i'm thrilled for all the people on the screen right now. >> we're very thrilled for you, and make no mistake of it, jonathan is very excited to be on "morning joe," but, yeah, thank you. >> thank you, mika, joe, all of you. >> would have been much happier if we had just gotten soda. >> $750 million. >> it wasn't my money. >> all right. we can't wait, ali. congratulations. >> thank you, guys, i can't wait either. >> thank you, joe, and thank you, ali vitali, that will start in january. we appreciate it. thanks to all of you for getting up "way too early" with us on this tuesday morning. "morning joe" starts, well, right now. "morning joe" starts, right now. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it's tuesday, december 10th. we have a lot to get to this morning. >> are we on? are we on? >> everybody has a seat. >> we're on but you need to get in your seats. lots to get to.

>> congratulations, ali. >> i'm happy for you. you'll sleep a little bit. >> thank you. i appreciate that. we're so thrilled for ali to take over "way too early." such a great team and great to host it. i'll be here every morning at 6:00 a.m. >> of course you will. >> i'm excited about my new role at "morning joe." thank you. >> the history of "way too early" is extraordinary. you've been there. we've had so many other hosts. willie geist. >> who started it all. >> the o.g. >> if you walk down the halls, you will see the long history back to jack benny was the first host. >> he was? i didn't realize that. >> it was also the launching pad for jack parr. >> did johnny spend time there, too? carson? >> he did, a couple weeks. he was still here from "the tonight show." put him on the air. >> you can't do that at 5:30 in the morning. >> no. congrats, man. great run. great run and congrats to ali who be amazing.

>> i'm excited. >> i guess i got makeup on him. we have a lot to get to this morning. our top story will be, among many, the arrest in the murder of the unitedhealthcare ceo less than a week after he was gunned down in midtown, manhattan. how the suspect, luigi mangione, was caught and what comes next in the case. plus, some of donald trump's most controversial cabinet picks were on capitol hill yesterday again meeting with republican senators. we'll show you what lawmakers had to say about those meetings and we'll bring you the very latest from damascus following the historic transfer of power from bashar al assad to syrian rebels. along with joe, willie and me, we have the host of "way too early" jonathan lemire and associate editor of "the washington post," eugene robinson is with us, or he will be here soon. >> he will be here soon.

willie, in new york at least, two cases yesterday really catching the attention of people in new york. one, of course, the ceo killing and, also, danny penny getting found not guilty on the subway case. >> yeah, the daniel penny case, we'll talk more about in a minute, was an incident that happened several months back where a homeless man was behaving erratically on the train and daniel penny subdued him and held him in a chokehold so long he killed the man. this sparked the debate whether he should have held the chokehold that long, whether he was a hero, a villain. a jury yesterday on a reduced charge found him not guilty in that case. >> and, by the way, john, a very thoughtful piece in "the new york times," talking about how "the times," the post-covid

times shaped it, the people in the subway scared what was going on down there, probably shaped not only the view of many new yorkers here but ultimately the jury to find him not guilty. >> yeah, there's no question the feel around the subway changed after the pandemic. crime went up. stats show it's still relatively low, but it's higher than it used to be. there was more of a sense of menace or unease and a lot of straphangers, myself included, this doesn't feel quite as safe as it used to, and i think that factored into the decision. the video, of course, of this death starts -- he's already been subdued, is in the chokehold. we, as the public, don't see what happened before then. clearly the jury thought penny was justified in doing what he did. >> you see the video of the riders with him afterwards talking about how they were scared, frightened, and saw him as someone protecting them. so, again, that's the debate that will go on, but let's get to the top story which just took shocking turns. so many. we begin with police arresting a

man in connection with the murder of unitedhealthcare ceo brian thompson. 26-year-old luigi mangione was taken into custody yesterday morning, ending a five-day manhunt. he was found at a mcdonald's in altoona, pennsylvania, after an employee called police about a suspicious person who matched the suspect's description. police say mangione had a gun and a silencing similar to one used in last week's shooting as well as a fake driver's license. police believe that i.d. was used to book a room at a hostel in new york city. two law enforcement officials tell nbc news police found a three-page handwritten document from mangione that refers to the health care industry and, quote, speaks to both his motivation and mind-set. mangione is currently being held in a state prison in huntington, pennsylvania, facing gun and

forgery charges. he was denied bail during a preliminary arraignment yesterday. his preliminary hearing is scheduled for december 23rd. online court documents show new york has also filed murder charges against mangione. it's not known when he will be extradited to the state. the 26-year-old suspect is from a prominent family in maryland. he attended a top private high school in baltimore where he became class valedictorian. in 2020 mangione graduated from the university of pennsylvania earning both a bachelor's and a masters degree in engineering. >> let's bring in nbc news national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent tom winter. tom, good morning. you and your colleague, jonathan dienst, broke the news that came like a thunderbolt on all our phones that there was somebody in altoona, pennsylvania -- we couldn't figure out why altoona, pennsylvania. so walk us through what you learned yesterday and now what we know about a man who has been

charged now with murder. >> right. so basically this happens only because an employee at a mcdonald's in altoona, pennsylvania, sees him and says, i recognize him from the news. you remember what's interesting is at the hostel, the people that he roomed with said he would never take off his mask but he would just to put in a bite of food. obviously can't eat through the mask. here he is eating at a mcdonald's. this individual spots him and then calls police. they show up and the details from the court documents filed in pennsylvania -- and that only pertains to the ghost gun. so he was going to get arged in pennsylvania regardless because he has the ghost gun, and that's in violation of state firearms laws. but they ask him, have you been to new york recently? and he starts shaking. and that's when the police officers, including the one who arrested him, he's been on the job now only six months, that's the moment when they knew that they had him. prior to that, they did run that identification, and it came back negative. they called that in over dispatch. they check in with the national

database. we don't have a driver's license under it. but that driver's license, the fact that he presented it at the hostel and then had it on his person, another huge clue. i think that's the reason the nypd, and us as reporters as we started to learn more what was found on him, it wasn't just a guy that kind of looks like the person we've been seeing in all these images over the last couple weeks and that there's a gun. as soon as we found out that he had the i.d., at that point it appeared this it was -- >> and it does go back to that one image from the hostel where he took his mask down when he checked in and presented that fake i.d. >> it's only a couple seconds. just a few seconds he takes it down. >> and being pushed out across the national bead media, an employee says, wait, that face looks familiar. i'd better call 911 and they catch the guy. do they get it all yet to motive? they found what's -- i don't know if it's fair to call it a manifesto, but some complaints about the health care system. we know he had back surgery, had been estranged from his family.

what more do we know about motive? >> three-plus pages of handwritten notes. it's kind of a little bit all over the place. i think when all the details of it come out it will point to the fact that, yes, he had an animus to the health care industry and unitedhealthcare, or at least referenced it, and there are specific things he apparently says to law enforcement as far as what they will find on won't find. if there are other articles or other written items that he has, some indications he might -- might help law enforcement understand how he put this all together, the work that he did as far as his time in new york city trying to determine where brian thompson, the ceo, who was killed, had his funeral yesterday, by the way, and leaves behind a wife and two kids, how he knew he was going to be where he was and the type of work that he did. i think there might be some more

details that will come out about that in the coming days, but, you know, putting it all together, the evidence against him is very damning, and that's why he's been charged with murder here in new york city, and so he's no longer a strong person of interest. he's the guy they've charged. >> police sources for a while were almost impressed how he pulled this off, meticulously planned. he knew where thompson was going to be. he had a getaway route with the bike, he paid cash at the hostel, went through the park, got out of town right away. it seems he got tripped up by some pretty basic mistakes, right? the same i.d. and still having the weapon on him. >> yes. so you could look at that a couple different ways. maybe he didn't want to ditch the weapon because he was afraid somebody would find it. it is a ghost gun, meaning it was manufactured effectively at home or by a 3d printer. whether or not he manufactured it, somebody else manufactured it, that's going to be a question. somebody could face charges for that, of course, but having that i.d. on him certainly helped them out. but he had a manifesto. so at some point he wanted to be

caught. he wanted people to know why he was doing this. >> interesting. >> but the fact that he was able to evade detection for so long in new york city and the fact that it's really just this one mistake that we're looking at on screen right now, this two to three seconds when he pulls the mask down, that's the reason why we're able to sit here today and say there's been an arrest, no doubt about it. sunday night, when i talk to people from the nypd at the stage where they said, if anybody has any information, no matter how small, whatever little detail, anything, you get to that point of the investigation, you're struggling to try to figure out where this person might be and they were just trying to back track him the whole way. >> how fascinating -- we talk about cameras all over the place. >> all over the place. >> and it ends up actually being eyes. eyes on him in altoona, pennsylvania, at a mcdonald's that actually brings this man hunt to an end. >> we'll be following this. also, a verdict has been reached in the case involving marine veteran daniel penny and

jordan neely, a homeless man, that penny -- who penny put into a chokehold on a new york city subway that resulted in neely's death. penny has been acquitted of criminally negligent homicide after neely's final moments were captured on video by a bystander that set off weeks of protests and drew national attention. the decision came on the fifth day of deliberations after the jury was deadlocked last week on manslaughter charges which the judge later dismissed. >> and, tom, a jury of his peers found him not guilty. a lot of people also screaming when a jury of peers found donald trump guilty, of course, they were dismissed as hacks. well, in the same manhattan jury pool, a jury of daniel penny's peers found him not guilty.

talk about this case. >> one of the interesting things you touched on before, the idea of safety on the subway. when you look at subway crimes per ridership, the subway system is statistically very safe. i've talked to transit chiefs, when you look at the underlying information, yes, it is very safe. but when you look at, and you ride it and i ride it every single day, most days to and from work every day, the feeling that you get is a little bit different than what the statistics are. and so there have been numerous occasions, particularly post pandemic, as you all mentioned before, this idea of do i feel safe versus am i safe? and we've all seen things on the subway that make us concerned. so i think when you put people into this mind-set -- and it was interesting to hear some of the testimony from, frankly, even some of the prosecution witnesses, who talked about how scared they were, it ultimately comes down to, i think, two

things, just looking at the facts of the case and thinking about this a little bit from a larger scale. when you look at what daniel penny did, this idea of holding on to the chokehold for too long, there will be a lot of debate and a lot of discussion about that, whether or not he should have let him go, whether or not he was fearful for his life. certainly can't put myself inside of that subway car, but when you look at the overall case, what we're doing for people that are consistently arrested and consistently have mental health issues -- >> how many times has he been arrested? >> a significant rap sheet. and then you look at the mental health component and the fact this is the ecosystem where some of these individuals live, when is enough enough for society? i think that's the big question here, and i think about it all the time. there was a proposal to involuntary commit people for mental health, not just for three days, five days, but for 30, 60, 90 days, to give people

some help so that they can break this. or, if you've been arrested -- how many times -- not specific to this case, but we see cases all the time when we talk about burglary, theft, things like that, 10, 20, 30, 40 arrests. when is enough to say, you know what, you need an extended period out of society? and so that's a big question, i think, that will be coming up for voters here in new york state and perhaps in major cities around the country, what types of laws are we going to go to. >> ene robinson, so much was framed around the environment in the subways post covid and a specific case a 40-year-old professional woman pushed in front of the r train on 42nd street back a year or so ago. and there's been this focus of violence down in the subways. you talked to most of the

people. you see on police tape afterwards most of them said they felt unsafe and uncomfortable. it does remind us, doesn't it, you and me are old enough to remember -- nobody else probably is, bernie gatz, when new york was just an absolute mess. he actually became a villain to many, a hero to more new yorkers because of the overall conditions that happened. i'm curious about your take on the real tragedy here, the issues, of course, tom brought up about just not a safety net for people with mental health problems and also a sense of insecurity for new yorkers and people in washington when they're on the subway or metro. >> well, look, i think mental health is the key issue here. we don't have any system. we don't have the institutions. we don't have the clinics.

we don't have the housing. we don't have what we need to deal with chronically mentally ill people who are judged a danger to themselves or others, you know, in a legalistic setting, and so, you know, we have to address that. we need to confront that as a society at some point. it's not, it's not fair to anybody. it's not fair to us. it's not fair to them. and so that's number one. and, number two, there is no comparison between the bernie betz days and today and in terms of crime and what new york feels like and is like, the sort of danger you felt justifiably 20, 30 years ago as opposed to today

when new york is the safest big city in the country going away. i'm a new yorker. i've ridden the subway on occasion. i get lost and take an express when i should have taken a local, vice versa. >> it happens to us all. i see parts of queens and the bronx that i really never intended to see. there is a feeling of kind of menace and danger still in the subway. and that's more related -- it's less what the passengers are doing than the actual infrastructure of the new york subway. it's early and is a great system that gets you around but it's

just not -- it feels more dangerous going into the new york subway than it does, to me at least, going into arnewer. that's a mammoth, herculean task to modernize the new york subway, but it ain't the tokyo subway. >> it ain't tokyo, willie. that's what we always say. >> this ain't tokyo, baby. >> i will say someone who will be on the subway a few hours from now, i don't feel danger when i'm down there. you have big crowds down there, but i understand why some people might, but we've all had a moment, tom, you're down there, somebody gets on the train, and you go, what would i do in the situation that daniel penny found himself in? i'll defer to the jury on this case. i didn't hear all the evidence. i haven't seen the video and the witnesses. should he have held him for six minutes in the chokehold and killed him? that's the question the jury

answered yesterday. you do have those moments, okay, this person does seem to be erratic, perhaps could pose a danger. do i step in if something happens? if he goes after that woman right there, do i step in? the answer you tell yourself is, yes, if he presents a weapon. you just don't know what happens. >> and it happens so fast, that's the thing. it happens so fast when that goes down. >> one technical question before we let you go, the jury was deadlocked on the manslaughter charge on friday, so they moved to criminally negligent homicide on which he was found not guilty. what's the distinction between those two there? >> yes. the details are pretty complicated but ultimately what the jury said, and they have the option to do this, is to say, okay, we're not going to be there with respect to specific intent. and so now we go whether or not he was negligent, in other words, this idea should he have let that chokehold go after a certain amount of time. but then this gets to all sorts of other permutations.

does neely get up and go after daniel penny or someone else on the subway car? at the end of the day jordan neely, who lost his mother as a result of a homicide, to joe's point, has 30, 40 plus arrests in new york city, a documented history of mental health. there is somebody who is dead as a result of all this. whether or not it was for criminal reasons, a jury decided on it. it underscores the people that move through the cracks and that's what everybody said when the case came up. the police department would love a solution for this because they don't want to keep arresting and people go and arresting and letting people go. so there's definitely a challenge. >> the mental health system in this country, again, is just grossly insufficient whether

you're talking about new york, whether you're talking about florida, whether you're talking about california, you have people walking about on the streets that have mental lelt issues, and the fact some progressives have said let's pass laws that allow homelessness. you look at san francisco, at los angeles. as we've said all along and rev and i have said all along, there's nothing compassionate about that, nothing progressive about that, leaving people with mental health problems on the street, no. we need to spend more money as a society taking care of those who have mental health challenges and not just say, yeah, you can live on the streets. bad things happen. >> nbc's tom winter, thank you very much for your reporting and analysis this morning. we appreciate it. we're going to turn now overseas to the major developments out of syria where the outgoing prime minister of the assad regime has agreed to turn over power to rebel forces.

nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel has the latest from damascus. >> reporter: in the main square in damascus, thousands gathered to cheer the end of syrian dictator bashar al assad. entire families came to witness history in the making. syrians have been coming from all over the country to gather here. hello. i'm from the united states. >> welcome. which press? >> reporter: nbc news. >> welcome. >> reporter: how are you feeling today? >> very happy. >> reporter: very happy. >> very, very happy. >> reporter: it seems to be the sentiment here. everyone says very happy. wow. so this is a symbol of everything that has transpired here over the last, really, just two weeks. the rebel forces moved into damascus, and the government and its armed forces, simply melted away. we've seen uniforms on the ground. this tank was just abandoned. now the tank is in the hands of

the people it was used to repress. there is one word i'm hearing over and over again, it is arabic for freedom. [ sound of gunfire ] >> reporter: and a lot of celebratory gun fire. the rebels were given a hero's welcome. many are from an islamic group called hts, considered a terrorist organization by the u.s. and the united nations. their victory was swift after assad's longtime backers, russia, iran, and hezbollah, did not or could not intervene. "everything will be excellent in our foreign and domestic relations. we don't want to be hostile to anyone," said one fighter. the leader of hts was once an

al qaeda commander and said there would be no restrictions on women's rights. syrians are overwhelmed by all the sudden changes and they're getting their first glimpses of assad's life of luxury. a video claims to show his vast collection of sports cars and suvs repossessed by revolution. the rebels have also been freeing political prisoners from a notorious prison once dubbed the human slaughterhouse. assad escaped for moscow, where he and his family were given asylum for humanitarian reasons. with him gone, there is nervousness but also hope. refugees are rushing back to write the next chapter of syria's history. >> that's nbc's richard engel with that report. front page of the "new york times." extraordinary story, willie. by the way, richard engel reporting gunfire goes off, do you know what richard engel calls that? monday. >> another day at the office for richard. that was an incredible piece

that captures the moment, including what "the new york times" describes as the unease. of course there's celebration that assad is gone. it's been 50 years under the assad rule, the dictatorship brutal for many people inside syria, but now what comes next? you have these rebels coming in. they've liberated the country, but what kind of rule do they impose? that's what we're waiting to see. >> jonathan lemire, i want to undercut right now the whining from some people saying that joe biden is just sitting back and doing nothing and ceding the powers to donald trump when he had his trip to africa, a significant trip. the first trip, i think, to the continent for joe biden since he's been president. yesterday reports that 75 isis targets inside of syria targeted and bombed. i mean, he's moving. they're doing everything they can do right now to try to move this action in syria in the

right direction. so the idea that he's sitting around, you know, playing ing parchisi. >> you're right. president biden was just in africa, a trip donald trump never made during his first term in office. and this will be a deeply consequential foreign policy legacy for the president. as a party how he has cozied up to prime minister netanyahu, we're seeing the changes in lebanon. of course the situation in gaza continues, seeing support for ukraine and how that has shaped alliances and europe and will be handing off to his successor but he hasn't done so yet. though trump has been on the global stage, the biden team, the administration still conducting foreign policy and will until the last minute.

still ahead on "morning joe," donald trump's pick for defense secretary, pete hegseth, says comments he made about women in combat have been misconstrued. >> huh. >> we'll show you what he initially said. >> maybe we should go through the sentences and do you think that an adjective was misplaced? >> we'll take a look at what he's saying now. plus, hegseth was on capitol hill yesterday along with kash patel and tulsi gabbard. we'll go live to capitol hill for the latest on where those controversial nominations stand. we're back in 90 seconds.

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please donate now. i think a huge one is women in combat and quotas. the way they pushed that under obama in a way in a had nothing, zero, to do with efficacy, zero to do with capability. >> you don't like women in combat? >> no. >> why not? >> i love women service members who contribute amazingly. because everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated and complication in combat means casualties are worse. i also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued that i somehow don't support women in the military. some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there, are women who serve, raise their right hand to defend this

country and love our nation, want to defend that flag, and they do it every single day around the globe. i'm not presuming anything. after president trump asked me to be the secretary of defense, i look forward to being a secretary for all our warriors, men and women, for the amazing contributions they make in our military. >> so women in the military, of course, very different than women in combat, which you saw him talking about in the sound bite before and he was extremely against women in combat. he made that very clear and, of course, there are very many women serving this country in that capacity. donald trump's pick for secretary of defense, pete hegseth, attempting to soften comments about women fighting on the front lines, but he didn't. he just separated from it. hegseth will be back on capitol hill today to meet with republican senators. he says he is meeting with senator lisa murkowski of alaska today and with senator susan collins of maine tomorrow.

it comes after he sat down for a second time with a key lawmaker, senator joanie ni ernst of iowa. she was hesitant to support the former fox news host, who has been accused of sexual assault, abusing alcohol, and financial mismanagement of two nonprofits dedicated to veterans, all of which he denies. but yesterday senator ernst had a different tone about hegseth, releasing a statement praising him for his responsiveness and respect for the process and calling their conversations. here is what she said when pressed by reporters. >> so i am supporting him through this process, and i'll just refer you back to the statement. >> is that a yes vote on the floor? >> did you change your mind? >> it was a very productive meeting, though. i think we're just moving through the process, but he does respect that i'm taking the time to spend with him.

>> back up. >> did you talk to him about the allegations today? >> thank you very much. i'll refer back to my statement. >> you said supporting the process. it doesn't sound like a yes yet. is that fair? >> i am supporting the process. >> did he commit to keeping women in their current roles in the military? >> he is very supportive of women in the military. it is one thing that we discussed. >> so he's changed his position? he's changed his position on that? >> memo to self, john, when you're being chased by reporters on the senate side of capitol hill, do not take the freight elevator. >> take the stairs. that elevator door -- you can see the aide growing panicked -- trying to hit the door close button. >> they kept getting -- >> i think the reporter had a hand in, i think. that's a pro tip. >> is that a pro tip? >> put your hand in. >> some people are good at gagglers. >> even though we have national news affair analyst and

columnist, john heilemann is here and the new host of "way too early" ali vitali. >> let's start with you on the hill. we've been hearing from our sources over the past week or so that there are up to six republican senators who are no votes on hegseth and, john, i think your reporting matches the same, right? >> yes. >> and right now they are just waiting for hegseth in the worms of r.e.m., to feel gravity's pull, much in the same way -- much in the same way that gaetz did, and you listen to joni ernst. i find it impossible, hard to believe she would ever support him given everything in his background, but yesterday she said, had a good meeting. we respect the process. we'll play this out until the end. what's your read with joni ernst

and, also, those republicans that are still hard-nosed but aren't saying anything? >> so there are the republicans that are hard-nosed that you are referring to and, you're right it the unofficial whip count stands at about six, but there are plenty of republicans, including in the president-elect's orbit who are hoping it's not the gravity you're talking about but the gravity we talk about in "wicked" where he'll be defying gravity. sorry for the pun but we have a lot of time to go on this confirmation battle. it's early in the process and that's either going to work in hegseth's favor because he'll be able to continue to have these kinds of meetings that go from productive and frank is how i think ernst was initially describing the tone of their conversations last week to now she's supporting him through the process. lemire and i were talking about this on "way too early." the idea she's had a clear tone shift is notable. the way that she's talking about in the last answer she didn't say anything about hegseth committing to keep women in their current roles in the

military, specifically that reporter trying to get at the idea of combat, instead joni ernst said he's supportive of women in the military. it's one thing we talked about. clearly he was not always in that stance. i don't think we should let anyone rewrite history, but it does give us a good sense of the way that hegseth is trying to at least soften the image that he came into capitol hill with, and as much as i think we're seeing ernst say she is supportive of the process, that's not saying i'm supportive of the man, at least not yet. it's saying i'll let him continue doing these meetings. i'm not going to be the next person or at least the first person to publicly tank the nomination, and i think that's important. just giving him the space and they'll see where it ends up. but that confirmation hearing is going to be bruising and brutal. >> our leadership when we were in congress, they never saw around the curve, right? they were just fighting to win the day.

i'm talking about back when i was in congress, fighting to win the day. >> the news cycle. >> fighting to win the news cycle and not looking at the bigger picture here. so maybe pete hegseth, maybe he wins a news cycle here, win as news cycle there, but you go to the end of this process, they don't want senate hearings because if they get senate hearings with pete hegseth, they're going to see testimony, certainly reports -- nbc news reports from fox news employees of public drunkenness recently at fox news. whether he was running to vets organizationings and tawdry behavior while running those organizations and whistle-blower reports. they're going to see in black and white financial mismanagement of vets

organizations that were very strong when he started there that ended up basically on the verge of bankruptcy and irrelevance of smaller vets organizations let alone -- and, yes, they're going to see testimony just like we would have seen with gaetz. it may not have been the 17-year-old girl for gaetz, but it may have been the other women around that with gaetz, but here we have the alleged rape. we have the police report. we have somebody who leaked that to "the new york times" and members of this woman's family, if she doesn't testify, other people testifying about what pete hegseth has done in the past. >> and from his mom. >> the email, of course, from his mom which actually lines up neatly with everything we've heard before and after about

pete hegseth. again, i said with gaetz, this is one of those old midas commercials. you can pay me now, or you can pay me later. and it is not in donald trump or the new administration's best interest that this is splayed all over the front pages of newspapers for a week or so while he's trying to get momentum for whatever policies he wants to push. again, maybe they want to put up a good fight, but, at the end of the day, this is just bad news for the dod. it's bad news for america and the world. it's even bad news for the incoming president. >> well, i think that's definitely a point of view and it's a point of view -- >> thank you. >> it's a point of view that i think -- >> wow. >> it's not really a point of view so much as a projection of how this ends up. >> i mean, look, i'm not taking the other side of the argument, but if you listen to people like

mike davis, the head of the article three project and a steve bannon ally, you listen to steve bannon, people who have a lot of influence with donald trump, they disagree with you. they want that fight. >> i'm just talking about the hearing. >> they want the fight, they want the hearing, they want it all. they have a much more scorched earth view of this. everyone on this i believe at that, i think, would agree with your point of view about this, why would the president want this? and i think if you had those two guys sitting here, they would say, we want to win this fight, and no matter how bloody it gets, the bloodier it gets in some ways the better because we are -- we saw what happened -- and in mike davis' case, he analogizes all these to the kavanaugh experience, which is it was a brutal experience, bloody and terrible, and yet we ended up getting our guy on the supreme court. i'm not trying to compare the two. >> he does. >> for those that do compare the two, it's a big difference

between bubba and buster drank in the backyard in tenth grade. >> there was a woman who came up on capitol hill and testified that he had sexually assaulted her, so it was brutal for all parties there. >> let's be very clear there. she went up and testified. nobody else did around there. here we have one case after another case after another case. >> i understand. >> we have documented whistle-blower reports. we have testimony. >> i'm not trying -- i said already, i'm not trying to take the argument, i'm not saying you're wrong, the question about what is about to unfold -- if there was unanimity in donald trump's world this was a mistake, they could have gotten out of it already. i think there are people around donald trump who are very -- >> do you think donald trump wants -- >> i don't know what donald trump wants. >> -- wants testimony about this person coming up saying he raped me and the public drunkenness

and the destroying the vets organizations and jonathan lemire, they are two different things. one thing if you say i want to fight about the mismanagement inside the pentagon and the bureaucracy and all the waste and how they won't listen to donald trump. that's one continuing. -- thing. they can get plenty of people who can do that just like the difference between pam bondi and matt gaetz. we're talking about two completely different things here. you can have the fight on, hey, let's clean up the pentagon. that's one thing. the question is whether this is a deeply flawed individual at this point in time to carry that fight out on capitol hill. >> and there's a bit of a split in the trump camp, people i've talked to. to heilemann's point, some want this fight. they don't care who it is. this is about breaking the dod, about having the public spectacle, ramming their choice down the throats of the public. others do have that concern. donald trump famously ins

people who drink too much. that cost rudy giuliani because he would drink too much and fall asleep on the plane. he doesn't care for that. it's more than he expected. the transition team surprised by the initial sexual assault allegation because hegseth didn't come forward right away. and some believe even if hegseth were to go down they could find a more palatable choice, a better choice of being confirmed, who will enact all those policies. right now it is a great debate but hegseth taking so much oxygen, though, they feel better about some of the other chances slipping under the radar like kash patel. >> he does not mind as much people who have been accused of sexual assault and harassment. he's picked a lot of them and he often sides with them, and i think they have this view which is a view you've heard first attributed to bill clinton, which is strong and wrong is better than weak and right. they do not want to be seen as

folding over nominee after nominee because they think it's not like, hey, if we give in on these two, that's going to lessen the taste for blood. they think the more they capitulate, what they see as capitulation, backing away from picks for sound strategic reasons, joe. i think your analysis is the standard. this is terrible for donald trump and a lot of people around trump say what's worse for donald trump is to give in and back away from someone who is a loyalist. >> on top of everything that joe has put forward here is the fact that he's completely unqualified for the job. completely. >> i do not disagree with that fact, but i'm trying to do the analysis of why this is not a foregone conclusion -- >> let me get the other side, though. there are people, quite a few people, a lot of people, inside of trump world that look at the matt gaetz pick and they laugh and they go, we traded up. we went from getting a guy who

wasn't up to the job to getting a woman who was attorney general of the state of florida for eight years, has democrats saying positive things about her, and, also, who they believe is far more competent. so they actually -- they're not sitting around going, oh, that gaetz thing was just horrible for us. they're sitting there thinking, kind of laughing, yeah, we traded up. we're good. i can't believe they can't trade up with somebody like hegseth who, again, is woefully unqualified given all the other problems. >> your point applies to dni, tulsi gabbard, the fbi to kash patel, which is you can find a maga loyalist who will disrupt the agencies and do all the things you want done to them without all the baggage that comes with them. there's somewhere in the middle they can land on. ali, let me first officially congratulate you on the "way too early" gig.

nobody better to take the reins from jonathan lemire. >> and started with milton burril. >> we put together with chewing gum and duct tape. >> can you believe back then we had ashtrays, we were smoking -- >> it was the best, oh, yeah, with the shag carpet. the band. remember the band? >> i'd like to keep the band. can we do that? >> lava lamps. >> gene remembers. >> gene was there. >> i remember, i remember. like johnny. >> just like carson. >> just like johnny. >> ali, welcome. this is how we do congratulations. >> just like johnny. but let's talk about what's going on on capitol hill and use senator ernst as the example here. her calculus, she sounded skeptical last week because of all the things not limited to

but especially because of that pete hegseth has said about women in the military. to be clear, this is a quote from him not ten years ago, last month, on that podcast straight up saying we should not have women in combat roles on the podcast from pete hegseth. yesterday she sounded more open to it. what did you read into that, and what is the vibe on capitol hill this morning about pete hegseth? >> i think with joni ernst as the example, though i will say i think other senators -- i believe it was kevin cramer -- have warned hegseth about the way that he's talked about women in combat and the fact that some of the very senators that he'll be testifying before, senator tammy duckworth among them, have been women in combat themselves who have the physical scars of that to show for it. so that's going to be yet another wrinkle if hegseth does move forward in this process. but for someone like ernst, her calculus is so layered, the fact she's up in 2026. we've already seen republican senators who are not constant

trump backers already drop primary challengers. she probably doesn't want to be among those. there's the fact, though, too, that she is also, at least in the reporting that we've done, a name that's in the mix, if the hegseth nomination ends up falling apart, everyone at that table you are sitting at knows the way to get in trump's good graces and stay there is to stay loyal. by saying i'm supporting the process and falling short of saying i'm supporting the man, ernst is saying that she's being good, going along to get along in this case while also doing a thorough check in her private meetings with him. and then the confirmation hearings will be what they'll be. i think you're right, at least the way heilemann is talking about it. the chaos is the point oftentimes in trump world. they're not shying away from the fact that this is going to be a nasty, nasty confirmation hearing. democrats are going to drag up all of this, and they're not going to have to look too hard when it comes to maligning pete hegseth, bringing forward the allegations that you have talked about, all of that is going to

be in there, but i also think a very pervasive thinking in trump world if you fold on the first one, you're just going to have to start folding later on down the line. this is a man who has never said i'm sorry for any number of the public controversies that he's been at the center of. look, a long time between now and the nominating contest on capitol hill, the mood was bad last week. it's better this week but it's only tuesday. we'll seal where it goes. >> we'll see what happens. and gene robinson, great point about joni ernst being up in 2026, something john heilemann and i were talking about earlier, the fact she has to worry about her primary and not quite so much about what happens in the general election, but there are a lot of republicans that are not up in '26, that are up in '28, that are up in '30. and for these republicans who actually can dare to be concerned about america's national security, i mean, if you're up in 2030 after donald trump is out of office, you can

actually sit back and go, all right, this would be horrific for the department of defense especially at a time when the middle east is in more turmoil, i would say, than any time since 1973. >> absolutely. look at what's happening in syria today. right? the israelis have gone across the border into syria to try to neutralize possible attacks. the turks have gone in to syria. there's questions about, you know, getting the iranians, who are already there, out. this is a mess. i think there are 1,000 or maybe it's just 100 u.s. troops somewhere in eastern syria that have to be taken care of and given assignments, and what are they doing today? this is an enormously

complicated and that's just syria. the middle east is a complete mess right now, and pete hegseth is manifestly completely unqualified to serve as secretary of defense at this moment or at any other moment, and that is something -- i mean, mika mentioned it, but the focus has to come back there regardless of what kind of person he is, which is certainly important and regardless of his drinking. he is unqualified. he's a fox news host. the secretary of defense is in the chain of command from the president to the secretary of defense to the commanders who are trying to execute our foreign policy and keep americans safe at a very dangerous time. and that's something that i hope

and i think senators are cognizant of and will keep in mind as this process goes on. i understand why joni ernst might not want to be -- want to run point on this -- >> right. >> but she served in combat. tammy duckworth served in combat. this is a bad nomination any way you look at it. and i hope those senators keep, you know, not only recognize that but act on it. >> remember, mika and i saw "conclave" by the way. >> really good. >> what's the best way to become pope? >> don't want to be pope. >> by not wanting to be pope. and a brilliant insight into joni ernst. right? the best way to become secdef. >> it's no good to have her name in the mix and you talked about feeling gravity's pull before. she has been for the last couple of weeks stuck in a moment she can't get out of.

all of this is the move of you go up to capitol hill every day and have everybody just swarm on you and be like you're the key person, what do you think, what do you think, what do you think? you are you going to vote against? and you want his job. her maneuver right now is, please stop -- let me just not be in the middle of this for a little while and get further along and hopefully this will go away and i'll never have to take a position. >> you did a ghostbusters thing. >> eugene robinson, john heilemann and ali vitali, thank you all very much for coming on the show this morning. great conversation. coming up on "morning joe," we're going to turn back to the latest developments out of syria where rebel forces are now in control of the country. we'll dig into how the fall of the assad regime is impacting the rest of the middle east. "morning joe" will be right back.

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editorial slanted fox news. his other children, according to the times, are both known to have less conservative political views than their father or brother. the scathing ruling characterizes murdoch's plan as a carefully crafted charade. >> i saw, john heilemann, got the idea watching an episode of "succession". >> i was thinking the same thing. >> whoa. okay. thank you. >> flashed on my thinking about that parallel. when it was on a realtime, it wasn't to me like obvious that it was just the murdoch family. in retrospect seems more like the murdoch family with each passing day. >> right. "the wall street journal" has this headline this morning in china's rapidly ageing cities, young people flee and few babies are borng. one example, only 5,500 babies were born in a city of 1.7 million last year.

by comparison, michigan's wayne county, includes detroit, has a similar size population, logged more than 20,000 births. while china's one child policy supercharged china's economic surge, it now means there are fewer young people to take care of the elderly and fewer women to start families. >> this is a critically important issue when you look at all the problems that china has been strapped with over the past decade, you talk to economists, ceos, you talk to people that are projecting out where they want to move their businesses, where they want to do their work, you keep hearing over and over again about the demographic time bomb in china that's going off. and it is a nightmare for them. >> every man at this table will want to hear this next story because they're going to want to get their watches. today, tom brady's rare watch collection goes up for auction at sotheby's. selling dozens of time pieces

including game-worn helmets and jerseys. some dating back to his time at the university of michigan. and ultra rare 1969 rolex daytona paul newman is priced to sell for up to 9 -- >> priced to sell. >> come on. >> bargain at half the price. >> this is -- >> why is he selling these watches? >> i don't know. >> why do you have these? >> listen, i know people probably that get watches. very important. you know, like my watch collection, i think i found a 1978 timex in kmart. >> willie likes the swatch better. >> i love the swatch. people love -- like you guys know people that go buy really -- >> sure. >> i just lose them. >> yeah. >> i just lose them. why do you get them? >> he has a royal oak that he wore at that roast last spring. >> these glamour shots -- i'm

not meant for this table. >> tiffany's pocket watch. >> how much? >> i don't know. >> how much are these things. >> we'll be back in 90 seconds with what we're learning about the identity -- >> why? >> 90 grand. >> a lot of these watches i would bet money were purchased for him by someone who investments. the reason he bought them in the first place, now he'll make a ton of money selling them at a huge profit from what he bought them from a couple years ago. >> the guy needs money obviously. good for him. >> funny. people who are really rich play the stock market. it's wild. >> really? >> don't worry. i'm not getting you a pocket watch for christmas. >> i got my timex. >> made in detroit, baby. made in detroit. >> give me the info on that. >> do they still make swatches? >> i have two swatches. they're under 100 bucks. >> the latest on the suspect in the unitedhealthcare shooting. we'll bring you the latest on

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murder of unitedhealthcare ceo brian thompson who was shot and killed in midtown manhattan last week. nbc news correspondent stephanie gosk has more on how police apprehended the suspect. >> reporter: 26-year-old luigi mangione is in custody in pennsylvania, arraigned on unrelated felony gun charges and lying to police about his identity. >> we have a strong person of interest in the shooting that shook our city last week. >> reporter: five days after unitedhealthcare ceo brian thompson was stalked and gunned down on the streets of midtown manhattan, the masked shooter fleeing on an e-bike into central park and alluding police long enough to get out of the city. >> the suspect was in a mcdonald's and was recognized by an employee who then called local police. >> reporter: 280 miles west of new york city, eating breakfast. officer tyler fry, who has been on the job just six months,

described approaching mangione. >> me and my partner and i recognized him immediately. didn't think twice about it. we knew that was our guy. >> reporter: local police detained mangione after he showed them this fake id from new jersey with the name mark rosario, the same one he used to check into a manhattan ho still. it was one of multiple fake ids in his possession, along with a u.s. passport, a similar mask and clothing worn by the gunman and this weapon, with a suppresser like the one used in the shooter. >> the gun appears to be a ghost gun. may have been made on a 3d printer. the capability of firing a 9 millimeter round. >> reporter: they found a handwritten three page manifesto. two senior law enforcement officials say it references the healthcare industry. >> does seem that he has some ill-will toward corporate america. >> reporter: mangione has not been charged in last week's

shooting. officials believe he's been in pennsylvania for several days. >> he was in a variety of locations across the state to include philadelphia, pittsburgh and points in between. >> reporter: the nypd says mangione was born and raised in maryland. his last known address in hawaii. he was the valedictorian at an all-boys private school in baltimore, according to his linkedin page. >> our class was able to explore the new while also preserving the old. >> reporter: the university of pennsylvania says he graduated in 2020 with a bachelors and masters in computer science, a fraternity at the school also confirming he was a member. investigators say they are combing through his online posts and there are many on platforms including facebook, x, instagram, linkedin and goodreads reveals the 26-year-old appears to be a prolific reader. he shared someone else's take on the manifesto written by the unabomber ted kaczynski. when all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. it's not terrorism, it's war and

revolution. mangione saying he found it interesting. thompson's murder triggered a backlash online against healthcare companies. many sharing their ainge we are the industry. some people even celebrating the killer. at unitedhealthcare in minnesota the company put up temporary fencing, a private funeral was held for the ceo, 50-year-old father of two, brian thompson. >> nbc's stephanie gosk with that report. we're learning more about the handwritten document that police say mangione left behind. a senior law enforcement official confirming to nbc news that it says in part, frankly these parasites had it coming and stated that he acted alone. the writings also include a line that says, i do apologize for any strife or traumas, but it had to be done. the official says. we're going to talk to former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi, frank figulusi about the

investigation and that in just a moment. we want to turn now to some of the backlash, president-elect trump is facing after calling for a members of the house january 6th committee, select committee, to be jailed. here is a reminder of what he said on nbc's "meet the press" on sunday. >> cheney was behind it and so was benny thompson and everybody on that committee. >> we're going -- >> for what they did. >> yeah. >> honestly, they should go to jail. >> so you think liz cheney should go to jail? >> for what they did -- >> everyone on the committee you think -- >> anybody that voted in favor -- >> are you going to direct your fbi director and attorney general to send them to jail? >> not at all. i think that they'll have to look at that, but i'm not going -- i'm going to focus on drill baby drill. >> he already directed them to. he just said they should all go to jail. no, i'm not going to direct them. they should all go to jail. he already directed them to. >> fox news legal analyst jonathan turley criticized those comments, writing on his website, quote, there is no

viable, criminal case to be made against the j 6th committee members for their investigation or report. we need to move beyond the rage rhetoric if this country is going to come together to face the tough challenges ahead. i consider the j 6th committee to be not just a colossal failure but a missed opportunity for a bipartisan look at that tragic day. having said that, these are ethical and political failings, not criminal violations. joining the conversation, we have president of the national action network and host of msnbc's "politic nation" reverend al sharpton and white house correspondent for reuters, jeff mason joins us. good to see you jeff, at the table, along with a ul of us. >> we have donald trump talking about sending members of congress to jail and kash patel, his pick to be fbi director, saying that reporters should be sent to jail.

so, i'm curious, how are you covering the story? and what are the -- what are -- you hear jonathan turley, a long-time supporter of donald trump, saying he crossed the line here. where does this go? >> well, the first thing i would say is anyone who speculates, just like they did eight years ago, that what donald trump says is not what he means is not -- not realizing who the president-elect is. and the fact that he's talking about it openly and suggesting this is what i want, but then transitions quickly to drill baby drill kash patel is listening to what he's saying. the justice department is listening to what he is saying. the people who work for him are listening to what he is saying. i don't think you can write it off. >> rev? >> i think that it's dangerous because if you listen closely, he says that everyone that voted should go to jail. so, i mean, if that's not moving all the way to a tyranny in this country, if you vote against me, that's criminal is actually what he's saying here.

i think that's very dangerous. and i think he's right. when you have the incoming nominee to be the incoming fbi director and others listening to the will of the incoming head of state, where he can criminalize people that vote in a way that he doesn't agree in a congressional committee, that's a danger to all of the american public. >> jonathan, how does that look? he arrests a member of the press, kash patel does? he arrests liz cheney for doing something that's perfectly legal? okay. we're all thinking about that. and it's horrifying. it's un-american. some would even say that's the rhetoric of a fascist. but what happens next with a country that has 240 years of checks and balances? we saw what happened in south korea when they declared martial law. and they had a history lasting about 20, 25 years of a democracy.

we have 240 years. so what happens the day after? how chaotic does it get for donald trump and people inside the white house? >> well, there are few things here. there's been a lot of conversation about the lack of protest movement around donald trump this time around. i think that would change if he were to follow through on some of these promises. arsing members of congress, arresting members of the media, the mass deportation plan that doesn't just focus on criminals but rather everyday people who have been in the community for decades. you know, he has never outlined what charges they would be here for these arrests for members of congress or members of the media. we have to look on that. this is beyond a threat to intimidate for the future. try to intimidate members of congress to not investigate him on the second term, to intimidate members of the press to not dig deep because we will -- even if we don't arrest you, perhaps try to seize your notes or get your phones or to try to stop your reporting and

intimidate you that way. expensive bills most reporters cannot pay. as much looking backwards as it is looking forward and setting a scary tone for the next four years. >> we'll see how far kash patel goes. he has kind records from republicans on the hill yesterday, but we'll see how long that continues. a couple things to say about donald trump's comment, jeff, on the drill baby drill, united states is pulling more oil out of the ground. that's one part. the second part about jonathan turley not being a bipartisan, democrats sure tried. they got -- >> thank you for bringing that up. >> they got liz cheney and adam kinzinger. mitch mcconnell decided not to participate in an investigation of his own. that all needs to be said. >> and kevin mccarthy. the democrats kept working -- >> they tried. >> they knew people. let's go. let's figure this out. there were a couple of bomb throwers that rhetorical bomb throwers, let's pick some others. they tried to work these committees do. and republicans walked away from it.

>> the republicans were threatened on january 6th, too. it's not as if that attack was just aimed at nancy pelosi and democrats. it was aimed out all the lawmakers who were there. >> jeff, let's pick up on this conversation about the transition that you're covering. pete hegseth is the man of the moment on capitol hill right now. but also up there yesterday were tulsi gabbard, donald trump's choice for dni, kash patel at fbi. what is your sense of how republicans in the senate are managing this idea that a loot of them privatesy as you know don't think any of those three are qualified for the jobs that they've been put up for but also need to massage donald trump? >> the last point is key. they're doing a vetting process. they want to show the president-elect that they're talking to his candidates and considering it before the vote. you had senator joanie ernst come out and say she had met again with the former fox news host. and said somewhat positive things but also didn't come out and say i'm going to support

him. as for the rest, i think it just -- it's a time game. see to what extent they get the support from these republicans and to what extent the lawmakers are willing, if they get that far to stand up to the president-elect and say, no, this is not what we want. that's what they did with gaetz, to some extent. gaetz ended up resigning or pulling out. see if that happens to anybody else. >> rev, interesting editorial board column by "the washington post" going off of this kristen welker, "meet the press" interview says trump tries a softer tone and a harder one, too. for trump 2.0, prepare for the worst but do not assume at every turn. fascinating because, of course, for us, and i think for everybody else, the headline was, arrest liz cheney, arrest binny thompson, arrest everybody. no, no, no. i'm not going to call for that. but what the "post" is saying, sift through that, but also look where he talks about wanting

compromise on immigration, wanting compromise possibly on abortion. that's hard for democrats to do when he's talking about arresting a member of the caucus. "washington post" on to something here? should they try to seek compromise on, for instance, dreamers? or the immigration issue, that's what "the washington post" is saying? >> i think the challenge the democrats have is not try to play to the cheap seats that trump sometimes plays to. and you need to keep in mind what is your end goal, what is your end result. and if compromising sometime to get some things through for the good of the people, then you do that. that's not selling out. that's why we sent you to washington. >> that's right. >> and i think that that -- and those of us that are out there in the communities and speak up need to give them the room to do that because at the end of the day, we want to see what is

better -- >> give the democrats room. >> give the democrats room. >> let me ask you this question because the post is saying democrats should sit down and start talking now. should hakeem jeffries sit down with donald trump and try to figure out, let's say, possible compromises on immigration? >> i think hakeem jeffries should sit down and seek to do it and let president-elect trump be the bad guy in the room if that's what happens. but don't let it be said you didn't try to do all you could for your constituents and we shouldn't be outside screaming at you for going into a meeting. that's why we sent you to washington. >> that's right. jeff? >> i would just add, jonathan and i both covered president trump's first term, he dangles compromises and he goes away. there were talks then about doing something with the dreamers and he actually seemed like he wanted to do something about the dreamers. and then he walked away from it. same with gun control. there was a moment after i think it was parkland, where it looked seriously like president trump might want to do something on gun violence protection and then the nra got involve and then he pulled away.

so he does talk about compromise and then it doesn't come to fruition. >> good context. >> with the democrats. >> what's so fascinating, jonathan, i know you covered him and you and jeff agree on this, he talks about compromise and pulls back. for somebody who controls his base as much as he does, he's awfully fearful of it. he will not talk about operation warp speed, again we talked about around this table perhaps one of the great achievements scientifically over the past 50 years. won't talk about that because he did one time with bill o'reilly and he got booed. so, i'm wondering, is there any reason to believe that he's going to move -- that he's not going to be as constrained by his base this time? or is it going to be more of the same? >> more of the same. you're right about operation warp speed. i was talking to someone else about this a few days ago, that should be his first room in his presidential library, that accomplishment. they did it in ten months and distributed during a global pandemic. but this is someone who when

given the choice between being a unifier or divider almost always chosen division. we're seeing that now with some of the responses to some of his cabinet picks. there's a real push on the right for folks like kash patel. we have reporting that trump was waffling about whether he wanted to put patel up for an fbi director job because they didn't think he would be confirmed. there was thought given a lesser job he could get through, but then steve bannon, others said, no, you need to put him at the top of the fbi and that's what he's going with. there are moments when he still despite never running for election again, he seems fearful of alienating the base too much. we'll move on now of the rebel group credited with overthrowing bashar al assad's regime in syria is now promising to publish a list of former assad officials who the group says oversaw torture prior to the collapse of the regime. its leader, former senior member of al qaeda, has been thrust

into the spotlight after his group toppled the 50-year rule of the assad family. syria's prime minister said yesterday most cabinet ministers resumed work following assad's ouster through the -- though the associated press cites a u.n. official as saying the public sector remains paralyzed. all of this is happening as displaced syrians continue to flow back into the country, seeking to reunite with family and hoping for a more peaceful future. joining us now, senior fellow at the carnegie endowment for international peace, focussing on iran and u.s. foreign policy toward the middle east. it's good have you on. what do you think will happen in the coming weeks? what worries you about the next few weeks right now? >> you know, mika, i think there's a real tension between the ideology of the leader you talked about, mr. jolani who is

emerging as the new leader of syria. there's tension between his ideology and his aspirations. as you mentioned, this is someone with a background in al qaeda and isis. so he's an islamist, but at the same time, when he talks about his vision for syria, he talks about reconciliation and reconstruction. so these things are at odds. islam has failed everywhere, whether the taliban, the muslim brotherhood, iran. so does he want to be like afghanistan? or does he want to be like dubai? i think this is a question that reporters should ask him. he's now doing a lot of interviews with western media. the question i would like to hear him answer is what country would he like to emulate? what is the vision that he has for syria? does he say the united arab emirates or the taliban? if he says the taliban, that's not going to have much popular backing within syria. >> so, let me ask you karim just

taking a step backwards. this happened at lightning speed. damascus fell over the weekend and assad fleeing to moscow. just for our viewers at home, how this happened so quickly. what were the factors at play that led to the end of a 50-year rule? >> so, the key factors, willie, one was the fact that russia -- assad's key backers, consumed in its own war with ukraine, the iran regime has -- the other key backer of assad, has been badly hurt by israeli military actions. and then the militia, which helped assad stay in power over the last decade and a half, lebanese hezbollah. and lebanese hezbollah has been decimated by israel over the last several weeks. its key backers were all consumed by its own conflicts. what we see is when dictatorships fall traditionally, you need two key things. you need divisions at the top

and you need pressure from below. and those existed in syria. so, assad's regime, his military, was divided. they had lost their resolve because they lost their foreign backing. and you had at the same time an opposition, which was organize, had a strategy, it had leadership and they felt an opportunity to pounce and they were successful. >> karim, sometimes we see the fall of dictators, but then we see those that came with the populist movement become dictatorial themselves. how do you feel that this new government will operate? will they go for for democratic syria? or will they just be a different face with the same kind of dictatorial powers? secondly, i heard the leader of the opposition or the leader of the group that is credited with the fall of assad, say that he welcomes all religions. will that be a case that is

practice, in your opinion, by the new leaders where christians and others will not be penalized or at least outcast in syria? >> that's a great question, reverend al. a wonderful quote from henry kissinger, revolutions aren't defined by the regimes which they brought down, their defined by the governments that they build. and so, we're in the very early days of the new syria. one of the signs that i looked for, one of the early red flags, goes to this issue of tolerance is whether they will start forcing women to wear the head scarf to where the hijab. if we start to see that, so far we haven't seen, that's a sign in the direction they're going to go to which will have implications not only for women's rights but will also have implications for the way they think about minorities, whether that's christians or

kurds, as i said, going back to this leader, mr. jolani, he's smart enough to know that his ideology has failed everywhere. isis has been a failure, taliban has been a failure, islamic republyca has been failure. he needs foreign investments. whether it's the europeans or very wealthy gulf countries, they're not going to invest in syria if he's going to try to turn it into another taliban government. >> senior fellow at the carnegie endowment for international piece, karim, thank you so much for coming on this morning. >> so, jeff, you obviously following the story about the biden administration its response, you have an interview later on today with a national security official there. talk about what the biden administration has been doing. we were saying earlier people that are reporting of the administration's untimely death. greatly exaggerating it because yesterday, what, 70, 75 bombing

runs against isis targets in syria. >> imagine going out, if you're joe biden, with this major foreign policy crisis at the end. which may not -- it's a crisis is probably the right word, but big challenge any way for the united states. one of the questions i have and that i'll be asking john finer about this afternoon is how will the new syria work with the west? and what does the west want to provide? i think the biggest concern is that it turns into chaos. i think the opportunity that they see right now is that this is -- first a chance to get out some hostages, including austin tice, we're all thinking about, and secondly to maybe build a country that has some stability and doesn't have these ties with iran and with some foreign adversaries that the united states sees. >> there is an opportunity, mika, because you have a weakened iran. >> yeah. >> that's not going to be able to be much help. you have the saudis, the emirates gulf states that don't want chaos there and will -- if they don't want to be radicals,

they'll build them up. you have the israelis that are already going in to syria right now. so there are a lot of different pressures. there are centives for them not to be extreme but also some real warnings that if they do go that way, it will be a problem. >> white house correspondent for reuters, jeff mason, thank you very much for coming on this morning. >> thank you. still ahead on "morning joe," much more on our top story of the morning, an arrest in the shooting death of united healthcare's ceo. what we're learning about the 26-year-old man facing charges this morning. also ahead, a conversation about the future of the democratic party as president-elect trump prepares to return to the white house. "morning joe" is back in a moment. white house "morning joe" is back in a moment the itch and rash of moderate to severe eczema disrupts my skin, night and day.

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and killings unitedhealthcare ceo brian thompson is in police custody this morning, ending a five-day manhunt for the 26-year-old suspect. let's bring in frank viglusi, senior msnbc national security and intelligence analyst. frank, good morning. walk through at the top of the hour how police found this 26-year-old. he was in altoona, pennsylvania, sitting at a mcdonald's, eating when an employee who had seen

that one moment, that one still image from the moment he checked in to an upper west side hostile last week recognized his face, called 911, two beat cops go in and confront him. they say have you been to new york lately, and according to the police, he began to shake and it all fell apart from there. what more can you tell us this morning about the way they found this guy who police confessed yesterday wasn't even on their radar as of 24 hours ago. >> yeah, that's significant, that part right there, that he wasn't on our radar really got my attention. here's a guy whose face or at least part of his face has been plastered all over global media, yet no one had called in, no family members, no friends or colleagues. it takes a mcdonald's employee who is really sharp and does the right thing and what a contrast between that simple function there of that employee and all the high-tech sophistication and forensics, dna and fingerprinting and cell phone tracking, scuba divers, all that

going on and what did it take? a member of the public saying, i think the guy looks like the killer. then i love the story of the six-month rookie, just six months out of the academy who comes and gets it right. he gets it right. he does the conversation. hey, can you take your mask down? hey, have you been in new york recently? and that allows a pat-down. all of this happened in a very legalistic fashion that allowed the pat-down which found more evidence which allowed a deeper search. all good. a good ending, but so many questions remain. >> yeah. they asked for id. and the 26-year-old presented the very id, the fake one, from new jersey that he presented at the youth hostile. they were able to match that up. and found a weapon as well. so, as we begin to look and law enforcement begins to look at motive here, there was some scribblings, three pages, tom winter reports, of railing in some ways against the healthcare industry. not clear why. he did have a back surgery, it was reported. could be connected to that. estranged from his family in some ways. but really a young man of great

privilege. his family very wealthy. went to elite private schools. went to an ivy league school. graduated a few years ago. what do you read into his profile and what we know so far to get you to some kind of mote i have? >> it's interesting how this profile takes shape as we get more and more information. initially when we just heard the name, masters degree from ivy league, this wasn't making a lot of sense. but now as it's starting to gel, i'm seeing what i'm calling an activist killer, not a cold-blooded killer, but rather he's about an ideology. we'll learn more of that from his couple of pages of writing. but also we're learning a lot from his social media. he's posted, particularly on his x account, all kinds of discussions with the ethics and morality of murder. he seems to be aligned with the unabomber in the sense that he read the unabomber's manifesto and concluded it is ethical and moral sometimes to kill somebody. and why? when it involves corporate greed

and big corporate institutions. so, we're going to find out the why. but i caution people, even when he -- if he cooperates and we get to the why, it's going to make perfect sense to him. it may not make sense to us. >> frank, i want to ask you about the gun they found, a ghost gun, with some speculation that maybe even was manufactured in a 3d printer, either he did it or someone else did it for him. no serial number. pretty untraceable. how prevalent are these guns right now and what sort of challenge do they pose for law enforcement to solve crimes exactly like this. >> yeah. so there's a micro issue with the ghost gun and a macro, societal issue. the micro issue, that's what allowed the altoona pd to hold him. that's illegal to possess a ghost gun. the larger issue of great concern to law enforcement which is why they're federally against the law. you can make this by simply renting time on a 3d printer. go to some libraries and say i need four hours with the 3d printer today.

you can manufacture a gun. there's instructions on the internet. what's the problem? it can't be traced. there's no serial number on it. and as we saw, it's not even reliable sometimes. you saw him struggle in the video in new york with that weapon. it appears to have jammed. he had to eject three live rounds to make it clear. it's dangerous and the police tell us it's increasingly turning up at crime scenes. >> good lord, former director for counterintelligence at the fbi, frank, thank you, frank, very much. we'll turn back now to politics. where democratic governors believe they need to lay the foundation for the future of the party. what's next? that was the consensus coming out of their annual meeting over the weekend in california. they also warned about letting president-elect trump and his administration set the agenda, calling for pitches that focus on improving voter's everyday lives. meanwhile, a survey from pew

research center follows november's election shows democrats are currently more pessimistic about their party's future than at any point over the last eight years. joining us now, former senior spokesperson and adviser for the harris campaign, adrian elrod back on the show. good to have you. >> perfect time to have you. i'm going to talk about somebody that you know, because you're from arkansas. i interviewed bill clinton last week, i would tell you, president clinton was optimistic. you know, he wasn't sitting there ringing his hands going, oh my god, what do we do? what do we do? he as always got right to the heart of the matter. he goes, we have to meet people where they are. right? and he said -- >> yep. >> i actually said it for him, i said, i was focussed on democracy. i was focussed on fascist rhetoric. and he said, yeah, people were focussed on gas prices and grocery bills. you have to meet people where they are.

or they're not going to vote for you. talk about that. and talk about how, again, how bill clinton always seems to boil it down to, again, what's the most essential part of the campaign. >> yeah, joe. first of all, great to be back with you and mika and the whole crew here. i watched the interview. such a great discussion between the two of you. and there's a couple of things here. yes, you're exactly right. we have got to get back to those bread and butter issues. those kitchen table issues, which by the way, democrats are the ones who are passing the policies that address those issues. when you look at president biden's record, four major economic bills, can you imagine what our lives would look like right now if he hadn't passed the american rescue plan right after covid. inflation would have been a record high. but how do we translate what we are doing as democrats? policies that we are passing. how do we translate that to how we are going to affect the everyday lives of the american people? lowering those gas prices, lowering food costs, improving

schools. you know, there's such a disconnect there in our party. it's not because of one human being. it's not because of one elected official. it is a collective effort. so, i think we have got to get back to being able to effectively communicate about what we're fighting for as democrats and how that is going to improve the lives of the american people. again, you and president clinton had such a great conversation. but he's exactly right. we have to meet people where they are. >> right. >> and if we can kind of get -- if we can kind of get the rub there where we can talk about what we're fighting for. what we've done but also what we want to do in the future. of course as we all know, elections are about the future, not the past. i think we can start to get back to the road to recovery. something else, joe, i want to mention we talk how some democrats think, gosh, we need new leadership, we have to start all over, we have to completely revamp where we are as a party. when john kerry lost his election in 2004, as president, we had 44 democrats in the senate. and i think we had about minus

28 to 30 seats in the house. i was part of rahm emanuel's team when he chaired in 2006 where we won back the house, we won back the senate. chuck schumer, his leadership. we're in a far better circumstance at this point, right? we are down several seats in the house. and we're only down three seats in the senate. so, democrats are in a much better situation. we picked up some crucial down ballot senate seats in this election. we narrowed the margins in the house. i think we're actually sitting right where we need to be as democrats. or whatever trump and the republicans can't pass, that is going to be on them because democrats have no power. >> right. >> we're not in these dire straits that some democrats think we are in this country but we do have a lot of work to do when it comes to communicating with the voters of this country. >> right. that's another thing. bill clinton was optimistic. and i actually heard people who spoken with barack obama, he's mott wringing his hands thinking it's the end of the word.

optimistic because they know two years things could be dramatically different. everybody obviously is concerned about what's going to happen over the next two years. but you look at that pew poll and it says democrats are more pessimistic than they've been in eight years. bill clinton will tell you, it was a 1% election. >> yep. >> the national vote 1%. wisconsin, less than 1%. michigan, a little more than 1%. pennsylvania, 1.5%. that is as we said on this show for a month, a tie. >> yep. >> i think it's crazy -- i want us all to talk about this, but i'll start with you, adrian. i'm reading all these things. elon musk shows the vision for the future. and it's x this and the bro culture and it's the end of blah blah blah. 1%. i will tell you, if it had been 1% in the other direction, we would be hearing elon musk, the

failure of all failures. he has destroyed his empire. the bro culture is officially -- the exaggeration over 1% is just terminally stupid. one final thing, too, with all of this talk about the amazing things that happened because of elon -- i'm not just talking about elon. that's just everybody is talking about elon musk, x, bro culture, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 1% is the big difference here. if it had changed and gone in the other direction, everybody would be talking differently about everything right now. it's just the overgeneralization and the democratic infighting really, really seems overcooked. >> thank you, joe, for saying that. you really teed that up perfectly. couple things. number one, as you and mika

talked about on this show a lot, democrats we tend to be debby downers. we tend to be negative nancys. when we shouldn't be. 75 million people and counting voted for kamala harris. let's lay that groundwork. she did very well in a number of states and certainly in the states that we invested in, the battleground states she invested in she outperformed dramatically where we would have if we had not played in those states. number one. number two yes, donald trump decisively won this election. there's no question about that. but it was not a mandate. i mean, look at michigan with alyssa slot kin and some of these down ballot races that outperformed the national ticket. democrats have a lot to be proud of and a lot to be optimistic about, but we do have a lot of work when it comes to how are we going to bring back some of those working class voters. we've lost latina voters at a rate of 29% since 2012. that is not sustainable. you know, we were able to cobble together a coalition of a lot of moderate republicans this election cycle. a lot of that had to do with

trump. but are we going to be able to maintain that coalition going forward. how are we going to get back some of those clinton voters, you know, in the '90s that voted for him because of that centrist leadership where he was putting them first. he was talking about how am i going to fight for the american people. how am i going to fight to lower their costs. it's the economy, stupid. sure that was something we talked about this election cycle but there's still a disconnect as a party. not one individual. this is not on president biden. this is not on vice president harris. this is a collective party issue of how do we get back to demonstrating to voters in america that we are the ones fighting to lower their costs, to improve their lives because that is exactly what we are doing. >> rev, no doubt democrats have some soul searching to do but to the point here, they also had an unpopular incumbent and also global forces. we see post-pandemic democratic leaders across the globe either losing power entirely or least being dramatically weak bed. republican margins are slim.

trump administration guilt of overreach, democrats could be just fine in two years. >> i think adrian is right. there needs to an analysis. all the bedwetting is counterproductive. it was a 1% race. yes, we need to do an analysis of how we deal with the price of groceries in our rhetoric and what is being sold. but let's not throw out the fact that joe biden was a good president that did very substantive consequential things. and we shouldn't back away from that. and all of this about bringing in just people because they're young, if they're able, yes, we need young leadership. but we just saw the country elect a 78-year-old man. they didn't bring in young leadership in the republicans. they talked to their base and the base came out. we need not sacrifice any part of the base. >> all right. adrian elrod, thank you very much. great to have you back on the show. good to see you. >> you, too. coming up, we'll go through the top health stories of the

day, which with nbc news medical contributor, dr. vin gupta, who joins us here in the studio. "morning joe" will be right back. "morning joe" will be right back what are folks 60 and older learning these days? new perspectives! ♪♪

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♪♪ 52 past the hour. welcome back to "morning joe." the u.s. department of agriculture recently announced it will mandate all raw milk to be tested for bird flu. more than 700 cow herds nationwide have been infected with bird flu since march. along with nearly 60 people, many of them dairy farmers. the rule is set to go in effect next week, just over a month before the inauguration of president-elect trump, whose nominee to lead the department of health and human services, robert f. kennedy jr., has been an outspoken supporter of consuming raw milk. rfk jr. has also said the u.s. government should reduce its restrictions on the product. i guess my worst advice, willie, on instagram and a lot of it i'm seeing about raw milk all the time. >> your getting advice -- >> well, i don't take the advice but i see a lot of it. >> yeah. i try not to get my medical advice from the comments section

on instagram. >> don't do it. especially there. joining us now dr. vin gupta. get your advice from a doctor. let's talk about raw milk, shall we? >> yep. >> in the same way that we talked about the great achievements of vaccines being called into question and other things that were fluoride in the water that have been settled for generations now, there's this conversation about raw milk. can you explain the idea behind consuming raw milk and why there's some danger to that. >> of course, willie. actually this is not something we used to talk about last five years we haven't been talking about raw milk. there's is reason we're talking about it, it's becoming mainstream. recent survey found that 53% of americans actually do not realize that raw milk is unsafe. and so this is something -- this is a concept that again needs to be normed. raw milk is not safe. and here is why. there's a lot of bacteria in raw milk that pasteurization, just the heating of raw milk kills. but the concept here is that

amongst wholistic proponents that raw milk will bolster your immune system, any number of things. there's a lot of nits out there about raw milk health benefits that fraepgly majority of the americans believe in or don't think raw milk is unsafe. salmonella listeria, much less bird flu, the fact that usda is testing for bird flu, to make sure we understand what's happening with the spread. there's a lot of reasons not to ingest it. we just need to start to educate the public a little more because there's a lot of misconceptions. >> i guess some people think if they boil it, if they boil it they'll solve all those problems, right? >> exactly. that's where pasteurization is a more refined process. it's critical. we have to break down this notion that somehow it's better if r you if you had a workout to have raw milk versus commercial supply. >> what is the argument? we should debunk it if you want

to or just put it out there, what is the argument for raw milk? >> there isn't any. >> there you go. >> there isn't an argument for it. the myth is that somehow pasteurization removes, just like you would say -- have actual whole vegetables versus break it down and have a smoothie, lose the nutritional value. there's this notion of something similar that somehow pasteurization removes all the goodness of coliseum and proteins and basically get nothing. that's what people think and it's wrong. >> okay. let's go to the next story we're looking at here. zepbound is emerging. >> yep. >> all these weight loss drugs. started with ozempic and wegovy. >> that's right. that's right. >> wegovy, yeah. what are we hearing about zepbound? >> it looks like, mika, another -- last week, towards the end of last week a trial showed that zepbound does look to be more effective than wegovy, the other weight loss drug on the market in promoting

weight loss. >> is it safe? >> i intolerance is a big issue. there's gi upset, whole host of other issues but does appear to be largely safe. what is extraordinary here is that cost issues aside and access issues, those are big deals, both these drugs are incredibly affective. there's a world if you're not responding to wegovy for whatever instance, maybe you can switch to something like zepbound and oral versions in the medications hopefully in the next few years bringing down that cost. >> dr. gupta, mysterious disease, flu-like illness outbreak in the congo. now we don't know the health infrastructure there is lacking. we don't know a lot about this just yet. setting aside what this particular virus is. what are the concerns about the trump administration coming in. considering all the anti-science rhetoric we've heard from so many of these people, the readiness level of this country for the next pandemic when ever

it might be. >> i think this will be something where we hopefully will see if there is a pandemic or a pathogen of pandemic potential something like operation warp speed we can credit them in his first administration for setting the stage for ultimately a pretty robust response. that will be the big issue, pandemic readiness and making sure that transition focuses on it. what's happening in the congo is worrisome. 460 cases of a respiratory illness, we think, over potentially 135 deaths. we don't know what's causing it. whether it's this. whether it's potentially bird flu. by the way, bird flu is changing. we saw in the case of a teenager bc. looks like bird flu is changing, becoming more capable of infecting human tissue, human lungs. things are changing whether it's this disease in the congo, bird flu, the common ailments, we have to make sure that the transition is really focussed on this. >> keeping a close eye on that given our experience over the last five years. finally a broader question about

the incoming administration and vaccines obviously if robert f. kennedy jr. is made the head of the nih, it will mean something for vaccines given his years of skepticism to put it mildly about vaccines and his putting out there false connections between vaccines and autism and the like. but there are people who say get your kids vaccinated now because they're going away. what is your expectation about what will happen with vaccines under a new administration? >> i do not think vaccines will go away. i think we have to reassure the public that they will not. there's a lot of guardrails in place. and you have to take the nominee at his word. rfk jr. said he will not take away the vaccines. wants to promote more information on safety and to make sure that's readily accessible. we in white coats welcome a transparent, honest discussion on safety and effectiveness. if that's going to be the focus, we welcome that. >> nbc news medical contributor, dr. vin gupta. thank you so much for coming on. it's always good to see you. up next, democratic

congressman robert garcia will be our guest to talk about president-elect trump's comments about ending birthright citizenship and much more. also ahead, academy award nominated ak stress, keira knightley will join us live in studio to talk about her new netflix series. we're back in one minute with the morning's top stories. we're the morning's top stories. yes, just hurry. hmm. it must be delicious. delectables lickable treat.

luigi mangione was caught and what kops comes next in the case. plus, some of donald trump's most controversial cabinet picks were on capitol hill yesterday again, meeting with republican senators. we'll show you what lawmakers had to say about those meetings and we'll bring you the very latest from damascus following the historic transfer of power from bashar al assad to syrian rebels. along with joe, willie and me, we have the host of "way too early," jonathan and pulitzer prize winning columnist of "the washington post", eugene robinson will be here soon. >> in new york at least, two cases really catching the attention of people in new york. one, of course, the ceo killing and daniel penny getting --

found not guilty on the subway case. >> the daniel penny case we'll talk more about in a minute is an incident that happened several months back where a homeless man was behaving erratically on the train and daniel penny subdued him and held him in a chokehold so long he killed the man. this sparked the debate whether he should have held the chokehold that long, a villain, a hero. yesterday a jury on a reduced charge found him not guilty in that case. >> by the way, very thoughtful piece in "the new york times" talking about how the times, the post-covid times how people, not only the courtroom, but people in the subway who were scared by what was going on down there really probably shaped not only the view of many new yorkers here but also ultimately the jury to find him not guilty. >> no doubt the feel around the subway changed. crime went up.

stats show it's still relatively low but higher than it used to but there was a sense of unease and i think a lot of strap hangers on the subway a lot, myself included, feel, okay, this doesn't feel quite as safe as it used to. i think that factored into the decision. the video of this death, starts as he's already in a chokehold. we don't see before then. clearly the jury felt penny was justified in what he did. >> you also see the video of the riders with him afterwards showing how they were scared, frightened and saw him as someone protecting them. that's a debate that will go on. >> we begin with police arresting a man in connection with the murder of united healthcare ceo brian thompson. 26-year-old-year-old luigi mangione was taken into custody yesterday ending a five-day

manhunt. he was found at an mcdonald's in altoona, pennsylvania, after an employee called police about a suspicious person who matched the suspect's description. police say mangione had a gun and silencer, similar to one used in last week's shooting, as well as a fake driver's license. police believe that id was used to book a hostel room in new york city. police found a three-page handwritten document from mangione that refers to the health care industry and, quote, speaks to both his motivation and mindset. he is currently being held in a state prison in pennsylvania facing gun and forgery charges. he was denied bail during a preliminary arraignment yesterday. his preliminary hearing is scheduled for december 23rd. online documents show new york has filed murder charges against

mangione. it's not known when he will be extradited to the state. the 26-year-old is from a prominent family in maryland. he attended a top private high school in baltimore where he became class valedictorian. in 2020 he graduated from the university of pennsylvania earning both a bachelor's and masters degree in engineering. >> let's bring in tom winter. you and your colleague jonathan deinst broke this news that he was caught in altoona, pen. walk us through what you know and a man charged now with murder. >> basically, this happens only because an employee at a mcdonald's in altoona, pennsylvania, sees him and says, i recognize him from the news.

people at the hostel said he would never take off his mask except to put in a piece of food. this individual spots him, calls police. the details from the court documents filed in pennsylvania, and that only pertains to the ghost gun. he was going to get charged in pennsylvania because he has the ghost gun which is in violation of state firearm laws. they ask him, has you been to new york recently? he starts shaking. that's when the police officers, including the one that arrested him, he's been on the job now only six months, that's the moment when they knew they had him. prior to that they did run that identification and it came back negative. that call that in over dispatch. they check it with a national database and say, we don't have the driver's license under it. that driver's license, the fact he presented it at the hostel and had it on his person, another huge clue. i think that's why the nypd and us as reporters as we started to learn more about the types of

things found on him. again, a guy that looks like the person we've seen in images and there's a gun. as soon as we found out he had the id, at that point -- >> it does go back to that one image from the hostel when he took his mask down, checked in and -- >> it was just a few seconds. a few seconds he takes it down. >> from that being pushed out across the national media, an employee at mcdonald's says that face looks familiar, i better call 911. do we get it all yet to motive? they found -- i don't know if it's fair to call it a manifesto but complaints about the health care system. we know he had back surgery, he was estranged from his family. what do we know about motive? >> three-plus pages of handwritten notes. it's a little all over the place. i think when all the details of it come out, it's going to point to the fact that, yes, he

definitely had anamous to the health care industry, and in particular this company, united healthcare, at least referenced it. there's some things he said to law enforcement about what they will find and won't find. i think it could potentially be, if there are other articles or other written items he has, and there's some indications he might, might help law enforcement understand how he put this all together, the work he did as far as his time in new york city, trying to determine where brian thompson, the ceo who was killed, who had his funeral yesterday, by the way, leaves behind a wife and two kids, how he knew he was going to be where he was and the type of work he did. i think there might be more details will come out about that in the coming days. putting it all together the evidence against him is damning and that's why he's been charged with murder in new york city. >> police for a while were

almost impressed how he pulled this off. he was meticulous. he knew where thompson was going to be, had a getaway with a bike, paid in cash at the hostel but he got tripped up by some same mistakes. same id and still having the weapon on him. >> you know, you could look at that a couple different ways. maybe he didn't want to ditch the weapon. it is a ghost gun meaning it was manufactured effectively at home or by a 3d printer. whether or not he manufactured or someone else manufactured it, that's a question. somebody could face charges for that. but having that id on him certainly helped them out. he had a manifesto so at some point he he wanted to be caught, but the fact he was able to evade detection for so long in new york city and the fact it's really just this one mistake that we're looking at on screen right now, this two to three seconds when he pulls that mask

down, that's the reason we're able to sit here today and say there's been an arrest. no doubt about it. sunday night, when i talked to people from the nypd, we were at the stage where they said, if anybody has any information, no matter how small, whatever little detail, anything, you get to that point of the investigation, you're struggling to try to figure out where this person might be. they were trying to backtrack the whole way. >> tom, we want to get to your reporting on the other big story in new york, the acquittal of a marine veteran accused of killing a passenger on the subway last year. how that played out in a manhattan croom next on "morning joe." manhattan croom next on "morning joe. rough, or tired? with miebo, eyes can feel ♪ miebo ohh yeah ♪ miebo is the only prescription dry eye drop that forms a protective layer for the number one cause of dry eye: too much tear evaporation. for relief that's ♪ miebo ohh yeah ♪ remove contact lenses before using miebo.

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a verdict has been reached in the case involving marine veteran daniel penny and jordan neely, a homeless man who penny put in a chokehold on a new york city subway that resulted in neely's death. penny has been acquitted of homicide after his actions were caught on a video by a bystander that set off national protests for weeks. the decision came on the fifth day of deliberations after the jury was deadlocked last week on manslaughter charges, which the judge later dismissed. >> a jury of his peers found him not guilty. a lot of people that are also screaming when a jury of peers

found donald trump guilty, of course, they were -- they were dismissed as hacks. well, in the same manhattan jury pool, a jury of daniel penny's peers found him not guilty. talk about this case. >> you know, one of the interesting things, you were touching on it before, this idea of safety in the subway. so, when you look at subway crimes per ridership, the subway system is statistically very safe. when you -- i've talked to transit chiefs, when you look at the underlying information, yes, it is very safe. when you look at and ride it, and i ride it every single day, most days to and from work every day, the feeling that you get is a little bit different than what the statistics are. so, there have been numerous occasions, particularly post-pandemic, as you all mentioned before, this idea of do i feel safe versus am i safe?

we've all seen things on the subway that make us concerned. when you put people in this mindset, and it was interesting to hear some testimony from even some prosecution witnesses who talked about how scared they were, it ultimately comes down to, i think, two things, looking at the facts of the case and thinking about this a little bit from a larger scale. when you look at what daniel penny did, this idea of holding onto the chokehold for too long, there will be a lot of debate and a lot of discussion about that, whether or not he should have let him go, whether or not he was fearful for his life. certainly can't put myself inside that subway car, but when you look at the overall case, what we're loog for people consistently arrested and consistently have mental health issues -- >> how many times was this guy arrested? >> a significant rap sheet. then you look at the mental

health component and the fact this is the ecosystem where some of these individuals live, when is enough enough for society? i think that's the big question here. i think about it all the time. there was a proposal to be able to involuntary commit people for mental health, not just for three days, five days, but for 30, 60, 90 days to give people some help so they can break this, or if you've been arrested, how many times do you need -- not specific to this case, but we see cases all the time when we're talking about burglary, theft, things like that, 10, 20, 30, 40 arrests. when is enough to say, you know what, you need an extended period out of society. that's a big question, i think, that is going to be coming up for voters here in new york state and perhaps in major cities around the country. what types of laws are we going to go to? coming up, nbc's richard engel is on the ground in syria. we'll get his powerful new reporting on the fall of the assad regime and what comes next

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we're going to turn now to overseas to the major developments out of syria where the outgoing prime minister of the assad regime has agreed to turn over power to rebel forces. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel has the latest from damascus. >> reporter: in the main square of damascus thousands gathered to cheer the end of bik tart bashar al assad. entire families came to witness history in the making. syrians have been coming from all over the country to gather here. i'm from the united states. thank you very much. nbc news. >> welcome. >> reporter: how are you feeling today? >> very happy. >> reporter: very happy? >> very, very happy. >> reporter: it seems to be the

sentiment here. everyone says very happy. this is a symbol of everything that's transpired over the last two weeks. the rebel forces moved into damascus and the government and its armed forces simply melted away. we've seen uniforms on the ground, this tank was just abandoned. now the tank is in the hands of the people it was used to repress. there is one word i'm hearing over and over again, it is arabic for freedom. [ gunfire ] >> reporter: and a lot of celebratory gunfire. the rebels were given a hero's welcome. am are from an islamic group called hts, considered a terrorist organization by the

u.s. and united nations. their victory was swift after bashar long-time backers, iran, isis and hezbollah did not intervene. everything will be excellent in our foreign and domestic relations. we don't want to be hostile to anyone, said one fighter. the leader of hts was once an al qaeda commander, although he split from the group years ago. he promised tolerance for all religions and said there would be no restrictions on women's rights. syrians are overwhelmed by the sudden changes and they're getting their first glimpses of assad's life of luxury. a video shows his vast collection of sports cars and suvs. they have been releasing prisoners once dubbed the human slaughterhouse. assad escaped from moscow, where he and his family were given asylum for humanitarian reasons.

with him gone there is nervousness but hope, as they write the next chapter of syria's history. >> richard engel on the ground in syria. coming up, can pete hegseth win confirmation on capitol hill? we'll have the latest on his push to become the next secretary of defense despite syria's questions about his background and qualifications. "morning joe" is back in a moment. sofia vergara: in this family, we don't fight over the bill. we just take care of it. families never receive a bill from st. jude for treatment, travel, housing, or food, so they can focus on helping their child live. because at st. jude, taking care of families facing childhood cancer is just what we do. this holiday season, join our st. jude family. we need you. please donate now.

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it's a lot to be a caregiver and a daughter. because you kind of have to take a step back. getting some help would be a great relief. from companions to helpers to caregivers. find all the senior care you need at care.com i think a huge one is women in combat and quotas. i think the way they push that under obama in a way that had nothing -- zero to do with efficacy, zero to do with lethality and capability. >> you don't like women in combat? >> no. >> why not? >> i love women service members who contribute amazingly.

because everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated. and complication in combat means casualties or worse. >> i also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that been misconstrued that i somehow don't support women in the military. some of our greatest warriors, best women out there are women who serve -- raise their right hand to defend this country and love our nation, want to defend that flag and they do it every single day around the globe. so, i'm not presuming anything, but after president trump asked me to be his secretary of defense, should i get the opportunity to do that, i look forward to being a secretary for all aur our warriors, men and w for the amazing contributions they make in our military. >> men and women in the military is different than women in the combat, which you heard him talking about in the sound byte before, and he was extremely against women in combat. he made that very clear.

and, of course, there are many women serving this country in that capacity. donald trump's pick for secretary of defense, pete hegseth, last night attempting to soften comments he has made about women's ability to fight on the front lines, but he didn't. he just separated from it. hegseth will be back on capitol hill today to meet with republican senators. he says he is meeting with senator lisa murkowski of alaska today and with senator susan collins of maine tomorrow. it comes after he sat down for a second time yesterday with a key lawmaker, senator joni ernst of iowa. last week she was hesitant to support the former fox news host, who has been accused of sexual assault, abusing alcohol, and financial mismanagement of two nonprofits dedicated to veterans, all of which he denies. but yesterday senator ernst had a different tone about hegseth, praising him for his

responsiveness and respect for the process and calling their conversations encouraging. here's what she had to say about the meeting when pressed by reporters. >> reporter: is that saying you're supporting him? >> so i am supporting him through this process and i'll just refer you back to the statement. >> is that a yes? >> did you change your mind? >> it was a very productive meeting, though. i think we're just moving through the process. but he does respect that i'm taking the time to spend with him. >> did you talk to him about the allegations as well, senator? >> back up. >> refer back to my statement. >> supporting the process doesn't sound look a yes yet. is that fair? >> i'm supporting the process. >> did he commit to keeping women in their current roles in the military? >> he is very supportive of women in the military. it is one thing we discussed, yes. >> did he change his position on that? >> memo to self, john, when you're being chased by reporters on the senate side of capitol hill, do not take the freight

elevator. >> take the stairs. >> that elevator door, you can see the aide growing panicked about -- trying to hit the door closed button. >> they kept -- >> the reporter had a hand in, i think. that's a pro tip. pro tip. >> is that a pro tip? >> on that side of the capitol, put your hand in. >> some people like pro gagglers and some -- >> even though we -- nbc news national affairs analyst and partner and chief political columnist john heilman is here and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and new host of "way too early," ali vitali. >> ali, we've been hearing from our sources over the past week or so that there are up to six republican senators who are no votes on hegseth. john, i think your reporting matches the same, right? >> yes. >> and right now they are just waiting for hegseth in the words

of r.e.m., to feel gravity's pull, much -- you like that? much in the same way that gates did. and you listen to joni ernst -- again, i find it impossible, hard to believe she would ever support him given everything in his background, but yesterday she said, had a good meeting, we respect the process, we'll play this out until the end. what's your read with joni ernst and also those republicans that are still hard nose but aren't saying anything? >> so, there are the republicans that are hard nose that you guys are referring to. you're right, the unofficial whip count stands at about six, but there are plenty republicans, including in the president-elect's orbit, are hoping it's not the gravity you're talking about but instead the gravity we talked about in "wicked," defying gravity. i'm sorry for the pun, but we have a lot of time to go on this

confirmation battle. it's early in the process. that's either going to work in hegseth's favor because he'll be able to continue to have these kind of meetings that go from productive and frank, how ernst was describing the tone of their conversations last week, to now she's supporting him through the process. lemire and i were talking about this on "way too early," the idea she's had a clear tone shift is notable. the way she's talking about in that last answer, how she didn't say anything about hegseth committing to keeping women in their current roles in the military, specifically that reporter trying to get at the idea of combat. instead joni ernst just said, he's very supportive of with em in the military. she said it's one thing we talked about. clearly he was not always in that stance. i don't think we should let anyone rewrite history but it does give us a good sense of the way hegseth is trying to, at least, soften the image that he came into capitol hill with. as much as i think we're seeing ernst say she's supportive of the process, that's not saying

i'm supportive of the man, at least not yet. it's saying, i'll let him continue doing these meetings. i'm not going to be the next person or at least the first person to publicly tank the nomination. and i think that's important. just giving him the space and they'll see where it ends up. but that confirmation hearing is going to be bruising and brutal. >> you know, one other glance we had of our leadership when we were in congress, they never saw around the curve. they were just winning -- fighting to win the day. i'm talking about back when i was in congress. fighting to win the day. fighting to win the news cycle and not looking at the bigger picture here. all right, so maybe pete hegseth, maybe he wins a news cycle here, a news cycle there. but you go to the end of this process, they don't want senate hearings, because if they get senate hearings with pete hegseth, they're going to see testimony, certainly reports, nbc news reports, from fox news employees of public drunkenness

recently at fox news. they're going to see reports of alcohol abuse when he was running to vets' organizations, and some pretty tawdry behavior while he was running those organizations, that have all been outlined in whistle-blower reports. they're going to see in black and white, they're going to see financial mismanagement of vets' organizations, that were very strong when he started there, that ended up basically on the verge of bankruptcy and irrelevance through his stewardship of smaller vets organizations. let alone the dod. and, yes, they're going to see testimony, just like we would have seen with gaetz. it may not have been the 17-year-old girl for gaetz, but it may have been the other women around that with gaetz. but here we have the alleged

rape, we have the police report, we have somebody who leaked that to "the new york times," and members of this woman's family, if she doesn't testify, other people testifying about what pete hegseth has done in the past. >> the email from his mom. >> and the email, of course, from his mom, which actually lines up neatly with everything we've heard before and after about pete hegseth. this is -- again, i will just say, as i said with gaetz, this is one of those old midas commercials. you can pay me now or you can pay me later. and it is not in donald trump or the new administration's best interest that this is splayed all over the front pages of newspapers for a week or so while he's trying to get momentum for whatever policies he wants to push. >> again, maybe they want to put up a good fight. at the end of the day, this is

just bad news for the dod, it's bad news for america and the world, it's even bad news for the incoming president. >> well, i think that's -- that's definitely a point of view. and it's not -- it's a point of view -- >> thank you. >> it's a point of view that i think -- >> it's not really a point of view so much as a projection of how this ends up. >> look, i'm not taking the other side of the argument, but if you listen to people like mike davis, the head of the article iii project and steve bannon ally. people who have a lot of influence with donald trump, they disagree with you. they want that fight. >> i'm just talking about the hearing. >> they want the fight. they want the hearing. they want it all. they have a much more scorched earth view of this. look, everyone at this table would agree with your point of view about this, which is why would the president want this? and i think if you were -- if you had those two guys sitting

here, they would say, we want to win this fight. no matter how bloody it gets -- the bloodier it gets, in some ways, the better, because we saw what happened. he analogizes all these things to the kavanaugh experience, which was it was a brutal experience, really bloody, really terrible and yet we ended up getting our guy on the supreme court. i'm not trying to compare the two. >> i was going to say, for those that do compare the two, it's a big difference between those saying bubba and buster drinking in the backyard in tenth grade -- >> a woman came up to capitol hill and testified that he sexually assaulted her. it was brutal for all parties there. >> let me -- let's be very clear there. she went up and testified, nobody else did around there. here we have one case after another case after another case. >> i understand. >> we have documented whistle-blower reports. we have testimony --

>> i'm not trying -- i said already, i'm not trying to take the other side of the argument. i'm not saying you're wrong. i'm saying the question of what is about to up fold, it's not like -- if there's unanimity of opinion in donald trump's world that this is a mistake and they want to get out of it, they would have gotten out of it already. i think there are people around donald trump -- >> do you think donald trump wants -- >> i don't know what donald trump wants. >> -- wants testimony about this person coming up saying, he raped me and the public drunkenness and the destroying the vets organizations? jonathan lemire, do they -- because they're two different things. it's one thing to say, i want to fight about the mismanagement inside the pentagon and the bureaucracy and they won't listen to donald trump, and there are plenty of people that can do that and they're clean. just like the difference between pam bondi and matt gaetz. can you have the fight on, hey, let's clean up the pentagon.

that's one thing. the question is whether this is a deeply flawed individual at this point in time to carry that fight out on capitol hill. >> and there's a bit of a split in the trump camp right now, people i talked to. absolutely to heilman's point. some people want this fight. they don't care who it is. this is about breaking the dod, about having the public spectacle, about ramming their choice down the public's throat. let's remember, donald trump famously disdains people who drink too much. we know that cost rudy giuliani a cabinet worst. because he would drink too much and fall into trump's lane. i am told trump doesn't care for that. the transition team surprised by even that initial sexual assault allegation because of their lack of vetting because hegseth didn't come forward with the information right way. there are some who believe even if hegseth were to go down, they could find a more palatable choice. right now it is a great debate

but with hegseth taking so much oxygen, they feel better about others, patel, gabbard. more about robert kennedy jr.'s nomination to health and human services. robert garcia joins us to talk about that and president trump's plan to end birth right citizenship. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." ead on "morning joe." ♪♪ playing games! ♪♪ dancing in the par... (high pitched sound) (high pitched sound) (high pitched sound) ♪ limu emu & doug ♪

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welcome back to "morning joe." last week had a chance to sit down with former president clinton, who recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the clinton presidential center in little rock. we talked about the remarkable work he's been doing since he left the white house and something he alluded to during

his rewell address to the nation. >> my days in office -- in the years ahead i will never hold m president of the united states. but there is no title i will wear more proudly than that of citizens. >> mika has always told me a story about how her dad was national security adviser, he had the red phone in the house. on january 20, 12:01 p.m., 1981, the secret service had been around their house, come in, they rip out the phone, wires hanging out. secret service leaves. and that's it. i can't imagine how tough it is, though, if you're the most powerful person in the world one day to becoming a private citizen the next. how is that transition for you, emotionally, professionally? >> i was grateful that the

american people gave me a chance to serve eight years. i knew what the constitution said. i supported the two-term limit. and so i had been training myself, if you will, for my whole second term, to try to walk out that door and be grateful and remember things i needed to remember, good and bad, but to never spend a day wishing i could still do a job that i couldn't do anymore. i wanted to live in the present and for the future. and you have to do that deliberately. you have to have a strategy, otherwise, you know, you're kind of a rift. i didn't know where he was for two or three weeks because i'd walk in and -- >> where are you? >> where's "hail the chief," just dead silence. i've been very grateful. i've had a wonderful time. >> what's incredible is you were

only 54 years old. >> yeah. >> these days that would be considered way too young to even run for president, but at 54, you're hoping, you're praying, you've got three decades ahead of you or so to get things done. did you ever imagine how you were going to fill that up at that time? >> oh, yeah, i thought a lot about it. >> again, before. you had been preparing for this day. >> i realized we were living in an interdependent world, but one full of conflict as well as possibilities of cooperation. and i wanted to do what i tried to do when i was governor of arkansas. i wanted to try to figure out how to do what i wanted to do because i think, you know, just think about the business you're in. and how many -- what percentage of your political reporting has been about basically what are you going to do and how much

money are you going to spend on it? no matter what you do, there will always be a gap between what the public sector produces and what the private sector produces. and i wanted to fill the gap and figure out how to do things faster, cheaper and better. >> the clinton foundation, it just seemed -- and i know it wasn't this way, but just looking back, it seemed to ramp up, to scale up so quickly when you consider almost half a billion people touched by those organizations, and over 180 countries. how did it ramp up? how did it scale up so quickly to have such an impact in haiti, with hiv/aids, in so many other places in the world? >> it turned out that there was a genuine hunger on the part of

people who were happy to give money to good causes if they thought it would make a difference. so, before you know it, we had an organization that was working year-round, trying to help people develop their commits and keep them. and keep score so they knew what they did. it sort of spread like wildfire. now in the last year, we've gone over 500 million lives that have been positively affected in one way or the other. with what we started in health care, finding a way to drive down the price of aids medicine before there was ever any global fund on aids, tb and malaria, that wound up saving millions of lives because we were able to move quickly into places and deliver that. >> you write about how no

country was impacted as much by your work and the work of your partners than haiti. talk about that, if you will. >> i realized that they didn't have any systems that worked in a way that i thought were important. and later when they had -- in 2009 they suffered from all these storms, so the united nations secretary-general, then kofi anan and later ban ki-moon, they asked if i would serve as the u.n. envoy and work for a few years to help increase the rate of economic growth, and solve some of these other problems. i agreed to do it. and it had -- we did a lot of really good things, but i learned a lot about haiti and haitians. i went down after the earthquake in 2010 and met with the

president and his minister of finance, who literally came back to work the day after his 10-year-old son was killed. and the agony in that man's eyes, i'll never forget. on the way in to the meeting, anybody that's ever been to haiti knows from the airport to the center city where the capital and all the government buildings are, there's a long road with a long fence where all the artists -- local artists hang their paintings. and on one side of the road behind that there's kind of a park-like area where the people who work in metal and wood, i stopped the car caravan and i said, i want everybody to get out and buy something and don't haggle with them over the prices this time. they're very brave people. so, i got out and went over and bought a picture or two. and i was getting back to the

car and this guy said, mr. president, come here. you bought something from me in 2003 when you were here, when we were bringing aids medicine to them. have you to come again. so, i went over and shook hands with the guy and sure enough he had a little picture of me buying something from him seven years earlier. i said, i really admire all of you for coming out now. i can't believe you're here so early. he said, well, i had to be here. besides, i have nothing else to do because my wife and children were killed in the quake. and he said, we're sort of a big family around here, all of us artists. and we all know what happens to each other. and i bought three or four paintings from that guy and i left knowing why i'd come to haiti. i'll never forget that man. >> i want to focus on one area that you write about, and that is, the everyday people,

history-bending difference working for cgi. you talk about some of their stories in the book. some of the heroes of cgi that didn't write the big checks, that didn't do maybe the bigger things that might draw attention from the press. like i said, the everyday heroes. can you tell us -- >> first of all, one of the things we tried to do was to match people who had time to give or skills to give with people who had money to give but didn't want to be taken for a ride. they wanted to know if they invested their money, they would get what they invested for. and so many of them were great. we had a young american woman named majora carter who was a native of the south bronx who came home and a man in new jersey who wanted to help the south bronx, which at the time was the poorest congressional district in america, and had no green space for people.

and so, they had set aside land, but they didn't have enough people to staff it. and this man who became a good friend of mine, barry seigal, gave them $100,000 to start. and he was so impressed, he gave them another $100,000, another $100,000 and kept them going for two or three years until they got other support. so, you had citizens doing one thing, but you had to have somebody who could do another. there are so many examples of that. i mean, 9-year-old kids who developed it beach clean-up programs that all of a sudden the adults were joining because they were so well organized. and then in other countries, there were also a remarkable number of young people who often paired with very old people to do this same sort of thing based on the problems that existed where they lived. and what they could change.

and i'll never forget that. and then there were just the people that were trying to not become victims, but were trying to begin again. that's a big secret of life, you know, we all have our setbacks, we all have things happen and we have to keep going. >> it's these individual stories, isn't it, that actually keep you going. >> one of the things i talk about in this book, hoping it will be helpful to other people, and doing in their lives, i said whether we acknowledge it or not, we all keep score on ourselves. on our lives. we wish we had more money or we wish we had more time to be with our kids. we wish this or we wish that. all this is part of a -- like a daily process, we're all in. if we give up, we're keeping

score and beat. i'm never going to be what i wanted to be. i'm never going to do what i wanted to do. and i'm giving up what i could be doing because i'm so depressed. i decided fairly early on that in order to go through the ups and downs of life when i had far less power than i did when i was president, even through politics and even if you're president of the united states, there are no permanent victories or defeat in public life. >> and coming up on "morning joe," keira knightley joins us to talk about her new spy thriller "black doves," the two-time oscar nominee is our guest here in the studio straight ahead on "morning joe." "

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like -- they embrace and struggle and this time, this started in 2017. at one point it was like they were struggling for control of a light saber. yeah. trump also got some time in paris with prince william. >> good to see you grace to see you. >> there they are. >> after many years trump found somebody with a gaudier house than mar-a-lago. look at how he's sitting. the future king and the burger king. >> welcome to the fourth hour of "morning joe." it's 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. in the east. jonathan lemire is still with us. >> wow. >> we're going to get to our -- you don't leave.

you sit in the chair. >> this is his hour. >> tax purposes. >> this is our co-host hour. >> yeah. >> you're supposed to be here. >> this is what i'm supposed to do. i'm glad to be here, i'm required to be here. >> yes, you are. >> required sitting. >> come on. >> yeah. >> i'm not doing that now. i guess not. well -- >> let's get to news. >> poor jonathan. to our top story this hour, a 26-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the murder of unitedhealthcare ceo brian thompson who was shot and killed in midtown manhattan last week. luigi mangione was taken into custody yesterday morning in pennsylvania after a mcdonald's employee called police about a suspicious person who matched the suspect's description. let's bring in nbc news correspondent sam brock, who is here on the set with us. this is so like unusual. >> right. >> good to is you. sam, details are starting to emerge on the suspect. what more can you tell us. >> certainly. first of all no prior criminal

history at all. commissioner tisch had just said that on the "today" show. this is someone who was highly intelligent, highly educated, came from a prominent family in the baltimore area where a lot of people knew him and also, guys, had a very provocative trail of social media posts. overnight in new york, luigi mangione was charged with murder in the death of unitedhealthcare ceo brian thompson. it comes after a multi-day manhunt led police to altoona, pennsylvania, where mangione was taken into custody. authorities finding three pages of writings which say in part "frankly these parasites had it coming" in reference to the health care industry a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation confirms to nbc news. the writings also include a line that says "i do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done" the official said. now more background on the suspect's past emerging. his family carving both financial and political footprints in baltimore where

they owned two country clubs and his cousin nino mangione is a republican state legislature. >> thank you for all being here to celebrate gillman's 116th founder days. >> reporter: attended the gilman school in baltimore where he was class valedictorian in 2016. mangione was ivy league educated. the university of pennsylvania confirming he earned a bachelor's degree and master's degree in engineering. including good reads where he quoted a take of the unabomber. when all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. mangione calling it interesting. a post elsewhere of an x-ray of a back. two senior law enforcement officials tell nbc news investigators are looking into whether it belongs to mangione and whether it has anything to do with the crime. his last known address in honolulu. a friend from hawaii told cnn he struggled with back pain.

>> he sent me the x-rays. another friend telling the "times" mangione's family had not heard from him after several months of surgery. a friend from college telling nbc he's shocked. >> he struck me as another ivy league student who enjoyed going to frat parties. he was good looking. confident. nothing particular about him. >> and talking with people in the suspect's orbit two things became very clear. one, he was in back pain for a significant period of time and, guys, two, for a period of, perhaps, six months to a year, mangione went effectively off the grid. there was outreach from friends and from family, and they did not hear back. it is pretty apparent that many within his community pretty surprised and stunned as anyone would be as where we are. >> oh, my gosh. >> surprised and stunned. we were talking about this before, we saw the face. you saw the full face. >> for about a week now. >> and -- and -- >> five and a half days. >> nobody in the family said, hey --

>> that's him. >> -- that's him. no friends that went to college with him said hey that's him. >> that's a pretty clear picture. >> nobody that knew him, especially the family, knowing that he's gone for six months, that he's disappeared and then he shows up in these images, that's -- does that strike you strange? >> he has distinctive facial features, eyebrows, his smile. he has dozens and dozens of family members. one of 37 grandchildren. the social networks we found out he was at a fraternity at penn where he had close relationships four years. he was at penn, stanford as a head counselor for precollegiate studies. he's in all of these academic universes and had deep relationships. how is it possible over the course of five days with his image being flooded everywhere no one that knew him recognized him. ended up being an comply at mcdonald's watching him eat. when they asked him to take the mask down they immediately recognized him.

maybe the most telling part one of the officers on the scene said he visibly started to shake when they asked mangione if he had been to new york recently. that was their tip-off. but how did this process take five or six days, i think a lot of people want to ne the answer. >> fascinating for all the high-tech surveillance out there, a mcdonald's employee saying that face looks familiar based on that one frame from the hostel. >> thank god for the surveillance. you got one frame at least. >> the one frame may have been crucial, what broke it. >> nbc's sam brock, thank you for that report. great to have you in the studio with us. moving on now, several of donald trump's cabinet nominees continue to make the rounds on capitol hill to shore up republican support ahead of their upcoming confirmation battles. nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake has the very latest. >> reporter: this week in washington a capitol hill confirmation crunch with president-elect trump's selections for top national security posts holding meetings monday with key senators.

pentagon pick pete hegseth continuing to draw the most scrutiny, amid reports of excessive drinking and a sexual assault accusation from 2017 for which he veblgtsed but never charged and denies. hegseth, who has called the report smears, sitting for a second time with iowa republican joni ernst, herself a combat veteran and sexual assault survivor. >> he is very supportive of women in the military. >> ernst issuing a seemingly supportive statement. hegseth using a fox news interview to clarify his position on women combat. >> some of our best warriors out there are women who serve, raise their right hand to defend this country, and love our nation. >> reporter: appearing to reverse his previous opposition. >> because i'm straight up just saying, we should not have women in combat roles. >> reporter: two other trump selections having their first days of meetings with republican lawmakers including director of

national intelligence selection tulsi gabbard. gabbard an army reserve colonel and former congresswoman who ran for president as a democrat is likely to face significant scrutiny of over her views on russia and past sympathies towards the assad regime in syria. >> assad is not the enemy of the united states. >> reporter: saying today. >> my own views and experiences have been shaped by my multiple deployments and seeing firsthand the cost of war and the threat of islamist terrorism. >> reporter: and controversial fbi director selection kash patel, a top trump loyalist who many democrats fear would use the bureau as a weapon to pursue mr. trump's enemies, praised by the president-elect in his interview with nbc's kristen welker. >> i don't think he's going to have any negative votes. >> is it your expectation, though, that kash patel will pursue investigations against your political enemies? >> no. i don't think so. >> nbc's garrett haake with that report. meanwhile -- >> i don't think so. and yet he's saying these people should be arrested, right?

like so if you work for donald trump, he, throughout that interview, says i'm not going to tell them to do it, but i just told you, kristen welker, that they need to do it. >> it is a typical trump rhetorical trick where he tries to create a little bit of plausible deniability, by saying i'm not going to direct them to do it on january 21st, but he clearly has. not just earlier in that very interview but for months he has named names and made it very clear who he wants to be arrested. even if he never says it again after sitting behind the desk, people who work for him know very well what he wants. >> doesn't that put -- i don't know -- if pressure is the right word, but make it more important for joe biden to give people like liz cheney, adam schiff, mark milley, jack smith, go down the list, to hand out pardons to these people? he's saying the quiet part out loud. >> they're considering it. do those people want them? is that some kind of admission of guilt they're not willing to

make. it is important to remember, too, the follow-up question is, what would you charge these people with >> right. >> we have courts that still work who would say, you can't bring -- you can't throw somebody in jail without a charge. it's not clear except some broad idea of treason that he has because he feels hurt by what they did. >> there's a great debate within the west wing at the highest levels whether to proceed with these preemptive pardons. biden an institutional expressed wariness about the idea, others say it's extraordinary times and needs to be done. there's concern, not only, perhaps, unintended admission of guilt for some of these people but what sort of precedent does it set for future administrations, including a donald trump administration? >> yeah. >> again, that said, if he's saying liz cheney, bennie thompson, and the entire january 6th committee should go to jail, this is unprecedented. right? so this isn't like, oh, what precedent are we going to be

setting. this is unprecedented, and, so i -- i'm not exactly sure why you would hesitate on that front. i am sure that liz cheney doesn't want one, adam schiff probably doesn't want one, mark milley doesn't want one, but if you're looking at it, i don't -- it seems to me that this makes sense. >> yeah. >> it's the debate going on right now. >> meanwhile donald trump's immigration and border policy plans continue to come into sharper focus. a centerpiece of trump's campaign was his vow to carry out mass deportations while in office. during his interview sunday on nbc's "meet the press" the president-elect said his administration would first focus on convicted criminals, but he did not rule out that american citizens would be caught up in the sweep and be deported with family members who are here illegally. >> well, i don't want to be breaking up families so the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back. we don't have to separate

families. we'll send the whole family humanely back to the country where they came. that way the family is not separated. if they come here illegally but their family is here legally then the family has a choice. the person that came in illegally can go out or they can all go out together. >> wow. trump has hired larry homan to carry out his plans. homan was the customs enforcement director during trump's first term and serve as border czar in the incoming administration. meanwhile, trump's pick to lead i.c.e. is an agency veteran who will be able to start the deportation effort on day one. one official told nbc news that caleb vitello, quote, grew up in the enforcement and removal operations division. vitello even received praise from the chief of staff at i.c.e. during the first two

years of the biden administration who called him, quote, a thoughtful, good leader. the president-elect also said on sunday he would be willing to work with congress to protect dreamers, those who were brought to the country illegally as children, despite his efforts to gut the program during his first term. >> the dreamers are going to come later and we have to do something about the dreamers because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age and many of these are middle-aged people now. they don't even speak the language of their country, and yes, we're going to do something about the dreamers. >> what does that mean? what are you going to do. >> >> i will work with the democrats on a lan. the democrats have made it difficult to do anything. republicans are open to the dreamers. >> so it's very interesting, jonathan, i'm wondering about your reporting, what -- what we're hearing from people in the trump team is, he wants to focus on the -- the -- the criminals,

the violent criminals, basically the ones 80% of americans need to go out. he talks about wanting to do a deal with democrats. i'm also hearing that behind the scenes, that the trump team thinks this is actually a deal they can make with democrats. but then, of course, as we heard last time from the last administration, he'll talk about this deal and then when you get close to the deal, he pulls back because the base gets angry. what are you hearing about what they want to do? >> there's at least some appetite in the trump team for a deal thinking there can be, there's an opening here for something. we have to keep a couple in this mind. as discussed there are other times where he was close to a deal and pulled back, sometimes simply because he was criticized on fox news by a host there and then suddenly changed his mind, didn't want to seem as selling out the base. there are some voices, influential voices, in the trump team, stephen miller chief among them, who do not want a deal and

simply want to go forward with a full-on mass deportation plan. were they to do that i think that's when we would see protests not just from citizens in the street but business leaders who would say to him this will destroy the economy, you can't do this. but this is a typical trump move where he wealds the worse case scenario with overheated rhetoric and creating an opening for a deal. so many times in the past the deal didn't get struck. >> right. >> the issue now, now that he doesn't face voters again, will he be willing to make a deal? at the same time we have said on the show for months we have to take him at his word. he's talking about mass deportations. the truth is going to be in the middle. democrats also trying to figure out what his appetite is. >> in that interview with kristen welker donald trump said he will try to end birthright citizenship. you're born here you're a citizen as soon as he gets into office. let's bring in congressman robert garcia of california a member of the house homeland security committee. a lot to sift through as we talk

about proposed immigration policy. let's start at the end with birthright citizenship. president-elect trump says he will get rid of it the day he gets into office. what's your reaction? >> look, i think all these new ideas that trump is coming out with and his proclamations over the weekend, besides being unconstitutional are quite un-american and shameful. i'm an immigrant myself. i came in this country part of the time, i was not documented. this idea we're not contributing to the country is really, really sad to see. quite frankly most of his ideas are out of step with most americans want. his claim he's going to separate families, who is doing that work? police officers have a job to do. we have a police shortage across the country. they don't want to spend their time separating families. so whether it's birthright, whether it's mass deportation, separating families, we have to be principled and oppose this not only is it not good for the economy it's actually quite un-american and quite frankly, democrats are going to strongly

oppose every single step of the way. >> and birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the 14th amendment for a long time anyway, so, obviously, it would take a major act. you can't wave a magic wand and get rid of that. the good news for people who enjoy that citizenship. how are you approaching as you think about the trump administration more broadly, this sort of tension between his rhetoric, the things he may say at a rally during the campaign or an interview, or to talk to his base and to keep them on board, versus what you actually believe he's going to do? where does that middle ground live for you? >> look, a couple things. obviously, one is we have to expect that trump is going to try to do the absolute worst. he tried to do that, obviously, in his first term. i take him very seriously when he says he wants to separate families, he wants to deport families that are here working, contributing to this country. so we have to take him at his word. we also know he has a hard time

putting together a competent government. both those things can be true, but we have to be prepared. we have to call out that all of these idea, particularly on immigration, are unconstitutional. he does not have the authority or the power to make it happen. what he does have unfortunately is people that follow his every word and so we've got to be very, very realistic here that he's going to have a lot of americans agreeing with these issues and we've got to call out the unconstitutionality of what he's trying to do and also ensure we remind people this is shameful actions and we're talking about real kids and families. >> there's no question, congressman, a lot of people living in fear because these promises, but let me ask you this, he, obviously, won on the basis of at least in part this issue and there are polls that suggest a lot of americans, democrats included, have concerns about the immigration issues in this country. you know, beyond just resisting what trump wants to do what are efforts democrats could put forth to put solutions to these problems? rjsz well, i'll start with

something republicans and democrats agree on border security. we had a bill that had bipartisan support in the senate. we could have got it done. we understand, we want a secure border. we don't want people causing crimes here if they're undocumented and causing crimes they shouldn't be here. we want to support our border patrol agents. we want to make sure there are guest worker programs. these are sensible solutions we could come to. beyond a border security plan, we should also be very clear that yes, we need a comprehensive immigration reform package in this country. look, the president is talking about dreamers. we would welcome a plan on dreamers. do i believe he's going to follow through with it? >> absolutely not. we would welcome a plan on dreamers. those are the types of issues that we're ready and at the table on, but what we're not going to do is stand by and have him separate families and put kids back in detention camps. >> democratic congressman robert garcia of california thank you so much. >> thank you. >> jonathan, this conversation

it's interesting where it's moving. you look at the "washington post" editorial board which i'm sure this morning their editorial was guided by what they're hearing behind the scenes from the trump camp, which is the trump camp wants to do a deal on immigration. and what "the washington post" editorial board said today is, plan for the worst. expect the worst. but when you can get a deal, if you can get a deal, take that deal. i think your question really framed it perfectly, that's what i think democrats on the hill right now are sort of sifting through. what's for the base. what's rhetoric. what deal can we have? democrats should take him up on this offer to negotiate a legislative solution for the dreamers, for example, even as they resist any effort to politicize law enforcement. jonathan. >> i think that's right. as the congressman invoked

there. even the summer democrats and some conservative republicans put together a deal on border security. last minute trump walked away told republicans shoot it down because he wanted to preserve it as a campaign issue. they did so. with that as sort of past as prologue democrats feel is he going to come to the table, start talking and then walk away because he'll bow to the base. that is something that certainly he has done in the past. i do think there will be -- the congressman said it -- democrats will make good faith efforts. make a deal let's do it. will there be follow through? trump in the past sometimes his own worst impulses submarine what could have been legislative accomplishments, but he was too afraid to stand up to his base. we have to see if this time is any difference. >> the base has a big voice. let's take a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. the eastern half of malibu, california, has been ordered to evacuate due to a massive wildfire ripping through the hills nearby.

"the los angeles times" reports the remaining half of the city is currently under an evacuation warning, while a shelter in place order is in effect for the campus of pepperdine university. the los angeles fire department says the franklin fire has burned over 1800 acres as of 3:00 a.m. pacific time. and earlier this morning, we told you about the low birth rate in china. along those same lines, the government of tokyo is planning to introduce a four-day work week for its employees in an attempt to encourage couples to have children. >> wait, what? on the fifth day -- >> don't go there. >> tokyo's birth rate dropped to 1.2 children per woman last year. according to the ministry of health, labor and welfare, the number should be 2.1 for the population to remain stable. more than 160,000 government employees will be able to take part in the program when it begins in april. >> wow. >> leave that right there.

and swedish government ministers are considering putting age limits on social media platforms in an effort to prevent gangs from recruiting young people. this comes amid a wave of crime that has led to sweden recording the most deadly shootings per capita in europe when just 20 years ago the country had among the lowest. swedish police tell reuters that gangs have been using social media platforms as, quote, digital marketplaces to recruit teenagers and children, some as young as 11 years old, to commit murders and bombings. we need to do more on this and on social media and on australia and what's going on with tiktok here. there's just -- there is a lot of reason to put bans on age -- age limits on social media. >> it kind of goes back to -- >> killing our kids. >> goes back to what we were talking about yesterday, willie, where it's like, the rules that apply to the rest of america for

other products, don't apply to silicon valley. >> we see the negative impact playing out before all of our eyes every single one of us knows somebody who is impacted or hurt by social media. >> especially children. >> yeah. australia took a big step. sweden might take this next step. >> huge. >> i can tell you this is happening in communities in the absence of leadership from congress or the social media companies themselves. communities are getting together and saying, let's all agree no phones for our kids until name your time. eighth grade, ninth grade. no social media. that's what it's taking at this point is the families and towns and communities and schools are getting it together to do it. >> coming up, president biden is set to deliver a major address on his economic legacy. about three hours from now, in which he will make the case that he has written a new playbook on how to grow the economy. nbc's christine romans and andrew ross sorkin join us with a preview. we're back in just a moment. 're.

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anywhere near if you can help it. that's blocked! >> and picked up by cincinnati out across the 46. >> so it was touched by dallas. right here. who was just activated. that gave cincinnati a chance to recover and get the ball. >> a special teams disaster for the cowboys last night. they were about to get the ball back with the game tied on the first play after the two-minute warning at the end of the game, but a -- they botched a blocked

punt and returned possession to the cincinnati bengals. they gave it back to the bengals you see. three plays later quarterback joe burrow connecting with ja particular chase who turns on the jets, 40-yard go ahead touchdown. bengals beat the cowboys 27-20. some -- >> if they had an nfl game and nobody watched, would it still be an nfl game? >> the bengals somehow are still fun to watch. >> yeah. >> burrow, but man, the cowboys, it's a sad day. >> aren't they the richest franchise in sports? >> yeah. they're one of them. >> at least here in the u.s. >> that jamar chase touchdown put my fantasy team in the playoffs. thank you. but with the cowboys being so dreadful that has taken a little bit of attention off the new york giants and that division. >> yeah. the giants are dreadful. sad days for new york fans, for

yankee fans, you guys talked about it yesterday, juan oto 765, we loved him as a new york yankee. i hoped he'd stay. you can't say we didn't put our best foot forward. the yankees put a proposal for $760 million. he took $5 million more to go across town. a bummer for the yankees but good news for our mets fans friends. if you prefer going to the playoffs once every seven or eight years and finishing in third place, that's your choice. >> i think he made an excellent choice. >> i bet you do. >> i think -- i do think that it was largely about the money and steve cohen said he wouldn't be outbid. the average value is like 4 or 5 million per year. but really, this was about him choosing to go. he wanted to be with the mets. there was suggestion he had issues with the yankee front office. i think the yankees have a core.

signing a 16-year deal, you're not sure -- >> they will always get guys. >> you would think so. as i said this is the first time i can remember, not just the yankees were outbid for a player they want, that happens once in a blue moon, but to have a player on your roster they wanted to keep and still lost him, i'm not sure that's happened in franchise history. >> with the money that close he made a conscious choice to go. >> but this is a very monumental gamble. >> oh, yeah. >> listen, i wanted soto on the red sox. i really did. i mean he would have made a huge difference and he would have fit well with our team, our young team, but, you know, maybe for $650 million. you start getting up to $765 million -- >> geez. >> -- the risk in that. you're risking your entire franchise on one person in a game where people separate their shoulders like diving for a play

at shortstop. i speak of trevor story. they're ought -- out for the next 27 years. it does not make sense. these numbers are just -- >> if he goes the life of the contract, he's going to get up to $800 million in 15 years is the other thing. that is a wild contract. >> you know, he's 26, but that is a long time. the issue is, beat otani's number, which was his agent's goal. otani maybe the best player any of us have seen. june soto is great. he's not otani. it's an overpay. now the red sox they were in the mix. they were at about $700 million. >> good for them. they were willing to spend. >> will they use the money for other things. >> let's get pitchers and andrew. >> co-anchor of squawk box andrew ross sorkin, along with nbc news senior business correspondent christine romans. >> so -- >> good to have you here with us. >> andrew, join in if you want

to -- >> yeah. >> -- a monumental gamble. i remember when the giants paid as much as they did for daniel jones. what are the giants doing. when the jaguars paid all the mun they paid for -- who is hippie, sunshine, trevor lawrence. how is that working out for them? i mean, you're paying 55, $56 million a year. hell, dak, like, the -- it's getting so expensive that -- that it seems to me that you got to look different way of approaching this because you can't gamble your entire franchise like the giants did on a guy -- >> well some of these guys can because the owners are not running them as genuine economic enterprises. in a bizarre and twisted way the values of these teams keep going up, even sometimes when their cash flows are not. so the actual underlying -- it's a big question about the

underlying business itself, but it's almost like collecting art for the billionaires that own these sports teams today. >> yeah. >> and so the sort of true economics are a little bit harder -- squishy. having said that, there is an actual market for these people in a way, i mean we cover the world of business and ceos, you know, talk about corny capitalism and how boards decide how much to pay their ceos. that's completely -- i'm not sure there's a real market for that in the same way that there actually is a market market for these athletes. >> yeah. >> for whatever -- for better or worse. >> yeah. what do you all want to talk about business wise? >> let's talk -- >> we are open -- we're jarred by the assassin that was tracked down. >> yep. >> we're jarred by is, all the family members, all the frat brothers, all the people that knew him at penn, all the people that knew him at his prep school, all the people that knew

him in the master's program, all the people that knew him at stanford, everywhere, and not a single person comes forward. >> kind of weird. >> to say i know who that guy is. when they see his face for three days. somebody in a mcdonald's in altoona, pennsylvania. >> one of the things we don't know, we don't know whether he was identified by anybody and clearly he was found in that mcdonald's -- >> right. >> i'm not sure we know there was any evidence suggesting this name -- this name was not -- i don't think we fully know -- >> the nypd said he was not on the raid. >> yet. >> they had not heard his name. >> whether we'll find out later, i'm praying, hoping, one of happens to people you talked about, the frat brothers, somebody, said something to somebody, and we'll find out about that and what the moral obligation is to do it. >> and christine, we're already talking about how nervous ceos

were. >> yeah. >> -- across america. i don't think it's any more comforting to find instead of some deranged guy living, you know, on the streets for six years, it's a guy that went to an exclusive prep school and was valedictorian, went to penn. i mean this makes it even more chilling, i would think. >> i think that they -- the mood of the country is something that everyone's really noting here, especially in the health care field, but if you look at the public response on social media and some of these -- social media isn't really real. it's anonymously behind a keyboard. there was vitriol for corporate executives, health care executives, and almost hero worship of this guy. >> yeah. >> i think really has caught a lot of leaders by surprise. i know that boards are beefing up security for all different kinds of -- >> yeah. >> -- scrubbing their websites of their executives.

not advertising addresses of investor events. i think things will really change, at least in the near term after this. >> talk about joe biden's speech today. >> yeah. >> we're going to be hearing from joe biden who is going to make the case that these last four years were better than at least what the voters ultimately decided on, and i think the truth is, in retrospect, i think history is actually going to look relatively fondly, if not more than relatively fondly, upon what's happened over the last four years. when you start to think -- there's some of the numbers -- 16 million jobs created, lowest average unemployment rate, smallest gap, i think all of that is representative of something that's actually quite remarkable. after individual covid and the this did not have to happen this way -- >> the atmosphere to get anything done in. >> to get anything done. the inflation piece was always the hard one, and it was a hard one around the world as well, and i think we did better on that score than most.

the question is, you know, how will the public look at this, you know, five, ten years from now. >> christine, as you look at those numbers, the kinds of things we talked about all year during the campaign which are all - >> right. >> -- that's hard data, and yet as andrew said, politically and in people's lives it was inflation that was decisive. >> look, the white house for a year thought they had a really good story to tell, but the mood of the country and the country just wasn't open to that story because of inflation and the pain of those higher prices. that was a scar that really -- that really is barely healed in terms of the inflation story and andrew is right, covid really just wrecked americans' optimism. it wrecked sort of their relationship with numbers like this, and i think the white house has thought it had a really good story to tell for the last year and really it fell kind of on deaf ears. this is about legacy building for joe biden. this is about really setting the record straight as one official said, you know, to make sure that people don't just attribute

all of this to a second donald trump term. >> laying down a marker to an extent and during the campaign, it seemed everything was turned upside down, oh, my gosh, joe biden's presidency was such a disaster. kamala harris has to separate herself from joe biden's legacy. i didn't understand it when you look at the accomplishments that he could list that quite frankly not many, if any, other modern american president could do. >> we're going to have a realtime live experiment over the next four years which we will be able to compare -- >> yes. >> -- what an economy that may have lower taxes or deregulation or whatever we think is about to happen and compare that with what has happened over the last four years -- >> right. >> -- i will say history has shown us, despite what people say about how people think that republicans are more friendly to the business community and this and that, when you look at economic growth and you go look

at stock market performance, which is not always necessarily fully correlated, better or worse, democrats have almost always come out on the better side of that score even though it is almost counterintuitive relative to the conventional sort of narrative that is ways told. >> yeah. >> but home insurance, car insurance, child care, elder care, health care costs these are the things in the middle class life still sticky and hard and you can look at the top line numbers but there are people screaming at the tv right now saying but my home insurance is terrible. >> fair. >> we looked at the inflation rates and they went down. by the end of the campaign they were really good. what the fed was pushing for, but it was the accumulation over four years. >> yeah. >> so they got inflation to a rate where they were comfortable with inflation, and yet, you add up inflation over the past four years, people are just thinking,

well, gas prices, listen, a fair comparison because, of course, gas prices were down in the middle of covid there was no demand, gas prices four years ago, so much cheaper than they are today. grocery bills so much cheaper than they are today. >> 20% cheaper. every week when you do the family shopping you can tell that difference. people will say, and donald trump has said, i'm going to get prices lower. >> right. >> getting prices lower is a different -- you don't want deflation. that's another story. he has to show now, as the president, how is he going to lower child care costs, elder care costs, health care costs, grocery costs. . we'll see. >> that's the next test. >> cnbc's andrew ross sorkin, and nbc's christine romans, thank you both very much for coming in. >> thank you. >> good to see you both. coming up, keira knightley joins us to talk about her new spy thriller "black doves." that's straight ahead on "morning joe." d on "morning joe." ♪far-xi-ga♪

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"time" magazine announced a finalist for the 2024 person of the year and list includes president-elect trump and vice president harris. i think trump would actually be more mad if he lost this to her than the election. >> "time's" 2024 person of the year will be revealed this thursday and moments ago, the magazine announced wnba superstar caitlin clark as its athlete of the year. congratulations her. and coming up on "morning joe" -- >> promise me that you will keep my family safe and you will keep me alive. so that i can find out who killed him and why. and i can take my revenge. >> that was keira knightley in the new critically acclaimed netflix series "black doves." the award-winning actress joins us next in studio, fresh off her golden globe nomination. we'll be right back. l be right . kept me...

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she's been feeding us government secrets for ten years now. i don't need to tell you how lucrative that's been for us. >> merry christmas. >> anything you want to tell me? >> no. >> this morning a man was killed in the south. he was murdered. >> you might have compromised yourself. >> and now it's time to get to work. >> hello, darling. >> shotgun. >> yes. >> good morning. >> oh, my god. >> that actually reminded me of the scene in "love actually".

>> no. >> it's kind of the same christmas vibe. >> no. no. that was a look at the new hit netflix series entitled "black doves." my god, we just saw that. the show stars academy award nominated actress -- >> good morning, kids. >> -- keira knightley as helen webb. >> it's almost 8:00. >> a london-based housewife married to britain's defense minister who leads another covert life as a spy. she goes on an action-packed intense revenge quest and keira joins us now on the heels of her nomination for a golden globe for her work on the show in the category of best performance by an actress in a tv drama series. she also serves as executive producer on "black doves." congratulations on all of this. >> thank you. >> well, that's nice. >> rather nice. >> yeah. >> i landed in new york. good news. hello. >> and here you are on "morning joe." so --

>> gets no bigger than this. >> how do you prepare for this character who is leading a double life to say the least. >> yes. >> and actually has a fight scene pregnant with twins. >> yeah. >> okay. >> i do. >> she's special. >> i was channeling the mom rage. >> that will work. >> i think i'm -- i was taking it from the school run. when you're there with your children and all been fighting that morning and you can't get them out and you're so angry and you suddenly get there and see the first mom like hi! >> hi>> so i basically based the entire thing on that. >> that works. now i get it. >> you see it now. >> i can do that. >> we were laughing as we came in with the trailer because i was describing how intense and excellent that scene was, not thinking we would actually show it this morning but there it was. >> good morning. >> that is quite a scene. your fighting is convincing. you've had such an incredible career on film, nominated for a couple academy awards "pirates of the caribbean" "love actually" and now here you are in this netflix series, and it

does feel like even since you got into the business this new world has opened up where you can do cinematic quality work like this. >> yeah. >> in a series form. how much fun was that for you? >> it was so much fun. i think i wanted to do something that was kind of pure entertainment, and this one is -- it's sort of got that wonderful melancholy that is lovely about the spy genre, but it's really silly. we get blown out of buildings and there's not a scratch on us. we're in that world. it's fun and serious at the same time and i think, you know, doing that, it's great. >> and there really has been an art where, again, everybody used to talk about movies. now when you were here we were sitting around "say nothing". >> yeah. >> seems that culture has moved -- >> yeah. >> -- to the sort of things you're doing here. >> you explore strange stories and people. the character i play is very odd. she's leading multiple lives. her morality is deeply

questionable. over six hours you really kind of get an opportunity to explore that. i think that's what's so wonderful about this series. >> one of the other striking characters of the film is london itself particularly at christmastime. >> it is. it's beautiful. it is another character in it. i think, you know, it was -- it was made by a bunch of londoners so we love our city and we wanted to kind of represent it in the way we sort of live in it. i think you can get that sense. it's a bit of punk, punk kind of vibe. >> i'm looking at your resume -- we're all very punk. >> i'm looking very punk this morning. >> yes actually are. >> i got the memo about the blue suit. >> everything is good. everything is good. imitation game, pride and prejudice, "black doves." "bend it like beckham" "love actually." you've had so many incredible roles in your resume. what's different about this one as a female lead and what do you like about that? >> i suppose the violence is

different. >> that's what i was hoping you would say. >> i haven't done action for about 18 years. >> yeah. >> it was a bit of a shock to get back into it but it was remarkably fun. >> right. >> which goes back to the mom rage. mom of two lovely small children. >> we have a lot to get out of our system. >> we do. >> you have to be so child friendly. it's quite nice to get it all out. >> let it out. >> you know, i will say the fight scene that we saw -- and i know there are more to come -- very convincing. was the action part a blast to do? >> it was a blast. it was a bit of a surprise because the original script i was just a spy and my best friend in it is the assassin. he was doing all the fighting. rewrite after rewrite my fights got more and more. this is going to be interesting. i really enjoyed it. >> talk a little bit more about doing a series instead of just doing a movie. we could talk about disclaimer, for instance, where you spend three and a half shows going, my god, could her character be any worse? and then you have the reveal at the end. >> yeah. >> it allows you a lot more opportunity to show depth and

for -- >> it does. >> talk about that. >> and again complexity. i think normally if you're doing a film you have to make very certain choices. you've got two hours, it has to be a clear choice as far as the character. when you have six or eight or ten hours you can really kind of take it in different directions. and i think that makes it fun for the audience and fun for you as the actor playing it. you sort of think oh, she can go anywhere and do anything. >> i love a female lead showing she can be imperfect even horrible instead of just the victim, help me. >> she's definitely not that, no. >> okay. i love it. >> so let me finish with the irritating question, i want to talk about "love actually" -- >> oh, my god. >> i love "love actually," i tear up all the time, on "love actually." "it's a wonderful life" it's okay. i understand there's just a huge divide out there. >> there is a divide. >> you love it or hate it. >> really? >> yeah. i thought everybody loved it. but yeah.

>> well -- >> obviously, i love it. >> help me. >> i guess my question is -- >> if i suddenly turned around and said no. i do love it. i have seen it once. >> that's normal. >> what he does is not normal. >> well. >> thank you tradition. >> you watched "elf" a million times. i'm not going to watch my own thing a million times. >> what's your favorite christmas movie? >> "die hard". >> yeah! >> okay. >> definitely. >> i understand you completely. >> by the way, she takes a side on that issue too. >> i do. >> and yes, it is a christmas movie. >> fully explained in that answer. the series "black doves" is streaming now on netflix. actress and executive producer keira knightley, thank you very much for coming on the show. right now on "ana cabrera reports," dramatic results in the killing of united healthcare ceo. the suspect now charged with murder. what we are learning