they've agreed? >> most of the reporting is saying they're positive. keeping forces on the ground and that's a good thing. so i'm moderately positive about a ceasefire this time around. >> general votel, as always, thank you so very much. appreciate it. >> thank you. good to be here. >> that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." chris jansing reports starts right now. rts. chris jansing reports starts right now. one job two very different ways of doing it. the stark contrast between joe biden and donald trump's approaches to the presidency on full display in these final weeks before they change places.

how politics and legacy and personality collide and what are the real world consequences. the suspect in the ambush killing of healthcare ceo now facing a charge that brands him as a terrorist. the latest on the fight to bring him back to new york. and on the ground in moscow after russia detained a suspect in the bombing of a top general on ukraine's orders. so much to get to. we begin where we have a stark contrast. a tale of two presidencies. one winding down any other ramping up. on one side is donald trump on the warpath against his perceived enemies and rewarding his friends. he's threatened both president biden has been avoiding any criticism. and instead with the window on

his power closing has focused on using it to burnish his legacy. >> we are wary about making predictions or promises, but this is close. with enough pushing from the outside mediators and commitment and hamas we can get it done. >> joe biden's chief of staff said he's in a sprint to the finish line. the consequences of this contrast have implications far beyond history. for starters will the push to punish cheney pushed joe biden to consider blanket pardons for trump's enemies. with me here in the studio is msnbc contributor jeremy peters. trump is not in office for more than a month, but in the meantime, he's always trying to

command the spotlight and threatening enemies and trying to block some of what joe biden is trying to do before he leaves. what can you tell us about his pre-presidency plans? >> reporter: the last month is indicative of how he intends to run his white house come january 20th of january of 2025. he is been sitting he has been sending clear signals about how he wants washington to operate when he is in charge. and the last 24 hours are very representative of that. in one social media post he made it very clear to are still in the minority they should not seek to come to any agreement with any democrats while the government is still

in session that would potentially allow democrats to install a couple late judicial judges and add them to the bench, which would effectively break his own record from his first administration of the record number of judicial nominees making their way to the bench. the biden administration is on the cusp of doing exactly that. if a couple of late nominees can get confirmed by that democratic majority senate. i want you to look at another social media post at 3:30 a.m. donald trump sending a message to liz cheney. calling for a federal investigation into the potential prosecution for what he alleges to be federal crimes saying that a report that came out from republicans in the house amount to critiques in the way in which she operated the january 6th committee and the allegation that she committed federal crimes. there is a lot to extract from that. liz cheney has pushback against

such assertions saying she worked within the law and her role in congress at the time overseeing the january 6th select committee and there was no witness tampering involved, and that they archived all the necessary documentation that was required in congress. and she's making the case very clearly that a judge would throw out any lawsuit or potential investigation and indictment against her. so for donald trump the last 24 hours and 48 hours with the civil lawsuit against the "des moines register" and that pollster, it's a clear message that he intends to use the executive branch to go on the offense against those who he believes have tried to undermine him politically but seek to use congress and his allies within it to ensure that not only are his budget priorities an active but make sure that judges, conservative

judges, are placed on the bench and in these closing days republicans do what it takes to block any democratic efforts to push their priorities through. >> i want to bring in mark mckinnon in. you know this. it's not easy for a lame-duck president to harder when the person on the other side is donald trump. so what do you think joe biden could accomplish in the spinal days whether it's pushing back against trump, fighting for his own legacy, trying to find a way for peace in the middle east. all of those are pretty tough. >> yeah, it is. this is the first presidency where it doesn't seem like there is a transition. joe biden is often africa working on a railroad and in the rain forest. those are issues that are not top of mind for american voters right now. but i do think that joe biden is quietly, he's not making

news about it, but they are firming a ton of judges, more than the record of mitch mcconnell, and he's getting money out for a lot of his programs. and that's where his legacy will be and so i think he's quietly doing what he needs to do to preserve his legacy, but we are hearing much about it. >> there was an article in your paper that explains joe biden's position this way. a traditionalist to his bones, he's opted to the grace and reticence he believes are befitting the departing president of a defeated party even as the incoming president tries to instill conspiracy minded acolytes in positions of power. so even though he's no longer criticizing trump as a danger, i wonder. is their message, whether it's fruitless or fruitful, that there is a right way to lead and a wrong way to lead. what could joe biden accomplish with this?

>> it can be kind of hard to remember that presidents used to behave with a certain measure of grace and professionalism when officers got handed from one to the next. we did not see that with trump, who did not even bother to show up at joe biden's inauguration and everything that preceded it that he did. but i think for all the criticism directed at joe biden for being absentee in a lame- duck, there is something decent about what he has done. i know there's criticism from the right and the left that he's not being forceful enough as someone who is criticized trump's threats to democracy and the possibility that he could undermine the fabric of our constitution and the republic. but is that what we really need right now?

like more heckling from the sidelines? trump does a good job at that himself. and it is not pleasant. i don't think anybody, regardless of where you are, thinks that the rancor needs to be dialed up. play out, he's leaving office with a certain measure of grace. >> for better or for worse, i think that is a reason that people voted for him. they were exhausted by the first trump presidency. i wonder if joe biden has to be wary about trump pushing him in some way into potentially making decisions he had not planned to make. even if he's worried about trump going after liz cheney. are there stronger reasons to stay out of it and not consider a blanket pardon? >> well, i think it's understandable why there are

discussions about those. but you have people like jonathan turley, a legal expert who appears prominently on conservative channels coming out saying that liz cheney is protected by her status as a member of congress. so i think it allows joe biden to do the work that he needs to do to preserve what will be his legacy and hopefully not the pardon of his son, which violated all he said about it during the election, but the sort of policy things he did during his presidency.>> one thing joe biden wants to get done and he has his team working on it is a cease-fire deal for gaza. we heard national security advisor jake sullivan say it's close. we've heard that before. but if this gets done, what would it mean for joe biden's legacy? >> we will not know what his legacy is. i think one thing is certain.

it's not going to be as bad as a lot of the naysayers would have us believe at this moment. it always takes time. having worked for george w. bush , who was very unpopular when he left office because of the economic wreckage that we saw in 2008. now he's looked at much differently as president in the pantheon of the u.s. presidency. and we have a tendency to want to know what the answers are right now and i think you have to wait and let this play out a little bit. joe biden will be the president who got pandemic. there were a lot of economic uncertainties, but he did get a lot of big things done in congress being someone who understood and understands the legislative process, so i think

the age and his decision to stay in the presidency in the running for as long as he did when he could've gotten out earlier will be question marks, but how much they overshadow his legacy, i think it too early to say.>> thank you. coming up, how matt gaetz is responding to the news that a key house committee will indeed make the investigation into allegations against him public. and the president tries to tamp down fears over the drone sightings. we will talk to an expert about what to watch for next time you look at the skies. th fasen fasenra is an add-on treatment for eosinophilic asthma that is taken once every 8 weeks and can also be taken conveniently at home. fasenra helps prevent asthma attacks.

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a longer and happier life. the farmer's dog makes weight management easy with fresh food pre-portioned for your dog's needs. it's an idea whose time has come. we have breaking news from capitol hill where the house ethics committee has voted to release the findings of a multiyear investigation into matt gaetz. including allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. that's according to two sources familiar with the matter. julie sirkin is live on capitol hill. matt gaetz is now lashing out at the decision. tell us what we are hearing from both sides. >> he's the former congressman from florida who had a bid to leave the department of justice. trump deleted picked him to lead the agency.

he's posting minutes after this news was first reported saying my 30s were an era of working very hard and playing hard. it's embarrassing though not criminal that i probably woman iced and drank and smoked more than i should have. i live a different life now. and perhaps he's making these statements because this was the centerpiece of that very short bid that he had to be the attorney general and it is what tanked him. this investigation has been going on and off for the last three years and a bipartisan panel is telling that these are allegations they've been investigating. illicit drug use, things the doj itself had looked into but decided ultimately not to charge him for those things. they then took that over. we were talking in the last couple of weeks that this panel decided not to release this report and then there was

effort on the house floor by democrats to force the release of this report anyway because of republicans who voted against it, it kicked the whole thing back in the hands of the committee and now you see sources telling myself that the people on this panel decided to release the report. the question now is when will we see it and to leave. they have one final vote left this week to keep the government funded and it's only after that's finished that this report will be released to the public when all the members are gone for the holiday break. >> so the fact that the committee voted to release this report, it's already out, but are there reasons to do it. should it be? >> it's a real interesting question. the question you have to ask is whose interests does it serve.

why do it now. he's not even going to be a member of congress. i think the answer is it serves the interest of the committee. this committee is the most independent committee in congress and intentionally so. so it can work to determine whether or not there have been ethical violations on either side of the aisle and mike johnson basically told them they could not release it. and that's what triggered them into this to say well, we are an independent committee and you cannot tell us what to do. i think if he had not tried to force their hand, they may have not released it. but it's all about the committee showing its independence saying we are going to remain independent and you can't tell us what to do and this is proof.>> i wonder how you view this if you are on the transition team. maybe it's a bad thing because it speaks to the president- elect's choices and speaks to the vetting process, or, does it take the heat off of some of the cabinet picks who are still

in the game by giving the attention to matt gaetz who is not. >> it very much serves the interest of trump and the transition by giving everybody a glittering object to shoot down and it gave cover to those members of congress say, well, we put a bullet in matt gaetz and we can shoot down -- it shows we are independent and we make our own decisions. but then allows them to go ahead. the end of the year, happy holidays. thank you for coming on the show. and now to what the new yorker calls the great drum panic with americans on edge over those mysterious objects flying over the northeast. in his first public remarks on this, joe biden trying to tamp down concerns saying the issue was nothing the various. that same message was echoed by

the secretary of homeland security. >> we know of no threat to people's security. and if we learn of any cause for concern, we will take action and we will communicate immediately with the american public.>> joining me now is a joan expert. in the new yorker piece they say it looks like a sign of deeper social dysfunction. america is fearful and paranoid. besides being told there's nothing nefarious, what can be said about what we are seeing? what is causing it and what can quell the concerns?>> it's important to think a bit as a friend or foe in the sky. there are more friendly drones coming, so we have to get used to them being up there. in this case i don't think

there's much that's nefarious. but we see a lot of burglaries where people use drones to case a house and on the way out to look as a cover in the sky. we see espionage tracking corporate executives and power supplies, so i think it's alarming and the american public should pay attention, but what we are seeing now is a wake-up call, but i don't see anything nefarious happening in 99% are airplanes that people are reporting that are not actually drones.>> you make a good point. the nypd said that the number of drone reports skyrocketed, but the have been seeing. and a lot of people miss identify what they see. so people are looking, which of they look for? >> if there is an exhaust, that's one thing. there's this problem of when you see the moon and the horizon

, and at the top of the sky, it's the same size. so people seaplanes and helicopters and they are really not. and we have an increase of police drones and people who are saying, let's go up and look around. we have a lot of the internet getting together to kind of mess with the public intentionally. so it's hard to say, the ones i've seen recently have all been either police drones or people's personal drones. i've not seen anything nefarious recently. >> a lot of members of congress, particularly if they live in new jersey will say they are getting a lot of nervous constituents and lawmakers have requested that same special drone hunting technology they wanted brought over to provide more information or cracked the mystery. i understand it's

called the robin radar system. what should we know about that? >> i don't know anything particular about that, but there are four ways to identify them. radar, radio frequency, that shows you where the pilot is and where the drone is. there are acoustics and that's an important one. and optical. radar is good. it's not great in urban environments. so well radar is a good way of detecting what we see in war zones, it's not so great for urban environments. so we will need more than just radar. we will need radio frequency and risk assessments so we understand where the threats are and we protect our physical assets and protect our water supply because like we saw new jersey, somebody put some green dye into somebody's swimming

pool to mess with them. it's very alarming for the public and we need as possible. >> but is your message no need to freak out?>> freak out overall in terms of they are coming. people are getting defibrillators in minutes and pills and are all these great uses of drones and it will become white noise and we better get used to it. but also with that comes a nefarious side. you don't need to take off the tinfoil hat, but we need to protect ourselves in the long term. >> thank you for coming on the show. we will speak to a congressman about what went on in that three-hour briefing next hour. but first, a major move by prosecutors against a suspect in the murder of the united

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prosecutors are calling him a terrorist and now the suspect in the killing of the united healthcare ceo will be in court tomorrow as prosecutors were to extradite him from pennsylvania. a source familiar with the situation says that luigi mangione is no longer expected to fight his return to new york

where he faces a sweeping indictment that includes a charge of first-degree murder is an act of terrorism. >> this was a well-planned targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation. it occurred in one of the most bustling parts of our city threatening the safety of local residents and tourists. it was a killing that was intended to evoke terror. >> we office. how is this charge of murder as an act of terrorism affect the prosecution? >> it is something that they brought because of the high profile nature of this murder, they feel like they can get some sort of a conviction on this count. but they've taken a case where there is overwhelming evidence of his guilt and they have

overcharged it and made it a case of terrorism. and to prove that they will have to show that it was not primarily personal but it was explicitly tied to a broader ideological campaign that he was trying to intimidate or coerce a civilian population and try to influence government policy. prosecutors are going to have to prove that. overcharging a case is nothing new and sometimes it is done to put pressure on someone to take a plea and sometimes it's done to have a jury convict on a lesser charge if the top one fails. what they've done is taken a very straightforward murder case and they have charged it as a very serious act of terrorism. and i think they will have a difficult time proving that on a short manifesto. we are talking about 300 words

on a piece of paper and from that they are trying to leverage that into a case where he would never be eligible for parole if he is convicted. so they've charged it as seriously as they could and it calls into question whether this is different than a lot of the murders you see in new york city every day because involved a broad daylight shooting and it involved a wealthy person and there's a lot of public interest in the case. but i think they've taken it and made more difficult for them where murder case, which doesn't have this added element of terrorism.>> so where do you begin to build your defense or do you think that this is a case where they might try to make plea deal, although the question remains whether prosecutors would even go for that.>> it's really early to

talk about a plea deal. but there are two very serious problems with the prosecution's case wherefrom all that we can see, it should be a slamdunk. this is a defendant who was carrying the gun in his back pack. his face matches the video. he has a manifesto written in his own writing talking about the murder. and the defense has two areas where they can push if this goes to trial. the first is whether a jury can believe that this was an act of terrorism. because if not, it's an element of the first-degree murder charge. and if not the prosecution will lose that. but when you get to the 2nd degree murder, there's a question about whether this was done under what they are calling extreme emotional disturbance. this is someone who was under

enormous amounts of pain from spinal injury. he had been through spinal surgery and he may have been on all kinds of drugs that impacted his psychological well- being. and from the defense perspective they're going to try to establish that he was under emotional disturbance at the time of this murder that he lacked the ability to premeditate this. it was not something that he had been thinking about for a long time. it was a more of a spur of the moment thing while he was in physical pain and also under disturbance from the psychological drugs he was on and even that count manslaughter charge.>> we only have a minute left. but i know that you know the attorney who will be representing him. karen friedman. what can you tell us about her.

>> she's a phenomenal attorney. she's talented and was the chief of the trial division at the manhattan das office and then became the chief assistant under cy vance. she is overseeing hundreds of prosecutions. she knows the prosecutor very well and knows how the office operates. she knows how to defend a case like this. he chose well in her. and i think she knows the law. she knows what she's doing. >> i appreciate your time. russia makes an arrest after of brazen bombing. what was seen at the assassination.

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two russian now where authorities have arrested the man who planted a bomb that took out a top general in the heart of moscow. officials say the the 29-year- old citizen was recruited by ukraine to kill the leader of the nuclearso ago and i

heard a lot of stories about how there is a decrease in african american enrollment. when i talk at hunter college in new york, so many of those students were first generation american and first-generation college students. public universities teach most of the college students in this country. so there are support services and hopefully there will be more after the supreme court decision that will be able to focus on those kinds of first- generation college students to not just do what do we give them the financial resources, the academic resources, and the emotional and mental health support for them to stay and flourish in these environments.

>> you been involved in this issue for a long time. what a precocious young man you were from 1996. let me ask you this. i know this story does not end here for you. what will you watch for in the months and years to come that will give us an indication, a better indication of the real- world impact of this. >> i think we will be watching to see whether the numbers go back up and k-12 schools and universities find some way to continue the progress of the civil rights movement and black people individually and generally in society. duluth a sizable number of black lawyers would be arguably a social harm. so i think we would be looking to see if universities are able

to avoid that. >> anemona hartocollis, and basil smikle, thank you both for being with me. i appreciate it. still ahead, what a frightening scene in hawaii. an airplane crashing into a building near the airport. the audio we are hearing of the pilots last words. more right after this. (limu sqs) only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ i'll be home for christmas.

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