it's embarrassing, shameful. yes, this bill is better than it was yesterday on certain respects, but to take this bill, to take this bill yesterday and congratulate yourself because it's shorter in pages but increases the debt by $5 trillion is asinine. and that's precisely what republicans are doing. i'm absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the american people and say you think this is fiscally responsible. it is absolutely ridiculous. >> republican congressman chip roy of texas, a consistent critic of spending bills, calling out his own party yesterday. his rant highlights the self-made crisis for the republican party. get ready. they had a bipartisan bill that would have passed this week, but then donald trump and elon musk killed it. yesterday, they hastily put

together a trump-backed package, only for it to be rejected by dozens of republicans and almost all democrats who were not going to give in to trump or musk's demands. to stop things off, elon musk may get rewarded for all of this. some republicans are now floating him as the next speaker of the house. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it's friday, december 20th. i'm jonathan lemire in for joe, mika, and willie. with us, we have a great group. pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of "the washington post," eugene robinson. nbc news capitol hill correspondent ali vitali. co-founder and ceo of "axios," jim vandehei. co-host of "the weekend" on msnbc, symone sanders townsend. and editor of the "republic," tomasky. let's dive in. less than 24 hours to go, congress has to path forward to

fund the government. capitol hill in complete chaos yesterday after president-elect trump and elon musk, his billionaire buddy, torched the bipartisan agreement to fund the government through march. congressional leadership and vice president-elect jd vance spent the day working on new legislation that would appease trump and the already very small republican majority. after hours of negotiation, the group managed to come out with a bill that had trump's seal of support, a drastically smaller bill. however, it did not have the full backing of the republican conference. the alternate package failed, 174-235, falling far short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass. moments after the bill failed on the floor, republicans tried to blame democrats for tanking the legislation, but democrats, for their part, say the gop backtracked on their deal and they felt no need to bail them out.

>> the democrats just voted to shut down the government even though we had a clean c.r. because they didn't want to give the president negotiating leverage during his first term -- or during the first year of his new term. number two, because they would rather shut down the government and fight for global censorship bull [ bleep ]. they've asked for a shutdown, and that's what -- >> 38 republicans voted against it, as well. >> i want you to remember, the news just last spring, the same democrats berated republicans and said that it was irresponsible to hold the debt limit, the debt ceiling hostage. what changed? it is, i think, really irresponsible for us to risk a shutdown over these issues on things that they have already agreed upon. i think you need to be asking them the questions about that. >> house, republicans have abandoned that bipartisan agreement that we entered into in good faith. a bill that house republicans

negotiated. gave us your word that you were going to move forward together on behalf of the american people. it was a republican drafted bill that was posted by house republicans. and then one or two puppet masters weigh in, and the extreme maga republicans decide to do the bidding of the wealthy, the well-off, the well-connected millionaires and billionaires, not working class people. >> there is so much to sift through here in terms of the politics, the impact on the incoming trump administration. let's start, ali vitali, with the basics. what is the latest you're reporting? is the government going to shut down tonight? >> it seems like lie, especially because the speaker and other top republicans aren't sure what plan c looked like. we watched speaker johnson, leader scalise, and other top

members leaving the building, questions if they're going to have a vote on anything today. it's bad news when you're hours to go until a government shutdown deadline and you don't know if you're going to have a vote because you don't know what you'd vote on. if they did have a vote, they don't know if it can pass. the iterations of, okay, is it a clean continuing revolution, is it going to be that plus just disaster relief? you've also got to throw a farm bill extension in there at some point, otherwise, you'll run into a lot of various problems in grocery store aisles across the country. there's different permutations of this, but there remains the same opposition from the core group of folks in the conservative ranks of the republican conference who don't vote for continuing resolutions anyway. it's why they're negotiated in bipartisan fashion to begin with, because you always need democrats in this iteration of the republican party to keep the lights on with the government, because there's always going to be staunch opposition from the same republicans within the party who don't want to vote for

it. then trump comes in and further complicates it by adding a debt ceiling negotiation to this mix, which i know to a casual viewer might seem like it's all part and parcel with the government funding negotiation, but we're talking about two very different fiscal negotiations happening right now. you can't just negotiate away the debt ceiling on a 24-hour deadline. that's certainly something they're running into, as well. now, trump has told them, you have to keep that in the mix. if you don't, you're going to have me and elon musk saying we're going to primary you. so they're creating guardrails to a system that's already very difficult, and that makes the job for speaker johnson even harder. i also think the democratic posture here is going to be instructive because there's very much a vibe of, you break it, you buy it. that's why democrats are setting the tone here, too, that they are not just going to be led down a path of negotiation and bipartisan fashion, see it fall apart after good faith negotiations, and then just say, okay, we'll vote for whatever

you want. they're doing their own tone setting here, too. i have to say, there is a settle troll that's happening, which is, hakeem jeffries is issuing all his statements on this, not on the social media platform elon musk owns, but blue sky, which has emerged since the election as the alternative. >> let's talk about how the democrats are handling this. up front, they agreed to the initial deal. the republicans walked away, not the democrats, despite playing the blame game there. give us your analysis here. there's a lot of trolling about president-elect musk and the like. they also chose not to bail out republicans. they walked away from this replacement deal. do you think, on both fronts, are they handling it right? >> look, past is prologue here. i think the last -- this 118th congress that we are at the tail end of, democrats have bailed out republicans every single time there has been a continuing resolution or something had to get done for the government,

something had to get done in terms of funding. democrats did come over, cross the aisle, and do what needed to be done to keep the government functioning. you saw in the election that they weren't necessarily rewarded for that work. did the american people, were they aware of what democrats were doing on that regard? did they know? maybe did they know and not care? we have to ask the voters. the reality here is that democrats cannot take the same posture that they have taken previously as it relates to speaker johnson and think that the voters will just recognize what they're doing. and/or even punish republicans for not doing their jobs. in this regard, i think that the posture that the democratic leader, hakeem jeffries, is taking is, in fact, the right one. i do think democrats need to step back just a notch and not be too gleeful, if you will. some folks are sounding a little gleeful here, and the republicans don't know what they're doing. it's a mess, and we're just waiting, posting the popcorn memes.

the reality here is if the government shuts down, whether for 24 hours or through january 20th, like lon musk tweeted on his social media platform that that's what he thinks should happen, real people are affected. social security checks, yes, continue to flow, but workers are not going to get paid. okay, they're not going to get paid. we are just days away from christmas. folks are making -- are going to have to make real time decisions, government workers across the country, about how they're going to survive over holidays because congress, ie republicans in congress, are taking their orders from elon musk on the social media site. i just really think watching here for what donald trump is going to say. he usually tweets through or posts on his social media site through everything else. i'm seeing elon musk tweeting and looking for what the president-elect is saying. i don't know if the blind is leading the blind, who is leading who, but democrats, they have to continue to take their posture that they are going to

do what is best for the people, but they are not going to do the republicans' work for them. >> let's dig in a little deeper on musk 's role here. several lawmakers are placing the blame squarely on the billionaire for the failure to pass the funding bill. musk was medicine dling where h didn't belong, democrats say, and has effectively taking control of the republican party. nancy pelosi took to social media calling the president-elect musk's puppet president-elect. adding that house republicans are abdicating their responsibility to the american people and siding with billionaires and special interests. other democrats echoed those sentiments. >> it's just shameful that they allow elon musk, who now everybody is calling president musk, to blow this deal up. i had one republican colleague say now it's president musk and jd vance as vice president. where does that trump, the president-elect? is he the former campaign manager or something? >> they write the bill. they post the bill.

they agreed on a bill. and you know what? they got scared. because president musk told them, president musk said, don't do it. don't do it. shut the government down. >> elon musk, unelected man, said we're not doing this deal, and donald trump followed along. so here we are once again in chaos, and house democrats are going to stand together and make sure that american families' voices are heard here. >> all i've heard for the last couple weeks about this giant mandate, landslide, trifecta. put on your big boy pants. pass your own bill. we're only here, we're only here because you guys can't agree

amongst yourselves. >> we're the legislative branch of the government. mr. musk is not the legislature. we should be voting on the agreement, and it's a fair agreement. >> for his part, president-elect trump told nbc news in a phone interview yesterday that musk did not influence him at all, when trump initially came out against the spending bill. some senate republicans also weighed in publicly, generally displeased with the idea of a government shutdown right before the holidays. but they claim that trump is in control, not musk. >> i think president trump is driving this, and i'm not diminishing mr. musk's role. i mean, this is america. everybody is entitled to have their opinion. and i listen, i follow his tweets, and it's just one more factor that i add to my equation of trying to make the right decision. but i think president trump is

driving this train. >> i think it's somewhat construct ive quite honestly, bt also disruptive. that's what people elected. they wanted a constructive disruptor. elon fits that bill nicely. >> despite what senator cramer just said, we'll note that elon musk was, of course, not on the ballot and was not elected to any position in the government. eugene robinson, though, elon musk wasn't elected, but he sure holds a perch of power, at least for the moment. i mean, it was already -- we've spent a lot of time on this show talking about just this unprecedented influence he had on the election with his money, with his time, with his social media site. now, he gets this doge quasi government agency. yesterday, let's be clear, this week, when this bill, the original bill went down to defeat, that started soon after, it was musk, not trump, starting to go after it on social media. seems like he's got the

president's ear, and it seems like he is wielding a lot of power. >> yeah, he definitely is wielding a lot of power. he definitely has the president's ear. i don't think -- or the president-elect's ear. i don't think donald trump is, for very long, going to like people talking about president musk and how elon musk is really running the show. but if we step back for a second, i mean, look at what just happened. the speaker of the house of representatives, the number three official in our entire government, agreed with democrats, negotiated and agreed on a bill to do the basic thing of keeping the government functioning, and it fell apart. it began to fall apart, as you said, when elon musk got on his social media platform and started attacking it. elon musk is not elected to any

position. he's not been appointed to any official position. he is apparently running this doge, which is not a government body. it's really an advisory panel. yet, yesterday, he was running the show. i think it's difficult to look at it any other way. it is a dangerous situation for this country, to have this unelected gazillionaire running the country by whim. also, what is the speaker of the house now supposed to do? how does he negotiate if his word is no good? if he has to go through not only president-elect, soon-to-be

president trump, but also elon musk, and figure out, what does elon think about this? doesn't sound like any way to run a country. >> we've never been here before. jim vandehei, you have reporting out this morning for "axios" about the government funding fight and how it captures the power and flaws of what you call the new information ecosystem, which is, in many ways, elon musk and x. >> this is the future foretold. you might like it. you might hate it. but it is. you now have musk controlling the dominant organ of the republican media industrial complex. there's nothing close. he single-handedly, with his tweets and his followers, killed that bill. there's no doubt about that. i think -- listen, i think the aspirational part of what he's saying probably is a good thing, right? we do spend way too much money as a country, and the process by which we do it is often asinine. i think that was, like, the fundamental thing that started this.

but now you do have somebody who, at least in this interim period, is arguably the most powerful person in politics and is totally unelected. now, republicans are seeing they have the benefit of musk in winning the election. now, they're going to have to deal with the consequences of having a media infrastructure that can put pressure on them to force members to instantaneouy change their votes. look at x, the number of congress members who said to musk, i changed my votes because of what you said. now, the complicating part for musk is there is a little bit of intellectual dishonesty when you say, listen, i want to cut spending but i'm also for a bill that would raise the debt limit. never in the history of the country have we raised the debt limit and not then hit the limit. the best way to actually cut spending would be, don't raise the debt limit. force government to live within its means and make the really hard choices. trump doesn't want to do that.

why would trump want to do that? he wants to crack down on immigration. he wants to do massive tax cuts. there's no appetite to do massive spending cuts on day one of the presidency. i get what trump is trying to do. and i do believe they'll figure out some kind of solution. i agree with everything ali vitali was saying, but there are ways out of this. you could do a clean c.r. for three months. you can get rid of the debt limit and hope trump doesn't get too ticked off. there are ways to avoid a government shutdown. >> the avenues to escape, right now, republicans don't seem particularly close to any of them. michael hat tomasky, veteran observer of washington for some time. this seems to be a preview of what's to come for the next couple months. donald trump, you know, receives hype that he ran a more disciplined campaign this time around. he's coming in with a, you know, exaggerated but mandate. he's got the two houses of congress both in republican

hands. he's more experienced this time around. he'll get things done. well, if this week is any example, it's the exact same chaos that we saw the first time around. >> yeah. well, you know, when republicans control the house of representatives, jonathan, we have chaos. we have had chaos going back a long time. really, you can trace this back to john boehner's tenure. john boehner was a reasonable human being compared to what we have today. the fact remains, when boehner was the speaker, senate republicans, you'll recall, voted in a bipartisan fashion to pass a good immigration bill, and the house held it up. pay boehner refused to bring it to the floor because he knew it'd pass and he'd, therefore, lose his speakership. fast forward to paul ryan's tenure. they passed a tax cut. that's about all they passed when they had the reins. they couldn't repeal obamacare.

fast forward to kevin mccarney's short tenure, the third shortest, i believe, in the history of the house of representatives, and essentially did nothing. now, in mike johnson's tenure, they have another mess. now, when trump is sworn in and trump presents his legislate you have agenda, such as it will be, and i can't really think of much that he has in the way of a legislative agenda, except another massive tax cut and some tariffs, although he may not even need legislation on those tariffs, what are the republicans going to do? it's interesting that we see these cracks today. yesterday, 38 republicans voting against the bill that trump wanted for, you know, fairly principled reasons, actually. so, you know, yes, there is a history of chaos, and be there are divisions right now within the caucus that make the future pretty up in the air, i think. >> one of the questions that's up in the air is who is going to be speaker of the house, ali vitali? mike johnson right now, i mean,

his grip on power has never been particularly firm, but he has been taking it on all sides this week. give us the latest here as to whether you think, whether the government shuts down at midnight tonight or not, whether he'll be re-elected speaker january 3rd. >> that's when the true ripple effect of whatever happens in the next 24 to 48 hours is going to happen, january 3rd. look, the question of the last few years is who is going to be the next speaker? mccarthy is ousted. you go through three weeks of chaos. the real question we should be asking is, why would anyone want to be speaker at this point? it is easily the most difficult and thankless job in washington. president-elect trump has only shown that it's going to be worse this time around for whoever it is. he clearly can't be predicted to even stay on his team's side once they have a negotiation they feel is palatable to move forward with. that's what mike johnson dealt with this week.

the reality is there's always someone who wants to be speaker, whether steve scalise, jim jordan. we could go down that road. the questions republicans have to ask themselves is, do they want to start the initial weeks of their new congress and of republicans having a trifecta of power in washington, by going through yet another multi-round, chaos-driven process to elect a new speaker, when i still think steve scalise put himself up for the job a year ago now. he had 20 or so detractors. that number may or may not still be the correct whip count, but that's something to deal with. same for jim jordan. if not, who? johnson is the person who has proven he can herd the cats, and that is, i think, the school of thought for the majority of republicans who say, let's go with the guy we've got and the person we know, but who knows? >> some republicans even floated elon musk as a possibility. >> certainly. >> we should note, there's actually not a requirement that the speaker be a member of the

house. this would seem deeply unlikely, but there is more than a few republicans yesterday who seemed to at least somewhat seriously engage with the idea. >> yeah. >> nbc's ali vitali, thank you. we know you have a busy, long day ahead of you. >> oh yeah. >> than ks for being with us. everyone else, stay put. amazon workers are on strike at several delivery hub locations. we'll break down the negotiations and how it could impact the holidays. plus, what we're learning about the meeting between amazon boss jeff bezos and president-elect donald trump. gene robinson will weigh in on that. we'll hear from his columns on "the risks of declaring fealty to donald trump." you're watching "morning joe." we'll be back in just 90 seconds. d about bulkamid - an fda-approved, non-drug solution for our condition. it really works, and it lasts for years. it's been the best thing we've done for our families. visit findrealrelief.com

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a beautiful shot of the rockefeller christmas tree outside of 30 rock. we're now just six days from christmas. complicating, perhaps, the holiday season, some labor strife. starbucks bra ris bucks barist off the job, launching a five-day strike that would impact hundreds of stores by christmas eve. workers are accusing starbucks of stalling union contract negotiations and failing to

produce better wage gains. the two sides have been bargaining a national contract since april. meanwhile, more labor issues. amazon workers at four states went on strike yesterday after claiming the teamster teamsters said the company ignored negotiations. it's unclear how long it'll last. the union is pushing for higher wages, better benefits, and safer work conditions. representatives from amazon say the strikes are not expected to impact holiday shipments, but i'm sure there are nervous, last-minute shoppers. the strike comes a day after amazon founder, jeff bezos, reportedly had dinner with president-elect donald trump and elon musk, who else, at mar-a-lago. according to reporting in "the new york times," musk was not initially invited to the meal but joined it after it began on wednesday. during trump's first term in

office, he often targeted bezos, calling him out for issues like how much amazon pays in taxes and news headlines he disagreed with. of course, bezos also owns "the washington post." the two men's evolving relationship is seen as an example of america's business leaders rushing to trump's side before his administration begins. it's a change that the president-elect has touted multiple times, including on social media, where he recently wrote, "everybody wants to be my friend," all caps, three exclamation points. gene, your latest column for the aforementioned "washington post" has this headline, kwtd "the rif declaring fealty to donald trump." you write this, "titans of industry and commerce, beware. when you bend the knee to the mad king, when you shower him with money and bathe him in flattery, he will receive your gifts with parent gratitude. but he will want more.

he will always want more. eugene, tell us more about your piece and the warning you're trying to issue to the billionaire class who, at the moment, is trying to cozy up with the president-elect. >> they certainly are. who hasn't been to mar-a-lago from that class, the billionaire class at this point? mark zuckerberg was there. sergei bryn and pichai from alphabet, google were there. of course, there was the dinner wednesday night with jeff bezos and elon musk dropping in. some of the titans or the companies are giving $1 million donations to the trump inauguration. mark zuckerberg's meta is doing that. they don't generally give money to that sort of thing, but they're doing it this time. amazon is giving $1 million. there are other big donations.

i just want the billionaires, if they, you know, want a little advise, advice, is to manage their expectations. because if their idea going in is to open a line of communications with the president-elect and the incoming administration, i get that. if they think that, finally, they're the ones who are going to talk sense into donald trump and get him on board, you know, some sort of systematic -- what they'd see as a systematic, reasonable program, then they're going to be disappointed. because, you know, we've seen this movie, and we kind of know how it works out. i don't want them to have illusions about what sort of influence they're ultimately

going to have over the president-elect when he becomes president, or indeed what kinds of policies may be coming down the pike. as we've seen in the last few days, things can change in an instant. we know how chaotic and unpredictable the first four trump years were. we're going to see that again. we definitely know that loyalty between trump and anybody else really flows one direction. it flows toward trump. if you don't believe me on that, just ask mike pence. >> it's a one-way street, to be sure. jim vandehei, trump is a unique character and e perceive as a threat to democracy. but it is not unusual for billion leaders to meet with a president-elect coming in to try to get in that administration's good graces and get favorable

policies. >> i mean, to be blunt, if you're a ceo of a publicly traded company, your job is to drive -- you have a fiduciary responsible to drive shareholder value. if you're sitting and running a tech company and realize the next government is going to decide ant itrust laws and setting the parameters for a.i., the future of all the big tech companies, you'd be nuts not to be talking to the president and his incoming staff and incoming cabinet secretaries, so that you have some leverage in the negotiations. on top of it, you can trace that back to musk, too. musk is their competitor in all of those spaces. they see what we see, that he's sitting next to the president every day, all day, at mar-a-lago, talking about policy, talking about personnel. they're scrambling to get in front of him to make sure they can at least make their case and there's not punitive actions taken against their companies because musk is whispering in one ear, and critics of them are whispering in the other. if anything, this dynamic will

intensify. >> michael tomasky, your article, "the real reason why americans approve of trump's disastrous itiontransition," yo write this. "how can it be, you may be wondering, that 5% of americans tell pollsters they approve of how donald trump is handling the transition? highway has nominated unqualified extremists. i don't blame people," you say," but culture, which is drained of common concern about our civic held. first and foremost, i blame rupert murdoch and his imitators, whose media properties have injected so much poison and so many lies into our discourse since 1977, that common civic agreement about basic morality and public life has become impossible." you go on, "we had a basic understanding about what kinds

of actions did and did not reflect our best values, and this was why richard nixon had to resign in disgrace for committing far fewer offenses than trump already has. everyone, whatever their politics, agreed that nixon had clearly klossed a line. but that impulse is dead in the united states, and the right-wing media killed it." michael, powerful piece. tell us more about your argument about the right-wing media, what it's done, and do you see any way that this civic bond, this civic concern can be repaired? >> i'm not very hopeful about that, jonathan, unfortunately. john dean said if fox news existed in 1973/'74, nixon would have survived watergate. i think that's probably true. today, the right-wing media extends beyond fox news. i mentioned murdoch, but it's sin claire media, many, many

outlets that follow the same kind of script. i do think that we have lost those bonds i'm talking about. i think that, you know, in an earlier time, without that media pressure, right-wing media pressure, i think republican sen ators and house members would have said in the first term, he's gone too far. this crosses a line. we can't tolerate this. but those aren't the rules anymore. with respect to the transition, very quickly, you know, i watch these polls. 55% approve of the transition. 59% i saw in one poll, although that was a few weeks ago. i don't really think, i just can't believe that 55% of americans think that robert f. kennedy is the best choice for hhs. i don't think 5% of americans think tulsi gabbard is the best choice for intelligence or pete hegseth is the best choice for the pentagon. what is happening, though, is people are checked out. they don't know. they're not paying attention.

some portion of the media, the right-wing media, is telling them these are well-qualified people and they should be confirmed. it's a sad situation that we're in, and i don't see an easy way out. >> you know, i think jim makes an important point here. eugene, i'm wondering what you think. the reality is, is i do think that some of it is people are not fully informed, right? folks are like, oh, people voted for what donald trump is going to do. they wanted this. i'm not sure they were fully informed about all the things but one could argue they know enough. depending on where you get your news, you could actually believe that the speaker of the house is supposed to go to every single member of the caucus and say, "hey, what do you want to put in the bill"? not knowing that's not actually how negotiations work. you elect a leader to negotiate on your behalf. the leader should have the respect and the backing of their caucus.

that's how this usually works. so given this is the situation, eugene, what are we going to do? i asked my folks on social media last night when i should have been asleep, and people were like, how are we going to survive the crazy of the next four years? drurp donald trump isn't even elected yet. this is utter chaos because of elon musk, and maybe the president-elect, didn't actually understand how the continuing resolution was supposed to go and what was actually in the bill. >> yeah, well, just a couple of quick points. symone, first of all, on those polls, you know, 55%, 59% saying they support the transition, frankly, i am not surprised. you know, donald trump won the popular vote. you know, just a scotch less

than 50%, but he won the popular vote. it doesn't surprise me that 55% or even 59% of americans, many of whom voted for donald trump and others of whom are not really that firmly attached to either party, it doesn't surprise me that that many people would want to be optimistic about the new administration. that's called the honeymoon, right? and so that's -- they're hardly going to, i think, take a hard look at some of the chaos and the dysfunction, at least until trump takes office and the administration begins to shape up. that's one point. the other point is that a lot of people have checked out. after a couple of years of really intense politics and

political news and being invested and in one candidacy or the other, headlines every day, i think a lot of people are just checked out for a little bit. you know, that's kind of okay. it's the holidays. let's get through the holidays. people will check back in. i don't worry about that. stuff will happen. people will have feelings about it. but what's happening right now, it's not of huge concern to me. >> yeah, perhaps when the inauguration rolls around, that's when the people do check back in. editor of "the new republic," michael tomasky, and "axios'" jim vandehei, important columns. thank you. and symone sanders townsend, thank you, as well. we'll watch "the weekend" saturdays and sundays starting at 8:00 a.m. here on msnbc.

coming up, we'll take a quick break from politics and turn to sports. pablo torre is here to preview the opening round of the first ever 12-team playoff in college football. he's got a bracket. i need a bracket. "morning joe" is coming right back. the virus that causes shingles is sleeping... in 99% of people over 50. it's lying dormant, waiting... and could reactivate. shingles strikes as a painful, blistering rash that can last for weeks. and it could wake at any time.

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herbert, a shovel dump pass to haskins. inside the ten. touchdown, chargers! >> that's hasan haskins taking a shovel pass from justin herbert 34 yards to the end zone, for the chargers' go-ahead score late in the fourth quarter. it was l.a.'s third touchdown in the second half in a comeback from a double digit deficit against their division rival, the denver broncos. this included the nfl's first successful fair catch kick in nearly half a century. the chargers took advantage of the seldom used rule after the broncos were called for fair catch interference. you saw it there. that would have been the final play of the second quarter. the rule, though, allows a team that just made the fair catch to try a free kick for three points. the rule states the kick has to be taken from the line of scrimmage, while all defenders must line up at least ten yards away. you have a clear line of sight. and with the flag moving the ball to the denver 47 for

untimed down, l.a. knocks one through the uprights from 57 yards. chargers rally for a 34-27 win, keeping the broncos from clinching a spot in the postseason, while increasing their own chances at a playoff berth. l.a. can secure its second trip to the playoffs in three seasons if the colts and dolphins lose. but the fair catch kick, truly bizarre. thankfully, we have someone who specializes in truly bizarre sports moments. >> that's right. >> the host of blo torre finds out" on meadowlark media, pablo torre. i followed the nfl my whole life. i know you did, too. i didn't know the rule existed, yet it gave the chargers three points and a key win. >> definitely, i was familiar with this. >> no, you weren't. >> absolutely, i study the parliamentary rules of nfl special teams studiously. the nfl is part, you know, a

violent spectacle. it's the coliseum brought to modern day. also tax law sometimes. you realize, oh, wait a minute, this is a thing that we have not seen happen at this distance, a successful free kick, fair catch free kick, since paul horning, john, in case you were wondering. green bay packers legend. i didn't know you could do this. i didn't know you could do this. it was crucial. it's ridiculous. apparently, both coaches claimed after the game, of course, they practice this, which is psychosis or reality. >> the only person on the planet who knew about this rule was bill belichick. unc will specialize in this play. >> the man loves a kick. >> i will say, though, this was an eyebrow raising headline. another in the nfl came hours earlier, when we learned the new york jets apparently make personnel decisions based on players' ratings in the video game madden. >> yes, the new york jets, much like our congress, you could argue, apparently run actually by teenagers.

woody johnson is the owner of the jets. you may recall him as president trump's ambassador to the uk. he goes away for a while. he has some young boys. he comes back from the appointment, and the boys are teenagers. >> one named -- >> brick. >> yeah. >> just a thing we do now. you call your teenage son brick and allow him to take over the post game huddle. look, i'm not the guy who comes on the show and praises aaron rodgers often, but there is a story in this piece in which it is the post game huddle in the locker room. aaron rodgers is about to give the game ball to a defensive player who was unheralded and deserves it. in comes brick with a profanity-laden, celebratory toast to garrett wilson and gives the star wide receiver the ball instead, leaving everybody mystified. on top of, allegedly, recommending they not sign jerry jeudy, acquire him, because the madden rating was not high enough. >> not high enough. this is why the new york jets, each and every year, continue to

disappoint. have the longest playoff draught. >> it's so good. by that, it's so bad. >> i'll stay with it's so good. let's turn from the pros tot college game. the 12-team college football playoff kicks off tonight in south bend with number ten indiana visiting nearby notre dame, which is ranked number seven, in the first round opener. the winner advances to the quarterfinals against second seeded georgia in the sugar bowl on new year's day. the bulldogs are reportedly preparing to play without starting quarterback carson beck. beck, who had been considered a potential first round pick in next year's nfl draft, has not practiced since he was hurt in the first half of georgia's s.e.c. championship game win over texas erarlier this month. espn is reporting the quarterback is exploring surgery options to repair an injury to the elbow on his throwing arm. that's a blow, potentially, to one of the favorites in the tournament. first time expanded 12 teams. i see you brought with you your bracket. >> i am steve kornacki on some

psychedelic. it's really messy. i've been crossing out names, updating it based on injuries and all that, john. georgia, can we start there? i am picking them, just to spoiler alert you here. and the reason i'm doing that is because as much as carson beck is the guy who is the incumbent, gunner stockton, which is a name that is also great. brick and gun ner just dominatig "morning joe" on the friday before christmas. >> i'd watch it. >> he is younger. carson beck the conventional passer. gunner stockton helped them beat texas. then, of course, was brutally concussed because football is the coliseum in modern day. that guy, i believe, has enough to pilot a team that is the most feared team in the s.e.c., which means i'm old enough to remember when that used to mean you won the national title. >> eugene robinson, i know you'll be watching these college football playoffs. >> yeah. >> i know you won't be picking

ohio state. >> no. >> otherwise, who you got? >> well, you know, georgia. i like georgia, too. i like that kid, gunner stockton. >> gunner. >> i am not -- you know, i don't have a bracket filled out. i doubt i'm going to because it's, frankly, too complicated. i can't figure out which bowl is what, and it's a semifinal or round of eight now or whatever. >> that's right. >> also, michigan isn't in it, so why am i going to invest that much time? pablo, you spoke with frequent "morning joe" guest paul finebaum about the passionate football fans who call into his show. let's look at some of the calls, all pertaining to the university of alabama and running the full gamut of human emotion. >> the tide just hired deboer,

and i smell a naty in '24. roll tide, buddy. >> i'm in sports hell, brother. i'm in sports hell. i never thought i'd utter these words, "vandy is my daddy." coach saban, you built this thing, baby. you built this thing from the ground up. please come back. come back! come back! >> hey, i don't even have a name for you anymore. except cow turd. how dare you. >> don't you dare come down on the university of alabama. i will eat your [ bleep ] for lunch, and i can make that a promise! you there? >> i am. i'm listening to every word and nodding my head. >> that was phyllis at the end there with some anger. >> god rest her soul. >> the call previous was a man named legend. >> yeah. >> we didn't have time to play

joe's frantic phone calls to paul. >> the most unhinged. >> complaining about the university of alabama. >> the most traumatized. >> talk to us more about the sort of singular role that paul finebaum played for so long. >> it is telling that whenever i come on to revel in alabama's misery, joe scarborough is nowhere to be found. but the thing you should realize is that sometimes paul finebaum joins us on monday mornings to talk college football at this very table, and then he goes off and he talks to an audience that is the most important and influential base in sports when it comes to the american south. this is a very different demographic. this christmas season, i have never been more interested, john. they are miserable. they are populist. they are a little bit occupy wall street and a lot a bit crazy. when it comes to why this job in alabama is so hard and so glorious, it is because of these people. this show, just for people who are not familiar, there's a guy who literally called into the

show while in the emergency room, was having a heart attack, to tell paul finefinebaum, i lo you. paul says, are you really in the er? a nurse's voice says, yes, he is. when we say life and death, this is real. this is a sports radio show unlike any other. we went behind the scenes, why people are the way they are and why alabama is this demographic that encapsulates why college football is the second most popular sport in america, behind the nfl. it's absurd. >> college football not shying away from head-to-head matchups with the nfl over the next week or so. >> correct, yes. let's turn to baseball. >> oh boy. >> for me, life or death, the red sox. i know your yankees, after missing out on juan soto, have been busy. weigh in what you think of the moves they've made to replace soto using the money freed up when he chose to go to the mets. also, after a busy stretch, we bit a lull in the hot stove, but

there's big names still out there. >> yeah, freed up. i see what you did there. >> mm-hmm. >> max fried. look, i believe the yankees ultimately dodged a financial bullet. i fully believe this, john. my text messages to you are not admissible in court. do not use them against me in this conversation. i currently believe the yankees are piecing together -- look, game five of the a.l.alcs, i ha gene robinson trauma, watching my team lose the game. i realized i needed a closer. we needed a closer. guess what we got? >> closer. >> we got a closer in devin williams. guess what we got? a new starting pitcher. we could use one of those. now, of course, i would like another slugger. i'd like to show what the yankees are. out steinbrenner steve colin, one of the 100 richest men on the planet. uphill battle but it's not yet over. how are you feeling, by the way?

>> briefly, the trade was good. they have a lot more to do. the ownership a few years now promised to spend money, promised to compete. let's see it. they also need a starting pitcher, a righty bat, need a couple relievers. they're out there. spend the money, make it happen. >> the theme of today, of this week, is actually, can we please spend more money? >> there we go. >> lots of places. >> no doge for the sports world, that's for sure. >> no. >> latest epiepisode of "pablo torre finds out" is available now. don't miss out. pablo torre, thank you, as always. >> roll tide. next up here, thomas freeman of "the new york times" says to solve the china relations lies with elon musk and taylor swift. the columnist joins us in the next hour to explain to. i hope so. "morning joe" back in a moment. ♪ i'll write your name ♪ ♪ cherry lips, crystal scars

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political news. last night, president-elect trump hosted jeff bezos at mar-a-lago. an hour into the dinner, elon musk showed up and sat between them at the table. even trump was like, okay, this is actually starting to freak me out. okay, you have to get a friend. to settle who he loves more, elon and bezos are going to put trump down the middle of the

room and see who he goes to first. come here, boy. no, no, he loves me. that's not fair. here boy. come on. >> the man of the moment, elon musk. welcome back to "morning joe." friday, december 20th. i'm jonathan lemire, in for joe, mika and willie. jrue gene robinson still with us. joining the conversation, we have nbc news and msnbc political analyst, former u.s. senator and former prosecutor, claire mccaskill. and former msnbc host and contributor to "washington monthly," chris matthews. our thanks to you both for joining us. we are, of course, now just less than 24 hours until a government shutdown, and congress still has no path forward. capitol hill in complete chaos yesterday after president-elect trump and his top adviser, elon musk, torched the bipartisan agreement to fund the government through march. congressional leadership and vice president-elect jd vance spent the day working on new

legislation that would appease trump and the already very small gop majority. after hours of negotiations, the group managed to come out with a much smaller bill that did have trump's seal of support. however, it did not have the backing of the republican conference. the slimmed down, alternate package iled, 174-235, falling far short of the two-thirds majority it needed to pass. moments after the bill failed on the floor, republicans blamed democrats for tanking the legislation. but democrats say that it was the gop who backtracked on the original deal and felt no need to bail them out. let's note, a couple of dozen republicans voted no on the revised bill, too. president biden, for his part, has not spoken publicly about the looming government shutdown, but his administration is working with democratic leaders in the house and senate on a strategy. democrats plan to message any

potential shutdown right before the holidays as a real blow to the economy and a block on much-needed disaster relief funding. the president ignored reporters, shouting questions about the spending bill as he and the first lady returned to the white house from delaware last night. white house press secretary karine jean-pierre issued a statement yesterday with the president's position on what she called the republicans' billionaire give away. she wrote in part this, "president biden supports the bipartisan agreement to keep the.gov open, help communities recovering from disasters, and lower costs. not this giveaway for billionaires the republicans are proposing at the 11th hour." the white house believes donald trump ordered republicans to shut down the government by tanking their bipartisan deal. and one former biden campaign official went even further, telling nbc news the president-elect was simply listening to elon musk.

quote, "trump seems like he needs to act on his dad's wishes," this adviser said. referring to musk. now, the office of management and budget has been working with agencies since last week to make sure plans for an orderly shutdown are up to date. the deadline midnight tonight. chris matthews, you're a veteran of washington. you have been in and covered fights like this before with one exception, we have never seen a fight like this before with a role played like the one right now by elon musk. >> no, nothing like it. you've heard of a bull in a china shop. this guy is an elephant in a china shop. these negotiations between the house democrats and the house republicans are very fragile. there's a one-vote majority for the republicans. the voters voted for that. they didn't -- they really voted to divide the house of representatives effectively. so that deal has to hold. you have to have democrats aboard. 30 or 40 republicans will not vote with their party, that will

always vote against any extension of the debt ceiling or anything like that that includes more government spending. so you need democrats. it has to happen that way. along comes musk with his trillions of dollars basically, doesn't know anything about civics. the house is divided. you have to make a deal. he doesn't. >> announcer: understand that. it's thrown the whole thing in the air. probably a government shutdown will happen tonight because of him personally. >> claire mccaskill, let's talk about this moment. first of all, let's not lose sight of the real implications if the government does shut down. people will not be paid just before the holidays. we also should note about how this seems to be offering a preview of what's to come. this talk of a unified republican government, well, now, it seems to be a recipe for more chaos. >> yeah. first, trump looked tiny yesterday. he looked like a very little man. that has got to be bugging him

big time. he not only had to follow musk's lead, he then couldn't deliver votes at a time when he's trying to convince everyone there's a massive mandate for him and everybody wants to be his friend. then, whoops, the brakes got put on. the other thing that's really interesting about this is, yes, there are real consequences to a government shutdown. elon musk doesn't understand that. he thinks the government shutdown is great. he thinks we should shut down the government entirely before donald trump becomes president. of course, real people are hurt. millions of real people are hurt by that. but here's the train wreck that's coming. here's the deal. you've got 40 republicans that have never voted -- around 40 that never voted to extend the debt limit without spending cuts. trump is against spending cuts. elon musk thinks he is going to do all these spending cuts. donald trump doesn't want spending cuts. he blew the deficit up.

he loves to spend money. he loves debt. he thinks debt is the way to success. he doesn't care about debt. so he said last night after his failure, do not do a deal without extending the debt limit. all the way until after my next term. so there's going to be a train wreck here between elon musk, who thinks he is going to cut $2 trillion out of the deficit, out of the budget, and donald trump, who, frankly, could give a rat's you know what about cutting any spending. >> some of the spending, as was pointed out yesterday, that is being cut, you know, really important, even life-saving measures that, frankly, add up to a pittance in the grand scale of the spending deal. our friend, sam stein, highlighted one of these with a new piece in "the bulwark" which details that one of the key item missing out of the republican-crafted government legislation is funding for cancer research program named after a 10-year-old virginia

girl who died from an inoperable brain tumor in 2013. it originally passed back in 2014 in a deal between congressional republicans and then president obama, a democrat. now, it needs to be extended. negotiators thought it would sail through, at least until elon musk went on an x rampage, tweeting the bill was antithetical to conservative, small government ambitions, and threatening primaries of lawmakers who supported it. gene, sam also yesterday highlighted on twitter a research group that does work with, you know, ing children with cancer. their tweet from a few days ago, celebrating that they thought this vital funding was going to be included, and now, suddenly, it's out. >> yeah, i mean, it'll come as a surprise to elon musk, i guess, but this is what the government does. the government funds for

research, not just the cancer research, not just research on children's cancer, which obviously is vitally important and much needed, but all kinds of research, including basic research that doesn't have immediate application but that leads to world-changing inventions and discoveries. that's a hugely important thing that our government does that seems to be directly in the crosshairs of doge and elon musk and those who, frankly, just don't understand what our government is, much less what it does. you know, just a question for chris matthews. because you have seen everything. you haven't seen this. where do we go from here?

republicans do not have a majority and will not have a majority on any spending bill, right? we should stop saying they have any sort of majority. in fact, because of those 30 or 40 who will never vote for this essentially increased spending. how do we get past this, and does it take donald trump just to put his foot down? he seemed to try to do that yesterday. didn't seem to work. what happens? >> well, i think one of the reasons this is happening this weekend, which is probably a government shutdown, is the message sent by senate republicans. they have 53 seats in the senate, a real majority. they can take a couple losses. you know, they've been eating everything this guy has thrown at them. all the dead fish he's given nominees for department heads and pam bondi and bobby kennedy jr. give me a break.

hhs for kennedy jr.? are you kidding? we're talking about whether we're going to investigate the vaccine for polio. the greatest president of the century, franklin roosevelt, who had polio. mitch mcconnell had polio. we're talking about investigating the vaccine? is that what we're really doing with the government? democrats ought to call them out right now, next week, and say, look, are you getting rid of the department of education? put up or shut up. are you getting rid of the peace core? tell us the things you're getting rid of, and tell us what you're really going to do. what are you throwing out the window, throwing in the trash can? tell us now. they have to call this guy and make him stand up for the nonsense he believes in. trump is running against government. he's not running against any part of the government. he's running against the government. he doesn't like the federal department of justice because they're going to get him. he doesn't -- all the people that tore down the capitol on

january 6th, he wants to free all those people, pardon them all. he's the bad guy. you have to understand, he is the bad guy. he's going to cut what he doesn't like, and it could be anything that musk thinks of. musk is an idiot. he may be a genius at making money, but we have to kill this habit of thinking everybody knows how to make money with e-cards and whatever else, who however knows something about civics. he doesn't know anything about running the house of representatives. he doesn't know anything about getting a majority vote. howard baker said you have to get to the third grade to be able to know how to win in the senate. that's called 51 votes. you have to understand it. this clown, and he is a clown, knows nothing about government. he knows all about making money. one time, i actually agree with bernie sanders this time around. he's one of the millionaires and billionaires that ought to stay out of our face. make money, okay. but stop running the united states government. that's what musk is doing this weekend. the only theory i do have, and i

love it, is that trump is planning to destroy elon musk. he puts him out there in the beginning. early in the -- late in the biden administration. he has him destroy himself pause he can't work with the congress. he can't put together a coalition. he can't get 218 votes, which is the name of the game in the house of representatives. 218. i live with that for six years with tip o'neill. if you don't get 218, you lose. tell him that. blame it all on musk. i think trump would like to get rid of his new dancing partner. i don't think he really wants him around. he doesn't like him around. he's basically saying already, when are you leaving? i think he means it. >> i think -- >> as he often does. >> watching the relationship between trump and musk unfold in the coming months will certainly be a fascinating spectator sport. claire mccaskill, i'll go to you to revisit the reporting that sam brought to us this morning about this health research, about, you know, pediatric

cancer. not only is that heartbreaking in itself, but, like, that is new research, medical innovation. well, that's something that would also be endangered by robert fchl . kennedy jr., were to be reformed. he wants a moratorium on new federal health research, as well as questioning what we all thought was settled medicine, like the polio vaccine. >> yeah, most americans don't know what nih is, the national institute of health. they don't understand how linked nih is with the success of our economy. we are and remain the envy of the world in terms of medical research. we are a magnet to the best minds of the world, to come to our institutes of higher education, to do research. we've got amazing research universities all over this country, all funded in part by nih. it has saved millions of lives. it has made the quality of life

much better for millions and millions of people around the globe. and it fuels our economy. if these guys think bringing nih to its knees, taking the leg out from the foundation of health research in this country, is somehow going to help america be great again, they are really confused. and i would certainly urge any of them to take some time and go to some of the universities that are funded by nih. go to nih. meet the people that are doing these research. find out how close they are to actually making real breakthroughs on cancer and heart disease and diabetes and all the things that cost our government trillions of dollars. through our health care system. it is really stupid. you know, chris is right. he is a guy who names his children after medical formulas, and thinks, somehow, he has the

common sense look after everyday americans. give me a break. >> yeah. we will be digging much, much more into this throughout the morning. everyone here is going to stay put. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll turn to the new federal charges. the man accused of killing united healthcare ceo brian thompson is now facing. plus, with the latest on the upheaval in syria from someone who knows the region as well as anyone. "new york times" columnist thomas friedman. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. look at this craftmanship. i mean they even got my nostrils right. it's just nice to know that years after i'm gone this guy will be standing the test of ti... he's melting! oh jeez... nooo... oh gaa... only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ you got this. one — remember, i don't want surgery for my dupuytren's contracture.

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welcome back. the suspect accused of killing brian thompson is back in new york city and facing new federal charges. correspondent stephanie gosk has the latest. >> reporter: this morning, mangione is back in new york city, landing in manhattan on an nypd helicopter thursday, after being extradited from pennsylvania where he was arrested. the 26-year-old accused of murdering united healthcare ceo bryon an thompson was handcuffe shackled, and escorted by armed law enforcement. >> i want to send a very clear, loud message, that this act of terrorism is something that would not be tolerated in the city. >> reporter: mangione hit with four new federal charges, including stalking and a murder charge that could carry the death penalty.

that's on top of 11 state criminal charges in new york, including murder in the first degree and the furtherance of terrorism. the newly unsealed federal complaint revealing details in the investigation. saying mangione allegedly undertook extensive efforts to identify, place under surveillance, and track the victim's whereabouts in the time period leading up to the murder. according to prosecutors, in the hours before the shooting, on at least one occasion prior to the murder, the shooter was depicted using a cell phone. it does not specify who mangione may have been talking to. the documents also detail more closely what was inside the notebook authorities say was recovered during mangione's arrest at a pennsylvania mcdonald's last week. according to the complaint, mangione had pages that express hostility toward the health insurance industry. august 15th, he wrote, "the details are finally coming together." adding, "the target is insurance because it checks every box." mangione's day thursday began in a pennsylvania courthouse, where he told a judge he was waiving

his right to an extradition hearing. he was immediately taken into custody by new york law enforcement, driven to an airport where a plane was waiting. ultimately, a helicopter bringing him to lower manhattan. his first appearance before a federal judge. he has not entered a plea in either the state or federal case. >> we're going to respectfully decline to make any comment at this time. >> that was nbc's stephanie gosk with that report. coming up here on "morning joe," our next guest says that elon musk and taylor swift can resolve u.s./china relations. columnist thomas friedman joins us to explain his new piece for "the new york times." "morning joe" will be right back. ♪♪

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pretty shot of the white house, decked out for the holidays. exactly one month until inauguration day. earlier this week, china's foreign minister expressed a desire to work with the incoming trump administration, saying he hoped the two countries could work together in a, quote, mutually beneficial manner to remove disruptions and overcome obstacles. the comments put a spotlight on what may be the most consequential diplomatic relationship of trump's second term.

but our next guest argues it's not just trump and xi who could figure prominently in the partnership between the two countries. joining us now, foreign affairs columnist for "the new york times," thomas friedman. his new piece requester for "th "how elon musk and taylor swift can resolve u.s.-china relations." "beijing and washington will be much better off with a bargain, one that imposes a gradual increase in u.s. tariffs, while both of us do what needed to be done long ago. what is that? i call it the elon musk/taylor swift paradigm. america would use higher tariffs on china to buy time to lift up more elon musks, more homegrown manufacturers who can make big stuff so we can export more to the world and import less. and china would use the time to let in more taylor swifts, more

opportunities for its youth to spend money on entertainment and consumer goods made abroad, but also to make more goods and offer more services that its own people want to buy. but if we don't use this time to respond to china the way we did to the soviet union's 1957 launch of sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, with our own comprehensive scientific, innovative push, we will be toast." tom, so good to see you this morning. i'll admit, i did a double take when i saw the two names mentioned in your headline and the roles they could play. elaborate further for why you think this makes sense for poet nations. >> first of all, great to be with you. obviously, i'm using them as a metaphor. the biggest thing i discovered on this trip to china, and i've been a regular visitor for the last 30 years, though i missed

covid, and while we were sleeping, blindsided by covid, then we disengaged with one another on top of it, china made a great leap forward in advanced manufacturing. china has gone from 6% of global manufacturing in the early 2000s to almost half today. one country, john, almost half. it's across a broad front. basically, what i was arguing is that we need to get pack back t tariffs are just there to buy time. they're to buy time for something. buy time for us to basically make our own great leap forward in advanced manufacturing again. we need more people like elon musk. not the elon musk you were talking about earlier in the hour. i agree with every word chris matthews said. but we need people who can make big stuff, bend metal, okay, satellites, internet systems, cars. we don't have enough of those. meanwhile, china, i said if i was drawing a cartoon of china, it's a country with the upper

body of popeye, still eating spinach. that's the advanced export manufacturing side. but it has stick legs because there's no -- not no, but very little domestic consumption. in part because of the economy being geared for exports and the creative juices have not been unleashed there for domestic consumption. so they need more taylor swifts. they need more of their own creative talent. they need to be letting in more creative talent. the young people can, you know -- girls just want to have fun. so do chinese. they're not getting those opportunities. >> tom, is this -- i understand your argument, and i think it is a very clever one, but is this at all realistic? is the united states actually going to start bending metal again? or are the next elon musks going to come up with these great ideas, these great projects,

these innovations, but do the manufacturing elsewhere and find that that's more efficient, even with reasonable tariffs applied? do we still have the skills and the mindset to do the metal bending here in the united states? that's number one. number two, is there any indication that xi would like to have anything like taylor swift in china? cultural figures who have this sort of independence of mind and voice, that is simply not allowed in xi's china. wouldn't he be satisfied to have that aspect the way it is? >> those are two legitimate questions. on the first, you know, i would simply say, after the russians launched their sputnik satellite in 1957, we had a similar

wake-up moment. we did make a massive investment in industrial manufacturing. as i note in the piece, i don't know if donald trump knows, but in china, his nickname on social media is comrade nation builder. he's been their sputnik. he woke them up. not to make more stuff but make more stuff that doesn't depend on the united states. that's number one. your point on taylor swift and creativity in china skpa and alg in those things, gene, you're absolutely right. that's not the inclination or direction of the chinese leader right now. although like her record when it was released to streaming there was wildly popular, and there is talk about her giving concerts there, but i'll tell you, they will have real problems if they don't. their young people feel choked. the organizations that track rise of demonstrations in china

have tracked a real substantial uptick lately. and you can't keep people choked that way in the 21st century. so this is a key moment. you can love china. you can hate china. many times, i do both. but this is a serious country when it comes to making stuff. while we, you know, busied ourselves basically manufacturing polarization and commenting on politics, they have taken a great leap forward and really focused on manufacturing. we've got to get focused. again, it goes back to your previous segment. look at some of the people we're appointing to key positions in science, in technology in this country. we're just not serious. trump will find they want a deal, not a fight here for sure, but they won't be pushovers.

they are a different country than donald trump dealt with eight years ago. >> tom, i'm curious, as you look at -- i get that tariffs provide space for a pause to allow us to try to catch up. what's a little bit different now is we've got supply chain issues that are global. then we also have a real dependency of american agriculture on exports. what happens in the interim? what happens to the economies, the economy here in our country if we get into a tariff war that, yes, gives us a pause, but what kind of damage is done during that interim to our overall economy? >> again, i'm talk about a negotiated tariff transition, not a war. if we get into a war, china has real resources, claire, for the reasons you've just suggested. you know, we basically buy four things from them for every one thing they buy from us. most of that one thing now is soybeans and other agricultural

products. imagine your rural farmer today. you're told, we're cutting off immigration so you'll lose your labor, have to pay more for labor, and china will buy few agricultural goods from us. china has real resources there. on the manufacturing side, levers there, as well. i want to do everything i can to avoid a trade war. let me just step back for a second and put this into a larger context, at least the way i see it. i vited xi to the inauguration, and it was meant more tongue in cheek than anything else, but i don't think it was a bad idea. we need to sit down with china in a deep dialogue. while engaging in a tariff war with each other, the world is actually on the cusp of three civilizational, threatening events. artificial general intelligence,

climate change, and spreading disorder. what do i mean by spreading disorder. look at israel and the countries around it. syria, lebanon, libya, iraq, yemen, sudan, somalia. they're all disintegrating, okay? spreading disorder is going to be a huge problem in the next, i would argue, administration. the united states and china are the a.i. superpowers. they're the climate superpowers. they're going to be the disorder-preventing superpowers. we need to sit down and have a serious discussion with them about these issues. by the way, they need to be serious with us, too. i have huge numbers of complaints with them and how they approach this. but we have a big agenda going forward. if we obscure that agenda by getting into a tit for tat war over toys and soybeans, shame on us, both of us. >> tom, while we have you, you mentioned the middle east. let's dive in a little further into the region you know so well. senior u.s. officials are in the

syrian capital of damascus for the first diplomatic mission there since the fall of dictator bashar al assad earlier this month. the state department says the delegation, led by senior state department official for the middle east, barbara leif, is expected to meet with the leaders of the de facto government. they'll also meet with some activists. a department spokesperson says they'll focus on the transition to an inclusive syrian government, along with hope to uncover the fate of austin tice and other american citizens who disappeared under the assad regime. the defense department said yesterday that the u.s. has doubled the number of american troops in the region, bringing the number to roughly 2,000. the pentagon press secretary says the troops are on the ground supporting the mission against isis, working to prevent it from regrouping. tom, we'd love to get your

thoughts about the situation in syria. whether or not you think this new rebel group, which is the de facto government, can be trusted. what are your hopes and fears there after the assad regime ends and suddenly there is a vacuum? what are your hopes and fears about what fills it? >> let me just start at 30,000 feet, john. i've been covering the middle east all my life. i'm 71. this is one of the most important moments in modern middle east history. i'm glad the blinken team is in damascus right now engaging with the syrian rebels and other civil society forces there. why is that? okay, syria is the keystone of the entire levant on the eastern mediterranean. it holds the whole thing together. as i wrote a few weeks ago, some countries in the middle east implode when they have the internal order collapse. syria explodes.

aftergangan began stan imploded. what happens in syria will not stay in syria. that's number one. number two is what is happening in syria today. it's something we dreamed about, basically, going back to the iraq war, okay. at least i dreamed about it. if you could create in a keystone country like syria consensual government that brings sunnis, iites, kurds, christians, together into a central government that is not governed by an iron fist from the top-down b ut consensually emerges from the bottom-up, that radiates throughout the region. i was hoping that's what iraq would do. we did it from the top-down. i don't need to refight that battle right now. but it is happening in syria authentically. why do we need to be there right now? it's because the forces that toppled assad were basically islamist, fundamentalist forces that came out of idlib in

northern syria. they're not as bad as al qaeda. i put them more of the taliban variety if you look how they govern towns in northern syria. women were completely covered. but they're not the worst of the worst. they understand that syria is a mosaic and they need to have a balance between their sort of islamic view and a more modern view. now, syria had -- assad drove about 13 million people out of the country. many of those people are now coming back. they're secular. they are modern. they are women. they are christians. they are modern sunnis. they come with a very, much more western, liberal vision of the future. we have to find a way, syria has to find a way, to find a new balance between the sort of muslim fundamentalist point of view, albeit a relatively moderate one given the spectrum, and this new modern, secular but democratic, pluralistic point of view. it is going to be hard.

but the fact that we are in there right now is so important. it is so important. when marco rubio becomes secretary of state, he better understand, this issue, syria, how we manage this, how he manages this, will be one of the prime things that he is judged on. he and trump. they have the opportunity of a lifetime. you have to understand, if syria succeeds, it will produce enormous hostility around it because who doesn't want syria to succeed? the same people who didn't want iraq to succeed. the other autocrats in the region. so this would not be an easy fight, but this is the fight of our time. it is the most important ng to happen in the middle east in four decades. i wish them well. >> tom, great to talk to you. i'd ask you to go to the widening of your mind. so much goes on in your mind in two pieces a week. let me ask about something you wrote months ago.

you said that joe biden was successful in uniting europe, but not so successful in uniting the united states. >> yeah, i have to go back in my head. >> that's what i'm doing. >> yeah. you know, we, chris, i would say, you know, biden was successful in building a unified coalition in europe, you know, against putin and his invasion of russia. i think that's what i was talking about. you know, it goes, chris, to something you said earlier or eluded alluded to. we are not divided as a country but are being divided. we're being divided for profit by social networks, gazillionaires like the dark side of elon musk and mark zuckerberg and the tiktok people. they have created a business

model that depends on making us angry at each other. shame on them. because i don't think the country is anywhere nearly as divided as we are being divided. at the same time, this is happening in our politics, as well. that's how you get ahead now. you know, some of these knuckle heads you see in congress right now. this is such a serious moment we are at. we're at the birth of -- we have become godlike as a species, more than ever in human history. we just created an artificial brain greater than we evolve with. that's actually godlike. we are the first of our species to actually change the climate, to drive ourselves from one climate epoch into another. through globalization and technology and interconnection, we can now hear each other whisper. we are godlike in three different realms but without the

ten commandments. when humans become godlike this way without the ten commandments, these issues of leadership, of morality, of decency, of building consensual politics become more important than ever. that's -- whatever donald trump thinks he will be judged by, that's what history will judge him on. >> foreign affairs lumnist for "the new york times," thomas friedman, always a pleasure to have you. his piece, "how elon musk and taylor swift can resolve u.s.-china relations." online now. thank you. chris matthews, thank you, as well. happy holidays. we'll take a look at headlines on front page across the country. including the issue in the skies over new jersey. "morning joe" will be right back with that.

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a live look at reagan national airport, washington, d.c. it'll be a lot of holiday travelers in the day as s ahead. five days from christmas and hanukkah. time now for a look at the morning papers. we begin in new jersey, where the record reports on the spike of people pointing lasers at airplanes flying overhead. faa officials say the recent wave of drone sightings along the east coast has prompted a

269% increase in laser strikes on planes, which, let's remember, pose a real threat to aviation safety and is also illegal. faa has banned drone operations for special security reasons in several areas of new jersey until january 17th. to ohio now. "the akron beacon journal" highlights a bill that limits driver's license suspensions. lawmakers approved a bill that will make it harder for licenses to be revoked and easier to get a suspended license reinstated. nearly 60% of driver licenses suspended in ohio each year stem from debt-related reasons. and in florida, "the orlando sentinel" leads with the fast-growing population. according to the census bureau, more than 400,000 people moved to florida this year, bringing the total population there to

more than 23.3 million. that's a 2% growth rate, surpassing all other states and trails only washington, d.c.'s 2.2% rate. officials say the population spike could be attributed to international migration and population increases across southern parts of the united states. now, it's time for one of the morning's must-read op-eds. the editorial board of "chicago tribune" has a new piece with this title, "you won, mr. trump. there's no call for litigation against "the des moines register."" the editorial reads in part this way, "there's little doubt that, beyond punishing veteran pollster ann selzer and the newspaper, a secondary goal of trump and whoever is paying his lawyers to bring this trif friv action is to make other publishers afraid to criticize him or reluctant to report negative news on him or his

administration. that's un-american. "the des moines register" is a highly respected and venerable, founded in 1860. this front page poll was an embarrassment to the paper and to seltzer. both have paid in the court of public opinion for the error. that's the appropriate level of accountability for what happened. you handily won the election, mr. president-elect. congratulations. even for someone whose impulse long has been to punch back at your foes, real or imagined, there's plenty of room here for you to rise above all petty bids for retribution." claire mccaskill, if past is prolong, donald trump rarely takes the high road. from reporting this morning, the media organization that owns "the des moines register" hasn't committed to paying ann selzer's legal bills, which is worrisome. i'd like you to weigh in, in particular, not just on this idea of trump trying to punish those who, in his mind, wronged him in the past, but this

chilling effect, this warning to try to media outlets, to individual pollsters, journalists alike, to not cross him in the future. >> yeah, the hypocrisy here is so huge. this is a man who talked constantly about the freedom of speech and how he is against censorship. look at elon musk. he pretends he is all about freedom of speech and against censorship. all of our freedoms, all of our freedoms flow through the freedom of speech and the first amendment that allows a free press in the united states. everything we know depends on a free press. this notion that going after "the des moines register" because of a bad poll is really corrosive to that freedom. and i would implore not just donald trump and his minions of kind of wanna be lawyers to lay off, but i also would implore

the c-suites of corporations that own these media outlets, don't act like you're for free speech and then fold. don't act like you are somehow bringing important information to the world and then fold. this is a fight worth making. i guarantee you this, if ann selzer needs legal fees, she can raise them. there will be plenty of people in america that would want to contribute to make sure she has the best lawyers to stand up to this bully. >> claire, have a good weekend. appreciate it. >> merry christmas. >> thank you, you the same, claire. still ahead here on "morning joe," we'll turn back to the looming government shutdown as congress has until midnight tonight to pass a spending bill. we'll get a live report from capitol hill. "morning joe" will be right back.

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it's embarrassing. it's shameful. yes, i think this bill is better than it was yesterday on certain respects, but to take this bill -- to take this bill yesterday and congratulate yourself because it's shorter in pages, but increases the debt by $5 trillion is -- i'm sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and goes forward to the american people and say you think this is

fiscally responsible. it is absolutely ridiculous. >> republican congressman chip roy of texas, a consistent critic of spending bills, calling out his own party yesterday. his rant highlights this self-made crisis for the republican party. get ready. they had a bipartisan bill that would have passed this week, but then donald trump and elon musk killed it. then yesterday they hastily put together a trump-backed package, only for it to be rejected by dozens of republicans and almost all democrats, who were not going to give in to trump or musk's demands. to top things off, elon musk may get rewarded for all of this, as some republicans are now floating him as the next speaker of the house. good morning, and welcome to "morning joe." it's friday, december 20th. i'm jonathan lemire, in for joe, mika and willie. we have associate editor of the

"washington post," eugene robinson, capitol hill correspondent ali vitali, co-founder of axios, and cohost of the weekend on numbers, and editor of the new republic. it has been a dizzying stretch here. let's dive right in and try to sort it out. with less than 24 hours to go, congress still has no path forward to fund the government. capitol hill in complete chaos yesterday, after president-elect trump and elon musk, his billionaire buddy, torched the bipartisan agreement to fund the government through march. congressional leadership and vice president elect j.d. vance spent the day working on new legislation that would appease trump and the already very small republican majority. after hours of negotiations, the group managed to come out with a bill that had trump's seal of support, drastically smaller bill. however, it did not have the full backing of the republican

conference. the alternate package failed, 174-235, falling fall short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass. moments after the bill failed on the floor, republicans tried to blame democrats for tanking the legislation, but democrats, for their part, say the gop backtracked on their deal and they felt no need to bail them out. >> the democrats just voted to shut down the government, even though we had a clean cr, because they didn't want to give the president negotiating leverage during his first term -- or during the first year of his new term. and number two, because they would rather shut down the government and fight for global censorship [ bleep ]. they've asked for a shutdown and i think that's exactly what they're going to get. >> i want you all to remember, the news just last spring, that the same democrats berated republicans and said that it was

irresponsible to hold the debt ceiling hostage. what changed? it is, i think, really irresponsible for us to risk a shutdown over these issues on things that they have already agreed upon. i think you need to be asking them the questions about that. >> house republicans have abandoned that bipartisan agreement that we entered into in good faith, a bill that house republicans negotiated, gave us your word that we were going to move forward together on behalf of the american people. it was a republican-drafted bill that was posted by house republicans. and then one or two puppet masters weigh in and the extreme maga republicans decide to do the bidding of the wealthy, the well off, the well connected millionaires and billionaires, not working class people.

>> there is so much to sift through here in terms of the politics, the impact on the incoming trump administration. let's start, ali vitali, with the basics. what's the latest you're reporting? is the government going to shut down tonight? >> it seems likely at this point, especially because the speaker and other top republicans aren't sure what plan c looks like. we watched speaker johnson, leader calise and other top members leaving the building last night, questioning if they're going to have a vote on anything today. it's bad news when you're hours to go until a government shutdown deadline, and you don't know if you're going to have a vote because you don't know what you would vote on. and even if they did have a vote, they don't know that it could pass, because all the different iterations of, okay, is it going to be just a clean continuing resolution, is it going to be that plus just disaster relief? you've also got to throw a farm bill extension in there at some point, otherwise you're going to run into a lot of various problems in grocery store aisles across the country.

there's different permutations, but there still remains the opposition from the same core of folks in the conservative ranks of the house republican conference who don't vote for continuing resolutions anyway. it's why they're negotiated in bipartisan fashion to begin with, because you always need democrats in this iteration of the republican party to keep the lights on with the government, because there's always going to be staunch opposition from the same republicans within the party who don't want to vote for it. then trump comes in and further complicates it by adding a debt ceiling negotiation to this mix, which i know to a casual viewer might seem like it's all part and parcel with a government funding negotiation. but we're talking about two very different fiscal negotiations happening right now, and you can't just negotiate away the debt ceiling on a 24-hour deadline. that's something they're running into as well, because now trump has told em you have to keep that in the mix or me and elon musk are going to primary you.

they're creating guardrails to a system that is difficult and it makes the job for speaker johnson even harder. i think the democrat posture is instructive because there's very much you break it, you buy it, and that's why democrats are setting the tone they are not going to be just led down a path of negotiation in bipartisan fashion, see it fall apart after good faith negotiations, and then just say, okay, we'll vote for whatever you want. so they're doing their own tone setting here, too, and i have to say there is a very subtle troll that's happening, hakeem jeffries is issuing all of his statements about this not on the social media platform that elon musk owns, but on blue sky, which has emerged since the election as the alternative. we're watching a little bit of trolling in real time, too. >> let's talk about how the democrats are handling this. let's state up front, they agreed to the initial deal, it's the republicans that walked away, not the democrats, despite the gop trying to play the blame game.

give us your analysis because there's a lot of trolling about president-elect musk and the like, but they also chose not to bail out republicans. they walked away from this replacement deal. do you think on both fronts, are they handling it right? >> look, the path is prologue here. and i think this 118th congress that we are at the tail end of, democrats have bailed out republicans every single time there has been a continuing resolution or something had to get done for the government, something had to get done in terms of funding, democrats did come over across the aisle and do what needed to be done to keep the government functioning. you saw in the election that they weren't necessarily rewarded for that work. the american people, were they aware of what democrats were doing on that regard? did they know and not care? we have to ask the voters. but the reality here is that democrats cannot take the same posture that they have taken previously with speaker johnson and think the voters will just recognize what they're doing and/or even punish republicans

for not doing their jobs. in this regard, i think the posture that the democratic leader hakeem jeffries is taking is, in fact, the right one. i think democrats need to step back just a notch and not be too gleeful, if you will, and some folks are sounding a little gleeful here and the republicans don't know what they're doing and it's a mess and we're just waiting and posting popcorn memes. because the reality is if the government shuts down, whether it's for 24 hours or through january 20th, like elon musk tweeted on his social media platform that that's what he thinks should happen, real people are affected by this. social security checks are going to continue to flow, but workers are not going to get paid, okay? they're not going to get paid. we are just days away from christmas. folks are going to have to make real-time decisions, government workers across the country, about how they're going to survive over the holidays, because congress, ie republicans in congress, are taking their

orders from elon musk on a social media site. so i just really think watching here for what donald trump is going to say, he usually tweets or posts on his truth social site through everything else. i'm seeing elon musk tweeting and i'm looking for what the president-elect is saying. so i don't know if the blind is leading the blind, who is leading who. but democrats, they have to continue to take their posture that they are going to do what's best for the people, but they are not going to do the republicans' work for them. >> let's dig in deeper on musk's role here. several lawmakers are placing the blame squarely on the billionaire for the failure to pass this government funding bill. democrats say musk was meddling where he did not belong and has effectively taken control of the republican party. former house speaker nancy pelosi took to social media calling the president-elect musk's puppet president-elect, adding that house republicans are abdicating their responsibility to the american people and siding with billionaires and special

interests. other democrats echoed those very sentiments. >> it's just shameful that they allowed elon musk, who now everybody is calling president musk, to blow this deal up. i had one republican colleague say now it's president musk and j.d. vance as vice president. where does that leave donald trump, the president-elect? is he the former campaign manager or something? >> they write the bill, they post the bill, they agreed on a bill, and you know what, they got scared, because president musk said don't do it, don't do it, shut the government down. >> elon musk, unelected man, said we're not doing this deal, and donald trump followed along. so here we are, once again, in

chaos, and house democrats are going to stand together and make sure that american families voices are heard here. >> all i've heard for the last couple of weeks about this giant mandate, landslide, trifecta. put on your big boy pants, pass your own bill. we're only here -- we're only here because you guys can't agree amongst yourselves. >> we're the legislative branch of government. mr. musk is not the legislature. we should be voting on that agreement and that agreement is a fair agreement. >> for his part, president-elect trump told nbc news in a phone interview yesterday that musk did not influence him at all, when trump initially came out against the spending bill. some senate republicans also weighed in publicly, generally displeased with the idea of a government shutdown right before the holidays. but they claim that trump is in control, not musk.

>> i think president trump is driving this, and i'm not diminishing mr. musk's role. i mean, this is america. everybody is entitled to have their opinion. and i follow his tweets and it's just one more factor that i add to my equation of trying to make the right decision. but i think president trump is driving the train. >> i think it's somewhat constructive, quite honestly, but it's also a little disruptive. that's what people elected. they wanted a constructive disrupter, and elon fits that bill pretty nicely. >> despite what the senator just said, we'll note that elon musk was, of course, not on the ballot and was not elected to any position in the government. so eugene robinson, elon musk wasn't elected, but he sure holds a perch of power, at least for the moment. we spend a lot of time on this show talking about this unprecedented influence he had

on the election with his money, with his time, with his social media site. now he gets this doge quasi government agency, and yesterday -- let's be clear, this week, when the original bill went down to defeat, that started soon after, it was musk, not trump, who started going after it on social media. it seems like he's got the president's ear and it seems like he's wielding a lot of power. >> yeah, he definitely is wielding a lot of power. he definitely has the president's ear, or the president-elect's ear. i don't think donald trump is for very long going to like people talking about president musk and how elon musk is really running the show. but if we step back for a second, look at what just happened. the speaker of the house of representatives, the number three official in our entire

government, agreed with democrats, negotiated and agreed on a bill to do the basic thing of keeping the government functioning, and it fell apart and it began to fall apart, as you've said, when elon musk got on his social media platform and started attacking it. elon musk is not elected, was not elected to my position, he's not been appointed to any official position. he is apparently running this doge, which is not a government body, it's really an advisory panel. yet he is running -- or he was yesterday, he was running the show. i think it's difficult to look at it any other way. it's i think a very dangerous situation for this country to have this unelected

gazillionaire essentially running the country by whim. but, also, what is the speaker of the house now supposed to do? how does he negotiate anything if his word is no good, if he has to go through not only president-elect, soon to be president trump, but also elon musk, and figure out, what does elon think about this? that doesn't sound like any way to run a country. >> we have never been here before. jim, you've got new reporting out this morning for axios about the government funding fight and how it captures the power and flaws of what you call the new information ecosystem, which is, in many ways, elon musk and x. >> i mean, this is your future foretold. you might like it, you might hate it, but it is. you now have musk controlling the dominant organ of the

republican media industrial complex. there's nothing close. he single-handedly, with his tweets and his followers, killed that bill. there's no doubt about that. i think -- listen, i think the aspirational part of what he's saying probably is a good thing, right? like, we do spend way too much money as a country and the process by which we do it is often the fundamental thing that started this. now you have somebody in this interim period who is arguably the most powerful person in politics and is totally unelected. so now republicans are seeing they've got the benefit of musk in winning the election, now they're going to have to deal with the consequences of having a media infrastructure that can put pressure on them to force members to instantaneously change their votes. and make no mistake, that's what happened. go back and look at x, at the numbers of congress that went on and said, i changed my vote because of what you said. now, the complicating part for

musk is there's a little bit of intellectual dishonesty when you say, listen, i want to cut spending, but i also am for a bill that would raise the debt limit. never in the history of the country have we raised the debt limit and not then hit the limit. so the best way, if you actually wanted to cut spending, would say, don't raise the debt limit, force government to start living within its means and make the really hard choices. but trump doesn't want to do that. why would trump want to do that? he wants to crack down on immigration, do massive tax cuts. there's no appetite to do massive spending cuts on day one of the idency. i do believe they'll figure out some kind of solution. i agree with everything ali vitali was saying. but there are ways out, you could do a clean cr for three months, get rid of the debt limit and hope trump doesn't get too ticked off. but there are ways to avoid a government shutdown. >> there are avenues to escape it. at least right now republicans don't seem particularly close to any of them.

michael, let's bring you in. a veteran observer of washington, you've been covering this for a long time. this feels like not only an unprecedented moment, but a preview, a preview of what's to come here in these next couple of months. donald trump, you know, he receives hype that he ran a more disciplined campaign this time around, he's coming in with, you know, exaggerated, but mandates, he's got the two houses of congress both in plan hands. he's more experienced this time around, he's going to get things done. well, if this week is any example, it's the exact same chaos that we saw the first time around. >> yeah, well, you know, when republicans control the house of representatives, jonathan, we have chaos, and we've had chaos going back a long time. really, you can trace this back to john boehner's tenure. he was a reasonable human being compared to what we've got today. but the fact remains when he was the speaker, the senate republicans, you'll recall, voted in a bipartisan fashion to

pass a good immigration bill, and the house held it up, he refused to bring it to the floor because he knew it would pass and he knew he would lose his speakership. fast forward to ryan's tenure, paul ryan, they passed -- what did they pass? they passed a tax cut. that's really about all they passed when they had the reins. they couldn't even appeal obamacare. fast forward to kevin mccarthy's brief tenure, the third shortest, i believe, in the history of the house of representatives, and they essentially did nothing. and now here in mike johnson's tenure they have another mess. now, when trump is sworn in and trump presents his legislative agenda, such as it will be -- and i can't really think of much that happen he has in the way of a legislative agenda, except another massive tax cut and some tariffs, although he may not need legislation on those tariffs. what are the republicans going to do? it's interesting that we see these cracks today, 38

yesterday, 38 republicans voting against the bill that trump wanted for, you know, fairly principled reasons, actually. so, yes, there's a history of chaos and there are divisions right now within that caucus that make the future pretty up in the air, i think. >> and one of the questions that's up in the air is who is going to be speaker of the house, ali vitali? because mike johnson right now, i mean, his grip on power has never been particularly firm, but he has been taking it on all sides this week. give us the latest here as to whether you think, whether the government shuts down at midnight tonight or not, whether he's going to be re-elected speaker come january 3rd? >> no matter what, that's when the true ripple effect of whatever happens in the next 24 to 48 hours is going to happen, is january 3rd. look, the question over the last two years has been who is going to be the next speaker. mccarthy is ousted and then you go through three weeks of chaos. the real question that we should be asking is why would anyone

want to be speaker at this point? it is easily the most difficult and thankless job in washington, and president-elect trump has only shown that it's going to be worse this time around for whoever it is, because he clearly can't be predicted to even stay on his team's side once they have a negotiation that they feel is palatable to move forward with. that's what mike johnson has dealt with this week. the reality is there's always someone who wants to be speaker, whether it's steve scalise or jim jordan, we could go down that road. but the questions republicans have to ask themselves, do they want to start the initial weeks of their new congress and of republicans having a trifecta of power in washington by going through yet another multi-round chaos-driven process to elect a new speaker, when i still think steve scalise put himself up for the job a year ago now, he had 20 or so detractors. that number may or may not still be the right whip count, but

certainly that would be something they have have to deal with. the same can be said for jim jordan. so if not them, then who? johnson is the person who has proven he can herd the cats and that is, i think, the school of thought for the majority of republicans, who say let's go with the guy we've got and the person that we know. but who knows? >> there are some republicans who even floated elon musk as a possibility for speaker. we should note there's actually not a requirement that the speaker be a member of the house. this would seem deeply unlikely, but there is more than a few republicans yesterday who seemed at least somewhat seriously engage with the idea. nbc's ali vitali, thank you. we know you have a very busy long day ahead of you. coming up on "morning joe," the next ranking member of the house oversight committee is our guest. congressman gerry connolly, beat out fellow democrat alexandria ocasio cortez for the role.

i used to leak urine when i coughed, laughed or exercised. i couldn't even enjoy playing with my kids.

i leaked too. i just assumed it was normal. then we learned about bulkamid. an fda approved non-drug solution for our condition. it really works, and it lasts for years. it's been the best thing we've done for our families. call 800-983-0000 to arrange an appointment with an expert physician to determine if bulkamid is right for you. results and experiences may vary. starbucks baristas are walking off the job this morning in three major cities. a union representing the workers say employees in los angeles, chicago and seattle, starbucks' hometown are launching a five-day strike that would impact hundreds of stores by christmas eve. workers are accusing starbucks of stalling union contract negotiations and failing to produce better wage gains. the two sides have been

bargaining a new national contract since april. meanwhile, more labor issues, amazon workers at seven different delivery hubs across four states also went on strike yesterday. this, after the teamsters union claimed the company ignored a sunday deadline for contract negotiations. it's not known how many are on strike or how long it will last. the union is pushing for higher wages, better benefits and safer work conditions. representatives from amazon say the strikes are not expected to impact holiday shipments, but i'm sure there's some nervous last-minute shoppers. that strike, of course, comes just a day after amazon founder jeff bezos reportedly are dinner with president-elect donald trump and elon musk, who else, at mar-a-lago. according to reporting in "the new york times," musk was not initially invited to the meal, but joined it after it began on wednesday. during trump's first term in office, he often targeted bezos, calling him out for issues like

how much amazon pays in taxes and news headlines he disagreed with because, of course, bezos also owns the "washington post." the two men's evolving relationship is seen as an example of america's business leaders rushing to trump's side before his administration begins. it's a change that the president-elect has touted multiple times, including on social media, where he recently wrote, everybody wants to be my friend, all caps, three exclamation points. gene, your latest column for the aforementioned "washington post" has this headline, the risks of declaring fealty to donald trump. you write in part this, titans of industry and commerce, beware. when you bend the knee to the mad king, when you shower him with money and bathe him in flattery, he will receive your gifts with apparent gratitude, but he will want more. he will always want more. and, eugene, tell us more about

your piece and, frankly, warning you're trying to issue to the billionaire class who, at the moment, is trying to cozy up to the president-elect. >> they certainly are. who hasn't been to mar-a-lago from the billionaire class at this point? mark zuckerberg was there, sundar pichai from alphabet, google were there and, of course, there was the dinner wednesday night with jeff bezos and elon musk dropping in. some of the titans or the companies are giving million dollar donations to the trump inauguration, and mark zuckerberg's meta is doing that. they don't generally give money to that sort of thing, but they're doing it this time. amazon is giving a million dollars. there are other big donations. i just want the billionaires, if

they want a little advice, is to manage their expectations. because if their idea going in is to open the line of communications with the president-elect and the incoming administration, i get that. if they think that finally they're the ones who are going to talk sense into donald trump and get him on board as some sort of systematic -- what they would see as a systematic reasonable program, then they're going to be disappointed, because, you know, we've seen this movie and we kind of know how it works out. so i don't want them to have illusions about what sort of influence they are ultimately going to have over the

president-elect when he becomes president, or indeed what kinds of policies may be coming down the pike. because as we've seen in the last few days, things can change in an instant. and we know how chaotic and unpredictable the first trump years were, we're going to see that again, and we definitely know that loyalty between trump and anybody else really flows one direction. it flows toward trump. and if you don't believe me on that, just ask mike pence. >> coming up on "morning joe," safe to say that things are getting pretty heated on capitol hill. >> the house -- >> furthermore, mr. speaker -- [ gavel ] >> the house will be in order. the house will be in order. >> that's republican congressman

mark molinaro of new york appearing to break the gavel yesterday while trying to slam the house back under control. we'll bring you the very latest on the looming threat of a government shutdown when "morning joe" comes right back. the virus that causes shingles is sleeping... in 99% of people over 50. it's lying dormant, waiting... and could reactivate. shingles strikes as a painful, blistering rash that can last for weeks. and it could wake at any time. think you're not at risk for shingles? it's time to wake up. because shingles could wake up in you. if you're over 50, talk to your doctor or pharmacist about shingles prevention.

in your latest article, titled "the real reason why americans approve of trump's disastrous transition" you write, in part, this, how can it be, you may be wondering, that 55% of americans tell pollsters they approve of how donald trump is handling the transition? he has nominated, almost but not quite literally across the board unequaled extremists. i don't blame people, you say. i blame the larger culture, which has been almost totally drained of common concern about

our civic health. first and foremost, i blame rupert murdoch, and to a lesser extent, his imitators, whose properties have injected so much poison and so many lies into your discourse since 1977 that common civic agreement about base morality and public life has become impossible. you go on, we had a basic understanding about what kinds of actions did and did not reflect our best values, and this was why richard nixon had to resign in disgrace for committing far fewer ffenses than trump already has. everyone, whatever their politics, agreed that nixon had clearly crossed the line. that impulse is dead in the united states and the right wing media killed it. michael, powerful piece. tell us more about your argument about the right wing media, what it's done, and do you see any way that this civic bond, this civic concern can be repaired? >> i'm not very hopeful about

that, jonathan, unfortunately. you know, john dean famously said a few years ago that if fox news had existed in 1973, '74, richard nixon would have survived watergate. i think that's probably true. today the right wing media extends far beyond fox news. i mentioned murdock, but there's sinclair media and many, many outlets that follow, essentially, the same kind of script. i do think that we have lost those bonds i'm talking about, i think that, you know, in an earlier time, without that media pressure, right wing media pressure, i think republican senators and house members during donald trump's first term would have said this is a bridge too far, he's gone too far, this crosses a line, we can't tolerate this. but those just aren't the rules anymore. with respect to the transition, very quickly, i watched these polls, 55% approve of the

transition, 59% i saw in one poll, although that was a few weeks ago. i don't really think -- i just can't believe that 55% of americans think that robert f. kennedy is the best choice for hhs, i don't think 55% of americans think tulsi gabbard is the best choice for intelligence or pete hegseth is the best choice for the pentagon. what i think is happening is that people are just kind of checked out, they don't know, they're not paying attention, and some portion of the media, the right wing media, is telling them that these are very well qualified people and they should be confirmed. it's a sad situation that we're in, and i don't see an easy way out. coming up, according to our next guest, republicans are partying like it's 1873. how zombie laws from the distant past are making a comeback on capitol hill. we'll explain right ahead here on "morning joe." disrupts my skin, night and day. despite treatment, it's still not under control.

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herbert. a shovel dump pass. inside the 10. touchdown, chargers! >> that's hassan haskins taking a shovel pass from justin herbert 34 yards to the end zone, for the chargers go-ahead score late in the fourth quarter. it was l.a.'s third touchdown in the second half and a comeback from a digit deficit against their rival denver broncos. this included the nfl's first successful fair catch kick in nearly half a century. the chargers took advantage of the seldom-used rule after the brank broncos were called for fair catch interference. that would have been the final play of the second quarter. the rule allows a team that just made the fair catch to try and free kick for three points. the rule states the kick has to be taken from the line of scrimmage, while all defenders might line up at least ten yards away, so you have a clear line

of sight. and with the flag moving the ball to the denver 47 for untimed down, l.a. knocks one through the uprights from 57 yards. chargers rally for a 34-27 win, keeping the broncos from clinching a spot in the postseason, while increasing their own chances at a playoff berth. l.a. can secure its second trip to the playoffs in three seasons if both the colts and dolphins lose. the fair catch kick truly bizarre. we have someone who specializes in bizarre sports moments, on meadowlark media. pablo, i've followed the nfl my whole life and i know you have, too. i didn't know that rule existed, and yet it gave the chargers three points and a key win. >> definitely. i was familiar with this. >> no, you weren't. >> absolutely. i study the parliamentary rules of nfl special teams studiously.

the nfl is part, you know, a violent expect spectacle, it's coliseum and also tax law sometimes. you realize, wait a minute, this is a thing that we have not seen happen at this distance, a successful free kick, since the green bay packers rej legend. i didn't know you could do this. it's crucial, it's ridiculous. apparently both coaches claimed after the game, of course, they practice this, which is psychosis or reality. >> the only person on the planet who knew about this rule was clearly bill belichick. unc will specialize in this play next year. i will say, this was an eyebrow raising headline, this play. another one in the nfl came hours earlier when we learned that the new york jets apparently make personnel decisions based on players' ratings in the video game madden. >> yes, the new york jets, much

like our congress, you could argue, apparently run by teenagers. woody johnson is the owner of the jets, you may recall him as also president trump's ambassador to the uk. he goes away for a while, he has some young boys, he comes back from that appointment, and those boys are teenagers. >> one of them named -- >> brick, which is just a thing you do now. you call our teenage son brick and allow him to basically take over the postgame huddle. i'm not the guy who comes on the show and praises aaron rodgers very often, but there's a story in this piece, it is the postgame huddle and aaron rodgers is about to give the game ball to a player that is heralded and deserves it and here comes brick with a toast and gives wilson the ball, leaving everybody mystified, on top of allegedly recommending that they not sign jerry jeudy because the rating was not high

enough. >> this is why the new york jets continue to disappoint. >> it's so good, and by that i mean they're so bad. >> i'm going to stay with it's so good. let's turn from the pros to the college game. the 12-team college football playoff kicks off tonight in south bend with number ten indiana visiting notre dame. the winner advances to the quarterfinals against second-seeded georgia in the sugar bowl on new year's day. but the bulldogs are reportedly preparing to play without starting quarterback, carson beck. beck, who had been considered a potential first round pick in next year's nfl draft, has not practiced since he was hurt in georgia's win over texas earlier this month. espn is reporting the quarterback is exploring surgery options to repair an injury to the elbow on his throwing arm. that's a blow to potentially one of the favorites. first time expanded 12 teams. i see you brought with you your

bracket. >> steve kornacki, it's just really messy. i've been crossing out names, updating it based on injuries and all of that, john. georgia, can we just start there? because i am picking them, just a spoiler alert, and the reason i'm doing that is because, as much as carson beck is the guy who is the incumbent, gunner stockton, who is also great, gunner stockton is arguably better. he's the younger guy, a dual-threat guy. carson beck a conventional passer. stockton helped them beat texas and got brutally concussed because football is the coliseum of modern day. but that guy, i believe he's got enough to pilot a team that is the most feared team in the sec, which means i'm old enough to remember that used to mean when you won the national title. >> eugene robinson, i know

you'll be watching the college football playoffs and i know you won't be picking ohio state. but otherwise, who do you got? >> well, you know, georgia, i like georgia, too. i like that kid gunner stockton. i am not -- i don't have a bracket filled out, and i doubt that i'm going to because it's, frankly, too complicated, i can't keep which bowl is what and what is a quarterfinal or a round of eight now or whatever, and, also, michigan is not in it. so why am i going to invest that much time? coming up, a federal judge changes his mind and an ex convict walks free after decades in prison. it's an incredible story of crime, punishment and second chances, and we'll talk to both of those men when "morning joe" comes right back. with my kids.

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here's how we got here. speaker mike johnson had painstakingly negotiated a kromize with the democrats to fund the government through march. then that was up-ended at the last minute by elon musk who tweeted at 4:15 a.m. yesterday, this bill should not pass. [ laughter ] i mean, if you think about it,

it makes sense that musk would kill this at the last minute because he's an expert at blowing things up on the launchpad. [ laughter ] plus -- plus, and i'm sure the founders are spinning in their graves with joy at the way all of this is playing out. after all, the constitution does start with "we the people do whatever rich boy tells us. rich boy makes the big square truck car. lol." [ applause ] and we obey. we the people obey. rich boy. trump didn't weigh in for a few hours, but when he did it was just to echo what musk had already said which is why now some folks are calling elon musk president. ooh. well, if he's going to be the guy running everything, i'm going to have to work on my elon musk impression. here it goes. ♪♪ [ laughter ] >> okay? >> not bad. not bad. >> we also know how much donald trump enjoys sharing the spotlight.

welcome to the fourth hour now of "morning joe." it's 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. here in the east. i'm jonathan lemire. thank you for being with us. and joining us we have president of the national action network and host of msnbc's "politics nation," the reverend al sharpton. correspondent at "vanity fair" and host of "fast politics," podcast, and national reporter for "the new york times," jeremy peters. we have a lot of fast developing news this hour. let's get to it. house speaker mike johnson is saying he has a plan to fund the government after the republican bill imploded on the floor of the lower chamber yesterday. let's take a listen to what the speaker said moments ago. >> is there going to be a different bill on the floor today? >> a vote today? >> we're expecting votes this morning. stay tuned. we've got a plan. >> you reached a new agreement? >> we'll see.

>> we'll see. when asked if they have a deal. those comments come with about 15 hours left on the clock for congress to pass a government funding package and avert that shutdown. president-elect donald trump after helping kill the original bipartisan funding package is saying that if a shutdown is going to happen to let it be begin -- let it begin under president biden's watch and not his own. let's bring in congressional reporter for "the hill" michael schnell and co-founder of punchbowl news jake sherman. jake, you heard from republican congresswoman paluna of florida. we still have jake? we lost jake for a minute. let's go to michael first. a lot of commotion there in the rotunda. michael, just get us up to speed. we heard from the speaker a moment ago, a few minutes ago saying he's got a plan, but acknowledged he doesn't know if he has the votes yet for a deal.

give us the latest you've heard, are we going to see some votes? what's the mood on the hill? >> yeah, hey, good morning. the expectation as speaker mike johnson said on his way into the capitol this morning is that the house is going to vote this morning, and that he has a plan. beyond that, we do not have many details. the speaker right there not divulging any particulars about what his new proposal is. he does have a few options at i had disposal. he could put the proposal that failed yesterday back on the floor, or something that's developing and something that folks are expecting could potentially happen today is a short-term continuing resolution to kick the deadline about two or three weeks, that would land in january. that would allow lawmakers to regroup, find a new proposal, a longer term proposal, but allow folks to head home for the holidays. senator mullen, a close ally of speaker johnson and president-elect donald trump, was on cnbc this morning after speaker johnson announced he had a plan and said that one of the options, one of the only options

on the table is this short-term cr to kick the deadline into january. again, this is a very fluid situation. it's all a lot of moving parts. we are expecting the house to vote this morning on some piece of legislation. >> all right. jake sherman, we've got you back. give us the latest you're hearing from -- republican congresswoman you just spoke to and your assessment of the state of play. are we going to get a deal tonight to keep the government open? >> reporter: you better hope so if you're a republican, jonathan, because this is quite the inauspicious way for donald trump to start his presidency. he has inserted this debt limit into the negotiation at the 11.5th hour, driving up the price. what he's done here is he's made it harder to raise the debt ceiling because you need democratic votes, and democrats know that they can -- they could demand whatever they want from republicans at the end of the day if that's -- if trump sticks with that demand. he's driven the price up significantly.

now anna paulina luna in with the leadership said they'll try the same thing they tried yesterday, a bill that 38 republicans voted against. i don't know how they're going to do that. i'll be honest with you, i've been doing this a long time, i'm not quite sure i've ever seen a mess like this before. the speaker is now -- has cycled through two proposals this week. one, the first proposal, which was destined to fail, never made it to the floor. the second proposal trump backed unofficially whipped it and just -- it failed miserably, showing the limits of trump's power on capitol hill. the answer i think -- i think it is -- that's right. it is a clean cr most likely. and -- i don't know when they'll get there. i don't know if johnson has some magic. it sure as heck doesn't seem like he has some magic, jonathan. and i don't know that he could turn 38 votes on the house floor in the course of 12 or so hours. >> i'll underscore what you said. you've been doing this a long

time. you've never seen a mess like this. let's go further here about two things you touched upon. one would be the limits of donald trump's power over the hill despite him claiming this massive mandate as he comes to office. and secondly, what do you think the chances are that speaker johnson is going to get this done and keep his job? >> the second answer i don't know if johnson's going to be able to keep his job. the speaker's race is in like two weeks. i know it seems like a long time because we have the christmas holiday, we have the break, new year's, all that stuff. i don't know. there are -- listen, if all the people who are telling us publicly and privately are going to vote against johnson, if they do vote against johnson, he can't make it. now he could turn the tide. i never underestimate anybody. he could turn the tide. he could -- i don't know what he'll give away. but if those people vote no against johnson, then johnson's done. that's number two i guess. number one, trump's power on the hill -- listen, it -- he does have some mandate. he has the house and the senate.

this baghdad deal for any president -- a big deal for any president. when you're asking a party to raise the debt limit the day before, two days before a shutdown, it's not going to be successful. the guy can't defy gravity in this way. although, you know, he just can't. it's not realistic. so this, we should put in the broader framework of tax reform, energy, border. it's not going to be as easy as donald trump thinks, and everybody needs to get comfortable with that. again, not a criticism of donald trump. but when you have hundreds of members of congress who have their own political incentive, it becomes more difficult. >> so michael, let's talk about the democrats' role. we heard from hakeem jeffries making it clear he wasn't just -- i believe the quote was he was a "hell no," it was reported. he seems to not be inclined to have the democrats lend a hand. they didn't yesterday. is there any sense they would today? what would they need to get in order to help out, or are they

content to let the republicans own this? >> i think the first question, jonathan, is is there anything on the table that they would take, that they would see in the possibility of a potential trade to support another piece of legislation. i mean, a, it would have to be a very narrowly tailored bill, and some of them are demanding disaster aid. that would have to be another conversation. assistance for farmers is another topic that a lot of folks are demanding. but this is a big moment for hakeem jeffries. the democratic house leader. he has said that the four corners in congress negotiated that spending deal that was rolled out earlier this week. that was the deal. they are now accusing republicans on reneging on that negotiation. and so democrats are not really apt to now change the plan and go support something else because of the whims of donald trump and elon musk. so the way that democrats have handled everything with this spending battle and all very tenuous battles in the past is they have spoken about the issue at hand as a caucus and then

decided what to do going forward. really staying largely united. i think the big question is is, a, what does johnson do now if he moves forward with that short-term continuing resolution. what exactly does that look like, what is in there? and then democrats will evaluate. but i mean, democrats right now so far have been saying they had a deal, and johnson reneged on it, and that's been their stance. >> congressional reporter for "the hill" and co-founder of "punchbowl news." we know you have to get back to work. good luck. we appreciate it. thanks to you both. jeremy peters, you covered the conservative movement for a long time. republicans and the maga world, trump wins the white house, they have both houses of congress with narrow margins, but have them all the same. yet here we are before trump takes office, the infighting resumes, the sort of gop civil war erupts yet again. it's a mess. >> yeah. here we are again, jonathan. i mean -- and not only here we

are again, but here we are at a place where we've been in the very recent future that is -- is really kind of unprecedented in modern -- the history of modern american government. government shutdowns used to be incredibly rare. when i covered the 2013 government shutdown, that was the first one in almost 30 years. now we've had -- this will be the third i believe in the last five years. and it just -- they've all been because of one thing -- republicans cannot get the right -- the number of votes that they need to pass a bill. and this -- the republican civil war that has been going on since the tea party took over basically the -- the grassroots of the party in 2010, it has eaten its -- how many speakers, boehner, paul ryan, mccarthy, and now it looks like speaker johnson, his neck is on the line here. i don't see -- if you're looking for a preview, like a dress

rehearsal of what the next four years under donald trump could be like, this is it. >> yeah. it is. you're so right about the -- the constant infighting and when republicans have control of the house of representatives they can't seemingly just govern. they're getting pressure from the outside. a new piece on that, the headline, "beginning of the end: elon musk overreaches in his relationship with donald trump." it's by samuel clench, a columnist fornews.com.au which is australia's largest news site, and we should note owned by rupert murdoch. he writes in part, "an unelected billionaire from south africa who has never held public office and is is in fact ineligible to be the american president appears to have seized effective control of the u.s. government. mr. trump famously has a low tolerance for being upstaged or for being seen as the junior partner in any relationship.

mr. musk has seemingly decided to test that tolerance. this is a person who seems to care more about adulation from the sewers of the internet than how his actions affect people in their real lives. he's a guy who ignores information from official sources but believes whatever patently ical crap rage baiters and engagement farmers. he is the guy dictating government policy and dictating to congress and overriding the person he spent more than than $200 million to get elected as president. the situation is not sustainable. the political right loves to rant about unelected bureaucrats. the so-called deep state making policy. well, here we are, we have an unelected billionaire with a long list of vested interests haranguing congress into following his whims and impulses. molly, that's well said. >> yeah. >> and really does crystallize this unprecedented situation.

elon musk was not elected. he was not voted into any office. even the post which trump wants him to fill is not even a government post. it's an outside advisory board some sort. yet right now in the words of so many democrats the last couple of days, he's acting like co-president. >> add to it that this is a person who got very, very rich are government subsidies, right? on electric cars, that got money from climate initiatives. so the irony here is pretty rich. he was a mega republican donor, but he has injected himself into politics. remember, he really is new at this. he's also trying to get involved in other elections around the world. so last night he was tweeting about the german elections. he has a lot -- he's in the middle of the night tweeting. he's almost donald trump's trump. >> yeah. in the uk elections -- >> you know what -- two points i think that really are disturbing. one, you have what has been said, unelected, unaccountable

guy that has this kind of influence. and if you could just think on the other side, they say some of the rich liberals or soros or something. imagine if soros was hanging around obama -- we are normalizing something that is outrageous at best. and the second part that is so interesting to me is that he doesn't even have enough respect for trump to act like he's not the puppetmaster. he's tweeting out this bill will not pass. at least go and say i disagree with the bill, mr. president. you put it out there. he wants people to know i'm calling the shots. he has no respect for donald trump. so the reason i agree with the columnist is that at some point not only does trump want to seize the spotlight alone, trump's going to say wait a

minute, you've got to not preempt the meet. i'm in charge here. because he is the one, not those on the left, not those in media, he's the one that's making trump look like the junior partner of a co-presidency. >> we know who's not going to like that. >> and add to this that the -- mike johnson is only going to have a smaller majority in the house in the next congress. he has never -- he has not passed laws without democratic votes. so how he's going to get these 38 republicans, a lot of whom never support crs, to support this is a mystery. >> there's only one vote difference now. he'll probably need democratic votes if he can get them to become speaker. so you've got the last two speakers that i'm the speaker but the democrats had to turn on the microphone. you weren't speaking to nobody. >> yeah. exactly. i mean, this has happened time and time again where republicans go back to the -- a bill or a proposal to elect a speaker falls apart. they go back to the drawing

board. it just blows up again. i mean, we could be doing this for quite a long time if past is -- >> the margin is one vote until the elections in florida is able to replace two members there. let's bring in our next guest who is one of several democrats who is indeed laying the blame on elon musk for the chaos on capitol hill surrounding this government funding bill. congressman gerry connolly of virginia. earlier this week the congressman was elected to be the top democrat on the house oversight committee. congratulations, congressman, on that. we'll get to that moment. first let gets your read of the situation. we are coming up on about now under 15 hours until the deadline for the government to shut down. what's the latest you're hearing about whether the lights will stay on, and talk to us about the role elon musk is playing. >> well, we don't really have a plan. the speaker loves to say we're working on a plan. i guess this is his third plan. the other two didn't go so well.

the fractures on the republican side create an unstable majority. and the democrats are in cohesion. we're unified. we want to see the deal that we negotiated and that was handshaken to agree to, we want to see that passed. so they've got a tough job trying to get democrats to vote for this. i think, frankly, a huge difficulty in getting those 38 republicans to stand down and change their minds. given the rhetoric on the floor last night about that bad plan, i think that's going to be very difficult to do. with respect to elon musk, this is unprecedented. it's dangerous. he is riddled with conflicts of interest. he's kind of the original american oligarch, a big world, but it means a rich guy who's unaccountable who was elected to nothing, who is basically sort of, you know -- overshadowing the actual president-elect of the united states, donald trump. i think that's a really

troubling development for everybody. it's not funny. it's actually quite serious. >> yeah, and congressman, let's talk about the serious real world implications if there is a shutdown. you know, the employees not getting paychecks and the like. just before the holidays. >> yeah. merry christmas from a republican majority congress and the president-elect. you got to remember, we actually have republicans calling for a shutdown. no democrat wants a shutdown. but we have republicans on public record saying, no, let's have at it. and there are people in the trump orbit who are also basically saying let's do it now. even trump said let's do it on biden's watch, not my watch. it's still a trump shutdown any way you look at it. he's got history. he had the longest shutdown in american history, 35 days. it didn't work out well. >> so congressman, as mentioned you've been the ranking member of the oversight committee. besting congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez in doing so. what is your -- two-part

question. what are your hopes for the post? but secondly, what do you say to democrats, progressives, who had -- hoping for this moment after november's electoral defeat to change, to sort of a generational change in the party? >> well, i think i do represent change. i've never had a shot at this. i've got a 16-year record of progressive voting and progressive actions. so i'm not somehow outside that camp. i do think some of the media attention on macron -- on chronological age is mindless. it's what you propose to do, what your capability is. i think the caucus recognized that. and also recognizing a rising talent in aoc that we want to certainly help and encourage. but meanwhile, there's somebody quite capable who's got demonstrable ability to do the job. as john laurence said, you know, you want to put your best general on the battlefield. i think my colleagues felt that

i've not only earned it, but i demonstrated i am that general. i'm proud to be it. >> democrat congressman gerry connolly of virginia, thank you. good luck today. could be a long day for you. >> thank you. >> jerry peters, let's get you in on this, this idea of democrats sort of caught in the middle. whether it is trying to shift generationally in the new congress. but also this idea of what -- how big -- how a lesson they should be learning from their defeat. there's been a divide among those who feel like this was a wipeout and the democrats need to start over and really rebuild the party. others say it's a point or two, it's close, let's not overreact. >> it was really close in the sense that this is an incredibly polarized and divided country. but 1.5 points in a country that closely divided is a wipeout. when adjusted for polarization, 1.5 points i would say is probably about ten points.

i mean, and you've -- you look at what happened, the democrats, harris lost all of the swing states. so this is not just a few bad breaks on their part. one of the things that i -- you know, in my interviews and conversations with top democrats in the last i would say week or two that has been most distressing is this tendency to whitewash the defeat. oh, it wasn't really that bad. look at what we did in the state legislatures. you know, she came in very late into the process. you know, if -- if, if, but, but. so that isn't exactly the type of message that democrats need to be sending to their voters if they want to win. that message basically -- and part of the problem here is it's predicated on denial of reality. and democrats in the conversations i've been having with people seem to be

forgetting that voters have eyes and ears. they can see that biden was not the man he was four years ago, they can see that the border was a mess. they can see that inflation was not just a niche academic concern. yet the message from this white house and this president was basically all three of those things, it's fine. there's new reporting in the "wall street journal" today just about how diminished biden was very early on in the first days of his presidency that is -- that's already raising questions about whether or not there's going to be an investigation perhaps by republicans in congress or elsewhere about what people knew, when they knew it with regard to the president's mental faculties. so the answer for democrats is -- as far as my reporting shows me isn't to say, you know, nothing to see here, folks. it's to be very honest with what they were not being straightforward with voters

about. and that is that they didn't know how to talk to voters about the issues they cared about. donald trump got elected for three reasons. take care of the economy and inflation, stop this -- what was seen as overreach and excess by the progressive left, and to clean up the border. democrats had no way to talk to voters on any of those issues. >> and i think i would add to it is that a lot of those that were planning and executing the strategy of the democrats, the k street consultants who were placing ads and making a percentage rather than really exercising the base. because if you look at where harris lost even in the battleground states, if there had been more turnout from the base in pennsylvania or wisconsin, she would have won those states. they didn't go in after the base, even the nonpartisan turnout efforts, until it was very late. and what trump does wisely that they do not do, he energizes his

base. they use their base -- used their base like we take you for granted, and that's why you did not get the vote you should have gotten. she was a perfect candidate, but i think the people, the advisers were telling her play it up here where they were making money off of it while -- and i'm being very open about it -- while she was not being well served because her base would have come out. but you can't answer the doorbell if nobody's ringing it. >> so if the base is the play and you want to energize them, why would you not elevate the woman who has millions and millions and millions of followers who is one of the best communicators in the party, as opposed to someone who is -- whose turn was first? there's so much politeness in the democratic party. and i think it really is to their detriment. >> your point about aoc there defeating -- defeated by

congressman connolly. jeremy, thank you for joining us. we appreciate that. coming up next, we'll get wall street's reaction to the looming government shutdown and billionaire elon musk's role in it. plus, donald trump's latest tariff threat. an overnight missive that the european union must buy u.s. oil and gas or else. we will have details when "morning snow joe" comes back. o. despite treatment, it's still not under control. but now, i have rinvoq. rinvoq is a once-daily pill... that reduces the itch... and helps clear the rash of eczema— ...fast. some taking rinvoq felt significant itch relief as early as 2 days. and some achieved dramatic skin clearance... as early as 2 weeks. many saw clear or almost-clear skin. rinvoq can lower ability to fight infections.

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well, guys, i'm so excited, there's less than one week until christmas. [ cheers ] we're now at the point where ambulances pull over to let amazon vans pass by. yeah, it's almost christmas, but i'm a little worried santa might be going through a midlife crisis. check out what he replaced his sleigh with. it's just sad. little sad. i don't know. i'm kidding.

santa will have his sleigh, and this year it will be guided through the sky by rudolph and eight tiny rain drones. >> just five more shopping days left. amazon workers, though, at seven different delivery hubs across four states, well, they may have complicated your plans by going on strike yesterday. the teamsters union claimed the company ignored a sunday deadline for contract negotiations. nbc news has the latest. >> reporter: from new york and georgia to california and illinois, the teamsters union says delivery drivers for amazon and workers at some facilities have walked off the job, demanding better pay and working conditions. >> we want to make sure that every customer gets their packages, but we also need what we deserve. >> reporter: teamsters union leaders say amazon missed a december 15th deadline to negotiate a first labor contract with their employees who want sick leave, more paid time off, and wages that are comparable with fedex and u.p.s. >> the customers see the amount

of work we do, whether rain, sleet, snow. we're constantly out here. >> reporter: amazon says these workers are not their employees, and that they're only seeing protests, not strikes, at a handful of its facilities. amazon says only around 1% of its work force are union members, and that some of the people demonstrating outside their facilities actually work for third-party contractors. >> we have hundreds of facilities across the country. and we're seeing some protests at a variety of facilities. again, very few amazon employees or drivers who drive on behalf of our company are involved in those protests. >> reporter: amazon says this work action will have minimal impact on its operations. shipping experts agree that it won't significantly delay deliveries, but there may be some holdups. >> if you're going to get it in one or two days, it may end up taking two or three. >> reporter: and with christmas just five days away, the union is aware this season is key, and

so is the group represent something starbucks workers. starbucks workers united overnight announced, quote, five days of escalating strikes during the christmas rush. the union says walkouts will begin in los angeles, seattle, and chicago and spread to other areas. protesting starbucks' wages and other labor disputes. while starbucks says the union ended bargaining prematurely and that the company offers, quote, competitive average pay and best-in-class benefiadding "we need the union to return to the table." >> let's bring in the co-anchor of cnbc's "squawk box" and "new york times" columnist, andrew ross sorkin. good to see you. we've spent most of the morning talking about the looming government shutdown. so why don't you give a quick take on how wall street is looking at that. then talk to us more about the overnight, out-of-nowhere tariff threat from donald trump issued not to mexico, not to canada, not to china, but rather the eu.

>> well, i think just to answer your first question on the sort of wall street reaction to a possible shutdown, the truth is right this moment i don't think there is a genuine concern. the markets have been concerned all week about the federal reserve and things. i think there's a sense that we've seen this movie before, though i think this movie may be different given the other new actors in this which is elon musk and vivek ramaswamy and so many others. but because historically we get to the 11th hour and then there's a deal, maybe we get one today, we'll see, and even if we don't, there's a view that whether we go a week or two and folks are either furloughed or not paid that they'll ultimately get paid. obviously for those folks who are doing work for us, and i say work for us, on behalf of taxpayers, we're -- who still need to pay rent and buy gifts for families, i think it is a genuine hardship. interestingly one of the things that elon musk said several months ago during the election itself was that if trump's

policies were put in place, there would be what he called, quote, temporary hardship. this may be an early example of that. now on to the question about the eu tariffs. it's an interesting thing to see the president-elect out there basically pushing the eu already on these tariffs. i think that actually does have some people concerned both in the u.s. and, of course, in europe. and whether we get a at this time- time- time--- a tit-for-tat situation it could be harder to export to europe. that is probably something that has people more on edge this morning than this shutdown, if you can imagine that. >> all right. we'll be watching that. thank you. have a good weekend. let's talk about the latest piece for "vanity fair." the headline, "gop digs up zombie laws." explain, if you will, how you

see republicans are looking to antiquated laws, some from more than a century ago, in order to advance their very modern agenda. >> yeah. this is super interesting. so if you think about project 2025, it was sort of set up by the heritage foundation. a lot of people who had worked in trump 1.0. and their theory was that trump 1.0 was a failure in some ways. though did do a lot of trump-y things for the judiciary, it wasn't able to accomplish a lot of things he wanted to. so they sort of went back and found laws that were still on the books, and they were -- you know, very creative. and then you saw members of the supreme court sort of introducing them. so during the oral arguments for myth -- mifepristone we heard them talking about -- they didn't say the comstock act which hasn't been in play in decades. they talked about it by the number. because it was such a sort of

big deal to sort of reintroduce it to the zeitgeist. there are a couple of laws like that. >> wouldn't you also say that they are trying to say to the public that let's go back to the pre-1960s, pre-1950s, the "leave it to beaver," "aunt bea" kind of world? because when you see the hlavac cultural diversity that is being proposed with the cabinet, you don't even see a tim scott or ron donalds even talked about. these were his surrogates. they're not even talking about that. and yet you see somebody considered like hegseth. if anybody was an example of affirmative action, it was him. because the only reason he's there is because of fox news and extenuating circumstances. so wouldn't you say there's also the cultural shift, molly, as well as going back to get laws of yesteryear, they're trying to bring back the culture and the

social setting of yesteryear. >> yeah. so comstock is a victorian-era law that targets obscenity. so think about this -- from the 1800s, it was a law that targeted the mail. it said you cannot mail things that might sort of -- the idea here is that the dangerous things, dangerous ideas, dangerous implements, there were some medical textbooks that could not be mailed because of this law. so you sort of think about culturally we're not even talking about the '60s, we're talking about the 1860s. then you have another law, alien enemies act, which is the law which would be -- again, these are like -- these frameworks are pretty mushy. you really have to have the judiciary on board to want to enact these because they haven't been enacted in such a long time. and alien enemies is the idea that there are people who are connected to a country we're at war with, and you can enternthem. it's -- internthem. it's been used during world war

ii, one of the darkest moments in american history, which people who were japanese were interned for being japanese. >> yeah. an important story. you can read it on "vanity fair's" website now. next up we'll bring you some of the other stories making headlines this morning including the massive amount of money that americans spend on unwanted holiday gifts. we hope you don't get those. ose. bent finger appointment in 30 minutes. you got this. one — remember, i don't want surgery for my dupuytren's contracture. two — i don't want to wait for my contracture to get worse. three — i want a treatment with minimal downtime. four — i want a nonsurgical treatment. and five... and if nonsurgical treatment isn't offered?

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welcome back. in other headlines, the biden administration is canceling federal student loan debt for another 55,000 americans. this round of relief focuses on nurses, teachers, service members, and members of law enforcement who have worked for

more than ten years in government or in nonprofit jobs. it's expected to be the final round of the student loan forgiveness program before the end of president biden's term. the president had promised sweeping debt cancelations, but his administration has been blocked repeatedly by the supreme court and lawsuits brought by republican-led states. so time now for a look at some other stories making headlines. a new online charter school in arizona will use a.i. to teach students instead of teachers. oh, boy. the unbound academy received approval from the state board for charter schools to open a school serving grades four to eight. students will receive two hours of daily instruction all from a.i. via personalized learning programs. according to the school's application, this plan will allow students to fill the rest of their days with life-skill workshops. unbound already operates a similar school in texas, and

it's currently applying to operate in arkansas and utah. "the boston globe" ms. a front page feature on a lawsuit by cvs employees who claim staffing shortages have created dangerous working conditions. the lawsuit unsealed wednesday reveals that employees of the drug store chain have filed hundreds of complaints about low staffing levels they say strip workers of basic human rights. not just going to the bathroom. and can jeopardize patient safety. a cvs spokesperson told the "globe" that the company is committed to providing consistent, safe, high-quality health care and would vigorously contest the lawsuit. and americans are expected to spend over $10 billion on unwanted gifts this holiday season. according to a new forecast, 53% of adults will be disappointed by at least one present they this year. the average -- they receive this year. the average cost, $27 each.

one -- $72 each. one silver lining, four in ten americans will re-gift those unwanted presents. that's the spirit of the season. and one way to afford all those gifts -- win the lottery. the mega millions jackpot has grown to $825 million ahead this evening's drawing. the seventh largest in history. there are two payout options, a 30-year annuity that pays the full jackpot amount or a onetime cash lump sum worth about, oh, $382 million. the jackpot has been building since it was last won back in september for only the third time this year. your odd of winning, not great. approximately one in 302 million. rev, you going to buy a ticket or two? >> i don't fwam -- mble, but i support those who do. if they win they can help feed the hungry on christmas day.

>> an unwanted gift, molly, would not be a lottery ticket purchased in your name. >> i will happily buy you a lottery ticket, rev. and then you will not have gambled. i will have gambled. >> we've just made plans for after the show. next up here, the first step dac signed in 2018 gives judges the opportunity to revisit previous sentences and then reduce them. but how does a judge decide who qualifies? we'll talk about that with one former convict and the federal judge who gave him a second chance. both join us next on "morning joe." rng in joe.

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he was convicted of robbery charges. thanks to the 2018 first step act, block was able to amend the sentence leasing him from prison after 27 years. and judge block and walter johnson join us now. judge block is also the author of the new book with the title "a second chance: a federal judge decides who deserves it." thanks for being here. judge, we'll start with you. talk to us a little about that process, that sort of -- the soul searching that you did and the conclusions you reached that some of these sentences may have been too harsh. >> the act from 2018 changed the sentencing landscape in the united states of america for federal court judges. in that statute which was a bipartisan statute endorsed by everybody and to its credit signed off by president trump, it gave judges like myself the responsibility to reconsider previously imposed sentences,

and if warranted, to reduce the sentences and even in the case of walter johnson to let him out of jail. i sentenced him to five lifetime terms of imprisonment. he was supposed to die in jail 28 years ago because the changes in the law, because of his rehabilitation, because of the powers that district court judges now have i was able to free him. >> let me ask you this, judge, and walter. one of the things i found -- i was a critic of mayor ed koch, but we formed a second chance program with professor charles ogle tree. and i do give credit to president trump for signing the act. one of the things i think people don't realize is that many people grew up like i did where it was correction facilities, not just detention centers. and you throw away people's lives by giving them this whole extreme sentence where we should be trying to redeem people that

are redeemable. talk about that. >> i think that's actually correct. we have 4% of the world's population, we have 22% of its prisoners. and that was the motivation behind congress' bipartisan effort to deal with mass incarceration. we are sentencing people to these indeterminate long terms of imprison. . things change over the years, and they're entitled to have a second chance when and if that happens. this legislation is important, reverend sharpton, and it has to be enacted by new york state, as well. only the federal government does this. new york state has a proposed statute called the second look act. they ought to enact it so people who were in jail inappropriately and then promptly in new york state have a second chance also. >> walter, tell us about you and your second chance and why it is so needed to have the opportunity for many others to have a second chance at life. >> the reason why it's so needed is because like many guys like myself, we made a lot of

mistakes in our pasts. and many times it's because of communities we may come from or our concept on life. but as we get older and recognize our wrongs, we start to better ourselves. and as we begin to better ourselves and change it's only right that you recognize the fact that we are working on ourselves, and we are trying to become better human beings. and that we're no longer a threat to society or a threat that we once were. >> judge frederick -- judge block, sorry, do you have a sense of what is holding this legislation from being passed? what's holding it back? >> my guess is it's a political dynamic. i think that the leadership is concerned about being criticized that they're soft on crime, there's a lot of sensitivity in new york state with the bail reform situation we have. and they're gun shy.

they ought not to be. it's the right thing to do, and they have to really belly up to the bar. i hope this legislative session will do that. >> tell us how you feel about your second chance and what you're doing with it. >> i feel great about the second chance. i'm ecstatic. i'm -- now that i'm home i get the opportunity to speak to the youth. i speak to other guys that i know who have made mistakes. i have a wife who speaks to the girls. i now -- we've developed a nonprofit organization, champions for change. and we just want people to know that if you're a human being, you can change. you can better yourself. you know, i want guys and girls who have made mistakes to understand the fact that they are not the mistakes that they've made. and all they have to do is participate in the process of

life to become better individuals. and it all comes from choices. you know, you choose better people, you choose better places, you choose better things. and before you know it, your life will become better. and that's what's happening to me. >> that's such an important message. we'll close the conversation with just exactly that. the new book, "a second chance: a federal judge decides who deserves it," is on sale now. author and judge block and motivational speaker "king tut" johnson. we thank you so much. johnson. we thank you so much coughed, l. i couldn't even enjoy playing with my kids. i leaked too. i just assumed it was normal. then we learned about bulkamid. an fda approved non-drug solution for our condition. it really works, and it lasts for years. it's been the best thing we've done for our families. call 800-983-0000 to arrange an appointment with an expert physician to determine if bulkamid is right for you.

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tell your doctor if you've had these events, infection, hep b or c, smoked, are pregnant or planning. don't take if allergic or have an infection. ♪♪ disrupt the itch & rash of eczema. talk to your dermatologist about rinvoq. learn how abbvie can help you save. talkjon hamm: in thisogist family, we choose to be here for each other. because here at st. jude, we believe there are families you are born into and families you choose. this holiday season, join our st. jude family. we need you. donate now.

rev, the revvie awards are at sunday at 5:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. what should we expect? >> we get dressed up and put on

tuxedos and after this election and what's with the cabinet, it's an exciting show. we have our regular show live saturday, but sunday 5:00 p.m. jonathan lemire in a tuxedo. we'll give out the awards of the year. >> it's a fun hour. that does it for us this morning. thank you for watching today and all week long. ana cabrera picks up the coverage right now. breaking news on capitol hill with just hours to avert a government shutdown. the house speaker promising votes this morning, insisting he has a plan. with the rebellion in his own ranks and democrats not on board, is a shut down more likely than not? plus, how donald trump and elon musk handed congress a nightmare before christmas.