your job and your service to the country. he clearly didn't. this is a person who felt his life purpose was to help other people, other americans, the less privileged, also the entire world and spent decades devoted to that in a way that is frankly inspiring. a lot of people probably wouldn't have the energy or the interest at some point in doing that much good for others, and the fact that he did tell you that it was core to who he was and his view of the world. whatever his politics are aside, everybody should be able to be inspired by somebody who lived their life with that much purpose. >> president carter's life and legacy definitely encourages me to do a little bit more. brendan buck, always lived thei purpose. >> president carter's life and legacy definitely encourages me to do a little bit more. brendan buck, good to see you. thank you for getting up way too early. and thank you for getting up way too early with us on this monday morning. "morning joe" starts right now.

we know the strength of america. we are strong. we can regain our unity. we can regain our confidence. we're the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. >> former president jimmy carter has passed away at the age of 100. this morning, we are remembering his lasting impact, both in and out of office. good morning and welcome to "morning joe," it is monday, december 30th. i'm jonathan lemire. joe and mika have the morning off. thank you so much for joining us. and joining us for this conversation, we have the co-host of "the weekend" on msnbc, symone sanders townsend, president emeritus on the council of foreign relations,

richard haass. and author, columnist and political analyst, jonathan alter. he wrote the acclaimed 2021 biography of president carter titled "his very best." and with us by phone is rogers chair and the american presidency at vanderbilt university, historian, our friend jon meacham. we'll get to all of our wonderful panel in just a moment. we're going to start this morning with reflections on the remarkable life of the 39th president of the united states. mika brzezinski had a front row seat to the carter white house and now brings us a deeper look at the late president's legacy. >> he was the man from plains. >> jimmy carter, georgia, running for president. >> an outsider who rose from the southern soil to the ultimate seat of power. >> i'd like to announce i am a candidate for president. >> america turned to jimmy carter after years of upheaval, a person of integrity to calm a pained nation. born in 1924, his boyhood home

lacked electricity and indoor plumbing. they were peanut farmers. and at an early age, carter declared himself born again. >> i worship jesus christ, who we christians consider to be the prince of peace. >> as world war ii raged in the atlantic and the pacific, he attended the u.s. naval academy, graduating in 1946, just weeks after receiving his commission, he married 18-year-old rosalynn smith, his life-long neighbor. >> i went over next door to look at the little girl who -- the newborn baby on the street. i have known her ever since the first day she was born. >> the carters growing family travelled the country on military assignment and jimmy worked on launching america's first nuclear submarines. when carter's father died in 1953, jimmy left the navy and took over the family farm. >> i'm proud of the heritage that shows concern for the working men and women, for the backbone of our great nation. >> it provided the platform to launch a political career in the

turbulent 1960s, when civil rights and supreme court rulings were changing southern politics. >> i didn't realize at that early age that my friends' mothers and fathers couldn't vote, they couldn't serve on a jury, the schools were inferior. >> carter ran for governor, lost and came back four years later to win in 1970. he became the face of the new south, painted in dixie colors on the cover of "time" magazine. but carter didn't have much time to build a national profile, constricted to just one term. he announced his bid for the white house during his final weeks in office. and carter was so unknown that a television quiz show panel was unable to name him. >> we'll come down here and make a movie, thank you for being here. >> southerners were long written off as presidential contenders, and few thought carter would make it. "the new york times" wrote, as a national political base, the

governorship of georgia has been only slightly more awesome than the governorship of american samoa. >> i'd like to win all the primaries. i can't deny that. >> carter was propelled to the nomination by early wins in iowa, new hampshire and elsewhere, defying expectations as watergate and the vietnam war had shaken americans' confidence in their leaders. he was accessible and candid. sometimes too candid. like when he caused a stir admitting to "playboy" magazine i looked on a lot of women with lust. carter said he regretted the interview. his opponents pounced. >> couldn't understand frankly why he was in "playboy" magazine. >> carter went into the general election with a big lead until october when the race tightened between him and president gerald ford, who had a quarter centuries worth of experience in washington, but on election night, americans turned to the peanut farmer. >> i can tout the greatness of

the american people we can make our government great and a source of pride once again. >> carter walked the mile and a half length of his inaugural parade hand and hand with rosalynn, to display his openness to the american people. the president sought to lead by example throughout his administration, a frugal commander in chief, conserving energy by putting on a sweater. >> the press office was chillier than usual today. he ordered the thermostats in the white house turned down to 65 degrees. >> his focus on foreign policy would define his presidency for better and worse. >> we will not seek to dominate nor dictate to others as we americans have included one chapter in our nation's history and are beginning to work on another. >> my father who had been informally advising him joined his staff as national security adviser. >> he had the good sense of humor, waking you up in the morning fashion. >> president carter was serious

about making a lasting impact on the world, a treaty over the panama canal, an agreement with the soviet union on nuclear arms control. yet his proudest legacy was his most personal, as governor of georgia, carter had traveled to the middle east and athed in the river jordan. he studied the profiles of the leaders of israel and egypt and brought them to camp david for 13 days of tense negotiations. >> begin and sedat were incompatible. they couldn't be in the same room without exploding in anger. i kept them apart. >> in the end, peace accords, uniting bitter enemies. >> the scene in the white house last night was almost unbelievable. begin and sedat in a bear hug will be the first time in history that an arab nation has agreed to a peace treaty with israel. >> foreign policy was the high

point of his presidency, but also the low. islamic fundamentalists took control of iran's government and seized the american embassy, taking over 50 american citizens hostage. a crisis, carter was unable to resolve. >> it was the worst fear of my life. i never went to bed the last three days i was in the white house to get hostages released. >> tensions escalated with the soviet union. >> the cold war was the critical issue. the president was decisive. >> in 1979 when the soviet union went into afghanistan, i warned russia that -- the soviet union then, if they went into a different country, we would respond militarily with all the weapons we had at our disposal. >> it led to a boycott of the olympic games. >> i would not support sending an american team to the olympics. >> ours will not go. >> there were other crises on the home front. in the nationally televised address, carter spoke to what he called a crisis of confidence in america. >> this from a southern governor.

mr. president, you're not leading this nation. you're just managing the government. >> though initially well received, many objected to the tone of what was soon dubbed the malaise speech, challenged from within his own party, carter persevered, but his re-election bid was devastated by ten simple words. >> are you better off than you were four years ago? >> carter left the white house humbled, but not anywhere close to finished with public life. founding the carter center, a concrete building set into a hillside, a sturdy foundation for unprecedented ambition, with an agenda for seeking peace in global hot spots, housing for the homeless with his passion for habitat for humanity and being a voice for the diseased and depressed. >> we treated 36 million people for what the world health organization calls neglected

tropical diseases. and this year we'll go over 70 million people. that's about seven times as many as live in georgia, matter of fact. >> out of office for more than four decades, he defined the modern post presidency. he faced the final challenge of his life with the same abiding faith that propelled him into history. >> good morning, everybody. >> good morning. >> teaching a bible class, a sunday after announcing treatment for brain cancer, and soldiering on with a belief in god and a love for his fellow americans that lifted him up and brought him back. >> no matter where we are in the world, we always look forward to getting back home. >> mika brzezinski there. jonathan alter, you, of course, wrote a biography, a definitive biography of president carter published a few years ago. but this morning, share with us, if you will, a few of your top lines, a few of your biggest thoughts about president carter, someone who so acclaimed in his

post presidency and you argue underrated while in office. >> well, jonathan, president carter led what can only be called an epic american life. he was born as we know 100 years ago, 1924, but it might as well have been the 19th century, even earlier. no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no mechanized farm equipment. so, in some senses he was actually the only person you could think of who effectively lived in three centuries, 19th century, 20th century, of course, when he was involved with all of the great movements of that century, and not to mention being president, and then the 21st, where he's been on the cutting edge and the carter center has been central in the challenges of global health, conflict resolution, democracy promotion, the big

issues of our century. and so i think it is important to look at him beyond this easy short-hand that you see everywhere. mediocre president, great former president. actually, that cliche is only half true. he was an inspirational former president who redefined that role as joe biden said yesterday. but he was a much better president than people recognize. he's not going to go on mount rushmore, but he was in many ways a visionary american president who put a lot of points on the board for the environment, with his domestic legislation and other areas, and internationally even beyond camp david, the panama canal treaties, his human rights policy, normalization of relations with china, even bringing the hostages home

safely, the foreign policy record of jimmy carter is much undervalued and i think there is a long overdue appraisal under way of his presidency. >> so, jon meacham, let's turn to you now. how should we be thinking in your estimation about jimmy carter today, son of the south, a man of devout faith who in his presidency and post presidency triumph and failure so defined by the world stage. >> well, i think -- i agree with my friend jon alter, and the way i think about president carter is he's a complicated man. and driven by, like all people in the public arena, driven by different elements of ambition and service. and when you look at most american presidents, most of our key leaders in the arena, you

have this tension. and what is so fascinating to me about president carter is here he is, an evangelical christian, new testament christian, who had a fascination with reinhold neeber who is the protestant theologian who wrote books, titles like "the tragedy of american history." you have someone who believed in the capacity of human nature to make our lives, the lives of the less fortunate better, stronger, even nobler, but you also have someone who recognized the limitations of human endeavor. and the epigraph of his great campaign book was from neeber and the quotation was, it is the

sad duty of politics to establish justice in a sinful world. it is not exactly a bumper sticker. but there is a great truth to that. and so what i think we are examining, what we're going to experience this week is something that often happens in american life, which is great public commemorations, great public contemplations often tell us as much about ourselves as they do about the person being contemplated and commemorated. and what you're seeing, i think, with the passing of jimmy carter is a sad but illuminating, sad but illuminating instance of someone who while imperfect believed in the centrality of character, the centrality of abiding creed at a moment in

american politics where character is not at the forefront of most voters' minds. >> so, richard haass, with that in mind, let's dive into president carter's foreign policy record. yes, highlighted in many ways by the hostages, highlighted by the camp david accords, but also setting as the backdrop of the cold war. a time so tense where there was a moment when his national security adviser, mr. brzezinski, thought that the nuclear end to the globe was coming, it was just moments away. talk to us about that particular time in american life. >> jonathan, full disclosure, i was at the pentagon during the carter presidency, the last nearly two years of it, and what we saw at that time with the soviet invasion of afghanistan as well as the revolution in iran, it was a real sense of upheaval. and the optimism about how

history was going was interrupted. people forget toward the end of his term, jimmy carter dramatically increased defense spending. he put down the foundations of what became the american military capacity to intervene in the persian gulf and middle east. and in taking a step back, what was so interesting to me, and i actually agree with jonathan alter, i do think he was underestimated on his foreign policy, in part because of the iran hostage crisis, which in many ways was his political undoing, perhaps, along with inflation. but what was so interesting to me about jimmy carter is he encapsulated, he embodied the two great traditions of american foreign policy. he was an idealist brokering peace in the middle east, shall we say a long shot at the time, his views about human rights in the soviet union, at the same time he was a realist, the normalization of relations with

communist china, recognizing then taiwan, the nuclear arms control agreements with the soviet union, the panama canal treaties, highly controversial, but from his point of view,isti we wanted to make sure there wasn't going to be violence on the scene and the united states and others could continue to use the canal. so that, to me, is what is so interesting. most other presidents have struggled with getting that balance right. and, again, i think as time passes, he will be seen as a successful foreign policy president, interestingly enough, george herbert walker bush, another successful foreign policy president who is seen better with the passage of time and raises the question whether or not that might also be joe biden's fate.

>> jonathan alter, symone sanders townsend here. president carter, he had a strong civil rights legacy, not known to many, and i'm sure you're very familiar, but he was a -- the senior dr. king, dr. king's father was a close confidant of his, dr. king's father advised him on many things. civil rights is a key part of his legacy. and so is ronald reagan. talk to us a little bit about the legacy that president carter left and how in the end of his presidency, reaganism was ushered in and now that transformation to what we now know as maga and the current iteration of this republican party. >> so, just on the civil rights question, the journey that jimmy carter was on from growing up in the brutal jim crow south to becoming a president of the united states who took the

government from tokenism to genuine diversity, and appointed more black judges than any of his predecessors, all of them combined, same thing with women, he appointed more women to the bench than all of the predecessors combined, times five. but it was a bumpy journey, and i remember when i was interviewing him, one of my many interviews with him for the book, at one point he stopped me and said, i never claimed to be part of the civil rights movement. so he never knew martin luther king, even though, you know, he was serving in the state senate in atlanta. and -- but he represented a very conservative district in georgia, and so he actually tacked right, not to the racist right, but he tacked right early

in his career, and then when he became governor of georgia, within seconds of taking the oath of office, he said the time for racial discrimination is over. and this was a shocking statement in georgia politics. it put him on the map nationally in 1971. and the -- there was a walkout of his white colleagues and from then on, he basically spent the second half of his life making up for what he did not do in the first half. stand up for civil rights. and he put dr. king's portrait in the georgia state capital, and became very close to daddy king, coretta king and went on to this career that we're familiar with in civil rights. and as far as reagan goes, you know, the idea of make america great again, maga, that notion actually started with ronald

reagan. so he was using some of these same nationalist arguments including against the panama canal that we now can see in the trump movement. there is a connective tissue between reagan and trump, although reagan had some character and so we were living in a time when even though politics was rough, there were these guardrails that existed in the carter/reagan period. and these are now at -- back at issue and were asking questions about decency in our politics that are raised by the life and career of jimmy carter who was a man of peace and great decency.

>> so, john meacham, let's dive in a little more about carter, the man, here. someone married for more than seven decades, you know, had a complicated family history and upbringing to be sure. but then who did, as jonathan alter did just say, both as post presidency tried to devote himself to peace, sometimes raising the ire of whoever the current occupant of the oval office was. talk to us about what drove jimmy carter, not just the politician or the president, but the person. >> well, jon, the title of jon's biography of the late president captures a great part of the drive of ambition. i hesitate to say it was jon right here, but there was a moment where carter was asked by senior legendary naval figure had he done his best at the -- had he done his very best at

annapolis. and carter said, no. and the question was, well, why not. and i think that there was a kind of -- i say this as a southerner, there was particularly in the 20th century a sense that southerners had to prove themselves in the national arena. the south was seen as backward, it was seen as southern accent was not a calling card to richard haass' council on foreign relations to link everybody here. and i think president carter and mrs. carter and jonathan can check me on this, were very conscious that they had a long way to go to impress the world

outside of plains, georgia, outside of atlanta, outside of the state. and they were emblems really of a kind of self-improvement. these were tireless people. they never stopped learning, reading, creating, working. and i think it was for the greatest of motives, but i think there was a little bit of -- i once heard mrs. carter talk about this, there was a -- she wanted to also make clear to people in washington or new york, you know what, we did read books down here, we did go to museums down here, we were engaged in the broad arguments and the cultural current of the time. and so you have really with this couple from south central

georgia emblems of -- as jon said a moment ago, of the mobility of the american century of people who were from the literal provinces who by their merit, also by the institutions of american democracy, public schools, the military academy, military service, electoral politics, these were folks who took advantage of the engines of social mobility that were available to white people in that era, and they rose to the pinnacle and made a difference. and, again, complicated interesting people who really did give their all decade after decade after decade in a tireless way to make the world a better place. it is a wonderful legacy. >> and on that, presidential historian john meacham, our sincere thanks you could join us this morning.

and jonathan alter, we're grateful you could join us today well. your book, your book, "his very best," a must read as we think about the life and legacy of jimmy carter. still ahead with us here on "morning joe," we'll bring you the latest on the deadly plane crash at a south korean airport and what they're saying about the possible cause. plus, the apology from vladimir putin over the civilian airliner that u.s. officials say might have been misidentified and then shot down by russian forces last week. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be back in just 90 seconds. atching "morning joe." we'll be back in just 90 seconds. , get life insurance," hm. i have a few minutes. i can do that now. oh, that fast? remember that colonial penn ad? i called and i got information. they sent the simple form i need to apply. all i do is fill it out and send it back. well, that sounds too easy! (man) give a little information, check a few boxes,

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welcome back. this morning, investigations are under way after a passenger plane crashed at a south korean airport yesterday, leaving 179 people dead. just two passengers from that plane survived. nbc news international correspondent meagan fitzgerald has the latest and we want to warn some viewers now, some of the images you're about to see are disturbing. >> reporter: horrifying images from a south korean airport, a passenger plane skidding across the runway after the landing gear appears to have failed, before crashing into a wall and bursting into a massive fireball. miraculously first responders who rushed to the scene managed to pull two people out alive. but many of the families of the 179 others waited inside the

muan airport, just 180 miles south of seoul, as the names of the deceased were announced. screams of agony and devastation filling the airport. as south korean officials offered an apology and vowing a swift and thorough investigation. so far the flight radar for tracking the plane's journey from bangkok, thailand, to south korea didn't appear to show anything unusual. but officials say a bird strike may have started the deadly chain of events, which caused the pilot to issue a may day warning. when you see this video of the landing of this aircraft, what does that tell you? >> this crash was tough to watch. and it is tough to piece together based en what we know so far. bird strikes don't bring down airplanes like this. nor do they prevent landing gear from extending. >> reporter: but it comes after a weekend of aviation incidents. a klm flight heading to

amsterdam made an emergency landing in norway after what the airline described as a loud noise. and an air canada flight in halifax experienced a suspected landing gear issue as well, preventing it from reaching the terminal. and back in south korea, so many unanswered questions surrounding one of their most deadly plane crashes in history. >> we'll bring you any updates as they come on the truly terrible tragedy there in south korea. elsewhere, the white house this morning, a few moments ago, announcing that an additional $2.5 billion in u.s. support is heading to ukraine. president joe biden says the funding will provide ukraine with an immediate influx of capabilities that it continues to use to great effect on the battlefield and longer term supplies of air defense, artillery and other critical weapons systems. meanwhile, russian president vladimir putin has offered an apology to the president of

azerbaijan following last week's deadly plane crash in kazakhstan, but stopped short of taking responsibility for the downing of the airliner. this comes amid mounting allegations that the plane was hit by two -- was hit by russian air defenses. two u.s. military officials told nbc news on friday that there was intelligence that indicated that russians may have misidentified the plane as a drone and then shot it down. 38 people were killed when the plane crashed. richard, let's turn to you on this. putin stopped short of saying that russia was responsible, but did offer this apology. certainly this is not the first time that they have been accused, credibly, of taking down a civilian aircraft. and now we have news this morning from the white house, more aid heading from washington to kyiv, set against the backdrop of a ticking clock with january 20th and a brand-new approach, we assume, for president trump coming to

office. how would you assess where things stand right now in that conflict in ukraine? >> well, in terms of ukraine, jonathan, you know, the battlefield is not all that different for what it was three years ago when russia invaded in february of '22. in recent months, the russian troops had begun to gain a little more territory in the east, they're attacking civilian infrastructure so there is a kind of war fatigue in ukraine. i think rushing this equipment to ukraine on one hand it is needed, on the other hand it is not going to change any of the fundamentals. i think what is really important is to nail down the position of the ukrainian government, that in exchange for american military support they're prepared to compromise, not their principles or long-term goals but accept some type of interim or temporary cease-fire and the reason i say that, so when donald trump becomes president, i think it is important that he sees vladimir putin rather than mr. president zelenskyy as the impediment to

peace. donald trump has talked about how much he wants to bring this war to an end. again, i think it is important that he sees the problem in moscow. >> richard, let's talk about where putin stands right now. there has been -- we spent years talking about the state of this conflict, his grip on power. you know, that it seemed like he was vulnerable a year or two back, there was the group he put down, russia has grown that much more of a repressive society in -- since the war in ukraine began. but there is also real warning signs with the russia economy as well as the toll of this conflict in terms of men going into battle and being killed or coming back wounded. how would you assess -- how is putin right now -- how is his grip on power, just what is russia's strength writ large right now, you know, coming up

on the three-year mark of this war. >> thank you, jonathan. putin is strongly in power until he's not. the parallel comes to mind and a lot of people are not quogoing buy this. putin has basically destroyed institutions in russia. what he's done instead is built a kind of cronyist government. he controls the war narrative that seems to be fairly effective, even though the cost, the economic and military and human cost of the war have been astronomical. russia has not realized its ambitions in ukraine. so that's where things stand. the economy is weak. the price of oil, which russia is so dependent on, has gone down in recent months. the sanctions have had some effect. so, again, it is the reason that i think it is so important that if donald trump wants peace, what he basically says to putin is we're going to continue to

arm ukraine, they're willing to compromise. we'll relax some of the sanctions against you, but only if you compromise. i think this backdrop does give donald trump something to work with. i'm not going to suggest it is easy. putin is going to hate compromising, he's going to have to spin it as a victory. but i think the cost of the war and the weakening of the russian economy give donald trump something to work with here. >> so, richard, your latest substack article has the headline no more 2024 in which you look back at the events of this past year, writing this, the year of elections proved terrible for most incumbents in their parties, while the underlying reasons behind the outcomes varied, from reactions to corruption, poor economic performance and/or simply a desire for something new. the results were largely consistent. the shift away from the

democrats occurred, despite president joe biden presiding over an economy that was and is the envy of much of the world. what hurt democrats was a perception held by many americans that the country's economy was not working for them. persisted inflation played a role in trump's victory, but the election turned on more than the economy, stupid. and in this case, it was an out of control border that allowed some 8 million people to enter the country illegally and out of control wokeness. in a president in obvious decline who should have declared his intention not to run after the 2022 midterm elections, but hung on for far too long, dropping out only after he had no choice following an epically bad debate performance and leaving insufficient time for his vice president to have any real chance at winning. so, richard, you're trying to sum up 2024 for us. certainly a consequential year

and one that will -- its aftershocks we'll still be feeling for years, maybe decades to come. >> absolutely. one of the reasons, the one you just focused on, the defeat of many incumbents, almost regardless of ideology, so we saw the conservatives be ousted after what, 14 years in britain, and we saw people on the other side of the spectrum, the left side of the spectrum dramatically weaken in other countries. so the only pattern, jonathan, seems to be it has been a bad time to have been an incumbent, given economic pressures, given immigration and so forth. all that said, my guess is, jonathan, when history is written about 2024, a big part of the focus is going to be on the middle east. let's just be honest here, i don't think any of us had what happened on our bingo cards, the devastation of hezbollah, the ouster of the regime in syria, the weakening of iran, the weakening of hamas, so, it is --

this is really in many ways a reshaped middle east and my guess is when, again, when history is written, that's probably the biggest, certainly the most surprising set of developments of what has been a consequential year. >> yeah. and developing by the day there in that region. richard haass, thank you for joining us this morning. happy new year to you. coming up, we'll shift to sports for a moment and talk about how the nfl playoff picture is coming into focus. pablo torre will join us with his takeaways from week 17, including the big win that still felt like a loss for new york giants fans. "morning joe" will be right back with pablo. giants fans. "morning joe" will be right back with pablo

third and three. blitz coming. picked up, gets intercepted! breaking in front is c.j. gardener johnson, house call. pick six to open the day! >> o'connell, seeking, serving, surging. launches, got a man! it is tucker! it is held on to for the touchdown! >> mayfield rifles it, open. mcmillan, touchdown! tampa bay! >> second and 14. heaves it to the end zone, oh, what a catch.

>> new set of downs for the giants. he breaks free. down the sideline! he's going to take this all the way! >> second down. has time this time. throws, going deep. has a man. he's got it! touchdown, minnesota! >> third and goal from the 2. it is jayden daniels! caught for the touchdown! washington is into the playoffs! >> those were some of the biggest touchdowns from across the nfl yesterday. and to help us understand it all, let's bring in the host of "pablo torre finds out" onned me yes meadowlark media. let's start with the vikings and packers game. the marquee matchup of the day. these are two teams we talked all season long about, what a juggernaut the nfc north is.

and the cinderella story of sam darnold continues with the vikings defeating the packers yesterday and now playing the lions next week with the winner of that game top seed in the nfc. >> this is the strongest division in the nfl. the strongest division in recent memory. i told you that all season long, jon. and this game against a team that is probably the best third place finisher in division history, in the packers, i think decisive win for sam darnold again was this reclamation project from the new york jets, a stopgap sort of, like, i guess we got to go with this guy kind of solution to a person who the vikings now have to decide is he the quarterback of our future, even though we just drafted .j. mccarthy out of michigan in the last draft. in the present tense, the vikings are incredible. two losses this season, to the lions, as you aforementioned, playing -- hosting the vikings

next sunday to decide the division and that guy with the purple cap on his head is kevin o'connell, the coach of the vikings, also the prohibitive favorite for coach of the year. incredible, incredible job he's done with that defense. but especially sam darnold in that offense. >> yeah, so, just really incredible and vikings have a decision to make after the season as to whether sam darnold is the future or turn it over to the first round pick j.j. mccarthy or look to shop the young qb. we saw jayden daniels there hitting a touchdown, commanders come back, they win, playoff bound. it is one of the better stories this year in the nfl the way this rookie, number two overall pick just revitalized not just the team, but, like, that entire franchise and region, which has been starved for a winner for so long. >> right. the recent history of the commanders is as bleak as any team in professional sports.

and jayden daniels in this matchup specifically, we have not seen a matchup of rookie quarterbacks like this, to give you a tale of the tape here, jayden daniels, there he is, throwing the winning pass to his tight end in overtime to beat the falcons. the falcons were starting michael penix jr. in a rare matchup. you get two rookie quarterbacks starting for two different teams, it is bad news for both teams. they are struggling. they got nothing else to play for. let's throw him out there. that is not the case here. the falcons are still on life support because michael penix is giving them this spark of life. he did try to lead a game-winning drive at the end, some clock mismanagement, i would argue on the part of the coach helped do that as well as the play of jayden daniels who, again, is just wise beyond his years. hard not to sound like a cliche spouting football coach, but to

win this game on the ground, so it is just a remarkable thing for a team and the commanders that, yes, is now officially, we can say it, a playoff team, which is an incredible, incredible turn around. >> so, we're talking about triumphs, pablo. now let's talk about tragedies on the football field. and the worst in the league, in beginning with -- let's talk about the new york giants, they won yesterday and that very fact is what has angered so much of their fan base because they won, they beat the colts yesterday, colts team that was playing for the -- had a shot at the post season, but the giants win and by doing so, move out of the number one overall draft pick position. they're no longer picking number one, they slid back, the new england patriots who were embarrassed on saturday by the chargers, they have a quarterback and nothing else, suddenly they're in the pole position and now we look to week 18 where frankly a lot of these teams are going to try their

best to lose without looking overtly like they're doing so. talk to us about this bizarre dynamic. >> it is so difficult to be the worst run team in the new york area right now. the jets, of course. we talk about them, laugh at them every single week and we should. but the giants, all they had to do was lose. they had the pole position as you said. they had no reason to win. for those who are not familiar with pro sports and the nfl draft in particular, it is a funny bit of socialism. where the worst yet the best, the worst ranked team gets the number one overall pick, that would have been the giants, instead you wake up a giants fan and here is the headline, i go with "the daily news" on this one, yea, exclamation point, just a sarcasm which i appreciate, underappreciated sarcasm. you don't get anything for what is truly a moral defeat, a literal victory, but a moral defeat. it is rare you get that in sports. here you have a team, against

its own best interests, losing the ability by all probability to take sanders out of colorado, or cam ward out of miami, another star quarterback, because they wanted to do stuff like this and it is amazing that your new england patriots, they happen to have now the inside track on a number one pick in a season in which the giants just gave it to them for no rational reason. >> and now the patriots, they play a bills team next week that has nothing to play for, so the stakes of the game will be deeply low. >> next week, can i jump ahead to this briefly, jon, i think you're going to go there. >> go for it. >> the giants play the eagles. and the eagles just clenched, that he's true, they have no ostensible reason to win and maybe it doesn't matter at this point, but we know who is playing running back for the eagles and it is saquon barkley, the guy who just cracked --

there it is. sorry for jumping ahead of you. 2,000 yards, okay. he's 101 yards away from breaking eric dickerson's all time rushing record. if you've not been following the soap opera that jon and i have been laughing about also here, it is the fact that the giants had saquon barkley and they went on hard knocks on television, you remember this, they were on television actively letting saquon go. they let him go. and now, in the ultimate symmetry of all of this, the giants may watch saquon barkley rush for the all time record against a giants team next week that cannot possibly have anything to celebrate on any level, even if they win that game. it is just insane to me how the giants took pole position and also just the psychological torture chamber that is the tristate area and its football teams. >> yeah, as bad as things are for the giants, at least they don't have aaron rodgers.

msnbc contributor pablo torre. pablo, thank you so much. we'll speak to you again soon. next up here, president-elect trump sides with elon musk in the fight over h-1b vitas. we'll have the latest on the growing and nasty feud among maga allies. plus, we'll get back to our top story of the morning, the life and legacy of jimmy carter following the death of america's 39th president. "morning joe" will be right back. rica's 39th president "morning joe" will be right back get life insurance," hm. i have a few minutes. i can do that now. oh, that fast? remember that colonial penn ad? i called and i got information. they sent the simple form i need to apply. all i do is fill it out and send it back. well, that sounds too easy! (man) give a little information, check a few boxes, sign my name, done. they don't ask about your health? (man) no health questions. -physical exam? -don't need one. it's colonial penn guaranteed acceptance whole life insurance.

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welcome back to "morning joe." we will now turn back to the passing of former president jimmy carter in just a moment, but, first, a look at the 2024 election and the emergence of an unexpected group of voters. nbc news correspondent trymaine lee explains. >> reporter: the 2024 presidential election year was a roller coaster, marked by politics not as usual. and the remarkable new focus on an unexpected group of voters. >> black male voters could prove to be a key swing voting bloc. >> reporter: as primary season kicked off, some voters seemed unenthused. >> what is missing from, like, the election cycle? what is missing? >> a good candidate right now. >> reporter: what is the word you think when you see these two candidates running for president? >> oh, hell no. >> reporter: and democrats worried about their base.

>> the president's support among black voters is slipping. a recent nbc news poll shows just 61% would now choose him over a republican. >> he's about to lose me. >> reporter: while former president donald trump eyed a potential opening. >> donald trump's campaign is targeting young black men believing that this year the gop can win them over. >> i love the black population of this country. i've done so much for the black population of this country. >> reporter: as this long overlooked voting bloc made it clear what mattered most to them -- >> anything that is going to directly affect my community -- >> we are entrepreneurs and we are business persons and we are homeowners and we want some real discussions around economic matters in the community. >> reporter: some felt ignored. >> we haven't heard anything from a democrat or a republican. >> reporter: some felt empowered. >> i want to make a decision that is going to be impactful. >> we need to save ourselves. if we're looking for somebody to save us, it is not going to happen. >> reporter: a tug and pull

between the status quo and the hope for something new. >> people come to our communities and pander for our votes. >> reporter: and then an 11th hour candidate shake-up. >> not about me. it is about you. >> reporter: president biden bowed out of the race. >> are you ready to make your voices heard? >> reporter: and vice president kamala harris became the nominee. >> and when we fight -- >> we win! >> reporter: and suddenly there was something new, along with new energy, for candidate kamala harris, looking to make history as the country's first indian, black and woman president. >> let's get out and make kamala harris the 47th president. >> reporter: a slew of black celebrities showing their support. >> our black men, we got to get them out to vote. >> reporter: the trump campaign had its own endorsements. >> let's vote for trump, baby. make some noise for the president. >> reporter: the former president courted controversy with his version of black voter outreach. >> they're taking black jobs. black people walking around with my mug shot. and a lot of people said that

that's why the black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against. >> reporter: but for some black men, there was an appeal beyond trump being trump. >> he has good folks around him. good policy. and so that's all i'm looking for. >> reporter: in the end, the vast majority of black voters including black men stood by vp harris, many dreaming of a new way forward. >> i voted for kamala. i think it is time to try something new. >> reporter: but there were unforecasted shifts and the surprising realignment of voters including growth with hispanic men and young people. among them, young black men, all moving toward trump. the. >> the democratic party trying to understand shifts in its core coalition. >> reporter: and setting the stage for a reckoning to come in american presidential politics. president-elect trump will be inaugurated on martin luther king jr. day, begging for some the question of what happens to a dream deferred?

>> symone, you need to run in a moment. but give us your quick thoughts as to what we saw just there. >> first of all, great package by ymaine lee and it encapsulates the story that was attempted to be told about black voters, specifically black men in this election. i don't think the world has seen the last of vice president kamala harris. i don't know how she will show up again, but she is a young politician who garnered over 75 million votes in this election. and she will be back. when it comes to donald trump and his presidency, a lot of folks are, like, donald trump has a lot of bluster, we'll wait and see what he has to do, we will see what he has done and it will be wrong for people to make big predictions about his presidency, people need to pay attention to what he says and what he actually does and judge him on that, not some fantasy land we think we live in. >> symone, our thanks to you as always. we'll talk to you again real soon. it is now the top of the hour on this monday, december

30th. i'm jonathan lemire. as we mark the passing of former president jimmy carter. joining the conversation, we now have president of the national action network and host of msnbc's "politics nation," reverend al sharpton. author and nbc news presidential historian, michael beschloss is here. as well as former msnbc host and contributor to "washington monthly," chris matthews. as i mentioned this morning, tributes and condolences are pouring in following the death of former president carter who passed away at his home in georgia yesterday at the age of 100. nbc's lester holt takes a look back at the life and legacy of the 39th president of the united states. >> my name is jimmy carter and i'm running for president. >> reporter: he went from being jimmy who to winning the white house itself. and then struggled with crises overseas and a troubled economy

at home. a one-term president whose time as ex-president was the longest and among the most active in american history. james earl carter jr., he always went by jimmy, was born in small town plains, georgia, growing up on a farm without electricity or indoor plumbing. he attended the u.s. naval academy, married rosalynn smith, a friend of his sister's, and eventually becoming governor of georgia. >> the time for racial discrimination is over. >> reporter: a year later, he ran for the white house. >> i'd like to announce that i am a candidate for president. >> reporter: and won. a born again christian who promised voters i will never lie to you. >> i, jimmy carter, do solemnly swear. >> reporter: at his best, he scored historic achievements, leading successful peace talks between egypt and israel. but closer to home, when the economy tanked, so did carter's

popularity. he seemed to blame americans themselves. >> the erosion of our confidence in the future. >> reporter: and it got worse. in iran, scores of americans were taken hostage and then came a grueling re-election battle. >> i'll bring new hope to america. >> reporter: jimmy carter lost in a landslide. through it all, carter was sustained by his faith. you were faced with some huge crises as president. did you drop down to your knees and pray? >> often, yes. often. in fact i prayed more, for a day, for an hour, while i was president, than any other four years in my life. >> reporter: his defeat marked the beginning of a remarkable post presidency. he established the carter center, committed to advancing human rights and democracy. carter built houses for the poor and in 2002 was awarded the nobel peace prize, an extraordinary ex-president, proud of his years in the white

house. >> kept the peace. never went to war. we told the truth. never lied to the american people. never misled the american people. so in general terms, i feel perfectly at ease with my term. >> reporter: he brought discipline and devotion to everything he did. including his battle with cancer. >> everything's been a blessing for me. i'm thankful and hopeful. >> reporter: despite the diagnosis, he continued building houses alongside rosalynn, and marked their 75th wedding anniversary in 2021. >> 75 years, i can't believe it. >> reporter: rosalynn died two years later, marking the longest presidential marriage in history. in 2024, carter marked another milestone, his 100th birthday, with an outpouring of gratitude for his life of service. he brought that devotion to everything he did for family and for country until the end.

>> our thanks to lester holt for that. chris matthews, let's get your thoughts here on a remarkable life and legacy of jimmy carter, someone who, you know, whose legacy will go well beyond his four years in office. tell us some of your thoughts this morning as you reflect upon his life. >> well, it looks like 100 is about the limit, isn't it? it really looks like that's as long as you can live because he did everything right. he taught us that the american presidency is not a transaction where you get something for it. it is what you give to it. and clearly that's what he did. and i think about how hard it was for -- people talk about the post presidency, but more important, that's one argument, i guess. what the truth was, how in the hell did this guy get elected president of the united states? nobody knew who he was in 1974. nobody. he wasn't on any poll. he didn't show up anywhere. he was a lame duck governor of a deep south state.

he was not on the charts for anybody. and then he became -- well, he won all the primaries basically. and how did he do it? he -- 1974, two years before he ran for president. he sent out letters to all the people that lost democratic primaries, i got one in philadelphia. i got one of those letters congratulating me for making the effort and inviting me to get involved not just in pennsylvania, but around the country. this is how he built his campaign. then he began sleeping on people's couches. and as ted sorenson said, once somebody slept on your couch, it is hard to vote against him. he built it up piece by piece, the peanut brigade and he put it all together and managed to knock off everybody in iowa, new hampshire, pennsylvania, beat george wallace and all the rest of them. it was a hell of a campaign piece by piece. and later on in the presidency, when i was a speechwriter for

him, i learned what jimmy carter was about. he's a man who believes in doing it yourself. i delivered a speech to him at 4:00 in the morning, the coffee was perking, he was up already like a farmer which he was for years, a farmer, and he was already working away on his decision memoranda. he loved when he could get an 80 point questionnaire from stu eisenstadt, his great domestic adviser. he wanted all the facts and figures, all the decisions to be made by himself. that was his undoing. he believed in doing everything piece by piece, like an engineer, like herbert hoover, unfortunately, instead of the grand sweep of things. i think ronald reagan, if he had the hostages grabbed in his role, he would have declared war. that's an act of war. that's an act of war, you iranians, i want those people back by 24 hours or we're going to war with you guys. carter saw it as a criminal act with a bunch of kids, college students, grabbing our people,

our diplomats. i think he was perhaps too granular. that's probably was his undoing. >> so, michael beschloss, in your estimation, how will the long lens of history remember former president carter? what are some things that you feel americans should be considering this morning? >> i think, you know, a few of them would be, jonathan, how he changed this political culture. for instance, for most of american history there is no way that jimmy carter would have been nominated by his party for president of the united states before the rules were changed in -- around 1970 to make primaries more important and to reduce the influence of elected officials and party bosses. if those party bosses and elected officials had made the choice in 1976, it would not have been jimmy carter. one term governor of georgia, whom most people did not know in that party. instead it would have been someone like hubert humphrey,

former vice president and senator from minnesota. so, he was an emblem of the opening of the door. if you're looking at donald trump in the way that donald trump was able to get nominated in 2016, he was able to do that as part of a popular groundswell. if the -- 2016 election and nomination had been just a pole of party leaders, there is no way donald trump would have been nominated. another big change at the time among many was carter's religion. this is probably the most deeply religious candidate for president of modern times. and that has been true elsewhere in american history. turns out for instance that harry truman was a very religious man, but he concealed it because he thought that that would be deterring to people, they would be put off by it. in carter's case, he said, you know, you may not know me, but one thing you should know about me and these are the words he used, my deep christian faith.

and that was short-hand for a lot of people even who were not christian, for the fact this was a person of strong character who could be relied on as a president of the united states even though as chris matthews said, very few people knew very much about him. >> so president biden issued public remarks yesterday on the life of president carter. biden last saw carter november 2023, rosalynn carter's funeral, where he said he took the time to tell the former president how much he loved him. while also agreeing to deliver a eulogy at his funeral. let's listen to some of what president biden had to say yesterday. >> jimmy carter lived a life measured not by words, but by his deeds. just look at his life. his life's work. he worked to eradicate disease and not just at home, but around the world. he forged peace. advanced civil rights. human rights, promoted free and fair elections around the world.

he built housing for the homeless with his own hands. and his compassion and moral clarity saved lives all over the globe. i'll always cherish seeing jimmy and rosalynn carter together. theirs is a love affair of the ages. i'll miss them both dearly. and i do take some solace, our kids were saying it, that they're united once again and they'll remain forever in our hearts, but they're together again. >> so, reverend al, let's get your thoughts here as to what president carter meant to the struggle of civil rights, but also to the democratic party, where he was at the time a revolutionary figure coming out of nowhere, coming out of the deep south, what he means to the american story. >> in order to understand what he meant, you have to understand the context. in 1972, the democratic party

nominee was george mcgovern, and was considered very liberal. i remember i was 17 years old at the time, i was shirley chisholm's youth director, she ran in those primaries. then right after the '72 race, where nixon won overwhelmingly by a landslide, we had watergate and the whole country is embarrassed, humiliated, we're in the middle of trying to deal with the war in vietnam, here comes this moral soft spoken man who had integrity and character that came out of nowhere and started winning primaries and won. he was born and raised in the deep south. his parents had been segregationists. he himself had an evolving relationship with the black community. he became very good friends with martin luther king sr., he didn't know dr. king jr., martin luther king iii and i talk about it often, that he became close, i talked to her about him, and

here was a man from the deep south, talking about civil rights and human rights and standing up for what was right and stabilizing the country and returning moral character to the white house. so, you have to understand the democratic party being traumatized with the mcgovern loss, and then we run into watergate and then we're dealing with war, here comes a man of faith, in the times i met with him and talked to him, i'll never forget that at the 50th anniversary of the '63 mark on washington, 2013, i got into conversation with president clinton and president carter and at the end of the conversation, carter said to me, al, i see you out there, your activism, you're still preaching, right? i said i'm at church every sunday. i don't pastor church. i took reverend jesse jackson's tradition not to pastor, but moving around like dr. king, but i'm in church every sunday,

preaching, and as studious of the bible as i always was. he said don't forget your faith, don't leave your ministry. let your civil rights work be your ministry. this guy lived what he talked, he practiced what he preached. >> yeah, beautiful words there. so, chris, in your latest op-ed for "the washington post" has the headline jimmy carter had an outsider edge. you wrote in part this, at the age of 28, i ran and lost a democratic primary for congress. it was not, however, for not. that wild campaign against philadelphia's old political machine won me an unlikely ally. the news came in, in a letter, urging i stay actively involved in democratic politics. more seductive still, it contained an out and out request for my future health in building the party. and it was signed, jimmy carter. so, chris, talk to us a little more about that moment in your life, how jimmy carter, you know, offered his assistance and

just put a revolutionary figure he was including after his presidency where he -- i argued has done more than anyone else who has ever held the office. >> it started young. you know. to follow up on what reverend al said so well, he rose -- he was brought up among all african american kids. all his friends were african american, he was the only white kid in the crowd, if you will. they would fish together, they would play games together, they would build toys together, they were rural kids, no running water, no electricity. i mean, the only outside influence jimmy carter had from the real world would be the larger world was that he would go to sleep in the evening, have an alarm set for 8:00, so he could get up and listen to glen miller. glen miller from the 1940s. that's what he remembered as his outside influence. the rest of it was rural, black, it was the people of the country, and later on as you say, what he did with his post

presidency was go back to plains, basically, back to atlanta, and build this huge effort to try to bring cures to diseases most americans are lucky to have never heard of, like guinea worm in africa and he would go over these places that we'll probably never visit and help people improve their lives. so, i think he was a rural guy, he told me once i never really liked the big city. i said why did you end up in new york like the clintons? all the big shots end up in new york. he said i don't feel too comfortable in new york. i don't feel comfortable with the big shots of the democratic party. he was not a big shot and i would say that is the best tribute we could give to this former president. he was not a big shot. he did not see the american presidency as a transaction, where you get something from it. you give a little, but you get a lot more from it. he never looked at it that way. he saw it as giving and there he

is with this habitat for humanity, i saw him down in tijuana, mexico, it was nice weather down there, i many say, we all slept out on the ground, but he was out there and rosalynn was out there with -- they're hauling 2 by 4s around. she has a nail apron on. this is not a pr stunt, a photo-op. they're building houses that people lived in. and so i think he had a lot of that rural attitude he never lost. it is no surprise he ended up dying and living in plains. >> yeah, certainly habitat for humanity a wonderful organization, one he spent much of his life helping. we'll have the ceo of that group join us a little later here on "morning joe." as we just showed you, president joe biden mourned the death of former president carter during public remarks he gave last night from st. croix where he is spending his final new year's as president. and joining us now live from the u.s. virgin islands is nbc news

white house correspondent mike memoli. mike, good to see you this morning. tell us more about what president biden had to say yesterday, the relationship between the two men and what we know how the nation will mourn former president carter in the week ahead. >> reporter: well, jonathan, we often talk about that exclusive president's club and you think about it, there may not be two members of that club who have the length and depth of relationship that these two men, president carter and president biden have had. one that began in 1976, in carter's presidential campaign, and one that now ends in the closing weeks of biden's presidency. biden often reflected about what attracted him to become the first lawmaker outside the state of georgia in 1976 to endorse carter's campaign for the presidency. he saw him as a transitional figure in the democratic party, a southern progressive on civil rights, somebody who he shared an outlook with on civil rights and on environmental issues.

but also somebody who coming out of watergate had the necessary character and honesty to lead the country. this is somebody who biden also shares many parallels in terms of their own presidencies, their one term presidents, efforts to help israel make peace with its neighbors, efforts to secure a hostage deal, the diversity within the administration is a top priority. and also the fact that the economic struggles of this country proved in many ways their respective political undoings. like any relationships, there were hiccups and conflicts. biden wrote when he was running in 2008 for president about the ways in which carter had stumbled in his race, that he -- because he ran against the democratic establishment, he had a hard time making friends in washington and in many ways the slights of that campaign carried into his presidency. biden wrote even he as somebody who had a close relationship with carter found it difficult to build relationships and work with him in the white house. but, you heard the president

last night in those remarks really just nothing but respect and love, those remarks at times scripted, but very often unscripted, reflecting i think this moment in time as biden is reflecting on the legacy of one man, while also beginning to think about his own legacy. i want you to take a listen to this interesting exchange in which the president took some questions in talking about carter as an ex-president. an ex. >> never give up hope. never give up hope. i mean it from the bottom of my heart. so much negativism out there. i know you're tired of hearing me say it over the last four years, but, folks, there is nothing beyond our capacity. nothing beyond our capacity. if we do it together. i mean it. i mean it. he believed it. >> president biden, of course,

jonathan, ordering a state funeral to be held in washington for president carter. also declaring john 9th to be a national day of mourning. this is in the final three weeks of biden's presidency, where one of his final acts now is being the eulogizer in chief, something -- a role he's played so often in the past. >> well said there. nbc's mike memoli live in st. croix. mike, thank you so much. michael beschloss, mike memoli mentioned that exclusive club of former presidents. even in his brief statement about jimmy carter, donald trump made the same reference that he and carter shared that. talk to us about what you think we'll hear for president biden in the week ahead, putting president carter's legacy in the context of not just the story of the presidency, but the story of the nation. >> i think what he will say is that jimmy carter restored the nation. one of the nicest things, jon, is that after carter was

inaugurated, 1977, i can recite the words by heart, the first thing he said was for myself and our nation, i would like to thank my predecessor, there he is on the screen, gerald ford, for all he's done to heal our land. this was after this ferocious campaign between the two of them. and this was after, just as others have said, the vietnam war and watergate, carter seemed a healing figure. the other thing is the personal message, jonathan. you know how many electoral votesvote s jimmy carter got against ronald reagan, chris remembers this sadly, he got 48 electoral votes after winning the presidency four years earlier. i used to talk to carter about what that was like. he said, people would not return my calls, the former president. yet, he had the strength of character and the imagination to say, there are things that an ex-president can now do that we never have seen before in american history. not just play golf or raise

money for charitable organizations, worthy as they may be, built the carter center, work for democracy around the world, eradicate disease, be a tower of moral principle, didn't always get it right. but as far as what we should say to young people, what should you say to your sons about what they should know one day about jimmy carter, this is a person who tried every day of his life to do right, sometimes did, sometimes did not, but in the end was the kind of person we can hold up to our children. >> yes, i agree with that. michael beschloss, thank you so much for your insight and perspective this morning. and chris matthews, as we close this block, let's give our final thought to you. >> well, you know, one of the things he said when he got the word from his pollster on air force one and i was there, he

said, don't tell rosalynn. and so we arrived down there in plains, georgia, and i remember looking at the train depo where he announced his victory four years before and he was in there alone with her. and i averted my glance. i did not want to look at it. he was telling his wife that after all their efforts and all the struggles of the months and years and holding on to the presidency that he had lost. they were going to lose by ten points. that was very personal with him that he protected his wife. he wanted to make sure it didn't hurt her too much. i remember in the plane landed, marine one landed in plains, georgia, the dancers on the ground, one of the great old secret service nicknames for her was dancer's on the ground. i thought he's got to tell her and he did and faced up to it, they both faced up to it and moved on to quite a life that most people would not have seen. as somebody said, f. scott fitzgerald said there is no

second acts in american life, this is one of the great second acts ever. >> chris matthews, thank you so much for sharing your memories of president carter this morning. we really appreciate it. next up here on "morning joe," we'll get the latest from capitol hill as house speaker mike johnson fights to keep his leadership post with a pivotal vote later this week. plus, msnbc's steve kornacki is taking a look at what's next for american politics and trump 2.0 in the upcoming year of 2025. we'll be right back with that. 2025 we'll be right back with that.

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welcome back to "morning joe." you can see it there. the ball, high above times square. this is, of course, the penultimate day of the year of 2024. the crowds will start gathering there tomorrow for the big celebration tomorrow night to ring in the new year in new york city. and, indeed, 2025 right around the corner and several big political races are also on the horizon. here's msnbc's national political correspondent steve kornacki with more. >> all right, 2025 going to be a big year in elections. i know we just had the biggest election year you could have. there are a few races in 2025, though, that i'm going to be watching. i think they're going to be

worth keeping an eye on because of some unanswered questions coming out of the presidential race we just had. here are the three biggies coming up in the new year, 2025. the race for mayor of new york city. you're probably wondering why the heck should i care about the race for new york city. it is a big city, it is a blue city. donald trump lost new york city in 2024. he made some big gains within it though, especially because when we talk about this nationally, new support he got from nonwhite voters, hispanic voters in particular, you see it in places like the bronx, made some pretty dramatic gains there, the question in new york city simply is there is this group of voters who we used to think of as just pure democratic voters who kind of set they're up for grabs a little bit. how are they going to handle the new york city mayor's race? learn about those voters, the new trump voters in new york city. for that matter, in new jersey, still a blue state, trump lost it in the 2024, but he only lost it by by six points.

he got blown out four years earlier. one of his biggest improvements in terms of numbers of any state in the country. he improved in virginia, lost it but improved his performance pretty significantly. the big question i think overhanging american politics coming out of 2024 is that new support that trump attracted, which you can see in all three of these places, especially from nonwhite voters, was it trump specific? or is it going to work for another republican not named donald trump? that's what the republican party is hoping for because obviously this hints at a new coalition that could be really powerful politically but it is unknown how much trump is the key ingredient to that. we may find out in the races. look at a place like virginia, as we say, trump didn't win it, this was still a blue state, that was a change. this was a double digit biden win, cut basically in half here. the margin by trump. and where did you see it? you saw it particularly, get ready to hear this a lot in

2025, loudon county, loudon county, more than 400,000 people, the suburb of washington, d.c., look here, harris wins it by 16 points, that's a huge -- that's a landslide, right? again, biden had won this by 25. from 25 all the way down to 16, what happened in loudon county? when you look closely, again, the large hispanic population, growing asian american population, these are groups where donald trump took some very big strides in 2024 compared to how republicans and trump himself had been doing in the past. and that's what brings the county like loudon down like this. loudon county, going to be a big place to look in the governor's race in virginia, with that question of can republicans pull this kind of thing off without trump? we'll see a lot of places in new jersey with similar stories as well. so, yes, it will still be a big year of elections. we never have anything but big years in elections. >> so, reverend al, one of the

great tests in recent elections is how do republicans do when donald trump's name is not on the ballot. they obviously took losses in the 2018 midterms. they took losses in the 2022 midterms. but when trump is there, you know, they won in '16, he put up a big number in 2020, but defeated, and won again this time around. what lessons -- what clues can we glean, do you think, from the three races that steve mentioned including the mayor of new york city as to that phenomenon, trump not appearing on the ballot what coattails do you think he'll have this year? >> well, the question is whether he has the coat to have coattails because we are beginning to see that some people are already saying wait a minute with his nomination for cabinet, matt gaetz blowing up in his face, and others. they're beginning to squirm a little bit. and we may see a battle in the congress with the republican

caucus where they may for the second time in a row dump their speaker. so, we don't know where we'll be when these races come up. in new york city, it is going to be very interesting. mayor eric adams, who is under indictment, but still popular, he was at national action network giving out food with us on christmas day, his popularity is still in tact in some quarters, but it is troubling what he's facing legally. and if trump, who has said he's open to thinking about a pardon for eric adams, well, whether that helps eric adams politically or hurts him, does andrew cuomo run has been rumored and his popularity is there, and you have brad landon, city controller. that race is going to be interesting. then you go to new jersey, phil murphy leaving after having done two terms and was pretty solid in all community, but new jersey did have a large vote for trump

and new jersey did elect chris christie. you don't know what is going to happen then. virginia had the governor that is republican and obviously can go either way. i think that this is going to be as an interesting political year as the 2024 presidential race was, because it will be a forecast of where we are going to go into the midterm election in '26. >> yeah, as you just mentioned, there is some real divides already emerging in the republican party before trump even takes office. we're going to dive into a lot of that. still coming up here on "morning joe," there is a simmering feud right now among maga allies surrounding a visa program that allows employers to temporarily hire non-u.s. citizens for highly skilled jobs. we'll talk about the latest crack, and a big one in donald trump's coalition. that's next on "morning joe." igd trump's coalition. that's next on "morning joe.

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welcome back. an all-out feud has erupted within president-elect trump's maga base over visas for skilled immigrant workers. trump is apparently now expressing some support for the h-1b visa program after he had criticized it in the past. this comes after trump allies elon musk and vivek ramaswamy expressed their support for the program last week, arguing that high skilled foreign workers are

essential for the u.s. tech industry. that had many in maga world furious, claiming the pair were contradicting trump's immigration policies and his america first philosophy for their own personal benefit. joining us now to talk about this is msnbc contributor and author of the book "how the right lost its mind," charlie sykes and contributing columnist for "the hill," matt lewis. gentlemen, thank you, both, for being here. if people were paying attention over the holidays last couple of days, this story exploded on the right and is going to have real, real ramifications going forward. matt, in your latest opinion piece, you asked the question can trump hold his coalition together? you write, today it is maga that finds itself as the big tent coalition full of internal contradictions. the question is, how long can it last. holding this coalition together will be one of trump's greatest challenges in his second term.

it is a happy dilemma, but also a test of political skill. cracks are already showing. you go on to write, a catch-22 of politics is the fact that once you start governing and making decisions, you're almost guaranteed to alienate some of the people who put you in office in the first place. it requires finesse to manage and finesse isn't exactly trump's strong suit. but will the coalitions' contradictions ultimately tear it apart. trump's ability to navigate these challenges will define his second presidency. by this time next year, we'll likely know the answer. and, matt, talk to us more about first of all the schism on immigration that happened here. fill viewers in as to what exactly is going on and what you think it does mean for this fragile trump coalition. >> right, well, there is this schism and you got sort of billionaire tech bros like elon

musk and vivek ramaswamy who want to be able to have highly skilled immigrants, obviously who are going to help work for them or work in the tech industry and argue that would be good for america, for innovation, for us to stay competitive around the world, but then you have folks who have been tilling these fields for a long time, steve bannon, stephen miller, laura loomer, who say, look, hey, last time we elected donald trump we were promised he was going to do something on immigration, he did some stuff, but we had all of these establishment republicans in our way, these kind of normy, you know, rex tillerson, reince priebus, those types stopping us from really having a radical agenda, doing mass deportations, building the wall, all of that stuff. this time around they think they're finally going to get to the promised land and here comes elon musk, right, this billionaire who owns x, who obviously has donald trump's ear. but, i think this is a microcosm

of a larger problem that donald trump has, which is that there is really no coherent maga philosophy and there are a ton of contradictions. is this the party of mcdonald's? is this the party of crunchy rfk yoga moms? is this the party of voter values? or is the party of pete hegseth and matt gaetz and donald trump? there are a lot of these problems and we had this before, fdr had a big coalition full of a lot of people who you couldn't have put them in a room together, but he had a big coalition, right? donald trump has one or two votes in the house to do anything. and so, this is going to take a lot of skill. i don't necessarily think it is the end of the trump presidency but it is going to be a challenge. >> steve bannon called elon musk a child on elon musk's own social media platform over the weekend.

that's where things are right now on the maga right. and, charlie, in your latest post on substack, you wrote in part this, it seems pretentious and overblown to call it a maga civil war, but the oligarch versus nativist furor that broke out over the last week broke out over immigration, race and visas was real and it was spectacular. the angry skirmish exposed a fundamental divide over a core issue for maga, and it is likely a preview of coming attractions. the fight was also a reminder that irony is good and truly dead. after spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting a candidate who lied about immigrants eating cats and dogs, the neo maga tech bros seem shocked that the fear and loathing extends to their immigrants. talk to us more about this. there was such an sense of anger and outrage and betrayal, let's say, on the far right,

particularly some very loud influential voices on the far right, who couldn't believe that ramaswamy and musk were taking the stance, ramaswamy kicking it off with a lengthy post on christmas day, trump tried to stay out of it for a couple of days and gave an interview in the new york post where he offered some soft support to where musk is hurting his base. what do you think is to come next? >> well, look, on one level there is a power struggle going on inside of maga. on another level, this is a substantive dispute which is inevitable in a populist movement that is now dominated by billionaire tech bro elitists and that's going to show up in a lot of issues. look, a lot of the maga base has motivated by the fear of immigrants, and resentment against immigrants, foreigners, taking jobs that they think that americans should have. and here comes elon musk and saying that, yeah, there are not enough americans, americans are,

and he endorsed the word retarded, are not smart enough, not skilled enough to take all these high tech jobs. we need to import foreigners like me. well, clearly that's going to cause tension in maga. this is a campaign that was based upon fear of foreigners coming in and taking your communities, your jobs, all of those things. and so, these latecomers, elon musk and vivek ramaswamy, really have very different value systems. i think they have different agendas than the maga base. so, this is going to play out over a long period of time. right now, to no one's surprise, donald trump is siding with the billionaire tech bros. but the base is not going to change its position on immigration and sometimes, you know, ideas have consequences. but so does racial demagoguery.

i think what was really extraordinary was watching how shocked elon musk and some of his buddies were to find out that many of their new maga allies are, in fact, pretty racist when it comes to indian immigrants. and it seemed like they were shocked, like, wait, we were supposed to be afraid of those immigrants, now you're coming for our immigrants? we didn't mean that. >> yeah, and this also is far from the only tension point on the right right now. because this friday house lawmakers will vote on whether or not to re-elect mike johnson as house speaker. following last week's government funding bill which passed the house with more democratic than republican votes, speaker johnson's candidacy is very much in peril. already johnson has publicly lost the support of one republican congressman with milt others saying they are unsure if they will back the speaker. and if as expected all 215

democrats oppose him, he can only afford one more ectiondefe. one trump seems content to let johnson twist in the end. he was unhappy with the cr that was passed because it didn't address the debt ceiling, he talked about that on truth social last night. though trump has not publicly called for trump to be ousted, there are all kinds of reporting, i heard this too from mar-a-lago, he's deeply unhappy with the speaker. >> yeah, well, get your popcorn ready, it is going to be crazy. look, if i had to bet, i think johnson probably survives this time. remember last time matt gaetz was really gunning for, you know, kevin mccarthy. he had an agenda, you know, like personal motive to take down mccarthy. i don't think that exists right now against the current speaker, mike johnson. he's in a very vulnerable position. nobody wants the job.

i don't think anybody else can get the votes. that's why johnson maybe survives this one. but i will say this, as opposed to the visa debate and the visa schism we were just talking about, i think the real problem republicans are going to have does have to do with mike johnson and it is going to have to do next year when it comes time to, like, fund the government or raise the debt ceiling. because with the h-1b visa controversy, you could possibly -- you could tell elon what he wants to hear, meanwhile stephen miller could limit the number of visas or you could make some changes on the margins. and avoid directly confronting that issue at least for a while. when it comes to whether or not you raised the debt limit, that is a very public thing. and so i don't think there is any way to avoid that controversy which pits, again, another civil war, a different one, republicans, fiscal conservatives like

representative chip roy, who want to cut the debt, want to cut the deficit, want to rein in the budget and keep the debt limit there as a reason to revisit this every once and a while versus donald trump who would like to see the debt limit just go away because he is the king of debt. so, that, i think it is maybe not this week, but this is coming attractions, stay tuned for more on mike johnson. >> charlie, isn't this really going to come down to sooner are later and i predict sooner, a battle between the true believers on the maga side, and those that are doing transactional politics using the maga base, including trump himself and elon musk and others because i think -- i've seen this happen on the left, i think that they misunderstand or mistaken that some of the people that are out there with them really believe in this stuff

against foreigners, against people of color and all, and they're kind of just doing whatever they think will get them to wherever they want to achieve. isn't this going to come down to that and it could come to a head as early with mike johnson and the speaker's race, certainly going to come down to when we deal with h-1b. >> well, yeah, it is going to come down to a lot of different issues. you're going to see this on issues of international trade, on the tariffs, on the spending cuts. you have a lot of the -- you described them as transactional. many of the members of the business community and wall street are on board because they want certain regulatory changes, they want certain tax cuts, and they're telling themselves, well, trump doesn't actually mean it with the tariffs. okay, so, ramaswamy and musk will propose all kind of draconian spending cuts, but that's not really going to go anywhere. well, at some point you are

going to have a conflict because the true believers know that they have a limited amount of time to get their agenda through. it is probably going to become relevant at some point that donald trump is a lame duck and so the power struggle is going to be very, very real. and for the true believers, they think that they may have a two-year window to get everything done, the transactionalists will be surprised to find out they bought into something that is somewhat different than they expected. >> msnbc contributor charlie sykes, thank you. matt lewis, thank you as well. we really appreciate the conversation. still ahead here on "morning joe," we'll take a closer look at former president jimmy carter's life and legacy beyond the oval office. the head of habitat for humanity for join us to talk about carter's tireless volunteer work. "morning joe" is coming right back. lunteer work "morning joe" is coming right

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♪♪ we know the strength of america. we are strong. we can regain our unity. we can gain regain our

confidence. we're the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. >> former president jimmy carter has passed away at the age of 100. this morning we're remembering his lasting impact both in and out of office. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is monday, december 30th. i'm jonathan lemire. joe and mika have the morning off. thank you so much for joining us. and joining us for this conversation, we have the co-host of "the weekend" on msnbc, symone sanders townsend, president emeritus of the council on foreign relations, richard haass, and author, columnist and political analyst jonathan alter, he wrote the acclaimed 2021 biography of president carter titled "his very best." and with us by phone is rogers chair in the american presidency

at vanderbilt university historian, our friend jon meacham. we'll get to all of our wonderful panel in a moment. we're going to start this morning with reflections on the remarkable life of the 39th president of the united states. mika brzezinski brings us a deeper look into the late president's legacy. >> he was the man from plains. an outsider who rose from the southern soil to the ultimate seat of power. >> i'd like to announce i am a candidate for president. >> america turned to jimmy carter after years of upheaval, a person of integrity to kaunl a pained nation. born in 1924, his boyhood home lacked electricity and indoor plumbing. they were peanut farmers. and at an early age, carter declared himself born again. >> i worship jesus christ, who

we christians consider to be the prince of peace. >> he attended the u.s. naval academy, graduating in 1946. just weeks after receiving his commission he married 18-year-old rosalynn smith, his life long neighbor. >> i went over next door to look at the little girl who -- the newborn baby on the street. i've known her ever since the first day she was born. >> the carters' growing family traveled the country on military assignment and jimmy worked on launching america's first nuclear submarines. when carter's father died in 1953, jimmy left the navy and took over the family farm. >> i'm proud of the heritage that shows concern for the working men and women, for the backbone of our great nation. >> it provided the platform to launch a political career in the turbulent 1960s, when civil rights and supreme court rulings were changing southern politics. >> i didn't realize at that early age that my friends' mothers and fathers couldn't

vote, couldn't serve on the jury, the schools were inferior. >> carter ran for governor, lost and came back four years later to win in 1970. he became the face of the new south, painted in dixie colors on the cover of "time" magazine. but carter didn't have much time to build a national profile, constricted to just one term. he announced his bid for the white house during his final weeks in office. and carter was so unknown that a television quiz show panel was unable to name him. >> come down to georgia to see us. >> we'll come down here and make a movie, thank you for being here. >> southerners were long written off as presidential contenders, and few thought carter would make it. "the new york times" wrote, as a national political base, the governorship of georgia has been only slightly more awesome than the governorship of american samoa. >> i'd like to win all the primaries. i can't deny that. >> carter was propelled to the nomination by early wins in iowa, new hampshire and elsewhere, defying expectations

as watergate and the vietnam war had shaken americans' confidence in their leaders. he was accessible and candid. sometimes too candid. like when he caused a stir admitting to "playboy" magazine i looked on a lot of women with lust. carter said he regretted the interview. his opponents pounced. >> couldn't understand frankly why he was in "playboy" magazine. and we'll give him the bunny vote. >> carter went into the general election with a big lead until october when the race tightened between him and president gerald ford, who had a quarter century's worth of experience in washington, but on election night, americans turned to the peanut farmer. >> i can tout the greatness of the american people we can make our government great and a source of pride once again. >> carter walked the mile and a half length of his inaugural parade hand and hand with rosalynn, to display his openness to the american people. the president sought to lead by

example throughout his administration, a frugal commander in chief, conserving energy by putting on a sweater. >> the press office was chillier than usual today. he ordered the thermostats in the white house turned down to 65 degrees. >> his focus on foreign policy would define his presidency for better and worse. >> we will not seek to dominate nor dictate to others as we americans have included one chapter in our nation's history and are beginning to work on another. >> my father, zbigniew brzezinski, who had been informally advising him, joined his staff as national security adviser. >> he had the good sense of humor, waking you up in the morning fashion. >> president carter was serious about making a lasting impact on the world, a treaty over the panama canal, an agreement with the soviet union on nuclear arms control. yet his proudest legacy was his most personal, as governor of georgia, carter had traveled to the middle east and bathed in the river jordan.

inspiring him to aggressively seek peace in the holy land. he studied the profiles of the leaders of israel and egypt and brought them to camp david for 13 days of tense negotiations. >> begin and sadat were incompatible. they couldn't be in the same room without exploding in anger. i kept them apart. they never saw each other for ten days. >> at the end, peace accords, uniting the bitter enemies. >> the scene in the white house last night was almost unbelievable. begin and sadat in a bear hug will be the first time in history that an arab nation has agreed to a peace treaty with israel. >> foreign policy was the high point of his presidency, but also the low. islamic fundamentalists took control of iran's government and seized the american embassy, taking over 50 american citizens hostage. a crisis, carter was unable to resolve. >> it was the worst fear of my life.

i never went to bed the last three days i was in the white house to get hostages released. >> tensions escalated with the soviet union. >> the cold war was the critical issue. the president was decisive. >> in 1979 when the soviet union went into afghanistan, i warned russia that -- the soviet union then, if they went into a different country, we would respond militarily with all the weapons we had at our disposal. >> it led to a boycott of the olympic games. >> i would not support sending an american team to the olympics. >> ours will not go. >> there were other crises on the home front. in the nationally televised address, carter spoke to what he called a crisis of confidence in america. >> this from a southern governor. mr. president, you're not leading this nation. you're just managing the government. >> though initially well received, many objected to the tone of what was soon dubbed the malaise speech, challenged from within his own party, carter persevered, but his re-election

bid was devastated by ten simple words. >> are you better off than you were four years ago? >> carter left the white house humbled, but not anywhere close to finished with public life. founding the carter center, a concrete building set into a hillside, a sturdy foundation for unprecedented ambition, with an agenda for seeking peace in global hot spots, housing for the homeless with his passion for habitat for humanity and being a voice for the diseased and depressed. >> we treated 36 million people for what the world health organization calls neglected tropical diseases. and this year we'll go over 70 million people. that's about seven times as many as live in georgia, matter of fact. >> out of office for more than four decades, he defined the modern post presidency. he faced the final challenge of his life with the same abiding

faith that propelled him into history. >> good morning, everybody. >> good morning. >> teaching a bible class, a sunday after announcing treatment for brain cancer, and soldiering on with a belief in god and a love for his fellow americans that lifted him up and brought him back. >> no matter where we are in the world, we always look forward to getting back home. >> mika brzezinski there. jonathan alter, you, of course, wrote a biography, a definitive biography of president carter published a few years ago. but this morning, share with us, if you will, a few of your top lines, a few of your biggest thoughts about president carter, someone who so acclaimed in his post presidency and you argue underrated while in office. >> well, jonathan, president carter led what can only be called an epic american life. he was born as we know 100 years

ago, 1924, but it might as well have been the 19th century, even earlier. no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no mechanized farm equipment. so, in some senses he was actually the only person you could think of who effectively lived in three centuries, 19th century, 20th century, of course, when he was involved with all of the great movements of that century, and not to mention being president, and then the 21st, where he's been on the cutting edge and the carter center has been central in the challenges of global health, conflict resolution, democracy promotion, the big issues of our century. and so i think it is important to look at him beyond this easy short-hand that you see everywhere. mediocre president, great former president. actually, that cliche is only half true.

he was an inspirational former president who redefined that role as joe biden said yesterday. but he was a much better president than people recognize. he's not going to go on mount rushmore, but he was in many ways a visionary american president who put a lot of points on the board for the environment, with his domestic legislation and other areas, and internationally even beyond camp david, the panama canal treaties, his human rights policy, normalization of relations with china, even bringing the hostages home safely, the foreign policy record of jimmy carter is much undervalued and i think there is a long overdue appraisal under way of his presidency. >> so, jon meacham, let's turn to you now.

how should we be thinking in your estimation about jimmy carter today, son of the south, a man of devout faith who in his presidency and post presidency triumph and failure so defined by the world stage. >> well, i think -- i agree with my friend jon alter, and the way i think about president carter is he's a complicated man. and driven by, like all people in the public arena, driven by different elements of ambition and service. and when you look at most american presidents, most of our key leaders in the arena, you have this tension. and what is so fascinating to me about president carter is here he is, an evangelical christian, new testament christian, who had a fascination with reinhold

niebuhr who is the protestant theologian who wrote books, titles like "the tragedy of american history." you have someone who believed in the capacity of human nature to make our lives, the lives of the less fortunate better, stronger, even nobler, but you also have someone who recognized the limitations of human endeavor. and the epigraph of his great campaign book was from niebuhr and the quotation was, it is the sad duty of politics to establish justice in a sinful world. it is not exactly a bumper sticker. but there is a great truth to that. and so what i think we are examining, what we're going to

experience this week is something that often happens in american life, which is great public commemorations, great public contemplations often tell us as much about ourselves as they do about the person being contemplated and commemorated. and what you're seeing, i think, with the passing of jimmy carter is a sad but illuminating, sad but illuminating instance of someone who while imperfect believed in the centrality of character, the centrality of abiding creed at a moment in american politics where character is not at the forefront of most voters' minds. >> so, richard haass, with that in mind, let's dive into president carter's foreign policy record. yes, highlighted in many ways by

the hostages, highlighted by the camp david accords, but also setting as the backdrop of the cold war. a time so tense where there was a moment when his national security adviser, mr. brzezinski, thought that the nuclear end to the globe was coming, it was just moments away. talk to us about that particular time in american life. >> jonathan, full disclosure, i was at the pentagon during the carter presidency, the last nearly two years of it, and what we saw at that time with the soviet invasion of afghanistan as well as the revolution in iran, it was a real sense of upheaval. and the optimism about how history was going was interrupted. people forget toward the end of his term, jimmy carter dramatically increased defense spending. he put down the foundations of what became the american military capacity to intervene in the persian gulf and middle

east. and in taking a step back, what was so interesting to me, and i actually agree with jonathan alter, i do think he was underestimated on his foreign policy, in part because of the iran hostage crisis, which in many ways was his political undoing, perhaps, along with inflation. but what was so interesting to me about jimmy carter is he encapsulated, he embodied the two great traditions of american foreign policy. he was an idealist brokering peace in the middle east, shall we say a long shot at the time, his views about human rights in the soviet union, at the same time he was a realist, the normalization of relations with communist china, recognizing then taiwan, the nuclear arms control agreements with the soviet union, the panama canal treaties, highly controversial, but from his point of view, this was the realistic way to go if we wanted to make sure there

wasn't going to be violence on the scene and the united states and others could continue to use the canal. so that, to me, is what is so interesting. most other presidents have struggled with getting that balance right. and, again, i think as time passes, he will be seen as a successful foreign policy president, interestingly enough, george herbert walker bush, another largely successful foreign policy president who is seen better with the passage of time and i think raises the interesting question about whether or not that may be joe biden's fate. >> jonathan alter, symone sanders townsend here. president carter, he had a strong civil rights legacy, not known to many, and i'm sure you're very familiar, but he was a -- the senior dr. king, dr. king's father was a close

confidant of his, dr. king's father advised him on many things. civil rights is a key part of his legacy. and so is ronald reagan. talk to us a little bit about the legacy that president carter left and how in the end of his presidency, reaganism was ushered in and now that transformation to what we now know as maga and the current iteration of this republican party. >> so, just on the civil rights question, the journey that jimmy carter was on from growing up in the brutal jim crow south to becoming a president of the united states who took the government from tokenism to genuine diversity, and appointed more black judges than any of his predecessors, all of them combined, same thing with women, he appointed more women to the bench than all of the predecessors combined, times

five. but it was a bumpy journey, and i remember when i was interviewing him, one of my many interviews with him for the book, at one point he stopped me and said, i never claimed to be part of the civil rights movement. so he never knew martin luther king, even though, you know, he was serving in the state senate in atlanta. and -- but he represented a very conservative district in georgia, and so he actually tacked right, not to the racist right, but he tacked right early in his career, and then when he became governor of georgia, within seconds of taking the oath of office, he said the time for racial discrimination is over. and this was a shocking statement in georgia politics. it put him on the map nationally

in 1971. and the -- there was a walkout of his white colleagues and from then on, he basically spent the second half of his life making up for what he did not do in the first half. stand up for civil rights. and he put dr. king's portrait in the georgia state capital, and became very close to daddy king, coretta king and went on to this career that we're familiar with in civil rights. and as far as reagan goes, you know, the idea of make america great again, maga, that notion actually started with ronald reagan. so he was using some of these same nationalist arguments including against the panama canal that we now can see in the trump movement. there is a connective tissue between reagan and trump,

although reagan had some character and so we were living in a time when even though politics was rough, there were these guardrails that existed in the carter/reagan period. and these are now at -- back at issue and were asking questions about decency in our politics that are raised by the life and career of jimmy carter who was a man of peace and great decency. coming up, can mike johnson keep his job as speaker of the house? there is a vote this friday and right now his prospects are seriously in doubt. "the washington pojackie alemany has the latest. that's straight ahead here on "morning joe." latest that's straight ahead here on "morning joe."

welcome back. this morning, investigations are under way after a passenger plane crashed at a south korean airport yesterday, leaving 179 people dead. just two passengers from that plane survived. nbc news international correspondent meagan fitzgerald has the latest. and we do want to warn some viewers now, some of the images you're about to see are disturbing.

>> reporter: horrifying images from a south korean airport, a passenger plane skidding across the runway after the landing gear appears to have failed, before crashing into a wall and bursting into a massive fireball. miraculously first responders who rushed to the scene managed to pull two people out alive. but many of the families of the 179 others waited inside the muan airport, just 180 miles south of seoul, as the names of the deceased were announced. screams of agony and devastation filling the airport. as south korean officials offered an apology and vowing a swift and thorough investigation. so far the flight radar for tracking the plane's journey from bangkok, thailand, to south korea didn't appear to show anything unusual. but officials say a bird strike may have started the deadly chain of events, which caused the pilot to issue a mayday

warning. when you see this video of the landing of this aircraft, what does that tell you? >> this crash was tough to watch. and it is tough to piece together based on what we know so far. bird strikes don't bring down airplanes like this.s ter a weekend of aviation incidents. a klm flight heading to amsterdam made an emergency landing in norway after what the airline described as a loud noise. and an air canada flight in halifax experienced a suspected landing gear issue as well, preventing it from reaching the terminal. and back in south korea, so many unanswered questions surrounding one of their most deadly plane crashes in history. >> we'll bring you any updates as they come on the truly terrible tragedy there in south korea. elsewhere, the white house this morning, a few moments ago, announcing that an additional $2.5 billion in u.s. support is heading to ukraine. president joe biden says the

funding will provide ukraine with an immediate influx of capabilities that it continues to use to great effect on the battlefield and longer term supplies of air defense, artillery and other critical weapons systems. meanwhile, russian president vladimir putin has offered an apology to the president of azerbaijan following last week's deadly plane crash in kazakhstan, but stopped short of taking responsibility for the downing of the airliner. this comes amid mounting allegations that the plane was hit by two -- was hit by russian air defenses. two u.s. military officials told nbc news on friday that there was intelligence that indicated that russians may have misidentified the plane as a drone and then shot it down. 38 people were killed when the plane crashed. richard, let's turn to you on this. putin stopped short of saying that russia was responsible, but did offer this apology. certainly this is not the first time that they have been

accused, credibly, of taking down a civilian aircraft. and now we have news this morning from the white house, more aid heading from washington to kyiv, set against the backdrop of a ticking clock with january 20th and a brand-new approach, we assume, for president trump coming to office. how would you assess where things stand right now in that conflict in ukraine? >> well, in terms of ukraine, jonathan, you know, the battlefield is not all that different for what it was three years ago when russia invaded in february of '22. in recent months, the russian troops had begun to gain a little more territory in the east, they're attacking civilian infrastructure so there is a kind of war fatigue in ukraine. i think rushing this equipment to ukraine on one hand it is needed, on the other hand it is not going to change any of the fundamentals. i think what is really important is to nail down the position of the ukrainian government, that in exchange for american

military support they're prepared to compromise, not their principles or long-term goals but accept some type of interim or temporary cease-fire and the reason i say that, so when donald trump becomes president, i think it is important that he sees vladimir putin rather than mr. president zelenskyy as the impediment to peace. donald trump has talked about how much he wants to bring this war to an end. again, i think it is important that he sees the problem in moscow. and not in kyiv. >> richard, let's talk about where putin stands right now. there has been -- we spent years talking about the state of this conflict, his grip on power. you know, that it seemed like he was vulnerable a year or two back, there was the group he put down, russia has grown that much more of a repressive society in -- since the war in ukraine began. but there is also real warning signs with the russia economy as

well as the toll of this conflict in terms of men going into battle and being killed or coming back wounded. how would you assess -- how is putin right now -- how is his grip on power, just what is russia's strength writ large right now, you know, coming up on the three-year mark of this war. >> my guess, jonathan, is putin is strongly in power until he's not. the parallel comes to mind and a lot of people are not going to buy this. putin has basically destroyed institutions in russia. what he's done instead is built a kind of cronyist government. he controls the war narrative that seems to be fairly effective, even though the cost, the economic and military and human cost of the war have been astronomical. russia has not realized its ambitions in ukraine. so that's where things stand.

the economy is weak. the price of oil, which russia is so dependent on, has gone down in recent months. the sanctions have had some effect. so, again, it is the reason that i think it is so important that if donald trump wants peace, what he basically says to putin is we're going to continue to arm ukraine, they're willing to compromise. we'll relax some of the sanctions against you, but only if you compromise. i think this backdrop does give donald trump something to work with. i'm not going to suggest it is easy. putin is going to hate compromising, he's going to have to spin it as a victory. but i think the cost of the war and the weakening of the russian economy give donald trump something to work with here. coming up, inside joe biden's lonely battle to sell his vision of american democracy. "the washington post's" tyler

pager joins us with his latest piece on the outgoing president when "morning joe" comes right back. outgoing president when "morning joe" comes right back

third and three. blitz coming. picked up. gets intercepted! breaking in front is c.j. gardener johnson, house call. pick six to open the day! >> o'connell, seeking, serving, surging. launches, got a man! it is tucker! it is held on to for the touchdown! >> mayfield rifles it, open. mcmillan, touchdown! tampa bay! >> second and 14. heaves it to the end zone, oh, what a catch. >> very good getting in and out of his breaks. >> new set of downs for the giants. he breaks free. down the sideline! he's going to take this all the way! >> second down.

has time this time. throws, going deep.he got it! touchdown, minnesota! >> third and goal from the 2. it is jayden daniels! caught for the touchdown! zach ertz takes washington into the playoffs! >> those were some of the biggest touchdowns from across the nfl yesterday. and to help us understand it all, let's bring in the host of "pablo torre finds out" on meadowlark media. msnbc contributor, pablo torre. good it see you this morning. let's start with the vikings and packers game. the marquee matchup of the day. these are two teams we talked all season long about, what a juggernaut the nfc north is. and the cinderella story of sam darnold continues with the vikings defeating the packers yesterday and now playing the

lions next week with the winner of that game top seed in the nfc. >> this is the strongest division in the nfl. the strongest division in recent memory. i told you that all season long, jon. and this game against a team that is probably the best third place finisher in division history, in the packers, i think decisive win for sam darnold again was this reclamation project from the new york jets, who went interest from a guy who was a stopgap sort of, like, i guess we got to go with this guy kind of solution to a person who the vikings now have to decide is he the quarterback of our future, even though we just drafted j.j. mccarthy out of michigan in the top ten in the last draft. in the present tense, the vikings are incredible. two losses this season, to the lions, as you aforementioned, playing -- hosting the vikings next sunday to decide the division and that guy with the purple cap on his head is kevin o'connell, the coach of the

vikings, also the prohibitive favorite for coach of the year. incredible, incredible job he's done with that defense. but especially sam darnold in that offense. >> yeah, so, just really incredible and vikings have a decision to make after the season as to whether sam darnold is the future or turn it over to the first round pick j.j. mccarthy or look to shop the young qb. we saw jayden daniels there hitting a touchdown, commanders come back, they win, playoff bound. it is one of the better stories this year in the nfl the way this rookie, number two overall pick just revitalized not just the team, but, like, that entire franchise and region, which has been starved for a winner for so long. >> right. the recent history of the commanders is as bleak as any team in professional sports. and jayden daniels in this matchup specifically, we have not seen a matchup of rookie quarterbacks like this, to give you a tale of the tape here,

jayden daniels, there he is, throwing the winning pass to his tight end in overtime to beat the falcons. the falcons were starting michael penix jr. in a rare matchup. you get two rookie quarterbacks starting for two different teams, it is bad news for both teams. they are struggling. they got nothing else to play for. let's throw him out there. that is not the case here. the falcons are still on life support because michael penix is giving them this spark of life. he did try to lead a game-winning drive at the end, some clock mismanagement, i would argue on the part of the coach helped do that as well as the play of jayden daniels who, again, is just wise beyond his years. hard not to sound like a cliche spouting football coach, but to run for 100 some odd years, you know, to win this game on the ground, so, it is just a remarkable thing for a team and the commanders that, yes, is now

officially, we can say it, a playoff team, which is an incredible, incredible turn around. >> so, we're talking about triumphs, pablo. now let's talk about tragedies on the football field. and the worst in the league, in beginning with -- let's talk about the new york giants, they won yesterday and that very fact is what has angered so much of their fan base because they won, they beat the colts yesterday, colts team that was playing for the -- had a shot at the post season, but the giants win and by doing so, move out of the number one overall draft pick position. they're no longer picking number one, they slid back, the new england patriots who were embarrassed on saturday by the chargers, they have a quarterback and nothing else, suddenly they're in the pole position and now we look to week 18 where frankly a lot of these teams are going to try their best to lose without looking overtly like they're doing so. talk to us about this bizarre dynamic. >> it is so difficult to be the

worst run team in the new york area right now. the jets, of course. we talk about them, laugh at them every single week and we should. but the giants, all they had to do was lose. they had the pole position as you said. they had no reason to win. for those who are not familiar with pro sports and the nfl draft in particular, it is a funny bit of socialism. where the worst yet the best, the worst ranked team gets the number one overall pick, that would have been the giants, instead you wake up a giants fan and here is the headline, i go with "the daily news" on this one, yay, exclamation point, just a sarcasm which i appreciate, underappreciated sarcasm. you don't get anything for what is truly a moral defeat, a literal victory, but a moral defeat. it is rare you get that in sports. here you have a team, against its own best interests, losing the ability by all probability to take sanders out of colorado, or cam ward out of miami,

another star quarterback, because they wanted to do stuff like this and it is amazing that your new england patriots, they happen to have now the inside track on a number one pick in a season in which the giants just gave it to them for no rational reason. coming up, a key part of jimmy carter's legacy came after he left the white house. the 39th president worked tirelessly on behalf of habitat for humanity and we'll talk to that organization's ceo straight ahead here on "morning joe." that ahead here on "morning joe."

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i got this $1,000 camera for only $41 on dealdash. dealdash.com, online auctions since 2009. this playstation 5 sold for only 50 cents. this ipad pro sold for less than $34. and this nintendo switch, sold for less than $20. i got this kitchenaid stand mixer for only $56. i got this bbq smoker for 26 bucks. and shipping is always free. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save. . welcome back to "morning joe." we will now turn back to the passing of former president jimmy carter. in just a moment. but first, a look at the 2024 election and the emergence of an unexpected group of voters. nbc news correspondent trymaine lee explains.

>> reporter: the 2024 presidential election year was a roller coaster, marked by politics not as usual. and the remarkable new focus on an unexpected group of voters. >> black male voters could prove to be a key swing voting bloc. >> reporter: as primary season kicked off, some voters seemed unenthused. >> what is missing from, like, the election cycle? what is missing? >> a good candidate right now. >> reporter: what is the word you think when you see these two candidates running for president? >> oh, hell no. >> reporter: and democrats worried about their base. >> the president's support among black voters is slipping. a recent nbc news poll shows just 61% would now choose him over a republican. >> he's about to lose me. >> reporter: while former president donald trump eyed a potential opening. >> donald trump's campaign is targeting young black men believing that this year the gop can win them over. >> i love the black population of this country.

i've done so much for the black population of this country. >> reporter: as this long overlooked voting bloc made it clear what mattered most to them -- >> anything that is going to directly affect my community -- >> we are entrepreneurs and we are business persons and we are homeowners and we want some real discussions around economic matters in the community. >> reporter: some felt ignored. >> we haven't heard anything from a democrat or a republican. >> reporter: some felt empowered. >> i want to make a decision that is going to be impactful. >> we need to save ourselves. if we're looking for somebody to save us, it is not going to happen. >> reporter: a tug and pull between the status quo and the hope for something new. >> people come to our communities and pander for our votes. >> reporter: and then an 11th hour candidate shake-up. >> not about me. it is about you. >> reporter: president biden bowed out of the race. >> are you ready to make your voices heard? >> reporter: and vice president kamala harris became the nominee. >> and when we fight --

>> we win! >> reporter: and suddenly there was something new, along with new energy, for candidate kamala harris, looking to make history as the country's first indian, black and woman president. >> let's get out and make kamala harris the 47th president. >> reporter: a slew of black celebrities showing their support. >> our black men, we got to get them out to vote. >> reporter: the trump campaign had its own endorsements. >> let's vote for trump, baby. make some noise for the president. >> reporter: the former president courted controversy with his version of black voter outreach. >> they're taking black jobs. black people walking around with my mug shot. and a lot of people said that that's why the black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against. >> reporter: but for some black men, there was an appeal beyond trump being trump. >> he has good folks around him. good policy. and so that's all i'm looking for. >> reporter: in the end, the vast majority of black voters

including black men stood by vp harris, many dreaming of a new way forward. >> i voted for kamala. i think it is time to try something new. >> reporter: but there were unforecasted shifts and the surprising realignment of voters including growth with hispanic men and young people. among them, young black men, all moving toward trump. >> the democratic party trying to understand shifts in its core coalition. >> reporter: and setting the stage for a reckoning to come in american presidential politics. president-elect trump will be inaugurated on martin luther king jr. day, begging for some the question of what happens to a dream deferred? coming up, nbc's andrea mitchell covered jimmy and rosalynn carter for decades, and she joins us in our fourth hour to reflect on the former president's passing. that conversation is just ahead on "morning joe." ent's passing. that conversation is just ahead on "morning joe. fingersticks. dexcom g7 is the most accurate cgm,

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coming up, what's driving the day on wall street? we'll get a live report from cnbc as the markets prepare to kick off a brand-new year. "morning joe" is back in just a moment. a brand-new year. "morning joe" is back in just a moment

♪ ♪ >> those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity, and who suffer for the sake of justice. they are the of this cause. i believe with all my heart america must always stand for these basic human rights at home and abroad. that is both our history and our destiny. >> that was then president jimmy carter in january of 1981

talking about the importance of human rights, an issue that would become central to his post-presidency. welcome to the fourth hour of "morning joe." thank you so much for joining us this morning. tributes are still pouring in following the death of former president jimmy carter who passed away in plains, georgia yesterday at the age of 100 years old. nbc news chief white house correspondent peter alexander takes a look back at the life and legacy of the 39th president of the united states. >> my name is jimmy carter and i'm running for president. >> reporter: the longest living former president in u.s. history who redefined post- presidency with his dedication to faith and public service. carter was virtually unknown when he ran for president in

1976. he grew up on a farm with no electricity or indoor plumbing. carter attended the u.s. naval academy, studied physics, and worked in the nuclear submarine program but his father's death brought him back home, where he ran the family peanut farm. in 1972, carter served two terms in the state senate before becoming governor. in the old south, he was something new. >> the time for racial discrimination is over. >> reporter: beyond georgia, many did not know who carter was and stomped with an appearance on what's my line in 1973. a year later he announced he was running for president in the wake of watergate and other scandals. the political outsider and born- again christian was viewed as a

change. he narrowly beat ford in the general election becoming the first president from the deep south in nearly a century. from the very start carter signaled his would be a down to earth presidency walking the entire way from the capitol to the white house during his inauguration and swapping his suit for a sweater while discussing the energy basis. >> there is no way i or anyone in the government can solve the energy crisis if you're not willing to help. >> reporter: carter's lack of experience in politics gave him a severe handicap. he blocked initiatives but carter found more success with matters of foreign policy, emerging as a champion of human rights. >> no, man of the united nations can plan the treatment of its citizens solely it's on business. >> reporter: the camp david accords, a major achievement. carter led marathon talks between israel and egypt.

bringing a historic peace treaty that is still in place today. a soviet invasion of afghanistan prompted carter to boycott the moscow olympics, and then there was iran, where dozens of americans were taken hostage. consuming his final year in office, a mission to rescue the hostages ending in tragedy. >> it was my intention to rescue -- >> reporter: at home when the economy tanked, so did carter's popularity. widespread gas shortages -- >> the erosion of our confidence in the future -- >> reporter: carter blamed the troubles on confidence. his political weakness brought challenges from senator kennedy in 1980, a race carter won only to face a more formidable opponent, ronald reagan. >> i bring new hope to america.

>> reporter: carter lost his bid to reelection in a landslide but never lost faith in himself or his principles. carter's love story was one for the ages. he married rosalynn smith and the girl he knew from his childhood became not only his closest friend but most trusted advisor. >> the best thing i ever did was mary rosalynn. >> reporter: they had 4 children, more than 20 grandchildren. after leaving the white house, they dedicated themselves to public service. >> this is the best time of our lives. >> reporter: in 1982 they announced the carter center, promoting democracy around the world. at age 78 carter became the third american president to be given the nobel peace prize. his work for habitat for humanity spanned decades and

both carters continued their work into the 90s, celebrating anniversaries and birthdays. carter said goodbye to rosalynn, his wife of 77 years, the longest presidential marriage in history. in october, the former president was seen by the public for what would be the last time celebrating his hundredth birthday punctuated by a navy flight over. carter died surrounded by family. his son saying, my father was a hero, not only to me, but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love. a leader who served not only his country, but the world. >> a wonderful life, friends, and exciting, adventurous, gratifying existence. >> we just learned this morning the state funeral for president jimmy carter will be held on

thursday, january 9th. joining us now, msnbc chief washington correspondent andrea mitchell, chief white house correspondent, peter baker, and the reverend al sharpton is with us as well. thank you all for joining us this morning. andrea, i will start with you. you covered former president carter. talk to us about what you are thinking about this morning, the day after his passing. >> reporter: so many thoughts because i covered him in the white house and his post- presidency, and i was really struck what richard said to you earlier this morning because we focus so much on the campaign and on that legacy in terms of the white house achievements and foreign policy, but we forget the panama canal treaty which cost him so much politically and again, what he

achieved in terms of the diplomacy with china, which had been started, of course, with nixon going to china in 1972 but the diplomacy to recognize china, taiwan, to make that one policy is something that continues to this day with few interruptions along the way, so i think profoundly when i think about him and haiti, him and cuba, jimmy carter and human rights, jimmy and rosalynn carter doing somewhat for blindness, for global health around the world and elsewhere, jimmy carter is a deeply religious man who lived his values and had a profound effect on the country and on the world. >> peter baker, you're one of the co-authors of the obituary

in today's new york times and you are such a chronicler of the presidency. where do you think carter fits in in the story of that office? >> a unique occupant of that office. he's not unlike many of the other presidents around him. andrea just talked about this. he was a man of plain origins from plains, georgia. he not only walked the walk, but when he returned home from the presidency, he returned to the same house that he had built with rosalynn in 1961 and lived there for the rest of his life, a small ranch house that was once calculated in 2018 to be $167,000, less than the cost of the secret service vehicles parked out front. he didn't cash in the other presidents had he didn't care

about celebrity for celebrity sake. he put his values to the test every day of his life, even after he left office and he could've easily, you know, focused on his own business, his own family, or what have you. andrea talked about his commitment to fighting disease. he particularly targeted warm infecting africa. there were 3.5 million cases that year and in 2024, only seven cases around the world, so he made a difference even after leaving office. the office that he could do things as a post president that he couldn't do while in office. >> vice president kamala harris has put out a statement on the passing of former president carter and rights this. president jimmy carter was guided by a deep and abiding faith in god, in america, and

humanity. jimmy carter's life is a testament to the power of service, as a lieutenant in the united states navy, the 76th governor of georgia, and 39th president of the united states. he reminded our nation and the world there is strength in decency and compassion. i had the privilege of knowing president carter for years. i will always remember his kindness, wisdom, and profound grace. his life and legacy continue to inspire me and will inspire generations to come. our world is a better place because of president carter. that is one of the themes this morning, this idea of being called to service. that president carter believed in that so very much in his public life and as a politician and president, but certainly for the decades afterwards as well where he donated his time to others including parts of the globe so few others dread. >> he personified the idea of

the bible, which he was a very serious practicing christian, said he found himself in doing bigger things than just for his own ego or gratification, which is rare in politicians. i think that is what made him so beloved. he was a man out of the deep south. it had been 100 years since we had a deep south president who championed civil rights. let's not forget he appointed one of dr. martin luther king's top lieutenants to the u.n. ambassador ship less than a decade after dr. king was killed. he stood up for jim crow and a lot of civil rights causes. he helped push a program with

jesse jackson. all of that with controversial. he had vision and commitment. very close to daddy king, martin luther king junior's father. he would deal with things and when i met him, he would challenge me. i see activism but don't forget the ministry. well, that is my ministry and they preach in church every sunday. he said your prayer life is very important and that is who he was. to contrast him with the divisiveness and self-indulgence we see today is something we ought to think about over the next few days because his legacy will be more important and will last longer in life than i believe in his passing. than most politicians that last in office. >> andrea, let's get you to

focus on the legacy president carter left on the world stage buffeted by a crises out of his control that negatively impacted his time in office, but also what he did globally is a post president. >> reporter: well, for instance, he went to haiti with at the time bill clinton was president and he went to haiti with powell at a time when the president had been overthrown by a military coup and he was trying to resolve that. he went to cuba on rights and met with fidel castro. he went around the world overseeing elections as part of the carter center. he was such an advocate for human rights. you may recall after the soviets invaded afghanistan, the russians invaded afghanistan in 1879, he canceled the u.s. delegation to the

olympics in protest of that, which was also very controversial. the iran hostage crisis, of course, that revolution and the crisis of hostages being taken for over 400 days overwhelmed his final year in office and of course, the oil prices that caused inflation, the energy crisis despite his efforts on climate change really, you know, were negative domestic impacts. but around the world, recognizing what he and a rosalynn carter did for decades and decades after his presidency and the middle east negotiations with egypt recognizing israel as the first arab state to do that. that is the template for the abraham accords and certainly jordan recognizing israel as well, its closest neighbor. if not for camp david, nothing that followed would have been

possible. clinton tried to follow up and the assassination interrupted that. there has never been ever since, and look at what is happening today. nothing has been achieved to the people at camp david. >> certainly a legacy that will live on. peter, president biden spoke yesterday about former president carter and the state funeral next week in washington, but tell us about this juxtaposition, this memory of jimmy carter led by president biden but happening in a moment that is about to become donald trump's washington again. >> reporter: those were quietly happy this is taking place on biden's watch then trump's

watch spared people awkward moments. biden, of course, admires carter. trump has denigrated him repeatedly on the campaign trail, even on his hundredth birthday. trump use carter as a ploy to mock president biden, so this will be a moment biden can be the one to reside over the cathedral, to deliver the main eulogy, and they had us a closer relationship than presidents had. carter didn't always get along well with other people who held office. he had criticism on how they did their business and they didn't appreciate his diplomacy, as andrea just talked about, but biden appreciated that and they had a close relationship. he was the first democratic senator to endorse in 1976 for the presidency in the first

sitting president in 2021 to ever visit carter at his home to pay him the honor other presidents since his departure had ever given him. i think there is a certain appropriateness that biden is the president at that's particular moment. there is this odd parallel with biden's presidency. hobbled by inflation, trying in the final days of his tenure to get hostages free in the middle east. there is that echo of history in that sense there, so i think the timing here is actually quite interesting. >> i could not agree more. please, go ahead. >> reporter: with the amount of press, he reshaped the modern vice presidency by making him a

full partner in the white house. i heard biden speak of that when he was vice president. you know, a tribute saying he really reshaped the vice presidency but it was because jimmy carter let him do that and that was the moment biden believed he was taking barack obama and arguably he did not confirm that with kamala harris in the first years of his presidency. >> we are very grateful for this conversation this morning. peter baker, thank you. andrea mitchell, thank you as well. we appreciate it. coming up on "morning joe," house lawmakers will vote on whether to reelect mike johnson as speaker, but republicans remain really divided. we will have those details for you in a moment. 4+, how a deadly plane crash in

south korea is impacting boeing. we will bring you a live report from cnbc next.

beautiful shot of the u.s. capitol this morning. 9:23 a.m. there in washington. that will be a beautiful place this week as house members vote whether to reelect mike johnson as speaker this friday following the recent government funding fight which passed the house with more democratic support than republican. johnson has already lost the support of one congress woman with multiple others saying they are unsure if they will back the current speaker. with a slim one seat majority, it's unclear where johnson will make up that vote. for more let's bring in congressional investigations reporter for the washington post, jackie.

good to see you. it seems johnson has an uphill fight ahead of him. preview for us the week ahead. >> reporter: before johnson faces his speaker reelection race, he has to grapple with a a laundry list of other items you will have to handle once he has the race settled which is negotiating a new funding bill to avoid a government shutdown adding to the laundry list of requests from trump and allies hoping there are enough republican votes so he doesn't have to rely on too many democrats to pass it and of course there is the debt ceiling donald trump continued to rail about yesterday on truth social and set targeting speaker mike johnson was spread assessing his good friend desi called him former speaker kevin mccarthy who was ousted from his position for extending the debt ceiling

for two years and trump is criticizing him for pushing it into the middle of the trump administration. as you noted, johnson will be facing an uphill battle with his ever so slim 2019 to 2015 majority if he wants to keep his job. you've got thomas massie voting for someone else. the house freedom caucus has caused doubt on the direction things are heading in and the way johnson handled the authorization and continuing resolution that was finally agreed upon two weeks ago during the initial first few steps of the negotiations where republicans felt that johnson had too many poison pills and allowed for a bloated budget and continuation of policies. but if you were listening to the sunday show over the

weekend, enough republican caution against trying to tank johnson, praising him for being in an impossible situation. as my colleagues were told before he left for the holiday, it is whatever trump says and whatever trump ultimately decides and right now according to what we are reading, it does not look like trump will pull the rug out from mike johnson. >> when we look at the fact this will lead to real instability with republicans in the house, he only needs one deflection and he has a problem i think leading hakeem jeffries. he said no democrat that votes there, at some point he said that. would nick come down to whether or not donald trump weighs in heavily? even donald trump has to be worried about being buffed

because he did not win when there was a showdown in the republican caucus and the senate. isn't there a lot at stake both from the republican party's stability and for the power or lack of power for donald trump to deliver everybody if he decides to make that move? >> reporter: absolutely, you are right. donald trump can do all of the phone calls and the threats from maga allies that he wants, but at the end of the day, you are right. it is up to this handful of very conservative members and what they ultimately decide to do. there were a number of republicans over the weekend going on fox news calling for republicans to put their civil war aside for the time being and try to stabilize the situation

by keeping mike johnson in his job. at the end of the day if there was one member who decides he wants to be the joe manchin of the house of representatives in the gop conference, that member has every right to do so and probably a buy-in from his constituency at the end of the day for taking such a measure. >> the washington post's jacqueline alemany, thank you for your reporting. we will talk again soon. busy there on capitol hill. elsewhere boeing shares have dropped this morning after south korea ordered an inspection of all b-737-800 planes in that country. that is the model that killed 179 people there. new york times reports boeing shares have lost 30% of their value this year.

joining us now, cnbc's contessa brewer. good morning, contests appear what might this drop in shares signal for boeing as markets are down across the board this morning? tell us about the market at large. >> reporter: what you see a lot of times is when the headlines hit, you will see shares react but at this point it's fairly standard what the south korean government has ordered, an inspection of all of the same model airplanes in south korea. by the way, the ntsb here will look at the boeing planes but right now we have no indication boeing is in any way to blame for the crash but it has been about starting with what we saw earlier this year at the beginning of the year when the plug blew out of the side of the aircraft and that was a four -- miraculous result there

that we did not see people dying on the plane but it sparked a renewed look at boeing. you will see that reaction based on the headlines. >> and tessa, let's turn to other headlines. treasury secretary janet yellen is warning leaders about raising the debt ceiling. what impact could this have? >> reporter: there are opportunities for the treasury department to take extraordinary action to avoid a fall, unless congress would take action but those maneuvers allow the federal government to continue operating for months but as you know, this has happened for years and years that congress will get to this debt limit point, debate increasing it, eliminating the debt ceiling altogether. there is back and forth on both

sides of the aisle and the debt is around the $36 trillion. a lot of those who come on cnbc say this is a huge factor and headwind for the markets not just in united states but globally to have this amount of debt sitting on our books and we don't want to see the debt ceiling eliminated. they want to see more fiscal responsibility from washington, d.c. but at the same time with the incoming administration and fights back and forth on whether congress should raise the debt ceiling, whether there should be an elimination of this, what you will see, there continues to be warnings on what the effect will be if the federal government were to shut down. >> and lastly, your tracking something called reinsurance renewals? explain what that is. >> reporter: oh, i love it. anytime someone says insurance, they stay away for the rest of

the conversation. it is insurance for insurance companies and we've seen prices skyrocket the last few years. insurance companies need this for the mega disasters. when you see prices go up because of inflation, people are opening their own insurance premium bills and seeing their own rates go up. reinsurance is a big reason why. we just got news from guy carpenter, an insurance company, who says prices will go down 5%. does that mean you will get cheaper rates for your own homeowners insurance? not necessarily because there are a lot of factors that go into that but because there has been an increase in prices, there is more competition now. more companies are getting into the insurance business and that's driving prices. meanwhile if you have invested

in reinsurance companies, shares are up 30% and 40%. companies like lemonade are up triple digits because of the growth in premiums. >> cnbc's contessa brewer, thank you for joining us this morning. coming up on "morning joe," with days left in office, president joe biden on whether he should have handled some decisions differently. very big decisions at that. the washington post's tyler joins us next, straight ahead here on "morning joe."

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i believe i recognize president our leadership in the world are america's vision for the future. nothing -- nothing

can come in the way of our democracy and that includes personal ambition. i've decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. >> that was president joe biden in july of this year explaining his decision to drop out of the presidential race. one of the most stunning moments of 2024, biden's announcement underscored a change in political times. let's bring in white house reporter from the washington post, tyler pager, whose latest piece is titled a joe biden's lonely battle to sell his vision of american democracy, his final chapter that looks at biden's theory of presidential leadership and it is a must read. tyler, good to see you this morning. the headline that attracted so much attention from so many was you reported in recent

conversations, president biden and his closest aides and confidants think he still could have won had he stayed in the race after that disastrous atlanta debate in june, he could have rallied and defeated donald trump. tell us more about that. >> reporter: the president has reflected in the days since the election and has said to friends, to allies, and to his closest advisors that if he decided to stay in the race he could have defeated donald trump. his theory was he was the only democrat who defeated him and he was best positioned to do so again. as you know, you have covered the aftermath of that debate. the president, his aides, his family thought the coverage of the debate was overblown and the reaction was unwarranted. they acknowledged the debate did not go well but kept going back to internal testing and

their polling that said showed a path for him forward and that was the fighting within the party that they blamed for the anxiety rippling through the country about his presidential candidacy. and so, in the days since trump won, biden says he is maintaining a believe he could have prevailed over trump in november. >> tyler, one of the things that i think is interesting, you talk about what he tried to achieve as president. i think he was the most consequential president in my lifetime in many areas from climate change to civil rights to voting rights to you name it, and a lot of it history will give him credit for but he didn't get it in the immediate time of his service and i'm wondering if you didn't think

he should have been pushed out of the race. donald trump had a disastrous debate and kamala harris beat him like a drum but no one was on the republican side saying he should pull out, so tell me how his legacy fits into his thinking and how he could pass the baton and didn't have a better candidate than kamala harris. if anyone deserved it, it was her. at the same time, the garnered respect for him should be underscored. >> reporter: yeah, that is something a lot of his aides and friends are taking solace in and the president himself is proud of his record. in a story published over the weekend there is a scene from the oval office talking about the message you wanted to send to staff, emphasizing he feels they have passed legislation and created a legacy that will impact america for generations and in conversations i've had

with his closest aides, they have ranked the president the 14th best in american history, noting trump was ranked last in that. donald trump is taking the oath of office, not joe biden, despite his deep desire to be the one staying in the white house but they are proud of the record. one of the things i wanted to look at in this story was the two pronged approach of joe biden's presidency. when he ran in 2020, i was there with him traveling in new hampshire while he made his case and one way he differentiated himself was making the case democrats need to work with republicans. they need to pass legislation in a bipartisan fashion and show americans democracy could work and deliver results. biden succeeded in a lot of respects by passing a

significant amount of legislation that would reshape the nation's infrastructure, the semiconductor chip industry, the climate. the second part in and of itself convinced americans to support his vision for the country's future and it was the tension between substance and style a lot of democrats were frustrated by as he decided as his term ends. >> yes, the legislative records, markable. history may regard him as an intermission within the trump era, rather than as he hoped to be an end to the trump era. tyler pager, thank you. the new piece is available to read online now and the whole series is worth checking out. former president jimmy carter will be remembered in part for his time and a hard hat. the ceo for habitat for humanity joins us to reflect on carter's decades of volunteer work. that is next here on "morning

joe."

it's not just governments that have a responsibility. it is a conglomerate momentum of individual citizens and this is to demonstrate our faith, our faith in ourselves, our faith in each other, and our faith in god. that's what habitat means to me. >> that was the late president jimmy carter talking about one of his life's greatest passions, volunteering for habitat for humanity. president carter and his wife,

rosalynn, volunteered with the organization every year from 1984 all the way to 2019 helping to build, renovate, and repair homes for those in need. joining us now to discuss the legacy of president carter, the ceo of habitat for humanity international , jonathan reckford. jonathan, thank you for joining us this morning. so, please take us to the beginning here. how did the relationship between habitat for humanity and former president carter began, and how did it flourish into the two almost becoming synonymous? >> well, it really of course was an incredible blessing for habitat for humanity. when president and misses rosalynn retired, habitat staff were going to church there and president carter got to know them, got to know the

organization but started volunteering locally in march of 1984 and everything changed for habitat, a tiny organization at the time. a busload of volunteers from south georgia went up to new york city and slept in a church basement on the lower east side of manhattan, that is when the world found out about habitat. no one had ever seen a former president of the united states and that became the annual jimmy carter work project which later became the jimmy and rosalynn work project but it was that sustained service and president carter was a very skilled carpenter. even more than that, it was a tangible way to express his faith. habitat for humanity was the best way he knew to put his faith into action in a tangible and practical way. he always said he got more out of volunteering than what he was able to give to it. >> jonathan, talk about how this was not some celebrity drive-by that president carter

would do. he would work whether the cameras were there or not, and he did this for years, when it was no longer just a fresh story but a real commitment and it was deeply rooted in his faith. >> very much so. you know, i had the incredible honor of working alongside him for 15 of those 35 years and he was legendary for his work ethic. one of the things he would always say on his first day in the opening devotional in the morning was i don't want anyone coming by asking for photos. if you're asking me for photo, you are not working, i am not working, and the person with the camera is not working so we will have time for photos at the end of the week but this time is about building houses for families. i think for him, he cared so

deeply about the quality of the work and the impact the work would have on families. people wanted to be in a carter house. i would warn them that is a great honor but comes with a lot of responsibility because you did not want to get that glare if he thought you weren't working hard enough. he could be a tough task master but he cared very deeply. i was with him with some of the most powerful people in the world and some of the least powerful people in the world and he was always the same person. that was exemplified when volunteering with habitat. it set such a great example for all of us. >> habitat for humanity international ceo jonathan reckford, thank you for sharing those stories with us this morning. we appreciate it. as we close out this morning, we wanted to take a moment to recognize the incredibly hard-working team that makes "morning joe" possible each and every day. we are so very grateful.

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remembering jimmy carter, a look back at the life of the 39th president as the nation remembers decades of public service that defined his legacy. also the probe into the deadly plane crash