he thought her life was in danger. that was his hook on linda. he gave her what she needed, which is somebody to say i love you, i will be here for you, i will hold your hand. that's what he preyed on. look, we all want someone in our lives who loves us and cares about us and tells us how great we are. linda curry not alone in that. but how long are you willing to stick around for what turns out to be your eventual murder after you already suspect your husband? in linda's case, for the rest of her life. that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. [theme music] morning, and welcome to this sunday edition of morning joe. >> weekend. it was another very

fast moving news week. here are some of the most important conversations you might have missed. >> president biden delivered his farewell address to the nation, capping four years in the white house as president and more than five decades in politics. speaking from the oval office, biden touted his legacy but also issued a series of stark warnings to the country as he prepares to cede power to president elect trump. >> i want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. this is a dangerous concern, and that's a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra wealthy people. the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. today, an oligarchy is taking shape in america of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,

and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. i'm equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country, as well. americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. the free press is crumbling, editors are disappearing. social media is giving up on fact checking. the truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. we must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power. meanwhile, artificial intelligence is the most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time. nothing offers more profound possibilities and risks for our

economy and our security, our society. unless safeguards are in place. i could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation. we must make sure ai is safe and trustworthy and good for all humankind. we need to amend the constitution to make clear that no president, no president is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office. the president's power is not limited. it's not absolute, and it shouldn't be. after 50 years of public service, i give you my word. i still believe in the idea for which this nation stands. nation where the strength of our institutions and the character of our people matter and must endure. now it's your turn to stand guard. may

you all be the keeper of the flame. may you keep the faith. i love america. you love it too. god bless you all. and may god protect our troops. thank you for this great honor. >> jonathan lemire, it's always a hard to figure out what will last, what will fall by the wayside as the years go by. >> but certainly with the rise of ai. >> hard not to imagine that his warning again, his eisenhower like warning against the tech industrial complex as as the power of ai rises largely unregulated and as silicon valley grows more powerful by the moment again largely unregulated, and the leaders there line up to make sure that donald trump will not have any need to go after them, to

regulate them, to have the government doing what i think most americans would want the government to do, having some sort of oversight role. that warning seems prescient. it seems like something we may be looking back on 20, 30 years from now, with regret that more people didn't listen, just like more people didn't listen to dwight eisenhower. >> yeah, that's clearly the takeaway line here in this remarkable speech. and there are two distinct themes. last night, the president delivered from the oval office. the first was sort of a love letter to the country talking about the statue of liberty and those who built it, and what it means for the nation to his own. his own story was sprinkled in there a little bit. you could see the pictures behind him there on the desk, including his late son, beau biden. he talked about how he still loves america and believes in its future, but and a defense somewhat of his record. and you could tell he made pointedly clear that he believes his team deserves the lion's share of the credit for this cease fire deal in in gaza. but, joe, you're

right. it also much of the speech was was fairly dark in a real a real warning. he used the word oligarchs, oligarchs, the united states of america. you know, he didn't name names, but it's pretty clear that some of these tech leaders surrounding donald trump right now were in his sights. he did talk, indeed about the tech industrial complex, invoking dwight eisenhower's famous farewell speech that included, of course, the worries about ai. he talked about the need to defend the united states still. and david ignatius, you know, he 50 years a 50 year public career in public service from the senate, the vice presidency, the president. a lot of personal heartache here at the end, obviously, disappointment that his mission was to defeat donald trump, which he did a strong legislative record for a time, but then to relinquish the stage again. and ahead of donald trump's return. what were some of your takeaways last night from his address, but in particular that war, that stark warning about the tech industrial complex, one that i

believe is how the speech will be remembered? >> i think that was the signature line to me. the irony of his warning is that these tech leaders, until very recently, for the most part, have been seen as supporters of the democratic party. silicon valley had been a stronghold of liberal views, and that, in an extraordinary way, has flipped in the last year as prominent people, mark zuckerberg of meta, jeff bezos, the head of amazon, the person who owns the washington post where i work. others in the tech industry have have really embraced trump, come to, to support his ideas. so i think it's that movement that's troubling president biden. this tech industrial complex is at once the key to our future prosperity, our ability to be the dominant player in the world, the incredible innovation of our tech sector is one of the

wonders of america. and in another sense, a danger whose dimensions we just don't understand very well. yet we see this huge, complex, ever, ever more powerful, ever, ever more central to our economy. i would note that president biden had an opportunity during his presidency to rein in these technology industries, to regulate them more, and generally didn't generally held back from that. he was pressed by by some progressives to do more. he didn't. his most decisive pronouncement on ai, the key technology has been to work with the government for greater safety and transparency, not to suppress the technology or the leaders. so i think this, at the very end of the speech, what moved me was biden in that kind of soft, almost wispy voice saying, now it's your turn. and he has given his whole life to politics, to these public issues

that matter so much. now it's your turn. and he's really saying, i'm worried about some things like these oligarchs. now you need to deal with them, right. >> and willie, of course, two things can be true at once. we talk about the explosion of america's economy, the strength overall of our gdp, our leadership in the world. so much of that does come from silicon valley. so much of that does come from our advantage with ai, but it seems a false choice continues to be presented by tech leaders, which is stay off our backs, stay out of our way. we've got this. if you try to regulate us at all, then you're playing right into china's hand. it is an all or nothing argument. that, of course, is just not compelling. but it is compelling to politicians and many people in the incoming administration. it's a it is one of the most powerful tools that

humans have ever had their hands on. and the idea that we somehow are going to just turn this over to tech bros and silicon valley who are saying, trust us, much like wall street bankers were saying, trust us on credit default swaps doesn't seem too compelling, but that does seem like the world we're going to be living in over the next four years. >> and you're right, that's the argument they make. >> if you hamstring us, you're handing the future to china. >> you're handing the future to other countries, to our adversaries, and you don't want to do that. so put us at the wheel. >> and clearly many of them elon musk, jeff bezos, mark zuckerberg are all going to be at the inauguration with prominent seats behind the incoming president of the united states. as donald trump is sworn in, a clear signal of who they support and who donald trump is there to support and who he trusts with our economy. >> so, richard, when you you think about ai and there's a lot to talk about in that speech.

>> so take this wherever you want of biden's speech last night on foreign policy particularly. >> but there's been this argument, too, that ai is too big to be legislated effectively. there's nothing that washington could do. there's no law it could pass to control this thing that that has spread into every device we use and every corner of our lives. so what is right now, sort of the dominant thinking about regulating ai in this moment? >> the short answer it's going to resist regulation both domestically and internationally, because it's not just a domestic challenge. you know, people have this image almost like arms control. nuclear weapons emerged. >> and we regulated nuclear weapons through arms control agreements. but nuclear weapons are in the hands of two players, the united states and the soviet union. >> incredibly hard to build. >> ai is decentralized, willie. plus it's dynamic. >> it's changing. since the show began this morning, it's already advanced. >> as a result, i actually think the chances for corralling ai, and since only the good parts were going to embrace and we're

going to push back against the bad parts, great idea in principle, extraordinarily difficult in practice. can i say one thing about the speech? also, what was interesting to me? you used the word robber barons. >> that's a phrase i haven't heard in a while. the vanderbilts, the carnegies, the rockefellers. i almost saw this speech as an attempt to wrestle back the mantle of populism from the republicans. donald trump has run a populist campaign, and that's allowed. he's the outsider. >> and what joe biden last night did was quite interesting, almost try to reclaim populism for the democratic party. >> a lot of biden's career has been about populism. the midwesterner who's upset about the loss of manufacturing jobs and been going after the oligarchs, which, again, is a really interesting phrase, and calling them robber barons. that, to me was basically defining for the democrats a line of attack for the future, the concentration of economic power and also the concentration of political power. and i think, you know, like everyone else, i think that will be what will

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invisible on the skin. it works like a dream. why didn't someone think of this sooner? >> donald trump plans to reshape the u.s. government as we know it. >> democrats have wasted no time in laying the groundwork to fight the incoming trump administration. the conversation right now is like, oh, we have to win back working class voters. >> but who are people talking about? >> it's no surprise that this is a time of reflection and reassessment for democrats.

>> donald trump wants a presidential cabinet full of loyalists that are going to push through his extreme agenda. >> don't miss the weekend, saturday and sunday mornings at 8:00 on msnbc. >> senator marco rubio drew bipartisan support from the senate foreign relations committee at a hearing to be confirmed as president elect trump's secretary of state. >> rubio, who spent years as the top republican on the senate intelligence committee, expressed views aligned with senators who work on foreign policy, including the ranking democrat who found common ground with rubio on quick filling, confirming vacant state department posts. >> will you commit to working with chairman risch and me to prioritize the advancement and confirmation of career state department officials? >> well, the answer to that is yes. but i would also point to the fact that i think we're

going to begin by prioritizing. we're going to look at what are the key issues in the world. >> there are obviously every post in the world is important or it shouldn't exist. and then the question is, which are the ones we bring to you first? and those are the ones that i think are most critical. i thought it was interesting. david ignatius, the marco rubio hearing for secretary of state, as well as the john ratcliffe hearing for the cia, unlike the hegseth hearing and even the bondy hearing, which we're going to get to in a moment. but but the confirmation hearings for secretary of state and for cia had had had a bipartisan air to both of those, didn't they? >> i thought so. marco rubio is a well known person in the senate. he's worked pretty closely with with senator mark warner on the senate intelligence committee, a committee that that prizes and requires bipartisanship because the subject that covers is so is so sensitive. ratcliffe has been working to speak with cia

director bill burns to get to know the place, to reassure employees that he's not going to conduct a witch hunt against the deep state. he's really been making an effort to reach out to the workforce there, so it's not surprising that those two, two nominations are going to go forward pretty easily. we still have a head. kash patel, rfk jr. i think some some pretty dramatic hearings. but no question that that that today's will talk in a minute about about pam bondi. but but rubio is so well known that the positions he laid out are not significantly different from those of the foreign policy positions of president biden. so not not surprising that that was smooth sailing. yeah. >> rubio's hearing was extremely chummy, talking to many of his on both sides of the aisle. many of his senate colleagues there. and it should be said, in contrast to some of these other nominees, showing command of the issues there as well, donald trump's pick for attorney general. meanwhile, pam bondi

sought to assure democrats yesterday she would not use the justice department to target the president elect's enemies. she made the comment after several democrats on the senate judiciary committee questioned bondi about her loyalty to trump. yes. >> would you have hired someone into the florida attorney general's office who you knew had an enemies list? >> senator, to cut to the chase, you're clearly talking about kash patel. >> i don't believe he has an enemies list. >> he made a quote on tv which i have not heard. >> there will never be an enemies list within the department of justice. >> you have said that department of justice prosecutors will be prosecuted in the trump administration. >> what department of justice prosecutors will be prosecuted and why? >> i said that on tv. i said prosecutors will be prosecuted to finish the quote, if bad investigators will be

investigated. >> you know, we all take an oath, senator, to uphold the law. none of us are above the law. >> bondi also refused to say whether she believed the 2020 election was stolen after she initially was involved in the legal efforts to overturn trump's loss. >> are you prepared to say today, under oath, without reservation, that donald trump lost the presidential contest to joe biden in 2020? >> ranking member durbin president biden is the president of the united states. >> he was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the united states. >> there was a peaceful transition of power. >> president trump left office and was overwhelmingly elected in 2024. >> do you have any doubts that joe biden had the majority of votes, electoral votes necessary to be elected president in 2020? >> you know, senator, all i can tell you as a prosecutor is from my firsthand experience, and i

accept the results very telling. >> that's an answer we've heard from many of donald trump's supporters over the last several years as a way out of an answer, which is, well, joe biden is the president not being able to say clearly what should be able to say clearly, david, which is that donald trump did lose that election. and just let's say again, there was not a peaceful transfer of power january 6th. yeah. to refresh some memories here. so, david, you've been watching all these hearings very closely. let's start with pam bondi. how did she do yesterday. and do you think she's going to have the votes here in the end? >> i think she has the votes here in the end. >> but you're seeing the beginning of the sort of mission impossible. i think pam bondi faces and hegseth, you saw this also. they have to say what donald trump wants to hear. they can't say that joe biden won the election, you know, and at the same time, she's trying to say she's not going to abuse her powers. and so trump is expecting investigations and prosecutions, and she's going to have a hard time building cases that actually show that. and then she was this enemies list

issue was was stunning. kash patel is the nominee to be the fbi director. he wrote a nearly 300 page book full of allegations that there are all these deep state bureaucrats committing crimes. and then there is an appendix that we've talked about with the names of 60 people that's entitled deep members of the deep state, you know, executive branch. so that is a de facto enemies list. >> and these are all the issues she's going to face. >> and then from my interviews about the first trump administration, jeff sessions tried to walk this line. you know, he's going to uphold the rule of law, but donald trump's demanding he fire robert mueller. he refused to do that. he's forced out bill barr. donald trump demands that he help him overturn the 2020 election. bill barr refuses to do that. he upholds the rule of law and he's forced out. so this is going to be a very difficult path ahead for pam bondi. >> it should be said, too. i mean, relative to matt gaetz, people have said, well, she's much better than matt gaetz, which i don't think we agree shouldn't be the standard to be

the attorney general of the united states. but she was his first impeachment lawyer for donald trump, right? she represented him in the senate on that. and as we mentioned, she was there in 2020 talking about some of the conspiracy theories about joe, joe biden actually having lost the election when that wasn't true. she is a loyalist to the core, which is hard even in the space of a half day hearing or whatever it was to run away from. despite what you may be saying to get the votes. >> she's she is respected as a sort of serious attorney general who, you know, ran held that office in florida for two terms. >> and there's much less concern about her and the doj workforce than there is about kash patel, who has far less experience, who's far more political. she will be kash patel's boss. so again, this is this tension about producing what donald trump wants to see and hear versus facts and reality. >> up next, we'll dig into gene robinson's recent column with the headline time caught up with biden. it will also prove him

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among the topics president biden addressed in his speech yesterday at the state department, in which he touted his foreign policy achievements. >> today, i can report to the american people our adversaries are weaker than we were when we came into this job four years ago. just consider russia. when putin invaded ukraine, he thought he'd conquer kyiv in a matter of days. the truth is, since that war began, i'm the only one that stood in the center of kyiv. not him. he'd never had. think about it. new challenges will certainly emerge in the months and years ahead. but even. but even so, it's clear my administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play. and we're leaving them an america with more friends and stronger alliances whose adversaries are weaker and under pressure, and america, that,

once again is leading, uniting countries, setting the agenda, bringing others together behind our plans and visions. >> jean, i love the title of your piece time caught up with biden. it'll also prove him right. i want you to talk about that. i want you to talk about foreign policy, but it does bear repeating whether you want to talk about the price of eggs or gasoline or some of the things that people say moved voters during this election. and certainly it certainly had to move some voters. at the same time, historians, you say time is on his side, just like time was on harry truman's side when he left with the 22% approval rating history. the data is clear right now. as we've said on this show repeatedly, the u.s. is the envy. our economy is the envy of the world. jobless rates are at record lows. the stock market's at at record

highs. workers wages keep going up year over year. the crime rate keeps going down year over year. violent crime is actually at a 50 year low right now. and even illegal immigration, which was the issue that so many pundits said caused donald trump to defeat joe biden. as we said, even before the election, illegal immigration across the southern border at lower rates now than it was during donald trump's last year in office. so and that's not to say that he didn't have a disastrous policy the first two years. we're talking about, though, where he ends up. add to that fact more bipartisan legislation passed in one of the most partizan times in american history. and then on top of that, foreign policy. it's a record that may be

getting kicked around right now, but historians, jane, like you said, with the passage of time, hard not to see how they don't look at his achievements and say he did a pretty damn good job. >> well, historians, joe will have to look at the country when joe biden took office and the country as he leaves office. >> and the difference is just dramatic. we forget when he took office, we were still in the middle of covid, and so much of the country was shut down. we had the vaccines thanks to the trump administration, but we didn't have a way to distribute them. >> we had we're two weeks after january 6th, this unprecedented violent assault on on our democracy, on the central ritual of our democracy. we were we were stunned and reeling from

that, that we were in the country was in dire shape when joe biden took over. >> and look at the country now, as you said, our economy is the envy of the world. we have, thanks to bipartisan historic, long overdue investments in our infrastructure in climate change, in manufacturing of computer chips and, and, and other technology that sets us up for the future. we have we're in so much better shape in terms of our foreign policy. you know, administrations going back, 2 or 3 of them always talked about, we're going to make this pivot to asia because we have to counter the rise of china. we're going to pivot to asia. and nobody did it.

>> joe biden did it. >> he formed these new these new partnerships, these new alliances, the quad group, the aukus group that makes the united states more of a of a presence and a player in asia than it was before. >> and that sets us up. >> well, it's really quite dramatic when you step back and look at the achievements of joe biden. he made some mistakes and he paid politically for them. but but it was quite a record in only one term. >> i was going to say he made mistakes. afghanistan, inflation, the southern border and not ceding the stage to other democrats in 2023 so they could have a competitive primary that will be balanced, though against his successes. and i think historians, most historians, will find that he had a quite successful

presidency, i completely agree. >> gene robinson, thank you very much. >> coming up, we'll look at jack smith's final report on donald trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the evidence that the special counsel believes would have convinced a believes would have convinced a jury to convict trump h everywhere but the seat. the seat is leather. alan, we get it. you love your bike. we do, too. that's why we're america's number-one motorcycle insurer. but do you have to wedge it into everything? what? i don't do that. this reminds me of my bike. the wolf was about the size of my new motorcycle. have you seen it, by the way? happy birthday, grandma! really? look how the brushstrokes follow the line of the gas tank. -hey! -hey! brought my plus-one. jamie? with diet and exercise. that's

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bye waybor. something minty? of course, it's a large. [ gasps ] ♪ ♪ a double. lucky. ♪ wayfair. every style. every home. ♪ 10 a.m, rachel maddow and team will bring you key moments of the day, followed by analysis from our prime time anchors as the new term begins tomorrow, beginning at six on msnbc. msnbc premium gives you early access and ad free listening to rachel maddow chart topping series, msnbc original podcasts, exclusive bonus content, and all of your favorite msnbc shows. now ad free. subscribe on apple podcasts. >> special counsel jack smith's report on his investigation into

donald trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election was released to the public. the report summarizes smith's investigation into trump's efforts to hold on to power. the final line of that report reads, quote, indeed. but for mr. trump's election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial. the report cites examples of such evidence, including how trump pressed vice president mike pence to overturn the results of the election, writing, quote, mr. trump wanted no one else speaking with vice president pence because he and coconspirators were already implementing a secret plan to use mr. pence's ministerial role as president of the senate to mr. trump's advantage, end quote. the report also cites how trump privately acknowledged he lost the election, writing at times mr. trump made comments implicitly acknowledging he knew he had lost the election. for example, in a january 3rd, 2021 oval office meeting regarding a

national security matter, mr. trump stated in part, it's too late for us. we're going to give that to the next guy, meaning president elect biden. the report continues in private, in contrast with his public false claims, mr. trump made admissions that reflected his understanding that he had lost. in a private moment, mr. trump confessed to his family members that it doesn't matter if he won or lost the election, you still have to fight like hell. when president elect biden appeared on television in november, mr. trump said to a staffer, quote, can you believe i lost to this effing guy? and when his own vice president declined to join the conspiracy, mr. trump berated him for being, quote, too honest. trump criticized the report on social media in a post at 1:41 a.m. eastern time. let's bring in nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian and former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. good morning to you both. a lot to sift through in

these overnight hours. ken, 174 pages, released by jack smith by the special counsel's office. most of the detail at this point had been public knowledge through media reports and other investigations. but to see it in one place and to hear jack smith say we had enough evidence to convict, but we had to step away because mr. trump was reelected. >> yeah, that's right willie. >> it was powerful. >> not really surprising, but what was most interesting to me, actually, was the introductory letter, which was from jack smith and in his own words and in his own voice, where he really tried to push back against the false charges that donald trump and his supporters have been making from the beginning, that this whole thing was politicized, that this prosecution was engineered by joe biden and his democratic allies to stop donald trump from becoming president. he has a whole long passage on that. and then he concludes what i thought was the most interesting line of the whole report, which is, and to all who know me well, the claim from mr. trump that my

decisions as prosecutor were influenced or directed by the biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable. and that's absolutely true for those of us who cover the justice department and know anything about jack smith and the people around him. this was an investigation pursued by career fbi agents and career prosecutors brought from different parts of the justice department or former officials like jack smith. there was no involvement whatsoever by anybody political, by joe biden, or even really by merrick garland, other than to be briefed on the results. and what you have here is a powerful narrative, really sort of laying out what we already knew, but in more explicit fashion. and you hit some of the really most important points that he hammered, which is that donald trump, according to the evidence that they've marshaled, knew that the claims, the false claims that he was making about fraud were, in fact false. and that was the basis for charging him with defrauding the american public. and they also go into some great detail here about how they believe that he actually

incited the january 6th riot. and while he did say in the ellipse speech, you know, urging people to be peaceful, he used the word fight more than ten times. and they say they considered charging him with incitement, but ended up tripping over the free speech issues. it's a really difficult charge to bring. they also considered the charge of insurrection, but decided that insurrection is so loosely defined in the statute, had been so seldomly brought that they didn't want to go down that road. so, look, you know, this was the last effort by jack smith to try to explain to the american public why he did what he did. at the end of the day, the american people spoke and the world that we thought we lived in. when richard nixon was driven out of office during watergate, where republicans and democrats came together, that's not the world we're living in anymore. it's very clear. yeah. >> lisa, this hit just before 1:00 in the morning. and again, jack smith makes very clear that donald trump was saved only by his own reelection, which is to say he goes through over 174

pages. the evidence that he has, he said, we for sure, we believe, have enough evidence to convict him, but we had to let it go. >> yeah. and willie, people like me are going to be spending the next several days or even the next several months. >> looking at the footnotes of this report you mentioned in your introduction, i'm a former litigator, and i'm looking through this report through that prism. what do we know from this report that we didn't know before? it's true, as ken said, that the bulk of this is really known to the american public, particularly those of us who closely follow this litigation, like ken and me, on the other hand, are there tidbits here that we hadn't seen before? absolutely. i want to tell you about one of them. >> one of the things that the department of justice is saying in this report, to explain why they made their charging decisions, is not only did trump know that his claims were false after and at the time that he made them, but it was always the plan to declare victory. >> and they say that trump had a plan to declare victory first, irrespective of what the election results showed. how did they know that they drop a

footnote in which there are citations to what appeared to be at least five different interviews or grand jury testimonies from people who heard him say that. that's the kind of evidence that's all replete throughout this report, and that people like me are going to focus on. he also warned mike pence when pence said, i can't do this for you, i'm going to have to go after you. i don't remember that from prior recitations of the facts here, but he basically told pence, i'm going to publicly criticize you. and then what did he do in the next breath? he lied to the public and said that he and pence were in agreement about the plan going forward to throw out votes. when they then got together with john eastman and pence said, look, i can't do that. i can't return these electoral votes to the states. trump said to him, well, i like the other thing better. the other thing being just throw them all out altogether. you know, that's the kind of detail here that while it's not game changing, there are some additional details here that i think will inform the way that people understood jack smith's

charging decisions, both in terms of what he did charge and as ken mentioned, what he didn't in terms of insurrection and some of the other options that were on the table. >> up next, award winning talk show host graham norton joins us on his wildly popular bbc program. and to share the inspiration behind his new book, hi, i'm greg. inspiration behind his new book, morning joe. we'll be i live in bloomington, illinois. i'm not an actor. i'm just a regular person. after working 25 years in the automotive industry, i retired. eight years ago, i just didn't feel like i was on my game. i started taking prevagen and i want people to know that prevagen has worked for me. give it a try. i want it to help you just like it has helped me. i've been taking prevagen for eight years now and it is still helping me tremendously. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. at bombas, we make absurdly comfortable socks, slippers you'll float in, and underwear and tees that feel like clouds... no, bunnies.

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individual people with their homes, with their lives. >> driving around, there's almost nothing left standing. >> occasionally you'll see a house that's okay or a street that's okay, but that's occasional. >> i continue to see, and i want to shout out one more time, the first responders who are responding in this mutual aid effort from all over southern california. it really has brought out the best and most inspiring part about human beings. >> our next guest is known for entertaining audiences as the host of the long running late night bbc program the graham norton show, where he interviews the world's biggest celebrities. >> david beckham, you've got hot. >> you have met your match. oh! >> both rebel and ben have talked about working with you, ricky, and that it's quite annoying. >> not for me. >> was it a deep tissue massage you were having? >> where are you going with this, graham? >> what are you having? weren't

you having a turkish massage or something? >> i don't know what it has to do with what we're talking about, but it's a funny story. >> tell it. so welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. so. so you. so you. you've never been on the show. >> i think he was impersonating you. what people may not know about graham norton. he also is a new york times bestselling novelist. and out with a new book titled frankie, which tells the story of an elderly irish woman recounting her colorful life from a difficult childhood in ireland to crossing paths with some of the biggest celebrities in new york in the 1960s. and we are so excited to say that graham joins us now live in studio. >> it's great to see you and lovely to be here. >> we've been embarrassing ourselves in the break, fawning over your show and telling you all the ways in which we're loving it and all the ways in which we love it. for american audiences who don't know, i think most of them do. the format of your show is it's you as host, of course, but the

format is really wonderful, where all the guests come out at once, and that interplay with them is what brings out so much. >> yeah, because i think some shows kind of add guests as the show goes along. and that was the old carson way and stuff. but we just got to know they're all here at the beginning. and then they kind of on a good night they talk to each other. you know, i just i'm just sort of the comedy butler at the side. and, and that's when the conversation takes off and the couch comes alive. and those are the nights when, you know, i don't really earn my money at all. >> do you know when you're sitting down, this is going to be a good night, based on the guests who are there and the way you can the first couple of minutes, you can see, yes, i think, you know, pretty quickly if there's a spark, if they like each other, sometimes there's a big, you know, just dead block in the middle of the sofa. >> they will have to talk around that. do you have any names? >> does it happen? did your host or a referee? >> oh, nearly always a host. the

number of times, because i started doing track shows back in 98. and it's like the number of times i've had to be a referee. very, very few, very, very few. >> so we were marveling just i mean, it is a-lister after a-lister after a-lister. is there a guest or two you have not had yet that's on your wish list? >> and honestly, i used to say julia roberts. and then last season she came on. so we tick. i think the only ones we left now, brad pitt, we haven't had brad pitt and i take a few young royals. i'd have a sure, i'd have some of them. never. i mean, i don't know why they would ever do it, but i won't say there's a rumor that harry was going to come on the show, and we got really excited about it, and we looked into where that rumor had come from, and it was me. i. i'd started that rumor. >> you forgotten you had said that somewhere online. yes. so let's talk about your other career as a very successful novelist. i mentioned you've already had bestselling novels out with a new one. you got started rather late in life as a

novelist. what prompted that for you? >> i turned 50, and, you know, i think when you turn 50, there's a sense that maybe you take your feet off the pedals a bit and you coast. and then someone explained to me, graham, if you stay healthy, you've got, you know, another 30, maybe 40 years left. so i thought, right, what have i always wanted to do? i've always wanted to write fiction. so i woke up age 52, a debut novelist. and it's i think it's a great reminder that, you know, you can be a debut, anything at any age. you've got more time than you think. so i turned to fiction writing and they're very different. you know, it's my name on the cover, but anyone who's familiar with the tv show, once you open the book, you're like, is this the same graham norton? because they're they're, you know, they're not reflective of that personality. this is these are kind of quiet books. they're emotional books. this one, it's you know, it's about aging. it's about memory. it's

about kind of what constitutes a significant life. it's very different. >> so tell me you're writing about my grandmother. >> okay. >> frankie. yes. okay. >> born in ireland, lived in england for a bit. >> comes to the united states, not new york, but boston, massachusetts. >> okay, that is so close to frankie's journey. >> so she recounted story after story after story about her life losing one of her sons in world war two. >> things like that. >> tell me about frankie. >> well, frankie, when we meet her, she's an old lady and she has a fall. she's living in london and she has a carer. and the carer is a young guy who happens to be from the same little bit of ireland that she's from. and that connection kind of triggers something in her and, and sparks her to start telling him stories about her childhood in west cork. and then the story goes on and she ends up coming to london in the kind of late 50s. and then she comes to new york, and she lives a kind of a passive life, you

know, things happen to her. she makes very few decisions in her life, but her life touches all these other things, and she kind of gets involved in kind of that huge explosion of the pop art scene. >> and we have a second hour of morning joe weekend on this sunday morning coming up next, right after this break. work. day, blink. >> relief work, play. blink. relief. >> the only 3 in 1 extended relief formula for dry eyes. blink. >> snoopy arrives at solitaire grand harvest dive into a world of fun and adventure with snoopy right by your side as you play solitaire, solve challenges, and reach new heights. >> salts are never felt so good with solitaire grand harvest. download for free now. >> did you know some liquid laundry detergents are designed to leave chemical residue on your clothes?

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started this morning. check out some more of this past week's top conversations. >> i really am concerned about how fragile democracy is. that sounds corny, but i mean, i really i really am concerned because you've heard me say it a hundred times. i really think we're at an inflection point in history here. we're unrelated to any particular leader. things are going to change drastically. so i guess what i'm worried about is that the thing that keeps it on track are the guardrails. that's that there's a supreme court that's independent, but not but accountable. there is a congress that you speak your mind, but you're held accountable to basic standards. there's a presidency that says you have really limited powers. i mean, you're the top dog, but you're not. you

can't dictate everything. and i don't know, they seem to just just seem to be chipping away at all those elements. look. if the decision is made. that the multi-billionaires, the super, super wealthy, the wealthiest people in the world began to control all the apparatuses from the media to the economy. and who do i get to fight back for me? who do i get to? i mean, look, i think everybody deserves this a shot, a lot of guarantee. just a shot. how the hell can you make it in society today if you don't have access to an education, you don't have access to adequate health care. you don't have access to the opportunity to have a job that

you can handle, where you can make you can make ends meet. >> lawrence, in his farewell speech to america, joe biden warned about the increasing power of billionaires, an oligarchy rising to control of america's government and, of course, industrial tech sector. did you find those themes running throughout his interview with you as well? >> yeah, that's where he wanted to begin. he definitely because i gave him a pretty wide open beginning there, and that's what he chose. that's what he went for. he also made some news or certainly clarifications, he said. i asked him if he had spoken to the president elect this week or last week as the cease fire deal was coming to a close. he said no. the only time he talked to him was on that visit to the oval office that we all saw, and he said that was just a brief part of that discussion. talking about the cease fire negotiations, i asked

him, when is the first time he said the words cease fire to benjamin netanyahu? and it was much earlier than publicly known, very right at the edge of israel's major escalation in gaza. and he, you know, the challenge, joe, in those interviews, as, you know, presidential interview, they they schedule it for 20 minutes. and i knew he would go longer than 20 minutes talking to me. i didn't know how much longer, you know, 2530 i don't know. you know, we ended up, i think, doing 48. but that was the every second of it. you are working with the knowledge that this could be the last, the last question. so you're just sitting there throwing you're throwing away questions the whole time. you know, you're just. yeah, i spent days writing questions, things that we didn't get to, subjects that we didn't get to. and you just have to, you know,

call an audible and constantly drop them. after the interview. there was some there was actually had an interesting time in the oval office. we were walking around the oval office a bit. he was showing me photographs and different things that meant something to him, and we caught that. we have video of that. we're going to show that on on monday. the president talking about a photograph of his mother on election night 2008, where he's she's holding barack obama's hand and her son's hand just as they're going out on the stage there to give their victory appearance and the story about how his mother was the final voice convincing him to accept barack obama's offer of the vice presidency. and, joe, this is a story you're going to love that he told about being in that in the oval office with ronald reagan, you know, because i asked him, do you remember the first time you were in this room? and he said, there's so many times, you know, and he went back to a great story about being in there with

ronald reagan when he had just defeated a reagan choice for supreme court. and reagan's reaction to that was to ask him to come up to the oval office to talk about, okay, you know, who could get through the committee, which is the way to do it. you know that. that's right. that's what you're going to have to do. and it's a really entertaining story about how that went. >> we'll have much more of morning joe weekend right after the break. >> i feel like new sunglasses, like brand new pair of jeans. >> i feel like taking chances, i feel alive. >> brand new. hello. oh. >> brand new. hello. oh. >> [birds chirping] [dog growls]

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>> get growing at nutrafol. com. >> donald trump plans to reshape the u.s. government. >> democrats have wasted no time in laying the groundwork to fight the incoming trump administration. >> donald trump wants a presidential cabinet full of loyalists. >> don't miss the weekend, saturday and sunday mornings at 8:00 on msnbc. >> breaking news. a fast moving disaster in california. breaking news israel and hamas will enter a cease fire in the nation's capital. >> philadelphia, el paso, the palisades from msnbc world headquarters. >> welcome back to morning joe weekend. >> let's pick up with the conversation we were having just before the break. >> so, lawrence, you talked about joe biden's mother holding barack obama's hand. if were she's still alive, i'm not so sure that would still be happening. nbc news a pretty stunning story. talking about how angry and embittered joe

biden is toward barack obama, toward nancy pelosi. kamala harris, you go down the line. it seems that he's isolated and embittered against people who have been some of his closest allies as he leaves office. james carville calls it a tragic, tragic ending to a successful presidency. did you did you see any of that, or do you have any insights on that? >> well, no. and there was actually an indication, an opposite kind of indication on that because i asked him about about netanyahu, about the delay in coming to an agreement. the agreement that they've come to has is essentially the same proposal that that joe biden's had out there, you know, since the spring. and there's an obvious issue there where i asked him, did he have reason to believe that prime minister netanyahu delayed an agreement

here because he knew it would hurt joe biden and kamala harris politically, and it would help donald trump? and that and the president said he absolutely did not think that he, you know, there was an opportunity there for him to go further in that direction that you're talking about. and he, he if you watch it, he absolutely did not. and kept saying, you know, you have to understand the difficult position netanyahu is in politically in his country. and i understand that. and so that's the ■only thing that comes close to what you were just talking about. and, and you certainly from the person in the room, you don't get any sense of, of any of that, any, any, any negative feelings at all in the time that i spent with him. >> mara. yeah. >> lawrence. >> did you get any sense of political regret from the president, any kind of new understanding of self or

self-awareness that could give the democrats some cues about what to do as the opposition party? >> some kind of sense that he may have done things differently if he had the chance now, and what that might look like. >> well, two things about that. the final question on my index card that i didn't get to was regret's question mark. because and so sorry, we don't we don't have that in there. but interesting component of what you just said is after the president gave his farewell address where he was laying out a different approach than he did, certainly as a candidate and certainly as president, things like, you know, term limits for supreme court justices and ethics code for supreme court justices and all. and that, that stuff about the oligarchy. a democratic senator said to me, if that had been the

campaign, we would have won. and so there are democrats looking at that farewell address saying, we see something there that is for us to go to go forward with. >> and i mean, he did say that i think lawrence and the president talked about not necessarily a regret, but maybe he would have spent more time on the politics of economic policy versus the economic policy itself. >> only the example of not signing the checks that went to american citizens. >> yeah, i thought that was interesting. i think that one of the things that comes to mind when you think of joe biden is that he was very much more into transformative kind of politics than transactional, right. and so i remember and it came to mind when lawrence was talking about him dealing with term limits and ethics for supreme court justices. >> he had us fly with him on air

force one to lyndon johnson library just a couple of months ago, where he said this publicly, but nobody was was rallying around that. it was a speech. everybody was glad. >> and that was in, in and out. and i think part of the frustration of joe biden in my conversations with him is that he wanted to transform a lot of things and rather than transact. >> so it never got to the to the politics of the day, of which he might have been a victim of, because he got a lot more done than he got credit for. >> oh, 100%. >> jonathan lemire, sue lawrence, let's let's talk about this is not about jimmy carter, someone we've all been thinking about in the last couple of weeks. obviously, when he left the white house, he had decades where he made a real difference in his post-presidency. barack obama left the white house as a young man. joe biden is 82 years old. this is not just a goodbye to the presidency. it's in many ways, goodbye to his life in public service. a remarkable 50 years. talk about like, as he thought back on his career in total, his reflections on on the

america that he's leaving, what he's and what he's worried about going forward. >> you know, he is an optimist. and this is a common condition i found, somewhat to my surprise, when i was working in the senate, which was during the biden era in the senate. i remember one day the great senator bill bradley from new jersey was in the back room of the senate finance committee, where i was staff director, and he was giving an interview to a newspaper about the basically the clinton health care bill and how it's kind of a struggle. and we're and so i the part that i overheard as i was going back out to the hearing was bill had painted a picture where the reporter inevitably kind of said, well, it kind of sounds pretty hopeless or something. and i heard senator bradley say, well, i'm an optimist. and he and he went on from there and i realized, oh, that's the difference between me and every member of this committee. i am not an optimist. it's why it's one reason why i'm not in your field is i'm much too cynical

or, i think, realistic about things. and so i've, i've, i've grown accustomed to that condition that i do not share, that people like joe biden and bill bradley and people who grew up in an earlier america than i did and grew up with aspirations that i certainly never had to be in these kinds of positions. and they, they, they are the kind of that kind of optimism is absolutely necessary in this work as as joe biden said, quoting george mitchell the other day, diplomacy is 700 days of failure and one day of success. i mean, that's a special kind of person who can take the 700 days of failure and hope for the one day of success, knowing they might not get the one day of success. and every one of those days say to you and mean it. i'm an optimist. joe biden is an optimist. and that's how things get done coming up here. >> the senior u.s. senator from california is our guest. we'll

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with ambition like that, you need someone who elevates advice to a craft. >> at ubs, we match your vision with insight and expertise to shape a unique outcome for you. >> advice is our craft. >> i gave an opportunity to study overnight, so can you tell me in this committee what the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment says? >> senator, i'm here to answer your questions. i'm not here to do your homework and study for you. >> if i'm confirmed as attorney asking for a confirmation vote, you cut me off. >> can i can i please finish? >> what is the 14th amendment say, senator? >> senator, the 14th amendment, we all know, addresses birthright citizenship. i have been a state prosecutor. i've been a state ag. i look forward to even given your remarks today, working with you and the people of california. if i am confirmed as the 87th attorney general of the united states of america, i didn't take your

homework assignment. i'm sorry. i was preparing for today. >> so on the 14th amendment. >> now, you've testified repeatedly to this committee that you will uphold the laws of this country and defend the constitution of the united states. do you believe birthright citizenship is the law of the land, and will you defend it regardless of a child born in the united states, regardless of their parents immigration status? >> senator, i will study birthright citizenship. i would love to meet with you. regarding birthright citizenship. can i answer the service? >> the attorney general of the united states. >> and you still need to study the 14th amendment of the constitution. that is not helping me have more confidence in your ability to do this job. >> and senator padilla joins us now here on set in washington. senator, good morning. thank you. thank you for joining us. good morning. we obviously just played that exchange you had with the attorney general nominee after the hearings

concluded. did you have any more or fewer reservations about her ability to serve in that post? >> look, a few more reservations. >> you saw that exchange. >> that's one of several issues that i personally raised that she either couldn't answer or wouldn't answer and let me sort of level set, you know, because i get it. this is donald trump was elected, so he's going to have a cabinet that aligns with his views. policy differences is one thing. one of the big issues in the hearing yesterday was the concern about her willingness or ability to be independent of the president of the united states, because we saw what happened in his first term. you remember pete sessions, what happened when he got crossways with donald trump? we saw at the end of the first term, even attorney general barr getting a little crossways with donald trump. so how do we expect that she will or won't stand up to trump when the constitution of the united states would require it? >> now, there does seem to be the whip counts that the pam

bondi will have the votes to become attorney general. but there's more skepticism about kash patel, who joe and i have been talking about all morning, seemed almost like a secondary figure in this hearing yesterday. he, of course, will have his own hearing down the road. what concerns do you have about him, and do you think that enough republicans share them? >> well, i think that is really at the root of all this, you know, attorney general nominee bondi looks like she can count on the support of most, if not all, the republicans. they do have a 53 vote majority, so they don't really need democrats to confirm her. we're hearing there's reservations about kash patel. we don't know how many republicans and how many republicans would actually be willing to act on those concerns publicly, maybe even vote against him, as opposed to express concerns privately, but not be willing to stand up to trump. so concerns about kash patel, his conspiracy theories, his his enemies list, which does exist. you talked about it earlier in the program. it's not just out there publicly. it's in his book. it's a whole chapter.

and the fbi director works within the department of justice, which is why it was so relevant in yesterday's hearing with the attorney general nominee, bondi. so time will tell. will enough republicans stand up to do their job on advise and consent and act on their concerns, or are they going to just prioritize loyalty to donald trump? >> well, senator, let's turn now to the ongoing tragedy in your home state of california. these wildfires in the los angeles area. as you sat down on the break, encouraging news with the weather forecast, the winds perhaps have not been as fierce as as feared. but tell us what you've seen. i know you've spent time there in these areas that has been ravaged by fire. what what have you seen? what has happened? >> yeah. >> look, staying busy on both coasts, as you can understand, having had a chance to be in the palisades over the course of the last week in the altadena pasadena area in the course of the last week. it's devastating. i mean, you see the visuals. we've been seeing them all week long, but i don't think watching

on television gives you an appreciation for is the scale of these fires. if you look at the acreage, the area burned, we're talking not just six fires, but combined four times manhattan. so it's a huge event, a lot of heartbreak. people displaced, you know, two dozen at least perished in the fire. as search and rescue teams are out there visiting property by property, that toll is probably going to go up. we're getting a little bit of a break in the weather, wind wise, but still no precipitation in sight. so the dry conditions are going to continue, and we're going to have to continue to be vigilant in the weeks and months ahead. >> and a very brief final question, do you want donald trump, once he takes office to visit california? do you think that he will spearhead enough relief to the state that needs it? >> absolutely. i've joined with the governor, the mayor, a whole lot of officials inviting him to come see firsthand, not just the impacted areas, but to meet with the families that have been impacted, just as he did when he

was president. in his first term, when we had wildfires in the north. and let's not condition federal aid. let's not play politics with the disaster that californians deserve, just as we've supported other regions of the country in their time of crisis, trump said that visit could come as soon as sometime next week. >> democratic member of the senate judiciary committee, senator alex padilla of california. senator, thank you, morning, joe. nice to meet ya. morning, joe. >> weekend. we'll be right back. along with the service, the my name is david. i've been a pharmacist for 44 years and i'm from flowery branch, georgia. when i have customers come in i recommend prevagen. number one, because it's effective. does not require a prescription. and i've been taking it quite a while myself and i know it works. and i love it when the customers come back in and tell me, "david, that really works so good for me." makes my day. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription.

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>> pheasant is one of these one of these one of these selections that is going to probably get bipartisan support, much like donald trump's select for the cia, donald trump's selection for secretary of state and several several picks. but in this pick in particular, i'm so glad you're on today because we wanted to talk about, first of all, what's happening at king's college and why it's relevant to this conversation. and secondly, your financial times column, which is which, by the way, is very reminiscent of bill clinton in 1993. the bond markets versus donald trump. explain. >> well, as you might remember, it was james carville who said, when i come back, i want to come back as a bond market because i

can terrorize everyone. >> and i suspect that's going to be one of the themes of this year, because there's almost nothing right now that can discipline or rein in donald trump. but the bond market might be it, because we saw this week that mortgage, 30 year mortgage rates have gone above gone above 7%. that's pretty stark contrast to where we were a few years ago. >> and the pressures in the bond markets because of the enormous government debt that the us is now grappling with, are mounting. yesterday, bessent sought to calm everyone down. it was quite a fiery, quite a long hearing, but he did pretty well. >> he tried to calm everyone down by indicating that he is very concerned about the debt. he wants to tackle the debt. he wants to keep the dollar strong. >> but he also insisted that he wanted to roll over the tax cuts, which is going to put even more debt on the us economy. and the question which groups like the international monetary fund and the world bank and others are asking, and we're in the middle of a conference,

actually, at king's college in cambridge, to discuss the future of these bretton woods institutions. the question people are asking is if the us keeps piling on more and more debt, how on earth is it going to manage its economy responsibly and stably without triggering a wider crisis? and i don't think we really know the answer yet. and certainly a lot of pressure is now heaped on the treasury secretary nominee to show that he actually can navigate this very nasty, slippery tightrope. >> when i left congress, we had a $4 trillion, $5 trillion national debt that had been built up over 225 years over the past 20 years, that skyrocketed to 36 trillion with these tax cuts, with the with the spending both on on defense and domestically, we're going to have add another $10 trillion at some point. jillian, the bond markets are going to say enough. we're we're going to stop buying

u.s. treasuries. >> absolutely. >> i mean, just this week, ray dalio, who is another big hedge fund luminary who's gone head to head with scott bessent in the past, started publishing his own analysis of the history of debt crises and looking at the us situation and saying that he is, quote, deeply concerned that the us might go broke unless it acts pretty quickly. >> i mean, there are people in the markets talking about sort of debt death spirals. now, at the moment, there's plenty of sign that foreign, foreign investors around the world keep gobbling up us treasuries. so do domestic investors, because they still believe that america is strong. however, the irony that hangs over any discussion about, say, the imf or the bretton woods institutions is that the us was seen as a bastion of economic strength, the model that other countries around the world wanted to follow. that was what the post-world war ii global order was built on, and it was assumed that the core of

the system, i.e. the us, was more stable financially than anywhere else. if we are moving into a world where investors are getting worried about the outlook for bonds, then it's going to be questionable whether we're still in that pattern. and you just have to look at what's happening with mortgage rates to see how this is feeding through to the way that american households are looking at the future right now. >> again, mortgage rates over 7% not getting better. the economy again, people are even questioning whether the fed may have cut interest rates a little too soon. and as everybody who watches this show knows, i spent my time in econ 101 at the university of alabama in the back row reading sports illustrated. but even i understand tax cuts are used to stimulate an economy that needs stimulation. right now, our problem is we're actually on on

a tipping point where we may be overheated. so you you add, you extend these tax cuts, you you increase spending, you add tariffs. i can't think of a worse case scenario to add just massive inflationary pressures to the us economy. >> well, what scott benson's team appears to be betting on is that you're going to grow the economy out of this debt burden. and if you add inflation into the mix as well, they assume that if you get lots of growth and some inflation, the debt will miraculously shrink. but the thing that's really amazing about what's happened in the last few months and no one's talked about, is that mortgage, 30 year mortgage rates have jumped up above 7%. treasury yields have jumped up 100 basis points to 4.65 on the ten year yield since last autumn, even as the federal reserve has been cutting. so the fed's cut its own policy rates by about 100

basis points. and it's incredibly unusual to have a situation where the fed is doing rate cuts. but bond yields the price of borrowing in the markets. the level of mortgage rates keeps going up and up. and one way to make sense of that is that the fed is losing a bit of control. >> i will i will only say, as a conservative who has usually supported tax cuts throughout my life, ronald reagan said his tax cuts were going to pay for themselves. they didn't. bush, 43, said his tax cuts were going to pay for themselves. they didn't. donald trump, in his first term, said the tax cuts were going to pay for themselves. they didn't. in all three cases, the deficits exploded and they will again. and as gillian saying that with a $36 trillion debt, that's something that i hope everybody in the incoming administration is deeply concerned about. when do we learn? >> columnist and member of the

editorial board at the financial times, gillian tett, thank you as always. >> coming up, senator ron wyden of oregon joins us to talk about this week's senate confirmation hearings, as well as his new book. it takes chutzpah. enjoy your weekend. we'll be right your weekend. we'll be right back. the virus that causes shingles is sleeping... in 99% of people over 50. and it could strike at any time. think you're not at risk? wake up. because shingles could wake up in you. if you're over 50, talk to your doctor or pharmacist about shingles prevention. bathroom. all our laundry. you just pick a date, pick a just pick a date, pick a cleaner, and if you're living with diabetes, i'll tell you the same thing i tell my patients. getting on dexcom g7 is one of the easiest ways to take better control of your diabetes and help protect yourself from the long-term health problems it can cause.

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fight the incoming trump administration. the conversation right now is like, oh, we have to win back working class voters. >> but who are people talking about? >> it's no surprise that this is a time of reflection and reassessment for democrats. >> donald trump wants a presidential cabinet full of loyalists that are going to push through his extreme agenda. don't miss the weekends, saturday and sunday mornings at 8:00 on msnbc. >> president elect trump has revealed plans to create the, quote, internal revenue service aimed at collecting tariffs, duties and other revenue from foreign sources. trump made the announcement yesterday on social media, stating that the irs would begin its work this monday. urs, urs, the urs would begin its work this monday, january 20th, the same day of his inauguration. he didn't give any additional details about the proposed government entity. currently, u.s. customs and border protection is responsible

for collecting tariffs. so we will see what happens. >> willie, let's bring in democratic senator ron wyden of oregon. he's the ranking member of the senate finance committee, which will hear from trump's treasury secretary pick tomorrow. senator wyden, also a member of the senate intelligence committee, which is set to hear from cia director nominee john ratcliffe today, as well as director of national intelligence nominee tulsi gabbard in the coming days. and senator wyden is out with a new book titled it takes chutzpah how to fight fearlessly for progressive change. senator, good morning. good to have you with us in new york. we'll get to the book in just a second. i'm curious about your busy week ahead, though. as i mentioned, you're on both the finance and intelligence committees. let's start with what we saw yesterday as sort of a tone setter for how republicans in particular, are going to behave in these hearings. what did you see in that room? >> well, first of all, willie, the trump people are just making a mockery out of the whole advise and consent process, this idea that senators aren't going

to get the information from the fbi and remember what's going on here. these fbi folks are going to be working for trump here in a couple of weeks. so that's what's going on. i thought the nominee, particularly on the issues relating to character and management ability, just came up way short. and we're still going to see the additional questioning members want to make. senator slotkin, i thought, was very persuasive on these illegal order questions. and we'll go from there. >> what about john ratcliffe, who is set to become, if donald trump has his way and republicans do, the head of the cia, obviously a critical position in our government? what's your early assessment of him and what questions might you have? >> this is a crucial time in the intelligence area. you look at salt typhoon, i mean, the chinese working to climb into our phone systems. some of the most conservative senators have said that that salt typhoon is the biggest hack in american history. so these are huge

challenges. also, the foreign intelligence surveillance act questions and his counterpart, the nominee for intelligence is tulsi gabbard. she's all over the map. she was against the foreign intelligence surveillance act. now a bunch of republicans talk to her. she's for it. >> so, senator, you won't be in the hearing today for ratcliffe. i know you'll be submitting questions. you expect to attend the one for tulsi gabbard. you just sort of alluded to some of the mystery or uncertainty around her nomination. what are some of the things that you think she needs to answer to prove to the senate, but also to the american people that she's up for the job? >> i want to know why the flip flop on the foreign intelligence surveillance act? this is a hugely important question. and open sources, i can tell you that there was an effort, for example, to make special breaks for data centers. a number of us were concerned about that, but we said, okay, let's see if we can work that out. but now we're talking about, in effect, conscripting people who work in any place where there's a hard drive into spying for the government. we've got to get these issues resolved. >> you know, i don't want to

concentrate too much on the intelligence issues, because i'll get a headache when you consider the potential fbi head, the dni head, the secretary of defense. >> what i want to find out is what you think about the potential for increased tariffs from the trump administration from day one, and the impact it's going to have, not only on our economy, but the global economy. >> that will be one of the big issues in the finance hearing. >> look, the trump people are talking about a universal across the board tariff. if you target a tariff, sometimes that can be an appropriate tool. but across the board means that working people and small businesses are going to get clobbered. that's external revenue service is just sort of window dressing, trying to decide it all through the campaign, mike trump said that the foreigners were going to pay these tariffs. that's just nonsense. they're going to be paid by workers and small businesses, and i'm going to do everything i can to derail it,

because the big issue in my part of the world, mike, when i have my town hall meetings, i'm going to have some. this weekend is where the second word is, bill. it can be medical bill, it can be housing bill, it can be gas bill. that's what we're focused on. these tariffs are going to be really hard on working families and small businesses. >> so senator let's turn to the book. the title again. it takes chutzpah how to fight fearlessly for progressive change. we're a couple of months removed from the election of donald trump, the defeat of kamala harris. and in many ways, some progressive values. it would seem at the ballot box. what needs to change in the progressive movement? >> well, i think we want to make it clear what our goals are, and that's one of my priorities, for example, on the energy and climate front, i feel very, very strongly that what we need is a lower carbon economy with affordable energy. in other words, the two aren't mutually exclusive. you can have both. and what i do is talk there about ron's rules of chutzpah, about how you can get people to find some common ground. joe,

let me ask you, senator, what's gone wrong with the progressive movement? when you look at the election results and what needs to be done when you you when you look at exit polls that show democrats lost working families making less than $50,000 a year, there's got to be a sharper focus on those issues that i just described. joe, where the second word is bill, on the social issues. i'm a live and let live democrat. for example, i was the first senator to support marriage equality, and i did it with one sentence. my sentence was, if you don't like gay marriage, don't get one. so let's get back to the economic issues. that's how we're going to get working people. >> what does that mean exactly, senator? because clearly, donald trump's message resonated with a lot of working people across racial divides, across gender in this last election. how did democrats win that argument? >> well, i think we focus, as i said, on these issues that

people bring up at the town hall meetings. i'm going to fight like crazy to protect people's privacy and individual liberty. we can't lose sight of these economic issues. and what i tried to do is say there's a prism out there. it's working. people in their kitchens, in their living rooms. they want to hear what you're going to do so that their kid, for example, can buy a house. i mean, all these kids, they can't even pay rent, let alone start their first home. >> when we return, bestselling author brad meltzer will talk about his new book, the jfk conspiracy the secret plot to after last month's massive solar flare conspiracy the secret plot to kill kennedy and why it failed. added a 25th hour to the day, businesses are wondering "what should we do with it?" bacon and eggs 25/7. you're darn right. solar stocks are up 20% with the additional hour in the day. [ clocks ticking ] i'm ruined. with the extra hour i'm thinking companywide power nap. let's put it to a vote. [ all snoring ] this is going to wreak havoc on overtime approvals.

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invisible on the skin. it works like a dream. why didn't someone think of this sooner? >> i do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. >> the energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. >> and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. and so, my fellow americans, ask not what your country can do for you. ask what you can do for your country. >> president john f kennedy, giving his famous inaugural address in january of 1961, nearly 64 years ago, kennedy's

speech, punctuated by his iconic call to civic action, came close to never happening at all because of a little known assassination attempt that went awry just one month before his inauguration. joining us now, new york times best selling author brad meltzer. he's coauthor of the new book, the jfk conspiracy the secret plot to kill kennedy and why it failed. brad, good morning. it's great to have you on. i guess the first and most obvious question is all these years later, why didn't we know about this? mike barnicle did know about it, of course, because he's mike barnicle. but why doesn't the general public know more about this attempted assassination of jfk? >> because on the day after it happened there, it was big news in florida, which is where it happened in palm beach. but two planes collided over new york city, and everyone died on board except for one young boy. america became obsessed with this sole survivor. and as a result, it took this jfk assassination story and knocked it from the front page into the

center of the newspaper. and it became a footnote until josh mentioned, i said, you know what? this is a really interesting idea for a book. >> so we're talking about december of 1960. jfk has been elected but has not yet been inaugurated. walk us through the details. a little bit of what happened. >> yeah. so this is three years before lee harvey oswald takes the famous shot. and we're in this beautiful sunny day in palm beach, and it's, as you said, right after he's elected, before the inauguration, and jfk is on his way to church. and what he doesn't know is there's a disgruntled former postal worker named richard pavlick who wants to kill him. and he's packed his car with seven sticks of dynamite. and as jfk comes out of his house, he doesn't realize pavlick is hiding there. pavlick picked palm beach because he thinks jfk security is weaker there, which he's right about. so as jfk leaves, all this assassin has to do is hit the little trigger mechanism and boom will go the dynamite. and

what saves jfk's life that day? i won't ruin the ending for you, but it has to do with jackie. and it is the start of one of the craziest jfk stories you've never heard in your life. >> you know, brad, i believe that pavlick worked in the south postal annex in boston, and so there's some familiarity in new england still of people of a certain age, remnants of this story. >> but it is amazing, amazing that this story has been just it has disappeared. it never really surfaced and had legs as a story. and i think pavlick just died in in the mid 70s or early 70s up in new hampshire, but remained anonymous for all that time. how does it happen, even though you know the news business and there's no social media back then, but still, it was it was a critical component of the of jfk's assuming the presidency that has been missed by history until now.

>> yeah. you know, and i just love a good story. and what i loved about this story is it doesn't just tell the story of jfk or pavlick, but it also involves jackie, and we don't pull our punches there. we show you jfk's affairs. you see that when jackie goes into labor and she's hemorrhaging, that jfk is nowhere to be found, he's on his way to on a plane to florida. and what was fascinating to me is as i was researching the book, i kept saying, well, where does camelot come from? we always call it camelot, but where does that start? and i finally realized it's after jfk is actually killed when he dies after the assassination, jackie grants one interview to life magazine, and she has the reporter over and gives him tells him this exclusive story that basically when jfk was alive and his back was hurting him in the white house, what she used to do was put on his favorite record, a song about a place called camelot. and we forget that jackie was a reporter in her early days, so she was a member of the press.

she was obviously hounded by the press, but make no mistake, she was a master of the press. jackie is the one who inserted that word camelot into our lexicon. she's the one who put it there, writing jfk's legacy before anyone else could. so, as my wife said, her favorite parts of this book are watching their marriage and watching what jackie does. >> she's so savvy, you know, and i believe the reporter that she spoke to from life magazine was theodore h. >> white. >> it was theodore h. white who got that famous thing. he was there until after midnight. she worked on that speech. and what i think is so important to remember is the kennedys. you know, jfk and jackie are our first celebrity presidents. and i don't mean, you know, obviously, every president is famous in their own way. and lincoln waves off the back of trains the same way truman does. but talking about hollywood famous, right, that hollywood celebrity that people have chased so badly with the fame and the houses and the money. and for me, we all know it's a hollow pursuit. and you can say some people think that that's what reagan is. some people think it's what the obamas are.

some people think it's of course, what trump is. but to me, all of them have been cosplaying jfk and jackie. and what isn't a hollow pursuit, though? fame may be hollow, but you know what isn't is hope. and what jfk did in that inaugural address was give the world hope again. and right now, as we're on that precipice of getting another inaugural address, and the one you're showing right now is one of the greatest ever written. we all know leadership is not about being in charge. it's about taking care of those in your charge. that's what jfk did better than anyone is unleashing that hope. >> and that's it for us this weekend. thank you for spending part of your sunday morning with us. we're back tomorrow live at 6 a.m. with special coverage of president elect donald trump's inauguration. we'll see you then. >> good morning. it is sunday,