frank bruni, stay with us if you can. ahead on "morning joe," peter king joins us live.contact with the president-elect. i have been in contact with the secretary of homeland security jeh johnson. i made clear to him how committed we are to the president-elect's security, but i've also made clear to him that there are extraordinary costs involved and that we want to start the process of understanding what kind of federal reimbursement we can get. >> how do you protect the president-elect in the country's biggest city? it's not cheap. the commissioner of the new york police department joins us live next on "morning joe." to do the best for your pet, you should know more about the food you choose. with beyond, you have a natural pet food that goes beyond telling ingredients to showing where they come from. beyond assuming the source is safe... to knowing it is. beyond asking for trust... to earning it. because, honestly, our pets deserve it. beyond. natural pet food. enepeople want power.hallenge. and power plants account for more than a third of energy-related carbon emis

we talk to frank bruni of the times who was at the meeting. >> if he is earnest about being a good or even great president, i think he has, even after this horribly vicious campaign, i think he has a really interesting window of opportunity here. and i just really hope he seizes it. >> we continue with david remnick who had two long interviews with president obama and we talk about the obama legacy. >> some american politicians and leaders, read a leffly talk about american exceptionalism. they talk about it in re-- religious terms, that show america is blessed, that we're mortal ented, and handsome and beautiful and blessed by god for this special history in the history of the world. >> rose: separated by oceans. >> obama doesn't believe that. he believes that our exceptionalism resides in two things. first, the unbelievable gift of becoming the essentially the brain child of a group of enlightenment era philosophers who developed a constitution. number one. and number two, that we are a country that has advanced largely due to social movements of great importance. >> rose: and we co

i want to bring you now senior political analyst david gergen and "new york times" columnist frank bruni. sorry you have a cold. >> thank you. >> i could hear you coughing. that was david you heard coughing. frank, i were nut meeting today. what was the tone? >> the tone was pretty cordial. i had read and heard donald trump a day earlier with television journalists berated them for their unflattering coverage. he began the meeting by saying he thought the "times" had been too tough on him but the tone beyond that was mostly cordial. >> in the meeting, did he talk about the conflict of interest? i would imagine he was asked about that? >> he was asked several times. he kept making sure we knew that he's under no legal obligation to put things in a blind trust or do anything like that but then he would pivot and say "no one will have to worry about it, my business is the least important thing, the country is the most important thing." that said, there was never "and thus i will do x, y, and z to reassure the american people that i am not using the presidency to enrich myself." and the othe

so, i went to columnist frank bruni's take. donald trump's demand for love.es that the trump who visited the times was purge of zeal to investigate clinton's e-mails or the clinton foundation, hear out the scientists on global warming, skeptical of waterboarding and unhesitant to disavow white nationalist. in other words, walking back l some of the extreme language that the times and others were critical of about trump that he's open to hearing about climate change. bruni questioning whether it makes the president look vulnerable, and does he buy the last idea that he heard, but also gives him a ray of hope that he now and the presidential position is more measured. tom freedman also wrote one that used the word hope for president trump. they liked what they heard. they got access to him. >> absolutely. interesting that the "new york times" got so much access to him yesterday when they were one of the biggest if not the biggest punching bag. >> yes. >> very interesting read. approaching the top of the hour, team getting ready for "squawk on the street." miche

>> joining us now politics writer at the atlantic magazine, molly ball and frank bruny. e very disturbed. >> i disturbed you. >> his latest column is hillary's male tore mentors and he writes in part, quote, this, weiner or no weiner, hillary clinton is likely to be our next president, but she can't seem to escape insatiable men. she married one for better, for bill b bimbo eruptions, for two terms in the white house for impeachment. she's in the climatic part of the season. and if she fails again there's a priapic protagonist. the fbi wouldn't be examining anthony weiner's laptop if he hadn't invited so many strangers to examine his lap. >> boy, i'll tell you what, frank. >> ew. >> you were bored during the basketball game last night. >> no, you've read enough, mika. are you an insatiable man yourself? >> i'm not an insatiable man. i do think it's fascinating, rich, ironic. there are so many opportunities in the picture. there's some kind of epically needy, profoundly undisciplined man. here with the weiner last-minute thing, you once again have the appearance of a certa