editor amanda terkel. thank you for getting up "way too early" with us on this friday morning. happy holidays to all of you. safe travels. i would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday. to those who broke the law, you will pay. you do not represent our movement. you do not represent our country. and if you broke the law, i can't say that. i already said you will pay. the demonstrators who ill filtrated the capital, has defied the seat -- i can't see it very well. i'll do this. this election is now over. congress has certified the results. i don't want to say the election

is over. i just want to say congress has certified the results without saying the election is over, okay. now congress -- >> i didn't say over. go to the paragraph before. >> wow. how would you like to be ivanka stage managing that? back in july, the january 6th committee played raw footage of the outtakes of former president trump's taped address the day after the capitol riot when he was choking on every word. this morning, the day before he called them patriots, beautiful, this, that, the other. wow. this morning, the committee's full final report has finally been released. we're going to go through it all. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it's friday, december 23rd. everybody's off.

i'm here. i hope you're not bothered too much by that. we're going to get through it together. we have former aide to george w. bush white house and state department's elise jordan. and the host of msnbc politics nation and president of the national action network, the hardest working man in show business and the ministry, reverend al sharpton, we've got columnist and associate editor for "the washington post," david ignatius. washington bureau chief for usa today, susan page, and nbc legal analyst andrew weissmann, former general counsel of the fbi and served as leader prosecutor in the mueller special counsel's office. this report came out late last night, david ignatius. you look at donald trump the day after there is an attempt to overthrow america's government. and he has trouble con fronting

the fact that it was his people that did it, first of all, and secondly that the election was over. and you know what, you can trace from that point forward his continued legal troubles that may, in the end, put him in jail. >> what i found in this report is the clarity that we want from investigations. so often committees come out with documents that are just a mishmash. this one is clear, well stated and makes evident that there is one person to blame for what happened on january 6th, the person who encouraged, in a sense, organized the activity on the capitol that became the insurrection. and that's president trump. the evidence of trump's knowledge that he had lost the election, going to go forward despite that that's in this report is devastating. and i found most emphatic the

committee's insistence that this person, that this man, donald trump, who has done these things, to subvert our country should not ever hold office again. i thought that was just the absolute thunder bolt at the end of this report. this person should really never hold office again. >> it was a massive report. such an extraordinarily important report. the executive summary was actually longer than most books i read. but after all of that, you are right, david, they boiled it down to the fact that this was about one man and one man only, donald trump, and more than 800 pages, this report is broken down into eight chapters and provides details from 1,000

witness interviews and hundreds of thousands of pages of text messages, e-mails and other documents. chapter 1 is titled the big lie, a reference to donald trump's widespread effort to push false claims about the 2020 election being stolen. that chapter notes that donald trump made efforts even before election day to delegitimatize the election process by just repeating over and over again that the election would be marred by ballot fraud. i had been telling you about chris christie who was told in the spring and summer of 2020 that trump was already trying that out. chapter 2 is titled, i just want to find 11,780 votes, focuses on trump's attempt to pressure local and state officials to overturn the 2020 election results. and the next few chapters outline how trump and his allies planned to get a slate of fake

electors and push to convince then vice president mike pence to decertify the results. vice chair liz cheney wrote this part, quote every president in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority, except one. january 6th, 2021, was the first time one american president refused his constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully to the next. and one could argue the two most important sentences in the report read this quote, the central cause of january 6th was one man, former president donald trump. none of the events of january 6th would have happened without him. and andrew weissmann, you know a thing or two about reports focusing on donald trump. talk about this report. does it do what needs to be done? first of all, for the historical

record, but more immediately for the department of justice who, you know, people can say this report's irrelevant. no, they have done an extraordinary amount of leg work, and i'm wondering how their work, how this report helps the doj. >> i think they answered that in two ways, first, it is actually quite important for the department that this is sort of public acceptance, and public education as to what it's going to do. if it is the case that the department brings a prosecution against donald trump either for the events surrounding january 6th or for mar-a-lago, it's really going to be important for the public to have some sense of what are those crimes, are they usually prosecuted? is donald trump being treated the same as other people, and so just the educational function that david laid out and the clarity of this report. i mean, to me, it reads like a

prosecution memo that you see internally at department of justice except it's written for the public, and so it's easily digestible. >> andrew, let me ask you this question. so we have the mueller investigation. we had the mueller report. people read through it. every time somebody says russian hoax to me, i said you haven't read the mueller report, have you? you have no idea what they uncovered, do you? so my question is this, i mean, you all had to be feeling pretty great after the mueller report was put out. you had to expect something to come of that. how is this going to be different. i think a lot of americans like myself read the mueller report, said, my god anybody else would be in jail for obstruction of justice, and my god, this russian evidence is actually more damming than i actually

thought. when you look at it all laid out. it was laid out masterfully, and nothing came of it. let me say that again. nothing came of that. why is this going to be different? >> great question. so i think two reasons. one, i think the january 6th committee realized that you can't just issue a, you know, report of hundreds and hundreds of pages with thick legal terminology, and so they had a series of public, widely accessible and viewed hearings, and so this is a culmination, but it very much documents what has happened in those hearings. so this is really taking advantage of a different form and give a report they have televised it, in a way that's very successful with live witnesses that said all of us can talk about it, and replay it. second, remember, there's a big difference in terms of what had happened to donald trump. he is now out of office. so one of the things that we did

not have the ability to do is we could not indict a sitting president for any crimes. he is no longer a sitting president and so the threat of what the department is going to do with this, i think, is palpable. and here, that goes to the other point you were alluded to. this helps in terms of public acceptance, it lays out evidence, so the department is going to be pouring through this. people like mark meadow, and rudy giuliani have to be reading chapter three about the fake electors, and thinking, oh, god, i really need counsel because there's so much proof about their involvement in the scheme, and those are the people the department will look to prosecute. really different situation both in terms of sort of the media savvy of the committees and also now the department's ability to

bring actual charges. >> yeah, and by the way, as a public service announcement, the dwindling number of trumpers, my christmas present to you all, right? before you use the term russian hoax. go ahead and go back and read the mueller report because you look like an idiot when you do that, when you write it in your op-eds because history is really clear on donald trump and what he did and what he actually continues to in apologizing for vladimir putin. i'm sorry, i just, that's one of my pet peeves as we move into the holiday season and the new year that so many people skimmed over the report, the mueller report, and i do hope, as andrew said, the january 6th report will be different. one of the reasons why is you can see how they acted like the mob. they really did. people around trump behaved like the mob. the committee released

deposition transcripts for more than six witnesses including former white house aide, cassidy hutchinson, despite her composure in june, the transcripts reveals inner tour moil, and whether or not to break with trump world. they reveal information about how trump's team tried to stop her repeatedly from cooperating with the house committee under oath. unemployed and unable to afford her own legal counsel less february, mark meadows says trump's team offered to set her up with a lawyer free of charge. that lawyer was former white house deputy counsel stephan pasatino. hutchinson told the committee, he dangled job prospects in front of her if only she would lie and withhold damming information about trump from the

house panel. according to hutchinson, he told her quote, the less you remember the better. and i don't want you to perjure yourself, but i don't recall isn't perjury. after lying to the committee in her initial depositions, hutchinson said she became racked with guilt but was scared to come forward with more information because quote, it felt like i had trump looking over my shoulder. by april, she said the guilt caused her to have a mental breakdown. she told herself, if i'm going to pass the mirror test for the rest of my life, i need to fix some of this. after agreeing to testify before the committee publicly, hutchinson told a staffer quote, i'm about to be blanking nuked. the staffer simply replied, i'm really sorry.

despite knowing this, hutchinson testified anyway. he says he is taking a leave of absence from his law firm. reverend al, you know, trump has behaved like he has been in the mob for quite some time. you look at these exchanges and you look at cassidy hutchinson, you know, she was terrified. she drove up to try to get support from her father who was a trumper. he wouldn't give her any support. she had a qanon aunt and uncle who said they would try to help her out any way she could. she was isolated. she was being threatened. she testified anyway. it was pretty extraordinary, and i think one of the key moments of this entire episode, this entire committee report. >> it is amazing. it's similar to reading a mob

novel or watching a mob movie. but what is so frightening and what is so compelling to those of us that looked at the report last night when it came out is what you said a few moments ago. we cannot allow this to be like the mueller report. we're talking about not the mob. we're talking about the government of the united states and as congresswoman liz cheney said, the first president in american history that would not go along with the transfer of power and you look at the outtakes you played where he consciously kept trying to cover for what happened in terms of some of his followers, tried to still buy is into a fraud that we now know from this report. he knew he lost. i mean, this is real evidence that he himself edited the

narrative that ms. cassidy was saying she was going to be nuked for revealing. you have him on tape. any mob trial, once you have the defendant on tape, you go to the jury. >> elise. >> it blew my mind to go through that testimony and read what cassidy hutchinson went through. thinking about a young 20-something staffer, leaving the white house. you're taking meetings, trying to get a job. she wanted to find a job. they dangle all of these jobs in front of her. it made me so uncomfortable to read the exchanges with her lawyer, who clearly was not looking out for her own interests. that's one side of it, and it's a compelling human element within this entire report but, susan, the other thing that grabbed me was this is a complete law enforcement failure. the fbi, what were they doing? they didn't really turn to this

until january 5th in looking at the report. they didn't look closely at the intel they collected until january 5th. no one knew who was in charge. doj thought they were in charge of one thing, dhs, another, what a mess. >> and you know what makes that so striking is we know from the report how long third-degree -- this had been in the works. some americans had a sense that this was a rally that went awry. the report makes it clear this was a long-term strategy to dispute the election and then to have a rally that was very likely to result in violence, and so there were signs that intelligence agencies should have picked up on law enforcement agencies could have picked on. there's an appendix to the report that deals with that, although the guts of the report is really dealing with former president trump. we're going to hear more about that. that's one of the angles that republicans will want to focus

on to divert attention from the responsibility of donald trump. >> you know, according to the 845-page report. trump and his inner circle made at least 200 attempts to pressure lawmakers and other officials to overturn state electors. 68 meetings, phone calls or texts aimed at local officials or state officials. 18 public remarks that targeted them, and 125 social media posts. around 300 lawmakers from battle ground states reportedly participated in a january 2nd, briefing with trump. the most well known incident, of course, detailing trump's efforts to rig local elections by intimidating local officials, his call to georgia secretary of state. brad raffensperger in which he said, i want to find, 11,780 votes. >> so look, all i want to do is this, i just want to find 11,780

votes. which is one more than we have. because we won the state, and flipping the state is a great testament to our country. the people of georgia are angry. the people of the country are angry, and there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you recalculated because 2,236 absentee ballots. they're all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms. law firms, et cetera, and even if you cut them in half, cut them in half again, it's more votes than we need. >> the data you have is wrong. >> and trump tried to talk with raffensperger 18 times. he finally started ghosting him.

donald trump said that the people of america are angry. well, no, actually, the people of georgia ended up not being angry. trump tried to destroy raffensperger and kemp because they wouldn't go along with the lie, and they both got reelected in their republican primaries. what does that say at the end of the day, what voters knew to be true. >> frankly, being angry or not is irrelevant. you cast a vote, it gets to be count. so, you know, donald trump is clearly just trying to strong arm this person in a way that he was doing with cassidy hutchinson. this is the tactic of a mob boss and in the fake elector scheme as i was noting, donald trump,

there's lots of new evidence, material about meetings. but also, it details how central the role was of mark meadows and rudy giuliani, carrying out donald trump's wishes. so they're all over the fake elector scheme. so you can be sure both doj and bonnie willis are going to be pouring over chapter three of this report because they now have not just donald trump but also rudy giuliani and mark meadows, i think, clearly in their sights, because all three are ring leaders of this scheme, which really goes to the heart of our electoral system. >> yeah, and david ignatius, over the past six years, my better half, who you know very well, and her father, but my better half has been saying time and again, what will the world think of us. what will the world think of us when donald trump was cozying up

to kim jong un and vladimir putin and xi. i just, i think it's a good time to ask that question again. here we are, a couple of days after welcoming president zelenskyy. leading the coalition of freedom fighters. helping them fight against the russian tyrants. committing war crimes. and here domestically, you look and see, we hold everyone accountable. even former presidents who believe they were above the law. what a clear, strong, resounding message this sends to the rest of the world. what will the world think of us? you tell me. what does this look like overseas? >> so mika has it right. that's the question we need to ask ourselves about every action. what will the world think of us. how will we be judged.

we've just seen evidence in the visit of president zelenskyy of what courage and principle looks like. as i look at this report by the select committee, i see people facing up to their responsibilities. i see witnesses like cassidy hutchinson who are frightened. they have a mental breakdown, who face the pressure to tell the truth who do so anyway. i want to face the mirror test. i want to be able to look at myself in the mirror for the rest of my life and foe i did the right thing, and they did the right thing, and the committee laid this out in simple language. it was systematic. i think they knew, joe, that the mueller report had been hard for the country to digest. they wanted something that would speak to everybody so we'd get it. so we would be able to understand. and, you know, i think on this question, how will people look at our time, they will say that

this january 6th insurrection, hideous in american history was at least met with a serious systematic effort to get to the truth. to get to the bottom of it, and that's something. that doesn't solve the problem. we don't know where president trump is going, but at least this committee did the job it was assigned to do. >> well, and they can see every day that people that took place in the riot, people that took place in the insurrection. people who beat the hell out of police officers with american flags, they're in jail. or they're going to jail. the question is now will the person that they came and rioted for, tried to stop an election, a peaceful transition for, whether he, the ring leader, will actually face the music too. nbc news legal analyst andrew weissmann, thank you so much for being here. and thank you for your service to america, and happy holidays. let's go now to

meteorologist angie lassman for the major winter storm impacting holiday travelers. everything has gotten better since yesterday, right? nothing to worry about there. >> if it was opposite day, it's good news only when it comes to the weather. there's a lot of americans, 60% of the population, under some sort of winter weather alert. the arctic front has left bitter cold for millions of people. chicago, a windchill of 32 degrees below at this hour, and these numbers are going to continue well into the rest of your day, and well into your weekend. as we move forward to the north, if you think you're escaping the cold, you sure aren't. a windchill of 12 degrees as you get up in the morning tomorrow in tallahassee, and orlando, could feel like 23 degrees. there's a couple of impacts with this system, a lot actually. we have the rain that's on basically hugging the northeastern areas of the country. we have the snow falling in parts of the great lakes and will continue to fall for the next couple of days in many

locations like buffalo which will have incredible amounts of snow over the next two days. the rain is going to cause its own issue, the wet surfaces, we see now dealing with the rain. as we see temperatures crashing down, it's going to be problematic. washington, d.c. right now, 45 trees. we'll see a 35 degree temperature drop as we get to 7:00 tonight. any wet surfaces are going to freeze immediately. you can't treat those with the salt and such when you have water washing it away. new york, 55. see temperatures drop in a hurry. 41 temperature drop by the time we get to later this evening, and that's just the rain areas as we look at the snowfall amounts. buffalo, 24 to 36 inches of snow, and winds up to 75 miles per hour. it will be a doozy as they head into christmas. >> that looks brutal. thank you so much. angie lassman, man, i'm looking at this, 41 degrees, a drop of

41 degrees in new york city. that's crazy. that's about as bad of a drop as the new york jets fortunes. and it got worse last night. we're going to tell you about that. and also still ahead on "morning joe," we've got a lot more to cover from the january 6th committee's full report, incoming a look at the eleven recommendations that the panel are making as a result of its investigation. plus, the senate approves a massive spending bill to avoid a government shut down, and now it heads over to the house, but will it pass before funding for federal agencies run out at midnight. i tell you what, there's important legislation in theory, the electoral count act, and other pieces of legislation. very important. and ukrainian president zelenskyy is back home after his historic visit to washington. what he's saying about the trip and how russia is responding. you're watching "morning joe," we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe," we'll be right back. congratulations on 15

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welcome back to "morning joe." it's 6:23 a.m. in new york city at 30 rock. a beautiful picture of the 30 rock christmas tree. reverend al, any big plans over the holidays? >> well, tomorrow, christmas eve, we are doing at mass action network, feeding the homeless and seniors, we usually do it on christmas day. we're not going to do it on sunday. we're all going to church. we're going to feed the hungry and the homeless which are far too many, and we're going to deal with seniors who have family in the city. i do it every christmas day. and i'll spend christmas morning calling the families of many victims from trayvon martin to back in the '80s. i always call all the families

on christmas day because they have a seat at the table that's empty and long after the media is gone, i want them to know i haven't forgotten them. >> that's one of the things since really getting to know you well, it's pretty amazing, every morning you make those calls. it's just on your list to call families, to comfort families, to ask them how you can help. it's pretty extraordinary, every day. i think it's important. people should be representative of causes, and you get to know them. you get to know their family. you get to say how are the kids now, some were like babies when i got involved in their cases are now getting ready to go to college, and they know my daughter, so i think it's important that the minute you stop caring about the people that you fought for, then you need to stop doing what you're doing because they're human being and you ought to always

remember that. >> and, elise, how is christmas looking around your place? how are the holidays looking in the search for santa claus. >> my little girl who's 2, she met santa claus a couple of weeks ago, talking about it a lot, but shy in the moment. and she's excited for him to come. and i think it's going to be the most fun christmas as all the excitement builds for santa claus to make it out. a kid growing up got switches and ashes so you have to behave, you don't want to be that kid. >> you're going full mississippi there. my parents would tell us that too if we weren't careful. yeah, and see, santa claus, that can be frightening. my older brother and sister, they always loved getting out the pictures in atlanta, when we would go to riches, and we would

see santa claus there and how every time i was sitting on santa's lap, i would be crying. and it finally ended when i was 14 or 15. thank god for that. i finally grew out of that phase. but what holiday plans do you have, susan? >> we have been enveloped with family this week, which has been great. culminates with our traditional christmas eve dinner of pizza. and then we do the opposite on christmas morning, we drive to fenwic island, delaware, and escape our family. i can recommend both aspects of that. >> i love the word. david ignatius, i don't know if you caught phrasing, susan said we have been enveloped by family. mika and i also enveloped by

family. it's fantastic. we're so happy. we're not going to delaware, though, the day after christmas. what are you doing, david? >> i'm going to be pretty enveloped myself tonight. i'm going to go with my daughters and my granddaughters to see the nutcracker. >> oh, how fun. >> i've probably seen the nutcracker a hundred times but i love it. and christmas eve we'll go to the washington national cathedral, a place that my late mother loved and we'll do what she always said was essential, which is to go and sing as loudly as you can, sing the christmas carols and the hymns that our family loves, and then we'll be celebrating christmas day with my dad who's 102 years old, and you know, we'll just be having a joyous time. we will be enveloped, susan. we'll be under that family blanket. i wish i could say i was doing as many good things for the world as reverend al, but i'll

try to think how to do that next year. >> it's fantastic. and, david, mika and i absolutely loved meeting your father at national cathedral when we were talking about the marshall plan all of these years later, and how blessed you are, how blessed your family is, and you talk about singing. it remind me of my father, every time we would go to midnight services, my father, it is safe to say, had the loudest voice in the church when he was singing and my mother would always grab his arm, george, george, be quiet. those are some great christmas eve memories for us, but you are right, it sound like wonderful holidays for everybody, and you are right, the rev doing so much, you didn't say it but the revvie awards are this week. we're excited about that. tell us about that really

quickly. >> i'm excited. 12th year we're doing the revvie award, giving out the wards to the best and worst political players of the year, the events that were the best, and what we remember, saturday and sunday, the revvies return for the 12th year. >> i absolutely love it, and i will be watching. this is a special time of year. i've got to say also as somebody that has spent most of my adult life in and out of washington, and have the honor of working with nancy pelosi first as someone who is seen as a hard right republican. and now someone who idealogically is about the same but is seen as a moderate, whatever people think of me. one of the great honors was getting to know nancy pelosi, and working with nancy through the years. we worked an awful lot on human

rights issues especially as it pertained to china. and nancy pelosi had her last press conference as speaker and she talked about passing it along, passing her legacy along to the next generation of leaders in the democratic party. take a look. >> my goal and my wish is that the members, our new leadership in the house, based on the foundation that we have laid or forming their own approach will do even better than the significant legislative successes that i have had as speaker of the house. >> and, you know, here's the thing about nancy pelosi, susan, that the haters don't recognize. people on the far right, the trump right, have always vilified her, and they've hated her with such intensity that they don't recognize that she

doesn't hate back. she says she prays for donald trump. she is a devote -- devout catholic who prays for donald trump, who prays for those who persecute, and she wishes every success which means they'll have to work with both sides, which is what america wants, right? >> yeah, you know, i was really struck by her last news conference as speaker. she seemed so relaxed and at ease in a way. she's really pretty determined, laser like force in politics. but, you know, she ends this remarkable career in the leadership, turning over the house to republicans. that's not something she wanted to see, but with big successes with the zelenskyy address to congress, that was in part

engineered by her, in passage, we expect today of the big spending bill that includes the initiatives, the electoral count reform act, which is important and with the january 6th committee, which is a singular creation of nancy pelosi, and i think she was kind of reveling this that yesterday in a way that we rarely see her do in public. >> yeah, and david, the thing about nancy pelosi that i always was so impressed by, i must say that i wasn't sure would be the case when she was speaker because you really never know how somebody is going to handle that position. it is -- i think it is a dismal job if you're not on top of things. but the thing i learned very quickly with nancy when she was a speaker was if the bill went to the floor, it was going to pass. when newt gingrich would bring a bill to the floor, half the time

tom delay would be running around the back, pleading, begging, yelling, threatening members like me to get on board and to vote with republicans. and you never knew how it was going to end up. we've seen that time and again. right now, you see it with kevin mccarthy. he's having trouble getting to 218. nancy pelosi was such a professional. i think especially of the affordable care act, obama care, which i believe, other than january 6th, may be her finest moment. but legislatively what she did then, and what she's done time and again, has been nothing short of remarkable. i would say i compare her to, you know, some of the great speakers of the past, but a lot of those speakers that we talk about had huge margins in the house of representatives. like sam ray burn, nancy pelosi never had that sort of comfort that rayburn had in the '50s and

'60s. she's done a lot with a little. a historic speaker, wouldn't you say. >> she was a great speaker, i think. she was a combination of being a disciplined vote counter in the way you described. she wouldn't bring a piece of legislation up unless she was pretty confident she had it locked. she also had a big heart. she always surprised me in conversations about the things she would talk about, the breadth of her interest. she once told me about her father, and his struggle when no one would pay attention to the flight of jews in europe, trying to wake up the state department and expressed interest and she sent me the next day all of the transcripts, the congressional records from 1943 about her father and her father's mission to try to save these jewish refugees in desperate situations, and in the

concentration camps. she was just a rare person in the house. i hope she inspires the people who will come after her. she's making a big point, as she should. it's a time for transition, a new generational lead. i hope they'll have the same combination, of discipline, intense focus on legislation, and a big heart. >> i think it's so important also, you bring up something i have noticed with speaker pelosi, it's a message to all of us, parents, fathers, aunts and uncles, teachers, people who are in a leadership position over children. nancy pelosi's father walks with her every day. he is with her every day. when she was being sworn in for speaker the second time, i said this a few weeks ago, she was showing me a picture of her father and talking about some of the things you did, and she said

he would be so proud of you today. she said, he is proud of me today, he's watching me, joe. i believe what i say, i know he's in heaven watching down on me. he's with me every day. it was really a great insight of a woman who knows she's standing on the shoulders of giants, and it's a challenge to all of us. it's a challenge to all of us to recognize the impact we're having on people's lives around us every day, and we hope, we pray, it's a positive impact like nancy pelosi's father. still ahead after two years of uncertainty brought on by the pandemic, economic policy makers forecast a return to something close to normal in 2022. that did not happen. instead, we've seen rampant inflation, a hawkish federal reserve, and growing fears of recession. steve rattner is going to be here to break down all of that. i mean, we're looking at the

storm in the midwest and northeast. there's an economic storm right now, and we're not exactly sure where their currents are going to take this country over the next few years. we'll talk about that next on "morning joe." ears we'll talk about that next on "morning joe."

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a look at reagan national airport at about 10 until 7:00. and futures are inching up this morning after a two-day rally came to a grinding halt. the dow, the s&p 500, and nasdaq all closed lower. but the overall economy seems to be in better shape than a lot of people originally thought. the final reading of the gdp shows it grew at 3.2% annual rate last quarter. that's higher than the previous estimate. let's bring in former treasury official, and economic analyst, steve rattner.

3.2, gdp growth, i think most economists will take that for the next ten years. let's talk about this economy, so many cross currents going on right now. where does it all lead us in the new year. >> cross currents is a good word for it. we're in an odd state in the economy. bad news could be good news. what's going on here as the lead in suggested is we have a significant inflation problem, and the only way to deal with a significant inflation problem is for the federal reserve to raise interest rates which you have seen them doing. the problem is the stronger the economy is, the good third quarter number, the more it suggests that the fed is going to have to raise interest rates, and that is bad for the stock market, high interest rates are the enemy of the stock market because as interest rates go up, people have other places to put their money besides in stocks and start to earn a better return on bonds and even on cash

accounts, and that puts downward pressure on the stock market. that's what you see going on here, the yin and yang. the economy is stronger that's most of us thought it would be at this point. inflation is worst than we thought it would be at this point. and all of that makes the fed's job harder and leads us to a situation where the odds are certainly well better than 50/50, probably as high as 70% that we're going to have some kind of a recession at the end of next year, or the following queer as the fed addresses this problem. and you saw me blink there because we have a wind going on here. >> steve, i wanted to ask you about the housing market. there have been so many fluctuations of mortgage rates going up, now they seem to have gone down a tiny bit. what's happening with housing? >> they have gone down a tiny

bit, as you say, elise, but the housing market is in pretty tough shape. housing prices have been coming down month after month. i think they're down five months in a row, if you look at it sequentially. because higher interest rates are also the enemy of the housing market as we've talked about before. when you look at where mortgage rates went to, and you look at where house prices went to in the sense of having gone up a lot in the pandemic, it doubled the cost per month for a typical family to buy a typical house and be able to afford their mortgage. it's come back a little bit from there, not enough to really solve that problem. so we are looking at a very soft housing market, and there's not any real likelihood that that's going to improve in this coming year. >> steve, it's david. i want to ask you about our old friend, mr. soft landing. soft landings are often predicted in situations like this by hopeful officials.

what do you think is the chance that jay powell, the fed chairman can land the u.s. economy next year, late next year, year after, without seriously damaging recession getting inflation under control without blowing the economy apart? >> i think those chances are probably about the same as landing a boeing 777 on an aircraft carrier. that would be impossible but it's going to be very unlikely. it's really like or another analogy, hitting a hole in one from a golf tee. the more likely it is that we're going to have a recession. when you say hugely damaging, how bad it will be to, that does involve a set of questions about how bad the inflation gets and how stubborn it is getting it down. it's been pretty stubborn. that means interest rates have to go up more, and obviously that reduces the chances of a soft landing. i don't think we're going to have recessions like we saw in

the late 1970s or early 1980s, but we are going to have to see some kind of a soft landing. the unfortunate paradox is we want people out there working. we want the economy to grow. but the only way to deal with inflation is to cut back on demand to cut back on the rate of growth of the economy and cut back frankly on the number of people working and all of that does suggest a recession is very much likely in the coming 12 to 18 months. >> steve, we know that the fed is the big policy maker when it comes to the soft landing, the recession, what happens with inflation, but the political responsibility is going to lie with president biden. what can president biden and the administration do in the next year to affect what's happening with the economy and to make it a little less onerous for the americans who are going to be hit by some of these effects? >> unfortunately, the policies

outside of the fed's regime which are fiscal policy, the federal budget deficit, as well as various other things that the white house can do, have been mostly going the wrong way. this omnibus bill that will get passed presumably today, the $1.7 trillion spending bill does increase the deficit more. it spends more, and all of that actually creates more inflation, not less inflation. the president's student debt relief plan, whatever you think about the merits of cancelling student debt, economists will tell you, it does add to inflation because it, again, puts more money out in the economy, and gives people more to spend. the kinds of things that we could be doing to alleviate the inflation problem, not in the next few months but a slightly longer term, would be things like increasing immigration, we are short of workers in this country, and we have president trump clamped down on immigration. it's not really been changed since the biden administration

came to office. we need more workers here. we could bring in lots of legal immigrants to help solve the wage inflation problem. unfortunately, i would have to say as many good things as the biden administration is doing to help people, to help longer term priorities, there's not much that they can or even are trying to do at the moment to really alleviate the inflation problem. >> well, and i'll tell you what, the fact that immigration is a third rail right now in american politics, that's bad news for the economy. that's bad news for inflation. that's bad news for family restaurants, small businesses, small entrepreneurs. i talked about, you know, the hardware store that's on your main street. the restaurants that are still only half opened because they don't have enough workers in some areas to service the entire restaurant. we've got to get an immigration package together that protects the boarder and gets legal

residents into this country again at a sufficient number to do the jobs that are out there and bring inflation down. steve rattner as always, thank you so much. susan page, thank you as well. good luck as you're enveloped by relatives and also good luck in your escape to the beach the day after christmas. and still ahead, more from the house select committee's final report, blaming donald trump for the violence on january 6th. i mean, who are they going to blame, don knots? plus, the latest from capitol hill, as the massive government funding bill heads to the house before a vote on tonight's shut down deadline. we're also tracking that major winter storm that's sweeping across the country, and how it might impact holiday travel plans. transportation secretary pete buttigieg is going to join the conversation and tell us just how bad it is out there and what we can do about it. "morning joe" will be right back. it "morni jngoe" will be right back

wilson back to throw. the clock is at all zeros, and then picked off. on the stat sheet, lloyd is going to -- we've seen this all weekend long, andre cisco. well, well, well. >> zach wilson booed off the field. wilson who returned from a three game benching last sunday in place of an injured mike white found his place back on the bench at the end of the third quarter last night as new york's playoff host of the big hit with a fourth quarter loss. jacksonville meanwhile, now controls its own post season destiny after qb trevor lawrence

with a 19-3 victory. and 50-1 on the ground, including a leaping touchdown in the second quarter. the jags, i can't believe this. they can actually capture the afc south with victories in their two final games. you talk about a tale of two seasons. the jets started off great. the jags started off horribly, and now they have reversed themselves. reverend al, i know you don't follow sports much. i know as a preacher you hear people coming in, parishioners coming in, complaining about the jets. >> absolutely, and you see -- i see i'm holding up your paper of the "new york post," as a progressive, i read the post from the back forward because it's better for my politics. but i'm hearing a lot of moaning, groaning, and praying around this football season. >> my gosh, it's brutal.

elf on a shelf. yikes. elise jordan is with us, reverend al sharpton, of course. and david ignatius. let's bring in chuck rosenberg, and msnbc legal analyst, charles coleman. they are here because the house committee has unveiled the report on the deadly capitol riot, and former president trump's efforts to overturn democracy. the report is broken down into eight chapters that provides stunning details from 1,000 witness interviews and hundreds of thousands of pages of text messages, e-mails and other documents. the first chapter called the big lie. of course a reference to trump's widespread effort to push false claims about the 2020 election being rigged. the chapter notes that trump made efforts even before election day, well before

election day, to delegitimize that election. chapter two is called i just want to find 11,780 votes. that focuses on trump's attempt to pressure state and local officials to overturn the 2020 elections. the next few chapters outline how trump and his allies plan to slate fake electors. the efforts to get the justice department to cast doubt on the integrity of the election, and the push to convince vice president mike pence to decertify those results. and a forward to the report, vice chair liz cheney wrote this. every president in our history has defended the orderly transfer of authority, except one. january 6th, 2021, was the first time one american presidential refused his constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully and -- to the next. and the two sentences read this,

quote the central cause of january 6th was one man, former president donald trump. none of the events of january 6th would have happened without him. and chuck rosenberg, i mean, whether we were talking about politics or other events, i would always talk about what my first year professor richard pierson talking me at the university of florida law school. he taught the but for test, you have an accident, there are five cars at the scene, and but for the one car, would the accident have happened, if so, that's when the negligence lies. it's very easy. we don't need a five-car pile up at the intersection to figure out who's responsible for this. remove donald trump from that crime scene, none of this ever happens. and that's where the january 6th committee started. >> and you're right, by the way,

joe, you probably did a much better job in law school than me. you actually listened. so well done. >> but talk about the report, and the impact of this report. >> sure. so when you're looking to see why something happened, to your point, a car crash or insurrection, you look to see who benefits from it, right, at whose behest is all of this stuff happening, and who could have stopped it, and the committee is exactly right. it was one person lusting for power, and refusing to adhere to the norms and the rules that we have always adhered to as a democracy, and that's why this happened. now, there are others who would have sort of basked in his power and glory, who wanted to help him, people like rudy giuliani, and sidney powell, and john eastman. there was one person, donald trump who could have stopped all of this thing, and didn't. and to your point, joe, it's

really interesting. this didn't happen on january 5th and 6th. it happened much earlier. a story in the "new york times," december of 2020, he really didn't think there would be any transition of power, any peaceful transition of power, that he didn't intend to relinquish power. if you were paying attention to what he said months before the insurrection, you would have seen this coming. so to your second question, i thought the committee put together an excellent set of hearings, and an excellent report. still working my way through it. but they were linear and compelling and cogent. this is how hearings ought to happen, but some of them do. that said, their presentation in a committee room is not a prosecution in a federal court room. there's a big gulf between the two, which i know you know and whether or not the justice department can meet the higher

burden of proof it has, remains to be seen. >> charles, there's so much here, as chuck was talking about. he's still going through the report. i am shocked, though, that so many people went in on this. and in one appendix, you know, the political fundraising, everyone who was working on trump's fundraising knew the elections had been called for biden. there are admissions that they knew that the election was not rigged, yet they still proceeded to raise $250 million. how is that not fraud? >> it is. i want to say before i even get to that, it's important that everyone understands, even as explosive as this report from the committee is, january 6th still remains the slow cooking pot roast to the mar-a-lago case, which is the pan seared salmon, if you will, for jack smith. that's still going to be, despite everything we're reading, the most straightforward route the doj has to a prosecution of donald

trump. everything that you said, to chuck's last point, so much of what jack smith and the doj is going to be looking at in terms of making a decision about which, if any of these charges to move forward on is going to be based not only on what's in that report but also their independent investigation and so while there have been criminal referrals from congress, there are additional issues and potential crimes and violations that they are going to be examining as well. but i would fully expect that this is going to be another thing that's going to be looked into because as we learned during the course of these hearings, and everything that came out, this was an extreme windfall for trump and they used it nefarious intention around grifting and fraud for the american public. >> this is david ignatius, i wanted to ask a question along the same lines. as the congressional committee finishes its work and forwards material in effect to the justice department and its prosecution, what do you think is especially useful and

relevant to the next task, which is not explaining this to the public through a committee report but actually seeing what is a prosecutable crime? what's the key pieces of evidence or lines of argument that you find in this report? >> yeah, well, you know, david, something the department of justice has wanted for months now are the transcripts that are being released over the next couple of days. and the reason the justice department wants that and that is not because agents and prosecutors couldn't have spoken with these witnesses themselves. i imagine they did, and not that they couldn't have obtained the evidence that the committee has opened. in fact, i imagine that they did. but because they have an absolute obligation to know what witnesses have said in the past. let me give you an example, david. if you're a witness, and you testify that the light was red on day one, and it was green on

day two, then on the third day you're questioned, you don't remember seeing the light at all, you have contradicted yourself. it makes you less credible and useful as a witness. before the department of justice called you they want to know on day one what you said about the light and what you said on day two about the light and the fact that you didn't remember the light on day three at all. that's a problem. and the department of justice needed that months ago, and asked for that months ago in order to be able to do their due diligence, and so while the committee has done a terrific job, they didn't give the department of justice, what it actually really needs to do their due diligence in this case. now, by the way, dumping it into the public arena introduces a whole other set of problems for the department of justice. >> what are those problems? >> yeah, so going back to my analogy with you, david, where we asked you about the light on day one, and again on day two,

and day three, and you give different answers. ill intentioned witnesses can align their stories to one another. that's a problem, and so that's why federal prosecutors never want transcripts of their grand jury testimony out in public, at least not until it's absolutely required as a matter of law. we don't want ill intentioned witnesses aligning their stories. there's a second and bigger problem. witnesses sometime come forward at some risk to themselves, and we have seen here already, witnesses being harassed and intimidated and by the way, there are worse things that can happen to witnesses and witnesses know that. we don't want harm to come to witnesses, we want to protect them, at all times, of course, we don't want to reveal their identity until we have to ideal their identity in court. you don't want ill intentioned witnesses aligning stories with one another, and you don't want witnesses being intimidated,

harassed or even worse. that's why you would never dump depositions into the public domain and give bad actors time to use them to their own gain. >> the committee report also lays out eleven recommendations for congress. and other various federal agencies. the panel urges congressional committees to look into creating a quote formal mechanism to bar trump and others identified in the report from holding any future office under the 14th amendment. the report recommends federal agencies take a quote whole of government approach to root out violent extremism including white nationalists. the january 6th committee is calling for reforms to the electoral count act of 1887, the act essentially sets the parameters for certifying the votes of a presidential election but the duties assigned to the vice president are fairly vague. now, the senate of course has passed a bill, as part of the government funding package that's going to address that.

it does clarify the president's role as purely ceremonial, making it clear a vice president has no power to single handedly reject a state's electors. it would also require 20% of each chamber to call for a challenge of a state's electors, more than the single member of both the house and senate that requires it now. the report also recommends the day congress certifies a presidential election, january 6th be made a national special security event. this would require greater planning, coordination and security for future of january 6th events at the capitol, and rev, how absolutely face nating. this day, january 6th, a day that 99% of americans couldn't name is the day that the electoral votes are certified. but now it's a day that's obviously like september 11th for terrorist attacks when it

comes to elections and people possibly overturning elections. now, january 6th is a date every four years that will be etched in americans' minds and the committee tries to do something about making that safe for legislators on both side of the aisle. >> there's no question the committee rose to the occasion by solidifying that in the minds of americans because we were looking at an existential threat to how we deal with the transfer of power. this wasn't just some date someone was calling a rally. this was to stop the certifying of an election, and i think that their report gives us chapter and verse on how insidious and detailed this was planned. this was not -- i have done thousands of rallies. this was not a rally getting out of hand. they planned to interfere with the transfer of power, but charles, let me ask you, the bar that you'd have to reach in the

justice department is a different bar than the congressional committee. we were all happy, those of us that were outraged at what happened on january 6th, that the january 6th committee had criminal referrals to the department of justice. but there's a different standard that they're going to have to reach there. explain the difference between sitting on a congressional committee looking at evidence and now with the prosecutors over justice is going to have to look at. >> even as the congressional committee has former prosecutors on it. you are absolutely correct. each step of the way the bar gets higher, and so you're talking about essentially what amounts from reasonable suspicion to probable cause, which is usually what they're going to be looking at in terms of whether they decide to make a criminal referral. do they have probable cause in each element of each crime they're looking to refer. by the time it gets to the doj, the conversation is going to shift. the conversation is then at that point going to be where do we have the elimination of reasonable doubt.

that's what is going to be necessary for conviction, and the reason why i'm saying that, they're going to skip, if you will, the notion of an indictment. they know they can likely get an indictment by a federal grand jury or most of the charges. jack smith is not playing that game. he wants all the marbles if he's going that far to indict and prosecute the former president. he's going to be looking at what evidence is he gleaning from this report. what evidence is he gleaning from the investigation that the doj is actually conducting on top of that, and what can he prove beyond a reasonable doubt, which is ultimately going to make his decision about what he decides to move forward on. >> all right. msnbc legal analyst, charles coleman, and former u.s. attorney chuck rosenberg, thank you so much to both of you. hope you have a wonderful holiday season. we're learning more about ukrainian president zelenskyy's historic trip to washington this week. following his return home after his address to congress.

zelenskyy posted on social media that he had come back with good results. he referenced financial support included in the new aid package and said there were other agreements made but didn't go into great detail. he thanked president biden along with both chambers of congress and both political parties before reiterating the belief that ukraine will be victorious. meanwhile in a call with reporters yesterday, the kremlin spokesperson peskov expressed disappointment that had no calls for peace with russia. they can say it with a straight face, which is so remarkable about the russians, they can say it with a straight face when obviously any attempts at a peace deal would be met with contempt. as we move towards the end of this new year, and move towards a new house of representatives,

republican house, you know, it's very interesting. we hear an awful lot about the three, four, five, six people loudly talking about republicans cutting support to the ukrainians. but as we were talking about it yesterday, i look at mike mccall who's going to be running the foreign affairs committee, a lot of other republicans on committee committees that are going to have a big say on where the house goes with ukraine, and for many of them, their criticism of the biden administration isn't that the biden administration is doing too much in supporting ukraine, but that they're not doing enough. they need more weapons. they need better weapons systems. i'm not so sure we're going to see a big cut with ukraine funding. you've looked at it more than me. what do you think the next year looks like in the house?

>> i think president zelenskyy's visit to washington, which was courageous in itself presents the image of a real life hero to americans around the country, but in particular, members of congress who listened to his speech. and i think it's much more likely that we'll have strong bipartisan support going forward into 2023 for a continued supply of weapons to ukraine. that's what they need to hear. they need to know that supply of weapons that they're counting on is not going to be interrupted by our partisan politics. so i agree with you. i think the committee chairs will generally be supportive in the house. i think the number of people who are sharp critics is declining. i think the former president trump's political troubles make it all the more likely that ukraine will be a bipartisan cause. there are issues coming out of this visit where you can see some differences between

president biden's view and that of president zelenskyy. i counted up, president zelenskyy in his speech to congress used the word victory 11 times. and when he was at the white house, he used the word -- president biden didn't use the word victory once in his comments. there's a different way of talking about this war. president biden still is focused on avoiding a direct conflict between the united states and russia, and for that reason refuses some of the weapons requests that zelenskyy made when he was here. even so, even with those divisions, i think you would have to say this trip was an extraordinary success. this is an informational war in parts, and the figure of zelenskyy, a tough guy in his green outfit, walking into congress, that was a powerful moment in the information world. >> it really was.

and, david, of course, you have a great column in the "washington post" right now that's up on where biden and zelenskyy still do diverge and i suspect that at the end of this war, whenever it comes, it is going to be the terms of peace, we will of course defer to the ukrainians. but, again, i think getting there may be a bit bumpy. still ahead on "morning joe," a massive winter storm is causing major delays at airports and on roadways across the country. transportation secretary pete buttigieg joins us next with what the government is doing to help the airlines and travelers with all of those delays. we'll be right back. it's bryan cranston. you know, no matter where i'm traveling in the world, i like to get up early and watch my favorite news show, "morning mika," and i understand you're celebrating 15 years together. you, mika, and that guy who sits

next to you whose name escapes me, but it will come to me. anyway, happy anniversary, 15 years, and may you have 15 more. congratulations. hey, "morning joe," carol burnett here. 15 years, wow, congratulations, and happy, happy anniversary. hi, this is jeff daniels. just a word of congratulations to everyone at "morning joe" for 15 years of helping us understand what's going on, telling us the truth, and therefore ruining the rest of our day. f our day. liberty mutual. they customize your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. and by switching, you could even save $652. thank you, liberty mutual. now, contestants ready? go!

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>> mark, how are you feeling out there? >> the same way i did eight minutes ago. i normally do sports. everything is cancelled. what better time to ask the

sports guy in about five hours earlier than he would normally wake up. go sand out in the wind and snow and cold and tell other people not to do the same. i didn't even realize there was a 3:30 also in the morning until today. it's absolutely fantastic, ryan, you know, i'm used to these evening shows that are only 30 minutes long and generally on those shows i'm inside, so this is a really long show. tune in for the next couple of hours to watch me progressively get crankier and crankier. how do i get that storm chaser 7 dude? i feel like clint got the better end of that deal. that thing is heated. the outdoors currently is not heated. i'll tell you what, ryan, i've got good news, and i've got bad news. the good news is that i can still feel my face right now. the bad news is i kind of wish i couldn't. can i go back to my regular job? i'm pretty sure, ryan, that you

guys added an extra hour to this show just because somebody likes torturing me because compared to two and a half hours ago, it is just getting colder and colder. live in waterloo, for the last time this morning, thankfully, i'm mark woodley, news 7, kwwl. >> turn that frown upside down, mark. that's what happened when our nbc affiliate in eastern iowa decided to put its sports broadcaster out in the cold weather to cover the severe weather that was making its way across the country. probably the last time they're going to do that. as for the storm, nbc news correspondent maggie vespa is at chicago's o'hare airport. yikes. would not want to be there right now. hope everybody is okay. she's got the latest. >> reporter: this morning, a massive winter storm and a dangerous deep freeze wreaking widespread havoc on holiday travel. in additionwide, more than

10,400 flights delayed thursday. 2,600 cancelled. derailing plans for tens of thousands to spend christmas with loved ones. >> i have to stick it out here, see if i can make it to indiana. >> reporter: cold, high winds, sweeping across the great plains and midwest into the northeast. more than a quarter of flights cancelled in denver. nearly 540 at chicago o'hare. a major hub for united and american airlines. >> it was really chaos, it was back and forth, and one minute, there's a fight at 8:30 or 6:45 and in a minute it's gone. >> reporter: tampa feeling the air travel pain. >> we were checking every few hours to make sure we weren't going to be delayed or cancelled. >> reporter: tens of millions on the road struggling too. whiteout conditions in places like kansas and missouri, making driving dangerous, and leaving some motorists stranded. state to state, hundreds of crashes reported on the roads,

due to severe weather conditions. powerful winds and arctic air causing flash freezes. that's when temperatures plummet quickly. in cheyenne, wyoming, temps dropping below 0 with windchills as cold as minus 50. in new york, the winds making a dangerous situation worse when a small fire broke out on the staten island ferry. 700 passengers forced to weight in freezing winds to be rescued. governors in half a dozen states declaring states of emergency, pleading with people to hunker down for the holidays. >> this is not going to be a typical storm. in fact, this could be a life threatening storm. please take it seriously. >> boy, it is brutal out there. and anytime you see the words bomb cyclone, you probably don't want to fly into it. now, this summer, you'll

remember, we had u.s. transportation secretary pete buttigieg on the show. i was asking him what in the world was going on with the airports. we had him on about two months later, three months later, and things had gotten extraordinarily, much better. i talked to him about that. my gosh, what's caused the great change because really travel throughout the fall has been exceptional when you compare it to where we were this summer as we were getting out of covid. but he warned us then. he said, it's going to get tougher in the holiday season because we're going to have a lot of the same problems we had in the summer. we knew the holiday season was going to be tough anyway, but you add something that's called a bomb cyclone on top of that, man. it's very rough for a lot of americans out there trying to get to their families and loved ones. let's bring in right now once again u.s. transportation secretary pete buttigieg.

and, pete, mr. secretary, it's interesting, you warned us. you said, hey, things are going great now, but it's going to get tough again in the holiday season. i can only imagine how stressed the system is when you put this horrible weather on top of it. tell us about it. what's going on? and is there anything you can do, transportation department can do, to help at least on the margins here? >> yeah, so, you know, after all of that progress we saw going into the fall, as you mentioned, we had that conversation around thanksgiving, where we had extraordinarily smooth flight operations and was hopeful about things in terms of the backbone of the system had continued to improve but really needed the weather to cooperate too going into the holidays, and to say we have the opposite of cooperative weather would be an understatement. you know, the whole system feels it when you have one or two

major airline hubs impacted. right now, we have multiple major airline hubs impacted. in the northwest, they're dealing with more snow coming in. in the east, it's really the winds we're worried about. in the middle of the country, it's those extreme cold temperatures that can make it hard for ground operations to continue. just think about, i know they make it look easy, but think about the crews and how long they can safely physically be out there servicing the aircraft. it just becomes that much more difficult for the airlines. yesterday, about 10% of flights cancelled. now, of course that means 90% of flights were not cancelled. if it goes above 2%, we consider that a lot. 10% means a lot of disruption for a lot of passengers. if there's any good news, the storm has moved quickly over some areas. denver, for example, where some of the biggest impacts were felt yesterday now getting back to normal. but we're seeing, again, over the middle of the country that extreme cold and then the east

that wind and snow coming. it's going to be rough for certainly the next couple of days when it comes to aviation. >> i was going to ask you about timing, mr. secretary, obviously you're not a meteorologist. you can't predict where the weather patterns, how they're going to develop over the next few days, but obviously people are looking and saying, well, there's no way i'm going to be able to travel to certain destinations, when is it going to be freed up. i'm sure you're talking to the best meteorologists inside and outside of your department, you're looking at the travel flow. what would you say to americans right now, let's say if they wanted to get up to the midwest or the northeast over the next couple of days. what are you all planning out? when do you think the ice is going to break a bit and travel is going to return to normal? >> so we do see those major hubs in chicago, for example, being in a position, hopefully to move into more of a recovery mode later today, but really would urge you to check local

conditions, local forecasts, and most importantly check with your airline. we're going to do everything we can to help to your earlier question, things you might not think about, the military closed their operations in the florida airspace to make sure the airspace was freer for commercial traffic. we're in constant contact with the airlines to see how we can be helpful. ultimately, you might see good weather out the window. the crew hasn't been able to make it to your flight. the best source of information is your airline, and encourage people to check the faa web site, fly.faa.gov. many airports will be able to get back on their feet quickly, we're seeing that in denver. but we're a long way from being out of the storm here. >> we're about six months past the chaos of this past summer. and i am fascinated by and just

would love to hear your sort of after action report. what caused the problems, but more importantly, how did they resolve themselves the way they did? because mika and i obviously have to travel a lot, and i will say, as rough as the summer traveling was, traveling throughout the fall, at least for us, and people who work with us, as smooth as it's ever been. i'm curious, what did you all do? what did the industries do? how did you turn things around so quickly? >> so what hit over the summer was a combination of demand roaring back faster than most anybody thought would happen, and the airlines with a staffing model that really hadn't kept up with that. we pushed them in three areas. one, realistic scheduling, making sure you don't book a flight in the first place, unless you're confident you're able to serve it, and boosting staffing levels, including

increased pay if that's what it took. a lot of them have done that. you see a lot of pilots frustrated with how much they're being asked to work. there's nobody to fill in and allow them to access time off that they have earned. mechanics, we don't have as many mechanics at the ready as we would like. definitely much better than it was before. and then third, customer service. so sometimes there's going to be a cancellation, a delay. how are you treating your passengers when that happens? the airlines that were really dragging their feet. we used enforcement, millions of dollars in fines, getting people hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds back, but what we saw was when we put clear information about what to expect from your airline on our web site, a lot of the airlines actually changed their policies so they could show they had better policies when we put that information out there. all of the steps contributed to improvements. we're seeing less of so called blue sky delays. that's when the weather is perfectly fine and they can't service the flights, we're going

to continue working on that, and making sure we have a strong training pipeline for air traffic controllers. a day like today, a storm like this, and there's no avoiding the exacts it's going to have. and speaking of workers and staffing models, i know everybody, especially if you are traveling today is, you know, likely to be in for some amount of disruption or frustration. had a thought for workers who are away from their families in order to get you closer to yours, and in the case of some of those ground crews working in just incredibly difficult conditions, the kind of -- just because of the mood people are in, the conditions inside the airport are pretty rough for airport and airline workers too. have a thought for them because of course more than anything else, more than the equipment, more than the infrastructure, it's the people of our transportation sector that we all count on, whether we realize it or not. >> you know, you're so right, and it is a great thought this holiday season, and also just around the year. sometimes during the toughest

summer months or during covid, you had flight attendants, pilots, other people working not treated well. your words come at a great time. u.s. secretary of transportation, pete buttigieg, thank you so much, hope you have a wonderful christmas and great holiday season. i know you're going to be keeping your eye on the weather report across the midwest and northeast. still, hope you have a wonderful holiday season. >> thanks, you too. merry christmas and take care. >> thank you so much, and coming up, a special year end edition of brand up, brand down. we're going to go through with donny deutsch, branding icon. we're going to go through the news makers who donny says ended the year on the up swing and the ones who might need to fix their images going into 2023. "morning joe" coming right back. 3 "morning joe" coming right back.

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welcome back to "morning joe." look at the white house. day before christmas eve. 7:45 a.m. on the east coast and washington, d.c. and we're halfway through now a history making term for vice president kamala harris. in a new interview, the vice president talks about her first reaction to the supreme court overturning roe. the administration's plan for handling the southern border and her relationship with the president. let's bring in the author of that piece, special correspondent, at vanity fair, and host of the fast politics podcast, molly jonfast, thank you so much for being with us. you know, i always found with bob dole, there was this great disconnect between the public image of bob dole and the private guy that you talked to

behind the scenes. i must say in all my years, all my decades in washington, in and out of politics, i got to say, the only other person who has that great of a divide is kamala harris, who has this public image of this stilted, tough, whatever you want to call it, however her detractors paint her, the public image that seems to be out there and the private person who is very warm, funny, relaxed, really engaging, i'm curious your impressions when you sat down with the vice president, and what you learned. >> yeah, i mean, i had that same thought. i was like why is she trying to make me feel comfortable. she is the most powerful woman ever in this country, and she's making sure i have my water. yeah, i found her to be very engaging and also just very funny and very versed in the

issues. remember, she comes from, you know, she's a lawyer. an ag, she's a very serious person. i mean, you don't get to be the first ag, the first female east indian senator, first, you know, female vice president. you don't get to be those things. unless you are very very very, you know, prepared and serious. >> molly, i know the vice president pretty well for a long time, and one of the things that strikes me, she's very -- as joe says, very sociable, very kind. i have talked to her face time while she was cooking. she does cook for the family. but then she in the next minute can say, i'm not going this far in this issue where you are. i will do this. did you find that kind of committed, self-aware person that knows exactly where they are, and at the same time won't be offensive about it, but she

just knows who she is, and what she believes in? >> yeah, oh, absolutely. and i do a lot of interviews for my podcast. i'm pretty good at getting people to talk about something i want to talk about, and one of the things i wanted her to talk about was ron desantis, and we were talking about abortion, and i said, well, you know, ron desantis has this six-week bill. and you could tell she just wasn't going to give it to me. she just went right to the gop. she's very, very organized and, you know, very good at being personable, but also being focused and that's frustrated as an interviewer but very useful as a politician. >> molly, you talked to the vice president about abortion and the landmark decision this year of the supreme court. you said that she -- you asked if she was surprised and can you talk about her response and how she engaged with that, because watching it from afar, it was surprising that some in the

biden white house seemed surprised by the reversal of roe after the leaked memo. >> it was really interested because once sb8, that texas law that basically overturned roe was allowed to stand, the supreme court looked at it on the nine months before the leaked decision and at that point i was pretty sure they would overturn roe. i asked her when that happened did you think this is it? it is over? she was still -- she still sort of had this belief that maybe it would n't happen. she is a lawyer and she knew how big the stakes were here i think but once she got the draft decision she was completely i think all so shocked. 50 years of precedence down is so shocking but i had heard that

when she had found the leak she gotten -- they had published it she had pulled everything from casey to the 1973 decision and went through everything and studied up on it and something we don't see that she is very studious and went and stat with the staff and like what will we do about this? she immediately connected it to birth control and gay marriage. i think a lot of us were surprised. the other thing is i said to her i was weirdly vindicated and she was like i was devastated for these women. that's an important place to come from and women do see how meaningful this is in a way that

maybe men don't. >> all right. special correspondent, thank you so much for being with us. a fascinating interview. coming up next, if you are looking for a christmas gift for a beatles fan in your life stick around. we are joining by an author with a behind scenes account of the biggest concert. we'll talk about that when "morning joe" comes back.

the beatles, of course, brought in more foreign industry. the queen saw fit to reward the economic contribution to the nation.

the award entitles them to put mbe after their names. what could it mean than more beatle encores. yeah, yeah, yeah. >> of course paul and ringo are sirs. but in 1965 beatle mania at the peak in the united states and across the pond. from meeting the queen to meeting the mets at shea stadium. the fab four was everywhere that year making an indelible impact on the music industry and the country in the process. let's bring in laura jacobson, her latest book "top of the mountain" looking at the legendary concert in queens. there's no way to describe to anybody -- i was only 2.

reading books and i have been shocked through the years to find the people who were actually there. i come across them every year but talk about that historic night at shea. >> it was absolutely the biggest event in show business history to that date. no one performed before 56,000 people why not el vision, not sinatra. nobody and nobody received the paycheck they received that night. they walked away with $160,000 in 1965. that just broke every record there was. >> yeah. >> only played for 27 minutes. >> right.

and so funny. david ignacius, you went to a beatles concert when you were young. it was all the tours in 1964, ' 5 and '66, we're playing on amplifiers the size of peanuts. everybody is screaming and sounds like a jumbo jet. they couldn't hear themselves playing. >> i went to the first concert in america, february 11, 1964 at what's known as the washington coliseum. maybe 3,000-seat auditorium. i was picking jellybeans out of my hair. a wonderful introduction to the beatles. at the time of the shea stadium

concert was this a band that could have stayed together. was the band that played there still locked that they might have stayed and played for another decade or more? >> that was a big surprise to me that in 1965 at the height of their popularity i could already see the signs of their breakup and going the separate ways, particularly john. he loved making music with his mates but he didn't enjoy being a beatle. and as a beatle he was forced to do things he didn't want to do like he didn't want to accept that mbe. he thought it was ridiculous for him to do so. and yet he was forced to do it because the other three were doing it. vietnam was heating up.

he was getting his activist pants on. and the jackets they wore at shea a military style. he didn't want to wear it. but the other three were so he had to do it. he gave away a part of himself why nobody could hear them as ringo said. people came to see us. they didn't come to hear us and frustrating for all of them. ringo became the star in "a hard day's night" so he was the star of "help." hollywood was calling him and he enjoyed being out in front for a while so he had something else going on. george discovered indian music and flipped out, began a spiritual quest at that time.

paul wanted to stay on the road which is clear because he is still on the road. >> yeah. still on the road. still incredible. >> when you hear the beatles talking about touring in general through '65 and '66 it just got so dangerous. it was a grim experience for them why finally decided enough was enough. >> no question about it. one of the things that i wanted to ask laurie is that were they very competitive? i was close with james brown who's like a father to me and then i was part of the community affairs for michael jackson's

big '84 tour. they were always watching what other groups were doing. michael fill a stadium and say did the beatles fill this stadium? how competitive were they? were they mindful how popular they were compared to other contemporary groups at the time? >> oh, certainly they were aware that -- and it was a shock to them. they with respect prepared for what they were greeted with in america and the title of the book is a quote from john years later referring to shea saying i saw the top of the mountain on that unforgettable night. they were on a ride that they really had no control over until they quit touring in '66 and got

serious with the music and spend time in the studio and that's what they wanted to do. they knew they were setting the trend for the entire british invasion really and their career changed everything in rock n roll. nobody played a baseball stadium before. after shea baseball stadiums were all you saw. technology wasn't ready for shea but four years later they were ready for woodstock. they had an impact on the music industry and pop culture. they changed everything. >> they -- yeah. a revolution in music and pop culture. just unbelievable. thank you so much for being with us. the book is "top of the

mountain." laurie jacobson, thank you so much. if you want to hear what it sounds like, you can still get some tapes. listen to some streaming of the beatles live at shea stadium or live at the hollywood bowl released on vinyl in '78 and just people screaming. you figure out quickly that probably not hearing a lot of their own music. the january 6 committee released the final report. the overall conclusion -- clear. donald trump's largely responsible for the insurrection. nbc news correspondent ryan nobles has the latest. overnight the final report. a more than 800-page narrative

claiming that former president trump is responsible for the violence on that day. >> i think for most americans it was beyond imagination. >> reporter: the report providing evidence trump and members of his inner circle in an effort to cling to power and overturn his 2020 election defeat, quote, engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outrage, pressure or condemnation in the two months between the election and the attack on the nation's capitol. >> had not been for the encouraged of donald trump, would have never occurred. it would have been the normal transfer of power that we do every four years when there is a presidential election. >> reporter: the report comes just days after the nine-member committee voted to recommend the department of justice pursue criminal charges against mr. trump, including obstruction of an official proceeding, congress' certification of electoral votes, and inciting or assisting others in an insurrection. earlier this week the former president called the committee's

work, quote, a partisan attempt to sideline him in his 2024 presidential bid. the committee also beginning to release hundreds of pages of transcripts, including an interview with star witness former white house aide cassidy hutchinson, who claimed a lawyer with ties to the former president suggested she withhold information from the committee saying, quote, the less the committee thinks you know, the better. in a statement, he said he represented hutchinson, quote, honorably, ethically and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me. the january 6 report also 11 recommendations to ensure nothing like the attack on the capitol ever happens again. among them, urging congress to consider passing legislation to bolster subpoena power, increase penalties against those who threat-election workers, and strengthen the nation's laws against insurrection. that would, in effect, bar president trump from holding office again. >> no man who would behave that

way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. he is unfit for any office. >> let's bring in justice correspondent ryan riley. still with us reverend al why what is your big takeaway? >> i'm a justice reporter and focus on the doj aspect of this and main takeaway is to pull the punches with the law enforcement mistakes that were made in the lead-up to january 6. overall the report tells a damning story about donald trump and an effective way to communicate it to the public especially with the public haefrings which captured the nation's attention but originally their assignment was supposed to be about largely

finding out how exactly doj or the fbi, dhs had missed the red signs leading up to january 6 suggesting violence that day and sometimes in tortured language try to in the appendix relegated to avoid reaching what experts agreed the largest law enforcement/intelligence failure seen nationwide since september 11th. >> right. why did they do that? why didn't they drill down further? we had colin powell on the show talking about watching what was happening on january 6 asking the question, where the hell is anybody? also, how did this happen? that's a question so many people are asking. you said they glossed over this part of the story.

why? >> i think that there's a worry that this would distract from the main component that donald trump responsible for what happened and i think you can walk and chew gum at the same time. make both of those points saying donald trump did the things and instigated the mob and had an effort to overturn the results of the election but doing that in public. right? i think that just putting the idea that hey donald trump is summons conspiracy theorists on the day to talk about the peaceful transfer of power this could be an issue. i reported this week something that the january 6 committee knows about but did not include in the final report which is that on the very day that donald trump sent the infamous will be wild tweet december 19th of 2020

a fbi informant said that's a call to arms weeks before the january 6 attack. i spoke to a separate fbi informant saying in november of 2020 that the rhetoric of donald trump to take people to the edge and cause them to do something violent and numerous law enforcement officials told me at the time and form every and current said that donald trump's rhetoric would lead to death. there is a ton of raw intelligence bubbling up and the report does get into some of that but the way it's sort of trying to pivot and sometimes can be really strange to see how they are trying to bring the focus on donald trump every time saying they could have predicted to send people to the capitol. i think back to, hey wait. this is the guy that informed

members of the crowd to punch protester at a rally. cops one day to slam suspect's heads on to the door of the police vehicle as they are put into it. he's talked directly about violent rhetoric and instructed people to commit violent crimes at the rallies before. this is also someone used bombastic language all the time and the idea that this is unforeseeable that donald trump may be irresponsible telling people that there's a massive criminal conspiracy to steal the election seems like a failure of imagination. it just seeing the two plus two equals four and when you every about to flood the fbi with half a billion of funding you would think you want to figure out

what happened first. this is an opportunity for congress to evaluate what went wrong. >> i want to keep talking about this in the law enforcement failure because it does seem stunning to me that the fbi had no unified reporting of these threats the report says until literally the day before january 6. what are the fbi sources telling you about that? >> yeah. they had the raw intel coming in and there's a focus on january 20th and 17th from my reporting and understanding that january 6 wasn't a huge thing until that donald trump tweet and i think that should have been a pivot and around the holidays and can be a component of this. there's not an overall deep dive look. that was sort of left on the cutting room floor but chapter on this prepared in other

sections of the january 6 committee blue team which was focused on law enforcement and had the work stymied and only were able to get out some of it. >> all right. nbc news justice reporter ryan riley thank you so much. now let's bring in nbc news senior political reporter sahil kupur who spoke to mitch mcconnell. he had things to say about former president trump. what did he say? >> reporter: he looked and sounded like a man with something to get off his chest in the capitol leadership office a few feet from here. newsy comments issuing some of the sharpest criticisms i have heard him express about former president trump. it was abundantly clear that he holds donald trump for the republican's underperformance in

the 2022 election. the democrats expanded the seats. what did he say about donald trump? let's put this up on the screen. quote, i think the former president's political clout has diminished. he went on to say regarding 2022, we lost the port we needed with independents and moderate republicans related to the view they had of us as a party largely made by the former president that we were sort of nasty and tended to chaos. this is mitch mcconnell saying independents and swing voters crucial to the result in the 2022 election have a negative view of the republican party because of trump. there was a purpose to this. not just him venting but a call to trump to back off 2024 by saying they want to be actively

involved in selecting quality candidates and will do that from the start and said that he felt he couldn't do much in 2022 because he conceded donald trump's political influence so significant there's not much to do in all but a couple states. republicans held the seats in those states but the diminished man running for president in 2024 trying to make a comeback is not able to have the same influence in the senate primaries. >> absolutely fascinating interview. thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. hope you have a wonderful holiday season. let's bring in historian and author doris kearns goodwin.

i'm going to talk about a pop music reference. maybe an obscure one. barbra streisand sang "the way we were" and then there's another version saying everybody's talking about the good old days and as bad as these are the bad days these are the children's good old days. >> wow. >> i think about that with the horrible time we are marching through and think of 2022. so much negative to think about. i think about zelenskyy coming to congress. i think about liz cheney who could have just stayed in line and followed marching orders and she would still be in congress. she lost. i think of cassidy hutchinson.

she escaped to new jersey. tried to get help from her father. tried to get help from others. she have all alone. she said i will get destroyed. i will get nuked. she testified anyway. i think about the federal court system. forgive me but there's heroes in our midst. one federal judge after another proving checks and balances work still. and saying no and pushing back to donald trump time and time again. so that's my sermon about the good old days. some being today. i'm curious your thoughts on leadership in 2022. >> i agree with you so much. it's a temperamental thing to

think like you do and i find the elements of strength. sometimes through history. we think look what they lived through. sometime we find it in our own moments. this is an extraordinary week for leadership. we saw zelenskyy come and 81 years ago winston churchill came to shore up morale, support of britain, a joint session of congress speech and incredibly popular and feel we're fighting for democracy in world war 2 and ukraine now and at home. i think this report that just came out the power is in the narrative. barbara tuckman said that chronology is the spine of history. look at events as they happened to see cause and effect and story telling is the key of that report. maybe it left out things but the

real power is people see from cause and effect that donald trump responsible not simply for what happened on january 6 but for not accepting the peaceful transition of power and creating an alternate reality and it meant that we lost time, energy and almost lost the system of government. lincoln said that public sentiment is everything. if this report continues to educate public sentiment story telling is in the brain. there's a reason the people sat around before printed material to tell stories. it is the way we continue to tell ourselves from our parents to the children to the grandchildren and this is chapter 1 in the books 50 to 100 years from now. what will chapter 2 be?

we listened to the story. a country was able to indict and get a response because the public sentiment was there. and that no president is above the law and will never happen again. i wish i could see chapter 2 right now. >> you are right. people may be picking apart this report and maybe some things they think the committee should have done but they told an extraordinary story that as you said is the first draft of history and that historians for years to come will use as a primary reference. you brought up churchill coming to the united states. christmas eve 1941 and joined fdr at the white house christmas tree lighting and spoke of the

importance of the moment. >> i stand this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family. and yet, i cannot truthfully say that i feel far from home. let the children have their night of fun and laughter. let the gifts of father christmas delight their play. let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstented pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and formidable year that lie before us. and so, in god's mercy a happy

christmas to you all. >> if history doesn't repeat itself it's rhyming very obviously this week. isn't it remarkable? churchill in 1941 and here zelenskyy in 2022. >> wow. just hearing the gift of rhetoric churchill had. the courage that zelenskyy took to take himself away from ukraine. churchill on a warship with u-boats in the water. america held the need of resources they both had. that visit with churchill is extraordinary because he disrupted the white house. he was there for three weeks and stay up with roosevelt until 2:00 in the morning. he would nap while roosevelt had to run the country. the great moment that happens at

the part of the visit they line a declaration the 26 nations against the axis powers will be together until the end. no separate peace. they were calling themselves the associated nations. roosevelt said the united nations. so excited is wheeled into the bedroom of churchill. he has absolutely nothing on. roosevelt said i'll come back. churchill stands up straight dripping from the tub says please stay. the prime minister of great britain has nothing to hide from the united states president. can you imagine? i mentioned this when hillary clinton was on the white house and she invited me to a sleepover and we slept in

churchill's room and i was sure he was in the room and i couldn't wait to go in the tub. it was a great moment. >> oh, it sounds amazing. presidential historian, thank you so much for be us with. we hope you have an absolutely wonderful holiday season. thank you. >> thank you, joe. same to you. >> all right. still ahead on "morning joe," new transcripts released by the january 6 committee raise questions about potential charges of witness tampering. what we are learning from the remarkable testimony from aide cassidy hutchinson. the message from nancy pelosi in the final news conference at house speaker. you are watching "morning joe." we'll be back as we go to break with gladys knight and the pips.

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the committee released deposition transcripts from more than six witnesses including former white house aide cassidy hutchinson. despite the composure the transcripts reveal her inner turmoil and fear over whether or not to break with trump world as she called it and then eventually did. they also review new information about how the trump team tried to stop her repeatedly from cooperating under oath. unemployed and unable to afford a legal counsel the former aide to white house chief of staff meadows said the trump team

offered to set her up with a lawyer free charge. hutchinson told the committee he dangled job prospects in front of her if she would lie and withhold damning information from the house panel saying the less you remember the better. and, i don't want you to perjure yourself but i don't recall isn't perjury. after lying to the committee in the initial depositions she said she became racked with guilt and scared to come forward because it felt like i had trump looking over my shoulder. by april she had a mental break down and studied up on whistle-blowers in watergate and said if i pass the mirror test for my life i need to try to fix

some of this. after agreeing to testify before the committee publicly she said i'm about to be blanking nuked. the staffer simply replied i'm really sorry. despite knowing this she testified anyway. he said he is taking a leave of absence from the law firm. reverend al, trump's rehaifed like he's been in the mob for quite sometime. you look at the exchanges and you look at cassidy hutchinson and she was terrified. she drove up to try to get support from her father as a trumper. she had qanon aunt and uncle saying they would try to help

her. she was isolated and testified anyway. i think a key moment of this entire episode, this entire committee report. >> it is amazing. it's similar to reading a mob novel or watching a mob movie. what is so frightening and so compelling to those of us that looked at the report last night is what you said a few moments ago. we cannot allow this to be like the mueller report. we are talking about not the mob but the government of the united states. as congresswoman cheney said the first president in american history not going along with the transfer of power. you take out the outtakes that you played where he consciously

kept trying to cover for what happened in terms of some of his followers, tried to enter a fraud we know from the report he knew he lost. this is real evidence that he himself edited the narrative that miss cassidy was saying she would be nuked for revealing. you have him on tape. once you have the defendant in a mob trial you go to the jury. >> it blew my mind to go through the testimony and read what cassidy hutchinson went through thinking about a young 20-something. she wanted to find a job. they dangle the jobs in front of her. it made me so uncomfortable to read the exchanges with the lawyer. that's a side of it and a human

element within this entire report. but susan, the thing that grabbed me is this is a complete law enforcement failure. the fbi. what were they doing? they didn't really turn to this until january 5 according to report not looking at the intel they collected until january 5. no one knew who was in charge. doj thought they were in charge of one thing. dhs another. what a mess. >> what makes that so striking is from the report this had been in the works. some americans had a sense that this is a rally that got out of hand but this is a long-term strategy to dispute the election and a rally likely to result in violence and so there were signs that intelligence agencies

should have picked on. there's an appendix to the report to deal with that but the guts of the report is dealing with former president trump. we'll hear more about that. that will be an angle that republicans want to focus on to divert the attention of donald trump. prosecutors will be reading the report in georgia leading the effort against donald trump and allies to overturn the election there. why the committee's finding could be key to that case. "morning joe" back in a moment.

according to the 845-page report trump and the inner circle made at least 200 attempts to pressure lawmakers. 68 meetings, phone calls or texts to state officials. 18 public remarks that targeted

them and social media posts. around 300 lawmakers from battleground states participated in a january 2 briefing with trump it said. the most known trying to rig elections intimidating local elections is the call to brad raffensberger. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is 1 more than we have. because we won the state and flipping the state is a great testament to our country. the people of georgia are angry. the people of the country are angry. there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you have recalculated.

because the 2,236 in absentee ballots, i mean, they're all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms, law firms and it is more votes than we need. >> mr. president, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. >> trump, tried to talk with raffensberger 18 times. raffensberger finally started ghosting him. donald trump, it is so funny, donald trump said that the people of america are angry. no. the people of georgia with respect angry. the republicans in georgia ended up not being angry. trump tried to destroy raffensberger and kemp and they both got re-elected overwhelming

in the republican primaries. what does that say about at the end of the day what voters knew to be true? >> being angry or not is irrelevant. you cast a vote. it's counted. so donald trump is clearly just trying to strong arm this person in a way he was doing in a different way with cassidy hutchinson. this is the tactic of a mob boss and donald trump in the fake elector scheme there's lots of new evidence about meetings and details how central the role of mark meadows and rudy giuliani carrying out donald trump's wishes. they're all over the fake elector scheme and you can be

sure they will pour over the report with not just donald trump but also rudy giuliani and mark meadows clearly in the sights because all three are ringleaders of this scheme going to the heart of our electoral system. >> david, over the six years my better half and her father saying what will the world think of us when donald trump was cozying up to kim jong-un and vladimir putin and xi. i think it's a good time to ask that question again. here we are a couple days after welcoming president zelenskyy, leading the coalition of freedom fighters, helping them fight

against the ruin tyrants committing war crimes and domestically we hold everyone accountable, even former presidents who believe they were above the law. what a clear, strong resounding message to the rest of the world. what will the world think of us? you tell me. what does this look like overseas? >> mika has it right. that is the question to ask ourselves. what will the world think of us? how will we be judged? we have seen evidence in the president of zelenskyy what courage and principle looks like. as i look at this report by the select committee i see people facing up to the responsibilities, witnesses like cassidy hutchinson who were frightened and have a mental

breakdown it is so difficult giving the pressure they face to tell the truth and do so anyway. i want to look at myself and know they did the right thing. the committee laid this out in simple language. it was systematic. i think they knew that the mueller report was hard to digest. they wanted something to speak to everybody so we would get it and be able to understand. i think on this question of how will people look at the time, they will say that the january 6 insurrection, hideous event in american history, met with a serious effort to get to the truth. that is something. that doesn't solve the problem. we don't know where president trump is going through the committee did the job. nancy pelosi says good-bye

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you know, this is a special time of year. i've got to say also as somebody that has spent most of my adult life in and out of washington and had the honor of working with nancy pelosi first as someone who was seen as a hard-right republican and now someone who ideologically is about the same but is seen as a moderate whatever people think of me, one of the great honors was getting to know nancy pelosi and working with nancy through

the years. we worked an awful lot on human rights issues, especially as it pertained to china, and nancy pelosi had her last press conference as speaker, and she talked about passing it along, passing her legacy along to the next generation of leaders in the democratic party. take a look. >> my goal, my wish is that the members that -- our new leadership in the house, based on the foundation that we have laid forming their own approach will do even better than the significant legislative successes that i have had as speaker of the house. >> and, you know, here's the thing about nancy pelosi, susan, that the haters don't recognize, people on the far right, the trump right, have always vilified her, and they've hated her with such intensity that

they don't recognize that she doesn't hate back. like, when she says she prays for donald trump, she is a devout catholic who prays for donald trump, who prays for those who try to persecute her, and she does wish for the republicans every success that she's had as speaker, which means they'll actually have to work with both sides, which is what america wants. right? >> yeah. you know, i was really struck by her last news conference as speaker in that she seemed so relaxed and at ease in a way, you know, she's really pretty determined, laser-like force in politics. but she ends this remarkable career in the leadership turning over the house to republicans, that's not something she wanted to see, but with big successes, with the zelenskyy address to

congress in part engineered by her, bypassage we expect today of this big spending bill that includes some initiatives including the electoral count reform act, which is important, and with the january 6th committee, which is a singular creation of nancy pelosi. and i think she was kind of reveling in that yesterday in a way that we rarely see her do in public. >> yeah. and, david, the thing about nancy pelosi is that i was always so impressed by, i'm going to say that i wasn't sure would be the case when she was speaker because you really never know how somebody's going to handle that position. i think it is a dismal job if you're not on top of things. but the thing i learned very quickly with nancy when she was a speaker was if a bill went to the floor, it was going to pass. when newt gingrich would bring a

bill to the floor, half the time tom delay would be running around the back, pleading, begging, yelling, threatening members like me to get on board and to vote with republicans because it was -- and you never knew how it was going to end up. we'd see that time and again. right now, you see it with kevin mccarthy. he's having trouble getting to 218. nancy pelosi was such a professional, i think especially of the affordable care act, obamacare, which i believe may be other than january 6th may be her finest moment, but legislatively what she did then and what she's done time and again has been nothing short of remarkable. i would say i compare her to, you know, some of the great speakers of the past, but a lot of those speakers that we talk about had huge margins in the house of representatives, like sam rayburn. nancy pelosi never had that sort of comfort that rayburn had in

the 50s and the 60s. and she's done a lot with a little. historic speaker, wouldn't you say? >> so, she was a great speaker, i think. she was a combination of being a disciplined vote counter in the way that you describe. she wouldn't bring a piece of legislation unless she was pretty confident she had it locked. but she also had a big part. she always surprised me in conversations by the things she'd talk about, the breadth of her interest. she once told me about her father when he was in congress and that his struggle when no one would pay attention to the plight of jews in europe, trying to wake up the state department. and i expressed interest, and she sent me the next day all of the transcripts, the congressional records from 1943 about her father and her father's mission to try to save these jewish refugees in

desperate situations, having been in concentration camps. she was just a rare person in the house. i hope she inspires the people who are coming after. she's making a big point as she should it's time for transition, time for a new generational lead. i hope they'll have that same combination she did of discipline, intense focus on legislation, and a big heart, because she had them both coming up, one of the most telling pieces of footage uncovered by the january 6th committee -- the outtakes from trump's taped messages on the heels of the insurrection he planned when he just couldn't bring himself to admit the election was over. if you wanted to hold my hand... [ gasps ] all you had to do is ask. i am down to my last life. when you only have one life... that's what makes it special. go get 'em tiger.

i would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday and to those who broke the law, you will pay.