midnight. good morning. welcome to morning joe. it is friday, december 30th. new year s eve on this final morning, joe, of the year. and this morning, there is more heat on new york congressman-elect george santos, who also now is under federal investigation after it was revealed that he lied about his resume while campaigning for congress. we ll have new reporting on what these charges could be. plus, newly released transcripts from the january 6th committee, showing the struggle within the trump white house to keep bad information, conspiracy theories, away from the president and the failure to do that in many cases. we ll take a closer look at former white house chief of staff, mark meadows, in his failed role as presidential gatekeeper. plus, after thousands of canceled flights and a reputation now in tarts, southwest airline says it finally expects to resume normal operations today. we ll tell you what the company is saying it plans to do to somehow make things right.
To quote Stormy Daniels, when somebody attacks me, im going to defend myself. Those were some of the final words from the Adult Film Star before she was excused from the stand in Donald Trumps Hush Money Trial. It is good to be back with you. Im chris jansing, alongside my colleague, andrea mitchell. Defense lawyer suggested she was trying to extort him, and capitalizing on his fame with merchandise, prosecutors for their part pointing out that daniels was the target of nasty, threatening tweets for even coming forward about an alleged affair with donald trump. They asked daniels been telling the truth net positive or net negative in your life. Daniels response, negative. Over the next hour, well bring you live updates from the courtroom, the latest witness who will be back after the lunch break, a bookkeeper at the Trump Organization who handled checks, including of course the key checks, the ones in question in this hush money case. So lets bring in the panel joining us now, nbc Nati
spriking how silent kevin mccarthy and other members of house leadership has been, that s because kevin mccarthy doesn t yet have the votes he needs to be speaker. santos had pledged to support mccarthy. also, if santos were to resign his seat and there were to be a special election, one would figure democrats would be favored in it. so mara, it is so disturbing. there seems to be no depth, no bottom here. including his own mother s death. there are questions he s raised about the story he told about some of his employees being murdered in the pulse nightclub shooting down in florida a few years ago. no one s been able to verify that. he does seem to be, though, almost the perfect embodiment of a republican party in the age of trump. one that is willing to lie about anything, thinking that they can get away with it. and at least right now, george santos is on track to become a member of congress. it s disturbing, john. but, of course, pulling back, this is the latest iteration of
about what happened in the trump white house before, during, and after the january 6th capital attack. the january 6th house select committee released a new trove of deposition transcripts from key witnesses late yesterday, including former head of personnel at the white house, john mccentee. he told the house panel that former president donald trump wanted to issue blanket pardons for everyone who participated in the attack. saying, quote, the president floated the idea and pat cipollone said no, referring to former white house counsel, pat cipollone. mcentee continued, i remember the president saying, well, what if i pardoned the people that weren t violent, just walked into the building, and i think the counsel gave him some pushback on that. new transcripts reveal that former president trump also considered firing any member of his staff who did not believe that the election was stolen from him. cipollone mentioned a memo that stated, quote, anyone that
we should shoot light into peoples bodies. but to hear it from the inside something else here. but at least there wasn t a run on humidifiers, i suppose. that s true. we knew there was a brief moment when john kelly was white house chief of staff and he put protocol in place to restrict office to the oval office, that got trump angry, so john kelly wasn t chief of staff for very long. by the time we got to mark meadows, it was the words of a trump adviser, grand central station. anyone could come in and out bringing anything they want, stuff about covid. we know from alyssa farah griffin s testimony yesterday that matt gaetz brought a conspiracy theory to the president s desk about the host of this very show. and most troubling, had easy access for the likes of michael flynn and rudy giuliani and others to bring conspiracy theories about january 6th to the president. that s where, you know, in those days after the election, when