good morning. welcome to morning joe. that s a look at times square. we re a heart of hours the ball the will drop and we ll turn the page to 2024. good morning. joe and mika have the morning off. a lot to get to this morning, including another state remove donald trump from the republican presidential ballot. we will have expert legal and political analysis on that big decision from maine s secretary of state. plus nikki haley s attempt at cleaning up her highly criticized answer on the cause of the civil war. also forces continue to strike refugee camps where it believes hamas terrorists are hiding. this comes as the biden administration is putting more pressure to protect civilians. plus we ll take a look at the stories that dominated 2023 from two wars overseas to chaos on capitol hill, as well as the former president s many legal battles as he enters the presidential election. a lot to go through. with us for all of us is nbc news national affairs analyst john heilem
tell us about what happened. well, that was a very early plot twist in my career. i was coming out of college and i was going to go work at a theatre, and i had a a friend who was working at hbo, which at that time was a very start up network, a long time ago pretty start up network and she said, well, you are going to go work in the theatre but there is some guy coming who s going to be making plays for television on hbo. you could maybe be his assistant, and so, i got that job as a secretary at the very bottom, starting out a long time ago. they don t say secretary any more. they did back then! they did back then i had to take a typing test! did you?! and then i was very lucky to be hitting a company like that at the time where my rate of growth and knowledge, really, the company was growing at the same pace, so i was able to move up there and just learn so much about making film and telling stories, still working with a lot of playwrights and still being so clos
morning joe. it is tuesday, december 26th, i m jonathan lemire. alongside me former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments elise jordan and the haass of msnbc s politics nation reverend al sharpton. president biden and first lady jill biden spent christmas eve fielding phone calls for the norad santa tracker. the president posted this picture on social media writing that he spoke to excited young americans worried about santa s whereabouts. then the president and first lady called units from each branch of the military to wish them a merry christmas and thank them for their service. republican front runner donald trump, on the other hand, spent the holiday weekend in a very different fashion, taking on his political enemies. the former president posted several, shall we say, unusual christmas messages on truth social that criticized people like joe biden and jack smith. in one post the channeled home alone kevin mccallister. merry christmas, y
that is new york city mayor eric adams again calling out the republican governor of texas and the biden administration. we ll go through the mayor s executive action to address the busing of migrants from the border as the tension continues to grow between the democratic mayor and the president of the united states. this all comes as secretary of state antony blinken met yesterday with mexico s president to discuss what can be done about the surge of migrants with another caravan moving toward the border. also ahead this morning, nikki haley making headlines this morning for her response to a question about the civil war. it wasn t a hard one. we ll show you that exchange from a campaign stop in new hampshire. plus, another warning about donald trump s plans for a second term. this time coming from ron desantis, one of his opponents for the republican primary. good morning. welcome to morning joe. i m willie geist. joe and mika have the morning off. with us, host of
down tonight? yeah, it was less with a bang and more with a whimper, stephanie ruhle. weeks and weeks of high stakes negotiations here in washington covering each and every turn of them, as speaker mccarthy and his top allies huddled with top white house officials over the course of several weeks to hammer out this deal. and now the senate finishing it up in the dead of night, sending it now to the presidents desk, and avoiding default, with the days to go until that ex date deadline on monday. that s good news. and frankly, i have to tell you, that we have seen a lot of these late nights in the senate, having votes that are done within nine or ten or even 11 minutes is real fast by senate standards. so it does give you a sense that even though they did 11 of these amendment votes they were looking to do them as quickly as possible, just trying to get this off their plate here in the senate, and move it on. i also think it was fascinating to watch just how this vote ultimat