has already started too. >> stop the steal! stop the steal! >> this is -- it's a problem when you're arguing against yourself. so the vote wasn't safe when joe biden won this state, but now that they have got a couple of senate races everything is going to be okay. willie, that argument is so crazy on all points and then in the middle of it when he's trying to say, oh, your vote's secure after we have had crazy people running around this state spreading conspiracy theories for the month, in the background the chants start, stop the steal. >> stop the steal as the vice president of the united states listens to the chant. it's amazing. they have been saying for six weeks now that the deceased hugo chavez is tampering with voting machines and changing election results and that's what they think about elections in the state of georgia, which by the way, the vote has been counted three times. the republican governor, the republican secretary of state in that state has said, yes, everything was legitimate and good here, but they painted themselves in that corner. saying the system is rigged and corrupt and now, they're asking republicans to go vote in that system in a couple of weeks. not going to work. >> well, yeah. in a state where there is a civil war going on with the republican party. you have got hugo chavez, maybe fidel castro. i heard stalin's name thrown in there are somehow working i guess brian kemp and the secretary of state have their ouija boards out, but they're in a conspiracy with brian kemp and the georgia governor and the georgia secretary of state and somehow getting kelly loeffler illegally on the ballot. so even one of the people that mike pence is telling them to vote for, you've got trumpers running around with the very big megaphones saying she stole the election and that it should be doug collins -- fast talking doug collins on the ballot. so it's bizarre. along with willie and me this morning, we have washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay. we're awaiting for her exclusive interview with hugo chavez later this hour. and executive editor of the weekend and -- >> i have to go -- the devil went down to georgia. >> oh, yes. the host of hell and high water podcast john heilemann. mika has the morning off. she's looking for the exclusive interview with fidel castro so maybe we'll get castro and chavez. that would be fantastic. but let's start, willie, where the vice president was yesterday where control of the senate rests in the coming weeks. let's start in georgia. >> by the way, if anyone can book those two guys it's mika. she'll find a way. let's start in georgia where voters are coming out in record numbers now for that high stakes senate runoff. early in-person voting began on monday and the turnout eclipsed the record set in the first day in the weeks before the november 3rd election. "the new york times" reports this on monday during the first day of in-person early voting about 168,000 georgia voters showed up a at the polls. by comparison, nearly 129,000 people cast ballots on the first day of early voting for the general election and nearly 91,000 people voted on the first day of the 2016 election. according to the "atlanta journal constitution," more than 900,000 people have cast ballots through wednesday. so john heilemann, you have been covering this race. obviously this level of turnout in early absentee voting a good sign, a hopeful sign for the two democrats hoping to unseat the two republicans there. >> right. so hey, willie and joe. good to see you on this friday morning. thank god it's friday. you know, the key challenge, right, if you're raphael warnock and jon ossoff is turnout in this runoff. it is historically -- we all know that turnout that runoff elections tend to be low turnout affairs. even after sometimes particularly after a big turnout election like in the presidential election in georgia, you see turnoff fall off the cliff two months later. the irregular voters don't come out, the most regular voters show up and that reinforces the normal dynamic and that would be a good outcome for david perdue and kelly loeffler. willie, you cited the in-person early vote numbers they blew the doors off on the first day and it's been going on all week and it looks like the run-up to the november election. but here's the other thing, in the november elections, they did 1.3 million vote by mail absentee votes. okay? 1.3 million. well, about a quarter of the total votes in georgia which is about 5 million. about a quarter were absentee ballots by mail, right? the number that had been requested for the runoff they sent out 1.6 million ballots. so they're up 300,000 over the general election in november which is like unprecedented. and if 1.6 million ballots come in by mail and this in-person early voting continues on this path, if it's really good news for ossoff and warnock. i think smart money says they won't win both of the races but the democrats can try to rebuild sort of the kind of turnout and the kind of constituency model that helped biden win georgia in november. >> you know, before -- well, actually right after the presidential election, katty kay, i would have said that the republicans were much better than even odds to win both of those and possibly win both of those going away but you look at these numbers and then you look at the fact that republicans have been doing everything they can do to depress vote by their -- their own vote, by having the civil war. donald trump has been stirring things up so badly. and then add on top of that the republicans just don't do well when donald trump is not on the ballot himself. you can look at the elections in 2017, the midterms in 2018. a lot of big gubernatorial races in the south in 2019. i'm not saying this for any other reason than it's true. democrats actually do now have a shot and they have donald trump to thank for it. >> yeah. i agree, the odds would probably still favor just the republicans but there've got to be some warning signs for them. the fact that mike pence has been down there four times is in itself an indication of how tight they realize this race is and how seriously they are taking this race from the republican side. the fact that he is, you know, ironically telling people it's super peachy and safe to be voting by mail and to be doing the early voting. in fact, the early voting, guys, is away from the walmart and the pizza hut, so make sure you all find it. all of the indications they weren't saying during the general election is another sign they are concerned about their numbers because otherwise why would he be down there, why would he be pushing the very thing they have been saying all along was so fraudulent and so open to corruption. so then the fact that donald trump is the person that drove up not just republican turnout in the general election, but on the democratic side as well. drove up -- the reason we had such massive numbers in november is because of donald trump and donald trump isn't there. so there are warning signs. you'd still have to -- if somebody asked you to put your considerable piggy bank money on one side or the other, just because it's georgia you'd think has it gone as far blue as it might have suggested you know in the general election and still just about favors -- and they have to win two, i would say it favors the republicans at least winning one of those which doesn't help the democrats very much. i thought mike pence's speech was really interesting and the stop the steal, that's that they're still focused on and you have a civil war and calling brian kemp a fool, how does that help them? >> a million votes have been cast already in georgia. obviously control of the senate hangs in the balance. speaking of the senate, majority leader mitch mcconnell warned republican senators not to challenge joe biden's electoral college win next month. but tuberville may not comply with that. he said he'd support a challenge to the election results. one that's being led by congressman moe brooks. he hinted earlier this week he's seriously considering that. reacting to the comments president trump tweeted of tuberville, quote, that's because he's a great champion and a man of courage. more republican senators should follow his lead. we had a landslide victory wrote the president and then it was swindled away by the republican party, but we caught them. do something. it appears that the president has found at least one -- this is quite a way for the senate elect to enter the senate by defying the majority leader as his first act. >> it really is something. and john heilemann, can you imagine your first act defying the majority leader who has begged the senators not to do that. that's not good for the state of alabama and two, by taking part in the president's attempt to stage a coup against the incoming president of the united states and do everything he can do to undermine america's faith in their electoral system. let's see. piss off mitch mcconnell, one. two, undermine american democracy. three, do the work of vladimir putin and kim jong-un and the iranian mullahs have been trying to do for decades now. get americans to have less faith in their own democratic institution. that's quite a trifecta for tommy tuberville a guy who thinks his family fought in world war ii to stop socialism. >> yeah. here's the thing, joe. the best thing about this, it's not just the trifecta. you have all three of the things and then the fourth thing, you're going to do all that and you're going to fail because if you're the guy in the senate who disputes the electoral college, that just opens a vote in the united states senate and on the house side, you know, the same thing happens. okay, so now we have until january 6th, because president trump has the two moronic lackeys to dispute the certified results of the electoral college we now get to have a vote in the house and senate over whether to push the process into the strange, you know, back to the house with the delegations and all that. but that's not where you go first. the first is you have an up or down vote in the house and the senate. that vote is doomed to fail in the house because democrats control the house and that's the end of the story. it's probably going to fail in the senate too because there's going to be enough republicans who are going to break from trump lunacy to not dispute the electoral college. so you're tommy tuberville, it's all going for to the cause of naught. it's not going to change anything or overturn the electoral college so you'll fail in the process. all you're doing here is making donald trump happy. and accomplishing the other three things that you laid out that are all bad things, so i mean, dear god, could you imagine a less inspirational -- a more pathetic way of making your debut in national politics than what tommy tuberville is planning to do? it's mind blowing. >> you know, maybe i need to say a few words to coach tuberville. coach, come here for a second. listen, here's the deal, okay? i understand that you're new at this and i understand that sometimes when you get the ball and you're running down the field and people are cheering and you like to look up in the stands and maybe dance around and play for the cheap seats but let me put it down as childress says. let me put the grass down there where the gets can eat it. here's what you're going to be doing. you're going to be pissing off his coach, his name is mitch mcconnell and he won't forget it. yeah, you may suffer, but so will the people in the great state of alabama. that's number one. number two, i know all the fancy things you don't want to hear about, undermining american democracy so i won't talk about that. but number three, the players you're on the field with, you're setting them up. every one of them, to make a vote that's going to make them deeply unpopular in their home state. you know, that would be like you being a quarterback and intentionally lazing a ball right over the middle, high in the air to get a wide receiver extended up as high as he can get extended so he gets his head knocked off. it would be like you doing that three or four times in a row. so what do you think happens to you after you go back to the huddle after that, after intentionally -- intentionally setting your fellow players up to get their heads knocked off at home. just so you can play to the cheap seats? that, my friend, is what bear bryant might call bad form. i don't actually know if bear bryant ever used the term bad form but i'm using it here. that's bad form and that's bad for you and that's bad for the people of the state of alabama. donald trump, he's going to be golfing in scotland and getting lots of money in saudi arabia and russia and china and qatar and all across the world. and you're still going to be on that field with your fellow players who you're setting up to get their heads knocked off. so i might not look at president trump's tweets at this point. i might look around at the people that you're going to be working with every day for the next six years. and believe you me, you're talking to somebody who's been there and who understands you're rowing in a very small boat, so be careful with what you do, coach tuberville, because you're going to pay for it by playing for the cheap seats. willie, that's the only advice i have for coach tuberville other than don't taunt 18-year-old boys after you beat them in the iron bowl. those are the only two pieces of advice i have for the coach this morning, but still, he will not only upset mitch mcconnell. he will set up fellow republican senators to have to vote no and then get killed by their own base when they go home. because they're going to vote no. >> yeah. john thune, the number two senator republican in the senate was asked about this specifically about tommy tuberville and he simply said, it is time to move on. don't do this was his message to tuberville. to your point about looking up into the seats for the approval as you run down the field of one fan, donald trump, you said it right. donald trump after tommy tuberville runs past him is leaving the stadium, two weeks he'll be gone, he'll be playing golf. it's a strange fan to play to when he's leaving the game. let's turn to the major story, hackers broke into several u.s. federal agencies and private companies and now we're learning more about the scope of the vast cyberattack linked to russian intelligence. u.s. officials fear hackers used an array of tools and previously unknown tactics to break in to government networks. the state defense, homeland security, commerce were all targeted and yesterday politico reported the department of energy and its national nuclear security administration which maintains the nuclear stockpile was also breached. the cyber security and infrastructure security agency warned, quote, it has determined that this threat poses a grave risk. it went on, removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging. this is a patient, well resourced and focused adversary. microsoft said it was in the attack, starting as early as march of this year. it's not just the federal government, the intercept is reporting that russian hackers breached the city network of austin, texas. joining us now national security correspondent from politico, natasha bertrand. she has been covering this story closely. let's dig specifically into your story about how this was detected and who exactly it appears has pulled this off. >> yeah. so this was initially detected by a cyber security firm called fireeye and they initially detected it by noticing some suspicious activity in their own networks. they looked into it and they realized that there was a vulnerability in software that was developed by a company called solar winds which is used across the federal government. it's kind of an i.t. management software use by many different federal agencies and they discovered a back door that was placed into solar winds that was allowing the hackers to compromise that software and then dig into the federal agencies that way. now, solar winds doesn't itself know yet or at least it hadn't announced how they were compromised. so that remains to be seen, but so far, the u.s. government has not officially pointed the finger at russian hackers but cyber security experts and security experts writ large says this has all of the hallmarks of a russian intelligence operation. >> obviously, natasha, when we look at your piece, nuclear weapons agency was targeted we're talking about the stockpile here. a brave risk says the cyber security agency inside homeland security. what exactly happened with the nuclear agency and how concerned are they about that compromise? >> they're very concerned. the hackers appear to have gotten into the department of energy's network and specifically into the networks of the national lab which conduct atomic research related to civil nuclear power and they got into the national nuclear security administration which is tasked with moving enriched uranium and they don't appear to have compromised any of the key national capabilities of the department of energy but they were able to burrow into the networks and the department of energy doesn't know how much damage these hackers were able to do yet. according to my sources, the energy officials were saying yesterday when they were briefing the department on this issue that it might be weeks before they finally are able to determine what the hackers were actually able to access, what they stole, if anything, and the extent of the damage because right now, what they were able to locate activity -- suspicious activity in five of the sub agencies including the nuclear -- national nuclear security administration, they don't know yet if that's the extent of it. i think that's what's worrying folks the most. >> some experts are saying this is going to take years for unwind. believe it or not, we have not heard from the president of the united states about this attack on the united states, but here's president-elect joe biden strongly condemning the suspected russian hack yesterday in a statement which reads in part, we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office but a good defense is not enough. we need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in first place. we will do that by among other things imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks. katty kay, astounding that the sitting president of the united states is so obsessed with overturning the election that he has not addressed even in a pro forma way this attack on america. >> so we first heard about this attack earlier this week and we have been waiting every single day, well i have been reporting on this, interviewing people in the cyber security world, waiting for the president to say something and still nothing. yet, it seems this is the biggest cyberattack on the american government ever to have taken place and so far, the president seems to have been spending nearly all of his energy and actually so -- and the hearings in the senate all around the intelligence and it's focused on the election, whether it was fraudulent which it wasn't and not on the attack. natasha, there seems to be a distinction -- maybe it's not a important distinction between whether if it's the russians they got into the agencies and they just sat there and they watched so it was classic espionage or whether they got into the agencies and they stole something, took something and acted in a much more offensive way. is that a distinction worth making and do we know if this was just espionage or whether it was an attack and something was taken in which case it's more like a declaration of war. >> i think it's an important distinction and the investigators will be looking into this who are retracing the hacker's steps here. they don't know yet. that's the most concerning aspect of this. is that it could have been just a really good spying operation and in which case, you know, the russians would have if it was the russians they would have gleaned important insight into the federal agencies were doing potentially. even if they did not gain access to classified information. but if it was a project in the operation that was meant to actually steal secrets, steal things that perhaps, you know, they wouldn't have been able to get into had they not been able to breach the networks then that seems a bit different. right now, what they suspect is that this was laying low. they were looking, waiting, watching, seeing how much they could get into and these networks, how deep they could get in. and unlike the hackers in 2016 who were primarily concerned with disruption and with hacking the election, undermining people's confidence in the legitimacy of the vote, these hackers were more concerned with just spying and right now we still don't know what they were able to find out about the government. >> additionally stunning because america has invested tens of billions of dollars in cyber security since the 2016 election. natasha bertrand, good to see you. another day of record high coronavirus cases and hospitals barely holding on. icus in california just about out of beds now while new york city takes drastic measures to save space. plus mike pence expected to get the covid vaccine this morning, but will president trump also take part in efforts to convince the public the vaccine is safe? 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(doorbell rings) thank you. ♪ is that my leotard? no. yes... ehh, you can keep it. the united states set a record for covid cases for a second day in a row yesterday. nbc data shows more than 243,000 new cases were reported while the covid tracking project reports some 115,000 people are currently hospitalized with the virus. the u.s. nearly set a new high for deaths as well. the 3,293 reported yesterday, just five shy of the record number reported on wednesday. but more relief could be on the way. the united states is on track to approve a second coronavirus vaccine after an independent panel to the food and drug administration recommended emergency use authorization for the moderna vaccine. yesterday, members of the vaccines and related biological committee voted 20-0 in favor of authorization with one abstention. the fda is expected to agree with the recommendation in an official capacity and could be as soon as today. joining us now, physician and medical director of the special pathogens unit at the boston university school of medicine, dr. nahid bhadelia, an msnbc and nbc medical contributor. good to see you. how significant is the moderna news to go on the back of the pfizer authorization? >> well, willie, it's another tool in the tool box. it's moderna's vaccine and the advantages of it it can be stored but much -- at much higher temperatures, but can be stored in most of the freezers and fridges that hospitals and clinics usually have, so it will be helpful in areas that maybe do not have the infrastructure to be able to store the pfizer vaccine. so that's one thing. the reason that moderna saw a 20-0 compared to pfizer that saw some people turn down the vote, is that the moderna vaccine is looking for emergency use over 18 years of age, while some of the committee had an issue with so few a number of people in the age group for pfizer. it's good news. the one thing i'll point out together with pfizer and moderna, the u.s. -- if everything goes as planned they have secured about 150 million -- enough vaccinations for about 150 million people so that's about half of our country. a little less than half of our country so we're still waiting for astrazeneca's data as well as johnson & johnson's data in january that will help fill the gap. >> so dr. bhadelia, how is this rollout going? as we hit the end of the week here, it started with the historic pictures of nurses being injected in new york city and new jersey and across the country. is it going as planned? will they make tweaks for the things that need to change to make sure this gets quickly to the people who need it? >> yeah. so for the most part, it's been smooth. you know, of course the winter storm here in the northeast and that as far as i know hasn't caused any delays but that definitely sort of tells you the number of types of variables that could be out of our control that could affect the future, particularly with the winter coming around. i'm getting my vaccine actually, the pfizer pfizer biontech vaccine this morning at 9:00. in our own hospitals it is going quite smoothly and pfizer has the doses in the warehouse and looking for guidance on how to get them delivered. that's one things that will happen with the upcoming doses in next couple of weeks because the hospitals have been told by their state they're getting fewer doses. so the data about what exactly is going on there is it's still unclear. >> katty, you look at the numbers, still a large number of americans suspicious about the vaccine. and we're going to be seeing mike pence later today get the vaccine and yet, not donald trump. some word that he's concerned about the anti-vaxxers being offended if he actually is seen on tv getting that vaccine. >> yeah. in terms of the communications side of this, it does seem the president could have an absolutely critical role because we know that amongst minority communities they are higher than amongst white communities groups of people who are skeptical for understandable historical reasons about this vaccine. but the other group amongst which there are high levels of skepticism is white people living in rural communities. well, that's exactly the kind of people that donald trump could impact if he was out there and dr. bhadelia, i think there's some question about whether donald trump because he had an antibody treatment when he was infected with covid should be getting the vaccine already. but even if he didn't go on television and get the vaccine, there is certainly things he could do on there, doctor, to, you know, get the message out as part of the communications campaign to encourage his supporters in particular, those people in rural areas, to go ahead and get the vaccine. >> absolutely, katty. and, you know, trusted messen r messengers is a sure-fire communication method that we have used, in the regular vaccinations. so your point about at least -- even so there's a couple of complicating questions in terms of president trump's case because he recently had the infection and so what the cdc has said is that within three months, at least, that is unlikely to have a reinfection but he's got the monoclonal antibodies, did he develop enough of an immunity? there's nothing stopping him from getting the vaccine if he wanted to. if he wanted to defer it, that's okay. however, the reason should be out helping is because his administration played a big role, in operation warp speed, in getting these on the market and having the president get behind it will make a big impact and really try to close that political divide we have seen in every other part of this pandemic response so far. >> so john, obviously there's a concerted effort out there among people that donald trump listens to in the media world, online world, people like his -- you know, his legal defense team, if we can still call them out, trying to overturn the election who are pushing the idea that the vaccine should not be trusted. we know he listens to those people. >> yeah. yeah, we do. willie, look, it's been one of the realities of the entire -- the prospect of the vaccine and now the reality of the vaccine is that there is in addition to people who are skeptical about the vaccine, about vaccines in general, about their efficacy, about potential side effects, people who have communities in this country with bad histories with needles being jabbed in their arms that's all out there and then there's a conspiracy theory driven fringe which is not a small fringe in america of the anti-vax world. the anti-vax world is as i say, it's a fringe, we're talking about millions of people who genuinely have a profound anti-scientific conviction that vaccines are not to be trusted but are generally a pernicious force in modern life. and those anti-vaxxers have been problematic. we have seen the outbreaks of epidemics and diseases that we thought we had gotten rid of in the last few years because of anti-vax sentiment around the country and they are a part of donald trump's coalition. it is one of the -- you know, just in the way that the qanon crowd is an overlap with the maga crowd, the anti-vax crowd overlaps with the maga crowd. so donald trump who goes out of his way not to offend the conspiracy driven parts of his coalition, is taking great pains not to criticize the qanon people, is donald trump going to do something that risks alienating the anti-vax part of his coalition going forward and now i think there's some significant questions about it and i want to turn this question to the doctor and ask -- i mean, to me, there are lots of challenges here. but the notion that the anti-vax sentiment that's out there is going to be at its peak and the conspiracy theories are flying in america more right now than they have ever been, how much of a problem do you think this particular version of this is going to be for getting the kind of vaccination levels that we need? >> yeah, john, i think the intersection of all the dynamics that you talked about are really worrisome to me as well. as you pointed out, even before the covid pandemic the w.h.o. said we're seeing large measles outbreaks, that we have vaccines for for decades we are seeing the highest rates of outbreaks in europe and the united states for this reason. now you have the intersections with the minority and immigrant communities feeling suspicious of the government. you have the rural communities as katty talked about and it's worrisome because on the flip side, as i get this vaccine this morning, i'm acutely aware -- you know, it's a privilege. i'm doing it because i think it will help to increase the science communication and instill some confidence, but i'm acutely aware that there are billions of people behind me in the line. you will see -- getting the vaccine everywhere and now you have this group of people who have access and don't want the vaccine. >> all right. dr. bhadelia, thank you so much for being with us as always. we really do appreciate it. now, for the last four years, donald trump has insulted his way through the presidency. with senate republicans always turning a blind eye. do we really need to go over the list for you? do you -- do you need to have us talk about all the ways he insulted people in his own party? the name calling, the vulgarities. you know, what he called -- i mean, ted cruz, for instance. it starts with a "p" we can't say it here. just the vulgarity, windsor man talked about a year ago. the stream of vulgarities going out of donald trump's mouth over the past year. that's -- that's on the record and we can even take judicial notice of that if we were in front of a court. but let's just talk about what happened yesterday when a staffer for joe biden cursed during an interview. marco rubio among others were shocked -- shocked, stunned and deeply saddened about it. biden talks about unity and healing but you want to know what they really think? the person he wants to be the next white house deputy called republicans -- this is after all, a guy who when campaigning accused donald trump of having a little penis. let's bring in right now columnist for "the washington post," karen -- whose new op-ed is about the sudden dislike for swear words of the republicans and being crude in the public sphere. i mean, seriously? karen, i mean, you have got a guy that i'm sorry, you've got to say it, when he was campaigning he told everybody that donald trump had a small penis and now he's pope francis, he's the moral arbiter of what is vulgar and what is not vulgar? >> and who knew he was such a close reader of "glamour" magazine. >> i know. >> so, you know, jen o'malley dylan who swears a lot has acknowledged that she wishes that she had used different words in that interview, but what's interesting to me is that if you go and read the interview, she is actually making the opposite point that you would think she was making if all you read was the reactions to her interview. her point that she is making is she's addressing the skepticism that a lot of democrats have about joe biden's ability to work with the republicans on capitol hill. and what she says is whatever you think of them, whatever you think of mitch mcconnell, joe biden is determined to work with them. he is determined to compromise with them because we have a lot of problems and anybody who has listened to the last 20 minutes of this show it's been a litany of those problems that this country has a lot of problems and you are only going to be able to solve them by getting things done. so not just marco rubio, but a lot of -- a lot of republicans including the white house press secretary kayleigh mcenany just were so offended by this word. apparently kayleigh mcenany has never met her boss, that they just couldn't see past the word to the larger point that jen o'malley dylan was making. >> yeah. you know, katty kay, it's so prepostero preposterous, you know, marco and the rest of the gang get the fainting couches out because neera tanden has been mean to the republicans in the past emails. we can talk about what president trump said about mika and me and put the 15, 20, 30 tweets up and it would go well beyond anything. by the way, i never heard marco come out and criticize donald trump when he called mika psycho. when he said she was bleeding badly from a face-lift. when he accused me of murder 12, 13 times. said i should be sent to jail. i never heard marco say anything when actually the husband of lori begged the president of the united states, please stop bringing pain and hardship to my family. lori's parents and me, we can't move forward as long as you're doing this. and donald trump told them basically just to go to hell. he was going to keep doing it. and i never heard -- i never heard marco rubio speaking out about -- just how grotesque that was. not that he was attacking me and saying i should be sent to jail for life or executed. but for continuing to slander a woman who's been dead for 19 years and having her parents and having her husband still hear about it 19 years -- did you hear -- because i didn't hear marco rubio say anything. did you hear marco rubio say anything about that? was he shocked about that? >> has he said anything this week when the president of the united states called a fellow republican governor a fool on twitter? nothing. no. i mean, i think, you know, the republicans writ large have to decide that they are going to take a total pass on criticizing anything anyone says on twitter, having accepted what donald trump has said on twitter for the last four years. we have all lived as a nation for four years kind of on edge. i mean, there's a level of sort of, you know, ptsd that everybody has from donald trump's twitter feed, just wondering who is going to be the next victim of the president's ire and the language he uses on twitter and the abuse he's giving people on twitter. karen, can i get back to something, the substance of the row between the biden camp and the republicans because what are you hearing from the republican side? i guess this is more pertinent about whether there is any willingness from mitch mcconnell's side to do what biden wants to do, which is to try and get things done. or is mcconnell going to come into this as he said he went into the obama presidency with the single goal of making sure that this was a failed presidency. are you hearing anything from mcconnell's team that this could be a moment when mcconnell realizes that some leadership and getting things done will be beneficial. >> well, it is worth noting that mitch mcconnell and joe biden have a personal history back during the obama presidency of being able to talk to each other, being able to cut deals. does that mean anything in the current environment? or perhaps the assumption that joe biden has left, that he's very likely to be a one-term president could also change the dynamic here. i think the thing to keep an eye on is not what anybody is saying, but take a look at this coronavirus economic aid package and look at whether and how that moves as an indicator perhaps and maybe i'm just being a christmas season optimist here, but whether there is any hope that congress and the new white house can get things done. >> it's not just the hypocrisy over language here, but it's where republicans like marco rubio choose to get their backs up. we have had a president for the last six weeks trying to overturn a free and fair election. we don't hear a lot about that, in fact, we don't hear much at all from most republicans about that. but when they find a nugget in a "glamour" magazine that they feel like can be shouted out with some mock outrage they're all over it. >> right. and it's -- i mean, again, i got all of the respect in the world for jen o'malley dylan, but staffer as opposed to principle. staffer as opposed to president. and an "f" bomb as opposed to the substance of what trump has said from the white house and the twitter feed. i don't care personally about profanity, as you know, willie. i'm a great fan of it. >> we know, john. >> but it's the racism and the sexism, the xenophobia. the cruelty and mockery. it's not that trump uses harsh language but he expresses harsh sentiments towards, you know, telling members of brown skin go back to africa, go back to their home countries. it's the stuff that trump has done in substance, what he said in substance, the tone that he's set and as you point out the larger question of impugning the basic democratic institutions of the country. these are the things that republicans have given a pass to. i don't even care about the debate about profanity. it's just to your point where are -- what are the things that you care about and the notion that marco rubio is going to throw a hissy fit over a single "f" bomb by a staffer, it beggars belief. katty said the truth. if there were justice in the world, if there were consistency in the world, of course, republicans would say, hey, you know what? we can't -- we're in no position to criticize anyone's profanity. we're in no position to criticize what anybody ever said on twitter having tolerated what we tolerated from trump. but there's no justice in the world and these people are -- when it comes to the -- they're hypocrites i'm referring to are utterly blind to the kind of common sense that would lead them down that path. so we are going to see neera tanden raked over the coals in her confirmation over her twitter feed and we'll point out that the republicans are being hypocritical. they will not care and i'm afraid that, you know, that that is the world we're headed towards right now which is going to be all of the republicans trying to put donald trump in how they tolerated donald trump's behavior down the memory hole and pretend as if it never happened. i'm afraid it's not going to be that easy for me and other people to forget. >> yeah. throwing the hissy fit -- go ahead, karen. >> point out a pattern here. you know, i wonder whether, you know, jen o'malley dylan's choice of words would have been at all newsworthy if it was a male deputy chief of staff. those of us who lived through harold ickes or others know what i'm talking about. mulvaney, the founder of the freedom caucus on the hill and jill biden it's being questioned if she can use the term doctor in her title and nobody raised that about henry kissinger. there are targets in three instances and they all seem to be women. >> yeah. no doubt about it. it is ridiculous. and again, the guy that is throwing a hissy fit over a swear word in "glamour" magazine i think is the only major presidential candidate ever to attack one of his opponents because of the size of his penis. and he is the one giving us moral lectures. "the washington post," karen tumulty, thank you so much. by the way, john heilemann, if anybody wants to know about -- i mean, you want to see real vulgarity thrown around, john, you and me on your podcast. i'm not proud of it at all. i mean, my mother regularly washed my mouth out with soap. it's just one of my many vices but i'll tell you what, you might want to have a tally board for the podcast when i was on your podcast. one side and then, you know and watch "scar face" at the same time and see which language is rougher. >> it's a little bit of a tarantino film there, joe. i have got going on the podcast on hell and high water, i have swear jars going for the various guests and of all the guests on the podcast running since 1943 the two biggest users of profanity were you and nicolle wallace and that includes some pretty smutty figures on the show. >> since 1943, i mean, you're telling me that milton beryl didn't swear more than that me? that's bad. not proud of it. not proud of 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the bar. try centrum minis. i think one of the reasons that joe was elected was because of his sense of empathy. i think theme understand that he's had a lot of tragedy and loss in our family and he understands what they're going through. and i hope the american people when we get to do white house know that we feel their pain. we know what it's like. >> they most certainly do. president-elect joe biden has no public events scheduled today. on this 48th anniversary of the day he lost his first wife and 1-year-old daughter in a tragic car accident. with us now from wilmington, delaware, is nbc news correspondent mike memoli. mike? >> joe, throughout his public career there's been a date on the calendar that anyone who's worked for joe biden knows is almost sacred. even as vice president, he would come back on this date to wilmington to be with his family every december 18.. what happened on this day 48 years ago forever changed joe biden's approach to politics. >> the indications are that you may be 100th in seniority. does that bother you? >> no, i think it's musing. >> reporter: just as quickly as his career took off. >> joe biden will make history because of his age when he takes the seat in the new senate. >> reporter: it nearly came to an abrupt end. >> i mean, the world completely turned upside down in a nanosecond. >> reporter: one of the youngest senators in history, biden was in washington setting up his office when tragedy struck. >> my brother jimmy biden called and said, val come home. there's been a really bad accident. i said, how bad? just come home. >> reporter: biden's family was driving home after picking out a christmas tree when their station wagon was struck by a tractor-trailer. >> my most vivid memory of that day is walking out of the russell senate office building because nobody was there. i remember -- it's all marble, it's cavernous and just hearing our footsteps and he looked at me and he said, she's dead, isn't she? >> reporter: his wife and infant daughter naomi were killed. his sons, beau and hunter, critically injured. >> since the accident, he's been living at a hospital in wilmington, delaware, taking care of his sons. >> reporter: the senator-elect considered not even taking the oath of office. he eventually would at beau's bed side. >> i hope that i can be a good senator for you all. i make this one promise, if in six months or so there's a conflict between being a good father and a good senator, i hope it won't occur, but i promise you i will contact governor-elect tribbet and tell him that we can always get another senator but they can't get another father. >> reporter: his close knit family stepped in at home. >> the immediate time afterwards was like walking through molasses. and i watched my brother with such awe that he got up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other. but it wasn't -- he was struggling for himself, but the greater thing was it was beau and hunt. >> i wasn't much for sticking around, i wanted to get home to see my boys. i commuted every day for 36 years. >> reporter: in washington, biden would find an unexpected support system too. >> we had friends, people who didn't know him who were senator, who treated him as fathers. >> reporter: giants of the senate took the political newcomer under their wings. >> i was prepared to walk away in 1973. but men like ted kennedy and mike mansfield and hubert humphrey, fritz hollings, they convinced me to stay. to stay six months, joe. remember that? stay six months. >> reporter: mansfield instilled in biden a lesson he would recount for decades. after biden criticized a republican colleague. >> from that moment on i tried to look back at -- at the past caricatures of my colleagues and try to see the whole person. never once have i questioned another man's or woman's motive. >> reporter: it set the course for a career reaching across the aisle. >> he views the competitors as customers not enemies. he's been able to cultivate friendships across the aisle. with jesse helms, with strom thurmond. with me. >> reporter: and shaped his view of policy. in the face of tragedy in 19782 and again in 2015, biden took on a new role, as an ambassador of grief. >> you know it will be okay when the first instinct is you get a smile to your lips before a tear in your eye. i promise you, i guarantee you, it will. >> reporter: biden aides calling empathy his superpower. campaigning during a deadly pandemic, it offered one of the clearest contrasts with president trump. >> like many of you, i know what it feels like to lose someone who's part of your heart. i know what that black hole that seems to open up in your chest feels like. you seem like you're being sucked into it. you know how hard it is this time of the year when you look across the table and you see an empty chair at christmas or new year's. >> reporter: that moment 48 years ago a formative one on biden's long road to the white house. >> through it all, joe learned how to heal a broken family. it's the same way you heal a nation. with love and understanding. with small acts of kindness. >> you see how it changed the way that he worked with republicans in congress, and offering empathy on the campaign trail. one other thing that this offered to joe biden was perspective. throughout this campaign, during the most difficult moments before iowa, before new hampshire, when you asked campaign or biden, what was giving him the move to keep going, they say he knows what loss really is. and that's not the loss of a campaign. joe? >> all right. nbc's mike memoli, thank you so much. that really is so true. if you look at that wonderful package that mike put together, it is remarkable. i have found myself a couple of times over the past year when somebody has lost a loved one quoting joe biden and they lost their parents. well, you know, it's like joe biden says, there will come a time when the memory will bring a smile to your lips before a tear to your eyes. even being able to tell them how -- you know for me, that was true with my parents when i lost my dad, when i lost my mom, it helps you understand that others have gone through it. let me bring in gene robinson here. when biden speaks before the gold star families, they know he's been there. it reminds me of the moment that bobby kennedy one of the reasons he became, you know, political hero of mine was the night martin luther king was assassinated, bobby went in to indianapolis and he could speak to the black citizens of indianapolis and they knew he could understand the pain in a more real way almost because it was his own brother who had been shot as he said by a white man. but that compassion that joe biden brings to the presidency, it has been hard earned and as -- as i think it was bobby kennedy said that night, it has been hard earned through the awful grace of god. >> absolutely. and in that speech, bobby kennedy also quoted the great poet aeschylus, which is -- it was an amazing, i think, turn of mind at that moment. but right. he spoke from a position of authority, of experience and compassion. and that is -- that is just joe biden in a nutshell. i mean, the cliche that his power is his empathy, but it was very, very hard earned. what he went through, what he has gone through in his life and repeated episodes of just terrible loss. and it's something that speaks to everyone, to everyone who's gone -- you recall going through that with your parents. i went through it with mine, my dad and then my mom, when they passed and my father-in-law and mother-in-law. you know, people with whom you are close and you have such memories and such love and they're gone and there is this emptiness that you eventually learn to live with and deal with. but it never really goes away. it becomes a part of you and i think it becomes a part of you that strengthens you and makes you more able to -- to face the world as it is. and joe biden has been through that sort of crucible and now he's going to be president of the united states. >> yeah. willie geist, he's been through it twice in the most unspeakable way as a father losing two children. but you look at mike's package and you see and i'm sure the president-elect would say this, the only way he got through and these extraordinarily painful times going back to 1972 was because val was there, his sister who has been his rock, who's been his foundation and then of course jill biden, his wife, who he said and said that she helped him dream again. those two women i don't think you can overstate how important they have been in helping joe biden move forward every day. >> yeah. there's no question. he would tell you that if he were sitting here, that's how he got it, both of those women who are with him every moment and if you want to talk to somebody on the biden campaign, you have to go through val and you want to get to the president-elect, you have to go through val, who we saw in the piece. it's interesting too, joe, when you think 48 years since that moment that in many ways defined his life, how that figured in to his becoming president of the united states at a time when americans are feeling so much loss, whether they have lost someone of their family. they do have that empty chair that he talks about, or lost a job or their kid isn't going to school. they feel a loss and them in their life in some ways. so much of the country is feeling that right now. if you look at polling or you just talk to people around this campaign or this election, they say he's a decent guy, he's a good guy. i may not agree with him on everything, but especially when contrasted to the sitting president he's a good guy who's going to empathize and get things done with people who don't agree with him. we still got john heilemann and katty kay with us. also joining us is capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early," kasie hunt. let's talk start with the status of the covid relief bill. and the senators said we're on the doorstep, it's imminent, there's going to be a $900 billion deal. feels like we're still where we were 24 hours ago. what's going on? >> so that's -- that's mostly right, willie. i would say that the difference between our conversation yesterday and today is that president trump seems to have gotten involved which has really never boded well in terms of congress being able to move forward with what it needs to do "the washington post" reported yesterday that he had to be talked out of making the demand that bigger stimulus checks be included in this package. it is worth noting there's pressure from senators like josh holley and on the left, senators like bernie sanders to increase these stimulus checks to people. people on both sides of the aisle are saying this isn't enough but however the compromise that will get the whole thing out the door is the middle ground. there was this kind of threat from the president suddenly to blow everything up at the last second. we have seen that over and over again from this president. he's also doing it with the bill that's supposed to include pay increases for our troops that has been passed every year for the last 60 years with no trouble, now he's threatening to veto that on his way out the door and all of it is wreaking havoc on the negotiations and that, you know, presents an incredibly difficult situation for the millions of americans that are waiting for relief here. so i think we could see -- we're still waiting to see how it will shake out exactly. there's a massive government funding bill. they want to attach the covid package to that bill because it's one of the must pass pieces of legislation. it would be much easier for everybody to take one vote on all of it and head out of town. now they may have to split it up because they don't want the government to shut down overnight, which is what would happen if they didn't pass this omnibus bill or there may be a big fight over keeping the funding going for another 24 hours. the very long way of saying that all of a sudden, we have a possible mess here and they really only have until the end of tonight, midnight to figure it out. so hopefully we'll know more in the next couple of hours but things are definitely in a dicier place than they were 24 hours ago. >> mitch mcconnell already was warning that congress ought to be ready to stay through the weekend to get this done. john heilemann, we sound like a broken record on this show but the deal on the table $900 billion or so is something that the senate could have agreed on months and months and months ago and to think of the lives lost and all of the things foisted on this country by the lack of action on the government in the intervening months is tragic. >> totally tragic and gridlock is like a cliche and it's become as the defining feature of our politics it's polarization and as congress has gotten more and more polarized we have seen every congress become less productive than the congress that preceded it. this congress and it has been historically the most unproductive/least productive congress at a time when more people were relying on the government in the middle of this pandemic and the middle of everything that's gone on in 2020, this is the period where people had the highest degree of need for government to step in and be effective. we had now been sitting here since the last -- the last moment where the government -- where there was a bipartisan move, back in the spring. that's how long ago it was. think of how much time has passed, how many lives have been lost, how much havoc covid has wreaked on the economy, how long it's been since there was any federal aid that's come on this covid front to try to help the country and, you know, a lot of it's been posturing. there's been a lot of blame cast in both directions and it seems like kasie has a better fingertip feel for it than i do, but it felt like we had gotten to the place that the combination of democrats being willing to take a smaller bill because they saw the vaccine on the horizon and joe biden coming in to office, mitch mcconnell being willing to move up a little bit from his $500 billion number, it looked like we were finally getting to the sweet spot where -- and obviously the virus spiking, you know, and the sense of urgency and need as the holidays approach going through the roof. it looked like we got to the place for all of the incompetence and all of the bitterness and partisanship, congress would be through the magic alchemy would get something done and then of course, the free radical in this equation is donald trump gets dropped into the middle of it and we are looking at a much dicier proposition. kasie, i have a question for you. it seems like the other thing that kind of got dropped in the middle of it it seems like the notion of the state and the local government funding piece of this is now out of the picture. that's something that i think -- obviously it's been an issue that the republicans have not wanted to see in the bill. it's got some implications here for joe biden going forward. there's been some reporting about this that will make his life more difficult if that's the way the final package gets crafted. can you talk about that a little bit? >> sure. yeah, it was broadly left out, john. you're right, it will be trickier for biden going forward because it will be a fight again when he actually takes office. the last minute fight they had set it aside officially and now the -- one of the biggest fights that's remaining as they try to negotiate is a fema fund that they think is a back channel way for democrats to send money to states and localities. so it's definitely still a sticking point here. right now, i don't think it's a fight that the democrats are going to win. >> all right. so while that negotiation goes on on capitol hill, another huge story. latest developments with the security breach into several u.s. federal agencies and private companies. we are learning about the scope of the vast cyberattack linked to russian intelligence. u.s. officials fear the hackers used an array of tools and previously unknown tactics to break into government networks. the state defense homeland security, commerce and treasury departments were all targeted. yesterday, politico reported the department of energy and the national nuclear security administration which maintains the nuclear stockpile also was breached. the cyber security and infrastructure security agency issued an alert yesterday saying this threat poses a grave risk. they continued, removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging. this is a patient, well resourced and focused adversary. joining us, former chief of staff, now an nbc news national security analyst jeremy bash. and correspondent for "gq" magazine, julia ioffe. what do you make of the massive breach, how did they pull it off, because it sounds like they have been inside these networks for months and months. >> well, the russians appear to have implanted the malicious code, malware, in a software security update that was utilized by hundreds of thousands of customers including those you listed. this is an epic national security bombshell in our history and the incoming biden team is going to have a monumental task. first they'll have to do a comprehensive damage assessment. that can't be done in hours or days. that will take weeks and months to figure out exactly what the russians now have their hands on. it's complicated by fact that the russians will be watching every single move we make in our network. they'll literally be reading the emails of the i.t. and security professionals who are responsible for this and they have to figure out how to kick the russians out of the network and that could take years. third, they have to establish deterrence. the russians if they have learned nothing else over four years, they don't pay consequences when trump is on the watch. they attacked the 2016 election and paid no price, i think trump welcomed it. they contemplated attacking american troops in afghanistan and there were intelligence briefings about it, and donald trump said nothing about it and he said nothing about this. so i think we have a lot of deterrence to re-establish before we try to figure out how to solve this immediate crisis. >> hey, julia, i know we discussed early on in 2017, 2018 in the trump presidency how lucky putin and the russians had become through our enforced errors. what can you tell us about it and what does it say about russia's continued efforts to undermine america's government? >> well, you know, i was just talking to a source of mine who was a former government intelligence officer and was saying, you know, this is the hack of the decade, at least. i think what happened is jeremy is right. on one hand, trump rewarded putin for this and in fact he not only welcomed it, he also said in front of the whole world, he said that he believed vladimir putin when he said he didn't meddle in the 2016 election, that russia wasn't involved in the hack and dump that led up to the 2016 election and i think for the russians i think that was a green light. i do disagree a little bit. i think the trump administration had the strange bifurcation on one hand, you had trump who was so keen on befriending putin and not offending him or criticizing him in any way. and publicly taking his word over the word of his own intelligence agencies. on the other hand, the administration that he sat atop of rolled out a lot of new sanctions, but the problem is those sanctions -- the russians just rolled with. they just now factored them in and basically, in their analysis, they don't cause enough pain and they're not enough to stop the russians from doing crazy things like this. the other problem that the biden administration faces coming in is that the sanctions are basically, you know, at full tilt. there's not much left to sanction anymore and so the biden administration comes in with not a lot of tools in their toolkit in terms of how to retaliate against the russians because again, the sanctions are cranked up pretty high and the russians don't seem to care all that much. they don't mind the pain it causes them versus the gains they think they make, that they do make when they pull off a heist like this. >> yeah. katty kay? >> jeremy, this looks so embarrassing for the american government in part because the u.s. has spent billions of dollars on this program einstein, which is meant to protect the u.s. from exactly this kind of intrusion. what went wrong? why did einstein fail or is it just that the russians have got so much better in recent years this kind of cyberattack and managed to get in undetected? >> we don't know yet, katty. i think it's too early to tell exactly what part of our defenses broke down, but it's clear that a lot of the efforts have been designed to train users not to click on links and really to try to solve the problems of user error. this may have been caused in part by user error but went far beyond that. in fact, every agency has to upload software patches. you have to do it on your iphone, you have to do it on your networks. you have to do it on your cloud infrastructure. it's like basically they poisoned our own medicine that we have to take and so it's an incredibly sophisticated attack. very difficult to detect. and very difficult to undo and i think this is going to be the work and the challenge of the new national cyber director. i want to point out we were talking about the legislative end game at the end of the year, and congress has passed a defense bill. the president has threatened to veto it and said he'll veto it this week and that bill has a lot of protections in it including a new national cyber director. >> what is russia's objective here? so much of what they have done is to create some chaos, to undermine democracy. what specifically would they want with this penetration of our networks? >> yeah. this is different. this isn't propaganda, this political involvement. this is espionage. this is our plan to understand our plans and our capabilities and with the nuclear stockpile, they want to understand how much it is ready, and ability to be deployed and they want to be in the network so they can disrupt something in the event of a contingency or an all-out war. >> so julia, how is russia looking at the incoming biden administration? putin has pretty well man handle donald trump. how do things change for them with the new president? >> well, i think they know that, you know, they know biden from dealing with him on ukraine in 20 14 where a lot of the sanctions were rolled out and biden was kind of the point man for the obama administration on ukraine. i have to say, by the way, you know, it's interesting just back to the hack, it's interesting that all of this started in march. what happened in march? we went into lockdown. we went into national crisis. while we were having a presidential election. and this all -- and this all triggered, you know, an economic crisis. we were busy chasing our own tails, which is the perfect opportunity to strike. it is kind -- it does flow out from the political maneuvering that russia has done in the years leading up to this to make sure we're chasing our own tails and are too distracted by our own issues to fend off something like this or to retaliate. the russians have been brazen across europe. they just tried to poison one of the biggest opposition leader. they know they'll get away with it and that there's no real punishment. and they know that even with biden coming in, you've got to get this under the wire but they know that biden can't do much of anything to them. again, sanctions are cranked up, there's not much further you can crank that dial and i don't think the russians would really care if you did. >> all right, julia ioffe, on that happy note, and jeremy bash -- >> always. >> thank you so much. still ahead on "morning joe," our next guest says working class voters of color are perhaps the least understood demographics in politics right now and how that plays into president trump's gains with latinos in the past election. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. there are ordinary eggs... and then there's the best. we like cage free, and which ones just taste fresher and more flavorful? only eggland's best. we prefer organic, and which ones have 6 times more vitamin d and 25% less saturated fat? only eggland's best. my family deserves the best, and which egg is the best in so many ways? only eggland's best. better taste, better nutrition, better eggs. finding the right words can be tough.n it comes to autism, finding understanding doesn't have to be. together, we can create a kinder, more inclusive world for the millions of people on the autism spectrum. go to autismspeaks.org no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card. our most advanced formularonamel repair. n-n-n-no-no helps you brush in vital minerals to actively repair and strengthen enamel. so you don't just brush to clean, you brush to build. pronamel intensive enamel repair. i wanted to follow up on a conversation we had on yesterday's show about donald trump's gains with latino voters in the past election. it came as a surprise to some, but i mean, we really -- when you look at the exit polls, we don't know how accurate those exit polls are and the reason why is because regular polls before weren't accurate in a lot of states. but anyway, considering his attacks on undocumented immigrants and his push to end the daca program, also of course the president calling hispanics breeders and of course saying he couldn't trust a judge from indiana because his parents were from mexico -- anyway, trying to sort through all of that and i read something that was written by our next guest. he says democrats should pay close attention to how those gains came about. with us, matthew yglesias, d.c. bureau chief of the blog and, again, my favorite title, slowboring.com. also we have national politics reporter from "the new york times," jennifer medina and from "the washington post," dave weigel. matthew, let me begin with you because, again, i have been dismissing a lot of the exit polls because we just don't know how accurate they are and the gains didn't seem that significant. but i love how you actually picked certain places in blue states where donald trump wasn't targets those blue states. so this is something that happened organically. you know, you had areas in california and illinois and new york. and you showed some pretty significant gains among latino voters. talk about that and talk about what democrats and republicans should be looking at when they look back at the 2020 results. >> yeah, so you see donald trump doing 10 to 20 points better in places like lawrence, massachusetts, in the south bronx, in the 22nd ward in chicago, in the imperial valley in california. these are places very heavily latino areas so you're not dependent on election -- sorry, on polls, it's actual results. these are blue states so it's not like magic campaigning outreach was happening necessarily in massachusetts, but people hear messages in english, in spanish language media, through social media. jennifer who's on with us, she's done some great reporting about this that i think democrats didn't pay enough attention to while she was running the articles. but there was a lot of pro trump persuasion happening, a lot of shifts coming in his direction. it seems like a lot of pro police sentiment among segments of latino community. support for some of trump's economic policies. it's a fairly broad thing, but my main point is that it's not the narrowly focused shift among the voters in south florida or just in the rio grande valley as some people have seen. as far as we can tell, most heavily latino areas of the country shifted toward trump. there's still democratic areas to be clear. but it's a difference between losing by 80 and losing by 60 and it sort of extends the gains with secular noncollege white voters that trump had in 2016. and i think it raises the question of how democrats are communicating with less educated people across races, particularly because trump said and did so many offensive things over the years. i mean, republicans could clearly do better than donald trump as an outreach candidate. you shouldn't think of this as the ceiling, it's like the floor for what a populist, right-wing candidate can do. >> so something i kept hearing from the trump campaign as well as the biden campaign, and for the biden campaign, it was driving them crazy the last month. but they said, we just can't break through certain hispanic men. there's this -- and the trump people said the same thing. there's a macho thing that we can't figure out, where of course, the trump campaign was saying the same thing on the other side, that a lot of the hispanics see trump as a strong, assertive person and they relate to him. so there's a gender gap among hispanic voters and it's helping donald trump. what did your reporting show on that front? did the campaigns get that right? >> there was always a huge gender gap among all races and particularly among latinos where you saw much more support for donald trump among men than women. and i don't know that either campaign sort of understood how dramatic that really was. i would talk to men at the events who just saw trump as a kind of hero. they nearly all talked about "the apprentice" and as someone they admired and they too could achieve economic success. they believe the notion he had built the empire that they somehow might be able to achieve. they really appreciated his economic policies and as matthew just said there was a lot of support for law enforcement, for police. i'm not sure that the biden campaign ever understood the depth of that. >> yeah. gene robinson, that's what i heard in florida especially. especially in miami-dade. well, yes, socialism had an impact but also both sides were telling me that the numbers just showed a lot of support for the police. a lot of support for firefighters, a lot of support for people in uniform. and that that also helped donald trump among hispanic voters. it is interesting though that following up on jennifer's comment about seeing trump as a success, somebody that they wanted to emulate. i remember back -- my god it must have been in 2004, 2005, at the beginning of "the apprentice". i started talking to a guy, recent immigrant, where are you from, where do you live? he said i'm driving a cab, but i want to buy a car and then i want to have five cars and then i'm going to be just like trump. that was back in 2005. and there is for immigrants, they look at trump and they see him as this american success story. if he did it, i can do it too. of course they don't realize his daddy gave him $400 million but let's not get hung up in details. but there was something about them aspiring to succeed in america like trump succeeded. >> right. i mean, it's not just immigrants, it's why trump -- performed not that well, but kind of performed with african-american men as well. he did successfully sort of create this image, he branded over a period of many years and especially with "the apprentice" and look at how many rap songs he's name checked in. i have a question for my colleague dave weigel who spent the campaign out on the trail. you know, this phenomenon, is this a party thing or is this just a trump thing? in other words, would some other republican candidate conscious of working-class issues necessarily do as well or better or is this -- is this something sort of unique to donald trump? >> well, if i can take that, it's not -- to donald trump. what he didn't do in '16 that he did in 2020 modeled on what rick scott did in florida. rick scott he would admit a less charismatic wealthy businessman like trump. he won two tight races as governor and it was a combination of branding the party what it offered economically and this harsh and false negative messaging. we mentioned socialism and that was enormous in all of the messaging to latinos everywhere. was that whatever democrats were offering it was socialism, it was the road to becoming venezuela. i think the boldness of repeating that again and again and again, you can't underrate. there was very good reporting not to focus too much on florida, but a lot of the messaging to latinos in florida was false. it was the country was going to change in these specific ways that we know it's not going to change being broadcast through false news sources, through whatsapp. but the problem for democrats, they were in less denial than they were in 2016. there was widespread denial among the democrats that trump could win at all. i think they just -- i think the groups that had been working on the latino outreach for years and there are a lot of them and some were tapped by joe biden's campaign i think had trouble squaring the rhetoric and the intersectionality as groups inside the democratic party sphere to working class, male latinos. i think there was a disconnect. matt had written about the term latinx as a term that squares up in the democratic coalition in the trump era got a lot more liberal, was emphasizing issues that maybe weren't at the top of the mind. and they were focusing less on economics even -- that was the issue that bernie sanders in the primary that successful democratic candidates in the states, they led with okay, things were bad. we're going to do -- deliver this for entrepreneurship. we're going to deliver this for infrastructure spending. the focus on the coronavirus even though that affected a lot of latino voters was not a good response to this donald trump beat of republican messaging that everything was going to fall apart. prosperity was going to disappear in democrats won and the final piece that is unique to trump, people got a check in the middle of the year. they might get a check later in the year, but you did hear anecdotally, well, trump is president, we got relief very quickly. they didn't give the congress any credit but they gave it to trump who had his name on the envelope. that helped to float him with the working-class voters without college degrees and we're talking about a lot of latino voters, in places like new york, pennsylvania, everywhere. people who were not being profiled necessarily by the media or not seen as the pivotal voters in the state. but more working class. they had a president who seemed like a success, a business success and delivered for them economically that maybe barack obama hadn't. >> i don't think it's something that democrats didn't want too hear before hand and other democrats didn't want to hear about it before hand and still some don't want to hear about it, issues about defunding the president. a lot of pro law enforcement voters in the hispanic community that reacted negatively to that. as dave said, socialism message just hammered nonstop. which had an impact with some hispanic voters and talking about the covid relief checks. also covid, the lockdown. i know a lot of people that are still sorting through the numbers trying to figure out what had happened in miami dade is the fact and again, democrats don't want to hear this. i have doctors who don't want to hear this, but there was a growing impatience with a lockdown and a fear that joe biden and the democrats will lock down the economy in 2021 and they'd fall behind economically. i'm not saying, you know, there's a lot of false information there, but again, just sorting through this. that's what some of the postmortem is saying about 2020. >> yeah. that's a message that the trump campaign pushed out. they did that, and said if joe biden is elected you're going to be locked down. i'm interested in the question of immigration. for a long time there's an assumption by the democrats they're on the right side of immigration, therefore, they have the latino vote. polling shows us otherwise that that's not always the number one issue for a latino voter. their lives are broad like everyone else's lives and as a matter of fact that many of them believe that legal immigration is the path to get here. that they did it that way or their parents did it that way. and in some ways, they agree with donald trump and some of what he says. but i think this year again sort of blew up some of those assumptions when contrasted with president trump that the democrats' only thing is immigration. >> yeah. the surveys show it's a low priority topic. latino voters by definition is a u.s. citizen. not an undocumented immigrant. and, you know, all of the groups that do latino outreach they know this. they will tell you this, but i think it's not always heard at the highest echelons of the democratic party. one reason for that is that there's a kind of siloing of latino politics in this sort of democratic space and so the person in the room in a sort of political conversation designed to represent latinos is often a young person, college graduate, involved in a group that heavily emphasizes immigration issues and tends to give a distorted view of the landscape relative to kind of a common sense vision that focuses on economics. there's a question of who are the faces of the party? somebody like alexandria ocasio-cortez is much more famous than others. aoc, you know, is a political star, she's famous for reasons but her electoral base is over there in queens, young college graduates who are left-wing, but in the latino community, older and more working class people are more moderate on working class issues and those voices not often listened to even when democrats tell themselves they're going to listen to latinos. >> so let's compare mitt romney in 2012 with donald trump in 2020. 2012, mitt romney talked about self-deportation in an early debate in iowa and when he lost hispanics, i think he got 28, 29% and everybody said it was what he said back in iowa about self-deportation. you can look it up. i mean, that was one of the explanations of why romney did so poorly among hispanic voters and yet trump did a good bit better according to exit polls, despite the fact he called hispanics breeders and despite the fact you can talk about judge curiel, despite the fact he caged immigrant children. you can go down the long laundry list of the harshness in his reaction to the suffering in puerto rico. and again, it just seems that a lot of that didn't matter to a lot of hispanic voters. >> yeah. i would say a few things about that. first it is important to put in context that biden did win the majority, the vast majority of latino voters but those who voted for trump, i know speaking to them, they saw the people that trump was attacking as certainly not them. they were not a part of them. as matthew said, of course any voter by definition is a citizen, many of them are american born. the majority are american born and the people who are voting for trump really put a wall, so to speak, no pun intended, between them and the latinos that trump was attacking. i also would say and we touched on this earlier, you cannot discount the impact of misinformation and disinformation within the latino community. it ran rampant whatsapp groups across the country, it was on the radio in south florida. it was on the tv in texas. there was all sorts of attempts to appeal to latinos that wasn't based in fact and it's still to be determined how much that worked but i think that some of this at least we can attribute to that. to go back to romney, i mean, i'm never sure, although we pay this close attention, i don't know that a voter who tunes in after labor day really cares what somebody says in march. so it's possible that all of the assumptions we made about romney back then are totally false. i think one of the places that democrats have the most -- >> all right. >> -- to worry about is down-ballot. one of the future things they have to worry about. >> all right. we obviously have a delay, so i apologize for that, jennifer. matt iglesias, dave weigel, jennifer medina, i hope you'll all come back. coming up next, the former homeland security secretary jeh johnson is going to be our guest. we'll get his expert take on russia's suspected cyberattack on major u.s. branches of government. can't wait to hear what jeh has to say. "morning joe" will be right back. say orning joe" will be right back the only thing a disaster can't destroy is hope. donate now at redcross.org let's see ....whoa! ...ot, oculus... someone please help! of course. you're tenacious, i'll give you that! [heavy breathing] product not yet rated. you can do better, steve! get a freshly made footlong, from subway®! you can even order on the subway® app! did i just get picked off by deion sanders? you sure did! now in the app, get a free footlong when you buy two. because it's footlong season™! so. so this morning i am proud to sign a law that will bring an end to don't ask don't tell. it is a law -- this law i'm about to sign will strengthen our national security and uphold the ideals that our fighting men and women risk their lives to defend. no longer will our country be denied the service of thousands of patriotic americans who were forced to leave the military regardless of their skills no matter their bravery or their zeal, no matters their years of exemplary performance because they happen to be gay. no longer will tens of thousands of americans in uniform be asked to live a lie or look over their shoulder in order to serve the country that they love. >> this coming tuesday marks the tenth anniversary of president obama signing legislation that repealed don't ask, don't tell. the clinton era law that sought to allow gays to serve under the terms of an uneasy compromise that required them to keep their sexuality a secret while they served. joining us now, two people who played a big role in that repeal, former secretary of homeland security under president obama, jeh johnson, and aubrey sarvice an army veteran who served as the executive director for the service members legal defense. it's great to have you. i want to dive into this for just a moment. first, secretary johnson, i have to ask you about this cyber attack on the united states said by some perhaps to be the worst in the history of the country. it appears that it's russia. it appears that they've been inside our systems, government systems, private companies since march. what do you make of it, and how did it happen? >> good morning, willie, first i remember i used to tell people in homeland security when i was secretary, don't plan for the last attack, plan for the next attack. bad cyber actors are increasingly clever, tenacious, aggressive, this particular attack was both ingenious and ironic to implant malware into something that is intended to promote cyber security. i agree with the assessments that we've heard on this show and elsewhere this morning that we don't yet know the full extent of this attack. it is most likely the most devastating far-reaching cyber attack in our nation's history. i have to also note that it is most unfortunate right now that our government lacks its chief cyber security official, chris krebs because president trump fired him a few weeks ago. it's exactly times like this when you need cyber security leadership at the national level. >> and a president who might actually say something about the worst cyber attack in the history of the country. we'll talk more about that later in the show. but secretary johnson, let's go to that tenth anniversary now. we saw the moment where president obama announced the end of don't ask, don't tell. you all were working behind the scenes on getting this rolled back. what was that process like and how did you get to that point ten years ago? >> so first of all, good morning, aubrey. ten years ago i was general counsel of the department of defense. that was my day job. i was along with army general carter hamm volunteered as they say at the pentagon to co-chair a working group to assess whether the military could handle the repeal of don't ask, don't tell. general hamm and i took ten months at this project. we surveyed 400,000 service members. we came face-to-face in various town halls with about 24,000 service members, and along the way wie realized that much of te opposition to the repeal of don't ask don't tell was based on a stereotype that somehow if you allowed gay service members to be open about their sexual orientation that it would conjure up a fear that really didn't exist, and general hamm who started in the army as an army private and both recognized a stereotype and when the survey results came back to indicate that by 2010 most service members really didn't care much about this law anymore. we recommended that the military could handle this and, frankly, the repeal and the implementation of the new regime went much smoother than general hamm and i could have predicted ten years ago. and then of course you had aubrey, the legislative craftsman behind the scenes working, congress working the hill. >> aubrey, gene robinson is here with a question for you. >> aubrey, hi, how are you? two quick things. first of all, i just would like you to speak about what the anniversary means to you, and second, is what's the next front here in terms of lgbtq issues with the military? is it the trump administration's hostile attitude towards transgender service members, or is it something else? >> well, first, it was an enormous day for lgbt service members when the senate actually 18 years ago passed the repeal of don't ask don't tell. and for that we owe a great deal of credit to senator harry reid. we had three cloture votes to get there. a great deal of credit goes to speaker pelosi, who took the bill from the house armed services committee to the floor and passed that bill twice, but again, a great deal of credit to senator reid, to senator joe lieberman who stareered the bil through the senate with harry reid, chairman carl levitt. that was a joy us dous day for service members who were finally free to serve their country, they didn't have it fight to serve their country in silence. they were free to be who they were, and that was a day of great joy and pride for us because it meant that we had the right to serve our country if we were qualified. we didn't have to pretend to be someone else to serve. and we were enjoying full citizenship in many ways for the first time. >> aubrey, that moment that we showed of president obama making the announcement almost ten years ago is obviously just the end of a very long process, and you were there for most of it on the front lines. what was the process like? whose arms did you have to twist? how did you get to that day? >> well, let me say this, president obama made a determination early on that this was going to be a partnership with the congress and with the pentagon. he did not want to repeat the mistakes of the clinton administration that ended up giving us a federal statute, don't ask don't tell, and so jeh johnson and admiral mollen and secretary gates played their role with the white house working together, but up on the hill it was persuading a number of congressmen and senators that this was not a big deal. this was not a vote you had to be concerned about that you were going to take a lot of heat if you voted for the repeal of don't ask don't tell. the majority of service members are under age 30. serving with gays and lesbians who they already knew were there with them in the ranks, that was no big deal, and frankly, that's why i wasn't concerned about the survey, the outreach that secretary johnson was taking to engage the force on this issue because they were already there. the reality is they had been there for decades. our leaders in congress and in the pentagon were not aware of th that. and in fact, when this bill passed ten years ago today, it was on a bipartisan basis. several republicans in the house and the senate voted for the repeal of don't ask don't tell. now, we had some very tough competition in terms of opposition from then senator lindsey graham, and frankly, one of the things i regret -- and i'm sorry about -- is that senator graham has not apologized to lgbt service members because he said that day on the floor of the senate if that legislation passed it was going to be a very dangerous moment for service members. and just the opposite has happened. just the opposite. >> that's right. well, aubrey sarvis thank you for your work on this. secretary jeh johnson great to see you as well, that tenth anniversary coming up on tuesday. thank you both for being here today. coming up next on "morning joe," turnout surges in the georgia senate runoff elections. what that suggests about the state of those critical races. the next hour of "morning joe" starts right now. and i want you to be confident about your vote. our great state chairman david shaeffer and the senators will tell you, we're on them this time. we're watching. we're going to secure the ballots. we're going to secure the drop boxes, and we're going to make sure that every absentee ballot is counted for the people of georgia. so don't wait. request that ballot and vote today, and if you don't want to vote by mail, i'm told in person votiing has already started too. >> this is a problem when you're arguing against yourself. so the vote wasn't safe when joe biden won the state, but now that they've got a couple of senate races, everything's going to be okay. willie, that argument is so crazy on all points, and then in the middle of it when he's trying to say, oh, your vote's secure after we've had crazy people running around this state spreading experticonspiracy the for the past month saying it's not, in the background the chants start "stop the steal". >> stop the steal as the vice president of the united states stands there and listens to that chant. it's amazing. i mean, they've been saying for six weeks now that the deceased hugo chavez is tampering with voting machines and changing election results and that's what they think about elections in the state of georgia, which by the way, for the presidential election the vote has been counted three times. the republican governor, the republican secretary of state in that state have said, yes, everything was legitimate and good here, but they painted themselves in that corner saying the system is rigged and corrupt. and now they're asking republicans to go vote in that system in a couple of weeks. not going to work. >> in a state where there is a civil war going on with the republican party, you've got hugo chavez, maybe fidel castro. i heard stalin's name thrown in there are somehow working, i guess, brian kemp and the secretary of state have their ouija boards out. somehow they're in a conspiracy with brian kemp and the georgia governor and the georgia secretary of state and somehow getting kelly loeffler illegally on the ballot. so even one of the people that mike pence is telling them to vote for, you've got trumpers running around with very big mega phones saying she stole the election and that it should be doug collins, fast talking doug collins on the ballot. so it's bizarre. well, along with willie and me this morning we have washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay. we're waiting for her exclusive interview are hue bow chavez later this hour. also msnbc national affairs analyst and executive editor of the -- >> i caught him down in georgia. >> yes, exactly. the devil went down to georgia, and the host in hell and high water podcast, john heilemann. mika has the morning off. she's looking for that exclusive interview with fidel castro. so maybe we'll get castro and chavez and that would be fantastic. let's start, willie, where the vice president was yesterday where control of the senate rests in the coming weeks. let's start in georgia. >> that way if anyone can book those two guys, it's mika. she'll find a way. let's start had in georgia where voters are coming out in record numbers now for that high stakes senate runoff. early in-person voting began on monday, and the turnout eclipse the record set on the first day of early voting in the weeks before the november 3rd election. the "new york times" reports this, on monday during the first day of in-person early voting about 168,000 georgia voters showed up at the polls. by comparison, nearly 129,000 people cast ballots on the first day of early voting for the general election, and nearly 91,000 people voted on the first day of the 2016 election. according to the atlanta journal constitution, more than 914,000 people already have cast ballots in the runoffs through wednesday. so john heilemann, you've been covering this race. obviously this level of turnout in early absentee voting a good sign, a hopeful sign for the two democrats hoping to unseat the two republicans there. >> right, so hey, willie and joe, good to see you on this friday morning, thank god it's friday. you know, the key challenge, right, if you're the -- if you're raphael warnock and jon ossoff is turnout in this runoff. historically we all know that turnout -- that runoff elections tend to be low turnout affairs, you usually see even after particularly a big turnout election like you had in the presidential election in georgia, you see turnout fall off the cliff two months later, the irregular voters don't come out. only the hardcore partisans, the most regular voters show up, and that sort of reinforces the normal partisan dynamics. that would be a good outcome for david perdue and for kelly loeffl loeffler. everyone's looking at what's going to happen with turnout in georgia. willie, you cited those in-person early vote numbers. they blew the doors off on the first day skpsand it's been goin all week. it looks a lot like what it looked like in georgia in the run up to the november election. here's the other thing, in the november election they did 1.3 million vote by mail absentee votes, about a quarter of the total votes in georgia, which is about 5 million. about a quarter were absentee ballots by mail. the number that have been requested for the runoff they sent out, 1.6 million ballots. they're up 300,000 over the general election in november, which is like unprecedented, and if 1.6 million ballots come in by mail and this in-person early voting continues on this path, it is really good news for ossoff and war knonock. smart money says it's unlikely they're going to win both of those races. the turnout is really encouraging right now for democrat. they can kind of rebuild the kind of turnout and the kind of constituency model that helped biden win georgia in november. >> you know, before -- well, actually, right after the presidential election katty kay, i would have said that the republicans were much better than even odds to win both of those and possibly win both of those going away, but you look at these numbers, and then you look at the fact that republicans have been doing everything they can do to depress vote by -- their own vote by having the civil war, donald trump has been stirring things up so badly, and then add on top of that that republicans just don't do well when donald trump is not on the ballot himself. you could look at the elections in 2017, the midterms in 2018, a lot of the gubernatorial races in the south in 2019. democrats actually do and i'm not saying this for any other reason than it's true. democrats actually do now have a shot, and they have donald trump to thank for it. >> yeah, i agree the odds would probably still favor just the republicans, but there have got to be some warning signs for them. the fact that mike pence has been down there four times is in itself an indication of how tight they realize this race is and how seriously they are taking this race from the republican side. the fact that he is, you know, ironically telling people it's super peachy and safe to be voting by mail and to be doing all of that early voting. in fact, the early voting, by the way, guys, is across the street from the walmart and the pizza hut so make sure you find it. all of those indications they weren't saying during the general election i think is another sign that they are concerned about their numbers because otherwise why would he be down there? why would he be pushing the very thing they've been saying all along was so fraudulent and so open to corruption. so -- and then the fact that donald trump is the person that drove up not just republican turnout in the general election but on the democratic side as well, and that's the reason we had such massive numbers in november was precisely because of donald trump, and donald trump isn't there. so there are warning signs. you'd still have to -- if somebody asked you to put your considerable piggy bank money on one side or the other you'd probably just because it's georgia would think has it gone as far blue as it might have suggested, you know, in the general election and still just about favors -- and they've got to win two. i would still say it favors the republicans at least winning one of those, which doesn't help the democrats very much. i thought mike pence's speech was really interesting. and then that stop the steal, that's what they're still focused on, and you still have the president calling brian kemp a fool. how does that help them? >> and speaking of a republican split, an incoming gop senator suggests he may ignore a warning from majority leader mitch mcconnell when it comes to challenging president-elect joe biden's victory. we'll tell you who that is next on "morning joe." ♪ fore nexium 24hr, anna could only imagine a comfortable night's sleep without frequent heartburn waking her up. now, that dream... . ...is her reality. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts, for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? we made usaa insurance for veterans like martin. when a hailstorm hit, he needed his insurance to get it done right, right away. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa t-moat a record pace. its network usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. we were the first to bring 5g nationwide. and now that sprint is a part of t-mobile we're turning up the speed. upgrading over a thousand towers a month with ultra capacity 5g. to bring speeds as fast as wifi to cities and towns across america. and we're adding more every week. coverage and speed. who says you can't have it all? no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card. it's time for theraflu hot liquid medicine. powerful relief so you can restore and recover. theraflu hot beats cold. majority leader mitch mcconnell warned republican senators not to challenge joe biden's electoral college certification next month, but senator elect tommy tuperville of alabama mantd comply with that. he suggested while campaigning in georgia he will support a challenge to the election results one that's being led by fellow alabama congressman. his campaign hinted that he is seriously considering that. reacting to the comments, president trump tweeted of tubarville, quote, that's because he is a great champion and a man of courage. more republican senators should follow his lead. we have a landslide victory. it was swindled away by the republican party, but we caught them. do something. it appears the president has found at least one -- and this is quite a way for the senator elect to enter the senate by defying the majority leader as his first act. >> it really is something, and john heilemann, can you imagine your first act defying the majority leader who has -- the senators not to do that. that's not going to be good for the state of alabama, and two, by taking part in the president's attempt to stage a coup against the incoming president of the united states and do everything he can do to undermine america's faith in their electoral system. let's see, piss off mitch mcconnell, one. two, undermine american democracy. three, do the work of vladimir putin and kim jong-un, the iranian mow las have been trying to do for decades now, get americans to have less faith in their own democratic institutions. that's quite a trifecta for tommy tuberville. >> awesome. >> a guy that thinks still his family fought in world war ii to stop socialism. >> yeah, here's the thick, jng, it's not just the trifecta. you've got all three of those things, and here's the fourth thing. you're going to do all of that and then you're going to fail. if you're the guy in the senate who disputes the electoral college, that just opens a vote in the united states senate, right? and on the house side, the same thing happens. now we get to january 6th. because donald trump has gotten these two moronic lackeys one on the house side, one on the senate to dispute the certified results of the electoral college, we now get to have a vote in the house and senate over whether to push the process into the strange, you know, back to the house with the delegations and all that. that's not where you go first. the first is you have an up or down vote in the house or senate. that vote is doomed to fail in the house because democrats control the house, and that's the end of the story. it's probably going to fail in the senate, too. there's going to be enough republicans who are going to break from trump lunacy to not dispute the electoral college. so your tommy tuberville you're going to do all the things you just said, and it's all going to be for the cause of naught. it's not going to change anything. it's not going to actually overturn the electoral college. you're going to fail in the process. all you're doing here is making donald trump happy, and accomplishing the other three things you laid out that are all bad things. i mean, dear god, could you imagine a less inspirational, a more pathetic way of making your debut in national politics than what tommy tuberville is planning to do. it's just mind blowing. >> you know, maybe i need to say a few words to coach tuberville. come here for a second. listen, here's the deal, okay? i understand you're new at this, and i understand that sometimes when you get the ball and you're running down the field and people are cheering, you like to look up in the stands and maybe dance around and play for the cheap seats. let me -- let me -- let me put it down as wd childers says, let me put the grass down there where the goats can eat it. okay? here's what you're going to be doing, all right? you're going to be pissing off your coach, his name is mitch mcconnell. and he won't forget it, and yeah, you may suffer, but so will the people in the great state of alabama. that's number one. number two, i know all those fancy things you don't want to hear about, undermining american democracy. i won't talk to you about that, but number three, the players that you're on the field with, you're setting them up. every one of them to make a vote that's going to make them deeply unpopular in their home state. you know, that would be like you being a quarterback and intentionally blazing a ball right over the middle high in the air to get a wide receiver extended up as high as he can get extended so gets his head knocked off. that'd be like you doing that three or four times in a row. so what do you think happens to you when you go back to the huddle after doing that? after intentionally, intentionally setting your fellow players up to get their heads knocked off at home just so you can play to the cheap sea seats? that my friend is what bear bryant might call bad form. i don't actually know if bear bryant ever used the term bad form, but i'm using it here. that's bad form, and that's bad for you and that's bad for the people in the state of alabama. donald trump, he's going to be golfing in scotland and getting lots of money in saudi arabia and russia and china and qatar and all across the world, and you're still going to be on that field with your fellow players who you're setting up to get their heads knocked off. so one might not look at president trump's tweets at this point. i might look around at the people that you're going to be working with every day for the next six years. and believe you me, you're talking to somebody who's been there and who understands you're rowing in a very small boat, so be careful with what you do, coach tuberville, because you're going to pay for it by playing for the cheap seats. coming up, not only did hackers break into government networks, they managed to stay hidden for months. what it means for national security including for america's nuclear stockpile, next on "morning joe." everyday you're eating acidic foods; you're constantly weakening that enamel structure. pronamel repair allows more minerals to penetrate deep into the enamel layer and it repairs it. it is pretty phenomenal. - [announcer] forget about vacuuming for up to a month. shark iq robot deep cleans and empties itself into a base you empty as little as once a month. and unlike standard robots that bounce around it cleans row by row. if it's not a shark, it's just a robot. so let me just ask you? this aveeno® moisturizer goes beyond just soothing sensitive skin? exactly jen! calm + restore oat gel was designed for sensitive skin. uh! it's incredible! we formulated it with a super nurturing ingredient. prebiotic oat. it soothes 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intelligence. u.s. officials fear hackers used an array of tools and previously unknown tactics to break into government networks. the state defense homeland security commerce and treasury departments all were targeted. and yesterday "politico" reported the department of energy and its national nuclear security administration, which maintains the nuclear stockpile, also was breached. the cyber security and infrastructure security agency issued an alert yesterday warning that quote, as determined that this threat poses a grave risk. it went on, removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging. this is a patient, well-resourced and focused adversary. microsoft announced yesterday it also was targeted in the cyber attack among more than 40 other organizations starting as early as march of this year. it's not just the federal government. the intercept is reporting russian hackers breached the city network of austin, texas. joining us now national security correspondent for "politico" and msnbc contributor, natasha bertrand. she's been covering this story closely. natasha, good morning. let's just take a step back before we dig specifically into your story about how this was detected and who exactly it appears has pulled this off. >> yeah, so this was initially detected by a cyber security firm called fire eye, and they initially detected it by noticing some suspicious activity in their own networks. they looked into it, and they realized that there was a vulnerability in software that was developed by a company called solar winds, which is used cross the federal government. it's kind of an i.t. management software that's used by many different federal agencies and what happened was fire eye discovered that there was a back door essentially that was placed into solar winds that was allowing the hackers to compromise that software and then dig into the federal agencies that way. solar winds doesn't itself know yet or at least it hasn't announced how they were compromi compromised, so that remains to be seen. but so far the u.s. government has not officially pointed the finger at russian hackers but cyber security experts and security experts at large say this has all the hallmarks of a russian intelligence operation. >> and obviously natasha, when we look at your piece, nuclear weapons agency was targeted. we're talking about the nuclear stockpile here, a grave risk says the cyber security agency inside homeland security. what exactly happened with the nuclear agency and how concerned are they about that compromise? >> they're very concerned. the hackers appear to have gotten into the department of energy's network, specifically they got into the networks of national labs which conduct atomic research related to civil nuclear power. they got into the national nuclear security administration's office of secure transportation, which is tasked with moving enriched uranium. and they don't appear to have compromised any of the key national security capabilities of the department of energy, but they were able to burrow into these networks. the department of energy really doesn't know how much damage these hackers were able to do yet. according to my sources, the energy officials were saying yesterday when they were briefing the department on this issue that it might be weeks before they finally are able to determine what the hackers were actually able to access, what they stole, if anything, and the extent of the damage. right now while they were able to locate suspicious activity in roughly five of the subagent psys of tpsy of the department of energy, they don't know yet if that's the extent of it, and i think that's what's worrying folks the most. coming up, why some places thrive while others collapse. we'll talk about america's deep divides with author and columnist tim carney. 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[ cheering ] about time 2020 gave us some good news. whatever your business is facing... let's workflow it. servicenow. that was vice president mike pence just moments ago receiving the covid-19 vaccine in the eisenhower executive office building near the white house, part of the administration's effort to promote the vaccine's safety and to boost public confidence in its effectiveness. the pfizer vaccine was also given to the vice president's wife karen pence and to surgeon general jerome adams by a medical team from walter reed national military medical center. joe, vice president pence saying i didn't feel a thing and well done to the doctor who administered the shot. >> and saying it was safe and effective so we're obviously looking forward to more members not only of the administration but other leaders across america to encourage other americans to go out and take care of themselves, take care of their families and get the vaccine. now to an ongoing conversation we've been having on the show looking at just how safe and secure our democracy is as president trump continues to say the election was stolen from him. and senate and congressional republicans have seemingly gone along for the ride until the past week. so i was reading a "new yorker" piece that was talking about this and talking about how institutions -- talking about institutions and also civilizing forces and went back through history and talked about germany before hitler said that -- talked about -- a hitler biographer had said that somehow the institutions failed. the governing institutions failed and also the civilizing forces failed. when i saw that quote, i immediately thought of our next author, not because he's a german historian but because his book really hit the point that america's civilizing forces are, in fact, failing. let's bring in commentary editor for "the washington examiner" and fellow at the american enterprise institute tim karn knee, and former aid to the george w. bush white house and state department elise jordan. you know, tim, as i was reading that line, the first half of that, the government institutions. it's a debate i've been having with everybody over the past four years, especially my wife saying the institutions are going to hold up. one person is not going to be able to undo what james madison and alexander hamilton did, you know, 240, 250 years ago. and so that's the only way i was looking at it, but then when i read this line what failed in germany and other countries, it's that they lose the institutions but also the civilizing forces, and i immediately thought, well, my god, let's not celebrate about the institutions holding up because i remembered your book, and you talking about the civilizing forces collapsing, especially in middle america. can you talk about that this morning? >> yes, and i think you're exactly right to focus on that, and alienated america was not about the judiciary and the bureaucracy and these other forces you might think about that would tame in a misbehaving president. it's about the real connective tissue of everyday life and that it's the bowling alone problem is what i talked about. what we lost are the bowling leagues. we've lost churches. america is really not just secularizing but deinstitutionalizing in the religion that remains. we've lost the little leagues, the ptas. you might not think we've lost it because in your life, in kind of elite america in these small towns or these suburbs where everybody has a college degree, these institutions are really strong, and in a few small religious communities they're really strong, but in most of middle class and working class america, we have this vast deinstitutionalization, so people aren't getting sort of the day-to-day face-to-face contact with people they might disagree with. they're not getting a reinforcement of the norms that a lot of us have gotten from our strong public schools or our religious lives. so that deinstitutionalization of the american life where we retreat, where we're watching tv, where we're on twitter, all of those things are much more exacerbated in the working class, and what breaks down is social trust. and when social trust is broken down, it's very easy for bad actors to come in and exploit fears and worries of the american people. >> and elise, tim makes such a great point. i just think back over my life when i was younger and i wanted you to come on because, like me, you know, you grew up in mississippi. i grew up in mississippi, alabama, georgia, northwest florida. i got all the deep south states on the bingo card, but we have these civilizing forces. we had sunday school. we had church. we had wednesday night dinners. we had rotary club, we had all of these things that were in all of our communities that were in communities across the united states, and i remember times where we'd be in sunday school and somebody would come in and go hey, i heard that, and then you'd fill in the blank with whatever the conspiracy theory was. george h.w. bush is shipping like crack cocaine into south central l.a. and everybody would look at the person and say come on, who are you listening to -- >> your sunday school was little more hip than mine, though, i think, a little more hip than mine, but. >> well, i'm just talking, though, about just in general, if somebody just randomly would -- even rotary club, somebody would bring up a conspiracy theory, they'd be -- you know, come on, jim. don't look at that. now people are in their homes. these institutions that are breaking apart middle america, and there's not that check. there aren't those civilizing forces like there were even 20 years ago. >> well, in small towns you see where a lot of these civic institutions are still thriving in religious communities as tim pointed out, but the last time tim came -- i think when tim first came on and spoke about his book, that was maybe a year ago or so, maybe in march i remember. think about what all has passed since then. and i'm concerned about this pandemic and how it has just expedited the resucivil societir communities across the countries simply because people have been forced to change their lives and their lives have been so upended, and so there was so much damage wrought already on these communities and you remember these ties that bind us and how, you know, we would have such close bonds going to church, going to, you know, tuesdays and the wednesday night suppers, and then your sunday, two services, and now without that, without that connective tissue, i wonder how hard it's going to be post-pandemic to regain what we've lost. >> yeah, i think there's a lot of truth in that. and tim, another thing that's happened more and more because we physically can't be together as elise said over the last ten months or so is that we're leaning on social media as a stand-in for real life connections. i wonder what you think in the context of your book is the impact of that. it's not just because of this. this has been happening for a long time where someone says, well, i don't need to have that sense of community or maybe that sense of community just doesn't exist where i live. i have facebook. i've made these new friends. i've found these new places to gather and congregate. what's the impact of that, of life going online rather than looking outward? >> i've always said that a virtual community is better than no community, but it's no replacement for physical in-person community. the best thing about facebook is when it serves to physically bring people together. i had my 20-year high school reunion only because a facebook group organized it. right? this is the sort of thing that next door if any of you are on next door, a lot of it is ridiculous like scolding people that the sort of scolding, hectoring, whether it's about masks or shoveling a sidewalk that doesn't really happy in person. that happens in the disembodied way. but some people use neighborhood list serves or next door to organize a picnic, even a socially distanced picnic that with our retreat from seeing each other physically is obviously going to raise tensions. i am a person on twitter. i'm not as nice as i think i am in real life, and i'm pretty sure i'm not the only person who when you lose that face-to-face contact loses the ability to respect and care about and just be -- try to be understanding of the other person. the best part of social media is its ability to bring people together physically. when that's lost during these lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, it becomes, i think clearly a force for negative -- for social disintegration. >> and katty kay, i know you have a question, but first, let's just to make this a little broader, this is not just about elise and i and where we would go to sunday school and training union in southern baptist churches across the deep south. this is happening in great britain. this is happening across western europe. it's happening across the world that we are seeing a breakdown of these civilizing forces which relating to extremes, and let's just talk about great britain, real skepticism about experts there. >> yeah, and actually, vaccination skepticism is even higher in the uk than it is here in america, and it's particularly higher like here amongst minority communities who haven't had the best experiences with health care systems. and often, these conspiracy theories do come from an area where people have been badly served or where they have had a grievance, and then it gets kind of blown out in social media and exacerbates that. it's not new to social media. there were conspiracy theories, the high point of conspiracy theories was perhaps after jsfk was shot. social media is spreading them even quicker. i think at least to get back to what you were talking about, what's really damaging about these conspiracy theories and the breakdown of community in this particular moment is that you do have a vaccine that was rushed through. i mean, this is record breaking speed, and so people who are prone to conspiracy theories or who don't have that community to fall back on, they can understandably to some extent look at this and say, wow, this was super, super fast. should i be a little bit careful about it, and as joe was saying, we are living in a time when politicians have denigrated science, particularly in this country. and so you get those two factors together, and it's not that surprising to me that you've got this kind of surge, this increase in vaccine skepticism. and we need more of what mike pence has just done. >> well, and i think i would add a third compounding factor, and that's the loss of local news outlets. trusted local news outlets as more and more news is spread around facebook where conspiracies thrive, and then you don't have the trusted small town newspapers that were funded largely by local ad revenue, and you have those small publications just falling away, and you lose the local connection to the consumer who trusts what's coming from the local source. and so much of this is cultural, too. you look at there was a study about the -- about trump voters and about how they ultimately voted, and it was much more about culture and about a vote against the other as the sense of alienation continues to spread around this country. >> all right, elise jordan, thank you for being with us. tim carney thank you as well. hope you come back really soon to keep talking about this extraordinarily important issue that's, let's face it, it's been a growing problem over the past several dex decades and it's only going to become more difficult in the coming years. up next as we showed you, vice president mike pence moments ago received the initial dose of pfizer's coronavirus vaccine, as hss secretary alex azar said the fda is expected to green light moderna's version. while the vaccine signals a beginning to the end of a global nightmare, there is another symptom of the pandemic that's creating its own crisis, a special report from "morning joe"'s medical -- chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell next on "morning joe." ♪ we made usaa insurance for veterans like martin. when a hailstorm hit, he needed his insurance to get it done right, right away. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa usaa.is now a good timeof, enough, crohn's. for adults with moderate to severe crohn's or ulcerative colitis, stelara® can provide relief, and is the only approved medication to reduce inflammation on and below the surface of the intestine in uc. you, getting on that flight? back off, uc. stelara® may increase your risk of infections, some serious, and cancer. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, sores, new skin growths, have had cancer, or if you need a vaccine. rpls, a rare, potentially fatal brain condition, may be possible. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. lasting remission can start with stelara®. if you've been financially impacted by covid-19, janssen may be able to help. no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card. serena: it's my 9:12, no-days-off migraine medicine. it's ubrelvy. for anytime, anywhere migraine strikes without worrying if it's too late, or where i am. one dose can quickly stop migraine in its tracks within two hours. unlike older medicines, ubrelvy is a pill that directly blocks cgrp protein, believed to be a cause of migraine. do not take with strong cyp3a4 inhibitors. most common side effects were nausea and tiredness. serena: ask about ubrelvy. the anytime, anywhere migraine medicine. serena: ask about ubrelvy. tonight, i'll be eating a veggie cheeseburger on ciabatta, no tomatoes.. [hard a] tonight... i'll be eating four cheese tortellini with extra tomatoes. [full emphasis on the soft a] so its come to this? [doorbell chimes] thank you. [doorbell chimes] bravo. careful, hamill. daddy's not here to save you. oh i am my daddy. wait, what? what are you talking about? this week, we started talking about hope. hope as we watched the first americans get the covid vaccine. but we still, obviously, have a long way to go. especially as america heads into the winter. "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell reports on the mental health crisis that's continuing to explode because of the pandemic. >> reporter: prior to the outbreak of covid-19, an estimated 1 in 5 new yorkers struggled with mental health issues, which has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. with widespread vaccination projected to begin by spring or summer, people are facing many more months of restrictions and isolation as this dark winter approaches. >> mental health used to be swept under the rug. used to be a second class citizen of health care. it can't be anymore. it needs to be front and center. coronavirus crisis actually will be more lasting in its mental health implications than physical health implications. >> reporter: there are over 33,000 young people dealing with trauma and homelessness in new york city. covenant house new york has ramped up its operations throughout the pandemic to provide round the clock support, shelter and nutrition to the city's youth in need. >> we were seeing a lot of young people who understandably were scared and anxious and feeling, you know, more hopeless and more depressed. we started offering telehealth therapy sessions. what we've learned is that most of our young people prefer in-person therapy. we reconfigured safe places so we can sit with them six feet apart, face masks on. >> reporter: tit has spiked during the outbreak. >> people are dreading the change of season, dreading the prolonged isolation, not being able to socialize. >> reporter: has the stigma affected your population any more because of the pandemic and the isolation? >> shame and stigma really have been the silent killer for behavioral health conditions. we are now able to provide virtual services for people who don't reside in the city. over 50% of our clients stated that they would actually continue virtual services. >> reporter: dr. eman yawl fabu is on the forefront of the better physical and mental health care. what are some innovations and methods you see in a post pandemic world. >> even pro-covid we had all these conditions that existed. not everyone had access to care. i made it a goal of mine to make sure we create awareness around mental health. there's no one solution for everything. we need a holistic approach to mental disease. you can have the drug but support can be important to you at the right place, at the right time. maybe the drug is important to you in the morning. having this personalized approach to medicine driven by data so we can make decisions at the right time. >> reporter: a citywide initiative was launched by first lady shirlane mcclay. >> what she did with thrive was make mental health available to everyone. starting with a hotline that anyone can call 24/7 and get help and get support. that's something that could be achieved anywhere in america, including rural areas that needed the most when there may not be health care nearby. >> as a cannountry, we need to think about integrating mental health care with our primary care. stigma is your biggest problem. it's the first issue that comes up. we're not built to hold on to all of these emotions by ourselves. we need others. that's why this pandemic has been so difficult. the isolation. there's a kind of punishment for us. we can prevent crises. we don't want people to get to the point where they feel like there's nowhere to turn. there's nothing they can do and they feel driven to take their own life or to use heavy drugs. we don't want people to reach that stage. there's always hope and there's always help. we just have to reach out. that's the first step to getting out of the sorrow, out of the sadness, out of the pain that we're in. >> dr. dave campbell joins us now live. good morning, dave. we just heard from the first lady of new york city talking about drug abuse and overdoses. we know those have spiked in the ten months. how does that factor into this story about mental health? >> willie, thanks for having me on. it overlaps tremendously. what we've seen during the pandemic nationwide, not just in new york city, is that there's been a surge and overdose cases, new cases. take indiana for example. they had 80% increase in the number of emergency department visits, and that was only in the spring before this winter surge. they had a 30% increase in overdose deaths. factor in now the surge we're in, the increasing numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths and you can imagine how we're going to see this continuing overlap of increasing mental health problems with increasing drug and alcohol misuse, increasing amounts of alcohol being consumed, drugs being used. and, really, the silent killer, as was mentioned, is this shame and stigma that follows. people don't sit around the kitchen table and talk about their alcohol problem or their drug problem. it is a very quiet, silent killer that is not in the mainstream view, even now. >> we did hear new york's first lady talk about that, dr. dave, and it is still hard for many americans to look at mental health problems, mental health challenges the same way they'd look at other physiological challenges. a broken arm. you can get a scan for that. if you have -- if you have a back problem, of course, you give patients mris all the time. but if there's a mental health challenge, it's -- you have to talk about it. i mean, you can't take a scan of somebody's brain usually and pick anything up. there can't be that stigma. we've got to be able to talk about it. we've got to be able to share. that's our best way to treat people who need the most help, right? >> it has to be brought out into the open, into the sunlight. you can't do an mri of the brain and see a problem of mental illness showing up as something that can be diagnosed typically. so having the entire population of the united states understanding that these were real diseases, they're as real as a broken arm, as you say, and understanding that a mental illness condition, a substance use disorder are chronic diseases. they can have acute phases but they're chronic problems that need to be dealt with openly, transparently and with a lot of compassion and safety mixed in, joe. >> all right. dr. dave campbell, as always, great insights. thank you so much for being here and helping us sort through all of this. now let's go around for some final thoughts and start with katty kay. final thoughts? >> we won't be doing this very much longer, but i have been looking at the president's twitter feed. he's tweeting about election fraud, no surprise. his disappointment at the supreme court and tweeting about how europe has terrible covid numbers. what he's not tweeting about are the two biggest stories that would be most helpful perhaps. that cyberattack and calling on his supporters to get the vaccination. we saw mike pence do it. we're still waiting for the president to do it. >> my final thought piggybacks on katty's. we're a week from crisis. you have 3200, 3300, 3400 americans dying every day of coronavirus. a record number of cases yesterday. that's the public health side. the economic crisis that comes with it. a cyberattack. and now the president of the united states is tweeting conspiracy theories and going after a leading republican in congress, all while, by the way, the senate is debating whether or not to get covid relief passed in time for the holidays. it's still up in the air. >> maybe the numbers are just too high? maybe people -- it's too hard for him to grasp that more people have died of covid than died in combat in america? americans that died in combat, world war ii. we've had a 9/11 every day this week. and still, the president won't talk about it. thanks for watching us. we greatly appreciate it. hope you have a great weekend. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle, live from msnbc headquarters in new york city. it is friday, december 18th. the end of an historic week in this country. just moemtss ago, we saw vice president mike pence get his dose of the new covid vaccine. the highest profile member of the government to get the shot. his wife karen and surgeon general jerome adams also got their vaccinations. and this comes on a day when we expect to get final approval, very good news, for another vaccine. the fda poised to grant emergency authorization for modern

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