hatred. >> we cannot expect to make everyone our friend. but we can try to make no one our enemy. >> let us create together a new national spirit of unity and trust. >> how can we love our country and not love our country men? and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall. >> my friends, and yes i do mean friends, in the loyal opposition and yes i mean loyal, i put out my hand. >> i ask the congress to join with me but no president, no congress, no government can undertake this mission alone. >> civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. it is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. >> on this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. >> it's time to put away the harsh rhetoric. we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. they are not our enemies. they are americans. ♪ it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me ♪ ♪ and i'm feeling good ♪ ♪♪ today, joe biden steps into power as this nation's 46th president. for him, this moment has been a long time coming. 35 years in the u.s. senate. two previous white house runs. two terms as vice president. and now, the president-elect is about to become the president of the united states during a time that's even more tumultuous than when he assumed the vice presidency 12 years ago, dealing like he did then, with a battered economy. this time because of a raging global pandemic. amid an even more bitterly divided nation. donald trump will leave the white house today at 8:00 a.m. for the final time as president. and today at noon, joe biden takes the oath of office. thank you for joining us on this historic day as we also prepare for the swearing in of america's first-ever woman vice president, kamala harris. along with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc national affairs analyst, executive editor of "the recount" and co-host and executive producer of showtime the circus john heilemann. chief white house correspondent for the new york times peter baker. member of the new york times editorial board, mara gay and author, historian and journalist, evan thomas joins us on this very important morning. >> well, it is a morning that every four years throughout our lifetime has been a morning where, as barack obama said in the inaugural address clip that we showed, that most americans have chosen hope over fear. that has not always been the case over the past four years. and willie, many of those promises of extended hands are efforts to reach out to the other party have fallen apart quickly. and we've especially seen it time and again over the past 30, 40 years as politics has become more toxic in washington, d.c. these last four years, of course, have been especially toxic. but this is the morning -- i can only speak for myself, this is the morning, this is the day when i have throughout my life done what mark thiessen, a conservative writer for the washington post said he was going to do today, and that is look at the incoming president and say, i may not agree with him on everything, i may not agree with him on most things, but he is my president and i hope he succeeds. it's what i said when donald trump was sworn in. it's what i said when bill clinton, probably the president whose election i was the most upset at the time. there's something about seeing a fellow american go up there and swearing an oath to this country where every american, be they conservative or liberal, black or white, democratic, independent or republican has to understand that if the president of the united states does not succeed, then the united states does not succeed. and anyone walking around washington, d.c., walking around washington last night or this morning has in front of them laid bear the effects of the past four years of this presidency an abandoned city, city that actually is shuttered up as if it is the middle of a civil war. still, buffetted from the violent, grim impact of what happened on january the 6th. and trying to look forward to a better, brighter four years ahead for all americans, not just for democrats. >> yeah, i share that sentiment exactly. and we said as much the day that president trump was inaugurated. the success of the president is the success of a country. but today ends for many people in this country a very, very dark chapter in our history that began on june 16th, 2015, when donald trump descended that escalator at trump tower in new york city. many people thought it was a joke at the time his candidacy. it ended two weeks ago on the steps of those capitol in a nightmare, riot, attack on the united states capitol. this is extraordinary, the transfer of power in this case to a new president joe biden, but it's extraordinary also because the sitting president of the united states will not be there. he has decided to not contend. he continues the lie he won the election. he will be leaving the white house on marine one at 8:00 a.m. this morning and travel to joint base andrews in maryland and fly out on air force one one last time so he will not be at this ceremony. also, as you said, this will take place on the steps of the capitol that was attacked two weeks ago, the very place where joe biden will take the oath of office. trump supporters were standing and cheering, waving flags, some beating police officers and ransacking the capitol building. it also takes place in a city, as you said s locked down, that's specially on a war footing and will look out over a mall and down to the reflecting pool that is a representation of where we are, a country that has lost more than 400,000 people to a pandemic that this president has vowed to take more seriously and to make the centerpiece of his administration in a way that the sitting president, who will be president now for just under six more hours did not. >> yeah. >> you know, evan thomas, set this for us historically, of course. george washington, the first foth be sworn in and was sworn in to new york, thomas jefferson in 1801, the first president to be sworn in in washington, d.c. i think it was martin van buran and andrew jackson were the first two presidents to get in a carriage together and ride to capitol hill for the swearing in ceremony, and that moment has provided great fodder for historians like you, whether it was the chilly ride between harry truman and dwight eisenhower, hardly any words were spoken or whether it was eisenhower just trying to figure out how to deal with jfk during the transition, a guy more transfixed on a button he could push on eisenhower's desk that would bring marine one any time and ike looking down on him going, you have more things to worry about that, son, basically. whether it was jimmy carter or ronald reagan. again, this is part of an unbroken tradition, which of course will be broken this morning as donald trump leaves washington and joe biden rides to the swearing in ceremonies by himself. talk about this day. >> well, that ride is really important. as you pointed out, i think it happened with jacquesson and van burran back in the 1830s. john adams beat it out of town. he was so mad at thomas jefferson, just like donald trump, john adams got out of town and went to baltimore on a carriage, i think. but they began the tradition of riding together. and it's really such an important symbolic moment. you mentioned that truman and eisenhower rode together. they couldn't stand each other. truman was mad at eisenhower for show boating, saying he was going to go to korea. and eisenhower was mad at truman because he thought that truman was spreading rumors about ike's affair with his driver, cay summersby in world war ii. so they were so hostile that they did not speak to each other. but -- and here is the big but -- they still rode in the car together. the public didn't know how much they hated each other. they saw something greater, which is that you have to make a show of unity at this moment. and they learned how to cooperate with each other. they're very different guys, but they had a common cause, which was the cold war and restoring america after world war ii. and they were able to bury their differences and work together. trump's not being here today is symbolic of what we have lost. and the sense of bipartisanship and the sense of having one country. trump has done, i'm sorry to say, his best to undermine that. and it's up to joe biden to try to restore that, however he can. and one thing he has going for him, he's not the world's greatest speaker. he's not the most uplifting speaker, he doesn't even have more than the half the country behind him, but he's a decent human being. i think people sense that, and his decency, i hope, will carry us through to this day and into the day's coming. >> well, decency, many would say, is what is needed right now more than anything. and joe, usually inaugural events are jubilant and music and performances and there will be as well as the very solemn moment of the president taking the oath of office, the president-elect. but i think most of the jubilation given the coronavirus and 400,000 dead amid all the other problems and the latest being the insurgency of the capitol, that jubilation will be replaced with resolve. and a sense of bringing our country back. >> yeah. there's no doubt joe biden is going to be inaugurated under difficult circumstances, but my god, abraham lincoln's second inaugural, of course, where he delivered composed one of the greatest speeches in american history our friend jon meacham would call american scripture, the second inaugural address. he did that. the country was recovering from the civil war, of course. he was assassinated soon after. but even in this century, woodrow wilson didn't hold inaugural balls in 1913 because he thought america was -- the situation was too solemn. fdr inaugurated four times had one inaugural ball in 1933, didn't even attend that. and we have seen time and again presidents coming into the white house under the most difficult of circumstances. so joe biden certainly student of history, certainly a student of these institutions in washington, d.c. understands exactly what he has to do. and at the top of the list, john heilemann, has to be declaring war on covid, where over 400,000 deaths. they had a solemn ceremony last night that was so moving. and let's just be really blunt here, donald trump has set the bar so low, he has set the bar so low since the end of february when he knew about covid and what it was going to do to america, but denied it. that joe biden can do the basic things that americans have been urging this president to do since early march and can make a difference. the big difference in the lives of americans and the economy. >> yeah. good morning, joe. you know that ceremony last night was stunning, right? and beautiful and incredibly, incredibly sad. i think for a lot of people cathartic. and beyond the stage craft of it, which was really quite something and the performance leonard cohen sang "hallelujah" sung beautifully, the brief remarks by the president-elect, you know, i think for a lot of people it was just a very stark illustration of the shortcomings of the outgoing president. this is a thing that donald trump could have done, i don't mean the grandeur of it, i men the sentiments expressed he could have done at any time over the course of the last 11 months, 10 months since covid washed across the country, you never saw a moment like this ever in the middle of 400,000 americans dying. you never had a moment where donald trump made even an effort to try to have a moment like what joe biden had last night, expressing that kind of emotion, that kind of sympathy, that kind of try to give the moment the country a moment to kind of reckon with the scale of what's happened here with this pandemic. and so joe biden reaching for that moment, understanding, i think, obviously that covid is going to define his first year as the first term, is bar is very low in that sense, both on the symbolic level, the rhetorical level and the level of basic competency to try to address the pandemic itself as a public health crisis. the bar is very low. but expectations i think are very high. the one thing joe biden understands is how steep this challenge is. where we stand right now with the vaccine, with the limited -- the botched roll-out of the vaccine, the limited up take of the vaccine. the vast infrastructure challenge of getting it out to the public on one hand it is a very straight forward thing. getting jabs in arms, convincing the country to accept this vaccine, very straight forward challenge, it's not an easy challenge, though. a lot of biden's success in this first year is going to turn on that. if they can get this one big giant very hard but very straight forward thing right, joe biden will be off to a very good start this year. if they fail at that, he's got a lot of problems to deal with, but if he fails at that, he's going to have problems. but i think there's a clear eyed sense of resolve and a sense of the scale of this issue in front of them and they understand how much they're going to be graded at the starting point just really on this one thing. i think that's part of why that ceremony last night in addition to emotion symbolically apt because it's the big issue that will define his first term, at least a large part of his first term to an extent. >> mara, racial animus across this country, the idea that out of many come one. e pleurobus yun shredded over the past four years. majority of americans said they believe their president was racist. this is a guy, and i just quickly jotted this down, who began his campaign talking about mexican rapists, moved on to muslim registry and muslim ban, something straight out of the germany in 1933, '34. of course he said he couldn't trust a mexican judge who actually was from indiana but his parents were from mexico. the mocking and the attacking of gold star family because their son was a muslim. charlottesville, need i say more. the mocking of black-led countries. calling hispanics breeders. telling women of color, who were members of the united states congress, to go back home where they came from. i could go on. there's no need. we all know what he's done over the past four years. going to present quite a challenge, is it not, for this president, for this congress to bring americans back together on not just issues of race, on all issues, so we move back towards that goal of being one country out of many one. >> you know, joe, i'm someone who believes that racism is not just animus that kind of lives in the hearts of some people, but unfortunately in this country is our national inheritance and national shame. in order to really overcome it, we need to confront it. and i certainly believe that if racism and white supremacy were alone disqualifying for the holder of an office, then we would not have had donald trump become president. so i think we really need to start to recognize with the role that white supremacy has played not just in this country but in the past four years in producing someone like donald trump. i don't think it would have been possible without white supremacy and without racism. and so i think it's really important that as we talk about unity and moving forward, we really start to confront that challenge. i think i'm very hopeful because when we saw what happened on january 6th, a lot of americans of goodwill saw the true face of white supremacy and of trumpism at its core. and so, that's not what we want as a country, no matter where you are in the political spectrum, if you are somebody who loves this country, you want to confront this and overcome it. so joe biden has his work cut out for him, but so do we all. and i think unless we actually root out this racism, we will never overcome this challenge. and we might find ourselves right back in the same position. you know, foreign countries, if you think about the soviet union, they know this is our greatest weakness. that's why during the civil rights movement they sought to exploit it and to exploit those tensions. they did the same thing with donald trump. this will happen over and over and over again. what is preventing us from coming together to fight our real enemies, like covid, is racism. it is at the heart of what allowed donald trump free reign to terrorize the american people for four years. and it will continue to do so in other forms. it did so before donald trump. it will do so again unless we confront it and defeat it together. >> peter bake,er every minute you have covered the twists and turns of this administration. it strikes me as donald trump flies over washington today just over an hour and a half from now on marine one leaving for joint base andrews and then takes off on air force one, that he will be flying over the wreckage of his four years. a city that is locked down because of pandemic that he ignored, that he said outloud on an interview on tape to bob woodward he always wanted to play down and also a city locked down because of the threat from white supremacists, from right wing groups that he encouraged, the flames he fanned that led up to the attack on the capitol two weeks ago. and all this, just hours ago, right before he is leaving town, pardons and commutations for 143 people including steve bannon. >> yeah, willie. that's exactly right. if you drive around the city right now, what you would see is the convergence of the crises that we have been enduring and now that joe biden inherits. you see the military in the streets of washington. you see the jersey barriers blocks and blocks away from the white house and the capitol, the whole swath of downtown is blocked off to traffic. bridges are going to be closed today, the last few days those of us who live here have been listening to the helicopters overhead fairly constant pace. and last night you heard the bells of washington national cathedral ringing for those who passed away from the coronavirus the day we reached 400,000 death toll mccab and grim milestone and the lights of ringing reflecting pool president-elect biden and jill biden and vice president-elect kamala harris and her husband, just a simple expression of national mourning, to acknowledge the pain and the suffering that so many americans have been through. and when the sun comes up today and joe biden takes the oath on the west front of the capitol on the same place those rioters, those mob members were, you know, at just two weeks ago assaulting the literal counting of the votes, to stop the democratic process, you're also going to see a fairly empty mall normally hundreds of thousands of people because of covid, because we can't afford to have people in such close proximity. so today kind of brings together in very stark relief, you know, a country in crisis and the scale of the challenges that await the new president. >> so peter, should we be surprised by any of the names on the list of pardons and commutations last night. the president has been out of sight for the last week, spending his final days in office holed up in the residence, holed up in the oval office with a tiny group of advisers deliberating, debating who should be on this list. steve bannon of course is the one that pops out, a guy who was at his side when he ran for president, a guy seen by some people including the president to have abandoned him in some ways. should we be surprised that steve bannon got the pardon last night? >> a little bit only because the president had seemed to be leaning against it just 24 hours earlier, but then over the course of yesterday had a running argument throughout the day, bannon himself weighed in, making his case. it's surprising in a number of ways not just because it's a controversial high profile pardon but because steve bannon hadn't gone to trial yet. traditionally pardons go to people who have been convicted and served their sentences according to justice department guidelines. bannon hadn't gotten that far. short circuited the prosecution before the lawyers had a chance to go to court to prove their case. i was also struck by the paragraph in the white house announcement about steve bannon. it didn't make the argument that he was innocent. it just simply said he was a well-known conservative leader with a fine political acumin which is not the usual criteria for earning presidential forgiveness. but, you know, i think in the end of the day the president has the power and he decided he wanted to use it. i think he decided that people who had been prosecuted in the last few years, you know, he identifies with them in the sense that he nurses this sense of victimhood, the idea that somehow he was persecuted unfairly or politically by all the various investigations that had been conducted and therefore he sees through that lens cases like the one against steve bannon. but you know, it's interesting, steve bannon isn't just charged with lying to prosecutors or one of these other crimes a lot of other aides have been charged with, he's charged with policing trump's own supporters, by telling them they were giving money that would be used for the wall that was, in fact, in some cases used for other purposes. that's trump's own base being victimized here and yet the president decided for whatever reason he wasn't going to allow that prosecution to go forward. >> so, evan thomas, draw parallels, if you will, for us between richard nixon's final days and donald trumps. there is, that i can think of, no figure in american history whose final days were spent in nixonian state inside the white house in a bunker more so than donald trump. of course, even, you know, nixon had kissinger to force him to get down on his knees and pray with him. kissinger extraordinarily uncomfortable. had al hague still running around trying to hold the ship together. still had people around him. with donald trump you had a man after the riots abandoned by his closest allies on the hill, the senate majority leader, banned by twitter, banned by facebook, this was the way he communicated to the outside world. impeached for a second time. and for the most part, sitting alone inside the white house for the last few weeks with just a few final holdovers. >> well, you know, they said that nixon was kind of half mad at the end, but he had a moment of insight that i don't expect from donald trump. when nixon left the white house, he gave a talk. and he said, you know, if you hate your enemies, it will destroy you. it was a little bit late for richard nixon to have this insight because hating his enemies did destroy him, but at least he did it. at least he said it and he said it as advice to his successors. i don't expect a moment of self reflection like that in donald trump. we'll see, but i wouldn't hold your breath. nixon was a horribly flawed person, but he did believe in the system in his own way. and he exceeded to the inevitability of his own impeachment and resigned. trump lives in a different place. trump is in another world. not nixon's world, just further out there. >> yeah. can we, john heilemann, before we go to break, we look at the united states capitol, absolutely beautiful imagery. i must say last night and maybe it's because of the chaos that surrounded it two, two and a half weeks ago, it was absolutely gorgeous last night. lit up during the ceremony, the covid ceremony. but let's talk about what's going to go on inside of that capitol in the coming weeks. mitch mcconnell yesterday came out and delivered a blistering critique of donald trump. said that the rioters were lied to, that donald trump supporters have been lied to about the election and that the responsibility rests with the president of the united states. tell us what is going on there. it's not that mitch mcconnell is incapable of just saying something because it's the right thing but many washington observers aren't sure that they've actually ever seen him do that while in washington, d.c. so what's the story behind the story. >> well, joe i think we saw last week, of course, mcconnell having the extraordinary thing of kind of letting -- without dispute -- not disputing in any way news reports which many believe were sort of direct leaks but certainly was offered the opportunity to say they were untrue, these stories "the new york times" and elsewhere that he believed that trump had committed impeachable offenses, that he was happy that he was being impeached, that he thought this was the way to purge trump from the republican party. and then maybe now come to this week. in between we have mcconnell not doing a snap senate trial after trump was impeached. a lot of people speculated about whether that was a sign that maybe mcconnell was trying to visit both ways, criticize trump on background and big newspapers but then not try to drive him out of public life by convicting him. didn't have the trial over the weekend, which he could have done, which is what a lot of house democrats and senate democrats wanted. instead he elected to wait and have this trial in this early part of joe biden's term. it's my view based on my reporting and analysis that mcconnell knew full well that in the senate, in order to get those 17 republicans that he needs, those votes to convict donald trump, that doing a snap trial in the senate would have offended their sense of due process. and that he knew that by waiting the case against trump would only grow more powerful, that more evidence would come out, we would see more video, the complicity of trump as rioters, as insurrectionists testified to the fact that they had come to the capitol in their minds on donald trump's orders, on donald trump's instructions, that that would make a case more powerful against trump and that waiting would make it easier to convict him. i think yesterday you saw mcconnell take the next step. he effectively said yesterday that, as you said, he came out and said -- basically said that donald trump was to blame for what happened in the capitol. he basically said without saying these words that he had, in fact, done what the article of impeachment says he did, incited an insurrection. that's the clearest tip of the hand that mcconnell intends to convict donald trump, not only opening the door but encouraging other republicans to do it and what's happening behind the scenes is what's mitch mcconnell's game? all he cares about is power and retaking control of the senate in 2022. he is staring into the reality that many republican -- many large companies and reliable republican donors are saying they will not contribute to the republican party, to republicans in the senate, if they are -- -- because of the stain of what happened last week. we have seen many companies come out and say if you voted against the certification of the electoral college, if you were a part of this failed coup attempt, we're cutting this spig got off, we're not going to write you the checks. mcconnell recognizes that without money, a lot of it, he's not going to get back in control of the united states senate back in 2022. part of what's going on is mcconnell understands that purging trump is in the long-term political interest of the party, but getting over this hump, that convicting trump in the u.s. senate would also be maybe the only way to get back on good terms with the donors that he so desperately needs if republicans are going to be able to retake control of the u.s. senate and put him in the job that he thinks is rightfully his, which is senate majority leader again. >> and peter baker, proving once again that donald trump is his own worst enemy, as we went through the laundry list yesterday. as this is happening on the senate floor, donald trump is letting "the wall street journal" know he's thinking about starting his own party to compete with the republican party, to split the republican base. so any fear that republicans may have, obviously to vote against him goes out the window. and it is in their best political interest now suddenly with donald trump talking about starting the patriot party to do what -- to vote the way they should vote and impeach a president for committing insurrection against the united states of america and then voting to ban him from ever being able to run for office again. and in so doing, actually helping themselves politically by ensuring that donald trump doesn't rip the republican party in half. >> well, it's interesting because it could be obviously an expression of his frustration, his exasperation as he's leaving the white house. it could be a threat. it could be his way of saying if you vote against me, i will take my people and i will leave and you will lose elections as a result. the last time a former president broke away from the republican party and created his own it didn't go so well for the republican party, that was teddy roosevelt in 1912, ran for president again on that ticket, the republican incumbent william howard taft went down and the democrat woodrow wilson won. so, you know, it's a good question. it's a good reminder, though, to republicans that donald trump never really saw himself as one of them. remember, he switched his party i think five, six, seven times in his life time, democrat, republican, reform party, independent. he never had a lifelong affiliation with the republican party. while the last four years he's governed from the conservative right, no question about it, he's always seen himself as an outsider. that was the word he used just yesterday in his farewell video. he never saw himself as a leader of the republican party. you saw at that rally those people who went and stormed the capitol, donald trump jr. excoriating traditional republicans saying it's not their party anymore. it's donald trump's party. that's what he said, it's donald trump's party. not a party ideas or party of values or party of shared beliefs. the president's son was defining it. so that's what you're seeing here, i think. i think it could have remarkable consequences for the republican party. just his expression of anger perhaps, but reflects the civil war going on in the republican party right now and the moment of testing. what do they want to be as a party. whose party is it any way. >> well, we have a packed show on this inauguration day, including president-elect joe biden's pick for transportation secretary, pete buttigieg. also, former secretary of state, madeleine albright will be our guest. and democratic congressman jim clyburn, whose crucial endorsement changed everything for the biden campaign during the democratic primaries. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. the mob was fed lies. they were provoked by the president and other powerful people. and they tried to use fear 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and gentlemen, i only have one regret, he's not here because we should be introducing him as president. president-elect joe biden speaking yesterday in wilmington, delaware, before heading to washington to begin the inauguration proceedings. joining us now in washington, nbc news correspondent mike memoli. set the scene for us today. >> reporter: well, mika, as you know, joe biden aspired to the presidency for most of his adult life he ran for president in 1988, 2008 unsuccessfully. these are certainly not the circumstances in which joe biden maybe wanted to inherit the massive challenges that are ahead, but as i've been talking with biden friends, allies, former and current staff, they all say the same thing, if there ever was a moment that called for joe biden, it really is this moment. and when you saw the scenes yesterday when we were in wilmington, the emotion just on display there, the dramatic pictures on the national mall last night as we had really the first major national commemoration of the 400,000 lives lost, you're reminded of what biden campaign said throughout the campaign, which was empathy is his superpower. yes, this is not the inauguration joe biden might have drawn up, of course, the security precautions, as you can see all around me here, near the church where biden will attend mass this morning. the covid protocols as i'm wearing a mask and the socially distant mall where we will see the inauguration today, but think about the first time joe biden took the oath of office as a senator. that was not the swearing in his envisioned, not in the well of the u.s. senate surrounded by his family but at the hospital bed next to his son, his two boys who were injured in that accident that also killed his wife and daughter. now, biden is beginning, you think of the notes he's been setting over the course of these inaugural proceedings. i find it so interesting that he is beginning his day not just attending mass and remember the history here, joe biden will become just the second roman catholic to be the president of the united states, but inviting the bipartisan leadership of congress to join him. he, of course, has made many promises and issued his confidence among other things that he can bring the country together. he's appealing to a higher power this morning to help him do that as he attends mass with those congressional leaders. then it's off to the capitol for that swearing in, a message of unity as we expect in what should be a 20 to 30 minute inaugural address and then he'll get to work. as soon as we get to the white house, we expect him to issue 15 executive orders, introduce legislation for an immigration reform bill and then just the beginning of what will be a very busy not just first day, first week but first 100 days in which he tries to address all these crisis facing the nation. >> mime memoli, thank you very much. it's great to see you on this morning. we appreciate it. hope to catch back up with you soon. willie, obviously the question is what is that address going to look like? of course we've had famous words uttered from presidents inaugural addresses, of course john kennedy's ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. abraham lincoln, with malice towards nonand charity towards all. your favorite line and my favorite line coming from behind the podium four years ago. >> i know where this is going. >> george w. bush, that was some weird. >> beep. >> stuff. and he was a prophet. he was a prophet. what do you expect of us to hear from joe biden today? nothing quite that prophetic, i know. but it does remind us about george bush. good having george bush around. >> yeah, he had some good political insight that day. he saw it all coming as he had that poncho arranged over his head. the theme today from joe biden is going to be unity. and that's a very broad theme, but these speeches are very broad. that's the way an inaugural address goes. thank you for the helpful visual aid. there's president bush four years ago he is reported to have turned to hillary clinton after president trump's inaugural address and as joe said, uttered the words that was some weird -- stuff. but mara gay, the theme of unity, obviously is a bomb to many people's souls after the last four years when we felt so divided. but as you were talking about, there has to be some reconciliation that comes with the unity. a number of executive actions today, an ambitious $1.9 trillion package that he is talking about pushing through congress to attack covid, to get the economy back on track. what would you like to see from this president, not just in these first days, but as we move forward, beyond the broad theme of unity which is welcomed but as we get down in the weeds more specifically. >> yeah, you know, i think that package that covid relief package is a great start. one thing we would really like to see, though, is aid to the american people that doesn't have an expiration date on it. i think when you look back at the 2008 crisis, the mistake that we made, one of the mistakes, of course, was not giving enough aid in the form that people needed for long enough. so, you know, people need to pay their rent every month. and this is a crisis that has been going on for nearly a year in the united states now. it's going to continue. it's a deep crisis. people are sick. they are out of work. they need help for the duration. so i think our hope is that this relief package, we can get help to the american people as they need it and take the expiration date off. that will also provide some stability in the markets certainly but also in people's lives. i think that's the kind of stability we need if we're going to rebuild the middle trust and rebuild the bond of americans. focussed on not just unity but recommitting to strengthing the institutions and bonds between americans. the best way to do that is what joe biden is talking about doing on day one, what he's expected to do which is getting help to the american people right now. >> and peter baker, joe biden is going to try to do something that the last two presidents have had difficulty doing, barack obama especially in the last six years and donald trump over the past four years, and that is to pass a good bit of legislation that can't be reversed by a president's signature. i mean, this morning joe biden can reverse so much of what donald trump did in his executive orders by just signing his own executive orders. so, what is a biden administration looking at as far as their opportunities go for a congress that actually is more split down the middle than any time in our life time we have in the united states senate a 50/50 split. in the house of representatives, four democrats provide the margin of difference. but, that actually is negligible considering you have 435 members there. so we actually have despite the heated rhetoric, this is actually the most centered, moderate congress and president that we've had at the same time for as long as i can remember. >> yeah, look. the president will -- the new president will show energy and action by signing these 17 executive orders and memoranda today, but he knows better than anybody or at least as well as anybody that you live by executive order, you die by executive order, right? the reason why president-elect biden can undo so much of president trump's administration on day one is because president trump did do so much through his own unilateral executive authority. that is instantly reversible or at least very quickly reversible in most cases. so joe biden, a creature of congress, really the first true creature of congress in the white house since gerald ford, knows better than anybody if you want to make change that lasts, if you want to make change that matters, you really have to do it through laws that are passed by both houses and signed by a president. that's why i think he's unveiling today his immigration plan to provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people who are in the country illegally. a way of at least signaling from the beginning yes he's using executive pen but planning to work with congress to do big things. now, can he? i don't know. you're right to point out how divided and closely narrow -- how narrow these democratic majorities really are. 50/50 senate is not conducive to big sweeping change. i think that joe biden and mitch mcconnell are the kind of politicians who don't want to have a train wreck on debt ceiling, on government shutdowns, on covid relief, things that are of urgent, immediate necessity. i don't know that means they can come to agreement on things like sweeping climate bills or gun control or healthcare bills or things that really challenge republican orthodoxy at the moment. that will be a hard thing for president-elect biden because he has to explain to his base why he can't give them everything they want even though democrats in theory control both houses of congress. >> so, john heilemann, it's interesting what a difference georgia has made in joe biden being able to appoint who he wants to appoint for the most part and get those appointees in. that said, we heard before the election that chuck schumer's worst case scenario was a 50/50 split where joe manchan would decide and joe represents a state that went for donald trump. that sets up an interesting dynamic. what i do find -- i don't know that it's fascinating, i think for democrats a good development, is that the progressive wing of the democratic party -- and let's just talk about bernie sanders. you talk to the biden campaign, they will say nobody played ball more than bernie sanders. he was extraordinary. he was a team player. he did everything that they asked of him and more. they could not say enough good things about bernie sanders or elizabeth warren. and i'm just wondering if joe biden is going to be able to avoid the pitfalls that the last two moderate democratic presidents faced, jimmy carter, of course, a bad relationship at times with tip o'neal, got off to a very rocky start and bill clinton in his final six years having democrats cursing his name for triangulation and making deals. what's happening for the democratic caucus, for now they seem to recognize the reality they face and seem to be working very constructively with the biden team. >> yeah, i think that's right, joe. look, a 50/50 senate, as you said, chuck schumer understands how this works, right? in a 50/50 senate it means that everyone, every single senator has leverage, which means that no one is really in charge. you know, and that's not just joe manchan, that's across the board. you lose one defection and you can't get something passed. you pointed out before there's not just joe manchan, the middle of the senate right now, the manchan -- the kristen cinemas and the democratic party on the republican side, the mitt romneys and susan collins there's a kind of sen tryst caucus that could be the place where a lot of deal making takes place. now, you raised the right question which is how happy does that make the democratic, progressive party, the democratic base that's where the action will be legislatively, a world in which susan collins and mitt romney meeting together with kristen cinema and joe manchan are going to set the policy direction for the next four years. i think in these first -- >> is anybody lighting roman candles and popping champagne corks over that in the progressive wing? i think not. but on the other hand i think there is -- this was true of the first two years of barack obama's administration, was the urgency of the moment will allow joe biden to keep the democratic party together for at least this next year, maybe for the first two years. there's going to be a lot of cohesion. people are going to accept that we're in a state of emergency economically in terms of echo vid where people will stay together. for large scale legislative priorities i think you'll have a lot of tension in the caucus and potentially a lot of problem not just with republicans but within the democratic party itself. >> all right. coming up, donald trump's decision to skip the inauguration sets off an unprecedented effort to hand off the nuclear football to joe biden when he assumes the presidency at noon. we'll explain how that's being done. "morning joe" is coming right back. >> man: what's my safelite story? my truck...is my livelihood. so when my windshield cracked... the experts at safelite autoglass came right to me... with service i could trust. right, girl? >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ so through ancestry, i discovered my great aunt ruth signed up as a nursing cadet for world war ii. she was only 17. bring your family history to life like never before. get started for free at ancestry.com 12 years ago i was waiting at the train station at wilmington for a black man to pick me up on our way to washington where we were sworn in as president and vice president of the united states of america. and here we are today, my family and i, about to return to washington to meet a black woman, of south asian decent, to be sworn in as president and vice president of the united states. ♪♪ the united states turns the page on the trump presidency today. as joe biden will be sworn in as the nation's 46th president. donald trump is scheduled to leave the white house for the final time as president at 8:00 a.m. in just about one hour and then heads to joint base andrews for a farewell ceremony for a final ride on air force one to palm beach, florida, skipping the inauguration. sources say the event will have all the pomp and pageantry of an official state visit, including selections from the air force band. mike pence, however, will not be there. a white house official tells nbc news that it is not logistically feasible for the vice president to attend both the farewell ceremony and the inauguration and that he has chosen the inauguration. as for the incoming president, he will begin his morning at church. he's expected to attend the cathedral of st. matthew, the apostle just before 9:00 a.m. with dr. jill biden, vice president-elect kamala harris and her husband doug emhoff. multiple sources tell nbc news that they'll be joined by all four top congressional leaders, house speaker nancy pelosi, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell, senate minority leader, chuck schumer and house minority leader kevin mccarthy. that means the two republican leaders will also attend the biden events in lieu of the trump farewell. that says a lot right there. along with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnacle, professor at harvard, annette garden reed. >> doris kerns good win and author and nbc news presidential historian michael besh losh. >> the impact this has on the men leaving the white house and all men so far that may change at some point, but it's very interesting i'm now old enough, doris, i have been able to tell members of the past three administrations you think you're going to be in this place forever, i've seen this before. you're not. it's going to be over one day in a flash of an eye and everybody that walks in here thinks they've cracked the code. they think they can buy this place. you can never buy the white house. you can rent it. and sometimes they evict you faster. and nobody when they're in it the first one, two, even into the third year, nobody believes it. but it happens to every occupant and every staff member. and it's happening this morning to donald trump. and we have seen even with the most temperamentally sound white house occupants, ronald reagan staring at the white house one last time, the oval office before he left and muttering if i could just take back that one day, talking about the day that the marines were killed in lebanon. and you talk about -- you've written about lbj being haunted as he knew his time was coming up. talk about this day and actually we talked so much about the people who are entering the oval office, talk about how this democracy requires everyone who walks into that oval office to know before they even walk in that their time there is going to be limited by our constitution. >> you know, you're so right, joe. it is the hallmark of democracy. i've not only lived longer than you but i lived with lincoln and fdr, so i go way back in time how much i spent time with them waking up with them in the morning and thinking about them at night. it is a very hard day for the previous president especially if you lost the election. as lincoln said, he wanted to win the second election even more than he wanted to win the first because it would be an endorsement of his policies and get to finish what he wanted to start. and so for those who have just had one term and been rejected by the electorate, there's the added sadness of leaving the white house. and i think you're right, everybody feels it. first of all, you've been living there for four years. you've got on the know the staff. there's been a ritual, there's been a routine. and it's your home. you're leaving your home. all know as ordinary people leave one home and go to another it's a difficult thing. especially if there are events you wish you could take back as reagan said. if there are disapprovals that you have that you wish you could have won that person over. then you watch a new person coming into this wondrous place of the white house and it's really hard. that's why the dignity and the grace of all those who are willing to stand at that inaugural stand and come and witness the new person coming in means so much. it was such a symbolic moment to see ford there when carter is coming in and indeed carter gave a nice statement about ford and everybody stood up. and it made ford almost come to tears. and you see carter standing there when he has lost and he's waiting for the new person. and you see bush senior doing the same thing. that moment i think characterizes for the american people, these guys have class and they're really able to show it at that symbolic moment of transition. >> that is the one thing we've seen in inauguration -- one inauguration after another, michael besh losh, grace that jimmy carter showed to the reagans despite the fact that he and rosalynn were heartbroken. that grace was returned. you could say the same thing was returned about george h.w. bush and bill clinton. just heart breaking for 41 and yet he did knock but show grace. and we must -- let's be honest this morning it was a complete lack of grace that defined donald trump's inaugural address four years ago where he didn't reference hillary clinton or anyone else up there but instead talked about american carnage. and then spent the end of this term trying to prove those of us wrong who always believed there would be a peaceful transition of power. the events over the last two weeks show he was perfectly fine with his mob going in, with the hopes of hanging his vice president, hopes of killing the speaker of the house and hopes of delaying the constitutional counting of the electoral votes because he wanted to do whatever he could do to stay in power. and here we are two and a half weeks later as the smoke is still clearing from that horrid event. >> you are so right, joe. and you know, all of our lives we've had these presidents come in. we just assume that they love democracy and that they honor the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power. and here we have a situation we have all just barely survived four years of this guy who hates democracy, has a lust for power, has contempt for ideas like peaceful transfer of power and it's almost a parable for us to have gone through two weeks ago that experience right in the same place, two weeks ago today in the capitol where the president incited that insurrection that was an attack, a terrorist attack against congress that could have resulted in assassinations and hostage takings and disruption of the presidential election and conceivably, joe, two weeks ago we could have lost our democracy and just think what we could be talking about this morning. so i think one thing it does is as we think about things like those transitions in the past when you've had graceful presidents and incoming first ladies come to the white house and they're taken in by people like dwight eisenhower entertaining john kennedy and his wife. you know, we just assume that's part of our democracy that we can depend on. what we've been taught during the last four years is that it's not. four years ago today donald trump gave that speech just as you said, joe, called american carnage. well, democratic tradition would say that a new president uses an inaugural address to try to unite the country, bring everyone together. that was really the first time in american history we have ever heard a president trying to pit group upon group and talk down this country. it's been four years of this almost every single hour and all i can say is thank god it's over and nice to be together. >> it's been exhausting. >> as we are looking at the pictures of the capitol as michael was speaking, it is 7:09 eastern time. eastern standard time. little under five hours until joe biden raises his right hand and takes the oath of office. willie geist, this morning, as we look at washington, joe biden is waking up in the blair house. donald trump is waking up in the white house. they are across the street from each other. it's still not too late. we know that donald trump watches our show despite the fact we have asked him not to watch our show because we don't think it's good for him. we don't think it's good for his mental health. we don't think it's good for the country. but how hard would it be for donald trump to walk across the street, invite joe biden to come across the street, shake his hand, congratulate him and wish him well. it just wouldn't be that hard. >> it wouldn't be that hard but he doesn't have it in him, i'm afraid. we learned enough about him over the last four years and frankly for many years before that about who he is. he can never admit defeat right until the very end. that would be an admission of defeat. i suspect we won't see -- i hope i'm wrong -- something what we saw from president george h.w. bush in 1993 when he left a letter in the desk for president bill clinton, as you said, it was hard fought. president bush was heartbroken by his loss. he was heartbroken by the fact that he would be a one-term president, but he wrote a beautiful letter that anybody can go google and find online, wishing success for the man who defeated him. and mike barnacle, as we look at these pictures of blair house at 7:11 a.m. in washington, joe biden is in there. he will emerge soon. there's a lot of focus on president trump and the damage he's done over the last four years and rightly so, but let's talk about this man you know in joe biden who first was elected nearly a half century ago to the united states senate in 1972, was sworn in under terrible circumstances after the death of his wife and his daughter, has run for president three times, finally winning this time. and now, just under five hours from now will stand on the steps of the capitol, raise his right hand with his left hand on the bible and take the oath of office to become the 46th president of the united states. >> yeah. willie, you know, i think you can simplify the whole process to discuss the 46th president, the incoming president joseph r. biden with one simple line that stands in stark contrast to his predecessor, who will leave the white house at 8:00 a.m. this morning. and that line is joe biden is a good man. i don't think you can say that about the fellow who is across the street this morning. it's interesting, though, you know, the emotions that flow through you, that fall all over you on a day like this. i today feel immense gratitude towards more than 80 million people who chose to vote to change this country and successfully voted to do that. and yesterday i think joe biden uttered a line that might stand above anything he says today in the inauguration. i don't know what will be contained in his inaugural address, but yesterday when he said at the reflecting pool to heal you must remember. and he said that in a city filled with memories as you know, as anyone who has ever been to washington knows, there's a memory around every corner. there's the lincoln memorial. there's the jefferson memorial. there's the washington memorial. there's the vietnam wall, the world war ii memorial, the iwo jima flag raising across the river. it's a city built on memory. and now joe biden's principle task is to urge americans to remember what america means. to remember who america is all about, a land of opportunity for all. and i think he will understood line with his behavior that those last two words, for all. so i am looking forward to noontime today. i feel tremendous gratitude and relief that he will be sworn in as the president of the united states. and as joe biden would say to you if he were on with us this morning, onward. >> let's actually stop for just a moment and take a listen to that bite from president-elect joe biden who will become president biden less than five hours from now. >> and i mean this from the bottom of my heart, if there are any angels in heaven that are all nurses, to heal, we must remember it's hard sometimes to remember, but that's how we heal. it's important to do that as a nation. that's why we're here today. between sun down and dusk, let us shine the lights in the darkness along the sacred pool of reflection and remember all whom we lost. >> professor gordon reed, that speech should have been made by the president any time within the last year. and i think a lot of us and a lot of people who sat and watched that, didn't realize how much they needed it, that they needed to have some moment of shared grief that this pandemic has been viewed through partisan politics so much of the time and through the failures of president trump, but this is a national tragedy and it took joe biden and vice president-elect kamala harris standing there and talking about it and acknowledging it and showing those 400 lights, each one representing 1,000 of the 400,000 deaths in this country, it took them, the new leadership, standing there expressing it that we could all grieve together finally. >> uh-huh. yes. it was something that the country needed. we have been divided, we've always been divided, but this is a particularly partisan time. and to acknowledge the suffering, the sort of silent suffering of many americans and the fears that exist in many americans about this pandemic was something that's a good starting point for him. it was something that he had to do. and this is a moment that we should all be able to agree on, that we care about one another, we care about -- we should care about the suffering of the fellow citizens and people around the world, as a matter of fact, and try to get a handle on all this. he has a tremendous task ahead of him to deal with all of this. and i think that this is the starting point. it was a wonderful place to start to begin to go to work, to acknowledge what has happened and to say now we have to move forward on this dread disease and try to figure out what to do to move as a government and to have a national effort to try to bring this to a halt as quickly as we possibly can. i thought it was deeply moving and necessary. it was very, very smart move on his part. >> all right. joining us now president-elect joe biden's nominee for secretary of transportation, pete buttigieg. it's great to have you on the show. >> great to be with you. >> i have a question that's actually just right for you because a lot of people are looking ahead. we've been talking all morning, counting down to noon today. counting down to turning the page. but, i want to ask about the countdown of the next i guess 43 or 37 minutes when the president will be heading to joint base andrews and leaving finally. you know, four years ago his speech was about carnage. and this is a man when he leaves there today, he will be leaving a trail of destruction across this country. he started out his carnage by deepening the racial divide in this country. he allowed the coronavirus to run rampant in this country, something that could have easily been stopped and perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths prevented. he tried to get dirt from a political rival from a foreign leader. and he provoked a massive riot on the nation's capitol just over a week ago. so, help us. where do we go from here given what has happened over the past four years? >> well, i've got an even shorter countdown on my mind, which is less than ten minutes until the sun comes up over the cap tom today. and that sun is going to rise over the capitol and by the time it goes down tonight over the lincoln memorial, it will be setting on a different washington, with different leadership. by then we will have heard the president of the united states at mid day under that sun say words to bring this country together. volumes are going to be written about the harms that have been done in the last four years. a time when we needed, even more than usual, needed a president to bring us together. and of course we have the opposite. now we have a president focussed on bringing us together. and as he expressed last night at the lincoln memorial recognizes that unity is hard work. it's not about pretending we don't have divisions. it's hard work, just as grief and mourning and remembrance are hard work as part of the process of healing. but i think that process is under way. and you know, what we're going to see over the next few hours and over the next few days is aggressive action, looking to the future to make the american people better off, starting with that covid rescue package that's about defeating the virus and building our economy back better. there's, of course, another bigger package on the way. there's that kind of one, two step process. and right off the bat, i'm just really looking forward to that leadership because we needed it all along and we're finally going to get it. >> you know, from mayor pete to secretary pete, mr. secretary, we have grown up in a very divided land, very politically divided land. democrats would probably trace that division back to the early 1990s and the election of bill clinton. republicans would go back to the boric nomination, maybe watergate. but regardless, we have been divided. and one president after another until donald trump came in promising to bring this country together, whether it was bill capitol hill or george w. bush, a uniter not a divider, or barack obama who didn't see red state america or blue state america, he saw the united states of america. and time and again their hopes on both sides have been dashed and both the other parties blamed each other for those divisions. what does joe biden need to do? what do you need to do? what does a biden administration need to do to turn the page on 30 years of deep, political division? >> well, it's true. presidents have been humbled in their efforts to bring this country together. but it has to start with efforts to bring this country together. we've had a president doing the opposite. so, it starts with that intent. but then that intent has to lead to action. i think at the end of the day, what americans need is results. we have to deliver for the american people. if confirmed that will obviously be my work to deliver that when it comes to transportation and infrastructure. but every part of this administration working on economics, working on security, working on health has to be able to produce results. and i think we're set up to do that. it will not be easy. and the divisions of the last four years or as you say the last 30 or 40 or honestly the last 400, right, some divisions in this republic are older than the republic itself. they're not going to heal overnight, but the question is whether we are making progress or whether we are falling back. we've had leadership pulling us back. now we have leadership that's going to be pulling us forward. >> treasury secretary, former mayor, pete buttigieg, thank you for being with us. transportation secretary designate, thank you so much. i hope you enjoy your day. stay safe. doris, we had made reference to that moment when you were talking to lbj at the end of his term and this morning we're talking about the great challenges that are facing joe biden, but my god, talk about what lbj faced at the beginning of his term, really the darkest day in the lives of most everyone on november 22nd, 1963. talk about those challenges, how he got through those and how we're going to get through these. >> yeah. the most important thing that lbj did was that after jfk had been assassinated, he made his number one priority to pass the civil rights bill that was stalled in the congress. nobody thought it would get through. and his advisers said to him, you can't do this. you have only a certain amount of currency in the presidency to spend and you'll fail and you'll go to the election 11 months later and fail there and he turns to them and said, then what the hell is the presidency for? and that was a great moment. you're going to use the presidency for the power you have. you're going to take a chance. you're going to have the courage. and he was the man for the moment in terms of getting the civil rights bill through, in terms of voting rights, in terms of fair housing. a southerner wanted the south to heal and the country to come together and was willing at the end of his life to at least hope he knew the war in vietnam would be a stain on his legacy and we talked about it so much in his last days when i was at the ranch helping him on his memoirs but he hoped that people would remember what he did on civil rights. that's the great thing. time has been with him. historians are putting him further up in the polls. his children are able to experience that sense of understanding what he did in medicare, medicaid, aids education, npr, it's amazing what he did and so sad and tragic he had to have a war in vietnam that he had not handled well. but oh boy was he courageous in the first few days. that's what you hope. it was action. it was movement. but he also understood he was going to get a tax cut before he got the civil rights bill and the way he got around byrd and dealt with these individuals in congress calling them up every morning, speaking to them at midnight, calling them at 2:00 a.m., it's a great template for joe biden because he'll be able to do that. he has those relationships. he was there in the congress when things worked better, bipartisanship was something he knew. it's like you're in a war for so long you don't know what peace. he knows that and he's going to call on that. i bet that phone will be working day after day and i hope it does. >> professor gordon-reed, you wrote a book about president andrew johnson. he is the last president not to attend the swearing in of his successor. he and ewe lis sis s. grant did not get along to put it mildly. he didn't like him so he didn't go to the inauguration, that's 1869. now we have a president in 2021 in donald trump who refuses to attend this inauguration. he'll lift off from the south lawn of the white house in marine one just over 30 minutes from now on his way out of washington. what is the impact of that? what is the impact of losing that ceremonial moment, particularly now when two weeks ago supporters of president trump attacked the capitol on the belief of a lie that the election had been stolen. what would it mean to have president trump at least there, he didn't have to celebrate, didn't have to applaud if he didn't want to, but to be there, to recognize and acknowledge a transition of power? >> well, actually goes back before then. i've written about thomas jefferson, too, and john say dams did not attend his inauguration in 1801. so it of course would be better. the symbolism of a change of power and handing off in a peaceful way. but we know this last term wasn't really peaceful. we can't call this the peaceful transfer that we americans like to think we have had except obviously the civil war and then 1876. it would mean a lot. but it would also not -- given this president, the current president, and the way he has conducted himself over the past four years, it would seem to many people phony. they may not believe it. the ceremony is important, but i think it would be a tough thing to pull off after what happened in the past two weeks, although it would have been something that would have contributed towards the healing that president-elect biden said he wants to bring about. but, it was not in the cards. it never -- i never thought that he would go. and the actions that he had taken before sort of telegraphed that, but it would be meaningful if he were there to some people. >> yeah. michael beschloss, we always go back. for me, over the past four years i will admit at times when it was hard to watch the news, in fact, mika would have to watch the news for me, for a year or two at a time i could not watch. i could only read the news because i was so agitated by what i saw. but reading history always provided me great comfort over these past four years because i saw whatever we were going through at times seemed small compared to what concerns we had faced in the past certainly during the civil war but also the skepticism that i heard everyday about the future of this country. leaders have had, americans have had -- well, as long as this country has existed, tom rick's extraordinary book "first principles" he taught me earlier this summer that as george washington was dying he was fearful that his entire life project was in vain, that this country was not going to survive. he did not like the direction it was going. thomas jefferson felt the same way. called the missouri compromise an act of suicide. and was also fearful that the country would not survive many of the conflicts that he had set in motion himself. and that he just refused to resolve during his presidency. and james madison the same. very concerned about the future of this country. it's happened time and again. it happened when andrew jackson became president of the united states and invited 20,000 people to the white house and they ransacked the place and he had to be snuck out. i mean, this has happened time and time again and yet this country, this capitol, this republic continues. certainly will there is hope for us over the next four years that we can come together, is there not? does history not show us that time and again? >> sure it does. you know, joe, one thing all of us who were together this morning and love being with all my friends this morning together on this amazing occasion is we all love history. and if you love american history and if you study american history, you always have to be an optimist in the end. we go through terrible traumas. terrible things happen. leaders and citizens do terrible things. but as far as our system is concerned, you know, 1789 people said george washington could not pull this desperate country together and build an office of the presidency that would last at the head of a yun union he did it. 1861 people said this country was finished, abraham lincoln would not bring north and south back together. we might not survive two world wars or great depression, every single time the system is sometimes slow, we make terrible mistakes, people suffer during the last year over 400,000 americans and many more families than that have been recked by this horrible coronavirus under a president who did not know how to handle it and did not have the empathy to lead us to all these unnecessary deaths. these things happen. but looking over the long run in american history, we've got a system that's resilient. >> and annette, as we look at this resilient system, we also understand and explain to us how thomas jefferson's life shows us that there is a great, great price to be paid for not confronting the evil that is in front of us. not confronting the challenges in front of us that we face we cannot turn a blind out to what has happened to us in the past. jefferson did. as i was saying before, he understood that there was a conflict that had to be resolved and it would be resolved unfortunately in a civil war, 30, 40 years after his death. >> well, that's the thing that he feared. jefferson understood or came to believe very early on in his life that there was no way that virginians were going to vote slavery out of existence. and when he talked about missouri and he talked about slavery, he thought that that was the rock upon which the union would split. he was right about that. that's what happened. but he couldn't contemplate a war to say we're going to -- that white americans are going to kill one another to solve this particular problem, that this was a problem that the next generations would solve. and kicking the can down the road you can say, but it was something a difficult thing for him to face, the idea of a war. one thing i wanted to say about this question about our resiliency and one of the things that we can't do, however, is to be complacent about the republic. i have always assumed, most of the people on this panel assumed we would have peaceful transfers of power. we had got on the a point that we had -- we would not fight about this. now we see this is fragile. democracy, republics are fragile. and we are resilient, but we have to work at it. what was mentioned earlier about the new administration having to do things. having to work and to deliver for people is imperative. and i think that that's in my understanding the way i think about this is that this is the only way that we have a shot at moving forward together in a way that accomplishes the healing that biden talks about. republics are fragile. government -- we're supposed to be the sovereigns. we are the people there on our behalf, and we should make government and to participate to make sure that the things that we want to have done are done and that we do, in fact, move forward. but we can't do that just assuming it's going to be okay. because it might not be. >> let's pray. still ahead on this inauguration day, confirmation hearings got under way yesterday for joe biden's key national security picks. we'll be joined by the incoming chairman of the senate intelligence committee, mark warner, to discuss those hearings and what to expect as joe biden prepares to be sworn in as the next president. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. "morning jo" we'll be right back. the energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor, will light our country and all who serve it. and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. ♪♪ meet jeff. in his life, he's been to the bottom of the ocean. the tops of mountains. the er... twice. and all the places this guy runs off to. like jeff's, a life well lived should continue at home. home instead offers customized services from personal care to memory care, so older adults can stay home, stay safe, and stay happy. home instead. to us, it's personal. >> man: what's my safelite story? i spend a lot of time in my truck. it's my livelihood. ♪ rock music ♪ >> man: so i'm not taking any chances when something happens to it. so when my windshield cracked... my friend recommended safelite autoglass. they came right to me, with expert service where i needed it. ♪ rock music ♪ >> man: that's service i can trust... no matter what i'm hauling. right, girl? >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ i would hope that the nations of the world might say that we had built a lasting peace based not on weapons of war but on international policies which reflect our own most precious values. these are not just my goals and they will not be my accomplishments but the affirmations of our nation's continuing moral strength and our belief in an undiminished, ever expanding american dream. ♪♪ such high hopes, president jimmy carter, as we listen to these inaugural addresses from presidents in the past. we understand a little bit more about what we will see today instead of what we have seen over the past four years. joining us now currently the vice chase and soon to be incoming chair of the senate intelligence committee, democratic senator mark warner of virginia. and senator warner, great to have you on. >> thanks, mika. >> top priorities for the committee as well as i guess effort to turn the page and sure up support and strength in our intelligence community. what are they? >> well, first of all, it was great to see the clip of kennedy and carter. i hope you will at some point, maybe you already have this morning, show a clip of the incredibly dark carnage laden speech that trump gave four years ago in many ways that tone has lasted through the last four years and more than appropriate on his way out he is not only pardoning a series of his cronies but literally has gotten rid of his drain the swamp executive order which will allow his staff to go get jobs as lobbyists right away. so maybe a fitting end to an obviously president that split our nation in ways that will take us a long time to heal. let me tell you about the intelligence committee. the good news is we had a great hearing yesterday. with the new director of national intelligence, she was introduced by dan coats, the former republican director of national intelligence, former republican senator, set a bipartisan tone. i thought the questions were great. republican colleagues i think probed appropriately in our closed session we really had a great discussion of where we need to head. and i'm confident that we're going to come out today or tomorrow with an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote to move to confirm her. good news there. in terms of agenda for this committee, first and foremost, we've got to restore the faith and confidence the intelligence community and speak truth to power. they should be willing to tell this president and its leadership the hard truths even if they don't like to hear them and there should not be any politicization coming out of the intelligence community. that is absolutely critical. and we have seen that politicization as recently in the last couple weeks where the white house actively watered down the attribution to russia in the so-called solar winds hack. so let's get the ic back telling the truth, being politically independent, number one. number two, i want the committee to look at the rise of these right wing anti-government extremists in this country, but also their connections and ties to those same kind of anti-government extremists in europe and how that anti-government extremism is being promoted by russia and others, terribly important. we're going to need to take a look at the role of social media. something our committee started on. we were the first in many ways starting with the russia investigation to point out how these platforms are manipulated. that is child's play compared to what has happened in the last 12 to 18 months. we cannot rely on the goodwill of a couple corporate ceos to get it right. we need some rules of the road. third, we have to continue to look at cyber and the fact that the ability of nation states like russia, iran and others will launch say symmetrical conflict with us. we need rules of the road. we know on one end of the spectrum you got denial of service like the so-called -- you know, classic espionage on the other. assaults like cyber winds. we're not clear where they all on that continuum and we need an international consensus so that we can take action and not just america but as nation and democracies against these kind of incursion. and then finally and potentially the most overarching of all the issues is the rise of china. china, who is not only a military threat but an economic threat but also an -- and we have not seen this kind of threat potentially exception of the soviet union in the '60s, a threat to be a leader in technology, 5g, artificial intelligence, quantum computing. these are things we need to do a deep dive on and frankly we're going to need to have a coalition of the willing of industrial democracies and others beyond our normal allies, five is and nato to take on this challenge to make sure the west writ large and i include japan and south korea and taiwan and that designation will make the kind of investments so that technology advancements are not driven by the communist party of china. my beef is with the communist party of china, not with the chinese people. and we have to build a new set of coalitions i think around technology that may replicate the economic coalitions and alliances of the 20th century and the military alliances in the 19th century. a lot there. and thank you for giving me two minutes to get that out. but i'm really excited about turning the page. i can tell you the overwhelming sense of my republican colleagues is they're willing to join in this effort. >> senator warner, willie geist here. your plate certainly is full as you laid out. let me ask you about working with those republicans as we look on the other side of the screen, beautiful pictures on what looks to be a beautiful inauguration day in washington. with the arrival of joe biden, someone you worked with, worked in the united states senate with many of you, there's been some expectation that things would change there because of personal relationships. the fact of the matter remains it is a 50/50 senate. there are a number of senators there who you serve with who still have not acknowledged that joe biden won the presidential election. so, how optimistic are you that just by virtue of who he is, where he has been and served that joe biden can somehow change the dynamics in the senate and get done many of these ambitious plans he laid out. >> willie, let me give you two examples. one, and maybe i think the best news for joe biden, is what happened in the senate before thanksgiving. and that's when a group of us and i was proud to be one of the organizers of this group, got tired of the back and forth of republican leadership and democratic leadership about putting together another covid relief package. you know, the american people were hurting. we knew we needed to get relief. so, group originally eight of us and many more said the heck with the talking points from each political party. we called ourselves the 908 coalition. we put together a package of 908 billion dollars that frankly only about 5% of it got changed. that package ultimately passed the senate with 92 votes. we then had a classic fashion donald trump jerk it around for a couple weeks in an effort to throw another temper tantrum, but even at the end of the day he signed it. so we showed that and that group that started with 8 has more than doubled in size. the number of senators both sides susan collins say next time you do this, put me in the group. put me in, coach. there is a real yearning to get this done, number one. number two, whether you like joe biden or dislike joe biden, the one thing anybody that has worked with him knows he does want to reach compromise. he's basically decent. i don't think it's going to be the kind of presidency the way trump was where it was all about trump 24/7. and i think that bodes well, too. and finally i think in many ways the senate and the house were rocked to the core on january 6th. when we saw those thugs go through the halls of congress, when vladimir putin got the best gift ever of those images of american democracy being attacked, i think an awful lot of us said, the baloney and other terminology if it wasn't tv needs to end. we need to get our stuff together and actually do the work of this country. so again, it's inauguration day. you got to be optimistic. but i think this optimism is going to last. >> senator mark warner, thank you very much. and good luck in your new role. so 12 members of the national guard were removed from inauguration duty yesterday. as part of defense department screenings for security concerns. after former and active military members were arrested for participation in the capitol riot. a pentagon spokesman told reporters two were removed for, quote, inappropriate comments or texts, and two officials -- speaking on the condition of anonymity told "the washington post" at least two have possible ties to extremist groups. the other ten were removed for reasons that defense officials declined to detail but said did not involve extremism. officials sited a quote potential link to questionable behavior. joining us now is the democratic governor of michigan, gretchen whitmer, who knows a thing or two about these threats and concerns. great to have you on. obviously this is such an important, hopeful day. but i have to start with the question, which isday. i guess on this day of resolve, moving forward and turning the page, how important is it to reconcile the things like the threats on your life and the massive assault at the capitol over a week ago in the days to come? >> well, i think watching the coverage two weeks ago of what was happening at our nation's capitol, i sat there with my daughters watching it. and to hear people say, we didn't see this coming and i could say is i have been telling you this is what's happening. we saw this happen in michigan before. it culminated in a plot to kidnap and murder me. it shouldn't wait until it's directed at you -- not you, mica, but congress before this is taken seriously. this is domestic terrorism. it threatens our democracy. it threatens our lives and underarms our ability to get our arms under a virus and get our economy up and running again. i am grateful at least now we are seeing leadership at every level, take it seriously to some extent. i know that a biden/harris administration will call us to our higher angels, willfocus on our future. and, yet, we have serious work to do on this front as well. and i know they are up to this challenge and to meet this meet. >> next question for governor whitmer. >> governor, the other morning i was speaking to a former united states senator who was talking about the attack on the capitol and the terrorists who invaded the capitol two weeks ago on january 6th. he said, you know, as i looked at the faces of those men crashing through windows and crashing into the capitol and up the steps of the capitol internally, he said, i thought i was looking at guys i went to vietnam with. in other words, we're talking about the enemy within. so under the rule of law that this nation does flourish under, how do we go after these people? how do we find them, who they are, what their businesses are, why are they so troubled and violent about the united states today? what do we do? >> well, i think that accountability as begun, and we're seeing that in terms of the fbi starting to arrest people and bring charges. a lot of things were filmed. and i think that this will lead to a lot of additional charges and convictions. and i think that's important. but we know that it was fomented and energized by the white house. who is in charge matters. what they say matters. i gave a speech to that effect and response in the state of the union about 11 months ago. words matter and leadership matters. and so i do think that starting at noon today we will see a very different environment created by our next president, joe biden. i know he is focussed on being an american president for all americans and delivering on an america united. he's got his work cut out for him. most presidents have a little bit of a honey room. he and camera harris do not have that luxury, but they are up to the task. i think it will be hard and it won't happen overnight. but if we are sober and focussed and we solve mind set, i know we will make great fronts on this front and many others. >> marine one preparing to land on the white house. the red carpet has been rolled out. the president is scheduled to come out of that door seven minutes from now for the last time and to lift off from the south lawn and to leave the white house after his single term in office. we will keep our eyes on this. many people as they watched the capitol over run pointed back to michigan last year and said we saw armed people who had the same intentions and same ideas inside the state capitol in lancing. they didn't do the things that the people at the united states capitol did, but their message was the same. have you seen any threats? we know last week there was some concern about state capitols. a lot of them went on high alert. i know you had protests there on sunday. what is your level of concern today about threats to your capitol? >> it's still high. you know, i started seeing threats the moment that president trump started attacking me personally. it was why i called and asked mike pence directly to do what he could to bring down the heat. i asked my republican leaders in michigan to bring down the heat. but those events culminated in charges to a plot to kidnap and kill me. yet, even that didn't stop everyone in their tracks. whether it is me or secretary or fauci or a secretary of state, they're trying to do their best to save our lives. everyone should call on our better angels, should rally us to rooting out domestic terrorism and fighting covid-19, which is our common enemy. it was fomented by this outgoing white house. i know we will see a dramatic change in the rhetoric and the focus and the energy and the optimism, but it has been a tough time, and we are all paying a price for that and will for a little while. but we're up to this challenge and i have ever confidence that we will overcome it. >> governor gretchen whitmer, thank you. thank you for your service and thank you for your important words this morning. still ahead, the initial that many are waiting to see. we're just now moments away from, you see there, that is it. donald trump's final departure from the white house as president. we'll be watching live as marine one carries trump from the south lawn to joint base andrews for the last time. "morning joe" is coming right back. my nunormal: fewer asthma attacks. less oral steroids. taking my treatment at home. nucala is a once-monthly add-on injection for severe eosinophilic asthma. not for sudden breathing problems. allergic reactions can occur. get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. infections that can cause shingles have occurred. don't stop steroids unless told by your doctor. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. may cause headache, injection site reactions, back pain, and fatigue. ask your doctor about nucala at home. find your nunormal with nucala. i feel like we're forgetting something. ask your doctor aboulet me check.ome. xfinity home gives you peace of mind from anywhere with professionally monitored home security built around you. no, i think we're good. good. so when you're away, you don't have to worry. the tent. we forgot... the tent. except about that. xfinity home. simple. easy. awesome. hey look, i found the tent! get xfinity home with no term contract required. click or call today. and, so, it's deeply personal that our next journey to washington starts here, a place that defines the very best of who we are as americans. i know these are dark times, but there is always light. that's what makes this state so special. that's what it taught me. it taught me the most. there is always light. >> as he stands on the brink of the presidency. in less than four hours, biden will take the oath of office on the capitol, 48 years after he became a united states senator, beginning his long journey to the white house. within the next hour president-elect biden is set to attend church with both parties. this afternoon, biden is expected to stress unity in his inaugural address, a stark contrast from the american carnage speech donald trump delivered four years ago today. at any moment now, we expect to see president trump leave the white house on marine one for the final time in his presidency, along with joe, mika, washington post opinions editor at large and coauthor of "the president's club: inside the world's most exclusive fraternity" and former secretary of state madeleine albright. >> as we look at that picture of marine one on the white house, it is an image that many progressives, many people in this country have been waiting for for a long time. even on november 7th, that saturday, when we called the election for joe biden, a lot of people walking on egg shells saying i believe it when i see marine one leave off the white house lawn with donald trump inside. that moment now, any moment here. >> well, a lot of progressives, a lot of conservatives, a lot of moderates, a lot of people who love this country believe it's gone in a disastrously wrong direction over the past four years, not based so much on ideology as on constitutional norms and political norms certainly have wondered if this day would ever come. it has come, but madeleine all light, it's come at an extraordinary price, a price you can see in looking through these streets, the streets of washington, d.c. looking at the numbers of those killed by the covid pandemic, a death toll that is far higher than it needed to be and the riots at our capitol, our nation's capitol just a few weeks ago. yes, we have gotten to this point, but the costs have been extraordinarily high. madam secretary, your thoughts? >> well, i do think the costs have been extraordinarily high, and we have shown in the last few weeks, frankly, the fragility of democracy. but we are seeing now the resilience of democracy. and i think that what we have to do is to express that hope. and you are showing a clip of president-elect biden and really looking at the light that is coming. and the statements he has made that have been truly remarkable, that we need to remember and we need to hope, and i think that we have very important messages coming up. i have to say that when i was in the white house when jimmy carter left, i was one of the last people to leave and go and meet him at andrews air force base. and, so, there is a transfer of power. that was a peaceful transfer of power and one that was very elevated in so many ways and very hopeful, despite the fact that we were still dealing with the hostage crisis. so i do think that these transitions are essential and i cannot wait for noon. >> i know. madeleine, i'm wondering, madam secretary, how important you believe it is as we watch him leave and we turn the page on this presidency, how important it is, though, to still reconcile some of the major things that happened, including the assault on the capitol. do we turn the page and move forward and not look back? or must we confront what happened and perhaps put in -- put levers in place, whether it be around the attorney general and how the attorney general has chosen or anything else to try and prevent this from happening again? >> i think that we do have to move forward, but also analyze what has happened. i have written about the divisions in this country, and the most dangerous words are us versus them. we have to understand what happened, why it happened and, mika, i think the part that's going to be tough to do but as to happen is to talk to the people with whom we disagree. understand where they're coming from, why, and understand that democracy is really based on an exchange of ideas. and we do need to look at what threats are remaining. listening to the governor of michigan, you know, and the problem of domestic terrorism, those are issues we have to deal with. and so president-elect biden and vice president-elect harris have a huge job ahead of them of taking advantage of the new hope for the future but at the same time understanding what has happened in the past. >> yamiche alcindor, you have covered every moment of this presidency. as we look at the final moments of the presidency, donald trump expected at any minute to walk across that red carpet, meet some aids, step on to marine one and leave for the last time before going to joint base andrews in maryland will he will hold a rally before leaving on to palm beach. what are your thoughts as you leave this morning? >> well, president trump is ending his time at the white house much like he began it, defiant, avoiding responsible for creating chaos and thinking about his own political futures and breaking the norms of washington. in the last few days, the president has refused to come publically to talk about his role he played in encouraging that mob to storm the u.s. capitol. instead, he's talked about the fact that his movement is just beginning. he's refused to go to inauguration, to hand off in an official way the presidency to president-elect joe biden, showing that he is someone who wants to instead focus on his own agenda, his own way of doing things. he has also pardoned 143 people, much of them people that were close to him. more than any other president, he has used that pardon power to help people politically connected to him as well as people politically connected to the messages he wants to send. as i think about this and i watch this white house send this president off, i think about the fact that this was a president who told us who he was at the very beginning, who revealed who america was at the very beginning and has continued to reveal all the different struggles that remain with us, including racism and white supremacy and the fact that in many ways the myth of america treating every man and woman equally it's just not true and his movement, his presidency has really challenged us to look at that in our face and look at it in the face and be blunt about the challenges ahead. >> yeah. david, listening to secretary all bright talk about our hopeful path forward, i wonder where you stand on the resilience of america. i, perhaps, am pollyannish. i believe we're a very resilient country. i believe we're a very indispensable nation. and i believe that joe biden is going to be able to piece together broken alliances. yes, we have lost ground to china over the past four years. we have lost ground even to russia over the past four years, but how resilient do you believe this country will prove to be in the next year or two, piecing together these shattered alliances across the world? >> joe, our country still is strong in so many of the areas that matter, our financial markets dominate the world. our federal reserve is the one central bank in the world that really needs currently movements to which all other central banks turn for swap lines for the cash that makes the world economy grow. our military is unmatched by any other countries. there are a lot of pluses in technology. i think we're still dominant in every major technology. but the trump years have damaged american ways that are going to be very hard to fix. and the damage, i think, is that they have said to the world, america may not be the country that you thought it was. as powerful as it is, as magnificent as its universities are, as great as its people's character may be, it is capable of electing a donald trump. i was just reading this morning an eu poll in which europeans were asked, do you think america can come back to its leadership role? and the answer was no, people were not confident of that. and i think that's what we are going to have to deal with in these biden months is a sub stantive world where america is different. i think he can show a lot of face and repair a lot of damage. but in some ways, joe, we will never get back to the sense the world had of us in 2016 before trump. i remember being with you and mika and talking about what might check donald trump's vulgar, selfish, disruptive tendencies. we talked, he's got good cabinet members. secretary tillerson might be able to help him. went down the list. and none of those buffers turned out to make much difference. trump's ability to blow through all of them to do what he wanted was greater than we imagined four years ago. and the world watched that. they watched us bungle our reaction to covid-19 and watched us misjudge a series of problems. they watched us unable to deal with donald trump himself. and that perception will continue. >> well, and i remember four years ago nancy pelosi and others, yourself, coming and talking with us on the day that donald trump was inaugurated before the american carnage speech and speaker of the house who was hopeful, as we all were, and everybody was saying the same thing. we only have one president at a time. that changed very quickly soon after donald trump walked into the white house. michael duffy, you have written an extraordinary book. i use it as preference time and again, especially on days like today about the president's club. talk about traditionally what this day has meant for america watching presidents, the vanquished and the incoming presidents ride together and go through the peaceful transition from one administration to another, what that has meant to this country over the past 200 years. >> good morning, joe. this morning, this morning certainly brings to mind for me the words of a republican president, gerald ford, who gave -- once he was sworn in following the resignation of richard nixon in 1974 gave a very short speech to the country. it wasn't an address, and he said our constitution works. our republic is a government of laws and not men. here the people rule. and that sentiment, then and now, is really the spirit of today. but, you know, ford said something else that day that's more famous. he said our long national nightmare is over. i'm less certain that that's true in this case some 45 or 46 years later. we have a nation that is more divided than any at time. 400,000 people have perished in the coronavirus pandemic, we're ridden by all different divisions and historical problems. this inauguration is in a lockdown city and is really only happening because there are 25,000 troops on the street. so this is a very different kind of transition. it's peaceful, more in name than in reality. so we have a lot of work to do together. it's going to take more than a president and a new administration to fix that. >> we see at the white house, we are looking at the president of the united states and melania trump leaving the white house for the last time. certainly in this president's term, he claimed to want to come back and run again, run another time in 2024, but this is the former reality tv host who had spoke about running for president, repeatedly since the late 1980s. he was friends with bill clinton and hillary clinton, contributed mightily to democrats from hillary clinton to kamala harris at late as 2014. but he saw an opening with a racist conspiracy theory called birtherism and targeted the republican party that was far more vulnerable than many of its own members expected. breezed through a 16-person republican field. became the gop nominee despite, mika, despite extraordinarily shocking comments he made throughout that campaign from promoting violence among his supporters to refusing to condemn david duke and the clue clux clan to actually urging a second amendment solution to stop hillary clinton from ever being elected and nominating federal judges. >> president trump and melania trump now boarding marine one. they are headed to joint base andrews. because of this choice by the president and by the first lady to, again, balk tradition and leave without -- without recognizing the traditions of a transition, they have this crowd there waiting for them at joint base andrews, a crowd that will not include mitch mcconnell, a crowd that will not include kevin mccarthy, a crowd that will not include the vice president mike pence. >> madeleine albright, that is in part when we talk about bringing this country together doesn't just rest on joe biden's shoulders. it rests on mitch mcconnell's shoulders and republican shoulders. mitch mcconnell sent a signal he wants to turn his back as quickly as possible. >> i think that will be very important. there ought to be an active congressional role in moving forward. what has happened is biden has put out a very detailed plan of things that he wants to do. he's going to have some executive actions, but he is going to need a cooperative congress and a way to work together. i was very interested in what senator warner was talking about in terms of the activities and the agenda that was out there. it is a huge agenda, people i hope are ready to work and to decide what the priorities are. we clearly have to deal with the virus and the various aspects that biden has laid out and to have a 50/50 and i have to say we have to comment on the greatness of having the first woman vice president. this is going to be a great moment in that way. and she will be sitting in the chair in the senate in a very important time. so i am somebody that, you know, i was asked to describe myself in six words not long ago, worried optimist, problem solver, grateful american. that's how i feel now. i do think there is a lot of work that has to be done and the congressional part of it is going to be essential. a partnership, that's what has to happen. a debate and a partnership. >> joe, the rotors are spinning now on marine one. and in many ways, this is the bookend moment to the moment on june 16th, 2015, when donald trump and melania trump descended the escalator of trump tower in new york and declared his presidency, his run for the presidency. now five and a half years later he lifts off for the final time on the south lawn of the white house. we should remind our viewers he has chosen not to welcome joe biden to the white house. he has chosen not to attend the inauguration of the 46th president of the united states based on a grievance he invented, based on a lie that says he won the election when obviously he did not. frankly, president obama had more reason four years ago to object to donald trump coming in than does donald trump now. here it is now, marine one lifting off the south lawn of the white house. >> and, willie, you can't help but remember back the last time we saw marine one lifting off the nation together when the president was diagnosed with covid and was being rushed out to walter reed to be taken care of and that terrible, concerning moment. but then the absolutely heinous way the president conducted himself while there, putting secret service lives in jeopardy, exposing them time and again, acting in a way that actually caused other members at walter reed to be critical of the way that hospital handled the situation. and then the president coming back to the white house and going up the stairs and doing his best eastern european strong man routine. these are all images that have flooded -- that we have been flooded with over the past four years, breaches of political decisions, breaches of constitutional norms and a president who felt neither connected to that tradition nor at many times to a constitution that he did not believe applied to him, a man that said that article 2 gave him unlimited powers, a man who questioned the independence of a federal judiciary. he is now leaving for andrews base and a very uncertain future and leaves behind an abandoned washington, d.c., ravaged by riots and a pandemic that joe biden, mitch mcconnell and the democratic and republican party are going to have to clean up. a tattered legacy that they're going to have to clean up now. >> as i said earlier, right now in this moment, president trump is flying over the wreckage of what he has wrought in many ways. washington is locked down because of a pandemic, which for a year, as he said to bob woodward he tried to play down, that he did not confront. it will be the biggest challenge in front of joe biden as he has acknowledged and also locked down because of a riot two weeks ago, an attack on the united states capitol including a police officer that was incited by president trump, encouraged by president trump. that city is locked down because of the actions of president trump in many ways and he's flying over that city right now. yamiche alcindor, a small group has assembled there to see him off. he will fly down to palm beach to mar-a-lago. what do we expect to hear from the president in his final address as president of the united states? >> we expect 15 minutes. yes, we expect to hear about 15 minutes, continuing with his movement to try to in some ways spread disinformation. he's going to try to make a case that he was a president who oversaw american greatness, put america first at every single corner, put america first foreign and domestically. but what we'll see -- >> we're having trouble with her audio. we'll go back to her when it's fixed. and we will, when the president arrives at andrews air force base, we will dip in and out of the speech. but obviously if he spreads disinformation, if he lies, he does anything that continues to lie to his supporters spreading falsehoods about the election, we will of course leave that speech. so michael duffy, it is interesting. there are these poignant moments, and one of them i remember that george h.w. bush going to andrews air force base as lyndon johnson left just an absolutely beaten man and very few people bothered going to andrews air force base to see this democratic president who just got beaten down. you talk time and again about the extraordinary grace by many departing presidents who are coming in. tell us about it. >> these are important rituals. the meeting at the white house where the families come together, the ride to the capitol which is sometimes frosty but sometimes informational for the new president and of course the speech, appears at the capitol for the inauguration where it is by tradition presidents thank their predecessors and they have all done it, even ones who didn't get along. reagan thanked carter. bush thanked clinton. just right on back, these are important signals that the presidents send to the public that they believe in the peaceful transition of power. they shake hands when the game is over before they walk off the court. it is part of what we all the democratic transfer of power. the interesting thing about bush going to andrews to say good-bye to johnson, it is a great story, i visited bush in his final days. one time in the last year of his life, and that picture of him shaking johnson's hand, it is it is a crowd. you can barely make out bush, that picture of him shaking johnson's hand was on his desk or right on his credenza, so it obviously meant a lot to him as well and another signal of what presidents, former, past and apparently future pay to the office. and this is about the office and what it can do to lift and heal the country. >> we are watching president donald trump and his wife, melania, as they are flying on marine one to joint base andrews to deliver final remarks before he leaves washington for good. many would say hopefully. and on the right side of your screen is blare house where we were seeing president-elect joe biden emerge shortly to go to church and to get ready to take the oath of office later on today. watching along with us, madeleine albright and david is joining us as well. >> secretary all bright, you warned in the book that mika just mentioned about fascism implicitly about the dangers that this president posed, about the threat that's just around the corner for every country of awe thorntarian rule that you as a girl have witnessed and remembered. i want to ask you about these pictures of president trump leaving the white house for the last time whether your anxiety that we might see our institutions destroyed is relieved now. are you expressing a sigh of relief as you watch these pictures, or do you think we're still in trouble? >> well, both, frankly because i amex pressing a sigh of relief. but i think some of the issues that are there that allowed somebody like trump to exacerbate the differences continue to be there. and, so, we have to figure out what brought this on. i decided to write that book to try to figure out what brought fascism on. and it is a leader that can exacerbate those differences aligned with one group at the expense of another who were made the scapegoat. i do think we need to talk to each other and figure out what the differences are about. but i think that the warning needs to be there and some of the other comments that have been made this morning in terms of trying to figure out what did happen, why it happened, your very important comments on this make me kind of think that we can't say, okay, it is all over. but i do want to look forward because in terms of trying to figure out what brought this on, you are going to -- president biden is going to have to look at how to bring the country together on solving some problem that have divided us. some of them the economy, some of them the systemic racism, some of it the fact that we have not dealt with some of the issues of the past. and, so, i am my typical kind of -- an optimist who worries a lot. but i do think that we need to figure out what the steps are and what is going to happen in the next few days and the executive action in moving forward on dealing with the covid horror and things that weren't handled right, the economic differences. and, david, i think one thing that is going to have to happen, you and i have both been very interested in foreign policy, but we have to -- and biden and harris are going to do this better, is talk about the domestic aspects of foreign policy, how domestic and foreign policy go together and that if we are going to look back and look forward we need to make that linkage very, very clear. >> madeleine albright, wonderful friend and partner for so many years with dr. brzezinski and the brzezinski family. thank you so much for being with us this morning and thank you for your leadership, not only as secretary of state but over the last four years. thank you so much. david, i'm looking at these images of donald trump's helicopter, marine one, leaving washington, d.c. i kept asking myself has he left washington air space yet? and it reminded me of course of january 20th, 1981 when everybody that was watching the inauguration of ronald reagan, especially of course dr. brzezinski and jimmy carter's foreign policy team was wondering when the hostages were free and left -- left iranian air space. up all night as mika said trying to bring that crisis to an end. but another moment in inaugural history. we've come so far as a country. we have had so many transitions. i have never seen such a small minded president leave the white house, to lead it in such a petty way, to refuse even to mention the name of the person who beat him, to pretend that he's going out with pomp and the thanks of a welcome, grateful nation. this is a drama whose ending i think so many millions of us are happy to see him. and i think, joe and mika, the question that haunted mika's dad the last time we really talked was whether something deeper had infected the american body politic, whether it wasn't just donald trump but something really was going wrong. and i think we're going to find out the answer to that in coming days. hopefully trump won't get the oxygen now that he's left the white house, now that he doesn't have the bully pulpit. hopefully the fbi and state enforcement will aggressively pursue the people who attacked our capitol. hopefully the military will try to pull out every seditionist member of the military. i know from my conversations that they're looking forward, thinking of new ways to investigate, but the hope is we return not to the way things were but at least to something normal. i say one final thing, remembering john, mika, four years ago to the inauguration of donald trump, i don't think any of us appreciated how damaged a man he was. we weren't prepared for the degree of disruption and vanity, the personal peak that we would see. that personality is now gone. that personality just left the white house. that is the way it feels like a new start, is there is somebody who is sane and balanced. whatever you say about joe biden, he's a pretty balanced guy and he's in a few hours going to be in those rooms with donald trump raged. it will feel different for all of us. >> there is a reason why americans selected jimmy carter in the wake of vietnam and watergate. he had promised to never tell a lie to the american people. if there is a reason why americans chose joe biden after four years of donald trump, they wanted a return, some sort of return to normalcy. there was just a sheer exhaustion even among those who voted for donald trump four years earlier. that exhaustion showed up across the suburbs of atlanta, georgia, across the suburbs of detroit and the suburbs of philadelphia. people who had voted for donald trump are changing their votes four years later and providing a narrow margin of victory and the most important swing states. jonathan is with us. jonathan, as we watch the president and the first lady get off of marine one for the last time, give us your thoughts of what's been going on this morning in the white house? >> well, this is a big good-bye to a singularly divisive president, joe, one who divided americans at home and strained alliances abroad, who in his final hours of office issued pardons to dozens of political allies including steve bannon and revoked a ban from re-entering the lobbying world after leaving office. so one of his promises to drain the swamp goes out the window here in his final hours as president of the united states. he told reporters while leaving there on the south lawn of the white house that he hoped it would be a short term good buy hinting perhaps at a political future, but people around him recognize how difficult that will be. he has been striking the silence in the last couple days as his twitter account has been taken away from him. republicans moving away from from him and perhaps banning him from ever running again, which would of course really diminish his clout, his ability to keep his hold on the republican party, his ability to raise money. and it should be said, joe, as a final point here as we see him about to board air force one for the final time as president as he heads to mar-a-lago where joe biden will be. the inauguration itself today represents the challenges that biden faces. it will be held at a capitol that is still wounded from an insurrectionist attack two weeks ago, surrounded by a security perimeter that looks like a war zone, not the capitol of the united states. it will be held in front of not hundreds of thousands of people, but a small crowd because of the pandemic. biden will look over a city dotted with -- >> we have the president of the united states coming -- jonathan, jonathan. >> sure. >> we have the president starting to speak. we will dip into this for as long as the president can manage to tell the truth. >> we love you. and i can tell you that from the bottom of my heart. this has been an incredible four years. we have accomplished so much together. i want to thank all of my family and my friends and my staff and many other people were being here. i want to thank you for your effort, your heart work. the people have no idea how hard this family worked. and they worked for you. they could have had a much easier life, but they did a fantastic job. i just want to thank all of you, every one. i want to thank mark meadows who is here someplace right there. but it's been -- it's been something very special. we have accomplished a lot. our first lady has been a woman of great grace and beauty and dignity. and so popular with the people, so popular with the people. in fact, honey, would you like to say a few words, please? >> being your first lady was my greatest honor. thank you for your love and your support. you will be in my thoughts and prayers. god bless you all. god bless your families. and god bless this beautiful nation. thank you. >> what else has to be said, right? but what we've done -- that's true, honey. great job. what we've done has been amazing by any standard. we rebuilt the united states military. we created a new force called space force. that in itself would be a major achievement for a regular administration. we were not a regular administration. we took care of the vets. 91% approval rating. they have never had before. the vets have given us an approval rating like has never been before. we took care of our vets and our beautiful vets. they were very badly treated before we came along. and as you know, we get them great service and we pick up the bill and they can go out and they can see a doctor if they have to wait long periods of time. we got it so we can sadly get rid of people that don't treat our vets popularly. so our vets are happy. our people are happy. our military is thrilled. we also got tax cuts, the largest kax cut and reform in our country by far. i hope they don't raise your taxes, but if they do, i told you so. and if you look at the regulations, which i consider the regulation cuts to be maybe even more important, that's why we have such good and have had such good job numbers. the numbers have been incredible. when we started and not hit by the pandemic, we would have had numbers seen already. our numbers are the best ever. if you look at what happened until february a year ago, our numbers were at a level that nobody had ever seen before. and even now we really built it twice. we got it. nobody blames us for that. the whole world got it. we built it again. and now the stock market is actually substantially higher than it was at its higher point prior to the pandemic. so it's really, you could say, we built it twice. and you're going to see -- you're going to see incredible numbers start coming in if everything is sort of left alone. be careful. very complex. be careful. but you are going to see some incredible things happening. and remember us when you see those things happening. remember us because i'm looking at -- i'm looking at elements of our economy that are set to be a rocket ship up. it is a rocketship up. we have the greatest country in the world. we have the greatest economy in the world. and as bad as the pandemic was, we were hit so hard just like the entire world was hit so hard, places that thought they got away with it didn't get away with it. they're suffering right now. we did something that is really considered a medical miracle. and that was the vaccine. we got the vaccine developed in nine months, instead of nine years or five years or ten years or a long time. it was supposed to take a long time. many, many years to develop a vaccine. we have two out. we have another one coming almost immediately. and it really is a great achievement. so you should start to see really good numbers over the next few months. i think you will start to see those numbers really skyrocket downward. and i can only say this. we have worked hard. we have left it all, as the athletes would say, we have left it all in the world. we don't have to come and say, we'll never say in a month when we're sitting in florida we're not going to be looking at each other and saying, you know, if we only worked a little harder. you can't work harder. we had a lot of obstacles and we went through the obstacles and we just got 75 million votes, and that's a record in the history of -- in the history of sitting presidents. that's an all-time record by a lot, by many millions. in the history of sitting presidents it's been really just an honor. one of the things we're very proud of is the selection of almost 300 federal judges and three great treatment court justices. that's a very big number. that's a record setting number. so we have done a lot. and there is still things to do. the first thing we have to do is pay our respects and our love to the incredible people and families who suffered so greatly from the china virus. it is a horrible thing that put on to the world. we all know where it came from. but it is a horrible, who i believe horrible thing. but we want to pay great love, great love to all of the people who are suffering, including families who are suffering so greatly. so with that, i just want to say you are amazing people. this is a great, great country. it is my greatest honor and privilege to have been your president. >> usa! usa! thank you, trump! thank you, trump! thank you, trump! thank you, trump! >> i will always fight for you. i will be watching. i will be listening. and i will tell you that the future of this country has never been better. i wish the new administration great luck and great success. i think they will have great success. they have the foundation to do something really spectacular. and, again, we put it in a position like it's never been before, despite the worst plague to hit since i guess you'd say 1917, over 100 years ago. and despite that, despite that, the things that we have done have been just incredible and i couldn't have done it without you. so just a good-bye. we love you. we will be back in some form. again, i want to thank our vice president mike pence and karen. i want to thank congress because we worked well with congress, at least certain elements of congress. but we really did. we got so much done that nobody thought would be possible. but i do want to thank congress. and i want to thank all of the great people of washington, d.c. all of the great people we worked with to get this miracle together. so have a good life. we will see you soon. thank you. thank you very much. thank you very much. ♪♪ >> that is the 45th president of the united states, donald trump, likely giving his last address to the american people as president of the united states. he at the end said this is a good-bye, but we will be back in some form. he offered his thanks to mike and karen pence, his vice president who obviously they had a break to say the least on january the 6th with mike pence feared for his life along with his wife and his family. they were trapped inside the capitol. the president still delighted by the riots going on did not reach out to mike pence. this morning he says he provides his thanks to mike pence and karen. he also wished the new administration without mentioning joe biden's name again, but he wished the administration great luck and great success. said they should be set up for that success. he said that the economy was going to continue to improve, that it's going to be a rocket ship that goes straight up and please remember us when you see amazing things happening. he talked about putting the space force in place, talked about a 91% approval rating among vets, a questionable number to say the least. he talked about the military being thrilled. and, again, donald trump was the first republican presidential candidate in some time to actual ly talk about passing the largest tax cuts ever. he did pass massive tax cuts that a lot of businesses and ceos enjoyed and profited from a great deal. there will be debates for some time about how that -- those tax cuts helped the richest americans overwhelmingly. he boasted about cutting regulations, talked about incredible job numbers. talked about the best ever economy, that's as we've shown you repeatedly. he ranked seventh among modern presidents in terms of gdp growth. he said the united states was the greatest country in the world with a greatest economy in the world. and it was the greatest honor of his life to be president of the united states. donald trump also talked about a miracle vaccine that took nine months instead of nine years, that it was a medical miracle. he also said something that white house correspondents will question, that he worked harder than anything else in the white house ever, that they left everything on the field. really went straight to donald trump's appeal when he said, i will always fight for you. >> yeah. the president talking about being a hard worker is a president who golfed over 300 times during his presidency and spent most of his time watching television and had his handlers describe executive time. willie, we are watching the president of the united states depart. and now the president-elect and his wife, the future first lady, dr. jill biden. joe biden and dr. jill biden emerging from blaire house and now a new vision for america begins as the trumps are leaving and the bidens are emerging. >> out of respect for the president of the united states, the bidens waiting until he finished his remarks. they stepped out of church to attend pass. they were joined there by mitch mcconnell, kevin mccarthy, other members of congress in a theme today, which is a show of unity. who wasn't there at the rally at point base andrews with president trump. mitch mcconnell was not there. president trump's own vice president was not there to see him off. of course donald trump has been furious for vice president mike pence for somehow not bending the rules of the united states senate and reversing the count of the electoral college a couple weeks ago on a day that led to the attack on the capitol. the president was off script, off prompter. there were prompters set up earlier in the day. those came down and he riffed off the top of his head. jonathan, there was no acknowledgment of joe biden by name, but as joe pointed out, he did, president trump, wished the new and success has he said in a line that a lot of people will probably cling to with some trepidation r dags. he said near the end, we will be back in some form. as of this morning, president trump is eligible to run in 2024. whether or not he intends to do that is an open question but it's one that will hover over the republican party the next couple of years. jonathan? i think we've lost jonathan actually. >> that question actually has hovered over our air the past minute or so, willie. we've lost jonathan's connection but it was interesting, i heard him talk about in some form, and willie, and you couldn't help but look at the family members that were walking up the steps to get on air force one with the president of the united states, the president's daughter-in-law laura, rumored to have a north carolina senate run ahead of her, ivanka trump and jared kushner buying property in south florida. i can tell you the florida republican party is abuzz with talk of ivanka trump challenging marco rubio in 2022. she always has been sort of the chosen one by donald trump, who saw her following in his footsteps into the white house. and that's something that she, of course, has seen herself along with jared kushner. that has been in their mind from the start. >> right now they're rolling up the red carpet and president trump and his family will be departing joint base san drews and leaving the washington area, headed back to palm beach, florida. but the rest of the day is about the next -- the next page, turning the page to the next four years where president-elect joe biden, who has hit the ground running. already setting up coronavirus task force and a science office and experts ready to tackle the economic struggles that americans are facing due to the coronavirus. but also trying to make some sort of order to the rollout of the vaccine, which has been botched every step of the way just like everything else with the pandemic that left 400,000 people and counting dead. a country in tatters in many ways. joe biden taking over and getting started today with executive orders. and his wife dr. jill biden, joe, will be the first first lady to have a job and her own professional career as she enters the white house. of course, she served as second lady eight years. she knows her way around washington and around the white house and she plans to continue her career as a community college professor, serving those who want to advance themselves in life. something she's been committed to for decades. >> so they're rolling the stairs away from air force one. donald trump, melania trump, the trump family about to leave, preparing to leave washington, d.c. for the last time with donald trump being president of the united states. david ignatius, we are obviously having a turning of a page -- the page right now in the trump administration. the biden administration, let me bring up something we really haven't had time to talk about over the past several months. joe biden through all of this chaos, of course, there have been many things that have been detrimental to a smooth start for the biden administration. but one thing that biden has had is cover, because the media has been chasing one story after another about donald trump, as we have from the start and joe biden has not gotten the close look that most president-elects have gotten. we remember bill clinton started his administration in the rockiest of ways. this is something biden and his team are going to be noticing over the past -- the coming weeks. they are suddenly going to feel the hot glare of those klieg lights that are being turned from donald trump now and going to be focusing squarely on them. >> joe, you're right. biden was lucky in a sense with all of the commotion going on around donald trump that he was able to work hard to put together a cabinet that generally has gotten very high marks. he was able to pick a group of people that he gets along with easily and well. it's a genuinely diverse cabinet in terms not only of racial and ethnic makeup but in terms of ideology. and biden in his television appearances over the last couple of months was faithful to this personality that the country is going to get to know better and better. want to say just plain old joe, the hard-working senator from delaware, kind of sentimental, family guy. takes his religion seriously. his words about the covid victims last night i think must have blew everybody away who saw them. everybody who speaks about his real family tragedies, you know there's a real person there who isn't afraid to talk about pain and suffering and loss. i think we'll get to know that personality better. he will be tested. these are tough times, not simply getting past the pandemic but america has a world of problems biden will have to start dealing with. and he will have to start dealing with the media. it's not going to be kid gloves. we're going to be hard looking at the choices he's making. i was struck, joe and mika, as air force one begins the last flight with donald trump, this was not the angry donald trump that we've seen in the last few months. it was as if he knew it was over. he said some things that stuck in my mind. we were not a regular administration. that's sure true, they were not. he said, we didn't leave anything on the field. he said that with some pride. and that reminded us of what a fighter in some ways, destructive fighter he's been. but the thing that surprised me and i'm going to take away from that little moment is when he said that he thought the new administration was poised for success and that he wished that they would have that success. i didn't expect that. glad to hear it and hopefully that's the last thing he's going to tell us. >> hours ago as we started our broadcast and we talked about the transition of power here, we said we doubted president trump could leave a graceful note for president biden but we are hearing from the press shop president trump did in fact leave a letter on the resolute desk for incoming president biden. we don't know what he wrote. he didn't mention names, as we see the president taxing to take off down palm beach for his final ride on air force one. but as you watched jonathan and we reconnected with you now, the president's final rally if you can call it that, the small group assembled there, you've watched so many of them, you've been at so many of them. they led to his rise. they brought him to the presidency in so many ways. what did you make of his last one? >> first, willie, i'll note as a sign of how tight the security is in washington now, the biden motorcade went by where i was sitting currently, and that's why my connection dropped. the secret service jams signal when a president-elect is in transit today. as far as president trump, you're right, no, there was a note of graciousness there, which was so rare for him, but still defiance, a hint at a return. of course, real reluck tansy about the spotlight, he had to have one last rally. be interesting how he can remain relevant without a twitter account and leaving a mess for a successor to clean up. >> yamiche, final thoughts. >> the president left in a way that was in some ways more optimistic we expected the president to be as he wished the next administration well. but the thing that was truest that he said although he lied about the fact he passed the largest tax cut, he also felt like he tried his best, that he done everything he needed to do. i think what the president in some ways is explaining there is even in fact in his own way he felt like he was doing what he thought was right and that i think will be the trump legacy in some ways, even as he upended washington and even as he encouraged this mob to attack our capitol. i also think it's a bit poetic as i watch air force one go away, he started his political career questioning the birthplace of the first black president. he's leaving washington as a black south asian woman is coming to the white house. that tells me even though president trump caused controversy, that america stood and democracy stood and there is a better future on the other end of it. >> willie, here we are at 8:59 a.m. we're watching air force one with the 45th president of the united states, donald trump, leave washington, d.c. as president of the united states for the last time. the wheels of air force one have left the ground, and washington, d.c. is three hours from right now will be president joe biden's town. donald trump leaving for mar-a-lago with his wife and children. willie? >> with those wheels up, a welcome sight for many americans. president trump is leaving washington. his presidency is over officially three hours from this moment. >> and joe biden is at st. matthew's cathedral. my brother and pastor mark ra zinke reminds me that's where my