police officer. video from the scene showed dozens of emergency vehicles and officers, many in tactical gear and camouflage around the store. one man spoke to nbc affiliate kusa about how his granddaughter had been inside. >> my two granddaughters, you know, 13 and 14, basically, came in with their dad so he could get a covid shot. and they came in through the east door where the pharmacy is and that's where it all started. and there was shooting, and he saw it and got the girls down. they ran and hid upstairs in a coat closet. the cops came in through the roof and were protecting them. they're out now, out the back. they got out and they, you know, this is going to be pretty hard for them to live with, i think. >> according to police, a suspect who was injured in the shooting is in custody. no details have been provided about a potential motive. so far, the only victim to be identified is 51-year-old police officer, eric talley, who was the first to respond to the scene. >> i have to tell you, the heroic action of this officer, when he responded to this scene. at 1430 hours, the boulder police department began receiving phone calls of shots fired in the area. and a phone call about a possible person with a patrol rifle. officer talley responded to the scene, was the first on the scene, and he was fatally shot. >> let's bring in nbc news correspondent erin mclaughlin, live in boulder. erin, what do we know at this point? it seems information has been really slow to come out. >> yeah, that's right, mika. there is definitely more questions than answers at this point. we do know that according to authorities, they have a suspect in custody. a person of interest, they say they believe there is no further danger posed to the public. it is unclear whether or not the suspect in custody is the same person seen on video being led away in handcuffs. his leg bloodied. authorities refused to confirm that detail. this is an ongoing investigation. also, no word as to a potential motive, what drove this individual to the grocery store behind me, opening fire, terrorizing grocery store workers as well as shoppers who ran for their lives. ten killed in total, including eric talley, 51-year-old police officer. we spoke to talley's father last night, who provided us with a statement. he said, my son took his job as a police officer very seriously. he had seven children. the youngest is 7. he loved his kids and his family more than anything. he also said that he was looking to leave the police force. he didn't want to be on the front lines anymore. he wanted to avoid the risks so that he could be there for his family. now one of ten lives lost. authorities have yet to identify the nine other individuals killed at the scene. they say that they're still working to notify next of kin. meanwhile, the fbi is helping out with the investigation. we do expect another update from police. officials hopefully clarifying some of these questions in the coming hours. mika? >> nbc's erin mclaughlin, thank you for your reporting. we're going to update this story with new information as we get it throughout the show this morning. and now to the southern border. the president is sending top officials to mexico and central america, as he works to get a handle on the growing migrant crisis. the national security council says the official responsible for border issues traveled to mexico on monday to, quote, develop an effective and humane plan of action. the nsc says that another official will go to guatemala to discuss the, quote, root causes of migration in the region and build a more hopeful future. according to the white house, the state department has run more than 17,000 radio ads across latin america and more than 500 ads on social media, telling migrants to stay home. yesterday, nbc's kelly o'donnell pressed white house press secretary jen psaki on what it will take for the administration to consider the situation a crisis. >> now that the public is seeing some of the images, because the congressional delegation provided some photos and descriptions about what they witnessed, children were frightened and crying, overcrowded conditions. now that the public has seen that, is that not a crisis and what conditions or situation -- what metrics would have to be in place for the administration to call it that? >> well, children presenting at our border who are fleeing violence, who are fleeing prosecution, who are fleeing terrible situations is not a crisis. we feel that it is our responsibility to humanely approach this circumstance and make sure they are treated with -- treated and put in conditions that are safe. i will say that, you know, these photos show what we've long been saying, which is that these border patrol facilities are not places made for children. they are not places that we want children to be staying for an extended period of time. our alternative is to send children back on this treacherous journey. that is not, in our view, the right choice to make. >> well, again, i just have to say one more tyke, like we said yesterday, those children made the journey in the first place because the united states of america now is sending a message to those children, if you journey across the desert, you make a long and dangerous trip, we're going to let you in. and we're going to let you in if you're unaccompanied. and sometimes, and we're going to find this out throughout the show, you can come in and we're not going to even give you a court date. so the administration right now, the bide administration right now is the one that's luring these children to the border with the promise of being able to get in. so they can't say, oh, they've come all the way across the desert. we can't just let them go back across the desert. no, you can figure out a way, a humane way, a safe way to transport them back home, i suspect. but, again, as long as you keep sending the message -- >> they're sending a different message now. >> not yesterday. oh, no, if they're up here, we're not going to send them back, we're just going to keep them there. and they're also letting families that go and -- that come across illegally, they're letting families just dissolve into the country and not have a court date, not have a date to come back. this is -- again, why do i bring this up? can we absorb families? yes. can we absorb immigration issues? yes, we can. a couple of things, first of all, this is what causes the border crisis. you can talk all you want to to foreign leaders. you can give as much money as you want to give to these countries, which i believe we need to help these countries. so people don't feel like they have to come to the united states as much. but as long as you have a permissive immigration policy, you're going to have a crisis at the border. and yes, we have united states senators from connecticut, democrats, liberals, that are talking about tears in their eyes, when they look at the situation that these children are in. that's a crisis! at the border! and as long as you have a permissive policy, first of all, again, it's dangerous for the children, because more children are going to keep coming, until you tell them, no, we're not going to let them in. >> you do understand they are saying that now. they're sending ads -- >> no, they're saying, don't come, but they're still not saying, we're not going to let unaccompanied minors in the united states, which is what they're going to have to say. and when they say that and that message is clearly sent, then unaccompanied minors will stop crowding the border in the numbers that they're crowding. that's one thing. also, there's an issue of fairness here that nobody talks about and i am not really sure why nobody ever talks about this, but i'm just going to say it. yes, when i was in congress, i had people who were family members who were desperately trying to get a husband or a wife over from pakistan or from india or from belgium. i don't know. from all over the world. and it would take years. and they would go through this process that was just soul crushing. and most of the time, they couldn't get in. and we have a policy that just allows people to come in illegally. it's not fair. it's not safe to the children. and the biden administration has to understand, if they're going to continue this policy, there aren't enough hotel rooms in texas, new mexico, arizona, and california to hold all of the migrants that are going to be coming. >> let's bring in nbc news correspondent gabe gutierrez from donna, texas, on the u.s. border with mexico. gabe, what can you tell us? >> reporter: hi, mika and joe. well, the rio grande valley here in texas the the epicenter of the surge right now. behind me is actually an overflow migrant children's facility in donna, texas. the latest numbers we have for how many children are here is more than 3,700. mika and joe, this facility was initially built for just 250. now, we are getting our first look inside the facility. some pictures were released yesterday by the office of henny cuellar, a democrat congressman from texas. and he says he released them because he wanted to draw attention to the situation here at the border. you can see those pictures there, overcrowded conditions inside this facility. kids in mylar blankets, waiting to be processed. we should point out that cuellar said he did not himself that i can take these pictures. they were given to him by someone else. he did not say whom. but he says he was told there were eight pods inside this facility, each with a capacity of the about 260 people. one of the pods, he said, had more than 400 people over the weekend. that's when he says these pictures were taken. now, again, the numbers are growing here at the border, according to our latest numbers, more than 800 children have been kept in border patrol custody for more than ten days, mika and joe. and that is far longer than the 72-hour legal limit. right now, even at this early hour, it's a very active scene here. we've seen border patrol vehicles. there are buses standing by. and once those migrant children are processed here, then they're taking to hhs facilities elsewhere. but questions are mounting as the biden administration tries to contain this fallout. mika and joe? >> nbc's gabe gutierrez, thank you very much. let's bring in washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay. pulitzer prize-winning historian, jon meacham, and staff writer at "the atlantic," caitlin dickerson joins us. good to have you all onboard. according to an internal document obtained by nbc news, border agents in the rio grande valley, the center of the migrant surge were authorized on saturday to begin releasing adult migrants and families from custody before they have been given dates to appear in court. based on the document, the move from customs and border protection is intended to mitigate operational challenges, including risks to national security during significant surges of illegal migration, as currently exist in the rio grande valley. some immigrants said they were being released inside the u.s. without knowing how they will be contacted to appear for their asylum hearings and without a court date. a departure from cbp policy, which typically provides migrants with a notice to appear before they are released or sent to immigration or customs enforcement. however, other migrants said they were not asked for contact information before being released and were simply given identification documents they were told to show local authorities if they were stopped while in the united states. >> so katty kay, you know, you talk about playing into republicans' hands, politically. you talk about playing to a lot of americans's biggest concerns about democrats taking control of the white house. and i suppose, i said yesterday, if this were 10, 15 years ago, i would say, democrats are just -- their border policy is much weaker than republicans. but barack obama did a much better job at managing the border than donald trump. by the time he left office, illegal border crossings, mexico were at 50-year lows. apparently, the biden administration decided not to follow the guidance of what worked so well for barack obama, because this is chaos. and it's children, once again, who are suffering. >> and there are a lot of push/pull factors here, right? there's been a slew of natural disasters. there's been the pandemic that is driving people from these central american countries. and many of these children were actually sitting in camps on the mexican side of the border until the biden administration came in. those camps were unsafe, unhealthy, overcrowded, worse conditions than the camps they're in on the u.s. side of the border. so there was a crisis. it was just a crisis on the mexican side of the border. what happens is, the biden administration comes in, changes the remain in mexico policy and all of these children flood on to the u.s. border. that's the humanitarian side of it. but the political side of it, this is the immigration that holds a divided republican party together. this is the glue, right? that the republican party is fractured. the one thing that is going to get them united is the issue of immigration. and we're seeing that play out. it looks like you have a new administration that has come in that is losing control of a situation. the numbers are far higher than they had anticipated. they clearly weren't prepared, even democrats are saying that. it's a democratic congressman who has released the very first photos that we're seeing, which shows you how unhappy democrats are about this. and it's just food for the republican party to distract from what joe biden wants to talk about this week at his press conference on thursday, which is the success that he's having battling covid. so they have to deal with -- they've got to look like they are on top of the situation on the border. and those stories that you just reported on, joe, of families being allowed to kind of disappear into the u.s., they will be back in honduras and guatemala and el salvador by the end of this broadcast, people will be hearing them. >> right. exactly. caitlin, that's obviously the issue. that joe biden can send as many messages, they can send as many radio or internet adds as they want to send, but the word is getting back, hey, we've got to cross the border, and they just told us to move on. they didn't even give us a notice to appear. which, of course, even when illegal immigrations get a notice to appear, often, maybe 25, maybe 25%, maybe a third of those given those notice to appear actually come back and show up in court. this is sending a message that i fear is going to just lead to more chaos at the border. >> that may be true, joe, but i do want to just put our feet back on the ground a little bit and remind people that the president who holds the record of the decade for most migrants crossing the border on a single year is president trump. and that was in 2019. years into his aggressive, rhetorical campaign and policy-based campaign that included new restrictions on asylum coming out, sometimes on a weekly basis. and i think that tells you that there's only so much an american president, an american policy can do to affect these flows of migrants crossing the border when the circumstances in people's home countries aren't changing. and especially when people feel like they're making the choice between, you know, a life-and-death decision, essentially. and deciding to take the risk and come to the united states. i think, as well, i just want to point out with the notices to appear, you know, certainly, having, you know, lots of news coverage of something like that will reach central america. will be sent back. but again, president trump sent really the opposite message throughout this administration, and you still saw record numbers of migrants crossing the border. i think, also, you know, it's fairly common for people to get their notice to appear. several weeks or months into being settled in the united states. that's normal. it sounds like there was a change in process, but not one that is very far outside the norm, where that seemed to apply to a vast number of people. so i think we want to continue to report this out and figure out what's going on, but it's important to remember the context, as well. >> it's something i've been saying for five years, that when donald trump was running around talking about, we feed to build a wall and the southern border is porous, i kept saying, barack obama kept illegal crossings at a 50-year low, jon meacham, at a 50-year low. so i said at the beginning, as i said off the top, this isn't a democratic and republican issue. republicans don't to compare donald trump's numbers with barack obama's numbers. but this is a problem with joe biden right now. because again, they are sending a message across central america if you're an unaccompanied minor and make that really dangerous trek, we're going to let you in. and we may not even give you a notice to appear. this is not, again, i just -- we need to remind viewers that may not remember this, this is not what barack obama did when he was president of the united states. and john, you remember, barack obama was criticized a great deal by certain his panic gro s that wanted more permissive immigration policy. he was called the deporter in chief, because he actually believed that laws needed to be enforced, whether it was on the southern border or in the united states of america. maybe that's when barack obama left office, crime was at a 50-year low, and illegal border crossings were at a 50-year low. so no one is here praising donald trump. nobody is here disconnected from facts. the facts are that joe biden has really botched this up. his administration has botched this up. and i'm just going to say it. it reminds me of the obama administration who came in thinking, we're going to do everything that's the polar opposite of what george w. bush and dick cheney did over eight years, as it pertains to foreign policy. and they found out soon enough that there were some things, unfortunately, that -- some policies that they had to continue. i don't think the biden administration is there yet, but at some point, they may be looking back to the obama administration and trying to figure out how to be a little tougher in enforcing laws at the border, so they don't encourage children to make that dangerous journey. >> yeah. i know very little about immigration policy, which i will say right off the top, but it seems to me that given the -- the self-evident humanitarian role and the very self-evident role, as katty was saying, that immigration plays in the life of the country politically, this is a moment for a big national tutorial on what the hell we're actually talking about. how many people, how many are refugees, how many are staying. this is a fireside chat. this is a powerpoint. and i hate powerpoint. you know, as a friend of mine once said, wherever someone's doing a powerpoint, they have neither. but this would be an exchange -- this would be a shift of this. explain it. explain what we're talking about. and take -- again, another phrase i don't like, but take ownership of it. the president has repeatedly said, i'll level with you. and let's talk about it. because there's the great tradition, which we've talked about endlessly of reagan's farewell address, all the pilgrims from all the lost places that were hurtling through the darkness towards home. that's what we are. but we also have to be a law -- a nation of laws. and so let's actually have a conversation -- and i don't mean that about, you know, a pointless thing, but give us the facts. let's look at the numbers. let's look at what you did right, what you did wrong, and do something so radical, which is, as you were just say, let's use facts and evidence and then make a decision. >> if we use facts and we use evidence, that doesn't play into donald trump's hand. i mean, certainly, if you look at the numbers over the past four years, it doesn't play into the republicans' hands. certainly, if you look at how badly they handled the border over the past four years and their numbers, they compare very poorly with the obama administration's numbers. certainly by the time barack obama left. so i think, mika, that's a great idea. we need -- and by the way, this isn't like just republicans saying this. these are democrats that are taking these pictures. these are democrats that are very concerned about what they're seeing at the border. these are democrats who are pressuring the biden white house to get their policy together. a policy that recognizes the promise of america, understands what reagan said in his farewell address, that our strength comes from our immigrants. reagan said that. >> mm-hmm. >> and reagan said that when we stop allowing immigrants into this country, we become a far weaker, vibrant country. reagan said that by the way. so we have to do it, but we have to do it in the same orderly manner that actually takes into account the safety of those who do reach our border. right now, we're not doing that. >> well, i think, also, this has been an issue that's difficult for administrations on both sides of the aisle, arguing whether or not this is a crisis is missing the point. of course it's a crisis. and nobody could speak more to the humanity of this problem and could speak more, i think, truthfully and empathetically to the problem than joe biden. so it's a good idea to sort of give the nation a tutorial on where we stand, because there's a lot of sort of misconceptions floating out there amidst this crisis at the border. the atlantic's caitlin dickerson, thank you very much for your analysis and reporting. and still ahead on "morning joe," after massing coronavirus relief, the biden administration is gearing up to tackle the next big white house priority. nbc's mike memoli joins us with reporting on the president's plans to move ahead with a new $3 trillion package to boost the economy. pretty soon, things are going to add up to some real money. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. re watching" we'll be right back. it doesn't happen often. everyday people taking on the corporate special interests. and winning. but now, the for the people act stands on the brink of becoming law. ensuring accurate elections. iron-clad ethics rules to crack down on political self-dealing. a ban on dark money. and finally reducing corporate money in our politics. to restore our faith in government. because it's time. for the people to win. facing leaks takes strength, so here's to the strong, who trust in our performance and comfortable, long-lasting protection. because your strength is supported by ours. depend. the only thing stronger than us, is you. psoriatic arthritis, made my joints stiff, swollen, painful. tremfya® is approved to help reduce joint symptoms in adults with active psoriatic arthritis. some patients even felt less fatigued. serious allergic reactions may occur. tremfya® may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. tremfya®. emerge tremfyant™. janssen can help you explore cost support options. not everybody wants the same thing. tremfya®. emerge tremfyant™. that's why i go with liberty mutual — they customize my car insurance so i only pay for what i need. 'cause i do things a little differently. hey, i'll take one, please! wait, this isn't a hot-dog stand? no, can't you see the sign? wet. teddy. bears. get ya' wet teddy bears! one-hundred percent wet, guaranteed! or the next one is on me! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ see every delivery... every yikes... and even every awwwwwwww... wait, where was i? introducing self protection from xfinity. designed to put you in control. with real-time notifications and a week of uninterrupted recording. all powered by reliable, secure wifi from xfinity. gotta respect his determination. it's easy and affordable to get started. get self protection for $10 a month. half past the hour. biden administration officials are preparing to present the president with options for moving ahead with his $3 trillion infrastructure agenda. trillion, with a "t." with no final decisions made about the exact legislative path forward for the build back better initiative, a senior administration official tells nbc news that talks with the hill are ongoing. another administration mishl said that the administration is leaning forwards an initial narrow infrastructure-focused bill that they hope could get bipartisan support. joining us now, nbc news correspondent mike memoli. mike, what do you have? >> the way that the bide administration has always conceived of his economic and legislative agenda is really in two phases. the first we've seen play out. that was to deal with the urgent needs brought about by the pandemic and the economic fallout, a national testing and vaccination strategy, aid to state and local governments of course as well as those stimulus checks. and what the president is traveling to ohio today to talk about is an expansion of benefits under the affordable care act through this legislation. that $1.9 trillion package is what you would call part of the rescue phase of the economic agenda. now the biden administration is ready to move forward with what they call the recovery phase of the agenda. this is the build back better proposals. as one administration official told me yesterday said this should not be a mystery to anyone following the campaign. this is something the president laid out during the course of the summer and campaigned on aggressively through the course of the fall. there are really four components of this plan. the three that have the biggest price tag include sort of a manufacturing and innovation agenda, that has biden calling the made in america agenda, designed to counter china's influence in the world. that has a price tag north of $775 billion. then there's the infrastructure. and to the biden administration, infrastructure includes climate and dealing with climate change. that is north of $2 trillion. and then there's a care giving agenda, that deals with both the needs of american families dealing both with child care, but also dealing with elderly parents. that also is north of $700 billion. now, what's not -- what is a mystery to this white house is exactly how they get this all through. the president certainly wants to try to do whatever he can on a bipartisan basis. so the conversations that are happening with capitol hill right now are all about finding where can pieces of that agenda move, including on pieces of legislation that are there are in the congress right now. there's a bill in the senate that has bipartisan sponsorship on china, that components of that first plan could incorporate in. the transportation, the infrastructure proposals could be incorporated in a must-pass surface transportation bill, that is already moving through the congress at this point. and then, of course, the white house acknowledges that there's going to probably need to be another reconciliation package, especially to deal with paying for this. it's going to revolve around revoking and repealing some of the trump tax cuts, implementing some more middle class tax relief, as well. and so the biden administration preparing to present these options to the president. he's going to lay out broadly what he wants to achieve in a joint -- a speech to a joint session of congress. we expect that in early-to-mid-april. but then the very difficult work of trying to attract bipartisan support is going to be what the administration has to focus with next. obviously, they're continuing to try to sell this rescue plan, though, while they have it. >> all right. nbc's mike memoli, thank you very, very much. >> jon meacham, a $2 trillion bill followed by a $3 trillion bill. >> well. >> for two nerds like us, i don't even have to give you the quote. but i'm going to give you the quote. minority leader everett dirkson said, the illinois senator, a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it's real money. but we need to replace that "b" with a "t" and update it, a trillion here, a trillion there. pretty soon, it's real money. >> it's dork inflation. >> dork inflation. but you add this $3 trillion with the last $2 trillion, with all the trillions spent on covid relief back in 2020 and seriously, you have people like larry summers, our own steve rattner, a lot of democrats, people that have always voted for democrats, who also note a hell of a lot about the economy, they were really concerned about inflation. really concerned about the debt. after the $2 trillion. are we going to see congress with the political will to pass a bill with a $3 trillion price tag now? >> well, the opportunistic and seasonal fiscal discipline of the republican party is pretty striking. it all depends on whether they want to be dirksonesque or not. and i think what the president is doing is, he has a -- and every president has this, but in a structurally partisan era like this one, is particularly the case. you have a vanishingly short window to do big things. you remember president reagan got graham rudman through, signed it in august, which shifted tax policy for a generation. i think what the president is doing here is following a pretty basic strategy of, if he's going to do big stuff, move quickly. and whether -- when mike was going through what he was saying, i was thinking about, you do dirkson, i'll do henry kissinger. there were three ways to present a recommendation to the president, if you were national security adviser. mika, i don't know if your dad did this. one, absolute abject surrender. two, nuclear armageddon. three, what i want. so, one question is, where is the "what i want" in the $3 trillion? and i think that will be the debate going forward. >> dr. bzezinski would always sound like a bond villain. and now, you will all die. so, you know, a couple of things, mika, with what john said. first of all, republicans are the last people to complain about deficits and debt and inflation, because, of course, they never do it when a republican is in the white house. that doesn't change economic realities. and that's why i brought up larry summers and steve rattner, and i brought up a lot of democrats who are also concerned about this. the question is, are they going to be able to get manchin or hickenlooper or sinema? those more moderate republicans on this? that's part one of this. but part two, there is no doubt, we are in an era that is extraordinarily partisan. if no republicans, not a single republican supported a bill that had 76% approval rating, no republican is going to support anything that joe biden does. right now, that seems to be a safe assumption to make. maybe somebody will prove me wrong, but if i were in the white house giving advice to anybody, i would say, listen, they're not going to help you. you're going to have to find a bill that gets 50 votes and pass one bill after another after another after another with 50 votes. you can't make the assumption based on the past 11 years that they're going to do anything but say no. you look at the aca, those numbers have gone up, that's good news for america, that's good news for people who need health care, who can't afford health care. look at what the republicans have done for the past 11 years on health care. absolutely nothing but say no. they say, we're going to get rid of it and replace it. they haven't -- think about this, in 11 years, in 11 years, the republican party has not put forward a single unifying piece of health care legislation that they all agree is what can replace the affordable care act. >> yet they brag they've had a replace. >> no, they don't have -- donald trump lied every -- well, every two minutes, but on health care, every two week. my health care plan is coming up in two weeks. >> what health care -- >> sounds like my diet. i'm going to start my diet in two weeks. >> you've done well. you did good lately. >> i'm going to start running in two weeks. >> so -- >> no, mika, they never -- republicans have never done it. so democrats and joe biden needs to figure out, how do i get the 50 votes. the question is, can they get 50 votes from the democratic caucus and the senate by blowing another $3 trillion hole in the national debt. putting up close to $30 trillion. that's the political question. >> so katty, i'm going to read a recent piece entitled, biden is planning for a great society 2.0. "washington post" columnist james holman writes in quote, part, president biden wants to make government great again. and lyndon b. johnson appears to be his new role model. perhaps surprising for those who anticipated that the 78-year-old biden might be satisfied being a caretaker president after the turbulence of donald trump. biden operates in a far different political environment than lbj and his nascent efforts to create a great society 2.0 are fragile. most of what biden has accomplished during his first two months is temporary and could be rolled back by the next president. yet, insiders say he yaer yearn be a transformational president, despite having campaigned as a transitional figure, who would serve mainly as a bridge to the next generation of democratic leaders. it's going to be awfully hard, in short, for biden to do much more than he already has to achieve a great society that can endure. but he has made a start at building a better one. >> katty kay, i know you remember what republicans were all saying before barack obama passed the affordable care act. and they were saying, if he passes this, then it's going to become an entitlement we'll never be able to take away. and those conservatives were proven right. here, joe biden, he's trying to do more than what presidents have done over the past ten years, and that is just sign executive orders that the next president could come in and get rid of by signing new executive orders. if you pass legislation, if you sign the bill, if you spend the money, republicans can't undo that legacy. >> yeah. and look, he's already done some of that with the child tax credit, right? he's already nudged america a little bit more in the direction of the european welfare net model. and i know it's only there for a year, but it's really, really hard to imagine that people will be clamoring to take money away from families with children after a year's time. so the chances are that extends. you've got a whole generation, though, of younger democrats, and younger democratic economists who are saying, okay, if you're so worried, you deficit hawks about inflation, prove it to us. the onus is on you to show us that inflation really is a problem. because every single time we've been hearing from you that if we increase spending, there's going to be inflation, and it hasn't happened for the last 20 or 30 years. so there's some difference of opinion amongst younger democratic economists than perhaps older democratic economists in that magical money tree thinking really does seem to be pervasive in the party at the moment. and the republicans just don't really have that much of a leg to stand on, because they've forgotten the lessons of being deficit hawks for the last four years under donald trump, who exploded the deficit. it's much harder for them to come back. and if you pump money into west virginia, if you put in green energy jobs into west virginia and broadband into this rural west virginia this this infrastructure spending plan, i think joe biden's pitch is, you go big at the beginning, as jon meacham said, at your administration. it's the only time he can really do this. and you win off joe manchin and kyrsten sinema with job-building efforts in rural areas of their states that need it. but there isn't much appetite, not here in the u.s. or in many other countries at the moment for not spending big, because the specter of inflation just seems to be less than it was 20, 30 years ago. they may well be wrong, by the way. >> well, exactly. it's never a problem until it's a problem, and then it's a big problem. i've been warning about deficits and debt for my entire adult life. it's the issue that got me elected to congress. when i left congress, we had $155 billion surplus. republicans haven't cared about it since then. so you are right. i mean, one of those people that i've been warning people about deficits and inflation for 25 years. it hasn't happened yet. so maybe i'm wrong. maybe i'm not. we'll see. jon meacham, really quickly, though, i want to -- again, i want to pull back -- i want to give americans a view of this not over the past six months, but over the past 40, 50, 60. actually, let's go ahead and go 90 years. we've talked about before how fdr, fdr's new deal coalition, his world view shaped american politics from 32 to 1980. ronald reagan's from 1980 to 2020. at the end of the day, what's happened since 1980 that i think more defines this economy than anything else has been the mass accumulation of wealth with the top 1%. actually, with the top probably 0.5%. this is one thing that joe biden can say he's working to push back against. moving beyond the reagan era, beyond -- from 2024, and actually trying to get more money into working class american's pockets, into middle class american pockets, and set up programs that will be more beneficial to them in this new post-reagan era we find ourselves in. >> yeah, i think that's right. and i think when you look at the architecture, the infrastructure, if you will, of the post world war ii middle class, you'll see that it was private and public working together. all right, it was interstate highways, it was the gi bill, all of which had important and tragic racial elements within them. you had public and private spending, cold war defense spending. i mean, the immensity of the material leaps that were made in the wake of the second world war, in the united states, for a large number of people, continues to be staggering. and that engine of social mobility, which was largely for white folks in the 50s and became more accessible as the 60s went on to more americans, that engine needs to be rebuilt. the engine of social mobility. where education, opportunity, what lincoln called an open field and a fair chance, is, i think, the consuming concern of the president's days. and i think he understands that presidents are judged favorably and/or unfavorably, by the extent to which they create opportunity for people to thrive. >> jon meacham, thank you very much for being on this morning. coming up, one-time trump attorney sidney powell asked a federal court to dismiss a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed against her by the election technology company dominion voting systems. her argument, essentially that no reasonable person should have taken her seriously. our legal panel is standing by for that one. "morning joe" is coming right back. r that one "morning joe" is coming right back i've lost count of how many asthma attacks i've had. but my nunormal with nucala? fewer asthma attacks. 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. find your nunormal with nucala. i have an idea for a trade. why don't you call td ameritrade for a strategy gut check? what's that? you run it by an expert, you talk about the risk and potential profit and loss. could've used that before i hired my interior decorator. get a strategy gut check from our trade desk. ♪♪ we look up to our heroes. idolizing them. mimicking their every move. and if she counts on the advanced hydration of pedialyte when it matters most... so do we. hydrate like our heroes. ♪♪ keeping your oysters business growing hydrate like our heroes. has you swamped. you need to hire. i need indeed indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a shortlist of quality candidates from a resume data base claim your seventy-five-dollar credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo it seems like a very low bar and i wonder why you're not charging that now? >> i don't think it's a low bar, scott, but i will tell you this. i personally believe the evidence is trending towards that and probably meets those elements. >> do you anticipate sedition charges against some of these suspects? >> i believe the facts do support those charges and i think as we go forward, more facts will support that, scott. >> the former elite investigator of the january 6th capitol attacks, michael sherwin, speaking on "60 minutes" about evidence thus far against rioting suspects. sherwin was interim acting u.s. attorney enemy just last week and returned to his post as a federal prosecutor in miami on monday. justice department officials have spent weeks weighing whether to file sedition charges against members of the oathkeeper's militia group who attacked the capital on january 6th, according to a report by "the new york times." group members, jessica watkins and donovan carell, both from ohio, and thomas caldwell of virginia, were indicted last month on charges of conspiring to obstruct congress' ability to certify joe biden's electoral college victory. "the times" reports, quote, law enforcement officials have given senior officials in the justice department's national security division potential evidence that they gathered about the trio and an analysis of whether that evidence supported a sedition charge. but they stopped short of delivering a more formal prosecution memo or a draft of an indictment. the new attorney general, merrick garland, is likely to have final say over such a high-profile case. lawyers for all three defendants have vigorously denied in court papers that their clients plotted to attack the capitol. and they have argued that prosecutors misinterpreted communications or exaggerated the strength of the evidence against them. >> don't believe the videotapes. >> yeah. >> and their words. >> and their own words. don't believe any of it is what the defendants seem to be saying. not going to be helpful. let's bring in dave aaronberg. also, professor of law at georgetown university, paul butler. he's an msnbc legal analyst. paul, if you -- and i know you've read and i know dave's read it, you look at the conspiracy to commit sedition. these acts that we're describing line straight up where you're trying to stop, whether it's legal -- you know, passing a law, executing a constitutional function of government. if somebody is trying to stop, get in the way of that happening. that's sedition under the federal statute! why wouldn't these people be charged with sedition and thrown in jail for 20 years? >> it's very possible that they will be, joe. sedition is using violence to uphold the government or prevent the law from being carried out. so the charge does seem to visit the conduct of some of the insurrectionists, who were trying to stop the certification of the election and use force to gain access to the capitol and attack law enforcement officers. a challenge for the prosecutor will be proving intent. that the accused persons were trying to stop the certification of the election as opposed to just wilding out. and another challenge will be proving conspiracy, a meeting of the minds between at least two insurrectionists, as opposed to just a spontaneous event. but i think prosecutors can overcome both of those challenges based on the circumstantial evidence like the equipment some insurrectionists brought, which proves advanced planning and some actions like gaining access to the capitol building that seem coordinated. >> so let me read this. this is 18 u.s. code 2384, seditious conspiracy. if two or more persons delay the execution by force, try to prevent, force, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the united states by force to seize, take possession of any property of the united states, and it goes, to oppose the authority, to delay the execution of any law, then that's a conspiracy to commit sedition. and, again, you just look at the statute. it's pretty obvious. >> i agree with professor butler that i believe that federal prosecutors are going to get there. in fact, mr. sherwin in his "60 minutes" interview seemed to indicate that. he was very candid. but it's clear that doj is under new management. they have already made more than 320 arrests. they've issued more than 900 search warrants and have following up on more than 200,000 tips. so they're moving in that direction. as to why they haven't charged seditious conspiracy yet, i think there's a couple of reasons. first, they are working at it. you need evidence that two or more people had an agreement to do it, you've got to have an actual agreement. and the other thing is, you have to be careful with this charge. it's really serious and i think it's on point, but it's only been charged very few times in recent years. when it has, prosecutors have a mixed record. you can see why they would rather be thorough than fast. but i think merrick garland is the right guy to oversee this investigation, because he led the oklahoma city bombing investigation and he did it in a nonpolitical way. that's what we need right now, especially after the last four years of a very politicized department of justice. >> for sure. attorney general sidney powell, who at one time represented donald trump in his numerous challenges to the election, asked a federal court to dismiss a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed against her by the election technology company dominion voting systems for claims that their machines rigged the election for joe biden. in a motion to dismiss filed yesterday, powell's legal team argued that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact, but view them only as claims that await testing by courts through the adversary process. the motion further argued that miss powell's claims are political speech, and therefore protected by the first amendment, according to the "wall street journal." the alleged defamatory statements made by trump attorneys were, quote, made as part of the normal process of litigating issues of momentous significance and immense public interest, the motion reads. >> whatever. >> are you kidding me? >> yeah. dave aaronberg, she slandered a company, tried to destroy a company's reputation, but even i wouldn't put forward the argument for any that nobody would be stupid enough to believe her words. does that fly? >> no, it's crazy, joe! she's saying all of her crazy statements she made about this vast conspiracy was some harmless riffing and she didn't intend for anyone to actually believe her. tell that to the family of officer brian sicknick, who lost his life in the capitol riots. you know, she is part of the reason why the big lie exists and was perpetuated. and these rioters were there because they believed in her lies. so now she says, well, anyone who believed her is stupid. well, i've said this before with joe. there is no one who has more contempt for their own supporters than the leaders of the maga world. we've seen this before. steve bannon's build a wall khater that he allegedly stole from the effort to raise $200 million for the former president's legal fund to fight the election, when much of that money was diverted elsewhere, to even just the policy of taking away your own supporters' health care insurance in exchange for a promise that something bigger and better will come in two years, or two weeks. we've also learned that when it comes to election lies, the beth truth serum is a multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuit. and if this is the best defense that sidney powell can come up, with i think she's in a whole lot of trouble. and to borrow a phrase from donald trump, i think the ultimate civil judgment against her will be "yuge." >> same question to you, does that work? saying, i lied about this company, i used them of the most terrible things, i hurt their reputation, but nobody would be stupid enough to believe me. >> my god. >> despite the fact that she was one of donald trump's lead propagandaists, in a lie that has actually got about 50% of americans believing in these conspiracy theories, believing that joe biden didn't win the election because of her conspiracy theories. >> you know, sidney powell is an embarrassment to lawyers. when you write a complaint or make a statement in court, you're not protected by the first amendment for lying. and if we think about the consequences of these lies. again, we have a police officer killed in the capitol. we have hundreds of officers assaulted, physically and verbally, and we have all of these insurrectionists, so that now that we're actually talking in the united states of america, in 2021, about whether to charge citizens with sedition for trying to overthrow the government. and it's all on the basis of this big lie that this lawyer promoted when she knew it wasn't true. so in addition to the civil consequences of a defamation suit, she should also be disbarred, frankly. she's not only an embarrassment to lawyers. lawyers are not allowed to do this. and so i think there will be serious consequences and it will be a good day if this woman is never allowed to set foot in a courtroom again. >> paul, can i ask you that question? i have been confused over the past several months as to why she's not already been disbarred, or why charges have not been brought up, ethics charges have not been brought up against her. why rudy giuliani has not already been disbarred. why all of these attorneys that have used their law degrees and used the bar's good name, and the authority that they deferred upon them to spread lies about american democracy. and as you said, obvious lies. why haven't ethics charges already been brought up against these people? why haven't state bar associations already moved to disbar these people? >> so in many jurisdictions, there have been ethics charges. it's a slow process, because, again, we're talking about taking away someone's livelihood. so there's another investigation by the bar, but i believe that with people like powell and giuliani and all of the other lawyers who perpetrated this big lie, that bar associations are investigating. lawyers are famously protective of our own, but when we think about the consequences of this egregious conduct, it's not even lawyering. it's more akin to the crimes of incitement that folks have been charged with. and i think the consequences of losing your law license should be invoked as quickly as a fair investigation with due process will allow. >> all right. paul butler and dave aaronberg, thank you very much for being on this morning. we will revisit this with you very soon. all right. it's five minutes past the top of the hour. we continue to follow the latest out of boulder, colorado, where at least ten people have died after a shooter opened fire inside a grocery store. the only victim that's been identified so far is officer eric talley, an 11-year veteran of the boulder police force. law enforcement officials say the suspect is in custody, but so far, few details have been released about the shooting, including any information about a possible motive. nbc news correspondent erin mclaughlin has more from boulder. >> reporter: good morning, joe and mika. at this point, there are more questions than answers. now, authorities say there's no further danger believed to be posed to the public. they do have a person of interest in custody, though, they're not releasing his name at this time. also, no word as to motive. what drove this individual to this grocery store. he entered, opened fire, sent shoppers and grocery store workers terrified, running for their lives, killing at least ten people, including a first responder, 11-year police veteran, eric talley, 51 years old, father of seven. we did speak to his father who released a statement saying in part, my son took his job as a police officer very seriously. he had seven children. the youngest 7. he loved his kids and his family more than anything. there's also a somber procession in the memory of officer talley, following the shooting. the names, identities of the nine others kid in this attack have yet to be released. this is very much an ongoing investigation. the fbi is taking part. we are expecting another update in the coming hours. back to you. >> let's bring in former commissioner of the nypd, bill bratton, to talk about more about this. of course, there's very little information at this point, sir. but what are the key questions that investigators will be following today. >> well, certainly, it's going to be motive. what compelled this individual to walk into a supermarket and start just randomly shooting people. so they will do the normal rollback investigations to his home, his residence, neighbors, friends, relatives, check if he has anything on social media, indicating his most recent history. so those details will start unfolding over the next day or so. >> and the motive they've been looking at where this happened, why this happened. i heard a sound bite, a grandfather talking about people receiving covid shots in there. don't know anything about motive at this point, but it's certainly, from the shooter's battleground, all the way to what was happening inside that store that might have driven this person to act this way. >> well, the irony is that among the victims were people waiting in line for covid injections, that reflection of the times that we're living in. in terms of the fact that the suspect, the person that they believe is the suspect is still alive, being treated will aid the investigation significantly, if that individual is willing to talk to the police. but these cases, as you know, mika, unfortunately, we cover all too many of them. although, interestingly enough, 2020, we only had two major mass shootings in the united states that were of significant news interest. that was actually a decline from 2019, when we got a glowing trend of mass shootings. so the fact that we've now had two of them in 2021, maybe, is unfortunately an indication of a return to normalcy where we'll see more of these incidents. some of them, unfortunately, fueled by actually hatred as we're seeing in the asian incidents. >> katty kay, i'll let you take the next question, but certainly a pathetic, sad sign that two mass shootings in a row is a sign of a return to normalcy. katty? >> katty? >> oh, her shot froze. >> she froze. >> so, commissioner, just -- when you get the call that comes in, can you just talk about how difficult it is to first of all, prevent these type of shootings and usually how quickly police officers have to get in, to try to stop these sort of incidents from becoming more deadly than they already are? >> well, in terms of unfortunately having been on the receiving end of this of these calls over the years, that this one is compounded certainly for the chief of police in that one of his own was lost, as he responded, as you expect officers to do. and as an irony, with so much criticism of the police in recent years, a lot of it justified, cops, despite their criticism, still will go toward the danger. officer talley yesterday certainly did not hesitate, went toward it, lost his life, and now his wife and seven children are left behind without a father. these incidents are awful for the police to deal with, whether or not one of their own is involved. but when one of their own is involved, it just reminds them of the daily dangers they face. and also, the need for continued training for our personnel, that all of the criticisms that get leveled against the police, the defund the police movement, it's quite clear that our police need to be better trained to deal with any of the things they have to deal with, whether it's demonstrations or mass shootings. and that's going to cost money. we shouldn't be defunding, we actually need to be refunding, and something that we haven't done in 50 years of law enforcement, and that is adequate training of our officers. we do a terrible job of that, unfortunately. train them in the academy, put them out in the streets, but for many departments, that's about it. we'll have to see going forward, what were the circumstances here as this shooting investigation unfolds. where did he get the weapon? was it legally purchased. so many things that are centerpieces of life in america today. >> all of that, former commissioner of the nypd, bill bratton, thank you very much for being on this morning. we'll be following this closely. and you to the fight against the pandemic. for americans are becoming eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine as states expand requirements. many governors are planning to open vaccine eligibility to all residents over the age of 16 by may 3rd. west virginia, tennessee, and arizona have all announced plans to make shots more widely available over the next two weeks. currently, 81 million americans have received one or both doses of a vaccine. the new eligibility comes as cases are increasing, which experts believe is due to virus variants and widespread pandemic fatigue. meanwhile, early this morning, the national institutes of health released a statement saying that it is concerned that astrazeneca may have included outdated information on its large-scale covid vaccine trial. this comes a day after the company announced that its vaccine is 79% effective against coronavirus. the nih says that the data provided by astrazeneca may have provided a, quote, incomplete view of the vaccine's efficacy. this is another setback to the vaccine's already-delayed approval here in the u.s. the vaccine developed for the university of oxford has already been approved in europe. european regulators have declared the shot safe to use after a pause over concerns of a possible increase in the risk of developing blood clots. we have katty kay back with us now. let's bring in nbc news capitol hill correspondent -- is kasie with us? i'll go to katty for now. so this astrazeneca story, a setback not just in terms of getting the vaccine here, but potentially worldwide? >> yeah, i mean, look, this is a vaccine that has been bedeviled over the last few weeks. first the european union saying that they weren't sure about its safety. then the european medical agency saying, yes, we have found no evidence that it's safe, several european industries have suspended distributing the vaccine, now they're back on track distributing it. boris johnson was on camera getting the astrazeneca vaccine last week. he wanted to make the point that there is no evidence linking to it blood clots. it's taken a while for astrazeneca to get approval here in the u.s., but that's not totally abnormal. it's because they have to go through trials that the american regulators are happy with. so they did that and it looked like now that they were on track. at the moment, the u.s. doesn't really need the splice of the astrazeneca vaccine and this is a vaccine that the u.s. had been open hoping to give to other countries that don't have vaccines, because unless the world is vaccinated, we are not going to be traveling anywhere. it's really important to get it distributed in other countries. but of course, you don't want those other countries to be nervous about the vaccine either. there are already reports from africa saying, well, actually, we don't want this astrazeneca vaccine. astrazeneca hasn't responded to the latest from the u.s. authorities questioning the reliability and the up to dateness. we need to get a response from astrazeneca, and it's really important for people around the world. it's important for them to believe in it and important for this data to be cleared up. because, again, we have to vaccinate everybody. it's great to vaccinate americans, but unless the world is vaccinated, you're going to get new variants, there are health threats to americans, those variants could come back into the country and this astrazeneca vaccine could be really helpful in that, because it's a cheaper vaccine to produce. >> katty, you talking about the british prime minister getting the shot, to show everybody, hey, this is okay. i'm getting it. no problems at all. i'm wondering, though, any rise in vaccine hesitancy in the uk or across europe with all of these regulatory stop and starts with this particular vaccine? >> yes, in europe, not in the uk. so european already interestingly has pretty high rates of vaccine hesitancy. france has one of the highest rates of vaccine hesitancy in the world and we have seen an uptick in vaccine hesitancy particularly around the astrazeneca vaccine over last week or two. and this is a real question for european leaders, who individually swened the distribution of the astrazeneca vaccine and questioned its efficacy. and those blood clots, by the way, there were something like 37 people who had blood clots in the total population who had taken the astrazeneca vaccine, that was totally in line with what you would have even if they hadn't been vaccinated. but they could have hurt their own populations by driving up hesitancy and making people reluctant to take a vaccine they don't have. european doesn't have enough vaccines. they are woefully behind. 3, 4% of their population has been vaccinated. the last thing they need is for people to turn around and say, actually, i'm not going to take the one vaccine that we do have. >> katty, why are they so far behind? sorry to keep going with this. it's just fascinating how far behind european is. why is that? >> the vaccine supplies were negotiated, the purchase of the vaccine supplies were negotiated by the european commission. they had tried to -- they waited too long. they negotiated, they tried to negotiate the price and they just got behind the curve on negotiating for supplies. the u.s. and the uk did a much, much better job of locking in supplies early on. the european union commission did a poor job of locking in supplies. they didn't let member states go individually to the producers of the vaccines to negotiate their own stocks. they said, you have to do it through us. and the result has been catastrophic for europe. >> let's bring in nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early," kasie hunt, and msnbc political analyst, eugene robertson. good to have you both onboard. >> so we talked last hour -- my gosh, we talked last hour about a lot of things. i want to start, though, with you, kasie. and let's first talk about this now. proposed or at least the floating of, maybe it's just a trial balloon, a $3 trillion infrastructure plan. is that something that the biden administration thinks it can get 50 votes on? is that something that you think, based on your reporting, that they can get 50 votes on? >> joe, this is in the very preliminary stages, i think there are some twists and turns, but that is a big price tag. and we've sort of gotten used to in the last year having price tags that high on things, because the coronavirus pandemic was unprecedented in modern history and frankly, people on both sides of the aisle agree it's something that needs to be done very quickly with the cares act, initially. and frankly, while there were some people who thought $1.9 trillion was too much this time around, there was a lot of support for it. people are still hurting. $3 trillion is a big number. that's, of course, over a ten-year time horizon. it sounds a little more manageable when you break it up to $300 billion a year. but i do think that there are some risks. they're going to have to get joe manchin onboard with something like that. he's already shown a willingness to step out and say, oh, i don't know. kerstin sinema in arizona, another big question mark. one big piece of this is climate change. it seems like that's the only place where democrats will get a chance to do their climate agenda, and that's even more started when you're starting to talk about a joe manchin. >> yeah, it is, more complicated when you're talking about $1 trillion or $2 on climate change and having joe manchin, a guy who is from a state that gets 68% of the vote in just a few months, it's going to be hard to get him there. speaking of joe manchin, last night, joe biden and senator warnock from georgia spoke and senator warnock said, regardless of joe biden's concerns about the infrastructure reportedly, he said this voting rights bill, hr-1 is more important. joe biden still very reluctant to get -- to have the senate give get rid of our -- or to pressure them to get rid of the filibuster. and once again, there's joe manchin. i think he's the only democrat that hasn't signed on to hr-1 yet. what can you tell us about this? we're talking about infrastructure and a lot of other issues, but you get a sense that this bill, hr-1 is going to be a dividing line between democrats -- well, what many people consider to be good democrats and bad democrats. i've said from the beginning, i don't think joe manchin will be able to vote "no" on hr-1, but right now, he's still holding out. what's the latest in that back and forth? >> joe, i think the voting rights question, hr-1, all of these changes, things that are designed to open ballot access, it's really becoming the seminole test for democrats. and for people who want to overturn the filibuster in the senate, they think the most successful way to make the argument to do that is not to talk about the process, the filibuster, minority rights, all those kind of things. if you're explaining that kind of process, you're losing. but if you think about it in this term of issues, should people have access to the ballots. should people be able to pass restrictions on voting that many are comparing to previous dark eras in u.s. voting rights history. should we be talking about battleground checks for gun sales? we've had two mass shootings in a single week. the filibuster is standing in the way of that. when you start to talk about issues, and especially issues that are supported by large majorities in the country, that's where i think democrats and particularly progressives who want to eliminate the filibuster feel like they're on stronger ground. and that's part of the message that warnock was delivering to the president last night. >> gene robinson, how difficult is it for the democrats to take control of the house, the senate, and the white house and not be able to pass a bill that ensures basic voting rights for black americans, when republicans have made very clear that the only thing they learned from this past election and losing complete control of washington, d.c. is, they've got to get a lot less black voters, a lot less hispanic voters voting in 2022. >> yeah, so the democratic voters across the country are going to be ask,ing, what was the point if democrats can't do this. if democrats can't pass legislation to ensure basic voting rights and to stop onerous jim crow-like restrictions on black suffrage or latino suffrage. this is as cut and dried as it could be. i don't think that joe manchin or kyrsten sinema or any of the moderate democrats can vote against the voting rights provisions of hr-1, because there's a lot in hr-1. i'm talking about the voting rights guarantees in hr-1. and remain in the democratic party. i just don't see how that can happen. i think they do want to remain in the democratic party. so there's a lot of legislative sort of gymnastics and sleight of hand that has to take place probably before it can be passed and before the question of the filibuster comes up. but this is a litmus test issue, i think, for democrats, period. and if you're going to say you're in the democratic party, and frankly, if you're -- you know, in favor of american democracy, you've got to vote for the voting group provisions of hr-1, you have to. >> gene, let's move to your latest piece for "the washington post." it's on what katty was just talking about, entitled, we can't get back to normal until everyone else dies. we're talking about a global pandemic. i'm really worried that we're banking on these vaccines, but they're not going to get to everyone in time and these strains. and the frustration of young people and those who refuse to see that we're in a pandemic, and refuse to take the social distancing guidelines seriously, which we have a huge problem with. i'm worried that we could be back at square one. is that a worry with some credibility, scientifically? >> well, you know, i'm not an epidemiologist, obviously. i am not that worried that we will backslide that far in the united states. we will go back that far. we are actually doing very well, compared to most of the rest of the world, in the speed of the rollout of the vaccines. and because of huge purchase orders by both the trump administration and then, you know, redoubling and retripling by the biden administration, we have enough vaccine doses, basically to vaccinate everybody in the united states twice. i mean, we have plenty of vaccines and it's now ramped up. there have been a couple of days where we've had 3 million shots administered in a day. that's more than an acceptable pace right now and it can wrap up more. i think we're going to vaccinate americans. i think we're going to outrace the potential damaging strains here. the problem is the rest of the world. as katty said, the problem is hesitancy in europe. the problem is lack of access in a lot of the world, in south america, in africa, in lots of parts of asia, they haven't started vaccinating. and at this pace and with projections, it could be 2023 before huge portions of the world starts getting vaccinated. and until everybody is vaccinated, the threat of more dangerous and vaccine-resistant strains developing, that threat continues. and we don't get back to anything like normal. because normal includes international travel and international trade. and we can't possibly get back there until we have confidence that everybody is vaccinated enough. and so, we're not going only have to vaccinate ourselves, we'll have to help vaccinate the world. and that's just a fact. >> wow. all right, still ahead on "morning joe," the mayor of new york city, bill de blasio will be our guest, but first, former congressman cedric richmond has been giving his perspective and advice as senior adviser to the president. he is standing by and joins the conversation next. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. atching "mo" we'll be right back. i've lost count of how many asthma attacks i've had. but my nunormal with nucala? fewer asthma attacks. 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. find your nunormal with nucala. [typing sound] i had this hundred thousand dollar student debt. two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in debt. ah, sofi literally changed my life. it was the easiest application process. sofi made it so there's no tradeoff between my dreams and paying student loans. student loans don't have to take over for the rest of your life. thank you for allowing me to get my money right. challenging times are nothing new. neither are resilient people. there's strength in every family story. learn more about yours. at ancestry. there's strength in every family story. hey lily, i need a new wireless plan for my business, but all my employees need something different. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this... your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep lisa has to send some files, asap! so basically i can pick the right plan for each employee... yeah i should've just led with that... with at&t business... you can pick the best plan for each employee and only pay for the features they need. ♪ ♪ locating your parked car with the touch of a button might seem... excessive. unless... getting lost is the whole point. ♪ ♪ hi sabrina! >>hi jen! so this aveeno® moisturizer goes beyond just soothing sensitive skin? exactly jen! calm + restore oat gel is formulated with prebiotic oat. and strengthens skin's moisture barrier. uh! i love it! aveeno® healthy. it's our nature.™ 32 past the hour. live look at the white house. joining us now, white house senior adviser and director of the office of public engagement, cedric richmond. thank you very much for joining us this morning. i think we'll start with the shooting in boulder, which is still an active situation in that there are a lot of questions that haven't been answered in terms of a motive and identifies of the victims. but, to clarify our conversation earlier in the show, this is the seventh mass shooting in the u.s. in the past seven days. is this life getting back to normal? your thoughts this morning. >> well, first of all, our hearts and prayers go out to the families and the community in boulder, colorado, because of the tragedy. the truth of the matter is, we hope not. we hope that this is not normal. but i will tell you this. that the regular sentiment of hearts and prayers are not enough. we need action on this in the country. and so you saw that the house of representatives passed two pieces of legislation, one to close the charleston loophole, and one to do universal background checks. that's just a step. but the good news is this president has a track record of fighting against the nra and beating them. and we need to make sure that we have sensible gun regulations in this country to ensure safety. and so, we need action. not just words and prayers. >> so we have seen -- this is now the 11th anniversary -- we're at the 11th anniversary of the affordable care act. and we've been talking this morning about how more americans are beginning to sign up. about how republicans don't have an alternative, even 11 years later. what are the plans for the biden administration and the affordable care act? how is the affordable care act going to look two, three years from now? >> we want to build on it. we think that it's very successful. and if you look at what we were able to do in the aarp, it gives you some sense of what we want to do in the future. there's a limit that no american will pay more than 8.5% of their income on health care. and so if you're a family making $90,000 a year, because of the aarp, you're going to see your monthly premiums drop by $200 a month. if you are lower income and just had a baby, we will allow states to keep you on the medicaid for another year. we are trying to push medicaid expansion through aarp, which would cover another 4 million americans, and at the end of the day, to answer your question, joe, the president signaled during the campaign that he would like to add a public option to the affordable care act, to make sure that health care is a right and not a privilege. and you will see us push for that. this president has worked hard to live up to his campaign commitments, because they're his values. and so we're going to make sure that we continue to encourage people to sign up. they can sign up right now at healthcare.gov. because we believe that affordable health care is crucial to moving this country forward in an economically stable way and provides great relief and comfort for families. >> katty kay? >> senator, thanks very much for joining us. i want to ask about the situation on the border. these kids, many of them were in a very difficult situation when they were on the mexican side of the border. we understand that. and changing the policy then allowed them to come to the u.s. side of the border. but did the administration dramatically underestimate the number of kids who would come across? because it just doesn't look like you were prepared for the tide of people that came. there were no facilities there, and we see pictures now of them crammed into conditions that are not optimal for children, especially in the middle of a pandemic. >> look, the infrastructure was just not in place. we just went through four years of a chaotic and broken immigration system. a very inhumane immigration policy. >> but then why change the policy before you were ready with the infrastructure? >> one, because of our values. we're never going to treat children in an inhumane fashion. so we're not pretending or advocating that cbp is the place to hold children. that's why we quickly try to get them out of cbp custody and move them over to hhs, where we have mental health counselors, we have education, we have health screenings. and then we try to move them as quickly as possible into vetted family members' custody or vetted sponsors within this country. so those things don't happen overnight, but we're trying to make them happen overnight. and with covid, capacity is just different model than what it you'd to be. but the goal is to treat children in a very humane way. and so that's our goal. that's what we're going to do. and we're going to continue to work on this until we get it right. >> gene robinson is with us and have has a question. gene? >> i'll follow up on the border. there is -- there is a rule, a law, which was imposed by a court settlement, that children are only supposed to be in border patrol custody for 72 hours, no more than that. it seems to me the administration has a responsibility to follow that law, period. yet, it's been missing that target, what can be done about that and why hasn't it been done yet? >> well, we want to get them out of cpb custody as soon as possible. but what you face is you have to find sponsors, whether it's family members or american households that will take the children in. and we're moving them to hhs as fast as we can. and we want to move that number up. we think anytime in cbp custody is not fit for children, it's not what we want to do. we want to quickly get them into hhs, so we're doing everything we can to get them in as fast as possible. does it extend over 72 hours sometimes? yes, it does. the infrastructure is not in place. but we are doing our best to make sure that these children are treated in a fair and compassionate manner, and we move them to hhs as quickly as possible. and we're going to keep working to make sure that we get down within that 72-hour time frame. but the truth is, we have to do it as fast as possible, because that's what we've been instructed to do by the president and vice president, so you're going to see this administration continuing to work, continuing to use all facets of the government to answer kasie hunt? >> good morning. i want to ask you about the infrastructure plan as well that's coming together behind the scenes. the number that we're seeing out there, $3 trillion possibly over the course of ten years. that's a really high number. are you confident that you can sell that to 50 democrats in the senate, and that it's the right move for the american economy? >> i'm not here to even confirm that the number $3 trillion that you're hearing the the right number. i think the president is still working on what his plan is going to look like. he said on the campaign trail, that he wanted to build back better, invest in infrastructure, and do all of those things, so we can enhance the recovery and fix things that are broken in this country, but also create jobs and spur the economy at the same time. so the president is looking at that. the president will make the announcement at the appropriate time on how big he will go and exactly what he will do. but if the real question is, are we looking at infrastructure or spending money to fix broken roads, bridges, water infrastructure, expand broadband, yes, the president said that on the campaign trail. >> all right. white house senior adviser, cedric richmond, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. and coming up, mayor bill de blasio has a message for new york city. it's back to business. the mayor joins us next with his new move for 80,000 municipal employees to return to the office in the coming weeks. we'll be right back. office in the coming weeks we'll be right back. want to make a name for yourself in gaming? then make a name for yourself. even if your office, and bank balance are... far from glamorous. that means expensing nothing but pizza. your expenses look good, and your books are set for the month! ...going up against this guy... and pitching your idea 100 times. no, no, no! no. i like it. -he likes it! ...and you definitely love that. intuit quickbooks helps small businesses be more successful with payments, payroll, banking and live bookkeeping. you're strong. you power through chronic migraine-15 or more headache days a month each lasting 4 hours or more. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. so, if you haven't tried botox® for your chronic migraine check with your doctor if botox® is right for you and, if samples are available. effects of botox® may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. side effects may include allergic reactions neck and injection site pain fatigue, and headache. don't receive botox® if there's a skin infection. tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. 95% of patients may pay as little as zero dollars for botox® so, text to see how you can save. botox is the #1 prescribed branded chronic migraine treatment. so, ask your doctor about botox® today. bike shop please hold. bike sales are booming. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a shortlist of quality candidates from our resume database. claim your $75 credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/bike. so you're a small business, when you post your first job or a big one. you were thriving, but then... oh. ah. okay. plan, pivot. how do you bounce back? you don't, you bounce forward, with serious and reliable internet. powered by the largest gig speed network in america. but is it secure? sure it's secure. and even if the power goes down, your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together. bounce forward, with comcast business. so katty kay, i'm intrigued by something here. so mika and i, you know, we're plain country folk. despite that, we have stumbled on to our favorite shows lately have been "call my agent" and also "the bureau," which we're halfway through right now, which is extraordinary. >> so good. >> i read the french subtitles. both of them are so great. so this is obviously, if you just judge them by their television output, this is a french culture. but i'm interested, you said there's vaccine resistance in france. by the way, for people reading that transcript, that was said firmly tongue in cheek about french culture and television shows. but why is there vaccine resistance in france? >> i have to say, i'm stronger on "the bureau" and "call my agent," than on the reasons for vaccine hesitancy in france. i was really surprised to see this, that they have the highest in europe, i think the highest in the world of vaccine hesitancy. this is the country of louis pastor, right? a country with a long and storied tradition in medical advances seems to have a lot of hesitancy -- and it's not just this vaccine. this depose back a long time. there was hesitancy towards the mmr vaccine, as well. and it's -- i can't account for it. for a country that is so -- i mean, i've spent a lot of my time there. i have lived there, it is rationale and reasonable. but this vaccine hesitancy a real problem for france. some of it is supply, but a lot of it is hesitancy. >> katty, help me out here, since you're our foreign correspondent, even though you're not. >> but she is. >> foreign tv correspondent. >> does this mean, katty, that we americans can -- does this mean that we can go to france? not that i ever would go to france. but mika, of course, goes to the south of france every couple of weeks. but do you think we'll be in a position where americans can go to france, but we may not allow the french in here if, again, a large portion of their population is not vaccinated? >> i mean, this is one element of what we were talking about with jean earlier, about why we need to get the world populated. it's for these whole issues. at the moment, the uk government is saying that brits should not expect to be able to travel abroad this summer, at all. which has really put a dampner on brits' summer holiday plans in the con innocent. that is the advice of the uk government. the uk government is doing really well like we are on vaccinating people, but they are worried that we would go to the continent where there are these south african and brazilian strains of the virus, and they may be more resistant to the vaccines. and they would then bring those back to the uk after their summer holidays. i don't think there's going to be any european countries -- i mean, the european countries are desperate for tourism. their economies have been crippled. this would be the second summer in a row that very tourist-dependent european holidays are not getting tourists. they want the tourists to come. some of them have already said,f you've been vaccinated, you can come. i think americans would be allowed to come. the question is going to be, is it safe? are there these strains of the vaccines that can resist -- the strains of the virus that can resist the vaccines we've all had and bring them back? that's going to be the issue. i think it's going to be tricky. i think foreign travel is a tricky for a long time. >> i think it is, too. also, that strobe light that's going off behind you, room raiders is going to have fun with that one. >> i like that one. that's "call my agent" kind of -- >> you know. exactly. so mika, maybe we have -- >> techno thing. i can't have a disco, so i have to have one right in my business. >> mika, how do you say doughnut in french? >> this is the weirdest segue. >> le doughnut. >> they might need krispy kreme in france, then. the doughnut shop is giving away free doughnuts to vaccinated people all year long in an effort to encourage everyone to get their shot. >> i'll take whatever shot you got. those who present a valid covid-19 vaccination card at any krispy kreme in the u.s. will receive an iconic original glazed doughnut. are you kidding? >> the company will also be delivering free doughnuts to select vaccination centers across the country in the coming weeks. the deal lasts through 2021. and as i've already said to mika, count me in for four, five, six, maybe ten shots. because krispy kreme. >> so good. >> i could eat ten. >> actually literally have dozens at a time. you heat them up -- >> you don't need to heat them up. and it's really bad for you. joining us now, new york city mayor bill de blasio. so -- >> you getting doughnuts, are y people vaccinated? >> joe, your devotion to doughnuts is. >> that as robert frost said made all the difference. how are vaccinations going in your city? >> we actually are seeing more and more people wanting the vaccine. we did have talking about the situation in france you discussed, we had a hesitancy problem but really greatly reduced. right now about 3.3 million vaccinations have been given in new york city since the beginning. we could be doing over half a million a week, if we had sufficient supply. so, that's the crucial reality. we're very hopeful more supply is coming in the next few weeks. we heard that from the biden administration but the demand is there and we have the ability to get the shots in the arm. so, i'm really hopeful. >> yeah, i'm hopeful, too. can i just ask you while we're talking about doughnuts, what doughnut shop do you and andrew cuomo go to when you're in the city? >> you'll be searching for that doughnut shop for quite a while, joe. >> some people think, mr. mayor, you have enjoyed -- what? i'm asking him a question. some people have said as mika always like to frame things that you have enjoyed -- when she's actually thinking it. you have enjoyed leaning in on andrew cuomo a little too much. is that fair? >> no, i really don't think it is. look, what we're dealing with unfortunately in the state of new york are really serious issues. we are talking about thousands of people that died in nursing homes and admitted cover up. we're talking about sexual harassment, multiple allegations of sexual harassment and these are serious, serious things that have to be brought out in the open and addressed. so, i got to tell you, it's been painful, but we need the truth and as i've said, i don't think he can continue to govern effectively while we're fighting this war against covid. >> you know, it is interesting watching how the news coverage of governor cuomo has moved over the past month or so that the sexual harassment charges have gained most of the attention, have gained most of the headlines, the same time there are a lot of people with relatives that wonder why we're not talking about nursing home deaths as much or more? >> it's painful. families lost their loved ones. they still don't know the truth. they know the truth is covered up. that's the only fact they know. what we've got to find out is why was there a cover up? did it have anything to do with the vast amount of campaign contributions that flowed into the governor's from the nursing home industry and the large hospital industry. and why were these decisions made in the way that, obviously, led to such horrible, horrible, painful outcomes for these families. i mean imagine if you lost someone you loved a grandparent, a parent, an aunt, an uncle and you did not know why and you had to wonder whether something different could have been done. by the way, what happens now? what happens in the future? i think we have to approach nursing homes very, very differently in the future. i think we've learned some powerful lessons but we're not going to be able to make those changes until these issues are addressed. >> okay. let's talk about new york city. what's being done to get everybody vaccinated? what do people need to know? and are there any trouble spots? >> listen, mika, the demand is amazing. really pleased about this. and what we did is we decided to go the grassroots. we set up vaccination centers in public housing developments, in houses of worship and community centers all over the five boroughs and that grassroots is what works. people need to know a trusted community organization or a person in the community, a leader is associated with it. they feel trust in and that helps overcome the hesitancy. so, what we're seeing is all over the five boroughs demand rising and 3.3 million vaccinations given from day one and we're picking up that pace steadily. i'm really hopeful. our goal is five million fuly vaccinated new yorkers and we'll hit that goal and reopen and energize. we'll see a really active summer. you talked about tourism earlier. come to new york city. it's going to be safe, it's going to be exciting. you'll see a huge amount of cultural activity, particularly outdoors. something's working and moving forward really aggressively in this city. we're going to have a huge comeback. >> hopefully a socially distanced shakespeare in the park. >> that's what you're going to see. shakespeare in the park is coming back. >> that's good. i want to talk about something that is happening in the biden administration something near and dear to your heart, child care and the possibility that universal pre-k could be included in the next big biden plan. >> yeah, mika, this is amazing. eight years ago i ran for mayor and pre-k for all the children in new york city. we made it a universal right for new york city for free and it was great for parents, working class parents, middle class parents, everyone benefited and here's what we heard from parents consistently. it took a huge amount of stress out of their life and the whole questionmark of where would they find quality and early education for their kid and it was resolved and there for them and then we saw now years later the results. as we have seen test scores come back from the state, we've actually seen the achievement gap start to close. students doing better and better because of the positive impact of early childhood education and it needs to be a universal right and i commend joe biden. look, this is one of the things that will define the biden presidency. he said in his remarks after the stimulus, he said we need to put working people first. this is what the democratic party is all about. joe biden is doing that and by putting universal pre-k front and center into this new initiative, this is going to transform education in america. this is going to open up incredible opportunity to families, particularly working families. there's literally nothing more foundational you can do. imagine every american child starting at the same starting line with equal opportunity. that's what is at stake here. >> all right. new york city mayor bill de blasio, as always, we love having you on. thank you so much for being here. >> thank you, joe. take care, guys. now, let's talk about a big loss for the world of basketball. hall of famer elgin baylor died of natural causes with his wife and daughter by his side. he was nba's 1958 rookie of the year for the first of his 14 seasons with the lakers during which he was an 11-time all-star and ten-time all nba selection. he appeared in eight nba finals and never held a title but final scoring record with 61 points against the celtics and as ap put it, baylor changed the very direction of basketball when he joined the nba and brought his vertical brilliance to a largely horizontal game. he filled score sheets and sparked young imagination with his trailblazing imaginary style. he was 86 years old. just a little bit before my time but, you know, i grew up reading about him. i grew up watching clips of him and it became very evident that, you know, this was the guy that superstars i loved growing up like the dr. js this elgin baylor was the guy that created the modern nba that i grew up loving. >> yeah, yeah. he was michael jordan before michael jordan. i mean, he was a true superstar. he was unstoppable. and he played above the rim. i mean, that's not the way the game was played at the beginning. you know, two-handed set shots and the like. elgin baylor my mental image from him seeing him as a kid is just, you know, swooping towards the basket. he was an amazing player. went on to become a noted and respected basketball executive. it's a great loss for basketball. >> all right. still ahead, the latest from boulder, colorado, as the u.s. grapples with the seventh mass shooting in a week. plus, new reporting from the southern border. that the u.s. is releasing migrants in the country without contact information and no court date. we're back in one minute. >> it is seventh this year and second in one week. unbelievable. lts with active psoriatic arthritis. some patients even felt less fatigued. serious allergic reactions may occur. tremfya® may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. tremfya®. emerge tremfyant™. janssen can help you explore cost support options. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it's tuesday march 23rd. the united states is marking its second mass shooting in a week. this time in boulder, colorado, where police say a gunman opened fire inside a grocery store killing ten people. including a police officer. video from the scene showed dozens of emergency vehicles and officers, many in tactical gear and camouflage around the store. one man spoke to nbc affiliate kusa how his one granddaughters were inside. >> granddaughters came in with their dad to get a covid shot. came in through the east door where the pharmacy is and that's where it all started and they were shooting and he saw it and got the girls down. they ran and hid upstairs in a coat closet. the cops came in through the roof and were protecting them. they're out now, out through the back. they got out. and they, you know, going to be pretty hard for them to live with, i think. >> according to police, a suspect who was injured in the shooting is in custody. no details have been provided about a potential motive. so far the only victim to be identified is 51-year-old police officer eric talley who is the first to respond to the scene. >> i have to tell you, the heroic action of this officer when he responded to this scene at 14:30 hour the boulder police department began receiving phone calls of shots fired in the area. and a phone call about a possible person with a patrol rifle. officer talley responded to the scene and was the first on the scene and he was fatally shot. >> we have a set of reports from nbc correspondents erin mclaughlin and steve paterson both reporting from boulder. >> reporter: shots ringing out and panic setting in. >> there's a shooter. active shooter. get away. get back! >> reporter: choppers going through a normal afternoon -- >> we had to go to king soopers to buy vanilla wafers. >> i just nearly got killed for getting a soda and a bag of chips. >> reporter: that turned into a deadly scene. >> we just kept going. and there was somebody laying on the ground. >> multiple people down. one officer down. >> reporter: the district attorney says the alleged shoot er is in custody after ten people were killed, including an 11-year veteran police officer. >> we know of ten fatalities at the scene including one of our boulder pd officers. officer talley responded to the scene and was the first on the scene and he was fatally shot. >> reporter: overnight officer talley's father telling nbc news his son was looking for a job to keep himself off of the front lines. he didn't want to put his family through something like this. >> we have a report of a shooting in progress. king soopers. >> reporter: within minutes of the first shots, multiple law enforcement agencies rushed to the scene. officers approaching the store, guns drawn and shoppers and staff scrambling to safety and helping others escape. >> i turned back and went back to the exit and there's people getting out. >> reporter: for some, it was too late. >> i did witness two of my co-workers, two of my best friends get shot. they did lose their lives. there was such little time to react that i just saw her get shot and fall and that was all i could see. >> reporter: officers could be seen leading a man out of the store in handcuffs. blood on his leg. police are not confirming if he's the suspected shooter who is being treated for an injury at a local hospital. while many shoppers escaped, boulder is mourning the lives lost. >> these were people going about their day, doing their food shopping and their lives were cut abruptly and tragically short by the shooter. >> reporter: a heartbreaking day ending with a solemn procession for the 51-year-old officer husband and father of seven, who lost his life while trying to save others. >> reporter: overnight a hero salute as the body of boulder police officer eric talley was escorted away from the scene by a solemn procession flashing red and blue. >> i'm going to grab our flag and go down to the corner and honor the first responders. >> reporter: boulder's police chief fighting back tears as she remembered one of her own. >> he served in numerous roles supporting the boulder police department and the community of boulder. and i have to tell you, the heroic action of this officer when he responded to this scene, officer talley responded to the scene and was the first on the scene and he was fatally shot. >> reporter: officer talley hailed as a hero for rushing towards danger as the first responding officer on scene. law enforcement experts say his actions prevented a greater loss of life. >> there is the need for officers to act immediately to stop the threat. there is training that goes along with this, but it is inherently dangerous and inherently risky but that is what needs to happen to save lives. >> reporter: boulder police say officer talley joined the department in 2010. according to talley's father the 51-year-old had seven children and hoped to transition to a role that took him off the front lines. he loved his family and kids more than anything and he didn't want to put them through something like this. rest in peace, officer talley. your service will never be forgotten. another mass shooting leaving a community and a police department forever shaken. >> i'm grateful for the police officers that responded and i'm so sorry about the loss of officer talley. >> nbc correspondents erin mclaughlin and steve paterson reporting from boulder. now to the southern border where the president is sending top officials to mexico and central america as he works to get a handle on the growing migrant crisis. the national security council says the official responsible for border issues travel to mexico on monday to, quote, develop an effective and humane plan of action. the nsc says another official willguatemala to discuss and build a more hopeful future. according to the white house, the state department has run more than 17,000 radio ads across latin america and more than 500 ads on social media telling migrants to stay home. yesterday nbc's kelly o'donnell pressed white house press secretary jen psaki on what it will take to consider it a crisis. >> seeing some of the images because the congressional delegation provided some photos and descriptions about what they witnessed. children were frightened and overcrowded conditions, not that the public has seen that. is that not a crisis and what conditions or situations, what metrics would have to be in place for the administration to call it that? >> well, children presenting at our border who are fleeing violence, who are fleeing prosecution, who are fleeing terrible situations is not a crisis. we feel that it is our responsibility to humanity approach this circumstance and make sure they are treated with, treated and put into conditions that are safe. i will say that, you know, these photos show what we've long been saying which is that these border patrol facilities are not places made for children. they are not places that we want children to be staying for an extended period of time. our alternative is to send children back on this treacherous journey that is not, in our view, the right choice to make. >> well, again, i just have to say one more time like we said yesterday, those children made the journey in the first place because the united states of america now is sending a message to those children. if you journey across the desert, you make a long and dangerous trip, we're going to let you in. and we're going to let you in if you're unaccompanied. and sometimes and we're going to find this out throughout the show you can come in and we're not going to even give you a court date. so, the administration right now, the biden administration right now is the one that's luring these children to the border with the promise of being able to get in. so, they can't say, oh, well, they've come all the way across the desert, we can't let them go back across the desert. no, you can figure out a way, a humane way, a safe way to transport them back home, i suspect. but, again, as long as you keep sending the message out -- >> they're sending a different message now. >> not yesterday. oh, no, if they're up here we're going to keep them here and they're also letting families that come across illegally, they're letting families just dissolve into the country and not have a court date, not have a date to come back. this is, again, why do i bring this up. can we absorb families, yes, we can? but a couple of things. first of all, this is what causes the border crisis. you can talk all you want to to foreign leaders. you can give as much money as you want to give to these countries which i believe we need to help these countries. so, people don't feel like they have to come to the united states. as much. but as long as you have a permissible immigration policy, you're going to have a crisis at the border and, yes, when you have united states senators from connecticut, democrats, liberals that are talking about tears in their eyes when they look at the situation that these children are in, that's a crisis at the border. and as long as you have a permissive policy. first of all, again, it's dangerous for the children because more children are going to keep coming until you tell them, no, we're not going to let you in. >> they're saying that. they're sending ads. >> no, they're saying, don't come. they're still not saying we're not going to let unaccompanied minors in the united states. which is what they're going to have to say. and when they say that and when that message is clearly sent, then unaccompanied minors will stop crowding the border and the numbers that they're crowding. also, there's an issue of fairness here that nobody talks about and i'm not really sure why nobody talks about this. but i'm just going to say it. yes, when i was in congress, i had people who were family members who were desperately trying to get a husband or a wife over from pakistan or from india or from belgium. i don't know. from all over the world. and it would take years and they would go through this process that was just soul crushing. and most of the time they couldn't get in. and we have a policy that just allows people to come in illegally. it's not fair. it's not safe to the children. and the biden administration has to understand if they're going to continue this policy, there aren't enough hotel rooms in texas, new mexico, arizona and california to hold all the migrants that are going to be coming. >> it's a critical issue for the country and our panel is standing by to talk about it. katty kay and john meacham joins us next on "morning joe." ♪ hey now, you're an all-star, get your game on, go play ♪ ♪ hey now, you're a rock star, get the show on, get paid ♪ ♪ and all that glitters is gold ♪ get 5 boneless wings for $1 with any handcrafted burger. only at applebee's. is now a good time for a flare-up? enough, crohn's! for adults with moderate to severe crohn's or ulcerative colitis... stelara® can provide relief and is the only approved medication to reduce inflammation on and below the surface of the intestine in uc. you, getting on that flight? back off, uc! stelara® may increase your risk of infections, some serious, and cancer. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection... flu-like symptoms, sores, new skin growths, have had cancer, or if you need a vaccine. pres, a rare, potentially fatal brain condition, may be possible. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. lasting remission can start with stelara®. if you've been financially impacted by covid-19, janssen may be able to help. hmmm... where to go today? if you've been financially impacted by covid-19, la? vegas? no, the desert. let's listen to this. louder. take these guys? i mean, there's room. maybe next time, fellas. now we're talking. alright. let's. go. ♪ ♪i've got the brains you've got the looks♪ ♪let's make lots of money♪ ♪you've got the brawn♪ ♪i've got the brains♪ ♪let's make lots of♪ ♪uh uh uh♪ ♪oohhh there's a lot of opportunities♪ with allstate, drivers who switched saved over $700. saving is easy when you're in good hands. allstate click or call to switch today. so you're a small business, allstate or a big one. you were thriving, but then... oh. ah. okay. plan, pivot. how do you bounce back? you don't, you bounce forward, with serious and reliable internet. powered by the largest gig speed network in america. but is it secure? sure it's secure. and even if the power goes down, your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together. bounce forward, with comcast business. let's bring in washington anchor for bbc world news america katty kay and historian josh meacham and staff writer at "the atlantic" caitlin dickerson joins us. great to have you all on board. as joe mentioned, according to an internal document obtained by nbc news, border agents in the rio grande valley, the center of the migrant surge were authorized on saturday to begin releasing adult migrants and families from custody before they have been given dates to appear in court. based on document, the move from customs and border protection is intended to mitigate operational challenges, including risks to national security during significant surges of illegal migration as currently exist in the rio grande valley. some immigrants said they were being released inside the u.s. without knowing how they will be contacted to appear for their asylum hearings and without a court date. departure from cbp policy where they notice to appear before they are released or sent to immigration or customs enforcement. however, other migrants said they were not asked for contact information before being released and were simply given identification documents. they were told to show local authorities if they were stopped while in the united states. >> so, katty kay, you know, you talk about playing into republicans hands politically. you talk about playing to a lot of americans biggest concerns about democrats taking control of the white house and i suppose i said yesterday if this were 10, 15 years ago i would say, well, democrats are, their border policy is weaker than republicans. but barack obama did a much better job at managing the border than donald trump. by the time he left office, illegal border crossings from mexico were at 50-year lows. apparently the biden administration decided not to follow the guidance of what worked so well for barack obama because this is chaos. and it's children, once again, who are suffering. >> yeah. there are a lot of push/pull factors here, right. a slew of natural disasters. there's been the pandemic that is driving people from the central american countries and many of these children were actually sitting in camps on the mexican side of the border until the biden administration came in. and those camps were unsafe, unhealthy, overcrowded, worse conditions than the camps they're in on the u.s. side of the border. so, there was a crisis. it was just a crisis on the mexican side of the border. what happens is the biden administration comes in and changes the remain in mexico policy and all these children flood on to the u.s. side of the border. that's the humanitarian side of it but the political side of it is that this is the immigration that holds a divided republican party together. this is the glue, right, that the republican party is fractured. the one thing that is going to get them united is the issue of immigration. and we're seeing that play out. it looks like you have a new administration that has come in that is losing control of a situation. the numbers are far higher than they had anticipated. they clearly weren't prepared, even democrats are saying that it is a democratic congressman who has released the very first photos that we're seeing which shows you how unhappy democrats are about this and it's just food for the republican party to distract from what joe biden wants to talk about this week at his press conference on thursday which is the success that he's having battling covid. they have to look like they're on top of the situation on the border and those stories that you just reported on, joe, families being allowed to kind of disappear into the u.s. they will be back in honduras and guatemala and el salvador by the end of this broadcast people will be hearing them. >> exactly, that's exactly the issue. that joe biden can send as many messages, they can send as many radio or internet ads as they want to send, but the word is getting back, hey, we got to cross the border and they just told us to move on. they didn't even give us a notice to appear. of course even when illegal immigrants get a notice to appear often maybe 25, maybe 25%, maybe a third of those given those notice to appear actually come back and show up in court. this is sending a message that i fear is going to just lead to more chaos at the border. >> that may be true, joe, but i do want to just put our feet back on the ground a little bit and remind people that, you know, the president who holds the record of the decade for most migrants crossing the border on a single year is president trump and that was in 2019. years into his aggressive, rhetorical campaign and policy-based campaign that included new restrictions on asylum coming out sometimes on a weekly basis. and i think that tells you that there's only so much an american president and american policy can do to effect these flows of migrants crossing the border when the circumstances in people's home countries aren't changing and people feel like they're making the choice between a life and death decision essentially and deciding to take the risk and come to the united states. i think, as well, i want to point out with the notices to appear. you know, certainly having, you know, a lot of news coverage of something like that will reach central america, will be sent back. but, again, president trump sent really the opposite message throughout his administration when you saw record numbers of migrants crossing the border. i think, also, you know, it's fairly common for people to get their notice to appear several weeks or months into already being settled in the united states. that's normal. it sounds like there was a change in process. but not one that is really far outside the norm that apply to a vast number of people. i think we want to continue to report this out and figure out what's going on. but just remember the context, as well. >> up next, john meacham weighs in on the obama administration's legacy on immigration and how it impacts what's happening today. "morning joe" is coming right back. ting. i'm here because you guys need together time... at universallllll. that's how you let yourself woah! save 40% on hotel and ticket packages right now. not later, like right now. ♪ limu emu & doug ♪ liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. thank you! hey, hey, no, no limu, no limu! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ keeping your oysters business growing has you swamped. you need to hire. i need indeed indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a shortlist of quality candidates from a resume data base claim your seventy-five-dollar credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo this is an athlete, twenty reps deep, sprinting past every leak in our softest, smoothest fabric. she's confident, protected, her strength respected. depend. the only thing stronger than us, is you. john, you remember barack obama was criticized a great deal by certain hispanic groups that wanted more permissive immigration policies. he was called the deporter in chief because he actually believed that laws needed to be enforced whether it was on the southern border or whether it was in the united states of america. maybe that's why when barack obama left office crime was at a 50-year low and illegal border crossings were at a 50-year low. so no one is here praising donald trump. nobody is here disconnected from facts. the facts are that joe biden has really botched this up. his administration has botched this up and i'm just going to say it, it reminds me of the obama administration who came in thinking we're going to do everything that's the polar opposite of what george w. bush and dick cheney did over eight years as it pertains to foreign policy and they found out soon enough that there were some things, unfortunately, some policies they had to continue. i don't think the biden administration is there yet. but at some point they may be looking back to the obama administration and trying to figure out how to be a little tougher in enforcing laws at the border so they don't encourage children to make that dangerous journey. >> yeah. i know very little about immigration policy, which i will say right off the top. but it seems to me that given the self-evident humanitarian role and the very self-evident role as katty was saying that immigration plays in the life of the country politically. this is a moment for a big national tutorial on what the hell we're actually talking about. how many people, how many are refugees. how many, you know, what are the economic, political, cultural motives. you know, the president's not asked my opinion on this but if i asked i would say this is a fireside chat. this is a power point. and i hate power point. as a friend of mine once said whenever someone is doing a powerpoint they have neither. but this would actually be a shift of this. explain it. explain what we're talking about and take, another phrase i don't like. but take ownership of it. the president has repeatedly said i'll level with you. and let's talk about it. because there's the great tradition which we've talked about endlessly of reagan's farewell address. all the pilgrims from all the lost places hurdling towards the darkness towards home. that's what we are. but we also have to be a nation of laws. and so let's actually have a conversation and i don't mean that about it being a pointless thing but give us the facts. let's look at the numbers and look at, you know, what you did right and what you did wrong and do something so radical which is, as you were just saying, let's use facts and evidence and then make a decision. >> if we use facts and we use evidence, that doesn't play into donald trump's hands. i mean, certainly if you look at the numbers over the past four years, it doesn't play into the republicans hands. certainly if you look at how badly they handled the border over the past four years and their numbers, they compare very poorly with the obama administration's numbers. certainly by the time barack obama left. so, i think, mika, that's a great idea. we need and, by the way, this is just republicans saying this, these are democrats that are taking these pictures. these are democrats that are very concerned about what they're seeing at the border. these are democrats who are pressuring the biden white house to get their policy together. a policy that recognizes the promise of america, understands what reagan said in this farewell address. that our strength comes from our immigrants, reagan said that, by the way. and reagan said that when we stop allowing immigrants in this country, we become a far weaker, vibrant country. reagan said that, by the way, republicans. so, we have to do it, but we have to do it in the same orderly manner that actually takes into account the safety of those who do reach our border. right now, we're not doing that. >> well, i think, also, this has been an issue that is difficult for administrations on both sides of the aisle. arguing whether or not this is a crisis is missing the point. of course it's a crisis. and nobody could speak more to the humanity of this problem and could speak more, i think, truthfully and empthetically to the problem than joe biden. so, it's a good idea to give the nation a tutorial on where we stand because there is a lot of sort of misconceptions floating out there amidst this crisis at the border. coming up, how the west lost covid. "new york magazine" is exploring how so many rich countries got it so wrong. david wallace wells joins us with his new piece straight ahead on "morning joe." plant-based surfactants like the ones in seventh generation detergent trap stains at the molecular level and flush them away. it's just science! just... science. seventh generation tackles stains. if you wanna be a winner then get a turkey footlong from subway®. that's oven roasted turkey. piled high with crisp veggies. on freshly baked bread! so, let's get out there and get those footlongs. now at subway®, buy one footlong in the app, and get one 50% off. subway®. eat fresh. some say this is my greatest challenge. and get one 50% off. governments in record debt; inflation rising, currencies falling. but i've seen centuries of this. with one companion that hedges the risks you choose and those that choose you. the physical seam of a digital world, traded with a touch. my strongest and closest asset. the gold standard, so to speak ;) people call my future uncertain. but there's one thing i am sure of... it's okay that you don't want to be first: you aren't. second covid vaccine. it's okay to have questions: everyone deserves answers. i'm wary that there isn't enough information. it's okay to be excited, or worried, or both. it's alright for it to take whatever it takes for you to be ready. hi mom, ready for your shot? yes, i've been waiting for this day. we just got what? vaccinated. we just got vaccinated! let's get you there. let's get to immunity. it really is unfortunate this happened. this is really what you call an unforced error because the fact is this is very likely a very good vaccine and this kind of thing does, as you say, do nothing but really cast some doubt about the vaccines and maybe contribute to the hesitancy. it was not necessary. if you look the data really are quite good but when they put it into the press release, it wasn't completely accurate. we have to keep essentially trying as hard as we can to get people to understand that there are safe guards in place and i think the data and safety monitoring board picking up this discrepancy was an example of a safe guard. >> dr. anthony fauci a short while ago responding to the breaking news overnight regarding astrazeneca's covid-19 vaccine. earlier this morning, the national institutes of health released a statement saying that it is concerned that the drugmaker may have included outdated information in its large-scale covid vaccine trial. that comes a day after the company announced that its vaccine is 79% effective against coronavirus. the nih says the data provided by astrazeneca may have provided a, quote, incomplete view of the vaccine's efficacy. this is another set back to the vaccine's already delayed approval in the u.s. developed with the university of oxford has been approved in europe. european regulators have declared the shots safe to use after a pause with the increase in risk of developing blood clots. joining us now dr. patel former white house policy director and an msnbc medical contributor and also with us editor at large at "new york" magazine david wells. kasie hunt is back with us, as well. dr. patel, could you please comment on the latest news on astrazeneca and how that could impact the world getting a hold on the coronavirus, if we can't get enough vaccine delivered globally. >> yeah, mika, good morning. i have to be honest with you, i have never seen anything like this and, also compared notes with other public health officials. we've never seen anything like this. simply put, the nih was forced to put out a statement literally at midnight that dr. fauci must have had a word smith carefully that basically said that astrazeneca in their press release overstated their data. that must have come after conversations with the manufacturer surely. so, this does set back, number one, public confidence. it's hard to really understand how there could be this much of a discrepancy and, mika, directly to your point, this is overall likely a very good vaccine. it exceeds the 50% efficacy threshold and more importantly, it's cheaper. it's easier to store. it's two doses. but it has been what people have thought of as a major part of the global solution and just unfortunate. another sign that despite all the success and amazing kind of accomplishments in science that there are still kind of these, you know, there's still these hurdles that we will have to overcome to get everybody vaccinated. >> david, wonderful time to have you here. your piece, fascinating piece on how the west lost covid comes at a time when this morning we're asking why the eu has done such a terrible job with vaccinations. all the mistakes that we made over the past year, all the criticisms rightly leveled and i'll say from our show and from a lot of other people, donald trump and his denialism and here we find ourselves in 2021 and not the united states that right now is struggling because it didn't purchase enough vaccines, it's the eu. how bad is it there? and what does that say about not only how the eu has handled this but how the west has? >> i think they're seeing case loads rise on the continent. they don't have much, many tools to combat it in the uk and u.s. two places that were really catastrophically poorly handled throughout the pandemic. we've seen a much more effective vaccine rollout. put when you look at the global picture the most striking thing of the pandemic overall is that countries have really fallen into really clear groups. in east asia they were able to eliminate the disease in a few months so they could have outdoor gatherings and sports. mostly into the age structure of those populations and then across europe and the americas total catastrophic failure where you have death rates per capita. and the best european countries are more than 100 times the best asian countries and the average european country is several thousand times worse in terms of death rates than say taiwan which has done exceptionally well in asia. as we go forward we have to think about why there was such incredible and uniform failure across all these wealthy countries who thought themselves immune from pandemic threats and countries that we saw as much more vulnerable demonstrated themselves much more impressively. >> so, david, let's not just talk internationally, let's talk domestically, as well. it seems we had a certain take on this pandemic that there were certain good governors, certain states that were handling this well. there were bad governors and i'm thinking specifically of ron desantis that flaunted every bit of advice, it seemed. a lot of floridians ignored him and still locked down. stories talking about that. but you look domestically and you look internationally. at the end of the day, this virus seemed to be the great equalizer and seemed to level those who were trying to act responsibly and those who were not for political reasons. acting responsibly. what's your big take away from that a year later? >> i think the main lesson is that the virus is really hard to control. and there are a lot of aspects of its spread that we don't all that well understand. if you moved really aggressively very early with mass testing, quarantine and contact tracing as they did in asia, you could get a handle on it. waiting as long as we did in the u.s. by the time new york city went to lockdown we had 3.8 million cases in the u.s. when we waited that long, the kind of measures that we then had at our disposal even shelter-in-place lockdowns and indoor dining restrictions and mask wearing, all these things made a difference but only made a difference on the margins and other dynamic forces at play that we don't entirely understand that say why florida which is one of the loosest states performed about as well as california which is one of the strictest. not to say there were no success stories and not to say if ron desantis had acted more aggressively it would have been lower, i think it would have been. but measures that really make a difference on the margins once we get such a slow start. the big question we have to ask ourselves is why did everywhere in the u.s. and especially everywhere across europe, why did all of these counties and cities get such a slow start? functionally that's a sign of oour arrogance that we looked at what was happening in china and didn't take seriously. we didn't believe it could happen here. we didn't think we had to act preemptively. unfortunately, by the time it arrived it was just too late. >> and kasie, of course, just to be very clear here ron desantis is bragging right now and going on a victory tour of sorts despite the fact that he ranked in the bottom half of states. florida ranked in the bottom half of states of deaths per capita. we're not saying he did a great job and we're not saying a lot of these people who were arrogant and dismissed science did a great job, but it wasn't as stark as many of us expected. >> well, and i think that underscores why david's reporting is so important because we are going to have to learn lessons from this. figure out why we failed to make sure that we're ready for what happens next. and dr. patel, i want to ask you about another cultural piece of this. anecdotally i know it's a conversation among a lot of my friends and i've spoken to some other health care workers who say one group of people that is particularly concerned about getting vaccinated which, of course, is our way out of this, finally. are pregnant women. people who are expecting babies. it's understandable that they would be when you're pregnant you're so concerned about every single thing that goes into your body, especially a vaccine that seems new. but some new reporting that suggests perhaps getting vaccinated while you're pregnant or before you get pregnant might actually give not just you, but your baby protection. what do you know about this emerging science? >> yeah, kasie, great kind of study. by the way, it builds on earlier research that demonstrates that pregnant mothers who are infected with covid were able to develop antibodies as we know people do after they have the infection and pass them through the placenta protecting their newborns. that's the phenomenon we see as you kind of mention mothers always having some ability to pass on antibodies through the placenta and breast milk. this emerging data sort of reinforces that and reinstates that the antibodies that develop after you receive your vaccination, even after the first dose, kasie, which is important to understand since some pregnant mothers might not be able to get both doses in their last trimester in time. even after one dose they develop antibodies and those antibodies get passed on to the placenta and that gives the newborn baby. making sure we were up to date on other vaccines including the flu shot, similar concept. i think it's incredible and reinforces any pregnant woman listening especially if you were concerned speak to your obstetrician and understand the risks and benefits. and i think the benefits outweigh the risks. >> the risks. >> dr. kavita patel and dr. wallace-walls thank you for joining us. up next, isabel allende, the highest selling spanish language author in the world joins us with her new memoir. just a note, tomorrow i will be teaming up with the biden institute for a wonderful event at the university of delaware. students can take part in the annual women's history month luncheon for a virtual opportunity to network with women in leadership. it's a great panel including valerie biden-owens and eleni assanis. keep it here on "morning joe." i want my kids to know... they come from people who... were brave. and took risks. big risks. bring your family history to life, like never before. get started for free at ancestry.com i've lost count of how many asthma attacks i've had. but my nunormal with nucala? fewer asthma attacks. 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. find your nunormal with nucala. retirement income is complicated. as your broker, i've solved it. that's great, carl. but we need something better. that's easily adjustable has no penalties or advisory fee. and we can monitor to see that we're on track. like schwab intelligent income. schwab! introducing schwab intelligent income. a simple, modern way to pay yourself from your portfolio. oh, that's cool... i mean, we don't have that. schwab. a modern approach to wealth management. (judith) at fisher investments, we do things differently and other money managers don't understand why. (money manager) because our way works great for us! (judith) but not for your clients. that's why we're a fiduciary, obligated to put clients first. (money manager) so, what do you provide? cookie cutter portfolios? (judith) nope, we tailor portfolios to our client's needs. (money manager) but you do sell investments that earn you high commissions, right? (judith) we don't have those. (money manager) so what's in it for you? (judith) our fees are structured so we do better when our clients do better. at fisher investments we're clearly different. new projects means new project managers. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a short list of quality candidates from our resume database. claim your seventy five dollar credit, when you post your first job at indeed.com/home. ♪ can you hear the whisper ♪ [ speaking foreign language ] ♪♪ >> that was a look at the hbo max mini series on the life of author, activist and feminist, isabel allende. and the celebrated author joins us now to discuss her first nonfiction work in over a decade. entitled "the soul of a woman." also with us for the conversation we have know your values daniella pierre-bravo. it's an honor to have you all on with us. ms. allende, this is your 25th book in a long list of "new york times" best sellers translated into 42 languages, which i can't even imagine. it focuses on what it means to be a woman. what was the motivation for writing this book now? >> i gave a speech a few years ago at a women's conference in mexico, it went viral. my publishers wanted to publish it like a booklet. i read it, it was totally stale because everything was happening. you know, the me too movement, black lives matter, women protesting in the streets, not only in the states but everywhere. a new awareness of feminism. so i decided i wanted to tell the trajectory of my life as a woman and as a feminist. >> your entire incredible successful reign of books started back in 1982 with your novel "house of spirits" which was later adapted into a movie with meryl streep and glenn close. what comes to mind when you think, you go back in time and think about that first book, how it changed not just your career trajectory but maybe the walls that broke down for other women writers? >> it changed my life. it gave me a voice. it was a terrible time in my life when i wrote that book. everything was bad around me. i had a job i didn't like. my marriage was failing. my children were leaving the nest. i was living in exile in venezuela. and the book gave me a voice and somehow connected me with the world. it opened the way for all the other books that i wrote later. it was really important. to this day, "the house of the spirits" keeps changing my life because it still -- it's become recommended reading in many places. so i always get a new generation of people reading the book that connects with me. it's been really important. >> daniella pierre-bravo has the next question. >> it's an honor to be here with you today. in your new book you talk about your time working at a feminist magazine in chile. you took on taboo subjects that were not being talked about on a national level and really gender stereotypes. what did it teach you about how to effectively elevate the voice of women particularly in a male-dominated society like chile? >> it was the '60s. 1967 when the magazine was first published. so, i mean, we were living in the stone age there. as you said, many subjects had never ever been discussed publicly. like abortion, infidelity, divorce. there was no divorce in chile until 2005. the last country in the world to get divorce. domestic violence, drugs, prostitution, so many things that affected women and were taboo. when we started working with those issues, i discovered the one way to penetrate the psyche was with humor. though that reporting was very, very serious and in depth, i could write -- attack, let's say, male chauvinism with humor. >> there's been tremendous progress for women since then. we've been able to make great strides on equal pay to women's rights, but there's a long way to go. what do you think is the most important roadblock and barriers for women that need to be addressed today? >> i think first of all awareness that there is a war against women. this is the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world it seems exaggerated, but it's not. when we think of women in this part of the world in the west, wehave acquired a lot more privileges, awareness and rights than in the rest of the world. 80% of the women in the world suffer an ongoing war against them. women suffer violence in many fronts, not only domestic violence, they're the first victims of war, conflict, crisis. look at the pandemic. the first to lose their jobs were women. the last ones to get them back would be the women. they are stuck at home with the kids and sometimes with an abusive partner. we have to create an awareness among women so we can be a united front to change the world. to change the patriarchy. that's the final goal, to change the patriarchy for a management of the world in which men and women in equal numbers share equal power. we don't have that. >> the book is "the soul of a woman." isabel allende, thank you so much for being on the show with us. that does it for us this morning. jeff bennett picks up the coverage right now. >> good morning. i'm in for stephanie ruhle. it's tuesday, march 23rd. we start with breaking news out of colorado. ten people are dead including a police officer after a mass shooting at a grocery store in boulder. the attack coming just six days after another mass shooting took the lives of eight people in atlanta. the denver post calling it simply a nightmare. we're expecting more information when we hear from colorado law enforcement in just about 90 minutes from now. the attack happened at a supermarket just before 3:00 local time when a gunman opened fire. some patrons