Transcripts For MSNBC Morning Joe 20240709 : comparemela.com

during that siege? were you worried about his safety? >> no, i heard he was well protected. i heard he was in very good shape. but -- >> the chants, that was terrible on the -- >> he could have -- well, the people were very angry. >> they're saying hang mike pence. >> it is common sense, john. it is common sense that you're supposed to protect -- how can you -- if you know a vote is fraudulent, right, how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to congress? >> wow. former president trump defending the january 6th rioters who were hunting down then vice president pence. jonathan carl interviewed trump for his new book, which is chalk full of new reporting on the lengths the former president and his allies went, trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. among that new reporting is then white house chief of staff mark meadows, who played a key role in trying to convince pence he had the authority to stop the certification, sending an email to a top aide, for the former vice president, detailing a plan to undo joe biden's election win. the memo was written by former trump lawyer jena ellis and centered around the vote totals of six battleground states that trump insisted he won. joining us now with more on that, and the final days of the trump presidency, chief washington correspondent for abc news, jonathan karl. the new book titled "betrayal: the final act of the trump presidency". >> it looks like a clown show except these people were in the white house, they had power and they were trying to overthrow the united states government or at least throw the election of a duly elected president when every federal judge, including all those appointed by donald trump said there was absolutely nothing to the charges. what was your takeaway talking to donald trump and digging into this as deeply as you did? >> well, first of all, i think that the role of mark meadows that was just mentioned by mika there is incredibly important because there has been a lot of talk about the memo written by john eastman, this outside lawyer who advised trump. no, this was right in the white house. this was the white house chief of staff, this was his -- one of his campaign lawyers, outlining a very specific plan with dates and times that was all send centering on mike pence obeying the orders of donald trump and it was a plan that if pence had gone along with, would have resulted in a much bigger constitutional crisis than what we saw. and, joe, what i found is that's just one example of where this could have gone off the rails and almost did go off the rails, even in a more spectacular way than it actually did. >> well, just one example, but, jonathan, let's stop for a second, the shocking example, a guy who is a member of the united states congress goes over to work for the white house, and he is actively working to overthrow the united states government. to overthrow the duly elected president of the united states. it is absolutely staggering in your reporting how widespread was the contempt that donald trump's staff members had for the united states constitution, for the peaceful transfer of power, for political and constitutional norms. >> and i'll add one other, for sanity. mark meadows played a role throughout this and, joe, i -- mika, i document this chapter and verse. the role that meadows played during the transition to chase down, to pursue every hair brain scheme that donald trump had, every conspiracy theory to try to undo what is really the central -- the central miracle of american democracy, peaceful transition of power, meadows was using the intelligence agencies, was pressuring the pentagon, the justice department in doing this, in the end with mike pence. much of this not known at the time. he just played this role of trying to use all means necessary to effectuate what really would have been a coup. let's call it what it would have been. it was a coup, overturning -- >> so, jonathan, i know this guy. i've had breakfast with this guy, many times, talking about when he was still in congress, giving him advice on focusing more on issues that matter to americans than some of the crazy stuff the freedom caucus was going after. i'm sure you have talked to him a good bit as well. and he's a likable guy. but he's also a likable guy who tried to overthrow the united states government. i guess none dare call it treason, but that's what it would be called in any other time, other than right now. so in reporting on this book, did you -- did you get to the motivation for why people who had seemed to be supposedly good people in their past lives moved into the trump white house, moved into the trump sphere and did things that no one would have ever believed they would have done four or five years ago? >> well, i think a big part of it, joe, was fear. and this is why another theme in the book is the role of johnny mcentee, the guy who carried trump's bags during the first year of the trump presidency before he was fired for issues in his fbi background check. he comes back to the trump white house in early 2020 and is put in charge of presidential personnel and really what he does is he conducts a purge of the executive branch, firing or intimidating into silence anybody who would dare do anything to disagree or contradict or challenge or question what donald trump wanted to do. so by the time you get to the transition, there is really nobody left around donald trump except for those that are all in, and willing to do whatever it is that he wants to do, or they're there, but cowled into silence. there are a couple of exceptions in the book, but by and large, they're all in for whatever trump wants. >> so, jonathan, it really is shocking. you obviously -- you would expect that of people who had been his golf caddie before or worked at his golf course, i wouldn't expect that of any american, treason is treason. but you have mainstream republican figures that, again, were willing to betray the united states, its constitution, peaceful transfer of power, but what about people like bill stepien who were respected, and would be so, you know, people would reach out to have him work on their campaigns? what about people like that, that got into his orbit and got involved in this? >> well, i get into that. there is people like bill stepien and justin clark, people involved in the campaign, who when rudy giuliani and sydney powell came in with all the wild conspiracy theories and all of that, they basically took a step aside. they were not part of this effort, but they weren't actively coming out to try to stop it. i'll give you another example. jared kushner, you know, obviously is one of the most powerful and important people in the west wing. at one point, jared kushner gets a call from mark short the chief of staff for mike pence, this is during the holidays, right before january, and he gets a call from short and says, please, jared, can you -- can you talk to your father-in-law? this is getting dangerous. somebody needs to tell him who he will listen to that mike pence cannot single-handedly overturn the election. please talk to him, he listens to you. jared's answer was, you know, ever since rudy giuliani came in, i don't have any part of this election stuff. i'm focused on middle east peace. i got things to do over here. and he refused to go and have an intervention with his father-in-law. those who knew better and weren't on the program with what trump wanted to do simply took a step back and did nothing. it is a very -- it is like jon stewart mills quote, all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. a lot of people were doing nothing around trump at that time. >> right. so you spoke with minority leader kevin mccarthy about defying trump and gave this analysis in the book of his answer. quote, i nodded toward the monday umms along the national mall, memorials to political leaders remembered precisely because they did things that were both important and difficult to do. who knows, i said, if you do the right thing, maybe there will be a statue of you out here some day. mccarthy laughed. where's the statue for jeff flake? where's the statue for that guy from tennessee, he said, referring to the former republican senator bob corker who, like former republican senator jeff flake had stood up to trump during trump's first two years in office. you continue, mccarthy can see the speakership within his grasp in 2022. but if he crossed trump, he figured he'd face an insurrection and could be voted out as leader. history could wait. his chance to be speaker could not. whatever kevin mccarthy thought of trump's lies and his lost cause and the damage it all was doing to our democracy, he wasn't going to do anything that would risk his chance to be the next speaker of the house. and then here's what former president trump told you about kevin mccarthy and mitch mcconnell. >> if mcconnell and mccarthy fought harder, okay, you could have a republican president right now, and now they don't have anything. >> wow. he doesn't stand by his men at all in any way. >> no. i mean, and, look, mccarthy, and this was a walk i had with him on the national mall on january 2nd, you know, just days before the actual insurrection, and the thrust of what he's saying is he can manipulate donald trump, by staying close to trump, he can prevent him from doing things that would be more damaging. that's really what mccarthy was saying in addition to talking about his own political future. but, what was extraordinary to me in talking to trump is that trump is as bitter towards mccarthy as he is towards mitch mcconnell. you know what he's saying about mitch mcconnell. so what happens to kevin mccarthy if republicans win back the house? does donald trump do something to try to sink his chance of getting the speakership? and wouldn't that be quite a turn to mccarthy? mccarthy knows what the truth is, absolutely. and he stood by trump. he didn't challenge him. he defied his own principles such as they are, and, you know, and now he's rewarded with this from donald trump. so i think that's going to be a very interesting dynamic to play. one other thing about mccarthy is trump condemned all these republicans during the course of my interview, pence, mccarthy, barr, you know, his former cabinet secretaries, all of them, but he did praise marjorie taylor greene. and said she was terrific, and she had fought for him and stood for him and then he added, and kevin hasn't treated her properly. kevin hasn't treated her properly. so there is some real bitterness that trump -- surprised me, has toward kevin mccarthy, despite the way mccarthy stood by him. >> you haven't -- we haven't talked, and i don't know what your conversation with kevin mccarthy have been, but it is interesting that it is hard to talk to somebody off the record who hasn't written a book, that doesn't say that kevin mccarthy isn't one of their great sources. he leaks like a sieve, wants everybody to know he has contempt for donald trump, attacks donald trump off the record, and i was struck by the fact that he let it out very quickly on january 6th about the private phone call they had, where he was shouting at donald trump and swearing at him. it's -- it's very interesting that it seems mccarthy is still trying to do this, as dan rather would say, texas two-step. you can never do that with donald trump. you're either all in or you're all out. >> he's doing the chris christie. >> mccarthy looks at a situation where the majority of his conference, the majority of those house republicans are all in for donald trump. and maybe a majority of that majority are truly in. like, believe everything. they're part of the cult. and so mccarthy is the leader of that conference. and his vision of leadership is doing the will of those that elected him leader. and there you are. i think that's why you see what you see. >> hey, john, it is john. congratulations on the book. i want to talk about the new reporting that was bandied out a lot during the trump years. the 25th amendment, which allows for the potential removal of the president, if he's deemed incapacitated, physically or mentally, for office. you have some reporting on conversations held by some of the most influential cabinet members including secretary mnuchin and pompeo. >> i learned that steven mnuchin had a conference with mike pompeo on the evening of january 6th. i learned that mnuchin had several conversations about the 25th amendment and further that mike pompeo actually asked for a legal analysis of the 25th amendment and how it would be -- how it would work. the idea quickly was jetsonned, you had cabinet members resign, devos resigned, the labor secretary elaine chao resigned, it was apparent the 25th amendment was not going to work, it wouldn't be quick enough, open to legal challenges, et cetera. in the hours after the riot, there were high level conversations about this. here is the fascinating detail about what i found out as work on this book, i reached out to both mnuchin and pompeo, over and over and over and over again, and they would not say anything to me on the record, did they favor it, did they not favor it, did they discuss it, did they not discuss it, until as i was just about to go to press, i had one final telephone interview with donald trump and i brought all this up with him, and said, you know, why is it that these guys won't even deny it, they won't even -- if you say it is not true, why won't they deny it? and then within a couple of hours after that interview ended, i suddenly got a call from one of pompeo's top aides, saying, oh, you know what, we got a quote for you, yeah, yeah, here it is. secretary pompeo never talked about the 25th amendment, not even once. sorry, i missed the beginning, a spokesperson for secretary pompeo says that he never had a single conversation about the 25th amendment, not even once. i asked this person, okay, can i quote you by name? can i say a spokesperson xxx said this? no, no, no, just keep it a spokesperson. it was a lie. they knew it was a lie. and they only -- pompeo -- mnuchin hasn't denied anything. pompeo denied it simply because he got a call from mar-a-lago, you know, saying what is going on here. >> all right, the new book is "betrayal: the final act of the trump show". up next, an author moved back to the u.s. and took to the road to investigate what happened to his country since that fateful day of september 11th, 2001. what he found is the focus of his latest book. and we'll talk about that next on "morning joe." st book. and we'll talk about that next on "morning joe. hi susan! honey? 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[cheering] that was awesome. and, the hits won't quit, with peacock premium included at no additional cost. all that entertainment built in. xfinity. a way better way to watch. joining us now, evan osnoss, author of "wild land: the making of america's fury." good morning. great to see you. this spans post 9/11 up to the attack on january 6th. it took years and traveled thousands of miles to tell this story. tell us the backdrop of what you sought to explain with your reporting here. >> in some ways this is the product of spending a decade abroad. in all those years i was overseas, living in egypt, working in iraq, lived in china for a long time, i often found myself in conversation with people living in authoritarian countries and i would be sort of subtly making a case for america, to be honest with you. saying, look, i know we're not perfect, we make a lot of mistakes, but we're fundamentally oriented toward a couple of big ideas, the rule of law, the power of truth and the idea you can have a better shot in life. and i came back to the united states in 2013 and to be perfectly blunt, all of those ideas were in doubt. a child born in 1940 had a 90% chance of outearning his or her parents, a child born at the beginning of this century has less than half of that chance. now, look, there was never a golden age in the sort of simple sense. it was always exclusive to people who were oftentimes people of color and women were left out of this pattern. and yet at the same time we have to acknowledge the ways in which we have fallen away from some of those commitments which had made the united states, what it was in its own eyes, for a long time. i set out and said, look, if i try to understand what changed, i can't go to places that i've never been before. i won't be able to measure the change over time. so i said i'll go to three places where i lived in my life. and begin to try to figure out what has changed and what is durable. how are we living up to some of the story we tell ourselves as a country and how are we falling away from it? >> you know, as you read through your book, it is so important to note that, yes, donald trump's arrival on the political scene officially as a presidential candidate anyway in 2015 marked an important inflexion point. but the sentiments and the division that he raised to the surface were there obviously long before. >> absolutely. right. i was thinking about it today that anthony gonzalez, the ohio republican who said he's not going to run again because as he described donald trump as a cancer on the country, it reminded me that there were precancerous cells on our politics for a long time. if you want to understand how people came to believe in the idea, the lie that in fact there was any fundamental problem with the 2020 election, you got to go back 20 years and look at the way that republican leadership was culturating their voters. there were 30 incidents of actual voter fraud and you heard this repeated over and over again. you get to the birther lie about barack obama and you get to pizzagate and qanon. like a stairway of increasingly lunatic conspiracy theories. the result being that eventually people lost sight of whatever it is that we might have recognized in the past as reliable truth. essentially they departed the plane of reality and you end up with the kind of folks who are planning to rally in defense of who they say was in donald trump's words, persecuted on january 6th. >> hey, evan, it is sam stein here. i would have gone with an escalator as opposed to a stairway, but that's just me. look, i've been thinking about this stuff, first of all, a deeply ambitious book. i've been thinking about this stuff too and the reason i have, one moment that stands out to me, i'm curious what that moment is for you, one moment that stands out to me that symbolizes that escalator, that stairway, where things clearly were going off the rails in retrospect was the debate over the so-called ground zero mosque, which in retrospect looks horrific and people have now apologized for how that was played out. but to me it symbolized the divisions that were really taking hold, politically and society wide. as you were researching this book, is there one moment that you think is underappreciated, that really exposed our divisions and how badly they were? >> yeah, you know, it is a great point, sam, if you think about it, the fear after 9/11 was in its own way a gateway drug to this larger form of divisive ideology for the reason you describe. there were political opportunists in the years afterward who said i'm going to take what say legitimate fear that people have of terrorism and i'm going to use it to incite a broader sense of division, somebody whose name is largely lost to history, tom tancredo, somebody i mention in the book, a republican congressman from colorado, he was one of the people who made that pivot, the move from fear of terrorism to fear of muslims and ultimately to fear of immigration itself. he was somebody who first said, you know, i'm introducing what he called a jihad prevention act, which was lunacy, which meant it was to bar immigrants from bringing sharia law into this country, something that wasn't happening. and eventually he expanded that to the point where he said i'm not going to participate in a debate in which people are broadcasting in spanish. there was this drift over time in which you saw one form of legitimate fear give way to this much broader permission to be xenophobic more broadly and you get an artifact like donald trump who is the product of that. >> mike barnicle has a question for you, evan. >> evan, i want to talk about sid mueller from clarksburg, west virginia. after world war ii and the korean war, there were a lot of sid muellers living on my street and they did okay. sid mueller came back from the war in afghanistan, and he did not do okay. what has happened? >> yeah, thanks for raising it, mike. you know, sid mueller as people will find out in the book is an extraordinary story of a marine who fought in some of the fiercest battles in afghanistan, particularly in a place called sangen, marines will tell you is the site in which the united states lost more marines than any battle since 9/11. and when he was over there, in fact, it was such a desperately difficult fight that the secretary of defense flew over and said to the sydney muellers of the world, if there is anything i can do to help you, call me when you come back. he was falling apart, addicted to opioids pretty soon, there was no system for him to come back to. he came back ambitious, wanted to get back to school, make something of his life. he fell apart. he was clearly in serious trouble, and this guy ended up committing a terrible crime. and he murdered people in the town of clarksburg, west virginia, a place where i started my journalism career a million years ago at a small newspaper there. the damage in the community was tremendous. and when you look at how it was that he slipped through the cracks, you have to look at the failure, at the very top, to actually give people the protects they promised them when they went off to fight in our name. and one thing that stays with me, mike, the idea that only one half of 1% of americans actually fought in the war since 9/11. and the impact of that has been felt much more deeply in rural areas. twice the number of casualties in small towns and cities as there are in big cities. and we're still reckoning with the effects of it. we have to write it down and document it and read about it in order to know what happened. >> there is so much at play here, we just scratched the surface. a really good and important new book "wildland: the making of america's fury." hope you come back and talk more about this. good to see you. still ahead, our next guest wrote that america risks being, quote, the first large modern society to go from fully developed to failing. a detailed look at how we got where we are economically as a nation. best-selling author curt anderson joins us next on "morning joe." hor curt anderson joins us next on "morning joe." launch. um, she's eating the rocket. ♪♪ lunchables! built to be eaten. hi susan! honey? yeah? i respect that. but that cough looks pretty bad... try this robitussin honey. the real honey you love... plus the powerful cough relief you need. mind if i root through your trash? now get powerful relief with robitussin elderberry. ♪♪ ♪♪ president ronald reagan in his first inaugural address famously said, government is not the solution to our problem. government is the problem. it is a decade about which our next guests writes when we were promised in 1980 the wonderful old-fashioned life of bedford falls, we didn't pay close enough attention to the fine print and possible downsides. and 40 years later, here we are in pottersville instead, living in the world actually realized by reaganism, our political economy remade by big business and the wealthy to maximize the wealth and power of big business and the well to do at the expense of everyone else. we were hoodwinked and we hoodwinked ourselves. the author of that passage is back with us once again. best-selling author curt anderson, his latest book is "evil geniuses: the unmaking of america: a recent history." as all this week we take a look at how we got to where we are economically as a nation. and also professor of history, walter isaacson, an associate professor of political science at fordham university, christina greer joins us. great to have you all on board. >> great to have you guys here with us. curt, this is -- we love doing this, obviously. you and i don't agree on everything but i love watching former republicans still love to watch when democrats fight and that's perfect, we have to get him back tomorrow, but just like the differences, obviously, where democrats are economically, that reagan quote reminded me of when i went to the house as this libertarian/conservative/ populist, one of the things that irritated me so much was that, yes, you are right, there were republicans and there were business people that tried since the early 1970s to get government off of their backs. but it is so funny that most of these people, the chamber, these pro business lobbying groups, they weren't such libertarians when, you know, people like me would try to vote down the sugar subsidy, or i remember just catching absolute hell when i tried to end loyalty relief, so big oil wouldn't get federal subsidies for doing what they do anyway. and drill. and you can -- they can go down the list. they always -- they would always grade you well if you voted against welfare benefits for poor single moms, but you would always get punished by the same supposedly libertarian pro business community if you were against -- if you voted against and fought against corporate welfare. i can't use the word this morning. let me just use the abbreviation, so many milton friedman frederick hyatt we're small government champions and government get out of our life, i saw it firsthand from the business community in washington, d.c., from k street, pure bs. >> yeah. well, like you, joe, back then, i remember reading the director of the office of management and budget david stockman's account in real time, in 1980, and william brider's story in "the atlantic monthly" saying he came in as a joe scarborough-esque conservative and was shocked and disgusted that this was all a lie. that it was just about opening up the troth as never before to big business and the rich. and that's what it was about. and admitted that supply side economics and lowering taxes so there will be lots of jobs, the trickle down idea was also just a trojan horse and something that they didn't really believe. yeah, lower taxes for everybody, but all we really care about is lowering taxes for the rich and big business. and the thing about -- when i started doing my research about evil geniuses, i knew, reagan got elected in 1980, i didn't realize until i did this massive amount of research how much change, what a gigantic shift that was. of course, as we spoke about the other day, it was being built up in the '70s, this alternate paradigm, this conservative counterestablishment was sending people like joe scarborough to congress. but really the before and after in the '80s is so stark in so many ways. really as big a change as the '6 0s or the '30s, which is why i call what happened the raw deal, rather than the new deal. it is not just lower taxes and deregulation, it is college becoming more essential and unaffordable. it is all business regulations, about all taxes are bad. let's crush the unions which was done, of course, let's cut minimum wages, let's take fewer and fewer people out of the overtime pay situation. let's take away private pensions, let's make -- all of it, all of that stuff changed in the '80s, and so much of it happened slowly in its effects. taxes were lowered immediately. and it is a big deregulation thing. but not all deregulation is bad as i say in the book. all these other things, all these millions of small, large, sometimes invisible changes took in some cases a generation to show up and produce this incredible inequality, insecurity, immobility that we find ourselves with starting at the end of the century. >> and, walter isaacson, that's what concerns me the most. kurt said people like joe scarborough went to congress post reagan, people like joe scarborough were also glad that tax rates went from the 70s to the 30s. one of my frustrations, though, is if you try to do anything these days, let's say you try to raise the top marginal tax rate from 39% to 42% or 36% to 38%, suddenly every republican gets on the floor and they start calling you a socialist and they start calling you a marxist and start calling you a communist. and, of course, we were so obsessed about cutting regulations because what we heard, what i heard from small business owners in pensacola, florida, but you see, we didn't just focus on regulations. it was this broad brush, and suddenly after 2008 we look back and we go, oh, my god, we cut regulations for the huge corporations and the world economy exploded because of it. it really -- it was this grand sweeping design that really got out of control. >> yeah, i would take it back to kurt, because i think his two books should be read as a box set. his earlier book "fantasy land" and then this book "evil geniuses," also what happens in the 1970s and '80s is that there is this sort of weird conspiracy fantasy that have been an undercurrent since the salem witch trials in early america get combined with and intentionally combined by people who want an economic change for the wealthy and for corporations. and so there is an unholy alliance or they call it a holy alliance, but an unholy alliance between the conspiracy theorists that now evolved into the qanon types and the type of evil geniuses that kurt writes about in his second book. i would love to ask kurt, there is this intertwining of these two things, qanon types and the economic types, and how does this get unwound? >> that's -- you couldn't have put it -- i couldn't have put it better, walter, thank you. they are connected. and you really see one place in which the republican conservative basically saying we're no longer necessarily good with -- committed to facts, committed to factual reality. you see it in '89-'90, when george h.w. bush administration was about to have a massive climate change initiative, right. that was a bipartisan idea. we got to fight this climate change thing, get global warming down. john sununu, as a definite evil genius at that moment in 1989-'90 said nope, we're not doing that. we're going to begin the process and the campaign and the project of casting doubt on the science of climate change. so that was a big step down the slippery slope toward denying reality. but -- and then in the '90s as well and all kinds of other ways in these mad conspiracy ways, things that 30 years earlier the conservatives like william f. buckley and barry goldwater cast out of the mainstream of the right, the john bircher stuff, were allowed in, more and more and more, which came into the mainstream, the republican party, and, again, the charles cokes of the world and the olans and billionaires and the university of chicago libertarians and all the rest didn't believe it, but they used those politically used those exciting falsehoods that were growing in number and adherence in the '90s to get their way. joe said the other day, if you just make a political party around the needs of the rich and big business, you don't have much of a political coalition. you can't really win elections. unless you get these other people who you can convince to vote against their own economic interests to believe all kinds of fantasies that get you elected. and that's really to your point of how these two things have worked together. >> and up next, more from our conversation with best-selling author kurt andersen, as we look at the future of america's economy. that's coming up on "morning joe." that's coming up on "morning joe. plaque psoriasis, the burning, itching. the pain. emerge tremfyant®. with tremfya®, adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis... ...can uncover clearer skin and improve symptoms at 16 weeks. 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. emerge tremfyant® with tremfya®... ask you doctor about tremfya® today. welcome back on this new year's eve morning. now to more of our conversation with best-selling author kurt andersen, as we look toward what's in store for america's economy under the biden administration. >> professor greer, it is so fascinating to watch over the last four years self-described small government conservatives go along for the ride and vote in favor of exploding debts and deficits and go along with tariffs because president trump thinks it is a good hit against china, all these things they said were core to them now completely abandoning those. i suspect they will find themselves again with joe biden in office now talking about adding more money, more aid in this covid relief saying that first plan should just be a down payment, the one they passed a couple of weeks ago. there is going to be more government needed. there is going to be more government brought to bear to the problems in front of us. it will be interesting to see if now these conservatives find their religion again on debts, deficits and the like. >> well, that will be interesting, willie. we have seen the conservatives not only failed to have a moral compass, they failed to have a policy compass as well. i mean, as democrats, we have seen this time and time again. republicans run the country into the ground, and spend, spend, spend and democrats need to raise taxes to strengthen the social safety net and all of a sudden democrats are the ones who like to waste money and throw it out the window. we have some structural issues that are really at the heart of the problem. i mean, kurt referencing this just a minute ago, but, you know, lbj,lbj, my favorite president, spoke to eloquently about, i'm paraphrasing, if you can convince the poorest white man that he's better than the negro, you can pick his pockets all day long. we've seen that time and time again with the republican party convincing poorer members of their factions to vote against their own interests time and time again. i guess my question for kurt, what really struck me, the beginning premise of the book, saying back in the new dealer ra, era, the tide lifted all boats. we know blacks were excluded from so many new deal benefits, that has created the foundation of so much of the wealth inequality that we see amongst black americans when we compare them to whites. can we get just a drop of hope in 2021? how do we bridge this divide when we know that there's not just a 400 year, but policy-wise, a 100 year head start that so many white americans have based on everything from policies in america, from education, to housing, to the environment, to public health, to health care? the list goes on and on. >> it's a great point about the unholy alliance that fdr and the democrats had in the 1930s and until the '60s, really, with southern segregationist democrats, and it was historically a kind of foreshadowing, or history was about to repeat, as the republicans then took up the southern segregationists that the democrats were jettisoned by. you're absolutely right, all boats did not rise, and as you say, certainly in housing and all kinds of other ways, there was a built-in structural racism, absolutely. so during the democratic primaries there was all this tiptoeing around the idea of reparations, for instance, and i do think one of the structural ideas that needs to be on the table, not probably tomorrow, but, you know, as was talked about in the primaries, this incredible, almost ten to one ratio of household wealth among white people to among black people. and that hasn't improved with all the progress of civil rights. how do you improve that? i don't think you do it -- that's a thing that probably can't be done incrementally. and by the way, equalizing that doesn't need to be all that crazily expensive. so i would say that's one of the things that ought to be on the table. another thing i wanted to talk about, maybe if anybody else has anything to say, is the wall street part of this, which also, for folks in the 1980s, was so important in changing the system, changing who was supposed to do better in the american economic system, from main street to wall street. and the degree to which before the '80s wall street did not run our economic system, and after the '80s they really have. and the stock market and the dow became the all-encompassing metric for how things were doing. and of course, you know, a tiny fraction of americans own a vast majority of stock, even though half of us own stock in some fashion, 84% of the stock is owned by a tiny fraction of people. that's the other big thing, along with unions being crushed and everything else that happened in the '80s to make america more unfair. >> we need to wrap this up, but, really, i want to bring up one more issue with you, kurt, really quickly. i talked about corporate welfare and how the supposed libertarians love small government and want government off their backs until they get corporate welfare. i will say charles koch, some of the things he's done, he's separate from a lot of those people on k street, especially in another area that really irritates me, the military industrial complex. of course charles, some would accuse him of being an isolationist. but you look at the military industrial complex, i mean, eisenhower was right, when i first got to capitol hill, the judiciary committee, we would debate and i would say, okay, yeah, the democrats are going to say this, the republicans are going to say this. but when it came to the b-2 bomber or f-22 programmer, some new massive program, programs the pentagon didn't even want, there would be some programs the pentagon would say we don't need it, and suddenly i would be like, wait a second, and i would look and i couldn't match it up. after about a week, i would go, oh, that's the representative from lockheed martin, from general dynamics. you talk about waste. i mean, unbelievable waste at the pentagon. and it's these so-called small government conservatives that are at the forefront of that since the day eisenhauer left office. >> well, absolutely. and of course in terms of, you know, government, oh, i don't like government, the classic thing over the last ten years is don't let government take my medicare from me. people don't understand, or they do understand in the case of your lobbyists, how much government does for them. ♪ come down to the city ♪ in an office we know as "oval," a new-generation president faced down an imminent threat of nuclear war. on a bridge in selma, alabama, the preacher of his time marched us straight to passing voting rights for every american. at a gate in west berlin, a late-generation american president demanded an enemy superpower tear down a wall and liberate a continent. american generations answering the call of their time with american ideals. freedom. liberty. justice. for today's generation of leaders, the call has come again to protect our freedom to vote, to fortify our democracy by passing the freedom to vote act and the john lewis voting rights act because america - john lewis: we are not going back, we are going forward. i've lost count of how many asthma attacks i've had. john lewis: we are not going back, 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. welcome to silversneakers. are you ready to get moving? (throws punch) our new virtual classes were designed for you and millions of seniors like you. you can now choose from thousands of live virtual classes every week. get moving wherever you have an internet connection. and when you're ready, enjoy access to thousands of locations nationwide. with silversneakers, you're free to move. enroll today at no additional cost by visiting getsilversneakers dot com. ♪ it wasn't me by shaggy ♪ you're never responsible for unauthorized purchases on your discover card. age is just a number. and mine's unlisted. try boost® high protein with 20 grams of protein for muscle health. versus 16 grams in ensure high protein. boost® high protein also has key nutrients for immune support. boost® high protein. ♪ ♪ ♪ welcome back to "morning joe" on this new year's eve morning. this hour we continue to bring you some of our most memorable interviews and conversations from the past few months. up first this hour, as the investigation into the events at the u.s. capitol on january the 6th continue, our next guest shared his reporting on how some of donald trump's own critics are helping him push one of his biggest lies. >> let's bring in the staff writer at "the atlantic," david fromm. his latest article is entitled "it wasn't a hoax, people with scant illusions about trump are volunteering to help him execute one of his big lies". david in your article you write in part, the steele dossier undertook to answer the question what the hell is going on with trump and russia. it was to silence that question that the outgoing trump administration appointed a special counsel of its own to investigate its investigators. there are three indictments, all for lying to the fbi about various aspects of the steele dossier. none of these indictments vindicate's trump's claims in any way. it remains fact that russian hackers and spies helped his campaign. it remains fact that the trump campaign welcomed the help. it remains fact that trump and those around him lied and lied and lied again about their connections to russia. anti-trump journalists want to use the steele controversy to score points off politicians and media institutions that they dislike, but if you choose as a journalist or a consumer of journalism to focus on smaller issues, you need to retain your perspective about what is bigger and what is smaller. so by all means, follow the trail on steele, be alert to how the twists of the trail block your view of the surrounding landscape. otherwise, you may discover too late that you have also been misdirected and misled, and that in setting out to explore a small truth you have become a participant in the selling of a greater lie, and that, joe, also seems like how democracy dies. >> david, it's fascinating that everybody that is a trump apologist, the anti anti-trumpers are using the steele to sayier to inflate everything involving russia, saying it was all a hoax. this is coming from people i read regularly and respect, like andrew sullivan who is suggesting it's all a hoax and stupid people run around saying the words russian hoax, russian hoax, as if it completely obliterates everything donald trump and his campaign did during the 2016 campaign, which by the way, the republican intel committee took apart bit by bit, and considered it a threat to america. >> part of the sickness of what the country has been through in the trump years was his ability to change our mind about what was wrong. so there are people, and as you say many of them are people who have done stalwart work in exposing many of donald trump's other attacks on democracy. it's now been sort of normalized. of course the russians spied on the hillary clinton campaign in the years of 2016, dumped all of that stuff expressly to help donald trump. we know all of that, that has been established by the intelligence committee. those are facts. but that's not a big deal. unless there's an exchange of letters between trump and putin, unless you can show that they had a handshake deal. unless you've got the signature in blood, you don't have anything. and we have everything. we have everything we need to show one of the largest scandals in american history and there's now retrospective denial that is coming from people who want to score points off hillary clinton and media institutions for their own reasons. >> they want to attack media institutions, it's their way to say, see, they're wrong about this, too, they're wrong about everything. just for people at home that have been reading this anti anti-trump disinformation, i want to read from marco rubio's senate intel committee report, just a couple of things here. i'm going to start with something i have and then we'll put up a full screen. taken as a whole. man fort's high level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the russian intelligence services represented a grave counterintelligence threat. that's the republican senate intel committee chaired by marco rubio, saying manafort's position on the trump campaign and the back and forth with individuals closely affiliated with russian intelligence services represented a, quote, grave intelligence threat to the united states of america. here's some more light reading. the committee found that russian president putin ordered russia to hack computer networks in accounts affiliated with the democratic party and leak information damaging to hillary clinton and her campaign for president. moscow's intent was to harm the clinton campaign, tarnish an expected clinton presidential administration and help trump's campaign, after trump became the presumptive republican nominee, and undermine the u.s. democratic process, so said marco rubio's senate intel committee run by republicans. the man who kicked off the federal investigation into the 2016 trump campaign, by the way, not steele, but the man who actually kicked it off, the committee found that papadopoulos lis likely learned about the russian measures campaign as early as april 2016 from an academic with long-standing russian ties, well before any public awareness of the russian effort. the committee also found, the republican committee found papadopoulos lis communicated the information that he learned to at least two separate foreign governments. the committee could not determine if papadopoulos informed anyone in the trump campaign with any of the information, though the committee finds it plausible he did not do so. the meeting with russians offering dirt on hillary clinton, this is what the intel committee, the republican intel committee with marco rubio as a chairman wrote, the committee assesses that at least two participants in the june 9th, 2016 meeting had significant connections to the russian government, including the russian intelligence services. russia and the trump campaign's communications with wiki leaks, they sought to obtain advanced information about wiki leak's planned releases through roger stone at their direction. stone took action to gain inside knowledge for the campaign and shared the purported knowledge directly with trump and senior campaign officials on multiple occasions, so said the republican senate intel committee. the trump campaign publicly undermined the at attribution of the leak campaign to russia and was indifferent as to whether it was wikileaks and they were furthering a russian interference effort, so sayeth the republican senate intel committee report on russian threats to american democracy. so, david, in the words of aristotle, anybody suggesting that this russian thing was a hoax, they're just spreading horse [ bleep ]. that's all they're doing. >> i want to rewind the tape of where you put the emphasis. when you said grave counterintelligence threat, you put the emphasis on grave. the emphasis also needs to be on the word counterintelligence. one of the things that did go wrong, and i wrote this article in 2017 and i've said it probably 100 tiles, maybe 200 times on television over 2017, 2018, 2019, americans were led to expect there would be criminal charges, that there would be a criminal case. and i spent three years warning that's not going to be so. you're not going to be able to formulate the elements of crimes here. it's a counterintelligence threat, it's a security threat, it's a loyalty threat, it is not illegal for an american businessman to do business with shady russian characters. it's not illegal for him to owe them money or hope for a giant payday if he does what they want. none of those things are crimes. and it's not a crime to talk to other people about it, it doesn't become a conspiracy because you bring other people into it. what we needed all along to be looking for was the question, why did russia do this extraordinary thing in 2016? russia has an economy the size of italy. everybody assumed that hillary clinton would probably win. what a terrible risk they ran in 2016 to help someone who was probably going to lose. why would they do that? why did they care so much? that was the mystery. and the answer was not going to be found by prosecuting crimes. the answer is going to be found through counterintelligence. >> a grave threat, by the way. a grave counterintelligence threat. >> joe wants to emphasize grave. i think aristotle wanted to emphasize horse [ bleep ]. so, david, i want to try to tie up the thread. one of the things that people can do is look at the mueller report, which is devastating to donald trump, even though his no collusion, no obstruction mantra and the work of bill barr undermined that report, if you go back and look at the cooperation with russia, not collusion, always a fake term, it makes the point that you're making to great effect in your piece. but here's the way i want to tie these two things up. we now live in this world where, as you say, people have basically completely distorted the history and i ask you as we go forward, whether you have the fear that i have, which is that the 1/6 commission is going to have the same thing happen to it. the trump people are going to run out the clock, we're not going to get to a conclusive answer at the end of next year, republicans take control of the house, the committee ends and we then live in a twilight zone going forward where 1/6 has the same thing done to it that trump's relationship with russia has done to it, which is it's filtered through a partisan lens and we can't see the forest for the trees because this committee has not moved fast enough. >> there's another thing that will happen with 1/6 and i've been warning about this a lot, it will go looking for crimes. that's not what you need to know. if i could make one reform to the mainstream media, stop booking former federal prosecutors to talk about these issues. they put it into the box, they give you -- it's fascinating to hear about the legalities of it, but we want to know what happened, why did it happen. lots of things are wrong that are not criminal. the united states has draconian punishments for crimes and it often makes it very difficult to prove a crime. we don't need to send people to prison. we need to know what happened and why. we need an informed democracy. so stop thinking about this through the criminal justice lens and think about it through threats to democracy lens and just seek knowledge, not punishment. >> and, mika, david is so right. i've heard people, enough people coming on the show saying so-and-so is going to go to jail for this or go to jail for that. that's why it's so important seeing what the republican senate intel committee said. every time somebody says russian hoax and what a grave threat this was. and another thing, too, i want to follow up with what john just said. if you really believe it's a russian hoax, because i have people that also aren't taking vaccines and also believe that donald trump won the election, they'll say, what do you think about the russian hoax. i say, listen, i'm not going to do your work for you. all you have to do the read the mueller report. i'm not exactly sure where mueller didn't tie that thing up better than he did. it was really a disaster in presentation. but if you read -- everybody was talking about the ten obstruction of justice articles. if you really read that report, the really scary part for american democracy was the part on russia. if you read it and you aren't completely biased, it will scare the hell out of you still about what was going on in american presidential campaign. but idiots run around on the journal editorial page and they'll write russian hoax. just please stop embarrassing yourself. read rubio's report. stop humiliating yourself. read rubio's report, read the mueller report, okay. stop playing to the lowest common denominator. when a democrat does this, i'm going to tell you to be tough on them, too. >> okay, the new piece for "the atlantic" is entitled "it wasn't a hoax, people with scant illusions about trump are volunteering to help him execute one of his big lies". david fromm, thank you. up next, the terrifying future of the american right, columnist david brooks on what he saw at a recent national conservatism conference. we'll talk about that when "morning joe" returns. s. s prettb . try this robitussin honey. the real honey you love... plus the powerful cough relief you need. mind if i root through your trash? now get powerful relief with robitussin elderberry. johnson & johnson is the world's largest healthcare company. building a future where cancers can be cured. strokes can be reversed. joints can be 3-d printed. and there isn't one definition of what well feels like. there are millions. we're using our world to make your world a world of well. find your rhythm. your happy place. find your breaking point. then break it. every emergen-c gives you a potent blend of nutrients so you can emerge your best with emergen-c. when you have 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from the "washington post," that allies of donald trump are trying to remove some of the guardrails that prevented him from overturning the 2020 election. now, according to the post, trump and his supporters are pushing a plan to place loyalists in key election posts from poll watchers and precinct judges, to county clerks and state attorneys general. the trump supporters seeking office claim they just want to secure the system. the post says a spokesperson for the former president did not respond to a request for comment. joe? >> let's bring in columnist from "the new york times" and contributing writer at "the atlantic," david brooks. his latest piece is titled "the terrifying future of the american right". david, terrifying look into the future. explain. >> well, terrifying for me. it was a conference in orlando in november called the national conservatism conference and it was some of the bright young things who populate the building behind me, young heritage foundation staff, young journalist and senator cruz, marco rubio, and the basic view was people in my generation were naive. we thought that left and right sort of wanted the best for the country and just disagreed on how to get there, and that is viewed as just passe now. this conference kept saying the left wants to destroy us, they despise america, they hate america. it was sort of an apocalyptic olympiad and what you saw was the tone of the republican party is sort of the intellectual wing of trumpism, which is they're out to get us, they control everything and we need to fight back using state power, and that's not something i ever heard on the conservative side of things in the years i've been sort of covering american conservatism. >> david, it's a question that's been asked quite a bit over the last five or six years, but where have the bush, reagan, mitt romney republicans landed in this era? someone, for example, like joe who left the party, what are they left with, when all of the power and influence seems to come from trumpism? >> they're fighting. if you go to the american enterprise institute, which is the think tank, there are people who say this is not the future of the republican party. they take on board some of the critiques they make, which is we have a conglomeration of big tech corporations and big media and there's a rebellion against that elite. they take that on board and their argument is that trump-ians, they're good at fighting the culture war, they have no positive agenda. so if you take sort of what would have been the folks in the bush admission, they've moved to the right, a little more against free trade, a little less against foreign intervention, but want to use state power in much smaller ways, but to help the working class. they've come to acknowledge it's a working class party, but they're not as apocalyptic in tone or as hysterical about immigration and not as much culture warriors as what you would call the trump-ians. >> david. call me passe, i'm very passe. still in the republican party, but still trying to find a place to land, because it is not with trumpism. one thing that we've seen, especially since the january 6th insurrection, is that republican state parties especially are drilling down into local races, they're drilling down into operations as far as election workers. i've heard things like steve bannon has targeted the top 20 clerks in the five states in which president trump lost to actually get them elected into positions. can you talk about the need for democrats to match this and to really, instead of talking a lot of times at 20,000 feet, to get down into the trenches to keep us a democracy? >> even mainstream republicans. after i went to this national conservatism conference, i went to oklahoma, i went out to west texas, i was with trump people, and they were republicans, but they were not this brand. they were not steve bannon. and when i described to them what i had just heard or what steve bannon might stand for, they looked at me like i was on mars. they said, no, we're a business party, we're a free market party. that's still their republican party. but as we've seen again and again in history, go back to the russian revolution, you know, a small vanguard that's really motivated that thinks about this stuff 24 hours a day can have immense power and we happen to be in an age where majorities don't rule right now, angry minorities. it's not only true in america, it's true across the western world. you're seeing people of this sort in france, sort of the tucker carlson of france is about to run for president and these people are on the move because of the information age. there's just a lot of resentment against what's perceived as the corporate cultural elite. >> good morning, jonathan lemire. i wanted to pick up on something you heard a minute ago about culture wars. it seems, as a republican strategist put to me recently, the ethos own the lips. it's not about policy, ideas for constituents, it's about the gotchas, and i wanted to get your thoughts on what you heard. and we've heard from senator josh hawley on things like manhood, big bird, whatever it might be. what is the principle on the culture wars you heard? >> it's based on the idea that there's a culture in sort of coastal cities that is not the real american culture and it's trying to take away church, manhood. donald trump doesn't have to talk about manhood. hawley is trying to fake it so he has to talk about it. but he understands the issues that resonate. and i think what was interesting to me was, you know, the culture wars, trump was a culture war, not a policy president. what was interesting to me about what's emerging on the right, and this is true of rubio, is we need to move beyond the culture wars. the argument is we on the right don't control the media, the universities, the corporations, we only have a shot at controlling the state and we have to use state power to enforce some sort of basic american rule and that's why there's such great fervor or the authoritarian who uses state power to ban the media and transgender in schools and other things. what struck me is they want to move beyond the culture war things, which they can win, to actually using government, which is almost -- you couldn't say a lot of this stuff on the republican party ten years ago, but now it's very sayable by people like marco rubio who say corporations are the enemy and we need to break them up, regulate them. that's just a different republican party than a lot of us are used to. >> david, good morning. great to see you. >> good to see you. >> let me ask you this basic question. what you heard, would you describe it as fundamentally illiberal. >> some of the people are blatantly illiberal. they say given the threat, we can't afford institutions. they're not shy about that. they're saying liberalism has broken down. there's a whole book on the idea that liberalism is now a failure. there are other people who say, no, we still need liberal institutions and we still need to rely on the state and the normal democratic elections and liberal institutions, and so the effort of this conference was to marry the people who said liberalism is done to those who say i'm liberal, but i'm again the left, and so there's a debate about that. but it's striking to me how we were raised with the idea of liberal democracy, that's our system. that's what won the cold war, that's what won the world war ii and that's now very much an open question across the western world. >> we grew up believing in liberal democracy and as conservatives we grew up believing in small government, et cetera, et cetera. but you're right, you now have illiberal forces claiming to be conservative who want to use state power. it's laughable how governors like desantis and abbott declare themselves to be conservatives, and yet they're telling businesses what they cannot do to keep themselves safe. we see that time and again. i do want you, if you could for us, underline the point you made before. you can't say all republicans are this or all trump supporters are that, because i can tell you a lot of the trump people in my neighborhood, people who voted for trump, you start talking about it, and we don't talk politics much, but a lot of times if trump says something crazy, they'll see me walking around the block and they'll laugh and they'll roll their eyes, going, good lord, did you see what he said today. and it wasn't celebratory. it was kind of like we can't wait until we can vote for desantis or vote for somebody else. you're right, there are a lot of people that still are voting for trump or voting for republicans because they're pro-business, because they still believe in free trade, they still believe in small government. it's not out there in the national press, but democrats should not underestimate that force out there as well. >> yeah, that's for sure. because of covid i didn't get a chance to do much reporting for a year and a half and now i'm out in the states and it's so refreshing, because you find exactly what you just described, joe. you find people who are republicans for the traditional reasons. i was in southern virginia during the governor's race and people are angry about how their kids are treated, they don't want their kids learning that america is a bad country. and they're not hyped up on whatever steve bannon is smoking, and they're out there. the question is, do they have institutional power, do they have voice, are republican senators who are running for office afraid of them? and one of the guys at the conference, j.d. vans, somebody people will know from the book and movie, and he's figured out where is the party and he's gone full trump. and so until the majority can make the j.d. vans's of the world think you've got to be with us, not with steve bannon, then it's an impotent majority. >> his book is available. thank you very much. up next, staff writer for the atlantic tackles one of the year's most important pieces and we'll show you our conversation with her next on "morning joe." . my nunormal? fewer asthma attacks with nucala. a once-monthly add-on injection for severe eosinophilic asthma. nucala reduces eosinophils, a key cause of severe asthma. nucala is 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. welcome back. now to our discussion with staff writer for "the atlantic," ann applebaum who wrote about wokeness, cancel culture. >> we're going to turn to a piece in the current issue of "the atlantic" that should be on everyone's must-read list. it's by staff writer at the atlantic, ann applebaum. also with us is prize winning columnist and associate editor of the "washington post" and msnbc political analyst, eugene anderson. the new piece is entitled "the new puritans" and it discusses the rise of mob justice in today's culture and its long-term effects, and you write in part, this, the modern online public's fear, a place of rapid conclusions, rigid idealogical prisms and arguments of 280 characters favors neither nuance nor ambiguity. but the online sphere has come to dominate many culture institutions, universities, museums. they sometimes impose the equivalent of a lifetime scarlet letter on people who have not been accused of anything remotely resembling a crime. instead of courts, they use secretive bureaucracies. instead of hearing evidence and witnesses, they make judgments behind closed doors. this is a story of moral panic, of cultural institutions policing or purifying themselves in the face of disapproving crowds. the crowds are no longer literal, as they once were in salem, but rather online mobs organized by a twitter, facebook, or sometimes internal company slack channels. >> and, by the way, the victims of this mob justice are certainly not confined to the right. so many are also on the left, whether media or in academic circles, wherever it is. and it was an eye-opening piece. years ago, probably about a decade ago, i started noticing this moral self-righteousness that had been associated with the far right, popping up in the far left. and i talked about how some of the things i was seeing from the far left, starting about a decade ago, reminded me of when i went to my grand mom's house and she would have on the ptl club and i was watching jim and tammy faye baker. you go back to the puritans. explain. >> as you know, i've written quite a bit about illiberalism on the right and this piece was an attempt to understand a different phenomenon, which is liberalism inside cultural institutions, which sometimes comes from what you could call the left or what you could call, you know, a new group of young people trying to think differently. but what it reminds me of is not so much institutions in the past. you know, when governments tried to impose a set of ideas or created laws or instituted censorship. what it looks like and feels like, and i talked to people on various sides of the argument, what it feels like is a kind of massive, intense form of social conformism, and the book that i wound up re-reading in order to understand it was the book "the scarlet letter". it's an american classic, many of you probably read it in school, and it describes how a small town gangs up on a woman who has been accused of adultery, makes her wear a scarlet letter, ostracizes her and kicks her out of the community, even though as it turns out in if course of the book, other people are guilty, many know she's completely innocent, many other people in the town have committed sins. but they identify her as the one who deserves punishment. this is what i think it feels like to people who wienld up on the wrong side of one of these arguments. they are ostracized, they lose their jobs, sometimes they lose their livelihoods, sometimes they lose all their friends. and often, as in the passages that you read out, after procedures that are unclear or anonymous or conducted behind closed doors, sometimes they understand very little about it. and that feels to me, you know, deeply unfair. it's something coming out of america's deep past and ending it is going to require that we begin to think differently about how we judge people, and in particular how we rely or learn to live with these social media mobs that sometimes attack people. >> and, mika, ann in the piece talks about how social codes are changing and how many of the people accused obviously did things that we should find abhorrent, at the same time obviously you have to sort through these accusations, and actually apply some due process and fairness to it. >> well, that's what i wanted to ask ann, if you can describe the people that you spoke to for this piece that is incredibly thoughtful, and i do think everybody should read it. what is the description of who these people are and would any of them have wanted to share their names? >> so i did talk to a range of people. some people did share their names. many of them did not, either because they fear, once again, being attacked online, or because they're involved in complicated legal issues or lawsuits with their institutions. they range a lot, actually. some of them are journalists, some of them were people in academia, some people were in foundations, and i talked to people who were on both sides of this. i talked to some people who were victims, who described how their friends and contacts and professional life disappeared overnight, and i also talked to some administrators who have had to deal with these issues and have also found them difficult and very hard to work through. i mean, one of the things i found was that usually these stories are really complicated. you can't summarize them in one sentence. and there are a lot of other issues involved, you know, jealousy or competition or people trying to get back at other people. this is also, by the way, typical of very conformist societies, where people are attacked for all kinds of reasons. and i also found that a lot of them are people who are what we would use the term perhaps difficult or sometimes gregarious, people who stood out in some way. they were people sometimes who bothered other people, they sometimes demanded a lot of their students or colleagues. there was something about them that often created some kind of dissencion around them. and usually, again, the ostensible reason, the thing they're accused of, is not usually the whole story and the whole stories are very complicated. >> gene robinson is with us and has a question. gene? >> i guess my question is, is this a qualitatively different process from what's always happened? is this new because of social media and the speed and volume of condemnation that comes, or is it the fact that every generation defines it's values and that the younger generation, whatever that generation happens to be at the time, tends to win those battles because it lives longer? and so whenever i hear people our age talking about these kids today and how politically correct they are and this and that, i keep thinking that, well, you know, in 30, 40 years we're not going to be around, they're going to be around, they're going to win the argument. isn't that the case? >> first of all, i do think that the speed of social media and the nature of these online mobs is different from anything that we've had before, and second of all, i worry that people in that generation, younger people, are just as much the victims of this as people our age. it's not confined to one age group. i mean, there is some generational conflict here, but that's not the only thing happening. and the concern is not that their values are different from minor something like that. the concern is that the atmosphere of intellectual life in a lot of institutions is frozen. people are afraid to say things. they're afraid to publish things. they don't talk to one another. there's topics that can't be brought up. one yale professor told me about an incident from history that he used to discuss with his students that he doesn't discuss anymore because he's afraid it will offend them. that means that we have universities, we have schools, we have other institutions where things that actually happened, difficult subjects aren't dealt with. and that does bode ill for the rest of us and it's worth discussing and confronting honestly. >> we have more of this conversation with "the atlantic's" anne applebaum straight ahead on "morning joe." when you have xfinity, you have entertainment built in. which is kind of nice. 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[cheering] that was awesome. and, the hits won't quit, with peacock premium included at no additional cost. all that entertainment built in. xfinity. a way better way to watch. mika and i decided to do something different this summer and actually talk to people, invite friends over to dinner. and i can't tell you, every dinner discussion somehow always got back to this. >> it's true. >> and most of the people that were talking about it, surprisingly enough, were left of center people who were going to take their kids out of new york city schools, who were left of center parents who had sent their kids to boarding schools, left of center parents who sent their kids to the best schools. they're all taking their kids out of these schools. but i was thinking that this was just an age issue and thinking, like gene, maybe we're just old and this is the future. and then mika and i had some college students visiting with parents, the most frightening thing i heard came from them. you know what they said, walter? we don't talk in class anymore. we don't have public discussions anymore. if you say one wrong thing, you're lit up on social media and your social life at school is over. and we heard this time and again. it made me sick, because for those who went to college when we went to college, it's about saying stupid things in class, about getting it terribly wrong, and about getting your pre-existing prejudices and getting your idiotic ideas out on the table, having it discussed, and you growing as a person. that is not happening now at so many colleges, because students are scared to death to talk, go up on social media and be canceled. what do we do about that? >> you know, at tulane, we talk about that all the time. i have a class that i'm teaching now, american history through the law, and like anne applebaum, i start with the salem witch trials, hawthorne and then the trial of ann hutchinson, people who were pushed out because of cancel culture back then, and i try to make sure, i say in the very first class, there are 75 people in the say let's talk about cancel culture. let's be up front about this. and i have found -- now this is down here at tulane -- i have found that students are very much pushing back in the direction saying we want to speak out, we don't want to be afraid and i say this class is a safe zone. you're free to say whatever the you want, and we will respect what everybody says. i try to draw out conservative voices, other voices, but make it a civil dialogue. i, perhaps i am overly optimistic, but because of the backlash against cancel culture, i see things swinging in my class that they want to be up front, open, talk about it and not allow it to stop them from the tough american history cases. running the things my students talk about and three or four times in her piece anne said this has been a really bad thing. but like all hurricanes it has a silver lining and it has corrected some of the toxic culture that used to exist when people got hit upon in universities or i would go to the new orleans athletic club and hear people talking a certain way. so i wanted anne to talk about that correction that has been good because of this. >> yes, i mean, it's hard to say what this is. my piece is more narrowly about the affects on people who lost their jobs and livelihoods. yes, there are cultural changes that have been hugely positive, women who feel more comfortable speaking and moving around universities and other institutions. there's a more open discussion of race. there are topics that were left out in the past that have been brought in. we're seeing a cultural change that has good and bad sides. my objection is not to the cultural change. my objection is to the way people who are caught up by it or by a version of it are unfairly punished or unjustly punished or mysteriously punished by things they often don't understand. so it's not an objection to everything that's happening in the culture and the piece is not about an attack on wokeness or it's not a woke versus anti-woke argument. it's really about thinking about, okay, we have these cultural changes. how do we cope with them? how do we make sure that people are treated fairly in light of the speed of judgment that you can now -- that is now common nowadays? >> and anne has obviously spent the last five years writing about ill liberalism on the right, in poland and hungary, across the world, a look at illiberalism by some on the left. gene robinson, let's talk about the balancing act. i'm sure that you've seen examples of this wokeness, this cancel culture that doesn't seem fair, that anne is writing about, that we hear about so much. at the same time it's a balancing act, isn't it? we have had not decades but centuries of racism, of sexism, even the past -- my gosh, even the past ten years when you look at advances women have made on corporate boards, in politics not only in america but across the world, things are changing dramatically, the social codes do need to change dramatically. we need, as i said earlier today, to keep stumbling toward the light. the question is how do we balance it? how do we make sure, first of all, that we don't have mob justice from the left but there isn't an overcorrection of this and we suddenly have people saying, oh, we can never talk about slavery. oh, we can never talk about reconstruction. oh, we can never talk about jim crow laws, which some people are actually saying out there. >> yeah, and we need to talk about all this stuff and absolutely we need to talk about history and we need to do so frankly. and if there are places we can't do that, then that's wrong. but i think in the broad -- in terms of the broad sweep of history, if we overcorrect toward, you know, political correctness in terms of racism and sexism, if the way we talk about lgbt community, for example, things like that, if we overcorrect a bit, i think that's okay. what i think is really different now, as anne said, and i think this and i don't have an answer for it, the consequences. the fact that this thing called social media, that instantly connects us and that can -- we just don't have our arms around all the ways this technical advance has affected our lives. maybe not changed things fundamentally but sped them up and intensified them and, you know, we're not going to solve that this morning, but i think that's one of the big things that's different now from in the past. social media, it's a beast that we've created. we created a frankenstein. ein. . now, she can have her cake and eat it too. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? ♪♪ ♪♪ snacking can mean that pieces get stuck under mike's denture. but super poligrip gives him a tight seal. ♪♪ to help block out food particles. so he can enjoy the game. super poligrip. ♪ call on your angels ♪ good morning and welcome to a special edition of "morning joe." we're on tape for this final day of 2021, and we're hoping that you're having a great holiday season and hope you'll enjoy the great conversations and interviews we've prepared for you this morning. let's dive right in. few documentaries ever generate the tidal wave of hype months before they're release that had this next one did. but this year one high-profile film did just that. it didn't disappoint. peter jackson's epic "the beatles get back" is a six-hour masterful journey that will capture the hearts and minds of even the most casual beatles fans. these days there's another mccartney making headlines. i recently spoke with photographer, author and vegan chef mary mccartney. and we had a wide-ranging conversation about her fantastic new show on discovery plus, meatless mondays, and we talked a little bit about her famous dad. paul mccartney is back in the spotlight thanks to a new docu-series and this incredible book. he's not the only mccartney taking over television screens. the daughter of beatles legend mary mccartney is back with season two of her own series on discovery plus, mary serves it up and the author, chef and photographer joins us now. let me just say a massive fan of your father, so i apologize -- >> i am, too. >> for the billions and billions of fans who have made your life more difficult through the years. but, also a big fan of yours. >> thank you. >> can we talk first about instagram and your photography? >> yes. >> we grew up seeing your mom's photography, and i just think it's so cool. >> thank you. >> that legacy lives on through you. >> i love instagram because it is instant, so a great way of communicating with people. i love the way you can sort of stay in touch with people globally. >> so talk about your portraits. >> talking about my mom, i grew up watching her take photographs. i thought everybody took pictures so i never thought to do it as a career. one day i was looking at one of my best friend's holiday pictures and they were awful. and i said, maybe i can actually -- not everyone can do this. i phoned my mom, i'm going to do it. i'm going to make the leap and become a professional photograph. it's quite challenging. when you pick up a camera -- you guys are so comfortable here, but if i pick up a camera, it changes the atmosphere. what i love is collaborating, putting someone at ease, a lot like the cooking show, the same sensibility, cooking for someone, making them happy photographing them, my stylist to not go in and overpower. i love being invited into people's homes and taking pictures of them. i love that you touched on the lyrics. >> i kind of love as i've grown up and collaborate more together. >> what's so cool about the lyrics book is your dad is always -- and i can't imagine being yanked at like that throughout your entire life and asking questions. you can tell, okay, i've answered this 8 billion times. >> no, no. >> but here's the lyrics. >> oh, the lyrics are not like that. >> what happened when the meteor fell on your house? >> the impersonation. >> it's really scary, i've been listening to it my whole life. in this book he talks about his dear dad and his mom who you're named after and it really is extraordinarily revealing. >> it's very honest. it's honest and intimate and he's a guest on one of the episodes of the show. i do my celebration meal for him. >> well, of course i know because we watch your show. >> so that's really cute because going back to what you're saying about the lyrics, if we go back to i made yorkshire puddingpudd gravy, roast potatoes, everything, but then i think you call them popovers. they're yorkshire puddings, and so his mom would always serving them as a dessert. we have them with gravy with the main meal. i always hold back one yorkshire pudding. >> i'm excited about your recipes because they're vegan and if you're experimenting and want to eat less meat it's hard to get started and having good recipes can be such a help. i'm fascinated, your sister is one of my favorite designers, though i don't have much of her work but i admire her, and she also does not use any animal skin and you are also a committed vegan. what is it about how you were raised that gave you such an awareness of animal welfare? >> well, we were brought up as a vegetarian family, and it wasn't rammed down our throats. it was something we enjoyed. when mom and dad sat down, kids -- mom particularly, didn't want to cook meat anymore but mom and dad made the decision together and said we're not going to have meat in the house anymore. as a family we talked about food, we thought about how something gets to your plate. we grew up enjoying it. when i did the cooking show, as you say, people do meat free monday or want to reduce their carbon foot print or for ethical reasons. i haven't cooked this way, what do i do? i grew up and sustained it because i genuinely enjoyed it. stella takes it into her fashion. it's very much ingrained in our family ethos. i'm proud of mom and dad that they didn't make it. that makes it more kind of genuine and less sort of -- i never want to be that preachy person you can't eat what you want. >> it's obviously the new season starts out, oprah winfrey, reese witherspoon, significant guests. how do you decide what you want to cook with them? how does that collaboration come about and how have you found people who perhaps have not been vegan? >> well, oprah and rece aren't vegan and a lot of my friends aren't. if i'm cooking for you i'll get a feeling of the flavors that you like, have you in mind, imagine you coming over to my place and then i'll sort of just think of flavors for you. so with oprah it was about entertaining and i was imagining her inviting friends around in a bit of a cocktail party, so bite-sized things. but reese witherspoon had messaged me saying i want to learn a family-style meal that i can put down on the table like a big pasta dish. i think of that person and get inspired by them. >> sounds like an invitation. >> it is an invitation. your dad's episode, the first of the second season, he actually says his dream, the macarena. >> macarita. a margarita with a twist. >> you get the shot, okay, that's great. but then another orange liquor and then another. then he tells people only drink wine. you've had more than one, right? >> it's one and two if you're eating with it is the right amount but no more than that. it packs a punch but it's so good. what is really sweet with the show, because i said to him, do you want to come on. let me think about it. when i did it, i -- we set it up like at home, the lighting is soft and the meal, he tests all the things i'm making for our christmas dinner. and then as we do at home he's making the cocktail kind of while i'm finishing off cooking. it's chilled because all of it's make ahead so i'm just heating it all up. i've made it before. >> nice, perfect for entertaining. >> the show is full of shortcuts and make ahead. because i want to hang out with people. >> because when you have a dinner party you don't want to be in the kitchen finishing up. you want to have your cocktail and hang out. >> jonathan and i hate when we're in the kitchen and everybody is hanging around. >> we would get you working in the kitchen. it's a group collaboration. >> i did want to talk about the atmosphere. >> yeah. >> it really was such a home atmosphere and your dad, you almost forget for a second that he's like, you know, our century's mozart. he's just your proud dad and it's so cute. the whole thing has a very mellow, homie feel. >> did you get that feeling of the proud dad? >> especially at the end when he walked out, okay, i'm done here. your plan ahead, though, it's like a brilliant and then you put it in the freezer. >> you know what was sweet, going back to what you're saying, we set it up -- i want people to enjoy any food experience so whether i cook for you, i'm feeding you. we made the setting so that dad literally, we were chatting and cooking, and then i would start talking to the camera. he forgot that we were on the set, and i was like, it was so cute, and he started talking to the camera, yeah, mission accomplished. >> the only time there was a problem was when your dad had to actually -- wait. my wife always goes -- >> that's what he does. >> and so mary gives -- and it's like -- do i have to do this? >> beautiful glass blown and so he's like -- and insaid to them this is going to be a problem because he's an electric squeezer guy. >> exactly. >> that was funny. >> it was. >> he was tipping it on the table. >> i saw while he was doing that, i saw some very good edits. he's going like this. and i'm going, he's not going to get enough. and the next second, and now we pour in the 12 gallons of orange juice and it works perfect. >> so funny. >> very smooth. i want to talk about your mom and how she's influenced this and how proud she would be. i remember the first time i got to see your dad live was like in '89, "flowers in the dirt" tour. >> she was there. >> and she was there. >> did you feel her lava lamps? >> yes. it's the first time i get a chance to see your dad, who really was my biggest influence growing up on anything, and so i go to the store, the mccartney store. okay, paul mccartney earmuffs. paul mccartney clock. and i get all this stuff and i'm carrying it out. >> did you really get earmuffs? >> no. i will just tell you this, whatever they were selling, i bought it. then i saw your mom's cookbook. i put down my hamburger, well this is interesting. what was at that point pretty revolutionary still my 13-year-old son last week, big, strapping baseball player, he comes home from school. dad, i think i want to be a vegan. >> what? >> and what i thought was, first of all, how cool, and he wanted to do it -- >> how great of to you say how cool because in the past, how are you going to get your protein? >> exactly. >> that's so amazing. the times have changed so much. >> that's what i was going to say, from '89 to now, the fact that my southern athletic baseball loving son, and he wanted to do it for animal welfare. he wanted to do it for his health and for the environment. so your mom would be so proud to see your show, wouldn't she, and how this is mainstream. >> lewis hamilton, the formula one racer, he's vegan. there are a lot more athletes now. the guy who won wimbledon tennis, he's vegan. that's so great. do you know? >> i actually am. this is what i've wanted to do for a long time, because i'm not going to lie, southern meat and potatoes guy -- >> there's no judgment here. >> thank you very much. what i've always wanted to do and what i thought would be a really school start and encourage everybody watching, you don't have to jump all the way in. you always have been pushing meatless mondays. i thought, well, that's cool. if i could just figure out how to do it on monday and then i could do it on a friday. and now i have a 13-year-old son who will require it. talk about meatless mondays, too. >> me and stella and dad started promoting it about 11 years ago. we love it because it's a really simple idea. it's a community. it's a word of mouth thing. stop eating meat on a monday and by doing that you reduce your carbon footprint, i think it's like not driving a car for a whole month reducing it by one day for the year. so it makes a big difference. >> and the way your show helps, it gives people ideas but for people who haven't seen the show, talk about what they're going to see in terms of planning meals. >> in each episode i do four recipes, and at the end of the episode i have a great guest that i cook with and i'm a people person and a portrait photographer so it gives me a chance to interact with people. but the recipes are plant based, they're really quick, they're simple, they're make ahead and i use as many shortcuts as i can so everything -- >> we like shortcuts. >> it's hearty and delicious and satisfying as well. >> well, thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. >> before we leave, have we figured out what we call her dad? i asked, is it sir paul? >> he was actually given another honor after. commander of honor. >> commander? >> commander sir? >> it's one above a sir. >> sir is not good enough. >> we just call him paul. >> all right. the new episodes of "mary mccartney serves it up" on discovery plus. mary, thank you so much. it's great to have you here. >> thank you. thanks. >> and we will prepare for meatless mondays. my son jack thanks you. up next, two music legends talk about their new album and more. a treat for fans of both led zeppelin and country music. why choose proven quality sleep from sleep number? because my sleep number 360 smart bed is temperature balancing so i stay cool. and senses my movement and effortlessly adjusts to help keep me comfortable. the sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now. only from sleep number. ♪ ♪ ♪ our lead singer of led zeppelin and alison krauss. they released "raised the roof." it's so great to have you here. robert, i'm looking at my notes here. robert anthony plant, english singer and songwriter, lyricist of the, in all caps, infamous english rock band led zeppelin. i'm not so sure who affixed the name infamous to led zeppelin but i find that amusing. this is exciting. you are back together again. talk about the new project. >> well, yeah, infamous. i don't even know what happened back then but i do know i'm glad to be where i am now in great company here with alison. well, we teamed up almost not by accident but by chance 14, 15 years ago. we found that even though we came from ridiculously different musical appreciations, if you like, backgrounds, we had a lot of stuff in common. first of all, we like to be happy and we like to be liked and we like to sing and the challenge was how are you ever going to mix these two vocal styles so we had a fantastic time. mysteriously -- well, we traveled for quite a long time together, didn't we, alison? and our project came to a head. we went about our previous business. never quite found it until very recently. >> you came together and it was just a natural fit. it came together when robert asked you to sing with him for a contribute at the rock 'n' roll hall of fame. talk about that. >> i had gotten a phone call to play bluegrass songs. they come from different sources and so music found its way into bluegrass through the years and some of the tunes robert suggested were things that i knew. it ended up being a lot of fun and intriguing and the first conversation we had was about ralph stanley. >> i love what t-bone said about the new album. he said despite the fact that these are old standards, there's no nostalgia in this album because you two put your own stamp and interpretation. it's new and dynamic. >> like a great song and great poetry there's countless lives that it has. just when you hear somebody read a piece of poetry. it's the same way and to have our own interpretation it has a very personal feeling to it. we've enjoyed it. >> talk about working with t-bone. >> he's, first of all, got a hell of a presence. he's a tall, big, and looming character who has all sorts of tangential ideas and a whole bag of mystical music and so do we, too, as well. so, yeah, it's like a christmas cracker you pull it and sometimes you make a funny hat and get a great joke and sometimes a great piece of music. he's brilliant, a fantastic guy. i love him very much. and i never really had a brother so i adopted him a few years ago. sometimes he won't come home for tea. >> but you're saying you wish you paid attention a little bit more. does t-bone have difficulty focusing? >> not taking all the cue. he has to keep the interest going. are we having a good time? it's a very difficult gig to keep going. i think he does an admirable job and has helped spectacular musicians who are omnipresent in everything that we do and i think quite a lot of things he records if he has the audacity to work without us. >> i was always musically a huge fan of british bands whether it was zeppelin or the beatles, rolling stones, the who, i never quite understood just how much the country singers meant to all of my heroes who seem to be from this extraordinary land far away whether it was zeppelin or the beatles. talk about that. >> life was kind of different in england. we didn't have any -- we didn't have any fancy stuff. at the end of the war it was a gray place to be. we didn't know about anything at all except for these amazing bursts of color like little richard and kyle perkins and the whole deal. perkins was like johnny cash coming out of south tennessee around memphis and heading up to nashville. i think a lot of us were really into the rockabilly side where conway twitty was, so we were digging something a little bit further south. nashville was very polished and when elvis went up and signed to rca and started cutting the great records. and glenn campbell and that sort of thing, charlie rich. people were moving always to the better recording studios up there in nashville. but as far as country went, i didn't learn too much at all about it just like alison said about a lot of stuff she didn't comprehend from my world i didn't really learn a huge amount until i met my friend there who is sitting in the studio 5,000 miles from me. >> all right. well, it's an incredible new album "raise the roof" robert plant and alison krauss. thank you both so much. can't wait to see you live when you go out in june of next year. up next, a look at one of the most iconic basketball players of all time. larry legend and those 1980s boston celtics. and how larry bird and l.a.'s magic johnson changed the game of basketball forever. "morning joe" is back in a minute. i brought in ensure max protein, with thirty grams of protein. those who tried me felt more energy in just two weeks! (sighs wearily) here i'll take that! (excited yell) woo-hoo! ensure max protein. with thirty grams of protein, one gram of sugar, and nutrients to support immune health. ♪♪ ♪♪ why choose proven quality sleep from sleep number? because every great play starts the night before. my sleep number 360 smart bed tracks my circadian rhythm, ♪♪ average heart rate, and breathing rate so i know how well i'm sleeping. it's also temperature balancing so i stay cool. and it senses my movement and automatically adjusts to help keep me comfortable all night. sleep number takes care of the science so i can focus on other things. the sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now. only from sleep number. two seconds, one, and world champions, the boston celtics. so the celtics with their 14th -- >> the buzzer at the end of the 1981 finals. who knew it was just the start of what would be one of the most successful dynasties in nba history. with us now sports columnist and associated editor for the "boston globe," author of the new book "wish it lasted forever: life with the larry bird celtics." dan, thanks so much for being with us. i don't have to ask you the question i usually ask authors, why did you choose this subject? it seems like a pretty obvious subject being a sportswriter in boston, but what an extraordinary story to tell. >> it was. i was the beat guy for the "boston globe" for four years. bob ryan, lo and behold, went to work on tv and left the celtic beat so "the globe" asked me to take over for bob and it ended up being four great years. i know you're a basketball fan, an s.e.c. fan. larry bird grew up an s.e.c. fan, rooting for kentucky a little bit. bird and magic came into the nba in the 1979 and the league was in trouble then. the finals were on tape delay. there were drug issues in the league, 17 out of 23 teams losing money, and these two guys rescued it. the bird/magic nba finals, joe, became the ali/frazier fights, allowed the league to take off. >> you know, looking back i watched ncaa basketball finals year in and year out. there were a few that stand out in my mind. of course '84 and '85 are two of those. another one was larry bird and magic johnson when larry was at indiana state. i never really knew the story behind that. why indiana state and not indiana? why indiana state and not kentucky? were they not interested in him? >> he was from rural southern indiana so kentucky was a destination. he and his dad went there to lexington. and the coach of the wildcats determined larry bird was not fast enough to get his shot off in the s.e.c. so he did not get a scholarship offer. no offer from kentucky. bobby knight did come down to the southern part of the state and republic crueted him for indiana. knight was at the top of his game then. but when larry got to campus, nobody really treated him that well. he was intimidated by the kids' cars and roommates they wore. and the upper classmen, kent benson and those guys, kind of big-timed him. he couldn't work out in the gym. he was lonely and poor and he hitchhiked home. he left. showed up in his grandmother's kitchen and took a year off. that's when he worked on a garbage truck and did maintenance for public works. and indiana state came around and said, hey, now come to us. he did and then fast forward led them to the 33-0 season in '79, epic duel with magic in the finals and the most college game in history. it always will be. larry, it took him five years to get his revenge back and finally beat magic in the nba finals. >> so what separated larry bird from so many other players? >> i think growing up poor, the hunger he had. he never took anything for granted. he wasn't entitled. he was not an aau warrior, getting his butt kissed from the time he was 14 years old. it was hard work. he just wanted to be the best player on his high school team. he had older brothers who played. you often see this with great athletes. he wanted to be like mark and mike bird. he admired them. they would carry the wash to the laundromat while the mom was doing laundry and they would go shoot hoops across the street. he grew up with nothing. i'm telling you, nothing. everything meant a lot to him, getting a free scholarship and then playing in the nba he would talk to his teammates and say this is a tough life a. free hotel, free bus rides, free tickets to the games, we get paid to play basketball. he couldn't believe it. >> mike barnicle? >> dan, you and i have talked over the years about many athletes and the competition gene that each of them has. it strikes me that larry bird, well, you'll rank them, but larry bird's competition gene was massive. how did he get that? you just explained partially how he got it but how did he retain it? and was he the biggest guy that you've ever met with a huge competition gene? >> the competition gene, this was every day. you would get to practice, he just wanted -- first of all, he wanted money and he valued money. he was standing in the gym and you walked in he would say give me a $1 if i make it from here? and he meant it. he would shoot for money. that's what he was all about. shoot for money. any of the three-point contests it was $10,000, the first-ever three-point contest. well, i'll win that. and he walked into the room with seven other competitors, which one of you is going to finish second? sure enough, he didn't even take off his warm-up jacket, made all the threes, put his greedy palm out and said where's my $10,000? it motivated him. he took me for $160 in a free throw shooting contest. stupid me. he knew what he was doing. if you run into larry bird and say what did you take shaughnessy for in that shooting contest 35 years ago, he'll still say i still have $160 in my pocket from that guy. >> dan, jonathan lemire. no one will be surprised you lost that. sorry. i grew up in lowell, massachusetts, idolizing the celtics and larry bird. in fact, i have a version of that warm-up jacket he wore for that three-point contest. but i want to talk to you about the '86 celtics which to my mind the greatest nba team of all time. one that others might say the bulls and warriors of a few years back. tell us if it's the greatest and why you think it is. >> bill walton named the book. said i have a year of my life, i wish it lasted forever, because he was there for that. 50-1 at home. 50-1 counting the playoffs. no one will ever do that again. five hall of famers including walton coming off the bench as a hall of famer and, again, it does translate to today's game. people who think it doesn't are wrong. bill walton was 7'2". robert parrish 7 feet today. kevin mchale. larry bird 6'9". they had outside shooters, bird, danny ainge. it translates. rick carlisle, who was on that team, coaches in the nba today. he says it translates. kevin mchale, when i talked to him for the book, how would you do against these people today? well, we could play with those guys. i'll take our chances, but they were calling the rules of 1980. that allows to us do it. the rules of today we would probably all foul out in the first quarter. >> dan, it's so interesting when you talk about larry bird being so competitive and remembering a bet that he had with you years ago. it remind me of what we saw with michael jordan in those espn documentaries about how competitive he was every second of his life. larry bird has seemed to age gracefully, hasn't had as many bumps in the road as michael jordan. talk about bird and how he moved from being a superstar to being a coach to being the front office. >> a good point. he retired in 1992. he won a gold medal with the dream team. he knew his back wouldn't april lau him to play at the highest level anymore. we were surprised when he took a job coaching with the indiana pacers. it's hard work coaching the nba. he did it. he knew the term limits was three years. he said i'm going to do this for three years and then i'm going to go away. sure enough, he took them to the finals and he walked. in his experience as a player, three years is the length of time the players are still listening to you. he was a good coach and a good gm. he was good at all of it. he's kind of done with it now, i think. he has a ceremonial job with the pacers. he's not active. he's not current. he's living the good life. does an occasional commercial and doesn't do much of anything else. >> can you talk about his relationship with magic? it was hyper competitive. i loved the story of magic flying to french lick to try to break the ice with larry and, man, it was hard to do because larry bird was so competitive. >> that was the bar. he always checked it out. so, again, joe, this goes back to kentucky. i know you love kentucky. larry did, too. when they were young players and he ends up in indiana state and magic is at michigan state, a team, a summer team that competed of college stars. bird and magic were on that team. but hall was playing the lexington boys ahead of them. bird and magic were on the bench. they were angry about that together and then, of course, they ascended to the greatness of the final four to play each other. magic beats him and larry would always check the l.a. box score. he wanted to know what was going on with the lakers. in the first four years in the nba, each one was in the finals but never against each other. rookie year larry rookie of the year, larry won a title. they didn't meet until 1983-1984. that's when you had the three epic matchups between the celtics and lakers. >> the new book is "wish it lasted forever: life with the larry bird celtics." we greatly appreciate it. coming up from the hardwood to the gridiron. how taking a knee helped change the world. a recent book examines the lasting legacy of colin kaepernick. snacking can mean that pieces get stuck under mike's denture. but super poligrip gives him a tight seal. to help block out food particles. so he can enjoy the game. super poligrip. ♪ ♪ ♪ "how bizarre" by omc ♪ no annual fee on any discover card. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ snacking can mean that pieces get stuck under mike's denture. ♪ but super poligrip gives him a tight seal. to help block out food particles. so he can enjoy the game. super poligrip. when you're born and raised in san francisco, you grow up wanting to make a difference. that's why, at recology, we're proud to be 100% employee owned with local workers as diverse as san francisco. we built the city's recycling system from the ground up, helping to make san francisco the greenest big city in america but we couldn't do it without you. thank you, san francisco. gracias, san francisco. -thank you. -[ speaks native language ] let's keep making a difference together. ♪♪ welcome back to "morning joe." five years ago san francisco 49ers quarterback colin kaepernick made what then was an unprecedented decision, to kneel during the national anthem of a preseason game in san diego. the response, of course, was polarizing. some calling kaepernick a hero. others calling him un-american. less than a year later the quarterback who had led his team to the super bowl just three seasons earlier would be out of the league entirely. kaepernick has yet to take another snap in the nfl. joining us now sports editor for the nation and host of the edge of sports podcast, the author of the new book "the kaepernick effect: taking a knee, changing the world." dave, good morning. it's good to see you. there's been so much controversy, so much debate about that act of taking a knee. i think a lot of people forget what compelled colin kaepernick to do it in the first place. he'd have this career that took him to the super bowl. they came within a few inches with him at quarterback. the next year they make a run through the playoffs as well. he's one of the premiere quarterbacks in the league so what brought him to this decision that obviously changed his life and as you say in your book changed the world? >> it was the summer of 2016. and if you remember that summer there were two very high-profile killings by police, one a man named alton sterling and another castillo and both were caught on videotape and sent shock waves really through the country as well as protests, anger, trauma. and colin kaepernick was just another person who was disgusted by what was happening. he made the private decision -- he didn't send a tweet, he didn't send a press release, the private decision he would sit on the bench behind his team during the playing of the national anthem, and it was a statement of disgust about the gap between what the flag is supposed to represent and the lived experiences of black and brown lives in the united states. he was seen sitting and made a beilein for kaepernick and said, all right, what's going on? colin kaepernick said why he was doing what he was doing and that's when the firestorm really erupted. >> gene be robinson has a question for you. gene? >> dave, it looks right now as if colin kaepernick is never going to take another snap in the nfl. is that right? if so, what is he doing now? what does his future look like? >> well, it's interesting. first, i have to say, i wrote this book about colin kaepernick but it's not really about colin kaepernick. it's about the thousands of young people who took a knee and were inspired to do so from scarborough country to seattle, washington. what colin kaepernick is doing right now is really trying to figure out, i think, his next move. he still works out. he still thinks he deserves a spot in the national football league, and anyone who knows nfl football knows that he does deserve a spot on a roster, that he's good enough to have one, but he's been colluded against and kept out of the league. the people who run the nfl have decided he has more value as a ghost story to haunt a young generation of players than he does as someone who can add to a winning team. they say don't be like colin kaepernick. you'd better stay in line. don't take a knee. don't embarrass the league. don't alienate fans. they decided they would rather have him as a punished figure than someone who could help his team and that's a darned shame. he has all sorts of projects lined up. he has a film come out about his life on netflix, a book for kids about what it was like to grow up as an adopted bi-racial kid in wisconsin, and he has a book coming out about criminal justice that i believe he has edited. i think in the next year you're going to hear a lot more from him than we have heard in the last five years. >> and, dave, since taking a knee has become -- since kaepernick, became kind of a worldwide they think, right? you've seen premier league soccer players doing it, you see athletes around the world doing it. as their expression for racial justice, do they trace that directly to kaepernick or has it taken on a life of its own? >> i mean, it starts with kaepernick and that's what the kaepernick effect is all about. i think colin kaepernick's gift that we are going to be feeling for decades to come is that he gave these young athletes and professional athletes, a language and a method by which they could protest as athletes if they were upset about the world. i interviewed young athletes from this book from beaumont, texas, to the florida panhandle, and these were folks who were very disgusted about racism in the united states, high school students, it's not like they can go to the nearest black lives matter demonstration. they were in this state of frustration and what can they do to register to their community that they are upset, to start a conversation in their community? and by kaepernick taking that knee they immediately saw something and recognized a language and method by which they could register their discontent, and the shock waves that that created i would argue has gone largely unreported, but we are talking about hundreds if not thousands of athletes throughout this country that over the last four or five years have seen the playing field as an appropriate place to register dissent. >> dave, as you say, the book is about a lot more than colin kaepernick, although he is of course at the center of it. it goes back to the history of protests in sports, a long history that obviously didn't begin with colin kaepernick, you talk about muhammad ali, talk about the '68 mexico games, but also what's come since as you have alluded to and way the leagues have handled this differently. the nba basically saying, yes, we embrace this, lebron james lead the name, these big marquis players willing to put themselves out there and the nba embracing it in the way the nfl hasn't. what's been the difference in the approach of some of these pro sports leagues? >> i think in the national basketball association you just said the two keyboards and that's lebron james. when you have the best player in the world say i want to be a political athlete, lebron james said i want to be a global icon like muhammad ali. lebron james was strongly, strongly affected, like the people i interviewed in my book, by the 2012 killing of trayvon martin. lebron james decided that he was going to bend the nba to being more accepting of political athletes and he became like a force field for other athletes who wanted to be political because how can you punish the last guy on the bench if you are going to celebrate lebron james being political. the nfl it's much tougher. the franchise owners are very, very conservative bunch and the contracts are not guaranteed, the average career only lasts three years. so what the nfl has really done is what i would describe as carrot and stick. they put decals on the helmets, write end racism in the end zone, they have very, very safe sort of social justice organizing that you can do if you are a player and you want to do something and meet with the local police captain and talk about policing. so they allow things like that, but the stick is there, too. colin kaepernick still no job. kenny stills and eric reid, two people i interview in my book who took a knee outside the nfl looking in. and that's the stick. that's them saying to players, okay, if you want to be politically active you can do it within prescribed parameters, but don't step outside those parameters or else you're going to find yourself without work. >> dave, mike barnicle has a question for you. mike? >> so, dave, you just outlined the reality of the nfl, a big corporate enterprise run by conservative billionaires and the nba, more active in terms of influencing the sport. >> my question is why is it that major league baseball looks like it's 1955? >> that's a great question. i mean, i will say this, though, about major league baseball, something remarkable happened last august when the milwaukee bucks players of the nba said they weren't going to play after the police shooting of jacob blake in kenosha, wisconsin. it actually spread to major league baseball. the milwaukee brewers said they refused to play, other teams said they refused to play. it was a one day day of protest and you could have knocked me over when that happened because you don't see that in major league baseball, it's a very conservative league from not wanting people to flip the bats to not wanting to talk about social justice, but, you know, at the same time i actually have a lot of hope in this young generation of baseball players coming up, just like i have a lot of hope in the young generation in this country. i started this book being very pessimistic, you know, thinking about how all these athletes tried to stand up and receive terrible back lashes in their home towns, but when i talked to these young people and i talked to dozens and dozens of young athletes, they were so hopeful about what they had done. they had to regrets. they felt vindicated by the mass protests in 2020 and that gave me a sense of hope because i feel like this young generation is less tolerant of intolerance than any generation in the history of the united states. >> the new book is "the kaepernick effect: taking a knee, changing the world." dave zirin, congratulations on the book. great to have you back with us this morning. us this morning hey, everybody, i'm yasmin vossoughian in for steph ruhle. it is friday, december 31st and we start with breaking news this hour. the governor of colorado declaring a state of emergency after a series of wildfires exploded within a couple of hours. spiraling out of control, burning hundreds of homes and tens of thousands of people forced from their homes. >> they are actively running from fire behind them. >> oh, my god. >> just devastating to see entire towns evacuated there, category 3

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