you can see how extraordinarily uncomfortable i was. frankly, i didn't know how to handle that episode. i still think about it every day. it's something dr. fauci and i talked about all the time, is how to correct the record. >> wow. i still think about it every day. dr. deborah birx, the former white house covid response coordinator under president trump in a new interview with abc news. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it's tuesday, march 16th. >> so let's talk about that for one second. you know, willie, at the time, dr. birx was getting abused -- >> oh, yeah. >> and criticized and you know, there are some things she said and did that were concerning to me, but you know -- >> it was mostly what she didn't say. >> she was trying to stay in to have some influence on a guy who was erratic and crazed on this issue. and people can say, well, she -- people are saying, she should just quit. and you're like, okay, how could it get worse if she just quit? well, dr. scott atlas could come in. the thing we learned with trump, it can always get worse. and all of these people were having abuse heaped on them like dr. birx to try to stay in the game to have some sort of influence, we see what happens when they give up. you then get a dr. scott atlas or a rick grinnell, who are at the bottom rung of the bureaucracy and would never be in any position for any other president. and do really, really bad things once they're given power. >> yeah, what happens is, you're right, that person leaves, former president trump would see someone on fox news or fox business channel and hire them to an evaluated position that that person shouldn't be in. scott atlas is a great case in point. he saw him talking on tv. you can only imagine who a doctor, like dr. birx, who is a real doctor and should be there and understands this disease, sitting and listening to those comments from the podium. it's good to hear her actually talk about what that was like. you hear them again almost a year later and it shocks you all again, he was talking about injecting disinfectant or shooting powerful light into people's bodies in the hope this would miraculously go away. we have dr. fauci on the show in a little while. he's another case in that point, that he hung despite often what he was hearing from that podium because he thought he could do better for the country on the inside than by walking away. >> and it's so ridiculous, but if there wasn't such carnage, such death and destruction attached to this, it would be some comedy show. it was ridiculous the things the president would say from the podium. and it was probably painful for these people trying to hang in there like dr. birx, who by the way, didn't say anything ridiculous, it's what she didn't say. she didn't stop him. but many would ask, what was she supposed to do, because she would lose her job, and like joe said, the next would come in and it would be a very bad fate for the country. along with joe, willie, and me, we have columnist and associate editor for "the washington post," david ignatius, member of "the new york times" editorial board, mara gay is with us this morning. and senior columnist for the daily beast, matt lewis joins us. great to have you all. our top story this morning, two men arrested and charged on sunday with assault on capitol police officer brian sicknick, who later died from injuries sustained in the january 6th attack on the capitol. julian cayter of pennsylvania and george tanios of west virginia are accused of working together to use bear spray on sicknick, but according to court documents, authorities are stopped short of charging them with killing him. the search warrant application says there is video of cayter reaching into tanio's backpack and later holding a can of chemical spray. a body camera of one officer captured a video of one of the man holding a can in his right hand and aiming it in the officer's direction while moving his right arm from side to side. both men made court appearances yesterday and were ordered to remain in custody. joe, if you follow the fbi, they are slowly trying to arrest anyone and everyone who was involved in any violent away in the capitol riot. and they're still looking for people, but these two men, it appears, according to those who are, you know, charging them, had something to do with the death of a capitol police officer. >> well, we don't know that. that's david ignatius, one of the things they wanted to bring up with you is, there may not be a direct link there. we originally were told, i think it was "the new york times" told us that he died from being hit by a fire extinguisher a couple of times. then the capitol police pulled back and haven't -- nobody's talked specifically about how he has died. there hasn't been a follow-up. there are questions surrounding that. was it this bear spray that somehow caused a condition. so we have that question. we had pentagon officials come before congress a couple of weeks ago, but not the pentagon officials that didn't send the national guard straight over. there are all of these questions that continue to hang around the worst attack on the united states capitol since the war of 1812. and yet, we still have no 9/11-type commission. we're not moving in the right direction. nancy pelosi is proposing something that republicans will never agree to, that has a 7-4 split between democrats and republicans. isn't it time for the biden administration to reach back to some former republican leaders, like maybe tom ridge and mike mukasey and others and some former democratic leaders and just get a 9/11-style commission inside the executive branch? >> i think it would be good to have that commission. the record that the country needs to go forward has to be established in a way that people think is fair and impartial, but i'm impressed, joe, by the fact that this investigation continues to roll forward. it's true, we don't have the coroner's report, i don't believe, on the death of officer sicknick, so you can't charge him yet for murder when you're not sure exactly how to charge these two suspects for murder when you're not sure how he died. but the investigation goes forward. there's no sign of a split within the fbi about carrying it out. there's less reaction to the investigation than i feared there might be around the country, fbi offices, state and local law enforcement are going out there, knocking on doors, putting together complicated conspiracy cases against these people. so, yes, it would be good to have that commission with a lot of distinguished men and women who would come with a final judgment. but for me right now, it's the inexorable pace of tracking down and charging and then eventually trying the people who were involved that day. and that having public support, and it does. so that's my takeaway, is actually, this is probably right now exactly what we need. >> well, and willie, the fbi just continues to do an extraordinary job searching out these people, trying to get help from the public. finding them and bringing them to justice. >> there were a lot of people in that building. this is a methodical effort. it's been less than two months and they're using all the technology at their disposal to capture images, to use facial recognition, to matchup insignia they may have seen on their clothing to something they're wearing in other social media posts. they're doing the best they can. but mara gay, when you read the details of this charging document against the two men, who are not charged with the murder of officer sicknick, but charged with assault, and you realize they were calling for the bear spray. for people who don't know, bear spray is exactly what it sounds like. if you're out walking in the woods in montana, you carry bear spray so you can neutralize a 6-foot grizzly bear. so these people came prepared. but to hear some people in the media and some republican senators to downplay this wasn't an armed insurrection, it was a few bad apples and people strolling through statutory hall, this charging document is another piece of evidence of what people came with. >> people came in tactical gear and with zip ties and bear spray. with anybody who has ever gone camping in the presence of any kind of bear knows, you don't use on another human being. that's to protect you instead of having a gun, a rifle. they also came and put a noose outside the capitol. so these were not people who came to have a conversation. and lest we forget that you had members of congress who were terrorized and terrified without any plan for their own safety or the safety of their staffs. not just police officers who were also there to serve the public and our democracy, but also those members of congress and journalists. so in all, it was a massive failure. and i can't say enough how important it is that as these perpetrators are brought to justice in the criminal sense, that also we have a 9/11-style commission that is, wherever possible, to the extent possible, you know, that the public can actually understand and see. i think there's an important part of this process that needs to be public, to whatever extent that's possible. the fbi is engaged in a nationwide search. i mean wifb friends who live in cities across the country, new orleans, who are sending me pictures of billboards, right, in their cities that say, we're looking for these individuals. the fbi is hunting these people down as it should, to bring them to justice. but the american public needs to see that this is adjudicated before them, as well. we need to know what happened. we need to know who failed and who needs to be held accountable. and i think we haven't seen that yet. there's a transparency here that really is important. >> and what's really important, too, and i'm going to go back to the 9/11-style commission that needs to be launched, we need to know, were there actually members that were giving tours the day before? were there members that were calling during the terrorist attack, i.d.'ing the location of nancy pelosi and other members of congress that the mob would be interested in abducting and possibly killing. they certainly were looking for mike pence to kill him. and yet, despite all of this, you have republicans who went ahead and voted and voted to not count millions and millions of votes. and you have others who were trying to downplay this mob. still trying to downplay this mob, mika, like ron johnson, who said he wasn't concerned, because they were law-abiding people. no, they were bashing police officers' heads, they were jamming police officers' heads in doors. they were bear spraying a police officer who later died. >> he's dead. >> these are terrorists. i will say, if ron johnson saw these people -- he's a bigot, if you judge him by his words, he's a bigot -- he said, if these were black people, he would have been scared. as i said the day after, if they were black people, they would have all been shot in the face. if they were muslims, they would have been sniped from the top of the building. they were white people. so -- >> no one knew what to do? >> this bs was allowed to continue for too long. the national guard wasn't called in. police officers didn't move as quickly. some capitol cops were letting them move in and out freely, opening up the gates, letting them run through it. this is grotesque. and it is an insult. it is an insult to the police officers who died that day and who were hurt that day that a united states senator is saying that these were peaceful law-abiding people who he wasn't worried about. would have been worried if they were black, but they weren't black, so, this didn't bother him. >> yeah, there are reporters and people -- staffers, people who work there who are still suffering from ptsd from this day. as you mentioned ron johnson, joe, the republican senator is defending his comments, if this is possible, that he made about black lives matter protesters and the deadly capitol riot. here's what he said late last week followed by his defense yesterday. >> i knew that even though those thousands of people that were marching the capitol were trying to pressure people like me to vote the way they wanted me to vote, i knew those were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break a law, and so i wasn't concerned. now, had the tables been turned, joe, this could mean trouble. had the tables been turned and president trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of black lives matter and antifa protesters, i might have been a little concerned. >> there was nothing racial about my comments. nothing whatsoever. this isn't about race. this is about riots. and i was -- you know, i have been attacked and criticized because i pushed back on the narrative that, you know, there were thousands of armed insurrectionists. and that's just part of a -- a small part of the 74 million americans that voted for president trump that also need to be suspect of being potential domestic terrorists or also potentially armed insurrectionist. this is a false narrative. i wasn't surprised, but it's still pretty shocking that it would take what i consider completely innocuous comment and turn it into, you know, use the race card on me. >> an innocuous comment. >> good lord. >> an innocuous comment where he said, i'm going to get in trouble for saying this. >> yeah, so he knew. >> he knew exactly what he was doing. >> he had an op-ed in today's "wall street journal" entitled, joe, "i won't be silenced by the left." no, keep talking, honestly! the left is good. >> let me tell you, ron, the left doesn't want you to be silenced, because the more you say bigoted things like the other day, the more you actually help the left. >> and the world sees who you are. >> and the more you hurt republicans. so, yes, ron, they don't want you to be silenced. and of course, you aren't silenced, because you actually wrote an op-ed in one of the largest newspapers on the planet, wasn't of the most important newspapers on the planet. we keep hearing this, willie. i will not be silenced, as people write op-eds in "the new york times" and "wall street journal" and go on national news networks and get more access to the american people than anybody else. it's just a stupid, stupid argument. but again, ron johnson said he was going to get in trouble for saying this, but these people truly respect law enforcement, unlike black lives matters marchers and they would never break the law. what the hell -- how does he say that when several cops are dead and scores of cops were beaten, battered, and abused by donald trump supporters that day. they were going around, wanting to hand mike pence and chanting it. had a noose for mike pence. they were calling for nancy pelosi, wanted to get her. and there were republicans just as scared of this mop as democrats. so how does ron johnson saying that people's lives being endangered and police officers being killed is not as worrisome to him as black people marching? >> it's astounding. we joke about ron johnson, because so many of his colleagues, not us, so many of his colleagues, current and former, tell us how limited he is, but this is clearly something different. but this is the game now, matt lewis. this is, go on to a friendly radio show, say something inflammatory, wait for opponents on the left to react to it, and write an op-ed in the "wall street journal" saying, i'm being silenced by the left. i would ask senator johnson to approach officer sicknick's family or approach the family of officer fanone was lying on the capitol steps who was being beaten and wondered what was going to happen to his four daughters when he was gone, when he was redesigned to his fate. i would ask him to go to those officers' families and ask if the rioters that day support law enforcement. an outrageous statement by ron johnson. >> ron johnson is obviously an idiot. i'll say that myself. i think anyone who saw the video knows it was utterly document. there was a scene in one of those documentaries that show them rifling through ted cruz's papers, about to turn on him saying that, you know, he had sold them out. they were looking for mike pence, not that going after nancy pelosi would have been okay, but it's not just democrats that they were after, ron johnson, and i'm not sure that they could have recognized you as one of the quote/unquote good guys if they found you. but listen, i think that this is the best case study i've ever seen. ron johnson's comments were the best case study i've ever seen or the best evidence of systemic racism and subliminal racism. i honestly do not think that he was trolling us initially to try to get attention when he went on that radio show. i honestly do not think that ron johnson believes that he is a racist. in he has mind, these protesters are our people. you know, they're good, patriotic white americans in his mind. i honestly think he believes that. he doesn't get it. and so i think he really proves the point that a lot of us, over the years, also didn't grasp. which is the fact that a lot of people, a lot of republicans, sadly, who maybe are just unconsciously racist. you know, they're harboring this bias, and out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. i think that's what just happened. ron johnson just told us who he is. >> well, matt, you and i both republicans for the past quarter century, yeah, we were wrong about a large swath of people who were in our party and fooled ours and kidded ourselves. but mara, ron johnson, what he said, that was not subliminal racism, that was overt. what i found most disturbing about what he said is that he knew it was racist. he knew what he was saying was racially charged. he said, this is going to get me in trouble. but everybody, i want you to know that i'm less concerned with a white mob that's going around screaming "hang mike pence" and is actually committing sedition against the united states of america than ron would be if there were black marchers going down pennsylvania avenue for black lives matters. i mean, that is not subliminal. that is overt racism and he wanted his listeners to know that he was racist. >> right. we have donald trump to thank for this wonderfully disgusting and grotesque outpouring of open racism, the likes of which we really haven't seen in this country, you know, in a mainstream cultural sense, i would say, since the 1950s, if not the 1920s, before that. so we do have donald trump to thank for that. and trumpism. but i think he knew exactly what he was saying. and you know, it's funny, because i think -- it's not funny, it's actually really sad, but if you ask any black american of any age, they will tell you what it means to be a black american is sometimes just to be gaslit by the rest of the country. to be told that you aren't seeing what's in front of your face. what the rest of the country has seen. that it didn't happen. that despite the fact that your people have been oppressed for generations, that you are the threat, right? so you can literally have a white mob attack the seat of democracy, bash the heads of police officers, and still you are the threat, because you're black. and so it is the blackness and the whiteness that is just the screaming elephant in the room in this case. and i think that we're really confronted now with the fact that a majority of the country, not just black americans, is now being gaslit, saying, how can this be? how can they be telling us that we didn't see what we saw before our faces? wherever in the course of american history of you have petty, lazy, small, small-minded politicians who don't want to show real leadership or build real coalitions or offer real solutions to the american people. wherever they are desperate for power, they turn to racism. so this is really a