we have to beat donald trump and all the polls agree joe biden is the strongest democratic to do the job. cnn political director david chalian joins me now live from washington. a consistent feature of the polls since he s been in the race, and really before then, is he is a front-runner with a big lead and now even a bigger lead. without a doubt, jim. the durability of biden s front-runner status has been the overarching story of this nomination race thus far. you showed 29%, he s back up to a double digit lead. we saw that lead narrow in our last poll immediately after the first debate. but this is the snap-back poll to where things were. sanders and warren bad or second place at 15%, and 14% buttigieg and harris round out, and everyone else 3% or below. look at the movement since the last poll at the end of june. the big movement, you see biden up 7 from that immediately immediately taking the punch from harris in miami. the other big movement in this poll down here, kamala harris taking a nose dive of 12 points from 17% back down to 5% in single digits around in the range where she was before that big moment. so what that shows us was that miami debate did have an impact, but it wasn t long lasting and we re seeing the race return to joe biden being the front-runner. and take a look at this notion of idealogical battle. if you re a self-declared liberal in this pool, biden and sanders and warren with all in a dead heat. but the democratic leaning patents in this poll, 34% are with joe biden, compared to 9% for standards and 7% for warren. this is a big strength for him. no question. so the biden campaign, even dr. joe biden, his wife making the point yesterday at an event that this is about electability and some of that is in the numbers, is it not? the democratic voters not only prefer him, but see him as the most likely to beat trump? you are absolutely right. 54% in this poll, a clear majority of democrats, say they want a can t that has the best chance of beating trump, versus 39% who say they want a candidate that shares their position on the issues. this is critical to a majority of democrats and it is a biden strength. but take a look at how different demographic groups perceive this question. if you take the white non-college educated versus white college educated, non-college educated folks it actually is a little bit of advantage to somebody that shares their positions, but splits evenly. if you ve got a college education, 65% want getting rid of donald trump as issue number one, 29% day shares a position on your issues. the divide gets even starker when you look at age. look at this. among people 45 and older in this poll, 66% want the candidate that is the trump defeater. 25%, somebody they share positions with. under 45, this is where the young vote comes into play, 56%, a majority of the younger voters want somebody who shares their position versus 41% say they want somebody who can defeat donald trump above all else. and those older voters, they tend to vote more so maybe they have more sway. david, thank you so much. joining me to discuss what all this means, joshua green, national correspondent for broom berg business week and cnn senior political analyst at the atlantic. you look at this and it s been a consistent front-runner status for joe biden since we ve been doing the polls. do you see this as nearly inevitable or we ve got a long way to go? we ve got a long way to go. it is kind of extraordinary with the 20 candidates how the voters have tiered this off. at the moment you re looking at three candidates who are all white candidates, basically 70 or older, dominating the field at a time when the democratic party is more diverse and relying on millennials than ever. the structure of the race is that basically joe biden is very strong among voters who are essentially middle-aged, middle of the road and country. his advantage among older voters and more moderate is very consistent, maybe the most consistent in polling throughout this race. and i think there will be increasing notice on the left that if you add up the support of bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, it takes you up to where joe biden is. and the fact that both of those candidates are the two other strongest ones at the moment is an advantage for him. the last point worth noting is that the race is more competitive in the first two states of iowa and new hampshire because candidates are paying more attention to them. but also because biden s advantage among non-white voters doesn t come into play for two states that are in 90% of the e lek treaty. you heard ron brownstein say middle-aged, middle of the road driving the support. those are the voters democrats need to win, do they not? they really are and that in a nutshell is joe biden s case for why he should be the democratic nominee. what s interesting to me in this poll is from the moment he got in, he s been the front-runner in every poll we ve seen but the lead has gradually eroded. this is the first poll where bid biden meerably jumps up. that says to me that his appeal is more enduring than a lot of political analysts believed than even a month ago. imagine that, if the polls defy the political analysts. that could never happen. can i just add, the one thing i agree with you, because the one thing that s been consistent even when biden s lead in the horse race has eroded in some of the national polls, his advantage over which democratic is best suited to beat trump really has not been challenged by anybody else at any point in this process and that is a big safety net. especially when you look at the voters over 45. they were 60% of all the primary voters in 2016, they were over 45. they are more concerned about electability. and if you look at some of those polls both nationally and in the states, biden leads among the voters on who is electable against trump by ten to one sometimes. so he has an overwhelming advantage and i really believe that until elizabeth warren or bernie sanders or kamala harris punctures that advantage, he is stronger than he may look at any given point in the race. the older voters show up at the polling booth. they actually vote. let s talk about some of the other candidates. kamala harris had a great launch, she had a great first debate. she s fallen off a cliff in this poll. and what that says to me is these viral moments that drive twitter attention and fundraising, they re important but don t translate to enduring support. you look at a different candidate like elizabeth warren who has steadily gained voters throughout the primary process, she hasn t really done it with viral moments. to me that s the way to advance for democrats. harris needs to figure out a way to get back into the conversation to get voters excited about her, because clearly this poll shows that their interest level has fallen off. warren in these figures, she had, ron, something of a rise over the last few weeks, steady and playing a long game, all these policies are going to plan for that. this poll leveled off a bit, and as you noted, splitting the progressive vote, if you can call it that, between bernie sanders. can she jump out of that? look, i think the challenge there s no question, as josh said, she is building support i think more steadily and she is stronger in the states by all indications than the national poll. her problem is the candidates with her profile, which is white liberals who depend mostly on college educated white liberals, have not won the nomination since gorge mcgovern. every other one, howard dean, bernie sanders, they all fall short unless they can across the racial divide and appeal more to african-american voters. she really needs unless she can expand her appeal, elizabeth warren needs kamala harris to recover. because the risk she faces is that even if she squeezes out bernie sanders and becomes the candidate of the white left, if joe biden is winning moderates and then black voters three to one. the math doesn t come close to adding up. if elizabeth warren cannot appeal to black voters better than her predecessors, she needs another african-american candidate to peel away some of those voters. right now winning the lion s share of african-american voters is joe biden. i want to switch gears from 2020 if i can. we heard from congresswoman tlaib and omar yesterday about being banned from their planned trip to israel. have a listen. i want to get your reaction. we cannot let trump and netanyahu succeed in hiding the cruel reality of the occupation from us. so i call on all of you to go. the occupation is real, barring members of congress from seeing it does not make it go away. we must end it together. joshua green, where does this go from here? president trump has relished this, using it as a way to paint democrats as somehow across the board anti-israel. where does this go from here? it s unprecedented for israel to have banned two sitting members of congress and clearly this is a fight that trump wants to stoke. he thinks that it benefits him when democrats are having fights over racial issues, over israel. but it s not clear that that s really going to help and it s not clear what is going to put a break on this process. some of the democrats i ve talked to have been very upset and have talked about maybe pulling back u.s. financial aid to israel, something that hasn t been seriously discussed in years all of a sudden is on the table. so i don t think we know where this ends or where it goes next. it could be up to trump and his decisions on whether or not he wants to exacerbate this fight. and there are concerns in israel about support for israel. it s traditionally been a bipartisan issue. josh green and ron brownstein, thanks very much to both of you. in the wake of the two deadly boeing crashes, a global panel is making new recommendations to the faa detailing ways that it can improve certification for planes. what will that involve and how will it make you and i safer? that s next. the president says the u.s. has the strongest economy in the world, but a new report says the white house is discussing the possibility of a payroll tax cut. if everything is fine, why the concern? and a disturbing new cnn story, huge amounts of plastic invading an entire ecosystem, destroying wildlife, all in a remote area in the middle of the ocean. how scientists are racing to stop the never-ending flow of garbage. it s a remarkable story. it s shocking. we re going to take you there. with amazing amenities like movie theaters, exercise rooms and swimming pools, public cafes, bars and bistros even pet care services. and there s never been an easier way to get great advice. a place for mom is a free service that pairs you with a local advisor to help you sort through your options and find a perfect place. a place for mom. you know your family we know senior living. together we ll make the right choice. laso you can enjoy it even ifst you re sensitive. se. yet some say it isn t real milk. i guess those cows must actually be big dogs. sit! i said sit! why accept it frompt an incompyour allergy pills?e else. flonase sensimist. nothing stronger. nothing gentler. nothing lasts longer. flonase sensimist. 24 hour non-drowsy allergy relief could you email me the part great about geicon, tim. making it easy to switch and save hundreds? 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internationally their trust was shaken with the faa after these two crashes. let s talk about this panel. it s an international panel. we do know from sources it s in its final stages of its work. this advisory panel is made up of reps from nine countries, aviation experts, also reps from the faa, and they are essentially tasked with scrutinizing how the fa asse faa certifies aircraft as safe. they ve faced a lot of scrutiny following the 737 max crashes. in particular, i m told that this panel has been looking into ways to prevent issues from slipping through the cracks. as it appears to have happened with that automated system on the 737 max, we know as mcas which automatically pushes the nose of the plane downward. i m also told that we can expect that the panel will suggest that the faa address this reality and safety concerns that aircraft technology is becoming far more sophisticated than the regulations that govern it. so they will have to address that reality. now, the group s recommendations will essentially look at the deficiencies and here s why this all matters. the faa certification process and its regulations are essentially the bed rock of aviation safety for aircraft. they don t just fly in the u.s., but internationally. so improving the agency s process will certainly help ensure that this sort of fatal crash never happens again. one of the most amazing things about this story is that the faa lets the manufacturers certify the plane. renee marshal, thanks very much. also this morning, cnn can confirm that the white house discussed the possibility of a payroll tax cut to head off a potential economic slowdown. this discussion in recent days. this is all despite the president and his advisers saying the economy is just fine. they have no concerns about a recession. all those concerns are fake news. cnn white house correspondent boris sanchez has more details. does this reveal, boris, genuine fears in the white house of a slowdown? well, jim, it certainly raises the question as to why the white house is having these private conversations about potential tax roll pay cuts to try to stave off an economic slowdown when they keep suggesting publicly that the economy is doing just fine. we understand that these conversations are still in the early stages. public kplee the white house has said it isn t under consideration at this time. but all we ve heard from the white house from the president s tweets and retweets, from kellyanne conway, wilbur ross, is that the economy is doing just fine. larry kudlow scheduled phone calls with business leaders this week to try to gauge their feelings on the state of the health of the economy. the white house is concerned about the economy. we know that president trump has had conversations with aides recently about whether this trade war with china could impact his chances going into a 2020 reelection campaign. keep in mind, u.s. steel is losing jobs, rv sales are down, which is an indicator of the strength of the economy moving forward. aside from that, there s volatility in the stock market. so of course the president having touted his record on the economy as one of his strongest selling points for voters, has to be concerned about a potential recession going into 2020. aside from that, we will hear from the president today. he s set to welcome to president of romania into the white house and you can bet reporters will be asking him about these potential tax cuts. boris sanchez, always good to have you. thanks very much. will congress do anything when it comes to stronger background checks on gun sales once they return from recess? 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[ sigh ] introducing an easier way to move with xfinity. it s just another way we re working to make your life simple, easy, awesome. go to xfinity.com/moving to get started. can you believe it? it s been just over two weeks since the shooting massacres in el paso and dayton left 31 people dead, and in that time president trump has gone from supporting stronger background checks on gun sales, remember that, to back pedaling. the president is now saying that the u.s. already has strong background check in place, and of course an nra talking point. that has democratic senate minority leader chuck schumer hitting trump so quick, saying we ve seen this before, president trump feeling public pressure in the aftermath of a shooting, talks about doing some meaningful to address gun violence, but inevitably he back tracks after fresh from the nra and the white. joining me is steve cohen of tennessee. he sits on the house judiciary committee. congressman, i went to el paso and dayton. people were asking me repeatedly will this time be different. it doesn t look like it will be. will anything get done? i don t think so. we re going to have a hearing on september 4 to deal with more extensive background checks than the bill we ve already passed that s sitting in the senate, also to deal with high capacity magazines and also the red flag laws, both summits for state governments and a federal law. we ll pass them out of the committee and we ll have to argue with the republicans. there won t be much support there. there may be some for background checks. i don t know. but the nra is against it all and so trump will be against it. i think back to the hearing he had on the parkland shooting with the white house and he acted so concerned and interested and how incredulous he was that 19 year olds could buy those weapons. and he did nothing. it s criminal to use those victims as a prop, to act like he cares, and then not to do it. i had something of a frustrating exchange with congressman tom reed in the last hour where i asked him about the magazine that was used in the dayton shooting. this magazine, that double drum barrel magazine as you see, carries 100 rounds. it helped the shooter in dayton kill nine people in 40 seconds, less than a minute. and the congressman wouldn t even say that should be illegal. i mean, is there any movement from your republican colleagues on banning magazines like that? i ve never seen that in the hands of a u.s. soldier in iraq or afghanistan, let alone on the streets of dayton. no. there hasn t been any movement that i m aware there are not many, and i don t think we exist on our committee. so it s just an unfortunate we need to ban assault weapons, too, but that s a problem in defining the ar-15, the ak-47, exactly what it is. i think they did it in the brady bill and eventually we ll get to that, too. that s the thing. in the past congress has passed measures, in 1994 the crime bill included assault weapons. i want to ask you about the economy. you have the white house in public saying the economy is just fine, but in private now discussing a payroll tax cut to help stave off even the possibility of a recession. would you support such a payroll tax cut? i would look at it. we did it with obama, so i would take it into consideration. but i would be concerned about it, because it would increase the debt, which i voted against the trump tax bill which put over a trillion dollars into debt and i voted against other proposals he s had, budget proposal. we re going so far out, the debt that the united states carries and china carries is hurting our economy and china s economy, which affects the world s economy. i have no doubt we re going to see a recession. what you see with u.s. steel is a response to the tariffs that were poorly thought out. the world is concerned about trump acting on his own with these tariffs and not working with allies to try to come up with mechanisms that help our country and the world s economy. we re not independent and trump said yesterday that there are recessions in europe but we re great. if there are recessions in europe, they re going to come to america. it s a worldwide economy and if they can t buy our goods, we re going to have a recession. we all work together and he can t understand that. or he refuses to admit it. as a democratic, are you concerned that if the president proposes this and democrats vote against a payroll tax cut, one that they ve supported in the past, and two, one that would put more money into the pocket of americans, that the president would be setting you up to say, listen, i tried to help you, democrats stood in the way? well, that is certainly what he could say. he s going to say whatever he has to say. the man has no conscience whatsoever and he has no understanding of the truth. i guess it s still the morning at 3:30 when he starts to tweet. i don t think we should base our policies and our actions on what he s going to do, because he s going to create his own realities, whether it s pocahontas or whatever it is. wouldn t that be a fair argument to say, listen, a payroll tax cut will give you, the economy may be slowing down, i want to cut you a break here, and after all, democrats voted for this in 2011, so why wouldn t that be a fair argument? it s a fair argument except it causes more of a deficit down the line. it could affect medicaid and social security and we need to protect medicaid and social security. that s so important. and if you re doing something today that you re going to have to pay for tomorrow, it s not good policy. there are certain things we could do immediately, like infrastructure bill to put people to work and get goods to market. that would help the american economy and help the american worker and we need an infrastructure bill. we need a minimum wage bill that puts money in the hands of people that are not living in poverty wages and that stimulates the economy rather than the trump tax bill to put money into the upper 1% who put it into cds or bonds and let it sit. before we go, i do want to ask you because you re on the record as a strong supporter of impeachment. another democratic, the fourth highest ranking democrat in the house has come out announcing his support, but still a majority of americans don t want to go there. they don t want to go there. why are democrats coming out exy step here when you don t have the public backing for it? well, we do have the public backing in a lot of areas. ben wray is running for the senate in new mexico and i guess the support is there in new mexico and it s certainly there in my district and a lot of districts around the country. not nationally. you need a majority of americans to want it and you would also need a republican senate, by the way. the fact is if you have hearings and we re having kind of quasi hearings, but if you had a full impeachment inquiry you would develop facts and put out information concerning the mueller report and obstruction of justice and violations and other errors and mistakes and violations of the constitution of this administration that would bring the numbers up. in watergate the hearings started with about 19% to impeachment and it got to 67% or something. true, we had john dean and we had rosemary woods and you re not going to have a rosemary woods. but you could have something like that. i think if the people heard from mcgahn, and we re trying to get mcgahn to testify. we ve gone to court and judge jackson will have it in his court to order him to appear. but if he testifies, if deer born testifies and lewandowski testifies, the information that trump tried to obstruct justice might bring those numbers up to where they need to be. there are a lot of ifs there. we appreciate you taking your time this morning. you re welcome. it took five years for the nypd to fire the officer who used an illegal choke hold on eric garner. has justice been served now? 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obviously of course i do. we have to stop pretending that black folks aren t human beings and so in these situations, they shouldn t have moved or shouldn t have this. they re human beings and i see other human beings do the same thing and they don t end up dead. even if all the things he was accused of were true, he didn t deserve to be dead. and i disagree with the stopping and looking. if you do that you ll actually see that something wrong happened. this is the only profession where people die and we say there shouldn t be accountable. this turned into a choke hold and it remained a choke hold for several seconds and there was no attempt to provide medical help when that occurred. most importantly, there was no danger to the officer or the public. and in that case, you re supposed to ask and wait for your supervisor to come. he was not armed. should that not have made a difference? because many of these interactions the police will say my safety was under threat here. and garner was outnumbered and he wasn t armed. let s look at what the nypd has done throughout my career. i got to new york city in 990. 2,455 homicides, and last year you know 289. that is a 95% decrease in homicides. now, use of force is important. every officer has to be judged by an objectionable, reasonable standard. did he operate objectionably reasonable? he initially tried to do an arm bar takedown. mr. garner resisted and said you re not taking me in today. then he went behind the waist and tried to bring him down. you re skipping an important point, because the laws in the books say that you have to go and arrest people no, no. you should wait for a supervisor if there is no fear of danger or harm to yourself. that s not true. that is true. i was in the job for 25 years on the nypd task force. it never waited for a supervisor. and on top of that, there are other officers still on the force who lied on the report, who accused eric garner of selling up to 10,000 cigarettes on the report. we have to look at it altogether. i appreciate listen, you re doing it great because you re listening to each other and i appreciate that. i want to ask you a big picture here, because there is a pattern when you have officer-involved killings, where there are at best in some cases or at least, at the extreme, administrative penalties. but very rarely legal penalties, right, where officers go to jail. those are definitely the minorities. california has just passed a law that changes the standard from reasonable to necessary use of force in these kinds of encounters. i want to get both of your views before we go. i ll start with you. do you think that s a good step what california has done? repeat again. the california governor and their state legislature passed a rule that changes the standard that allows a police officer to use deadly force from reasonable to necessary. in other words, makes it a higher standard for applying that kind of force and i wonder from a legal perspective, do you think that makes a difference? i think that is important. i think we have to continue to have these conversations like this, because policing is hard. we also ask our police to do too much. i m also concerned in new york city because there were some changes made they were looking into that makes it almost easier to use a choke hold and they are doing some use of force changes that we think may be damaging so we re looking at that in new york city as well. that sounds like it s a good step in the right direction. do you think that works? i don t necessarily disagree with that, but i think when we have reflexive legislation, let s look at the patriot act and how it looked ten years after 9/11. i think we need to be careful with that and understand. i don t know what it s like to grow up as a black man in america. you do. you don t know what it s like to be a cop on the streets in an area that is a high crime area when you never know when somebody refuses to comply, are they looking to take my life or making it hard for me to arrest them? i agree with that and i don t know pantaleo. i know he s someone s son and people love him. i also know in high crime areas, they want it down more than anyone else. but someone died and an illegal technique was used and there has to be accountability. can i thank you for having the kind of conversation i wish we were able to have more often on a divisive and important issue but you discussed it like adults and i appreciate it. we ll have you back soon because i know it s going to be a continuing conversation. coming up, a sea of debris in the middle of the atlantic ocean. our cnn crew went there and took a deep dive looking at the extreme amount of plastic threatening wildlife in the north of the atlantic. this is a remarkable story and you re going to want to watch it. stay with us. aim to say that more with aimovig. a preventive treatment for migraine in adults that reduces the number of monthly migraine days. for some, that number can be cut in half or more. don t take aimovig if you re allergic to it. allergic reactions like rash or swelling can happen hours to days after use. common side effects include injection site reactions and constipation. aim to be there more. talk to your doctor about aimovig. be right back. with moderate to severe crohn s disease, i was there, just not always where i needed to be. is she alright? 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memory support brand. you can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. folks, you really want to watch this story. it s alarming. it s amazing. there s a rainforest in the middle of the atlantic ocean. researchers say the sargasso sea is now on the brink of devastation. small dish, baby turtles all under threat because of plastic. cnn s senior international correspondent went there right in the middle of it and she explains why. reporter: it is humbling to be out in the deep blue hundreds of miles from land. we re in the sargasso sea, a free-floating seaweed dubbed the rainforest. under the mats there is an unexpected array of bio diversity, but also the shocking realization of what we are doing to it. look at all that. reporter: there are so tienier pieces, hard to see, but everywhere. each time we got into the water we found countless pieces, all different shapes and sizes. most plastic is not directly dumped into the ocean. much of what you see has been discarded on land, traveling thousands of miles and breaking up along the away. the sargasso sea is the world s only body of water without shores. it s defined by the current of the north atlantic, current that also carry plastic filth, making it one of the five ocean garbage patches. alexandra and maureen are marine biologists. the sargasso provides a habitat for baby hurtles and fish, shrimp, plus hundreds of other organisms. in the oceans degrading plastic becomes more poisonous as it binds with other man-made chemical pollutants. all the toxicity ends up in the digestive system of marine life and travels up the food chain all the way to our dinner plates. on board, amanda collects samples, part of a study into plastics in this body of water. you can see quite a bit of plastic and this has been fairly common in most of the samples that have been coming up. in most of the samples, we have seen a lot of plastics because they get in the sargasso. the results of the study are alarming. in it s samples, they found similar or greater microplastic to what they found in the pacific garbage patch last year. we have to change our consumption and the way we do things. you have a son? yes. when you see the way things are now, are you worried about his future? yes. i am, a lot. because i think with climate change, what are we giving them? it s insane. reporter: being out this far from land, you can t help but be struck by how interconnected our world is and how destructive we are being to marine eco systems, and with that, also to ourselves. cnn in the sargasso sea. just so harrowing there. incredible reporting right in the middle of the ocean. thanks so much for joining us today. i m jim sciutto in new york. we always appreciate having you with us. at the hour with kate bolduan will start right after a quick break. fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely. but allstate helps you. with drivewise. feedback that helps you drive safer. and that can lower your cost now that you know the truth. are you in good hands? and with new features and richer stories,d you re from. it can lead you on an unexpected journey. .that brings you closer to home. it s only $59 to discover your heritage. so instead of telling stories of where you went. .you can tell the story of where you come from. get your dna kit (now) for just $59 at ancestry.com. no cover-up spray here. cheaper aerosols can cover up odors in a flowery fog. but febreze air effects eliminates odors. with a 100% natural propellent. it leaves behind a pleasant scent you ll love. [deep inhale] freshen up. don t cover up. febreze. hello, everyone. i m kate bolduan. thanks so much for joining me. a brand new look at the current state of the democratic race for president. just out this morning, a new cnn poll shows joe biden is bouncing back. warren and sanders are battling for second. and kamala harris, where did you
do is focus on this. they could be doing and they are thdeclaring their sustain for te americancl voter. this lawless partisan impeachment, is the political suicide march the democrats. have you seen my posts the last four weeks. [applause]. during the panel this week, wall street journal. dan and columnist a kim. and bill mcgurn. dan largely along party lines nancy pelosi said impeachment to work as to be bipartisan. i guess you achieve that in a way. and the only people who voted our three democrats voted against three and two voted against both. and jeff andrew from new jersey, he is switching parties. is that the outcome the she expected. i think it is kind of where she thought it was going. but part of it that i find surprising is that the intensity of the democratic commitment of impeachment as noted all throughout the drunk the impeachment collated this. think some of d these democrats believe there is some sort of constitutional crisis in their making this great think and defending the constitution whereas both the breakdown makes it clear that is broken along totally partisan and political live and that this is a political exercise. that is not reached or achieved the loophole of great prostitution exercise that impeachment is supposed to be. it is r become a political exercise i think that everyone in washington is beginning to the sea as such. bill what you think that 20 of them now, are retiring in 2020. they have no stake in the not running for office. they have no stake in the future election. they can vote as they please. yet they all voted against it. bill: i think this was nancy pelosi news great achievement. mitzvah, cut into it, she had the political party. paul: it started off and illegitimately. they changed the rules to stack the deck. so i think a lot of people don t necessarily like donald trump, holly don t like the democrats more for doing this. that is all of the warnings missus posey and amy jerry had said p months ago about throwing the country into impeachment when it s not bipartisan. you can harden the publican republican result. and i think the senate the senate mcconnell news getting however they respond, i think that it is important to respond in a way that conveys the legitimacy of the way the date democrats had proceeded on this. paul: on that.can you get the speaker now staying many will wait to turn over the articles of impeachment to the senate. when rush rush rush to get this done before christmas. no going to wait to see how the senate is going to set the rules of the trial echoing chuck schumer the minority leader news demands to call more witnesses. what is her rationale here. it strikes me that what it looks like is the really serious. kim: here s what they re trying to do, they re trying to attempt to suggest that the senate majority leaders met mcconnell has brought taking this seriously. the senate has brought doing his job. therefore you have schumer news call for witnesses and you have her refusing to turn over the articles until there is what she says, a fair trial. i think the problem is though thathe mitch mcconnell to kick s out of the park. she pointed out that the recent no one news heard from those witnesses because the house gave up on that. and was sloppy in his own impeachment inquiry. also that nancy pelosi has no right to dictate to the senate in any of this. so is the very weak position. i think it hurts her politically. for her to not send this over. paul: one of the purposes of what they are doing here was supposed to be to fressure about for vulnerable senate republicans. collins garner mansion, no mention but to listen make sally. i think because of the way things have become so politicized, actually turning into something of a fiasco, pelosi has taken those for off of the hook. i think there both against to equip president trump. it s going to be a pretty easy one and be able to tell their constituents that this think was kind of a mess. and they will be right. as well as making it easier for democratic, mansion and doug jones, to vote also, to acquit the president trump. paul: lemanski about a big pitcher question. business impeachment and the way handled, the abuse and the vagueness of the abuse of power charge. your obstruction of congress because you decided to go forward. to resist fizzing subpoenas. disclaiming impeachment for any president, more likely. sadly i think it does. not just more likely, as we see already, people are taking this impeachment is seriously as is happened before when president clinton. where i go, he said on thursday night & nobody asked about impeachment. hello, stan said, with the senate. the republicans, they are already running ads in the district the trump districts they t think are vulnerable democratic w on this. it tells you something. the democrats i would-be very surprised if they run impeachment. they re going to try to hit other issues. the speaker news press conference, it was stop asking me about impeachment. ask me about anything else. [laughter]. soon let s get past this. i can tell you that the press. the democratic legal case against president trump and how the process is likely to play out when or if impeachment makes his way to the senate. senate. i don t even have a crime, this is the first impeachment where t this is the first impeachment. tu[background sounds] con liberty mutual solo pagas lo que necesitas. only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. this is the epson no more buying cartridges.. big ink tanks. lots of ink. print about. this many pages. the epson ecotank. just fill and chill. paul: the calming scent of lavender by downy infusions calm. laundry isn t done until it s done with downy. that s ensure max protein, with high protein and 1 gram sugar. it s a sit-up, banana! bend at the waist! i m tryin ! keep it up. you ll get there. whoa-hoa-hoa! 30 grams of protein, and one gram of sugar. ensure max protein. as it general matter, i think we have to worry about criminalizing they process. the putting in hurdle of high crimes and treason, bribery and other high crimes. the articles of impeachment, did not allege a violation of the law. paul: was attorney general. arguing that the articles of impeachment passed by the house this week, do not allege any violations of law. and trivializes the impeachment process for partisan purposes. he served as deputy attorney general on the bar. welcome george. nice to see you b again. first let s talk about and before we get to impeachment. the senate trial. is nancy pelosi and the speakers threatening not to turn over the articles of impeachment and the senate. until she likes how they conduct the trial of the center. this represses to that. know. it is absorbed. is fundamental to the constitution paul, and he tells of the congress sets his own grrules, that the senate has its rules. for impeachment and decides its own procedures. the idea that they would have to negotiate with the house as to what that process looks like, is silly. and you shows again, how unabashedly political and politically motivated the whole impeachment businesses. it s very. paul: so the senate and ms. mcconnell the majority, be justified with us if those articles never come over. sorry, we re not going to hold a trial because you are not sending anything over. yes. i think it would. there may be different ways to approach this but i think the senate could easily take the position from prosecution. paul: really, what about just staying ifssss you ll.to the managers, e want to honor the constitution and do better than he did so will.your managers for you. focus of many to argue the case on your behalf. and elsie away on the constitutional provisions or the existing senate rules for that to fly. but the senate perhaps could had met its rules and do something like that but i d be surprised if they did. i think that is what is happened here is that ms. pelosi and the leadership the democratically the leadership the house, has demonstrated clearly that this was all about affecting the 2020 election. and has nothing to do with ukraine or 2016 or 2017, or 2018 or 2019. it is about 2020. on again to the fisa quote because we do areis deputy ag of course that gives youar some responsibility over the fbi. as you look at the borowitz report, is the behavior that it documents behind the fbi and its submissions to the quote. is that it at all your view. no. specifically no. paul: happen.thiss i guess is what i m staying, you have a wiretap essentially. you have proof of the quote, submitted by the fbi of an official is advising a preside president. district me is very serious. in the normal course of affairs, that kind of decision, with his political implications, have been alerted at the deputy ag for deep levels. one would certainly think so. and i think of the strongest points and recommendations that michael borowitz makes in that report, is that there needs to be some kind of change to make sure the notification to theha responsible political leadership of the justice department would occur in certain sales like this in the future but there s a lot more that needs to be done to fix this and judge collier news rebuke, of the fbi, that came in what we have heard so far from director ray has frankly been better. it was extraordinary that he issued that rebuke in public. i guess one of the concerns that i have is what took them so long. what took the course along. they had information in the real reason to doubt what was submitted to them long ago, because of submissions from the house intelligence committee. letters will sent to the fisa quote. is this a little bit is it too late here. on the judges bear some responsibility here. i think that is a legitimate question. not so sure that the way things are set up, that it would-be a good idea for the quote directly to respond to every sort of issue that congress might raise because in part it is a larger problem may be for us to discuss another day. but having article three judges performed what is really an article to p function is to authorize these wiretaps and where does congressional oversight play intoze that. they have oversight of the judges, and the quote function or just the executive function. it is a mass and i think one of the things that i personally hope that will come out of this is the complete re-examination of the legal regime that should be used to pursue these necessary and intrusive investigative techniques. see what kind of accountability do you think is here. as i look at this, the whole history of the fisa process was set up in the wake of the abuses on j j edgar uber. they set that up to sort of so and we can never happen again. now in the case will clearly some people, evidence even that there was a an, to distort presentations to the t quote. and you can get away with this. that went out consequences of the fbi. how are we setting ourselves up for this happening again. are we. yes very much so. and i really trust that attorney ttgeneral bar knows the fbi inse out. i trust that he is going to make sure that this think sticks. okay, negative and includes john durham newshi brawl as the u.s. attorney looking at this. ai think what john doran is looking at is a much wider question just problems that the fbi in the fisa application process. thank you really appreciate it. still ahead the fallout continues. paul: from the inspector general news report on truck campaign is the fisa quote presiding judge, issues a a rare rebuke of the f. next. 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[ hisses ] [ hisses and snarls ] [ bell chimes ] let s dance! and now the icing on the cake! paul: the secret surveillance issuing a rare public rebuke of the appeal of this week. rosemary collier ordering the agency to see how it intends to correct their errors. is laid out in the justice department to report on the investigation into the trunk presidential campaign. inspector general michael horowitz, said this week that the fbi made serious and repeated mistakes and handling of applications to the former carter page. something former fbi james call me acknowledge the fact that chris wallace last sunday. is right, i was wrong. i was overconfident in the procedures that the fbi injustice had built over 20 years. i thought they were robust enough. it s incredibly hard to get a fisa. i was overconfident in those because he is right, there is real sloppiness. rio back with dan. andd him and bill. kim it was a lot more than sloppy. was not. kim: much much more and also by the way, it s not really hard to get a fisa. we can go for a long time and this whole think, through jim corum coming, is kind of legally words there. paul: want to ask you know about uconn this make because you reported that actually the fisa quote, had known for a long time before the borowitz report came out. that it probably had received false information from the fbi. in its applications to survey carter page. explain what happened. kim: this is really important. we get hold of two letters that the former house intelligence committee had sent to the quote and one in february of 2018 and then one in c june of 2018. pointing out that many of the things that michael horowitz has now said. that was 18 months earlier, two years earlier and we also got hold of the responders from the quote which will essentially just to blow all of this up and to this blow the committee off an estate not even really respond to any of this so they had direct evidence of problems in the page application and this isn t really a separation of powers issue or its response to the house committee, the question is that they had the information and they did nothing. paul: is really interesting because of course, is sick and significant, congressional intelligence committee does b have oversight responsibility over the intelligence process fisa is really clearly, part of that process. sunnis in these letters the quote just as nevermind, that is a real serious issue in my mind of separation of powers. in the delusion of accountability on the executive branch because we you get is the quote says, will not come to me talk to the justice department and they said talk to the course. kim: right, that s what makes this rebuke from rosemary collier, somewhat disingenuous is it too. to see we are so surprised to see and find out there is problems in this process. they know there will problems in this process and it was in the spotlight on the brawl quote itself played in this. in this mess. paul: i agree and one of the things that he raises the time and fines that was being proposed, and i think some of the judgment of professor silverman was that if judges minute step like this, you can t really call the judges. they are one of the unaccountable parts. also in this case, and the two things that stay on out. how many people gone to jail. if martha stewart for lying to the fbi. the fbing - paul: from here to des moines. and in the fbi, misrepresents itself to a quote, and the think is just telus event boys, how you are not going to do it again. that seems very disproportionate. to gives., in addition to the intelligence community, he came to judge collier before the carter page four. and i think he said we ve got a big problem with this. with a spying and so forth. and especially information for getting into independent contractors. she issued a scathing, like a hundred page report so she knew there will presidents in this a and she had precedence and she has to have an innocent humidity telling them and now is just see, tell me how you are not going to do it again. no businesses filed this kind of misinformation. paul: one ofet the point when asking about, robert muller who it s been two years investigating his whole business in the reston russian collision story. the moral of this. hate now they re either he didn t look at it, and he didn t certainly report on, or he did and said well, i don t want to tell anybody about it. how can he do that. that s the question will probably remain unanswered question. carter page was a paris fuel figure in the trunk campaign and yet he and the vita investigation is the link into the so-called russian collision narrative. they built them out of him. should include them when this came out in late 2016 that the original application, the russian collision narrative itself was very weak. in the country was exposed to it for two long years. and at some., robert moore had to see it was going nowhere. paul: just over six weeks ago, when the first cast in the presidential campaign will come up. i m a verizon engineer, and i m part of the team building the most powerful 5g experience for america. it s 5g ultra wideband for massive capacity and ultra-fast speeds. almost 2 gigs here in minneapolis. that s 25 times faster than today s network in new york city. so people from midtown manhattan to downtown denver can experience what our 5g can deliver. (woman) and if verizon 5g can deliver performance like this in these places. it s pretty crazy. .just imagine what it can do for you. the paul: the democrats held their final presidential debate on thursday night. just seven of the seventh 20 connectors taking the stage in los angeles. only six weeks ago on the first votes are cast, the candidates took on iowa from on mayor pete would adjust. including missus zach, from senator elisabeth warren. so the mayor just recently had a fundraiser, tell was held in one cave, full of crystals and served 900-dollar a bottle wine. billionaires and wine caves. they should not pick the next president of the united states. literally the only person on the state, who has brought a millionaire, or billionaire. this is the problem with issuing atsecurity test purity test used yourself cannott pass. paul: james freeman, and mr. we re also, what i want to know is have you ever consorted with billionaires and is this the new, does this disqualifying in it residential race. is such a potent attack or not. i wish i could see. [laughter]. i want to be a billionaire. love, mayor pete did his own back purity.i think i noting that senator warren made an enormous transfer of gas to her friends when her senate realized what she got from billionaires. her new purity, is pretty new. but overall, look, it signifies there a pretty big island peak on thursday night is doing so well in the iowa poll. see if senator warren after him on campaign finance and you had any going after him on leadership. it is a bit of a test for him the night. i think he came out of it reasonably okay. i thought the point attack was more potentlo because he got to his relative lack of experience in the fact that he had gotten trounced in indiana, inin 2010. and this is his big weakness right now. at this big liability i should see. kim: fundamentally you have a guy this piece very well, has got some policy platform but he doesn t have a lot of experience and we ve been through that before. paul: view of the winners, then debate vita number one, global chart, number two. major case for being minnesota person. you can get things done progressive enough, but not to progressive invited, held up p pvery well. the strongest debate. think other than acknowledging the green plants will destroy loss of jobs, i think was a very strong night ar joe biden. i would agree on, chart and add to the list of winners andrea yang who was unpredictable, he said the professional politician and the others are so it doesn t feel the need to embrace every democratic myth including about the 2016 election. i thought it was telling and i expect to get more out of that evening. held up very well. mayor pete said he can take those punch and he can return punches. he didn t flinch when elisabeth warren was issuing his broadside against him. he came right back with thee point abouthe purity. which is the good. nothing is going to be there. he is occupying a kind of straight face. i saw on the things emerged from the debate was there are some real tensions emerging between the moderate biden costar, and warren. and sanders. one of joe biden news best moments at the endth was money literally ripped into medicare for all. all of us in a state of anger about it. how infeasible it was. was in telling these people, that elisabeth warren, your beef is with moderate democrats. thirty when it turned the house two years ago. the moderate governors. some people but a judge is trying to have it both ways, occupying a space between the two of them. i think one of the interesting things here, it s obvious that warren and buddha judge, are both competing for what i would call the white general think the ann arbor cambridge massachusetts and the ames iowa liberals. and buddha jazz is came at her expense. lord has brought just competing with britney for the left out. she is worried about what buddha judge is doing to his forte. bangmac absolutely i would see she was a loser. she kind of had ahe rough run because of the way she changed around her medicare for aller pn it is scaling that back it certainly made her look less strong. she is phoned in the polls again because of pete buddha judge his live. and she need it a big night and she didn t get it. she instead came back, she was very defensive on her stacked plans and how you payax for it d she was pretty combative and made it look a little angry. i just didn t think she got what she need it out of that debate. see what i think the clovers are with his performance, could have something of an arise in iowa over the next month. anybody discrete. i think she can. i just think off of, it is good move going after buttigieg on how he lost. and for some reason, she and the other competitors even as buttigieg is his chance essentially taken the lead in the iowa, walked into her or unaware about the real failures as mayor of south bend indiana. they keep trying to concede that as well. this valuable experience as well. he is leaving office next month after eight years. he is leaving the city and more violent dangerous place and it s not a good story. paul: still ahead trade tensions is the house faces the extensions mca and the truth with china. what is it all mean with china and 2020. next. others. and ourselves. for a better us, donate to your local y today. i receivelize travel rewards. going new places! going out for a bite! going anytime. rewarded! learn more at the explorer card dot com. we just made the is the worst trade deal ever. [applause]. is very exciting, a great deal. and the democrats tried to take credit. it is okay. one retakes. boo. paul: both sides are claiming credit. the trade agreement was passed. a major legislative victory just today after his impeachment. one step closer to fulfilling his campaign promise. every making t north american trade agreement. until canada, and mexico penetrators with china, made for the economy heading into the 2020. assess douglas. he is the former director of the congressional budget office and president of the market action forum. welcome doug coetzee. the mexican deal, is the better than nafta and how much will help the economy. i think the mexican deal, u.s. canada mexican deal is initialed by subtraction critic takes off of the table when potential source of trade turbulence, has brought a dramatic change from nafta. discuss some steps forward. a better on digital trade. butter and ip protection. steps backwards, higher trading autos after 16 years. it s hard to see if it is dramatic trade deal but that enough turbulence. growth peaked in the middle of 2019. 2.2 percent every year heard number down to 2.1. immersive problems, the trade sector and the business part. confidence has stopped putting our growth prospects. the step in the good direction. other trade development in the last couple of weeks during the china deal. phase one, the president says relatively modest. a lot of purchases the white houses off of the 2017, baseline over two years. from china, also some changes to investor, intellectual property protections and patents and so on. we make of this deal. it s the right list of topics in it. william is in the deal yet. even since it was announced, we heard some skepticism on the ability the chinese to buy all of the things they promise. especially the executor. double with the use of i. there s been some confusion on the tiny side. how much additional tariff protection do we get out of the united states. that s all relationships as china, skepticism is in order. make sure that in january, there s a single piece of paper on which both parties signed. the make sure they comply with it. speak so again, progress, but our plea out of the woods yet. i don t think so. let s assume for the fink of argument that in fact, this really worked out, the details will be put on paper. somber vacancy and we do get a truce here for at least another year. between china and the u.s. i would assume you would think that that would again be another blow against uncertainty from trade. i think it would-be tremendous harm that is been inflicted by these things going at each other. it is hard to quantify. this is really significant. the worldwide manufacturing really is the chinese slowdown. it came back into our slowdown in business investment and that is hurt the u.s. economy greatly. taking that and reversing it. while the federal reserve has been a number on it. .it says in one study the trade uncertainty is cost about 1 percent of gdp growth. and we are below or we will before. okay. let s assume again for the fink of argument we do get this straight truce, i think white house advisers that talked to her staying that the economy is probably worth a half-point of gdp for 2020 increase improvement. how you see it. sooner think that is a simple number have a percentage. i see for the first time presidential construction attributed to the gdp growth in a little bit more upside was there. the most important, will no longer relying on the house. all of our gdp growth. then in balance growth wasn t going to last forever. the steps towards an ability to sustain, has 2020 and a 2021. one of the things that has been concerning, is declining business investment. with that abuse, big burst of it after the stacked reform. but in the trade turmoil, movie really it fall off. that s been disappointed because as you know, not going to get long-term growth unless you get that business investment. using the bouncing back. do. it went from something like 7 percent and to a in the most recent gdp data. part of that is just in the cycle. it is just not possible to get activity growth and continued rise in wages. that went out that investment coming back. i think there s good reason to think this. so do you see that with growth. the sea get tuned to two and a half growth in the next year. you will have pretty tight labor markets continuing you are probably going to see pretty healthy wage games. the spare predictions. i think those are fair predictions. been astonished at the ability of the economy to create as many jobs as it has. the demographicre seebs we shoue having workers to print jobs should have fewer jobs. i m a slay to the numbers. so will going to have to even tighter labor market s structur. wage growth higher. it will be a good year for workers. select two years briefly, stacked reforms, what is the verdict. economy. is no question netflix, do you make a long-term, we just don t know. a we have the trade tensions, md, really just finished the regulation that affect the largest u.s. companies, the big global companies. another can actually do their capital plan. we will see how that turns out. takes a lot. i appreciate it. she went when we come back, congress leaves town for the holidays but not before passing the year in spending blowout. we would see what s included in there. $1.4 trillion spending spree next. needles. essential for the sea urchin, but maybe not for people with rheumatoid arthritis. because there are options. like an unjection™ . xeljanz xr, a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well enough. xeljanz xr can reduce pain, swelling and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections like tb; don t start xeljanz if you have an infection. taking a higher than recommended dose of xeljanz for ra can increase risk of death. serious, sometimes fatal infections, cancers including lymphoma, and blood clots have happened. as have tears in the stomach or intestines, serious allergic reactions, and changes in lab results. news when it comes to using data, everyone is different. which is why xfinity mobile is a different kind of wireless network that lets you design your own data. choose unlimited, shared data, or mix lines of each and switch any line, anytime. giving you more choice and control compared to other top wireless carriers. save up to $400 a year when you switch. plus, unwrap $250 off a new samsung phone. click, call or visit a store today. and a drumroll, please. yeah! tonight is a magical night. where anything is possible. it s party time. woo! here we go. ha, ha. now for the icing on the cake! come, we re about to begin. see that we will meeting rooms for the holidays, congress passed a $1.4 billion spending deal. shutdown venerated. there was something for everyone in the 2000 plus page spending spree for the president of getting more than $1.3 billion for his border wall. credit scoring 25 million gun violence research and another 425 million for election security. will back with dan andor kim and james. paul: i james this is the exact think you love about government. [laughter]. is depressing. i was the president would take some of that justifiable anger he has for speaker pelosi and channel it to opposing her spending priorities. you just mentioned the economy is growing at about 2.1 percent. government revenues are growing at 4 percent. spending going in a percent. where this environment where it is very cheaper tomorrow right now with the c idea is to grow your government four times as fast as your economy over time. that s a fantasy. increase of revenues, that s a problem, budget problem has brought revenue. the stacked cut has not reduced spending from your two year. only expectations of what the revenues work. i think the basic problem paul is ideological. the two parties are so far apart now. the democratic is shoveling revenue coal into the revenue furnace. meanwhile their only defense spending hostage. it will not increase it in the sink theirs. there was a time when democrats believed in national and defense not a mark. this is basically, the devil news bargain that that republicans would have to make with thega democrats. the one was done again, we ll just throw it at the end and introduce it on monday. on on tuesday or wednesday so of course everybody looked at all of the details. very closely. kim: all 2000 pages. paul: if my to the top live. this has brought the way to do a government but on the other hand budget process is broken. any good in this bill the you like. kim: now. how s that for an answered. paul: for the repeal of the obama care. kim:r that would-be the one think. all right, we will give you that. the bill does have it as an end to the cadillac stacked which was an obama care stacked on high-cost health plans. also the permanent repeal stacked on health providers. and on medical devices. these will all very bad. prevent taxes and better policy. one is nice, it s not them will getting rid of them but they were repealed for important fortuity. thate would-be the one highlight of this. went i guess, you mentioned you wanted the president to focus on it. so why doesn t he. tonight thesi question. i think it comes down to the point that dan mentioned. the republicans have decided to get defense spending spending increases. they will accept all that liberal spending priorities. i would just urge them to think andhe consider that we cannot remain and military superpower if we do not also remain an economic superpower. if financial superpower. this idea of the government will always give the borrow money and listen to a off percent. and ten years less than 2 percent. and they see t no. the problem is the big drivers are spinning hard time is so security and medicaid and there s no political will to do any of those. so as long as they want to tackle this, then they just see, a wealth. in discretionary spending isn t all that big of a problem. so will just kick back out to your grandchildren. tonight president trump city he would rather do it with economic growth. there is a.there. but even with economic growth i am not sure that not doing anything about entitlements is going to result in anything but shafting. the younger generation. sooner or later have to do some think about it. paul: plumber break before we come back. his and missus of the week. paul: timeout for hits and misses of the week. kim: so thisth is had to attorney jon durham is being attacked by the media on the left after reports cities looking directly into the brawl ofct former cia director f john brenda in terms of the rustic pollution hoax. except calling thisan partisan. it is essential in the biggest question is what brawl intelligence communities play to the beginning of all of this. especially the cia i in a very strict photograph and domestic politics. we should be applauding this courage. paul: l. cost of donor intent and 2002 a business charlotte camps died, the five university to promote austrian school economics and they took the money, or much of interest but he had to trust verify clause requires they sued, that the monies going to do stuff with the donor news intent will be honored. paul: james. james: goldman sachs. they were getting tears this week from environmentalists from staying that they re not going to produce energyas products in alaska arctic regions. i don t really have time to go into the brawl the malaysian corruption scandal but they been involved in energy and those environmentally sensitive james called venezuela in saudi arabia but a fairly hard-working alaskans doing lawful business is unacceptable with him. all right mother cabrini, denver immigrants for whom a statute was going to be erected in lower manhattan looking out over the statue of liberty. it is so appropriate. in 1870, who told mother cabrini to go to italy to help the impoverished italians pouring into new york city. that said, the administration numeric dimaggio skipped over her to add the monument was this past year. this writes a terrible wrong. paul: thank you all remember if you have your own interest be sure to twitter it to us. is it for the show. thanks my panel and thanks to all of you for watching. hope to k see you right here, nt week. g.ou right here next week. massive chain reaction crash in virginia. placing 150 people will treated including two people with life-threatening injuries. the crash also snarling traffic on the busiest travel days of the year. the initial cause of the accident is still unknown. mica said, they been called at 27 troopers to come to the same to investigate. they re still unseen by now. hello everyone welcome to venue our, i m eric shaw. police see in this congress just a short time ago italy 69 cars will involved in a crash and i have it
last night. he went off. the jackson five they re calling it, five touchdown passes. he s a sports changer. he will become now the new yardstick for a professional quarterback. as a steelers fan, eddie is very, very excited. we ll show some lamar jackson later in the show, but we have to begin with the court ruling against the argument the president is using to stonewall the impeachment investigation. a federal court judge has rejected the white house claim of absolute immunity ruling that former white house counsel don mcgahn must testify in the impeachment inquiry. the house judiciary committee subpoenaed mcgahn earlier this year for testimony on possible obstruction of justice in the mueller investigation. when the white house blocked his appearance, the committee sued and yesterday a federal judge sided with congress writing in her opinion this, quote, stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of reported american history is that presidents are not kings. this means that they do not have subjects bound by loyalty or blood whose destiny they are entitled to control. that rule by judge jackson in a federal court. official tells nbc news the justice department will seek a stay to stop the ruling from taking effect immediately. the white house in a statement said this decision contradicts longstanding legal press dens dent established by administrations by both political parties. will appeal and are confident that the principle advanced by the administration will be vindicated while the ruling only compels mcgahn s testimony, the trump administration has used the now rejected absolute immunity claim to defy congressional subpoenas for vice president pence, secretary of state mike pompeo, and acting chief of staff mick mulvaney. former national security adviser john bolton has not been subpoenaed but people familiar with his views are now telling the washington post he would testify if cleared by a federal court. danny, let me start with you just on the nuts and bolts of this, what it means exactly. what judge jackson effectively said is don mcgahn has to go testify before the house judiciary committee, forget the immunity claim. but once he s in the chair, he can still claim executive privilege. i do have that right? that s right. on a case by case or question by question basis. what this ruling holds, it is a significant opinion, but it s not a surprise because the same court decided essentially exactly the exact same issue back in 2007. that case involving harriet meyers at the time did not make it all the way to the end of appeals, it was resolved otherwise. but there s nothing about this opinion that s that shocking because everything that the court holds or that compels the testimony or shoots down the kpl absolute privilege argument is based on case law. the administration is based on their own legal opinions, which have no binding legal precedent at all. in a sense, the winner in this case was never going to be in doubt and if it goes up on appeal the result will be the same. the net takeaway is there is no absolute immunity for high-ranking executive aides. they have to show up and comply. then they may have executive privilege claims. but you can t ignore a congressional subpoena. that s the big takeaway. let s bring in yamiche and nbc news correspondent covering national security and intelligence ken dilanian. mike, we should point out, we re talking about don mcgahn because we ve had so many names come through in the last several months. don mcgahn was the former white house counsel that left last fall. we re talking here about the mueller investigation which, in this case, is separate from the ukrainian investigation. but there may be some implications for the ukrainian investigation if it sets a precedent that allows someone like john bolton to go testify. clearly. but in this sea of subpoenas, danny, that have been issued, many people who have been issued a subpoena have just totally ignore the subpoena? how does that happen? if i get a subpoena, eddie gets a subpoena, we have to respond to it. they re playing a game of chicken. what we re finding out is that the congress doesn t have a very good enforcement mechanism. so someone who received a congressional subpoena, and if they have the chutzpah, the amazing thing is once you get a new congress in, that subpoena disappears into the either disappears into the ether. that s what the operation admin is doing. they re saying if i hold out as long as i can, the need for the subpoena may dissipate. that s what happened with the meyers s&p subpoena. it never made it through the court of appeals. it was resolved in another way and you had this freestanding court opinion for over a decade that left us wondering where exactly the law is on this issue. in the mueller report, ken dilanian, we know that don mcgahn testified for about 30 hours in front of the special counsel s office. we know that he testified that president trump asked him to fire robert mueller at one point in 2017. how significant is this ruling to that case? well, look, i don t actually think that this ruling is going to affect how congress deals with airing that matter before the public because it s going to be appealed, it s going to drag out. and, look, they re going to take a vote before thanksgiving on the ukraine matter. they re moving ahead. so congressman schiff keeps using this term ropeadope. he says i m not going to be dragged into a long court fight hoping we get the testimony of these people. none of less, because of what danny said this is a hugely important decision that will last long after the trump administration is gone. since 1971, the executive branch has claimed this right of testimonial immunity saying that congress has no right to call close presidential aides to testify. and what this judge said was that doesn t exist. that is not a thing. and so so, you know, as you said, mcgahn will, of course, even once this say peeled and goes all the way through and assuming that this ruling holds, mcgahn will then claim executive privilege on these because he was advising the president about how to respond and how to deal with the mueller investigation in his capacity as white house counsel. and executive privilege arguably does protect some sensitive conversations with the president. so we may never see mcgahn s testimony. but nonetheless, this is an incredible important ruling because especially in light of the recent speech that the attorney general made arguing essentially for unchecked presidential power and that these these many investigations by congress amount to harassment. now, that s a sort of a distorted view of an argument that the executive branch has been making for a long time. and what this judge said is absolutely not, congressional investigations are enshrined in the constitution and they have a right to call aides to come and comply with subpoenas. it s a separation of powers argument is what judge jackson made yesterday in court, eddie. i want to under line what ken just said. oftentimes we confuse two things. there s the bad actor that s donald trump, and then there are the arguments surrounding donald trump around an imperial presidency. and then there s some folks like bill barr who is defending this radical understanding of executive, of executive power, and then there s folks defending trump and the way in which those two things converge. what we saw yesterday is a clear distinction. judge jackson invoked federalist 51 which was all about the separation of powers, right? so we have in some ways a clear annunciation that this idea of unlimited executive power is just simply unconstitutional. it just has no merit. so that argument now is in full view as opposed to just simply being something driving behind the scenes the way in which people have been defending donald trump. the headline from judge jackson yesterday was presidents are not kings. that s the case she was making yesterday. it was classic federalist paper. this is a public civics class. i have a question for the lawyer types around the table. say people ultimately testify, who gets to decide whether executive privilege is claimed? if john bolton testifies, can the white house instruct him to assert executive privilege? does i ha does he have the right to say i choose to answer this question? they can instruct him and it would go immediately to the courts and that creates a problem. obviously an individual can say i m not going to comply with that order. that, again, would go to the courts. this is why these legal issues have been left so unresolved for so long, because in many cases congress says what s the point in the battle? let s try to negotiate something else so that he that we get something today as opposed to maybe something in the future. and just one thing to build on what eddie said, it s so interesting that the administration argued separation of powers means that we as the executive are untouchable. the court said no, no, you ve got it exactly wrong. it s the opposite. separation of powers means that the different branches act as a check on each other and it is exactly our job as a judiciary to check you, the executive branch. yamiche, as i pointed out, don mcgahn testified to robert mueller that president trump asked him to go fire robert mueller, fire the special counsel and he refused to so. president trump has denied that in an interview since then. what is the white house reaction to this? do they show any concern about this or they think this is just another step along this path of impeachment the democrats are trying to pursue? the white house is obviously concerned about this. don mcgahn is someone who was at the center of the white house and understood what was going on with the president, understood some of the orders that he was giving. but i think what s even more interesting or more concerning than don mcgahn s testimony since democrats really do want to focus so narrowly on this ukraine issue is what that will mean for the people that have been named by all the witnesses that came forward in these impeachment hearings. there was secretary pompeo, vice president pence, rick perry, all of these people that are not testifying as people under them like alexander vindman, lieutenant colonel vindman, he s someone working at the white house and decided to show up. but there are these higher up officials who understand what the president s thinking who don t want to come to congress. i think the white house and those people might somehow be compelled to be part of this impeachment inquiry. so, ken, let s talk about potential implications for the ukraine conversation. this, again, we re talking about testimony for don mcgahn before the house judiciary committee. but what about for the house intel committee and a witness like john bolton, someone who s been sort of flirting with the idea of speaking publicly in one form or another, whether that s a book or testimony, and the impeachment inquiry remains to be seen. did this set some kind of a precedent in that conversation? well, it certainly does. to yamiche s point, it absolutely does. the judge even mentioned that national security does not create testimony testimonial immunity either. however, it would allow bolton to claim executive privilege. but you can argue a lot of what s covered in this ukraine matter does not implicate u.s. national security. democrats would say it s a criminal scheme. in the famous nixon sproocase, argued to give up the tapes because it doesn t trip a valid investigation. that has got to be a concern here. john bolton, mick mulvaney, mike pompeo, all of these people who have resisted efforts to get them to talk about ukraine. that said, there s a long road of litigation here and democrats are on a much different timetable. realistically, will the courts decide this on the timetable the democrats need to get an impeachment vote and to get this information before the public, that seems unlikely. but it may affect future generations. this is a really important precedent being set by this ruling. there s legal timeline, appeals, stays, and then the political timeline. adam schiff signaling yesterday to his members, we want to get this moving, get something done and get a vote sometime before christmas. just as a practical matter, how long do this play out, this mcgahn question only? we have a stay right now. how long do this go on? we re only at the district court, which is the lowest trial court. from there they can appeal right to the d.c. circuit and there to the supreme court. they re at the very beginning of this road so it could take a long time. in important issues like this, they will often expedite matters on appeal, but they still need to brief the issues. and the core look at this. we just had over a hundred page opinion issued by the district court. these kinds of things take time. so that s why congress knows that discretion may be the better part of valor. get what they can today, immediately through negotiation and only press forward if the other side refused and stone walls completely. that s how we get existing case law and future precedent. this will not be tied up, the mcgahn issue, before christmas when adam schiff wants a vote on impeachment? oh, it will be tied up but not in the way you re saying. it will be tied up in the courts. danny sa v, thanks so much. we talk about crime in progress, inside the steele dossier and the infusion of donald trump. we ll see you in a bit, ken. meanwhile, we re weighing in on the firing of richard spencer following a controversial war crimes case. speaking to reporters yesterday, secretary esper explained he was, quote, flabbergasted to learn that spence her tried to make a secret deal with the white house concerning embattled navy s.e.a.l. eddie gallagher. secretary esper said he demanded spencer s resignation after learning he approached the white house about an arrangement to let gallagher retire as a navy s.e.a.l. if the president stayed out of the case. esper also said monday president trump gave him a direct order to drop disciplinary action against gallagher. in his first tv interview since being fired, spencer told cbs he spoke with white house counsel pat cipollone about the proposed arrangement on the november 15th. he says cipollone called back the same day to decline the offer saying the president would be involved. spencer acknowledged not telling esser about that proposal. i will take the bad on me for not letting him know i did that. but he was completely informed as to this because his chief of staff was briefed on it. a spokesperson for the pentagon disputed spencer s statement telling the washington post no one on esper s staff was aware of spencer s pro posed deal. in that came deal, he also argued he was trying to head off an order from the president which he said he could not in good conscience obey? what i do stand for for the u.s. navy some of that s a prime tenant. this erodes that. what s wrong with following a lawful order from the commander and chief? nothing, everyone should follow a lawful order, that s good order and discipline. i could not, in my conscience, do this. speaking to reporters yesterday, donald trump defended his involvement in the war crimes case. i have to protect my war fighters. i ve been gotten a lot of people, a lot of war fighters and people in the military have thanked us very much. with eddie gallagher, you know that story very well. they wanted to take his pin away, i said, no, you re not going to take it away. he was a great fighter. he was one of the ultimate fighters. tough guy. these are not weak people. these are tough people. and we re going to protect our war fighters. i don t think he really understands the full definition of a war fighter. a war fighter say profession of arms. and a profession of arms has standards that they have to be held to and they hold themselves to. richard, i ll read some of the reactions. senator jack reed the top democrat on armed services said this is an outrageous, irresponsible interference by president trump in the military justice system. he went on and explained why he believes that. just your reaction to how this has all played out. there s no winners here. spencer s position was ridiculous. he was going to basically argue for a sham or almost show trial kind of thing with the outcome guaranteed, so that wasn t an answer. i understand why he got canned. but the president s position is unsupportable. and the sad thing, willie, it s not a one off. the military is not the only institution he s gone after. he s gone after the foreign service, we saw that the last weeks. he s gone after the against community. he s gone after the federal reserve. he s gone after, you know, national security council. what he s basically doing is institution after institution he is going against the norms, the culture, the idea of professionalism. the idea of independence. so we thought the military was somehow off limits, it s sad, not just because the military is critically important, military s arguably the most successful institution in american society. i can t think when we look at where the military was, say, in vietnam and where it is half a century later, it is a model for talent development, for diversity, for professionalism, for excellence. we have been extraordinarily well served in this country by our military. and this is a corrosive act. this is a way of removing the military s ability to self-regulate, to self-police. so this is a dangerous, dangerous precedent. yamiche, we just spoke to norms broken, standards lowered. this is throughout many agencies in this administration. and jack reed, senator reed s comment that was just referred to, i d like you to speak to the level of concern that you hear along our elected officials who realize that norms broken, standards lowered is really universal now across government. well, there are two parts that you talk to democrats, they really are worried that what president trump presents is really a question about how our democracy functions in general. whether or not the institution that people have held up, i m talking about the dojr t, are t department of justice, whether they will continue to work in the nation s best interest or whether or not a president can come in and put in an attorney general that s been personally loyal to him, as democrats have argued that attorney general barr is to president trump, whether or not that with an agenda president trump has that he can test those norms and break those norms and get away with it. republicans when i talk to them off the record are also people who have been a lot of people will back the idea of rule of law who have shied away from the idea of abusing power but who find themselves having to back up and defend someone that they think is bending the rules if at best and at worse is the really putting them in a situation where they re having to defend what they think is really unethical behavior if not impeachable. so i think the republicans i ve talked to, they don t move away from the president saying they re going to be strogt impeach him or anything like that. i think he will continue to have solid republican support. but there are republicans who definitely worried that this president in breaking these norms and in change the way that america functions overall might mean something bad for the future of this country. so, eddie, secretary spencer was asked that cbs interview last night what message this sends. he says well the mess tage it sends is that you can get away with anything and president trump will come in and clear your name. it s a bad message to send. we got news from the beast that eddie gallagher would like to campaign with him in 2020, be on the stage in convention in 2020. president trump now effect fivly using the man he cleared as something like a political prop. right. it qualifies what secretary sperns w spencer was saying, it s not that anyone can get away with anything, but if you support donald trump you may be able to. and what we see is the president believes can he do anything he wants. no matter institutional norms say or what they might be, he believes that his power is unlimited and unchecked. and so for those of us who aren t in the military, i was talking to mike about this earlier, just imagine this as the president swooping in, just a particular judicial case and overturning what the judge says. so it disrupts the way in which military justice functions. and here in the context of someone who was convicted of a war crime, of a war crime, someone who in some ways undermined the values of the navy s.e.a.l.s. and donald trump said it doesn t matter. it doesn t matter. you know, to your point and to what richard said about the american military, especially over the course of the last 20, 30 years, the retraining of the american military, the image of the eyes of americans and around the world, on october 12th, donald trump tweeted this. we train our boys to be killing machines then prosecute them when they kill. that is an exhibit of a fundamental total misunderstanding of what we do as a country to train our military. we do not train them to be killing machines. we train them principally to be national security apparatus, but to be weapons representing the united states of america when they are overseas, good order, discipline, as spencer said. a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the military. yeah. absolutely. and this is a perfect example of how we reduce our standing in the world and in some ways we reduce i think potentially the safety of american troops around the world. they re in all sorts of settings. in some cases they re peacekeepers. some cases they are providing stability and sometimes they re war fighters. but when they re war fighters they act with real cohesion and under laws and command and that s so corrosive of what the president is because he undermines that. he undermines the discipline, he undermines the chain of command, the relationship it s a hierarchical organization. that s exactly what he s working against. for this short-term benefit he gets politically, the word that keeps coming to mind, is corrosive. institutions depend upon rules and norms and values and this works against it. all right. still ahead on morning joe, we are exactly 11 weeks away this morning from new hampshire democratic primary. new polling there shows a tight four-way race. we ll dig into the new numbers. plus, former new york city mayor michael bloomberg maikes his first presidential campaign stop. but first, a look at the forecast. we re reporting over 700 kplooit flig flight cancellations and thr3,0 delays. we have everything. let s get into it. we re first of all starting with 23 million people under winter storm warnings. we ve had 7 inches of snow in denver. collins, 14 inches of snow. it s a snow day in colorado and that s going to spread through areas of the plains. and then tonight and into tomorrow, the west gets it hard, especially the mountainous areas. arizona, nevada, everywhere. here s the snowfall map. you can see how big this footprint is of snow. another 6 inches possible later on tonight in places like minneapolis minneapolis. warm side will produce severe weather. we have a chance of an isolated tornado if the you re flying out of st. louis, little rock when this line of storms come through, we ll have to shut things down, get a brief stop and resume. delays are possible throughout the region of arkansas and definition st. louis. let me give you the timing with the heavy snow in denver, we re going to have significant airport delays there. later today the snow begins in minneapolis. early flights are fine. then when that line of storms goes through, we could get delays st. louis, chicago, dallas, and a little bit there in houston. the good news is that the roads pretty much south of chicago are going to be wet. 80 is the tresh chacherous road there will be a period of rain going through and strong winds so i don t think the rain will cause too many delays. but as far as the airports go, we could see winds gusting 50 to 60 miles per hour in chicago and also detroit. so that s going to cause significant problems. delays, maybe cancellations through the great lakes. breezier conditions in areas of the northeast, it won t be as bad as say chicago in new york, but we ll still have some issues out of it. and of course the roads, minor problems with that and with the windy conditions a lot of people are wondering what s happening with the balloons. we can t have gusts forecast over 34 in new york city. right now the gust forecast support to 40. that may change and they may have to be grounded. right now, beautiful in new york city. that changes for wednesday. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. u re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. 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(people talking) for every dollar you spend at a small business, an average of 67 cents stays local. shop small and watch it add up. small business saturday by american express is november 30th. beyond the routine checkups. beyond the not-so-routine cases. comcast business is helping doctors provide care in whole new ways. all working with a new generation of technologies powered by our gig-speed network. because beyond technology. there is human ingenuity. every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected. to do the extraordinary. take your business beyond. some are saying that they see your decision to run now as an indication that you feel that the current candidates in the field are weak and they ket can can t get the job done is. that accurate? let me phrase it this way. i think there s a greater risk of having donald trump re-elected than there was before. and in the end i looked in the mirror and said i just cannot let this happen. michael bloomberg is making a bet about democracy in 2020. he doesn t need people, he only needs bags and bags of money. i have nothing personal against mr. bloomberg, i really don t. but what does disturb me is the arrogance of the billionaire class. senators elizabeth warren and bernie sanders reacting to former new york city mayor michael bloomberg s entrance in the presidential race. he made his first campaign stop in norfolk, virginia, yesterday. meanwhile, for the first time in decades it s a four-way race in new hampshire. the latest suffolk university boston globe poll shows senator bernie sanders at 16% and senator elizabeth warren at 14%. mayor pete buttigieg at 13%. he s up eight points since august. and former advice president joe biden at 12%. he is down nine points since august. this is essentially a statistical tie with all four candidates sitting in the polls margin of error of more than four points. the support for senator sanders appeared to be more solid than others. 64% of their supporters say their mind is firmly made up. biden is the next close northwest that regard with 37%. let s bring in pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of the washington post, eugene robinson. and political reporter for the boston globe, james. james, what do you see in that poll that maybe the rest of us haven t seen yet, which is that mayor pete buttigieg flying up 8%, up eight points, and vice president down nine points. there was that poll last week up in new hampshire that showed mayor buttigieg with a league. some say the highly educated white voters gave him an edge that inflated his numbers, but here he is tied for the lead. yeah, there s a broader point and then a granular point. the broader point is that for so long many, including myself, thought that new hampshire would eventually just come down to this progressive grudge match between two neighboring senators of elizabeth warren and bernie sanders who of course won the 2016 primary. then joe biden comes in the race, obviously floating above it, immediately becomes the front runner. now what we re seeing is the most complicated scenario in new hampshire that we have all cycle. and as i wrote and as you quoted, we ve never had this many candidates clustered at the very top this close to the new hampshire primary in decades. and so while a lot of people are looking at iowa, that s clearly where a lot of voters thought this is going to be a make a break contest for them and they thought new hampshire would be this warn and bernie contest, i think this poll will change the nare tip of and for narrative here. remember the top number, 16%. anything can happen in terms of a candidate who s down at 2% or 4% like yang. and the number of undecides are 50% and haven t decided yesterday. the smaller point would be the one thing to look in this poll are older voters. fascinating. from one poll over last poll to this poll, older voters have been fleeing joe biden. that s why he dropped to fourth place. he dropped nine points among older voters. meanwhile, pete buttigieg is the one who s gaining. he gained seven points among those older voters. right now they re the subgroup that s moving the most right now. isn t that interesting that mayor buttigieg leads the field with 22% support among voters 52 to 65 years of old. the young mayor from south bend, indiana, is the most popular with older voters in new hampshire. and clearly his jump up eight points, it s at joe biden s expense. there s a saying in politics and it began in 1968 in new hampshire that old people like young people. i mean, they just do. they re drawn to younger like willie? that s right. if i m young there are san old showed. i m a middle-aged man. gene robinson, what do you see in these numbers other than the fact that this race is completely up for grabs as is the case in iowa. you ve got a cluster of candidates at the top of polls there. what do you see in these new numbers? i see what you saw. i see a race that s completely up for grabs. i see a primary contest through the first at least two contests and maybe the first three if you count nevada that s totally fluid, that could go any way. and then you get to south carolina and maybe joe biden still has a firewall there and because of his support with african-american voters and we ll, at that point we ll see. but this is this we could be in a few months after these this first set of primaries we could be looking toward super tuesday and hoping that we get some questions answered. this could look like a very messy, undecided race for some time through the primary season, i think. because voters clearly haven t made up their minds that they that there s one of these candidates or even two of these candidates that they want to finally duke it out to run against donald trump. the number of undecideds is striking. steve kornacki reminds us as this poll came out, the same poll, december 11th, 2003, howard dean 42%, john kerry 19%, wesley clark 13%. obviously a long way to go in these. a long way to go, it s just a picture of a particular moment. but i think what s interesting, particularly with the buttigieg numbers and the biden numbers, the kind of conversation we were having around the progressive side of the democratic party that those votes would be split between warren and sanders, we re seeing that happen among the centrists. you have buttigieg, bide ren an now bloomberg. it s interesting how this ideological divide within the party has taken shape up to now and what it will look like moving forward as the voters have choices within those particular camps to make. we re in for a long ride. already it s a factor, but it s going to become a larger factor after the holidays are over and the beginning of the new year. which among these candidates, who can beat donald trump? that s the factor. no one has higher than 16%. the two progress sives together or 30%, the two centrists are 25 percent. this is truly distributed and it reflects the larger narrative. we began this with bloomberg. this is the scenario he benefits from, that nobody emerges. the first four primaries air wash and then you start moving towards super tuesday. it s interesting watching his ads. bloomberg is running less against everybody else and much more against trump. he is the one who who is framing the issues so far more than anything else as a referendum on incumbent and on his fitness to serve. i know his numbers are low and he s not in these polls, but this reinforces the rational for his presidency. we re going to talk more about that after we sneak in a quick break. we ll be right back on morning joe. right back on morning joe. i m your 70lb st. bernard puppy, and my lack of impulse control, is about to become your problem. ahh no, come on. i saw you eating poop earlier. hey! my focus is on the road, and that s saving me cash with drivewise. who s the dummy now? 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( ) only tylenol® rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. they release medicine fast, for fast pain relief. tylenol®. we cannot afford four more years of president trump s reckless and unethical actions. he is an existential threat to our country, to our values, and our national security. and every day it seems to bring another example of just how unfit he is to serve as our president and commander and chief. and this week was no exception. mayor michael bloomberg kicking off his campaign in norfolk, virginia, yesterday. gene robinson r let s play a little devil s advocation is i. he can pour unlimited funds into this race to interact it but a man who is sitting out the beginning of this campaign and waiting on super tuesday. does he really play i part in this campaign the way a lot of people are speculating he will? well, the answer is not yet, certainly, because, as you said, he s not on the charts at the moment. however, if the scenario we were just talking about turns out to be right, if democratic voters really aren t sure, if they really don t know, if we get a completely mixed result from the first four primaries, then, you know, you can imagine a huge sort of blanketing media campaign by michael bloomberg in the super tuesday states, including california and texas. and you can imagine him playing a role in the campaign. i m a bit skeptical as to whether the democratic primary elector rate electorate as we know it this year will warmly embrace michael bloomberg. he ll have a lot of questions to answer. one of them will be if you re elected will you divert yourself of these vast assets so we don t have some of the conflict questions and issues that we have with the billionaire currently occupying or the alleged billion ar currently acc pi occupying the white house. he ll have a lot of explaining to do, but it s not inconceivable this year that, yes, he may have an impact and we ll just have to see. this is going to be one wild ride. no question about that. yamiche, we know the president s always thinking about the race, it s the reason he had rudy giuliani running around ukraine trying to get dirt on joe biden because he was thinking about his next race. what is the white house and specifically the president thinking right now as it watches this field beat each other up and watches the polls move through different states, see another billionaire enter the race in michael bloomberg. where do they see this democratic field and who do they fear most? well, the president has said that he still has his eyes on bernie sanders, elizabeth warren, and joe biden as the top contenders. but when you add michael bloomberg, you riley is eally h understand there are people who see michael bloomberg there is from a democrat i was talking about yesterday, the real version of what president trump claims to be. it s from a democrat, but you have someone who say new york billionaire who has made his money and given away his money, who has been philanthropic and as one said in the democratic convention, that he sees a fraud when he he knows what a fraud is when he sees one. and he was talking about donald trump in that moment. essentially you have someone in michael bloomberg who could get under the president s skin because he could talk about the president s background in new york, cotalk about hhe could ta business ventures and not paying people and the fact that he isn t a billionaire because he s not released his tax returns. so michael bloomberg, even if he s not a direct threat, he s someone that president trump will hone in on because he s known him for a long time. that, i think the president is still most concerned with the democrats leading in the polls. pete buttigieg isn t someone i ve heard that much about when it comes to campaign officials for president trump. but he might be someone who the president begins to hone in on as well. so we ve said it s early, it s early, it s early. a lot of things can change. we ve pointed to the last polls that showed a race that didn t end one howard dean doing the things that the polls suggested he was going to do. what changes the dynamic in this race over these next 11 weeks? how does it shake out when you have four people essentially tied in new hampshire, what are the voters up there look at that will separate somebody from that pack? you know what s amaze something michael bloomberg is worth $53 billion and he doesn t control his own definite nip, at lea destiny in this presidential race. he needs something messy to happen. and to directly answer your question, i m glad kornacki brought up 2003, because you know what happened in 2003/2004? john kerry wins iowa. and he wins iowa and he comes back and then wins new hampshire. i don t know how likely that scenario is going to be here, but if we have a very, very messy race, with a lot of different dynamics going on, if elizabeth warren or bernie sanders win iowa, maybe even pete buttigieg win iowa, they may well win new hampshire as well. and then now we re off to the races and no one has ever lost the nomination who have won those first two states. and then mike bloomberg who? by the time he s probably i don t know how many hundreds of millions of dollars. so i do think that iowa will be playing a very critual roical r determining whether we have a one or two-person campaign. people want a winner similar to 2004. and then of course what new hampshire does. if it s very, very messy that s good for bloomberg. if it s not and we have a clear dynamic, there s questions about what bloomberg s play is right here. coming up, republican senator john kennedy of louisiana tries to clean up his comments about the debunked ukraine conspiracy. still leaves a bit of a mess behind. we ll show you what he says next on morning joe. we ll show you what he says next on morning joe. any comments doug? yeah. only pay for what you need with liberty mutual. only pay for what you need with liberty mutual. con liberty mutual solo pagas lo que necesitas. only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. you too, have a great day. five years ago. .i had psoriasis everywhere. .head to toe. people were afraid i was contagious. alright, i ll be back in one hour. my skin hurt. .i felt gross. what s up jay? how s everything? what s up man? hope you ve been practicing? but then i started cosentyx. .and i haven t really had to think about it. see me. cosentyx works fast to give you clear skin that can last. real people with psoriasis. .look and feel better with cosentyx. don t use if you re allergic to cosentyx. before starting, get checked. .for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections. .and lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor about an infection. .or symptoms. .if your inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop. .or worsen, or if you ve had a vaccine. .or plan to. serious allergic reactions. .may occur. i just look and feel better. see me. ask your dermatologist if cosentyx could help you move past the pain of psoriasis. but when i started seeing things, i didn t know what was happening. so i kept it in. he started believing things that weren t true. i knew something was wrong. but i didn t say a word. during the course of their disease around 50% of people with parkinson s may experience hallucinations or delusions. but now, doctors are prescribing nuplazid. the only fda approved medicine. proven to significantly reduce hallucinations and delusions related to parkinson s. don t take nuplazid if you are allergic to its ingredients. nuplazid can increase the risk of death in elderly people with dementia-related psychosis and is not for treating symptoms unrelated to parkinson s disease. nuplazid can cause changes in heart rhythm and should not be taken if you have certain abnormal heart rhythms or take other drugs that are known to cause changes in heart rhythm. tell your doctor about any changes in medicines you re taking. the most common side effects are swelling of the arms and legs and confusion. we spoke up and it made all the difference. ask your parkinson s specialist about nuplazid. welcome back to morning joe. eugene robinson has a new piece out in the washington post titled trump insiders are finally speaking up. what took so long? in it gene writes this. i wonder why it took a still anonymous whistle-blower to launch the probe of holding trump accountable approximately why it took a war crimes case to focus the attention on trump s disregard for the rule of lieu law. i wander why it took so long for the insiders to begin telling us what they know. there s no shortage in one time administration officials who hint darkly at the danger trump poses to our national security. former chief of staff john kelly, rex tillerson, former defense secretary jim mattis yet refuse to speak plainly. are they afraid of trump for some reason? do they feel some sense of loyalty to a man who obviously has no loyalty to them? working for the trump administration has been a moral slippery slope. i applaud the desire of officials to serve their country and i believe i can understand how they rationalize staying on. without them penn perhaps the betrails would have been worse. but the loyalty s were to the constitution and not to donald trump. anyone with relevant information about donald trump s work in office no longer has the right to remain silent. it may not violate any law, but history, i m quite sure, will take a much harsher view. gene, i imagine you re thinking about someone like john bolton testifying in the impeachment inquiry? i sure am. and i ve been it s actually not john bolton. in the column, look, he was there, he called the ukraine dealings a drug deal, according to fiona hill. he was apparently appalled at what he saw going on. so come tell us. he signed apparently, we re told, according to reports, a big money deal for a book which would have to be a tell-all bik bo book to get that kind of money, couple million dollars, reportedly. zre does he really want to be remembered as the guy rather than tell the american people about the clear and present danger he sees from this president waited to, you know, to tell it in a book that he s getting millions of dollars for and for huge speaking fees that he s raking in? and how can he be in that position? so he s sort of exhibit a in the question of why aren t people speaking out. but others as well. even the witnesses who testified last week, they saw this stuff going on yet we haven t didn t hear from them until after the whistle-blower blew the whis. whistle. yamiche, gene is writing about and talking about a town filled with cowards from anonymous to republicans who you know, who we all know will speak to you off the record about how dangerous this is, about how all of the norms and standards have been broken, lowered, or disappeared and will not put their names on it. well, critics of the president will say that when we look back at the trump presidency we won t just be looking at a president who maybe challenged the norms and maybe really put to test the democratic institutions, we ll be looking at whether or not there were all thesen able enab around him and allowed these things to happen. and whether those people are going to be named say question. we know that the president has people around him he wants to be fiercely loyal to him and those people have in some ways stuck around and helped him and enabled him to do things. you only have to look at the ukraine controversy to know that whether or not the president did was impeachable, we know there are other officials, mick mulvaney and others who are around that the president was trying to get a foreign country to investigate a political rival and didn t find that something that was too wrong that they want to go after. i think what you have in what eugene is writing about say listing is a listing of the people helping president trump. president trump and his supporters will say this is what the people voted for. they voted for someone that was going to have the norm-breaking policies. but think uzbeen righeugene is we did have two weeks of history of people that did speak up. coming up next, pulitzer prize winning author and presidential historian, doris go goodwin joins our table when we come back in two minutes. our t come back in two minutes. we re reporters from the new york times. this melting pot of impacted species. everywhere is going to get touched by climate change. i need all the breaks, that i can get. at liberty butchumal- cut. liberty biberty- cut. we ll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. applebee s new sizzlin entrées. now starting at $9.99. i can shine. i mma do what i m made to do. built for excellence. you start from the foundation up. the excellence is reaching dreams and chasing them at the same time. for the holidays you can t beat home sweet home. the excellence is reaching dreams and we go the extra mile to bring your holidays home. we re portuguese? i thought we were hungarian. can you tell me that story again? behind every question is a story waiting to be discovered. this holiday, start the journey with a dna kit from ancestry. senator kennedy, who do you believe was responsible for hack the dnc and clinton campaign computers, their emails? was it russia or ukraine? i don t know. nor do you, nor do any of us. ms. hill well, let me just interrupt to say the entire intelligence community says it was russia. right. but it could also be ukraine. i m not saying that i know one way or the other. i m saying that ms. hill is entitled to her opinion but no rebuttal evidence was allowed to be offered. i was answering one of his questions and he interjected a statement and asked me to react to it. what i heard chris say was, he made the statement that only russia what tried to interfere in the election. and i answered the question. that s not what he said. i went back and looked at the transcript. he said only russia tried to hack the dnc computer. now, chris is right, i was wrong. the only evidence i have, and i think it s overwhelming, is that it was russia who tried to hack the dnc computer. that s what the consensus is. i ve seen yep. i ve seen no indication that ukraine tried to do it. if you ll look at the articles i talked about, you will see that there s a lot of evidence that ukraine did try to meddle in the election in 2016. there is not. of course republican senator john kennedy now saying it was not ukrainians who hacked the dnc but still saying ukraine did try to meddle in the election. welcome back to morning joe. it s tuesday, november 26th. with us we still have msnbc contributor mike barn knack he will pouring over his notes. your fantasy team? yeah. eddie glaude junior. richard haass. and joining the conversation, doris kerns goodwin, senior yieter at palo altoco, jake sherman, an msnbc contributor, and former justice department spokesman now an msnbc justice and security analysts matt himmer. joe a miller. joe and mika have the morning off. what is he doing in propagating the lie that ukraine meddled in the election, even after he tried to clean it up, he came back to it at the end of that interview? well, i don t know is the short answer. i have no idea. but i would say, listen there are say long-runnithis is a lon theory. republicans especially in the house where they tend to be a little bit more imaginative, let s say, on the house intelligence committee have said this over and over again that it wasn t russia or it was russia plus ukraine. and it s been a way to try to undermine the intelligence community, which president trump has at times tried to do. and it has been a backup mechanism for a lot of house republicans, a lot of congressional republicans. it s rare, though, to see senators who tend to be a little bit more grown up, perhaps, say the same thing. so it was surprising. and i think the cleanup duty is illustrative of that dynamic. i saw you tweeting about this yesterday, jake, something we ve talked about now for weeks and months on this show, which is the franantasy, that the republicans are going to have their minds changed by the impeachment proceedings and turn on the president and vote to convict here. yeah, there s doesn t appear to be any evidence at hand that any republican in the house or the senate is going to vote to convict president trump, period, the end. we ve seen no evidence of this. it seems to be some sort of fantasy among some in the media that somehow republicans are going to get what a lot of people consider to be religion on this. we don t see any evidence of that. we don t see any evidence that any minds are changing. yes, public opinion has fluctuated back and forth. people have been for impeachment, against impeachment, depending on what poll you look at. but there s no evidence that anybody is going to do anything but what we expect, which is republicans are going to back the president here. and although, you know, the senate is a little bit more unpredictedab unpredictable than the house of representatives on that front, it doesn t seem like it s going to be anything besides republicans backing the president. doris, we haven t had you at the table since there was impeachment table where career diplomat after career diplomat told the same story where president trump tried to get political dirt in exchange for military assistance. we saw in that room republicans denying, effectively, the facts that were presented to them over the course of two weeks. yeah, it is the difficult situation we re living in today where it s not just a question of opinion or whether or not there s an understanding of what s happened, facts themselves are what are true and what are not true and as part of the alternative narratives that we re living in. i mean, it just you know, we misspoke. i don t know if we request live can live in a democracy when you can t agree with what s happening underneath. it s not a knew thing for them to rally around the president. but can you put this in historical perspective which is what we re seeing with republican and republican following in line. the other thing that s not new is that zdisagreement on th facts. an old lady asked me on the plane the other day and said have we been in a worst time than this? i said well, lincoln had a debate with douglas, he falls on the floor and you have to drag him out. he s so great in the republican paper they carry him out on their arms. she said that s not very hopeful that ended up in the civil war. i m like, oh, right. there s a new pom oll out th shows effectively no movement on impeachment after those two weeks. 50% say should president trump be impeached and removed from office? that s the same number as october. so we saw and heard what we saw and heard over the last two weeks from those career diplomats. the american american public remains exactly where it was at lea least according to this one poll. in the real world outside of what we re doing here, whether you re getting gas or at the market, impeachment, they re not paying attention to it. they have too many things going on in their lives. and what doris was just talking about reminded me once again how enormously depressing this is that we witness the death of fact, the death of truth. in particular, will littlie, yo talking about ukraine a couple minutes ago. and ukraine and joe biden, it s a lie. it began with a lie months ago. and evilly clever people linked the lie to one candidate, to one race, the race for the presidency, and now that lie, if you pick up any up in each and every day, the lie is covered as if it s perhaps true. right. it s just it s depressing. and the lie if you say it one, two, three, four, five, ten times then it s true. when what the opposite of what a lie escalated should be. the president is using this to stonewall the impeachment investigation. the federal court judge has rejected the white house claim of absolute immunity ruling that former white house counsel don mcgahn must testify in the impeachment inquiry. the house judiciary committee subpoenaed ma begcgahn earlier year. when the white house blocked his appearance, the committee sued and yesterday a federal judge sided with congress writing in her opinion, quote, stated simply the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded american history is that presidents are not kings. this means that they do not have subjects bound by loyalty or blood whose destiny they are entitled to control. that is judge jackson in the federal court yesterday. an official telling nbc news the justice department will seek a stay to stop the ruling from taking effect immediately. the white house in a statement said this decision contradicts long-standing legal precedent established by administrations of both political parties. we will appeal and are confident that the important constitutional principle advanced by the administration will be vindicated. while the ruling only compels mcgahn s testimony, the trump administration has also now used the now rejected absolute immunity claim to defy congressional subpoenas for vice president mike pence, secretary of state mike pompeo, and acting chief of staff mick mulvaney. former national security adviser john bolton has not been subpoenaed but people familiar with his views are now telling the washington post he would testify if cleared by a federal court. all right. matt miller, break this down for us a little bit. we were discussing in our last hour this effectively compels don mcgahn, the white house counsel who left the white house just over a year ago last fall in october to sit before the house judiciary committee, but it does not compel him to say anything. effectively he did still invoke executive privilege. what do you make of all of this? think you re right. i think in the short-term this is not going to have much of an effect, at least as it applies to don mcgahn. the administration is going to appeal and he s not going to show up and testify before that appeal is decided. number two, even if he does show up, as you note the administration can still claim executive privilege and at that point you could find yourself back in the courts trying to litigate whether he had to answer these specific questions. but number three, don mcgahn is not as important a witness to thehouse hou house six months a we know what he said to mueller and mueller put it in the report that we read. the theory of having mcgahn is you would have this public hearing where he would come forward and say it on camera to show the american people. we had two weeks draf matic public hearings. i m not sure that don mcgahn right now is as important a witness as he would have been last summer. that said, i think this is a really important ruling for the long tem, forts next six months, the next year as the house tries to please the administration. because it was such an exhaustive dismantling of the position that the justice department has taken both claiming that the judge writing that this testimonial immunity, this absolute immunity that the justice departments that claimed is something the justice department made out of thin air in the 70s and it s been repeated by administrations on both parties to be fair but there s no basis for it in actual law. that could really have an effect, if john bolton, looking for an excuse to testify, i doubt he isry think he s look h looking for an excuse not to testify. but this could have an effect going forward with witnesses going forward for as long as donald trump is president. there s a lot of interest in this decision but didn t seem like as much interest, correct me if i m wrong, from chairman adam schiff who told his members we ve got what we need, we want to vote before christmas and not wait out these appeals that could go on and on. we need though move forward here. there s a political reality that democrats need to move on impeachment and need to do it soon, probably before the end of the year. they feel like democrats feel broadly fa th broadly that if they get stuck waiting for court decisions they could be waiting forever. they don t want to allow the administration to play what adam schiff has called ropeadope with continued appeals and delay tactics which would be difficult politically. democrats want to move. they say they have clear compelling testimony and evidence to proceed immediately and they leave open the possibility that if courts rule in their favor, they will take their testimony. now, i agree with matt 100%. don mcgahn is not material at the moment to what democrats are looking into. but, as a matter of precedent, there are other administration officials, mulvaney, that they want to testify. so this could be a mont tus decision do momentous decision down the line. we are almost at the end of the year. we re not talking about impeachment vote months in the future. we re talking about two, three, four weeks from now right before christmas. and democrats feel like they can t wait and they feel like it s an urgent issue. matt, could you speak to a figure who looms in the background of this, the close background to all of this, the attorney general of the united states, bill barr and what has happened to the justice department that so much of it seems to have become a political tool rather than a tool for justice for all. you know, i think what s happened to the justice department over the last few years has been depressing for people like me who are veterans of the department and know that it s supposed to operate independently of the president. you look at the way bill barr has behaved internally, squashing an investigation into the president s behavior and then into his phone call with president zelensky and the way that he s behaved publicly where he s spun things for the president and given a speech recently proclaiming that almost absolute power for the president. one of those partisan speeches i can remember by an attorney general. i will say, however, i don t know how long bill barr can continue to toe this road. these new revelations about rudy giuliani and the investigation into his associates in ukraine, i think for the last few weeks we have tended to look at these investigations on two tracks. one, the political track inside the house, which has been a top down investigation. the house looking at the president s behavior and then work its way down the food chain. the investigation the southern district of new york has been a b bottom-up investigation with the two associates of rudy giuliani moving their way to him. eventually they re going to make it to the top. when that happened happens, when the southern district of new york looks at all of this and determines these aren t two separate scandals this is one big scandal with rudy giuliani, his associates peddling influence on both sides of the atlantic, i don t know what bill barr does then if he tries to quash it and sets off a revolt inside the department. i think his ability to keep a lid on justice department prosecutors keeping a lid on what they re supposed to do, i m skeptical of how long can he do that, or i m hopeful he cent continue to do that forever. there s a lot for a presidenti presidential historian to love yesterday. she stated the primary takeaway of 250 years of recorded history is that presidents are not kings and then cited federalist 51, federalist 69. get a little hamilton and mattis in there. it was a separation of powers argument effectively. it s so important to row mind of that what that history is. it s a rule of law, not men. we just have to remember what the ideals are behind these arguments that are now playing out in present time. i read a recent study about how few americans understood history. alarming numbers can t name two branches of the government. many people think that judge judy is say a supreme court justice. the real goal has to be not simple will to lay out the facts, they have to show how they undermine the country. and what does abuse of power mean and obstruction of justice mean? it has to be explained as a story and grounded in the constitution. that s why yesterday just like when we read the separation of powers are not equal in brown versus board when they said you can t have equal schools, separation is not equal, that was a wonderful metaphor for understanding what is unconstitutional. we need metaphors, stories, and we need a narrative of why we need investigation now and impeachment now versus waiting till a year from now. there s a huge responsibility to tie it to the history. we learn from the past. it makes a fascinating read by the way, about american history and separation of history. she s got a history locked inside of her. she does. richard, you re just back from china so we thought we d go round the world with you and take a look at some of the big issues in asia, including the threat you say this administration poses to the u.s./south korea alliance. what are you look at? this alliance has kept the piece on the peninsula now for 70 years. and it s been offsetting the costs of stationing americans there, costs about a billion dollars a year for them. the other billion dollars we pick up. we gave them a bill for $5 billion. this is like going to the restaurant and essentially more than doubling what it costs. and the skraens aouth koreans ag what is gong here? they re already under stress from north korea. this means what does japan do this if this begins to unravel? does that mean they re no longer safe? essentially we ve had something that s worked for three quarters of a century. people are focussed on what we re talking about around this table. but meanwhile we are dismantling, i can t think of a better word for it. we re dismantling the foundations of stability in the region of the world that will more than any other part of the world dominate this sent tripce this is where china is, nuclear weapons in north korea. we are dismantling the system of stabilitization there. and this goes to donald trump s idea that is a transaction. they re not paying enough for them to defend themselves. they are spending 2.5% of gdp on defense. they re more than offsetting most of the costs or about half of the costs of what we re doing there. think it s more fundamental. this is donald trump s view that we get ripped off. that alliances rip us off. that basically the costs of america s world role are far greater than the benefits. and it s as if he were running a business, it s as if he was only being looking at the cost side of the ledger r, he s never looking at the revenue side. you have any concern about the stability of nato? absolutely. comes out in the anoun nnymous . we ve had more sustained fight with our allies than anybody. the president does a cost/benefit analysis. i m a little concomfortabuncomf talking about it. but if you re someone like vladimir putin, why do you do what he s doing against a country, does he know for sure how donald trump and nato would react? would we institute so-called article 5, the commitment of collective defense? and more broadly, again, things are beginning to unravel in europe. and this has worked for 70, 75 years, the whole post war structure the the first part was about two enormous world wars, very expensive. we have avoided that for 70 years. i feel like we re yanking out the foundation stones and almost like health care, we re repealing without replacing. what s going to be puts in his place? i don t see it. i understand that. let s go to the global south. what do you make of what s happening in bolivia and chile where you see folks who are simply resisting in a different sort of way. what do you make of that? it s interesting. everywhere in the world we re seeing people push against the status quo. if it was a leftist center government we re seeing them push aside. if it s right, we re seeing it in china and hong kong. turkey. it makes no difference. we re seeing an enormous antistatus quo populous bias around the world. what that suggests to me we still haven t recovered from the financial crisis. and by and large governments are not able to meet the expectations of their citizens so around the literally in every region of the world we re seeing an antiestablishment push. we re seeing it in this country. donald trump s election is signs of that. the progressive strength on the democratic party. increasingly politics around the world are being fought from the end zones rather than from within the 40 yard lines. the danger of that is really dramatic shifts. the policies that have served us i think pretty well for three quarters of a century. the center s getting hollowed out around the world and we re in danger of going from one supreme to another. it s almost like the world is in disarray, if i may coin a term. i didn t hear you. the world is in disarray. say it again and again. thanks so much. great to see you. jake sherman, matt mill, he thank you both as well. coming up on morning joe, it s still one of the biggest mysteries of the steele dossier. we will talk to the men who commissioned the infamous dossier, the cofounders of fusion goodne fusion gps. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. orning joe we ll be rhtig back. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. i wish i could shake your hand. granted. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. applebee s new sizzlin entrées. now starting at $9.99. now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. woman: i m here, and suddenly my migraine takes me somewhere else, where there s pain and nausea. but excedrin pulls me back in a way 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or visit a store today. welcome back to morning joe. beautiful live picture of the white house. coming up on 7:30 in washington, d.c. on a tuesday morning. joining us now, the cofounders of politico opposition research firm glen simpson and peter frisch. they re out with a new book entitled crime in progress. inside the steele dossier and the investigation of donald trump. and back with us for this conversation, nbc news correspondent covering national security and intelligence, ken dilanian. gentlemen, good morning. good to have you with us. morning. glen, fusion gps, the steele dossier have become these buzz terms. we heard them come up in the impeachment hearing in the open hearings. i want to go back to the beginning of who hired you during the campaign to look into then candidate donald trump in 2015? right. originally we were retained by a conservative up in during the republican primaries. and it was an intra-republican competition. we worked for about seven months looking into donald trump during the republican primaries. that s important to remember and is detailed in length in the book because the republican talking points now is that this is some kind of democratic hoax or conspiracy. that doesn t make logical sense because the republicans paid for half of the investigation. so we re talking about september of 2015 the washington free beacon conservative outlet comes to you at the time like many republicans opposed donald trump and was looking for dirt. what when did they stop their association with you and who picked it up from there? first of all, let s correct this a little bit. we weren t looking for dirt so much as understanding of who this individual was. sure. his business record. you know, this is the first time a real estate executive has run for president, i think. doris will correct me. you are correct. and, you know, so we actually amassed a lot of evidence of a i would call it sort of an ecosystem of compromise around donald trump and people affiliate with the former soviet union. people like felix sater who was a convicted criminal once stabbed someone in the face with a margarita glass, went to prison for it. and then we saw a poker ring being run by the russian mob out of trump tower. you know, which hosted. the likes of famous people. when you stack a lot of that up we got to the point where we felt like we needed to know a little bit more. public records laws aren t so great in russia, so we turned to chris steele. that was around the time that we transitioned from republican client to a democratic client. which was who? the democratic national committee and the clinton campaign. at what point was is that? when did that transition happen? it was around may of 2016. may of 2016. ken dilanian is in washington with a question for you. ken. glen and peter, i ve viewed the dossier as raw intelligence. and as you know raw intelligence can often be wrong in part, but still be very important. and viewed that way, the dossier was incredibly prescient document about what the prutirus were doing. i want to ask you about this, in terms of what trump was doing it got major things wrong. we know about the michael cohen meeting in prague. mueller found that never happened. but they found that cohen was not conspiring with the russians at all despite the dossier saying that he was. the dossier said there was a well-developed conspiracy between the trump campaign and russia, obviously mueller didn t establish that. the dossier said that the russians had been feeding trump intelligence for years about hillary clinton and others. mueller failed to establish that. can you talk about do you think that mueller simply couldn t prove some of these things and that they actually may in fact be true? or what are your thoughts about some of these allegations that haven t proven out zblifrpg t? i think we have to think about the meta theme of the report, which is here was a report that said the russians are trying to effect the affect the outcome of an american election with the specific goal of getting donald trump elected as president. that warning about an attack on pearl harbor turned out to be correct. in light of current events, i think no one can question of whether or not donald trump is capable of inciting a foreign government to help himself. in behind sight, it s like talking about pearl harbor and saying the report got it wrong because you said there was going for 150 japanese there and there was only 120. they were coming in from the north but they came in from the west. it s just deflection of the bicker poi bigger point. there s a huge distinction between unproven and untrue. we talk about this a lot in the book. there isn t a long list of things in the dossier that have been disproven. there are many things that have not been resolved as to whether or not they are true. can we go back to the root? who is christopher steele? where did he come from? and why did he have this uniquely piqued interest in donald trump? so we re former journalists. christopher steele has been doing rush russsia his entire l he s a linguist, saved tour in russia for mi-6, the british intelligence service, and rose to run its russia desk before he left in 2009. he is one of the preeminent experts in the world on russia. he s also, he and his company orbis are highly trained in the detection of misinformation. he collected a lot around the dossier, but there s a lot he didn t put in there. we don t know what this is because he didn t clear his bar. like us, really didn t know anything about donald trump when we first commissioned him to try to figure out why donald trump was going to russia. he was, you know donald trump was a fairly obscure character in his world and ours. so his real expertise is russia. and trump wondered into the middle of something that was going on with russia, which is that russia had mounted a huge operation to begin meddling in the politics of western democracies and attempting to disrupt the nato alliance, the atlantic alliance, the european union, all of which has been frightening successful. and just one other point on sort of the investigative hygiene here, it s really important to remember that when we tasked or hired chris steele, we didn t tell him who we were working for. he didn t know when he created that first report. ken. thanks, willie. guys, there was a broadly-held assumption that robert mueller would take a look at whether donald trump had prior business relationships with russian oligarchs, that he would follow the money and get trump s tax returns and explore relationships that could be seen as compromising once trump became president. but when the mueller report was published it became pretty clear that he didn t do that and it s not clear to me that the fbi counterintelligence division has done that either. you guys have investigated that somewhat. do you think that s still an open question? what can you tell us about what you know about whether or not donald trump did business with russians? for example, his son once said told a golf writer allegedly that russian investment financed some golf course purchases that the trump organization made. do you think that s still an oo active and open question? we ve seen indaesh icia of a separate investigation but it s beneath the waves so we don t know what s going on in the counterintelligence arm of the fbi. historically, as you know, counterintelligence investigations don t result usually in criminal charges so we may never know what they found or what they even looked for. but obviously it was a disappointment to see that mueller didn t go in this direction and we were hopeful that congress would step up and shed some light on this. we still think that s a possibility. it s also important to remember that most of the examples you mentioned deal with evidence that is sitting outside of this country and therefore beyond the reach of robert mueller and his team and their subpoena power. but certainly we saw mountains of evidence, and this is detailed at length in the book, that huge amounts of mystery money from the former soviet union flowed through donald trump s properties. guys, i wonder if you could talk about what fiona hill said in her testimony. she s one of the foremost russia experts on the nsc until she left. and she said that the dossier went down rabbit holes and she suggested that christopher steele was played suggesting that, you know, the russians may have fed him misinformation to infect the discourse here. how would you respond to what fiona hill said? we saw that testimony. we ve been asked about it. i mean, we would only say that, first of all, fiona hill, as you say, an outstanding russia expert. we re here to talk about our book, but you should read her book, it s outstanding. she, however, is not an intelligence official, she s not a professional in the detection of things like disinformation. and i don t know that she was able to well, the republicans didn t really follow up on that point so we don t know really what she meant. a little mystifying about what they meant by that. she was in government when all these events occurred and when she was in government it wasn t her job to look into all of this. she s entitled to her opinion, but it s uninformed as to the specifics with the dossier. you re trying not to put conspiracy theories out but you re here to respond to it. so i ll let you, rudy giuliani on tv last week saying he has very strong evidence that the steele dossier, a lot of it was produced in ukraine. what s your response there? i mean, i have one word. a few words, that s absolutely false. glenn has a better story about rudolph giuliani which you might like to hear. i ran into him on the shut from the new yorking to d.c. last week. got out my phone. after we got off the plane and turned on the recorder and said, mr. giuliani, ihm my name is glenn simpson, i introduced myself. i said would it surprise you if i told you i ve never been to ukraine in my life? he said, oh, okay, guess i ll have to look into that. however, i don t think he s ill informed, misinformed or confused, i think he s just not telling the truth. it s just a made up it s another made up story designed to provide cover for donald trump. he is cranking the fog machine. we have just scratched the surface of the story, the entire story s in the new book, crime in progress inside the steele dossier and the infusion gps investigation of donald trump. glenn simpson, peter frisch, thank you both. good to see you. coming up on morning joe, as the impeachment probe has ramped up, neil joins us to lay out the argument in his new book impeach. that s ahead on morning joe. k impeach. that s ahead on morning joe. managing type 2 diabetes? dimitri s on it. eating right and getting those steps in? on it! dimitri thinks he s doing all he can to manage his type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but is his treatment doing 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i started off my whole career as a teacher and something happened when i got married and had kids and was teaching and writing, i couldn t teach and write. so i went to being a writer. but i miss the years i was no longer teaching at harvard. i was at a party and someone said what happened to doris kerns anyway, did she die? so i m back. i m a teacher again. people go on the website, masterclass.com, and effectively get hours and hours of doris kerns goodwin talking about presidents, it s filled with documents and video and all kinds of different elements. how much fun was it for you to sit and talk through history? the great thing is when you can express your passion, something your care about and you get students listening and this time listening online and listening in parts of the world, that s the way you can inspire somebody, i think. all the people they ve chosen for this master class, whether it s aaron stalken or annie, they all love what they re doing. when i think about the teachers i had in high school, that s what hainchanges you when someb has a passion for somebody. i can bring back my guys, teddy, lincoln, lbj, it s been fun and provide a leadership index for how we should look at that campaign, who has empathy, resilience, who has ability to create a them that can argue with them and question them? who shoulders the responsibility? who shares credit? then you look at the president and think who s got that both in the republicans and democrats. mike is complaining about the red sox bull pen, very informative, i think. you should see the huge online following my class has. doris, i was glancing at parts of this course. is the difference between iq, how smart is this person, how smart is she, how smart is he, and emotional intelligence and a leader, emotional intelligence is really critical? it s the critical thing. you think about empathy as one of the most important qualities. that s part of emotional intelligence, your ability to understand somebody else s point of view. teddy roosevelt warned, and i bet you know this, eddie, that the rock of democracy will fail if people in other sections of the country begin seeing augthe other people in the country as other. that s why i believe in national service and get a way to get these people to see each other. and empathy is at the root of that. you can develop it and understand just if you go out like we did in the peace corps and see what s happening. just like resilience. academic intelligence is probably overrated, i can say to us. and moou hhumility is key. that s key. you can t grow if you can t make missi mistakes. we ve given away too much free content. for the rest of it you have to go to masterclass.com. up next, the power unplugging. our next guess is an internet pioneer who makes the case for turning off all screens one day a week. i like that. tiffany joins us next on morning joe. that. tiffany joins us next on morning joe. i m your 70lb st. bernard puppy, and my lack of impulse control, is about to become your problem. ahh no, come on. i saw you eating poop earlier. hey! my focus is on the road, and that s saving me cash with drivewise. who s the dummy now? 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my family and i for ten years turn off all screens from friday night to saturday night, and it s been the best, most transformative thing we have done. obviously, i love technology. my husband is a professor of robotics. we re in to it, but not the way we re living now, every second we re plugged into this network available to everyone and everything and it s brought so much life back to have one day where we re all together, all the screens are put away. we feel more creative. you can have more time for reflection. you re more present with each other. there s so many benefits, and you re more productive afterwards. we re not giving ourselves any space to be disconnected from the network. what brought you to the point where you said we have to do something here and take a day off? i had a period of days where i lost my father and my daughter was born, and it was one of those moments where it felt like life was wrab grabbing you by the shoulders and saying focus on what is important. everyone on the book tour agrees they feel like they re on screens too much, they re not present. it s a very simple practice and bases on thousands of years old practicef the shabbat. friday night, we have people over for a wonderful dinner, and all the screens are off. for a full 24 hours, we re off the screens. it s literally our favorite day of the week, even our 16-year-old daughter, people can t believe that. they re under so much pressure, too. she s a junior in high school. she s got so much pressure, and she s in to politics, we re all excited to have a day of rest from what she ll say is homework and posting and all of it, which i think we all just haven t given ourselves that day in so long, you forget the feeling that i feel is liberated, really. and then saturday night, you have this dual effect where you reappreciate being connected and technology all over again, but having a complete day off to think and feel and be and have your own thoughts because right now, we re so influenced by everything happening that you don t even have space to think for yourself. there s this amazing episode of black mirror called nose dive. i didn t see that one. you should take a look at it. it s about the way in which social media overruns our life and defined status and the like. what are you saying about our relationships currently when you call for a day off? this seems as if there s an underlying assumption about what being plugged in is doing to us and our relationships. i m glad you asked that. it is. when i first started the webby awards over 20 years ago, the hope for the web was that it was going to be this open network connecting us to ideas and people all over the world, but what i never imagined is that everyone would be heads down, staring at their phones, disconnected from the people and ideas that are right in front of them. and because the business model is such that it is basically tracking, you have thousands of engineers and behavioral scientists looking at your likes and dislikes and algorithms feeding you disinformation to make you click more, it s manipulating us also. basically, we re being manipulated and the whole business model is to keep us addicted to screens all the time. so the minute that you say, you know what, i m going to technology has erased all these boundaries between work and pleasure and everything, but i m going to create a boundary back and have a whole day i i m not on the screen, not on the network, and it feels so good. and you know, what i say to people that are considering this is, what do you wish you had more time to do? and ask every person in your life that that you re going to ask to do it with you, your partner, your kids. everyone has that list, and nil the day with that, because there s so many days we just don t do anymore because every second we re flipping our wrist and looking at our phones. the thing you said about the importance of taking time to think. i think about the leader yz have studied. they were pretty busy and yet busier than us, in a civil war, great depression, world war ii, yet lincoln took time out to go 100 times to the theater. he said when he sat in the theater, he could forget the war that was raging and transport himself back to shakespeare. put your mind into a different mode. teddy roosevelt exercised two hours a day, a hike in the wood, and fdr had a cocktail party every night in world war ii and the rule was you couldn t talk about the war. the one time he was able to think about something, he went on a fishing trip in the middle of the crisis with britain. because he was away from washington. it s good for us, it s good for leadership, it s good for everybody. we think we re so important that we can t be outside. i think that s part of it, we think we re so plugged in and we know everything that s going on. but when you never have a chance to step back and reflect, you can t see the big picture because you re so in it. having a complete day off each week is a day i kind of rush towards, because i actually put aside things i want to think about. i m going to think about that on saturday. i feel like i have the space. when it s only eight inches from your face, that s eight inches of thought distance. when you have a whole day in front of you, it feels incredible. what about the added element with this in front of your face, people walking around with this in front of their face, the element of loneliness in this country? it just adds you don t communicate with people. you communicate with this thing in front of your face. you know, i think so much of what s the divisiveness in our country is all the little moments that used to happen at the library, the coffee shop. the exchanges. now everyone is kind of faking their way through it, uh-huh, uh-huh. oh, yeah, and it s those little moments that stitch together the fabric of our society, and right now, we re all in our little universes on our phones. and we lose, and that contributes to the sense of loneliness. so all this connection is ultimately leading to disconnection. so when you put the devices away, you connect so deeply. and i think connecting broadly is meaningless unless you have authentic connection, which i feel the most on my friday nights to saturday nights for the last ten years. that seems like a great week to start trying this. you have time off. take a day away from it. a perfect time. talk to your family. yeah, think about the online world puts you in a perpetual state of want. when you turn it off, you appreciate what s right in front of you. thanksgiving is a perfect weekend to try it. read the book. i have a lot of practical ways to convince people in your life in how to do it, but i promise it will make things better. love the idea. the book 24/6, the power of unplugging one day a week. tiffany sclahlaishlain, thank y. doris, thanks to you. still ahead, congress wins round one in a battle over the trump administration s efforts to stonewall the impeachment investigation. we ll dig 92 the ruling that challenged the president s claim of absolute immunity. morning joe is back in two minutes. we made usaa insurance for members like martin. an air force veteran made of doing what s right, not what s easy. so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that s how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin s family needs it - with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that s what s right. usaa. what you re made of, we re made for. usaa i m part of a community of problem solvers. we make ideas grow. from an everyday solution. to one that can take on a bigger challenge. from packaging tape. to tape that can bond materials to buildings. and planes. one idea can unlock a breadth of solutions. at 3m, we are solving problems that improve lives. one idea can unlock a breadth of solutions. i m a verizon engineer, and i m part of the team building the most powerful 5g experience for america. it s 5g ultra wideband for massive capacity and ultra-fast speeds. almost 2 gigs here in minneapolis. that s 25 times faster than today s network in new york city. so people from midtown manhattan to downtown denver can experience what our 5g can deliver. (woman) and if verizon 5g can deliver performance like this in these places. it s pretty crazy. .just imagine what it can do for you. good morning. welcome to morning joe. it s tuesday, november 26th. with us, we ve got msnbc contributor mike barnicle. eddie glaude jr., president of the council on foreign relations and author of the book, a world in disarray, richard haass, and msnbc legal analyst danny cevall cevallos. we have to begin with the court ruling against the argument the president is using to stonewall the impeachment investigation. a federal court judge has rejected the white house claim of absolute immunity, ruling that former white house counsel don mcgahn must testify in the impeachment inquiry. the house judiciary committee subpoenaed mcgahn earlier this year for testimony on possible obstruction of justice in the mueller investigation. when the white house blocked his appearance, the committee sued, and yesterday, a federal judge sided with congress, writing in her opinion, this. quote, stated simply, the primary takeaway from the last 250 years of reported american history is presidents are not kings. this means that they do not have subjects bound by loyalty or blood whose destiny they are entitled to control. that ruling by judge jackson in court. and an official tells nbc news they will seek a stay to stop the ruling from taking effect immediately. the white house says this contradicts long standing legal precedent established by administrations of both political parties. we will appeal and are confident that the important constitutional principle advanced by the administration will be vindicated. while the ruling only compelled mcgahn s testimony, the trump administration has used the rejected absolute immunity claim to defy subpoenas for vice president pence, secretary of state mike pompeo, and acting chief of staff mick mulvaney. former national security adviser john bolton has not been subpoenaed, but people familiar with his views are now telling the washington post he would testify if cleared by a federal court. danny, let me start with you, just on the nuts and bolts of this, what it means exactly. what judge jackson effectively said is don mcgahn has to testify before the house judiciary committee, forget the immunity claim. once he s in the chair, he can still claim executive privilege, is that right? that s right. on a case by case or question by question basis. what this ruling holds, and it is a significant opinion, but it s not a surprise. because the same court decided essentially the exact same issue back in 2007. that case involving harriet miers at the time did not make it all the way to the end of appeals. it was resolved otherwise. but there s nothing about this opinion that is really that shocking because everything that the court holds or that compels the testimony or shoots down the absolute privilege argument or immunity, rather, is based on case law. the administration s position is instead based on their own internal olc legal opinions, which have no binding legal precedent at all. in a sense, the winner in this case was never going to be in doubt. and if it goes up on appeal, the result will probably be the same. the net takeaway is that there is no absolute immunity for executive officials, high ranking executive aides. instead, they have to show up, they have to comply. then they may have individualized executive privilege claims, but you can t ignore a congressional subpoena. that s the big takeaway today. let s also bring into the conversation white house correspondent for pbs news hour, yamiche elcinder, and ken dilanian. we re talking about don mcgahn here, because we had so many names come through in the last several months. don mcgahn was the last white house counsel who left last fall. wro we re talking here about the mueller investigation which is separate from the ukrainian investigation, but there may be implications for the ukrainian investigation if it sets a precedent and allowed someone like john bolton to testify. clearly, but in this sea of subpoenas that have been issued, many people who have been issued a subpoena have just totally ignored the subpoena. how does that happen? if i get a subpoena, if eddie gets a subpoena, we have to respond to it. that s right. they re playing a game of chicken because congress has this broad power to subpoena, but what we re finding out in the last couple years is that they don t really have a very good enforcement mechanism so that someone who receives a congressional subpoena, if they have the chutzpah, the courage, can oppose it, and if they drag it out long enough, once you get a new congress in, that subpoena kind of disappears into the ether. that s what the administration issing to. they re saying if i hold if i run out the clock as long as i can, the need for the subpoena may dissipate. that s what happened with the harriet miers case in 2007. it never made it all the way through to appeals. it was resolved in another way and then you had this free-standing court opinion for over a decade that really left us wondering where exactly the law is on this issue. so in the mueller report, ken dilanian, we know don mcgahn testified for about 30 hours in front of the special counsel s office. we know he testified president trump asked him to fire robert mueller at one point in 2017. how significant is this ruling to that case? well, look. i don t actually think this ruling is going to affect how congress deals with airing that matter before the public because it s going to be appealed. it s going to drag out. and look, they re going to take a vote before thanksgiving on the ukraine matter. they re moving ahead. so congressman schiff keeps using this term rope-a-dope. he said i m not going to be dragged into a long court fight hoping we get the testimony of these people. none the less, this is a hugely important decision that will last potentially long after the trump administration is gone. because since 1971, the executive branch has claimed this right of testimonial immunity, saying congress has no right to call close presidential aides to testify. and what this judge said was, that doesn t exist. that is not a thing. and so, you know, as you said, mcgahn will, of course, even once this is appealed and goes all the way through, and assuming this ruling holds, mcgahn will then claim executive privilege because he was advising the president about how to respond and how to deal with the mueller investigation in his capacity as white house counsel, and executive privilege arguably does protect some sensitive conversations with the president, so we may never see mcgahn s testimony, but nonetheless, this is an incredibly important ruling because it especially in light of the recent speech that the attorney general made, arguing essentially for unchecked presidential power, and that these many investigations by congress amount to harassment. now, that s sort of a distorted view of an argument that the executive branch has been making for a long time, and what this judge said is absolutely not. congressional investigations are enshrined in the constitution and they have a right to call aides to come and comply with subpoenas. separation of powers, is what judge jackson made yesterday in court. i wanted to underline what ken just said, because oftentimes we confuse two things. there s the bad actor that is donald trump. and then there are the arguments surrounding donald trump around unitary executive, about an imperial presidency. it seems to me there s some folks like bill barr who is actually defending this rather radical understanding of the executive, of executive power, and then there are folks defending trump, and then there s the way in which those two things converge. what we saw yesterday is a kind of clear distinction. judge jackson invoked federalist 51, which was all about the separation of powers. so we have in some ways a clear enunciation that this idea of unlimited executive power is just simply unconstitutional. it just has no merit. so that argument now is in full view as opposed to just simply being something driving behind the scenes the way in which people have been defending donald trump. the headline from judge jackson, again, was presidents are not kings. that s the case she was making yesterday. it really was classic federalist paper. this is a public civics classroom. i had a question for the lawyer types. let s say people ultimately testify. who gets to decide if executive privilege is claims? if john bolton testifies, can the white house instruct him to assert executive privilege. how does that play out? they can instruct him, and then it would probably go immediately to the courts. that creates a real problem. obviously, an individual can say i m not going to comply with that order. that, again, would go to the courts. every turn, and this is why these legal issues have been left so unresolved for so long, is that in many cases, congress says, well, you know, what s the point of the battle? let s try to negotiate something else so we get something today as opposed to maybe something in the future. and just one other thing to build on what eddie said, is that it s so interesting that the administration argued separation of powers means that we as the executive are untouchable and the court said you have it exactly wrong. it s the opposite. separation of powers means that the different branches act as a check on each other. and it is exactly our job as a judiciary to check you, the executive branch. yamiche, as i pointed out, don mcgahn testified to robert mueller that president trump asked him to go fire robert mueller, fire the special counsel, and he refused to do so. president trump has denied that in interviews since then, of course. what is the white house reaction to this? do they show any concern about this? or do they think this is just another step along this path of impeachment that democrats are trying to pursue? the white house is obviously concerned about this. don mcgahn is someone who was at the center of the white house and understood what was going on with the president, understood some of the orders he was giving. i think what s even more interesting or concerning than don mcgahn s testimony, since democrats want to focus so narrowly on the ukraine issue, is what it will mean for the people named by all the witnesses named in the impeachment inquiry hearings. there was secretary pompeo, vice president pence, mick mulvaney, energy secretary rick perry. all these people that are not testifying as people under them, like alexander vindman, lieutenant colonel vindman, he s working at the white house and decided to show up, but there are higher up officials who are very close to president trump who understand what the president is thinking who don t want to come to congress. so i think the white house are worried those people might be compelled to be part of this impeachment inquiry. ken, let s talk about potential implications for the ukraine conversation. this again, we re talking about testimony for don mcgahn before the house judiciary committee. what about for the house intel committee and a witness like john bolton? someone who has been sort of flirting with the idea of speaking publicly in one form or another, whether that s a book or testimony. and the impeachment inquiry remains to be seen. does this set some kind of a precedent in that conversation? well, it certainly does. to yamiche s point, it absolutely does. the judge even mentioned that national security does not create testimonial immunity either. however, it would allow bolton to claim executive privilege. but you can argue that a lot of what s covered in this ukraine matter does not really implicate u.s. national security. democrats would say it s a criminal scheme. and in the famous nixon supreme court case, you know, nixon had to give up the tapes because the judge ruled that, you know, executive privilege doesn t trump a valid criminal investigation. so that has got to be a concern for the white house here. john bolton, mick mulvaney, mike pompeo, all these people who have resisted congressional efforts to get them to talk about ukraine. that said, there s a long road of litigation here, and democrats are on a much different time table. realistically, will the courts decide this on the time table that democrats need to get an impeachment vote and get this information before the public? that seems unlikely, but it may affect future generations. this could be a really important precedent that is being now set by this ruling. still ahead on morning joe, just a day after being fired, former navy secretary richard spencer is defending his conduct and now hitting back at president trump over his involvement in a controversial war crimes case. we ll get to that. but first, bill karins has a check on the thanksgiving forecast. hey, bill. good morning, willie. easily the worst pre-thanksgiving travel forecast i have given in my 20 years. let s take you to denver. you can see the snow-covered roads. reports of i-25 and portions of i-70 that are now closed in a few locations. blizzard conditions developing just outside of denver. seven inches on the ground in denver. 14 inches of snow in ft. collins. let s show you the wider view and tell you what s going on. 23 million people with winter storm warnings or advisories. two storms. one over colorado that slides into the plains later today and nails minneapolis later tonight, and then a huge storm in the coastal areas of california and oregon later today. now, we ll show you the other option. the warm side of this storm system could produce even severe storms. at the same time, we have this horrific winter weather with already 300 flights canceled out of denver. we could have flight problems out of memphis, st. louis, little rock today. you re at a slight risk of severe weather. 10 million people at risk. let s time this all out for you, so we re going thru the day today. let s fast forward to 6:00 p.m. notice, minneapolis, you re okay until this evening. your snow begins after 8:00 p.m. most significant airport delays and cancellations, denver, and minneapolis later on tonight. when the line of storms goes through chicago, st. louis, to little rock, that s where we could have problems, and driving on the roads, especially interstate 55, just rainy so it won t be horrible. the worst drive, i-70 and i-25, and then i-80 during the day today has the potential to get shut down. what does this mean for areas of the northeast and great lakes. the storm weakens, mostly a rain event. we ll still have problems at the airports when the winds pick up. we have high volume with the busiest travel day of the year. the new york airports could have delays. minor problems in areas like logan and all the way down through philadelphia and d.c. chicago, watch out. not that rainy or snowy, but you re under a high wind warning for wednesday. winds could be up to 50 miles per hour. that s not fun at all, and on the roads, i-90 will probably be one of the worst drives. mostly rain in the northeast. by the time we get to wednesday and thursday, this is about as ugly as it gets as far as everywhere here in the west. this is where the next storm comes in, in l.a., san diego, veg vegas, phoenix. and finally, the last thing, and maybe the thing a lot of kids care about the most. will the balloons fly or not? right now, the wind forecast is unfortunately 35 to 40 miles per hour. and if it s over 34, they ll ground all the big balloons. it s going to be a close call. we still have about two days. hopefully that will change. new york city, we re waiting to see how it ends up with the beautiful balloons. the rockefeller christmas tree, they re taking selfies. look at the guys up there. that s a once in a lifetime shot. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. 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well time is money. switch to comcast business now and get a great deal when you get fast, reliable internet. with a 30-day money-back guarantee, installation when it works for you, and 24/7 customer support. so what are you waiting for? get this great deal when you sign up for fast, reliable internet. call 1-800-501-6000 today. comcast business. beyond fast. defense secretary mark esper is weighingen on the firing of navy secretary richard spencer following a controversial war crimes case. speaking to reporters yesterday, secretary esper explained he was, quote, flabbergasted to learn that spencer had tried to make a secret deal with the white house concerning embattled navy s.e.a.l. eddie gallagher. secretary esper said he demanded spencer s resignation after learning he had secretly approached the white house about an arrangement to let gallagher retire as a navy s.e.a.l. if the president stayed out of the case. esper also said monday president trump gave him a direct order to drop disciplinary action against gallagher. in his first tv interview since being fired, spencer told cbs he spoke with white house counsel pat cipollone about the arrangement on november 15th saying he declined the offer saying the president would be involved. i will take the bad on me for not letting him know i did that, but he was completely informed as to this because his chief of staff was briefed on it. spokesperson for the pentagon disputed spencer s statement, telling the washington post, no one on esper s staff was aware of spencer s proposed deal. in the same interview, spencer also argued he was trying to head off an order from the president which he said he could not in good conscience obey. what do i standard for in the navy. that s a prime tenant. this in fact erodes that. what s wrong with following a lawful order from the commander in chief? nothing. everyone should follow order. i could not in my conscience do this. speaking to reporters yesterday, president trump defended his involvement in the war crimes case. i have to protect my war fighters. i have gotten a lot of people a lot of war fighters and people in the military have thanked us very much. with eddie gallagher, you know that story very well. they wanted to take his pin away and i said no, you re not going to take it away. he was a great fighter. he was one of the ultimate fighters. tough guy. these are not weak people. these are tough people. and we re going to protect our war fighters. i don t think he really understands the full definition of a war fighter. a war fighter is a profession of arms. a profession of arms has standards they have to be held to and they hold themselves to. richard, i ll read some of the reaction. senator jack reed, military veteran himself said this is an outrageous irresponsible interfeens by president trump in the military justice system. he went on to explain why he believes that. your reaction to how this has all played out. no winners here. spencer s position was ridiculous. he was going to basically argue for a sham or almost show trial kind of thing with the outcome guaranteed. that wasn t the answer. i understand why he got canned, but the president s position is unsupportable. and the sad thing, willie, is it s not a one off. the military is not the only institution he s gone after. he s gone after the foreign service. we saw that the last few weeks. he s gone after the intelligence community. he s gone after the federal reserve. he s gone after, you know, national security council. what he s basically doing is institution after institution, he is going against the norms, the culture, the idea of professionalism, the idea of independence. we thought the military was somehow off limits. it s sad, not just because the military is critically important, military is arguably the most successful institution in american society. i can t think when we look at where the military was say in vietnam and where it is half a century later, it s a model for talent development, for diversity, for professionalism, for excellence. we have been extraordinarily well served in this country by our military, and this is a corrosive act. this is a way of removing the military s ability to self-regulate, to self-police. this is a dangerous, dangerous precedent. still ahead, new polling shows a tight race in new hampshire. the first in the nation primary, but the numbers suggest nothing is set in stone at this point. morning joe is back in a moment. we made usaa insurance for members like martin. an air force veteran made of doing what s right, not what s easy. so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that s how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin s family needs it - with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that s what s right. usaa. what you re made of, we re made for. usaa if you have moderate to thsevere rheumatoid arthritis, month after month, the clock is ticking on irreversible joint damage. ongoing pain and stiffness are signs of joint erosion. humira can help stop the clock. prescribed for 15 years, humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. help stop the clock on further irreversible joint damage. talk to your rheumatologist. right here. right now. humira. the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. [ turn around, look at me there is someone walking behind you turn around look at me there is someone look at me robinwithout the commission fees. so, you can start investing today wherever you are - even hanging with your dog. so, what are you waiting for? download now and get your first stock on us. robinhood. some are saying they see your decision to run now as an indication you feel that the current candidates in the field are weak and they can t get the job done. is that accurate. let me phrase it this way. i think there is a greater risk of having donald trump re-elected than there was before. and in the end, i looked in the mirror and said i just cannot let this happen. michael bloomberg is making a bet about democracy in 2020. he doesn t need people. he only needs bags and bags of money. i have nothing personal against mr. bloomberg. i really don t. but what does disturb me is the arrogance of the billionaire class. senators elizabeth warren and bernie sanders reacting to former new york city mayor micha michael bloomberg s entrance into the presidential race. he made his first campaign stop in norvoke, virginia. but it s a four-way race in new hampshi hampshire. the latest poll shows senator bernie sanders at 16%, senator elizabeth warren at 14%. mayor pete buttigieg at 13%. he s up eight points since august, and former vice president joe biden at 12%. he is down nine points since august. this is essentially a statistical tie with all four candidates sitting in the polls, margin of error of more than four points. support for senator sanders appears to be much more solid than others. 64% of his supporters say their mind is firmly made up. biden is the next closest in that regard with 37%. let s bring in pulitzer prize winning columnist and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson, and political reporter for the boston globe, james pindell. james, what do you see in the poll that maybe the rest of us haven t seen, that mayor pete buttigieg flying up eight points since the last poll and vice president biden down nine points. there was a poll last week up in new hampshire that shows mayor buttigieg with a lead. some said the sampling of that poll, the group of highly educated white voters gave him an edge that perhaps inflated his numbers, but here he is tied for the lead. yeah, there s a broader point and then a granular point. the broader point is that for so long, many including myself, thought that new hampshire would eventually just come down to this progressive grudge match between two neighboring senators of elizabeth warren and bernie sanders, who of course, won the 2016 primary. then joe biden comes in the race. obviously, floating above it. immediately becomes the front-runner. now what we re seeing is the most complicated scenario in new hampshire we have all cycle, and as i wrote and you quoted, we have never had this many candidates clustered at the very top this close to the new hampshire primary in decades. so while a lot of people are looking at iowa. that s clearly where a lot of candidates thought this was going to be a make-or-break contest for them, and they thought new hampshire would just be this warren and bernie contest, i think this poll in particular is going to change the narrative a little bit and force other campaigns to say wait a minute, what s actually happening here in new hampshire, and remember, the top number there, 16%. anything can happen in terms of a candidate who s down at 2% or 4% like andrew yang. and the number of undecideds are at 21%, and 53% haven t even decided on a final candidate yet. i m sorry, the smaller point, to answer your question, the smaller point would be the one thing to look at in this poll are older voters. fascinating. from our last poll to this poll, older voters have been fleeing joe biden. that s why he dropped to fourth place. he dropped nine points among older voters. and meanwhile, pete buttigieg is the one gaining. he gained seven points among the older voters. right now, they re the subgroup moving the most. isn t that interesting that mayor buttigieg leads the field of 22% among voters 56 to 65 years old. so the young mayor from south bend, indiana, is the most popular with older voters in new hampshire. clearly, his jump up eight points since the last poll is at joe biden s expense. there s an old aphorism in politics and it began with uyean mccarthy s campaign in new hampshire, old people like young people. they just do. they re drawn to younger why you like willie? that s exactly right. if i m young, this is an old show. coming up on morning joe, our next guest is making the case for president trump s impeachment. former acting u.s. solicitor general neal katyal joins us to outline what president trump did, when he did it, and why he says it meets the constitution s standard for impeachment. morning joe is back in a moment. i m finding it hard to stay on top of things a faster laptop could help. plus, tech support to stay worry free. worry free.boom boom! get free next business day shipping or .1 hour in-store pick up shopping season solved at office depot officemax or officedepot.com. hbut mike bloomberg became thele clasguy whoho mdid good. after building a business that created thousands of jobs he took charge of a city still reeling from 9/11 a three-term mayor who helped bring it back from the ashes bringing jobs and thousands of affordable housing units with it. after witnessing the terrible toll of gun violence. he helped create a movement to protect families across america. and stood up to the coal lobby and this administration to protect this planet from climate change. and now, he s taking on. him. to rebuild a country and restore faith in the dream that defines us. where the wealthy will pay more in taxes and the middle class get their fair share. everyone without health insurance can get it and everyone who likes theirs keep it. and where jobs won t just help you get by, but get ahead. and on all those things mike blomberg intends to make good. jobs creator. leader. problem solver. mike bloomberg for president. i m mike bloomberg and i approve this message. make family-sized meals fast, and because it s a ninja foodi, it can do things no other oven can, like flip away. the ninja foodi air fry oven, the oven that crisps and flips away. a lot will happen in your life. wrinkles just won t. neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair s derm-proven retinol works so fast, it takes only one week to reveal younger looking skin. neutrogena® cause no matter how far away for you roam. ys. when you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze. for the holidays you can t beat home sweet home. the united states postal service goes the extra mile to bring your holidays home. the constitution provides an article 2, section 4, that the president, the environment, and all civil officers of the united states should be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. i started looking at whether the president has violated his oith of office, specifically by putting his personal interests above those of the country or by committing other acts obviously criminal. the framers did not intend impeachment as a political device to be used when the majority party is unhappy with the president and wants to get rid of him. the bar is much higher than that and ought to be. that was an indiana congressman named mike pence in 2008 reading out the terms for impeaching a president. joining us now is a neal katyal. he s out today with a new book entitled impeach, the case against donald trump. also, yazman vossoughian, and care karine jean-pierre. we were lamented the fact you wrote this in three weeks. it takes the rest of us three years to write books, and while you have a day job, by the way. there s been this is sort of a good moment to settle out. it s thanksgiving week. we had two weeks of intense public testimony. what is the bottom line for you in the case against donald trump? so, i m glad you started with those clips because the book begins with exactly that. i call it the mike pence standard. and pence said in order for something to be an impeachable offense, it s got to be when the president puts his personal interests above those of the american people. and i wrote this book as a very simple book, you know, you don t need a fancy law degree or a history graduate degree. it s written like a novel just to outline what did the president do and why is impeachment the necessary result. and basically, the question i think everyone should ask as they go into thanksgiving dinner, and i don t think this should be partisan. this should be simply, if it were obama who did all of this stuff with ukraine, would you be in favor of impeachment? and i think as long as people think about that, that s the essence of what the rule of law is. justice, lady justice is literally blindfolded. the idea being it doesn t matter whether you re rich or poor or a democrat or republican, same set of rules should apply to you. by the way, if you ask republicans in that intelligence committee hearing room, they wld say the same thing, of course, if president obama did this, they would say it quietly, maybe not out loud, of course, we would vote to impeach. what do you say to their public argument, anyway, some of them say, there s a lot of bad stuff in here. i don t like the way the president conducted himself. i don t like rudy giuliani running around the world, running some kind of shadow deal, but on the merits, there s just not enough to impeach this president. what do you say? when they say there s not enough on the faths, that s been thoroughly disproven by the two weeks of testimony as well as just the original transcript of the call. what i think they are really saying is, oh, this crime isn t bad enough. and that, boy, i mean, when you go back and one of the reasons i wrote this book is to go and examine what our founders said in 1787 at the philadelphia convention. many of our founders didn t want to put impeachment in the constituti constitution. they said you can have a re-election campaign. that will check abuse by the president, and what madison and others said is no, what if you have a president who goes and conspires with a foreign government to get help in his election campaign? what if you have a president who cheats? that s the case of impeachment. that s what this thing is for. and so what i say to those folks is, if you don t impeach here, you re saying every other president can do this in the future and cheat and win an election. that will undermine gravely our democracy. so neal, expand on that for us, because i think that s incredibly important point you bring up in that you argue if this president is not held accountable, that our democracy in this country will not recover. and it seems as if that is the direction in which we re heading in, in that he will likely be impeached in the house but will not be removed from office in the senate. subsequently, in himind, not necessarily held accountable. i really want to push back on that. i know this is what the republicans are saying, oh, polls aren t changing. he s going to be fine and so on. but it s only been two months since the ukraine story even entered our consciousness, and already here, we re seeing weeks of hearings. popular opinion moving up to 50% of people saying that the president should be impeached. i do think when i mean, democrats have always been so afraid to put the question to republicans in the senate and say do you really want to stand for this? and i think finally for the first time, it looks like we re heading towards that. i know a lot of people are pessimistic and say, oh, the senate will never remove, but i have a much more optimistic view of america. i started in 1776. i think ofpho all these moments have underestimated even when you see mitch mcconnell saying straight ahead into camera y have made my decision? we have heard him say that publicly two weeks ago. i understand that, but once we actually have a trial, once the evidence is out there, it s going to be very hard to vote for this. it s like nixon. with nixon, it was the same thing in which opinion poll after opinion poll, congress member after and senator after senator said i m fine, i m going to support him, but at the end, that support crumbled. when you re dealing with something like this here and thinking, boy, i entered public life in order to make the world better, and even if they have a different conception, but they really want to stand for this? a president who cheats to win an election? because that s what the evidence is showing. eddie, that s the calculation mitt romney, lamar alexander, susan collins, lisa murkowski, they will have to make with themselves. do i want to be on the record based on all the evidence neal has put out there, do i want to be on the record for history as having said this is okay? right, and it seems to me given what we have seen up to this point, many of those very folks are making choices that seem to suggest that they are going to, shall we say cave to the moment. as opposed to look towards history. and neal, i understand your faith in the courts. we know that the courts have made some bad decisions. we think about questions around civil rights and how the court in some ways set the stage post-plesy v. ferguson for the reassertion of jim crow, but there s some examples to say we might shouldn t have that kind of faith. but let me ask you this question, as we think about impeachment. how might the decision of judge jackson and the supreme court s decision around taxes, the stay around his taxes, how might that impact the impeachment process. ? i think it does in two respects. one, judge jackson s opinion yesterday requiring white house former counsel don mcgahn to testify i think is written in such a broad way that it will it s saying people like john bolton and mick mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, have to come testify. there are also people they re thinking about, congress is thinking about subpoenaing, and boy, that decision yesterday says the rule of law, the rule of law, the rule of law. i think, is going to really put pressure on them to testify. and number two, when mcgahn testifies, and it may be a while because it looks like there will be an appeal. when mcgahn testifies, that itself will generate new evidence in the impeachment inquiry. karine has a question for you. hey there, neal. so the democrats, the democratic case, it was pretty much overwhelming. and you make such a compelling case in your book as well as you just laid out. and i know you said that it shouldn t be partisan, which i totally agree with you. but when you do look at the polling, republican voters are just not moving. that dynamic has not changed. so what is like a clear, concise message that you would tell democrats and others to tell republican voters on the case for impeachment? i would say the president tried to cheat in secret to help win his 2020 election. and if you accept that, if you think that s okay for this president, every other president can do it. it would be one thing if this president said, i made a mistake. expressed contrition, you know, said i ll never do it again. he s done the reverse. he s gone to the white house lawn and said hey, i want to do it again with china and the like. and in a democracy, you know, the last thing we should be the last thing that should be happening is that our political candidates are getting help from foreign governments in our election system. and doing so in secret. that is as un-american as it gets. so neal, you sort of look over the horizon in case the president is not convicted in the senate. you say here are some ways we can prevent this from happening again, with legislation. what are some of those ideas that you lay out in the book? i think the most important one is to revamp the special counsel regulations which i had the privilege of drafting when i was 28 years old. i think we have seen, you know, some problems with them. in particular, the most important one is that it really didn t require reporting to the congress whenever there was any interference in the investigation. and it looks like the attorney general did some stuff with this investigation, including just the way he spun it when it was over, that i think fundamentally transformed the story, and i think obscured a lot of the truth of what mueller found. so i think that s one thing. another is, you know, a simple idea that congress should pass a law requiring presidents to release their tax returns. i don t think states can do it, like california, but i certainly think the congress can do it. lindsey graham has sort of launched now this counterinvestigation, chasing down the ukrainian conspiracy theories. i want to get your take, thursday of last week, it was lindsey graham. he s chairman of the senate judiciary committee, sent a letter to mike pompeo, the secretary of state, asking him to hand over documents on joe biden, his son hunter, obama administration officials, and former ukrainian president poroshen poroshenko. biden responded to the request from graham, and then graham responded to biden. they re asking lindsey graham, they have him under their thumb right now. they know he knows if he comes out against trump, he s got a real tough road for re-election. number one. i am disappointed, and quite frankly, i m angered by the fact. he knows me, he knows my son. he knows there s nothing to this. lindsey is about to go down in a way that i think he s going to regret his whole life. what do you say to him? i say lindsey, i just i just am embarrassed by what you re doing for you. my lord. it s not going to work. i like joe biden. you know, all i can say is that joe didn t pull any punches when he ran against mccain. that s the way the system works. i like him fine, but we re not going to have two systems where you just look at the republicans and you get a pass. we re going to ask questions, what was your son doing on that board? why was he receiving $50,000 a month? my conscience is clear. i love joe biden as a person. he is a really decent man. he s a lot of tragedy in his life. but i have a conscience very clear right now and i have a duty. if the house is going to shut it down, the senate is going to pick it up. nothing to do with friendship. when joe biden was the vice presidential nominee in 2008, he tore the bark off john mccain and sarah palin. nobody asked him, hey, will that hurt your friendship? it hurt my relationship because that s the job he was assigned. neal, it s one thing to fall in line with the president on this impeachment question. it s another to pursue and to lead the effort to chase down a ukrainian conspiracy theory to help the president. so when lindsey graham talks about his conscience and duty requiring asking these questions, i mean, give me a break. if his consps and duty required asking those questions, i would like to see his conscience and duty ask the questions of this president about cheating in a foreign election. cheating to get help by a foreign government in his 2020 election. i would like to see him asking all sorts of questions around that, and he s not. and you know, this is occurring against the backdrop of a white house that has gagged every executive branch employee from testifying, from providing documents in the impeachment inquiry. if senator graham is so curious about kind of, you know, these questions and thinks that s his duty, boy, that s where his duties should begin. we re talking about the president of the united states, not some former vice president, but the sitting president of the united states being alleged to have committed impeachable offenses and crimes. these are crimes, bribery and the like. so karine, we re not surprised anymore from lindsey graham to senator john kennedy, who we showed earlier dabbling in this ukrainian conspiracy theory to devin nunes leading with his opening statement every day of those hearings, attacking the with his daytime, chasing conspiracy theories, this is not what they got, but to chase shiny objects off in the distance. they re arguing with conspiracy theories. theories have have been debunked. and the thing that i really, that strikes me so bizarre ly i if you look at the last couple weeks the big governor races that democrats won, it is two states that trump went into and nationalized and made it about impeachment, put it on the ballot. one of the races in kentucky, he had an add on impeachment. and they lost a state that trump won by 30 points in 2016. if you re a vulnerable senate right now. i don t understand how you cannot vote for impeachment and say that the president is not above the law. that is a senator they will have to answer. we re going to continue on morning joe. are crispy on the outs and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. i receivelize travel rewards. going new places! going out for a bite! going anytime. rewarded! learn more at the explorer card dot com. too many after-parties. new neutrogena® bright boost with dullness-fighting neoglucosamine. boosts cell turnover by 10 times for instantly brighter skin. bright boost neutrogena®. we re portuguese? i thought we were hungarian. can you tell me that story again? behind every question is a story waiting to be discovered. this holiday, start the journey with a dna kit from ancestry. according to a new cnn poll taken after last week s second week of impeachable hearings. the polls response is nearly identical to that before the hearings. the american public made up their mind, people knew what they would say, and they were asked. this is a kms best argument. they re not trying to say he didn t do that. the polls are moving from april to now in the direction of impeachment but they re still early on. we re still in chapter one. i think it is a fundamental mistake to say oh, people made up their minds, let s let the process unfold and see. what do make of the associates attachment, now we re learning of subpoenas that have been issued. we don t know who they have been issued to, we have not heard anything. some of the violations possibly including campaign finance violations. as opposed to by the way what the president try today do. you do it with the way they re doing it now, as they have been, and now they re starting to look into what they did. let s pan out. we re in this moment, we have the process, as you finish the book, where where we as a country. what is the process. it feels like we re on a knife s edge. that is what the founders thought. what did they think impeachment would be. they thought it would be ugly. it does ask that fundamental question. and that is an ugly process. i think we re seeing that the democrats are conducting that p process in the way, many of them are trump administration employees. these are trump s own people saying there was a quid pro quo and there was something wrong. you mentioned these are obama people. kellyanne kaconway, of course there was a federally the idea that a president s employee would say that about a judge, a sitting judge, there is nothing more corrosive than that. this is not an obama judge, i happen to know her, she is very powerful, very respected, and her opinion yesterday that does demolish the president s arguments, it is based on an opinion written by john bates. another distinguished and lovely judge. and i think this has to stop. this attack is so dangerous. not the first time from this administration. the book is impeached, the case against donald trump. that does it for us this morning, stephanie ruhle picking up our coverage right now. good morning, it is tuesday november 26th, and here is what is happening, a district judge orders former white house council don mcgann to testify rejecting the argument that he should have blanket immunity says a white house argument runs counter to the constitution. it is
james really is the forgotten man. embroiled in one of the longest forgery trials ever, could this box be the first physical evidence of jesus and his secret brother, james? fall 2002, royal ontario museum in toronto, canada opens its doors to what may be the most significant discovery ever in biblical archaeology: a limestone burial box, known as an ossuary, scientifically dated to the time of christ. on its side, an inscription in ancient aramaic which reads james, son of joseph, brother of jesus. it came just as we d crossed the millennium threshold. we d already had the y2k bug. we had the pope s millennial visit to the holy land, and this seemed to be another one of those sort of millennial happenings. it s claimed that this box, measuring 10 inches by 20, is no less than the burial casket of james, the brother of jesus christ. the ossuary is so important, not just for the fact that it says, the brother of jesus, but you have to understand that there s no physical evidence of the existence of jesus of nazareth dating from the time of jesus. there is nothing except the gospels which were written down decades later. this would be the first physical evidence that jesus of nazareth existed. this is such a landmark. i mean, this is the only material evidence, nonliterary, we have for the family of jesus. i think most people would be extremely surprised to learn that jesus had siblings. even though james is called the brother of jesus in the new testament, most christians grow up learning that mary was a virgin, and that he didn t have any siblings, so i think most people would be astonished. the gospels of both matthew and mark name jesus brothers. as well as james, there s joses, judas and simon alongside at least two unnamed sisters, but exactly whose offspring these other children are is still the subject of debate. for catholics, there is an emphasis on mary s virginity. she was not only a virgin at the time of jesus conception and birth but also afterwards, so that s why i like to think of james, the brother of jesus, as probably a child from joseph s prior marriage, before he married mary. but not all christians are in agreement. the protestants would say there are other children that are the biological kids of mary and joseph, in which case jesus would be the older brother and perhaps the other siblings of jesus would have looked up to him. matthew 1:25 says literally, joseph was not knowing her in the carnal sense until she gave birth to jesus. now, any normal reading of that sentence implies she went on to have more children after that, and his brothers and sisters are in fact his brothers and sisters. the bible tells us very little about the early life of jesus. the gospels really fast forward almost totally until he s 30 years old, and he s the son of god. what about all those missing years when he was a teenager playing around with his brothers, getting into trouble? written around 100 years after jesus death, the infancy gospel of thomas is a collection of stories about his childhood. there is a peculiar story about james, and it s an interesting picture of jesus and james together as children. joseph sent james into the forest to gather sticks. jesus also went with him. the gospel continues: an abominable snake bit james on the hand, and as he lay dying, the boy jesus ran to james and did nothing but blow on the bite, and immediately the bite was healed. james is put there with jesus from the very beginning. we see an organic connection between them, not only in terms of their relationship but also in terms of their common experience. but the story of james, the brother of jesus, will be forgotten until this casket bearing his name reappears to launch one of the longest and most controversial forgery trials ever. if your gums bleed when you brush, you may have gingivitis. and the clock could be ticking towards bad breath, receding gums, and possibly. tooth loss. help turn back the clock on gingivitis with parodontax. leave bleeding gums behind. parodontax. the wait is over. t-mobile is lighting up 5g nationwide. while some 5g signals go only blocks, t-mobile 5g goes miles. beyond the big cities to the small towns. to the people. now, millions of americans can have access to 5g on t-mobile. and this is just the beginning. t-mobile, the first and only nationwide 5g network. ( ) only tylenol® rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. they release medicine fast, for fast pain relief. tylenol®. for fast pain relief. i climate is the number 1ove priority.sage. i would declare a state of emergency on day 1. congress has never passed an important climate bill, ever. this is a problem that continues to get worse. i ve spent a decade fighting and beating oil companies. stopping pipelines. stopping fossil fuel plants, ensuring clean energy across the country. how are we going to pull this country together? we take on the biggest challenge in history, we save the world and do it together. up here at the dewar s distillery, all our whiskies are aged, blended and aged again. it s the reason our whisky is so extraordinarily smooth. dewar s. double aged for extra smoothness. the story of the james ossuary, the casket that may have held the bones of james, the forgotten brother of jesus, starts with one of the world s greatest antiquities collectors. oded golan is one of the great experts on archaeologist artifacts. i have actually the biggest private collection of ossuaries in israel, probably in the world. most of his collection tells the story of the development of the civilizations here, and that includes the biblical era. his collection must be worth millions and millions of dollars. according to golan, in the early 1970s, he bought an empty first-century ossuary from a dealer in jerusalem. i could see some of the names which are mentioned and especially ya akov, the first name, meaning james. it came by itself without any item to accompany it. in first century jerusalem, the bones of the dead were placed in ossuaries in underground tombs. archaeologist byron mccane is a leading expert on burial practices in ancient palestine. we re just south of the old city of jerusalem. there are a number of burial caves from the time of jesus right around here. in the jewish tradition, on the first anniversary of the death, they gather the bones of their deceased loved ones. those bones are placed in an ossuary. the ossuary is marked with the name of the deceased and then placed somewhere in the tomb. back in 1970s jerusalem, there is a vibrant market for antique ossuaries. i didn t see anything particular in this ossuary. it was sat for many years at my parents apartment together with several other ossuaries that i purchased at that time because i didn t put any special attention to this ossuary. but in april 2002, golan invites andre lemaire, a renowned scholar of ancient aramaic, to examine some items in his collection. lemaire s attention is immediate drawn to the unidentified ossuary golan bought 30 years before. lemaire deciphers the mysterious inscription. it reads, james, son of joseph, brother of jesus. he found that there is a very high probability that it belonged to james, the brother of jesus christ. frankly, i didn t even know that jesus christ had brothers or sisters. golan immediately sends the ossuary to the geological survey of israel to help with its authentication. using high-power microscopes, they inspect the patina coating the box and the inscriptions. they conclude the lettering has not been made by modern tools. it s not the question of authentic. it s a question, if it belongs to james. intrigued about the probability of finding the names james, jesus and joseph in more than one family in first century jerusalem, golan asks renowned statistician camil fuchs to audit the names on the inscription. we have 168 inscribed ossuaries from that period in jerusalem. while the name joseph appears on 7 percent, jesus on 4 and james on 2 percent, fuchs concludes it s improbable that another family combining these three names existed. it is very likely, in my opinion, the james on this ossuary is the james who is the brother of jesus. the likelihood that this could be some other family with those three names, where the father is joseph and the two brothers are james and jesus, seems very unlikely. two thousand years ago, everything changes for the brothers, jesus and james, when joseph dies. we really don t know when joseph died, but somewhere about 27 ad, joseph is nowhere on the scene. family is the central core of first-century jewish society. they had lost somebody who could be providing for this family who were essentially living at a kind of subsistence level. the family would really have relied on jesus to pick up the slack, to provide it for the family. they would have really needed his income. but aged around 30, jesus makes a life-changing choice. jesus leaves the family and goes walkabout in galilee and judea. according to the gospels, jesus seeks out john the baptist on the banks of the river jordan. jesus baptism by john the baptist really galvanized him. that got him thinking, i must act now and convert people now. he begins performing miracles, casting out demons. according to the gospels, there are large crowds that are drawn to jesus throughout his ministry. jesus healing miracles would have drawn a lot of attention. but while jesus embarks on his mission, his family remained in nazareth. jesus leaves james and the other brothers and sisters in charge of the family hey, enough. and that is what s uncomfortable about this story. the village itself was a small village, so tongues would wag about this whole deal of jesus going off and doing some kind of ministry and leaving his family to take care of business. there would have been a local of social marginalization that they would have experienced because they had this slightly crazy, embarrassing brother, and we can imagine that would have created friction between jesus and his family. but as the fame of jesus spreads, the tension with his family will come to a head. james looked upon what jesus was doing as something that brought the family into dishonor. and set brother against brother. ird stair always creake. and your mother told me all her life that i should fix it. and now it reminds me of her. i m just glad i never fixed it. listen, you don t need to go anywhere dad. meet christine, she s going to help you around the house. the best home to be in is your own. from personal care and memory care, to help around the house, home instead offers personalized in-home services for your loved ones. home instead senior care. to us, it s personal. plaque psoriasis uncoverth hclearer skin that can last. in fact, tremfya® was proven superior to humira® in providing significantly clearer skin. 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. serious allergic reactions may occur. tremfya®. uncover clearer skin that can last. janssen can help you explore cost support options. [ drathis holiday. ahhhhh!!! -ahhhhh!!! a distant friend returns. elliott. you came back! and while lots of things have changed. wooooah! -woah! it s called the internet. some things haven t. get ready for a reunion 3 million light years in the making. woohoo! -yeah! capernaum, on the banks of lake galilee. according to the gospel of mark, in the synagogue, a man asks jesus to cure his withered hand. jesus tells him to stretch out his hand, and he s healed. but this is the sabbath, and working on the sabbath is prohibited. the fact that jesus heals the man with the withered hand on the sabbath in the synagogue suggests that he s just gonna do what he wants. it s an action that brings jesus into conflict with the jewish priesthood. now, his reputation precedes him wherever he goes. the number of his followers increases. the crowds he attracts bring him to the attention of the roman authorities. when jesus is active in galilee, those areas were under roman occupation. you could believe whatever you wanted to believe in the roman empire. you could practice your religion in whatever way you chose to practice your religion, but what the romans didn t like is one charismatic figure, especially one who was messianic. fearing for jesus safety, james and his family come to capernaum. i think it would be terribly frightening to have a member of your family get involved in that kind of religious environment potentially leading up to violence. the family have heard these reports that jesus is preaching and casting demons out, and they think, has he gone mad? i m here to see jesus. i m his brother. his mother is here. when jesus gets word that his family have come for him, he refuses to see them. he asked, who are my mother and my brothers? here are my mother and my brothers. whoever does god s will is my brother and sister and mother. he s saying to his family if you don t support me, i m going to deny you too. he won t see you. it s almost like he disses his family. tell him we ve traveled far. his mother is here. sorry. that s actually a rejection of the flesh and blood family, and i think his family would have been shocked by that. he s out of his mind. leave, go! james is not unlike us. i mean, can you imagine if your brother said, you know, i m the son of god. you know, what would you say? i mean, obviously we would think they re crazy. a few weeks later, jesus enters jerusalem. hundreds of thousands line the streets. according to the gospels, he s later arrested in the garden of gethsemane, and the following day is tortured and executed. jesus family have failed to save him. an apocryphal gospel not found in the new testament tells us about james. the gospel of the hebrews portrays james as being in jerusalem in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion. james has probably found the whole business of jesus being crucified about as traumatic, about as life changing as you can imagine. he goes into a period of fasting and mourning, something that no one else of jesus followers did. but then the bible reveals that james grieving is bought to a sudden end. jesus returns. he was buried, and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. then he appeared to james. james has spent much of his life wondering who his brother is, especially during this extraordinary mission that jesus has been on, and the resurrection is the moment where james comes to believe that jesus really is something special. perhaps that was the moment where he came to acknowledge jesus was not just his brother but also his lord. james life is transformed. now from doubting brother, he will become jesus most devoted follower and help shape a new world religion. and definitely.don t do this. see everything you should never do with an alfa romeo. .then experience everything you should on the road now. the zip code you re born into can determine your future. your school. your job. your dreams. your problems. (indistinct shouting) but at the y, we create opportunities for everyone, no matter who you are or where you re from. for a better us, donate to your local y today. for a better us, the beat goes onp for heart failure look like? it looks like emily cooking dinner for ten. the beat goes on it looks like jonathan on a date with his wife. la-di-la-di-di entresto is a heart failure medicine that helps your heart, so you can keep on doing what you love. entresto helped people stay alive and out of the hospital. heart failure can change the structure of your heart, so it may not work as well. entresto helps improve your heart s ability to pump blood to the body. don t take entresto if pregnant; it can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. don t take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren, or if you ve had angioedema with an ace or arb. the most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high blood potassium. the beat goes on ask your doctor about entresto for heart failure. ask your doctor about entresto for heart failure yeah! entrust your heart to entresto. the beat goes on october 2002, news of the most astonishing archaeological discovery of the new millennium makes headlines around the world. the james ossuary is put on display at the royal ontario museum in toronto, canada. at that point, i thought we were dealing with just a fantastic archaeological story about perhaps the only item ever to come from the family of jesus. but controversy is about to engulf the ossuary. while it was on display in toronto, some questions were asked here in israel as to how it got there. the antiquities authority said, we didn t realize it was such an important item that he wanted to send abroad. two months after it is first put on display, the israel antiquities authority refused to grant oded golan an extension to his export license. they demand the immediate return of the ossuary to israel. the israeli police and the iaa felt as though they had been embarrassed in front of the whole world by oded golan, and they went after him. in july 2003, tel aviv police, accompanied by officers from the iaa, swooped. his premises were raided in the middle of the night. we came with a search warrant to search his apartment. along with the james ossuary, golan has other rare antiquities they want to examine. the whole apartment was full of archaeological finds. they turned up all these boxes of materials and drawings and computer programs and other documents that they said looked like a forgery workshop. in the end, we had dozens of pieces that were supposedly forged. the police confiscate boxes full of artifacts for investigation including the james ossuary. carefully, carefully! from that moment on, a totally different area of inquiry was opened, not just concealing antiquities from the authority, but actually faking them and selling them, which is a criminal act, and so you have this very bright, quite obsessive character coming in contact with this strange world of antiquities, an awful lot of which is based on very shady, dodgy dealing and tomb robbing, so you ve got a very interesting and perhaps volatile mix. it s an allegation oded golan vigorously denies. this is just ridiculous accusation. all what i hold in my hand was a small box of very old tools in which i used to restore antiquities like any other collector. for more than a year, golan is held under house arrest while the iaa prepares its case. the story switched from being a nice, happy archaeology story to being a story about a criminal mastermind trying to change the course of history. in december 2004, at the district court of jerusalem, golan and four others are charged on 44 counts of fraud and forgery. they accused him of being part of an international forgery ring, faking the historical record by forging such important items as the burial box of james, the brother of jesus. the prosecution launch a case to prove that golan added the three most contentious words, brother of jesus, to the inscription. it is a genuine ossuary from that period of time, but what oded golan did was he made a supplement and making a whole new meaning of them. part of the prosecution s case is based on an examination by epigraphy expert chris rollston who had analyzed the lettering for any inconsistencies. if you look at the inscription really carefully, you ll notice that there s a difference in depth, clarity and the presence of kerning between the first half of the inscription and the second half of the inscription. i believe that the chances of at least the second half being a modern forgery are at least 75 to 85 percent. i think the forger attempted to replicate the style of writing of the first half of the inscription but really didn t do it with enormous precision. but the defense disagrees, so next, the prosecution turns its attention to the patina, the coating on the box. over the next 5 years, their scientists repeatedly scrutinize the microorganisms embedded inside the lettering. they believe this is all the work of golan. he made the fake patina at home. he went to archaeological sites and took out dirt from that period, took it back home and mixed it with water and then poured it over the ossuary. now witnesses for the defense contradict this claim. to fake a real patina, you need time. you need years and years, maybe 50 years, maybe 100 years, to develop this patina by growing the microorganisms that form the patina. every day, new evidence is presented. there were more than 120 witnesses in this trial, many of them leading scientific experts. the case itself lasts for almost 8 years. geology, physics, chemistry, stone, glue, ink, you name it. i don t think there was ever any case like this in the world. the judge said to each of them, look, if you, the best experts in the world, can t tell me whether this is a fake or authentic, then how on earth can i decide? finally in march 2012, after one of the longest ever forgery trials, 12,000 pages of transcripts and more than 400 exhibits, the judge reaches a verdict. oded golan is found guilty on two charges relating to the trade in antiquities, but when it comes to the charges of forgery, he s found not guilty and acquitted on all counts. i felt a release, but i felt that i lost many years just in order to prove something that should not even have to go into court. but the verdict does not comment on whether the box could really have been the ossuary of jesus brother james. that debate is still very much alive. by the end of this 10-year odyssey, what we re left with is an item that might be or might not be associated with jesus family. but the bible does record what happens to james. his fate will impact the course of world history. it s thought this ossuary once held the bones of jesus brother james. his story may have been hidden, but there are clues to his life. in the gospel according to thomas, jesus tells his disciples when they want to find leadership after his departure, they should go to james. james was a very devout man. a second-century historian tells us that james was continually on his knees, praying so much so that he had calloused knees like a camel s knees. james becomes the first bishop of jerusalem. my brother. he becomes a kind of rock of the movement in many ways because he provides the kind of stability that a new christian movement like that needs. over time, he progressively develops a sense of commitment and ownership for his brother s message. for you. but his authority is soon to be challenged by someone who was once a sworn enemy of jesus and his teachings. paul had been one of the pharisees who was against the jesus group, who changes sides as it were, and once he comes into the community, he just comes in incredibly strongly and takes a huge role. paul has been traveling across the roman empire preaching his own version of the jesus message for more than 10 years. his manifesto has even reached non-jews or gentiles. the tricky issue of what do we do with gentiles was the hot-button issue in earliest christianity. you have to remember all of the earliest followers of jesus were jews, all of them, so where do the gentiles fit into this? paul doesn t want the gentiles to convert to judaism in order to become christian, in order to be followers of the christ. his letters to new christian communities, the epistles, make up a third of the new testament. his teachings show how determined he is to reach out to gentiles. jesus said, go and make disciples of all the nations, and that meant not just the jews. if i were james and i had heard about paul and what paul was doing, i would be hugely frustrated. paul never met the human jesus. here was james, who was jesus brother, and this upstart was presuming to teach jesus message and go out among the gentiles with this message. things get so bad in the relations between paul and james that ultimately they have to have a big conference in jerusalem to sort it out. around 50 ad, 20 years after the execution of his brother jesus, james presides over a council of the movement s leaders. the outcome will decide the future. will they remain a small jewish sect, or will christianity stand alone? paul comes to defend the salvation afforded by the death and resurrection of christ that also extends to gentiles, and he brings a saved christian to jerusalem in order to try to prove his point. here is my friend, titus the greek. paul brings with him titus, an uncircumcised greek, as a sort of symbol of the gospel that he s preached, and he s really bringing him there to say to everyone, so what are you going to do about this? the only thing that counts is faith. when we read the acts of the apostles, it s quite clear that there s tension, and there s especially tension between james and paul. so if you were jesus brother and this upstart came along preaching and teaching a different message from the one that you had learned from your brother, i imagine you would have felt immense frustration. what the council are witnessing my brothers. is the birth of early christianity. the process by which christianity and judaism become two different things is a process that takes centuries. that said, in my opinion, paul s decision is a critically important moment in that division. jews or greeks, slaves or paul clearly believes that you really need to go out there and spread the message if your legacy s going to be protected. listen to me. james is a torah-true jew, and he got along apparently just fine with the jewish authorities, but this jewish following in jesus had really taken on a life of its own. it wasn t just another sector of judaism. it was a movement. james eventually sides with paul. this decision will soon revolutionize christianity, but it will also seal james fate. he is now seen as a threat to the jewish religious order. james was the face of early jewish christianity in jerusalem. he represented all of that, and so of course the authorities are going to take out on him whatever they had heard about the revolutionary beliefs about the followers of jesus. at that point, the jewish authorities knew that they couldn t control this. in spite of james good behavior, they still associated him with that troublemaker jesus that had been crucified back in the early 30s. james is arrested on the orders of the same jewish priesthood who only 3 decades earlier had condemned his brother jesus to death. and the clock could be ticking towards bad breath, receding gums, and possibly. tooth loss. help turn back the clock on gingivitis with parodontax. leave bleeding gums behind. parodontax. the wait is over. t-mobile is lighting up 5g nationwide. while some 5g signals go only blocks, t-mobile 5g goes miles. beyond the big cities to the small towns. to the people. now, millions of americans can have access to 5g on t-mobile. and this is just the beginning. t-mobile, the first and only nationwide 5g network. but he wanted snow for thelace holidays.. so we built a snow globe. i ll get that later. dylan! but the one thing we could both agree on was getting geico to help with homeowners insurance. what? switching and saving was really easy! i love you! what? sweetie! hands off the glass. ugh!! call geico and see how easy saving on homeowners and condo insurance can be. i love her! and your mother told me all her life that i should fix it. and now it reminds me of her. i m just glad i never fixed it. listen, you don t need to go anywhere dad. meet christine, she s going to help you around the house. the best home to be in is your own. from personal care and memory care, to help around the house, home instead offers personalized in-home services for your loved ones. home instead senior care. to us, it s personal. home instead senior care. up here at the dewar s distillery, all our whiskies are aged, blended and aged again. it s the reason our whisky is so extraordinarily smooth. dewar s. double aged for extra smoothness. jerusalem, ad 62, a leading member of the jewish priesthood gives james an ultimatum: renounce his brother jesus as his messiah or face death, but james refuses. the link between jesus and james ultimately means that james can t survive. james is led to the temple walls, only a few hundred meters from where jesus was crucified. he s martyred for this cause, and he s martyred for his sincere devotional piety. but pushing james from the walls doesn t kill him. ancient texts record that the final blows come when he s stoned to death, and his body is buried on the spot where he falls. in accordance with jewish custom of the time, one year after his death, james bones would have been collected and interred in an ossuary. i think it is likely that james body was claimed by his followers and buried. there was considerable support from within the city of jerusalem, right across the board, for james to be honored against the demeaning death that was inflicted on him. after james murder, the crucial role he played in the development of the early church will fade from view, but today in jerusalem, james is still venerated. the 12th-century armenian cathedral is dedicated to him. saint james is our first patriarch. we feel privileged that our brotherhood here in saint james are in direct succession and in direct line to saint james, the first bishop of jerusalem. in our daily prayers, james is our lord. james is sitting next to christ. it s claimed the cathedral is built on the site of james home. worshippers also believe his remains are buried here. according to armenian tradition, the bones of saint james were brought from the valley of kidron, where they were originally buried, and they were reburied under the main alter of the present saint james cathedral. but what happened to the box that first held his mortal remains? so is the james ossuary real or not? that s a tough question. the jury is still out on that one. at the end of it, you still have a mystery. we ll never quite know if the james ossuary is real or not. we ll never quite know if it s that james, the brother of jesus. after golan is acquitted of forging the inscription, the ossuary is eventually returned to him. now he is hoping to put it on display for a second time. it should be exhibited to people who have interest in early christianity, and we have a lot of material now that everyone can evaluate, read and even get his own impression or conclusion. but the dispute over the authenticity of the box has left one lasting legacy. i think james the just is one of the most important figures in earliest christianity, and the controversy about the ossuary has caused people to become more aware of the fact that jesus had brothers and that james was preeminent among them. so why has james memory been lost to history? we re guided so much by the theology that suggests that mary can t really have had other sons than jesus. it s really that idea that mary was a perpetual virgin that really kicked jesus siblings offstage in the history of christianity. the first gospels are written only a few years after james death, by which time christianity, as it will become known, is already moving away from its jewish roots. by the second century, there were more gentiles in the early church than there were israelites, and the memory of james was diluted, and now we come to think of him as a purely historical figure and not as the transitional figure that he truly was. theologically it becomes difficult for us to talk about the important history of the early jesus movement and that history does involve james. everyone else knew jesus. they knew jesus the great teacher. they knew jesus the great healer. james knew the invisible jesus. james knew the jesus that he was when no one was watching. this is a special edition of new day with alisyn camerota and john berman. good morning, everyone. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. this is a special holiday edition of new day. merry christmas, everyone. merry christmas. just what everyone wants for christmas. we re going to talk about the latest on impeachment this morning and what we can expect moving forward. also the 2020 race for the white house. where do the democratic primary candidates stand ahead of the iowa caucus now just five weeks away? we ll also talk about building political bridges and
man. embroiled in one of the longest forgery trials ever, could this box be the first physical evidence of jesus and his secret brother, james? fall 2002, royal ontario museum in toronto, canada opens its doors to what may be the most significant discovery ever in biblical archaeology: a limestone burial box, known as an ossuary, scientifically dated to the time of christ. on its side, an inscription in ancient aramaic which reads james, son of joseph, brother of jesus. it came just as we d crossed the millennium threshold. we d already had the y2k bug. we had the pope s millennial visit to the holy land, and this seemed to be another one of those sort of millennial happenings. it s claimed that this box, measuring 10 inches by 20, is no less than the burial casket of james, the brother of jesus christ. the ossuary is so important, not just for the fact that it says, the brother of jesus, but you have to understand that there s no physical evidence of the existence of jesus of nazareth dating from the time of jesus. there is nothing except the gospels which were written down decades later. this would be the first physical evidence that jesus of nazareth existed. this is such a landmark. i mean, this is the only material evidence, nonliterary, we have for the family of jesus. i think most people would be extremely surprised to learn that jesus had siblings. even though james is called the brother of jesus in the new testament, most christians grow up learning that mary was a virgin, and that he didn t have any siblings, so i think most people would be astonished. the gospels of both matthew and mark name jesus brothers. as well as james, there s joses, judas and simon alongside at least two unnamed sisters, but exactly whose offspring these other children are is still the subject of debate. for catholics, there is an emphasis on mary s virginity. she was not only a virgin at the time of jesus conception and birth but also afterwards, so that s why i like to think of james, the brother of jesus, as probably a child from joseph s prior marriage, before he married mary. but not all christians are in agreement. the protestants would say there are other children that are the biological kids of mary and joseph, in which case jesus would be the older brother and perhaps the other siblings of jesus would have looked up to him. matthew 1:25 says literally, joseph was not knowing her in the carnal sense until she gave birth to jesus. now, any normal reading of that sentence implies she went on to have more children after that, and his brothers and sisters are in fact his brothers and sisters. the bible tells us very little about the early life of jesus. the gospels really fast forward almost totally until he s 30 years old, and he s the son of god. what about all those missing years when he was a teenager playing around with his brothers, getting into trouble? written around 100 years after jesus death, the infancy gospel of thomas is a collection of stories about his childhood. there is a peculiar story about james, and it s an interesting picture of jesus and james together as children. joseph sent james into the forest to gather sticks. jesus also went with him. the gospel continues: an abominable snake bit james on the hand, and as he lay dying, the boy jesus ran to james and did nothing but blow on the bite, and immediately the bite was healed. james is put there with jesus from the very beginning. we see an organic connection between them, not only in terms of their relationship but also in terms of their common experience. but the story of james, the brother of jesus, will be forgotten until this casket bearing his name reappears to launch one of the longest and most controversial forgery trials ever. ( ) thlook at all this ink no more bit comes with.es. big ink tanks. lots of ink. no more cartridges. incredible amount of ink. the epson ecotank. just fill and chill. up here at the dewar s distillery, all our whiskies are aged, blended and aged again. it s the reason our whisky is so extraordinarily smooth. dewar s. double aged for extra smoothness. enjoy your prime rib! anyone ever call you, meat santa ? no, that s. weird. happy holidays. enjoy. next customer? enjoy. need a change of scenery? kayak searches hundreds of travel sites - even our competitors - so you can be confident you re getting the right flight at the best price. kayak. search one and done. [sneezing] you don t want to cancel your plans. [sneezing] cancel your cold. the 1-pill power of advil multi-symptom cold & flu knocks out your worst symptoms. cancel your cold, not your plans. advil multi-symptom cold & flu. to take care of yourself. but nature s bounty has innovative ways to help you maintain balance and help keep you active and well-rested. because hey, tomorrow s coming up fast. nature s bounty. because you re better off healthy. the story of the james ossuary, the casket that may have held the bones of james, the forgotten brother of jesus, starts with one of the world s greatest antiquities collectors. oded golan is one of the great experts on archaeologist artifacts. i have actually the biggest private collection of ossuaries in israel, probably in the world. most of his collection tells the story of the development of the civilizations here, and that includes the biblical era. his collection must be worth millions and millions of dollars. according to golan, in the early 1970s, he bought an empty first-century ossuary from a dealer in jerusalem. i could see some of the names which are mentioned and especially ya akov, the first name, meaning james. it came by itself without any item to accompany it. in first century jerusalem, the bones of the dead were placed in ossuaries in underground tombs. archaeologist byron mccane is a leading expert on burial practices in ancient palestine. we re just south of the old city of jerusalem. there are a number of burial caves from the time of jesus right around here. in the jewish tradition, on the first anniversary of the death, they gather the bones of their deceased loved ones. those bones are placed in an ossuary. the ossuary is marked with the name of the deceased and then placed somewhere in the tomb. back in 1970s jerusalem, there is a vibrant market for antique ossuaries. i didn t see anything particular in this ossuary. it was sat for many years at my parents apartment together with several other ossuaries that i purchased at that time because i didn t put any special attention to this ossuary. but in april 2002, golan invites andre lemaire, a renowned scholar of ancient aramaic, to examine some items in his collection. lemaire s attention is immediate drawn to the unidentified ossuary golan bought 30 years before. lemaire deciphers the mysterious inscription. it reads, james, son of joseph, brother of jesus. he found that there is a very high probability that it belonged to james, the brother of jesus christ. frankly, i didn t even know that jesus christ had brothers or sisters. golan immediately sends the ossuary to the geological survey of israel to help with its authentication. using high-power microscopes, they inspect the patina coating the box and the inscriptions. they conclude the lettering has not been made by modern tools. it s not the question of authentic. it s a question, if it belongs to james. intrigued about the probability of finding the names james, jesus and joseph in more than one family in first century jerusalem, golan asks renowned statistician camil fuchs to audit the names on the inscription. we have 168 inscribed ossuaries from that period in jerusalem. while the name joseph appears on 7 percent, jesus on 4 and james on 2 percent, fuchs concludes it s improbable that another family combining these three names existed. it is very likely, in my opinion, the james on this ossuary is the james who is the brother of jesus. the likelihood that this could be some other family with those three names, where the father is joseph and the two brothers are james and jesus, seems very unlikely. two thousand years ago, everything changes for the brothers, jesus and james, when joseph dies. we really don t know when joseph died, but somewhere about 27 ad, joseph is nowhere on the scene. family is the central core of first-century jewish society. they had lost somebody who could be providing for this family who were essentially living at a kind of subsistence level. the family would really have relied on jesus to pick up the slack, to provide it for the family. they would have really needed his income. but aged around 30, jesus makes a life-changing choice. jesus leaves the family and goes walkabout in galilee and judea. according to the gospels, jesus seeks out john the baptist on the banks of the river jordan. jesus baptism by john the baptist really galvanized him. that got him thinking, i must act now and convert people now. he begins performing miracles, casting out demons. according to the gospels, there are large crowds that are drawn to jesus throughout his ministry. jesus healing miracles would have drawn a lot of attention. but while jesus embarks on his mission, his family remained in nazareth. jesus leaves james and the other brothers and sisters in charge of the family. hey, enough. and that is what s uncomfortable about this story. the village itself was a small village, so tongues would wag about this whole deal of jesus going off and doing some kind of ministry and leaving his family to take care of business. there would have been a local of social marginalization that they would have experienced because they had this slightly crazy, embarrassing brother, and we can imagine that would have created friction between jesus and his family. but as the fame of jesus spreads, the tension with his family will come to a head. james looked upon what jesus was doing as something that brought the family into dishonor. and set brother against brother. apps are used everywhere. except work. why is that? is it because people love filling out forms? maybe they like checking with their supervisor to see how much vacation time they have. or sending corporate their expense reports. i ll let you in on a little secret. they don t. by empowering employees to manage their own tasks, paycom frees you to focus on the business of business. to learn more, visit paycom.com [ chuckles ] so, what are some key takeaways from this commercial? did any of you 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[ laughter ] bundle, bundle, bundle. -my kids would love that. -yeah. male anchor: .an update on the cat who captured our hearts. female anchor: how often should you clean your fridge? stay tuned to find out. male anchor: beats the odds at the box office to become a rare non-franchise hit. you can give help and hope to those in need. capernaum, on the banks of lake galilee. according to the gospel of mark, in the synagogue, a man asks jesus to cure his withered hand. jesus tells him to stretch out his hand, and he s healed. but this is the sabbath, and working on the sabbath is prohibited. the fact that jesus heals the man with the withered hand on the sabbath in the synagogue suggests that he s just gonna do what he wants. it s an action that brings jesus into conflict with the jewish priesthood. now, his reputation precedes him wherever he goes. the number of his followers increases. the crowds he attracts bring him to the attention of the roman authorities. when jesus is active in galilee, those areas were under roman occupation. you could believe whatever you wanted to believe in the roman empire. you could practice your religion in whatever way you chose to practice your religion, but what the romans didn t like is one charismatic figure, especially one who was messianic. fearing for jesus safety, james and his family come to capernaum. i think it would be terribly frightening to have a member of your family get involved in that kind of religious environment potentially leading up to violence. the family have heard these reports that jesus is preaching and casting demons out, and they think, has he gone mad? i m here to see jesus. i m his brother. his mother is here. when jesus gets word that his family have come for him, he refuses to see them. he asked, who are my mother and my brothers? here are my mother and my brothers. whoever does god s will is my brother and sister and mother. he s saying to his family if you don t support me, i m going to deny you too. he won t see you. it s almost like he disses his family. tell him we ve traveled far. his mother is here. sorry. that s actually a rejection of the flesh and blood family, and i think his family would have been shocked by that. he s out of his mind. leave, go! james is not unlike us. i mean, can you imagine if your brother said, you know, i m the son of god. you know, what would you say? i mean, obviously we would think they re crazy. a few weeks later, jesus enters jerusalem. hundreds of thousands line the streets. according to the gospels, he s later arrested in the garden of gethsemane, and the following day is tortured and executed. jesus family have failed to save him. an apocryphal gospel not found in the new testament tells us about james. the gospel of the hebrews portrays james as being in jerusalem in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion. james has probably found the whole business of jesus being crucified about as traumatic, about as life changing as you can imagine. he goes into a period of fasting and mourning, something that no one else of jesus followers did. but then the bible reveals that james grieving is bought to a sudden end. jesus returns. he was buried, and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. then he appeared to james. james has spent much of his life wondering who his brother is, especially during this extraordinary mission that jesus has been on, and the resurrection is the moment where james comes to believe that jesus really is something special. perhaps that was the moment where he came to acknowledge jesus was not just his brother but also his lord. james life is transformed. now from doubting brother, he will become jesus most devoted follower and help shape a new world religion. what i love most about being a scientist at 3m is that i m part of a community of problem solvers. we make ideas grow. from an everyday solution. to one that can take on a bigger challenge. we are solving problems that improve lives. (vo) than just the business theryou came for.more. whether that s getting a taste of where you are, or bringing some of that flavor back home. that s room for possibility. let s get to living (air pump motors) (lamp crashes) music it s the final days of the wish list sales event. sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first month s payment. october 2002, news of the most astonishing archaeological discovery of the new millennium makes headlines around the world. the james ossuary is put on display at the royal ontario museum in toronto, canada. at that point, i thought we were dealing with just a fantastic archaeological story about perhaps the only item ever to come from the family of jesus. but controversy is about to engulf the ossuary. while it was on display in toronto, some questions were asked here in israel as to how it got there. the antiquities authority said, we didn t realize it was such an important item that he wanted to send abroad. two months after it is first put on display, the israel antiquities authority refused to grant oded golan an extension to his export license. they demand the immediate return of the ossuary to israel. the israeli police and the iaa felt as though they had been embarrassed in front of the whole world by oded golan, and they went after him. in july 2003, tel aviv police, accompanied by officers from the iaa, swooped. his premises were raided in the middle of the night. we came with a search warrant to search his apartment. along with the james ossuary, golan has other rare antiquities they want to examine. the whole apartment was full of archaeological finds. they turned up all these boxes of materials and drawings and computer programs and other documents that they said looked like a forgery workshop. in the end, we had dozens of pieces that were supposedly forged. the police confiscate boxes full of artifacts for investigation including the carefully, carefully! from that moment on, a totally different area of inquiry was opened, not just concealing antiquities from the authority, but actually faking them and selling them, which is a criminal act, and so you have this very bright, quite obsessive character coming in contact with this strange world of antiquities, an awful lot of which is based on very shady, dodgy dealing and tomb robbing, so you ve got a very interesting and perhaps volatile mix. it s an allegation oded golan vigorously denies. this is just ridiculous accusation. all what i hold in my hand was a small box of very old tools in which i used to restore antiquities like any other collector. for more than a year, golan is held under house arrest while the iaa prepares its case. the story switched from being a nice, happy archaeology story to being a story about a criminal mastermind trying to change the course of history. in december 2004, at the district court of jerusalem, golan and four others are charged on 44 counts of fraud and forgery. they accused him of being part of an international forgery ring, faking the historical record by forging such important items as the burial box of james, the brother of jesus. the prosecution launch a case to prove that golan added the three most contentious words, brother of jesus, to the inscription. it is a genuine ossuary from that period of time, but what oded golan did was he made a supplement and making a whole new meaning of them. part of the prosecution s case is based on an examination by epigraphy expert chris rollston who had analyzed the lettering for any inconsistencies. if you look at the inscription really carefully, you ll notice that there s a difference in depth, clarity and the presence of kerning between the first half of the inscription and the second half of the inscription. i believe that the chances of at least the second half being a modern forgery are at least 75 to 85 percent. i think the forger attempted to replicate the style of writing of the first half of the inscription but really didn t do it with enormous precision. but the defense disagrees, so next, the prosecution turns its attention to the patina, the coating on the box. over the next 5 years, their scientists repeatedly scrutinize the microorganisms embedded inside the lettering. they believe this is all the work of golan. he made the fake patina at home. he went to archaeological sites and took out dirt from that period, took it back home and mixed it with water and then poured it over the ossuary. now witnesses for the defense contradict this claim. to fake a real patina, you need time. you need years and years, maybe 50 years, maybe 100 years, to develop this patina by growing the microorganisms that form the patina. every day, new evidence is presented. there were more than 120 witnesses in this trial, many of them leading scientific experts. the case itself lasts for almost 8 years. geology, physics, chemistry, stone, glue, ink, you name it. i don t think there was ever any case like this in the world. the judge said to each of them, look, if you, the best experts in the world, can t tell me whether this is a fake or authentic, then how on earth can i decide? finally in march 2012, after one of the longest ever forgery trials, 12,000 pages of transcripts and more than 400 exhibits, the judge reaches a verdict. oded golan is found guilty on two charges relating to the trade in antiquities, but when it comes to the charges of forgery, he s found not guilty and acquitted on all counts. i felt a release, but i felt that i lost many years just in order to prove something that should not even have to go into court. but the verdict does not comment on whether the box could really have been the ossuary of jesus brother james. that debate is still very much alive. by the end of this 10-year odyssey, what we re left with is an item that might be or might not be associated with jesus family. but the bible does record what happens to james. his fate will impact the course of world history. for the holidays, there are countless people working to help them get there. thank you to everyone we rely on to get us home to the ones we love. 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(paul) america s best network. the best network is even better. the best deals on the best network. how can everyone be the best? well, sprint s doing things differently. they re offering a 100% total satisfaction guarantee. while i think their network and savings are great, you don t just have to take my word for it. try it out, decide for yourself. hurry in for exciting holiday deals and save your family money. get both an unlimited plan and one of the newest phones included for just $35 a month. for people with hearing loss, visit sprintrelay.com it s thought this ossuary once held the bones of jesus brother james. his story may have been hidden, but there are clues to his life. in the gospel according to thomas, jesus tells his disciples when they want to find leadership after his departure, they should go to james. james was a very devout man. a second-century historian tells us that james was continually on his knees, praying so much so that he had calloused knees like a camel s knees. james becomes the first bishop of jerusalem. my brother. he becomes a kind of rock of the movement in many ways because he provides the kind of stability that a new christian movement like that needs. over time, he progressively develops a sense of commitment and ownership for his brother s message. for you. but his authority is soon to be challenged by someone who was once a sworn enemy of jesus and his teachings. paul had been one of the pharisees who was against the jesus group, who changes sides as it were, and once he comes into the community, he just comes in incredibly strongly and takes a huge role. paul has been traveling across the roman empire preaching his own version of the jesus message for more than 10 years. his manifesto has even reached non-jews or gentiles. the tricky issue of what do we do with gentiles was the hot-button issue in earliest christianity. you have to remember all of the earliest followers of jesus were jews, all of them, so where do the gentiles fit into this? paul doesn t want the gentiles to convert to judaism in order to become christian, in order to be followers of the christ. his letters to new christian communities, the epistles, make up a third of the new testament. his teachings show how determined he is to reach out to gentiles. jesus said, go and make disciples of all the nations, and that meant not just the jews. if i were james and i had heard about paul and what paul was doing, i would be hugely frustrated. paul never met the human jesus. here was james, who was jesus brother, and this upstart was presuming to teach jesus message and go out among the gentiles with this message. things get so bad in the relations between paul and james that ultimately they have to have a big conference in jerusalem to sort it out. around 50 ad, 20 years after the execution of his brother jesus, james presides over a council of the movement s leaders. the outcome will decide the future. will they remain a small jewish sect, or will christianity stand alone? paul comes to defend the salvation afforded by the death and resurrection of christ that also extends to gentiles, and he brings a saved christian to jerusalem in order to try to prove his point. here is my friend, titus the uncircumcised greek, and he s bringing him to everyone that says so what are you going to do about this? the only thing that counts is faith. when we read the acts of the apostles, it s quite clear that there s tension, and there s especially tension between james and paul. so if you were jesus brother and this upstart came along preaching and teaching a different message from the one that you had learned from your brother, i imagine you would have felt immense frustration. what the council are witnessing my brothers. is the birth of early christianity. the process by which christianity and judaism become two different things is a process that takes centuries. that said, in my opinion, paul s decision is a critically important moment in that division. jews or greeks, slaves or free. paul clearly believes that you really need to go out there and spread the message if your legacy s going to be protected. listen to me. james is a torah-true jew, and he got along apparently just fine with the jewish authorities, but this jewish following in jesus had really taken on a life of its own. it wasn t just another sector of judaism. it was a movement. james eventually sides with paul. this decision will soon revolutionize christianity, but it will also seal james fate. he is now seen as a threat to the jewish religious order. james was the face of early jewish christianity in jerusalem. he represented all of that, and so of course the authorities are going to take out on him whatever they had heard about the revolutionary beliefs about the followers of jesus. at that point, the jewish authorities knew that they couldn t control this. in spite of james good behavior, they still associated cnn. james is arrested on the orders of the same jewish priesthood who only 3 decades earlier had condemned his brother jesus to death. ping up with what you always do. or training for something you ve never done before. that s room for possibility. of italian designyears to and performance.rpiece .and about 15 minutes for us to do this. blends right into the italian architecture! no no no no no! male anchor: .an update on the cat who captured our hearts. female anchor: how often should you clean your fridge? stay tuned to find out. male anchor: beats the odds at the box office to become a rare non-franchise hit. you can give help and hope to those in need. jerusalem, ad 62, a leading member of the jewish priesthood gives james an ultimatum: renounce his brother jesus as his messiah or face death, but james refuses. the link between jesus and james ultimately means that james can t survive. james is led to the temple walls, only a few hundred meters from where jesus was crucified. he s martyred for this cause, and he s martyred for his sincere devotional piety. but pushing james from the walls doesn t kill him. ancient texts record that the final blows come when he s stoned to death, and his body is buried on the spot where he falls. in accordance with jewish custom of the time, one year after his death, james bones would have been collected and interred in an ossuary. i think it is likely that james body was claimed by his followers and buried. there was considerable support from within the city of jerusalem, right across the board, for james to be honored against the demeaning death that was inflicted on him. after james murder, the crucial role he played in the development of the early church will fade from view, but today in jerusalem, james is still venerated. the 12th-century armenian cathedral is dedicated to him. saint james is our first patriarch. we feel privileged that our brotherhood here in saint james are in direct succession and in direct line to saint james, the first bishop of jerusalem. in our daily prayers, james is our lord. james is sitting next to christ. it s claimed the cathedral is built on the site of james home. worshippers also believe his remains are buried here. according to armenian tradition, the bones of saint james were brought from the valley of kidron, where they were originally buried, and they were reburied under the main altar of the present saint james cathedral. but what happened to the box that first held his mortal remains? so is the james ossuary real or not? that s a tough question. the jury is still out on that one. at the end of it, you still have a mystery. we ll never quite know if the james ossuary is real or not. we ll never quite know if it s that james, the brother of jesus. after golan is acquitted of forging the inscription, the ossuary is eventually returned to him. now he is hoping to put it on display for a second time. it should be exhibited to people who have interest in early christianity, and we have a lot of material now that everyone can evaluate, read and even get his own impression or conclusion. but the dispute over the authenticity of the box has left one lasting legacy. i think james the just is one of the most important figures in earliest christianity, and the controversy about the ossuary has caused people to become more aware of the fact that jesus had brothers and that james was preeminent among them. so why has james memory been lost to history? we re guided so much by the theology that suggests that mary can t really have had other sons than jesus. it s really that idea that mary was a perpetual virgin that really kicked jesus siblings offstage in the history of christianity. the first gospels are written only a few years after james death, by which time christianity, as it will become known, is already moving away from its jewish roots. by the second century, there were more gentiles in the early church than there were israelites, and the memory of james was diluted, and now we come to think of him as a purely historical figure and not as the transitional figure that he truly was. theologically it becomes difficult for us to talk about the important history of the early jesus movement and that history does involve james. everyone else knew jesus. they knew jesus the great teacher. they knew jesus the great healer. james knew the invisible jesus. james knew the jesus that he was when no one was watching. the true cross, the actual cross that jesus of nazareth was crucified on, wood infused with his blood and tears. it is literally the scaffolding upon which jesus saved the world. but the relic was thought to be lost to history. then a roman empress, helena, sets off on a dramatic quest to find it. helena changed everything. the discovery of the cross is shrouded in mystery. there s intrigue. there s murder. there s sex.