Morning Joe - Morning Joe 12/23/22

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Jan. 6 committee report details the scope of Trump's pressure campaign to overturn the election

I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday. And to those who broke the law, you will pay. You do not represent our movement. You do not represent our country. And if you broke the law, you can't say that. I'm not going to. I already said you will pay. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defied the seat of justice. It's defiled. Right. I can't see it very well.

OK, I'll do this. I'm going to do this. Let's go. But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results. I don't want to say the election's over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election's over. Okay? But Congress has certified. Now Congress is over. Yeah, right.

Now Congress is over. I didn't say over. So let me see. Don't go to the paragraph before. Wow. How do you like to be Ivanka stage managing that? Back in July, the January 6th committee played raw footage of the outtakes from former President Trump's taped address the day after the Capitol riot when he was choking on every word.

Oh, my God. This morning, you know, the day before he called them patriots. Beautiful. This, that and the other. Wow. This morning, the committee's full final report has finally been released. We're going to go through it all. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Friday, December 23rd. Everybody's off. I'm here. I hope you're not bothered too much by that.

We're going to get through this together. With us, we have former aide to George W. Bush White House and State Department's Elise Jordan. I also have the host of MSNBC's Politics Nation and president of the National Action Network, the hardest working man in show business and the ministry, Reverend Al Sharpton. We've got columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius, Washington Bureau chief for USA Today, Susan Page, and NBC legal analyst, Andrew Weissman. He's a former general counsel of the FBI and served as lead prosecutor in the Mueller special counsel's office. This report came out late last night, David Ignatius. But you just even you look at Donald Trump the day after there is an attempt to overthrow America's government.

And he has trouble confronting the fact that it was his people who did it, first of all. And secondly, that the election was over. And you know what? You could trace from that point forward his continued legal troubles that may may in the end put him in jail. Joe, what I found in this report is the clarity that we want from investigations. So often committees come out with documents that are just a mishmash. This one is clear, well stated and makes evident that there is one person to blame for what happened on January 6th,

the person who encouraged, in a sense, organized the activity on the Capitol that became the insurrection. And that's President Trump. The evidence of Trump's knowledge that he that he had lost the election was going to go forward despite that. That's in this report is devastating. And I found most emphatic the committee's insistence that this person, this man, Donald Trump, who has done done these things to subvert our country, should not ever hold office again. I thought that was just the absolute thunderbolt at the end of this report. This this person really never, never hold office again. You know, it was it was a massive report, such such an extraordinarily important report.

The executive summary was actually longer than than most books I read. But but after all of that, you are right, David. They boiled it down to the fact that this was about one man and one man only. Donald Trump had more than 800 pages. This report's broken down into eight chapters and it provides details for more than 1,000 witness interviews and hundreds of thousands of pages of text messages, emails, and other documents. Chapter one is titled The Big Lie, a reference to Donald Trump's widespread effort to push false claims about the 2020 election being stolen. That chapter notes that Donald Trump made efforts even before Election Day to delegitimize the election process

by just repeating over and over again that the election would be marred by ballot fraud. Remember, I've been telling you about Chris Christie was told in the spring and summer of 2020 that Trump was already trying that out. Chapter two is titled I just want to find eleven thousand seven hundred eighty votes focuses on Trump's attempt to pressure local and state officials to overturn the 2020 election results. And the next few chapters outline how Trump and his allies plan to slate a fake electors. Their efforts to get the Justice Department to cast doubt on the integrity of the election and push to convince then Vice President Mike Pence to decertify the results. Now, in a forward to the report, Vice Chair Liz Cheney wrote this in part, quote, Every president in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority,

except one. January 6th, 2021 was the first time one American president refused his constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully to the next. And one could argue the two most important sentences in the report read this, quote, the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him. And Andrew Weissman, you know a thing or two about reports focusing on Donald Trump. Talk about this report. Does it do what needs to be done? First of all, for the historical record, but more immediately for the Department of Justice,

who, you know, people can say this report's irrelevant. This is this, this. No, they have done an extraordinary amount of legwork. And I'm wondering how their work, how this report helps the DOJ. I think the answer to that is in two ways. First, it is actually quite important for the department that there is sort of public acceptance and public education as to what it's going to do. If it is the case that the department brings a prosecution against

Donald Trump, either for the events surrounding January 6th or for Mar-a-Lago, it's really going to be important for the public to have some sense of what are those crimes? Are they usually prosecuted? Is Donald Trump being treated the same as other people. And so just the educational function that David laid out and the clarity of this report, I mean, to me, it reads like a prosecution memo that you see internally at the Department of Justice, except it's written for the public. And so it's easily digestible. So Andrew, let me ask you this question. Let me ask you this question. So we had the Mueller investigation. We had the Mueller report. People read through it. Every time somebody says the words Russian hoax to me,

I said, you haven't read the Mueller report, have you? You have no idea what they uncovered, do you? So my question is this. I mean, you all had to be feeling pretty great after the Mueller report was put out. You had to expect something to come of that. How is this going to be different? Because I think a lot of Americans like myself read the Mueller report, said, my God, anybody else would be in jail for obstruction of justice. And my God, this this Russian evidence is actually more damning than than I actually thought. When you look at it all laid out, it was laid out masterfully and nothing came of it. Let me say that again. Nothing came of that. Why is this going to be different? Great question. So I think two reasons. One, I think the January 6th committee realized that you can't just issue a report of hundreds and hundreds of pages with thick legal terminology.

And so they had a series of public, widely accessible and viewed hearings. And so this is a culmination, but it very much documents what has happened in those hearings. And so this is a culmination, but it very much documents what has happened in those hearings. So this is really taking advantage of a different form to give a report, that they've televised it in a way that's very accessible with live witnesses so that all of us can really talk about it and replay it. Second, remember, there's a big difference in terms of what can happen to Donald Trump. He is now out of office. So one of the things that we did not have the ability to do is we could not indict a sitting president for any crimes. He is no longer a sitting president. And so the threat of what the department's going to do with this, I think is palpable. And, you know, here,

that goes to the other point that you were alluding to, which is that this report both helps in terms of public acceptance, but it also lays out so much evidence. And so the department's going to be pouring through this. People like Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani have to be reading Chapter three about the fake electors and thinking, oh, my God, I involvement in the scheme. And those are going to be the people that the department looks to prosecute and flip. So really different situation, both in terms of the sort of media savvy of the committee and also now the department's ability to bring to bring actual charges. Yeah. And by the way, as a public service announcement, the dwindling number of Trumpers also my Christmas present to you all. Right. Before you use the term.

Russian hoax, go ahead and go back and read the Mueller report because you look like an idiot when you do that or when you write it in your op eds, because history is really clear on year is that that that so many people just skimmed over the report, the Mueller report. And I do hope, as Andrew said, the January 6th report will be different. One of the reasons why is you can see how they acted like the mob. They really did. People around Trump behaved like the mob. The committee released deposition transcripts for more than six witnesses, including former White House aide Cassidy Hutchison. Despite her composure during a public hearing in June, the transcripts reveal Hutchison's inner turmoil and fear over whether or not to break with Trump world, as she called it and as she eventually did. They also review new information about how Trump's team tried to stop her repeatedly from cooperating with the House committee under oath. Unemployed and unable to afford her own legal counsel last February, the former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows says Trump's team offered to set her up with a lawyer free of

charge. That lawyer was former White House Deputy Counsel Stefan Passatino. Hutchison told the committee that Passatino dangled job prospects in front of her if only if only she would lie and withhold damning information about Trump from the House panel. According to Hutchison, Pasatino told her, quote, the less you remember, the better. And I don't want you to perjure yourself, but I don't recall isn't perjury. After lying to the committee in her initial depositions, Hutchison said she became wracked with guilt, but was scared to come forward with more information because, quote, it felt like I had Trump looking over my shoulder. By April, she said the guilt caused her to have a mental breakdown. Hutchison then studied up on whistleblowers that came forward during Watergate and told herself, if I'm going to pass the mirror

test for the rest of my life, I need to try to fix some of this. At the end of her third deposition, after agreeing to testify before the committee publicly, Hutchison told the staffer, quote, I'm about to blank. I'm about to be blanking newt. The staffer simply replied, I'm really sorry. Despite knowing this, Hutchison testified anyway. The same in NBC News. Pasatino denied any wrongdoing, but says he is taking a leave of absence from his law firm. Reverend Al, you know, Trump's behaved like he's been in the mob for for quite some time. You look at these exchanges and you look at Cassidy Hutchison, how she was,

you know, she was terrified. She drove up to try to get support from her father, who was a Trumper. He wouldn't give her any support. She had a QAnon aunt and uncle who actually said they would try to help her out any way they could. But she was isolated. She was being threatened. She testified anyway. It's pretty extraordinary. And I think one of the key moments of this entire this this entire episode, this this this this entire committee report. It is amazing. It's similar to reading a mob novel or watching a mob movie. But what is so frightening and what is so compelling to those of us that looked at the report last night when it came out is what you said a few moments ago. We cannot allow this to be like the Mueller report. We're talking about not the mob. We're

talking about the government of the United States. And as Congresswoman Liz Cheney said, the first president in American history that would not go along with the transfer of power. And you look at the takeout, the outtakes that you played where he consciously kept trying to cover for what happened in terms of some of his followers tried to still buy into a fraud that we now know from this report. He knew he lost. I mean, this is real evidence that he himself edited the narrative that Miss Cassidy was saying she was going to be nuked for revealing. You have him on tape. Any mob trial. Once you have the defendant on tape, you go to the jury. I mean, it blew my mind to go through that testimony and read what Cassidy Hutchison went through. Just thinking about a young 20 something staffer leaving the White House.

I was in that position. You're taking meetings. You're trying to get a job. She wanted to find a job. They dangle all these jobs in front of her. It made me so uncomfortable to read the exchanges with her lawyer, who clearly was not looking out for her own interests. That's one side of it. And it's a very compelling human element within this entire report. But Susan, the other thing that really grabbed me was this is a complete law enforcement failure. The FBI, what were they doing? They didn't really turn to this until January 5th, according to the report, and looking at they didn't look closely at all of the intel they collected until January 5th. No one knew who was in charge. DOJ thought they were in charge of one thing. DHS, another. What a mess.

And you know what makes that so striking is that we know from the report how long this had been in the works. You know, I think some Americans had the sense that, oh, this was a rally that went awry, that got out of hand. But the report makes it clear that this was a long-term strategy, first to dispute the election returns and then to have a rally that was very likely to result in violence. And so there were signs that intelligence agencies should have picked up on, law enforcement agencies could have picked up on. There's an appendix to the report that deals with that,

although the guts of the report is really dealing with former President Trump. We're going to hear more about that. I mean, that's going to be one of the, I think, angles of this that Republicans will want to focus on to divert attention from the responsibility of Donald Trump. You know, according to the 845 page report, Trump and his inner circle made at least 200 attempts to pressure lawmakers and other officials to overturn state electors. There were 68 meetings, phone calls or texts aimed at local officials or state officials, 18 public remarks that targeted them and 125

social media posts. The committee says around 300 lawmakers from battleground states also reportedly participated in a January 2nd briefing with Trump. It says the most well-known incident, of course, detailing Trump's efforts to rig local elections by intimidating local officials was his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he said, I just want to find 11,780 votes. So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. And flipping the state is a great testament to our country. The people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry.

And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you've recalculated because the 2000, 236 and absentee ballots. I mean, they're all exact numbers that were were done by accounting firms, law firms, et cetera. And even if you cut them in half, cut them in half and cut them in half again, it's more votes than we need. Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. And Trump tried to talk with Raffensperger 18 times. Raffensperger finally started ghosting him. And Donald Trump, it's so funny, Andrew Weissman, Donald Trump said that the people of America are angry. Well, no, actually, the people of Georgia ended up not even being angry. The Republicans in Georgia ended up not being angry. Trump tried to destroy Raffensperger

and Kemp because they wouldn't go along with a big lie. And they both got reelected overwhelmingly in their Republican primaries. I mean, what does that say about at the end of the day, what voters knew to be true? Well, frankly, being angry or not is is irrelevant. I mean, if you cast a vote, it gets to be counted. And so, you know, Donald Trump is clearly just trying to strong arm this person in a way that he was really doing in a different way with Cassidy Hutchinson. I mean, this really is the tactic of a mob boss. And in the fake elector scheme, as I was noting, Donald Trump, there's lots of new evidence, lots of new material about meetings. But also, it details how central the role was of Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani being the consigliere and carrying out Donald Trump's wishes.

So they're all over the fake elector scheme. So you can be sure both DOJ and Fannie Willis are going to be poring over Chapter 3 of this report because they now have not just Donald Trump, but also Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, I think, clearly in their sights because they are all three are ring leaders of this scheme, which really goes to the heart of our electoral system. Yeah. And David Ignatius, over the past six years, my better half, who you know very well, and her father, but my better half has been saying time and again, what will the world think of us? What will the world think of us? When Donald Trump was was cozying up to Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin and Xi? I just I think it's a good time to ask that question again. Here we are a couple of days after welcoming President Zelensky, leading the coalition of freedom fighters, helping them fight against the Russian tyrants

committing war crimes. And here domestically, you look and see we hold everyone accountable, even former presidents who believed they were above the law. What a clear, strong, resounding message this sends to the rest of the world. What what will the world think of us? You tell me, what does this look like overseas? So Mika has it right. That's the question we need to ask ourselves about every action. What will the world think of us? How will we be judged? We've just seen evidence in the visit of President Zelensky of what courage and principle looks like. As I look at this report by the select committee, I see people facing up to their responsibilities. I see witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson who are who are frightened, who have a mental breakdown. It's

so difficult, given the pressure that they're facing, to tell the truth, who do so anyway, who say, I want to face the mirror test. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror for the rest of my life and know I did the right thing. And they did the right thing. And the committee laid this out in simple language. It was systematic. I think they knew, Joe, that the Mueller report had been hard for the country to digest. They wanted something that would speak to everybody so we'd get it, so we'd be able to understand. And I think on this question, how will people look at our time, they will say that this January 6th insurrection,

hideous of men in American history, was at least met with a serious systematic effort to get the truth, to get to the bottom of it. And that's something. That's something. That doesn't solve the problem. We don't know where President Trump's going, but at least this committee did the job it was assigned to do. Well, and they can see every day that people that took place in the riot, people who took place in the insurrection, people who beat the hell out of police officers with American flags, they're in jail. Are they're going to jail? Now, will the person that they came and rioted for tried to stop an election, a peaceful transition for whether he, the ringleader, will actually face the music to NBC News legal analyst Andrew Weissman. Thank you so much for being here and thank you for your service to America and happy holidays. Let's go now to meteorologist Angie Lastman for the major winter storm impacting millions of holiday travelers. Angie, I'm just going to ask. Everything's gotten better since yesterday, right?

Nothing to worry about out there, right? Yeah, if it was opposite day, maybe. If it was opposite day, then it's good news only when it comes to the weather. But there's a lot of Americans, 60 percent of the population that are under some sort of winter weather alert at this hour. And you can see why that Arctic front has left bitter cold for millions of people. Chicago, a wind chill of 32 degrees below at this hour. And these numbers are going to continue well into the rest of your day today and well into your weekend. As we move a little farther to the south, if you think you're escaping the cold, you sure aren't. A wind chill of 12 degrees as you get up in the morning tomorrow in Tallahassee.

And as far south as Orlando could feel like 23 degrees. There's a couple of impacts, though, with this system. A lot, actually. We have the rain that's basically hugging the northeastern areas of the country. We have the snow that's falling in parts of the Great Lakes and will continue to fall here through the next couple of days. In many locations, like Buffalo, which will have incredible amounts of snow over the next two days. But the rain is going to cause its own issue. Those wet surfaces that we see right now that are dealing with the rain, as we see those temperatures come crashing down, it's going to be problematic.

Washington, D.C. right now, 45 degrees. We'll see a 35 degree temperature drop by the time we get to seven o'clock tonight. Any wet surfaces are going to freeze immediately. You can't treat those, of course, with the salt and such when you have water washing it away. New York, 55 right now. See those temperatures drop in a hurry. 41 degree temperature drop by the time we get to later this evening. And that is just the rain areas. As we look at the snowfall amounts, there's Buffalo, Joe, 24 to 36 inches of snow and winds up to 75 miles per hour. It'll be a doozy for them as they head into Christmas. That looks brutal. All right. Thank you so much, Angie Lassman. And man, I'm looking at this at 41 degrees, a drop of 41 degrees in New York City.

That's that's crazy. It's about as bad of a drop as the New York Jets fortunes. And it got worse last night. We're going to tell you about that. And also still out of morning, Joe, got a lot more to cover from January 6th committee's full report, including a look at the 11 recommendations that the panel are making as a result of its investigation. Plus, the Senate approves a massive spending bill to avoid the government shutdown. And now it heads over to the House. But will it pass before funding for federal agency run out at midnight? And I'll tell you what, there's some important legislation in here.

Also, the Electoral Count Acts reform is in here and quite a few other pieces of legislation very important also had ukrainian president zelensky is back home after his historic visit to washington what he's saying about the trip and how russia is responding watching morning joe we'll be right back congratulations on 15 incredible years of hosting your show. I know that you guys have not been counting the years. You've been making each one count. You've been using the platform that you have to really bring light and truth and passion and a lot, a lot of great energy to all of us getting up in the morning.

So you guys know this. I love you guys. You've been a part of my whole career from Newark, New Jersey, to Washington as a United States Senator, even along my presidential run. I've just been grateful to sit with you and to share with you and to be a part of history-making with you. We love our country. I know how much you all are patriots. Thank you for being a very important part of it all. As was envisioned by our founders in the First Amendment, you all are fulfilling your service in such an extraordinary way. Happy 15th anniversary. Hey, welcome back to Morning Joe.

It's 6.23 a.m. in New York City at 30 Rock. Beautiful picture of the 30 Rock Christmas tree. I'm wondering, Reverend Al, any big plans over the holidays? Well, tomorrow, Christmas Eve, we are doing at National Action Network feeding the homeless and seniors. We usually do it on Christmas Day, but we're not going to do it on Sunday because we're all going to church. We're going to feed the hungry and the homeless, which are far too many. And we're going to deal with seniors who may not have family in the city. I do it every Christmas day and I'll be doing that. And I'll spend Christmas morning calling the families of many of victims from

Trayvon Martin to back in the 80s. I always call all the families on Christmas Day because they have a seat at the table that's empty. And long after the media is gone, I want them to know I haven't forgotten them. You know, it's one of the things that I sense really getting to know you well. It's pretty amazing. Every morning you make those calls. It's just it's just it's on your it's on your list to call families, to comfort families, to ask them how you can help. It's pretty extraordinary every day. Yeah, I think it's important. People should not be props of causes.

People should be representative of causes. And you get to know them. You get to know their family. You get to say how are the kids now. Some were like babies when I got involved with their cases are now getting ready to go to college, and they know my daughters. So I think it's important that the minute you stop caring about the people that you fought for, then you need to stop doing what you're doing, because they're human beings, and you ought to always remember that.

And, and Elise, uh, how was, uh, how's Christmas looking, uh, around your place? How are the holidays looking, uh, with, with, uh, in search for Santa Claus? You know, my little girl who's two, she met Santa Claus a couple of weekends ago and she was very excited and talking about it a lot ahead of time but got a little shy in the moment but she's very excited for him to come and I think it's going to be our most fun Christmas yet as all this excitement builds for Santa Claus to make it but I have been warning her that a kid growing up got switches and ashes so she has to behave because you know you don't want to be that kid. You're going full Mississippi there. My parents would tell us that, too, if we weren't careful.

Yeah, and seeing Santa Claus, I mean, that can be frightening. I mean, my older brother and sister, they always loved getting out the pictures in Atlanta when we would go to Rich's, we would see Santa Claus there and they'll show all the pictures of when I was younger, how every time I was sitting on Santa's lap, I would be crying. And Susan Page, that finally ended when I was like 14 or 15. So thank God for that. I finally grew out of that phase. But what holiday plans do you have, Susan? Well, we've been enveloped with family this week, which has been great. It culminates with our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of pizza. And then we do the opposite on Christmas morning.

We drive to Finmik Island, Delaware, and escape our family. I can recommend both aspects of that holiday. I love the word there. That is great democracy. I mean, very being diplomatic. David Ignatius, I don't know if you caught the phrasing. Susan said we have been enveloped by family. We can I also enveloped by family. It's fantastic. We're so happy. We're not going to Delaware, though, the day after Christmas. What are you doing, David? Well, I'm going to be pretty enveloped

myself tonight. I'm going to go with my daughters and my granddaughters to see the Nutcracker. I had a daughter who was a ballet dancer. I've probably seen the Nutcracker a hundred times, but I love it. And then Christmas Eve, we'll go to the Washington National Cathedral, a place that my late mother loved. And we'll do what she always said was essential, which is to go and sing as loudly as you can. Sing the Christmas carols and the hymns that our family loves. And then we'll be celebrating Christmas Day with my dad, who's 102 years old. And, you know, we'll just be having a joyous time. But we will be enveloped, Susan.

We'll be under that family blanket. I wish I could say I was doing as many good things for the world as Reverend Al, but I'll try to think to think think how to do that next year. Yeah, no, it's fantastic. And David Meek and I just absolutely loved meeting your father at National Cathedral when we were talking about the Marshall Plan all these years later and how blessed you are, how blessed your family is. And you talk about singing. It reminds me of my father every time we would go to midnight services. My father, it is safe to say, had the loudest voice in the church when he was singing.

And my mother would always grab his arm and go, George, George, be quiet. Those are some great Christmas Eve memories for us. But you are right. It sounds like wonderful, wonderful holidays for everybody. And you are right. The Rev doing so much, including this weekend. You didn't say it, but the Revy Awards are this week, Reverend Al. We're very excited about that. Tell us about that really quickly. I'm very excited. It's 12th year we're doing the Revy Awards, where we give out the awards to the best and the worst political players of the year, the events that were the best, and what we remember.

So on Saturday and Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern time, the Revis return for the 12th year. I love it. I absolutely love it, And I will be watching. You know, this is a special time of year. I've got to say also is somebody that that has spent most of my adult life in and out of Washington and have had the honor of working with Nancy Pelosi first as someone who was seen as a hard right Republican and now someone who ideologically is about the same, but is seen as a moderate whatever people think of me. One of the great honors was was getting to know Nancy Pelosi and working with Nancy through the years.

We worked an awful lot on human rights issues, especially as it pertained to China. And Nancy Pelosi had her last press conference as speaker. And she talked about passing it along, passing her legacy along to the next generation of leaders in the Democratic Party. Take a look. My goal and my wish is that the members that are new leadership in the House, based on the foundation that we have laid or forming their own approach, will do even better than the significant legislative successes that I have had as Speaker of the House. Yeah. And, you know, here's the thing about Nancy Pelosi, Susan, that the haters don't recognize. People on the far right, the Trump right, have always vilified her and they've hated her with such intensity

that they don't recognize that she doesn't hate back. Like when she says she prays for Donald Trump, she is a devout Catholic who prays for Donald Trump, who prays for those who try to persecute her. And she does wish for the Republicans every success that she's had as a speaker, which means they'll actually have to work with both sides, which is what America wants, right? Yeah. You know, I was really struck by her last news conference as speaker in that she seemed so relaxed and at ease in a way. You know, she's really pretty determined, laser-like force in politics. But, you know, she ends this remarkable career

in the leadership. Turning over the House to Republicans, that's not something she wanted to see. But with big successes, with the Zelensky address to Congress, that was in part engineered by her. By passage, we expect today of this big spending bill that includes some initiatives, including the Electoral Count Reform Act, which is which is important. And with the January 6th committee, which is a singular creation of Nancy Pelosi. And I think she was kind of reveling in that yesterday in a way that we rarely see her do in public. Yeah. And David, the thing about Nancy Pelosi that I always was so impressed by, and I must say that I wasn't sure would be the case when she was speaker, because you really never know how somebody is going to handle that position. It is. I think it is a dismal job if if you're not on top of things. But the thing I learned very quickly with Nancy once she was a speaker was if the bill went to

the floor, it was going to pass. When Newt Gingrich would bring a bill to the floor, half the time Tom DeLay would be running around the back, pleading, begging, yelling, threatening members like me to get on board and to vote with Republicans because it was right. And you never knew how it was going to end up. We've seen that time and again. Right now, you see it with Kevin McCarthy. He's having trouble get to 218. Nancy Pelosi was such a professional, I think, especially of the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, which I believe may be, other than January 6th, may be her finest moment. But legislatively, what she did then and what she's done time and again has been nothing short of remarkable. I would say I compare her to some of know, some of the great speakers of the past.

But a lot of those speakers that that we talk about had huge margins in the House of Representatives like Sam Rayburn. Nancy Pelosi never had that sort of comfort that Rayburn had in the 50s and the 60s. And she's done a lot with a little. A historic speaker, wouldn't you say? So she was a great speaker, I think. She was a combination of being a disciplined vote counter in the way that you described. She wouldn't bring a piece of legislation up

unless she was pretty confident she had it locked. But she also had a big heart. She always surprised me in conversations by the things she'd talk about, the breadth of her interests. She once told me about her father, Tommy D'Alessandro, when he was in Congress and his struggle when no one would pay attention to the plight of Jews in Europe trying to wake up the State Department. And I expressed interest. And she sent me the next day all of the transcripts, the congressional records from 1943 about her father and her father's mission to try to save these Jewish refugees in desperate situations heading

the concentration camps. She was just a rare person in the House. I hope she inspires the people who will come after her. She's making a big point, as she should, that it's time for transition, time for a new generation to lead. I hope they'll have that same combination that she did of discipline, intense focus on legislation, and a big heart, because she had them both. I think it's so important also you bring up something that I've noticed with Speaker Pelosi. And it's just a message to all of us, to his parents, to fathers, to mothers, to aunts, to uncles, to teachers, the people who who are in a leadership position over children. Nancy Pelosi's father walks with her every day. He is with her every day. When she's

being sworn in for speaker the second time, I said this a few weeks ago, she was showing me a picture of her father and talking about some of the things that he did. And I said, he would be so proud of you today. And she said, he is proud of me today. He's watching today, Joe. I believe what I say. I know he's in heaven watching down on me. He's with me every day. It was really a great insight of a woman who knows she's standing on the shoulders of giants. And it's a challenge to all of us. It's a challenge to all of us to recognize the impact we're having on people's lives around us every day. And we hope, we pray it's a positive impact like Nancy Pelosi's father. Still ahead, after two years of uncertainty brought on by the pandemic, economic policymakers forecasted a return to something close to normal in 2022.

That did not happen. Instead, we've seen rampant inflation, a hawkish Federal Reserve, and growing fears of recession. Steve Ratner is going to be here to break down all of that. I mean, we're looking at the storm in the Midwest and Northeast. There's an economic storm right now, and we're not exactly sure where their currents are going to take this country over the next few years. We'll talk about that next on Morning Joe. So look at Reagan National Airport at about 10 to 6 or 10 to 7. And futures are inching up this morning after a two-day rally came to a grinding haul yesterday. The Dow, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq all closed lower. But the overall economy seems to be in better shape than a lot of people originally thought. The final reading of

the GDP shows it grew at 3.2 percent annual rate last quarter. That's higher than the previous estimate. Let's bring in former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner. First of all, 3.2 GDP growth. I think most economists will take that for the next like 10 years. But let's talk about this economy. So many cross currents going on right now. Where does it all lead us in the new year? Yeah, Joe, cross currents is a good word for it. We're in this odd state in the economy where in a way, good news is bad news and bad news can be good news because what we have going on here, as the lead in suggested, is we have a significant inflation problem. And the only way to deal with

a significant inflation problem is for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, which you've seen them doing. And the problem is that the stronger the economy is, like this good third quarter number and various other things that we can talk about, the more it suggests that the Fed is going to have to raise interest rates. And that is bad for the stock market. High interest rates are the enemy of the stock market because as interest rates go up, people have other places to put their money besides in stocks and start to earn a better return on bonds, even on cash accounts. And that puts downward pressure on the stock market. And that's what you see going on here, this kind of yin and yang between inflation and the strength of the economy and the stock market.

So the economy is stronger, I think, than most of us thought it would be at this point. Inflation is a bit worse than most of us thought it would be at this point. And all of that makes the Fed's job harder and it leads us to a situation where the odds are certainly well better than 50-50, probably as high as 70 percent, that we're going to have some kind of a recession at the end of

next year, early the following year, as the Fed addresses this problem. Steve, what about the housing market? And you just saw me blink there because we have such a wind going on here. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Elise. Steve, I just wanted to ask you about the housing market. There have been so many fluctuations over the course of the year, mortgage rates going up. Now mortgage rates

seem to have gone down a teeny bit. What's happening with housing? They have gone down a teeny bit, as you say, Elise, but the housing market is in pretty tough shape. Housing prices have been coming down month after month. I think they're down five months in a row if you look at it sequentially, because higher interest rates are also the enemy of the housing market, as we've talked about before. When you look at where mortgage rates went to and you look at where house prices went to in the sense of having gone up a lot during the pandemic, it almost doubled the cost per month for a typical family to buy a typical house and be able to afford their mortgage. As you say, it's come back a little bit from there, but not enough to really

solve that problem. So we are looking at a very soft housing market, and there's not any real likelihood that that's going to improve in this coming year. Steve, this is David. I want to ask you about our old friend, Mr. Soft Landing. Soft landings are often predicted in situations like this by hopeful officials. What do you think is the chance that Jay Powell, the Fed chairman, can land the U.S. economy next year, late next year, year after, without a seriously damaging recession, getting inflation under control without blowing the economy apart?

I think those chances are probably about the same as landing a Boeing 777 on an aircraft carrier. In other words, it's not, well, that would be impossible, but it's going to be very, very unlikely. It's really like, or another analogy, hitting a hole in one from a golf tee. The more likely scenario is that we're going to have a recession. When you say hugely damaging, how bad it will be, that does involve a set of questions about how bad the inflation gets and how stubborn it is getting it down. Right now, it's been pretty stubborn. And so that means interest rates have to go up even more. And obviously, that reduces the chances of a so-called soft landing. So I don't think we're going to have recessions like

we saw in the late 1970s, early 1980s. But we are going to see, we are going to have to see some kind of a soft landing. Look, the unfortunate paradox of all this is we want people out there working. We want the economy to grow. But the only way to deal with inflation is to cut back on demand, to cut back on the rate of growth of the economy

and cut back, frankly, on the number of people who are working and cut back, frankly, on the number of people who are working. And all that does suggest a recession is very much likely in the coming 12 to 18 months. Steve, we know that the Fed is the big policymaker when it comes to the soft landing, the recession, what happens with inflation. But the political responsibility is going to lie with President Biden. What can President Biden and the administration do in the next year to affect what's happening with the economy and to make it a little less onerous for the Americans are going to be hit by some of these effects? The policies outside of the Fed's regime, which are basically what we call fiscal policy, the federal budget deficit, as well as various other things that the White House can do, have been mostly going the wrong way.

This omnibus bill that will get passed presumably today, the $1.7 trillion spending bill, does increase the deficit more. It spends more. And all of that actually creates more inflation, not less inflation. The president's student debt relief plan, whatever you think about the merits of canceling student debt, economists will tell you it does add to inflation because it, again, puts more money out in the economy and gives people more to spend. The kinds of things that we could be doing to alleviate the inflation problem, not in the next few months, but over a slightly longer term, would be things like increasing immigration. We are really, really short of workers in this country and we have President Trump clamped down on immigration.

It has not really been changed since the Biden administration came to office. We need more workers here. We could bring in lots of legal immigrants to help solve the wage inflation problem. So unfortunately, I would have to say that as many good things as the Biden administration is doing to help people, to help longer term, longer term priorities, there's not much that they can or even are trying to do at the moment to really alleviate the inflation problem. Well, and I'll tell you what, the fact that immigration is a third rail right now in American politics, that's bad news for the economy. That's bad news for inflation. That's bad news for family restaurants, small businesses, small entrepreneurs. I talked about, you know, the hardware store that's on your main street, the restaurants that are still

only half open because they don't have enough workers in some areas to service the entire restaurant. We've got to get an immigration package together that protects the border and gets legal residents into this country again at a sufficient number to do the jobs that are out there and bring inflation down. Steve Ratner, as always, thank you so much. Susan Page, thank you as well. Good luck as you're enveloped by relatives and also good luck in your escape to the beach the day after Christmas.