Morning Joe - Morning Joe 12/6/22

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

High-stakes Georgia Senate runoff election on Tuesday

Hey everybody, guess what? We got married! We just ran off to the Justice of the Peace before we could change our minds. We're a little bit crazy, aren't we? She's a whole lot crazy and I'm not at all. That averages out to just a little. Well done, Don. You've grabbed yourself a really, a totally, you got Rebecca.

See, Don, here, have a seat. Let me get you a drink. Thanks, Doc. Sweetheart, I'll just be over here. Okay, hubby. Don't you stop loving me. What? I'll just be over here. Okay, hubby. Don't you stop loving me. Irina Plummer!

Kirstie Alley in her Emmy-winning role as Rebecca Howe in the classic NBC sitcom Cheers. The actress, being remembered this morning after passing away from cancer yesterday, will have more on her life and career. And it is Decision Day in Georgia again. Incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock will be on the ballot today for the fifth time in two years, this time facing Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Steve Kornacki is standing by at the big board to help set the stage for tonight's big night. Plus, Donald Trump now claims he did not advocate for the termination of the Constitution, claiming fake news over his direct written quote saying exactly that. We'll have the latest on his lame attempt at a walk back as more Republicans speak out,

sort of. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, December 6th. With us, we have the host of way too early White House bear chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, former aide to the George W. Bush White House and State Department's Elise Jordan. She's an MSNBC political analyst and former secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama, Jay Johnson. Good to have you all along with Willie and me. Joe will be back tomorrow. Great to have Jay Johnson here, especially with what is going on in North Carolina this morning. Yeah, it's amazing. We're going to get to Georgia in just a second. But you're right. Tens of thousands of North Carolina residents spent another night in the cold after officials say someone deliberately opened fire on two energy substations.

Join us now from Moore County, North Carolina, is NBC News correspondent Blaine Alexander. Blaine, good morning. So what more are we learning here? Not only about the state of emergency that's been put in place there, but what exactly happened? Well, really, good morning to you. That's right. Priority number one is getting the lights and power back on this morning. There are still some thirty seven thousand people in this area who don't have power, who don't have heat. And we're talking about temperatures that are in the low 40s. So we know that crews are working around the clock to try and repair these two very severely damaged substations. But they say it

could still be as late as Thursday before the majority of people see their lights back on. Meanwhile, investigators here are still looking into what they call a willful and malicious attack. As the sun sets on Moore County, North Carolina, tens of thousands of residents are left in the dark for a third straight night. How did you guys stay warm?

A lot of blankets, a lot of blankets. The work of at least one criminal vandal, officials say, who intentionally targeted the county's electrical system. What happened here Saturday night was a criminal attack. The FBI says it's investigating willful damage after officials say at least one gunman broke through gates accessing accessing two Duke Energy substations, and started shooting. Enough damage to knock out power to more than 45,000 customers, the majority of them still in the dark.

This was not no random act. This was something targeted. The folks that done this knew exactly what they were doing. So, and that's scary. Businesses, roads, and busy intersections, all in the dark. How dangerous is this situation? It's very dangerous. We've had several accidents involved already due to power outages. We had some shots fired. We had robbery attempts.

Duke Energy would not detail security measures around the substations, but says they do meet industry requirements. Are these energy stations secure enough? You know, we have robust security measures and requirements as an electric utility. We're regulated. We do look for opportunities of how we can improve that process, things that we can do, and we'll take learnings from this. As temperatures dip into the low 40s, for many, this grocery store,

one of the few with power, is the only refuge. It's cold and I come over here a couple of times a day to get some hot food. Just to get warm. Yeah. We have no heat. We have no cooking facilities. We have none of that. How are you getting by?

Barely. And Willie, of course, we're seeing different spots around the area, just like that grocery store that are running on generator power. People are flocking to those areas to try and charge their phones or just get warm for a little bit. Meanwhile, officials say that as of this morning, there are no suspects and they don't yet have a motive. Willie. Yeah, no claims of responsibility. Nothing like that in a rural area, less than 40,000 people there hit by that. You'd think if there was some kind of a targeted terrorist attack, Charlotte, two hours to the west. Strange story. Many more questions to be answered. NBC's Blaine Alexander. Blaine, thanks so much. Mr. Secretary, if you were still there at Homeland Security,

what kind of questions would you be asking this morning? Well, first, I'd want to know what the motive for the attack was. This is no doubt a willful and malicious criminal act. I'd want to know whether this is part of some larger criminal plot or plan for an attack on critical infrastructure, on power grids. Like a tryout or something? This is yet another reminder of the importance of redundancy in critical infrastructure. If you can take out two substations with gunfire, which then takes out the power for 45,000 people in North Carolina, that really does speak to the need for the ability to have redundancy if there's a physical kinetic attack on a substation like this. DHS has been putting out bulletins lately every six months warning about the heightened threat

environment. One of the things that I noted from the latest bulletin is that attackers can be inspired by prior attacks. And that's consistent with my own experience here. So this is a dangerous environment. My guess is that the FBI, local police are hot on the trail of these guys who ever did this. I wouldn't be surprised if there were surveillance cameras at the substation. And my bet is that they're arrested before a week. Really? Okay. a week. Really? OK. A week.

OK. We're going to be following this, especially given the implications that you alluded to there. We'll go to Georgia now, where polls across Georgia will open next hour for the state's highly anticipated Senate runoff election between incumbent Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Before any balance or even cast today, Senator Warnock already has momentum, thanks to a sizable early vote lead, as well as several recent polls showing a four to five point edge. Walker now has to rely on strong Election Day turnout to win the Senate seat.

Word is it's raining there. Both candidates spent the final campaign day yesterday barnstorming the state, making a final case to voters and pushing supporters to the ballot box. And I want to say this is about turnout. This is about turnout. And now that means that we got to get in the game. And we can't sit on the sideline anymore because if we sit on the sideline y'all see what we're gonna

get we're gonna get people that you can't trust anymore get your friends to vote call your friends to vote this is so important and I say this if you don't have friends what do you do to need to do Make some friends and get them out to vote. Listen, the people of Georgia are showing up. And I think it's because they understand how much is at stake. We've seen record voter turnout day after day after day. But here's the thing. I want people to understand that although we're seeing record voter turnout during this early voting period that ended Friday,

we need people to show up again tomorrow. Given my opponent, this race is not even about Republican versus Democrat, red versus blue, right versus left. It's right versus wrong. And I think people see that. Both candidates speaking yesterday in Georgia. Let's go right over to the big board where NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornacki is standing by. So, Steve, we've got record early voting in this race, which has big implications for what happens today. And it looks like Herschel Walker is going to need to have a big day to make up for some of what we've seen in the early voting. Yeah. And I should say, in recent elections, we've seen plenty of examples here where, you know, one party, generally the Democrats, seems to have a strong advantage in the early vote,

and we come into Election Day saying, hey, the Republicans need to pull a rabbit out of the hat here, and they do in terms of getting the turnout that they need. So just to give you a sense of what it is Republicans need today, here is what the early and male vote total was in the general election in Georgia. It's about 2.5 is what the early and male vote total was in the general election in Georgia, about two and a half million in the general. And actually, it's going to fall short of two million here for the runoff. Remember, this is a truncated period. They had like nine weeks of

early voting before the general election, a much shorter period here because of the condensed nature of the runoff. So while you were seeing these extremely high single day totals for the early vote, that's what's been making the headlines. When you add it all together, it is short of the 2022 general number. It still is nearly two million voters. That is a big number for a runoff. And if you just look at the composition here, this is the 2022 general election. This is the entire electorate, same day, mail, early, all combined together. And this is what the runoff electorate so far has looked like. And I think one thing that stands out here is a higher share of the electorate African-American in the runoff, not just compared to the general election,

but that would also be true if you compared it to the early voting period ahead of the general election. I think when Democrats say that they're excited about what they're seeing in the early voting numbers, I think that is specifically what they're talking about, because if there was some weakness for them in that Senate race in November, while Warnock did finish ahead of Walker, black turnout was low in Georgia relative to previous midterm elections. In the last runoff after the 2020 presidential election, when Warnock first got elected, we saw Democrats successfully increase black turnout between the general election and the runoff. That's something

they're trying to pull off again today. And again, the early voting data suggests it's possible that they've done that. If they have, what that means, obviously, is it just intensifies the need for Walker, for Republicans to really turn out the vote in some of their core areas here. And if you look, where do Republicans get their most votes in Georgia, their biggest margins? You look in the sort of the fringes of the Atlanta metro area. So a place like Forsyth County, this is a core Republican county. This is the second biggest Republican plurality producing county in Georgia. And just take a look here.

You saw something in Forsyth County in November that was true statewide, but it was particularly true in these core Republican counties. Here in the Senate race, Walker beat Warnock in Forsyth County by a two to one margin, healthy margin, about 33,000 votes and change right there. But compare that to how Brian Kempton, this same county in the governor's race. He won it by 46 points. He got a margin of nearly 50,000 votes out of Forsyth County. So we saw this in county after county. The electorate that turned out in the November general election statewide in Georgia was actually a very Republican friendly electorate. Joe Biden's approval rating with Georgia voters in November was only 41 percent. Republicans won the other statewide contest.

Kemp won the governor's race fairly easily. On paper, it was the kind of electorate that you think would elect a Republican senator. But it clearly had reservations about Herschel Walker. And you saw this in county after county. Forsyth is a good example. You could go next door to Cherokee County. Similar gap there. Kemp won it by 50.

Walker won it by under 40. Walker underperforming Kemp, underperforming the rest of the Republicans running statewide in Georgia. So what the Republicans will tell you is, hey, what's different here in the runoff than in the general election? They'll say it's that Kemp has been actively involved in Walker's campaign this time around. There was distance between them, clearly, in the general election. They say Kemp's on board now. And what that's going to mean is when you look at a Forsyth County, when you look at a Cherokee County, when you look at a Fayette County, that's another one we're going to be talking about south of Atlanta tonight, you're going to see Walker numbers that get closer to, probably won't reach, but get closer to the Kemp

level. If he can improve, if Walker in a place like Cherokee County is north of 70 percent, that could make all difference. So Republicans need turnout here. They need those voters who voted for Kemp, but not for Walker. They need them, A, to turn out and then B, to actually cast ballots for Walker this time. That's good. You need a lot of that to offset what the Democrats have done in the early vote. So, Steve, as you know, this has been a margin of error race for the last month. Every poll, the last couple of polls in the last few days show a little bit of a lead for Warnock. How much stock do you put in those numbers? Yeah, I mean, again, it would be consistent with what you've seen in those early voting numbers in terms of do the Democrats have a big advantage here. Keep in mind, though, Georgia just in terms of becoming the Democrats have a big advantage here. Keep in mind, though,

Georgia just in terms of becoming a politically competitive state, you know, Joe Biden did win it in 2020. You're talking about a margin there of a little bit more than 10,000 votes. Warnock did win that runoff. John Ossoff, for that matter, won that runoff. But, you know, the last time a Democrat won a Senate race in Georgia by more than two points, you got to go back to Zell Miller, a very conservative Democrat. Conservative ended up endorsing George W. Bush in 2004. In 2000, Zell Miller is the last one. And before that, you got to go back another 10 years to Sam Nunn in 1990. So Georgia has been changing demographically.

It's becoming more competitive. Democrats have had more opportunities to win. So much of it has to do with that core Atlanta metro area. But when they've been winning, they've been winning squeakers. So some of these polls, hey, if Warnock were to actually win by the margin you're seeing in some of these polls, that wouldn't be just a win for Democrats tonight. That would be a breakthrough for them in Georgia. Margin of error race and a margin of error state.

Steve Kornacki, thanks so much. You've got a long day and night ahead of you. We will see you again tomorrow. Mika, also interesting to note, Donald Trump has not been in the state rallying for Herschel Walker, despite the fact that it's his handpicked candidate. Republicans have asked him to stay away. He did a phone call last night. Really? It was a small event, no press, nothing, not a rally. I wonder what that phone call is like. Republicans asking Donald Trump to stay away. Like what? What is it? What is how do they how do they do it, at least? I mean, and and also for Georgia voters. I mean, I wonder, especially given the aggressive ad campaign by Raphael Warnock, really letting Herschel Walker's words speak for themselves. And now knowing that this isn't about the balance of power, this is about

getting one more, which is especially important to Democrats, but it isn't as make or break after Nevada. I wonder if the mindset in the voting booth is different after listening to him speak over and over again, thanks to aggressive ad buys by the Warnock campaign. Well, Mika, I think you nailed it in that the voters are going to actually make it to the voting booth. If they weren't that excited first go around and turning out, they voted for Brian Kemp and they didn't vote for Walker. Are they really going to come back and vote for Herschel Walker today? And they might. They might, but if I had to bet, I would say no,

it's not looking good for Herschel Walker right now. I mean, who knows? But the early voting number that stuck out for me with turnout, women voted 56 percent to men voting early, 43 percent. So women are really outpacing men voting in this runoff election. And the implications of this race are still significant. You're right. The Senate, control of the Senate is no longer in the balance. But if Democrats were to get that 51st vote, not only does it break the deadlocks in the committees, Mr. Secretary, but also, of course, it de-emphasizes the influence that Senator Manchin,

Senator Sinema have, who have been such stubborn holdouts a number of things. Now, the Democrats can afford to lose one or two of those. But it's only one or two of those. It's only one. Right. Like Senator Warnock, I'm a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. The way I see this race, it can be reduced to a very simple equation. Herschel Walker was an iconic football player, but he is not qualified to be a U.S. senator.

I might have been qualified to be secretary of Homeland Security, but I'd get crushed on the football field. And this was we don't know the result, obviously, but this was and is, in my eyes, a cynical attempt by Republicans to simply put a celebrity out there in the with the expectation that voters in Georgia, particularly black voters in Georgia, were going to vote for him. And all the stories I've been reading is that Walker is polling very low, even among black voters in Georgia. I was talking to Reverend Al yesterday, and it's like a lot of black voters are thinking, are you serious? I mean, come on. This is insulting. Sorry, he's not qualified. We can say it over and over again. And this is not a matter of left or right. This is a matter of can he speak to the issues? Does

he have a grasp on the issues? Would he be able to perform the job as senator for the state of Georgia? Are you kidding me? Remember, this all leads back to Donald Trump. This is his guy. It's a party that's scared of Donald Trump. He said this is the candidate. And they said, yes, sir. So now they've been for the last several months having to make the best of what they can with the order they got from Donald Trump. And to your point, Mr. Secretary, it's been to listen publicly and privately, incredibly patronizing to Herschel Walker. He's a Republican. Effectively, he's going to do what we tell him to do. He's going to be a vote for for what we want. He'll be a rubber stamp. We get it. We don't put him out in public because he doesn't have views on issues. He embarrasses himself. When they did, it would be Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham literally sandwiching him on Fox News or wherever he would go where they, you

know, where they would actually not ask him hard questions and he wouldn't have to answer them necessarily. Lindsey Graham would pick up the question and say, this guy's going to be a vote for Republicans. And that has been the rationale from the beginning. They've said implicitly, we get it. He's a terrible candidate. Donald Trump handed us this, but he is a vote for us. And that's OK. Wow. Well, we're going to get to a lot more on Donald Trump's statement about terminating the Constitution, which he put in writing and now trying to walk back and also some Republicans somewhat having a response to it. That's a little bit different than before. So we'll have that in just a moment.

Arizona has certified its 2022 midterm results following pushback from election deniers at an event in Phoenix yesterday. Secretary of State and governor elect Katie Hobbs, along with Governor Doug Ducey and Arizona's attorney general, signed documents to certify results from the state's 15 counties. It's a routine step in Arizona's election process that was delayed after some Republicans claimed without evidence that there were problems with the vote count. At yesterday's ceremony, Hobbs spoke about the importance of protecting democracy. As we've learned these past few years, protecting our democracy requires everyone's participation to help discern truth from fiction. Arizona had a successful election, but too often throughout the process, powerful voices proliferated misinformation that threatened to disenfranchise voters. Democracy prevailed, but it's not out of the woods.

2024 will bring a host of challenges from the election denial community that we must prepare for. Meanwhile, Republican Carrie Lake, who lost the race for governor, has suggested in recent days that she will file a lawsuit protecting protesting Arizona's election results. I want to go back to the secretary about this, because I think sometimes it's too easy to sort of cast this off as some comedy sideshow by some political actress who used to be a TV show news anchor and Obama supporter and sort of laugh at the hypocrisy of the whole thing. But there is a strain of danger here that we've seen throughout. I mean, the midterms were really, really resounding in terms of voters stepping up for the United States of America and for democracy. But there were a lot of candidates who made it to pass the primaries who were election deniers and who took on the Trump game like Kerry Lake. Can you talk a little bit about why this is important in terms of our

homeland security? To put it simply, Kerry Lake, candidates like Kerry Lake are playing with fire. People do listen to their leaders. People do listen to those with a microphone. A very large percentage of Republicans, a very large percentage of Americans today believe that it's appropriate to resort to violence to restore Donald Trump to office. Calls like suspending the Constitution, for example, is an implicit call to take matters into your own hands. And so candidates who do not know how to lose gracefully and deny the result are really playing with fire and tempting violence. And also in terms of... And we have to call that out. We do have to call it out.

At the same time, I mean, there's so many problems within this country caused by those who don't want to observe the values and the tenets of our Constitution and want to terminate it or dip in and say, let's terminate and say, I didn't say that. That's Trump doing what... Believe him, please. He wants to terminate the constitution. End of story. But our allies, our enemies, this is so dangerous on a geopolitical level as well, is it not? Of course. I mean, do we even need to speculate that a lot of this is broadcast across television in China, for example. Let's be plain here.

Denying constitutional norms, calling into question a vote count makes unacceptable behavior acceptable and for the deranged among us, violence inevitable. So let's be plain about that. I'm not to take a rosy view of this because there really isn't one. But the good news is, Jonathan, the overwhelming majority of candidates who ran on that platform lost in these midterm elections. Some made it through. But Carrie Lake being the most prominent, she's now howling into the wind on Steve Bannon's podcast while the state, as we just saw there, has moved on. It has a new governor and the new governor was sitting next to a Republican governor who oversaw that.

Exactly right. That's part of this here. It's just, it shouldn't be. But it was reassuring to see the bipartisan, simple ceremony. It was a Republican governor handing over power, or as part of the process, handing over power to an incoming Democrat governor. And that's how it should work. And Carrie Lake, we should note, has not conceded yet.

She's threatening legal challenges now. But to make it to your larger point, we hear from President Biden all the time. He talks about how he sat down at his first overseas trip. It was the G7. And he was said that other leaders there, these democracies said, well, this is so good that America is back in the wake of the President Trump's time in office. But then there will always be the but for how long? And so much of this is fragile still. And he makes the point that this election denialism is at the heart of their worry. So it is reassuring to see this ceremony yesterday. It is reassuring that the most high profile election denier is lost, although some of them certainly still were elected to the House of Representatives and will have a majority there

soon. But it is working, but fragile. Democracy just hold it. Yes. Mr. Secretary, I want to get your take on this story as well. Two senators working to strike a last minute deal on immigration reform before the end of the year. It's a bipartisan effort. Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Republican Tom Tillis of North Carolina have drafted a potential immigration proposal that would provide a path to legalization for two million dreamers in exchange for at least $25 billion in increased funding for Border Patrol and border security. The framework reportedly calls for extending Title 42 for at least a year until new regional processing centers provided for in the bill can be built. Title 42 is a Trump-era

COVID policy that allowed authorities to restrict asylum seekers from crossing the border into the United States. Most reasonable people admit, Mr. Secretary, that there is a crisis at the border, the arrests and everything else that's happening down there. Does this sound like a reasonable proposal to you? Whether or not it can pass is a different matter. But is this a reasonable proposal? Everything in this package is very reasonable. I feel like I've seen this movie before. This is Congress doing 80% of its homework at one minute to midnight in the lame duck session. Whether Title 42 remains in place or not, DHS does need the ability to send people back quickly. They sent back, repatriated, returned 1.4 million people last year.

If Title 42 goes away, there needs to be some ability to do that quickly. We need to speed up our asylum process. The average wait time on an asylum decision is six years. And last but not least, we really do need to codify into law the DACA program for these young people who've been in this country since they were children. There are Yale Law School graduates who are DACA recipients. There is an associate in my law firm who is a DACA recipient. She asked me, what's my future?

And I can't tell her as long as this is simply executive action. This ought to be a no-brainer to codify this into law. And it's certainly interesting that there is a bipartisan effort here, but we should tread cautiously. There's little to no chance it will happen. Jake Sherman, our friend from Punchbowl News, was just on way too early, suggested that there's simply no time in the calendar here with the other priorities Congress has to get to. Republicans take control of the House. That'll make it a harder climb come January. But there seems to be at least some bipartisan interest in the issue.

All right. Former Homeland Security Secretary Jay Johnson, great to have you. Thank you very much for coming on this morning. And still ahead on Morning Joe, Moscow is blaming Ukraine for new attacks on military bases deep inside Russia. We'll look at where the fighting stands amid this new escalation. Plus, former President Donald Trump tries to walk back those comments he made in writing about terminating the Constitution. But he is facing growing backlash from Republicans. We'll play the new comments for you.

Plus, a look at the morning papers, including one state's strict abortion ban that's just been blocked for a second time. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Beautiful shot. Look at that. It's the Christmas tree, Willie. Isn't that pretty? It is beautiful, isn't it? Jonathan Lemire, don't you like it?

I do love it. Elise Jordan. I love the outside of the sacks this morning, too. It's so beautiful. Have you seen the window? Is it pretty? It's awesome. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, so beautiful. Have you seen the window? Is it pretty? It's awesome. Oh, wow.

Okay. Well, everyone bring the kids to see the Christmas tree and spend lots of money, because I guess that's the point of it. All right, time now for a look at the morning papers. The Connecticut Post reports that a state resident has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs,

alleging it wrongfully denied disability compensation for black veterans at a higher rate than white veterans. The agency's own data reveals that for nearly two decades leading up to 2020, black veterans were denied disability claims at a rate of nearly 40 percent, while white veterans were denied just over 24 percent of the time. From Indiana, the Evansville Courier Press reports a Marion County judge has issued a temporary injunction against the state's near total abortion ban. The lawsuit claims the ban violates religious freedom protections. It is the second time Indiana's abortion ban has been blocked since Governor Eric Holcomb signed it into law in August. In Ohio, the Canton repository leads with a reminder about the dangers of porch pirates this holiday season.

Really bad. New data shows more than 49 million Americans have had a package stolen in the past year. Lemire? Yeah, I've had packages taken from my building. A few of them already. Oh my gosh. Not just in Canton. That amounts to nearly $2.5 billion in losses nationwide.

And Florida Today reports NASA's Orion spacecraft has begun its trip back to Earth. It's expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean next week. During that mission, Orion flew nearly 270,000 miles from Earth. That is a new record for a spacecraft designed to carry humans in the program aimed to send Americans back to the moon. And news breaking this morning, actress Kirstie Alley has passed away after a private battle with cancer. According to a statement from her children, Alley's cancer was recently discovered. She rose to fame, we all know, after her breakout role as Rebecca Howe in the NBC comedy Cheers, which earned her an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe.

She also starred in the popular 90s comedy film franchise Look Who's Talking with John Travolta and Bruce Willis. The actress spent the last two decades starring and competing in several reality television shows, from Kirstie Alley's Big Life to Dancing with the Stars. Kirstie Alley was 71 years old. Really sad. Yeah, and I think for a lot of us, Cheers was the one that always stood out. She did a lot in her career, but man, she was so good on Cheers. For my money, Cheers was the greatest sitcom we've ever had. And she had big shoes to fill.

Shelley Long as the Diane Chambers role. She came in and was still really funny. The show kept going for years. Very hard to do. Yeah, wonderful show and a very funny actress. Well, I remember watching it when I was a kid, and it was one of those shows that your parents didn't mind having on because it wasn't, you know, inappropriate. The jokes kind of went over the head of a child. But then we rewatched it during the pandemic. And it's so good.

It holds up. We did a rewatch too. Her characters are not only funny, but vulnerable, real. She was so good at Rebecca. And it's such sad news. Again, 71 years old, Christy Alley passing away from cancer. Coming up, President Biden travels to Phoenix today to celebrate the construction of a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Arizona. Steve Ratner will be here with charts on how it might impact U.S. dependency on foreign-made tech. Plus, the director of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, is standing by. He joins us live from the White House, straight ahead on Morning Joe. After more than a year of record inflation, it looks like prices are finally starting to go down. So take that, annoying people who finished

all their Christmas shopping in November. Ha, ha, ha. Time is never time at all. You can never ever leave without me. 40 past the hour. Look at that beautiful shot of the White House all ready for Christmas. Sun has yet to come up in Washington. Time to go to work, everybody. In just a few hours, President Biden will head to Arizona for a major milestone in the construction of a new 12 billion billion semiconductor facility in Phoenix.

The president will be in town as the Taiwanese company TSMC holds a first tool-in ceremony at its facility today, signifying the building is ready for the first of the manufacturing equipment to be moved inside. TSMC is the world's largest contract chip maker. Joining us now, the director of the White House National Economic Council, Brian Deese. So, Brian, if you can talk about why the president is putting a frame around this plant in Arizona, not just for what it can do, but our dependence on on items from abroad, from overseas, geopolitically, the importance? Well, yeah, we're looking forward to getting on the plane here and heading out to Phoenix in just a couple of hours to mark a really significant milestone. So not only is TSMC starting production in that facility that you mentioned, but today they will announce that they are going to build

an additional fab, an additional semiconductor factory to build the most leading edge chips. And we've been talking about semiconductors for some time. They've affected all of our lives during the pandemic. The shortage has driven up prices, made things harder to get. But particularly those leading edge semiconductors, so-called three nanometer, the smallest chips, those power the most advanced computing systems. Today, the United States makes none of those chips. We're completely dependent on foreign supply chains. But today, with this milestone, that is going to start to change. TSMC is committing to build those here in-house. It's an economic security issue, but also an economic opportunity issue. The greater Phoenix area, this is going to mean thousands of jobs in construction, in engineering, and in running this facility once it's up and

running and creating a larger ecosystem in the greater Phoenix area. And we're seeing this happen all around the country from New York to Ohio to now Arizona. And we hope to see it in other places in the country as well. Hey, Brian, good morning. Jonathan Lemire, you just sort of hinted at it. This is the idea of not having to rely on foreign sources for these chips, which became such an issue during the pandemic. But if you could put it in a broader context about what this means about the economic rivalry with China, which we hear from President Biden frequently. Look, we are in an economic competition with China. You've heard it from the president and you know that that's the case. But we also,

if you think on a broader global level, one of the things that we learned from this pandemic was the incredible dependency that we have when our supply chains are not secure. And semiconductors is a classic example of this. We used to create We used to produce 40% of the world's semiconductors. That's now fallen to 12. But in these advanced areas, these leading edge chips I was mentioning, we literally produce 0%. We're very dependent on foreign supply chains, and we're principally dependent on chips that are produced in Taiwan. That creates a geopolitical vulnerability, but it also creates an economic vulnerability as well. It's one of the big motivators behind the Bipartisan Chips Act that we passed to encourage more production here in the United States.

And now only a couple of months after the passage of that legislation, we're seeing this in practice. We're seeing it play out with TSMC, that Taiwanese chip manufacturer, coming and saying we are going to build that capability here in the United States. And by the way, just down the road from where we will be, Intel, the American chip company, has announced 20 billion dollars to build a fab itself. So we're seeing across the United States the building of this resiliency. Big geopolitical issue. Big economic issue. OK. Director of the White House National Economic Council, Brian Deese. Thank you very much. That tees up perfectly the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, and former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner.

And you've got charts on this, Steve. So why don't we start with that? I've got charts because, you know, a lot of people don't necessarily know what a chip is or how it works or what it even looks like. So let's give let's do a quick little primer on chips. So the first thing is on the left is a chip that was built in 1956 when Richard and I were four or five years old. Well, you're older than I am actually. It's a chip that was built in 1956 and you can see it's about an inch by a half and three quarters of an inch wide. The chip on the right is the current cutting edge chip that's in an Apple M1 Max computer. And it's roughly the same size.

But here's my Morning Joe quiz of the day. How many of the things on the left are in the thing on the right? How many things on the left are in the thing on the right? Ten million. The answer is 57 billion with a B. I was the closest. Yeah, yeah. 57 billion. Wait, in just one?

In just one. In just one. It's like the price was right. I'll give you another small factoid. No more quizzes, though. No, not a quiz. I'll give it a take. In 1971, Intel built the first microprocessor, something that strung them all together could do something.

It had 2,250 transistors in it that had been shrunk. Right. If you wanted to build the M1 chip today using that 1971 microprocessor, how much space would you need? An inch. 3,300 square feet, 50% larger than the average. Wait, wait, wait. Can we go back to the first picture?

I didn't mean to make that a quiz. That's all right. All right, this. How big is the latest version? They're roughly the same size. What's the size? An inch high, three quarters of an inch wide.

Oh, my God. Which gets to the point. They are the size of your thumb, roughly. Which gets to the point, Steve, that we're carrying supercomputers in our pockets. Yes. That's where we've got it. And literally everybody in the world is listening to all your conversations. Everybody.

That's a big matter. And to the point that Brian Deese was making, every single one of those phones requires a chip of that kind of sophistication, none of which are made here. And so if you look at the next chart, you can see what's happened to chip making. We were, as Brian said, the leading chip maker in the world. In 1980, we had 60 percent. We're now the light blue on the right, and we're sitting at 13 percent. Japan overtook us in 1986. They're the yellow on the left.

And then in the upper left is Taiwan. But here's the real problem, and Brian and Deese alluded to it. So we still make a lot of chips. But what we don't make, if you look at the chart on the right, are the most sophisticated chips. That first red bar on the left are the chips that you need to put in an iPhone. 92% of them are made in Taiwan by TSMC, and 8% are made in South Korea by Samsung. And then as you go further to the right,

you have less sophisticated chips, and then we start to make some of them. But without those chips on the left, not only do we not have iPhones, more importantly, we don't have a lot of military equipment. Like those chips are F-35 fighters. If you saw that strike against Russia yesterday by Ukraine, there are 250 chips and Javelin missile. I mean, these are things that are of critical importance to our national to our national security.

And as Brian said, we don't make any of them here. And Taiwan, Steve, has been hesitant, has it not, to make any of these chips outside of its country. That's why this is so significant today. That's a big deal. Yes, that's exactly right. Now we're going to get, because that relates a lot, obviously, to what Richard has to talk about. They have basically not wanted that. Brian is right.

They're going to make these so-called three nanometer chips, which are so tiny. A nanometer is 1 250 millionth of an inch or something like that here. But by the time they make the three here, they're going to be making two nanometer chips somewhere else. And so the Taiwanese government has been very reluctant, as you said, to let that technology out of Taiwan for self-protective reasons. So if we look at the last chart, which is now up on the screen there, you can see part of why they're making those chips here, the most sophisticated ones, is because Apple, which you see is the red up in the left, which is their biggest customer, has basically put the arm on them and said, we can't depend on Taiwan as a supply chain. You've got to make chips for our phones here. So yes, the subsidies played a role. Apple played a

big role. The subsidies on the right, the red bars are the $52 billion that we've allocated for chipmaking. And according to a study by BCG, it would allow us to make enough of the highly sophisticated chips to power our critical needs, but it wouldn't make enough to power all our iPhones and all the stuff that is less critical. That would require $400 billion on the right. So that's not happening anytime soon, but we will at least get in the game a bit. And you have to give a shout out to Mark Warner and John Cornyn, the two senators who really led the charge on this. They did a great job, as did others. And it was bipartisan, Richard. It was passed in August, $52 billion in this CHIPS Act, Republicans and Democrats getting together. A little bit late to the realization from the United States that, hey, maybe we shouldn't allow all these CHIPS that

power everything we do to be paid exclusively in Taiwan. But here we are having some of them produced on our soil. Just step in the right direction, but let's not exaggerate it. We're not yet producing them here. As Steve said, by the time we do produce them, they'll no longer be they won't be the cutting edge chips. I was also I was at TSMC a few weeks ago meeting with the founder of it. They're already having trouble here. Why? It goes back to your previous conversation. They can't get the skilled labor force here they need. Our graduates from engineering schools don't have all the skills they need. We no longer have the level of high end immigration that we need.

So this is where they talk about ecosystems. We do not yet have the ecosystem in place. So we shouldn't hit ourselves. This is not going to materially affect the dependency the United States and indeed the entire world has on Taiwan. Its security will continue to be paramount. And that's why this conversation about what we're prepared to do to help Taiwan, it's not just about geopolitics. It's about chips. It's about chips. It's about the economy. This is a country of about 23, 24 million people living in a democracy. So again, this is good. What we're doing here is a step in the right

direction. But we can't do it ourselves. It's a baby step in the right direction. It's a baby step. And so my question is then, you touched on it a little bit, the importance of Taiwan security. So describe the relationship right now between the U.S. and China as it pertains to Taiwan and some of the challenges and perils there? Look, this has been the single biggest fly in the ointment or friction between the United States and China since we established our modern relationship when Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon went there. And basically, we had to agree to disagree. We could not agree on what we would call the final status of Taiwan. And this has been continuing now for more than four decades. China has announced its goal to bring Taiwan in. We have said we cannot allow things to happen coercively.

This has got to be voluntary. So what we have been doing is providing Taiwan with arms for all these decades. But the real question is, as China builds up, as it begins to get impatient, as its economy slows down, and this becomes increasingly perhaps Xi Jinping's legacy, unifying China, as he would see it, rejuvenating China, as he describes it, what are we prepared to do to help Taiwan? Are the United States and Japan, above all, are we going to be willing and able, both willing and able, to effectively come to Taiwan's defense? I think we've got a few years to answer that question, to put those capabilities in place.

But right now, as focused we are, as we all are on Ukraine, this could, before this decade is out, this could become the biggest international question. Let's talk about Ukraine before we let you go, Richard. And the two drone strikes, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, launched by Ukraine deep inside Russia. One of them landed at an airbase 100 miles only from Moscow. What does this tell you about the war right now and Ukrainian capability? Look, Ukraine has been incredibly adaptive, and this is what they're doing. I expect we are not happy with this. We do not want to see this kind of war widening. There's another story out today how we've not provided certain weapon systems. There's been a pretty clear understanding that we will support Ukraine to fight the war, to liberate Ukraine on Ukrainian territory.

We have not been on Ukraine's side to fight the war, to bring the war to Russia. So my guess is every other time this has happened over the last 10 months or nine months, we have pushed back against Ukraine. I expect the same thing is going to happen today. This is a bit of a scratchy relationship. As supportive as we've been, as appreciative as Ukraine is, we're not exactly on the same page. It's almost another case study. When we have alliances or close relations, we've had it with Israel at times in history.

Now we're having it with Ukraine. Ukraine wants to do more. It wants to be more aggressive. The United States is worried about a bigger and wider war. So we're pulling back. And my guess is there's going to be some very interesting conversations over the next 48 hours. Richard Haass, thank you very much. And Steve Ratner bringing charts with pictures and quizzes. Very good. We didn't do it. Can you do it again? I like that. Can I just quickly recommend to you, if you want to know about chips, this book is the book to read. It reads like a novel.

All the history of chips. Wonderful. Okay. Quizzes, pictures, book recommendations. And these, look at the shot of these two, the personal injury firm. I know. I thought it was Haas and Ratner.

They're still trying to figure that out. Have you been injured at work? It's a different type of chip war. So we actually had the author of that book on the show as well. So they can look up that. But chip war, recommended by Steve Ratner.