Morning Joe - Morning Joe 1/28/25

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Trump administration fires DOJ officials who worked on criminal investigations of the president

A fight that will go tonight and tomorrow and the next day and the day after and it won't stop. What they're stealing is not just an election. It's our future and it's our republic. And that's why we'll never stop. We'll never stop fighting because we will stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal.

...the peace. They were so funny. And we're out. We're doing it. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal.

Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal.

Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. back on January 5th, 2021, pushing Donald Trump's big lie. So it should come as no surprise that he is launching a review

of the prosecutions of Capitol rioters. We'll explain that probe straight ahead. Plus, we'll have the latest on the immigration raids in major cities across the country and the high number of migrants arrested who do not have criminal records. Also ahead, an FBI whistleblower has accused Cash Patel of violating hostage rescue protocols.

We'll dig into that new development ahead of Patel's confirmation hearing. Meanwhile, two major conservative publications are calling on Republicans to vote against Trump's nominee to lead health and human services. We'll go through their arguments against RFK Jr. And the markets are rebounding this morning after a massive sell-off tied to a Chinese AI program.

We'll get insight on that from CNBC. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is only Tuesday. If you can believe it, January 28th. Only Tuesday. It's only Tuesday. It feels like, this is definitely a Thursday feel, right? No? Yeah.

Thursday energy. Yeah, major vibe of Thursday. Yeah, anywho. I'm kind of excited. We have, I wish it were Monday because that would mean we'd have five more shows in front of us. But I'll take Tuesday. Okay. Yeah.

So exciting. Only four. Right. Okay. Along with Joe, Willie and me. So exciting. The cohost of our fourth hour, Jonathan LaMere. He's now a contributing writer at The Atlantic covering the White House and national politics.

The host of Way Too Early, Alec Vitali. I like that show you do. Thanks. Yeah. You do a great job. We're doing a piece on her on Know Your Value. I just interviewed William Lemire about that. Maybe that was... Wonder what they have to say. It was a hard book. Yeah. They were like the two old guys on the Muppets. They were both interrupting each other. It was good stuff. Anyhow, MSNBC political analyst Anand Girdardas. He is publisher of the newsletter, The Inc., available on Substack.

And Roger's chair in the American presidency at Vanderbilt University, historian John Meacham is with us. He's an MSNBC political analyst. And Joe, we have a lot to talk about this morning. We do have a lot to talk about, though. We do have a lot to talk about though I feel compelled to go back to the split of Anand and Roger's chair of history in Vanderbilt. See, because what's so so interesting about the split screen is that Anand is actually killing Hamlet in the first act, this is the hairstyle that Meacham was going to launch

in the spring. Yeah. But you beat him to it. Always, always, you can see around the curb, Anand. See around the curb. I tried, I may not have a Rogers chair, but I do have the ability to, you know, just to see what's coming.

Yeah, and fashion-wise, you've done it again. You've done it again. John, do you care to respond? I just want to say that when Peter Millar launches the Meacham line, the hair was supposed to go with it. But now we're going to have to revisit a lot of this, do a lot of blue-skying and white hoarding, so we'll be back with you. Yeah, exactly.

A lot more market research in Nantucket coming up soon to see what they can do. A couple of things I'd like to just share with everybody off the top. And the front page of the New York Times, extraordinarily moving scene from the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And the headline says it all, on Auschwitz anniversary, great sorrow for rising nationalism. Of course, how shocking it had to be for so many people, so many survivors and their loved ones and family members and all those tortured by what happened to six million Jews in the attempt to exterminate Jews from Europe, that on the eve of that you have one of the President of the United States,

his closest allies telling the German people to just get over it. Enough of the guilt. Just stop. The timing of that, of course, was as deplorable as so many other things that he's done in this area over the past week or so. I'm speaking, of course, of Elon Musk. Also, Willie, we talked yesterday, and we're going to talk again today about the Wall Street Journal editorial page

and what it says about RFK Jr. But here, this is quite a compelling piece, talking about how Donald Trump needs to provide protection for the three men who did his bidding in the killing of Soleimani, something that I think many foreign policy experts would agree with. But let me just read a little bit from this. Here's how Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, put it on Sunday. As the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I've reviewed the intelligence in the past few days.

The threat to someone involved in President Trump's strike on Soleimani is persistent. It's real. Iran is committed to vengeance against all of these people. Mr. Cotton went on to say it's not just about these men who helped President Trump carry out the policy in the first term. It's about their family and their friends. And it's by standards every time they're in public. It's also about the president being able to get good people and good advice.

Quote, this is Tom Cotton. If people are, say, going to work for the president now on Iran or China or North Korea or the Mexican drug cartels, they might hesitate to do so or they might hesitate if they're in office to give him the advice he needs or carry out the policies that he decides upon. Excellent points all, says the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Mr. Trump hasn't explained his denial of security, but it should last as long as there are real threats to those

who did their duty and are marked by death by an adversary because of it. It seems pretty straightforward, Willie. And the Wall Street Journal editorial page is talking again specifically about these three Trump cabinet officials or three officials that were just doing their job. And now they have hits on them from the Iranian government and no protection. And the one that most people are curious about is Brian Hook.

Here's a State Department guy, kept his head down, did his job, envoy to Iran. Like I said, I have been in meetings, I've been in dinners, I've been in places where he's talking to policymakers and ambassadors. Always told the company line. Never said anything derogatory about Donald Trump. And he's just left out there. Not that it matters.

You should protect those who the Iranians are trying to kill on your behalf anyway. But Brian Hook is a special case where he doesn't have the money to protect himself, his family. He's been a loyal foot soldier for the Trump administration and others. Yeah, I mean, private security, we should say, is extraordinarily expensive, usually reserved for very famous music artists and things like that who have the money to pay for something like that. Not for a guy who worked in the State Department, as you said, Joe, has a young family, got

a knock on the door from his detail and said, they've taken us off the job. The car that's been in his driveway for a long time since all these threats from Iran came in left and somehow, some way he's going to defend himself and his family from direct explicit threats from Iran. And as you say, the crime here is crossing perhaps subtly at times or disagreeing with Donald Trump, not in a big public showy way, but Mike Pompeo of Anthony Fauci, of course, we can add to that list, and you talked about Tom Cotton. Senator Lindsey Graham on the Sunday show said, I disagree with this move.

We need to look at this again. We've got to give security to the people who really do need it. And yes, we're going to go along with most of your grievance campaign. It appears in this first week, Mr. President, say Republicans. But there are, at least in this one narrow area, some Republicans saying we've got to look at this again for the safety and security of these people. And then there's this, the newly installed acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., is launching an internal review of the department's capital riot prosecutions. Ed Martin, who has been an advocate for January 6th

defendants, made the announcement in an email to Justice Department colleagues. Martin referred to the review as Project 15-12, which is a felony obstruction charge that was used against hundreds of capital rioters. The Supreme Court ruled last year that the charge was too broadly applied. Martin wrote, quote, Obviously, the use was a great failure of our office and we need to get to the bottom of it. Before he joined the Trump administration, Martin was a stop-the-steal advocate who spoke at the Capitol on January 5th.

It was on the grounds of the Capitol during the riot. As the mob was breaching the building, Martin tweeted, like Mardi Gras in DC Today, Love, faith and joy. Ignore hashtag fake news. Meanwhile, several career lawyers involved in the prosecutions against Donald Trump have been fired by the Justice Department, specifically more than a dozen officials who worked on special counsel Jack Smith's team, which investigated Trump's handling of classified documents, along with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. In a statement to NBC News, a Justice Department official explained, quote, the acting attorney general does not trust these officials to assist in

faithfully implementing the president's agenda. This action is consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government. Willie. For more on this, let's bring in NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney. Ken, good morning. If we can go back just for a moment to Ed Martin. We heard the sound right there on January 5th and January 6th, he was on the grounds

of the Capitol saying this is like Mardi Gras in a tweet. Not only that though, he was the attorney for at least three January 6th defendants, one of the leaders of the Patriot Freedom Project that advocated for January 6th defendants with these big fundraisers at Trump properties. So what exactly is his directive now as Donald Trump deputizes him to look into this? Good morning, Willie. Good morning, guys. Yeah, well, as you said, he's asking the office to go back and investigate every use of that

obstruction of an official proceeding statute that was widely used to prosecute many January 6th defendants and then was somewhat narrowed in a Supreme Court ruling. He's portraying this as an inappropriate act by prosecutors, something that needs to be investigated. And I would just point out that this is the office that prosecutes crime in DC, where there is not an insignificant amount of crime. And this is at a time when the Justice Department

is suspending new hires. So there's a manpower shortage essentially, and he's tasking an undetermined amount of people to go back and look at all of these cases to see if anybody did anything wrong, instead of investigating crimes in DC and elsewhere. So it's quite remarkable, but actually not unexpected, guys. So Ken, talk to us about how this fits into a broader look and reshaping of the Department of Justice, which of course Trump made so center during his campaign, firing prosecutors

involved in the Jack Smith investigation. Where is this, where else could this be going right now as we all wait to see what happens with his selections for attorney general and FBI director? Yeah, Jonathan, I mean, I have to emphasize, look, elections have consequences, obviously, and when a new administration comes in, they do, first of all, all the political appointees

at the Justice Department leave, which happened on January 20th, and they do change course, of course, and sometimes they reassign members of the senior executive service who are career civil servants, but actually are sort of quasi-political appointees. But this goes way beyond that. This is a shock and awe campaign that the Trump administration is waging at the Justice Department, and this act of firing these career prosecutors who worked for Jack Smith, this is really stunning. I mean,

it's hard to explain to the public because they probably think, well of course he's doing that, right? They investigated the president and he comes in and he's firing them. It just doesn't happen and it appears to have been illegal because these are people who have civil service protection. You can't just fire these folks. You have to have cause to fire them. There was no cause or proper cause given in that letter, no allegation that they did anything wrong or acted inappropriately or were incompetent.

And so they're gonna appeal these files and they'll probably win, but it won't matter in the end because their careers essentially at the Justice Department are over. And many of these people were very accomplished career prosecutors. And it's sending a message to other people at the Justice Department,

get in line or your job is in peril. And I'm talking to people across the department who are sending me copies of memos that go out every day. There is a lot of deep, deep concern, not just about the typical change of policy that comes with a new administration, but a fundamental reshaping here and a message that really tries to deter enforcement of the law. All right, NBC News' Ken Delaney, and thank you so much for that report, and we appreciate it. It's very interesting that in so many of these things that are happening, that are moving forward, Ken was just talking about how possible civil service protections were violated in

the firings of these Justice Department officials. You could look at the firing of the inspectors generals. And of course, that went against the legal requirements that sent the Senate be given a 30-day notice. You look at the grants being frozen, provided by the United States Congress and therefore within their constitutional realm, and not the presidents to freeze it and people talking about how that also will present great legal challenges. And you can go down the list, so many of these things, there are legal questions on whether they're going to even be upheld or not. Certainly, there are going to be, you know, just dozens and dozens of legal challenges. And I suspect many of those will probably be held up, but that's not really the purpose.

Whether they get held up or not, that's really not the purpose of doing this all at once right out of the gate, is it? I mean, this is, as Ken said, it's a shock and awe campaign. And what sticks, sticks. And what doesn't stick still sends a message. Absolutely right.

It's setting the tone and tenor of this administration. It is underscoring the fact that they won the election. And it also tells us a lot about the way that this Washington is different than the one that Trump walked into in 2017. Both internally in the White House, there are far more people here who either learned the lessons of the last administration

that they needed people around them who would not be checks on them, but they also learned how to pull the levers of government. And then over on Capitol Hill, many of the folks who ever bucked the Trump administration found the door themselves or were voted out of office because of primary challenges backed by more MAGA-aligned candidates.

So this really tells a story of the Washington that Trump is in, but then there's also the way that they are trying to do it. They have a very public campaign on things like immigration that polled quite well, that voters say that they voted for, and then they have the things that are really rooting out the parts of government and bureaucracy that don't work for them.

The kinds of things where Ken is able to say, well, I know people don't know this about career prosecutors, but that's the kind of stuff that Americans might not latch onto as much because it's not a hot button issue on the campaign trail, but it is the way that government functions and the way, frankly, that small-D democracy

stays stitched together, especially through the Department of Justice. Joe. Yeah, John Meacham, I'm curious your thoughts together, especially through the Department of Justice. Joe? Yeah. John Meacham, I'm curious your thoughts on the firings and the other actions over at the Justice Department. And if you want to just speak more broadly, more sweeping on what's happening with immigration, of course, as Ali said, and you know, many of these things popular with American people,

certainly on deportation, on immigration cases, certainly up to a certain point. And also Donald Trump going in and sort of taking on this strongman role. That's what people voted for while he was saying things that were deeply offensive to many of us. The American people are getting so far what Donald Trump promised them to do. You can talk about that on one side. On the other side though, compare the firings of the IGs, compare the firings of the Justice Department officials,

compare all of this activity over the first week or so with Nixon, the Saturday Night Massacre, the other things that we're used to talking about here when we go back through history and talk about presidents pushing the boundaries of their constitutional powers. Yeah, this is the imperial presidency without any kind of constraint. It's a, if you're exactly right. It's what people voted for. There's no mystery here.

There was no mystery given the American experience of the last nine years politically. It's a hallmark of not a democratic lowercase D system, but more of an autocratic one. I think you all are exactly right, that it's not just the actual firings, the actual people going, but it's then the ensuing chilling effect. And I don't know about you all, but I know this just out in the wild.

They're in different kinds of institutions. If you have any kind of connection to the federal government, you are you know, there are a lot of emails going around about what to how to watch yourself. about how to watch yourself. And you know, it's a devastating phrase, I think, because it has this kind of Orwellian overtone. That said, before people go crazy, you're right. There are some things that should be disrupted. But the issue with this particular disrupter, which I think of as this is a 14% question.

So 35% of Trump's base, don't hold me as exact numbers, but I think this is pretty close, would follow him anywhere for anything. The people who put him in power are a lot of the folks that we know pretty well. Joe, you and I have talked about this endlessly. It's the 14% who are MAGA adjacent who are doing it for taxes, or did it for taxes and judges in 16, right? And then couldn't, couldn't quite get there with Vice President Harris. Could not pull the lever for Kamala Harris. Could not do it. They could not do it. And so they've taken this... I'm just emphasizing that, John. I'm sorry we have

delay. I'm just emphasizing that because for those that have one excuse after another excuse after another excuse, you go through it and you go, well, you know, that's not true. Well, you know, that's not the case. Well, you know, that fact pattern is completely wrong. And then they just end up by going, I just can't vote for her. Like she is a San Francisco radical 2019 debate,

blah, blah, blah. But anyway, yeah, that was their final line of defense for voting for Donald Trump. And that's why I think the Wall Street Journal editorial page today, the piece you read about Senator Cotton, who I salute for saying this, saying what he said about the national security officials who in the defense of this country put themselves and their families in harm's way and then a petulant king is going to punish them? Let's just be very clear here. We don't have to harshly attack everything President Trump does. We don't. But when he does something that should be harshly attacked, it should be harshly attacked.

And chilling effect be damned. Because if there's full-on universal preemptive surrender, then we really are, as my grandmother used to say, past where the buses run, right? It's just not going to be recoverable. And not being hyperbolic, I don't think. You damage something that is organic and fragile and tender at the best of times, and that's American democracy and American institutions. You damage it, it's very hard to fix it. And so when we've therefore, the argument is, I think, that there's plenty to be fixed

in American life and democracy. But do we have to do it so bluntly and with such an emphasis on the loyalty to a single person and not to the idea. Right, right. And by the way, what you're saying is not radical or extreme. What you're saying, specifically on what I brought up today and what I brought up over the past several days, I'm always reading from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, whether it was on releasing cop beaters, and that was their

words, that Donald Trump made a horrific mistake in releasing cop beaters and promoting violence in the future by doing that, but also, of course, by yanking Secret Service protection from those who actually did his bidding in the killing of Soleimani and actually, as Senate Intel Chairman Tom Cotton says, still have contracts on their head from the radical leaders, the radical mullahs in Iran. Yes. So, historian John Meacham, thank you very much.

We still need to get to Anand on the ICE arrests, a high number of people, by the way, who did not commit serious crimes. So we'll get to that. And also coming up on Morning Joe. And Miko, we also need to make note that John Meacham defined, quote, in the wilds. Yes. He said, out here in the wilds. In the wilds, yeah. I got that.

I heard that. It really, yeah. The Bell Mead Country Club. Right. Peter Millar wearing membership of the Bell Meade Country Club. So, there you go. Everybody's got their version. Okay.

Bye, Meacham. Everybody's got their voice up in the wilds. Coming up on Morning Joe, we're learning, we're moving on now, learning, harrowing new details about what some of the freed Israeli hostages endured while being held in Gaza by Hamas. We'll dig into the details and have the latest from the Region Plus. An FBI whistleblower has come forward with new information questioning the judgment

of President Trump's pick to lead the agency, Cash Patel. We'll have that new reporting straight ahead on Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. Stock futures are pointing to a bit calmer trading session today after chipmaker Nvidia lost close to $600 billion in market cap yesterday, plummeting 17%. Marks the biggest drop for any company on a single day in U.S. history. So why? Well, the sell-off was sparked by news of Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek releasing an open source AI model at just a fraction of the cost of its American competitors.

DeepSeek's AI model appears to rival those from OpenAI, Google, and Meta despite the US government's efforts to limit China's access to cutting edge AI technology. Joining us now, the anchor of CNBC's worldwide exchange, Frank Holland. Frank, good morning. The New York Post, subtle as ever, warning of a red alert with the news of DeepSeek here coming out. So just for people who were completely taken by surprise by this news yesterday and why the markets took it so hard, what is DeepSeek and why did it shake the markets?

Well, I mean, let's get into this right now. There is some optimism this morning. Futures are a bit higher, as you noted. S&P up about a third of a percent. But let's be clear, the markets were certainly rattled yesterday. You mentioned Nvidia's nearly $600 billion market cap loss. It was a trillion dollars loss yesterday overall. So DeepSeek, as you mentioned, Chinese AI tool that's open to developers

and very competitive with U.S. proprietary models or closed models like a chat GPT. It's raising a lot of questions about the very competitive with U.S. proprietary models or closed models like a chat GPT. It's raising a lot of questions about the lead that the U.S. has over China when it comes to artificial intelligence. What companies are going to see the biggest benefit and what is the true value when it comes to stock price of our U.S. mega cap tech companies. You mentioned Nvidia, other companies like Alphabet, Microsoft, et cetera, the whole list. So yesterday we saw microchip or semiconductor stocks like Nvidia sell off. AI infrastructure and energy stocks also sold off, largely because DeepSeq was reportedly

and reportedly is the key word here, developed for about six million bucks in about two months and again without some of the most advanced chips from Nvidia. So if this is all true, if is again the keyword, it's a major development that's making investors rethink their holdings of tech stocks and what it takes to be really competitive when it comes to artificial intelligence. The keyword again is if. We're not 100% sure if this was independently developed by a hedge fund as the claims are, if it was really done in just two months and if they really didn't have access to advanced Nvidia chips. Dan Eyes from Wedbush, really known tech voice, he said

if they did this with six million dollars in under two months, he believes that he's playing in the Super Bowl with Saquon Barkley and the Philadelphia Eagles. Just kind of asserting his questions about what's going on. So this is interesting. If you want to sound smart at a cocktail party this weekend, talk about Jevons Paradox. You're going to hear a lot of people talk about this today. The idea here is that the more efficient or inexpensive a resource becomes, demand increases. A lot of people think that's kind of the inflection point we are seeing with DeepSeek. If they could really build these less expensive models, it's actually a boost and a tailwind for the broader AI economy.

Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, he said that. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong, despite personally losing $20 billion, he's saying the same thing. We need all the help we can get. This sounds smart at cocktail parties. So I'm going to use that one, Frank. That's a gift, guys. Enjoy. Before I let you go, Frank, just quickly, is there a chance that the market's overreacted

yesterday? In other words, the reason the stock fell is because people said, oh my gosh, all this AI that companies and private equity firms invested in here in the United States is now obsolete because of DeepSeek. Let's not count out Google Meta and some of the American companies developing their own AI. Well, I think the consensus is that yesterday was a knee-jerk reaction and possibly an overreaction. But the question is that there's a lot of questions. Again, a lot of ifs around DeepSeek, a lot of ifs about what the future is when it comes to AI development. But one thing we know, from this point on, it's not

going to be this one model philosophy. These closed models, proprietary models like a chat GPT, open model is going to become more part of the major discourse. So that could change what companies are in position to win, or at least seen as in position to win. By the way, Nvidia earnings, they come up in about three weeks. So a lot of eyes will be on those to see what that company says about demand, if there's any changes in demand related to this. We also have other big tech company earnings this week. We're talking Apple, Meta, et cetera.

So we're gonna be listening for a lot of commentary from these companies about what this development really means. All right, CNBC's Frank Holland doing a great job walking us through this, Frank. Appreciate it so much. Devin's Paradox, enjoy it, guys. Thank you, I'm writing it so much. Devin's paradox.

Enjoy it, guys. Thank you. I'm writing it down right now, and we'll see what happens when the market's open in a couple of hours. Yes. Yep. Federal agencies stepped up immigration enforcement operations in cities across the country again yesterday.

That included Dallas, Denver, Seattle, and Honolulu. In Chicago, approximately 10 separate teams of federal agents fanned out across the city to conduct operations there. NBC News rode along with one of the teams in Chicago and was granted rare access to the ice processing facility where detainees are being taken to be photographed, fingerprinted, and held until there are deportation flights. At the same time, the number of undocumented immigrants rounded up by authorities on Sunday was much higher than first reported. NBC News has learned immigration authorities made close to 1,200 arrests on Sunday,

up from the 956 reported by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement on social media. And nearly half of those detained do not have criminal records. That's according to a senior Trump administration official. President Trump and administration officials have repeatedly said they would prioritize the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes. And your thoughts on this? Look, you know, I think there's always this gap

between what they say they're gonna do and what they do. And that is because what Donald Trump is interested in is using genuine public concerns that are out there and weaponizing them to then do much more sweeping things for which there is no mandate. So in this example, is there a, I was on with you last week when we were talking about polling that shows there is support in the country for deporting undocumented people with criminal records.

There is support for that. So Donald Trump will talk about that and then kind of run on that. And then as you're seeing in the reporting just now, what they actually do behind the scenes, they trust will not really get out. And it's part of a different agenda they have, which is really to make America white again,

which part of their attack on everything from birthright citizenship to any number of programs, aid freezing various forms of aid that real people depend on. They have an agenda to make it harder for regular people to live in this country, for immigrants to have to live in worry about whether they have their papers, we are going to become a kind of check your papers society in the blink of an eye. And there's no mandate for that. But that is what folks like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and others around the president

actually want. They want to change the very fabric of this country, something for which there is not that same mandate. So, hon, we know there's a showman part of this. We know that this is partially speculative for political points. How do we know it? Well, the latest evidence is newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem right now is live tweeting.

She's live tweeting a immigration raid in New York City, right here in New York City right now. She's posted a few times this morning landing in New York and now they're carrying out this raid. She is saying the person that this latest clip shows is someone who does have a criminal record, but there's also been reporting that Donald Trump is unhappy actually, these numbers aren't higher

in the first week of his term, and that raises that tension point. If this does go and more and more, we've already seen it's happened some, but more and more people who do not have criminal records are indeed rounded up, do you think that's the flashpoint for some sort of real pushback, public outcry, the sort of protest movement to this, at least to this point, we haven't seen in the second Trump term? Here's what I think the real tipping point is and will be.

The thing that I would say Donald Trump deserved most praise for is that he intuited in 2016 and then again in 24 that there was an emotion out there among many, many people of feeling undefended, of feeling unseen and unheard by the system, of feeling defenseless against chaos and entropy. And that political emotion was underserved, was under recognized by those of us in the media, was underserved by the Democratic Party, was underserved by his own different flavor of Republicans. And he was able to see that.

People wanted to be advocated for. Now, I have every quibble with every actual thing he wanted to do to advocate for them, but he won for a reason. He won because he was able to see that. When you start having Gestapo raids in America and we start becoming a country where, as in East Germany, a knock on the door is the thing people are thinking about instead of the brilliant idea they want to go create. Then we are moving very, very far from the president

worrying about what regular people need, right? He is distracting people with this flurry of activity, but none of this, none of these images you're seeing are going to make your life better. None of these things, contrary to popular belief, have anything to do with the still high price of eggs. None of these things will make it easier to start a business. None of these things will make it easier for people to get the education they need, change their lives, leave their kids better off. This is all a distraction, shock and awe, as you said earlier, so that Donald Trump can do one thing and you saw it at the inauguration, telegraphed to you, enrich his billionaire

cronies, enrich his oligarch friends. That is what he is actually doing when he's not busy releasing his crypto coins. And all of this is sort of bread and circuses for people to stare at while he's robbing you from the back. All right, MSNBC political analyst Anand Girdardas, thank you very much for your insights this morning. It's time now to take a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. There is a shake-up in Florida politics after Republican lawmakers rejected Governor Ron DeSantis' call for a special session on illegal immigration. Instead, they introduced their own immigration bill and also overrode one of his budget vetoes. As the New York Times reports, the rare move represents a dramatic

break with a governor who has methodically expanded his executive powers. The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a renewed effort by North Korea to keep control over its population, particularly teenagers and young adults. Hundreds of thousands of them have been plucked from their daily lives to instead build houses, schools and hospitals. Dictator Kim Jong-un is particularly worried about the influence of foreign media, Hollywood films and South Korean television. Possessing that content in North Korea can result in the death penalty. And U.S. officials say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

could meet with President Donald Trump in Washington as early as next week. It comes as Trump's Middle East envoy is expected to travel to Israel this week to discuss the prospect of securing a longer-term solution to the conflict with Hamas. And coming up, congressional Democrats are asking why Trump is not making good on his campaign promise to lower the cost of food as soon as he took office. We'll dig into the new letter they sent to the administration. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. I know for a fact they're up and down, but we have to stay with it. My dad taught me the measure of firsts and heard me say before us how quickly they get

back up when they get knocked out. That's what we have to do right now. We've always done our best as Americans. We never, never, never give up. Never. We're leaving office. We're not leaving the fight. That was Joe Biden last week in his first speech as an ex-president delivered just hours

after Donald Trump's second inauguration. Biden has not laid out specific plans for his post-presidency, but has said that he wants to be involved with the institutes bearing his name at the University of Pennsylvania and, of course, the University of Delaware. Let's bring in New York Times bestselling author Jared Cohen. He's the author of the book entitled Life After Power, Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House. And it was released last year, but it's now out in paperback and kind of timely in terms

of Joe Biden's departure. So welcome back to the show. Good to have you. Thank you. So talk a little bit about the purpose of this book as we look through the lens at what Joe Biden's going do and you look at seven presidents What did they have in common anything? Well, so I started writing this book because

All of us are confronted with this elusive question of what do we do next all the time? And I thought it'd be interesting to answer that question by looking at the most dramatic transition the world president of the United States where you kind of fall from the stratosphere of political power to just becoming an everyday citizen. I just didn't expect it to come out at a time where it had political relevance, right? It's always the dream of an author. But here we have only the second time in history that a U.S. president has come back for a second non-consecutive presidency, Grover Cleveland being the other.

And he's one of the ones that I feature in the book as the comeback. Yeah. And so we just heard from Joe Biden, he's saying he's not leaving the fight. Talk about the presidents you do look at and how they were able to take it, transform their futures.

So I look at seven presidents. What they all have in common is that after achieving the pinnacle of power, they all found something that gave them a greater sense of purpose than when they came to the White House. In the case of Thomas Jefferson, it was founding UVA. He worried that the republic that he co-founded was flawed. If you didn't create a new university for the next generation, the republic wouldn't

survive. John Quincy Adams went on to serve nine terms in the House of Representatives as an ex-president where in a much lower station, he found a much higher calling and became a leader of the abolitionist movement. Cleveland obviously made a comeback. Taft, who wanted nothing more than to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,

unfortunately suffered the fate of his wife, his brother, and Theodore Roosevelt, his mentor and friend, wanting him to be president of the United States. So he kept turning down the Supreme Court. In the last 10 years of his life, he achieved his dream. And at the end of life, he gets asked, does he remember being president? And he says, no, I don't remember being president. I finally have achieved my dream. So his story is kind of a lesson that a dream deferred doesn't need to be a dream denied.

Your book also topical because Jimmy Carter is top of mind with his recent death and state funeral where everyone was reminded about his extraordinary post presidency. Some historians argue it might have been more consequential than his presidency. So what do presidents that follow Jimmy Carter take from his experience and his example? Yeah, so it's interesting.

So Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, they were debating what to do with ex-presidents, and he said, does it benefit the republic to have half a dozen men who were elevated to the presidency wandering around the rest of us like discontented ghosts? I actually think Carter answers Hamilton's question because he was both a tremendous ally to his successors and a bipartisan nuisance to his successors. So he did amazing things like when George H.W. Bush sent him to Panama to monitor the elections

and stand up to Noriega. But he also did very annoying things, like when he went to North Korea in 1994 and Bill Clinton was surprised to hear him on CNN declaring that he sort of brokered a deal with the dear leader. First of all, I would love to be known as a bipartisan nuisance. I think that would be an excellent monitor.

But as we think about Biden's legacy, I'm wondering who of these presidents that you profiled you think he might have the most in common with, especially because for Biden, this is the culmination of 40 plus years in public life. An age is also a function to building a post presidential legacy. Well, this is an unfortunately for Biden. He doesn't have a tongue in common with these post-presidents because the post-presidents that I wrote about had a lot of time after they left office.

And obviously, we hope Biden lives a long and prosperous life in the post-presidency. But because of his age, he's almost beginning the post-presidency as a lame duck ex-president. And that's something that we've had in history. We had it with Woodrow Wilson after his stroke. We had it with Chester Arthur, you know, who was not in good health after he left. We had it with James Polk who was not in good health after after he left.

And so it's been a long time since we've had a post presidency where somebody's left office really, you know, kind of at an advanced age and certainly never in their early 80s. This is an unprecedented moment in the post-presidents. So Jared, of the seven presidents you examine here, most of them, we hadn't mentioned Herbert Hoover yet, but most of them have very active post-presidential lives, still in some ways in public service. The exception being George W. Bush, who is still with us, of course, who seems very content to have nothing at all to do with politics except to show up at the occasional inauguration

and make comments afterwards about how strange Donald Trump's speech was. Yes, absolutely. So I'm glad you mentioned Herbert Hoover because one of the things I tried to do in this book is make Herbert Hoover great again. You know, for a man... You've got a long way to go.

That's a new hat. For a man who lived to be 90 years old, to be defined by four years, his 32-year post-presidency was one of the most extraordinary post-presidencies in history. He regains his status as the great humanitarian. He regains his status as a great executive, reorganizing the executive branch.

And in his final act of his post-presidency, JFK's father calls on him to broker a rapprochement between JFK and Nixon to show the country healing in the midst of the Cold War. But the reason I focused on George W. Bush in the last chapter of the book, and I spent about eight hours on the record with him, if you look at the active post-presidents at the time that I was writing, his was the only one whose popularity had gone up more than 50%, and he'd invested less in his legacy

than anyone else. So I thought that was worth focusing on. I think some of it is his disciplined adherence to the Washington principle of one president at a time. But he's also found a post-presidential voice through painting that allows him to elevate issues that he cares about without engaging in debates and the discourse in ways

that undermine his successors. And out of all the post-presidents that I focus on, he's the only one that 100% of the time stays out of the fray. And that requires a level of discipline that no other ex-president other than him has had, and certainly not President Trump during his interregnum. Yeah. Boy, he stayed out of the fray at the same time, though.

Every year, the number of lives that were saved by PEPFAR goes up. It was 10 million, 12 million estimates now that George W. Bush's PEPFAR program, which many call one of the greatest government programs ever. In fact, Nick Kristof of the New York Times says may be the greatest of his lifetime. Now the estimate is 25 million lives in Africa saved by PEPFAR. And of course, right now, with all the freezes, real concerns that the PEPFAR program is in danger of funding being limited. I certainly hope that's something that Congress will step in and take care of. But I will say on the Joe Biden front, he can look to George W. Bush, somebody who left office with approval rating in the 20s. He can look to Harry Truman, the man who actually reached out to Herbert Hoover

and said, I need your help with the refugee crisis in Europe. And Hoover did an extraordinary job with with the help and guidance of Harry Truman to really shape his post presidency and alleviate massive suffering in Europe and the greatest refugee crisis that we've seen since then. So yeah, it is, there are many things that can happen, but sometimes just the passage of time as you get away from the heat of presidential campaigns, the heat of the day in and day out fighting and bickering.

Most presidents, their legacy grows, and I suspect the same will be the case with Joe Biden, regardless of what people are saying at 1201 a.m. after his presidency ends. I believe that for sure. The book, Life After Power, Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House. It's available in paperback now. New York Times bestselling author Jared Cohen. Thank you and great to have you on the show this morning.

Take care.