-Welcome back.
-Well, hello.
How are you?
-I'm good.
-How was your break?
-My break was good.
It was a little long.
I had two weeks.
You had a week, yes?
-I had seven days.
I had the longest
stretch of time
I have ever had off in
the decade I have had this job
-That is amazing.
-Yes, it was fantastic.
-Could you find a way to unplug?
Are you okay at that?
-No.
-Yeah.
-Not well.
-You did some fishing.
-I did. I did some ice fishing
-Ice fishing.
-We had early ice
in Western Massachusetts,
so I caught a chain pickerel
and six yellow perch, thank you.
-That's great, yeah.
I mean, I feel like that's -
that's -- not being a fisherman,
that sounds good.
-It is, yes.
-Yeah.
The perch were about yea big
But you know...
I catch fish
that other people call bait.
-Interesting.
[ Laughter ]
That's very nice.
You're right at the bottom
of the food chain.
I recently heard that you also
do fishing around here.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-This is something you do
after your show?
-Yes, New York City
is technically an island
in the North Atlantic.
-Yeah.
We don't think about it
that much.
-We don't think about it tha
way, but it is possible
to go fishing and to get
some good fishing in
in New York City.
You can fish in Central Park
in the Harlem Meer and
in the reservoir, the ponds,
but you can also fish the East
River and the Hudson River
I sometimes fish the piers
on the Hudson River,
like, after my show.
-That doesn't seem safe or good.
[ Laughter ]
Have you ever is eaten a fis
out of the Hudson River?
-No.
-Okay, gotcha.
-No, I mean -- I'm out there
fishing after midn--
-The good news is
that the fish glow.
-Oh, good.
[ Laughter ]
So if you catch one,
it's very safe.
All of a sudden,
you've got illumination.
-They glow like a neon
"Do not eat."
-Yes, exactly.
There's no --
I mean, there's never --
If you pull a fish
out of the Hudson River,
everything in your universe,
every atom of your body says
"Put it back, put it back,
put it back, put it back."
-Right.
-There's no -- No instinct kicks
in that says, "Ingest this."
-Right. Do the fish --
Have the fish
of the Hudson River
evolved to the point
where they can say to you,
"Don't put me back?"
[ Laughter ]
"Take me with you!"
-"I want a contributor dea
at MSNBC!
Can you hook me up?"
-So this is -- Obviously
now we're back at work.
It is 2020,
it's an election year.
There's an impeachment going on,
and, obviously,
we have the situation in Iran,
Which is escalating
to the point that --
I know this is hard to eve
ask you to comment on,
but we're taping before
your show tapes at 9:00.
-Yeah.
-And then, this show will ai
after that, obviously,
but there are reports
of missiles being launched
into Iraq right now...
-Right.
-near or into U.S. bases?
Is that accurate
from what you're hearing?
-Again, initial reports,
and it's hard to say,
because this will evolve ove
the course of the evening.
But the thing
about General Soleimani,
who was killed, is that he was
the head of the Quds Force
What the Quds Force did in Ira
is that it projected
Iranian military force
all over the world,
outside of their borders.
Mostly, in the Middle East
but also in Latin America
and in Africa and far afield
And so we really think of hi
as this guy who created
the ability for Iran
to wage asymmetric warfare
all over the world,
and that's really the kind o
retaliation retribution
we've been expecting from Iran
But then yesterday,
the Iranian leadership said,
"You know what?
We plan to retaliate
directly ourselves as the
Iranian military from Iran
because we don't need to hid
this behind any proxy forces
We want you to know
it's coming from us.
And nobody quite knew
what to make of that.
That defied early expectations
And now today,
we've got these reports that
in fact, Iran has --
they say they have shot
ballistic missiles at multiple
U.S. military facilities
in Iraq.
And we've got a lot of U.S
military personnel in Iraq -
about 5,000 people there
as well as a lot of
other American troops
all over the Middle East.
And so if they have been able to
fire either missiles or rocket
into al-Asad and Anbar Provinc
in Western Iraq
or in Erbil in Northern Iraq
that's a really big deal.
The U.S. really
started something here,
and maybe
that was strategically wise,
but you have to hope
that the people in charge
really, really
thought this through.
-Now, this is some--
People in charge before Trum
have known that Soleimani
was a bad guy
and have made the decision not
to take this step that he took
And one of the things,
some of the reporting has been
that he was presented
with a list of options
of how to respond
to recent Iranian aggression
and he chose the most extreme,
which was to take out Soleimani.
Do you think it's foolhard
for his advisors
to ever give him an option
that is so extreme
that they think
he won't take it?
-The -- Yeah.
[ Light laughter ]
Your take on this
on your show last night
I thought was actually perfect
which was like --
You basically said,
"Has anybody ever briefed
these advisors on Donald Trump?"
-Yeah.
-Because if you offer him
a bunch of kind of normal idea
and one
"Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" idea,
there's no reason to believe
that "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs
will seem at all different
or less palatable to him.
-Of course.
Especially because he want
to be the guy who did the thin
that nobody has done before.
Right?
-Yes.
-And you want to be, like,
"And this one's too crazy.
No one's ever done it.
You'd have to be
a super kick-ass guy
to even think about it."
And he'd be like, "Hold on
Go back to that one."
[ Laughter ]
-But I mean, it isn't --
And it isn't
the first time with this.
These things have differen
levels of consequence,
but no U.S. leader had eve
thought it was a good idea
to go hang out
with the leader of North Korea
-Yeah.
-With the dictatorial,
messianic, cuckoo leader
of North Korea.
And Trump's like,
"Nobody's done that? Hmm."
-Yeah.
-"I'm in love."
-Yeah.
[ Light laughter ]
-"I'm gonna go
hang out with him.
I'm gonna go to North Korea.
And he gets this
sort of surface level, I think
cheers for that,
for people who like him already.
But there isn't any part
of his head that thinks,
"No other President
has wanted to do this
probably for a reason."
-Right.
-And so, something like this
that other administrations
had considered and rejecte
as being too risky
for American
national security --
We haven't had an explanatio
as to why he thought
this was worth it
and why he did it now.
-And as you mentioned,
you hope that there's some
core competence behind
the decision and preparing
for the next steps,
but we've already seen some --
I think it's fair to say -
incompetence in the handling
of this, up to and including
there was a press --
Not a press release.
What would you --
-It was a letter to Iraq,
telling them
we were withdrawing.
-Yes.
-That was a mistake?
"Oops!
Can we have that back?"
This is so freaking weird,
I can't even believe it.
I mean, it's one thing to thin
about something like this
half, like, scooting its way
out of the Oval Office
or Trump blurting it out i
front of a whirring helicopter
but this was
the actual Pentagon.
This was the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff -- ha! -
and the Secretary of Defense
and the two of them
explaining within
the past 24 hours that,
yes, the U.S. military
did deliver a formal letter,
on letterhead, to Iraq, saying
"We respect your decision
to tell us to leave.
All our troops are leaving."
But when we sent that letter
we didn't mean it.
It was a mistake.
It was a draft.
"Oops!"
Like, what?
I meant to hit recall
and instead I hit send?
-Yeah.
-Like, okay.
If you're, like, an intern
or if you're this President,
we got it.
[ Laughter ]
But when you're the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs...
-Yeah.
-Aah! [ Gibberish ]
And so it just makes you worry
that the incompetence
that we expect, I think,
at the level of the White House,
even on
national security matters,
might now be extended
to things as serious
as the Defense Secretary and
chairman of the Joint Chiefs
And that's really worrying
Also, in the 24 hours
since that has evolved,
Iraq has decided, "Well, listen,
you sent the letter.
No backsies."
-Yeah.
-"We're keeping it.
We consider you to have
formally notified us
that all U.S. troops
are getting out of Iraq.
-It is a sitcom plot of,
"You sent the letter?!
We gotta get the letter back!"
-Yeah.
-"Send the SEALs
to get the letter back!"
And they're, like,
creeping into the mailbox
and like...
[ Laughter ]
-"Recall, recall!"
