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Brigid Bergen: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergen, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. Brian will be back on Monday. I'll start by saying that we've got our eyes on the Supreme Court, which is expected to issue that opinion on the TikTok case this morning. Right about now, they'll decide whether the popular Chinese-owned social media app should be banned. I'll share the news when it comes out. Then in about an hour, we're going to break it down with a guest from the tech site, The Information and legal analysis from Emily Bazelon from Yale Law School.

Now this is coming at an interesting time since President-elect Trump will be inaugurated on Monday and has vowed to save the app. Plus, we'll talk to State Senator Zellnor Myrie. He's running in the Democratic primary election for mayor. I'll ask him about what he's pledging to do on housing, child care, and more. Then we're going to wrap up today's show by sharing some ideas for how to help people affected by the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles. I'm sure a lot of you have already done this and maybe some of you are wondering how to make sure what you're giving is doing the most good. We're going to give you some suggestions on that front.

First, it is the last Friday of the Biden administration and news continues to emerge about the final steps he's taking before leaving the Oval Office. Today, there's news that he's commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. These are people who received longer sentences based on older drug laws. Earlier this week, the administration announced a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal reached between Israel and Hamas. Biden credited the nonstop negotiations led by the outgoing and incoming administrations.

On Wednesday night, the president delivered a farewell address that included a stark warning about the risk of a rising oligarchy in America. Joining me now to reflect on President Biden's final week, his farewell address to Americans and the world, and what we're learning each day about the challenges that await the incoming Trump administration at home and abroad is Jonathan Lemire, co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe and now a contributing writer for The Atlantic. His newest piece is headlined Brace for Foreign-Policy Chaos. Jon, always great to talk to you. Thanks for joining me today just as you were wrapping up your show.

Jonathan Lemire: Oh, good morning. Always, always happy to do it. It's certainly been an eventful week and we have eventful days ahead.

Brigid Bergen: That's for sure. Listeners, we want to hear from you, too, of course. What are your reflections on the Biden administration and what's on your mind as we look ahead to Trump's inauguration next week? What do you consider President Biden's single greatest accomplishment and what was his greatest failure? For the incoming administration, what will you be watching in the days and weeks ahead? Are you focused on domestic policy or foreign policy?

We want your Biden reflections and your Trump questions. You can call us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text at that number. Jon, I want to start by asking about some breaking news from earlier this morning. News outlets have been reporting that the Israeli security cabinet has voted to approve the ceasefire deal that I was talking about. The full cabinet will be voting later today, though it's now looking like it will happen. Have you heard more about what the next steps may be?

Jonathan Lemire: Well, this was a hurdle that we were all waiting to see if the deal would clear. Prime Minister Netanyahu, there have been a number of times over the process since the October 7th attacks where it looked like a deal was imminent and one side or the other, whether it was [unintelligible 00:03:53] or the Israeli government, would change the terms, move the goalposts. Much to the frustration of the Biden administration, scuttled the possible deal.

Now it does look like, though, that Phase 1 is on track. Now it's going to effect on Sunday. We learned from the Middle East anything can happen at any time. As a senior diplomat put it to me yesterday, no one is going to celebrate this until we see the first hostages actually walking out of Gaza. There is a hope that is on track for Sunday, but that's only Phase 1, of course. It will only get harder from here with the first subsequent stages of this deal, more hostages being released, and a more durable ceasefire.

Brigid Bergen: We'll talk more about that later in our conversation. I want to spend some time with the president's farewell address. I'm going to play a few clips from it, but before I do, as someone who covered the White House, I was wondering, can you give us some framing for this moment? What was Biden trying to accomplish in this speech, and how well do you think he did?

Jonathan Lemire: Well, the backdrop, of course, is this is not the goodbye that Joe Biden had in mind. He began 2024 with a reelection campaign believing that he could win another four years in office and this would just be the midway point of his time at the White House. We know, of course, that was not meant to be after his disastrous debate over the summer and then the decision to step down from atop the ticket. There was definitely a bittersweet moment to this. Some disappointment fueled this speech.

President Biden and aides told me that day he really wanted to leave a durable, lasting message. Yes, there was some reflection, of course about his time in office, touting of accomplishments and calling to mind the end of a 50 years in public service. He also had real warnings about the future of democracy, about the future of oligarchs that he sees on the rise here in the United States. The tech-industrial complex, a play on words of what Dwight Eisenhower warned in 1961 about the military-industrial complex. Though he didn't mention the likes of Elon Musk by name, that was clearly who he was speaking of.

He warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence as well and basically said that he was passing the torch. Not to his chosen successor like Vice President Harris, but rather to the American people. Ending his speech saying that he loved America. He know they did too, and it was their turn, our turn as citizens to stand guard, to defend the democracy.

Brigid Bergen: It looks like we do have some breaking news on the TiklTok case-

Jonathan Lemire: We do.

Brigid Bergen: -out of the Supreme Court. Right now, the Supreme Court is upholding the TikTok ban. If it's not sold by Sunday, it will shut down as it appears in the United States. Jon, I know you've been talking about this this morning. Any initial reaction? I know this is just breaking now.

Jonathan Lemire: Yes, I'm seeing it just as you are. News coming from the Supreme Court just up the street from where I'm sitting at the moment. This will be a test for Donald Trump, the incoming president who, of course, while in office, mused with the TikTok ban himself but then dramatically reversed course. He's now defending the app. We know that there are national security concerns surrounding this app because of its ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

The Biden team thought about a last-ditch effort here, I'm told the last day or two to see if they could extend its life, try to push this decision, but they opted not to follow through with any last-minute appeal. Now we will see how the new administration wants to try to handle this. Whether this will be forced at 11th-hour sale or whether TikTok will indeed go dark on everyone's app store in the days ahead.

Brigid Bergen: Listeners, I just want to note that we're going to be talking a lot more about this decision. Right after eleven o'clock, we have a guest from the Tech site, The Information and legal analysis from Emily Bazelon from Yale Law School. Jon, just before we move on from it, I wonder if you could touch on a little bit of the politics leading up to this decision. We really saw some interesting shifts even just yesterday with folks like Senator Schumer talking about wanting to extend the timeline for TikTok. What do you make of some of those shifting politics?

Jonathan Lemire: I think there's a few things at play here. China and being concerned about China is one of the few bipartisan issues here in Washington. That has been the backdrop for years. As I noted a moment ago, Donald Trump was part of that when he was in office the first time around, but things have changed. First, for Trump, in part, he realized that TikTok was useful to his campaign. He was very popular on TikTok. It was part of his appeal to young voters, particularly young male voters who watched TikTok, that was their primary source of news.

He also became friendly with an investor in TikTok who made a significant donation to his campaign fund. I think we're seeing from Democrats here, look, certainly principled freedom of speech concerns, but they can read the politics, too. They saw TikTok, how popular it is among young voters, the voters that they struggle to reach this time or last campaign at the same success rate that they did in previous campaigns. I think there was fear the Democrats would be blamed, perhaps, by some of these young Americans for taking their TikTok away, if you will. There did seem to be a little bit of a rethinking of the politics of it in recent days. We now have the decision, and now we'll see what the incoming Trump administration will do.

Brigid Bergen: It's a nice pivot back to what we were talking about, Jon, which is the rise of this tech-industrial complex and the idea of an oligarchy taking shape in America. That was an image that President Biden warned about on Wednesday night after he leaned on the visual image of the Statue of Liberty being constructed in New York Harbor. He offered this warning afterwards. Here's about a minute from that speech today.

President Biden: Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America and we've seen it before more than a century ago. The American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts. They didn't punish the wealthy, just made the wealthy play by the rules everybody else had. Workers want rights to earn their fair share. They were dealt into the deal and helped put us on a path to building the largest middle class, the most prosperous century any nation in the world has ever seen. We've got to do that again.

Brigid Bergen: Jon. I know many listeners have seen that New Yorker cover with Elon Musk standing next to Donald Trump taking the oath of office. What do you see as the oligarchy Biden is warning about there?

Jonathan Lemire: I think there's a few different things. Musk is the most obvious example. This is someone who spent $300 million (about) on the last campaign and has been rewarded with an extraordinary amount of influence within the Trump world, where he is and the New Yorker cartoon suggests almost a co-president, but at the very least, Trump's, at this moment, most influential adviser, period, full stop. Elon Musk is sat in on transition calls. He helps conduct foreign policy as well as on domestic issues. He's the one who first scuttled the spending deal last year. He opposed it first before Trump did, [unintelligible 00:11:59] Republicans had to go back to the drawing board.

Musk is also beyond having that influence. He has made an extraordinary amount of money since the election. His fortune has only grown. His wealth has only grown. He's also one of the nation's largest government contractors, particularly with the defense industry. The amount of power and influence that Musk has is extraordinary, and it's only growing. We have seen in recent days Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, other tech industry titans all cozy up to Trump.

Now, a little bit of that you would see at the beginning of any new term. It's certainly not surprising that a business leader would want to curry favor with an incoming president. To this degree is startling. Many of these leaders really spoke out against Trump after January 6th. Now it's not just they're supporting him and donating money, some of them are appearing at the inauguration on the inaugural platform Monday afternoon with Trump himself. There's a coziness there that I think has really alarmed Joe Biden. It's also a stock market that's really driven by seven companies. There's suddenly a real concentration of wealth and power in the hands of very few. That is something that President Biden really wanted to warn the American people about as he stepped off the stage Wednesday.

Brigid Bergen: Jon, I'm interested, you mentioned this tech-industrial complex that the president talked about. He also talked about the rise of misinformation and disinformation and threats to a free press. We've certainly seen many reporters who covered the first Trump administration shift around, yourself included. Congratulations.

Jonathan Lemire: Thank you.

Brigid Bergen: Since your time as the White House bureau chief for POLITICO, what has changed about covering the president and how do some of those forces that you just described become obstacles for doing that very important job?

Jonathan Lemire: Well, first of all, thank you. We have seen a lot of my colleagues shift outlets, but I think the commitment to cover the incoming administration remains clear and consistent. Yes, there is some fatigue. We all remember the breakneck pace of the Trump four years, followed then by a pandemic and an extraordinarily eventful four years under President Biden as well.

I think the change, though far more than that, is just the misinformation and disinformation that surrounds us. The polls to show Americans get their news from their phones far more than more what we consider legacy media outlets. The rise of whether it's foreign or domestic, misinformation campaigns that are on social media. As part of our oligarch conversation, the fact that Twitter, now X, is owned by Elon Musk. When it's time, it feels like it just acts as a megaphone to amplify his views. It certainly no longer can be counted as a reliable news source.

These are all things that make the media's lives more difficult. There's also, of course, significant budget cutbacks in the media industry. You know, I know, we all know, with few exceptions, media companies have been hurting, they've had to lay off people. Certainly it's not a particularly profitable industry for most. I think that's a concern that the evaporation of local news is something that you and I have talked about on a number of occasions.

Lastly, I would just say this, a really striking poll number that came out of the 2024 election where Americans who consider themselves well-informed on current events and civic life overwhelmingly voted for Vice President Harris. Those who received little to no news overwhelmingly broke for Donald Trump. I think Trump and his allies have played upon that.

Brigid Bergen: Listeners, if you're just joining us, I'm Brigid Bergen filling in for Brian Lehrer today. My guest is Jonathan Lemire, co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. We are talking about President Biden's legacy and looking ahead to the incoming Trump administration. I want to go to Sue in Andover, New Jersey. Sue, thanks for calling WNYC.

Sue: Thank you, Brigid. I wanted to talk about Joe Biden. I went to the University of Delaware. I think his legacy goes back 50 years, as you've discussed, but one of the most important and early things that drew my attention to him was he was the sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, and I believe he has saved lives. It wasn't his natural strength, like foreign relations and judiciary. I was kind of surprised by it.

The thing that reminds me about his work and his ability to network within Congress and make government work for us is when you go to the doctor's office and you go to the emergency room and the nurse looks at you and makes sure you're alone and then says, "Do you feel safe at home?" That is a direct tool that we use in health care to help identify women and families who are at risk. Joe Biden was behind that early, early 1994 in his career, and he is just going to be missed.

Brigid Bergen: Sue, thank you so much for that call and that reflection. I want to go to Steve in Manhattan. Steve, thanks for calling.

Steve: Your segment here. I want to share one enduring memory of the Biden administration. It was the first thing he did that I remember, which is the candlelight vigil and ringing of the bells for the victims of COVID. I remember sitting in the dark and listening to that on the radio or wherever it was, and just feeling the ability to mourn, but with the sense of solace and togetherness and the hope that we could find some relief and there'd be some way forward and we'd come out of that really dark time.

I think that all of us together caring for all of us is not going to be something we find in the next four years and it's been really hard to have. That moment was really powerful and I'll always remember it.

Brigid Bergen: Steve, thank you so much for that remembrance. I want to take one more call, Jon, before I get your reactions to some of these, let's go to Kyle in Brooklyn, who I think is more of a critique of the administration. Kyle, you're on WNYC.

Kyle: Hello. Hi, Brigid. I just want to say, as much as I like this administration, I think a lot of progressives like myself were just set up for more expectations, and a lot of things were not met, whether it be student loans or protections for certain minorities, et cetera, et cetera. In July, the Supreme Court gave the executive basically a lot of power to the former president, but also the current president. I'm a little disappointed knowing that Republicans who have no respect for the process will leap at this and use it to their full advantage.

As where Joe, probably concerned about his legacy and respect for the process, the Constitution, and everything, did not utilize it to advance, say, student loan relief and just basically other general policy things that Republicans everywhere on state level, national, et cetera, were fighting him on tooth and nail simply because they had nothing better to do. Anyway, that's my critique. Thank you.

Brigid Bergen: Kyle, thanks for calling. Jon, I'd love to get your reaction to some of that. It's interesting that when people reflect on Biden, it obviously goes beyond just the years that he was in the Oval Office. He has a long career in politics and a lot of policy accomplishments and other things that people might critique because of that. Again, echoes of why the election was not successful in some of what Kyle said there, what's your reaction to some of that?

Jonathan Lemire: First of all, we should note it is not just 4r years in the White House, but 50 years of public service from Joe Biden as senator, vice president, and now president, and certainly a lot of real accomplishments. Certainly, his team is deeply proud of the record they put together in the White House, particularly his first two years. I do think there's a lot of Democrats who are very fond of President Biden, grateful for his service, grateful for his victory in 2020, who now, as he's set to leave public life, are really disappointed in him and angry about the last two years. The signs were there that he should have stepped away sooner, they will argue. They'll point to polls in 2022, even as Democrats had strong midterms, and they undeniably did.

Even then there were polls that suggested that even Democrats who liked Joe Biden thought he was too old to run again. I think there's real frustration about how long it took that decision to be made, in many ways made for him after that debate this summer in Atlanta, I was there for that. Even now, in the final days of the Biden time in office, there's still a lot of anger and stubbornness coming from the White House suggesting that no, no, maybe he could have won, that he should have stayed in.

Including, I'll just say, I thought a very illuminating moment in the one print interview, print exit interview that Biden did with USA Today about a week ago where he again insisted that he could win, but also acknowledged that, well, he wasn't sure that he was going to be able to serve all 4 years in office, taking to the age of 86. It just seemed like there was this disconnect there that he did not understand that those two things are very linked, that, for many Americans, they wouldn't vote for him and therefore he couldn't have won because they also thought he wasn't up for spending four more years in office. I think even that lack of awareness of the situation has really angered and frustrated some Democrats here.

Brigid Bergen: It's a fascinating dissonance. We're going to take more of your reflections of the Biden administration. Your look ahead to the Trump administration after a short break and more with MSNBC's and The Atlantic's Jon Lemire coming up.

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Brigid Bergen: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergen filling in for Brian today. My guest is Jonathan Lemire, co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Jon, before we move on from the speech, I have one other clip that I want to play. It's where Biden called for some additional reforms, ones we are not likely to see in the current administration. It's about 50 seconds. I want to get your reaction after we hear it.

President Biden: We must reform the tax code. Not by giving the biggest tax cuts to billionaires, but by making them begin to pay their fair share. We need to get dark money. That's that hidden funding behind too many campaign contributions. We need to get it out of our politics. We need to enact an 18-year time limit, term limit, time in term for the strongest ethics and the strongest ethics reforms for our Supreme Court.

We need to ban members of Congress from trading stock while they're in the Congress. We need to amend the Constitution to make clear that no president, no president is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office. The president's power is not limit. It's not absolute and shouldn't be.

Brigid Bergen: Jon. Taxes for the wealthy, term limits for Supreme Court justices, limits to presidential power. Who was Biden speaking to in that moment?

Jonathan Lemire: He's speaking sort of to the history books. I believe, because you're right, that little of that has chance of going into effect anytime soon. Perhaps the ban on members of Congress with stock market trades, that there has been some momentum on that in recent years, but that's the smallest measure there of what he was speaking about. This is united decision, Supreme Court decision that allows this unlimited money in our politics has fundamentally reshaped Washington and our political system. It's hard to see now that money coming out of our politics, at least not anytime soon.

The president, when he was in his campaign, gave some voice in 2020 to Supreme Court reforms. His administration didn't really pursue with much in the way of energy until after the Dobbs decision and now, which of course overturned the federal right to abortion. That also seems unlikely. There'll be major reforms, whether that's Supreme Court's term limits or adding seats to the court. I think these here are things that I think the president sincerely believes would make our democracy healthier, would make our democracy function better. The political will and ability to have any of those things happen anytime soon seems very, very unlikely.

Brigid Bergen: Jon, I want to get to some of what you written about recently on the foreign policy front. In the end of that speech, we hear the president reference the Statue of Liberty in the story of an immigrant veteran who used to climb the torch and polish the amber panes, calling on all Americans to be keepers of the flame. It's a really stirring image, but also a reminder of these headwinds the nation is facing. You wrote about that in the context of foreign policy. We know that Trump often says one thing and then says something entirely different. What kind of chaos did experts say we should be bracing for on the foreign policy front?

Jonathan Lemire: The only certainty here is uncertainty. We can start by looking at Trump's first term as a guide, where it was very haphazard at most. Kim Jong Un is a great example where he went from one summer threatening to rain fire and fury down on North Korea, and by the end of his time in office, he and Kim Jong Un, he said, were exchanging love letters. His approach to China waffled repeatedly. He antagonized so many of our allies. He threatened to pull out of NATO and, of course, he sided with Vladimir Putin over the United States' own intelligence agencies.

Now he inherits a tumultuous world. We, of course, have two hot wars going on. Yes, a ceasefire. We appear to be on the doorstep of one, a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. The war in Ukraine still rages, although it does seem because of how frozen that conflict is, moving perhaps towards the negotiating table. Trump's made clear he wants both of these conflicts to end and end soon.

I think there is concern about how he has given praise to autocrats, how he has continued to strain our Democratic alliances. His team will defend his approach, saying, because it's so unpredictable, the madman theory, if you will, it works. That even has played a role here in helping get this ceasefire deal over the finish line, because foreign powers simply don't know what to expect from Trump and they don't want to antagonize him. Others will say that sort of go-it-alone approach will only weaken America across the global stage and leave a power vacuum that bad actors could fill and make the world a more dangerous place.

Brigid Bergen: Certainly, the topic of foreign policy was central to one of the hearings of a Trump nominee this week, Senator Marco Rubio, his pick for Secretary of State, less contentious than many of the other hearings. Rubio, one of the issues he talked about was the state of play between the US And China. What concerns do experts have now about how Trump will approach China?

Jonathan Lemire: I think there's many concerns. In fact, the very timely question, just earlier this morning, Donald Trump spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping. No real specific release from that call just yet, other than Trump putting onto his social that he and Xi are working to make the world a safer place. We'll see what that means. Of course, China has been helping support Russia's war machine in Ukraine. There's a real concern that at some point in the years ahead, it will make a move on Taiwan. With Trump, at least traditionally, being far less interested in American alliances, there is some concern that perhaps Trump would not rise to Taiwan's defense like other American presidents might.

Joe Biden has said that the relationship with China, which he deemed a competition, a rivalry, not a conflict, is the most important of this coming century. I think most foreign policy experts still believe that. This is certainly a pivotal time. As China's economy has weakened, there's concern that Xi Jinping instead will turn to nationalism and perhaps military adventurism.

Brigid Bergen: I want to come back for a moment to the conversation related to the Middle East. The news of that potential ceasefire actually broke during Rubio's hearing. As we mentioned, we're in the early stages of this process. I'm curious because as you wrote about, there are implications for other regions, other parts of the Middle East in this deal, namely Iran. Can you talk a little bit about what experts are watching in that part of the world?

Jonathan Lemire: Well, Trump here, experts agree, and Biden and Trump officials agree, Trump's inheriting a real opportunity here in the Middle East. We have seen the war in Gaza, of course, has raised rage, the horrible plights of the hostages, the horrible humanitarian crisis, and the tens of thousands of civilians killed in Gaza. That began a ripple effect throughout the region where we have seen Hamas weaken, we have seen Hezbollah really been weakened. We have seen the collapse of Syria. Some renewed momentum perhaps of normalization of relations between Israel and other Gulf states, nations like perhaps Saudi Arabia.

Iran is more isolated, weak, and vulnerable than it's been perhaps since the revolution there in 1979. What we don't know, and the Trump team is not telegraphing, to harken back to our previous conversation of their unpredictability, into how they approach Iran. There is some who think this is the moment to try to bring Iran to its knees, to try to push them to rid that regime. Others in the region say no, that Iran has been defanged and perhaps we can sort of live with them as not-so-friendly neighbors. We seem to be on the precipice of a significant change during the Middle East, but no one with any confidence can predict what that change will be.

Brigid Bergen: Jon, just briefly, I want to touch on another global conflict, obviously of great importance. Trump had pledged to end the war between Russia and Ukraine in the first 24 hours of taking office. His tone has shifted. Why is that? What are the divisions that are driving that?

Jonathan Lemire: Well, this is one where, I mean, Donald Trump speaks in hyperbole. No one actually thought that the war could end in 24 hours.

Brigid Bergen: Sure.

Jonathan Lemire: He has since softened that. He is still calling for a quick resolution and swears he can get a negotiation to get it done. There's only one way to read that, is that he's going to insist that Putin be allowed to maintain some of his territorial advances that freeze the conflict in place, redraw Ukraine's borders, perhaps. This is a worry, I mean, certainly all would welcome an end to the violence there that has devastated Ukraine and cost tens of thousands of people's lives on the front. If Putin was able to maintain his conquests in Ukraine far less than he originally hoped, and then able to sort of replenish his military, who's to say he won't make another try or perhaps move on another neighbor.

It would just be sort of rewarding Putin's lack of respect for sovereign borders. Not only could that embolden Putin, perhaps, but there's a thought that it could embolden Xi Jinping or others. Trump has really strained the foundations of the post-World War II globe, including alliances like NATO. I was there in 2018, at the Brussels NATO headquarters, where he nearly stormed out of the alliance, pulled the United States out of it. Since then he's remained skeptical of it and demanded that the countries involved all pay more. It does feel like an inflection point in Europe as well, that we're heading into perhaps a more transactional relationship with Europe and the ramifications remain to be seen.

Brigid Bergen: We are getting more text messages than I could ever read. I'm going to get a couple in there and then another caller. One listener writes, "Joe Biden was an incredibly successful president and a lifelong politician. I love him and I'm furious with him for running again in the first place, especially for not bowing out after the midterms in 2022. His legacy is Donald Trump."

Another listener writes, "Joe Biden was an excellent president, but the worst communicator of any president in my memory, which goes all the way back to Eisenhower. Had he dropped out of running for president after the 2022 midterms, his legacy may have been saved. Instead, we have a very uncertain future."

Now I want to go to Hugh in Manhattan, who has a different view on one of the things that he believes President Biden's legacy also should be remembered for. Hugh, you're on WNYC.

Hugh: Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I think it's also often undersung, his impact on labor and labor rights and the strengthening and bolstering of unions during his tenure. I believe he was the first president to actually join a picket. My facts aren't completely there on whether he's the only one, but I know for at least in my lifetime he was. We saw the growth and the organization of the UAW under him. We saw workers' rights get strengthened and so on under his guidance.

I want to just bring up one more point, which is back to international diplomacy. He really lost so much credit and faith in the world community as well as in his own voting base because he just did not recognize what was going on in Gaza for what it is, which is a genocide. It's going to be a sad stain on what otherwise would have been a very good legacy. I think that's a great point in why the Democrats lost so badly this last general election in that basically it wasn't that Trump gained voters as much as Democratic voters stayed home.

Brigid Bergen: Hugh, thanks so much for that call. Jon, any reaction to both those points that Hugh is raising, both Biden as a labor advocate and supporter and then also his record on the Mid East conflict?

Jonathan Lemire: I think he's right that Biden is, certainly in recent time, the most pro-labor president we've had. I believe, in fact, he was the only one to join a picket line. He, though, and Democrats were then not rewarded with a real surge in votes, though. Certainly, a lot has been made about Donald Trump's inroads with working class, with rank and file union members, particularly white union members, we should be clear to point out, in recent elections.

As for the Middle East, I think that is also correct, that so many Democrats understood needing to support Israel right after the attack, but felt like Biden should have tried to have done more to rein in the response in Gaza, to try to get Netanyahu to slow down. Biden did try at times, maybe not as forcefully as he should have, some would argue, but it also seemed Netanyahu was not particularly willing or interested in listening to him.

To the text messages you read before that call, I do think that is what a lot of Democrats are grappling with now. The idea that had Biden walked away at the midterms, no matter the outcome of the 2024 election, would have been remembered as a good president. He defeated Donald Trump in 2020. He pulled the nation out of the pandemic. Again, the body of work, the legislative record for those first two years is very, very strong and I think we'll be regarded well in history. The decision to stay in even when there was such mounting evidence and polling that Americans just simply thought he was too old for it, that's going to become part of his legacy. Even senior Democrats who are very fond of Joe Biden called this decision selfish and it did not read the moment. I think that unfortunately paving the way, or at least partially paving the way for the return of Donald Trump will be a big part of Biden's legacy now.

Brigid Bergen: Jon, as an alum of Room 9 at City Hall, I can't let you go without getting your reaction to the news that Mayor Adams has made-

Jonathan Lemire: I've been waiting.

Brigid Bergen: -a last-minute pilgrimage to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Of course, Adams facing that five-count corruption indictment with a trial set for April, that's just months before the Democratic mayoral primary. What do you make of it?

Jonathan Lemire: Well, first of all, I'll say I can't even count the number of times in the last year where I have stopped conversations by saying, "Actually, all I want to do is talk about Mayor Adams," once you do that, it never leaves you.

Brigid Bergen: Once and always.

Jonathan Lemire: Once and always. It is yet another extraordinary step, but perhaps not surprising. Adams for months now has cozied up to Trump in a way that we've seen few Democrats do. Adams has been very critical of the Biden administration, okay, over migrants policy, yes, but also in very, very Trumpian language, suggesting that the prosecutions against him were a witch hunt, that they were politically motivated. There's no evidence of that.

Any time he is going to speak with Trump, he is simply not condemned. There are moments where of course he said he disagrees with Trump, but he has not condemned him nearly as strongly as most Democrats have. There is now with Donald Trump, three days away from coming back to power, there's going to be speculation that, yes, I'm sure they're talking about city visits. It's not unusual for the mayor of the nation's largest city to talk to the president of the United States. There are real things to talk about, including migration.

There's going to be speculation that they also talked about some sort of pardon situation, some sort of deal that would alleviate Adams of legal woes. We'll have to find out what comes of this meeting. We will certainly be watching this relationship in the weeks and months ahead. Yet another remarkable chapter for Eric Adams, who is certainly leaving a singular legacy there at City Hall.

Brigid Bergen: Much more to talk about there. My guest has been Jonathan Lemire, co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Jon, thanks so much for joining us.

Jonathan Lemire: A pleasure. Hope to do it again soon.

 

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