Morning Joe - ICE agent shoots and injures man in car with child in NYC

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

October 8, 2026 – 6am:ICE agent shoots, injures man in car with child in NYCTrump approval continues to sink ahead of the midtermsPoll: Trump losing support among his 2024 votersPoll: trump approval rating sinks to 30%Vance, Rubio brush off reporting on Kimberly GuilfoyleDOJ seeking criminal indictment for Cassidy Hutchinson To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

He can't bring himself to condemn it. I did condemn it and you know it. Oh, you did not. You absolutely did not. Don't make stuff up. Talking about making stuff up. I literally condemned this guy. Can't condemn it.

He can't condemn Hamas. He can't condemn the Muslim Brotherhood. He says his home is Egypt. This is all starting my home. We are going to move along. We can continue this conversation in the second half the show. He does own a home in Florida. He took it off the market.

I don't know for why. He just takes it home in the United Arab. We're done. Staying in the Middle East. Congressman Rogers, you pledge. He's Florida's in the United States. Not in Michigan, my guy. I'd like to be part of the debate, too.

So, this is a man who cheered on a group of young men who were mocking a black woman on a college campus with monkey sounds. If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club. His office has been in cahoots with some of the most notorious white supremacists on the country. He himself has amplified neo-Nazi propaganda. He's never apologized for it. All right, a couple of moments from the Georgia and Michigan Senate debates last night where things got very personal with just 25 days left until Election Day. We're going to show you more of the key exchanges, a lot of fireworks.

But we start this morning with a developing story in New York City. New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani is calling for ICE officers to leave the city after an agent shot a Dominican man inside an SUV with a young child inside the vehicle. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch identified the victim as 28-year-old Oscar Belgaal. He was in the Marble Hill neighborhood on the border of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Tish said Belgall was pulling into a parking space when a federal officer in plain clothes approached with a gun drawn, followed by another federal officer who was also not in uniform. Belgall started to pull the car forward and then at least one of the officers fired seven rounds hitting the man below his left ear.

Here's what Mayor Mamdani had to say about the shooting last night. Ice agents surrounded the man's vehicle before opening fire. They wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces. There was no reasonable way to identify them as ice agents. School had just gotten out. The street was crowded with families and children. When ICE agents opened fire, a five-year-old child, a five-year-old child was in the back seat of the car.

Thank God that child. is physically unharmed. We know that ice is rotten to its core. Today's shooting is only further devastating confirmation of what we have long known, which is that ICE operates with impunity, that they sow chaos and terror across our country, that they have killed far more of our neighbors than they could ever have claimed to save. Now, the police commissioner also detailed Belgall's criminal record,

saying he'd been arrested on a robbery. charge in 2023. He later pleaded guilty to grand larceny and was sentenced to probation.

Belgal has also been arrested on a drug sale charge in a case that hasn't yet been resolved. And of course that's what they'll

talk about. But think about this. A lot of anger in the streets of Manhattan last night. Just put

yourself in this scene here. You're in a residential neighborhood. Thursday afternoon. It's around four o'clock.

You've gone to pick up your children from school. They just let school out in Marble Hill. Sidewalks were filled with parents and school children. And you heard Mayor of Mom Donnie talk about ice shooting with impunity,

sowing chaos and terror? Well, as school is let out in New York, that's the time an ice agent unleashed a hail of gun fire into a car that had a five-year-old baby sitting in the back seat. The man in the car was hit in the neck. He survived. The boy, only by the grace of God, was not hurt. Now, DHS will only talk about the man's prior arrest. Okay, great. We know about the man's prior arrest.

They immediately dive into that. Yeah, but what they find. Okay. Check. but they don't talk about how every other law enforcement agency in America would have gone in and gotten that man peacefully out of the car. They don't want to talk about that. No, no. They don't want to talk about why an amped up federal agent

sprayed bullets in the direction of a car on a crowded street in a residential area at school pickup time. You know, police departments across America, we've talked about this nonstop. Everybody knows this to be the case. We've had commissioners come on time and time again telling us, law enforcement agencies like the NYPD have spent years learning a hard lesson that they live by. Don't shoot at moving cars.

Don't you park cars because it rarely stops the danger. It just puts more people in danger. It just puts more people in the law. line of fire. And almost every department limits it and most ban it outright. And the reason is simple. Bullets don't know what children are sitting in the backseat of those cars. This isn't about whether immigration law should be enforced. You know where I stand. That debate, though, will go on. This is about whether enforcing them gives anyone a license to keep gambling with the lives of five-year-old children with Americans, with immigrants, twice in Minneapolis, killing Americans,

killing immigrants in Maine, killing immigrants in Houston, and now shooting into a car in New York City. You know what? They may not know it, but ICE got lucky this time. But luck is not a policy. And luck, Willie, is not what, what, what, those children. children that are let out of school at 4 p.m. in the afternoon and walking home with their parents, that luck is not what they should be able to depend on. This whole idea about immigration, we're going to make the streets safe from gangs. Really? Really, why is it that these communities

that they were supposedly supposed to protect? They're actually scared of these ICE agents who act like thugs who aren't trained, who carry around guns and shoot wildly and depart or move slowly moving cars. It is beyond outrageous. Yeah, I mean, you just laid it out really well, Joe. Imagine you're sitting in a car, whoever you are, and people walk up with masks on and construction vests holding long guns. You might drive away. You might try to get away from those people to protect yourself in the five-year-old child in your backseat, right? Maybe you would if these people didn't identify themselves. And then as you said, and we've said a million times before, the NYPD or the smallest small town police force in America does not shoot into cars to make

arrests. If you can't apprehend somebody with all those agents, even if the guy pulls away, you call ahead to another car, they pull the guy over, you get the tag number, and you make the arrest. The same thing we said in Minneapolis, the same thing we've said in Maine, in Texas, and all over the place. This is just not how it goes. It's not how it works. You don't shoot into a car. Any car, certainly not one with a five-year-old child in the back at four o'clock in the afternoon in Upper Manhattan at school pickup time. The details of this are horrific. The man was here illegally. He had been convicted of grand larceny. All those things are true. But that's one set of facts right there. But if you cannot as an agency arrest a person without force,

firing seven shots into a vehicle, then there is something rotten to the core. And the New York Police Department obviously has distanced itself from this and said, we had nothing to do with this. Obviously, this is not how we apprehend criminals. They are left to do the investigation. And the scene and the eyewitness accounts were hearing from, you know, the child being left in the back seat of the car while the man got out, holding his neck, calling for help as people called 911, people trying to get to the five year old who was crying in the back seat of the car and the ice agents keeping people away. Just another horrific scene in America that is completely avoidable by a group of agents who have

quotas now. They have to meet certain numbers. We're hearing they're going to have 5,000 more of these agents in the street by the end of the year. This is not de-escalating. This actually is ramping up at this point. I mean, there are so many. This is just one of a scroll of stories. that we could be covering throughout the three-hour show, and we wouldn't have enough time. I'm looking into a Maryland man who tried to self-deport, ended up dying in detention. The whole detention center aspect of this story

is horrific in itself and possibly unlawful on a number of levels. Looking into a story out of New Jersey, where, again, during the day, school hours, a man is detained, dragged into an ice vehicle with his children clinging to him. Are we serious? happening across the country.

This is, again, this will be looked back upon as a dark, dark chapter in American history. People will wonder how Republicans in the Senate and the House ever allowed this to happen. This will go alongside Japanese internment camps and far, far worse. Along with Mika Willie and me, we have the co-hosts of our 8 a.m. hour staff writer

at the Atlantic Jonathan Lemire Managing Editor at the Bullwark, Sam Stein, and CEO and co-founder of Axis, Jim Vandaa. You know, Jim, our first story, we were going to be talking about Donald Trump's just shockingly low approval ratings, but we don't really have to explain why, do we? I mean, we got a month to go to the midterms, a month to go to the midterms. And you look what Donald Trump's doing every single day, every day. And it seems like he's working overtime to agitate, to irritate, to piss off the very voters he and Republicans need to win. in November. And here you have, again, a Pew poll. Pretty good standard here. Go back, go back to the last please, because this number is, I've seen this, I've seen this once before in my life. Can you go back to

the last screen, please? 30% approval rating. I saw that in the final days of George W. Bush's presidency, Jim, and the only other time I saw it was following Donald Trump trying to whip up an insurrection where a bunch of cops got the shit beat out of them, four died, and his approval rating dropped at 30 percent then. It's back at 30 percent now right before the election. And every day, every day, it seems like he and Stephen Miller and everybody in that administration are working overtime to bring their numbers down and destroy the Republican majority. Yeah, as you were mentioning, for people who you can dismiss a poll here or there, 30 percent is almost impossible to achieve

just because you have locked in hardcore partisan. So it just shows that even Republicans, not a bunch of them, but certainly non-self-identified mega-Republicans are turning against him. You've seen this in state after state. Part of it's linked to what you were talking about at the top of the show.

I think the American people have now been very clear what they want, right? Like on immigration, you want to lock down the borders, but they also want to treat people humanely. So when you see images in city after city of people getting rough, up, in some cases, getting killed.

When people know that we rushed the training of a lot of people and then said, hey, let's go be hardcore against anybody who looks a certain way or might be suspected of being here illegally, people respond negatively. And you're seeing this. You saw it last night in the debates. We had huge debates in three big states. And the common theme was basically Democrats taking Trump up on his offer. He wanted to make the election about him.

They said, good, let's make it about you. We don't like your war. We don't like your tariffs. We don't like the economy. We don't like ice. We don't like your acolytes who are running against, who happen to be losing in states that you should be winning. We don't talk enough about that.

The fact that you're having to be competitive in Iowa and Kansas that you're going to lose potentially badly in Georgia shows you that that 30% is now starting to be contagious. It's trickling into states that just should not be competitive for Republicans. Republicans privately, you know, you have the same conversations I do. They just had it because they're, just begging Trump to stop doing things that seem to make it hard to end up to well. Somebody needs a spine in the party. All right. So, John,

Louis. Republicans are so. Spineless. They're so upset. Jim brings up a great point. You talk to the Republican. I mean, at this point, a lot of reporters are actually we're not even talking to Democrats anymore because we're going to get the quotes from Republicans. They're the ones who were really angry at Donald Trump right now. Yeah, well, you get what you get and you can't get upset if you don't speak out. So Jonathan Lamere, much of the decline is in Trump's own supporters. The poll that Joe moved from, it found 67% of Trump's 2024 voters approve of his performance down from 75% in July and 83% at the beginning of the year. His approval rating is down particularly, obviously.

I wonder why. Hispanic voters and younger voters. So one, Jonathan Lemire, one out of three, people who voted for Donald Trump. Why would that be? In 2024, 18 months later, don't approve. It is an extraordinary decline in support. It's an extraordinary decline in support, the erosion, the gains he made in 2024. He's given them all back and then some.

And it's in part because, yes, there are economic issues, of course, to tariffs and the like, the right price of gas soaring because of the war in Iran. But a lot of it is what we've seen from these scenes of chaos from these ice agents. And I just want to add a couple quick notes on the shooting last night. Mayor, Mom, Donnie, here in New York City, noting that he tried to get this, the person who was shot, the suspect, the person who was shot was whisked away by ICE agents, and they don't know where he is. They're not sure if he went to the hospital. They're not sure if he was taken to a detention center. He's under ICE custody, despite city efforts to make sure he gets to the hospital and receives the medical treatment he requires.

again, he was shot. This also, this will be a test of mayor, the relationship mayor, Mombani, has tried to build with President Trump. Maldi last night calling for ICE agents to be pushed out of the city entirely. He said he called Trump. Trump hasn't returned his call, at least not yet.

And then, of course, there are the political, there is the political impact of this. I mean, the New York governor's race probably wasn't in play. Governor Hockel has a decent lead. But there were some Republicans who have been suggesting in the last week or two that, hey, look for that. Maybe we have a shot. Yeah, this is going to be a problem for the GOP candidate.

there as well. And Sam Stein is a problem for GOP candidates everywhere because of these scenes of chaos, these scenes of violence. Yes, Americans voted in 2024. They wanted better security at the borders. They wanted the border to be tighter. Fine. They didn't vote for this. This isn't the worst of the worst. And we have seen these scenes here from Minneapolis to Maine to Texas, where ICE agents, a lot of them poorly trained or out of control, including firing into a car when a five-year-old is in the back seat. Yeah, it's obviously a tragedy, but also I think Joe's right. Thank God that the kid wasn't killed.

This is a problem on, I think, a couple different dimensions. I'm just talking about the immigration stuff. So obviously, the violent scenes have been repelling voters and making it difficult for Republicans to justify what's happening with ICE. That's one. Two is on a weirdly personal level, you see a lot of Republicans who actually have loved one. family members deported and who were like, wait a second, this wasn't supposed to be the case. I mean, Paul LePage up in Maine had a relative, I believe, who's deported and came out and said,

oh my God, wait, that wasn't what I expected. And then the third component is on a business level. And this is also happening in certain races like Kansas, for instance, where ICE is going into work sites affecting the cattle ranchers, for instance. And Republicans are like, wait a second, hold on, you're harming our industry by doing this. And I thought this was just supposed to be the bad guys. Now, I will just say this. I do believe it's harming them tremendously at the polls, but they are in a bit of a trap here because if you look at the response on the far, far right, I'm talking about the true MAGA converse here. Every time this happens, they're like, good, more, good, more. This is what I voted for. And so there's a very firm 30%, again,

it's 30% of the base who is just egging this on. And until Trump can say, you know what, I don't need that 30%. I need to broaden my appeal until he can get Stephen Miller to stop directing policy, this will continue. We went through the shooting and killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretty. We went through the killings and shootings in Maine, and they have not backed off at all. They're upping the quotas, and you're seeing more scenes like the one in New York City last night. Yeah, you're so right. There's so much really quickly. Just a side note. We did just get an update that the president of the mayor did speak last night. Also, the man has been taken to the hospital. Regarding what Sam's saying, though, this is, Willie, this is a problem. This is a problem for Donald Trump.

It's a problem for Republicans, not just in New York, not just in a New York governor's race. But when there's a shooting like this, everybody in Minnesota who's looking at a tight Senate race right now in governor's race, what do they do? They think about what happened in Minneapolis. They think about what looked like an execution-style murder, to me, at least. That's what, in my opinion, looked like an execution-style murder of Alex Freddie. They think about a mom being shot through her side window and killed Renee Good. They think about a young man in Susan Collins, Maine. Because in large part, because people like Susan Collins voted to continue to fund ICE shot there.

a young man who loved and respected, a young father, a young husband, dead, shot dead in the streets of Biddleford, Maine. Don't forget Texas. They're thinking about it this morning. They're thinking about a grandfather, a father, a husband, a respected worker, shot and left to bleed out and die at the side of his pickup truck in Houston, Texas. This is what they remember. This is what Americans remember.

Every time this happens, Americans want a secure southern border, but Americans don't want to be part of this legacy of hatred. And this legacy, again, that will rank, it will rank at least, at least as badly in history as our Japanese internment camps during World War II and it will haunt every single person right now in the Trump White House that is pushing this policy and not speaking. out against it for the rest of their lives. And even if it doesn't haunt them morally, which it should, it may haunt them legally and soon when the next president is in. We'll see. And that goes for ICE agents as well, by the way. But I mean, you're right. It shows up in the polling. This is one of those things, and we've talked about this with Pete Hagsith, too, where Stephen Miller is hurting the president of the United States appeal to the American population, to the voters. And he does, President Trump, for all his failings that we talk about every day, has good political instincts about

what's good for him and what's bad. Stephen Miller is bad for him. Pete Hagsit is bad for him, and yet he stays in side by side with these guys and lets these policies roll out that are plummeting, along with, of course, inflation and tariffs and everything else, plummeting his approval numbers. And Americans, even the hardcore supporters of President Trump's immigration policies, they may say, I wanted more than just the criminals and rapists that were promised by President Trump, I actually want all legal immigrants rounded up and sent out of the country. But they didn't vote for walking up in disguise in a mask up to a car at 4 o'clock in the afternoon with a child in the backseat and firing seven shots into a car to apprehend someone who is

here illegally or to do all the things that you just laid out, Joe, in all those cases. This is American violence, public violence and daylight in the street with children around. This is not, it's just not American. And the polls show that Americans agree with that idea. And it's purposeful cruelty. I mean, kids in Danbury, Connecticut coming home from school with no parents there. The list goes on. Still ahead on Morning Joe, the Justice Department is looking to indict Cassidy Hutchinson,

a former White House aide who testified before the January 6th Select Committee years ago, will run through the details of what looks like the administration's latest retribution campaign. Plus, the Trump administration is facing questions over a Wall Street Journal report that U.S. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle pressured a Trump donor to pay her credit card bill. What was like, what? Reportedly took hundreds of thousands of dollars from him. It was a $100,000 credit card bill. We'll show you how the donor described the incident to Sam Stein and fresh off his second debate

against incumbent Senator Susan Collins. We will be joined by Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, Troy Jackson. And as we go to break, I'll look at the Travelers forecast this morning from Acuethers, Bernie Raina. It's going to be messy in Tuscaloosa this weekend. Bernie has been very concerned about that. How's it looking? Mika Hurricane ECS will make landfall tonight near Pensacola, Florida. Worst parts of the impact will be long in the eastern side of the storm, damaging storm surge,

and then lots of rain and severe weather over the weekend. It's the calm before the storm across the southeast. Increasing amounts of rain along the Central Gulf Coast states late today and tonight, increasing clouds in Atlanta. Stays dry in Dallas. Beautiful weather, acuity weather says across the northeast with sunshine, maybe a shower in Chicago. Delays will be coming along the Central Gulf Coast states tonight, but your acuether business travel forecast for today looks good. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, Download the ACUweather app today.

You know, Willie, yesterday was like Christmas Eve for Jonathan O'Mere for much of the day, sending anybody that he knew memes about the New York Yankees. I thought that the Red Sox had a problem with, it is sad. It is sad. And this is the sort of thing I discourage, even when I'm laughing at them all. But I thought, you know, the Red Sox, we have a team that can't hit the ball, can't throw the ball very well in postseason. Can't win games in September or October.

Is that bad? Is that bad? But a lot of that went down to the fact that we have a manager who takes calls after four and one-thirds vending with our best pitchers, and the guy upstairs are going, take him out of that game. We need to take him out of the computer is saying, take him out of the game, instead the feel, baby, the feel.

It's the feel, baby. Like when you're a manager, that's when you know what to do, unless you have people upstairs on computers that are, they come out of that game, I went to MIT, which is, by the way,

it's crazy. You think that I'm making up that voice. That's how all the analytics guys for the Red Sox talk. And so, of course, as you know, we did that. We, and it probably caused us our best pitcher, Sonny Gray,

who's like, wait, Why am I playing for bots? I think I'm going to have a human being manage me next year instead of having Russian bots manage me, which is exactly what the Red Sox have. So I was feeling bad about myself, but man, there was a meltdown in the Bronx yesterday. I could not believe what some of these guys were saying.

And I bring this up because I want to ask you, every Yankee fan I talk to, I'll say the same thing. Well, this is going to just keep happening because they don't fire the two guys they need to fire, which I want to ask you, first of all, I've always liked Boone. I don't know Cashman.

But do you think those two need to be fired? Because, you know, I'll let Lemire say how long. Look at him smart. You've got to rip up. Look at that self-satisfied smirk, Lamere has. Just get to Willie. So it's been a long time since the Yankees won World Series. isn't it time to change who's running that team?

Well, first of all, I don't think about the Red Sox nearly as much as Lamere thinks about the Yankees, which is all day and all night. It's strange, actually, but we'll leave that to the side. Poor thing. Brian Cashman is the architect of the Yankees dynasty. He was a boy wonder, a genius who put it all together. He's earned the right to be where he is. The problem is the construction of the lineup.

The pitching is elite, maybe the best staff in Major League Baseball. They were even great in the playoffs. They can't hit the ball. We couldn't field the ball against the race. That didn't help either. But you can't have a lineup for $300 million where when one guy, albeit one of the best guys to ever play the game, Aaron Judge goes out, that you completely fall apart.

And he was out for most of the season. He, of course, was out for the playoffs, and we couldn't put runs on the board. We did somehow against the Red Sox, but otherwise couldn't. So the lineup, the roster has to be constructed. differently. Not the pitching staff. That's great. You just have to figure out a way to not pay guys $25 million a year to hit $189 or $211 or whatever a lot of those guys are paying. So I don't know. I love Aaron Boone. I don't actually don't think he's the problem. I think you just have to put together a lineup. And they don't have to be all the big ticket guys that you've got to pay all that

money. They got to be the guys who fit best into the lineup. And I think Cashman understands that. So I'm not calling for people to get fired, but they have to definitely change the way they think about constructing the roster because you're right. You're just going to get beaten by teams like the race who are well constructed without high paid players. Right. And, you know, Jonathan, is something that we've noticed going to the playoffs. I'm sort of the I'm so confident going to the playoffs this year was because we had three really good pitchers. I didn't know that Russian bots would stream into Breslow's like computers. computers and floppy disks would be polluted by Russian bots and make him take out our best

pitchers two nights in a row after four and one-thirds inning. But the reason I thought we were going to do well is we had great pitchers. And you look at the Yankees lineup this year, last year, the year before, other than Aaron Judge, as Willie was saying, these guys are hitting 188, 212, 2.14. And I'm just sitting there looking going, well, we crush teams all a year. With batting averages like this, you know, all we have to do is, get our, I swear to God, I said, get our pitchers to the seventh inning, and we're going to win, because we'll bring in, you know, Whitlock, and then we'll bring in Chapman, and we got to win. Of course, we had a manager who had to listen to Russian bots, and so we didn't do that.

But, yeah, it is a real problem. I mean, Willie's right, they have, they have hitters that can't hit the ball. We've got hitters that can't hit the ball in September, and we got our star whose arms fall off every time he does a jack swing. Yeah, before AI wipes out humanity, they took care of the Red Sox playoff chances first. Who would order you what thing to do? Yeah, no, Red Sox deeply, deeply, like, could not hit. They're badly injured.

Look, the Yankees obviously fell apart, too. They couldn't field. I'm delighted to say that there's already some reports that Boone and Cashman will be back next year, so that makes me happy. And also, to be clear, Joe sends as many of these memes as he received. But yeah, I think these are two deeply flawed teams. And there's a reason why their seasons ended when they did. And, you know, look, the Yankees have a couple of young stars, Schlittler included.

The core of that team is older than you think. So there is going to be some retooling there. The Red Sox, our biggest issue is we have no one who can hit a baseball. And, you know, now we have. Is that bad? That is usually bad. But the right teams are advancing in the playoffs. The Brewers and Dodgers are the best teams in the National League all year.

they'll meet in the NLCS. We now will have a Guardian's White Sox decisive game five tomorrow, because Cleveland won again last night. The winner gets the raise. And these are teams. One common thing these teams have, they put the ball in play. They put the ball in play. And for the most part, they field it.

Wait. And those are significant parts of the game. They hit the ball? They hit the ball in September. That's fascinating. Yeah, they don't try that as much. We ought to try that sometime. You know, as you guys know, the Yankees, Red Sox, they're out. And so the baseball season is over, in effect.

It's over. They are still a few teams playing for a consolation prize. The Dodgers, I hear, they have a pretty good team. And they're playing against Jim Van der Heye's Brew crew. By the way, last night, I mean, Cleveland, what a great comeback against the Pope's team. And so they are going to play game five this weekend. It's going to be amazing. But Jim Van der Heye, of course,

We know there's no justice in the world. That's going to be Saturday at 8 p.m. We know there's no justice in the world, and we prove it here when we talk baseball every morning because we have, you know, the Brewers are in central time zone. And, you know, Lemire says, if you're in central time zone, you don't count. I disagree.

I'm a central time zone guy. But the brewers, the brewers have, I think, created an extraordinary team this year with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. They actually look like the first team in a long time that could beat the mighty Dodgers. Talk about the brew crew. Well, there's one person on set today who's going to go to Green Bay, watch the Packers and the Bears, then drive up north and see Ms. Pitch as a Brewers play the Dodgers. That'd be me.

Sam's a great story. I know Sam was doing that. Great story. Great team. Great manager. Great city. You guys are so snobby with your Red Sox and Yankees. We got one third.

the payroll of all you rich people. And what do we do? We win more than anybody else. No responding. True. Okay. Thank you, everybody, very much. Coming up, we'll get to the big moments

from the debates last night in many of the key Senate races. A lot to see there. Can I just say one more thing about baseball? No, you can't. It's scary. How much you know. Too much detail.

Like, you're obsessed. It's not okay. Plus, we'll talk to one with... Ask me who won the World Series any year. Pick it, big a year. Who won the World Series in 1970? 1971, the pirates beat the Orioles. We'll talk to one of the Democrats trying to flip a U.S. House seat in Florida this November.

Retired Army Brigadier General Lila Gregg. This race is getting tied, according to the latest polls. On Morning Joe. Welcome back, live look at Capitol Hill for you this morning. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance were both asked to respond yesterday to a Wall Street Journal report that found Kimberly Gilfoyle asked a Trump donor to send her $100,000 to pay her MX bill last year right before her confirmation as U.S. Ambassador to Greece.

The journal reviewed hundreds of messages, emails, and letters. And in one text, she wrote, quote, Honey, please, I need you to get this done for me today. You could just send it here. Here's how Rubio and Vance responded yesterday. So I'm not going to comment on a story that literally posted a few hours ago. I get the game. I've been in this for a long time.

With an hour, some member of Congress will write you a letter demanding you to answer questions or something we've never seen before. I don't even know if it's true and not true. What I find with these stories is that you never want to comment in a purely abstract way because a lot of times the details really matter and the details in the context inform the reality of the situation. So, of course, I don't like anybody selling access to another government official. certainly a high-level government official, but, you know, I assume you're talking about a specific case, and I can't say with confidence that the case you're talking about

is actually reflective of the way you're describing it. Well, you know, the only thing I would say is this. I mean, listen, if they're out, they're doing things and they hear news about something breaking in the Wall Street Journal. I understand. I mean, to say, well, you know, let me get all the details before I offer a comment. I will say Marco Rubia saying that the game, it's a game. It's not a game. Marco knows this story.

It's the Wall Street Journal. I mean, because he should know the story because it's somebody that works in the State Department. He's in Greece. It's the Wall Street Journal. It's not, you know, some fly by and I think. He's pretending. He doesn't know what the story is. Well, but the deal is he's going.

The game is acting as if the press is playing gotcha. They're not playing gotcha. There's something very serious about somebody who works for him in the State Department. Trading access. Who's asking for 100,000. according to the Wall Street Journal, who, of course, has this story dead to write. So the State Department and the White House have not responded to requests for comment. A lawyer for Gilfoyle said the ambassador disputed the authenticity of the messages obtained by the

Wall Street Journal, but he declined to provide specifics. We will note the Trump donor that Gilfoyle reportedly pressed for money, Eric Dieter's, didn't ultimately make that $100,000 payment to her, but it turns out he did previously pay her $300,000 over the past several years to speak at events in Kentucky. And Sam Stein, you spoke with him yesterday for the bulwark. And here is some of what he told you. Do you feel icky about the fact that you spent $300,000 this way. You were employing her as a quasi-lobys, but there was no disclosure about it.

The money is kind of obscene from a general standpoint, because it's like a million dollars is a lot of money. Like, as you look back in and out, would you do things differently? Do you feel bad about any of it? I feel like a dumb ass.

I would... You guys don't know me. You all would love me. All right? We'd be buddies. I am like the, typical man's man woman's man, all right? I'm happy every man in America, okay?

I feel like a dumbass. My wife is so, gosh, damn, living at me. How did you end up giving them money? Did they say, did they basically say this is how it works and you have to play by these rules? Here's what happened. I put on that Patriot State Freedom Fest. I had a lot of money at that time.

Between 2020 and 2020 and 2020, I had a ton of money. I've put it all back in this case now. but um my and my thinking and my thinking the whole time was i need to get into this trump world and this is why i feel like a dumbass and then they will help me in this durrani battle i mean so that was methodical it was all in the back of my mind the day will come when this will pay off and i was a dumbass wow he really thinks he was a dumb ass doesn't he sam said it about 11 times there just in that clip. So can you explain what he's talking about there, what that he thought quid pro quo was? And also why, Sam, he's decided to go so public now with this MX bill case.

Well, first of all, the green screen was quite hypnotic, I felt. Okay. So Eric Deerz is a donor in Republican circles, also a former congressional candidate and a gubernatorial candidate. he has a case that I guess is very near and dear to him. A doctor allegedly performed unnecessary surgery, spinal surgeries on a number of children who was then fled the country. He wants extradition for that doctor. And then on this aside note, he has some issues with the IRS around audits. So he was looking for help to get the extradition of the doctor and the resolution of some of these audits.

And he ran into Kimberly Gilfoyle at this event in Kentucky and decided to enlist her in what is essentially a quid pro quo. Dieter's is not like a hero here, right? I mean, he was engaging in an act of corruption himself. And I think he sort of recognizes that, even though he is now out there trying to pin it all on Guilfoy for not coming forward and getting it done for him. The reason he's coming forward is because she didn't do anything for him.

He spent a lot of money to get her to Kentucky. He spent a lot of money on Don Jr. for events. He spent a lot of money on Eric Trump. he continued to work with Kimberly Gilfoyle as she pledged to get him on Tucker Carlson's show, as she said she was going to get him in audience with the IRS commissioner. And nothing ever happened. And then this all sort of crusted as Gilfoylell begins nominated to be Ambassador to Greece. She says, hey, I got this credit card debt.

It's $100,000. I need your help paying it off because it would be highly humiliating and maybe even scuttle her nomination prospects if it is exposed that she's in debt. And it's a real liability, right? And then he says, you know what, I've done nothing for me. And so over the past couple months, they basically have had this dance. And what he told me was that last week, he was just fed up. And last week he sent an email to Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, Donald Frum Jr.,

who was Gilfoyle's ex-fiancee, and Gilfoyle. And he said, if you do not get me help on these two issues, I will come forward and give this stuff to the journal. And they never responded to the email. Okay. then. Well, we'll be following that story. Sam Stein, thank you very much. Interesting interview. Of course. MS now, I mean, I appreciate the honesty, I guess. I think he said that. MS now has learned the Department of Justice is looking to indict

Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide who testified before Congress about Trump's actions leading up to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Punchball news was first to report that the DOJ is seeking a federal criminal indictment. of Hutchinson. For charges, she lied to Congress about the events surrounding the attack. A source familiar with the matter tells MS now, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division brought evidence to a federal grand jury earlier this week and is expected to present more evidence and witnesses later this month. In April, when we learned Hutchinson was being investigated, the New York Times reported some DOJ officials had been skeptical from the onset.

about whether there is a viable criminal case to be made against her. Joining us now, investigative reporter for the New York Times, Michael Schmidt. Michael, what more can you add to your reporting here? Look, in normal times, if the Justice Department decided it was going to indict someone, that would mean they were going to be indicted. And they were going to have to go to court and face criminal charges and ultimately go on trial. But in Washington, D.C. and across the country, grand juries have responded very differently to this Justice Department. So in the coming weeks, the prosecutors will have to go before a grand jury and try and make this case.

They saw the case of the so-called suggestious six that blew up in their face when they tried to indict the members of Congress that Trump was mad at over, you know, telling military members that they should follow the law. and in this instance, this will now be a showdown, and it will be a test to see, okay, can the department once again try to harness the vast criminal powers of the Justice Department against an enemy of Trump? And we'll likely find out. Obviously, she'll either get charged or there'll be what's called a no true bill, which is an instance where a grand jury says, you know what, we don't even think there's enough evidence here to indict. And that really turns decades and decades of legal thought on its head, which was this idea that you could indict a ham sandwich. Michael, I think a lot of people don't even know who Cassidy Hutchinson is. Can you just talk about how unusual it is that you would go after her, how low level she was, how in the scheme of things, insignificant she is. The fact that the Justice Department is spending any time on this, really you can only understand it by understanding who she is. So Cassidy Hutchinson has a very, very important role in the arc of the January 6th story and how the public was educated about it, but she's not really essential to any of the criminal cases that were built against Trump.

Cassidy Hutchinson dramatically testified before the January 6th committee. 13 million people watched her testimony. She gave intimate details of what was going on that day, how agitated Trump was, how Trump wanted. his protesters to not have to go through magnetometers that were heading up to Capitol Hill. And even though as the public, we knew an enormous amount about January 6th, it played out on television. Donald Trump was out there publicly talking that day about what he wanted. Her testimony as essentially a junior staffer or a mid-level staffer really brought the country inside the room of what was going on that day and just showed not only what was.

was at stake, but sort of how unhinged Trump was. And it really gave wind to the January 6th committee as it made that argument to the public, hey, there's some really awful stuff that happened this day and you need to take it seriously. Yeah, you know, Jonathan, Jamir, I know you don't know a lot about this because you only wrote the book on January the 6th. But of course, if you could also explain, since you do know so much about this, it's not just what was happening in the room, but some of her most compelling testimony was what she heard was happening in the limo, as Donald Trump was desperate to get up to Capitol Hill with the rioters to try to, again,

I don't know what if he expected to make a grand entrance and walk in and, you know, take the crown from the Pope and put it on his own head or not. But, you know, big problems when the Secret Service said, no, Mr. President, we're not going to Capitol Hill. Talk about that. That would have been a Napoleon-esque move. You're right. President Trump spoke on the ellipse. He had riled up the crowd that was gathered there. He even said that he was going to go to the Capitol.

But when he got to the car, the Secret Service agent said, no, it's not secure. We're not going to let you do that. And Cassidy-Henchester testified that he got very, very upset at that. But he was eventually had to relent. he was taken back to the White House, but he then went to the little office space off of the Oval office there at the dining room and watched on television for hours as to what happened and did not react despite the pleading from even members of his own family and staff. And Michael, real quick, last question to you.

This is, of course, part of the president's broader retribution campaign. A lot of it has been pretty faltering or postponed or hasn't come together. But what's your sense here? How big of a priority is this still for the DOJ to go after trans-political? foes. I will note, it has an Attorney General and an FBI director who seem hell bent on giving Trump whatever he wants. And in this instance, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington is not handling the case, but Harmeet Dillon, who runs the Civil Rights Division, has it. And that's highly unusual and speaks to the nature of the fact that some prosecutors didn't want to

touch this, but others who have shown themselves to be more political have jumped directly in. All right. Investigated Report for the New York Times. Michael Schmidt, thank you very, very much. Jim Van de High of Axis. Thank you as well. Go backers. Go brew crew. How are you feeling about the Brewers? No, no. One word ends. How are you feeling about the Brewers, baby? Mika wants us to talk about this at length.

That's two words. I feel great. I know. Good Lord. Do you really? They think they can beat the Dodgers? I do. I mean, it's tough, obviously. Yeah, we're playing great baseball. Limer was talking about it earlier. We do all the little things right.

And if we keep doing that, we'll win. All right. Still ahead on morning show. Senate candidates faced off across the country. last night, head of the midterms, will show you some of the key moments, including the fiery debate between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul-El-Said in Michigan. You know, I know Mike Rogers. I didn't recognize that guy last night yelling about, you know, Al-Qaeda trying to make it look

like an American was connected with Al-Qaeda. And it was, man. It's different. It was low, man. And you can always tell when somebody's in trouble in a political campaign. And Mike Rogers looked scared last night. Morning Joe will be right back.