Morning Joe - Morning Joe 10/11/22

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

The Morning Joe panel discusses the latest in politics, U.S. and world news and sports

The New York Times did a fake story today, big front page, that J.D. wasn't sure if he wanted my support. J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support. I'm 18 points up. The reality of it is I have been a pain in the rear end to Nancy Pelosi. And if Chuck Schumer is the leader, I will be a pain in the rear end to him, too. I'm for Ohio. I don't kiss anyone's ass like him. Ohio needs an ass kicker, not an ass kisser.

OK, then Ohio Senate nominees Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance square off in their very first debate. By the way, that was Churchillian. That was. I can't remember the exact quote, Katie Kay. But yeah, remember when Churchill said. No, Brittany, dad, ass kicker,

kisser. Churchill said many wonderful things. Those particular phrases, I don't remember. You're the historian, not me. But he was thinking it, I tell you. And then it's like the greatest Churchill quote ever.

So, all the things T. He never said it. So all the things Tocqueville said and all the things that Churchill said, but really didn't say, I'm laying Clayton to them. Okay. Tim Ryan took that one, though. I think he owned it quite well. It is a close race that could determine

the balance of power in Washington. The Democratic nominee, Congressman Ryan, will join us in just a moment. But first, NBC's Steve Kornacki is standing by at the big board to break down where things stand with the midterms less than a month away. We are at go time. The rage is here and I'm a little nervous. He's pissed off. He really is. Look at him. Yep. He's ready. He's trying to hide it. I know. All right. We're also following the latest from Ukraine as Russia escalates attacks on civilian areas.

G7 leaders are set to hold an emergency meeting in just a few moments from now. We'll be following that. We'll tell you what to expect. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Tuesday, October 11th. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have a full table. How weird is this? Is everybody OK? I don't know. I'm ready to go back into my corner. and the host of way too early White House Bear Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. So, Willie, let me ask you a question. Uh-oh. I don't like the look on your face, but go ahead.

No, I'm being serious here. 602. It's too much. It's 602. Thank you. So Donald Trump, he brings up a great point. Donald Trump emasculated J.D. Vance in front of his crowd. Yeah.

Right? Mocked him. True that. Truth social. And it is so foreign to me. He might as well have been speaking green. I'm just asking you, have you ever had a job where you would allow some or want a job where you would allow somebody to say? Because I will tell you.

Oh, no. Oh, I guess I should say that. You're going to strike that question. So, Willie, how are the Yankees going to do that? I'm just saying if a guy purposely tries to emasculate you, and I'm just speaking as a guy here. I hope I'm not offending people. I really, actually, I say that, but I don't care. If a guy emasculates, tries to emasculate you, and you sit there and take it.

I think this applies to women, too. I wouldn't take it. So you can talk about guys and gals. Well, I know, but I can talk about guys because I'm a guy. It's a guy thing. And there's another thing, too. All of these guys that talk about a war on masculinity, I've given my very unpopular opinion, which is if you're a real man, you don't know there's a war on masculinity, right?

You're like, oh, that's very nice. Thank you. Yes. I feel terrible about myself. You don't write entire books about that. But fascinating interviews. And I swear to God, I'm getting to a point here. How fascinating that the very men in the Republican Party talk about a war on masculinity.

Put their own manhood in a lockbox for Donald Trump and allow Donald Trump to insult them in front of their families, their friends, their communities, insult their wives, insult them constantly. And they they just go along for the ride. I find this absolutely fascinating. And J.D. Vance's little butters. He's the same. And Tim Ryan put that into stark relief last night. And it's something we've talked about this for a couple of years now. How do a lot of these guys and we're talking about mostly men, these senators, how do they look in the mirror every night with the things they do and the things they allow to pass and the insults that are thrown at them? How do they talk to their kids about what they do for a living and why Donald Trump tells them what to do,

leads them around by the nose and says, do this or else? I don't know. Just as a question of pride, personal pride, forget the politics and everything else. How do you allow it to happen, whether you're Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio in the 2016 campaign or moving forward to J.D. Vance now? And the answer is power. They want to keep their jobs. That's it. And they'll do whatever they have to do to keep their jobs. But that's powerless power.

If you have to, like, just kind of cower down and literally let linger the insults that Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have taken from Donald Trump, and you never, ever rectify what has happened, you never say that was wrong, you never perhaps push back a little bit, that is about as weak as it gets. Because it can be taken away. It changes like that. It can be, as we know, as he lived in constant fear.

You have to contort yourself into satisfying him and getting over all the things that you said about your wife or your dad. It's a bully. You never know what he's going to do next. It's a bully on the playground. I remember when Mika was insulted, Jonathan, it took her a really long time when we were on this.

Y'all were on this. I was downstairs. Because sometimes I go to the locker room five or ten minutes early because I've got to do the orphanage. Exactly. So I'm down there and Donald Trump does that bleeding badly from a facelift thing.

And you guys were holding me back. And everybody was horrified. And they go, oh, how's poor Mika going to respond? She walks down and she sees the Cheerios box and the back of it says, made for little hands. She takes a picture, puts up the tweet. There's the answer. You know, he's a short fingered Bulgarian.

I've heard that about. Yeah, but but you look at and I don't want to name any of their names because they've already been emasculated. But you just look at these guys, these senators who completely. I'll just say it, Rush Lombaugh said it in a bit more stark way, but I've gotten older, so I won't repeat him. They put their manhood in a blind trust. And they let him insult their families and insult their kids. And so it's just it's unbelievable. Well, if Ted Cruz's father hadn't helped assassinate JFK, this wouldn't have been an issue for him. But this is it is maintains it's still happening.

Donald Trump has been out of power now for nearly two years, and the Republicans are still refusing to stand up for him. And Ryan last night actually not only called out Vance for that, but drew a stark contrast because he went on record and said, I don't think Joe Biden should run again. That he says not he said, I've been consistent on this. I don't believe Joe Biden should run again. He says not. He said, I've been consistent on this. I don't believe President Biden's run again. I think it's time for a new generation of leaders. And he singled out Schumer, Pelosi, Biden as being of an older generation. And it was time for new ones. So he was able to say, look, I won't be as beholden to these Democratic leaders as Vance and his ilk are to Trump. And Mara, he did say that a new generation of Democratic leaders, instead of people in their late 70s and early 80s, he wants them to be at least 75 or younger. By the way, it's a lot to ask.

What happened? How did the Democratic Party get so old? So old. It's incredible. You know, it's actually, it's a great question. Probably a longer conversation. But one reason is that

there's a lot of races that are just not that competitive. And the Democratic Party locally does a really good job, unfortunately, at making it very difficult to have competition in local seats. I mean, you actually saw that several years ago with Ocasio-Cortez. I mean, she had run for dog catcher and then finally just got fed up with the party apparatus that wouldn't let her on a ballot and just challenged the big kahuna and took that seat. So you don't have a lot of competition. Willie, could you take us to the rage? Yes, please. You're my honor. I promise I won't talk anymore. Steve Kornacki, sometimes just the red face. He doesn't give off rage, it's bubbling beneath the surface, though, I assure you.

It makes it even scarier, right? Like Shutter Island or whatever. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's quite a poll at 6 o'clock in the morning. Let's go over to Steve Kornacki. Midterm elections, four weeks away now. He's over at the big board.

Steve, we can talk Ohio, big picture. What are you looking at today? Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry if you're looking for me to scream or shout or knock this thing over. We can we can see if it works and we could take you through where some numbers and indicators stand here. Twenty eight days here, four weeks ago until Election Day. So we always talk about the midterm election. The president's job approval rating typically has been most closely associated with the results here. And you see Biden where he's at right now this morning,

an average of a 42.9% approval rating. Let's take every recent president at this point, 28 days out from their first midterm. What were their average approval ratings? You can see where that 42.9 fits in. It's right there, a tick less than Trump. Couple points under Obama, basically identical to Bill Clinton back

in 1994. One exception here was George W. Bush. This is about a year after 9-11 when his popularity was still stratospheric. And you see what this has translated into in terms of House seats gained and lost in midterms. Again, Biden is right in that range. Trump lost the House. Obama lost the House. Clinton lost the House in 94. Giant gains for the opposition party. Again, Bush the only exception. So on this metric, Joe Biden is right in that extreme danger zone for a president and that is the generic ballot. And he asked folks in the poll, who would you want to vote for for Congress this year, the Democrat, the Republicans? Who would you want to control in Congress? And on this issue, on this trend, I should say the Republicans do have the edge right now. Zero point nine points, 46.1 to 45.2 on average. There has been a slight shift in the Republicans direction in the last two or three weeks. Democrats actually had a lead on this back in September. So Republicans have moved ahead, but it's only by 0.9. And what you're looking at here, 18, 14, 10, 06, these are the four most recent midterm wave

elections where the opposition party made tremendous gains in the midterms. This is what the generic ballot looked like at this point in those races. And again, you can see four years ago at this time, you could see that Democratic wave coming. 2010, you could see the Republican wave coming. 2006, the Democratic wave. What Republicans, I think, are hoping for is that maybe 2014, you know, it was only two points in the generic ballot at this point. This was Barack Obama's second midterm election. Republicans ended up taking the Senate, getting to their highest level in the House since 1928. It was kind of a late breaking wave in 2014. And clearly, I think that's what Republicans are hoping for now, because when you look at Biden's approval rating, you would expect historically to see a bigger gap

here in the generic ballot. That gap really hasn't materialized yet. Again, the battleground, the big potential battleground for the Senate. You see here the party that currently holds each one of these seats. It's a 50-50 Senate. The key, obviously, is Republicans. They need a net gain from this map of one seat to give them control of the Senate. Let's take a look at these seats and what the polling average looks like in all of them right now. So the Democratic-held seats that are in the battleground or the potential battleground, this is key. I think one of them you see in Nevada here, the Republican leads in the polling. That's Adam Laxalt leading Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic incumbent. If Republican, if that holds, if that ends up being the result here, that for Republicans would represent a net gain of one seat from the Democratic seats.

But right now, what Democrats have to counter that is they lead in one Republican held seat. That's Pennsylvania, where John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, leads Memedaz by three point seven in the polling average. And if that held and everything else on this list held, Democrats would erase that net gain of one seat because they'd get one of their own and things would stay exactly the same. So, again, the name of the game for Republicans is they need to end up with a net gain of a seat here. Democrats have their best shot right now on paper in Pennsylvania. Republicans have their best shot in Nevada. But there's a lot of variables here. We'll see the fallout in Georgia. We've yet to see much polling since that latest Herschel Walker controversy erupted. You're just showing in Ohio there. Tim Ryan has been running

very close to Vance. And the other wild card here in this is some of these states, Ohio, Wisconsin in particular, the polls since 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, you've seen some significant misses. The polls have overstated Democratic support in Wisconsin and Ohio in particular in recent elections. That could also end up being a factor. But obviously, we wouldn't know that till election night. Well, thank you for pointing that out because it's so hard to look at the polls. I'm wondering, Steve, to look at the polls and understand. I think some of us knew they were really off in 2020 when said Joe Biden was going

to win by 98 points in Wisconsin, 47 in Pennsylvania. I mean, they just so I'm just curious as we were trying to figure out who who's going to actually get out there and vote. What do you look at? And I also a month ago, everybody was saying Dobbs is going to change the outcome of this election. It's something that actually I thought would happen. It would be significant, especially after Kansas. You look at one issue poll after another issue poll. It doesn't seem to be at the top of the debate. And yet, I must say, and I'm equating nothing here. I'm just saying as somebody that's observed politics my entire life, I've never heard. And I'm usually around Republicans or former Republicans or conservatives.

I've never heard people talk more in restaurants or on a dinner table out, out, out and about, about any issue since 9-11, as they have about Dobbs and the crazy legislation Republicans have been passing on the state level. It's wherever you go. I don't care what a woman's ideology is. They're bringing it up. Lifelong Republicans are bringing it. And I'm just curious. And their husbands and their dads. And their husbands and dads. And you go down the list.

So I'm just curious how right now, what's your thought about how that's going to play into this election, how that's going to change the people that actually get out and vote this time. Yeah, I think it did have a bit of an energizing effect on Democratic voters when that decision came down this summer, because when I was showing you that generic ballot, we can go back to that screen. In fact, you know, when that Dobbs decision came down, I think it was June 24th, Republicans led on the generic ballot by several points. By the end, you could actually just look at the trend line on this. And there was an uptick in Democratic support over the course of the summer that led the Democrats around Labor Day into September actually leading on the generic ballot. And I think there were probably a couple of factors that were involved there. But I do think the Dobbs decision was one of them. That said, when you look at our most recent NBC poll here

and you ask folks, what is the single most important issue that's going to drive your vote in this year's midterm elections? A combined 34 percent cite either jobs in the economy or inflation. And you combine those two. That's the biggest single number you're going to get. And on that question, the Republicans have a nearly 30 point advantage over the Democrats. It's eight percent in our most recent poll who cite abortion as the number one issue in their midterm vote. Democrats have a comparable advantage within that eight percent over Democrats. But thirty four versus eight, that's economy and inflation. That's where abortion is in between. By the way, you have this this question, this topic that we haven't polled in the past,

but that pops up now threats to democracy that actually clocks in at 20 percent. That breaks heavily Democratic. And I think that gets to the Democrats. Other besides abortion, the other thing Democrats are counting on in this election is the unusual prominence of an unusually polarizing former president in a midterm after that president's left office. The Donald Trump factor. Republicans are hoping that there's a certain voter out there that maybe isn't wild about Biden, isn't wild about the Democrats, isn't nuts about how the last two years went, but ultimately is going to look at that Republican Party, still see Donald Trump and not want to vote for it.

I saw a conservative on Twitter yesterday who's not a fan of Donald Trump say, and I thought summed it up perfectly, when people are talking about Donald Trump, Democrats are winning. When people are talking about Joe Biden, Republicans are winning. That's right. You notice that the Democrats aren't talking about Joe Biden as a motivating factor. They're talking about abortion. They're talking about democracy. Right. And so, I mean, that poll is very interesting to me. Steve kind of raised this issue. But yes, it's true. You only have what was it? A small percentage was eight percent or 13 percent who are focused on abortion. But that if you add that to the people who are concerned about democracy, I actually would put those together because I think women understand women are smart. They understand that the the attempt to control our bodies is a threat to democracy. You know, our fathers understand that voters understand that our friends, our husbands, our boyfriends, they understand that.

So it's actually quite related. And I think also the concerns about gun control would fall into that same bucket. So when you look at a Democratic voter, you are looking at somebody who is extremely concerned about human, where that vote is going to be volatile because, you know, they're looking at the prices of the gas pump and it's understandable. But then you have other voters. And I think that's heavily Democratic base who's really concerned about about democracy. And that includes women's rights. Yeah. Katie, I always I always quote quote you something you said on the show in 2009 when everybody Newsweek had a headline that said we are all socialists now after the huge bailouts. And I always quote you saying you Americans should make such terrible socialists. You don't define yourself by your work. You're horrible socialists.

And I was thinking about that quote. We Americans also we're not good regardless of our ideology, of you taking away a right, a constitutional right that we've had for half a century. It's just again, even to people who are pro-life, it is very jarring. Yeah. I actually also think Americans would make terrible fascists, too. I just don't think you're on either side of that spectrum. I agree. By the way, I hit this talk with Mika a couple of weeks ago. She's like, oh, civil war.

Everybody said that. I said, honey, do you think in Florida, a state I know very well, and in Texas, do you think they're going to give up Friday night lights for like an armed rebellion? No. It's like I just would be terrible. It's a long debate. It's a very long debate we have right now. But I'm just saying you're right.

I think I think the center does hold here, despite how crazy it is getting on. Let's just tactfully call it the fascist right. Yeah, I mean, the extremes have got more extreme and they've both got louder and they've been given this wonderful weapon of social media that allows them to get louder. But if you add up those things that Mara spoke about, democracy, abortion and gun rights, you get to 41 percent. If you look at the economy, people who say the economy is the biggest thing, you're at 41 percent. So, I mean, the question about these midterms is, does history hold or is there something quantifiably different this time around? And is that quantifiably different thing, the presence of Donald Trump in the campaign and the issue of abortion? And if the Dobbs ruling had come down now, I suspect abortion would have

been a bigger issue in the midterm elections than it was. You know, we get used to things. There is so much news going on in the world. We are inundated with different stories all of the time. There are big pressing issues and gas prices every week are creeping up. I've just come back from California and they've gone up like 20 percent in the last week. That's a problem for Democrats heading into the midterms. All right. NBC, Steve Kornacki in playoff form already. Steve, great to see you. We'll talk to you again soon. So we just talked about Republican J.D. Vance, Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan going at it head to head last night in their first debate ahead of the midterms coming up here closely.

They clashed on everything from the attack on the Capitol to abortion rights, where Vance was questioned about what he has called his 100 percent pro-life position. I've always believed in reasonable exceptions. This is a misrepresentation of my view, but let's hear it from me, not from Congressman Ryan. I absolutely think the 10-year-old girl, the case that we've, of course, heard a lot about, an incredibly tragic situation.

I mean, look, I've got a nine-year-old baby girl at home. I cannot imagine what that's like for the girl, for her family. God forbid something like that would happen. I have said repeatedly on the record that I think that that girl should be able to get an abortion if she and her family so choose to do so. I am not going to take a back seat to J.D. Vance on law enforcement or anything else for that matter. The fact that on January 6th, we had 140 cops, United States Capitol Police, get injured during the insurrection when they tried

to overthrow the government. Beat them upside the head with lead pipes, spray them with pepper spray. The one video we saw, the cop got jammed into the door. J.D. Vance raised money for the legal defense fund of the insurrectionists. This is the kind of extremism, J.D., that we wholly reject. You have video posts. Don't even try to deny it. We got your Twitter posts and everything else. Everybody's seen it.

He said, help these guys with their legal defense fund. Now, can you imagine one guy saying out of one side of his mouth he's pro-cop and out of the other side of his mouth he's raising money for the insurrectionists who are beating up the Capitol Police? The one guy he tried to raise money for got four years in prison. This is ridiculous. I'm not taking a backseat to you. I brought $500 million back to fund police in Ohio.

I think the problem is when you have guys like J.D. Vance who can't stand up to anybody, like just a few weeks ago in Youngstown on the stage, Donald Trump said to J.D. Vance, all you do is kiss my ass to get my support. He said that. That's bad because that means J.D. Vance is going to do whatever he wants. Mitch McConnell's given him 40 million. He's going to do what he wants. And Peter Thiel gave him 15 million. He's going to do what he wants. And here's the thing that's most troubling about this lack of courage is that after Trump took J.D. Vance's dignity from him on the stage in Youngstown, J.D. Vance got back up on stage and said, start shaking his hand, take a picture saying, hey, aren't we having a great time here tonight?

I don't know anybody I grew up with. I don't know anybody I went to high school with that would allow somebody to take their dignity like that and then get back up on stage. We need leaders who have courage to take on their own party. And I've proven that. And he was called an ass kisser by the former president. I mean, is there anything he's done that's concerned me? Why don't we let the criminal investigations actually play out? Because I was alive during 2016 to 2020. And what I saw was consistently rumors that finally Donald Trump was going to be indicted, that he was going to be accused of something legitimately criminal. Of course, Tim Ryan, despite his commercials, voted to impeach him twice. I have seen nothing that suggests the president of the United States should be thrown in prison.

And most importantly here, if you're going to make accusations like this, the attorney general of the United States, Merrick Garland, one of the most political actors in the history of American justice. If you want to go after a former president, a likely a possible future president, or at least a future political candidate. You've got to tell the American people why we have really corrupt leadership at at the Department of Justice. And that's a problem. Well, that was something. Ohio's Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Congressman Tim Ryan joins us now. Good morning, Congressman. I think congratulations are in order. That was a really strong performance. I'm curious, though, how you felt it went last night, but also how the campaign

is doing. Is the party giving you the support you need? And what do you think it will take to get it over the line in this final month? Yeah, thanks, Mika. Morning, everybody. Yeah, it was a fun night. I mean, you know, there wasn't a crowd there or anything. It was just in the studio. So it was a little bit, you know, muted. But, you know, I think we got our points across. We wanted to make sure we held his feet to the fire. We just see so many candidates who get away with some of the crap that they've been saying for the last however many months or years, really. And, you know, we held him account last night. And by all accounts, we won the debate. And, you know, got a lot of people wanting to help and support the campaign now. You know, we're taking them on. As I said, Mitch McConnell gave him 40 million bucks.

Peter Thiel gave him 15. You know, we're out here slogging. It's David versus Goliath. But I think we got a really, really good shot to win this thing. Well, let me ask you, have the Democrats given you 40 million dollars? They have not. I didn't see that come in. Why not? This is an extraordinarily important race. I'm just curious. Why are they letting Republicans and Peter Till buy this seat? Where are the Democrats? Why aren't the Democrats putting money into this race? Because the way I look at it, Nevada is going sideways. Pennsylvania is getting really close. It's really tight. I mean, if you look at trend lines, Dr. Oz, one second, he's in a grocery store talking about crudité 20 points down, and now it's too close to call. Ohio is a critically important race because you have, and I'm just going to say this on the air, by the way, J.D., we invite you to come on our show. People have told me Republican donors have told me he's the worst candidate they've ever been in touch with. The worst candidate they've ever held fundraisers

for the rudest candidate they've ever seen. He doesn't like campaigning. They tell me he's lazy and he doesn't look like he likes being out there. I don't bring that up to insult Butters. I have the greatest of respect for that. Butters has gotten out there and I don't bring that up to insult Butters. I have the greatest of respect for that Butters has gotten out there and campaigned. And by the way, J.D., you're welcome on this show. But I'm I'm serious. I'm underlining this point for national Democrats. Why does Mitch McConnell want to win this seat more than national Democrats? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's a good question. I've, as you know, and I've been on your show for years now, I've always expressed the level of frustration with the National Democratic Party, the disconnected working class people. And here you have a blue

collar candidate who's, you know, in the last two public polls, we've been up three points. We're traveling the whole state. We have Rob Portman's former chief of staff helping us with a huge Republicans for Ryan effort. Lots of two-time Trump voters that are supporting us. And, you know, yet we still can't get the kind of the air support that J.D. Vance is getting. But look, make no mistake, we just had a huge fundraising haul. We raised $17 million. The national and state donor base are being very, very helpful.

Low-dollar donors. I get little notes, Joe, probably like you did when you ran. Someone that's on Social Security sent you a $10 check because that's all they can give. That's what's fueling this campaign. That's why it's exciting. I kind of like it a little bit, you know, that we're David versus Goliath, because we're going to shock the world. And we are asking people to go to Tim for OH.com and chip in some money because that's what's going to make it fun. You know, no one's saying we could win. They've been saying it for a year and a half. We're grinding it out. And we're going to knock

this guy off because he's a complete fraud, as we proved last night. We'll prove it again next week at the debate. And we're going to do the final quarter of play here. Willie, I did get notes. I did get those little notes. But they were like, get off my lawn. Stop littering our neighborhood with your yard signs. They were everywhere.

Beat it, Scarborough. That's how you got their votes. You just annoyed them into submission. Said, I will stop. I'll get out of your neighborhood if you vote for me. Deal. Congressman Ryan, by the way, said to NBC, it's like pulling teeth with the National Democrats. They got a guy running around with a tinfoil hat on and we're out here fighting on our own. He's raising money. He's help from the party. So, Congressman, you made the point yesterday, last night at the debate,

when you were talking about the ass kisser line that Donald Trump used to talk about J.D. Vance, that you had broken with Joe Biden, that you had broken with Nancy Pelosi and others. You, in fact, said last night that Joe Biden shouldn't run for president. We can talk about that. Republicans last night pointed to the fact that despite what you say and you have come out in publicly and said those things, you vote with Nancy Pelosi and you vote with Joe Biden almost 100 percent of the time. So what do you say to that? Well, I say, look, look at what we voted for. You know, the CHIPS Act has helped us land a hundred billion dollar investment from Intel to manufacture semiconductors in Ohio, 7000 union construction jobs to build it, 5,000 union construction jobs

for the next 10 years. Look at the infrastructure bill, bipartisan. I was able, working with Sherrod Brown and others, to get significant Buy American language into that bill. It's going to create 600,000 jobs in Ohio and get this Brent Spence Bridge we've been trying to get built in Cincinnati for a long time. You look at the Inflation Reduction Act, it goes all in on natural gas, which is going to be huge for Ohio. But it also, we saw a stream of investments happen after we passed that. General Motors is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into their transmission facility in Toledo because they're going all in on electric vehicles because they know the government now is significantly behind them. The old Lordstown plant that I've talked about my whole career was empty.

They just announced, Foxconn bought it. They just announced a fourth vehicle. There's a truck, two cars, and a tractor that are going to be manufactured in the old General Motors Lordstown plant. We're talking about thousands of jobs. So what are we voting for here is the question. So of course, I'm going to support the things that are good from Ohio. But on the student loan piece, on on some of the other initiatives, I'm taking on the administration. I think that's what Ohio wants. All right, Congressman, we we're now the lightning round. We've got a couple other questions for you, but we don't have a couple of minutes. Well, we do. Go, Marka. Yeah, thanks, Congressman.

You know, a lot of Democratic voters are perpetually frustrated seeing Republicans win races that Democrats should have been able to win. So do you think this is connected to this generational change? I'm still stuck on this fact that the party isn't helping your campaign in the way they could be. Is that part of the reason for this need for generational change that you were talking about last night? Help us understand that. Yeah, I don't understand it, but I think the focus on the economic issues here in places like Ohio are really critically important. We lost that brand. When I grew up, it used to be Democrats for the working people and Republicans were for the rich people. And that's when we held Congress

and we had significant support. So I think getting back on this economic message, building stuff, taking on China, manufacturing these clean tech jobs of the future, I think that's where we need to be. If we hit that sweet spot, along with Roe v. Wade and a couple of these other things, I think we can put together another majority. So, Congressman, we were just talking about what issues are animating voters this fall. In a recent poll in your state in Ohio, say 15 percent threats to democracy, 13 percent abortion, but a whopping 41 percent the economy. So by far the biggest issue there. What are you hearing day to day on the trail of people talking about the economy? And have you seen a flood of new voters that Democrats thought would come this fall in the wake of the Supreme Court decision? We are seeing a lot of energy around Roe v. Wade, but I kind of feel that

a lot of that's baked in already, like including like Republican pro-choice women or your dads or brothers who think this is the largest governmental overreach in the history of our lifetime, as Joe mentioned earlier, taking rights away. Like people know about that. Yeah, you've got to communicate a little bit with them. But most people are still living paycheck to paycheck. And if you're talking about issues other than their pocketbook, you look disconnected. And I think that's why we're doing so well here is because we have the economic argument, but we're also talking about freedom and personal liberty of women. You can talk about both. It's a false choice. Economic freedom and personal freedom are still freedom. And so running under the banner of freedom, America, you know, that this is a great place and we got to rebuild the American middle, shouldn't be hard to do. And so, again, now we're taking on everybody here.

We don't have the national support that we want. We're asking people to help us. We've got 350,000 low-dollar donors. Ninety-five percent of our contributions are under $100. So we're asking people to go to TimForOH.com and chip in a few bucks for us so we can keep this thing going and shock the world. All right, Ohio's Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Congressman Tim Ryan, thank you very much for being on the show this morning.

We appreciate it. It is amazing that he's not getting more national support because of the candidate he is and the campaign he's running. He's made Ohio competitive. A lot of people think it couldn't be. He's done it. Maybe they'll turn on the gas in these last few weeks, but they'll regret it if they lose.

You know, sometimes ideology just doesn't matter. You take somebody like Sherry Brown. Sherry Brown is a progressive. And he runs away with win after win in a very red state. They love him. If Fetterman wins, it'll be the same thing with Pennsylvania. Swing state where a progressive wins. But Democrats

desperately need somebody like Tim Ryan in the United States Senate. They need a guy from Youngstown. A white, working class guy from Youngstown. With experience. With experience.

With experience who's been there, it would work. And who's under 79 years of age. I do wonder, I follow up with Maura, is this a generational thing? Why aren't they giving this guy money? They're up. He's up three points in the latest Siena poll. He's up in other polls. It's a tight race. I know that they're a little worried about media polls in Ohio. OK, well, if you're worried about it, then take care of it. Give him more money. So he's up 10

points in the poll and maybe only wins by three or four. It's ridiculous. There there's a bit of a financial crunch, but certainly Democrats, it's more of a skepticism about Ohio. Let's all recall that in 2020, polls showed Biden was running neck and neck with Trump to the point where I believe two days before election day, they sent Biden to Ohio. Most valuable part of a candidate's agenda is his time right there in the final closing stretch of campaign he went he lost by eight and i think the democrats for what pennsylvania used to be to republicans that white whale they could never get ohio has become that for democrats the counter to that is of

course donald trump eventually got pennsylvania and so therefore why aren't the democrats playing harder in ohio especially with as you say fears growing in a number of other battlegrounds and by the way mika also important to know sherrod brown yeah is united states senator in ohio no no it's it's it's it was really incredible also to watch last night so he did a great job in the bait maybe they'll take note time now for some of the other stories making headlines this morning the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee is calling on the White House to cut ties with Saudi Arabia over the country's decision to scale back oil production. In a statement yesterday, New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez argued that last week's decision from the Saudi led OPEC plus group will allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to finance the war in Ukraine. Last week, OPEC Plus announced its largest cuts in oil production since the start of the pandemic, citing instability in the global economy.

This move will allow Russia, the world's second largest oil exporter, to raise the prices of its own fuel. Well, yeah, I wish life were that easy. I wish we could just tell China, you're doing horrible things. We're not going to deal with you anymore. But if we're going to end the war in Russia, Ukraine, that's going to happen through China. If we're going to make progress on climate change, China has to be a partner in that as reprehensible as same thing with the Saudis. I wish we could just say we're really offended by everything that you do.

It's I mean, I guess he's smarter than I am. He's chairman of the committee, right? But I don't think most diplomats would say life's that easy. Yeah. How many times have we said we need to reevaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia? 9-11, Jamal Khashoggi, this move by OPEC plus. It never quite seems to happen because we are reliant on the Saudis on the world stage. Meanwhile, in Iran, there's something extraordinary happening.

Workers at a petrochemical complex there went on strike yesterday, marking the fourth straight week of anti-government protests. It's the first time the demonstrations have spread to Iran's oil and gas industry since the unrest began last month. Before that, it was mostly small businesses that had closed their doors in support of the movement. Unclear whether the strike will affect oil production, the demonstrations began when a 22-year-old woman died after being held by the country's morality police for allegedly violating its strict Islamic dress code. Yeah, Cadi, it's fascinating. Every day what's happening in Iran, and it's fascinating because it's not led by anybody. It's an uprising of women and girls, middle school girls, professional women.

I mean, unbelievably brave, these young women and teenagers and students, too, across the campuses. And actually, what's also been kind of heartening to see is the degree to which young male students have been standing alongside them. You look at these protests and the images from these protests, and it's hard to get inside there to talk to people. And we've had people on the borders talking to them. But we've had people across generations coming in and out of Iran who are saying something has to change. And we are on the side of the students. There has to be a liberalization of the rules following this. Whether they can keep out there long enough, the degree to which they're being repressed as well is extraordinary. They are clamping down hard on them. They could clamp down a lot harder. And that's a question is why have they not clamped down a lot harder? Why are they letting this run so long?

All right. Still ahead on Morning Joe. You know, first, Donald Trump said it was all planted at Mar-a-Lago. Now he's saying it's mine. Give it back to me. Now, a key player in the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago sits down with federal investigators, possibly in an effort not to take the fall for the discovery of classified documents at the country club. It always gets fun, John, when lawyers start pointing. It's me. No, it's me. A bad sign when your lawyers are fighting. We'll explain.

When your lawyer has to hire a lawyer, it's usually John. Not good. Plus, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville goes silent after a racist rant this weekend during a Trump rally. Also had a major voting bloc gets behind Herschel Walker after allegations he paid for an abortion. The group that's rallying around him might surprise you. Probably not. Probably not. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Yes. It's a beautiful live picture of Washington with the sun coming up at 646 in the morning. Let's take a look at some of the morning papers.

And we begin in Alabama, where the Montgomery Advertiser reports Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville is staying quiet amid criticism of a racist remark he made at a Trump rally the other day. Former Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat who Tuberville defeated in 2020, offered his criticism, saying, quote, this racist rant has to be called out. Tuberville's office did not respond to two requests for comment. So how do you think? I've heard people don't follow Auburn football or Alabama football. The majority of kids that play are black kids, usually from rural Alabama. They come there and they go there because Tommy Tuberville goes into their parents' homes,

makes the sale and says, I'm going to take care of your kid. That's right. You can bring him to me. Yeah. Take care of him. That's why he's a coach. Saban, great in the living rooms. All these, Bear Bryant used to be.

Tuberville. A role model. What if you're one of those kids now and you're looking at this guy who sounded like George Wallace and Lester Maddox? Yeah, I was just looking for one of his best players he'd ever played from. Carlos Dansby was a linebacker, was asked about it. And he said, really? Is that the way he thought about all of us all of this time?

So to your point, yeah, he goes in living rooms and recruits all these kids who give their lives to him. They give four years to him. You can't imagine what they're thinking. But what about he's running? You know, he's the senator for all of Alabama. He's not Donald Trump's no right hand senator, or maybe he is. But what are the citizens? What are all the people, black and white, anybody thinking about the man? What are all the people, black and white? Anybody thinking about the man who is one of two people who represents them on the national level, if that's who he is and what he believes? Well, we'll be following that and seeing when he finally emerges and what he says about it. Trump lawyer Christina Bob, a key player in the seized documents

from Mar-a-Lago, recently met with federal investigators. According to NBC News, Bob highlighted two other lawyers who were involved in the case. He pointed at them. Yeah. On June 3rd, Bob signed a letter attesting that all the classified material and former President Trump's possession had been returned to the government. She signed her name to that. Court documents show that the FBI subsequently determined that the signed statement was untrue and executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, which turned up 103 additional records with classification markings that were not returned, as Bob had attested they were.

According to sources, Bob told investigators she did not draft that signed statement, but was told to sign it by Evan Corcoran. It was Evan! Yeah, it was me. It was Evan! It was Evan. I was just doing my job. You know, Jonathan O'Meara. I didn't sign my name to anything.

Here's the thing. These people have seen, I'm dead serious here, they've seen Donald Trump lie, get away with lying when Trump knew he was lying. They knew he was lying. The country knew he was lying. Oh, they can get away with that. I mean, anybody who's ever been an attorney, though, should understand that what works outside of the courtroom does not work inside of the courtroom. The FBI doesn't play. Federal judges don't play.

And I'm just I'm really surprised at the number of lawyers who didn't understand that. It's just and they're getting in trouble now. Yeah, we saw even in 2020, even the Rudy Giuliani, who was Trump's lawyer at the time, would say one thing outside the courthouse, another inside, because he knew that he could run afoul of the court if he were to lie inside the room. But these lawyers seem to have missed that memo. It also points to the lack of, shall we say, A-team attorneys that the president has had, been able to, former president

has been able to hire to represent him in this case. They have continually, and they've either taken the word of Trump or taken the word of people around Trump. It seems like a lot of them have not done the verification themselves, or they feel like, well, if Trump can get away with it, I can too. And that's not going to necessarily be the case as his legal, his circle is getting shrinking even further because some of these lawyers are running into their own legal trouble. Okay. Joining us now, state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, Dave Ehrenberg and NBC News senior national political reporter, Mark Caputo. David, just want to check this one off the list. I mean, can an attorney, especially for a former president in a case like this, just say, oh, I don't, I didn't know what I was signing. Someone told me to. Is that

does that pass? Good morning, Mika. Yeah, I think that's going to keep her from being charged by DOJ. And she met with DOJ out of self-preservation because she knows she's in prosecutors crosshairs for possible obstruction of justice. 18 U.S.C. 1519, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Here's a tip for my fellow lawyers, Mika. Don't sign letters that the letter writer won't sign himself. Exactly. Seems like good advice. Okay. And Willie, I just say, Willie, if you're a lawyer, you understand if I'm signing something to the DOJ, I can tell you, you get everybody around. OK, this is OK. You have to really be lacking in some basic

understanding of the world you're living in if you just sign a document. And if you think that's what happened. And to know who you are to Donald Trump, which is a fall guy or a fall woman or a buffer between him and justice. And Mark, that's what you're writing about. We should get into a little bit about who Christina Bob is. John was just talking about not necessarily the A-team in terms of election lawyers. Who is she? And was she effectively saying, look, I'm not taking the fall for this. This was somebody else's idea.

Well, one of the people we spoke to had said that she shouldn't be the fall guy or the fall gal. To Dave's point earlier about don't sign something that someone else drafts and won't sign themselves. From what our sources tell us and looking at the federal court records, Evan Corcoran was not only in charge of drafting this document, but also doing the, quote unquote, due diligence in doing the search, or pardon me, the diligent search that he claimed was performed to turn over classified documents. So on June 3rd, the feds show up at Mar-a-Lago. They're like, hey, you got any more classified records from this subpoena that we sent you on May 11th?

Evan Corcoran's like, sure do, and hands them a packet of 38 of them. And the feds are also given this letter, this attestation our sources who had spoken to Christina Bob about her testimony, is that she appeared to know something was up because Evan Corcoran claimed he did the diligent search and drafted the letter that he didn't sign. And so she insisted and had to insist twice that I have a disclaimer in there saying, based on the information that has been provided to me, a diligent search has been performed and you have all the records. Obviously, that wound up not being true. So there's evidence that she knew something was going on. And as some folks have responded to me on Twitter after we broke the story and NBC is MAGA not only stands for Make America Great Again, but in this context, it stands for Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.

She has a lawyer. I mean, right? She has a lawyer. So, Christina Bobb is a lawyer, John Lauro, out of Tampa, very good lawyer. He's a friend of Pam Bond. He's the former attorney general in the state of Florida. Evan Corcoran, according to our sources here, is going to need to, quote, lawyer up. And right now, he's still of counsel on this case. But as folks have pointed out, you can't represent a client and be a material witness against him. And that's just a matter of time. Boris Epstein, who is sort of the overall legal advisor who helped assemble this team at the time of what we're talking about in June of this year, he had his phone recently seized and had a subpoena served on him. So if you have that happen, you have to have a lawyer. We don't know who else has been kind of roped up in this.

But as was said earlier, Christina Bob went there willingly and completely, gave her testimony freely and willingly, because she doesn't want to be the fall guy or fall gal, according to the people who know her. So, I mean, I guess there is somebody in the Trump White House who doesn't have a lawyer at the moment, but I haven't come across one very recently. So, Dave, can you zoom us out to 10,000 feet, particularly in the context of Donald Trump holding rallies at which he's admitting that he had these documents, saying that they were his documents anyway and that they belonged to him. So he's kind of taking ownership of the fact that they were there at Mar-a-Lago. What kind of legal jeopardy is he in right now with what we understand and what's out there in the public knowledge?

Yeah, Katty, Trump keeps digging himself a deeper hole with every public statement he makes. He was saying that, yeah, he possessed these documents, but he has every right to do so. That goes to the crucial elements of knowledge and intent. And, you know, the prosecutors are listening. And even if he mentally declassified the documents through Jedi mind tricks, it's still unlawful removal and retention of documents and possible obstruction. And after all these months, we still haven't heard a coherent defense for Trump's actions. And unlike January 6th, where it's a bit murky whether there's a direct tie between Trump and the violence on that day, at least for prosecutors, there is a direct line between Trump and the documents and the alleged crimes here. And this is why I expect Trump to be indicted after the midterm elections.

All right. State attorney for Palm Beach County, Dave Ehrenberg. Thank you. Also, NBC's Mark Caputo, as always. Thanks for being with us. So, Mara, what are you working on this week, this month, this year? What are you focused on? Well, you know, there's an election afoot.

So, no, we're going to be looking very on? Well, you know, there's an election afoot. So, no, we're going to be looking very closely, obviously, at the congressional races, especially in New York. And of course, we also have a governor's race here in New York that I'm going to be. Is that going to be close? Close. You know, it's funny. Probably not. And yet, you know, I think that the Republicans are gaining a lot of ground in New York. And I think that, you know, from the folks I talk to very closely, that the governor has been very conservative. People around her are very nervous. So it may be closer than we think. Coming up, Vladimir Putin retaliates following an attack on a Russian bridge killing innocent Ukrainians in major cities.

We'll have the latest on the war and get expert analysis from a decorated U.S. combat veteran and intelligence officer. That is straight ahead on Morning Joe.