Morning Joe - Morning Joe 11/10/22

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

The Morning Joe panel continues its discussion on the 2022 midterm elections.

As of now, there's still some races that are still too close to call, but according to the media, there was one clear loser. It's a bad, bad night for Donald Trump. Very bad night for Donald Trump. It is a bad night for Trump. What I can tell you is the biggest loser tonight is Donald Trump. Donald Trump was the biggest loser of the night. He's the biggest loser in American politics. Donald Trump's not gonna like this.

Trump was so mad he ran upstairs and slammed the door of his tanning bed. Ketchup everywhere. Spray. I think it's spray rather than a bed. It's not safe, the tanning bed. We love the tanning bed. It's not a tanning bed.

Some? We did. We used to. Sometimes the goggles. And you'd see the goggles and you'd be like, come on, you're not even trying anymore. I don't understand it. All right, I think it's safe to say it was a bad night for Donald Trump. Some of his own allies urging him to delay that expected reelection announcement.

One former top adviser even suggesting Trump should stay away from Georgia altogether as the Senate runoff election plays out into December. Yeah. Yeah. Stay away from Georgia, Donald. they don't want you there um uh so so you know willie when when we first started the show people are like well why is why are we getting joe he doesn't know anything about anything well but i know a couple things one i knew a lot about you know i could look up on the platform you know during the communist era and i could i could i was a criminologist also very good that's right you were vaticanologist right you could always tell i'd be like tell everybody it's I was a criminologist. Also very good Vaticanologist, right? You could always tell. I'd be like, it's the white smoke.

You knew that with Cardinal Montefiore, right? You had your... I always had a restaurant. I was eating. And then I, yeah, exactly. So they go, Joe, what does it mean? He'd say, no, that's gray. That's not white.

No, no, he said, that's gray. It's not white. It's the same thing. So I'm walking down, going down to the orphanage. I'm figuring we've done enough election work. That's all right. Right. I'm going back past Fox News.

Yeah. Right on sixth. Poof. White smoke. Uh-oh. Yeah. Uh-oh. And then I went to News Corp headquarters.

Walked past. It's not the same thing, you know. They're merging back together. Huge, billowing puff of white smoke over News Corp. Trumpy dumpty. You got to go back to the early summer of 2015 to see this. Now, the Wall Street Journal opinion page has been tough on Trump consistently. But the Post now, brutal.

The Daily News also. And he's just not looking well there. I don't know. They made some photo editing. They might use some photo editing. But Trump's big fail also. He is going to say that. fail also is going to say that he is going to go insane. He's going to go insane. He's going to blame his wife again. By the way, pro tip, pro tip to guys. Oh, don't things are going bad. Don't blame your wife. But anyway, let's get back to the New York Post.

This pretty big. I mean, listen, Murdoch is never liked. Donald Trump never liked him, put up with him. He knew that it was good business. But, man, they have turned on him and they're looking, you know, Vaticanologists tell me they're looking actually at Yunkin. They like Yunkin a lot. And they'll deal with DeSantis. But they want this guy gone. Yeah.

The last couple of days have shown that. And we've seen cracks, too, in the narrative at Fox News as well online, but also now on the air spilling over, say, how did this happen? I mean, they were dumbstruck by the results of the election Tuesday night. And it all leads back to Donald Trump. There's no avoiding that. You know, I mean, you can make the case that they had bad candidates. Well, a lot of those bad candidates were there because of Donald Trump. So all roads lead back to him. And they believe if Tuesday night was any indication of where things headed, they just can't afford even politically to have him still pulling the strings on the party. Well, and Gene, why are we talking

about this off the top? We're talking about it, first of all, because this drives so much Republican thinking. It sure does. I know inside and outside of my family. And that impacts the base. But also, you see the conservatives that are attacking. And we're going to be talking about this soon. People who call themselves conservatives that aren't actually conservative. Trumpists. And you realize we may be moving toward not the end, not the beginning of the end.

But as Churchill said, the beginning, maybe, maybe, maybe. I mean, we've called that end of the beginning thing before. I know I have. But no, this really seems different because it's so concrete. They were so sure they were just going to sweep to these big majorities in, you know, in the House and the Senate. And it was going to be, you know, happy days are here again, or the Republican version of that. And it absolutely ain't that, you know, they they so, you know, they got to look at Trump, right, who was responsible for a lot of this. They also need to look at those exit polls.

They need to look at those issues that voters were concerned about. They were concerned about democracy. They were concerned about abortion. And yes, they were concerned about inflation. But it wasn't all inflation. There are other things. And they are on the wrong side of these issues. Most of the issues.

I just want to say really quickly, there are people on Twitter going, oh, everybody got it wrong. Everybody said this. Everybody said that. I must say what we said all along was, first of all, everything we say is wrong. But that was the prelude to say we don't know what's going to happen. But we did keep saying and I'm not bringing this up to say we were right. I'm bringing this up to say it's shocking what some of these polling aggregate places were doing. They made it look like a wave election by putting in a bunch of B.S. Republican polls, putting in a bunch of B.S. slanted polls. And we kept saying and the people who really kept saying this doesn't feel like a normal wave year. It could be. It should be. You look at inflation. You look at what people

think. It should be a wave year. It never felt like one to us here. Yeah, should was the operative word there by historical trends. We bored people to death with the number, but the plus 28 is the average in the last 90 years of what the out party picks up in the House. It's going to be a small handful. They were talking, you know, three nights ago, the Republicans were saying,

is it going to be 30? Is it going to be 40? Is it going to be 50 seats? How historic is it going to be? Inflation, as you mentioned, a president, Joe Biden, that they thought was weak. They thought they had a crime going for them,

immigration crisis, everything that you fold into that number, and it did not materialize. And that can't all just be terrible candidates. They had a handful of those for sure, but there was something else going on. And again, on the expectations games, you would have, again, some very well-known polling sites. They would have these BS polls, and they were saying to the very end that Washington State was going to be competitive. Colorado was going to be competitive, that New Hampshire was going the Republicans way. It was just all a huge, massive lie. And I hope that and some some of these

people are very well known. We're being very angry that anybody would question that this might be a split down the middle. Absolutely. And, you know, what I kept wondering was if anybody who's been paying attention to U.S. politics since like 2015, why would you think that any election is that predictable? It never is. Because the unexpected always happens. That's our politics these days. The country is polarized in a way that it hasn't been in my lifetime. I'm not saying it's the most polarized ever, but it hasn't been like this. Dobbs was an earthquake.

It just seemed to me like an inherently unpredictable situation. And I never bought into these polls to saying that, oh, well, you know, wave, wave, wave. It just didn't seem right. And Willie, you had these things that we we had worried might be too abstract for voters. What? What? Not Dobbs. One of them was January the 6th. And we kept saying this. Obviously, we're horrified by this. Is this going to be brought home to people? And I really do believe Paul Pelosi being attacked. Yes.

By a guy quoting MAGA. And it wasn't just the attack, because as we know, there are people who who are are are crazy on both extremes. And both extremes, obviously very capable of violence. Just ask Steve Scalise. But the reaction of Republicans, the reaction of Donald Trump, the mocking, the ridicule, the hatred, it actually, they drew a straight line from January 6th, which may have been a little too abstract. Maybe we're a couple of years for some voters. They brought it all the way to Election Day. The Republicans, the hatred, the animosity, all the things that we were talking about and asking, why are they being this way?

Show a little grace. They actually pulled January 6th and the threat of political violence coming from the MAGA right, pulled it right to election day and they paid for it. Very specifically, I wonder how many votes that smirk is costing Carrie Lake right now. Yeah. You know, the way she reacts. Keeping it close. And by the way, some of those people have learned nothing. The jokes about the attack on Paul Pelosi continue. We're going to show that in just a minute.

But let's go to the big board. NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornacki is there. Steve, good morning again. So when we left you yesterday, we had questions about Georgia. We have an answer on that. We're going to be here for a little bit longer on that. But out West now, those two states that everything hinges on, what are you seeing? Yeah, so Georgia is going to be a runoff.

And you've got Nevada. You've got Arizona. You've got Republicans needing to take one of those two to make that Georgia runoff on December 6th. The thing that would determine Senate control. If Democrats go two for two in Nevada and Arizona, Democrats have the Senate and the Georgia six runoff is just for determining what the exact majority size will be. So let's take you through both of those states. And we got some votes last night and overnight in both first in Arizona. And you see Mark Kelly,

his lead over Blake Masters in the Senate race statewide is ninety five thousand. That's up a little bit more than ten thousand from where it was at the start of the evening last night. The major development in Arizona was Pima County, where Tucson is. They released a batch of early votes, heavily Democratic. That boosted Kelly's lead. And we got sixty thousand plus votes at Maricopa County, biggest county in the state. And again, Kelly was winning those votes by about 12 points over Masters. So it allowed him to pad his lead. What is left to come in Arizona? Two types of votes, basically, here.

You got about 60,000 left of the same type that was counted last night. Those are votes that were dropped off or that arrived over the weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday. OK, you got about 60,000 left that fit that category. Democrats are hoping that category, like we saw last night, will continue to help Kelly pad this lead and move it up over 100,000 statewide. What will come after that is, I think what could decide all this, 275,000 votes that were dropped off by people in person on Election Day. And there's a whole sort of debate here about are these going to be Democratic friendly? Are these going to be Republican friendly? How much so? Because this was the type of vote, the vote that was dropped off in person on Election Day in 2020

that allowed Donald Trump late in election week to nearly erase all of the advantage that Joe Biden had built up in Arizona. He brought like 100,000 vote Biden lead down to 9700 votes with this batch of votes. So Democrats are hoping that, you know, with what's left from the weekend, Kelly can build the kind of pad where he could withstand a big Republican vote here. We're not sure it's going to be a big Republican vote, by the way, because in 2018 in the Senate race, it's actually the same type of vote that allowed Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat, to win the Senate race. So we've seen this type of vote kind of behave differently in the past two elections. So it's a mystery. We think tonight we're hoping in Maricopa County is suggesting we're going to get a lot of this and we're going to get our first readout of this 275,000 votes. So the question of how Republican, how Democratic that vote is, we may really start to get an answer tonight sometime

around eight, nine o'clock. And I think that's going to go a long way to determining this Senate race here. But Kelly does have a pad, can add to that pad potentially, and could potentially withstand a big Republican number here. The candidate who may not be in that situation in Arizona, it's the difference between the Senate race and the governor's race, a 95,000 vote advantage for Mark Kelly. But in the governor's race, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is running about 80,000 votes behind Kelly. She is only 13,000 votes ahead of Carrie Lake. She is in a situation where if that late vote there, that

275,000 I was talking about, is Republican, not even overwhelmingly Republican, there are more than enough votes there for Carrie Lake to overtake Katie Hobbs. So there's the potential there for a split result in Arizona. And Hobbs really needs that 275,000, not just to not be Republican, but to be Democratic. So that's going to be key in Arizona. In Nevada, you see the governor's race right here where Joe Lombardo, the Republicans leading Steve Sisolak, the Democratic incumbent. In Nevada, you see the governor's race right here where Joe Lombardo, the Republicans leading Steve Sisolak, the Democratic incumbent. In the Senate race, it's a little bit closer to the Republicans leading. And again, what happened last night is we got updates from the two key

counties in Nevada, and it basically shaved about 7000 votes off of Adam Laxalt's statewide lead. It was 22000 and change coming into last night. Now this morning, it sits just under 16,000 votes. Laxalt over Cortez Masto. What happened was we got a batch of about 15,000 mail votes that were released in Clark County, Las Vegas, biggest in the state. Cortez Masto was winning them better than two to one. And we got a bash up in Reno of close to 20,000 votes. And again, they favored Cortez Masto. They allowed her to cut that laxalt lead by a few thousand more. So what is left to come in Nevada? There are about 40,000 mail votes left now in Washoe County, where Reno is. And there are about 70,000 mail ballots left in Clark County.

The vast majority of those mail ballots that are left in Clark County are a very particular type. They are votes that were dropped off in ballot boxes on Election Day. And so just like I was saying in Arizona, it's a bit of a question. What type of vote is that? The voter who takes the mail-in ballot, brings it in person to a drop box on election day. Is that more Democratic? Is that more Republican? You hear arguments from both parties about why it's going to favor them. We don't know, but the vast majority is from that pool. If Cortez Masto continues to win the outstanding vote in Clark at the rate we see her winning it at last night, there are more than enough votes for her to overtake Laxalt.

If that same day drop off that I'm talking about in Clark looks different, looks very different than what we saw last night, there is an opportunity certainly for Laxalt to hold off Cortez Masto. Hey, Steve, can I ask you really quickly, tell us again, what kind of votes helped her shave 7,000 votes off of Laxalt's lead? Yeah, they were mail-in ballots that had been received prior to Election Day, combined with drop-off boxes that were received prior to Election Day. So prior to Election Day, again, in 20, broke for Democrats. But the ones that we're going to be counting moving forward is same day, right? All of them same day?

Yeah. And it's just what there's a difference because it's like what they counted in Clark the other day. The number of ballots dropped off at these drop off locations, like on the Monday, even before the election, is something like 12, 13,000. Then you get to Election Day itself and the number dropped off is 56,000. And so there's just is there a difference between the type of person, the type of voter politically who's doing it even a day earlier as opposed to doing it the day of the election? And I raise the question because the trend we've seen in the last two elections is people who wait until election day to vote, certainly in person and maybe by drop box, tend to be much more Republican than the folks who vote early, even just the weekend before the election. And that's what we've seen. We saw that certainly in Arizona. The first results out of

Arizona on election night had Mark Kelly 20 points ahead in the Senate race. What were those? Those were the early votes. And then when we woke up the morning after the election, it was a single digit race. Why was it a single digit race? Because they counted the same day vote overnight and the same day vote was heavily Republican. So then you enter into that kind of hybrid situation there where it's like it's same day, but it's dropped off mail ballots in person. What is that? Is that a Republican? Does it fit that same day pattern? It's still a mail ballot. Does it fit that Democratic pattern? That's the question in Arizona. And really, in a way, that's the question in Nevada as well. And as you say, a lot of that is guesswork. At this point, we're just going to have to wait. And we heard from election officials yesterday in Nevada trying to be transparent, saying we're

going to have a briefing every day to update you where we are to avoid sort of some of these conspiracy theories of festering. But they also said, Steve, it may be a while, potentially eight, nine days until we know a winner in Nevada. Yeah. I mean, for the official full process to play out in Nevada, which includes ballot curing, which includes provision, yes, you're talking into the middle of next week. But like I said, I think the key is once they start releasing from that big batch I'm talking about in Clark County of 56,000 votes that were dropped off in ballot boxes on Election Day, and once in Arizona they start releasing from that two hundred seventy five

thousand in Maricopa that was dropped off on Election Day. We will get a set. We'll get an answer when we start seeing the results. We have to see the full results from that two hundred seventy five thousand to answer that question. Is this an overwhelmingly Republican batch? Because in Arizona, that's what Blake Masters hopes depend on. He needs an overwhelmingly Republican batch of votes that were dropped off same day. If we start getting those and we're seeing 50-50, the numbers just aren't going to be there for Masters. If we start getting those and it's two to one Republican, then it's, you know, Democrats are going to be sweating it out and saying, does Kelly have a big enough lead? And if it's two to one Republican, then Carrie Lake is going to be feeling good in the governor's race about overtaking Katie Hobbs because the margin there is just so much thinner.

But I think there's a potential tonight in Maricopa to get not all, but to get our first look at what that 200 said, a chunk of that 275,000. And I think to answer the question I'm posing this morning, I remember Arizona in 2020. It was it was never as easy as two to one. It was always always Trump 60, Biden 40. Then the next batch would be Trump 58, Biden 40. And you would go through it. And it was just it was mad. Worth it wasn't the same day vote, Steve, a slightly more Democratic this year than it usually is? Or did I get that wrong? The election day vote in some places in Arizona, though. I mean, you can you can see the effect that it has. Again, it was the early vote was a smaller share. And so it was the Kelly lead coming out of Maricopa County from that initial batch of early votes on election night was much larger, actually, than it had typically been and than it had been in 2020.

So the Republicans shaved a lot off of that with the same day vote. So we're still seeing, I think, a very similar split in Arizona and in Nevada to what we saw in 2020 with that X factor of how you determine how you you know interpret that that same day drop and finally Steve really quickly Katy Perry fans want to know who won the mayor's race in LA still too close to call yes you did that you talk about something that's going to take some time to count yeah there's a lot of votes left to count there uh I don't think we have it in the board immediately available but yeah that's real close yeah and it also that that one took that might have set the record for the longest primary to count this year oh wow okay talk about katie perry because she posted

a picture of herself voting for the republican in that race saying because la is a quote hot mess something needs to change he's not the only one saying that nbc steve kornacki Thanks so much as always, Steve. Great to see you. You got it. Also with us this morning, former White House communications director under President Obama, Jennifer Palmieri. She's co-host of Showtime's The Circus, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kaye, and U.S. national editor at the Financial Times, Ed Luce. So, Jen, we were looking at this New York Post headline, which you kindly texted to me this morning at 5 a.m. But this is this is we're talking about the possible end of the beginning of the end of Donald Trump. But you were in Dayton on Monday night. You saw his speech. I had been saying this year that he reminded me of Fat Elvis in 77, like, like, yeah, singing, singing the old

hits, but just not really feeling it, sweating a whole lot more than he did even a few years before. Tell me, how was how was Trump? How was Trump in Dayton? Does he match up with what we're hearing from Republicans, sort of the decline and fall of this failed reality TV host? Yeah, it's like it was like I nicely refer to as late stage Elvis is like is what it's what it felt like. And I would say there was a huge crowd, okay, like a huge crowd. So not to diminish that there was maybe 7,000 to 10,000 people there. They weirdly make you wait forever. People needed to be in by three. He arrives at 830. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, but there's an atmosphere to it. You know, it's like an outing. It's like tailgating. It's like a fun thing. And

people, you know, people like that and they wanted to hear him do the greatest hits, right's what they were there to hear they're here they were here that's what they were you know they were there to hear the big hits and when he got on stage it was two solid hours of grievance it was just all the things that he was treated badly about people who had dissed him uh letitia james and the fbi raiding mar-a-Lago before he got on stage. They showed a very well produced video about evil Letitia James and the FBI raid. Crowd did not react at all. When he started speaking, the crowd sat down. The crowd started to leave. It was nothing about them. Right. And they used to feel like a kinship. Right. You could feel a real kinship in these rallies between Trump and the people that he that they believed he was that he was fighting for them. And it was just like air out of the balloon.

Now, he also showed a PowerPoint of all of how he was doing so much better in a 2024 matchup than the other Republicans that may run. He had a little PowerPoint presentation for us on that part. Never, never, never go to the PowerPoint presentation. In the middle of a two-hour rally. People have been there for five hours. So the support is still kind of there, but, like, it was, you know, people tried to get a build the wall chant going. They couldn't get anything going.

It was a little sad. You know, Willie, pro tip. I mean, you know, when they were putting together Elvis's 68 comeback special in Vegas, they had, Elvis had wanted to do a PowerPoint comparison. Is it Beatles versus the king of rock and roll. And fortunately, the producers, a couple of very young, hip guys said, listen, let's just not. He had the clicker in his hand. Remember Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock? Remember the good old days? Exactly. Shut him through some old photographs.

They didn't let him do it. You know, Katty, we showed the cover of the New York Post, but you leaf through it. It's just page after page inside. Toxic Trump is GOP ballot poison. Turn the page. It's a red wave. Goodbye, Don. This is from The New York Post. So we've been talking since yesterday morning about Republicans now just saying out loud that it's time to move on. They may wish for that to happen, but it's not so easy, is it? He still has a firm grip on so many people in the party. Yeah. I mean, you've even got Fox News, right,

tweeting out that DeSantis is the next leader of the Republican Party. So, I mean, Rupert Murdoch, at least, is making his position very clear. And you've got a lot of other Republicans doing the same. I was just texting overnight with somebody who's close to Trump, you know, asking, is anyone actually telling him directly that he has to delay at least until the Georgia runoff? And he texted back saying everyone is telling him to delay. But then he also added, but he never listens to us really anyway.

So he could do what he wants to do. I mean, Trump has now got himself into this position where he's all but told us the date, the time, the minute of his announcement. And the question is, does his pride let him find some way to row back from that? And then eventually, does his pride find some find some way to row back from that? And then eventually, does his pride find some way to let him row back from an announcement at all, particularly if the Republicans don't win in the Senate? But you know what? Jen was just pointing out, made me think, he can't stop doing this because this is his therapy. I mean, he goes out and he does these

rallies. These rallies are no longer about the people he's talking to. They're all about himself. And I don't see how he gives that up. How does he give up going out and, you know, talking about all his grievances, even if it's only to a crowd of 7000 who are getting a little bored after three hours of waiting? But so I think the chance of him not running is still pretty slim. You know, despite what The New York Post is saying, despite what The New York Post is saying, Ed Luce, you wrote about how Biden is still Trump's worst political nightmare. Explain. Well, I mean, he keeps surprising us. Somebody

pointed out that nobody hates Biden. I mean, they might be disappointed in inflation. They might think he's suffering from being older than many other president. But nobody hates Biden. Huge chunks of America, I'd say the majority, not just hate Trump, but see him as Mitch McConnell once described him as a despicable human being. And I think a large section of the Republican Party, a lot of them, you know, senior and elected and fairly spineless, feel the same way as Mitch McConnell and are now finding their spines growing back. I disagree that we're at the end of the beginning. I think we're in the middle of the end here. And from now on, we're going to see an increasingly, I hate to say it, entertaining degeneration of Trump.

I don't think you I don't think you hate to say it, entertaining degeneration of Trump as he tries to. I don't think you I don't think you hate to say that. I don't think all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put Trump back together again. As the poem goes, I don't see what puts him back together again. He's got Murdoch against him. Ron DeSantis is is is living rent-free inside his head. If he postpones next week, it'll look like weakness. If he goes ahead, it's going to be a farce.

I don't see how – and of course, you know, the 60-day rule that Merrick Garland has been living under, that's no longer pertaining. There are indictments coming down the pipeline. So I think we're going to see, as I say, I'm not one given to schadenfreude, but we're going to see quite an enjoyable degeneration of Trump in the coming weeks and months. Well, Ed, it does actually sound like you would love to be in schadenfreude. What kind of textbook definition of schadenfreude would be what Ed just did. What he just said.

Exactly. Exactly. You know, I will reveal my ideology, but in Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, the introduction, one of the introductions, last introductions was by Milton Friedman. And he was talking about capitalism versus communism. And he said, you just don't have a clearer lab experiment than Germany, East Germany versus West Germany, or North Korea versus South Korea, right? Well, here, and I think it pertains here, you have an almost perfect lab experiment between Ron DeSantis' Florida and Donald Trump's Pennsylvania, Donald Trump's Arizona, Donald Trump's Republican Party that just absolutely collapsed. Republicans are watching a greater disparity between absolute total. And I will say this limited to the state of Florida, Reagan like dominance in the state of Florida. I think you

have to give him that in Florida. You certainly do. And a complete, absolute collapse and underperformance in Donald Trump's Republican Party in the other 49 states. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think, you know, the big, big winner on Tuesday, aside from democracy, potentially, which is a really huge winner, is Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis. I mean, he came out, comes out of that. He is the king right now in Florida.

There's a reason Donald Trump on whatever his social media site is, was posting yesterday. Yes, Ron DeSantis won Florida, but I got more votes than he did in Florida when I ran for president side by side. So clearly. And I will say, though, all the declarations of Donald Trump's demise in the last 24 hours made people very nervous because they've heard this story before. This is not a man who goes away easily. We'll talk much more about this coming up on Morning Joe. Plus, governor elect now we can call him. Wes Moore will be our guest after his big win in the Maryland governor's race. Plus, the head of House Democrats campaign arm, Sean Patrick Maloney, joins us after conceding defeat in his hard-fought House race.

Also ahead, Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger will be with us. He says it's now clear the party should stop talking about Trump after this week's losses. And New York City Mayor Eric Adams will join us to weigh in on how the issue of crime played a factor in the midterm elections and much more. But first, let's go to meteorologist Michelle Grossman to talk about the tropical storm now hitting Florida. Michelle, how does it look? Hey there, Willie. It's well, it's November 10th and we're still talking about the tropics. So now a tropical storm. It did make landfall around three o'clock this morning, just south of Vero Beach, Florida, as a category one storm with 75 mile per hour winds. And it has since weakened

since it moved inland, but still a really strong tropical storm at 70 mile per hour winds. The good news is it's moving fast at northwest at 14 miles per hour. So it's going to move across the peninsula of Florida, bringing really heavy rains. We have over 100,000 people without power this morning with really gusty winds as well. You can see that on radar clearly where that heavy rain is falling, the brighter colors, the reds, the oranges, the yellows, those are torrential tropical downpours. We're looking at wind gusts still 59 miles per hour in Orlando, 64 in Sanford. So it's going to continue to cross the peninsula. It will make a second landfall along the panhandle of Florida. It will bring heavy rain to the northern parts of Florida today. Also Georgia, South Carolina. It makes a right-hand turn and

look at all that rain tomorrow. It's going to be a nasty day in the mid-Atlantic, the Northeast, Ohio Valley, the Appalachians, as we're going to see heavy rain falling and also some really gusty winds. We'll be right back. The man accused of violently attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, in their San Francisco home last month has been indicted by a federal grand jury on assault and kidnapping charges. If convicted, 42-year-old David DePapp could face up to 30 years in prison for assault and 20 years for attempted kidnapping. DePapp also faces a series of state charges. He has pleaded not guilty to all of them. Meanwhile, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin apologized to Speaker Pelosi

for comments he made just hours after the attack on her husband. Governor Youngkin was at a campaign rally on the morning of the attack when he told the crowd, quote, there's no room for violence anywhere, but we're going to send her back to be with him in California. Talking about Paul Pelosi yesterday, Youngkin said he sent a personal handwritten note apologizing to the House speaker. That's a good thing. I mean, that's what we want. This is a second apology. He said, like the day or the after or the day after that, after making that tasteless, awful remark that, gee, I, you know,

I tried to say something about this. I didn't do a very good job. Now, this is the second apology, the handwritten note. So I'm somebody who's speaking of tasteless and awful. Other Republicans continue to make jokes about that brutal assault. Again, an attack with a hammer on an 82 year old man that fractured his skull and sent him to the ICU in the middle of the night. Here's what Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs said on Tuesday night. We can't wait to get back to Washington, D.C. with some new Arizona congressmen.

And we're going to show Nancy Pelosi the door very shortly. Don't let it hit you on the backside, Nancy. Nancy! Don't let it hit you on the backside, Nancy. Nancy. Hey. Yeah, she's losing the gavel but finding the hammer. Too soon? Is that too soon?

I didn't know. I just didn't know. Who raised him? I wonder. I wonder what his mother or father would think uh does it matter how old my mom or dad were if i'd said something like that thanksgiving would be rough and my mother would just say i'm ashamed of you he's also got kid i think he has five kids i wonder what he tells kids. Does he teach his kids to make jokes about old men being beaten nearly to death with a hammer? He grew up in the Mormon church. I don't think there was anybody in that church who ever taught him to speak or think that way about another person.

But again, this infection of politics, he with this congressman, he is in that Marjorie Taylor Greene camp of people who just say the most outrageous things they can say to get attention and has voted against all kinds of things. We could go down the list. But where does this where do you you sit there on the stage? Maybe that joke's brewing in your mind. The decision to make it comes from where I think he thinks there's some reward. There's cheering in the room. The same calculation that Carrie Lake made when she made the joke. It's going to work in this room. It'll fire some people up. Yeah, but just disgusting. But on a human level, I've been in that I've been in that situation and it never even comes into your mind.

Well, it should never come into your mind. The first thing you would say is I don't care who it is. If you bring up Nancy Pelosi, the first thing you say is, first of all, you know, by the way, we're thinking about Paul Pelosi and we're praying for him. He's a grandfather. He's a husband. He's, you know, Nancy. We don't agree with Nancy on everything, but she's a colleague. And we come together just like we did, just like Nancy Pelosi did with Steve Scalise, just like we have always done. We're all one family. Yeah. And Steve Scalise did in this case right away. And Steve did in this case. I had asked the question. I had not seen and not seen the tweet. I'm so glad you read it.

But Steve did in this case as well. And God bless him. I mean, we're in this caddy together. We're in this together. Republicans, Democrats, independents. We are Americans. We we've we've got to figure out a way to work together to make this country a better place. And it's I just don't I don't know where that comes from. Somebody saying something like that. You know, I mean, I can only think it's what Willie says, that you're up there and you're loving the crowd. And I mean, I think that was really what happened with Carrie Lake. Carrie Lake made that comment.

And then it was the smirk that Jean was referring to earlier. If you watch the video, there's that moment of a smirk that then gives permission to the audience to laugh and to her host to laugh. And she gets the adulation of them laughing at a joke she's made. And it's that feeling of we are all owning the libs together. And look at look how outrageous we can be and look how far we can go in owning the libs. And we don't care. They're going to criticize us, but we don't care. As Carrie Lake said the next day, oh, I can't even say anything anymore. And it's like a deliberate rollout. It's like you do something offensive and then you hit back at people for criticizing you for being offensive in a way that is totally disingenuous because she started referring to a whole load of other stuff. But I was I was with Glenn Youngkin down in Virginia last weekend, and he's a really impressive campaigner for the Republicans.

I mean, he's somebody who has managed to keep a kind of open arm to everybody. He has not totally dissed Trump. He actually did, and he may regret that one day, spend time with Carrie Lake if he's trying to be a centrist. But I thought it was interesting that he made that time to send a handwritten note

because two things happened in the week in the run up to the midterms. One was the Paul Pelosi attack and the reaction from some of those extremists to the Paul Pelosi attack. And the other was Donald Trump being out much more visible and calling Nancy Pelosi an animal. And I think those, you know, you have to wonder whether those two things in the run up to the midterms, people went into the polls just with those ringing their heads and thought, as you just said, Joe, that's not how my mom raised me. That's not how my parents raised me. It's just not nice. And you wonder how many votes it swayed and how many people it pulled to Democrats. Just seeing,

again, this savage, inhumane thing. Because, you know, I talk a lot about the church, about evangelicals, but, you know, in most evangelical churches, they're still preaching the Bible and they're still preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so for people that are in the church and they're hearing their preacher every week, it's the antithesis of a smirk, a mocking, a joke about an 82-year-old grandpa. I mean, you just, again, we don't have to go back into the hour of power again here, but you read the red letters in the gospel, and all it is is Jesus talking about loving your enemies, praying for those who persecute you. If you only love those who love you, what good are you doing? Even sinners do that, you know, and the parable of the good Samaritan, you know, somebody who is an enemy is beaten up and attacked and on the side of the road and a businessman rushes past him and

a priest rushes past him. And yet someone who is an enemy of the Samaritans, consider them a mortal enemy, stops, picks up the man, takes care of his wounds, takes him to an inn, tells the innkeeper, I'm going to pay for this guy. Let this guy nurse this guy back to health. I'll come back and I'll pay you for it. That's how Jesus tells us to treat our enemies. Why do I bring that up? Because, Ed, the very people who are acting the most horrifically out there, you match it up. They're wrapping themselves in the American flag,

and they're putting a Christian nationalist cross in front of them when actually this sort of language and this sort of action and the declaration that Jesus would have never been crucified if only he had an AR-15. This is the antithesis of everything Jesus preached in his life. And I have to say, sort of picking up on nice surprises from Tuesday night, Lauren Bobbitt potentially losing somebody who had her kids on her Christmas card with AR-15s as her Christmas message would be, I think, a nice rebuke from the universe. I was afraid you were going to ask me about sort of Jesus theologically. In terms of the electoral impact of this, you know, we spend our time day and night all the time following politics and public affairs. We're very unusual. We're like stamp collectors or something. Most people don't pay that much attention and only really start to focus in the few days and weeks before voting, before polling day. And Paul Pelosi's, this attack on Pelosi, the extraordinary gracelessness, the sort of malevolence of some of the Republican responses. I mean, the Briggs one there was, I mean, one of the worst. But not just Republicans, by the way.

Elon Musk, you know, did the equivalent of a smirk on Twitter, which rightly caused massive blowback to his claim that he's going to create a fair digital public square. I feel extremely buoyed by most people's reaction to this. I feel that actually we've taken the pulse of where most Americans, where the exhausted majority are. And they're not bad people. They're not like this. And this doesn't pay. And so, you know, I think I'm not going to get into Jesus and the Good Samaritan. You've made that point very well, Joe. But I think whether you call this a religious feeling or a much more Christian one than the Christian nationalist one,

there is a sense of decency that I think has been upheld over this really nasty episode with Paul Pelosi. Jen Palmieri, to Katty's point and something Joe said earlier about this, I think a lot of voters did look at the attack on Paul Pelosi, the reaction to it. I'm not saying it was determinative in their vote, but just said, yuck, I don't want our politics to be like this. I don't want to live in this culture. Let's be human. Let's be decent. And they decided to pull back on some candidates who are behaving this way. So now, as you look ahead, as you look at the map, as you look at Arizona and Nevada still twisting out there, and it may be another week or so before we know exactly what's going on, which will determine whether or not Georgia gets all

the attention over the next couple of weeks. How are things looking after this surprisingly upbeat night for Democrats? I feel like that voters are erecting, are starting to erect a new guardrails for democracy, right? It's not perfect. It's not complete yet. But when I think back to Wednesday, November 9th, 2016, to Wednesday, November 9th, 2022, and, you know, a lot of carnage in between, a lot of erosion of rights, a lot of pain, a lot of trouble. But when you look at the results, you know, look at the results,

a state like Michigan, for example, someplace I've spent a lot of time in, the Democratic governor there not only won, she won by 10 percentage points, which is even more than she was projected to win. She got more votes this time than last time. More people voted in 2022 than voted in 2018. The fight there to protect abortion rights, plus fight on the economy, plus protect democracy, the candidates there from the House, Alyssa Slotkin to Gretchen Whitmer to, you know, Mallory Mimoro, who's so good about this.

They made a complete argument and voters rewarded voters rewarded that. So like Carrie Lake may become governor of Arizona tonight. So it's not you know, this is not a straight line. Jen, can I let's talk about Michigan for a second. We're talking about Republican violence. We're talking about MAGA extremism. What did Michigan voters see? What did they hear for the last couple of years? Extremists talking about plotting to kidnap the governor, put her on trial and possibly kill her.

That extremism was there. The extremism on abortion. And listen, most Americans, they support the Mississippi law, which is 15 weeks. That's where most Americans are. But where Gretchen Whitmer's opponent was, was again, literally talking about a 14 year old rape victim who was raped by an uncle, being a perfect example of why that girl and her family and her pastor and her doctor and her mental health counselor should have no say in what she does. The extremism there led in the Wall Street Journal editorial page that Willie's brought up talks about it. The extremism led. I won't even call it the Michigan miracle because it was just a response to the crazy weirdos, freaks and insurrectionists in Michigan. And it caused a political revolution. Again, let's say this. In an off-year election that historically should have been horrible for them, with inflation incredibly high, which should have been horrible for them, with fears over crime

rising. And yet, in all of that, they won everything in Michigan in this in one of the biggest swing states in America, both houses of the legislature, both houses of the legislature. For the first time in 40 years, I remember I talked to Whitmer staff earlier in the year and said, do you all think that you have a chance of flipping the House or Senate? And they're like, you know, maybe in a few years, not this year, not this time. And it just and it just it's it's a majority of seats on the Supreme Court. It's, you know, governor, secretary of state, the attorney, the attorney general, all which happen to be women, by the way.

It's the the you know, the women that won the House races there. Alyssa Slotkin in a really tough race. She pulls it out, too, after I mean, a really tough race, she pulls it out too. Talk about the personification of everything terrible in America. Greta Shumner has gone through COVID, armed COVID protests. Remember the protests about the lockdown started there, the assassination plot.

By the way, inside the legislature, they're bringing AR-15s inside of the legislature. Memo to Republicans. Memo to Republicans. You bring AR-15s inside of legislatures and you scream at law enforcement officers. Don't go well. Right, Jim? Yeah. And then and I mean, I, I, I was there. I was there later in September when the more armed protests showed up in 2020. And then Dixon, who the Republicans wanted,

she was the candidate that they wanted. She thought she was good. That answer on abortion just put her in the box from the beginning. And she tried to recover from it. She actually ended up being a good campaigner. I spent some time with her on Sunday night. She was good. She was Glenn Youngkin kind of good.

But to overcome what people knew about her on abortion, plus that atmosphere in Michigan, it was just, you know, it was it was too much. But I also don't want to take away from, you know, from like how good the candidates were because they really argued their case. Well, all right, Jim, thank you so much. Ed Luce, thank you so much. And of course, the sponsor of schadenfreude bubble bath he's going to he's going to be soaking in it for the next week but it brings him no joy it brings him no joy i'd like i'd hate to be on that guy's only the kind of joy i know exactly all right thank you ed

uh can you put a tj that from that graphic up again? Look at that. Look at that in Michigan. Look at that. And it's a pretty it's pretty moderate, pretty conservative state. It's a moderate state. Abortion was on the ballot. And so when you're the candidate who goes out and says, well, having the baby after being raped can be healing for a teenage girl. Yeah. When you're the candidate who made the point you made earlier about a 14 year old, that it's the best example being raped by an uncle of why we have to stop abortion. You're going to lose if that's the number one issue for almost half of the voters. And remember when the analysis was on our show and others for a couple of weeks. Well, maybe abortion has receded. Right. You know, maybe Dobbs happened too soon to be beneficial politically. But boy, there it is in Michigan and in Pennsylvania, by the way, to way up there as an important issue. Think about

the three most important states in twenty twenty four are going to be Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Republicans had a great chance of rolling up some gains there. McCormick, if they put McCormick in the Senate, if they'd gotten somebody who wasn't a crazy freak running for governor that wasn't an insurrectionist, you know, people, you know, Republicans sometimes will tune in and and will say to me, oh, you're you're being so so negative. No, I'm not. I'm trying to help you win. It's just not that hard. You bring AR-15s to state legislatures thinking you look tough.

And you shout at law enforcement officers that they're the enemies. You try to kidnap the governor and then blame it on the FBI? You say that 14 year old girls that get raped by their uncle is a perfect example of like this all adds up. Me telling you that's stupid. That's me trying to help you. All right. If you had listened to a lot of things that we said through the years, you wouldn't find yourself in this position this morning. I'm sorry. We don't usually talk that way. It's just the truth. extremism doesn't work. And Willie in Michigan, again, a swing state and a year that should have broken wildly for Republicans. And now Democrats own Michigan. Democrats own Pennsylvania. Democrats own the governorship in Wisconsin and there's absolutely no reason why they should have won any of those states we talked about it yesterday to Republican Peter Meyer who dared defy Donald Trump Donald Trump primaried him with John Gibbs yeah Peter Meyer loses his job

John Gibbs who is certifiably well he's he has some crazy way way out there beyond Herschel but yeah beyond Herschel which is Donald Trump puts his hand on. John Gibbs says you're the next candidate. He gets absolutely wiped out by 13, 14 points. Yeah, right. In Grand Rapids. I mean, this is not a Democratic sitting. Believe me, this is Gerald Ribrock Republic.

I mean, it's just classic Republican and, you know, represented by a Democrat now. For the first time in almost 50 years. Yeah. Eugene, thanks so much. Always great to have you with us. Coming up, the chair of the DCCC lost his race in New York's Hudson Valley, but it appears Democrats have held on to another closely watched seat in that area. Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan, whose opponent has conceded the race, joins us next.