Morning Joe - Morning Joe 11/17/22
Episode Date: November 17, 2022Republicans win control of the House, NBC News projects, overtaking Democrats by a slim margin ...
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Down in Georgia, Herschel's gearing up for his runoff with Raphael Warnock,
and he's doing it by tackling the issues voters believe matter the most.
The other night I was watching this movie, I was watching this movie called Fright Night,
Freak Night, or some kind of night, but it was about vampires.
I don't know if you know vampires and cool people, are they not?
But I'm going to tell you something that I found out.
A werewolf can kill a vampire, did you know that?
Uh, Senator, your time has expired.
Whoa.
And that is what Donald Trump has done to the Georgia Republican Party as it works to get a victory in the Senate runoff election.
We will.
Have you heard all of that, Willie, yet?
I have.
It's incredible.
It's long.
And Joe, it's one of those where you're watching and you go, how is he going to bring this
plane in for a landing?
Exactly.
And you get to the end.
It turns out he doesn't.
It goes right into the side of Stone Mountain.
Yeah, there's there's no sense to it at all.
So we're going to obviously have a very good Georgia reference.
More from that moment from the campaign trail coming up.
But the big development NBC News projects Republicans will win the House of Representatives with Democrats in control of the Senate.
We're going to discuss what a split Congress means for the Biden agenda. four Republican mega donors are ditching Trump's 2024 presidential run with one billionaire who
donated to Trump in 2020, telling the New York Post, quote, I wouldn't give him an effing nickel.
We'll put him down as undecided. Good morning. Well, we're hearing an awful lot of that. We're
also hearing a lot of sort of bumbling around by former allies and workers of
Donald Trump, elected officials, people like Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence. Some of them don't want to
come out and say it directly, but the impact is clear. They speak to it. Yeah, they speak to it.
The fact that it seems that the party is finally moving away from Donald Trump?
Well, yeah, Mike Pence is on this tour extensively about his book,
but all he's being asked about is Donald Trump.
And he's getting closer and closer to saying no.
He's saying effectively there are going to be better options out there,
including perhaps myself, in his words.
But yes, it's not just Mike Pence.
It's congressional Republicans sprinting away from cameras up on Capitol Hill when they're asked about Donald Trump.
And as you say, it's these big donors, people who helped Donald Trump become a politician, who helped him launch his campaign in 2015 and 2016, rode with him through all the terrible things that happened over those four years.
And now finally are saying, no, we're not doing this again.
Not doing it. And to Willie's point about Mike Pence possibly running,
noticing that his comments come after the midterms and his comments come saying Donald Trump endangered his life, but also not cooperating with the January 6th committee, saying it's too
partisan, all sort of preparing himself to line himself up for the next powerful
position. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have former White House press secretary now and MSNBC
host Jen Psaki and White House editor for Politico, Sam Stein, who stays on with us this morning.
You're doing a great job, Sam. Oh, my God. How long can we do this? He'll be 60 years old. And well, it's just how old we are.
So let's go right to those Republican mega donors breaking with Donald Trump as the former president announced his third presidential bid.
Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder of the private equity giant Blackstone, says he will not back Trump's campaign.
In a statement, Schwarzman said America does better when its
leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday. It is time for the Republican
Party to turn to a new generation of leaders. And I intend to support one of them in the
presidential primaries. He is not the only Republican mega donor who has decided not to support Trump this go round.
Earlier this month, billionaire Ken Griffin endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
In a recent interview, Griffin called Trump, quote, a three time loser.
Ouch. Well, that's but that's only a fact. That's not like a description.
And billionaire Ronald Lauder will not help finance Trump's campaign either,
according to his spokesman. Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that other donors are
actively weighing their options while a number of former allies are staying on the sidelines.
An early sign that he may face difficulty winning the support of a Republican Party still reeling from unexpected
midterm losses. The paper notes even his own daughter has declined to get involved this time
around, the Times reports. The transformation of Mr. Trump's position in the party over the past
week has been striking, and his campaign kickoff appears to have done little to silence the
criticism. Yeah. And Jen, these mega donors, obviously some of the people that helped fuel Donald Trump's campaign were with him.
And listen, they follow power. They follow the person they think is going to be in power.
And a lot of them have really stuck stuck their neck out saying, you know, if they thought that Donald Trump was going to
get there. I guess a better way to say it is a lot of markets stick their neck out unless they're
pretty sure they're betting on a sure thing. And right now, for most of them, Ron DeSantis seems
to be that sure thing. And Donald Trump already in the rearview mirror. Yeah. Look, you need money
to run for president. Elple stated pretty plainly. And a lot of these people are the people who have been funding these outside groups that helped some of these Republicans win, not just this year, but in years past.
So that's certainly not a good sign.
I think it's important to state here that none of these people, the members or these donors, woke up and found morality.
Right. They just found that he was a loser and that they did not want to bet on this horse.
I will say, though, what wakes me up at night and I know we've all been through kind of a trauma with Trump over the last several years is that he's been ruled out before.
And it is possible he can use this to his advantage.
Yes, he needs money. But if the establishment, all these members, all these big money donors are against him, how does he use that to his advantage?
And I think we got to be talking about that because that's what he's thinking about and trying to figure out right now.
Yeah. And I've got to say, of course, his problem is and Willie, I just keep hearing it from one Donald Trump supporter after another Donald Trump supporter. His biggest problem is the guy that he's really going up against,
that he's got to get through if he's going to win the Republican nomination,
is Ron DeSantis.
And it is nearly unanimous.
The people I've spoken with in the past that have been diehard Trump supporters,
all deeply offended that he was attacking Ron DeSantis
on the same night that Ron DeSantis was rolling up historic numbers in the state of Florida
while Donald Trump's selections were losing the Senate.
And really embarrassing for Republicans.
And, you know, they're saying it's kind of funny after you consider all the things Donald Trump has said in the past.
But they're saying things like, man, he didn't show any class.
There's no class when you're attacking Ryan DeSantis.
You know, so you know where I'm going with that.
But this this apparently seems to be the final straw.
And unlike the other times when Donald Trump's back was against the wall, there is an alternative now inside the Republican Party.
And the more he attacks Ron DeSantis, the more he hurts his own standing in the Republican Party.
So right now he's sort of in a no win situation.
Yeah, Ron DeSantis has given Republicans somewhere else to go and freshen their minds is his overwhelming 20 point defeat where he flipped a bunch of blue counties, red captured Latino voters in the state of Florida and can go out and say, I got these twenty nine thirty electoral votes in Florida locked up.
Let's start playing from there if I run for president.
But to Jen's point, we've been saying that for the last week as well.
You don't get to just say Donald Trump's in the rearview mirror.
He gets a big say in whether or not he's in the rearview mirror.
And we know he's not going anywhere.
But his former vice president, Mike Pence, did say he is considering whether to run for president in 2024
and doubled down on his remarks that voters will not have to settle for the former president.
The president's entitled to announce his intentions whenever he desires.
But I honestly believe that we'll have better choices come 2024.
You know, I don't think anybody could have choices than Donald Trump.
I do. I do.
He says former secretary of state, the former secretary of state in the Trump administration, Mike Pompeo, also considering a presidential run,
tweeted yesterday, quote, We need more seriousness, less noise and leaders who are looking forward,
not staring in the rearview mirror, claiming victimhood. Pompeo did not mention Trump by name, but his an announcement speech Tuesday night, Trump claimed to be a, quote, victim of a rogue
justice system. And then there's House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who dodged then ignored questions yesterday about Trump's new presidential campaign.
You guys are going to follow me?
So why are you prepared to endorse President Trump?
Why?
No, are you prepared to endorse him?
Do you guys endorse him?
You guys are crazy.
Do you want to endorse him?
Do you want to endorse him?
Do you want to endorse him?
Do you want to endorse him?
My Kevin, my Kevin.
Where have you gone, my Kevin? He just doesn't want to talk about it, which Sam Stein certainly means that he wasn't too worried about the threat coming from Moralago. down there said that Kevin McCarthy, if he wanted to win the speakership, is going to have to strongly support Donald Trump and say it out loud. He's just completely avoiding it. And
he wants to become the next speaker of the House. So that's a guy when he's walking,
avoiding answering that question is just simply reflecting the will of most of his members.
Look, this all reminds me of this movie Fright Night involving a bunch of vampires.
Go ahead. I'm not going to go down that road. I will not go down the werewolves and vampires
metaphor here. Look, I think I align myself here with Jen's comments, which is one, I do think
Trump can probably use some of this to his advantage. He ran successfully as an outsider in 2015.
Now, of course, he was the president in between then and now, so less of an ability to do
so.
But, you know, he doesn't necessarily need the GOP establishment to run for office.
He's done it before without it.
Two is, I think on the fundraising front, you know, these GOP megadonors are helpful
in funding outside efforts, but Trump's main cash base is the online donations.
He should still have that.
The third component is stuff like McCarthy and Pompeo and Pence and the pile on.
That, I think, is a little bit more tricky to navigate.
But then again, you know, Trump has a lot of leverage over McCarthy.
So if McCarthy doesn't want to answer that question now, all Trump really has to do is
come out and say,
we need to not elect this man speaker when the vote is actually held in public in early January.
That's a ton of leverage over McCarthy, especially because the House Republican majority would be so slim. So, you know, I know Trump's in a weakened state, but he's been in a weakened state before.
Post-January 6th, we all thought it was the last chapter for him.
And then McCarthy went down to Mar-a-Lago. So I'm not totally sure that this is it for Trump. I
think he has a few more tricks up his sleeve. Yeah. And Jen Psaki, you know, it's not just
donors and what they do with their money. There are some Republican leaders that are finding a
way to sort of speak around this or speak to the Trump issue without mentioning Trump's name and you look at one governor who's now
working with Corey Lewandowski, who worked with Trump, but finding a way to navigate this.
Yeah, Kristi Noem. I mean, look, she was quoted this morning at the fact that Corey Lewandowski
is in the story sitting with her. It's like, why? What is happening there? That was one of my
reactions. But but, you know, she talked about the need to expand the base of the party and talk to people
who support Trump, but don't also don't support Trump. Now, putting aside all of the crazy,
which we should not put aside all the crazy, that is the kind of message that wins elections.
Right. And if you look at it, it's so starkly different from what Carrie Lake did when she
kind of punched all the McCain supporters and all the people in Arizona who love McCain in the face, which turned out didn't work for her.
And the expansion of it, expanding the vote is what either party needs to do.
So I read that and thought, why is Corey Lewandowski there? But also, that's a smart, a smart message. And that message, you know, it's interesting, Willie, that message
really stands out, jumped off the page to me because you haven't understood. You have
Republicans talking like they haven't spoken in about a decade. We have to expand the base. You
heard that from Kristi Noem, who doesn't govern like a person who thinks she needs to expand the
base. But after the election results, she thinks she needs to expand the base.
You had Mitch McConnell saying that the Republicans were too harsh.
They were too severe.
They scared away independents, all of this.
And I saw a headline yesterday in The New York Times that the Senate actually had gone over a procedural safeguard to ensure marriage equality.
It's a shocking headline how easily that procedural vote passed. Let's remember, again,
just for perspective, then Vice President Joe Biden went on a Sunday show and said the administration supported marriage equality and same sex marriage.
And he paid a terrible price for it inside the Obama White House because Barack Obama was running for reelection.
He was still saying that marriage was between a man and a woman because he was a Christian. And so that was just a decade ago that even progressives
were angry at Joe Biden for getting ahead of them on this message. Here we are 10 years later,
and you have Republicans and Democrats coming together to support a same sex marriage marriage protection, which, again, we wouldn't have seen the vote passed that cleanly before
last week. There is an understanding. There's just a big understanding, I think, among a lot
of Republicans that they've got to stop turning off independents and moderates if they want to
win elections again. Yeah, that's almost a direct quote from Mitch McConnell a couple of days ago.
He said, we just got wiped out among independents.
We've got to figure out how to change that.
The vote yesterday, that procedural hurdle
on the gay marriage, the federal gay marriage legislation
was 62 votes.
So you've got 12 Republicans to go with the 50 Democrats.
I should point out Mitch McConnell was not among them.
He voted against it.
But it looks like it's on a path
toward passing through the Senate
to have federal legislation codifying gay marriage. So that's one step Republicans may be recognizing.
But then there's the extremism on abortion, on guns, on democracy and all the other things that
cost them so desperately in this election and kind of stunned them. Are they willing to change? Are
they able to change their positions on those or at least
moderate them a little bit so they can recapture some of those independents who fled from them
a couple of days ago? Yeah. And make no mistake of it. When when Willie talks about extremism on
these positions, we've talked about this before. You know, the majority are a plurality of Americans.
When you talk about abortion, They support the 15 week ban
that John Roberts had supported, an upholding of Mississippi law that the rest of the court
would not have gone along with. If they had, the whole world politically would have most likely
been different. But it's when you hear on abortion, 10 year old girls in Ohio that have been raped,
having to flee the state. When you have candidates running
for governor talking about 14 year old girls being raped by their uncles being the perfect
example of why there can't be any exceptions. When you talk about that, when you talk about guns,
Republicans who have been on the wrong side of a 90-10 issue for years now since Sandy Hook,
90% of Americans support universal background checks and other gun safety laws. I'm wondering
as we move forward, are Republicans still going to support the 7%, the 8%, the 9% position
just to please some gun lobbyists? Doesn't make a lot of political sense.
All of this adds up and makes the Republican Party look like it's out of touch, which is why,
Mika, Republicans underperformed so historically this week.
So we have an elections update this morning. NBC News now projects Republicans have won control of the House by a slim margin.
They barely did it with 218 seats being officially called for the GOP.
That's a number of seats needed for the majority.
And of course, there was a time that McCarthy was thinking maybe 60 that win by 60 seats.
This is that win by 50 seats.
They'll be lucky to win by four or
five or six. Overall, NBC News estimates Republicans will win 221 seats while Democrats
will hold on to 214 seats. The margin of error is plus or minus two seats with seven races
yet to be called. The results hand President Biden a divided Congress
with Democrats keeping control of the Senate,
a stunning victory for the Democrats.
The president issued a statement which reads in part,
quote, I congratulate Leader McCarthy
on Republicans winning the House majority
and I'm ready to work with House Republicans
to deliver results for working families.
But Jen Psaki, let's talk about the nightmare it is to be,
well, whether it's Catherine McCarthy, who's going to be the speaker.
I mean, and I say this because I know this,
because I was there when Republicans had a four vote majority.
You've got 218 members, 218 members that are tired to be,
of being just a face in the crowd.
All they have to do is find three of their friends 218 members that are tired to be of being just a face in the crowd.
All they have to do is find three of their friends and say, let's go talk to the Democrats.
I want to pass this bill and it gets done.
That is that is impossible for for the best of speakers to maintain. And right now on the Republican side, all I see is anarchy. This is going to be a difficult two years where
Republicans supposedly have the power, supposedly have the responsibility, but aren't going to be
able to get anything done there. Right. Be careful what you ask for, Kevin McCarthy. If this is your
dream, it's so hard to govern with that slim of a majority. He also has doubled down recently on
being opposed to proxy voting,
which they've been doing in the House for the last few years,
allowing people to vote from their districts,
which, you know, the fact is a lot of these members are older
or people have family member issues or reasons they just don't show up
because it's a big, huge caucus.
It means he needs all of these members to not just support his agenda,
but to also be
there in person, which is a two hurdle challenge. So this is going plus, as you just said, Joe,
he's got a bigger dose of crazy that he's going to have to manage in terms of his caucus than
than most caucuses. So, yes, be careful. Be careful. You ask for Kevin McCarthy. This is
the gift you will have now for the coming years, which is managing this big group.
And let's bring in now congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, Jackie Alameda.
She's an MSNBC contributor following now all the moves in terms of the balance of power.
Jackie, what are you looking at?
Yeah, Mika, well, I can't echo enough what you've all just said, that Kevin McCarthy faces a Sisyphean task if he does
ultimately become speaker, which seems inevitable but is going to be a hurdle in these next few
weeks as he's going to try to get from 188 votes of support behind closed doors during leadership
elections that we saw earlier this week to the number 218. And the hatred for McCarthy amongst his own ranks is palpable amongst
certain House Freedom Caucus members. But as for today, actually, I'm keeping an eye
not just on Republicans who are going to be making announcements on investigations.
One of the only things that a lot of Republicans can agree on right now, you're going to have Jim
Jordan and James Comer, who are ranking members likely to
become the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee,
announce some of those investigations into various targets, many of them quite political
this morning. But then we're also going to be hearing a big announcement from Speaker Pelosi
later today. Unclear what that's going to be exactly.
But I do think that we're going to want to tune into the House floor at some point when
she does come to speak to and address her members.
Yeah, we'll see.
We'll be watching that closely.
She's got that press conference coming up later this morning as well.
Jackie, let's look at the Senate side for Republicans as well.
Rick Scott made a run for the leadership position, made a run at Mitch McConnell. Pretty bold move a week after losing the United States Senate against the odds.
What did that do to the dynamic? What does it look like inside the party on the Senate side?
Yeah, well, look, I think that the Senate in general was always a little more inoculated to
the politics that the House faces, which is just definitely a more ideologically extreme and
diverse conference. Rick Scott never really faced a chance. I think that member Senate senators,
sitting senators, were skeptical that Scott could really separate himself from the results as the
head of the campaign arm of the Senate and was in part responsible for helping prop up some of these very
flawed candidates who should have won seats that Republicans expected to win, seats like
Pennsylvania and now the runoff in Georgia, where the candidate, Herschel Walker, it won't make a
difference whether he wins or not in terms of the control of the Senate, but again, is a seat that was viewed as winnable and
now has an extraordinarily tight race. But, you know, Mitch McConnell does face a bit of a
leader McCarthy problem in terms of being able to manage his conference at the end of the day.
But again, we'll see how much the House actually is passing at the end of the day.
I'm not sure that all that much is going to make it to the Senate.
And I think that the goal for Republicans right now in the next two years is not to
legislate, but really to just block the Biden administration. So, you know, the the the task for McConnell and
McCarthy is a little bit different than what Pelosi and Schumer were up against these past two years.
Yeah. You know, the thing is, and I said this before off air because Sam Stein,
I didn't want to get pummeled on Twitter, but I will say it on air now
since it's already happened. And I'll get pummeled on Twitter today. Actually, when people were
saying, oh, my God, what's going to happen when the House Republicans take control of the House?
They're going to have this massive, massive margin. And I said, well, if the Democrats can somehow hold on to the Senate
for Democrats, if you just want to look at this cynically for Democrats, and I know Jen knows
exactly what I'm about to say, it's the best thing possible because you're going to have an extreme
GOP house that can't get anything done as far as passing laws. They're going to be people out there
that are saying the craziest, stupidest things. There are going to be massive headlines and it's going to matter
because they're in power. I remember Karl Rove coming and talking to us in 1999 before George
W. Bush's campaign in 2000. And somebody brought up us running out, running Newt Gingrich out of town in 98.
And and and Karl Rove, you know, somebody asked him about it.
He said, well, it sure makes our job a lot easier.
We probably wouldn't be able to win in 2000 if we were competing against Newt Gingrich's headlines and having to answer for Newt Gingrich at all times. Now you actually are going to have whoever, whoever that Republican is running in 2024,
they're going to have to answer for the most extreme statements made by Marjorie Taylor
Greene, are made by Jim Jordan, are made by Lauren Boebert.
You know, Ron DeSantis is in a church and somebody says, do you agree with Lauren Boebert. You know, Yolanda Sanderson is in a church and somebody says,
do you agree with Lauren Boebert that if Jesus had an AR-15, he wouldn't have been crucified
and died for everybody's sins and that would have been preferable? Do you agree with that?
But that will follow the craziness now that they're in power actually matters. And it's something that whoever's
running for president in 2024 on the Democratic side, well, just cynically, you know, somebody
observing it's going to it's going to it's probably going to help them a lot.
Well, I don't know why you would get a Twitter pummeling for that, although I will say
a Twitter pummeling is good for the soul occasionally. I enjoy it.
It really is.
It keeps you fresh.
I think that's a very accurate and admittedly cynical way to look at things, which is that you have a villain that you can run against in the House GOP conference, right?
You have – it's not unified democratic control of governance, so it doesn't become necessarily a referendum.
You could turn the spotlight on Republicans, especially if you get high-stakes showdowns over funding the government and potentially a government shutdown,
and high-stakes showdowns over the debt ceiling and lifting the debt ceiling, which could really damage the economy.
If you can run against that, that is, of course, beneficial.
Now, the flip side of that is that it's not good for the country necessarily. And if you're in office, there might be some legislative initiatives that
you want to pursue that are simply just closed off now. So immigration reform or even dealing
with DACA, done, unless they do it in the lame-done conference. Any hopes of reviving elements of that
Build Back Better initiative, the domestic stuff that they didn't get to, you know, parental leave,
for instance, child care, done unless you deal with it in Congress. So that's the downside of
having this divided government is that you cannot do that legislation. I would just say one other
thing. We don't know what the House Republican investigative committees are going to do with
their time. Early indications are that they're going to go after Hunter Biden, which I think
will just gin up sympathy for Joe Biden. But, you know, they could theoretically
uncover some stuff that is not what Biden wants and is not something that Biden wants to talk
about. So there is the element of surprise there that could be that could produce some bad headlines
for the White House. But overall, I think despite the coming Twitter pummeling, you're probably right
on this one. You know, the problem on this one, probably right on this one. You know, on this one, probably right on this one.
Well, you know, Jen, the thing that we have learned is,
and we Republicans learned it with Bill Clinton, Democrats,
if you impeach somebody, you think it's going to be this huge political win.
One of the reasons Newt Gingrich has run out of town was because
the public reacted in such a negative way in the 98 midterms to impeachment. You look at Donald
Trump, even after two impeachments, even after the Moralago investigation, his numbers in a lot
of polls over the past month actually had gone up. So those investigations will backfire. I think the
Biden administration knows it. But also think about this. So Republicans aren't going to do
anything great. So they're the do nothing Republicans pass a standalone bill. We're
going to stop pharmaceutical companies from gouging everybody on insulin. Standalone bill.
That's it. The Senate passes it. The president wants it signed.
Killed by Republicans. Pass a billionaire's tax. And that billionaire's tax goes to funding
pre-K education. I mean, you could line up a hundred bills like this and just let the
Republicans vote no on every single one of them and campaign on it
in 24, it will make a difference. Yeah. I mean, it turns out everybody in the country, for the
most part, is for lowering the cost of prescription drugs. So it's in all of the things you just
outlined, Joe. And now that they're going to have a component of what they're in charge in,
you're sort of held accountable, to your point, to a different standard. Because if you do nothing, then you're, as you said, the do-nothing
Congress. And to build on what Sam said, it's not just investigations into the president's
son or other family members or whatever they may pursue. They've also been very clear they want to
impeach Ali Mayorkas, Tony Blinken, a bunch of cabinet members people have probably never heard
of. And that consumes time and energy. And if they're doing that instead of doing things like
lowering the cost of prescription drugs, doing something about lowering cost of energy and
addressing inflation, you know, people can make their own judgment about that because that's
that they ran on doing something. And it seems like they're going to do nothing. They're going to do impeachments.
Hey, Jackie, before I let you go, you've covered the January 6th committee so closely now that the House has been called for Republicans.
It means that's going away here in the next couple of months.
So what is left for them? What's ahead of them? Is there more testimony to come?
We heard from former Vice President Pence in an interview yesterday saying that he's closing the door on the idea of testifying, saying the committee, in his words, has no right to his testimony.
What's left for them to do? What more might we see from that committee?
Yeah, Willie, well, they've got to get this report on that we've all been waiting for.
And as we've reported, there has been some behind the scenes differences about how this report should be structured exactly.
We're also waiting on a number of criminal referrals.
Chairman of the committee, Benny Thompson, told us that the committee is currently working on that.
They met on Monday when they were back from recess to discuss the path forward. They're also figuring out how exactly to handle the counter litigation to the
former president, who has decided he's not going to cooperate with the subpoena or testify before
the committee. They have to decide if they're going to ultimately try to hold him in contempt.
But at the end of the day, a lot of this is really just now in the hands of the Department of Justice.
They're going to have to, at some point, the committee transfer all of the information that they've collected and that report, which is
expected to sort of be a prosecutorial roadmap to the Department of Justice that is moving ahead
in their investigation, which is also running parallel to the investigation into Trump's
handling of classified documents, which sort of leads me to, I think, a final point I want to make about GOP investigations. I think we need to watch
very closely what Republicans do going forward with their subpoena power in the House GOP
conference and the way they try to sort of run a smear campaign against the FBI and the Department
of Justice to essentially, I think, grease the wheels in the case that the former president is
ultimately indicted for either something related to January 6th or the mishandling of classified
documents. So I think today at that press conference, we're going to hear a lot about
investigating the DOJ, the FBI. You're already seeing them in the minority call for FBI
whistleblowers to come forward.
And I think we're going to see a lot more of that.
The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany, as always, thank you very much for being on this morning.
Thanks, Mika.
And still ahead on Morning Joe, NATO officials say it was a Ukrainian missile that crossed into
Poland and killed two people. But Russia still bears the blame.
We'll have the latest on the response from world leaders.
Also ahead, airfares are soaring ahead of a busy holiday travel season.
We'll talk to the head of the TSA about that and a look at the morning papers,
including a new effort to block Donald Trump from taking public office ever again.
You're watching Morning Joe.
We'll be right back. the edge to see my world below.
I'm past the hour. Here's a look at some of the other headlines making news this morning.
Philadelphia officials lashed out at Texas Governor Greg Abbott after a 10-year-old girl who arrived in Philadelphia on a bus of migrants was hospitalized with dehydration and a high
fever. She came on the bus from Texas. The bus carried 28 people in total, five of them children.
They were greeted yesterday morning in Philadelphia with warm drinks and clothing.
Because city officials had advanced notice of their arrival, they were able to activate a
mass care plan, which included
mobilizing the Office of Migrant Affairs and the Office of Emergency Management.
Abbott's office did not immediately respond to the requests for comments about the child.
Terrible.
Former Tonight Show host Jay Leno recovering this morning after having surgery for serious
burns he suffered during a
recent car fire. Leno was in Los Angeles in his garage where he stores his cars when one of them
burst into flames this past Saturday. The physician overseeing Leno's care told reporters yesterday
he's in good spirits. He suffered burns to his face, hands and chest that doctors categorized as second degree or verging on more severe must be incredibly painful.
And in a major shakeup in college academics, Yale and Harvard Law School are withdrawing from the U.S. News rankings. In separate letters, the deans for both law schools harshly criticized
the rankings, saying they devalue programs that encourage lower paying public interest careers
and reward schools that give scholarships to students with high test scores rather than those
in need of financial aid. Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken wrote, the U.S. news rankings are profoundly flawed.
Its approach not only fails to advance the legal profession, but stands squarely in the way of progress.
We'll be following that. And coming up, we have more of Herschel Walker's bizarre campaign speech about werewolves and vampires. Meanwhile, a retiring Republican
lawmaker goes scorched earth on Kevin McCarthy. We'll play for you those comments. And up next,
national security analyst for NBC News, Clint Watts, joins us with more insight
on the deadly missile mistake in Poland and the state of the war in Ukraine. We'll be right back. w Polsce i w Ukrainie. Z kolejne zasadnicze pytanie było, kto był odpowiedzialny
za wystrzelenie tej rakiety, krótko mówiąc, kto wystrzelił tą rakietę.
Nie mamy w tej chwili żadnych dowodów na to, że rakieta ta została wystrzelona
przez stronę rosyjską, natomiast wiele wskazuje na to, jest wysokie prawdopodobieństwo,
że była to rakieta, która służyła po prostu obronie przeciwrakietowej,
czyli że była użyta przez siły obronne ukraińskie. was most likely the result of a Ukrainian air defense missile that unfortunately landed in
Poland. And whatever the final conclusions may be, the world knows that Russia bears
ultimate responsibility for this incident. That is Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin agreeing
with Polish President Duda that a missile that struck a Polish border town appears to have been
launched by Ukraine in defense against Russian missiles.
The two leaders also agree that while Ukraine may have launched the missile,
the blame ultimately falls on Russia as its war on Ukraine continues.
Joining us now, columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post,
David Ignatius, former Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman of California.
She was ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and former FBI special agent and national security analyst for NBC News.
Clint Watts. Good morning to you all. Clint, let me start with you just on your assessment of how this is shaken out.
When this news broke a couple of days ago, Russia has landed a missile inside Poland, a NATO member.
What next? And slowly but surely, the intelligence agencies
abroad and here in the United States took a look at it and said, it's looking more and more like
this is a Ukrainian missile. President Zelensky notably still suggesting it was a Russian missile,
but he kind of stands alone on that. Yeah, not helpful, you know, having this debate at a time
when Ukraine has been doing so well. At the same point, that just shows you how tense that situation
is. I mean, over 100 missiles being fired that day, all the anti-aircraft missiles going after those missiles.
Now you're talking about several hundred missiles flying all over the country at any given time.
It was natural that something like this would happen eventually. And I think everyone has been
bracing for this happening to some degree. At the same point, the Russians are increasingly
using dumber munitions. They can't do the same targeting that they did before. It's erratic and sporadic.
And whenever that happens, it gets more dangerous. So we're at a particularly dangerous point,
I think, with the missiles and the way the strikes are going on around the country.
And Jane, as the defense secretary said yesterday, yes, this looks like it was a Ukrainian missile
and a tragic accident. But,
but, but we have those defensive anti-aircraft missile installations in place because Russia
is firing deeper and deeper into Ukraine and going after civilian targets. Well, yes. And
he also tried to reach his Russian counterpart, but I gather that phone call was refused.
Not good. I think that Russia has lost
or is certainly losing the ground war. And all they have left are dumb missiles and drones they're
buying from Iran. This is pretty pathetic, but they're causing a lot of damage on the ground
and still destroying civilian targets and infrastructure as the winter approaches. So
it's still a bad deal, but it is pretty clear after careful work and the
polls need to be commended, too, because they did invite invoke Article four of the NATO charter
after careful work that this was a mistake. And David Ignatius, we certainly saw that Poland
stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States and the rest of NATO.
Nobody got out in front of each other.
That certainly was good news.
What else have we learned from this false alarm?
Joe, I think we've learned in addition to just how dangerous this war is, the Russian onslaught the Ukrainians are trying so hard to defend against.
We've learned that the system to calibrate precisely what's happening in the fog of war seems to work.
This was the most dangerous moment that you could imagine.
For many months, we have worried, the U.S. is worried that Russians might attack our supply depots moving from Poland into Ukraine,
setting off an Article 5 so-called NATO reaction, which NATO would have to respond to an attack on NATO territory.
In this case, people waited. They gathered evidence.
They tried to make sure what had happened in the fog of war.
Whose missile was this?
And they found evidence that, contrary to what they might have imagined initially, it was not a Russian missile, but a Ukrainian one.
And we're able to forestall the kind of sharp reaction that could have led to rapid escalation in this conflict.
So, you know, one takeaway amid this terrible situation is that system works and we should be glad that responsible, level headed people are running it.
So, David, in your you have a question and answer session with the readers every Monday at The Washington Post.
And a lot of questions had to do with the end game.
Peace talks. You were you were skeptical that we were there, but you did say that both sides appear to be reaching an exhaustion point.
What can you tell us about that?
And what can you tell us about any reporting you have about both sides possibly inching closer to at least sitting down and
talking to each other? So, Joe, I don't think we're there yet. Everyone around the globe would
like to see this war end. But as I noted in that discussion with readers, wars end because the
parties decide that they simply can't gain their goals on the battlefield.
They are exhausted and negotiators find a way to get them out of the predicament.
We're not there yet.
And efforts by the United States or any other mediator to interpose in this conflict are, I think, a mistake.
This has to be Russia and Ukraine talking,
realizing that they need to come up with some compromise that they accept. It is interesting
that our CIA director, Bill Burns, was just meeting with his Russian counterpart,
Naryshkin, in Turkey and went on to see President Zelensky in Ukraine. I'm certainly going to be asking questions today about what happened in those meetings.
But as near as we can tell, it was basically Burns warning the Russians about any escalation and the dangers of it.
So as much as we hope that this winter could provide a transition point where the two sides could begin to talk about peace. I just don't
see it yet. Yeah. But Jane Harmon following up on David talking about the CIA director Burns
traveling and talking to his counterpart in Russia. If there were anybody that would be a
key player in at least the start of negotiations from the United States side,
it would be Director Burns, would it not? It sure would. And he met with Putin personally,
I think, before this ridiculous, unnecessary, illegal war started, but obviously to no effect.
I just wanted to add to what David said, which is this. There's no room for compromise right now.
And that's the U.S. position. And Lloyd Austin met
with his counterparts, I think, this week, and almost a billion dollars more aid is coming from
Sweden and Germany and us and Canada. And that's what we have to do. There's no evidence that
Putin keeps his word. And it ain't over until it's over. And it's going to be a brutal winter.
But the strongest weapon in this fight is the Ukrainian heart.
It's much stronger than dumb missiles or drones or tanks or whatever else has been used.
And the Ukrainians are very well trained at this point, in part thanks to us, but in part
also thanks to their enormous tech skills to withstand this. And boy, if Russia
isn't pushed back here, we are going to have an Article 5 NATO confrontation, and that's not
going to be good for anybody. Clint, for all the reasons that Jane just laid out, General Milley
said yesterday there's about zero chance that at this point that Russia just completely overruns
Ukraine. With that said, even though they're retreating from places like Kherson, they're still lobbing missiles by 85 a day in some cases, and they're hitting infrastructure,
power grids. We saw pictures yesterday of Ukrainian heart surgeons performing surgeries
just with headlamps to continue to do their jobs. So what does this winter look like? Where is Russia
right now? How long does this go on? Yeah, I think we're in a major inflection point in the war, partly because this is the second mud season, which leads to frozen
tundra. Yes, you could advance on positions, but it gives the Russians time to build fortifications.
If you look at what's going on closer to Crimea, primary, secondary lines of defense are going into
place, which I think it really brings us to the fight will expand outside of Ukraine. I think a
lot of it has to do with I would look for cyber attacks, particularly around energy in Europe.
Putin sees that as his lever to try and bring the alliance to its knees.
The other thing I would look for is influence operations.
We oftentimes see the Russians playing around in populist movements, lots of protests and uprisings around inflation.
And then the real wild card is what's going on inside Russia.
We've not covered that very well over the last six months, but the war has come home. You're seeing
people rising up against Putin. There's even statements from former leaders and current
leaders inside Russia saying Putin needs to be removed or he should be assassinated. I've never
heard that in my life. So that's a very different scenario that can play out for the winner. The
squeezing is happening on both ends. Well, thanks. I just had a thought experiment for Joe Biden as we close here,
and that is to do something Woodrow Wilson did, who never served in Congress. Joe Biden served
for 40 years, set up an office in the Capitol and have office hours on a periodic basis and meet
with members. This is a huge opportunity for a sea change
because of the result of the midterms. And one of the things that has to pass immediately is
the Electoral Count Act. So we don't see a repeat of January 6th in 2024. For sure. Well, and if
anyone can do that, it would be Joe Biden. Right. And David Ignatius, we had a conversation at the
National Cathedral a few weeks back on how Harry Truman was able to succeed, whether it was with the Marshall Plan or the Truman Doctrine or all the setting up NATO, all the things he did.
The way he did it was working with the Republican Congress extraordinarily closely and finding the responsible members and with Arthur Vandenberg, having conversations every
day with him. And if he didn't, sending his staff members over to Vandenberg's townhouse
at night to keep them updated with what was going on. That made Republicans who were isolationists
far more engaged. Of course, these Republicans, certainly on the Senate side,
are shoulder to shoulder with Biden's aims right now.
But it certainly wouldn't hurt going forward,
would it, to work even more closely with both sides on the issue of Ukraine.
On the issue of Ukraine and also, Joe, on the issue of China.
If you're going to look for an issue that's analogous to the late 40s, it would be it would
be the growing U.S. competition with China. And there's strong bipartisan support.
President Biden, like President Truman, is somebody who's who's who's been
disrespected in some ways, not seen as a strong leader.
And this is a moment for him to play a stronger leadership role, to work more with Congress.
I think one message, certainly, that Bill Burns took with him to Turkey and then to Kiev is to say our commitment, our American commitment to
Ukraine will continue. And there's every sign that there'll be bipartisan support. So on that issue
and on the issue of U.S.-China relations, there is a chance for Biden in this in this next period
to be a strong, I don't want to say Truman-esque, but a strong leader.
Jen, you like the idea of the president setting up shop on Capitol Hill, but you did have one
concern. He might never leave. I do think it's a really compelling idea. And for those of you who
know Joe Biden and have covered him or friends with him, you know, he loves being in the Senate.
He loves talking to members, frankly, of both parties. And I spent a lot of time sitting in
the Oval Office with him when I was working for him. People would be surprised. You probably wouldn't be.
The number of people, he would just pick up the phone and call. Republicans, Democrats,
people who disagree with him on a lot. The one caveat I would say is, unfortunately,
in the environment we're in right now, if he goes up to Capitol Hill to an office there,
he takes a press corps with him. It becomes a massive
pomp and circumstance. And my only tweak would be it probably is better if he does it just from his
office on the phone. A lot of that behind the scenes is going to it would be more effective.
Personal contact makes a huge difference. Having served there for nine terms, I know that. Yes.
And maybe he should get you back, Jen, and then you can just handle everything.
I know we got her.
It's a good idea.
The president's listening.
Jane Harman, Clint Watts, thank you both.
We appreciate it.