Morning Joe - Morning Joe 1/15/24

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

The Morning Joe panel remembers the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Well I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.

My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking in Memphis on April 3rd, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and we will discuss Dr. King's ongoing legacy, especially as important as ever, because today is also the first nominating contest of the pivotal 2024 presidential campaign. Turnout for the Iowa caucuses could be an issue because it will be absolutely frigid tonight with temperatures well below zero across the state. Voters must be at their caucus precincts by seven o'clock central time and weather will absolutely be a factor. With us, we have the president of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton, founder of the conservative website, The Bulwark. Charlie Sykes is with us, the host of Wait Too Early, White House peer chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire.

And in Iowa, NBC News national affairs analyst John Heilman is with us this morning. Joe. Rev, I just wanted to talk about that remarkable that remarkable speech in Memphis before we launch into politics and all the other issues of this day on that day, the night before Martin Luther King was shot. He talks about going to the mountaintop and seeing the other side. Of course, using just an extraordinary reference from the Old Testament, where God says to Moses, go up and see the land that I have prepared for the children of Israel. Talk about that night. Talk about that legacy. Talk about what it means for all of us today. Well, I think that clearly it is a sermon he preached the night before he was killed.

He was in Memphis, Tennessee, to support striking garbage workers who were led by a union, AFSME. And he came as he was building to fight for poor people to have equal income, to have a better life. And he was under threat. People don't realize Dr. King in 1968 was very unpopular because he had come out against the war in Vietnam. Even other civil rights leaders had attacked him. But he stood up on moral grounds. 55 percent of blacks said he was negative in the last poll they did on him before he died. And he stood his ground. He stood for nonviolence. He stood for change. And as you referred to in the Bible, Moses, who God brought up in the Bible narrative that God brought up and let him look over to see the promised land, but he didn't get there. And Dr. King said he will not get there

with us, but we as a people would get to the promised land. And here we are all these years later, where we are now facing some of the same battles, affirmative action being just about gutted by this Supreme Court. We're fighting DEI. We have presidential candidates talking about the civil war should have been negotiated. So I thought about as I woke up this morning here in Washington, and I'm here with Martin Luther King III and his wife and his daughter, the only grandchild of Dr. King, we're doing our National Action Network breakfast. I thought about what Dr. King would think about when people talk about negotiating away the civil war and forgetting to mention slavery was part of why the Civil War was.

And then I think Dr. King would be challenging us of all parties and races to make this beloved community a reality. Don't just sit around complaining. Do something about it. And how incredible, Mika, that that is, as Zarev said, Martin Luther King, not popular in the final years of his life. He was seen as too radical by white America. He was seen as too passive and conservative with a small C by large segments of black America. He was despised by those who wanted to use violence to push civil rights. And who's talking in the studio there? I don't know.

Could you ask him to stop talking? All right. And so here you have what's remarkable is in 1965, 1964 and 1965, we had the second American Revolution, as John Meacham says so beautifully and so eloquently, for the first time in American history, the laws of this land actually allowed black Americans the civil rights and the voting rights that they had been stripped from for so long. And even three years later, people were pushing Martin Luther King, one of the most transformative figures in American history, certainly the 20th century, to go even further and push for violence. He did not do it. And he changed the world in a way very few have. Just a remarkable time. Important.

Remember Martin Luther King and very important for Americans, especially this year when American democracy is on the line and the rights of black Americans, of all Americans rest and hang in the balance. Absolutely. And I thank you both for those remarkable words. And the fight still today is almost as if we have fallen back. And Rev, you're going to be having President Biden on your radio show today. Give us a preview. He's going to call in this afternoon at three o'clock on my syndicated radio show and talk about the legacy of Dr. King as he sees it and the election hat fits in. He was our speaker last year as president at this same breakfast. And then I fly back to New York and we'll do my radio show. I think it's interesting, though, that we're having the Iowa caucus on Martin Luther King holiday and how race inadvertently became a part of it because of Donald Trump's statements and Nikki Haley's around slavery.

So it seems like it's like Dr. King would always say, you make two steps forward and three backward. And with Martin III and Andrea King and all of us are trying to do National Action Network is keep moving it forward. It's it's it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. That is for sure. John Heilman. Let's go to John Heilman. I hope he's outside. Did we push? No, he's not outside. We we wanted that scene from broadcast news. You're the illusion Islands. Exactly.

It is so cool. It is so cool there. And I just want to I was listening to Jonathan Lemire and interviewing people about already talking about what was and what was not going to happen in South Carolina. And I'm reminded of what Tom Brokaw said to us when we were when we were all sitting around the table in 2008, all of us talking about saying our farewells to Hillary Clinton because she was going to get stomped the next day and going to get stomped in New Hampshire. And Tom Brokaw comes on and said, I strongly suggest we wait until the voters have spoken. And so when I look at these polls and people are saying, this is just positive. This is how it's going to end up. It is a great poll. And Ann Seltzer, one of the greatest pollsters that that we've had in decades.

That said, polls don't matter. What what we guess doesn't matter. The voters go out and vote. And I tell you what, I don't I refuse to say before the first Republican voter has voted that this race is over. But take us through Iowa and what you've seen. Well, first of all, Joe, yes, you are actually trying to kill me. I appreciate that. I sent you a screenshot of the weather right around the time the poll came out on Saturday night where the windchill was negative 44, negative 45 or something on Saturday night. I told you guys it was going to be bad and nobody here had any idea. You can't imagine also how much the weather here, because it killed an entire day

of the campaign. Everybody had just basically shut down on Friday. How much it's been the dominant thing is from people who work on the campaigns, the candidates themselves, everyone who covers it. It's been more the story of this weekend than anything has actually happened on the campaign trail. Joe, to your point about polling, you know, Ann Seltzer would be the first person to agree with you. She would say, you know, we're not predicting anything here. We're just doing a snapshot in time. The one thing I will say is that the poll that came out on Saturday night, the Iowa poll, it's been very consistent with what the shape of this race has been over the course of the last nine months.

And that is where I sort of start here. It's a really weird Iowa caucus. And it's weird in the sense that a lot of things that have characterized caucuses in the past have not happened. It's had a different kind of flavor of it, the machinations of it, the tenor of it, the lack of volatility, the lack of surprises. We'll probably do one. Anyway, I kind of spent this weekend thinking about some of those topics along with the weather and decided to bring you this piece. So let's roll it. Three, three. The negative 15 wind chill.

You know, there's one thing I know for sure. I am not in South Carolina anymore. I'm really impressed that so many people came out given the weather. Most Floridians don't come north in January. The only thing is I just landed in an airplane and it's nasty out there. From the moment Des Moines woke up last Friday morning, it was clear that the final weekend before this year's Iowa caucuses might look a little different than usual. John, what's going on on the ground three days out? As soon as I landed, they said there's a blizzard coming, a foot of snow in the next 24 hours, and the National

Weather Service said life-threatening winter weather conditions in Des Moines. Life-threatening or not, as the Arctic blast slammed into Iowa full force, the campaign trail, like most of Iowa's roads, quickly became impassable. So instead of frantically crisscrossing the state, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump shut down their schedules on Friday, with Trump bailing on all but one of his events on Saturday and Sunday, too. Via social media, he assured his Iowa fans that he'd be back, though his grasp of his own itinerary seemed a tad tenuous. Hello, Iowa. This is your favorite president.

I'm leaving very shortly for your beautiful state. I'll get there sometime around Saturday night or something. The sight of the Republican field literally frozen in place was strange for sure, but also a strangely apt end for a race that's been politically frozen for months. Especially on the GOP side, Iowa has a reputation, long and hard earned for volatility and caucus night surprises. The kind of dark horse victories that when the smoke cleared in 2008, 2012, and 2016, had these guys celebrating. Tonight, I love Iowa a whole lot. Game on.

God bless the great state of Iowa. But this year, Iowa hasn't felt much like Iowa at all. There's been no volatility whatsoever. Trump's been up by roughly 30 points since last summer. And among those who know Iowa Republican politics best, the possibility of a shock the world upset is vanishingly close to zero. You don't think there's any way Trump doesn't win here on Monday night? Yeah, it looks almost impossible. And Iowa surprises people a lot. I don't think we have that kind of surprise in us right now.

That was Kochel's view even before the release on Saturday of the final NBC News Des Moines Register MediaCom Iowa poll conducted by the revered Iowa pollster Ann Selzer showing Trump at 48 with a 28-point lead and only deepening the pervasive sense that Trump has Iowa in the bag. But the Iowa poll also showed Haley for for the first time, overtaking DeSantis, arguably turning their fight for second place into caucus night's main event. In this race, there's been no punches thrown from the contenders after the guy at the top.

So here we are, and we know what's going to happen. And the question, the really only question, is who's two and three, and then who stays in the race, marching forward to New Hampshire. It's crazy. You've seen Seltzer's poll. Yeah. Trump's 48, Haley's at 20. If those numbers were the real numbers, what's the story? She's the story.

If she comes in second. Pretty clear that she's the one who's going to earn the right to take on Trump one-on-one. There's no way you win when it's Trump versus the field. Trump one-on-one will be a different dynamic. Ann Selzer tells me that Haley's leap into second place struck her as a big deal, too, at first. But Selzer wondered about the strength of Haley's support, so she looked more deeply at her numbers. We have a four-point scale. Extremely enthusiastic, very enthusiastic,

mildly enthusiastic, or not that enthusiastic. The majority of her supporters are on the bottom half of that scale. They choose her as their first choice. They're only mildly or not that enthusiastic. I've never seen that. We'll know soon enough, of course, if Haley has the big mo or not. But one person who appears to believe that she does is Trump. In recent days, he's amped up his attacks on Haley as her poll numbers have risen. Yet for her part, Haley continues to couch her critiques of Trump in the vaguest of generalities. I think President Trump was the right president at the right time. I agree with a lot of his policies.

But rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him. And we can't be a country in disarray and have a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. Haley knows that many who see Trump as a menace desperately want her to put caution aside and go after him, guns blazing. The other day in Indianola, she addressed those calls head on. For those that want me to hit Trump more, I just am not going to do it. I just think politics is personal enough. But Haley may need to change her tune and fast if she wakes up on Tuesday morning in a one-on-one battle with Trump, an opponent whose definition of personal enough is unlikely to be in the same galaxy as hers. So, guys, I think, you know, to me, a couple of takeaways here, and I'll toss back to you guys

to talk about. One of them is this interesting question. If we end up in a situation where Haley has a big night tonight, Iowa will, and she ends up in a one-on-one essentially with Trump. That is what people have wanted to stop Trump, have said we've needed all along. We said it in 2016. They said it in 2020. All right, now they're saying now in 2024. You can't beat Trump in a spread-out field. You could end up after tonight with really the one-on-one dynamic

that people have said is the only way for Trump to ever be taken down. So in that case, Iowa will have winnowed the field if it does that and will have really done its job. The other thing I'll say is that Ann Selzer's point about the lack of enthusiasm, of real enthusiasm for Haley, she continues to hold out the possibility, as a lot of people do here, that it's in a low turnout scenario with the bad weather and everything else, that Ron DeSantis may end up surprising everybody and actually finishing second in the end. Well, that really is troubling for if you're Nikki Haley and you look at this poll and you're right, the least and least inspired people, the least motivated people are your supporters. Maybe at the end of the day, they all come out.

Maybe it's because they're more anti-Trump than pro-Nikki Haley. But yeah, a remarkable report. Thank you so much and stay with us, John. I do want to go to Charlie Sykes. Charlie, we have been looking at a race between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis now for well over a year. And that's been how this Republican race has been framed. Does that all change tonight if you have Donald Trump in the mid-40s, Nikki Haley in the mid-20s, and Ron DeSantis down in the teens somewhere? Is that the end for DeSantis? And does this become a one-on-one race as Nikki Haley moves towards New Hampshire, where many believe she actually can win?

Well, it ought to. I mean, if if if Rhonda Sanders has a reality check, he spent all of his resources on Iowa. And then, you know, if he finishes third, where does he have to go? He has no no presence really in New Hampshire. He's going to get smoked in South Carolina. So, yeah, I think this is the end of the road for Rhonda Sanders, whether or not he recognizes or not. And so, yes, it does become one on one. But I have to say, you know, you have to pull back, though, the reality check, looking at the Republican Party, looking at the polls, looking at the map over the weekend, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee refuting the idea that people grow in political office and endorsing Donald Trump. The Republican Party is in the process, not just of consolidating,

but in completely, once again, surrendering to Donald Trump. So we're going to play this out and pretend maybe that there's a glimmer of hope that Republicans will wake up sometime in March or April and say, you know what, maybe we ought to move on from Donald Trump. But right now, there's no indication that's going to happen. Jonathan O'Meara, it does require, does it not, for Donald Trump to be kept in the mid 40s? Because we've been hearing from his campaign and others expecting to break 50 and a lot of people expecting him to have an absolute blowout. If Nikki Haley can keep this, you know, again, let's say mid-40s to Haley in the mid-20s, she's going to have to, I think, overachieve here.

Then as she goes to New Hampshire State, many people believe she can win. That's really, I mean, that's her inside straight. And after winning there, she's got a month before South Carolina. And oh, my God, as you know, I think it was McMillan who said a week in politics is a lifetime, a month. My God, that is that is enough for even Donald Trump to get in his own way. That's certainly true, Joe. And I do think we've seen a little bit of anxiety from Trump folks in the last few days because they were so boldly predicting, confidently predicting this huge blowout. And polls suggest he's going to win by a sizable margin, but maybe

not by the number that they had put out there, as you say, over 50 percent. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One would be, of course, the weather. And as Hauman noted, and I'm sorry to see that he didn't have like an Andy Reid frozen mustache sport looking this morning from this brutal winter weather, there is concerns that people are going to stay home tonight because it's just going to be dangerous to be outside. Legitimate reasons to stay home tonight. Secondly, we've seen Trump for the first time all campaign the last 24, 36 hours go on the attack against Vivek Ramaswamy of all people. And Ramaswamy has been very supportive of Trump throughout his campaign. He's never really criticized him. But the Trump people have really turned on him in recent days because Ramaswamy is still sticking

in the 7, 8, 9 percent. And his people who are for him are really for him. There's a lot of enthusiasm there. And he's trying to, Trump is trying to bang those people down to see if those folks can maybe come over to switch to vote for him, to touch his margins. The DeSantis people, they do think they have the best ground game out there. What that really means for a campaign that does seem to be about half dead, we'll see. But there are some who think that he'll put up a better number than expected tonight because his team is motivated and organized to get people to caucus sites despite the bad weather. And then, yes, all eyes will be on the number that Haley comes up with, Joe and Mika, because if Haley can come into that second place and have momentum, then suddenly, if next week,

if she can win New Hampshire, draws the Chris Christie votes, if she can win New Hampshire, then we have that binary choice in the Republican Party. Haley, Trump, we'll see what happens. Trump will be favored, but you can never say never. All right. We'll be watching this and talking about it a lot more. Also, another anniversary to note. 30 years ago today on MLK Day. Big day.

It was a big day. Yes, it was. Joe announced his first run for Congress. He announced on Martin Luther King Day 30 years ago today, and he had a dream. Now he's the king of morning news cable. All right. There you go. Turned out a little differently. All right. Still ahead. We'll talk more about it on Morning Joe. We're going to bring you the new developments from the Middle East. Now, 100 days since the Hamas terror attack in Israel. Plus, new U.S. airstrikes launched on Houthi rebels in Yemen. And as we go to break, Charlie mentioned Senator Marco Rubio of Florida

and Senator Mike Lee of Utah, both endorsing Donald Trump for president this campaign season. Here's a reminder of what they were saying in 2015. Donald Trump has been perhaps the most vulgar. No, I don't think perhaps the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency in terms of how he's carried out his candidacy. There is no way we are going to allow a con artist to take over the conservative movement. And Donald Trump is a con artist. He doesn't sweat. He doesn't sweat because his pores are clogged from the spray tan that he uses. Donald is not going to make America great. He's going to make America orange. If anyone spoke to my wife or my daughter or my mother or any of my five sisters the way Mr. Trump has spoken to women, I wouldn't hire that person.

I wouldn't hire that person, wouldn't want to be associated with that person. And I certainly don't think I'd feel comfortable hiring that person to be the leader of the free world. Wars on the world stage that your husband is managing. There's the threat of another Trump presidency, which we just talked about. He's a man indicted four times. He's doubling down on the conspiracy theories, flouting the rule of law. Many would say that literally everything is on the line. I think you just said that. This is a massive amount of physical

and emotional stress. It would be on any person. Your husband is 81. At the end of a second term, he'd be 86. As his life partner of 46 years, is there a part of you that is worried about his age and health, can he do it? He can do it. And I see Joe every day. I see him out, you know, traveling around this country. I see his vigor. I see his energy. I see his passion every single day. So to those who say I can't vote for Joe Biden, he's too old. What do you say? I say his age is an asset. He's wise. Yes, he's wise. He has wisdom. He has experience.

He knows every leader on the world stage. He's lived history. He knows history. He's thoughtful in his decisions. He is the right man or the right person for the job at this moment in history. First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, in my exclusive interview last week on the question of President Biden's age. Joining us now, columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius. David, you wrote the column that Joe Biden, President Biden,

should not run again in 2024. When you look at how he's managing the world stage and you hear Dr. Biden's argument that he knows everybody, he's been there, done that. Any response, any update to your point of view? So as I wrote at the time in September, so many of President Biden's policies I think are good. I think he's done a very good job of handling this extraordinarily difficult war in Gaza. I think he's worked well with the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and God bless him. The American public does seem to be concerned about his age, that that's not you or me saying it. It's a feeling that's out there in the public. The polls consistently show that. And the best thing he can

do is to demonstrate that he's a strong leader, have a strong team, and is the best person not simply to beat Trump, but to lead the world in a very difficult period. I can't fault the leadership he's giving on these crises, but I don't I haven't lost my concern, nor has the public. And Joe, it's the presidency. It is the team that he has put together as well. And many of the members of this administration, you and I both know well. And in light of what they're facing on the world stage, which I think most Americans pretty busy just, you know, getting to their jobs, putting food

on the table or not as connected with. But he is he's addressing these two different wars very differently and with great, I think, wisdom, insight and knowledge of history? Well, everybody's going to have have have different viewpoints. I think neocons want him to do more. Progressives and people on the Trump right want him to do less. I think most I certainly know your father and most foreign policy experts would be saying he's done a remarkable job. You see the expansion of NATO. You see what's happening in Ukraine right now. The Ukrainians are have their backs against the wall. Things are going badly in the east.

What is he doing? He's begging the Republicans for support. Here's a Republican Party that won't support Israel. Here's a Republican Party that won't support Israel. Here's a Republican Party that won't support Ukraine. Here's a Republican Party whose speaker came out and said, we don't care what the Republicans are doing to negotiate the toughest deal ever on the southern border. We're not doing anything. We're going to wait and we're going to use it as a political issue for the next year and let chaos abound on the southern border.

That's who he's dealing with. And yet, despite all of that, he's I believe he's done a great job on foreign policy. And you look even to Asia and just say you talked about the fuzzy language that was going to be needed to to finesse this relationship. I get a sense just from talking to people inside the White House that the fuzzy language is going to end soon. Biden's had enough. He's going to say we strongly support Israel. We do not support Netanyahu. Netanyahu, to paraphrase his old boss's words about Assad, Netanyahu must go. Enough is enough. He's getting in the way of peace in Israel and with the Palestinians. What have you heard? Joe, what I meant speaking about fuzzy language was more of the diplomatic formulations down the road that will be part of negotiations. In the short run, I think that Biden's job and Blinken's as his representative is to be as

clear and tough as he can, as they can with Israel, to make clear that United States interests, United States analysis of this war requires that we move toward much lower intensity quickly. Blinken made that point, lower civilian casualties and a move toward finally beginning to have a coherent plan for the day after. The president has to say that in a way that makes Bibi Netanyahu take notice. Blinken came to Israel with an offer from the leader of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to normalize relations with Israel despite this war. And still Netanyahu hasn't yet responded. I think it's time to be tougher.

For example, if the Israelis, as they're doing, refuse to give tax revenues to the Palestinians as they're supposed to, well, why not dock the payment that the United States owes Israel under our eight agreements by that amount? Don't want to give them the tax money? OK, the allotment that goes from U.S. taxpayers to Israel, to you, will be reduced by that amount. That kind of toughness, I think, is going to be required. And by the way, you talk about that toughness, not just toughness towards the extreme policies inside about, I think it was in the Times, talking about the very people who have wanted to avoid a regional war understand now because of what

the Houthi rebels continue to do, we are now, David, in the throes of a regional war. Where does that go from here? So, Joe, for the moment, yes, I mean, definitionally, we're in a regional war, but it's one with some pretty clear limits. Iran does not want to be in a direct conflict with the United States. That becomes clearer and clearer. Hezbollah doesn't seem to want to be in an all-out conflict with Israel. So I'd say we're on the brink of an all-out regional war.

It's interesting, just this morning, I believe the Houthis, they were still in the game despite heavy bombardment by the U.S. on Thursday, launched a missile at a U.S. destroyer. They're still trying to assert their power. But the destroyer took that missile out. I've been struck by how effective U.S. military power has been in dealing with these missiles. They're demonstrating a technological skill that we weren't sure that they had. So, you know, we're walking on eggshells. But I still hear both from U.S. analysts and from Israeli analysts a belief that it's not in Iran's or Hezbollah's interest right now to take this over the lip of the waterfall into something much more dangerous.

Well, and that's what that's what you keep hearing. And certainly that is the word inside the White House and in the communities, the intel community. That said, of course, that's what Netanyahu and so many people believe about Hamas on October the 5th. So always, we always have to remain vigilant. Jonathan O'Meara, I find it fascinating that that Biden has been struggling over the past two or three months in public opinion polls. People have been pushing Biden to do this or to do that, to be more active,

to get more engaged at the same time. And, and you know this very well from your reporting, because of the ongoing crisis in Israel, because of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, because of the ongoing crisis in China, which got amped up over the weekend with Taiwan's election of a very pro-Western president, Joe Biden is spending about 70, 75 percent of his time inside the White House trying to prevent World War Three. He has to do it. Any president, save Donald Trump, he'd be watching cable news. But any president in his position would be doing it. At the same time, it has gotten in his way of campaigning. Oh, there's no question. Foreign policy has become such a focus for this president.

Now, this president was prepared for that. He, of course, spent decades on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was its chairman. He is someone who, as vice president for Barack Obama, trotted the globe on his behalf. He is very comfortable with foreign policy. And I think we've seen there's the Biden doctrine is to stay the course, is to not listen to the outside noise, if you will. And that, you know, he took a lot of criticism for the Afghanistan withdrawal, how that happened in that first summer of his presidency. Then when he backed Ukraine and stitched together a really impressive international coalition, revived NATO, revived the alliances that Donald Trump so badly damaged, he received

widespread praise, including from the other side of the aisle. But he has now had to completely focus on this. And there are, as much as the president believes this is the right thing to do, and his aides tell me and others that he's not thinking about domestic politics while he's managing these overseas crises, of course those matters do bleed in to the White House's thinking, including with the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. We've seen the polls about how so many Democrats are disenchanted with how Biden has backed Israel, Mika, and that has hurt him, at least for now, among progressive voters, voters of color, young voters. Now, there's a lot of time for that to change between now and November, and this administration believes it will. They certainly hope that the Middle East calms down to at least to a degree between now and then.

But right now, the president has had to be able to focus on foreign policy. And yes, to the detriment of his domestic campaigning. Absolutely. It's been a real focus. And David, between Israel, the Taiwan elections and Ukraine, as Joe just mentioned, your final thoughts this morning. So one thing that we've seen over the weekend that I think should encourage everyone is the election in Taiwan. China really tried hard to intimidate Chinese voters in Taiwan against voting for what's known as the Democratic Progressive Party, which doesn't favor independence exactly, but that has a strong line of separate identity for Taiwan. Despite that intimidation, the winner of that election is the new president is Lai Cheng-Chi, who will follow the same policies that the current

president, President Tsai Ing-Wen, has followed, which really upset Beijing. Beijing said it's a dangerous choice and did a lot of saber rattling before the election. You know what? Chinese went ahead and voted the way they wanted. And it's a reminder to me that democracy has its faults, but people in Taiwan under threat still want it, still vote for it. And that's, you know, that's a good thing. Yeah. In a world, there's a lot of bad things. A lot. It was a it really was a great outcome. The Washington Post, David Ignatius, a national treasure. Thank you so much, sir. And please say

hello to your father for us. Oh, yeah, I will. One hundred and three and going strong and watching and watching morning shows. Good morning, sir. Oh, my gosh. Good morning, sir. All right. Thank you, David. So, John, John Heilman, we brought up Afghanistan, which which reminds us in American politics, if foreign policy goes well, if you manage regional crises in Israel and Ukraine and you expand NATO and you have historic, historic advances against the Russians and one third of the Russian army is destroyed. And I could keep going on and on. And you pivot to Asia and suddenly Japan and South Korea are talking and Philippines, et cetera, et cetera. You know where I'm going. Americans are like, yeah, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. You make a decision like Joe Biden made in Afghanistan,

which, of course, Joe Biden made that decision in Afghanistan, not not in twenty twenty one or two. He made that decision in 2009 when he got up with Karzai and threw down his napkin and basically said, you're a scam artist. So talk about that. Not much upside. Ask George H.W. Bush about being a great foreign policy president. And I would guess in Iowa right now, among Republicans, that foreign policy is just not on their mind, is it? No, I mean, to the extent that it's on anybody's mind, Joe, it's there's that the part of the party and this party and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party that gets catered to politically are those that are kind of want to retreat from the world stage that are that have kind of the isolationist tendency. And we have we see that in both parties. They make that that's the way it pops up and down in domestic politics.

But you're but you're exactly right. You know, it is a thankless part of being president. United States, you basically you get no political credit for all the things as you made that litany, because there is a presumption on the part of a lot of Americans that that's what America's role should be in the world. So if we're leading by creating peace through strength, and we're keeping markets open, and we're doing all those sort of things, that's sort of like, OK, thank you very much. Now, what have you done for me lately domestically? But if you have one big foreign policy crisis or one policy that does not go well, you are immediately tarred and feathered for having projected American weakness abroad. It is it really is a no win situation in the history

books. I think Joe Biden has an appreciation for the fact that history will look kindly on him for the degree of difficulty of running right now two hot wars in two of the most important regions on Earth and doing extremely well. But in terms of his domestic politics, in terms of his reelection in 2024, I think it will, you know, with that and about 10 bucks, you could get him a nice Starbucks venti latte. That's about it. It's not there's not a big political upside in this for Joe Biden. Yeah.

You know, as as Richard Haass said a couple of weeks ago, the one thing he learned about about from George H.W. Bush's presidency when he was was working with George H.W. Bush is when it came to foreign policy, doing the right thing all the time and being great at your job wasn't enough. You actually had to still do more. John Heilman, thank you so much. Absolutely loved your look, your view at Iowa. Greatly appreciate it. And we will be talking to you tomorrow morning. Miss you guys here. Yeah, we miss you too. Enjoy the weather.

Anyway, so Charlie Sykes, Charlie Sykes, you're in the middle of that weather, too. I've got to say, if foreign policy doesn't matter to Republicans that are voting, Ann Seltzer and the Des Moines Register poll also shows us that Donald Trump's crimes, possible crimes, possible convictions, 61 percent don't matter if he's convicted. One in five say it'll make him more likely to support him. So there you have 80 percent of Republicans saying we don't care and it may make us more likely to support him. Shows you just the sickness, the corrupting influence Donald Trump has. And here we have a New York Times story talking about college educated Republicans who went for DeSantis. But, Charlie, they're so shocked and stunned by the Justice Department's overreach that they're now saying, now we're going to support Donald Trump, even though he stole nuclear documents,

even though he stole secret war plans on how we're going to attack Iran, even though he stole assessments that show our weakness, even though he illegally shared, illegally shared secret war plans with members of his campaign staff. Even though we believe, if you believe those that work for him, he then tried to obstruct justice and obstruct the fact that he had these documents. So I could go on and on and on. But you know what? It's all everybody. You know, it's an excuse. Everybody has an excuse in the Republican Party on why they want to vote for Donald Trump. And they don't even care if he's convicted. What does it say about the party? Well, it says that it's getting even worse than

we thought it was. Right. I mean, you know, that that pulls, of course, a monument to the alternative reality silos we have, but also to the way in which Donald Trump has affected the character of his own political party. I mean, Donald Trump is Donald Trump. He's he's always been the same guy. But look what he has done to Republicans. Look what Republicans who used to be the party of law and order and used to care about character. Look what's happened to them and to the judgments that they're making right now. You can write off the elected officials, you know, capitulation as cowardice. But what they're afraid of is a Republican electorate that just doesn't care. And by the way, I think that one of the real dangers of 2024 and beyond is the success that Donald Trump is having and will continue to have, perhaps,

in delegitimizing the entire criminal justice system to basically do to the criminal justice system what he has done to so many other institutions, rob them of credibility and legitimacy. Because otherwise, how do you explain the fact that millions of Republicans look at judges, juries, look at the evidence and say, we don't care about this. This is not this is not real. This is going to have a very, very long tail, unfortunately. And for all the frustrations with Joe Biden, 2024 is is a year is not a referendum on Joe Biden. It is a choice. And this choice is pretty stark. Yes, it is. The bulwarks, Charlie Sykes. Thank you so much for coming on this morning. And up next, a shocker in Dallas and history in Detroit. ESPN's Pablo Torre will

join us to break down the NFL playoff action from over the weekend. And as we go to break, here's a bit of my interview with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, the part from our Know Your Value event, which took place in the east wing of the White House, and a bit of fun with some rapid fire. Well, I am going to do a little rapid fire. I have to now, I know you think about a lot of things, so don't think, just blurt. Okay. Just blurt. Oh, don't think. Okay. Okay. Um, what's the one word that comes to mind when I say aging? Grace. Yeah. Campaigning. Top. Okay. Uh, 50? Success. Fabulous. Your favorite emoji?

Oh, my gosh. The turquoise heart. The turquoise heart? Yeah. I like that one best. I don't have a turquoise heart on my phone. What does that mean? It's like at the beach.

It's calm. Oh, I like that. Like the color of the sea. Yeah. So do I type out turquoise heart? Okay. Comfort food. Oh, I like that. Like the color of the sea, yeah. So do I type out turquoise heart? Okay. Comfort food. Oh, French fries.

Yeah, yeah. Retirement. Whenever. Early bird or night owl? Early bird, for sure. Okay. Your grandkids call you? Nana.

Aw. What is your most strongly held belief? That acts of kindness really matter. Well, this is kind of a bad turn. Define fexting. Oh, fexting. Oh, my gosh. It's texting with an F.

Yes. So, you know, if you're, well, you don't know, but I'll tell you. I think I get this because I actually, you have this. Yeah. So, when you're in the car and you're texting, right, and you're fighting with your husband, and there are two secret service agents in the car with you, you know, and you can't say you're a whatever. So, like, you're texting, you're a whatever.

You know, so it's fighting over text because you can't verbalize it. Texting. Texting. Fighting over text. I love it. I think I might have done that a time or two in my life. A time or two. What's your morning coffee order?

Black. Okay. It's easy. You know, I learned that during the campaign. I'm the extra hot, extra foam red-eyed mischief. Oh, my goodness. Too much. I need a lot of shots.

It's early. By the way, Joe, Willie, or Mika? Oh, Mika. Right. Okay, I know. Like what? Yeah. We'll be right back. And off to a knee. And to a very important place for him. And yeah, you see a few tears in there for those folks. One more knee and business is done.

And Detroit, for the first time in 32 years, your Lions have won a playoff game. Have at it. Yeah, baby. Oh, yeah. A game-sealing first down at the two-minute mark allowed the Detroit Lions to run out the clock and beat the Los Angeles Rams last night. The 24-23 victory against the Lions' nine-game postseason

losing streak, the longest in the league history for just their second playoff victory since winning the 1957 NFL title. It means so much more, though, for the people of Detroit. It means so much more for this Lions team. They started out 0-6 last year, and I will tell you what, as I've discussed with Pablo, even at 0-6, 1-6, you could tell they were a great team but what what a game for jared goff talk about redemption let's bring him right now uh such a such a uh such a happy story let's bring right now pablo tory finds out on metal art media espn's pablo tory pablo two extraordinary games

yesterday two for one the dallas cowboys do what the Dallas Cowboys always do. They collapse. It's like being an Atlanta Braves fan and watching them win the division 11 or 12 years in a row and knowing whether they've won 99 or 105 games, they're going to lose. Kind of like being a Dodgers fan right now. But we'll get to Dallas in a second. You talk about a problem franchise, but let's talk about Detroit. Man, what a great story. What an exciting story. I remember last year going on Twitter telling Lions fans, you guys may be a bad record right now, but you guys are an extraordinary team.

They're like, no, this is us. We're the Lions. We'll never be good. Man, they deserve this. Joe, 32 years, man. People need to appreciate what this was because this is Detroit, a great American city, finally surviving past the first scene in the horror movie where they've lived, right? This has not happened in three decades. And so this team and this city, this fan base that has just been crying out for help,

the poetry of this game was not merely that they finally broke through and they did it. And now they can say, wow, we feel like we can hang our heads high again. It's because they did it with Jared Goff at quarterback against the Los Angeles Rams. And for people who don't appreciate what Jared Goff was feeling, it was a version of a similar bit of closure, a psychotherapy bit of closure for him to beat the team that had dumped him.

Remember the Rams, this team that won the Super Bowl after getting rid of Jared Goff because he was derided as mostly a puppet for their great head coach, Sean McVay. He got to prove as if he was going to, I don't know, it was like going to your high school reunion and saying, look at me now, look what I can do. And Jared Goff led them to a win that is historic in the literal and figurative senses, emotional and real. And it's just one of the greatest feel-good games that we've seen literally in 30 years. Well, it is.

And I'm so glad you said that because this was much more than just a football team winning a game and first time in 32 years. We hear that a lot. This is just a great team. They were on hard knocks. You saw Dan Campbell beginning of last season. You saw these players that you loved. I mean, Jack and I fell in love with St. Brown. What a great guy watching his dad taking him to the weight room, pushing him. There's hometown boy Aiden Hutchinson. He's there. You've talked about Jared Goff. Man, if this isn't the feel-good team of the year, I don't know what is. I mean, let's go ahead, though, and turn the page, though, to the clunker.

I mean, holy cow, Jerry Jones. What's he going to kick this morning, man? What an absolute total collapse in Dallas. And you could kind of see it coming because this happens in Dallas every year. No, the definition of insanity, Joe, is what? It's doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And so these are the Dallas Cowboys who are the bizarro lions in all of these ways this weekend and forever, it seems like, because their story for so long has been

they're just good enough to get to the postseason and be ritualistically humiliated. And so this is what we saw. It's amazing when you have a team, America's team, no less, that everybody but them can make fun of for the same reason every time. And there is that rake lying in Jerry Jones's yard and there is him stomping on it with two feet. This was the worst loss, I would say, the worst loss in Cowboys history, which is saying quite a bit. But this is a team, Joe, just again, to recap the season, 16 straight wins at home. Dak Preston, invincible, invincible playing at home. An amazing defense. And Jordan Love, the guy who replaced Aaron Rodgers, and everyone said, are you really going to cut ties with a two-time MVP?

Aaron Rodgers, really? You're going to roll the dice with this rookie out of Utah State? Yes, they rolled the dice. Yes, this decision has been vindicated. And it's just funny when you can get Jerry Jones and Aaron Rodgers. Look at this. Look at this. Look at that.

That pass play right there. Incredible. That's a basic Madden. On video, that's a Madden pass play. Nobody was within 20 feet, 20 yards. The most open anyone has ever been was that guy. The most open anybody's ever been. And also, you talk about Dallas' great defense, and everybody does,

but the Bills ran over them, ran through them. The Packers ran over them, ran through them. And then on pass plays, I mean, how many times can Jordan Love be falling off of his back foot? That's right. It's the fadeaway. Oh, the back foot fadeaway, man. Yes. And yet the players he threw to always open. That's right. That's right. It's crazy. Favre Rogers, Jordan Love. This is what they are saying in Green Bay, and no one, no franchise has done it like this. The hardest thing in the NFL is to find a quarterback. They've gotten three of them, and they've gotten out.

And this is the key part. They've sold high every time. It's a ridiculously impressive run that they're on right now. It really is. And Jonathan O'Meara, I'll let you get a question in. It's the top of the hour. But again, I remind everybody the NFL, 19 of the top 20 ranked primetime shows last year, NFL games. I think people will be patient about us talking about the NFL playoffs for one minute before we get to the top news stories. But we got to talk about Dak.

Dak Prescott, he looks so impressive this year in regular season. Always, always a bad scene. And last night, he was terrible. He was off. He was underthrowing. He was, and after every bad throw, he would look at the best receiver in the league and he would like point at him.

He would gesture at him. He was constant. You know, and they kept saying, oh boy, you know, CeCe Lamb and Dak Prescott aren't linking up tonight. Well, yeah, they're not linking up because Dak wasn't getting the ball to him

and yet he kept badgering him. It was a really bad scene. A really bad scene. You don't want to see that from your quarterback. No, and Prescott is just so fragile. The Cowboys were so fragile that Lamb had one bad drop early and they never recovered. And it did seem like that Prescott was blaming him for other balls that he threw that were not good. He was 10 and up all day. The pick six was the end of the game in the first half when he

threw that. He just totally missed the coverage. And I will just note as we turn to some of the other games that it was on Thursday on this show, I predicted Bill Belichick to Dallas because the Cowboys were going to lose this game, which they did. And Belichick would be a fit there. And they need some help on the defensive end. Let's quickly hit the other games. Chiefs, Dolphins, Saturday night, played in terrible conditions. Very, very cold. Andy Reid's mustache froze. Yeah. Preview of what's going to happen in the Iowa caucus today. The Dolphins were terrible. Questions about Tua. But I also, and we can get into that, but I also should say,

the Chiefs made a bit of a statement here, and we shouldn't count out the champs just yet. Yeah. I mean, look, was it the fourth coldest game in NFL history? Yes. Is it basically a fact that Tua Tungvalu cannot win when the temperature is below 40 degrees? He's 0-4 now. Also, yes. But the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, sometimes a sport is as simple as who has the best player.

Patrick Mahomes, for all the MVP talk, and someone else besides him will win it this year. You just want that guy. Sometimes sports validates your most basic, simplistic analyses. And it's just, yeah, who has Patrick Mahomes? I would like him. And the Dolphins, meanwhile, are watching this and they're realizing, is our guy, is Tua going to be enough going forward? This is one of those games that, whether or not, may have derailed his future in Miami because they need him to overcome weather-related obstacles in the AFC full of these wintry mixes and worse.

Yeah, Mahomes' helmet even broke. And Joe, we should just mention briefly the Houston Texans. Very impressive. C.J. Stroud. Oh, my gosh. Rookie quarterback was spectacular. And the Joe Flacco dream scenario came crashing down with a pair of pick sixes on Saturday as well. We've got two games today.

Steelers-Bills postponed because of weather. That's at 430 up in Buffalo. Going to be a great game. Great, but they're going to play. And then two very struggling teams in the nightcap, Eagles at Bucs. Baker Mayfield. Yeah. Baker Mayfield time.

Baker Mayfield. I mean, how could that guy not be the comeback player of the year? But, yeah, really quickly, Pablo, I know I have to go. But, yeah, Tua didn't do well. Those Miami Dolphin players, though, the defense, they literally turned sideways. I'm serious. So they didn't have to make contact with oncoming Chiefs. It was a rough ride.

Who do you like tonight? I like Baker Mayfield and the Bucs and the Bills at home in the weather against the Steelers team that got outscored on the season. They were outscored. The Steelers were very impressive, but they made it as a team that got outscored in totality. Give me the Bills. Give me the Bucks, please. All right. I also, by the way, always have a soft spot for the Browns. They shall return. And you can listen to more of Pablo through his podcast. Pablo Torre finds out on Metal Arc Media.

ESPN's Pablo Torre, thank you so much. Greatly appreciate it. I hope you come tomorrow morning. We can talk for way too long about the games tonight. Always. Sorry to Mika.