Morning Joe - Morning Joe 11/6/23

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Trump leads Biden in five battleground states

Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, November 6th. We've got a lot to get to this morning, including new polling from five swing states that is concerning for Democrats and the White House. We'll go through those numbers on a potential 2020 rematch. It comes as there is new reporting on Donald Trump's authoritarian plans for revenge if he gets a second term. He's already figured out, by the way, who he's going to arrest. And it's yeah, it's it is about as authoritarian as you can get, I will say. And also those Biden poll numbers, they looked about as bad as Barack Obama's in 2011 at about this time where Barack Obama was losing to Mitt Romney in several swing states.

So we still have a long way to go. Also ahead, we'll tell you about the potential key endorsement for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the Republican presidential primary, as Donald Trump will be on the stand today in the $250 million fraud trial against his company. Plus, we'll show you what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had to say about the state of the war and his invitation to Donald Trump. And we'll have the latest on the diplomatic trip overseas by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as Arab leaders are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. With us, we have the host of way too early White House peer chief at Politico, Jonathan

Lamir, president of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton, columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius, co-host of Showtime's The Circus, NBC News, National Affairs Analyst, John Heilman and Rogers, chair in the American presidency at Vanderbilt University, historian John Meacher. It's a great lineup. We need a great. Hello. Good morning. There's a bit of a meltdown yesterday. Democratic circus all over the place. My very worried, melting, exploding. I kept telling people, be mindful. Were you?

Be mindful. Is that what you were saying? That's what I told people. You got to be mindful. Got to be mindful. Long way out. I mean, you know, President Romney was doing extraordinarily well at this point, not only a year before the election, but you'll remember the last polls, the last Gallup poll going into

that race, I think had Mitt Romney up by 11 points over Barack Obama. It didn't quite turn out that way. So I think these polls are very important. I think the White House should be scared as hell because if you're running for president or any office, you should always be scared as hell. I always ran scared 20 points ahead. I always ran like I was 20 points behind. But these polls that came out yesterday shows they have areas they really need to work on. Is it something that people should be freaking out like they did yesterday? No, but it's a good indicator. And the thing I always loved about polls, Miki, and I know you're saying, what did Joe

love about polls? It's not that they were a predictor of what was going to happen. I always looked at trend lines. Yeah. And that's what always mattered. If I went from being up by 20 to being up by 15, I immediately said, where am I losing support? If something broke in another way and I was losing support in a certain

area, I got over to that area. Well, Joe Biden is having real problems right now, holding traditionally Democratic support. And that's that's what we should look at these polls about, not that they're predictive. I think what's just a little bit traumatic for Democrats, if they are freaking out as much as you feel they are, is that the contrast between these two candidates is like nothing I think we've seen in history. And it's a little bit depressing in terms of the mood out there, in terms of disinformation, right wing media and a number of narratives that may have sunk in that Joe Biden has to push back against. And many of them are flatly untrue.

We're not dealing in the same reality. And what does that mean? What does that mean? Work harder. That's what it means. It means work harder. If people are lying about you, work harder to get out the truth. If American democracy is on the line, work harder.

If you have a guy who has said, let's suspend the Constitution of the United States because I didn't win, work harder. I mean, if you've got people lying all the time. I mean, and Donald Trump, once again, this Washington Post article we're going to get to. Yeah. Wow. He just goes there. And it's not like Joe Biden Post article we're going to get to. Yeah. Wow. He just goes there. And it's not like Joe Biden hasn't given them material to work with. Yeah.

Well, yeah. Give some reasons. Knock on doors. Give some reason to make phone calls. Give some reason to reach out to their neighbors. That's how you win elections. So let's let's get to what we're talking about here in the latest New York Times Siena College survey. Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in five of six battleground states won by then candidate Biden in the last election. If the election were held today, the polls show registered voters in Arizona would go for Trump by five points, 49 percent to 44 percent.

In Georgia, Trump's lead is six points, 49 percent to 44 percent. In Georgia, Trump's lead is six points, 49 percent to 43 percent. In Michigan, Trump holds a five point advantage, 48 percent to 43 percent. In Nevada, Trump leads Biden by 11 points, 52 percent to 41 percent. In Pennsylvania, Trump leads by four points, 48 to 44 percent. The only battleground state Biden would retain, according to this poll, is Wisconsin. Interesting. Wisconsin trends older and wider. And weirdly enough, those are the only voters that Biden hasn't bled support from.

Voters in those states also say they trust Trump more than Biden to handle most key issues on the economy. Trump is favored by 22 points on immigration, his lead is 12 points on handling the Israel Hamas war. Trump holds an 11 point edge over Biden and on national security. Trump's lead is 12 points. Let's just stop for one second. Can we just stop right there? Stop. If you look at the Israel Hamas war. Oh, my God. Donald Trump, who 11 point favored by voters, 11 points. He has called Hezbollah terrorists smart. He's complimenting the terrorists and he's attacking Israel. And he's up plus 11. What does that tell you? The economy, again, just absolutely bizarre.

I'm not going to go into the numbers right now. Inflation has been a problem for Biden, but by every other measurement, Joe Biden is just doing so much better. Donald Trump had a miserable, miserable four years. If you look at his numbers over the four years. But again, these things don't matter to voters. It's, you know, in politics, as Henry Kissinger once said, perception is reality. And what the Biden White House better figure out quickly is why is perception so upside down? All right. So, by the way, Biden is favored by nine percent on the issue of abortion, despite there being just a three year age gap between the two candidates.

71 percent of the polls respondents say Biden is too old to be sense on stage, sweating bullets and forgetting who he's running against. Not just that. And let's keep these numbers up. Donald Trump, the guy on the right, often forgets where he is. People have to go up in a whisper and tell him that, no, no, you're not in the city you said you were in. He also continually forgets who he's running against, thinks he's running against Barack Obama, keeps saying he's running against Barack Obama. But again, perception's reality. And the perception here is every time Joe Biden gives a speech, you know, from the very beginning, right-wing Trump supporters on TV and also online, they'll cut a part of the speech and make him look like, you know, he's an idiot or he doesn't remember what he's saying.

And there's so many times I go and look. Sometimes I'm like, oh, geez, that's not good. Yikes. But you know what? Most of the times I'm looking at, I go, wait a second. He didn't fall asleep. He closed his eyes. He was praying like I'm thinking about those Hawaiian firefighters. If you looked at like 10 seconds of the clip, 20 seconds of the clip, it was all what we all do in memorial services at times where we're overwhelmed. But again, perception is reality. And from the very beginning, you've had Trump people and and people on certain cable news networks. You know, they'll try to find any clip and they've hammered this home. So, again, you can whine about it or you can push back against it.

Fight harder, work harder because perception is reality. And right now, perception is screwed up. Fifty three percent of those voters also say they have been personally hurt by the current president's policies compared to 35 percent who have been helped. We'll talk about that. On the flip side, 51 percent of those same voters say Trump's policies have helped them, while 34 percent say the opposite. And this is the reason our phones were exploding yesterday with people really, really freaked out and upset. And it does it does beg the question, you know, if there are Democrats out there who are concerned or even moderate Republicans about the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Right. I think that the real concern here is disinformation, the electorate being poisoned.

I mean, it's not like the contrast between these two are Republican and Democrat and conservative versus liberal policies. It's not. I mean, President Biden has accomplished a lot in his presidency. And there are those who would say it's even historic. And then you have a guy with 91 counts against him, liable for fraud, liable for sexual abuse. I mean, I could go on for four hours. Judge said he raped a woman. And that's that's where the concern is here, that there's a lot of different layers of things going on. Yeah. I mean, again, though, perception's reality. And that's what when I had people going, yeah, but this, yeah, but that, yeah, but mean, again, though, perception's reality. And that's what

when I had people going, yeah, but this, yeah, but that, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, it doesn't matter. Right. Perception is reality. Stop your whining. The poll numbers are the poll numbers and they're just poll numbers. Still a year out. But I'll tell you what, they're getting worse. And it kind of reminds me of a basketball game where you're watching one side that is, you know, seemingly doing everything right. The other side horribly, you know, has like a 23 percent shooting percentage from the field. They go into halftime and it's tied or the team that's looking so bad is only down by two or three points. You go, oh, boy. Wow. OK, everything seemed to break for one team and they're still only tied it after. That's what I'm thinking about these poll numbers,

John Heilman. I mean, you look what you look at all of the bipartisan legislation Biden's done. You look at the good news on on the economy, on many, many fronts. You look at what's what's happened with NATO and a lot of good things to say about what's happened with Joe Biden. And yet here he is three years later. You know, a lot of things going right for him. And Donald Trump, 91 counts against him. He's talking about, you know, getting rid of the Constitution. He's getting crazier every day on stage.

He's just saying, I'm going to just start arresting people after I'm president of the United States. He says he's going to spin the Constitution, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he's ahead. So I don't know exactly how this gets any better moving forward. It's not like Donald Trump's not been crazy enough to be punished by voters to be unfit to be president of the United States. Well, Kyle, like, happy Monday. Thanks, Joe. This is a very kind, cheerful way to wake up here on a Monday morning after this weekend. It's just a poll. No, well, I think that's the point.

I'll tell you what the Biden White House is not worried about and what Democrats out there shouldn't be worried about is one set of polls. You just made this point. It's not the fact that these polls say what they say. It's one set of polls. Don't worry about it. It's also not that Trump is, quote, ahead in five of those six battleground states. All those polls are very close to or within the margin of error. They are essentially statistical ties. Those are not the things to worry about. Things the Biden White House worries about and that Democrats who support Joe Biden should worry about is that these polls are part of a pattern. They have shown, they've been across a lot of polls, across a lot of weeks now, across a lot of months. To your point about perception being reality, it's not just the perception's reality,

it's the perception that's sunken in in some quite deep way about things like Joe Biden's age, about things like the relative strengths and weaknesses of Donald Trump and Joe Biden on certain sets of issues and on certain sets of character traits. That's a thing that worries the White House. And I'll tell you, the other thing that really worries the White House and should worry the White House and should worry Democrats is this erosion of support with core Democratic constituencies. Again, not just in this poll, but in poll after poll after poll. Joe, you've got this in this poll right now, Joe Biden among voters under 30. Joe Biden is up by one point. Just think about that for a second. A Democrat running against Donald Trump. He's up by one. Donald Trump right now in

these polls across the six states has 22% support among African-Americans. Historically low support levels for Joe Biden among African-Americans, Hispanics, and young voters. If Joe Biden doesn't fix those problems with his core constituencies, he will lose to Donald Trump. And that is the thing that the White House has been seeing erode over the course of the last six months to a very worrying degree. And this poll puts a very stark spotlight on those particular problems. Those attribute problems and the parts of that talk about the erosion of core constituencies in the Democratic coalition. Those are the things to worry about. The White House is worried about it. And Democrats should not be panicking, but they should take those things really seriously. Yeah. And by the way, it's I want to talk about the young voters

in a second, Reverend Al, because there's just been the thought that maybe Joe Biden's too old or maybe it's this issue or maybe it's that issue. But tell you, I know a few young voters who can't buy a house and haven't been able to buy their first house for years now because interest rates are too high. Or before that, it was covid. And so there are a lot of different things going on. If you want to look at the part of the economy where where where actually reality is reality instead of perception is reality, it's high interest rates keeping people out of buying homes and young people, people under, let's say, 40 are disproportionately impacted by that. But I

want to talk about people of color. Reverend Al, if if Joe Biden were to give up 22 percent of the share of black voters to Donald Trump, that would be the highest percentage anybody, any Republican candidate got in the post civil rights era since 65. And for all Canada, Donald Trump, for God's sake, I mean, the most racist candidate we've had running for president since George Wallace. Well, not only the most racist candidate, I think the most racist president. When you look at what he did in office that disproportionately impacted blacks and other people of color. The problem is that you must do, as you said at the beginning of the show, Joe, work harder.

There will be two ways to react to these polls. You can give your theories on why they're wrong, why they're polling wrong, what is who they're not reaching, this, that or the other. Or you can say, let's accept the poll and go to work and see where we can turn it around. You know, I was blessed in my young years to hang around Muhammad Ali. And he used to tell me that he liked Angelo Dundee, his trainer, in the corner between rounds, telling him he was losing even if he was winning. He said, because even if I was in the fight in the way I was scoring in my head, on my head, it didn't matter. It's

what the judges said. And it doesn't matter to the Democrats what they think it matters. If that's what they're saying, we're at. They need to work harder. They need to stop making excuses and rationalizing and go to the base, including black voters and pull ahead. It's just that simple. Yeah. Stop whining. Start working. And I know there are a lot of Democrats out there that are working quietly, but you got to work harder. That's just that's just the bottom line of it. And I agree, Rev. In my first race, I was down by 20, 30, 40 points the entire race. The last weekend, a poll came out that had me like one or two points ahead. It was the only time I got scared when our staff started saying, oh, my God, you're ahead.

And I went crazy going, we're 20 points behind. We're 20. Work harder. We're going to lose. Like, that's what you've got to always have that. You know, Rocky would talk about the eye of the tiger. That's what you got to need. You got to fight hungry.

You got to fight hard. You got to fight hard. You got to fight. And Democrats have got to stop assuming that just because Donald Trump is so crazy because his election is going to end American democracy as we know it, that everybody's got that message. Got to figure out. Got to figure out how to move those votes. If you're a Democrat and if you're a Joe Biden supporter. So, John Meacham, I'd love for you to give us some perspective. I talked about 2011 at this point in Barack Obama's reelection campaign, exactly where

you have Joe Biden right now. You actually had Mitt Romney. A lot of people talking about how Mitt Romney was doing so well against against Barack Obama, the guy that Donald Trump thinks he's running against this year. But actually, this was in 2011 in the fall where Romney was ahead in Florida. Romney, you know, was ahead in a lot of different states. Obama, of course, ended up winning. But you go back to 2011. I always talk about 1979, where it had Ted Kennedy beating Jimmy Carter by about 15, 20 points. They're just polls.

There's a year to go. But I'm just curious, what's your historical perspective on all of this and what should Democrats do? Well, I think historically, you know, insert clever joke here. Ronald Reagan used to always say, I always ask President Dewey about the efficacy of polls, you know. And so, yes, snapshot in time, et cetera. But as everybody's saying, as you've said, it's significant. It's significant because I think, and this is the historical view, not the horse race view. I think if you step back a little bit,

what this poll shows is that there is, it's not just President Biden who's on the ballot and being judged. It's really the entire constitutional order, right? It's the American set of political institutions, their capacity to deliver or lack thereof. That's what's here. Because if you think about it, presidential politics tends not to be a referendum. It's a choice, right? No one came to the country and said, do you want Donald Trump to be president? Right. It was a choice. And that's clearly going to happen. And I think it all comes into focus. And that's that's the tactical side. When I read these polls, I thought there is a significant number of people who are not in MAGA land who have profound doubts about the capacity of American democracy to long endure. As you laid out, there are innumerable facts here, almost innumerable facts about President Biden's job performance and what has actually delivered. We are sitting here talking about this while there are two hot wars unfolding in the world that are connected in a in a global sense that will in many ways help determine the nature of how my kids grow up.

And if there's any question in someone's mind about whether President Biden versus President Trump should be in power there, then that person is probably not all that reachable unless they think about it. And I think that's the key point here is that President Biden is a kind of stand in for the American system. And there are a lot of particularly young people who have profound doubts about that system. And the argument that has to be made, and I realize it's not, you know, huge clarion call here, but it's reality, is, as Churchill said, this may be the worst system of all, except for all the others. And I think that that I don't think this is about telling people. I don't think you can tell 71 percent of the people that they're wrong about a certain characteristic of a public figure. You have to show them. You have to show. This is a show tell question. You have to show them.

And for those of us who believe in the Constitution, who believe in this flawed, infallible system, we need to continue to show and make the case that having a president who embodies the values of a constitutional order is vitally important to have that person and not someone who has told us what he wants to do, which is to terminate it and take vengeance on his own enemies. Now, and that's exactly what he's talking about. You look at you look at a lot of polling and you see some very disturbing things, especially among younger voters. I want to later on, I'm going to be reading from Peggy Noonan's weekend Wall Street Journal op ed where she talks about how Israel needs a new leader for this fight. But there is a line that stuck out talking about how so many young people don't believe in American democracy anymore. As Peggy writes, if you're in your

20s now, you've been taught throughout high school and college to view the world within a certain framework, white privilege, Western imperialism, the whole woke agenda. And she goes on to talk about every time you tried to defend America and America's goodness, you feel like you're chasing ghosts. And that certainly has had an impact. And also government missteps time and time again throughout this century. Or you can go back to the last century. You look at Ken Burns, Vietnam. You can figure out a lot of reasons why Donald Trump won in 2016 in the first place. You look at what's happened on Wall Street, all of the Wall Street scandals.

What happened in 2008? You look at what happened with Hurricane Katrina? You look at what happened with Hurricane Katrina. You look at what happened time and time again. And there has been this ongoing belief that the American system is not working. Of course, in part, that's because that's all people focus on is the negative side of things as they do their podcasts and they do their primetime cable shows and they do all these other things running down the system. Well, over 20 years, that scar tissue builds up and people start believing, well, maybe American democracy doesn't work unless my side's in power. And that's exactly where Republicans, Trump Republicans got. American democracy doesn't work unless my side is in power. And I think that's where we

are with a lot of Americans. And there are a lot of people, non-MAGA people, who have heard this time and time again over the years. And they start believing it. I don't want to bore you, but I'm just going to say our economy is the strongest in the world. There's not a close second. Our military is the strongest in the world. There's not a close second. Our military is the strongest in the world, there's not a close second. Culturally, we have a greater impact than any other country in the world. Soft power wise, there's not a close second. I mean, hard power, soft power. Economically, we're the strongest country in the world. We just are. China, we're leaving China in the dust. Russia, please. They don't even come close to competing with us. And yet the problem is at home. We hear this time and time again. The problem is at home.

And I'm speaking not just speaking to the polls. I'm speaking to what John said about how a growing number of Americans don't believe in the greatness of Western democracy, American democracy. They want our country to be like Hungary. How's that working for Hungary? Not well. It just isn't. Freedom, democracy. I'll say it.

Yes, capitalism. All of that works together to make our country stronger than any country on the planet. Not a close second. So that's another message Joe Biden needs to drive home. And he can't be afraid to go against his own far left base that may want to just focus on what's wrong with America. I'll tell you what, there are a lot of things that are right with America, and he should talk for the next year about what's right about America. And do it with a smile on his face. Do it being proud about the fact this country is fed and freed more people

than any other country in the face of them. We've got our problems. We've got to address our problems. But democracy works. This constitutional republic works. And he should be proud about it. John, John Lemire, I know you want to talk to David Ignatius, ask him about this. He was writing about this a month ago before anybody wanted to talk about it publicly. I know you want to talk to him, but I'm curious, what's your thoughts and what's the reaction from the White House on what came out yesterday? I mean, the White House is some defiance here and some defensiveness, pointing out that things have looked bad in the polls before for this president, both as candidate and since taking office. They point to the 2022 midterms. Democrats did well. They point to a number of special elections, off-year elections where Democrats do well.

There's more coming tomorrow night, of course. But the numbers are stark, and there's real alarm among Democrats outside of the West Wing. I mean, the states, the six battleground states, Arizona and Georgia, two that President Biden flipped in 2020 from Republican. There's a sense that those may have arrived ahead of schedule. Biden aides concede those two both will be hard to keep this time around. The two that really bothered them, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, Biden's from next door in Delaware. He spends more time in Pennsylvania than any other state by far. But there are some demographic trends in the western part of the state, maybe breaking away from Democrats.

No Democrat can win without Michigan. And I'm not even sure this poll really captures some of the unhappiness in the Arab-American and Muslim-American communities there in the handling of the Israel-Hamas war. And then Nevada, 11 points. And that shows also that Nevada is a snapshot as to how younger voters of color, in particular, don't seem very impressed by this West Wing. Now, we should be clear, we are a year out. David Ignatius, as Joe mentioned, Mitt Romney was doing well in the polls this time around in 2011. That said, in 2019, Joe Biden was up on Donald Trump in this exact same set of polls. But to that bigger picture argument, and this is what confounds so many Democrats, who are just like, well, how can we be talking about anything other than Donald Trump fueling an insurrection? That Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government. That Donald Trump is sitting for four criminal trials,

that Donald Trump has all of this baggage that he sided with Putin, whatever you want to say. He's done all of these things. How could we be talking about anything else? How could he be ahead? But yet those big picture arguments seem to be less relevant to a lot of Americans than the day-to-day stuff.

What's your read as to what can happen next? So, John, I find these numbers confounding. I think back three years, Joe Biden was elected because he was the guy who was going to bring the country back to the center, to its balance. This American republic had gotten out of whack and Trump was seen as kind of the candidate of crazy and Biden beat him. And in the midterms, Biden was solid. The party of crazy did badly in 2022. And that's that's slipped away. And I'm unclear why.

If you look at President Biden's last month, he's had a pretty good month in terms of leadership. I think his leadership on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, as painful, as savage as it's been, has been good. He's stood up for Israel, but he's also whispered into Israel's ear, be careful, exercise caution. Similarly, the U.S. economy, which Biden gets blamed for, when you look at the numbers, is doing amazingly well. The bad things that were predicted generally haven't happened. So there's something else going on here. The overwhelming numbers on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, who think the country is going in the wrong direction. That tells you something. It tells you something about, as John Meechum was saying, a kind of deep uneasiness, almost a gloom

among the country. Somehow Biden has to find a way to animate the excitement, enthusiasm that I think he tapped as a man of the center, a man who would put the country back together quickly. He's got he's got to do it soon and reverse these perceptions. Otherwise, we're really heading toward what I fear will be a cataclysmic election next year. And it will be one final thought. One of the most negative campaigns, I expect, that we've ever seen in our lifetimes. Just, you know, slinging more mud in both directions. That's really Biden's best hope is to is to is to is to be go so negative, so hard on Trump that that he that's that enough of it sticks that he manages to squeak through.

So I think we're going to have on president evidence a pretty nasty campaign season. So, John Heilman, you have, I think, a pretty brilliant insight when it comes to why Democrats aren't more fired up about the threat of Donald Trump. Tell it to our viewers. Well, I think to what David was just saying, I think you can characterize 2020 in a slightly different way, which is that Biden had a degree of appeal to a bunch of people in the electorate. and non-aligned Democrats, but anti-Trump voters, turned out in 2020 was because they thought Donald Trump had been president for four years, and he was seen by black voters, a lot of Hispanic voters, a lot of young voters, a lot of people around the country. They'd seen what he could do in four years, and they thought another four years of Donald Trump was an existential threat. And so they rallied around Joe Biden as the most credible and plausible opponent to Trump. What a lot of

Democratic strategists and people inside the world that now are doing a lot of not just quantitative, but qualitative work in the field, doing focus groups right now, talking to these Democratic voters and asking them why they don't love Joe Biden, why they look at the state of the economy or Biden's accomplishments or everything else, and why are they not with him? Why has he eroded so much in those groups? And what they find kind of confoundingly, everyone on this panel is going to say, are you kidding me? We've seen the polls, but a lot of average, ordinary, normal, workaday Americans, Democrats are asked in focus groups, they say, well,

Donald Trump's never going to be the nominee. We don't have to worry about that. They have no idea. And I think it's helpful to remind people that we talk about Trump's poll numbers all day long on cable and no one, not no one, thank God, but very few people are paying attention. It's a year out. This goes back to the thing of why these numbers don't matter that much a year away. It's because most voters do not tune into presidential politics until around Labor Day of an election year. And what they know, basically, is Donald Trump's in court, right? That guy's got arrested. He's maybe going to jail.

That guy could never be the Republican nominee. And if you don't think Trump is going to be the nominee, you don't see it as an existential threat yet. Right. And so you can kind of afford to be loose in your support for Joe Biden because, yeah, Trump will be there, be the nominee. That's impossible. And Democrats in the White House, they hear this all the time. They hear it all the time and they got to turn that around. I'm actually laughing because what's so funny is you talk to Republicans and what you hear from Republicans is the same thing about Joe Biden, which is and they think, you know, totally think there's this great conspiracy and they're like

Biden's not going to run. So who are they going to put up? We know he's not running. He's too old. He's a swear. And it's not just sort of rank and file Republicans. It's like the Republican elite. They are so certain that the Democrats have a hook and ladder play that they're passing it. And then they're going to lateral to somebody who's going to run down the sidelines and score the touchdown for Democrats. And they're going to be caught flat footed. I say to my Democratic friends, Donald Trump looks like he's going to be the nominee. And I say to my Republican friends, the Democratic Party can't run a conspiracy. You go to like one of their lunches, they can't even

get your ham sandwich order right. So, no, there's no great conspiracy that they're keeping under wraps right now. Joe Biden is running for president. And the more people suggest that he does it, the angrier he gets. And that's the reality. But you really do have you have Democrats who don't think Trump's going to ever make it. And you have Republicans who think Joe Biden's never going to wish maybe that they would find someone else because Joe Biden has beaten Trump. He's the one person who has. So that's proven. John Meacham, moving forward, we're going to talk about this throughout the four hours this morning.

But just what do you think Americans should be focused on in the months to come compared to what they might be focused on? I don't think President Biden is being is on trial here. I think we are. I really do. I think this is a test of citizenship. It's I think John just put it really well. I think a lot of people are not as blessedly for them are not as immersed in all this as as as most of us. But, you know, when Republicans talk, you know, criticize President Biden, it's like having someone in a burning house talking about the fire safety violations of a house that's not on fire across the street. Right. Right. And so I just think it requires two beats of thought. It requires saying, OK, I don't agree with, you know, 25 percent of what's going on or whatever the percentage is.

But you know what? He's not going to break the law. He's not going to storm the Capitol. And does that sound like we're lowering the bar? Maybe. But we're human beings. We have proven in the last six years that we are capable of making terrible public decisions. And one of the things the founders gave us is the recognition that it's hard to get things done in this country based on their view that most of what we would want to do, we shouldn't do. And I think that we just have to take we have to take a beat here. Remember, President Biden woke up this morning worried about a wider war in the Middle East in a most unstable region in the world involving the global economy century in history unfolding in Ukraine because of the appetites of a dictator. He's got a lot to think about. And I think that it requires citizenship requires a certain amount of of empathy for that.

And maybe it maybe that doesn't get the job done. Maybe we're just in such a foul humor that let's see what the authoritarians can do. But we saw what the authoritarian almost did. And if we lose this, it's really hard to see how we get it back. The United States of America. So that test of citizenship, Joe, I mean, I just I find it hard. This is naive, maybe, but I find it hard to believe that American voters will vote against women's health. I find it hard to believe that American voters will vote against jobs and whether you like his policies or not. Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act. I find it hard to believe American voters will vote against global security and leadership and not being embarrassed around the world.

NATO, Ukraine, Israel. I find it very, very, very hard to believe that voters will not vote for a president who didn't start an insurrection. I find it very hard to believe that they will vote against a president who has humanity and empathy and doesn't insult people and act in a cruel way. I find it hard to believe that American voters won't vote for someone who is a patriot, who loves his country, who doesn't have a crush on authoritarian and steal documents to show to his authoritarian friends. I just find it very hard to believe that unless the electorate has been poisoned by disinformation, that we're going to have this test of citizenship that we're going to have this test of citizenship. We're going to fail. I find it hard to believe. If you find it hard to believe,

then all I can say is if Hillary Clinton were here. Yeah, I hear you. She would say, then you've already forgotten about 2016, Mika. No, I believe it's possible, but I'm finding it hard to believe. And I'm hoping that people vote for America. We talk about 2016, but let's talk about 2020. You had 77 million people vote for a guy who proved himself to be reckless, out of control, radical, a guy who spent the entire year undermining American democracy because he knew he was going to lose. Seventy seven million people lying about American democracy, saying the election was going to be rigged because he knew he was going to lose. And then what happened? Well, two days before the election, he was still telling his attorney general, ordering his attorney general to arrest his political opponent and his political opponent's family. Seventy seven million people voted for that guy.

And if he gets elected in 24, it will only be worse. Don't take my word for it. Take his because he's already said he's going to arrest Democrats after he gets elected. We're going to be talking about that Washington Post article where he promises to be authoritarian. He's already promised to suspend the Constitution of the United States. Now he's talking about what he's going to do when he gets elected to turn America into an authoritarian state. John Halman, thank you both for being on this morning and coming up hours from now. Donald Trump will take the stand in the civil fraud case. This is the one where the judge has already found him and his co-defendants, his sons, liable of massive fraud. Anywho, what will his testimony reveal?

And could it decide the fate of his business empire? We'll get a live report from the courthouse. Plus, see the moment Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie got booed on stage by a MAGA crowd in Florida. Do you think it bothered him? Nope. How the former governor reacted to being heckled. And, quote, Netanyahu is an albatross around Biden's neck. That's the analysis from Ed Luce of The Financial Times, who will join us to explain.

We're back in a moment. We'll be right back. Yeah. Well, now it feels like home. Thank you all very much. What a shock here for Trump. I'm going to fall over dead. Now, look. Now, look. Every one of those boos, every one of those catcalls,

every one of those yells will not keep it. Yes, sure. Will not solve one problem we face in this country. Will not solve and will not make this country better. Your anger, your anger, your anger against the truth is reprehensible. Well, there you go. Preacher, brother. Presidential candidate Chris Christie over the weekend responding to the boos and jeers from pro-Trump crowd at the GOP Freedom Summit. Freedom Summit. They call it the Freedom Summit. You've got a guy at the Freedom Summit. You've got a guy that they're praising in Donald Trump that has talked about terminating the Constitution. A guy who is saying he's going to arrest people just because he wants to arrest them, said he's going to arrest General Mark Milley.

He loves the six says he's going to arrest Ty Cobb, his former attorney, just because just because the Freedom Summit, those people are jokes. Every one of them that booed are jokes. And he goes out. You're right. He goes out and he has the the people who pummeled police officers with American flags that he praises, that he calls hostage. How sick do you have to be to actually go to an event and boo somebody for criticizing Donald Trump at the, quote, Freedom Summit. How sick do you have to be to praise a man who supports rioters who beat the hell out of cops and led to the death of four police officers, if you ask their families, led to the death of four police officers. And yet ask their families, led to the death of four police officers. And yet they say they support freedom. No, it's just the opposite. They support a tyrant, a guy who's promised he wants to suspend the Constitution and a guy who has said,

I'm going to just start arresting people after I'm elected president of the United States. Also found liable of being a massive fraudster. And that's what we'll go next. Well, the judge also judge saying he's a rapist. But I guess that freedom to rape is what they support. Do you like that? I mean, seriously, how low can you go? So Donald Trump is scheduled to take pretty damn low today in his two hundred and fifty million million New York City civil fraud trial. The former president will have to defend his actions as head of the Trump organization and deny allegations he ordered his subordinates to falsify financial records and inflate his wealth. The New York Times reports Trump is deeply, personally enraged by this trial and by the fact that his children have had to testify.

Several people who have spoken with him said, and he may not be able to restrain himself on the stand. He reportedly held practice sessions over the weekend to prepare for today's testimony because he's so upset. He's so angry. Joining us now. He's been caught doing something that people have been knowing he's been upset. He's so angry. Joining us now. He's been caught doing something that people have been knowing he's been doing for 40 years. From outside the courthouse,

former litigator and MSNBC legal analyst, Lisa Rubin. Lisa, what can we expect today? I think, Mika, you're exactly right that part of what we're really looking for today is seeing whether former President Trump either deliberately or not deliberately loses his temper as he's being examined about the core issue in this trial, which is whether he,

his adult sons, Allen Weisselberg, Jeff McConaughey, and others at the Trump Organization intended to defraud the lenders and insurance companies with whom they were dealing and to whom they sent his statements of financial condition, which are sort of like a 360 picture of his financial status. Trump will disclaim again and again, as Michael Cohen warned us, that he had any involvement in that. And to the extent that there are valuation discrepancies, that's someone else's problem and something that the accountants should have checked. What I'm really watching for today is whether Trump does slip up and give indications. And of course, he was the one who either directed this or signaled that he wanted this to happen. Why? Because having the world think that he was a multi-billionaire was more important to him

than telling the truth, particularly when he was dealing with the people that he needed money from the most. Lisa Alshapton, one of the things that I'll be looking for, and I want you to address this, as someone that knew Trump when he tried to play more liberal and Democrat, is that he always bragged about how he was self-made, how he took nothing and made himself something, even though it wasn't true. His father had given him hundreds of millions of dollars. How does he get on the stand today and contrast his self-made, I was this savvy, brilliant, self-made billionaire We're now saying I really didn't know a lot what was going on. The accountants did it and I was, you know, six feet away from it.

And does second part of the question, does the prosecutor go at whether you being the self-made brilliant guy is the true Trump or whether you just happen to be the CEO of a firm that kind of took a life of its own and you had nothing to do with the details, even though you knew every check written in the company. Which side of that does the prosecutors do? Well, I think Trump is going to try to bridge that distance, Rev. He's going to say, I was immersed in my real estate business, right? I was self-made to the extent that I was focused on building this empire and the assets. What I wasn't focused on was the nitty gritty of the financial reporting. I left that to Weisselberg and the accountants at all times. And of course, Allen Weisselberg himself, when he was on the stand, he had every incentive

to pitch a narrative that's much more in line with Trump's than what the attorney general wants to get out of him. One of the ways that I think that they'll exploit that Trump knew what was going on is by showing him a series of documents and other people's testimony that is designed to remind him of meetings and other interactions that he had where he boasted about the value of his assets, which insinuates that he was where he boasted about the value of his assets, which insinuates that he was, in fact, deeply involved in the creation of those values. That includes meetings that he took with people from Forbes or meetings that he took with insurance underwriters where he would make a guest appearance, so to speak, in the last 15 minutes just to brag about the size and scope of his empire. All right. Former litigator and MSNBC legal analyst will be watching today.

Lisa Rubin, thank you very much. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is wrapping up his trip to the Middle East as he tries to quell tensions amid the Israel-Hamas war. Yesterday, after meeting with Arab leaders in Jordan, Blinken made two surprise visits to the West Bank and Iraq. In the occupied West Bank, he met with Palestinian leaders and reassured them that the U.S. is working with Israel to minimize harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip. This as the Palestinian Authority is calling for a, quote, immediate halt to the war.

Blinken also reiterated America's support for a two state solution and condemned extremist violence in the West Bank. David Ignatius, talk about where we are right now and how Joe Biden and Antony Blinken are balancing, doing this delicate balance? So I thought Blinken's trips yesterday to the West Bank and to Iraq were perfect examples of how this administration, led by President Trump, but with Blinken as his key associate, are doing the hard things, are going to the places that are dangerous. For an American secretary of state to go to Ramallah, almost in a state of insurrection against Israel, angry at America, takes a lot of guts. Same thing with going to Baghdad.

The leader of one of the militias, Kataib Hezbollah, said before Blinken arrived, Anthony Blinken, son of a Jew, don't you dare come here. We threaten violence. It was an elaborate statement. Blinken went anyway. And he said, we have an interest in a stable Iraq. He warned the Shiite militias to be careful. So the two things I see Blinken focusing on for President Biden are deterring a wider war that would be driven by Iran's proxies. That's why you go to Baghdad. You say, don't do it. You know, I'm here to show don't do it. And then secondly, this key question of the day after, how on earth can the international community help put Gaza back together after Hamas is defeated? It's going to depend a lot on Palestinians who have to do the work in the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority.

And there's Blinken focusing on it. So I really commend the diplomacy. It's one of Blinken's best periods, I think, as Secretary of State. Absolutely. And joining us now, national editor at The Financial Times, Ed Luce. And Ed, in your latest Financial Times piece entitled Netanyahu is an albatross around Biden's neck, you write in part, quote, Joe Biden has hitched his fortunes to a man, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is co-creator of the ghastly dilemma with which Israel is now faced.

The problem with Biden's bear hug strategy is that he has no veto on the Israeli prime minister's actions. The tool Biden wields is influence. Biden has reiterated that America's goal remains the two state solution. Yet Netanyahu's life work has been about making the two state solution impossible. Israel's military plan to remove Hamas has to be linked to the political settlement that will come afterwards. Israel's next battle would be would then be the West Bank. And my question to you is, what else, though, could Joe Biden do at this point? I mean, he went in there and not only did he give the bear hug to Benjamin Netanyahu.

He was actually bear hugged. Yeah. And he was bear hugged. You're right. Couldn't push him away. But he also, you know, I mean, he went in there and sat with the I've never seen a president. Am I wrong? Sit in a war cabinet meeting on live television.

I mean, he made it very clear. I'm going to stand with you, but I'm going to see exactly what's going on here. And you better not screw up. Yeah, I mean, Biden has been doing the right things. Don't get me wrong. But as David mentioned, there is a day after problem here because the military action we're seeing in Gaza is linked to what the political process will be afterwards. And Netanyahu and Biden have diametrically opposite views of what that should be. So this isn't just something that you put off until the end of the war, until Hamas has been eliminated. This is intimately linked to how you win that war. And so that's a problem for Biden. It's not a it's not something you can blame on Biden for a second. Biden has to deal with the world as it is and the linked to a pledge by Netanyahu to stop trying to light the tinderbox Gaza and West Bank at the same time, turn this into a two front war and we're seeing so many provocations in the West Bank,

then that's going to be disastrous for Israel's security, but also for Biden's plan, which I think is the right plan for a two state process to be put back in play. You know, David Ignatius, I know you have a question for Ed Luz. I've got to say, you look at the news coming out of the West Bank, it's bad. Joe Biden's talked about the radical settlers that have been radicalized and are just going in and committing acts of violence against Palestinians who've lived there. And no, I'm not, no moral equivocation here. I've said from the very beginning, Israel has to, we have to support Israel destroying Hamas. And then we have to fight for a two-state solution.

Right now, what is happening today, every single day in the West Bank is making that the second part of that equation harder. And I'm wondering if Netanyahu knows that and is not going to do anything to stop it. Well, I applaud Biden and Blinken for speaking out against extremist settler violence, attacking Palestinians. I hope they do more of that. I mean, that is dry tinder and you could have a much worse crisis than we do now if if if Palestinians are in radical revolt.

I want to ask Ed. So, Ed, when I look at the polls in Israel, I see a really catastrophic fall for Netanyahu. Benny Gantz's coalition partner is out almost almost double Bibi's numbers. Israelis say as soon as this war is over, talk about the day after the day after they want elections to get a new prime minister. So I'm wondering whether Biden needs to understand the depth of Israeli feeling that Bibi has let them down by the failures that led to October 7th? I mean, I imagine that President Biden does. I mean, the polls are just so stark. I saw one, the Israel Democracy Institute, showing only 18 percent of Israelis want Netanyahu to stay on as prime minister. But here is a prime minister who is not, I think I'm correct in saying, attended a single funeral yet

of anybody who was killed on October the 7th. Can you imagine if that were Biden? He would have been to every single funeral. Here is a prime minister who has blamed everybody else, Shin Bet, the Israeli defense forces, the reservists who volunteer to defend Israel. He's blamed everybody else except himself for what happened. When actually his responsibility for building up Hamas is well documented and well understood

and building down the nonviolent Palestinian alternatives. So how do we see eventually the back of Netanyahu? I don't know how that happens. He is the Houdini of Israeli politics. He gets out of these situations again and again. This time, though, the consequences of him staying on and what he might do to stay on him, to cling onto power are too grave for Israel's security, for America's interests in the region. So I hope and pray that somebody like Benny Gantz or Yair Lapid or another Israeli figure will find a way of maneuvering Netanyahu out of power. He is an obstacle for Biden and everybody else. Great insight, Ed Luce. Thank you very much for coming on this morning.

Thank you so much, Ed. And this weekend, Peggy Noonan wrote in her Wall Street Journal column that Netanyahu has to go. I just want to read a little bit of it for you, David Ignatius. Peggy writes, if the Gaza operation continues, it is even more important for Israel to face the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu is the wrong leader for this crucial moment. His own country doesn't trust his leadership. He sapped the Israeli people's strength over the past year by forcing them into a deeply damaging dispute over his judicial power grab, sundering what unity they had. His actions have smeared Israel in the eyes of the world as increasingly undemocratic.

He has been aggressively deaf on the rights of the Palestinian people. Sometimes a leader has too much history. Everything is being remade now. All the pieces are moving on the board. Israel's meaning must be made new. It would be good for them to have a new person the world could look at, freshly weigh his or her own words, sift them. Even if this person isn't much better, an unknown variable might shake up this in a way that

benefits civilization. The U.S. in its support of Israel is tied to this discredited man in a way that does not help. It is a mistake for Israel, for its Knesset, to allow him to continue. And you just can't help David Ignatius. But seeing every time the leader of Israel goes out to talk about its latest offensive in Gaza or the latest development there, you're seeing a man who is deeply unpopular across the world and more importantly, deeply unpopular in Israel among his own people. And it has to have a drag, be a terrible drag on the people of Israel in this battle for, well, survival against Hamas. You know, Peggy Noonan, as usual, gets it just right. Israel must be made new after this horror, this absolutely shattering experience of October 7,

for which Israel wasn't prepared, for which the reaction was slow. Coming to a country that Prime Minister Netanyahu had been dividing politically in a way that I have never seen in 40 years of covering Israel. Anything like the divisions that preceded October 7. So Israel must be made new. I think Israelis understand that. job as Israel's ally, partner, you know, forever friend is to help that process of becoming new, becoming strong, becoming as wise as possible. These are huge problems that really are going to need our help, sometimes stern, you know, tough love from the United States. But I can't imagine that the Netanyahu era, as we've known it, isn't isn't ending.

I won't say over isn't ending. All right, David Ignatius, thank you very much. And before we get to our top story, we have two leaders that have talked about this. First, Hillary Clinton in 2016 was very clear about what was going on between Israel and the Gaza Strip and what was bound to happen. And Hamas. And former President Obama recently spoke about it as well, really explaining the four or five truths that we have to hold at the same time. But here's Hillary Clinton in 2016. Take a listen. Remember, Israel left Gaza. They took out all the Israelis. They turned the keys over to the Palestinian people.

And what happened? Hamas took over Gaza. So instead of having a thriving economy with the kind of opportunities that the children of the Palestinians deserve, we have a terrorist haven that is getting more and more rockets shipped in from Iran and elsewhere. I read. I read. Wow. Not exactly sure why Bernie is trying to interrupt because Jonathan O'Meara, 2016, once again, seven years ago, there you have Hillary Clinton. Over seven years ago, Hillary Clinton predicting exactly what was building up and what was going to happen on October the 7th. Now, she saw it coming. Benjamin Netanyahu did not.

That is clear. I had reporting last week about to the conversation of a moment ago how the Biden administration is starting to talk about a post Bibi Israel. They can see those polls. They're talking to Israeli leaders there on the ground from a variety of political perspectives, making no effort, of course, to nudge Netanyahu out. That's another country's democratic process. But they can get a sense of what is the landscape there, and they don't believe, I'm told, that Netanyahu likely survives politically

after this first phase of the war. Now, we should note, to quote Ed Luce, Netanyahu has been the Houdini of Israeli politics. He has managed to survive in the past. So no one is guaranteeing this. But there is a sense here, those I speak to in the West Wing and elsewhere in the administration, that this probably will be the end of Netanyahu. Now, that could still be months from now, whenever this phase of the war is deemed over, but they do believe that some significant changes are coming.

And I think that Secretary of State's trip, though Admiral Joe and Mika, point underscores the challenges ahead to Matthew Lee, one of the AP's State Department correspondent, one of the deans of the beat, noted he's traveling with the secretary. The tepid response that Blinken got, both from Israel and the Arab leaders, about what happens next. The Arab leaders calling for a ceasefire.

Israel's rejecting that. Israel won't even do humanitarian pauses to let hostages out right now, saying that will only happen if the hostages are released. So it is very tricky days ahead. It is tricky, which is why it's so great that Anthony Blinken is there. Obviously, Arab leaders are going to side by the Palestinians, even if they've treated the Palestinians like dirt over the past decade or so, ignored the Palestinians plight. Arab leaders have just done it. Like I say, they're great with the press releases, not so great when it comes to actually helping the Palestinian people out.

And they've been making peace with the Israelis while keeping Palestinians at an arm's length. So this hypocrisy that comes from Arab leaders, please, had enough.