Morning Joe - Morning Joe 12/11/24

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

CEO murder suspect fights extradition to New York

Judging by what I've heard from my Republican colleague, I think the odds of his being approved are still less than 50-50. You're hearing dissenting voices among your Republican colleagues. I am hearing from a Republican colleague grave doubts about his ability to do this job in a way that upholds our national security. There are too many doubts, too many risks, and threats to our national security from this appointment. I think my Republican colleagues are really deeply troubled.

And to be really blunt, if the fear of Donald Trump and his potential retribution were less, there's no question that this nomination would go down and go down heavily. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal yesterday, with his assessment on where support currently stands for Pete Hegseth,

Donald Trump's pick for Defense Secretary Hegseth was in Washington again yesterday morning with Republican senators and two of the president-elect's other controversial cabinet picks were on the Hill. They were there as well. We'll have more about those key meetings. We'll also have reaction from lawmakers who Donald Trump said should be jailed for their role in investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

Plus, the very latest from Syria, including an inside look at the prison where top old dictator Bashar al-Assad held and tortured those who opposed his regime. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Wednesday, December 11th. Host of Wait Too Early for Now, Jonathan Lemire is with us. And we'll begin this morning with our top story, the man accused of killing United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson fighting extradition to New York. Luigi Mangione made that decision during a hearing in Pennsylvania yesterday where he is facing charges for forgery and carrying a gun without a

license and Joni was arrested in the Commonwealth on Monday ending a five-day manhunt. A judge denied bail for the 26 year old suspect. He's now expected to remain in custody at a state prison in Huntingdon. Before his hearing yesterday, the suspect shouted this to reporters. The Manhattan district attorney's office says it will now seek a governor's warrant to extradite Menjione to the city. A move Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul says she supports. Prosecutors have charged Mangione with second-degree murder, forgery, and three gun offenses. We're also learning more this morning about the potential motive now behind the killing

of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. When police arrested Luigi Mangione on Monday, they found a three-page handwritten note. Senior law enforcement officials tell NBC News the document had fewer than 300 words and included a note to law enforcement. It reads, quote, "'To the feds, I'll keep this short

"'because I do respect what you do for our country. "'To save you a lengthy investigation, "'I state plainly that I was not working with anyone." The writings also included an apology and a line that reads, in part, these parasites had it coming. New York City police now looking to whether the shooting was a culmination of the suspect's troubles, calling the murder a possible symbolic takedown in a fight against, quote, corporate power games. According to people who knew him, Mangione had

suffered a painful back injury and had stopped connecting with friends and family. Police are investigating if that may have been a motive for the attack. Police also believe Mangione admired the Unabomber and allegedly echoed his own concerns about technological advancement. The suspect had posted a positive review of the domestic terrorist manifesto on Goodreads, a site, earlier this year. Let's bring in the NYPD's Chief of Patrol, John Schell, and NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations, Kaz Daughtry. Guys, good morning to you both.

Good morning. Chief, I'll start with you. I said the other day, we've become kind of spoiled in this city because you guys move so quickly, and when a crime happens, we become accustomed, because of the work you do, the cameras that we have in the city to those quick apprehensions. This went on for a few days. Can you talk about from the moment of the killing, the murder of Brian Thompson, forward, how this investigation played out for you? Well, Detective Smigieko, Chief Kennedy's Detective Smigieko had a multitude of pieces of evidence to go through.

And this will explain the process. You're talking about the gun ballistics, video cams, and forensic evidence, the laborious task of tracking cameras to the park, to the hotel, getting those pictures out, a tremendous amount of work they were doing. And really when you think about it, at the end of the day, getting the picture out, good old Farson detective work, to the community. Thank the press for getting it out.

And a couple employees and citizens from McDonald's raised the alarm, called the police department. A young rookie cop who had to enter McDonald's approached a murderer with a gun. And how the assault played out was just a great job from a detective in the community and the media at large. It was a nice team effort. He had to take this person off the street.

So Deputy Commissioner, something we've been talking about since yesterday is you had that clear shot, that photograph from the hostel where he pulled down his mask very briefly to talk to the clerk at the hostel up on Amsterdam Avenue. This is the shot right here. That's a pretty clear shot of his face. So the question we had yesterday when we heard all these family members and people who went to college with talking about their shock and their surprise, did you all hear from anyone over the last several days since that photo went out who knew him, who said, I know

who that is? Well, you know, yes and no. Let's talk about how the photo went out, first of all. Myself, the chief shell, the chief of the department, Jeff Madry, and as well as our police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, the chief Kenny, while she was briefing, he was briefing the police commissioner, she said, this photo, we got to get out immediately.

She goes, somebody is going to know him. And immediately, she gave the authorization to put somebody's going to know him. And immediately she gave the authorization to put that phone out to the media. Tips started coming. I think we got over 400 tips that came in. So we're still vetting these tips. And I want to say, your view was that if anybody has any information in regards to this case, to please call 1-800-577-TIPS. Just because we have the suspect in custody, we still have a lot of work to do. You know, Chief, I know have a lot of work to do. You know Chief, I know we're waiting into a political issue. It's not your job, your job is to enforce the law.

I'll just ask a question this way. Would your job be made easier, would the NYPD's job be made easier if there were more cameras up in this city, like in Central Park? Because it seemed like we had the trail, he goes into Central Park and then nothing. Wouldn't it make sense to also have cameras positioned so we could have followed him wherever we went? So there's a multitude of cameras in the city, private businesses, CEOs, police cameras, right even Central Park has cameras on the outskirts that's how we allowed to track him the detectives tracked him from the park to the hotel and what we do so well and again it's so hard to track video takes time. Boots on the ground.

Video compilations are the key to success here. And that's what happened here. So there are a lot of cameras out in the streets of Manhattan, as you well know. Right. Buses have them. Sanitation drugs have them. We could always say the city doesn't really have like London, for instance, has CCTV all over the place, right? but I'd say we have a tremendous amount of cameras in this city we can always take more don't get me wrong but we but but there's more

than you the public really knows here and again just the boots on the ground going building to building track on this person detectives tracking this person across the city and you put the video out from the from the cab now with the eyebrows. Right. That was really that was key. So these detectives were working 24-7. So to Willie's point though did you guys hear from his family and friends? I mean this is a very clear I mean these pictures are pretty clear if you know this person, wouldn't you recognize him? The picture you showed before of him standing outside in front of the hostel, if you saw me, my mother saw me, my dad saw me, they were like, that's Kaz's daughter.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, like I said before, we have over, I think it's more than 400 tips that came in. We're still vetting each one of those tips, but thank God for that. The customer that was in the McDonald's, thank God for the store employees. I get that, but where were the parents? Where was the family? Where were the fraternity brothers? Where were all the other people? They saw him. I think, again, post-arrest investigation here, I think all these things will be asked and answered in time. Like we said when the picture went out the thought

process from everyone was like if someone knows this person and say hey that's like that's John and that'll all come out there's a lot of there's still a lot of work to do here it really is. So Chief can we I know the investigation still in its early days but we speak more about motive writings were found with this individual when he was apprehended. It does seem like at least some of it against the healthcare industry.

Do you have a sense as to was this solely targeted towards this particular company? Why United? Was he also looking to strike at other companies? So our intelligence bureau, our FBI, and our detectives will go to that manifesto word by word and figure out what everything means, but at the end of the day, he clearly had an animus towards the health industry.

This was a targeted murder against one person. And how that, the motive on the surface looks what it is, but when they dive deeper into it, maybe some of those questions will be answered. Like I said, a lot of work to still be done here to figure out in totality what went on here. Yeah, Deputy Commissioner, just gleaning what we can from his writings, he had a back surgery that was painful. That's obviously not a motive to kill someone.

I'm sorry, he had a bad back surgery. But do you worry about the lionization of this guy that we've seen in some reaches of the internet and even spilling out into the public where they view him as, I don't know, a hero in some way because he's going after somebody who runs a healthcare company that they perceive as being unfair to other people. Does that concern you, copycat kind of stuff here? It does concern the agency and actually it does concern the commissioner at the very sad point, but this guy's not a hero.

He's not a hero. If you have any issues with somebody, we don't go out there and commit violence. We don't go out there and commit.... We don't go out there and commit. This guy committed cold blooded murder on our streets, and that's not something that we are tolerating, and I don't think that he's a hero for that. Let's follow up on the weapon that was found, the idea that it was a ghost gun potentially manufactured in a 3D printer. Tell us just the challenge that poses to law enforcement, because those are so difficult

to trace. Right, so ghost gun, you can't trace it. There's no serial number. You order parts and you put together with 3D printers. So in terms of this investigation, if it went on, we would never be able to track that firearm because it's not a serial number. What we will do now is we will take it to the lab, the techers will take it to the lab and test fire it and we'll take the ballistics from the gun and match up to the ballistics

at the scene and we'll see that's a comparison. So that will be done as part of the post arrest investigation. And what can the public do right now during this phase to help you guys do your job better? Yeah, like I said before, I would like the public to call 1-800-577-TIPS. Even though we have all of these tips coming in, we still have to put,

when I say we, the Detective Bureau, Chief Kenyon, the Detective Bureau, have to put together a good case to present to the District Attorney's Office. This guy will be back in New York City, and he will face time. I hope he faces time. He will face a jury and a judge of his peers in New York City for his case. Joe, if you look back at the last three major incidents in this city, this is a key point here for everyone to hear. A couple weeks ago, we had three people stabbed in the city and killed.

What happened? A civilian followed the bad person and alerted our cops and made the arrest. Two weeks ago in Queens, a person robbing a store shooting, a civilian followed the bad guy and alerted our cops. And we got through shooting and we stopped that. And now you look at the other day, again, a civilian put a picture, a civilian from McDonald's workers.

So we say all the time, see something, say something. The public's eyes and ears are a false multiplier for public safety. Always go with your first reaction, because guess what? It's normally your right reaction. So that's where you ask the public to see something, say something.

Keep safe, get involved a little bit, but look at those three major events. How the public helped the public safety of the city. It's a key point to make here. Chief of patrol. Let me ask real quick, I'm sorry. I want to just end with a general question for friends that come here.

I was talking to somebody yesterday who moved here in 1988. I go bad timing, like 88 to 90, 91. Those were some pretty tough years as far as crime and quality of life goes. So things are obviously so much better than they've been in the past. We still hear about crime. And just give us an overview of the way you look at the situation in New York City. It seems that if you look at the macro, the crime rates are going way down from where they were two, three years ago.

You still have people asking the question, why can't I go in and get a toothbrush and CVS it and it's not locked up, you know, behind, you know, behind plastic or something. Where is New York City from y'all's perspective since you're the ones on the street every day? so post bear reform Post all the changes that came about in 2020, but didn't really hit us till 2022 There was a market adjustment of crime if you will, but since then we are bringing crime down slowly

It is coming down violence is coming down We are bringing crime down slowly. It is coming down. Violence is coming down. But we like to come down fast enough. When you have record amount of enforcement and crime is coming down not as fast as you want, the question to me is why? And it goes to your second point. Repeat offenders, recidivism.

If they were dealt with properly in the city... Why aren't they? Why aren't they? It's a 30, 40 arrests and they keep getting thrown back out onto the street and a lot of these people with mental health problems. They shouldn't be on the street. Well, you know, we could talk about, let's talk about the subway. The 30 individuals that was arrested for assaulting an MTA workers, right?

Right. Out of the 30 that were arrested, they have a combined arrest of over 1100 total arrests. That's the recidivism problem. There's a small group of numerical minorities, numerical individuals in the city, individuals that are responsible for the high amount of crime in the city. Bill reform was well intended. People shouldn't be sitting in a bill for stealing a bag of chips and can't make $100 bail. We all agree on that. But we need some slight adjustments to the discovery laws so the DAs have more time to

process these cases. And if that occurs, this problem will come down immensely. So again, bail attempts are well informed. It still needs more adjustments. People to the table. And if you do this, to your point, we will come down faster. The repeat offenders that hurt our community will be out of our community. And we can still get everything we want in the process.

Public safety is key around the city. We don't want public safety, we're in trouble. Well, everybody around this table, I know all of us, we thank you guys for the incredible work that you do. We are so grateful day in and day out for what you do and for all of the police officers, law enforcement officers, detectives that you guys represent. Thank you. NYPD Chief of Patrol John Schell and NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Dautry,

thank you both very much for being on this morning. Still ahead on Morning Joe, we're going to get to Pete Hegsath's day on Capitol Hill as he looks to win over some key centrist Republicans in his fight to become defense secretary. We'll also talk about where Cash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard's nominations stand this morning. We're back in 90 seconds. In Syria. 18 past the hour, live look at the Capitol.

Pete Hexeth will continue meeting with Republican senators today in hopes of building support for his bid to become defense secretary. He is set to sit down today with Senator Susan Collins of Maine after meeting yesterday with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Both are moderate Republicans whose votes could decide whether or not he is confirmed as the leader of the Department of Defense. Here's what Senator Murkowski had to say about their meeting. So, how was it?

Are you ready to support him? Did you learn anything that swayed you at all? I had a good exchange with Mr. Hegseth. Are you ready to support him? I had a good exchange and we'll see what the process bears. What more are you looking to learn? Well, he's got probably at least half the Senate that he's going to visit with. He's got a process that is going to involve full vetting through the administration and then ultimately a committee. What about the allegations?

Did he answer your questions with respect to the sexual assault allegations? Did he answer your questions on the sexual assault allegations? Okay, we're writing elevators, by the way. That one works a little better than the F2P. For the click escape sounds better. Little better. Still, Ms. John says take the stairs. That one's better.

I don't know. You know, they remind me, these answers on Pete Hegson, for people that don't want to vote for him, reminds me of, like, a football coach. I think maybe Nick Saban may have said it once. Trust the process. I mean, it's all about,

we're going to take it through the process. We're going to see what's happening. We're hearing two separate things. Maggieland is saying, oh, we're going to get all of them in. Everybody's scared to death to cross, you know, Donald Trump and the mainly MAGA people on on Twitter. But everybody's saying the same thing, like behind the scenes. There are six, seven hard nos for a lot of these candidates.

So they're saying trust the process. Who knows? Maybe they go through the process. He goes through a really ugly hearing and gets through. But I think right now we should just say trust the process means trust the process and let it run its course and see how the votes end up. The word from Palm Beach is that Hagsat has some momentum.

They feel more confident about him now than they did say last week, but he's still not there yet. And Murkowski, yesterday, is using the very careful wording. Oh, I expect, trust the process. We expect that he will get a fair, fair hearing. You know, it's the same we heard from Joni Ernst yesterday. Yes, they're not outright saying no, but they're also not saying yes. They're not there yet.

They're gonna let this play out, see what other revelations may come up. There's certainly been no shortage at this point. Also, the people I've talked to on the Hill the last 24 hours say that number's about the same. There's still about six Republicans who aren't there yet to vote yes. Also, Senator Richard Blumenthal doing a public service

by providing public whip counts. He seemingly, this is the third time where he has now gone before cameras and said, nope, I've been talking to Republican colleagues. He doesn't have the votes just yet. But at least so far, the Trump team leaning in, they think they're going to keep pushing. And by the way, we're doing this day in and day out. Let's not get numb to the reality here. The person we're looking at right now is woefully ill-equipped to be Secretary of Defense, does not have any managerial experience that would allow him to run the largest, the most complex, the most important, critically important bureaucracy in the United States of America or the world.

As the Middle East dissolves and melts down, as a war in Eastern Europe threatens to move towards a nuclear confrontation or a world war. That's where we start, and then you start stacking up one allegation after another, whether the allegation is about financial mismanagement, whether the allegation is about a chronic abuse of women. That allegation, of course, underlined in a letter his own mother wrote to him. Whether you're talking about taking successful VA organizations and running them into the ground, whether you're talking about claim after claim after claim of the sort of inappropriate behavior that Joni Ernst claims to be a champion of in stopping in the United States military.

And speaking of Joni Ernst and Tammy Duckworth and so many other women, Willie, that have made heroic contributions to the United States of America through armed combat, he still sounds like a hard no on women in combat. This is a this is not the 1950s. And again, take all of that and put it to the side. The fact that any senator could stand up and confidently say, oh yes, Pete Hegseth is exactly the sort of person that should run the DOD. That says so much about the complete lack of just responsibility that these senators that are saying this publicly are taking in their extraordinarily

important job. Yeah. And you hear in Senator Ernst's comments the other day where she sounded a little more open to Pete Hegs if perhaps some fear, some have suggested because people from Donald Trump's circle are intimidating these senators and saying, if you vote against these picks, we will primary you. I would like to think that Joni Ernst or Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins has more confidence in their relationship with voters in their home states that, OK, you want to run a primary

at me, let's do it. I'm still going to vote what I think is right and not give in to those. But Donald Trump does appear to be treating these very, very important picks like ambassador choices. I like Pete Hegseth. He was nice to me on Fox. I'm going to make him the ambassador to fill in the blank. No, this is a very, very serious job running a massive bureaucracy.

This is not sending Kimberly Guilfoyle to Greece. Exactly. Thank you. That's exactly what I was trying to say. Which, of course, is also pretty outrageous. Right. There's that, too. But to your point, in many ways, the character questions with Pete Hegsit and many of these

others have overshadowed the incompetence problem, which is... Right, exactly. Yes, there are huge questions about character. And as Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs in combat, said, hey, Pete Hegsit, how do you think I lost my legs in a bar fight? No, I lost them in combat. So he's trying to parse that statement. He's saying, well, I think, of course, women should be in the military.

Well, everyone agrees on that, but he won't go off as far as saying they should be in combat. And that's the problem for many senators. Turning to Cash Patel, he is, of course, Trump's picked ahead the FBI. He was back on the Hill yesterday for a second straight day of meetings. Patel met with key Republican senators, Tom Tillis, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Lee. All three have signaled they will support Patel's nomination. Senator Graham posted this photo on social media after the meeting endorsing Patel's nomination, writing, cash promise to get the FBI back on its original

mission of protecting America and that the days of the FBI leadership having their thumb on the scale politically will be over. Is there anything in there about him saying he was going to arrest members of the press? Nothing. Because they didn't support the stop the stale conspiracy theory? And put the shoe on the other foot, can you imagine if Joe Biden or Barack Obama or someone else had nominated someone who said we're going to arrest members of the media at Fox News or Newsmax or Democrats. Locusts descending from the sky. We know exactly what would happen.

Former Congressman Tulsi Gabbard also continued her Senate meeting yesterday. Trump's choice to be director of national intelligence has scheduled visits with Senators Tom Cotton and Jim Reach, along with Senator-elect Bernie Moreno. Some of the concerns about Gabbard due to a secret meeting she had in 2017 with Syria's now deposed President Bashar al-Assad. Senator-elect Moreno brushed that off, telling reporters after his meeting, Gabbard said she, quote, serves as the pleasure of the president. So this is ultimately President Trump's foreign policy, not any one member. No advice and consent anymore?

Is that what he's saying? That's what a lot of them are saying. Could we get him the Constitution to read? I know he's new to the Senate, but maybe he should read the Constitution. They have the right to advise and consent. And when somebody is like a puppet for Assad or a puppet for Putin, if you just look at what they say. I mean, yeah, advice and consent still supposed to be alive and well in America. Yeah, and that's, John, what we've been hearing a lot.

We heard it from Ted Cruz yesterday. President Trump won a mandate. He's the president of the United States. He deserves to have his people put in, which totally ignores the advice and consent. Ted Cruz had to be reminded that he voted against many, many of Joe Biden's picks to be in the cabinet. That's a deeply, deeply shocking revelation there, really. This is how this works.

Yes, we know that Donald Trump, yes, he won. He won by about a point, point and a half. Yes, Republicans have control of the Senate and the House. Slim margins. They're treating this like it is a landslide and that Trump should just, the Senate should just be a rubber stamp for whoever Trump wants. There are a few Republicans who have balked at that, at least privately, and we will see if they do so publicly with some of these picks.

Mitch McConnell is one. McConnell took a fall yesterday. His office says he is okay. But McConnell, Collins, Murkowski, the three we talk about the most. But there are other senators who might weigh in on different picks. We talk about Joni Ernst a lot in terms of Pete Hegseth. But others have real concerns about the FBI director, Joyce Patel, and then certainly Tulsi Gabbard, Joe and Mika, who especially with Syria front and center in the news again,

that this, many have said this is not the right woman for this moment. That's bringing right now in this interview, Mike Barnicle, US special correspondent for BBC News, Katty K and Roger's chair in the American presidency at Vanderbilt University, historian John Meacham. Katty K, you look across the globe, especially in the Middle East, but also in Eastern Europe. Things are more fraught now than ever before. Yes, Assad is gone.

Yes, Iran is beaten down. There are a lot of positive signs. Of course, the Russians continue to just take massive cash, at least the rubles falling. There are a lot of great opportunities. There are also a lot of opportunities, though, for chaos that could lead to regional or world wars. The prospect, I would think, not only of people on the Hill, but also across Europe, the prospect of having somebody like Pete Hegseth or Tulsi Gabbard in two of the most important foreign policy positions in America and the

world, it has to be chilling for our allies and also for many Republicans on Capitol Hill. Yeah, the world has not got calmer since Donald Trump was elected. I think that is a fair assessment. I had a chance on Sunday night to be at an event here in Washington. There were a whole bunch of senators there, And I asked a couple of them, you know, what they thought of Tulsi Gabbard's pick, given what had happened in Syria literally over the weekend, hours beforehand.

And they kind of rolled their eyes and just, you know, shook their heads in some kind of dismay that were Democrats amongst them. This is going to be a challenge for them. And we don't know what more material might come out of Syria in connection with Tulsi de Gabbard. Are there documents there that could be damaging to her? She is somebody who has on several occasions sided with the point of view of America's

adversary. She was already under scrutiny as DNI. But now I think the events in Syria have put her even further under scrutiny, and the timing of that's going to be very interesting. But you've got these other controversial picks as well. My understanding is that John Thune, the senator from North Dakota, has to think, how can I protect some of my senators? He can't have all the same senators go out and say no against all of the picks.

And so he's coming up with some kind of a rotation scheme. Maybe it's Tom Tillis votes against one of them. Maybe it's Joni Ernst votes against one of them. Maybe somebody else votes against one of them. The thinking is they could probably get rid of four, and that includes Matt Gaetz. But you don't want always to have the same centipede, because that opens them up to too much fury from the MAGA crowd. And by the way, this is what happened all the time in the House, where, you know, somebody

would say, I cannot vote against five of these bills. I'll take these two, you take those two, you take that one. And there is a rotation. So, when you go back to your district or you go back to your state, go, yeah, I voted against one of his selections. But I voted for 15 of them. Right? So, 15 out of 16, that ain't too bad.

So that rotation, yeah, rotate the crops, rotate the crops. It makes a lot of sense. Mike Barnicle, another part of this is, of course, the actual hearings that these nominees will have to go through. And I would think that for some of these nominees, they would be especially brutal, especially Pete Hegseth, given what we know already. You know, Mika, the Senate used to be described as the greatest deliberative body in the world. I don't think he can apply that description to the United States Senate of today, given

what we're dealing with. We have a group of people, three people that we just mentioned here. Character is all, as the Jesuits say, but in these cases, competence is the issue. Look at the Middle East. Cady was just talking about the Middle East. Is Syria on the verge of becoming a failed state, or is it a failed state already? The German government is in the state of near collapse. The French legislature has been disbanded, and they are going to have another election

probably this spring. Ukraine, what's going to happen with Ukraine? All of this depends on partially, at least two of the nominees, Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, doing their jobs competently. They can't do their jobs competently because they're not fully qualified for those jobs, and yet they're nominated for those jobs. So it's going to be up to the Senate, the United States Senate, to stand up, advise, consent, and then vote.

And we're going to find out which senators have the courage to do absolutely the right thing in defense of the United States of America. John, this is an early test in the second Trump administration of the United States Senate. He's seeing before he even gets into office how far he can push many of these senators. How much control do I actually have over these men and women? And they're going to show him. In the case of Matt Gaetz, they said that's a bridge too far.

But he's wondering now, can I push them far enough to put Tulsi Gabbard as the head of DNI, someone who in the most generous description is sympathetic to Putin, who is sympathetic to people like Assad across the country? Can I push him to put Cash Patel in charge of the FBI to carry out and settle my grievances and seek retribution on my behalf? He's seeing how far he can push the line in this moment, and it will set the tone for the rest of his four years. Yeah, and there's an old story about John Kennedy

explaining that Profiles in Courage was short and one volume for a reason. There wasn't a huge amount of material to work with. And, you know, if you want to know where a senator, where a congressman is going to be, show us their primary electorate. And that'll give you a pretty good indication. Remember, the president and the vice president are the only people in the American political system,

in the elected political system, who are elected by more than a district or more than a state. It's an extraordinary burden on that office, not just because of the powers it has, but because of the base it must deal with, the divided sovereignty it has to govern from. And so that's why character, as Mike was saying, character matters so much. It's not the institutions, and we keep hearing about this, the institutions are going to prevail.

It's not the Senate, it's senators. It's not the courts, it's judges. It's not the people, it's individual voters. And so what I would say to folks who are concerned about Gabbard and RFK Patel is if you have any way to register your voice with a senator, do it. Because you have to incentivize the courage it's gonna take, and it is courage, because this is their world, the courage it's gonna take for them to say no

to the incoming president. And it's important, you know, I stumbled, somebody, I must have gotten on the wrong list. I got a text yesterday from a MAGA group, which said, please call a certain Republican senator and say thank you for supporting President Trump. I didn't run to the phone, but they're good at this. And so the loyal opposition needs to be too.

You know, Katige, you can look at who's up in 2026 and see which Republican members are going to be most concerned about running afoul of the MAGA base. I mean, it's a good instruction as John Thune is looking at what members could actually step forward and help save the Department of Defense and save the Intel community. A lot of that's probably going to have to do with the fact that you look at the people who are up in 2026 and understand that they're going to be worried about winning their primaries first. Two of those names, Susan Collins and Tom Tillis, would be two that normally would be the first to oppose some of these, the worst of these picks.

Yeah, and Susan Collins, you can imagine repeatedly doing so, and her state reflects her ability to do that. Tom Tillis is somebody that John Thune is worried about because it's a front line state. North Carolina obviously went for Donald Trump this time around. The Republicans want to make sure that it stays in the Republican column. And even though it might be in Tom Tillis' instincts, as somebody who has been pretty independent and not necessarily particularly MAGA, I've heard to resist more than one of these picks.

That is where I think John Thune is trying to make sure that Tillis, in particular, is not out there more than once on one of them. And it was interesting that you did hear Tillis support one of these picks that you might have thought he would oppose. And perhaps he's just going to get one of them to say no to. All right. We want to close by remembering Mississippi businessman Clark Reed, who developed the Republican Party in the state and across the South beginning in the 1960s.

He's died. He was 96 years old. Reed was chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party from 1966 to 1976, at a time when Democrats still dominated the region. He is credited with helping President Gerald Ford win the 1976 Republican nomination when during the convention delegates were divided between Ford and California Governor Ronald Reagan. And remembering Reid, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi wrote, there is no more significant figure in the development of modern-day Mississippi Republican

Party than Clark Reid. Our state has lost a giant. Yeah, I mean, we lived in Mississippi in the late 60s, early 70s. I think there were two Republicans in the entire state, Gil Carmichael and Meridian and Clark Reed. But John, you you knew him well. The one thing we have not said most importantly, he was the father of Julia Reed. You think taking the Republican Party from from nothing to a dominant force in Mississippi was tough. I think he would probably tell you Raisin Julia was more difficult. That is correct.

But you wrote an absolutely beautiful, touching tribute to Reed, and it reads in part this. Handsome, charming, Miki, take it from me. Parapetetic, Reed, who spoke in a delta poitouis that was best described as a drawing mumble or a mumbled drawing. He was big, consequential, fascinating life. Reid was not only president at the creation of Republican South, he was one of its creators and his politics seems quaint now. Never an extremist, he believed

in an America that was engaged in the world. You could disagree with Clark, but his motives were not petty, but patriotic, not reflexively partisan, but civic-minded. In 1957, he married Julia Brooks, known as Judy. She had been pinned or pre-engaged in the manner of the time to another man, a fellow student at Vanderbilt University when she met Reed. She was interested, as was he, but he did not move with dispatch until during a phone call with Judy he heard a dog barking in the background. When he learned that the Vanderbilt boyfriend

had given Judy the puppy, he hung up. A dog, Reed thought, is a serious thing. And so Reed drove to Nashville and proposed. The Reed's house became a kind of conservative salon, a stopping off point for visiting politicians and journalists, many of whom were brought over to be fetid with little to no notice. Judy Reed became expert at whipping up scalloped oysters made with Ritz crackers when her husband called from the airport to announce that Bill Buckley or Dick Cheney was coming over in

a few minutes. Into his 90s, he would be working the phones, weighing in with Republicans and journalists across the country. With brown bags of bourbon and wine, Reed hosted a flow of visitors. He could hold forth at some lengths on subjects ranging from the agrarian thought of Andrew Lytle and Robert Penn Warren to the virtues of the large plastic clips

that sealed opened but unfinished bags of potato chips to the details of the Alger Hiss perjury trial. Presidents, senators, congressmen, and governors depended on this political pioneer for counsel and leadership. Karl Rove said, he had a broad smile, a twinkle in his eye, and a talent for friendship. He made politics not only consequential, but interesting and fun. The light that brightened many a political back room and convention hall is gone. John, you've expressed many of, in the past, said many things that he had said, which,

some of which we will not repeat here, but a dog is a serious thing, sticks out in this beautiful, beautiful obit. Tell us about your friend. Well, thank you. And let's point out that the most formidable women any of us know went to the Madeira School. Oh, there you go. women any of us know went to Madeira school. Julia Reed and our leader, Ms. Brzezinski. He was from Missouri, born in Ohio, part of the Delta, the northern part of the Delta, came, wanted to be, was at a military school in Tennessee, very much wanted to fight in World War II, was a little too young. Became a businessman in the Delta building grain bins and scaring birds off of fields. And got interested in

politics in the 50s. Voted for Eisenhower in 1952, which as you know was the first time a lot of Southerners actually allowed themselves to do that since the Civil War and Reconstruction. And what's important I think for us is that Clark loved delegate counting and precinct cutting and thrusting, loved all the pettiness of politics he reveled in. But he was a Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Edmund Burke kind of conservative. His way into politics was not just mindless competitiveness, but was the idea. The ideas that maybe the state did not have all the answers. America needed to be standing strong

against fascism and communism. He was someone who came to the arena with a creed and in that he believed that there should be a two-party system. Remember, the Democratic Party was at a total monopoly. One of the reasons JFK was in Dallas in 1963, remember, was to bring peace not between Democrats and Republicans. That wasn't where the race was. It was between the liberal Democrats and the conservative, more segregationist Democrats. And Clark, with Hotting Carter III, a liberal newspaper editor there in Greenville, wanted to break the power of the conservative Democrats. And he became this remarkable power broker and also just had a lot of fun doing it.

Yeah. All right. All right. Historian John Meacham. Thank you so much, John. Well done. Thank you. All right.

Coming up, Bill Belichick is an eight-time Super Bowl winner as an NFL coach. But can he translate that success to college football? football. Paul Voturi will weigh in on that potential move next on Morning Joe. So June. We heard Belichick is actually interviewing for college jobs. Can you imagine him coaching college? No. Absolutely not. I think there's a lot of things he could do. And obviously, he's tremendous. And even showing his personality.

But getting out there on the recruiting trail and dealing with all these college kids that would be in the game. And I.L. Could you imagine Bill on the couch recruiting an 18-year-old? Listen, if you really want to come here, I mean, we don't really want you anyway. But I mean, I guess you could come.

We'll figure out if you play. Lomir loves seeing those three together again. Warms the heart. Tom Brady imitating former coach with his teammates Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman discussing recent reports that Bill Belichick is in talks to become the next head football coach at the University of North Carolina. Let's bring in the host of Pablo Torre Finds Out on Metal Arch Media, MSN host of Pablo Torre finds out on Metal Arc Media and SMBC contributor Pablo Torre Pablo. Always great to see you. So hello.

It's hard. I understand that he wants to get back into coaching. It's who he is. It's all he's ever been. Seems. But is this the job that brings Bill Belichick back on the sidelines? You know, I go back to a day last fall, Joe.

Yeah. Remember, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick retire from their prospective purchase within 24 hours of each other, right? The greatest NFL head coach, eight Super Bowls, the greatest college head coach and Nick Saban left his job because he was like this new game in which I got to pay players and there's a GM managing a salary cap. I can't do this anymore. He went into living rooms, he dominated them, he said I'm out. Well,, he said, you know, I'm going to recruit one time.

I'm not going to recruit a player four years in a row. Perpetual free agency, exactly right. And so Saban is like, I'm out of here. And his good friend Bill Belichick was like, you know what, one year later, I want what Saban gave up. And it's fascinating because North Carolina, John, it's not a marquee job, but it is a job. And the guy clearly wants to prove that maybe he can do it.

The thought here is that he's so desperate. He's open about it till we get the all-time NFL wins record. He's second place. He probably needs about two to three more good years in order to do that. He's in his early 70s. Going to North Carolina, even just for a year or two, delays the pursuit of the wins.

I admit, I am deeply skeptical of this. I still think that this is his eyes for the NFL. But I wonder if his reputation took such a hit and as a feud with Robert Kraft at the end didn't help that he feels, you know what, there may be NFL jobs open at the end of the year, but I'm not getting any. He's not. And Mika, I do like the idea. Like some part of me theoretically likes the idea of Bill Belichick on a college campus,

maybe teaching a class, sort of like taking a step back and maybe possible. He just loves coaching and wants to coach There's no question that he loves coaching more than anything has not appreciated Podcasting and broadcasting what you guys what we do nearly as much but I do think there is some aspect of he's here to prove something Okay, but why can't one of the greatest football coaches of all time get a job in the NFL? So it's interesting on this level too. So Bill Belichick, when he left that perch, was the last remaining dinosaur in this sense. He was the head coach and the general manager. He was the head of the front office and he was running the football team.

And in college football right now, that is not the case. There is no job like that. There are GMs now. And so Belichick is basically signaling to everybody, including the NFL, I don't need power over both departments. I only need power over the Senate. You can take the House. I am gonna be the guy controlling the on-field stuff.

He submitted a 400 page, and you could use the word Bible, maybe manifesto, depending on your mileage on this, your confidence in his in his theories. But he's saying, I'm a different guy, I can work with people. And this feels like a training wheels version of what the NFL is now, which is also a metaphor for college football. So does this go back to the fact that when he was going to go to Atlanta, he actually got warned off Atlanta by Robert Kraft, who said he's going to bring in his own people. You don't want any part of him.

Is this him saying exactly what Pablo is saying, which is, hey, listen, I understand I can play on different game. It's a different game. And then, you know, the higher the new me in the NFL later. Yeah, I mean, I'm certainly I've heard from people in the page organization that relationship got really toxic at the end between Kraft and Belichick. And there was a sense that Graff was sort of even trying to submarine Belichick's chances to get a coaching job

elsewhere in the NFL. Belichick has said, yes, he just wants to coach now. And he's still a great on the field coach. It was his role as a GM that suffered in those last couple of years in New England. And I've always thought, Pablo, it seems like this, his venture into media here was in part an effort to give himself a personality

to sort of say, look, I'm not just this curmudgeon who fights with Robert Kraft. I can be a friendlier face and just coach. Brady is like that too in that way. This is a bit of a, you know, tenderize me, put me in the spotlight, literally make me more relatable. But Belichick, man, you know, it's interesting. I talked to high level college executives right now and they're like, we don't believe

that Belichick, as Brady was alluding to, can be the guy who understands a player who is even more irresponsible than NFL players. 18 years old? Exactly. The Patriot way. Can you do that? I will say this Willie though, Nick Saban could walk into any living room and say if your son comes and works with me and gives his all, I'm going to give him the best shot to get to the NFL. Bill Belichick can actually say I've been to the NFL. I know what it takes. Bring your son to North Carolina.

Bring him to Chapel Hill and he'll have the best shot to get there. I mean, it's a pretty good pitch. It is. The problem nowadays is that kid you recruit, he comes to Chapel Hill, he doesn't think he plays enough. His freshman year, he goes in Bellatrix office and said, what can you offer me to stay? Otherwise, I'm going to South Carolina. I'm going to Georgia. He's got to recruit that kid all over again. So, Mike Barnicle, you've covered and known everybody around the Patriots, including Bob Kraft, Bill Belichick, all of them for many years now. What's your sense of how badly Belichick wants back into the game, generally speaking?

And do you really believe he would take a college job that's not the Alabama job, for example? I believe that Bill Belichick is a lost soul take a college job that's not the Alabama job, for example. I believe that Bill Belichick is a lost soul without a coaching job. I do not believe that he is a college football coach or will be a college football coach. He would have no idea of how to put up with the portal and the young athlete that you just mentioned walking in to see him after his freshman year saying, I'm out of here, I got a better offer from Notre Dame, would not know how to deal with that.

I think he is intent on eclipsing Don Shuler's win record in the National Football League, but his problem there isn't the owners as much as it is the staff around the existing owners, the general managers, the head of football operations, because all you have to do is take a look at the last five draft years of Bill Belichick's tenure in New England. Who did he draft? And it was all him doing it. He controlled everything. They were all terrible drafts

in terms of building a football team and that will have an impact on any future NFL job that he might be offered. One little thing to keep in the back of your mind, Bill Belichick started as an assistant coach with the New York Giants. They're a mess right now. I love Brian Dable, but he may not be long for the world. Belichick circling, perhaps. Why not?

Keep that in mind in New York. Why not? That record is a real thing. Everybody thinks he's going after it. He has real animosity towards the Jets franchise. The Jets also looking for a head coach. He won't be going there. But yeah, I mean, think of a few jobs that could be open.

Jacksonville maybe. There are a few others. The Giants do make a lot of sense, though I would hate to see it personally. Yeah. Pablo, let's talk a little baseball before we let you go. Juan Soto, 765. Wow, it's hard to kill it.

$765 million, a million years, however, whatever it is. To the New York Mets, the Yankees offered 760, took five million more. What's your take? Yeah, I've switched gears on this. I was initially very mad that Steve Cohen, one of the 100 richest people in the world, was a better Steinbrenner than the heirs to Steinbrenner.

I was like, this is what the Yankees do. We overpay for the players we want. And now I'm realizing this was a massive overpay and my massive rationalization is we dodged the bullet. 765, John is already making noises that sound like he does not believe my coping mechanism. I don't. But the fact that it is,

you can afford so much else now. Here's what you can afford, Joe, while you make your point. Go ahead and eat. Let me join you. There we go, Max Fried. The coping mechanism. Please, I was in company. All the Red Sox fans in my house were saying, we want him, we want him, we want him.

When we saw 765, we were like, take him, take him, take him. I'm telling you, that is an existential Daniel Jones type gamble. Now, obviously S is an existential Daniel Jones type gamble. Now, obviously, Soto is not Daniel Jones. But I'm saying, you bet your entire franchise on one player. One player.

It's a dumb move. And I would say, we wanted Max Fry. He's not worth that. I mean, again, we're now talking about overpaying people so much. We know something about this in that, you know, we paid a guy a hundred and something million dollars and he started falling off bikes and rolling down hills, getting in fights with, you know, I mean, it's you can't gamble your entire, Chris, you can't gamble your entire franchise on one player.

It's a dumb move. It is the most money ever paid to an individual athlete in the history of our planet. I don't know what the gladiators and the Coliseum made adjusting for inflation, but this feels like, we look back, this is peak sports, okay? For a DH, by the way, a guy who's only gonna do this one thing for 15 years for 765 is a bit mind blowing.

Again, happy we didn't get him. Sure. Very, very happy. And Jonathan O'Meara would say the same thing if he were being honest with you here. 765, different pick. Oh, no, it's a huge overpick. And the fact that they beat the Otani number. Otani's a generational player. Maybe the best player we've ever seen.

Who also hits and pitches. Right, exactly. One so to, he can only hit. He's two people. Yeah. Can't even field. Maybe the best player we've ever seen who also hits and pitches once in a while. So Mike Barnicle, Panic and Red Sox Nation. I was on a text thread with you last night about one of our good friends melting down. And then I talked to my son last night who was not melting down, but was not a happy man and basically said the Red Sox have to stand up and deliver. They can't keep being sort of the also rands. What are you thinking about the Sox right now?

Who are they targeting? Who are they going to get? Well, I don't know who they're going to get, but let's simplify this, okay? Free agency. Is Soto an overpay? Sure, to everyone other than Steve Cohen. He's not an overpay to Steve Cohen. Free agency is basically like going grocery shopping every weekend.

You know what you need to get at the market. You go in, you pick things off the shelf, and you check out. That's the way you get players. You go into the market, you look at what you need, you pick one out, and you go and check out. That's the way you get players. You go into the market, you look at what you need, you pick one out and you go and check out. But you're going to check out with a big, big number. Now the Red Sox, the Red Sox are going to be fine. They're going to be fine. And our old friend Theo Epstein is also down in Dallas working this week for the Red Sox. So I'm very confident the Red Sox are going to pick up part of what they need. They need a lot. They need pitching and they need a right-handed bat.

But I think they're on the road to at least a playoff team this fall, this summer. Let me hear you, you got to go. I hope Mike is right. The ownership group obviously has not spent much in recent years. They have said this year will be different, but Mike's right.

They need not just one starter, they need two starters. They need a righty bat. They have a lot of work to do. And some of these big free agents are already coming. By the way, Willie, Sam Kennedy said at the end of the year, we belong at the top of the division. We're going to get back there. There is no ambiguity there.

So I suspect they're going to go in home. More fun when the Red Sox are good. I can say that as a Yankee fan. It makes the October fun. It makes it all fun. And I'm with it. I don't think it's just coping. I loved Juan Soto. He was so fun this year. I sat in the bleachers with my son. Oh, he's turning around and talking to the

fans and saying, yeah, but 765. So now they have three quarters of a billion dollars freed up to get a left handed pitcher like Max Fried and a couple of other guys. So I wish Soto good luck, but it's too much. Yeah. Okay. So Pablo, on your recent episode of your podcast, you brought on a Pulitzer Prize winning art critic, okay, to analyze some of the recent statues of sports figures, which many have found to be unimpressive. What did you find out? Yeah, again, I harken back to the Greco-Romans,

not since that era have we valued statues and sports quite like this. Exactly. Dwayne Wade, by the way, Florida's own was honored in such a way. This is what they produced. What? You know?

It's like Han Solo. A little carbonized. A little carbonized. That's exactly right. Not a great statue. We had Jerry Saltz, the Pulitzer Prize winning art critic who has no idea who Dwyane Wade even is, by the way, to weigh in on this.

He also, spoiler alert, didn't love it. Cristiano Ronaldo, you may recall, maybe the gold standard, the bronze standard, as it were. What? That's a what? Jerry called this a tremendous piece of folk art. He actually loved this one. What?

Because it just felt bleeped up and super crazy. That is a quote from the Pulitzer Prize winner. And so, to me, Joe, this is a question of, how do we honor these people? Nick Saban, of course, was a coach and a statue at the same time, right? We don't need a spell check. We'll get one. Also, you love that when you go to Alabama

and they have all the statues of all the coaches, they're all like 5'3", Nick Saban, 7' tall. And, of they have all the statues of all the coaches, they're all like five foot three, Nick Saban's seven feet tall. That's right, proportional. And of course we culminated, by the way, we culminated this exercise with another sculpture that we surprised the Pulitzer Prize winning art critic with.

I don't know if we have just a little bit of footage. Oh! Butter. You may recall the art of butter sculpture. Is that Musco Wisconsin State Fair? In honor of the Gray State Fairs across the Heartland. We took it to Washington Square Park. Butter Me, who is just a little more attractive than me

in a way that is disturbing, was very popular. So popular, in fact, that you may have contracted some things, allegedly. You may see that this guy was just a big fan of the show and these This was just unprompted by the way now what did you do with it do you have it somewhere? The post-credit scene of the episode is gory. I want to warn you. He met a fate that I believe turned out pretty impossible. Hosted Pablo Torre finds out on Metal Art Media MSNBC. You win in the Margarine. Can someone just roll him out? Still has one member.