Morning Joe - Morning Joe 12/20/23

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

Colorado Supreme Court kicks Trump off the state's 2024 primary ballot for violating the U.S. Constitution

When you look at the totality of the year, if you had to describe it in one word, what would that word be and tell me why? New York. This is a place where every day you wake up, you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our trade center to a person who's celebrating a new business that's open. This is a very, very complicated city, and that's why it's the greatest city on the globe. Allow me to describe that answer in one word. What the hell are you talking about? Let me get this straight. New York is the greatest city on the globe because sometimes stores open, What the hell are you talking about? Let me get this straight.

New York is the greatest city on the globe because sometimes stores open, but also you never know when there might be a terrorist attack. Reminds me of that Alicia Keys song. In New York, sometimes there's a brand new Panera, sometimes 9-11. Somehow, she's got it. She's got the pipes. Wow. Well, there you go. Good morning, and welcome to Morning Show.

I mean, who doesn't like a new Panera? I have nothing. I'm so confused by that soundbite and that answer. With us this morning, we have MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, member of the New York Times editorial board, Mara Gay, conservative lawyer George Conway and staff writer for The Atlantic, David Frum. A lot going on this morning. And we start with that historic decision. The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled Donald Trump is disqualified from holding office again after determining he had engaged in insurrection on January 6, 2021. The fourth re-ruling reverses a lower court decision and effectively keeps the former president off the state's presidential

primary ballot next year. The court stayed its decision until January 4th to allow for any further appeals. And the Trump team is already vowing they'll be doing just that. But the 4th is just one day before the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots. Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold discussed the tight timeline in an interview last night on MSNBC. If they take the case, we will make clear to the court the deadlines and the timelines. You know, the bigger thing is if the court does not take the case. As of January 5th, if the U.S. Supreme Court does not take the case or intervene, then Donald Trump will not be on the presidential primary ballot. The lawsuit was brought by six Colorado voters,

backed by a group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The complaint cites Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states any officer of the United States who engages in an insurrection cannot hold office again. to keep former Confederates from returning to power after the Civil War. The lower court ruling agreed Trump was involved in an insurrection, but said the statute did not apply to presidents. At least five states have seen similar challenges, but the Colorado one is the first one that was successful. In their ruling, the judges note the gravity of their decision. We do not reach these conclusions lightly. We are mindful of the magnitude and the weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law without fear or favor and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach. The Trump campaign

plans to immediately appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a statement, Trump lawyer Alina Haba said the ruling, quote, attacks the very heart of this nation's democracy. So it's important to remember, just as we back up again, we're going to be talking about whether this goes forward or not, whether it's going to be successful or not. It's important to remember this theory was first brought forward by a couple of members of the Federalist Society, strict constructionists, two conservative legal scholars who are eminently respected among conservatives. So it's fascinating. And speaking of conservatives and conservative jurists and their reaction to this, a couple of notable reactions to the Colorado ruling. Yeah. New York Times columnist David French posted this quote. This decision is absolutely

correct. It's a bold, courageous decision, but it's a correct decision. One cannot ignore the Constitution simply because applying its clear terms creates political anger. Meanwhile, retired conservative judge J. Michael Ludig, who served in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, said, quote, This is a very this is very, very important. Section three disqualifies one who is engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution of the United States, not an insurrection or rebellion against the United States or the authority of the United States. So there are a couple of viewpoints actually from the right. This again, this theory, George Conway actually was first put forward by two conservative members of the Federalist Society. I'm curious, your thoughts, your reaction, and where we go from here. Well, I have to say, I've been a little bit skeptical of this theory until last night, when I, now I'm completely sold, and I was sold by the dissents. And let me explain that. I mean,

I've been skeptical of this theory, not because I found anything that professors Polson and Bode said was wrong. I mean, I read their article. I said, wow, that makes a lot of sense. And I heard I read what Judge Ludig and Larry Tribe said in The Atlantic. And Mike Ludig has been Judge Ludig has been talking my ear off about it. But I just thought, well, it's a little too good to be true. And I really do want to see Donald Trump beaten at the polls. And so I've been a little bit skeptical. But then I read the dissents last night. The dissents, they're so unbelievably, gobsmackingly weak that I'm now convinced there really isn't an argument against what the Supreme

Court of Colorado did. And let me unpack that a little. The dissenters, there were three separate dissents. I don't know anything about these judges who dissented, but they're obviously competent lawyers. Hey, George, let's do this. Hey, George, George Conway, let's do this. Let's go to David really quickly. We got to fix your mic. And Alex, if you can help fix his mic. And David Frum, you actually wrote about this. We'll get back to George. It's fascinating him talking about the weakness of the dissents and what impact that may have actually on the Supreme Court ruling. But David, your latest article for The Atlantic is titled The Colorado Supreme Court Just Gave Republicans a Chance to Save Themselves. And in it, you write this. The U.S. Supreme Court now has the opportunity

to offer Republicans an exit from their Trump predicament in time to let some non-insurrectionist candidate win the Republican nomination and contest the presidency. The Colorado court has invited the U.S. political system away from authoritarian disaster, back to normal politics, back to a race where the Biden-Harris ticket faces more or less normal opponents rather than an ex-president who openly yearns to be a dictator. Until now, Trump supporters have been protecting Biden from his own weaknesses by insisting on nominating an even weaker alternative. If upheld by the Supreme Court, the Colorado court's decision might yet save the GOP from itself. Will the GOP consent to be rescued? And this reminds me of what Liz Cheney was saying on

Fox News on Monday night, where she was saying there are other candidates who can stand up for this party and bring it back to its roots and actually wage a good fight for the presidency. They could, I guess, David. The question is, as we look forward to what the Supreme Court does here, obviously you've got a Roberts court that, yes, is conservative in many ways, but also Roberts himself is conservative with a small C, an institutionalist. I think one of his most famous rulings was upholding Obamacare, where he said, don't ask us to do from the bench what you all can do from your voting booths next year. I'm wondering if that, despite the fact that this is a very strong legal argument, according to most conservative jurists, that despite that fact, the institutionalist and Roberts and the Roberts court will say, we're going to let the voters decide this. Yeah. Well, that's why the remarks from Republican candidates over the past 12 hours or so have been so important. Because this court is highly ideological. It's highly political. It's very

attuned to what Republicans want. If Republicans like Haley, like DeSantis, like others give the Supreme Court, this very pro-Republican Supreme Court, sort of a permission, they may act. If not, they won't. You know, like George Conway, I was president of the Harvard Law School Federalist Society the same year he was president of the Yale Law School Federalist Society. Like him, I was skeptical of this approach. But one reason I was skeptical, in fact, I wrote an article in August warning that the courts would never do it. But one reason I was so worried about it was I thought this case would probably arise in the summer when it would be Trump versus Biden.

But it's arising at the end of 2023 when it's not Trump versus Biden. It's Trump versus Haley, Trump versus DeSantis. So if the Supreme Court says, you know what, they're right in Colorado, Trump is an insurrectionist, the candidates they are boosting are not Democrats. The candidates they are boosting are not Democrats. The candidates they are boosting are fellow Republicans. If only the Republicans will accept the lifeline, the courts could throw them. I think we have George Conway back now. George, you were talking prior to your microphone problems about the dissent in this decision. You know, I read the decision last night and the dissent. And like you, I was struck by the

language of the dissent. And that seemed to me non-ideological, non-threatening, non-angry about the majority opinion. And so let's continue with your view of what you read. Yeah, I agree with that assessment, Mike. But it goes more than that. The dissents were logically weak. I mean, even if you don't have a lot of rhetoric in a dissent, you often have just this logic that just slices and dices the majority opinion to bits. And there was none of that. There was nothing in this opinion. In fact, the opinion doesn't really talk about the real issues in the case. They don't say they don't dispute that Donald Trump engaged in an insurrection, and they don't dispute

that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars people who engage in insurrection from running for president or anything else. What they talked about mostly was state law, and state law doesn't matter anymore because the Supreme Court of the United States cannot overturn findings of state law made by the state's highest court. And not only that, even the things that the dissents were saying about state law seemed kind of trivial and weak. I mean, they were saying things like, oh, this is too complicated for our electoral litigation system, which is ludicrous because, you know, these systems do think, like, you remember the Bush v. Gore and the litigation about chads and everything like that?

That can get very, very complicated. And these election litigation systems are designed to resolve that rather quickly. And people can go to jail in criminal cases on five-day bench trials. The other thing was they said, oh, well, our Colorado law only deals with qualifications, not disqualifications. And that's just nonsense, because logically every qualification is a disqualification and vice versa. The Constitution says you have to be 35 to serve as president of the United States. And that means there's a disqualification. If you're 34 years and nine months, forget it. And then the other the closest that they come to talking about the merits of the case was a legal discussion in one of the dissents about whether or not Section three of the 14th Amendment was is self-executing. And the argument is that and this is what the

Trump people are saying is, well, you can't just take Section three of the 14th Amendment, which says what it says, I mean, and and and just apply it. Courts can't just apply that because they need Congress to tell them how to do it. And that's ridiculous, too, because there are other provisions in the 14th Amendment, most notably Section one, which contains the all important equal protection clause, which protects us all from race discrimination. Nobody says, and there's no textual basis for saying that that provision is not self-executing. Because if it were, that means you don't need a law from Congress to say that you can't discriminate against the basis of race. The same thing here. So the weakness of these dissents, and I always read the dissents first when I read

appellate opinions, because I look for like, OK, what's the weakness of the majority opinion? And I particularly look at that when there's an intermediate appellate court or state Supreme Court decision that could go up to the Supreme Court. I read the dissent to see what the battle lines are. And I got to tell you, if Trump's going to win in the Supreme Court, he's got to come up with some better arguments than the dissents have. And if the Supreme Court is going to overturn this decision, those justices need to come up with better arguments. Wow. Donald Trump's 2024 Republican rivals are backing him against the Colorado court decision. Posting on social media,

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called the ruling tantamount to abusing judicial power and wrote SCOTUS should reverse. Here's former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. We don't need to have judges making these decisions. We need voters to make these decisions. So I want to see this in the hands of the voters. We're going to win this the right way. We're going to do what we need to do. But the last thing we want is judges telling us who can and can't be on the ballot. I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court. I think he should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court. I think he should be prevented from being president of the United States by the voters of this country.

The only candidate for president who didn't immediately condemn the ruling was former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson. So Maura, what do you- I think his statement's actually very interesting. The Colorado Supreme Court, okay. Go ahead, put his statement in there. Here's Asa Hutchinson's statement.

The factual finding that he supported insurrection will haunt his candidacy. So, Marge, what do you say to the Republican candidates' argument that this should be, the voters should have the say and not the courts. Why are you standing with Confederates who betrayed this country? And this is what they're standing with is the spirit of those Confederates rather than the Americans who came together after a long and brutal civil war that was fought to keep the union together and saw, clearly saw a threat in ex-Confederates running for office, so much so that they amended the Constitution to prevent those traitors from running for office. That should send a message that our election system, our electoral system can be used for nefarious purposes against the democracy itself.

It's clear. It's clear as day. Yeah. David, David from. So the question is, who is a finder of fact that Donald Trump committed insurrection? We, of course, all believe it. I said, OK, you don't have to dart your eyes around. I was like, you don't have to dart your eyes around. I said on January the 7th, Donald Trump should be arrested and tried and sent to jail. But the question is, under the law, due process under the law, do judges randomly decide that he's an insurrectionist or do people on cable news shows decide he's an insurrectionist? Or does he actually have to be convicted of insurrection by by federal prosecutors? These these Republican candidates are all willing to fight for the silver medal. They're all willing to fight each other, but they will not stand up to Donald Trump. They're too scared to fight and therefore they are too weak to win. The reason their words matter now, I mean, I think probably

what's going through Nikki Haley's head is she's hoping the Supreme Court will deliver for her, but she doesn't want to be the person to say so. The problem they have is the Supreme Court is looking to these candidates for signals about what Republicans expect. If Nikki Haley is trying to be artfully insincere and maybe Ron DeSantis the same and to say, you know, please say, you know, please don't do this. I beg you not to do this while thinking, please do this, please do this, please do this. But that's too complicated. The courts need to hear from Republicans. We respect your authority. If you do this, you will be supported.

And that will give the Supreme Court the permission it needs from its fellow Republicans. It's a very political court to act in a way to save the Republican Party from itself. As I keep stressing, had this case come up in the summer, we would be talking about Biden as the beneficiary. But in coming up as it does at the end of 2023, the beneficiaries here are Trump's fellow and better Republicans. That's correct. Yeah.

So, George Conway, let me ask you. 14th Amendment talks about someone who's committed insurrection against the United States Constitution. Who is the finder of fact of that? People on cable news, judges in Colorado or does it need to be a jury in Washington, D.C. that is hearing a case on whether Donald Trump committed insurrection against the United States Constitution. Well, as a good longtime member of the Federalist Society, you have to look at the text of the Constitutional provision. And the Constitutional provision says nothing about convictions. They could have easily, when they wrote that provision, said someone convicted of insurrection cannot be held, cannot be, cannot hold public office. It does not say that. And so what that means is the courts are free to determine on their own, you know, based upon, you know, the valid judicial processes,

what is an insurrection and whether the facts meet that. And what happened here was there was a five- day trial where Donald Trump got done. His lawyers got to participate and the judge made extensive findings. A judge that actually kind of ruled for him on a bogus ground found that he engaged in insurrection, found this by not just a preponderance of the evidence, which is your lower, your lower basic civil court standard, but by clear and convincing evidence, which means that it's way more than, you know, more likely than not. It's very, very, very strong evidence. And you don't see the dissents challenging those findings at all. And in fact, there's no basis to

challenge the findings. When you go to the majority opinion and you read the 30 or 40 pages, or I don't know how many there are, on what happened on January 6th and what Donald Trump did before and during January 6th. There's no dispute. I mean, we saw it on television and we saw we we know what happened. He fomented he engaged in an insurrection. He wanted this to happen. And not only that, I mean, he, you know, he gave, there's another provision in section three of the 14th amendment that talks about giving aid and comfort, comfort, um, to enemies of the constitution. Well, he did that. He was an enemy of the constitution. So it's really, if this case, if this decision gets overturned, it's not going to be on the basis of, of, of, of the factual findings. And I'll, I'll say this about a jury trial. There's no basis for demanding a jury trial here. Any first year law student will tell you that because this

is not the kind of case, it's not the kind of like a civil case for damages where you do get a Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. This is a, you know, this is election litigation. Election litigation is always is more equitable. And it's always it's more of something that a court of equity does. And there's never jury trials in election cases because they have to be dissolved, resolved quickly. And such as Bush v. Gore, that's exactly the same thing. There were no juries there. Yeah. All right. Well, everybody, everybody stay with us, because in one minute we're going to be right back. And we're going to talk about how Donald Trump is doubling down on his dehumanizing language. It's it's actually fascist language. And you can stack it up with what Adolf Hitler was saying about Jews and and and about others that he wanted to exterminate. It's dehumanizing fascist language.

And he's really doubling down on it. We're going to play it for you next and continue the conversation. Morning Joe is back in 60 seconds. All right. Welcome back. Former President Trump continues to use fascist language that dehumanizes immigrants. Here's what he said last night in Iowa. We have no idea who any of them are. They come from Africa. They come from Asia. They come from South America. And it's true. They're destroying the blood of our country.

That's what they're doing. They're destroying our country. They don't like it when I said that. And I never read Mein Kampf. They said, oh, Hitler said that in a much different way. No, they're coming from all over the world, people all over the world. We have no idea. They could be healthy. They could be very unhealthy. They could bring in disease that's going to catch on in our country. But they do bring in crime. But they have them coming from all over the world. And they're destroying the blood of our country. They're destroying the fabric of our country. And we're going to have to get them out. So, Mike Barnicle, just it's always I've always found it just absolutely surprising that whenever you would bring up comparisons, not you, when I would bring up or other people bring up comparisons with what Donald Trump said and what fascist leaders in the past have said, you know, everybody with their white gloves trying to, I don't know, trying to play by a different set of rules. Oh, you can't you can't talk about that. You can't bring up the fact that

Donald Trump talks like a fascist or Mussolini or Hitler, when in fact you go back and see what enough Hitler said about vermin and the need to destroy vermin and uproot Marxist, destroy vermin or what Hitler said about about poisoning the blood of our country. The comparisons are are the parallels are are shocking. They're just shocking. And by the way, when a guy says, by the way, I've never read Mein Kampf while he's speaking as if he's read Mein Kampf, it reminds, it brings me back and a lot of people back to Ivana Trump's 1990 interview with Vanity Fair, where she said that her husband kept collected speeches of Adolf Hitler by his bedside. And that's that's an awfully random thing to say. I mean, if you ask me, I should say, yeah, Joe, Joe know, sometimes, you know, Faulkner devotional things, biographies of Paul McCartney, Churchill books, et cetera.

Not Mein Kampf. Randomly, Donald Trump kept a collection of Hitler speeches by his bedside, said his first wife. And so maybe he didn't read Mein Kampf, but he he kept a collection of Hitler speeches by by his bed, according to his first wife in a Vanity Fair article. And you can hear it in his words. You can see it at his rallies. That's exactly the direction he's going. He's going doubling, tripling down on fascist Hitler-like rhetoric. You know, Joe, as you were speaking just a few moments ago and referencing his bedside and Hitler's manuscripts or whatever.

Mika sighed. She went, oh. And that's the sigh, I think, of the country. This country is on overload. The volatility of the electorate in this country is that everyone of eligible voting age, and plus some younger people, are in a clothes dryer tumbling around the problem with what we just heard donald trump speaking as he spoke saying what he said is nobody ever leaves they stay there and they listen to him mara and the infection has spread coast to coast. Nobody leaves a Trump rally. You know, I think one of the things we forget is that fascism has traditionally had enormous appeal. And that's hard to talk about because, of course, we know it's scary.

It's dangerous. It's wrong. It led in the 20th century to the murder of six million Jews and many others. And yet fascism continues to have appeal. And that was also true in this country where we saw fascism take a different form, just as racist in the U.S. South. And so we have to be on constant guard for it. We have to call it by its name when we see it. And I think that there are some other things that can be done as well, which is, you know, somebody's got to stand up and say, no, that's wrong. Immigrants are the

lifeblood of this country. Immigrants helped build this country. Immigrants are humans, just like you and me. And by the way, of course, the hypocrisy is stunning. If I'm not mistaken, I don't believe that Donald Trump's family has been here alongside the Native Americans since the beginning of the founding of the country. He himself is the descendant of immigrants. But this is what fascism does. It lies. It dehumanizes. It turns Americans and people against one another. It has to be called out, uprooted. And we have to create some off ramps to to just help the American people understand how to recognize fascism. I think that's what scares me. How many voters really listen to Donald Trump and understand how dangerous these lies are?

And where is the effort to help Americans understand, not in a partisan way, but in a historic way, help them contextualize that language? You know, Americans deserve better. Immigrants deserve better. Yeah. Shameful. And David, it is shameful. And David Frum, it's shameful that so many people that members of our former party are just going along for the ride. And, you know, I had a friend when after in 2020, after all the things that he had said,

including accusing me of being a murderer 12 times. I'm just putting that to the side because this was a good friend of mine when I asked him, wait, wait, wait, wait. So I'm just curious. I'm I'm this is not about us. But why did you vote for Donald Trump? He said. Regulations. And I just I wonder how you have someone channeling Adolf Hitler, how you have Ronald Reagan said about immigrants. Someone who promises to assassinate disloyal generals, jail his opponents. I could go down the list, ban networks that he doesn't like. How do our former party members, how do they look at all of this and go, you know, I really like Donald Trump's view of regulatory reform more than Joe Biden's? I think I'm going to vote for the guy who's channeling Hitler. Well, there's a very specific warning in those words to Donald Trump and to Republicans about Donald Trump. Because one of the things you hear from a

lot of Republicans and the kind of grudging Trump camp is, look, OK, maybe what happened on January 6th was kind of unfortunate and treason-like, but he certainly learned his lesson and he won't repeat his mistake. And that has been a promise that Republicans like Susan Collins and others have made again and again. He's learned his lesson. He won't repeat his mistake. The important thing about this poisoning the blood remark is this was the second time he'd said it. He'd said it once before. And a number of people around him had said, a number of people in the country said, that's disgusting. And people even around him had said, maybe that's inadvisable.

How does Donald Trump respond to any check, any correction, which is to say what he, as in the clip you just showed, he said, they said this about me. I said this before people told me not to say it. They said, it's mind conflict. I'm doing it again, precisely because I was told not to do it. That's why I'm doing it. So you have to think everything else that the people around him are saying, maybe it's inadvisable to try to overthrow the government. Maybe it's inadvisable to talk about executing generals. The more you tell him not to do it, the more he will do it. So everything he has done, you're not voting for the things he hasn't done. You're not voting for your deregulatory fantasy.

You're voting to repeat the things he has done because the essence of his personality, George Conway has written often about Trump's narcissism, but he's also got this huge oppositional defiant disorder where you tell him, don't lick your finger and put it in the electric socket, and he will lick his finger and put it in the electric socket just to spite you and also, by the way, blow out the house. So, George, why don't you respond to what David said and also to the fact that you have people that will say, oh, I like how he handles foreign policy better or I like his view on regulations and somehow claim to look past the channeling of Adolf Hitler and his rhetoric saying he's going to execute disloyal generals. He's going to ban media outlets that he doesn't like. He's going to jail opponents and former lawyers who were disloyal to him. How do they look past that fact? And and and how does this republic survive if 50 percent of

Americans are fine with a guy that that is lifting notes from Adolf Hitler in his speeches? Yeah, I I couldn't agree more with what David just said. And it's just quite an amazing tell. You've got Donald Trump, who is a profoundly ignorant man, and he's particularly ignorant about history. And yet he names Hitler's book in the German title, and he nails it perfectly, Mein Kampf. Somehow he knows that, even though he had to have General Kelly explain to him the significance of Pearl Harbor once. It's just mind boggling. It's not surprising. And it's and I agree with David that he just doubles down when he's criticized for something.

But it's more than that. The people in 2015 and 2016 who were the loudest in warning us about the dangers of Donald Trump, and I confess I wasn't listening and I was wrong for that, were the psychologists and the historians or the people who understood history, people who understood psychology, because they're completely interrelated. His kind of personality, he's a narcissistic sociopath, a psychopath, a malignant narcissist is exactly the kind of personality that you see in the world's historical, you know, great dictators. And that's why he can't stop it. And what's scary about it is exactly what you point out, is that some segment of the population innately desires this.

And they may pretend that it's something else, that it's tax cuts or regulation. But they but but they're absorbing this. And it's scary. Final thought. I think we need to think about that. What is that appeal? How do we how do we combat that? I mean, this is a war of ideas and we should start acting like it. I'm so grateful, Maura, that you said what you just said, because the way Trump thrives, and I know we all know this, is by him saying outrageous things and people pulling their hair out and being shocked and stunned and deeply saddened. The proper response is hearing it and saying, how do we stop that? How do we defeat that?

How do we shove the words of Hitler back into his throat, shove it down his throat and make him pay politically for this every day for the rest of his life. How do we take the fact that he brags about terminating Roe v. Wade and then tries to go back on that? That's just not fair. I've got to say, Maher is exactly right. It's just like TikTok. I hear from everyone, oh, TikTok's destroying America. Young people are watching TikTok. They're going to vote for Donald. Well, get on TikTok and figure out how to confront it, how to overcome it, how to beat it. I think the problem, I agree with everything that you just said and what Mara said, but the problem here is that this conversation somehow in certain circles,

and I would say among the Republican presidential candidates, Republican leaders in Congress and on networks like Fox News and Newsmax, oh, it's so partisan. What they're saying is so partisan. No, no, this is American. We're all trying to talk about the same facts. We're trying to adhere to the Constitution. We're trying to follow the law. And no, we don't like insurrections or Adolf Hitler. It's pretty basic. And show the screen, if you will, TJ, if you will. Show the screen for a second.

And if you watch this show, and I've noticed this several times, and I haven't said anything. But if you look at that screen, I can identify one, two, three people who before Donald Trump probably never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. I don't want to speak for you all, but certainly voted for more Republicans than Democrats. So this is not about Republican versus Democrat. This is not about liberal versus conservative. This is about people who love democracy versus people who, I guess, just don't give a damn about American democracy. So this lie that on other networks that this is partisan and this is left wing and versus right wing, this is progressive versus. That's just a lie. Mike Barnicle, this is a fight. This is a fight in the next 11 months, regardless of your views

on certain issues or your political stands on certain issues. This is a fight for the heart and soul of American democracy and not where American democracy goes over the next four years, but whether American democracy survives. And the Biden White House and every Democrat on Capitol Hill understands this. This is about the very survival of American democracy. I think the quick answer to the question that you just posed is no, they don't fully understand it. I mean, I don't know whether the country is up for this fight because the country is sort of exhausted, wearied of everything that they get each and every day by the hour on American politics, a dysfunctional Congress, a nutcase running for president again, a nutcase who was president of the United States.

People are grappling with that as they're trying to grapple with their ordinary daily lives, paying the rent, paying the mortgage, hoping that their kids will do well in school better than they did. All of those things, the combustion factor. We live in a country where you get more warnings about Internet scams on your credit card than you do about what's going on in American politics, the threat to democracy posed by Donald J. Trump. We get more warnings about your financial security. You know, your refrigerator is broken. Call this number and we'll fix this for you. Just give us your credit card number. Millions have been lost like that to scams. We get no warnings about what is about to happen

again, perhaps. I mean, Ukraine is on the edge of a defeat. Vladimir Putin is on the edge of defeating Ukraine. And that means he will be at the border of a NATO country. All of these Republicans who say we've got to stay out of it. What are they going to do when Vladimir Putin's next step is to invade Poland, a NATO country. America's ally, America's ally would require that we inject troops into that fight. All of this, all of this is weighted on the average American each and every day

whose basic job is to get through the day, pay for his gas prices, pay for his rent, pay for his food, and it's just exhausting. That is the reason I don't think we might not be up for the fight as a nation. So, George, so, George Conway, what do you say to that voter that's exhausted, that says inflation's gone up? Don't talk to me about American democracy. I'm angry. Joe Biden didn't cancel my student debt. Even though he tried. Joe Biden didn't codify Roe v. Wade.

Joe Biden didn't stop my gas prices from going up. So I don't really care what Donald Trump's saying, whether he's quoting Hitler or not. I just want my prices to go down. Yeah, so what do you say to that person? Yeah. None of that matters compared to what's at stake in this election. And, Joe, more to your point, I'm 60 years old. I first voted in a presidential election in 1984. I voted in 10 presidential elections.

2020 was the first time I ever voted for somebody other than the Republican. First time I ever voted for a Democrat for president. And the reason is because our entire system is threatened by this one man and his supporters. The whole—none of these things that you talk about, student, look, none of these matter if a president can declare himself president for life and can call out the Army under the Insurrection Act to arrest whoever he wants to shut down the media. And this is exactly what he wants to do. If he's elected in 2024, I don't know that he will be able to do all of those things, but he will try. And the fact that

he tries will cause great damage, as he did over four years to this country. It will cause great damage to this country. It will paralyze the government and will cause civil unrest. And we will we will lose our democracy in the way that others other countries have lost their democracies by by by disorder and and and and and chaos. And we can't allow that to happen. George Conway, thank you very much for coming on this morning and coming up on Morning Joe, a deal on immigration reform and additional aid for Ukraine. We'll have to wait until next year. We'll go over where Senate negotiators left things off as lawmakers head home for the holidays. Plus, The Washington Post's David Ignatius joins us to discuss what appears to be an inflection point approaching in the Gaza war.

Morning Joe is coming right back. Forty six past the hour. Live look at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., as the sun comes up over Washington. Well, it took a while, but the Senate officially ended Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville's 10-month hold on military promotions. And that's a 10-month hold on the men and women who are responsible for, you know, protecting our country on. They sacrifice their families.

Sacrifice. Yeah. Tommy Tuberville being extraordinarily painful, causing causing extraordinary pain for family members, for children uprooted, separating for for spouses, for separating those families. Some had to move on to new schools and new jobs, expecting to move on with with their their father or mother working. It's just it really is shocking that he just he just did this. And while doing this, the Republicans stood by while he said that this was the weakest military in American history, which is the biggest lie ever. It's the strongest military. You can look at any any ranking of militaries across the globe. And we're more powerful by a long shot than any other country and more powerful than we've been relative to any other country since 1945.

But Tommy Tuberville and other Republicans continue their war against the armed services, continue to say that our troops are weak, continue to say our troops are woke, continue to say that they'd rather than be more like Russian troops, which is just such a joke, such a joke. It's just I wish these people that hate the United States military, if they hate the United States military so much, you know, don't don't serve our country because you're doing us a grave disservice. Well, I hope it was worth it for him. Let's see how many military bases in his state. Is it five? They're going to not be happy with him. The upper chamber yesterday confirmed the 11 four-star generals Tuberville had been blocking as part of a protest against a Pentagon policy that reimbursed service members who had to travel out of state for abortion health care, a policy which remains unchanged. The generals were approved yesterday

by a voice vote, which means no one, including Tuberville, objected. By the way, the people of Alabama were against this as well. It's and even even when the majority of people in Alabama were against what Tuberville was doing, he was still insulting men and women in uniform, still insulting the leaders of our military, still insulting America's service members, saying they're the weakest ever. It's a lie. It's a damned lie that people like Vladimir Putin and Xi love to hear. Otherwise, the Senate has wrapped up its work for the year without coming to an agreement on immigration and border policy, meaning additional funding for Ukraine and Israel will have to wait until at least next month. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority

Leader Mitch McConnell issued a rare joint statement expressing the importance of the negotiations, saying talks will continue as issues are ironed out. Leader Schumer also vowed to take swift action on the funding supplemental for Ukraine and Israel early in the new year. Joining us now, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitale. Ali, I think it was yesterday you were telling us that you really didn't want to put this off because it was going to be a messy start to the new year. Now it's going to be messier. Yeah, which this Congress, I guess that should be no surprise to us because it's been one mess after the other from the very start of it back in January. But this really does tee up another tenuous battle for Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill,

not only because they are negotiating on this increasingly and always thorny issue of immigration, but because they're now not doing it in a vacuum. And negotiators in the room will cop to that. They know that as they're hammering out border restrictions, they are going up against someone on the Republican side who is likely going to be the nominee in former President Donald Trump. They are hearing those comments that he's making about immigrants. They are being asked about what he's saying about immigrants somehow poisoning the blood of this country. And I think what I'm continually struck by is the ways in which Republicans are trying to portend that immigration policy in 2023 and 2024 can somehow be divorced from the comments that Trump is making

on the campaign trail, which are only going to be increasingly in the spotlight as he inches closer and closer to taking this nomination. And so it impacts what's happening in the room there, because Democrats are now trying in some ways to Trump proof this legislation if it actually gets to a point where they can write it down on paper and end up on the floor to have a vote on it. They're still far away from that. This framework is still actually coming together. But when you think about the ways that they're talking about how presidents can have leverage, for example, over asylum and the way that asylum is claimed or adjudicated, or the ways in which deportations happen on an expedited basis, Republicans might want those policies on the

table. And certainly Democrats are now willing to entertain them. But they are doing so in a way that they're trying to make it that future presidents, a future President Trump, if it comes to that, cannot make this system or exploit this system in a way that Democrats and Republicans could be uncomfortable with. So certainly all of this is swirling in the pot. It's messy now. These issues were messy anyway. But the Trump factor, once again, makes them increasingly messier. NBC's Ali Vitale, thank you so much for your reporting and great job on way too early this morning. David Frum, you have a recent piece in The Atlantic on what's behind the GOP's shifting excuses for abandoning Ukraine. What are they? Well, Republicans would never say we can't have any tax cuts till we solve the border

problem. They would never say we can't mail Social Security checks until we've solved the border problem. But they have said we can't help Ukraine until we've solved the border problem. Now, the Ukraine ask, the $106 billion that President Biden has asked for includes $14 billion for the border. And the reason that money is so important is because we have a breakdown of the asylum system. You need to hear cases more quickly under American law and under treaty in order to remove people from the country. Most asylum cases are rejected if they are heard, but it costs money to hear them, and President Biden has put that forward. But Republicans have demonstrated,

and that's the thesis of my article, as they have moved step by step away from Ukraine, that they're doing it in order to honor Trump. There's only a handful of Republicans in the House and Senate who share the kind of pro-Putin ideology. You hear from some of the noisier voices in social media and on broadcast media. But there are a lot of Republicans who want to demonstrate that they're loyal to Trump. And they know

Trump hates Ukraine. Trump wants to see Ukraine lose. And they're loyal to him. There's one more factor here. And it's a concept I call under news. If you are a regular consumer of Fox News, Fox isn't the only way you're getting your messaging. You're also part of a system of social media where they circulate stuff that's too crazy for Fox News. But when you watch Fox News, the Fox News hosts allude to this crazy stuff. They know you know it. You know they know it. And they wink at it. They nod at it. And it's part of the whole information environment. So while Fox News may cover Ukraine as if it's about the border, if you're experiencing

Fox News, what you're experiencing is an immersion system in which it's linked to a bunch of truly insane ideas about Ukraine's role in American politics, Ukraine's role in connection to the Biden family. And all of that is the poison that people are absorbing from many different sources and that is now being focused by Republican leaders against Ukraine. It's it's it's really shocking what you see Trump supporters saying about Ukraine, about Vladimir Putin, about they literally parrot Russian talking points because they've heard it, as David said, online. And somehow this somehow the far right has taken to embracing authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and Orban.

Yeah. No, and they don't see anything wrong with it. It's totally backwards. And also, Republicans in everything that they're doing are not being actual Republicans, including the candidates, by not calling out Donald Trump, by not saying what they see. The Atlantic's David Frum, thank you very much. We move now to Israel, which is offering to pause the fighting in Gaza for at least one week as part of a new deal

to get Hamas to release more than three dozen hostages the terror group is holding. Two Israeli officials and another source with knowledge of the situation tell this to Axios. The offer is the first from Israel since the collapse of the seven day ceasefire last month. Let's bring it right out. Congress Associated for The Washington Post. David Ignatius. David, you've written about this. I wonder how much of this is is due to the pressure coming from the Israeli people after three hostages with their shirts off to show that they didn't have explosives, waving a white flag, speaking in Hebrew, were gunned down and killed by Israeli troops.

Joe, I think that's a big reason that the hostage release issue has come back. This was agonizing for Israelis. It was agonizing, I think, for everybody in the IDF. It's a horrific moment. It happened in an area, I'm told, where there had been ambushes. These are young soldiers. They're not that experienced. They made a nightmarish mistake, but it made every Israeli think, what can we do to get the hostages out? And so I think we will see a new effort to resume mediated negotiations with Hamas through Qatar. I'm told that the ceasefire at this time could actually last a couple of weeks, be accompanied by more humanitarian assistance into Gaza, more relief for the Palestinians there who've been suffering so badly. There has been concern about terrible outbreaks of disease, cholera among them.

Cholera threat for the moment apparently has receded, but it's a severe humanitarian problem. I'm told that what's happening on the ground is that in northern Gaza, Israel believes that Hamas' command and control is basically broken. It's not possible for Hamas leaders in the south to communicate with the north anymore. You have roving bands of Hamas fighters who are still doing a lot of damage to the Israelis in the north, but it's not well coordinated. The concern is in the south where Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, is located. He's said to have surrounded himself with hostages to try to protect himself. That's going to be the focus of the fighting. And I think there is a hope that perhaps after this period of ceasefire, additional humanitarian assistance, some Israeli troops in the north might be able to pull back so that they were in a standoff position.

That would be the kind of, as I said in my piece this morning, inflection point that the U.S. had hoped would come in this war soon. I don't think we're there yet. There's still an awful lot of Hamas fighters out there killing Israelis. This is still a real hot war. But I think we are moving towards something different. David, what's your sense of what might happen when there are over 100 hostages being held right now, when the world and the state of Israel finds out that several, perhaps more than several hostages, died during captivity. Well, you know, Mike, I think that's almost a certainty.

When you look at hostage numbers, you have to be very careful to talk about living hostages within the total. Some were carried out dead or almost dead on October 7. Some have died in captivity. Some may have died as a result of Israeli efforts to get their captors. You know, how that math works out is hard to say. From the beginning, Mike, one of the dilemmas for the Israeli military has been how do you go aggressively after Hamas and not at the same time kill your hostages. And this process of humanitarian ceasefires, negotiations with Gutter to free the women and children and foreign hostages, that was significant in part because it removed that worry for the time those negotiations were going on.

I think there's a desire to go back to negotiations, get as many people as possible out so that you can then do the kind of end game, which is going to take months. I think nobody should be imagining that there's going to be an on-off switch, that suddenly one day, you know, flip and the Gaza war is going to be over. They're going to be long running cleanup operations. They won't be as bloody. Civilians, I hope, won't be targeted. But there's going to be a long period in which the Israelis try to consolidate what they began after October 7. David, can you tell us a little bit more about the view from the White House in Washington on this. We know that they were trying to apply

pressure for another pause in the fighting and specifically sending that message to try and focus on the hostages as many, I assume, in the Israeli public would also want. Can you talk to us a little bit about that dynamic, especially as polls are showing that President Biden is just underwater on this issue with American voters. So, Mara, I think the White House feels that the United States is paying a cost. The longer this war continues, the longer the images of civilian suffering continue. But maybe more to the point, Israel is paying a cost. It becomes more and more difficult for Israel to sustain international support. You've got the UN lined up now all but unanimously against Israel. So the United States, the way it has been saying, it's in your interest

to have more of a humanitarian face for this conflict, to preserve support for it, because it's going to continue for a while and because you're going to need help in rebuilding some new secure order in Gaza. What I think has happened is after a period of jostling where President Biden or one of his aides would say this to Netanyahu or his government, the Israelis have begun to think, you know, that's probably right. And there's more support. I hear more support from Israelis now for this idea of a pause, a return to negotiations, a move into phase three, as they like to call it, in the conflict. David, I'm going to be a broken record here. Forgive me. But you said you talked

about the United States paying a high price and we are across the globe. Israel is paying a high price across the globe. And I just I just have to ask again the question I'm asking about every day. How much longer will the United States continue to pay the price, not for Israel, but for a leader who knew of Hamas's funding sources, massive funding sources in 2018, chose to do nothing, was asked in Doha by Qatar, his Mossad head, asked, does the Netanyahu government want us to continue funneling the billions of dollars that we've been funneling to Hamas through the years? And Netanyahu's, yes. How much longer do we pay the cost and Israelis pay the cost for a leader who was responsible for the greatest intelligence failure in the history of Israel, who let hostages are who let let hostages be taken, let women be raped, let Israelis be killed for eight, nine, 10, in some cases, 12 hours before they organized a rescue to go down and save them. The greatest operational failure in Israeli history. And as we see on the screen, they knew for a year. The government had Hamas's attack plans for a year.

And so I ask again, I'm curious what you're hearing. How much longer is the United States going to be willing to pay the price, the massive price we are paying globally? How much longer will Israelis be paying the price, the massive price, the worst price they've paid since the Holocaust for a leader whose failures, intelligence failures, operational failures, failures to cut off funding sources to this terror group, the encouragement of funding of these terror groups by third parties across the Middle East? How much longer does this last? So, Joe, as I as I've said often in our conversations, Netanyahu is unpopular in Israel.

The polls show that. And I'd be amazed if when the war ends or moves into a different phase, he remains as prime minister. There's been a desire to keep the war cabinet, the coalition intact. It is tragically the case that there are a lot of fingerprints on the mistakes that you were describing. Israeli military intelligence, other elements of Israeli intelligence missed the warnings. Many parts of the Israeli establishment signed off on the funding of Hamas from Qatar. If that was uniquely a BB mistake, it would be different. He is the prime minister. And what's

infuriated Israelis is that as other senior leaders in the military, in other parts of the national security establishment have accepted responsibility. He generally has not. And that's really made people mad. He issued a statement of denial of responsibility that he had to withdraw the next day because it infuriated Israelis so much. The idea that the White House has is that over the next months, as the war begins to move into a different phase, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries can be encouraged to make an offer of normalization and movement toward a Palestinian state that Bibi and this coalition, this right wing coalition, cannot accept, which means that that coalition probably will fall and you'll have new elections.

And that's the way Bibi will be out as prime minister. Somebody new who might be able to take up this very attractive offer would replace him. I think that's the most likely scenario. But he is a symbol in Israeli minds, as in yours, as in ours, of all the mistakes that were made that led to the tragedy that we're in. It's just unfortunately the case that those mistakes were widely shared. And he's the prime minister. He's the figure. But he's not the only one. If you get a chance today, please read David Ignatius's new column talking about what happens the day after the war, the possibility of Saudi Arabia, the UAE,

other Middle Eastern powers, other Gulf region powers stepping in and and and figuring out a way to help Gaza, a way to help the Palestinians move forward. David Ignatius, thank you. Also, go back a couple of weeks and read The New York Times editorial pages path forward for peace. It is an extraordinarily important blueprint. And in a day when when people are saying there can be no peace in Israel, between Israel and the Palestinians, go back and look for that piece in The New York Times, the editorial board, what they wrote. Maura Gay, thank you so much for being with us.