Morning Joe - Morning Joe 1/24/24

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Trump defeats Haley in New Hampshire GOP primary

Now you've all heard the chatter among the political class. They're falling all over themselves saying this race is over. Well I have news for all of them. New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation. This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go. Nikki Haley vowing to stay in the race despite a double digit loss to Donald Trump in New Hampshire.

After winning the Iowa caucuses last week, Trump beat Haley by just over 11 points in the Granite State. President Biden, meanwhile, is hitting the campaign trail after cruising to victory in New Hampshire without even being on the ballot. The Play For You portions of his passionate speech focused on the contrasts between himself and the Republican frontrunner. It comes as new general election polling out of Pennsylvania shows the incumbent president leading Trump in that key battleground state. And there's a trend going on in Pennsylvania, not just with Joe Biden over the last two polls. Willie, we've also seen it with Fetterman. His number is going way up in Pennsylvania. People that that know this race say Pennsylvania is now looking like his strongest state and he is looking strong there. Wisconsin following. And so they'll be focusing on mission a good bit. Michigan a good bit to get those numbers back up as well.

By the way, if he wins those three states, the election's over. It's just over. There's no way Trump gets to 270. But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Willie, I was I was glad to see Nikki Haley stay in last night. There's so many people that have done these halfway measures. They've been weak. They pretty much assigned themselves to be nothing but Donald Trump's lapdogs for the rest of their political career. For Nikki Haley, there's only one way through this. I mean, there's light way down there at the end of the tunnel. And the way you do it is you win and you just keep at it.

You keep going. And maybe you don't win outright, but you win a war of attrition because with this candidate she's running against, Donald Trump, more untethered from reality than ever. And let's face it, you know, it's very sad. I saw it in my parents and Nikki Haley saw it in her parents. It's just, you know, it's just nature. I mean, he's losing. He's he's losing more than one or two steps. He gets confused up there. There's no reason why Nikki Haley shouldn't stay in this race and again, possibly win a war of attrition and find herself after all of these trials and all of the chaos, find herself as a Republican nominee this

this summer. That said, Donald Trump is freaking out. He's threatening her. He had a meltdown last night. He threatened her that, again, more reason to stay in the race because, again, he's more detached and more radical than ever. And also the Biden campaign trying to pretend she's not there. Like they're saying the general election's begun for, you know, forget what happened last night. Don't don't listen to what nikki nikki haley why well it's very obvious they want to run against the crazy guy they don't want to run against look at that look at that split screen who do you think who on this planet other than extreme maggots think that Joe Biden wants to run against the woman on the right?

Nobody. Nobody. Republicans know Donald Trump is the only person on that screen that Joe Biden's going to beat. They know that, Willie. That's what makes this so fascinating. Will they be too stupid to vote that way in the upcoming contest? I think they will. Well, that's been her argument. And we heard it in her closing argument. We were up in New Hampshire the last couple of days, which is, guys, we're going to lose if you nominate Donald Trump. Don't take my word for it. Look at the polling. I beat Joe Biden by double digits. Donald Trump is losing or within the margin of error

with Joe Biden. Now, last night, Donald Trump did win by 11 points. It was a smaller margin than some of that tracking that we saw in the week leading up to it. But 11 points is 11 points. It's a double digit win in New Hampshire. Donald Trump got that. But if you look inside the numbers, he can't win an independent voter. He dominates the Republican Party. Eighty five percent of the people who voted for him came out and said Joe Biden did not win the election. So his propaganda, his lies have taken hold with that segment of the electorate. But the guy cannot win an independent voter. And that's what you're going to hear now for a month. If Nikki Haley does, in fact, stay in and she said she would, we have every reason to believe her. She's got a month to run in her home state where there aren't a lot of independents going to show up. So it's going to be a heavily Republican electorate down

there. It's a tough road for her, even in her home state. But her case is this guy is nuts. Watch him perform. Watch his speech last night. I think, Joan Mika, you might agree it was the most ungracious victory speech in the history of politics. We'll play some of it. Criticizing Nikki Haley, going after her dress that she was wearing on and on. Just completely humiliating the men standing behind him, particularly Senator Tim Scott, who Nikki Haley appointed to his Senate seat. Donald Trump drew him into the insults. This is who he is. This is who he's going to be.

And she says, I win. He loses against Joe Biden. You got to think this through. But it's an uphill climb, of course, as we saw last night. And we'll see in South Carolina. And my God, who is Tim Scott? Who is Tim Scott? Who is Tim Scott? The guy that Nikki Haley appointed to the Senate.

He's he's supporting a guy right now who defended Nazis in Charlottesville. He's defending a guy that supports the replacement theory. He's defending a guy and supporting a guy. Happily, happily, it's easily the most racist president in our lifetime. It just goes without saying. He's inspired racism across this country. Just all you have to do is go on social media and see what his supporters are saying. We want to show you Trump's leering

meltdown of a speech last night. But first, along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House peer chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, former aide to the George W. Bush White House and State Department's Elise Jordan is with us this morning. And in New Hampshire, NBC News national affairs analyst John Heilman. So let's go straight to Donald Trump as the final result in the New Hampshire primary was closer than some expected. It's supposed to be like a 20 point blowout, according to tracking polls. Well, and that's why I think Trump was mad. But then Nikki Haley came out pretty early in the night and said that she was marching on with her campaign. And Trump delivered a venomous victory speech after learning that Haley planned to stay

in the race despite her loss to Trump. His wild appearance coming amid another day of angry binge posts on social media. It's not well. Who the hell was the imposter that went up on the stage before and, like, claimed a victory? She did very poorly, actually. You know, we won New Hampshire three times now. Three. We win it every time.

We win the primary. We win the generals. This is not your typical victory speech, but let's not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night. I find in life you can't let people get away with bulls**t. Okay? You can't. You just can't do that. And when I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn't so fancy come up. I said, what's she doing? We won.

Did you ever think that she actually appointed you, Tim? And think of it. Appointed and you're the senator of his state. And she endorsed me. You must really hate her. No, it's a shame. It's a shame. Uh-oh.

I just love you. No, that's why he's a great politician. You have the now very unpopular governor of this state. This guy, he's got to be on something. I've never seen anybody with energy. He's like hopscotch. We have beaten Biden. You could almost say, who can't?

Who the hell can't? The man can't put two sentences together. And just a little note to Nikki. She's not going to win. But if she did, she would be under investigation by those people in 15 minutes. And I could tell you five reasons why already. Not big reasons. A little stuff that she doesn't want to talk about.

I don't get too angry. I get even. Oh, that was kind of a little threat right there. And that's going to be the choice for Nikki. I just just just here we have Donald Trump mocking Chris and who who made it clear yesterday and has made it clear throughout this campaign. He is not a man to be mocked. He's on Fox News yesterday saying that Donald Trump had gotten too old, that he was almost 80. And the Fox News host chimed in. He's 77. Yeah, said he's 77. To which Chris Nunes said, yeah, almost 80.

I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll go over math later. And then talked about all of his senior moments. And by the way, they were shouting geriatric from the crowd yesterday at Nikki Haley's event. This is why it's freaking Donald Trump out. He's being exposed. But just for the record here, I'm reading from The Hill. Despite what Trump claimed, that that that that Sununu is very unpopular. He has a 63 percent approval rating compared to Donald Trump's 42 percent approval rating in New Hampshire. And as Chris Sununu said, I've never

lost an election. You have. And you think, Mika, and I agree, she should take Chris Sununu to South Carolina where she goes, everywhere she goes. I think, you know, I think for everybody has a different kind of point where they feel that they're pushing things too far. I think that Nikki Haley is, you know, a very strong Southern woman. And, you know, at the same time, there might be some some, you know, breaks in her brain where she thinks, oh, I can't go that far. Chris Sununu is showing her, yes, you can. When you're when you're speaking the truth about someone who had sex with a porn star and then took the money for his campaign, let's start right there. Someone who

defamed and raped a woman. Let's start right there. Someone who stole documents and admits to it and says they're his. Let's start right there. You know, foreign policy. Go in there. Go after him. And let's talk about the threat that he poses to our democracy. I think that he can show her that it's actually easy once you push through that. But Republicans have kind of like these breaks they put on in their brain where they're too afraid to go too close to Donald Trump. At this point, if she wants this campaign to continue, I don't think she has any other choice but to go in 100 percent after him. There's one way. There's one way out.

And that is by winning. That is by going after Donald Trump and just telling the truth. And as Mika said, it's it's the truth to say a judge in New York after a jury said she was she she Donald Trump was liable for for for sexually sexually abusing her. The judge said what he did was rape. Let's call rape rape. And then, yeah, he funneled money to pay off a porn star a couple of weeks before his election. And my God, if a congressman or a senator or a governor or anybody had done that without reporting that, they would they would be in jail. I know I knew members of Congress that got put in jail for going golfing in Ireland and coming back and reading a speech on the floor. So, please, the double standards are really, really crazy. But John Heilman,

you know, this idea that this election's over, Nikki Haley, I know that's what the Biden campaign wants because they desperately want to match up with Donald Trump. I know that's what Donald Trump wants. That's what Donald Trump wants. The fact is, let's compare what people were saying about Nikki Haley at the beginning of the week and what they were saying about Nikki Haley at the end of the week. I mean, there was a lot of growth just in those three or four days. She ended strong. Now she has a month to do that, to go around South Carolina where she was governor for six years, to go to all the people she knows there. And again, she's got a month, a month while Trump is going crazy.

She can work the ground. And by the way, Meek and I met her when she was a state legislator running for governor. Nobody, I mean, nobody thought she was going to win. Nobody. And when Nick and I left that first debate that we moderated, we said Nikki Haley is going to win. And she did. She beat a lot of big, powerful men that were supposed to humiliate her. And anything's possible. She's got a month. What's your takeaway from New Hampshire? And what does she need to do moving forward?

Well, first, I think you guys put your finger on an important thing. The number of people over the weekend on the Republican side who I talked to for the piece that we aired yesterday, who said some version of, watching her last weekend, who said some version of, if the Nikki Haley we're seeing this weekend had come here six months ago, if this had been the Nikki Haley we'd seen, this would be a different election.

And it wasn't that they thought she had revolutionized her performance, but she had gone, she's a very cautious politician. She's always been very cautious. She's always been very calculating. That does not really work in New Hampshire. I would say, Joe, it doesn't really work anywhere anymore in the modern age, right? The spontaneity, the sense of being loose, the sense of connecting with people, that is a thing that not only works in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, but it translates over television. It translates on

digital. You can't seem like you're like you're kind of pathologically cautious, especially when you're running against Donald Trump. And what we saw with Nikki Haley was this growth, the growth towards spontaneity, the growth towards kind of not just taking the gloves off, going after Trump, but also just being looser, being more human out on the campaign trail. And you could see it almost day to day over the weekend. It wasn't as radical or as transformative as what happened with Hillary Clinton in 2008, but it was pretty striking. And I will say that having been up at her event last night in Concord, it was the best I've ever seen her. In her speech, her consolation speech, her victory speech,

I don't know what you want to call that speech, but the I'm going, I'm staying in the race speech. She was poised. She was confident. She was at ease. Part of the reason I think that Trump went so crazy was not just that she didn't immediately bow down and collapse and before him and say, oh, you know, dear leader Trump, you beat me. I will now be your slave and your supplicant. I think he looked at her and said, that's a problem. You know, a confident, secure, at ease, younger woman on that stage presenting the image that she was presenting looking as good. And I mean this in every way, politically, her presentation, everything, all the stuff that Trump would fixate on and focus on. He's looking at her and that's part of what caused that freakout. He sees that she's on a trajectory towards getting better. Now, you know, he also wants people to bow down and kiss the ring, and that infuriates him when it doesn't happen. You know, look, he won 75 percent of Republicans up here. You know, she

won two-thirds almost of independent voters. You know, you think about the composition of the party in South Carolina. She's going to be playing a waiting game, Joe. The reality is, you know, if you have this election, even if she's getting better, the party in South Carolina is a MAGA version of this party, and Trump's going to be even stronger there. So something's got to happen. She's probably going to have the money to stay in this race because of the Koch brothers who want her to stay in, at least as of now. So the money's not going to force her out. And she's got that time and she's got the connection to the state. But something else is going to have to happen in addition to her getting better. Trump is going to have to falter in some way. And she's going to be waiting around for that to happen. But that, given that

it's Donald Trump, isn't a terrible bet. It's not a crazy thing for her to want to stay in and see what happens over that month. It's a month, as you know, a lifetime, a lifetime in politics. And in fact, her campaign is already talking about Super Tuesday, where they see more opportunity with independent voters in places like Michigan and other states. Just a couple of things from that speech before we get to Steve Kornacki that have to be pointed out. Donald Trump said he won New Hampshire three times. You'll remember he got smoked by Joe Biden in 2020 in New Hampshire and lost narrowly to Hillary Clinton in 2016 in New Hampshire. That's important to remember. He also he asked rhetorically who can't beat Joe Biden. The answer is him, of course, who lost in 2020.

All the innuendo about Nikki Haley rumors stuff's going to come out. See what he has there. Criticizing her apparel. I won't get into that. It seemed like a nice dress. And then finally, he said we can't let people get away with B.S. Well, a whole bunch of prosecutors agree with that when it comes to Donald Trump. A jury here in New York agrees with that as well. So it's important to stop sometimes and just point out all the lies that flow from his mouth. Now, let's go to NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornacki at the big board. Steve, how did Donald Trump do it and where are some of the areas that he ought to be concerned with moving forward? I mean, he did it by winning Republican voters. That's that's the short answer. He won Republican voters by fifty five zero points over Nikki Haley. What went wrong for Haley in terms of not getting this within single digits or really getting in position to have a shot to win is two things. First of all, in the population centers of the state, we saw this in Iowa.

That's where the voters that she tends to appeal to are disproportionately. Voters with higher incomes, places with higher concentrations of college degrees, more moderate voters, that sort of thing. Yeah. Nashua, New Hampshire, the second largest city in the state, right across the Massachusetts border is a perfect example. This was supposed to be in Haley's world. This was supposed to be Haley country has exactly the kind of voters I'm talking about. And yet she didn't even win Nashua as a place she needed to win by about 10 points. And the other problem that Nikki Haley had is, and we saw this in Iowa, when you get away from population centers and you get to areas that are small individually but big collectively and that really are becoming the backbone of the Republican Party, especially since Donald Trump came on the scene nearly a decade ago. Now, we're talking about small towns.

We're talking about rural areas. We're talking about places with lower median incomes, places with lower college attainment. Nikki Haley did absolutely nothing in Iowa with places like that. There were a quarter of the counties in the state where she got single digits. And that trend absolutely continued in New Hampshire and showed no signs of changing. A good example, again, we'll go to the Massachusetts border, but a little town, new Ipswich here. You know, Fitchburg, Mass for point of reference, a little bit south of here. Look at this 51 point win for Trump over Haley here. Again, this is like an Iowa like performance for her in a county that is similar to what she struggled in in Iowa. So it

all adds up to Trump winning this thing by double digits. And I think if we just go to the exit poll here, I think it really puts it in stark relief. Again, this was an electorate. You are not going to find another state like this. District of Columbia is the only thing I can even think of where the electorate is going to resemble something like this. 50-50, essentially, Republican and non-Republican. And look it, among Republicans, 25% for Nikki Haley. You're not winning primaries if you're getting 25% of the Republican vote. You're not going to come close to the Republican nomination if you're getting 25% of the Republican vote. Where Haley was able to do better and keep this thing to the low double digits, independent voters made up more than 40% of the electorate. She did win them by 22 points. That's

a big margin. That's a good margin for her. But put this in some context. That is not that is not by far the best margin we've seen among independents in the New Hampshire Republican primary. The biggest margin was 42 points. This is 22. The biggest margin was 42. That was John McCain in 2000. And John McCain then went to South Carolina as this race will now go to South Carolina. And in South Carolina, George W. Bush was able to say, hey, John McCain is winning this thing or is competitive on the backs of non-Republicans. And he was able to turn that Republican electorate in South Carolina heavily toward him, toward Bush. Trump certainly saw him last night. Among all the things he said, he seemed to be setting up a very similar dynamic. And he's got a stronger argument to the core Republican base than Bush or really any other

Republican I think have had, because this is a 73 point. This is more than a 70 point swing from Trump winning by 49 among Republicans to Nikki Haley winning by 22 among independents. That's a 71 point swing. That is by far the biggest swing between winners of those two groups that we've ever seen in a New Hampshire Republican primary. And so simply, if you just look ahead at what's coming on this calendar, I can pull it up on the screen right here. You know, you have Nevada. The rules are Haley's in a primary with no delegates. Trump's in the caucus that has the delegates. So Trump's going to get all those delegates out of out of Nevada. There are four in the Virgin Islands. It's a wild card. There's a possibility Haley could do well there. It's four delegates. You go to South Carolina, just mentioned all the

issues is her home state. But the issues based on those demographics that Haley is going to have in South Carolina are profound. And the key here is once we're out of this, these initial states, the rules change. And in many of these states, the rules have been changed at the behest of the Trump campaign, which has a strong influence over the state Republican parties. They've not been changed in South Carolina. They've always been this way. You win a congressional district by a single vote. You get every single delegate in the district.

You win a statewide vote by one point. You win the entire state's delegation, delegate pool. So Trump got about a third of the vote in South Carolina in 2016. He swept all 50 delegates. He absolutely could do the same based on what we're seeing right now. You go to Michigan, it's split into two parts right here. You notice there's two different days. There's 16 delegates. There's 39 delegates. These are going to be given out proportionally. So Haley could get a chunk of these 16. But these 39 could they're essentially winner take all because if there's two person

race right now in most of these states that are going to vote Super Tuesday, the rule is basically if you get 50 percent plus one, you get all the congressional district delegates. If you get 50 percent plus one, you get all the statewide delegates. And in a two person race, it just means when Trump's getting 51 and Haley's getting 49. He will take all in a district or he will take all statewide. And you just look, Michigan, go down to a March 5th. It's a 50% rule in Alabama, in Arkansas. California statewide, 50% plus one, closed primary. Trump's at 66% in the latest poll in California. You get all 169 there.

Now, North Carolina's proportional. Haley could have an opportunity there. Texas, 50%. You win the district, all the votes. 50%. You win the statewide, all the votes. Haley could do well in Vermont, I could see. But this is just a recipe looming on the 5th of March for what the Republican process is designed to do to get a nominee early.

Yeah. Wow. All right, Steve. Thank you so much, Steve. Wow. Greatly appreciate it. It is. I will just say again, what a night. I will just say again, it's very early. So we have the next real contest that matters a month from now. And Willie, that's in South Carolina. I just I just want to say that, you know, Steve showed us in two charts. The the problem facing the Republican Party, they elect a guy that gets 75 percent of the votes in the Republican Party and loses and only gets about 35 percent of independent votes. So as Steve said, you can't win a Republican primary if your opponent's getting 75 percent. The other side of that is you can't win in a general election if you can't get 40 percent of independent voters. And we're seeing that in places like Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump's getting smoked and is going to lose. So this has been we've talked about this since 2016. It's still another conundrum.

Also, you again, I can't say this enough. Donald Trump's getting about 50 percent of the vote in Iowa. He's getting about 50 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. He's running as an as as basically a glorified incumbent. Has everything on his side, everything on his side. This guy should be getting 80 percent, 90 percent. If anybody anybody thinks that Barack Obama, if Barack Obama were running as a Democrat this year, if he could run again as a Democrat this year, those numbers would be asking, is he going to get 92 percent or 98 percent of the vote? Donald Trump is so weak and enfeebled as a politician compared to Barack Obama. And the fact that a glorified incumbent is only getting 54% of the vote and everybody's freaking out and calling him like a kingmaker is laughable. This guy, Willie, this guy has so many problems going into the general election.

He is so weak, even in his own party. One out of four voters in some states, one out of three voters in other states are saying they'll never vote for him. That is a weak, weak, enfeebled general election candidate. And yet we heard again last night, the head of the RNC saying it's clear that people want Donald Trump. We need to unite around him. You had two more Republican senators, including John Cornyn of Texas, come out after the results last night and say, it's clear that people have spoken. We've got a rally behind Donald Trump. You had all those men on the stage behind Donald Trump last night again. And we should say the American people have not spoken. The people of Iowa, 56,000 or so of them, 160,000 last night in New Hampshire, just over 200,000 Republicans have spoken, as you say, just clearing Donald Trump 50 percent in both places.

So despite that second place finish in New Hampshire last night, Nikki Haley, as we say, insists she can still beat Donald Trump while he cannot beat other candidates. With Donald Trump, Republicans have lost almost every competitive election. We lost the Senate. We lost the House. We lost the White House. We lost in 2018. We lost in 2020. And we lost in 2022. The worst kept secret in politics is how badly the Democrats want to run against Donald Trump.

Trump's a loser! He's a loser! They know Trump is the only Republican in the country who Joe Biden can defeat. Elise, it's not really even a secret. The Biden campaign is saying out loud, Donald Trump's the nominee. Let's go have the general election. Nikki Haley also says on the campaign trail, if you go to her events, paraphrasing a little bit, she says, don't come crying to me when you lose in November. I'm telling you right now, I can beat Joe Biden. Donald Trump cannot.

You need to vote for me. Well, it's really clear that the party elites are not rigging the process, given that the candidate who is doing the best is one who would lose to Joe Biden, possibly, although I think it still could be a close race. You look at the steep climb, though, that Nikki Haley has going into South Carolina. It's about a month. She has to make up about 30 points with Donald Trump. She has never lost an election there. She's won tough battles. She's always underestimated. But you look at the fault of the Republican challengers to Donald Trump to this point. They spent about one percent of their war chest to actually attack Donald Trump.

And that's about 250 million that DeSantis and Haley that they spent collectively. So Haley this weekend started to attack Donald Trump and in an effective way. Attacking his age is a winning argument. Voters question his age. They question his stability. And when he's mistaking her for Nancy Pelosi, it's a great thing for her. And I would just run that on auto-repeating ads. But is it going to be enough? In these next 30 days, is she going to do what it takes when it comes to attacking Donald Trump? Yeah, there's no doubt that the results of Iowa and New Hampshire show some bright red warning signs for Donald Trump

heading into a general election. But in terms of the Republican primary process, he did still win by 11 points. Nikki Haley is not going to find a more favorable electorate anytime soon than she did in New Hampshire last night. She's still lost by double digits. And yes, she's vowing to get in. And we've just been going through the reasons why you would. She will have the money. She's got fundraisers slated for this week here in New York City. She has won races in South Carolina before, but she trails badly in the polls there. We remember Ron DeSantis was insisting he was going to stay in until Super Tuesday. The very morning of the day, he dropped out. You're in until you're not. There is still a chance Republicans are talking that at some point,

Haley may pull the plug on this to try to avoid that humiliating defeat, which seems likely in South Carolina, unless there's some sort of black swan event that really that really changes things. So we'll have to see about that. But in terms of what she said about the Democrats, you're right. I mean, the White House last night in the campaign, they made some moves. They've shifted to top senior advisors. I know we'll get into a little more later in the show from the White House to the campaign in Wilmington. They are ready. They are declaring today the general election is on. It is a binary choice because they are convinced that the more voters see that, that it's Trump and Biden, they'll set aside whatever misgivings they have about Biden,

and they simply won't vote for Trump again. That is the race they have always wanted. Nikki Haley does, guys, have money. As Elise said, she can keep going if she wants to. They're talking about Super Tuesday as a destination for their campaign. We'll see if she lasts that long. But it is extraordinary to have a former two-term governor going home to run in a primary there with the support of only one member of the congressional delegation. As you see, all those members, senators, members of the

House, Nancy Mays, Tim Scott going out supporting Donald Trump, even the sitting governor right now in the state of South Carolina supporting Donald Trump. So it's an odd thing to say, but she's got a very tough battle on her home turf. I think the sitting governor was one of the people she beat as I maybe he was secretary of state or attorney general when she was a lonely, a lowly state legislator. She also beat a man who was lieutenant governor. I mean, this is you know what you call this? If you're Nikki Haley and I'm dead serious, you call this Tuesday. It's like this is what happens like on Tuesdays in South Carolina. She goes into elections on Tuesdays and a bunch of men are supposed to beat her. And so far, she's undefeated down there, Willie.

And I will say anything can happen in a month. And just also say on the Biden side, man, things have changed in a couple of weeks. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but they got Jen O'Malley Dillon going over to the campaign. It looks like Mike Donlan's going over to the campaign, a guy who is Biden's brain, a guy who has a mind meld with Joe Biden. Those are two people that helped him win before. You look at, again, their rapid response. You look at how people are feeling inside the White House, how they're feeling in Wilmington. Yeah. We talk to campaigns every day. I can tell you something. There is a

sea change over the past couple of weeks. And it's almost like they said, OK, we're dealing with Israel. We're dealing with with Ukraine. We're dealing with China. I mean, taking up all of their time and boom, you said, OK, time to get in the ring. And man, they have gotten in the ring. And you just look at their social media presence and and they're they're punching, punching, punching nonstop. So still ahead on Morning Joe, a significant contrast in campaign messages while Donald Trump is out on the trail praising dictators and autocrats. Joe Biden is talking about protecting women's rights and health and democracy as a whole. We'll get into that next on Morning Joe.

So my question to you is simple. Are you ready? Are you ready to defend democracy? Are you ready to protect our freedoms? And are you ready to win this election? Let's get this done. Talk to your families in France. Organize your community. Register to vote.

Get people to the polls. And let's remember who we are. We are the United States of America. And there's nothing, nothing beyond our capacity when we do it together. That's part of President Biden's message in a fiery campaign speech yesterday in Virginia. Man, he went there on every front. But that was that was that was really emphasizing not just protecting democracy, but protecting women's rights that have been been been taken away from them by Donald Trump, who brags about it. So Joe Biden yesterday looked presidential, looked strong, looked in control, looked measured everything that Donald Trump didn't look like.

So just by existing, he creates that contrast because of who he is and what everybody knows about him. But he also has a lot to work with. When you take away a right that women have had for 50 years and our daughters and our sisters and your wives out there now are afraid to be pregnant and afraid to have pregnancy complications because of what Donald Trump has done. I think it changes the game in the general election. And Joe Biden and yes, Kamala Harris are in a great position to use that to shake Americans into understanding that we have to protect democracy, not them, not just Joe Biden. Every single person in America is responsible for preserving not just how precious this democracy is, but our rights and our health and everything that we have worked for.

And I think he was making the case quite well yesterday in Virginia. It was compelling. It's going to be a compelling argument throughout this entire campaign. You compare that, John Heilman, to what we saw with Donald Trump last night melting down, even in victory. And and that scene with Tim Scott and Trump saying, oh, you must really hate her. She appointed you. You're from her state. You must really hate her. I mean, humiliating Tim Scott publicly. What what was your take on that? Well, I say two things about this show. The first on Joe Biden. You know, I had lunch the other day with with a very significant Democratic friend of the president's president, President Biden and someone who's a big donor and bundler in Biden's world who said that, you know, he had had a discussion with Biden for the end of last year in which he sort of said, you know, there is a different criticizing Biden as performance as president. He was saying that kind of eye of the tiger he needed to, he needed to basically come into the new year at battle stations. He needed to really be on. And, and this person said to me, he said, you know, look at Biden so far this year, look at every time he's been done anything on camera

in public in the course of January, especially things that have been campaign related. He said, there is a market change in, in, in how much sharper, how much more focused, how much more fired up Joe Biden is. So that's something worth noting. This has been a after the first of the year, we've gotten a little bit of a new we've got campaign Joe out there when it comes to Trump and Tim Scott. I just got to say, you know, it feels like it should be an object lesson to any Republican. There's all these Republicans that we saw up here all weekend. J.D. Vance and Elise Stefanik and all these people who think they're going to be or trying to get on Trump's ticket. They all want to be Trump's running mate. Well, we've seen this in a million aspects of Trump's life, political life, the kind

of supplicants, those who bow down and scrape before Donald Trump. And the Tim Scott thing that you saw, that to me, that was the most shocking thing, that he was obsessed with Nikki Haley in his victory speech, ungracious, unhinged. That in some weird way didn't surprise me. But that moment when he turned to Tim Scott and sort of basically looked at a guy who had kind of prostrated himself in front of Trump. He had abandoned Nikki Haley, a guy, a woman who had kind of made his political career possible, turns around and endorses Trump, is standing up there on the night that Trump is against Nikki Haley. And all he wants to do is just, you know, quietly.

That's enough. His presence on that stage is enough. And instead, Trump turns and just humiliates him and makes him feel so obviously uncomfortable. To me, it's just an object lesson for every Republican. This is what you're going to get if you make a personal sacrifice or a political sacrifice for Donald Trump. He will at some point turn around and say, thank you very much. And now let me make a fool of you. Let me put you in a position where you are humiliated on national television. I don't think it's restricted to Tim Scott. We've seen it over and over again. We're going to see it into the future. Every Republican, just take note. This

is what you get for being nice to Donald Trump, being loyal to Donald Trump, sacrificing for Donald Trump. That was a deeply, deeply pathetic moment. And he had to sit there and smile through that and quickly scramble to think of something. No, I just love you. I don't hate her. Just it's going to be 10 months of this. So get ready. Let's talk about that speech from the president yesterday. John, in Virginia, talking about reproductive rights, obviously one of the core, if not the central issue

that they're going to lean into for the general. There's no question. And they're going to outline their case in the coming days. But basically, as much as they are going to make a positive argument for what Joe Biden has done, particularly on the economy and other issues, Biden needs to tell me, really, this election is going to come down to two things, the backdrop to it all. First is abortion rights, that, of course, abortion was such a motivator at the polls in 2022. It was again last year.

Every reason to believe it will this year. They think you could even perhaps put a state like North Carolina on the map as a battleground. Abortion is number one. And secondly, it's simply the threat that Donald Trump poses to people's rights, to the democracy itself, to the rule of law. Biden's famous saying is, you know, don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative. He's going to be comparing himself to the alternative every chance he gets. It's going to be that contrast with Donald Trump. That is going to be the central argument. Because now, in a race that's more or less two incumbents, usually when a president is running for reelection, it's a referendum

on that president. Now it's more of a choice election, assuming it is indeed Biden-Trump. But at least I will say the other thing that happened in that speech, and we should note it, at least for now, is a sign of concern for Democrats. President Biden was interrupted by my count about 15 times by protesters upset about his handling of the situation in Gaza. It was coordinated every few minutes. A different protester got up, interrupted him.

Biden acknowledged it the first couple of times, and then he just kept plowing through. At least in his representative, at least for the moment, as long as this war is in the headlines, the problem that Biden has with his base, that's the issue. They feel really good about independent and swing voters. The polling backs that up. They're going to break, they think, away from Trump to Biden. Biden's got to get his own base out, too. Well, can he weave that? Can he thread that needle of not repulsing progressives that he needs, but also winning the swing voters that he needs to keep coming back? Is he going to be strong enough on the border to be able to get those voters back is really the question. And so you look at all of the different issues at play and he's just got to keep

those independents at the same time as those progressives. How are they really going to stay on board or do they go third party? Where do they stay home? That's part of the concern as well. John Howman on to South Carolina, though. If I know you, you're going to make a stop in Nevada first. Do I know you? Well, you know, there is no, as Donald Trump announced last night, he's already won that thing. And, you know, you think, well, it's a rigged deal. You know, he's got the caucus in his pocket.

What possible reason, Willie, what possible reason would there be to go to Nevada, to go to the great state of Nevada? You know me, I've never been a person who was ever attracted to the temptations of Las Vegas, never a thing that I've ever indulged in before, but maybe I'll give it a try for the first time ever this month. In bed by nine, John Heilman, Vegas. John, we'll see you soon. Thanks so much. Coming up next here, Sweden is one step closer to NATO membership. Turkey finally approving the country's bid to join the alliance after a delay of nearly two years. Now only Hungary and its prime minister, Viktor Orban, stand in the way. We'll talk to former Supreme Allied commander of NATO, retired Admiral James DeVritas.

The Morning Joe comes right back. Live picture of the United States Capitol. Sun's still not quite up at 651 in the morning. Israel and Hamas appear to be getting closer now to striking a new deal for the release of hostages. Sources with knowledge of the discussions tell Reuters both sides have agreed in principle that an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners can take place during a month-long ceasefire. But that plan reportedly is being held up by differences over how to bring a permanent end to the war. This comes as tensions continue to rise across the Middle East. Late last night, the United States launched another strike against Houthi military sites in Yemen, destroying two anti-ship

missiles the Pentagon says posed an imminent threat. Joining us now, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, retired four-star Navy Admiral James Stavridis. He is chief international analyst for NBC News. Admiral, it's good to see you. So let's talk about what's going on in the Red Sea right now, which is that American carriers and ships and fighter jets are attacking Houthi positions that they say are going after cargo ships in the sea and targeting American interests as well. Do you worry about where this goes if the Houthis and the Iranian-backed militias continue to escalate what the United States is going to have to do in return? Yeah, it's the right question to

be asking. I would say that three things to bear in mind. Number one, this is not just American interests. If we allow this to continue, you're going to see fuel prices rise, the global economy start to choke. It's a very bad fact set for the global economy. Secondly, the Houthis appear to be determined to continue these strikes. And so in response, I think the administration is doing exactly the right thing, Willie, which is and you're showing it right here in this graphic, going after the surgical instruments that are being used to strike these ships, the missile launchers, the radars, the command and control, the fuel, the small boats. And frankly, at the end of the day, we can do that very effectively.

The real message is to Tehran. Here we get to your point. I'm somewhat concerned, but I think it's a one in five chance that Iran really takes on the U.S. and really gets fired up behind the Houthis. Another way to put it is the Iranians will fight to the last Houthi, but they're not going to be putting Iranian armed forces in harm's way. But you also have American bases, as you know, in Iraq being targeted. They're going after whatever it is, an irritation, but there are real injuries being inflicted on these. So what is the goal of Iran here?

What does it want here? Yeah, a good way to think about it is take a map of the ancient Persian Empire and overlay it on the Middle East. What they want to do is continue to press forward, perpetuate their brand of Islam, Shia, and finally create as much disturbance in the global economy as they can, all for political benefit. And oh, by the way, they don't mind those rising oil prices that are coming out of this. So, Admiral, let's talk about the other headline there about this

potential deal for a ceasefire in exchange for hostages. You know, Reuters reports there's still some some snags. It's not done yet. And we've had been close to deals before that have been falling apart. What's your read? Is this something from what you know, do you think that both the Israelis and Hamas would go for something like this? I do. I think there's motivation on both sides to get more of these hostages out and Palestinian prisoners out. We can probably find some trade space in there, Jonathan. But secondly, at the end of the day, the Israelis are going to continue to go after that tunnel system and the Hamas leadership. The hostages can be set off to one side.

Let's hope we can get a breakthrough. So, Admiral, I'm going to ask you a question out after you called the cops and they got sent to jail, your neighbors across the street were paying teenagers to break into your house. How long would you keep worrying about the teenagers instead of walking across the street and doing to your neighbor what you should do to your neighbor and get him or her arrested? Of course, the question is, how much longer are we going to put up with this BS from Iran? How much longer? We've been doing it since 1979.

Does Iran want to fight? I don't want a war. But I know this, as much as I don't want a war with Iran, they want one less because Iran would be over in about a week or two if the United States military decided to destroy their oil fields, destroy their bases, destroy their infrastructure. You know what? I say a week or two. I'm being modest. It'd be a couple of days. So how much longer do we let Iran pay people to try to kill Americans, try to disrupt our trade? The short answer is not very much longer at all.

So we're still punching the teenagers in the nose. But you're right. The next step is to go pound on the door across the street. That door is in Tehran. And I'll close with this. I would go after the Iranian Navy. Go back to the late 1980s. We sank about a third of the Iranian Navy when they tried to

mine the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe it's time to go pound on that door. Retired four-star Admiral James Tavridis, thank you so much for being on this morning. We'll talk to you again soon.