Morning Joe - Morning Joe 12/9/22

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Brittney Griner has landed back in the U.S. and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic Party

This is video from just moments ago in San Antonio, where basketball star Brittany Griner has touched down now on U.S. soil after her release from a Russian penal colony. She was freed yesterday as part of a prisoner swap after 10 months behind bars. And there she is stepping off the plane just moments ago in San Antonio. Good morning. Welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, December 9th, along with Joe and me. We've got the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at

Politico and author of The Big Lie, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kaye, and former CIA officer Mark Polymeropoulos. He's an NBC News security and intelligence analyst. Guys, good morning to all of you. Willie, if you look at them lined up, can we have that three shot just so we can explain what everybody's going to be talking about here? So we've got Caddy. Caddy's going to be talking about the Harry and Meghan special

and the response. Quite a story in the Times. Mark is going to be talking about his problems with the Griner, Victor Boutswap, and Jonathan O'Meara is going to be talking about, along with Paul Amoropoulos, just how horrible it is being a Red Sox fan and how our heart breaks a little bit more every morning. So, Willie, that's about it. We've lined it up. And of course, I'm going to talk to you about Baker Mayfield. Did you hear about Baker last night? Big comeback for Baker a couple of days after he signed with the new team. Yeah. Now it's pretty crazy. Here's Baker Mayfield. Sorry. I just kind of took that one over. Not

on Lloyd's this morning. I promise. So Baker Mayfield, Willie, he got cut by the Panthers, right? Yeah, he got cut by the Panthers on Monday. He comes in last night. He's been with the team for literally like 48 hours, quickly learns the basic ins and outs of the playbook, gets in, meets these guys. He came in after the first series. They had another quarterback in, wasn't going great. So they said, let's take a shot with Baker.

But they were down 16-3 in the fourth quarter. Leads them on one drive. Then goes 98 yards with no timeouts. Throws that touchdown pass to Jefferson to win the game at the end. So he's had a brutal career. He was the number one overall pick a few years ago, having just won the Heisman Trophy. Struggled with the Browns. Struggled in Carolina, was waived by Carolina on Monday, and now maybe, maybe finding a home in Los Angeles, at least until Stafford comes back.

Well, it's a great story. It's an absolutely great story, but it's not as important as the Brittany Griner story. So go ahead, Willie. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I agree. I was just going with you on that one. All right. Let's go back to Brittany Griner. She is, as we said, back on American soil this morning, the plane carrying the WNBA star touchdown about 30 minutes ago in San Antonio following her release from Russia yesterday. Russian state media posted video of Griner being told for the first time that she was heading home. What's your mood? Happy.

Well, are you ready for the flight? Yes. Do you know where I'm heading to? No. No? No. You fly back home. To the U.S.? To the U.S.

Yes, of course. Everything will be fine. Everything will be fine. That, again, is video from Russian state media. This also from Russian state TV. Video of the prisoner exchange itself, which took place, as we told you yesterday, at an airport in the United Arab Emirates. The video appears to show Griner crossing paths with Victor Boot,

the notorious Russian arms dealer the United States traded for Griner's release. Meanwhile, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan still is in Russia, where he's been in prison since 2018 on charges of espionage. The Biden administration and Whelan himself have disputed those charges in that account. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday the administration continues to engage with Russia to secure Whelan's release. This was not a choice of which American to bring home. The choice was one or none. I wholeheartedly wish that we could have brought Paul home today on the same plane as Brittany, just as at the time I wish we could have brought

Brittany and Paul home when we secured the release of Trevor Reed back in April. But we will stay at it. We've made every possible offer available to us thus far to secure Paul's release. But in this moment, there was no way to bring him home along with Brittany. You know, Willie, the emotions yesterday were exceptional, exceptionally intense, obviously, for the Griner family, for the millions of Americans who celebrated her release. It had to be heartbreaking and crushing for Paul Whalen. It's one of the first things I think all of us thought about. What about this guy that's been there for four years? How's he doing? His family showed extraordinary grace.

And again, these things don't just happen by accident. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that the Biden administration has stayed in constant communication with them, talked to them about the Britney Griner release and obviously let them know they're continuing to work hard every day to release Paul Whelan. All that being said, still an extraordinary statement from that family, just showing a lot of grace and a lot of class that unfortunately, a lot of a lot of people on the sidelines yesterday who wanted to use this for political purposes could not show that same grace. Yeah, we'll get into some of the criticism in just a moment. But you're right. The Whelan family, of course, devastated by this news. This felt to them like the moment with this big chip in Victor Booth, this notorious criminal, the merchant of death, that this would be the moment. This would be the exchange where they could get Paul Whelan back home. It didn't happen, but they put out a very gracious statement saying this was the right decision by the Biden administration. These are difficult decisions. They said they

understand and they hold out hope. And President Biden himself said we are still working. He guaranteed the family at that press conference yesterday. I guarantee the family we're still working on this. We are going to get him home. And Mark Polymeropoulos, I'm curious about your take here. As we said yesterday, there are never any perfect deals in these moments. They said the State Department and the White House said Russia said it's this deal or no deal. What do you make of the exchange? So, you know, so I think as we look at something like this, you know, we have to look at this soberly. I don't I don't see this as kind of a diplomatic triumph. I see it as President Biden making a very difficult decision and going through.

And this is what the U.S. government does. Kind of this, you know, kind of this risk versus gain calculus. Well, the gain is extraordinary. We're going to see incredible emotions when Brittany Griner eventually does an interview. But the risks of this are real as well. First of all, we still left an American behind in terms of Paul Whelan. We lost leverage over this because Victor Bout was released. And we did reward, in essence, Russian hostage taking.

So it's OK to look at this soberly. It's OK to question this deal while at the same time certainly noting that there is going to be joy in the Griner household. And I think that, you know, over the last several, you know, maybe the last 24 hours, you know, my circles, you know, former intelligence community officials, some with, you know, decades of experience on Russia, everyone everyone kind of was not aghast, but they did kind of have some raised eyebrows saying, wow, this was very much a symmetric deal, not necessarily in line what we've done in the past. President Biden is going to own it. There's going to be the good and the bad. But but make no mistake, they you know, as they sat in the Oval and decided whether or not to do this deal,

they knew that there would be some drawbacks to this. Well, you know, it's very interesting, though, Katie Kay, a lot of the Trumpers that are out there, of course, the same people who defend a president who sits down with Nazis and fascists, they're sitting there screaming about what a horrible deal this is somehow forgetting that Donald Trump himself released 5000 Taliban terrorists, didn't get anybody in exchange, and was actually working really hard to have a September 11th summit with the Taliban, obviously, at Camp David. Again, getting nothing in return. And this is, again, once again, just the hypocrisy is just overwhelming. Yeah. I mean, I think you can look at those

cries of outrage coming from the sort of Trump wing of the Republican Party and pretty much, Joe, just dismiss them outright. I mean, you know, for the reasons of hypocrisy that you've noticed, they sound so knee-jerkly political that they're almost, frankly, not worth considering. I think Marx got a much more nuanced and appropriate reaction, which is two things can be true at once, right? As we often say on this show, everyone can be delighted that Brittany Griner's coming home with some real reservations about the asymmetry of the swap that was done here. You think back to the Cold War in America, swapped spy for spy, businessman for businessman. It was very much a direct and fairly equal exchange that was usually made. Here, you had a very unequal exchange that was made in terms of the severity of the crime of

the people that were being swapped. And watching Brittany Greiner, you know, pass Victor Boot on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi was quite chilling, frankly, to see that he was being released, partly because of the fears that this might mean that other countries around the world, as Tony Blinken referred to, will now think, OK, it's fine. America's a free game. Look what we can get in return for it. But also because Russia seems to have, you know, held a kind of a weak hand here.

And as we've seen Russia do recently, played it with enormous force. They are ferocious negotiators. I mean, perhaps they weren't even really negotiating, but Russia got an awful lot out of this without holding very much. And that's a kind of alarming sign of what Russia is able to do. They are doing, they're playing the same kind of a game in Ukraine, a game of fear. They did it with Brittany Griner. They're doing it and they're doing it to their own advantage and to the huge detriment of other people. It's understandable that people are concerned about this swap and what it says about America in the future and about Russia's role at the moment. Yeah. Reverend Al, at the end of the day, though, somebody talked yesterday about the fact that if you're Iran, if you are Russia, if you are ISIS,

if you're a terrorist organization or a terrorist state, as these states are now, you don't value human life. So you can engage in asymmetric warfare. You can engage in asymmetric negotiation. And we understand that. We're Americans. We actually value human life. We actually value Americans getting home. And sometimes, yes, sometimes we do things that don't line up squarely on the page, but we do it because we're Americans and because we want to bring everybody home. It's really a question of values. And I think you're correct to say our values are different. Certainly, President Biden knew all of the downside when he did it. But our values told him that the life of Brittany Greiner and for that matter, Paul Whelan, that

they are continuing to negotiate for overrules the the global political setup that you might say who's winning on this one, who's winning on that one. I do think, however, that Putin risks a lot of people now that are coming to Russia, helping as Brittany Griner did their sports teams saying, well, maybe I shouldn't go to Russia. I mean, this could be something that Russian people would understand that they would suffer from, because if this is the way Brittany was going to be treated, This could be something that Russian people would understand that they would suffer from. Because if this is the way Brittany was going to be treated, I don't know that I would want to be one that would go to Russia now, play on their sports team as she did and was treated as a pawn like this. But thank God she's home. Thank God for those of us that stood by her, Sherelle, her wife. And thank God for the high moral ground of the Whelan family,

not demonstrated by some right wingers that tried to act like this shouldn't have happened. The Whelans who had more skin in the game, as we say to anyone, took the high road and showed a real example. And let's continue to pray for Paul. And how fascinating that so many of those right wingers were talking about how she may have kneeled in protest at times during the national anthem, not showing that use the American flag that our men and women fought and died for for over 200 years, used it to bludgeon police officers and set up an American flag as a weapon of death. So, again, the hypocrisy is just it's just overwhelming. But I never heard Brittany Joe say that she wanted to undermine the U.S. Constitution. I don't hang out with fascists. Exactly.

Again, it's very interesting these days. I'm finding more and more of these days that that the things that Trump supporters, the things they have to do to try to find something to criticize others for, it all pales in comparison with them still supporting a fascist who sits down and has dinners with fascists, who won't criticize fascists, who won't apologize for sitting down and having dinner with fascists, and who says he wants to, quote, terminate the United States Constitution? I'm sorry, game over. You can't you can't you can't criticize somebody for jaywalking if you actually are supporting the guy who wants to terminate the United States Constitution.

Game over. So, Willie, it's always interesting, isn't it? In the mind of Kyrsten Sinema, we don't actually know what's it, in the mind of Kyrsten Sinema? We don't actually know what's going on in the mind of Kyrsten Sinema, but sometimes we can look at her and we can ask ourselves, what's she thinking? What's going on in that mind of her? Well, it's moved in quite a unique direction over the past few minutes, and you have breaking news. It's just in to us from Politico.

Jonathan Lemire's colleague Burgess there. Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has announced she will be leaving the Democratic Party and will register as an independent. The senator said, quote, I know some people might be a little bit surprised by this, but actually, I think it makes a lot of sense. The senator did not say whether she would caucus with Democrats or with Republicans. So, Jonathan LeMay, I'm just reading through Burgess Everett's story. Your colleague here just posted to Politico this interview where Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Sinema, announced she's leaving the Democratic Party, which raises the question, Democrats just won the Senate and probably they got to 51 votes. What does this mean for that Democrats just won the Senate and probably got to 51 votes. What does this mean for that balance now in the Senate?

Yeah, an absolute bombshell this morning, Willie, and certainly Democrats very relieved that they won the Georgia runoff. Kyrsten Sinema says, as you just said, she's, quote, I never fit neatly into any party box, she believes, and doesn't want to. She is registering as an independent. Now, she is saying, though, that she intends to keep her committee assignments, which is a signal that she doesn't plan to upend how the Senate is organized. Therefore, the Senate Majority Leader Schumer, with the Democrats having 51, controls the committee assignments. So though she's not committing to caucus with the Democrats, she's sort of telegraphing that she will. She's claiming this won't change anything and she'll still be who she always is. We should note that there are two other independents, Bernie Sanders

of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, who also caucus with the Democrats. So perhaps Sinema is doing that as well. So we don't know yet how much this will change. Democrats have 51 votes in the Senate, but it certainly seems to be a signal from Sinema that they shouldn't count on her support. We know that she was frustrating, to say the least, over the last few years to many Democrats. She didn't support a lot of their initiatives, along with, at times, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. And the Democrats were so pleased by getting that 51st vote with Georgia because, therefore, they would be a little less reliant on those two. That seems a little more in doubt right now.

We should also notice note that in this interview, Sinema does not commit to running for reelection. But there's a safe bet there was already growing talk among Democrats that she would be primaried or she to stand for reelection. That is certainly the case now that she would face far more opposition. That's a safe bet this morning. But again, the bombshell, Kyrsten Sinema leaving the Democratic Party just days after Democrats secured that 51st vote in the Senate. Well, you look at her poll numbers in the state of Arizona. Politically, it makes pretty good sense. She does well with independents. She does OK with Republicans, not quite as well with Democrats. So her approval ratings over the past few years, while she's been criticized in Washington, D.C., have been fairly strong in Arizona and typically a little bit stronger than Mark Kelly's.

But it's so interesting, Katie. Democrats were so frustrated by Joe Manchin because Joe was out front, right? But there were so many times when they would be close to a deal on reversing Trump's tax cuts, the worst parts of Trump's tax cuts, if you consider giveaways to billionaires and multinational corporations a bad thing. And Kyrsten Sinema would be the 50th vote getting in the way. The same thing with with with big pharma. There are many times when Manchin was actually lined up with the rest of the Democratic Party to move aggressively to reform some some some parts of of of the big pharma market. And Kyrsten Sinema was the person standing in the way. So, yes, it's I think Democrats are going to be frustrated. But at the same time, she was going to be facing a tough primary challenge in a state where she's not beloved by Democrats.

Yeah. And she was often the stumbling block, particularly when it came to issues surrounding her financial backers or her friends in the financial industry or in the pharmaceutical industry, as you say. And she would keep her views to herself on other issues. When it came to the infrastructure bill, for example, it took a lot. And the better bill didn't go through in the end. It was Kyrsten Sinema that we couldn't really get a response out of. We knew what Joe Manchin thought. He was very public about what he thought. But Sinema kind of kept her cards very close to her chest. And it was not very easy to find out what she actually believed. And that could be actually more frustrating for the administration. So I don't think this will come as a surprise to anybody. If she carries on caucusing with the Democrats, she's suggesting she is inclined to if she wants to keep her committee assignments, then it won't change very much. And anyway, look, you know,

you look over the next two years, what's the Senate going to be doing? It's not going to be big pieces of financial legislation or big pieces of legislation that might upset her own supporters or people she considers her base in the finance or business community. So, it would be on administration appointments or court appointments, judges. And I wonder whether she'd be inclined to to caucus with the Republicans on issues like that. So perhaps it won't change very much over the next two years. Well, and really, we just saw again, Lisa Murkowski doing what many people across the country can't do. She said no to Donald Trump this time. She got reelected. The Tea Party came after her, I believe, in 2010. She got defeated in a primary.

She ran as a write-in candidate as independent, where you actually had to spell the name Murkowski right. She won there as well. So in certain states, being an independent actually works very well. It works great for Angus King. It certainly worked for Bernie Sanders for quite some time in a state that, yes, Vermont's liberal, but also it's got a very popular Republican governor. Arizona is a swing state. And actually, this seems to make a lot of political sense for Kyrsten Sinema. May end up backfiring. But if you just look at Arizona,

you look at the number of independents, you look at the fact that it is really it's the swing state along with Georgia right now. This actually seems like a pretty smart political move for. And there are a lot of Democrats who are going to be saying this morning, good riddance. Yeah. And we will see, as John pointed out, rightly, independents, Angus King, independent Bernie Sanders, both caucus by and large, almost exclusively with the Democrats. So we'll see if Kyrsten Sinema is that same kind of independent. She said to Politico, nothing will change about my values. Nothing will change about my behavior, suggesting that she will continue to vote with Democrats.

We will see. Still ahead on Morning Joe, we'll be joined by White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on the heels of Brittany Griner's release from Russia. She is back home this morning on U.S. soil. Plus, the Justice Department is asking a federal judge to hold former President Trump's legal team in contempt of court. We're bringing one of the reporters who broke that story. Also ahead, the House passes landmark legislation protecting same-sex marriage. We'll break down yesterday's bipartisan vote. And look at this, Joe. Before we go to break, look who's here. Meteorologist Bill Cairns.

Bill Cairns with a Friday cameo. This is Willie. This is like Brady returning, right? You never thought it was going to happen. Broadway Bill makes his triumphant return to 30 Rock. Bill, how are you, man? I'm doing great. It's great to be back here with the Morning Joe.

This is actually my first time in the studio with you guys since pre-COVID times. So that's like a long time ago. I know. So, yeah, it's great to be back. And your weekend forecast depends where you are, if it's going to be great or not. We have a little mini snowstorm going on. This is that time of year right before the holidays. Some people don't mind the snow. I know the kids wouldn't mind a snow day. Some teachers, too. You're going to get that today. It's snowing hard right now in southern Wisconsin and northern portions of Iowa.

You've had some significant snow overnight. This is missing Chicago, though. Chicago, it's an umbrella day for you. It's kind of the worst. It's a cold rain, and that's what's heading into your area. Additional snow, we'll call it maybe about two to four inches here in lower portions of Wisconsin. Now, over the weekend, that storm system will weaken. We'll have another storm coming in behind it that could bring some snow to the northeast for the first time come Sunday night, Monday morning. So keep that in the back of your plans. Today, no problems for the East Coast. Kind of dreary in the South. It's been very cloudy and wet lately.

That continues today. Then we get a decently sunny day for the East Coast on Saturday. A huge storm comes into the West. We're going to talk three to five feet of snow in the Sierra. 90 mile per hour winds on the coastline of Oregon. So you'll see pictures of that this weekend. The ski resorts are going to have snow up to here, like three to five feet. Then by Sunday, this is when that little storm will come through New England.

Look for snow during the day, central New York. Sunday night heading into the Hudson Valley. And it looks like by even Monday morning, we're going to have accumulating snows. We haven't had a lot of snow this winter yet, if any, in this area. So even Hartford could get accumulating snow. Providence to Boston, just a tiny bit, maybe enough to cover the grass. Hopefully the roads won't be too bad Monday morning. New York City, too warm.

It looks like a rain event for you. But once you get north of New York, that's when you get into some of the snow. Maybe enough to shovel and plow. It's not a huge event, around two to three inches in a lot of areas. But still, it's the first snow of the season for many of these areas. We're kind of a little bit behind schedule in Christmas, only about two weeks away, soon approaching. So we'll keep an eye on that as we go throughout your weekend forecast. You're watching Morning Joe. I'm glad to be back.

My Morning Joe family, we'll be right back. You don't have none of us under control. And you will never have us under control again. That was Howard Beach. It felt like a victory, but you knew that you won a case, not changed the system. I've been in the movement since 12, and I knew the difference between moments and movements that won. So it was a good momentary victory. But I knew there was no structural change in the

criminal justice system. That's just absolutely fascinating. A clip from the new documentary titled Loudmouth, which was screened today in nearly 120 theaters nationwide. The film chronicles the decades-long career of Reverend Al Sharpton. I have so many things, Rev, I want to talk about here, but I want to start with that scene.

And there, you're pumping up the crowd. You know, you know they need to be inspired. You've got a long fight ahead. You're obviously, as you say, you're that loud mouth. You're pushing it. And I fast forward 40 years or so to Arbery, where Ahmaud Arbery, you go out in Georgia, and you go out country divided, and you actually sit there with the family. And it's a message of reconciliation.

Now, I know a lot of that has to do with your age, has a lot to do with, as you said, what Mrs. King and others have said to you. But also, different times, different places, and a different leader. And we get to see that evolution throughout this extraordinary documentary, don't we? That's exactly right. I think that the documentary shows me and the country growing into different phases. And I believe that it is important that people see the different phases the country has gone through and not gone through. And I, as a center part in it, you know, I really believe when you look at the documentary and you see the marches we did in the 80s and 90s, where people threw watermelons at us and used the N-word and they show the actual raw footage. None of this is

acting. This is all from the director, Josh Alexander, getting actual footage from TV stations and documentarians at the time. You would think this was Mississippi or Georgia. And I think this documentary explains that racism and bigotry was not a Southern thing. It was all over the country. This is where Donald Trump grew up in Queens and how we responded to it. But I grew to learn how to make my response as Mrs. King admonished me, be toward trying to heal and get things accomplished, not to match the drama with just drama without an end goal of trying to make something real happen. So speaking of the King family, as I'm looking at this documentary and I'm looking at how you've just seen it, it opens up in Tribeca. It actually sold out. There's this massive buzz. It's now going to open up tonight.

It just it keeps growing. It's going to actually be opening up in 120 theaters. And and really, there's just this momentum. But first of all, one thing first thing that hit me was that no civil rights leader has lived to see the documentary, the movie about his life. And that reminds me of what Dr. King said the night before he was assassinated, where he said, you know, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. You've been blessed with longevity, even though people tried to kill you. You've been blessed with longevity. It must be pretty extraordinary getting to see everything that's happened over the past 40, 50 years. No, it has been extraordinary. I think about when I was a teenager, I worked for Shirley Chisholm's presidential campaign. And now I get to go to see the first black woman vice president.

I get to see Barack Obama. I worked with closely, became president of the United States as a black. Things that people that I grew up admiring never lived to see. In fact, as you point out, that generation, the generation that mentored me, the generation of Jesse Jackson and Mark and John Lewis, they never saw their heroes live to 40. You have to remember, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Medgivers, all were killed at 39 years old. They had to learn how to get older. And I had to watch them get older and learn that. So I'm blessed that I'm in a generation that I can actually see. Bring my grandson to the movie today to see his grandfather. He's going to be four years old. Dr. King never saw his children get old enough to go to college. So we've made at least where we can live.

Now, the question is how we can make life better for everyone and at the same time improve ourselves. Admit our faults. It's not all glory in the picture. I talk about my mistakes, but it also in the movie shows us we can make progress. And if we believe in what we're doing, we can make this country better, even though in many ways it has not changed. In other ways, it has. Yeah, well, you talk about being blessed. We've all been blessed to get to know you. I've been blessed to get to know you and consider you the closest of friends. And Mika feels the same way.

I know, Willie, we all do. So congratulations. And I just I want to read really quickly, Willie, before we move on. A review from The New York Times says the documentary is, quote, equal parts time capsule, media critique and authorized biography. Each of those examinations has its own flaws, but also offers insights into the man, the moment, the current one, but more pointedly, New York City of the 1980s and 90s and the news media. One of the documentary's most salient cautions might be that members of the news media were and remain unwilling to cop to their biases. Sharpton has spent a lifetime calling the storytellers out for their slant

and schooling us to do the same. As straightforward as it appears, Loudmouth also invites an engaged but necessary judicious scrutiny. And Loudmouth releases today nearly 120 theaters and will stream on Amazon and Apple TV starting January the 13th. That is really just absolutely fascinating. Yeah, it's really good. We've had a chance to see it. I think people, even people feel like they know Rev and have followed his journey and love him on our show and on his show on MSNBC are going to be surprised by some of what they've seen and what they learned. So congratulations, Rev. Can't wait for this to get out into the world today. Thank you. All right, let's turn back to some more news here. Federal

appeals court has overturned a judge's decision to appoint a special master to review thousands of documents seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and club in Florida, all as part of its criminal investigation. The ruling yesterday came after Trump declined to appeal a court order ending his lawsuit that challenged the FBI's seizure of documents from Mar-a-Lago. The move now paves the way for federal investigators finally to get a hold of the bulk of documents collected in the search that took place in August. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice reportedly has asked a federal judge to hold former President Trump's legal team in contempt of court for failing to

comply with a subpoena that requires him to turn over all documents in his possession marked classified. The Washington Post cites two people familiar with the matter who say a hearing is scheduled for today on the issue. Let's bring in one of the authors of that piece, congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany. Jackie, good to see you this morning. So just more bad news for President Donald Trump. What does it all add up to here? Well, not bad news just yet. The court has yet to decide.

That hearing is happening today about whether or not she is going to ultimately hold Trump's legal team in contempt, which would most likely look like some sort of daily fine if they ultimately don't agree with the terms that the Justice Department has demanded. One of the issues, really the primary issue at play here, is that the attestations that Trump's legal team has provided that show that the Trump team is in compliance with the May grand jury subpoena that had required any and all documents with classified markings to be returned to the federal government, should have an explicit custodian of those documents. The attestations, as they are now and have been communicated to Judge Beryl Howell, do not list a document of custodians. That's one of the central issues here that the Department of Justice is arguing show that the Trump lawyers are potentially not

acting in good faith. They can't trust these assurances and that they want Beryl Howell to force the lawyers to go further in making sure that the court has complete confidence that they've all done their best to search for any and all outstanding documents. Hey, Jackie, it's Jonathan. It does seem that every day carries another bad headline for former President Donald Trump. But let's say this happened and Trump's office or and or Trump himself is held in contempt of court. What does that actually mean? Yeah, so it's actually not as dramatic as I would say the contempt proceedings that we saw happen with the congressional committee when the House voted to hold various members of the former

president's White House, people like Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, in contempt, which was then referred to the Department of Justice. We saw Steve Bannon was ultimately held in contempt. He's facing potential actual prison time. But in this scenario, it would most likely be a fine. That's actually what happened in the New York case as it relates to Trump's legal issues in New York City. But in this case, it would be most likely a daily fine until the lawyers come forth and comply with the terms that the court would like them to see, which is, again, providing a full-throated attestation that they have searched every nook and cranny diligently and that there is a specific name on it, that there is a lawyer that's carrying the water here for the Trump team,

who is now the custodian of these documents. Mark, it does now seem that most of the documents we assume after this, after Trump's own lawyers have searched what they can, have been recovered and are in the hands of the FBI. You and I had a conversation when this story first broke about what the real national security implications were for this. Beyond the legal implications for Donald Trump himself, what are the national security implications of these documents having been taken away and put into a place that was not particularly secure and kept by Donald Trump down at Mar-a-Lago? Months into this, what are you now thinking about that? What does this look like from a CIA intelligence point of view? Sure. So, you know, we still don't know in terms of, you know, the still don't know in terms of,

you know, the damage assessment of what occurred. Again, the documents, which some of which were, you know, marked top secret, which had to do with compartmented programs, you know, was there any kind of spill of information that would hurt or, you know, damage, you know, sources and methods? These are agents of ours. These are individuals who are spying for the United States, perhaps overseas, or perhaps even resettled now with our communications capabilities that have been compromised. So we still don't exactly know in terms of the damage assessment. And the second part that you and I talked about previously is what about our allies? You know, so one of the things is and I think it's not talked about enough is that we share a tremendous amount of information and we receive a tremendous amount of information from things such as our five eye partners.

You know, that's the you know, that's the British Canadians, the Australians, New Zealand. Are they going to be more reticent to do so if it turns out that some of their information was leaked? Final point on this. And, you know, I was I was on last week when when Joe and Mika had come back from the state dinner with the French president. Remember, there are reports out there that Trump, for whatever reason, had actually kept a document, perhaps a personality profile of French President Macron. Is that important? Well, it might be, because what does that document say? Does that document have things such as, perhaps, intelligence collection methodology that we used to make an assessment on the French president. So I think in terms of our bilateral liaison relationships, it's quite important to see what

happens. And of course, just the ongoing kind of saga, if anything, in terms of sources and methods were compromised. A lot to find out about this. This story, while it hasn't gotten a lot of play over the last couple of weeks, there still remains to be seen what happens. I think there can be some real consternation in the intelligence community with what's going to come out in the near future. More to come there. The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany, thank you for your reporting. Former CIA officer Mark Polymeropoulos. Before I let you go, we've covered trivial matters like prisoner swaps and classified documents being taken in Mar-a-Lago. Let's get to the serious stuff. Xander Bogarts is now a San Diego Padre. Your thoughts. So let me say this. And as I've talked kind of offline with Lemire or Barnacle or Joe, my Christmas is ruined. So Kyan Bloom,

the director of baseball operations, has ruined my Christmas. And I will kind of leave it at that. Well, I want to jump in here. I want to jump in. What's the plan? Let's bring Lemire up, too. You know, the thing is, I'm a patient man if there's a theory of the case. But if you're a Boston writer, and I'm dead serious, they win the World Series in 2018. They trade away their reliever. So our bullpen blows up. Our starting lineup blows up. You go back and look at the 28 World 2018 World Series. None of the players are there. Are you rebuilding? Are you telling Boston fans that we're going to be in last place for a couple of years, but there's something three years down the road? OK, if that's the case, if that's the

sacrifice required, tell us the theory of the case. But Jonathan Lemire, there is no theory of the case. Trade deadline comes, trade deadline goes. We do crappy trades. My God, you look at the superstars that we've let go and the lousy players that we've gotten in return. And it's been one bad trade after another. And the worst part of it is, again, there's no theory of the case. Tell me what you're doing. Say there's going to be two years of pain here, but three years in, we're going to start being competitive again. But they don't do that. It seems like they literally are playing like they're a small, small, small market team that has no money.

Major League Baseball is awash with cash right now. And the trend is that teams are locking up their young stars to long-term deals. They're keeping them in-house. And the Boston Red Sox, who are one of the richest teams in the sport, are the exception to that rule. And the theory of the case, as flawed as it was, was when they traded Mookie Betts, the last superstar, young superstar we gave away. It was like, look, we're going to trade Mookie, and then we'll use that financial flexibility to lock up our other stars and build a team for the future.

Well, here we are two years later, and we've let another star go. They are operating like a small market team. It feels like the ownership group, which has perhaps lost interest. They own Liverpool. They own the Pittsburgh Penguins now. There's talk they want to be involved in the NBA's expansion team to Las Vegas in a couple of years. There's a ton of frustration as to what they're doing. And I will say this, as important as the Red Sox are to New England, fans are angry. They are angry at this

team. And this is not going to be a pretty season if they don't make a lot of moves and fast, starting with keeping Rafael Devers. Yeah, Willie, it's, you know, we've always been the little team that could, you know, little engine that could, just I think I can. But it looks like you guys in the Bronx are going to crush us. Then again, you can say that about four other teams in the American League East, too. We're going to end up buying the Baltimore Orioles again, most likely. You know, we're still accepting applications for fans in the Bronx. If you guys want to hop over to the dark side, we take care of our franchise players. Aaron Judge is easy to root for. No?

No. Think about it. No. Think about it. No. Hey hey good news the celtics are great this year that's some good news for boston fans mark polymeropolis sorry about your christmas sir try to soldier through these holidays we appreciate you being on this morning coming up next florida governor ron desantis holds a significant advantage over donald trump now among florida republicans we're going to show you some of those new numbers, plus a look inside the turbulent doomed campaign of Herschel Walker. NBC's Marco Pudo joins us with his new reporting on that. And would a third party ticket doom President Biden's potential chances for reelection in 2024? We will dig in to a new warning from some Democrats next on Morning Joe. Ten minutes before the top of the hour, just days now after Herschel Walker's Senate runoff loss in Georgia, we're learning more

about the inner workings of his failed campaign. That includes a text message sent from a staffer to Walker's adult son, Christian, pleading for his help. In this text from over the summer, which was shared with NBC News by Christian Walker himself, a campaign staffer asked the son to help guide his father in his messaging. We know how that ended with Christian Walker. Joining us now with more NBC News senior national political reporter Mark Caputo. Mark, good morning. So we all saw from the outside what a disaster this campaign was, but reading your piece, it seems it was just as messy on the inside.

Yeah, the problem that the campaign had is that, and this is according to multiple interviews with staffers over a long period of time, Herschel Walker didn't really tell them the truth. He inhibited them from learning the truth. One of the things you want to do as a campaign is to vet your candidate and understand his or her or their weaknesses. Usually you do an opposition research book on your own candidate so you can say, OK, this is going to be a hit on us and here's how we're going to deal with it. That was done twice with Herschel Walker. Well, once before he even ran. And apparently this 500 page book kind of landed with a thud on his desk. And they're like, look, you've got a lot of problems. We just discovered 500 pages of bad stuff on you

in just two weeks. He decided to press ahead anyway. Then in the winter, he announced in August of 2021, the campaign realized, you know, we need to control our candidate a little better because at 4 a.m. he kept posting these weird stream of consciousness Twitter videos where he was just kind of giving these meditations. And they reached out to Christian Walker and said, hey, can you get him to stop this? And Christian Walker did. So you fast forward to June of 2022. And by then there are reports and there's reporters sniffing around about secret love children and possible abortions that he paid for or asked people to have. Herschel Walker being an anti-abortion candidate.

And the campaign was having trouble getting through to Herschel Walker, getting him to talk to them, getting him to stay on message. So a staffer reached out to Christian Walker and said, hey, can you can you help us with your dad? And Christian Walker said, well, what do you mean? They said, look, tell him to stop being a moron on television. And that's actually a direct quote. Tell him to read the playbook, et cetera. So it's really an insight into a campaign that had trouble managing a celebrity candidate who had no clue what he was going to face and didn't really care about their professional opinions when it came to managing him. And Mark, reading through your piece, I mean, this is a team of professional political hands who knew how bad a candidate Walker was right from the outset. So they're hired on. So they hire they get a firm to do opposition research to see what they're dealing with with their candidate.

They come back in two weeks, as you said, with 500 pages of stuff on Herschel Walker. Right. And, you know, usually that's just kind of a red flag. And then by the winter of 2021 into 2022, when they realized that the candidate, Herschel Walker, had not been straight with them, they did another opposition research book on their own candidate and found more stuff. In the end, they still didn't find that story of a former girlfriend, the mother of one of his four kids, who claimed that at one point he pressured her and paid for her abortion. But that was one of those things that might not have been able to be discovered unless you did an even deeper dive.

The problem, according to the campaign staff, is that Walker didn't allow them to talk to the women who were the mothers of his children. He had four children by four different women. And for candidates, having former girlfriends, former wives, people he used to live with, that could be a vulnerability. And the campaign needs to know who they are, find out if they're on board, and if they're going to come out and ambush them. Well, since they were unable to reach these people and unable to talk to them, guess what happened? He kind of got ambushed. Yeah. So, so Mark, you're also looking at a new poll out of, out of Florida. There's been a lot of talk of, of Donald Trump's absolutely disastrous campaign launch. And it may be having an impact in the state of Florida. Tell us about it.

If you look at this poll, it's by Ragnar Research, which is a Republican polling firm, 500 Republicans polled. Ron DeSantis is off the charts, at least among Republicans, in his approval rating. 79%, nearly eight in 10 people have a very favorable impression of him in the Republican Party. Donald Trump's numbers, 44%. The top line number for Ron DeSantis is also far higher than the top line number for President Trump or former President Trump. So at least in Florida, the home state of both DeSantis and Trump, Republican voters are increasingly and very clear about whom they prefer in the party. And it's Ron DeSantis. It's not Donald Trump. Now, DeSantis, is he going to run for president? Is he not? That's a good question. We're going to find out in a number of months. Hey, Mark, it's Jonathan. A lot of

Republicans obviously have a lot invested in Ron, Governor Ron DeSantis right now, although some acknowledge that he's kind of a blank canvas. They can kind of project what they want on him. The country doesn't really know him yet. So outside of his stunt with the migrants in Martha's Vineyard last year, which made him somewhat of a national figure, what's the latest for people around him? I'm sure a declaration of a campaign is a ways off. But is there more of an effort and a way to give him more of a national profile to start to get him out there, to let voters learn who he is? They're not sharing that with us. But if we just kind of

reverse or rewind and look at how he became a national figure in the Republican Party, it started with COVID in 2020 when he was the first kind of high profile governor to fling his state open. And, you know, depending on who you talk to, he was more right than his critics. Maybe that might be the best way to say it. So that sort of made him this big figure in the GOP. Then you move to the last legislative session. There was the parents' rights bill, which has been dubbed the don't say gay bill. That gave him a national platform. His anti-woke act, which is his phrase, or stop woke, that also did. So he's repeatedly been able to use stories and legislation in Florida to kind of propel himself forward. And then that ultimate stunt with the migrants in Venezuela. So we have an upcoming legislative session about property insurance. I imagine he's going to decimate

the trial lawyers there. The regular lawmaking session is going to be in March. There's going to be enough legislation there for him to possibly use as a way to capture national attention. He's got a book coming out in February. So if you kind of add those things up and then you look at, OK, well, what what also can he do this coming Sunday? He's got a bunch of national donors coming into Miami, allegedly just for a thank you dinner. But it's pretty clear that while people aren't being asked to contribute, they're just getting the impression that he is still interested in possibly running for president. So I could imagine seeing him travel to an early state just as sort of a hello, showing a little bit of leg. But I don't think we're going to know anything very clearly about his intentions until after the legislative session, sometime after the summer, you know,

maybe Memorial Day, Labor Day, stuff like that. But unlike a lot of the also possible Republican candidates for president, Ron DeSantis has two luxuries. He's got time and money. He's got about $64 million in the bank he can convert to a super PAC. That goes a long way. Yeah, it really does. I'm sorry, Willie, go ahead. I was just going to say, Mark, does he have, at this point, as he watched Donald Trump serve with all these self-inflicted wounds, get weaker by the day, does Ron DeSantis, does he have the guts, maybe that's not the right term, to run against Donald Trump? This is the guy who helped propel him to the governor's

mansion. Remember, he ran all those ads where his kids were little kids with MAGA onesies on, using their building blocks to build a wall. It was all linked to Donald Trump. Is he really going to step out and cross Donald Trump and run for president? I've always held that Ron DeSantis is not going to run against President Trump unless the polling changes. Well, the polling has changed. One of the things that you notice if you observe DeSantis is he's calculating, he's cautious, he's data-driven, and he's disciplined. And so if the trend continues and if there's really a space for him to take on Trump and win, yeah, I think he'll probably do it. But those are two big ifs. And there's got to be a lot more time to elapse, a lot more polling. And to your point, your

original point asking me the question is there's just this time, this period of time for him to make himself more of a national figure. How does Ron DeSantis do that? How does he make his case without actually running for president to position himself to run for president? We're going to have to see. We will have to see. NBC's Mark Caputo, thank you so much. And, you know, Cady, right now you have Ron DeSantis in a pretty good position. Donald Trump, every three or four days, it seems, does something that completely undermines his ability to be a successful candidate in a general election campaign.

His legal woes continue to mount. And it seems that Ron DeSantis is sitting back and living by the old proverb, never interfere with your enemy when he's destroying himself. And it appears to be what the governor is doing. And it's working for him well. Yeah, I mean, Trump has had the weirdest period, hasn't he, since announcing. Unlike Trump, he has not been out there being visible. He hasn't done rallies. We haven't really heard very much from him apart from posts on Truth Social.

And then apart from kind of lawyers over the latest legal problems that he gets himself into, which seems to be almost every day, he has some run-in or some loss with the Justice Department. So he hasn't had a great three weeks since that announcement, and DeSantis is enjoying the polls. The only caveat I hear is that people who know DeSantis aren't clear what it will look like when he does go head-to-head with Trump, which presumably he will have to do unless Trump, for some reason, were to pull out of his pulling into the race and say, actually, I'm not going to run after all. But they wonder that whether DeSantis is quite brittle. He's apparently quite thin skinned. And they point to the fact that when Trump takes on his opponents, it's like a kind of truck driving through you. And people close to Trump think that would be the same with DeSantis

and that DeSantis doesn't have the character to withstand the kind of Trump onslaught that happens in a primary campaign situation. I don't know if that's the case, but it's one question mark over how DeSantis would handle Donald Trump when he gets the full force of Trump's attacks on him.