Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/12/24

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Kansas City Chiefs win Super Bowl for second year in a row

the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in an overtime thriller to win their third Super Bowl in the last five years with quarterback Patrick Mahomes earning his third Super Bowl MVP. What a game. We have a lot of tired faces for you this morning. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, February 12th. Let's bring in the host of Pablo Torre finds out on Metalark Media ESPN's Pablo Torre. Okay, guys. I mean. It was actually a really good game. I'm going to let it go. It was a classic.

It was a classic from the beginning. The teams were set. Unbelievable. You know, Pablo, it's so fascinating. You know, I was like you. I was looking at the Chiefs defense as being a key, looking at so many different things being, you know, the key. But at the end of the day, it was a young quarterback versus a guy who's been there before. And what a huge difference it made.

Mahomes, we're not saying he's Brady because he's not Brady yet. But, man, you could put him in a handful of maybe three or four quarterbacks, like Montana, Brady, that could have done that last night. It's just extraordinary. Joe, he is, Patrick Mahomes is, the greatest quarterback I have ever seen. And that's, of course, with deference to John Lemire's beloved, Mike Barnicle's beloved Tom Brady, right?

The guy who has won it all. But what Patrick Mahomes has done is turned the Super Bowl into his own residency. He's been there four times. He's won three of them. He's won two in a row. On Friday, I talked to you about my personal philosophical conflict between collective greatness and the individualist great man theory of football, which I am tempted into. And that's what we saw. We saw Patrick Mahomes get the ball with less than two minutes left in overtime. An all-time classic, like no hyperbole here necessary. One of the greatest and longest games we have ever seen.

And Patrick Mahomes does this. It's the guy who reshapes history because he is just that good. You know, one of my favorite stories, Super Bowl stories, is the Montana John Candy story, which I've retold so many times around my house at people. But the story is, for those who haven't heard me tell it a thousand times, you had the 49ers backed up against the Bengals. They had, what, 90 yards to go to win the Super Bowl.

All the guys in the San Francisco huddle were, like, freaked out and nervous. And they looked at Joe Montana, who was looking overhead, and he goes, hey. And they turn around and he goes, it's John Candy. And they all looked at each other and said, well, if he's not worried, we're not worried. And, of course, he wasn't because he knew he was going to take him 90 yards in the last minute. They were going to win.

I've never felt that way. You know, greatness is a quarterback walking in, in seemingly insurmountable circumstances. And you're looking at that quarterback, you're going, oh, he's going to do this. Yeah, I like that guy. His teammates knew it. He knew it. You knew it.

We knew. We all picked the Chiefs for this reason on Friday. We all did. Typically a recipe for us to face plant to step on a rake. That's how good he is. He made us look good. Yeah, thank God, because at the end of the day, Lemire, it is all about us. It was – Jonathan Lemire, again, I just – you can't say enough about Patrick Mahomes.

These were two evenly matched teams. It was a great 49ers team. The Chiefs had trouble through the year. They were fighting each other on the sidelines, Rice is screaming, and Kelsey, I still can't believe you went up to Andy Reid and bumped him. I mean, he obviously didn't go to high school in Northwest Florida because, you know, your head would have been taken off if you did that to a coach up there. But they were a mess throughout the year. They're kind of a mess on the sidelines. They still won. Yeah, the word is inevitable.

Patrick Mahomes is inevitable. He's reached that threshold of greatness where you just, you know he's going to do it. You know he's going to do it. No, he's not Tom Brady yet, but I have to say, he's got a path. He's got a long way ahead of him. He could enter that conversation someday. This was not a great game to start. It was very sloppy.

The 49ers defense was excellent. It was 10-3 at the half. San Francisco should have been up by more than that. It was a sluggish game, but then it really picked up, and we did get a classic fourth quarter in overtime. And Pablo, let's go to the other side of this, which is the 49ers. Brock Purdy played pretty well. Christian McCaffrey, one killer fumble, but otherwise he was good as well as he always is. The biggest mistake I think made was that they took the ball in overtime. I think with these new NFL overtime rules. They wanted it first.

Yeah, but I think the strategy is you should give the other team first, so then you see what you need. But this is also now Kyle Shanahan. Not one, not two, but the third time he has blown a 10-point lead in the Super Bowl. What a devastating morning for San Francisco. Yeah, if it's not going to happen this year, then when would be the question you ask if you're Kyle Shanahan's dad, Mike Shanahan, anybody who cares about Kyle Shanahan? Because Kyle Shanahan, for people who don't know the lore now, has the reputation, has the behavior of a choker. And he did it when he blew 28-3 against John's Patriots.

This was yet another game in which it looked like it looked like he was the character in the horror movie you know they wanted the ball first and overtime new overtime rules which were inspired because of what the chiefs did or didn't get to do against the bills that's why they had these new overtime rules everybody gets a shot now and patrick will holmes went second and he turned into the guy chasing the inevitable, yeah, horror movie villain down the hallway. It was like it was watching Mahomes operate on the 49ers defense, which was excellent. It was like I can only imagine what it's like to be on that Niners defense. It was like being awake for open heart surgery on yourself. Like he was clinical. He was surgical.

And look, the number one thing I think about when I just reflect on a year at the end of a football season is how this is the most random sport. It's a sport where the ball is literally oblong. It's meant to be unpredictable. It's meant to be like a roulette table. You don't know. It's a coin flip every time. But Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid and Travis Kelsey, what they've done is made the unpredictable, the random, predictable, inevitable. And that's something that we haven't seen since Tom Brady and the Patriots. It's the highest compliment we can give. They're a dynasty now, Joe. They've actually done it. Yeah, they are a dynasty. You know, also, the Niners are so good. You talk about their defense. I mean, I mean, throughout the game,

Bosa was just extraordinary. So disciplined on the outside. They're an amazing football team. But, you know, Pablo, this reminds me of the great Steelers-Cowboys matchups in the 70s where you had the two best teams going and they left it all on the field. I mean, Super Bowl XIII along with this one, probably the greatest

Super Bowl of all time. But you do. You have that inabdability. Football, it is true in time. But you do. You have that inabitability. Football, it is true in football. Anything can happen on any given Sunday, and it always does, right? But you're right, though. This is what was so exciting to me about this Super Bowl was you had the two best teams playing by four.

You had two extraordinary organizations playing. And yet again, the only thing that separated them was like the guy who one day may be called GOAT. Yeah, yeah, Joe. When I think of what Andy Reid has done also, right, with this Kansas City Chiefs franchise, he wasn't the obvious guy to be the Belichick to someone's Brady.

I'm going to keep on torturing this Patriots metaphor here. Just torturing Lamir. Torturing Lamir mostly. Just torturing Lamir here. It's true. But I want to give just a bit of credit here to the quality of this game, because I didn't know when I was watching it,

does America broadly, the hundred and bazillion million people of this game? Because I didn't know when I was watching it, does America broadly, the hundred and bazillion million people watching this game, do they appreciate the defensive slugfest that we got? This was the best defense of Andy Reid's tenure, right? This was not what the Chiefs were known for. They should be known for it now after watching that secondary shut down a really good Niners offense. And it had that feeling of a prestige drama, like the tension ratcheting.

Truly. And I was like, I hope people at home understand the nuances, the subtleties. Look at that 57-yard kick that was basically just a bullet down the middle. It was crazy. Hammered. Yeah. It was crazy. And it was those little things.

And the difference in this game is also the special teams mistakes. Niners missed an extra point. The muff fumble when it bounced off the guy's foot. But I'd say, Joe, the scariest thing for the rest of the NFL is this wasn't even a great Chiefs team compared to some of their other years. They didn't have an explosive offense. Kelsey had an up-and-down season. They traded Tyreek Hill two years ago and then won two straight Super Bowls. This is a team that's probably only going to get better in the next couple years.

They'll add some more weapons. They are the gold standard right now. And they also have that ability with Mahomes in their center. The other team looks across the field and goes, we have to be perfect or we can't win. It's the same thing. That's the other Brady comparison. If you give him a chance, he'll beat you. And the Niners gave him a chance.

Yeah. And even when, you know, when he was blitzed, he scrambles. He usually read the blitzes. If the blitz came from the right side, he opened up, flipped a pass in the flat to the right side. Yeah. It is very hard, very hard to stop him. Now, we've shown great discipline. Ten minutes in. John Heilman, we have not said Taylor Swift's name yet. There it is. I like it.

Finally. There it is. Omni President. Can I have it? Yeah, there you go. Omni President. Thank you. Do you think Taylor will play?

Taylor was, but she made it in there. You can talk about the game if you'd like to, but I thought it was, I don't know if you saw the very end, but a really, really moving scene when Kelsey and Taylor Swift met up on the field afterwards. It was really beautiful, I thought.

I could have done without his rendition of Viva Las Vegas. But other than that, it was very, yes, very. Clearly, for those who are cynical, for those who think that this is just another product of Taylor Swift's plan for world domination, that she sees this as, you know, she has a very colorful dating history, and he's obviously a superhero. There are those who are cynical. I say, look at the love on display here. And I will say this too, Pablo Torre. The love on display, it feels very real.

And I will say, whether you are a cynic or whether you believe in the romantic side of this, the prospect of the Kansas City Chiefs now teed up for the three-peat. Anybody who's a hater of Taylor Swift is going to be dealing with this for another year, baby. It's going to be Kelsey, Swift, Mahomes for a year until next time next year. I just want to thank at the very end. Don has inspired me. I want to just thank President Biden for the PSYOP. Just an amazing rigged script in coordination with Pfizer.

He rigged it perfectly. This was an all-time, just a masterful, a masterful PSYOP by President Biden. Really impressive. By the way, let's show this really quickly, Elise. So for people that don't get this, and which it was the first thousand or so after he put it up, they're like, watch this. This is, of course,

mocking all the MAGA, ultra MAGA freaks that were saying that this was all rigged from the very beginning. And this is him mocking the snowflakes. Just like we drew it up, Elise. All my intel on this is just that

if you're willing to hug a smelly football player after he's won the Super Bowl, that's true love. That's true love. And I think you're being a little unfair to Kyle Shanahan. I still think he's the best coach in the NFL. There it is. You know, look at how far he took Brock Purdy this year. And I think you're being a little unfair to Kyle Shanahan. I still think he's the best coach in the NFL. There it is. I don't know.

You know, look at how far he took Brock Purdy this year, and who knows what's next. San Francisco had a lot of chances to close the door, though, in this game. That's right. That first three quarters, man. Those first three quarters, they just gave the Chiefs too much breathing room in that first quarter. You know, a lot of it was surprising, a lot of mistakes.

And, again, you don't usually see that from the 49ers, Jonathan, You know, a lot of it was surprising, a lot of mistakes. And, again, you don't usually see that from the 49ers, Jonathan, but a lot of offsides, penalties, fumbles. I mean, they really hurt themselves time and time again. Yeah, the killer McCaffrey fumble early. Although the Chiefs had one of those, too. We mentioned the two special teams blunders, which they knew would be an advantage. The Chiefs are money on special teams.

That's an advantage here. Purdy was pretty solid. Late in the game, the Chiefs got to him a bunt. He missed some throws. But the Niners, it was not the offense's fault. Maybe you'd say they should have gone to McCaffrey a little bit more. It was just they didn't close the door. And that's greatness.

We're going to repeat ourselves here. But Mahomes has reached that point where he is now, Joe, a top three QB, probably of all time. And, you know, his arrow is only pointing up. He's only 28 years old. Yeah. I mean, other than Montana and that other guy. Brady. ESPN's Pablo Torre.

Hold on one second. Hold on one second. Okay. We didn't even talk about ads. I didn't. Not a lot of great ads. There are a couple of them. Or Usher. Or Usher. Shirtless Usher. I'm sorry. He almost fell. We're going to have to blow this out here. Really quickly, John Heilman will go with you. Shirtless Usher. Shirtless roller skating. Shirtless roller skating Usher. Shirtless roller skating Usher. I was reminded last night of not of Usher's greatness,

but of the fact that it's always been a little hard to tell the difference between a lot of Usher songs. And he's not had an album in eight years? A solo album in eight years? A solo album in eight years? A brand new one's coming out. It came out just a couple days ago, right? This is not going to go down. Unlike the game, which according to Pablo and Joe, at least, is one of the great Super Bowls in history, this is not going to go down in history as one of the all-time great

Super Bowl halftime shows. I think it's fair to say. Usher is not a guy without talent, but he had some really good guest stars that helped him maybe connect with the younger generation because he felt a little more tired than wired, I would say, in terms of the demographic he's hitting here. A lot of the younger folks were saying, who is this man? Who is this man? Why is he shirtless? Why is he roller skating?

Why is he roller skating? That's correct. Well, you've just explained. You have just explained exactly what people in Los Angeles face around Heilman. Yeah, I liked it. When he's in his Airbnb. Who is this man? Why is he shirtless? Why is he on roller skates?

I'm wrapping this up. Now, really quickly, I got two more things. I don't have a big wist as well as Patrick Mahomes does. Let's put it that way. Elise, did you see any commercials that stuck out? I like the Uber Eats. Jen Aniston.

That was good. That was cute. Hold on. Hold on. Give the Schwimmer a little credit there. Hold on. Hold on. I'm not done. I'm not done. Come on. If you're going to get the punchline, yeah. Give the swimmer a little credit there. Come on. There was, although I didn't see it in the Super Bowl, I saw it leading up to the Super

Bowl. There was Robert Kraft's ad that was an extraordinary ad about supporting Jews who are victims of anti-Semitism. I thought that was a really, really moving classic commercial, the painting commercial. And finally, Pablo, before we let you go, one final thing. Mika thinks,

oh, Super Bowl. We don't have to talk sports anymore on Morning Joe for a while. Pablo, one day until pitchers and catchers report. There it is. Yes, Mika. Boom! It's only just begun.

Our segments have only begun to become way too long. Yes, just starting. Thank you. Pablo, do you have a pick on the eve of pitchers and catchers reporting? Who's going to win the World Series this year? In honor of John Lemire sitting right here, I'm glad to inform America that the New York Yankees will be World Series champions. Oh, come on.

That's right. Here we go. ESPN's Pablo Torre. Thank you. I can get my shirt off. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye.

He kept his shirt on. Yeah. For now. For now. I didn't do any roller skating around. I mean, it was really good. Okay. That's how Pablo, you don't know this, but this was his background.

He was on the Sports Reporters. Yeah. You'd have all these, Dick Schaaf. You'd have our good friend Mike Lupica. And then when they introduced Pablo, it was getting younger demographic. He'd come out shirtless. He would have his roller skates on and he'd roll right up on the stage and sit down. Roller skates.

And talk about the WNBA. Still ahead in 60 seconds. A lot more to get to on this Monday morning. Donald Trump's staggering comments encouraging Russia to attack our NATO allies. He did that and he did that and he justified it by making up a conversation. We're back in one minute. As war rages in both Europe and the Middle East, Donald Trump is encouraging Russia to attack our NATO allies. During a campaign speech in South Carolina on Saturday, Trump recounted a conversation he allegedly had with a fellow world leader while he was president.

By the way, it was one of those crazy, and someone stood up and said, sir, sir. And he said they were from a big country. Sir, sir, if they don't pay, if we don't pay, what will you do, sir? Nobody's saying that. Like, what did Jack ask? How stupid would you have to be in that audience to go,

oh, wow, didn't he really say that? Yeah. That's amazing. I can't believe a big country president would say that. Anyhow. But it was just stupid. Like he's he is now so desperate to support Vladimir Putin and undercut America's allies in Europe.

He's making up a Sir story. It's not even it's not even a good lie for Donald Trump. Like this is you can tell he's losing it. Like he's losing his touch. This is when Elvis couldn't even get, when he's so fat, he couldn't even get the scarf from around his neck to throw to the audience.

He just kind of sat there and looked down and sang. Remember, look, you know, remember Heilman when they had to hold the microphone? Yeah. For fat Elvis when he was playing piano. 100 percent, yes. Because he lost all his moves. This is Donald Trump.

It's a story that a third grader would go, why is he lying to me? And you know the people in the audience, they can't be that dumb. They say, oh, a big country person said, sir, what if we don't like this guy? This guy will do anything to justify defending and supporting Vladimir Putin and getting us all ready for. This is a dangerous part. When he's president again, he's getting us ready for him to be an autocrat. Sure. A dictator and a guy who's going to tell Vladimir Putin, sweep in. Play it before we hear from him. You want to play it?

Because I thought my imitation sounded, I thought it sounded just, why would you want to play the dictator? I like Joe's imitation better. Why would we play the sound? Just stick with Joe's. It's the best version. Go, baby. Let's do this.

One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said, you didn't pay your delinquent. He said, yes, let's say that happened. No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills again. It's like you're fired again.

Well, just stupid because it's a lie. Nobody said that. What president? What president? Did President Merkel say that? Donald? Did President Theresa May say that? Did President Macron?

Who said that? I mean, John Heilman, I'm serious. It's so stupid. And the level of stupidity, like to actually believe that story and cheer for it, really, it makes my teeth hurt so mind bogglingly bad. I mean, just to say the thing out loud, heads of state, even of not big countries, small countries, heads of state don't refer to each each other like the president's called him, sir, as if he's like the White House usher.

Not the way they talk to each other. And I think, Joe, it's an interesting metric that you've introduced into our vocabulary. We should really think about this because as we chart Trump's decline, some of the things we should be monitoring are the quality of the lies. As they become more transparent and dumber,

that's one side of kind of terminal decline. Another is going to be when the nicknames start to go. You know, when he starts when he starts like coming up with very late, he starts referring to Joe Biden as, you know, Cheery Joe or I don't know, he's going to have some bad set of nicknames like nicknames are going to decline. That's another sign that, you know, that Trump has reached the final stages of ineptitude and political. OK, well, there's just no doubt this is fat Elvis at the piano. That's where we are right now. Next, next stop right in front of the televisions in Graceland, where he's shooting out the screens on the TVs.

Right. With it'll happen. That's that's coming. Let's bring in MSNBC contributor and author of the book, How the Right Lost Its Mind, Charlie Sykes, and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, retired four-star Navy Admiral James Tafridis. He's chief international analyst for NBC News. You know, Admiral, it really, it's not like Donald Trump is trying to prepare us for the horrible things he'll do when he's president. He is. He's praising Orban. He says, we need a strong is. He's praising Orban. He says we need a strongman.

He's telling us that. Says he's going to be a dictator on day one. He's telling us that. Here he's telling us he's going to encourage Vladimir Putin, a former Russian, a Soviet enemy, Vladimir Putin to just take over not only NATO, but other, I mean, not only Ukraine, but other NATO countries. I mean, talk about the dangers of this kind of talk becoming mainstream in American politics.

Terribly dangerous and lives will be lost, particularly if he goes the next step and does something or attempts to do something truly foolish, ignorant. And that would be to pull out of NATO. I mean, let's just do the numbers for one second. NATO is 32 countries. It's 55 percent of the world's GDP. It's three million troops, active duty, well-trained, competent, almost all volunteers. It's got a collective defense budget of a trillion dollars. And oh, by the way, on the point of defense budgets and back to the, sir, will you pay us, defend us if we don't pay? Again, let's do the numbers for a minute. U.S. spends $700 billion a year on defense. The Europeans collectively spend over $300 billion. It's the second largest defense budget in the world. That's more than China spends. And by the way,

it's three times what Russia spends. And then the other part, Joe, and your rendition of it was pretty accurate, is just the condescension, the arrogance. John Howman's exactly right. I've been to a million NATO summits. I've never heard a head of state call another head of state anything but by their first name. And so you see Donald Trump treating NATO like it's a protection racket. You know, hey, you've got a nice little country here. Be ashamed if something happened to it. It fails on every level, frankly. Well, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is also weighing in on the ex-president's comments. The editors write in part, Mr. Trump's riff also comes in the context of his lobbying against more U.S. military aid for Ukraine. He boasts about his admiration for

Mr. Putin and his bromance with the dictator during the 2018 Helsinki summit was a low point of his presidency. Mr. Trump now says he'll end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, even before he's inaugurated. The only way to do that is to deny Ukraine more weapons and tell President Volodymyr Zelensky to give Mr. Putin what he wants. The word for that is in peace. It's appeasement. The U.S. should be having an election debate over the growing dangers to U.S. security and how to counter them. Instead, we have an incumbent who has presided over the collapse of U.S. deterrence and a GOP frontrunner who dotes on dictators. No wonder Mr. Putin is looking so confident these days. Well, the Wall Street Journal had to throw in that line just for its readers that Mr. Biden

is like discouraging deterrence. It couldn't be any further from the truth. What he's done in Ukraine is extraordinary. What he wants to do. What he support, what his I mean, just extraordinary how he's built that up. And the same with with Israel. What's happened there? It's just that that just we'll we'll talk about that later. It's become such a mess with Netanyahu. But Charlie Sykes, Wall Street Journal editorial page, for the most part, nails it. Talking about just how dangerous this is. And yes, talks about 2018 when Jonathan Lemire asked the question to Vladimir, or to Donald Trump, who he trusted more.

And he said the Russians over his own intel community. But this is sinking even further for Donald Trump. And the Wall Street Journal editorial page is right. This is extraordinarily dangerous. His bromance with Vladimir Putin, Russian hoax, no Russian hoax, no Russian hoax. There continues to be an admiration there that makes America weaker, that makes America less safe, that makes Western democracy endangered. Yeah, this is this is fat Elvis, but it's fat Elvis with with nukes.

I mean, we have to balance out the clownishness of much of this with how really fundamentally dangerous it is. And The Wall Street Journal is right. You have to put this in context. This comment over the weekend is not really is not a one off. It is consistent with what Donald Trump has been saying for years, what he has been signaling for years. And the rest of the world is listening to this. And, you know, the way to start wars, of course, is to have miscalculations. And he is signaling weakness. He is signaling appeasement. He is signaling surrender. So there are real world consequences to the things that Donald Trump is saying. And of all of the things, you know,

this is a very inconsistent, very erratic man. But one of the consistent things about Donald Trump has been his willingness to bow his knee to Vladimir Putin, to ask for favors from Vladimir Putin. He will attack everyone in the world. I can't find any reference where he's ever criticized Vladimir Putin. And again, we have NATO watching. Our allies are watching. Vladimir Putin is watching. The Chinese are watching what Donald Trump is saying. And again, as The Wall Street Journal points out, this is not just an off the cuff remark at a rally. This this comes amid his campaign to basically kneecap the aid to Ukraine right now. People want to take this very, very seriously because it feels as if we are sleepwalking

into a global catastrophe while we're focusing on on maybe some of the atmospherics of American politics. But this is this is real and it will have real world consequences, as the admiral said. Jonathan, Charlie's so right. And Wall Street Journal editorial page is so right. Not only is he saying that he's going to encourage Russia to invade our NATO allies, he's also actively right now working and intimidating Republicans in Congress to kill funding for Ukraine to basically turn the country over to Vladimir Putin. Yeah, he already pushed them to kill the border bill, which would have had also the national security funding for Ukraine that died. The Senate has taken some steps now to

pass a standalone that will have foreign aid bill, including a foreign aid, including a lot to Ukraine. But there's a real sense that even if the Senate does pass it, it won't get through the House, largely because Donald Trump has poisoned fellow Republicans in the House against helping Ukraine. Let's recall right before Trump went to Helsinki in 2018, he was in Brussels at a NATO summit meeting and was this close to pulling the U.S. out then. We shouldn't doubt him if he says when he says he will do it if he's elected again, giving Vladimir Putin free reign throughout Europe. So other reactions to this from over the weekend include from Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee who has endorsed Trump for president. Well, yesterday he scrambled to try to defend Trump's comments.

I mean, he was talking about something, a story that he talked about happened in the past. By the way, Donald Trump was president and he didn't pull aside in NATO. But he's telling a story. And frankly, look, Donald Trump is not a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. He doesn't talk like a traditional politician. What he's basically saying is, if you see the comments, he said NATO was broke or busted until he took over because people weren't paying their dues.

And then he told the story about how he used leverage to get people to step up to the plate and become more active in NATO. Virtually every American president at some point in some way has complained about other countries in NATO not doing enough. You know, Trump's just the first one to express it in these terms. But I have zero concern, because he's been president before. I know exactly what he has done and will do with the NATO alliance. First off, pretty pathetic.

Secondly, a fact check. There aren't dues, NATO dues. Countries are encouraged to put in 2% of their GDPs. We have seen European nations pick up their level of contributions in recent years. And at least they've done so not because of Donald Trump's threats, but because President Joe Biden has revitalized NATO as it tries to stand together against Russian aggression. But yet it sure looks like Donald Trump is willing to help out his pal Vladimir Putin again. And a lot of Republicans, like Marco Rubio, just going to go along with it. I have absolutely no problem with pressuring NATO countries to pay their fair share and to pony up

so that we're not carrying the bulk of the burden. What I have a problem with pressuring NATO countries to pay their fair share and to pony up so that we're not carrying the bulk of the burden. What I have a problem with is Republicans like Marco Rubio just letting Donald Trump say it's OK for Russia to invade NATO allies. That is so ridiculous and is such a contrast from the Marco Rubio of 2016 in the Republican primary, a former hawk, who can you imagine if he said any of that stuff then? And what we have heard from former Trump officials is that he is going to make good on his craziest statements next go round. That's what John Kelly has been warning. That's what John Bolton's been warning.

He is telling us what he is going to do, and we should be prepared for that. And let's remember, John Hellman, the only time that NATO's Article 5, the Mutual Defense Pact, was enacted was to help the United States. Our allies were coming to our help after September 11th. Right. And, you know, look, little Marco has not. This is not like out of character of the portraits of courage, portraits encouraged that that have ever any of that have ever surrounded him. Oh, God, it's been a long time since we saw little Marco in 2016, anything like in 2016, it wasn't all that great then. He's not going to get VP. That's right. But he's made his peace with Donald Trump. Admiral Stavridis, I ask you at this juncture, what, just taking the focus

off Donald Trump for a second. We understand how important the breakdown of the bill that was kind of being cobbled together that put border security in with Ukraine and Israel aid, that obviously fell apart. But there's now some energy on the Hill to actually get that Ukraine bill up through the Senate, at least, and maybe through the House. Tell us what you think, not just what, I'm not going to ask you for a political read on whether you think it's going to pass, but what do you think is at stake in terms of getting that legislation through? Everything as follows. This is a 1939 moment when the United States can lead the band here and shut down Vladimir Putin

now in Ukraine, which is not a NATO member. And if we don't shut him down now, it will be called appeasement and it will have a knock on effect that we will pay for later. From 1939, we kind of tried to come home and hide back here in the United States. In 1941, the world reached out for us. We ended up in two global wars, one with Imperial Japan, the other with Nazi Germany. So history has shown us this movie already. Now's our chance to stop it. And I'll conclude with this, everybody. You know, we've talked about kind of the philosophy of this and the importance of it and the historical references. There's a very pragmatic reason that we ought to continue to build on this NATO alliance, and it's called the rest of the world. We are desperately seeking

now for our NATO allies to come to the Middle East and operate with us to shut down Houthi pirates. We are asking our NATO allies to come to the South China Sea and sail with us so China doesn't simply co-opt that enormous body of water. There are real pragmatic reasons we want to keep this alliance together and, you know, not to torture football one more time. But we get to be the quarterback of this alliance. The stupidest thing we could do is simply walk away from that role, fire the offensive line and decide that we don't want to play the game anymore because the game will come here and find us. Oh, it will. It will come here and find us. And, you know, it's so stupid. We do this all the time. You know, in 2010, most Americans agreed with President Obama.

I'm not saying what he did was stupid in 2010 because so many people, you know, myself included, said, OK, well, we've been over in Iraq enough. Let's just bring them home. We brought them home. Then came ISIS. We didn't move in Syria. Five hundred thousand dead. I'm not saying we have to send in two hundred, three hundred thousand troops everywhere. We need to support people on the ground. We need to support the Kurds. Maybe we send in a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there. It has worked. We have now figured out how to put in a small footprint. And with that small footprint, like, for instance, in Syria, push back Iran, push back Syria, push back Russia, push back Turkey, push back, well, destroy ISIS. I mean, we figured this out. And yet with Donald Trump and with the House Republicans, they really are. It's 1939 isolationists. They are appeasers. They are Neville Chamberlain. It's all they are. They're Neville Chamberlain. And the message they send to Vladimir Putin by following Donald Trump, who is beyond Neville Chamberlain. Neville Chamberlain was actually an honorable man, made the wrong call.

But it's far worse than that. And so what is the impact, not only on our allies, but what are they saying in Beijing tonight? tonight. In Beijing, they are doing high fives at the prospect of breaking the transatlantic alliance because we are so much weaker when the pieces and parts start to fall apart. And Jody, your point about using smaller footprints around the world, that's what we did in Colombia and ended up taking out an insurgency there before it took over a massive and important country. That's what we did in the Balkans. We never had hundreds of thousands of troops there. We can do this smart. We don't have to be the world's policeman. Final thought, it's so much easier when you do it with allies. Winston Churchill, most quotable man in the world, said, you know, it's pretty frustrating fighting with allies.

But, you know, the only thing worse is fighting without allies. I'll take the allies. There you go. And the insane thing is when we are with our European allies, I mean, we've got a $50 trillion GDP to China's $18 trillion to Russia's $1.2 trillion. Come on, think about that. When we are together, we have a defense budget of well over a billion dollars when we are together with our European allies. Like this is not a close call. The only reason somebody would want to separate us from Europe is because, well, they want Vladimir Putin to sweep across Europe.

There's no other good reason. And Charlie Sykes, let's take a step back for a second. We talk about Donald Trump too much. If you want to talk about what worries me, I mean, in 2020, when people were celebrating Joe Biden's victory, I looked up on the big board and saw that 77 million Americans voted for a man who just two weeks earlier had said that it was pressuring his attorney general to arrest the family of his political opponent. It's classic strongman,

classic Orban, classic Putin, classic Putin move. But yet 77 million Americans still voted for him. Even after January the 6th, after even encouraging the hanging of his vice president, even after stealing nuclear secrets, even after telling Putin to invade European allies, even after Donald Trump promised to be a dictator on day one, even after Donald Trump said what America needs is a strong man like Orban, who is at war with Western democracy, a guy who said he wanted to terminate the Constitution, a guy who a judge has said is guilty of rape, a guy who a jury said was guilty of sexual assault and then defamation, continued defamation of the woman the judge said he raped, that he raped. And yet people are saying,

well, Joe Biden falls off of his bike and a Trumpy special prosecutor says he can't remember when his son died. So we'll vote for this other guy. Go ahead. This is why so many Americans feel that they've taken crazy pills every single day, because it is it is remarkable. And Donald Trump is making no secret of what he intends to do. And he tells us over and over and over again, we cannot say that we were warned.

And that's the extraordinary thing about watching Marco Rubio, watching the other Republicans, because in 2016, they could engage in the fantasy. Well, maybe he will become more presidential or he will do all of those things. We'll fast forward to everything you just said, Joe, we all know these things. They know these things. And they're still saying, let's put Donald Trump into the White House. So it's not just Donald Trump. It's also what's happened to this Republican Party, which we've discussed. You know, and the admiral says this is a 1939 moment. Think about the 84 years between 1940 and 2024. The Republican Party made a choice in 1940 not to nominate an isolationist. They nominated Wendell Willkie. And at that point, the Republican Party decided it was not going to turn its back on the world. So the modern world,

a modern American foreign policy really has rested on a bipartisan consensus. In 1952, Republicans nominated Dwight Eisenhower rather than Robert Taft. They rejected the America first wing of their party. It's always been there. They've always been isolationist. But consistently since 1940, the Republican Party has been a party that understands its international responsibilities. That that tradition is ending now. We know whatever happens with Donald Trump, the Republican Party is turning its back on America's leadership role. And that is an historic, epical change that we're going through right now. It is big, big shift right at this moment.

Charlie Sykes and retired four-star Admiral James Tabredis, thank you both very much for being with us early on this Monday morning. And coming up, we'll have a live report from Israel with the latest on the war with Hamas and how the Biden administration is weighing a formally recognizing a Palestinian state as a step toward broader peace in the region. That's coming up just ahead here on Morning Joe. We saw this week the special counsel here in the United States described President Biden as an elderly man with a poor memory. You've known Joe Biden for decades and you've dealt with him a lot over the course of this conflict. What's your what's your assessment of him? Well, John, I've had more than a dozen phone conversations, extended phone conversations with President Biden. He also came on a visit to Israel during wartime, which is a historic first. And I found him very clear and very focused.

We managed to agree on the war aims and on many things. Sometimes we had disagreements, but they weren't born of a lack of understanding on his part or on my part. So that's what I can tell you. So I haven't seen that. You know, and that's Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked by ABC's Jonathan Carle about President Biden's mental sharpness in the wake of last week's report by Special Counsel Robert Herr. And let me just say again, and we've talked to foreign leaders, we've talked, I won't name the countries, but people that have negotiated with him in very tough circumstances over the past year,

a few years, they all say the same thing. He knows his issues. He's very aggressive when negotiating. He knows all the angles. He's in there. And again, that's just a reality. I've spent a good bit of time talking to him as well. And I can tell you that that he he knows his stuff. I mean, he's more than more than anybody else here that I talk to as far as as far as politicians. And the reason why it's clear, Mika, he's been doing this for 40, 45 years, 50 years. Made mistakes along the way. Made mistakes along the way. And maybe he gets tired.

Maybe he makes a mistake, talks about Mexico instead of Egypt. But if you keep playing that clip, he circles back around and he goes back and he talks about Egypt and Sisi, I believe. But the thing Lawson there was, of course, he was explaining what he is doing to help the Palestinians. And at the same time, move the Palestinians towards statehood and support Israel while pushing back on the most extreme elements there. And that's something he's one of the few presidents that has the ability, I've seen, you know, over the past 20 years to maneuver the way he does because of the

long relationships that he has. Let's keep in mind the special prosecutor was there for a reason. The report was written for a reason and it concluded what was necessary for President Biden. And that is that there are no charges necessary in the documents case pertaining to President Biden. And yet he and yet he made sure he made sure this this this it it really did seem like an in-kind contribution to Donald Trump. He made sure to put language in there that actually damaged the president politically because he couldn't damage him legally. And by the way, why are you asking about when somebody's son died? You know, if I was if I were in the middle of an interview and I know that you're the same way,

if I were in the middle of a five hour interview, the war had just broken out in Israel the day before. And they're going through all these other questions. Somebody asked me, what year did your mother die? I don't remember the year. Yeah, I can tell you I was closer to my mother than than anybody my entire life. And I go, right. Two thousand seventeen. Two thousand eighteen. I'm not sure. I know if I asked you when your father died, you'd be like, I remember the exact moment. But no, I don't remember. Don't remember the date or the year. So, again, our minds retain. I can tell you when my dad died.

I can tell you when other big things happened in my life. But sometimes we don't file things away, the specific things like that. So for him to ask the question and then secondly, for this to be be some some huge issue again is really ridiculous. Instead of asking the question, which Netanyahu spoke to there. Yeah. Who is going to defend who is going to protect America? Who has been doing this? Who has the experience to get us through all of these difficult times? That's the issue. And right now, it's just not a close call. It's Joe Biden. It's not a close call.

I think Joe Biden and those that work with him around the world and in the White House, they can show that. I really don't think it's that big a deal what this guy wrote. You're not concerned. I'm not freaked out about it at all because it does seem political. What's important is the outcome of that report and what he concluded. And I think, you know, the those on the far Trump right would love to see Democrats freaking out about a special prosecutor and freaking out about a report and undermining it for their own. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But John Heilman, this is a perfect example, John, of why Donald would open his mouth, do his Fat Elvis routine, say something completely off the wall, and then everybody would be talking about that. Nobody's talking about Friday and the press conference

that didn't go well this morning. Why? Because Donald Trump made sure they would talk about him by saying he would encourage Russia to invade our European allies, our NATO allies. And so he knew that was going to take the story, the Klieg lights off of Joee biden and sure enough this this is why this is why he can never get ahead and stay ahead the biden team uh in the wake of of uh the the tough week that joe biden had last week uh pointed out fairly rightly and and also strategically you know donald trump is is addled donald trump makes uh lies. Donald Trump makes factual misstatements.

You know, compare Joe Biden to Donald Trump. And as they were saying, this is what basically progress. And this is what we're going to do. We have to go on offense against Donald Trump and make the point that Donald Trump is no spring chicken. Donald Trump doesn't speak perfectly. What does Donald Trump do? As Joe just points out, he goes up and doesn't just cough up the Russia thing. He coughs up the Nikki Haley's husband. Where is Nikki Haley's husband in the same one speech in South Carolina? I watched way too early this morning, Joe. I don't know if you did. I always do. Of course. And John, and John Lemire did a, a long block, basically going through the totality of all the things Trump did in that one speech. Not just the thing we're focused on here, rightly, on substance, which matters the most related to Putin, but all of these other instances.

He got confused about who he was running against in that speech. Kept talking about how he was running against Obama. He did all of the things to provide fodder for anyone who wants to say, Joe Biden may not be perfect, but look at Donald Trump. It's like Donald Trump was like, OK, time to go out and show him exactly how imperfect I am. He laid it all out in the course of that one speech he made on every front. Jonathan. Yeah, on two things here. First of all, it seems it's Trump's pathological need to be the center of attention,

where you be quiet. Joe Biden had a terrible news cycle. Be quiet. Let him have to deal with that. In fact, he didn't. He stepped on it repeatedly, as Hauman just played out. And as we showed at The Five, he made misstatement after misstatement after misstatement in that speech. And I think that we could safely say this. Both of these men, they're both elderly. They're both going to

make mistakes. Only one of them is encouraging Russia to invade NATO countries. So that is the clear difference here. Or try to overturn the 2020 election. Of course. Or talks about who wants to be a dictator. Right. The stakes are so obvious. And we are seeing the Biden team go on the offensive. Do some Democrats wish that Biden had done a Super Bowl interview yesterday,

particularly in the wake of Thursday? Yes, they do. But we had a vice president forcefully defending him over the weekend. We had the president go on attack over the weekend about NATO comments. And Joe Amica, he rigged the Super Bowl. So we are seeing the Biden team really strike back. He did. And not only did he rig the Super Bowl, but look at this. He actually bragged, Mika, about rigging the Super Bowl. Like that they had that the right wing just as he planned the QAnon freaks. Do we have that full screen? The right wing QAnon Trumpy freaks who said that Biden rigged the

Super Bowl so the chiefs would win in dramatic fashion and Taylor Swift would be on the field and get even bigger before she endorsed him. I mean, the White House is just admitting it. Well, they like to be transparent. You know what they like to do? They like to troll extreme mega freaks. And by the way, just for the record, John Heilman asked if I watched way too early. So you can ask if I watched the Super Bowl. I know. I've watched now, just in the past 12 hours, I've watched the two highest rated shows of 2024 so far. Number two, the Super Bowl.

Number one, this morning's edition of What's New Early. Okay.