Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/14/23

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

3 killed and suspect dead after mass shooting at Michigan State University

We're talking about how school shootings are still an issue and how everyone thinks we left it in high school and never did I think this would happen, excuse me, directly the next day. A distraught Michigan State student moments after a deadly shooting on campus will have the very latest from East Lansing on the victims and the investigation into this latest tragedy. Also ahead, the Biden administration responds to a string of unidentified objects over the northern U.S. and Canada, ruling out one possibility despite not knowing where the objects came from. Plus, a lawyer for Donald Trump gives a totally reasonable explanation for why a folder for classified materials was found in the former president's bedroom. It comes as some sections of a grand jury report into Trump's potential 2020 election interference will be made public this week. We're going to go through which parts a judge agreed to release and why. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, February 14th.

Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief of Politico, Jonathan Lemire, former White House Director of Communications to President Obama and Director of Communications for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, Jennifer Palmieri. And Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post and MSNBC political analyst, Eugene Robinson. So we'll begin the show with yet another, Willie, mass shooting in America. Yeah, this one was at Michigan State University in East

Lansing, Michigan last night. MSU's interim deputy police chief spoke on the shooting last night. This truly has been a nightmare that we are living tonight. We are sad to report that there have been three confirmed fatalities. This is in addition to the five victims who were injured and transported to the hospital. Some of those five victims still have life-threatening injuries. So three killed, five injured, some with life-threatening injuries. The suspected shooter, a 43-year-old male, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a confrontation with law enforcement officials off campus. The police have not released the man's identity or disclosed the type of weapon he used in the shooting. The suspect has no known connection to Michigan State University. Police do not have a motive yet. Authorities still identifying the victims and what connections they have with the school.

Police report the first shots went out at 8.18 p.m. at Berkeley Hall on the north side of campus. A second shooting then occurred at the Michigan State Union, just a few buildings over from the first location shooting. Two victims were found at Berkey Hall and one was found at the Union. Police say there were activities going on in Berkey Hall last night and the Union is open to the public and does not require any special access to enter. At 8.31 p.m., school sent out a secure in place alert telling students to evacuate safely to run, hide or fight. That's a quote with reports of shots fired on campus.

Suspect was found hours later and the campus lockdown was lifted early this morning. This is the 67th mass shooting in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. So guys, think of yourself as a student at Michigan State last night in the library or someone else doing your work and you get an alert on your phone that says run, hide or fight. That seems to be where we are right now. It really is. And, you know, it used to be after each one of these mass shootings, people would talk about how to stop these mass shootings and people on the far right, the gun lobby, gun manufacturers would scream, oh, don't politicize it. Don't don't talk about it. But but this is what is what we say. This is the 67th mass shooting just this year.

Yep. In two months, they're practically mass shootings. Well, there are on average mass shootings every day in America. And what's what's wrong with a country? Let me say more specifically, what's wrong with state legislatures? What's wrong with governors? What's wrong with members of Congress? What's wrong with with elected leaders? They don't do everything that they can to

stop mass shootings in America. This does not happen in other industrialized nations. This is an American phenomenon. It's not just about mental health. It's not about video games. It's not about any of the things that the apologists for the gun lobby says it is. This is about guns and the proliferation of guns, the continued proliferation of guns. And Gene Robinson about the fact that you can't I mean, you can't even get the most basic of reforms put in place. You know, 90% of Americans, let me say it again, support universal background checks. But the people stopping that, they'd rather talk about the three trans athletes in Utah.

They'd rather talk about the 0.003% of the population that's driving them crazy. They'd rather talk about gas stoves before they would rather talk about Dr. Seuss. They always find distractions. Instead of talking about the fact that we have mass shootings every day and our children can't go to school safely without worrying about being shot. Parents can't send their young babies to school without worrying about being shot. And this continues. And again, listen, there's just no way, no other way to put it.

It's the Republican Party that's allowing this to continue to happen. Let me say, as you look at those haunted faces, it is the Republican Party. It is the Republican Party that allows this gun culture to spread. We have mass shootings every single day. And all they say is there's nothing we can do about it. Now, NRA, give us more money. Yeah, no, it's incredible. It's incredible. As you say, overwhelming public opinion for baby steps, for basic gun controls like universal background checks. There's majority support for an assault weapons ban. There is almost unanimous support for doing something. Yet you're right. It's the Republican Party refuses to budge on guns, refuses to move on guns. And that is the

problem. That is what ties all these shootings together. The mass shootings, as you said, more than one a day, not just the mass shootings, but the individual shootings. Just the level of gun carnage in this country is multiple, many times, exponentially more than in any other industrialized country, any other rich country. It only happens here, and it only happens here because in the United States, we have more guns than people. And, of course, those guns find their way into the hands of people who shouldn't have them and who do what we saw last night. Michigan State, beautiful campus, 50,000 students. Can you imagine 50,000 students? Reimagine all the parents of those students and the loved ones, all the anxiety and the fear and the reaction when you get a message like that on your cell phone.

And that's become the norm in the United States of America. So just to give you guys a real sense of how prevalent this problem is, a searing point here. We have a report that some of these kids who were sheltering in place after this mass shooting were also at Oxford High School in 2021 and survived that mass shooting. We have 20 year old kids now who have sheltered in place for two separate mass shootings on their school campuses. This has become a way of life. And again, for those Republican lawmakers, you were speaking directly to Joe. Think about the 12 families or so or more right now who are in agony right now because of their kids being shot at school or their kids' friends being shot dead at school. Right.

And here we are on five years after Parkland. And think about those families who lost children, continue to lose children. And we see people continuing to lose children. And we see people continuing to lose children. And Jim Paul Mary, as you know, we've had through the years a lot of very heated debates about Republicans and Democrats. And I go after Democrats as much as I go after Republicans, because in a lot of issues, because there are multiple sides to most issues out there, two sides to a lot of a lot of policy issues. And it's good to have the back and forth. There's not two sides here. Congress that have blocked meaningful red flag laws across the United States that have blocked a meaningful way to stop deranged 18 year old kids from getting AR-15s and weapons of war,

to stop deranged people from being able to walk into gun shops and getting weapons of war. And, you know, it's this fetishness that's grown over the past 25 years about all rights, no responsibilities. And I need the most extreme version of whatever right you're handing out, unless, of course, it has to do with a woman's body and a woman's health. And I have no responsibility to act in any responsible way. And that's what the Republican Party has become. This continues. And it will continue.

We know this will continue. And they sit back after every shooting, and they'll sit back after this shooting, and they'll say, there's nothing that we could do. You can't name a piece of gun legislation that would have stopped this shooting. And it's whack-a-mole on every slaughter. Every time children get slaughtered, it's whack-a-mole. They have another excuse about why they're too weak to do anything to save our children.

I was in the Obama White House the day of the Newtown shooting. You know, I actually worked on a gun control group 20 years ago and always thought, what's it going to take for America? It will take small children being killed in a school room. And then that would be that would make the difference. And Newtown happened. And and Congress did not do anything, even with the Democratic president pushing them. And at that moment, you thought this could happen anywhere. If it can happen in a first grade classroom, it could happen anywhere.

And then five years ago today, Parkland happens. And I thought, it's not just that it could happen anywhere. It's going to happen everywhere. I mean, 67 shootings this year. It's February 14th. It's more than I'm not great at math. That's more than one a day. And, you know, there is we don't know the details of what happened. You know, what kind of gun who this person is in Michigan. Michigan does now have a Democratic legislature, Democratic governor. They could take action. I thought it was important after Uvalde that the

Congress took action, bipartisan action, even though it was, you know, it was small measures just to show American people that you don't have to descend into nihilism. Something can change, that we can react to this. We can do something to deal with this. Whether, you know, Kevin McCarthy is going to see that, I don't know. But Schumer and the bipartisan Republican, the group of bipartisan Republicans, some in the Senate, some in the House, that came together after Evaldi should, you know, should take it back up now. John, Jen's right. We don't know anything about the gun, don't know anything about the shooter in this case. But when you hear about run, hide and fight, that I think grabbed a lot of people's attention last night and this morning. But that's a protocol. That's

something that FEMA and Homeland Security have recommended to schools across the country. So we're at a point in our society where there is a protocol for a kid, whether they're on the campus of Michigan State or a first grader in a classroom somewhere, that your first option is to run, get out of the building. Your second option is to hide somewhere from the shooter. And third, you're doing your homework in the library at Michigan State. You got to be ready to fight, confront a guy with a gun. So we have those things. Our kids do these lockdown drills that they don't even bat an eye anymore. We had fire drills. They have lockdown drills. What did you do at school today? We locked ourselves an eye anymore. We had fire drills. They have lockdown drills.

What did you do at school today? We locked ourselves in the closet. We turned off the lights and we hid. It's where we are. Yeah. My eight-year-old has to do those. And the protocol is an admission of failure. It's an admission of failure because it's an admission of reality that there's a pretty good chance that you will be confronted with a school shooter or a threat thereof. And whether you're a second grader, you're a student in Connecticut, you're a student in Texas, or you're a college student last night in Michigan, this is now part of every student's reality is that this might happen. And it is nearly a daily occurrence that we have mass shootings. Not everyone gets the headlines that Michigan State

did or the couple we just saw in California, but there's a mass shooting just about every day. And this is the reality that Americans and, yes, the Republican Party have largely created for us all. And yes, we undoubtedly will hear from the president later today about this. There was that modest, as Jen said, the modest reforms passed a year ago. We hear from President Biden nearly every day calling for an assault weapons ban, one that had been previously been placed in 1990s. But there's no expectation, no expectation that will get done. Even with a diminished NRA, Republicans seem to have no political appetite to take on something that big. And at best, we're looking at maybe an executive order or two passed. But largely, the reality will be unchanged. Those protocols will continue

and the shootings will continue. Yeah. And, you know, this again, you look at the fetishness that that the far right has as as become fixated on for hyper hyper individual rights that go far beyond anything that our founding fathers ever expected. And what it does is it this is this is exact. It's a country, again, that's completely blown out the balance of what our founders intended. There were supposed to be responsibilities that went along with rights, obligations that went along with liberties. There's none of that now. It's one of the things that Richard Haass writes about in his book, The Bill of Obligations, is that, again, this fetishness for this hyper, hyper individualism that started up decades ago. Guess what it's done?

It's left a lot of people isolated. It's left a lot of people alone. It's one of the reasons the CDC has a study out. One of the reasons we've been talking about it for years, the depression, the anxiety, the complete obliteration of communities, of neighborhoods, of personal connections, because again, this hyper individualism that has increased and it keeps increasing every year where people will look at children gunned down and slaughtered at school and they go, well, you know, big deal because I have a right to go buy a bazooka. And if you don't give me a right to buy a bazooka, then you're tearing up my rights. Oh, I can't have a bazooka. Well, I have a right for a weapon of war. I have a right to have a weapon that was actually developed to be more lethal than those in Vietnam. And it's very

easy for me just to go out now illegally, get bump stock and make it far more deadly than what our soldiers carried around in the jungles of Vietnam, except I can take it to a college campus. I can take it to a country music festival in Los Angeles. I can take it to a church in Texas. I can take it to a synagogue in Pittsburgh and hunt human beings. This, this is the world, this world right here. This is the world we Americans want to live in because of a handful of people worried about the apocalypse or they want to be able to shoot members of the This is the America that we're living in because of a handful of extremists. And again, let me just say again, this isn't a left wing thing. 90% of Americans support universal background checks for all purchases. The majority of Republicans support universal background checks for all gun purchases.

Members of the majority of the NRA supports a majority of the NRA members support universal background checks for all gun purchases. You could say the same for red flag laws. You could actually even say the same for military style weapons. A majority of Americans support a ban on military style weapons. But we're not going to get there. That's not going to happen. Right. Even though 18 year olds can still walk in and gun down people in schools, gunned down children in schools. We won't get there. But Republicans won't even take the first steps that the majority, overwhelming majority of their own people want them to take. These are adults, by the way. I think these adults, these Republican leaders

who use guns, use AR-15s and other high assault weapons as part of their political gesturing. They take pictures with them. They take pictures with their family holding guns. They think they're so cool. Point the gun at the camera, whatever. It's not only grotesque, it's mocking the reality that your kids are living in. Well, and let me tell you, Willie, I'm a gun owner. I've grown up in cultures with guns all over the place. Let me tell you something. No self-respecting gun owner goes around carrying guns, taking pictures of themselves and putting them on Christmas cards

or take pictures of themselves aiming guns up at sky. That's gesturing. It's dangerous gesturing. It's ridiculous. And again, it's it's it's I think they're adults, but I'm not sure. Well, it's juvenile on top of the fact that it's just promoting a culture that is right now. And this isn't an exaggeration. Killing our kids. Yeah. Killing our kids. And I wish it was. And and you even have Lauren Boebert saying if in church saying if Jesus had an AR-15, he wouldn't have been crucified.

I mean, somehow Christian nationalism has become entangled in this hyper individualism and gun culture. And to say for me to have to even waste my breath and say that this is the exact opposite of what Jesus preached during his three years here in his ministry, like and from everything you can read in the Gospels for me to even have to waste my breath and say that shows how sick these people have become. Lauren Boebert, by the way, said just a couple of days ago, you remember, I think it was last week, that the United States owns 46 percent of the world's guns and we need to get that number up. But that was her quote, not mine. You're right. Responsible gun owners, the millions of them in this country, either roll their eyes or just express disgust when they see people carrying an AR-15

into a Starbucks, for example, as some show of force or to show up at the state capitol in Michigan confronting law enforcement officers with AR-15s. That's not what responsible gun ownership is. The question is, is anyone willing to talk about it? And the answer on one side appears to be no. It can't just be that this is the way it is. I mean, as you say, there's always an argument around it like you could get rid of all guns right now. You could ban every kind of gun in America and we'd still have more guns than people in this country. We've got 400 million guns floating around. What do you do about that? You can't throw up your hands, can you, when your kids are being threatened in school, whether they're in first grade or in college at Michigan State? You should, right? I think as a human being want to do better,

want to figure a way out of this. And maybe it's not that everybody gets to carry around an AR-15, but that'll be for the Congress to decide. Yeah, you know, Gene Robinson, this is what's, it's so un-American. It's so un-American to just throw up your arms and say we can't do anything. After Pearl Harbor, America responded. After 9-11, America responded. The civil rights movement. I mean, it was the Birmingham church bombing, the horror of the Birmingham church bombing where four little girls were killed in Sunday school in Chicago, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, in New York, in Atlanta, across America. That's happening every day. And if we reported on those gun murders, that's all we would be doing for three hours. Exactly. Yeah, that's all we would talk about. All we would talk about was the previous

day and evening's carnage across America. And look, if we're going to ever attack this problem, which is just astounding, stupefying to people in the rest of the world who cannot understand why we permit this to happen. We're never going to do anything about it. Either the Republican Party is going to change, or we're going to take power away from the Republican Party and back into the hands of sensible people, and we're going to start to do something about it. That's kind of where we are, because right now this Republican Party is in favor of the gun carnage that continues to happen. All right. We're going to obviously get more from Michigan State throughout the show this morning and coming up, we'll get a live report from the NATO meeting in Brussels. Also, they're not aliens, but we'll get the latest on the unidentified flying objects that were shot down over the U.S. and Canada when Morning Joe returns. At the hour, there are still many unanswered questions regarding the White House's decision to shoot down three unidentified flying objects last weekend. And now President

Joe Biden is tasking members of his administration to study the situation. Yesterday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced the formation of a new group formed to examine the government's policies for dealing with these kinds of events. The president, through his national security advisor, has today directed an interagency team to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks. Every element of the government will redouble their efforts to understand and mitigate these events. As for what happened last weekend, the White House provided few new details yesterday. In Brussels, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the military had not yet recovered

any debris from the three sites in the Arctic Ocean above Alaska, in Canada's Yukon Territory and from Lake Huron near Michigan. The White House also maintains the objects posed no threat to people on the ground, but were flying at low enough altitudes that they could have interfered with commercial flights. It's still not known who sent the objects, but the White House was able to confidently say yesterday who did not send them. There is no, again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. Again, there is no indication of aliens or terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. I loved E.T., the movie, but I'm just going to leave it there. I don't think the American people need to worry about aliens

with respect to these craft, period. I don't think there's any more that needs to be said there. I think we can all get our heads around the fact that there are sometimes things floating at high altitudes for various purposes. I don't think that that's necessarily unusual here. It's difficult for me to say exactly what you can expect going forward. One of the reasons that we think we're seeing more is because we're looking for more. Joining us now live from Brussels, where NATO allies are gathering for a key

meeting regarding aid to Ukraine. NBC News national security and military correspondent Courtney Kuby and Courtney will get to the NATO meeting in just a moment. But first, anything more about the unidentified objects shot down over the weekend? No, we're still waiting for them to actually get to the sites and actually recover some of these three unidentified objects that were shot down in very quick succession. So we don't know, as you said, Mika, who sent these balloons or even if it was a nation that did it at all, whether these could have been some sort of civilian research balloons with no nefarious intent at all. Those are the kinds of questions that we've been asking here. What we do know is the very first balloon,

the thing that kicked off this entire thing about a week and a half ago, was a Chinese high altitude surveillance balloon. In the aftermath of the U.S. shooting that down off the coast of the southeast coast of the U.S., these three additional balloons came on, but they have very different characteristics. And in fact, we're not even calling them balloons. We're supposed to call them unidentified objects. That's because they're much smaller. They were flying at lower altitudes. They were not as maneuverable, every one of them, as we saw that Chinese high altitude balloon.

And again, we don't know exactly what they were doing or who they belong to. Those are the questions that the U.S. government is hoping to find out when they recover them. All three have gone down in very difficult environments. That's one of the reasons that they haven't reached them yet. The first one that went down sort of near the Aleutians over Alaska, it's very difficult weather there right now. It's over ice. The one that was over Lake Huron, the most recent one, that actually went down on the Canadian side of Lake Huron. So the Canadian government is the ones who sort of taken the lead on that. And the one in the Yukon is in a very remote area. So

it may be days or frankly, even weeks before the U.S. and Canadian authorities reach these and are able to actually look at them and figure out what they have on their hands here. All right. And Courtney, as we wait for more information on that, set the scene for us at the NATO meeting, especially focused on aid to Ukraine and all these countries working together. So today is a meeting of the Ukraine defense contact group. And what that is, is a whole bunch of allies, about 50 of them, that come together every several weeks and they discuss what Ukraine needs for the current fight and what they can do to provide that. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin shares these meetings,

and you can kind of think of him as like an auctioneer. So they're sitting around this giant room and he'll say, OK, Ukraine needs ammo. Who's got 155 rounds? Oh, you have them? Well, you know, so-and-so can provide them. Who else can provide tanks? Who can provide air defenses? And they sit there for hours and they figure out what exactly these countries can provide and when. So the things that we should be looking for out of today's Ukraine contact group are the four A's. The first is air defenses. And that's because Ukraine needs air defense systems for the coming Russian offensive. The hope is that the airspace over Ukraine has remained contested since the invasion. That means

that Russia doesn't own any of the airspace. If Ukraine has effective air defense systems on the ground, they'll be able to keep Russia from taking over any of the skies and the Ukrainians can effectively operate more safely without the pretty capable Russian Air Force in the skies. The second is ammo, ammunition. There will never be enough ammunition for the Ukrainians in this conflict. They are running through tens of thousands of rounds, sometimes in a day. The third, artillery, goes back to the ammo as well. They need more and more and more artillery shells for this coming offensive and even for the current fight right now. The fourth one, armor, what we think of as tanks.

We already heard from Jan Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, saying that the Russians are preparing for this next offensive. It may even be starting. They may be in the sort of a shaping operations phase of it. Once that begins, Ukraine needs to hold their defensive lines. They need tanks. So think of it as a tank provides them with protection from incoming fire, but it also allows them to pack a punch to fire back on the Russians during this offensive. So that's a critical capability. Some of the first Leopard tanks that were pledged in the most recent weeks from European allies are expected to be delivered to Ukraine as early as next month. That will be for this offensive. We did hear from Jan Stoltenberg just recently about how Russia is planning this coming offensive and how the world needs to keep

helping Ukraine so that they can defend against it. Almost one year since the invasion, President I nærmest en år siden invasjonen, er president Putin ikke forberedt for fred. Han lanserer nye offensiv. Så vi må fortsette å forberede Ukraina med det han trenger til å vinne. Det som Russland har for stor kvalitet, prøver de å kompensere i kvalitet. Treningene har ikke samme nivå som ukrainiske krefter, men de har flere krefter. training don't have the same level as the Ukrainian forces, but they have more forces. And the Russians are willing to send in those forces and take a high, high number of casualties. We'll hear from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley in the coming hours about both of these topics, the spy balloons or whatever these unidentified objects are,

and more weapons and things and equipment for Ukraine, Willie. A race for logistics, Stoltenberg put it that way today. NBC's Courtney Kuby joining us from Brussels this morning. Courtney, thanks so much. So, John, this is the front page of The New York Post. Take me to your leader on this question of whether or not these are UFOs, they're aliens. The White House actually had to address the question of aliens. But for a serious point, a lot of people are saying this this balloon, this surveillance craft, whatever it was from China, did spend an awful lot of time floating across the United States before it was taken down. If it had been something more threatening, something with a payload, how would this have gone down? Yeah, we heard the White House denials on aliens. I'll just note that in the movies right before the aliens come, what happens?

The White House denies that the aliens are coming. So I don't think we should let our guard down just yet. Senators, Jen, are going to get a classified briefing today about what they think these objects are. It has been frustrating to some in the White House. They haven't recovered anything yet from this beyond the one off South Carolina to the next three, as Courtney detailed, because they've ended up where they remote locations where the debris landed. It's become a little bit of a political issue for this for this president. He took a lot of heat from Republicans, but some Democrats, too, as to how long that first balloon was allowed to stay up over the United States. And now China is saying, hey, you put up balloons over our space, too, although

John Kirby on our show yesterday denied that. How does they navigate this domestic politics? But also they need to have a relationship with Beijing here. And this isn't helping. Yeah, I think I understand. I feel the frustration of the White House, particularly on the communications side, because I know how it is when you can't find it. Like the communications team, I'm sure, is like, what is going on? What is the deal with these balloons? Why can't we find it? And it's like, it's in a remote area of Yukon. It's going to take a long time to get it. It's underneath Lake Huron, and we can't get to it.

But it is always better in these situations to go slowly and share facts as you have them, but don't get ahead or speculate. And don't do anything that's going to cause danger into the United States. So I know that, you know, particularly the Montana senators, because I guess the way the weather patterns are, these balloons really hit Montana first or seem to like to hang out there. I also like to hang out there. I get it. Absolutely. But there's the idea that they're frustrated, but you can't. But if they had shot something down and it hit, you know, like the president said, it hit a school or, you know,

there are all these reasons why the actions that they are taking are the prudent thing to do, even if they're frustrating in the moment, particularly to Congress and the House and the Intel Committee always wants to get briefed right away. And I get that, too. But if you don't have facts, you don't you know, you don't you don't have facts. And they had this interagency review. Now, that also sounds bureaucratic and frustrating, but it's probably the right level to look at a problem that may go on for a while. These balloons, apparently this sort of war of rhetoric has escalated out of China saying, well, the United States does this, too. They've flown 10 balloons over our country. Kirby and others have said we absolutely do not. The National Security Advisors has we absolutely do not fly balloons over China. But maybe we don't fly balloons over China, but we're spying on

China. Of course. Right this moment, we're undeniably spying on China, just as they are on us. And I know it's your TikTok account, Willie, where you're most vulnerable there from the Chinese. But this is, you know, Secretary Blinken, you know, canceled his trip to Beijing. There has been some talk not confirmed yet from the State Department that he and his counterpart from China will be speaking perhaps on the phone in the coming days in an effort there to sort of try to repair some relationships here. We know how tense things have gotten, warmed up slightly after President Biden and President Xi met in November at the G20. This is not what they needed, a setback like this. But they're going to need to come to some sort of agreement here before the war, the rhetoric gets even hotter.

Joe, obviously, this is the most visible form of spying that we've seen. That's why it's getting so much attention. But to John's point, there are much, much, much more specific and detailed and elaborate ways that we are spying on each other. China, the United States. Yeah, I mean, we had a former CIA agent, lifetime CIA agent, Mark Polymeropoulos on saying, you know what? There are like 30 ways China spies on us. This doesn't even crack the top 20. So, yeah, you know, the thing is, we we knew that when this group of Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, what we were getting, we knew it was going to be crazy town. You you had hoped in an international crisis they wouldn't go out and sit

on bales of hay and aim AR-15s up at the sky and gesture for social media. That's one thing. But when you have the head of the House Intel Committee saying that he wants the military to be, quote, trigger happy, said he wants the military to be trigger quote, trigger happy, said he wants the military to be trigger happy. Shoot first, ask questions later. Then, you know, there are real consequences, of course, attached to some people who are deeply unserious taking the controls in the House of Representatives. Yeah. And one time backbenchers or you could just sort of dismiss them as the crazies are now elevated to positions of real power and real decision making in the House. We'll have more on this story coming up in just a bit. Also ahead, a judge in Georgia has ordered the partial release anyway of Fulton County's special grand jury report, looking at what it

might reveal about potential interference into the 2020 election by former President Trump and his allies, and if anyone will be charged in that case. Plus, new reporting on a near disaster off the coast of Maui in December involving a nosediving commercial flight that almost plunged into the Pacific Ocean. Also ahead, a troubling new report from the CDC finds teen girls in the United States are experiencing record levels of violence, sadness and suicidal thoughts. We're going to dig into that report and tell you what parents need to be looking out for. Also, we'll be joined by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as we approach now the one year mark of Russia's invasion. You're watching Morning Joe on a busy Tuesday morning. We'll be right back. My gosh, TJ, our directors dialed up another beautiful shot of lower Manhattan as the sun

comes up at 647 in the morning. Some parts of the Fulton County grand jury report into potential 2020 election interference will be made public this week. Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled yesterday the introduction, conclusion and a portion of the report where jurors worried some unnamed witnesses may have lied under oath. All that could be made public in his eight page decision. Judge McBurney revealed the grand jury report does include recommended charges. However, that part will not be made public because McBurney determined it would deny individuals due process. The full grand jury report won't be made public until the district attorney, Fannie Willis, finishes the investigation. The grand jury submitted its

finished report last month. Georgia's flip to Joe Biden made the state a major focal point of the Trump campaign's attempt to overturn the election results. Most infamously, the phone call between former President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January of 2021. So look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state. Joe, every time you hear it, it strikes you that he just said it out loud on a telephone call. And Secretary of State Raffensperger wisely recorded the call because he was worried about how Donald Trump and his team would spin what happened during their conversation. But there it is on tape.

It's Perry Mason, man. It's Ellery Queen. It's not Sherlock Holmes because those mysteries are always hard to figure out. This is the evidence just falling right in your lap. And you're right, Willie, the more we hear it, the more damning it is for Donald Trump. There's really no getting around that for him. The guy was trying to steal the election. And, you know, what's so interesting is, again, and what we're hearing about the report, parts of the report that are going to be let out are, you know, they have the line about, again,

about those people who they believe may have been lying under oath. It's going to be a fascinating, fascinating read. Yeah, and that's obviously a lot of people focusing on Georgia as a spot of trouble for President Trump, potentially former President Trump. But also, let's not forget the classified documents and a strange, strange twist here. Some new details about a folder with classified written on it that recently was found in former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Lawyers for the former president voluntarily handed that folder to federal investigators last month. But now one of the attorneys says the folder was in Trump's bedroom at the Palm Beach estate. And whether you hear this, Trump apparently was using it to help him sleep at night.

The folder is kind of one of the more humorous aspects of this whole thing. This is not a classified folder. It's a folder, Manila folder, that says classified evening summary on it. And it was in the president's bedroom. He has one of those landline telephones next to his bed and has a blue light on it and it keeps him up at night. So he took the Manoa folder and he put it over it so that it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night. And it's just this folder. It says classified evening brief, evening summary on it. It is not a classification marking. It's not anything that is controlled in any way. There's nothing illegal about it. There's nothing in it. And when DOJ found that

about it, they went crazy. And they said they actually gave me a subpoena to say, give us over this empty folder that means nothing. And maybe the dumbest thing. And I've heard a lot of dumb things coming out of Trump lawyers mouths. First of all, where does he get all these lawyers? Like, are they just driving past and he grabs them to, hey, you're going to be my lawyer today. I've never seen this guy, this clown before. There's a new one every week. Right. I guess a lot of them are actually possibly going to be under indictment.

So I guess he has to keep getting new lawyers. But that's just the dumbest explanation I've ever, ever heard of. Remember Trump freaking out over markings on some of Hillary Clinton's emails that weren't even classified. But he was so he would just like if it looked like it was classified, he freaked out. And here you have Donald Trump using a classified folder to block out light so he could sleep. Seriously, one of the dumbest things I've ever heard from the land of stupid. Kudos to the CNN host for keeping a straight face while whoever that attorney was, was trying to make the case that the only thing Donald Trump

could find in his sprawling estate to cover a blue light next to his bed was a classified folder. I mean, it's funny on the one hand. On the other hand, just think of the contempt these people have for the intelligence of anyone listening to that. Their supporters, the people who oppose them, whatever it is to say that, oh, come on, get over it. He was just using it to block out light in his room so he could sleep better at Mar-a-Lago. I mean, the question is, Jonathan O'Meara, what was inside the folder? That's the question. So you talk forever about the folder, talk forever about, you know, but just think about, you know, all the things that, you know, the archives didn't

get back. DOJ probably didn't get back when they went after Trump's documents. A landline with a blue light. That's the explanation here. But it's also, let's remember the timing. This was just a month or so back and they found it. How many times have we heard from Trump's attorneys that they have done searches, thorough searches, they've cooperated with investigators, they've handed everything over. And every time they do that, it turns out not to be the case, just furthering potentially the legal peril for the former president. And we don't know what was in this folder. They claim it was empty. OK, maybe. But that even if this one was empty, lots of others weren't. And the investigation, special counsel Jack Smith proceeding apace.

Certainly a lot of headlines in recent days about how he's probing the January 6th aspect of this. And there's some news this morning about how Mike Pence is going to try to fight the subpoena so he doesn't have to cooperate with that. So not exactly a profile of courage there from the former vice president. But here, this is a reminder that this documents case is still very much with Donald Trump and could be we could see indictments in the months ahead.