Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/15/24

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

Woman shot dead at Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration was a popular radio DJ

And this is a day that a lot of people look forward to, something they remember for a lifetime. And what they shouldn't have to remember is the threat of gun violence, marring a day like this, injuring them and their families. This morning, I was actually thinking about bringing my child, as many people in Kansas City did. And I don't want us to have to, in our country, for every big event, think about a concern of being shot. A uniquely American problem, another mass shooting, this time at the Super Bowl celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs. We'll bring you the latest on this tragedy. Plus, we'll explain the cryptic statement on a national security threat from Republican Congressman

Mike Turner of Ohio that created chaos and confusion on Capitol Hill. Also ahead, we'll preview a busy 48 hours for Donald Trump's various legal issues. There are two hearings today, including a criminal case you may have forgotten about. So good morning and welcome to Morning Joe on this busy Thursday, February 15th. With us, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. Special Correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kay, and Deputy Managing Editor for Politics at Politico, Sam Stein Stein is with us this morning as well. Good to have you. Willie, we're going to be talking. We got Tom Witter here and going to be talking about the tragedy in Kansas City. Really quickly, though, the reverberations from that that huge

Democratic win on Long Island a couple of nights ago, still still being felt in Washington. And here, the head editorial in The Wall Street Journal talks about the fact that the Republicans' border cynicism is what handed Democrats a seat. Border cynicism costs the GOP. And they talk about how you're actually in a unique position where Republicans who think that the border issue is going to be supporting them. Republic. Only this Republican Party could screw that up so badly that they actually turned the border issue into a plus for Democrats. And as The Wall Street Journal says, Democrat Tom Suozzi backed a border deal and took a House seat because of it. Whereas his opponent opposed one. And, you know, I guess they think I guess these Republicans, maybe they're so stupid to the House.

The extreme MAGA House Republicans, they think all the voters are stupid and they don't know what's out there. But as The Wall Street Journal editorial page said today, the Democrats supported the bill. The Democrat campaigned on the bill and the Democrat picked up a House seat that Republicans won by eight points just a year and a half ago. Yeah. And even Speaker Johnson yesterday didn't look like he believed his own spin while he was talking about this race saying it snowed and this and that and completely ignoring what the journal and you point to this morning and we've been talking about here, which is that voters are really smart as they see through nonsense. They see through spin and they want the crisis at the border fixed. And they know that there was a proposal to get that fixed, worked on for months in the Senate, led by a Republican, and that Speaker Johnson and House

Republicans have turned their backs on that to keep the issue alive. People are smart. And I agree, Joe, I've been thinking about that. I said, you know, like, what contempt do you have for the intelligence of your own voters when you're lying to them saying no one's given us anything to do on the border? We want border reform. They watch the news. They have phones. They have eyes. They know that there was a deal in the Senate. And Mike Johnson yesterday, very, very desperately trying to spin what was a significant loss for his party in many, many ways, not just in terms of losing that one vote in the House, but as perhaps a canary in the coal mine for what's coming in the fall, wasn't terribly convincing in his. Now, look at this. Here he is spinning.

The result last night is not something, in my view, that Democrats should celebrate too much. Think about what happened there. They spent about 15 million dollars to win a seat that President Biden won by eight points. They won it by less than eight points. Their candidate ran like a Republican. He sounded like a Republican talking about the border and immigration, because everybody knows that's the top issue that is on the concern, the hearts and minds of everybody. You know, there was a weather event that affected turnout. There are a lot of factors there. That is in no way a bellwether of what's going to happen this fall. You know, it snowed on Democrats, Democratic voters as much as it snowed on Republican voters. So basically what he's saying there is Republicans don't have enough money.

Republicans don't know how to organize when it snows. And Republicans don't know how to run on the right issues. Sam Stein, that doesn't actually sound like a great vote of confidence. And he sounds I mean, that approach suggests that the candidates just as confused as Mike Johnson is. And I think I saw Politico's story over the past day or two that a lot of Republicans are just saying he's winging it, that this is it's kind of chaos around here. Joe, you don't understand. It was strategically targeted snow down to the district level, knowing the voter locations. Yeah, no, weird spin. And yeah, it does feel like, look, there's been a string of these defeats. Obviously you can't say one special election is going to tell you everything about the political climate, but

this isn't just one special election. I mean, on the same night, there was a state house election in Pennsylvania. We saw, obviously, a string of other special elections, the 2023 elections. All these down ballot races, or not all of them, but almost all of them, have really broken in the Democratic favor, especially since the Dobbs decision. Now, in this case, the border bill obviously played a bigger role. But, you know, if you were the Republicans, you came out of this over the past two years, a year and a half, you looked at the totality of these results, you would say, OK, we need to sort of course correct in some significant way. But that's not what's happening on the Hill right now. I mean, if anything, they're saying we need to actually continue doing what we're doing. They dismiss

these things as isolated incidents. There's no introspection from leadership here. If anything, they're tying themselves closer to Trump, who was the one who said, let's kill this border deal because I want the issue in play. Yeah. And once again. Whoever saw this coming, Donald Trump cost Republicans another election. It was Donald Trump's cynicism that the Wall Street Journal talks about once again that cost Republicans a lot. You know, I sit here and people are like, Joe, why are you being so mean to Republicans? I'm not. I'm trying to help. I am here. I am here. I am. I am like I'm trying to fix your house. It is structurally unsound and you won't let me do it. So you keep losing. Katty, I noticed another thing, though, out of this whole election.

And it's one of the reasons when everybody is like doing their bedwetting in February, they're looking at, you know, a Squares case G university poll. I'm not exactly sure where that university is, but they're looking at some poll. Oh, my God. Biden is down by five points. The world is over. Here's another example. And Sam really brought it up. Since Dobbs, it seems like every election has gone this way. The polls may show a close race. And this in this case, the last poll showed the Democrat up by one point, ended up winning by eight points. You've seen it time and time again since Dobbs

that Democrats, for some reason, under women's health care, you name it. And it's not just women, as we've talked about before. It's a lot of men. When they go out, they vote on that issue and it makes a huge difference. And it did here again. It wasn't a one of one point victory. It was an eight point victory. Yeah. I mean, obviously, the the poll that caused the most nighttime incontinence was the New York Times one last October, which had Donald Trump ahead. And that was, you know, a respectable, reasonable poll, one assumes. But you look at all the special elections and we don't know how much you can translate a special election into an election year election when the president's name is actually on the ticket. There's some debate about that. But it's not just New York. It's not just Virginia. It's not just New Jersey. It's not just Pennsylvania. Throw Florida in there as well.

And you've had a string of states where Republicans have lost who should have been in a position to win, who have lost to a Democrat. And that is the hope that the White House has. They say, look, when it actually comes to people voting, forget the polls, but look at how people vote. People are voting for Democrats, particularly since Dobbs. Throw in an economy that seems to be improving and consumer sentiments that seem to be getting more confident. And that's why the White House is thinking that it's in a stronger position,

certainly, than it seemed to be thinking. I think that the panic that that New York Times poll caused last October has receded somewhat. There is more confidence in the White House at the moment because of these things. All right. We're going to continue this conversation, but we want to move to the deadly gun violence during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration. One person was killed and at least 21 other people were injured. Many of them are children in yesterday's gun violence during that celebration. This morning, the sister of Lisa Lopez Galvan confirmed to NBC News she was the one who was shot and killed. Lopez Galvan was the mother of two and a DJ at a Kansas City

radio station, which posted a tribute to her online, calling the shooting a senseless act that has taken a beautiful person from her community and from her family. Let's bring in, go ahead, but let's bring in NBC News investigations correspondent Tom Winter with the very latest on this. Tom, what do you know? Right. So right now, investigators are trying to determine exactly why this happened yesterday. According to our reporting and from a number of state and federal law enforcement officials that have been briefed on this, there is no indication here, Mika, that there's some sort of international or national terrorist plot or national security concern.

I know people are going to hear that and look at these scenes that we're looking at right now and say, how could that not be terrifying? But it doesn't appear that this was motivated by any specific ideology or a specific hate crime. Now, the question is, how did this all happen? I think it's interesting that we haven't heard any of the names of the people that are in custody. And one of the reasons that that could be, according to eyewitness testimony and to what people have told us yesterday in the course of reporting on this, is that some of the individuals may be under the age of 18. And of course, that raises challenges when it comes to charging those people. It raises challenges

when it comes to naming individuals. And so they're going to have to make some decisions. And Missouri law is a little bit unique in this, making some decisions as to whether or not to potentially charge individuals as adults if, in fact, they are juveniles. So that's something that we'll be following as the day progresses, exactly how this happened. Did these people know each other prior to the shooting? Was this a dispute that arose during the course of the celebration yesterday, or was it not connected to it at all? Obviously, it's near Union Station, so you don't have to have attended this event yesterday to have been there. But I think when you look at it in its totality, it's another event where it has been marred by gun violence.

It's been another event where it's been marred by really a horrifying scene. The individuals who have been shot, the kids that were shot, they will never think of an event like that the same. And so this was also an event where you had 800 members of law enforcement, according to the Kansas City Police Department themselves and members of the state police. So I think it's it's a situation where we see a heavily secured event where yet still something happened. So Lisa Lopez Galvin was killed yesterday, confirmed by her sister to us at NBC. She was one of 22 victims. Twelve victims were sent to Children's Mercy Hospital. If you're looking for some kind of silver lining, the hospital came out late yesterday afternoon and said all 12 of the victims there are likely to survive and recover fully, which we take as a

little bit of good news here. So is it fair to say, Tom, then, that according to law enforcement you've talked to, this was not some kind of a targeted attack on the parade, but more likely a dispute between people who possibly were at the parade? That's what it sounds like at this point. And so whether or not these folks have a history with law enforcement or whether it was something that arose out of the fact, you know, you've got a celebration, you have alcohol, you have people in tight spaces. Did something grow out of that? That's a little bit unclear at this point.

And then the age of the individuals who may have been involved. Again, that's that this was a situation where somebody came there yesterday to attack Chiefs fans or people in Kansas City as part of some specific plot, that there's no indication of that, at least at this juncture of the investigation. What is more American than a Super Bowl parade? And yet, what is more American than a mass shooting? I mean, that is where we are right now. We did hear from a number of the chief's players yesterday. Some took to social media. Some spoke out in interviews. Obviously, their thoughts and prayers are for their city there, horrified by what happened. Some reports of some players comforting children who were scared by the chaos. Can you just tell us a little more about how this all went down yesterday? I know there's also a report of some onlookers, some bystanders may have tackled one of the assailants. And just remind us also, what are the gun laws in Missouri?

Right. So that's an easy question to answer. The gun laws there are pretty loose as far as gun laws go. So the idea of carrying a weapon in public places, it's certainly not prohibited. You can carry concealed weapons in a number of different places. And there's no, I don't think there would have been a prohibition on having a weapon there yesterday. Folks have looked at, on that point, were there magnetometers close to this event? It's near a transit hub. It's near a whole bunch of public places where people are going to be coming and going that have nothing to do with the celebration yesterday. I think it would have been very difficult to enforce a perimeter on that scale, just having covered so many of these events before. And of course, you have a parade,

which makes certainly any sort of security checks even more of a challenge. So that's the first thing. As far as how all this went down yesterday, you know, I think the whole event time was 10 or 12 minutes. To your point, you saw people being tackled. We're not showing that video at this point because we're not sure whether or not those individuals were actually involved. You know, somebody could say, oh, there's the shooter. They're running over there and they run after them or they could have been involved in a dispute. So I think we want to be a little bit cautious about who we're showing in handcuffs here. And a number of times, you know, police would rather put somebody in handcuffs for five or 10 minutes and make sure that that's somebody who's not involved in the shooting than to let somebody go who they're going to have to look for later. So a little bit of caution on that.

Although police did acknowledge, to your point, Jonathan, that they were people that were chased after, that there was a pursuit at some point, so it is possible that those individuals can be involved. I think it's a big reason why we saw overnight the FBI and the Kansas City Police Department really urging folks to send in as many videos as you have, send in as many images as you have. And I remember from the Boston Marathon bombing, it was the the types of images that were sent in from people's cameras that they just kept rolling after the incident that were found on the ground or cell phone video that really helped make that case. At some point, you're going to want to make a prosecution here. So and by the way, Claire McCaskill comes on this show and often talks

about how the radicalism in Missouri's gun laws are causing more more deaths. And that's obvious. You look at it and you see it and it's happened. Also, crime has gone down across the country. I think it's it's remained stubbornly high in Kansas City as far as shootings go. But Tom, I wanted to ask you on that front, do the police think that this could possibly possibly be gang related activity? Has that come up? I think it's just a little too soon to say. I think all those type of things could be looked at. How many of these injured children are they teenagers? If in fact this was a dispute between teenagers, could these individuals have been part of that dispute or have been spending time with their friends? It doesn't make it any less or any less horrible or horrific for them, of course. Right.

Or were these kids that were innocent bystanders that were hit as a result of the shooting? It's just too soon to say on on all those fronts. You know, crime is has come down, Joe, certainly across the country, certainly in the violent crime, homicide shooting category. But it's still a continual thing. So I think if you have a five or 10 percent reduction, I know you know this, you still have 90 percent of the violence that you had before. And I get overnight reports from police departments all up and down the East Coast. I'm looking at Philadelphia's right now, literally at my fingertips. A couple of shootings there last night, a homicide as well.

So the violence is still pervasive and it's still something that is touched on earlier, still part of our of our culture with these incidents. And I can't think of the last time we've gone, you know, without a holiday or a parade or some sort of a large gathering over a period of months where we haven't had something come up. It doesn't happen all the time, but it is something that we are now seeing more and more at these type of events. We really are. And this time, Mika, it could be more of a random mass shooting than some of the mass shootings we've seen at events that have been planned by people who have serious psychological problems, are trying to make a political point

in this case, or are doing it as their last act before suicide. In this case, this looks like this may be more crime, random, random crime. But yeah, Tom's right. The crime, the crime has gone down. It's gone down a good bit in many places, but it's still stubbornly high in Kansas City. And as we know, it's still stubbornly high in Washington, D.C. It's just this Washington is just absolutely ridiculous. The fact that you have a city council and the fact and you can you can take that you can take this to the New York City Council, the Washington City Council. You can take this to city councils on the West Coast.

They live in another world. They really do live in another world than where most of their voters are and that they continue to pass legislation that gets in the way of police officers doing their job. Crime rates skyrocket. And then people are standing around asking why. In New York City, you've got Eric Adams. It's, of course, an ex-cop who's trying to have legislation passed through the city council to make New Yorkers safer. They're just not doing it. That's happening the city level across America. And I don't, especially in a place like Washington, D.C., I just don't understand why. NBC News investigations correspondent Tom Winter, thank you very much for your reporting this morning. Now, coming up in one minute, special counsel Jack Smith urges the Supreme Court to reject Donald Trump's bid to further delay his federal election trial.

We'll go over Smith's urgent argument, as well as the two other legal proceedings happening today, this morning, involving the former president. Plus, what we're learning about Russia's pursuit of a space-based nuclear weapon that is raising national security concerns in Washington. What a bizarre day yesterday in Washington where you had the House head of the Intel Committee jump out and blurt that out the day before they were going to have a briefing with everybody at the White House. We'll have that coming up. Morning Joe is back in 60 seconds. Beautiful shot of New York City in the morning. Look at those purple skies. I don't know how TJ dials those. All right. Twenty one past the hour. Pretty. That special counsel, Jack Smith, is urging the Supreme Court to reject former President Donald Trump's efforts to delay his criminal trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

The special counsel filed his response last night, six days ahead of the deadline issued by the high court. The former president wants more time to litigate his claim that the federal indictment against him should be dismissed on the grounds of presidential immunity. I don't think so. As part of his filing, Smith stated that Trump's bid to put on hold an appeals court ruling that rejected his immunity claim fails to meet the necessary requirements for the Supreme Court to intervene. Smith also stated that if the high court is inclined to grant Trump's request, it should immediately take the case up and issue a ruling, quote, as promptly as possible so the trial can move forward. Trump's lawyers contend presidents should have total immunity for official acts as president and that Trump's actions in questioning the 2020 election results were part of his official duties. That includes, I guess, signing insurrections, whatever else. Really?

Let's bring in former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin. Lisa, good morning. So Jack Smith actually had almost another week to file this request. He said, no, I'm ready now. Let's get this. Let's stop the nonsense, effectively, is what he's saying here. Let's get this trial moving. Supreme Court receptive to this, do you think? I think they will be receptive to the overall argument. Whether they're receptive to some form of a stay is a different question. But I think Jack Smith really put the lie to many of Trump's

arguments in this brief. One of the things I thought was most persuasive about it is them basically calling Trump on his canards and saying, look, nobody believes presidents have total immunity. Nixon himself didn't believe it. They actually cite to a brief that Nixon filed in the United States versus Nixon case where Nixon says, of course, after leaving office, a former president can be prosecuted. They cite to DOJ policy. They even cite to Justice Kavanaugh, who in the Trump versus Vance decision, a precursor to some proceedings later today, essentially said nobody's above the law, of course, including a president. So the argument from the other side, from Trump's attorneys, is let's get let's litigate this out, this question of immunity.

The D.C. Federal Appeals Court has ruled on it, but let's let it move through before we start this trial. Jack Smith is saying, no, let's start now with oral arguments. Do you think we'll get this thing moving anytime soon, the trial? Let's go back for a second. Jack Smith isn't saying let's start now with oral arguments. His first preference is that they don't grant a stay, and therefore the case goes back to Chutkan, and we can start the pretrial proceedings.

In the alternative, he's saying, if you're inclined to hear the case, let's do this expeditiously. Let's get the show on the road. We'll have oral argument in March. I don't think that Trump's attempts to portray what has happened so far as overly rushed or as novel as he says it is will succeed with this court. But of course, this is a court that has surprised us time and time before. It could surprise us again. So Lisa, this is a deeply busy week on the Trump legal front.

Yes, you are well aware of it. The including the hearing today in New York City on the criminal case that I think has sort of been overlooked by many. It including the hearing today in New York City on the criminal case that I think has sort of been overlooked by many. It's the hush money case. It's not received the headlines. Others look there's to be fair, there's a lot of analysis. They think that's the weakest case against Trump. But now it seems like it might be the first to go forth. So tell us what we're going to hear today and also whether you think that that late March trial date will stick, which at this point probably does put it first on the list? I think it's probable that it sticks in large part because Judge Juan Marchand can go forward on March 25th, comfortable that as of right now, there is no other trial that

could be tried in that window of time. And because Judge Chetkin's case has been effectively on hold since December 7th, and she has committed in writing to giving Trump a full seven months for pretrial preparations. All this period of time that we've been on hold, that's not going to count. So I think that Judge Mershon feels like or will feel like he can try the case before him in a window of time that's not going to incur on anybody else's calendar. And to your first question, John, what are we going to see today? Judge Mershon is going to rule on Trump's motions to dismiss the indictment against him in this case. Most people believe that he will not accept those motions to dismiss and that will move ahead to considerations of scheduling and jury selection and the like. My guess is that when I emerge from that courthouse today and I will be there in the courtroom, that I will have a top line of a trial date to report. All right, let's hop down the legal docket to Atlanta. 930 this morning, a hearing in the Fulton County election interference case, but not really about Donald Trump here, about Fannie Willis and allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, trying to get her

off the case effectively. What are we going to see today? I think if the proceedings in New York are largely predictable today, what's going to happen in the courtroom that Judge Scott McAfee presides over in Fulton County is going to feel like a telenovela. Right. It's all about when the affair before Fannie Willis appointed her old friend, Nathan Wade, to be a special prosecutor as of November of 2021. First witness today will be a man named Terrence Bradley. He was Nathan Wade's business partner and his first divorce attorney. He can't violate the attorney-client privilege as of when he started to represent Nathan Wade. But he can talk about what he knew about the relationship between Willis and Wade before that attorney-client relationship began. So depending on what Terrence Bradley says on the stand today, we may also hear from witnesses including Fonny Willis and Nathan Wade. Judge McAfee has said he will consider whether or not

the trials of I'm sorry, the testimonial subpoenas to them are valid after he hears what Bradley has to say first. And we're going to be carrying that live as it happens. One other case, Lisa, tomorrow, it appears we may hear from Judge Angoran in the fraud trial, the massive fraud trial. Of course, Donald Trump has already been found liable of ripping people off. This is more like the penalties and figuring out the level of intent here. How how much do we know that we might see an actual judgment this week? I think we're going to make and I think we'll see a written opinion from Judge Arthur and Goran tomorrow. And, you know, to John's point that people have sort of overlooked the

Manhattan D.A.'s criminal case, I would argue that people ignore the impact of the civil cases on Donald Trump. This might be the thing that really punches him in the gut more even than the prospect of time in prison and being convicted. You've got $370 million on the line, as well as prospective lifetime bans on serving as an officer director in New York and participation in the real estate industry. And if you think Donald Trump can simply take his assets, pick them up and move them to a Florida corporation, there are already injunctions in place that prevent him from moving significant assets, whether cash or buildings, golf courses and the like, to other legal entities. He's really stuck right now. And tomorrow it may become much, much worse for him.

All right. Former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin will be keeping you very busy and seeing you again soon. Thank you very much. Thanks, Megan. And coming up, Donald Trump is doubling down on a NATO story that is frankly hard to believe. Oh, you mean the one where he lies? Yeah. And says a guy from a big country, a big country, said, sir.

Right there, you know it's a lie. I think you're 100 percent right. He's trying to deflect from the Joe Biden is old story because he knows that bounces to him. Yeah. And then clip after clip after clip after clip after clip. The past roles of him slurring his words and saying ridiculous things. So he doubles down on ridiculous. So it makes headlines.

He still believes that Barack Obama's president. He says there is that gets on stage. He gets confused. It happens. The new comments will also show you what Speaker Mike Johnson had to say yesterday when he was again pressed on taking up the Senate's foreign aid bill. Morning, Joe. Are these Republicans?

I'm not. They're certainly not Reagan Republicans. But man, I will tell you, there's a Republican senator. There's a Republican senator. There's a Republican senator that spoke out yesterday. I just loved hearing, loved hearing what he said. Okay, we'll have it. We'll tell you what it was next. Also, more from the Wall Street Journal editorial page when we come back. 34 past the hour, a beautiful shot of Capitol Hill this morning. Purple skies in Washington, too.

Gorgeous. It is gorgeous. It is a crazy, crazy afternoon yesterday on the Hill. What happened? We'll get to that in one second. But, you know, Willie, and you know this because you get flooded with the same emails as I do. A lot of young kids watch this show in the morning. And I just got an email from a mom in Sausalito.

She said that her son woke up. She's not perfect. And little Johnny in Sausalito, very early, he loves the show. He loves the show. I think I'm going to use the bell. Exactly. But Little Johnny and Sausalito, Texas, wanted more. He said more.

They wanted more of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. So Little Johnny and Sausalito, Texas, this is for you. This is for you, kiddo. As he often does, this goes back to the shocking win, eight point win, supposed to be a toss up. As he often does, the Wall Street Journal editorial page writes, Mr. Trump strolled in late Tuesday night to shoot the wounded. He blamed the defeat on Ms. Pillop for not having endorsed him for president and causing the MAGA vote to stay home. But the Wall Street Journal editorial page says the Republican candidate did not criticize Mr. Trump and ran on his anti-immigration and anti-crime agenda. Maybe swing suburban voters

don't like the MAGA GOP. Voters know Mr. Mayorkas' impeachment won't do a lick of good at the border. Watching the GOP house, they see nothing but grandstanding, internal fighting, and an inability to put together a majority for anything but gestures. Mr. Swazi exploited that record to further erode the tenuous GOP majority. I tell you, we need to get these editorial page people really on, first of all, because little Johnny and Sausalito would love it. But secondly, they're saying here what we've been saying for a very long time and to their benefit. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has been warning about this for weeks now. Stop posing on the bill. It's going to cost you elections. And it did. And they keep they keep posing on the bill. They keep posing on the bill. Despite everything we know, I keep going back to

when we were up in New Hampshire watching Nikki Haley and her line was, don't come crying to me when we lose in November. I'm telling you right now, Donald Trump will cause all of us to lose in November. Now, she likely won't win the nomination. There aren't enough people, I guess, in the party listening to her warning. But how many more signs do you need? And to hear Mike Johnson, the speaker yesterday, try to explain what happened on Tuesday night in New York, three away to weather and anything but his own performance, anything but the fealty to Donald Trump just shows you that they're not going to change, that they've

got their heads down and they're going to continue to do whatever Donald Trump tells them to do. They're not doing what's in the best interest of their House caucus. They're not doing what's in the best interest of the Republican Party. And they're not doing what's in the best interest at the southern border. And they're not doing what's in the best interest at the southern border. And they're not doing what's in the best interest of America. They're not. And this is so unique to this time and place, because I have seen speakers and they, you know, they fight for their members. They fight for the majority.

They fight to make sure they're going to be there next time. They're not doing it this time because there's this there's this little guy, Mika, who who who runs around. He just wants to be, as Liz Cheney said, he just wants to be close to Donald Trump. OK, close to Donald Trump and a guy who's running his caucus over the side of the cliff. So this morning, the White House and top officials on Capitol Hill are looking to reassure the American public that there is no need for panic after Republican House Intelligence Committee chair Congressman Mike Turner sounded the alarm about a serious national security threat facing the U.S. At the time, his cryptic message urged President Biden to declassify intelligence on an unnamed threat.

The move caught many lawmakers by surprise and sent journalists scrambling around the halls of Congress trying to figure out what he was talking about. Later on, sources told NBC News that Turner's warning was referring to Russia's efforts to target U.S. satellites in space. U.S. officials stressed that while the danger is significant, the threat is not imminent. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sought to downplay concerns, telling reporters he was already set to brief Turner and the gang of eight House members on this issue later today. I'm a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today in advance of a meeting on the books for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defense professionals. I'm confident that President Biden, in the decisions that he is taking,

is going to ensure the security of the American people going forward. And I will stand here at this podium and assert that, look you in the eye with confidence that we believe that we can and will and are protecting the national security of the United States and the American people. Sam, this was a man. This was a bizarre, sort of a bizarre. It was it wasn't sort of it was a bizarre outburst that they got the whole intel community scratching their heads going, what's he doing? Because the White House was about to brief the Gang of Eight. They were about to talk about it. And then he made a jump.

Some people are suggesting he did it to help funding for Ukraine. He is a supporter of Ukraine. But most others, like Jake Sullivan, just scratching their heads. Do you have any reporting what exactly was going on? I mean, so the report, in theory, I was very supportive of him coming out because I want more information, obviously. But yes, head scratching, head scratching decision. You don't ever see something like this happen. Someone sort of obliquely referring to a real threat, setting off real panic, honestly, and confusion. I mean, in our newsroom, we were scrambling to

figure out what the actual specifics of this were. You know, what we found was what other outlets found, which are sort of saying it's related to a space program that the Russians are either launching or have launched that would involve potentially, again, I'm using my words very carefully, potentially nuclear capabilities in outer space targeting U.S. satellites. Officials told us publicly that it was not an imminent threat, but that it was a potentially grave threat. And that's about the extent of what we know. I just want to stress, this is an extremely bizarre way for stuff to come out. Usually, the gang of eight is airtight in terms of what they talk about with

respect to intelligence. Obviously, this is coming not just in the debate around Ukraine funding. It's coming in the shadow of Donald Trump and his comments on NATO. It's coming amid debates over FISA court and gathering intelligence. So we're trying to piece together what the motivations were for Congressman Turner, who has a decent reputation around this stuff. But this was just a little bit out of character and frankly, a little bit bizarre. Yeah, John, to Sam's point, I heard from a couple of people in the intel community yesterday who were surprised, number one, that the violation of protocol and regular order. But because it was Mike Turner, who they view as sort of a welcome, sane, responsible, serious voice in this House Republican caucus, kind of just popping off in a tweet, this thing that sent everybody scrambling. And again, as we just heard from

Jake Sullivan ahead of a meeting today that he already had scheduled. Right. It was on the books and it's sort of an exasperated, almost bemused Jake Sullivan, really confused as to why the congressman did that. Yet another moment of, shall we say, another moment where a Republican in the House not exactly covered themselves in glory in the last week or two. So a very odd thing that set off, to Sam's point, set off real panic. There was real concern yesterday when this happened. So, Katty, as Joe alluded, there was this idea that this maybe this is some sort of three-dimensional chess move to sort of rally support for the Ukraine bill, saying, look, Russia is such a threat. It's not just Ukraine, which some Americans feels now like a distant war, but rather this could be in the skies above targeting American satellites, if indeed that is what it is, this sort of nuclear space program. Do you think that that had any success? It did seem like everyone was so quick to downplay it.

And just talk to us a little bit more about what you're hearing as to the possibility of that aid bill even getting a vote. Yeah, I mean, there's some reporting that Senator Rubio had heard about this a while ago. And of course, he didn't say anything. He's a member of the Gang of Eight as well. So it was a bit odd that Congressman Turner decided to. I mean, the implication would be that Russia sent up this Soyuz aircraft on February the 9th.

It had a hidden payload. We don't know what it was. Was there something nuclear in there that America doesn't have defenses against that could then attack America's own satellite capabilities? But you don't really need a nuclear weapon up in space to attack U.S. satellite capabilities. You could do that with something much less. But the whole thing is to gin up this. It does gin up this idea that Russia is a threat everywhere. Meanwhile, American, I think, officials and the White House need to make a better case for why they need to carry on funding Ukraine more directly. And that's the case that's been failed, that they haven't really made successfully.

So at the moment, we have the Senate bill, but we just don't have any prospect of the House. It looks like coming up, you've got Republican support in the Senate, clearly for funding Ukraine. You've got some Republican support like Congressman Turner in the House for funding Ukraine, but just not enough of it looks like at the moment for it to get through anytime soon. And meanwhile, this has been weeks now that Ukrainians waiting. My understanding is the Pentagon can shuffle some stuff around. They can keep the Ukrainian supply to some extent, but they still need that big bill to fill that stopgap when the when the shuffling around capability runs out. And it is really important. Mike Turner is a guy who supports Ukraine funding. Right. And I mean, it's the same thing. I mean, it's the same thing with McCaul.

And again, just to underline this, Jonathan Lemire, just as there was huge support for the Ukraine bill in the Senate, most observers say if it could get on the floor, the bill would pass overwhelmingly, just like it did in the Senate, in the Senate, because most Republicans support this. It's just the extreme, crazy MAGA right that that is going, you know, that's trying to destroy sort of Ronald Reagan's view of of defense. Yeah, I think that was the sense, Joe. But actually, in recent days, the vibe from the House is that this is less of a sure thing to pass, even if it were to get a vote. We actually had Congressman Garamendi of California on way tour a little while ago, and he relayed that he spoke to a number of Republicans yesterday on the House floor, those he thought

would stand for this bill, and they seem to be wavering. So this is potentially more pressure from Donald Trump. So I think it would be, I think at this point it would be a toss up whether this bill would pass or not. But unfortunately, it's likely to be moot because the speaker has made it clear time and time again that he's not bringing even up for a vote unless it gets more border security, which of course they tried to do a week ago and it was dead on arrival and so on. So right now, Ukraine aid is far, far, far from a sure thing. Yeah. So, so, so let's be very clear here. The people that say, Ukraine aid is far, far, far from a sure thing. Yeah. So so so let's be very clear here. The people that say, oh, there's there's nothing between Ronald Ray, between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Oh, there's a Russia hoax. Oh, there's no whatever you have right now. Right now, you have Donald Trump working as hard as he can to help Vladimir Putin defeat Ukraine.

Donald Trump is lobbying Republican lawmakers to undercut Ukraine, who has been invaded. And, of course, he's still angry about the fact that he tried to get Zelensky to dish up dirt on Joe Biden? Remember that? We'll give you your weapons if you dish up dirt on Joe Biden. And openly admitted to it. And openly admitted to it. He called it a perfect phone call that he used the power of the presidency and actually. American weapons as leverage over a foreign president in danger of being invaded, saying you can get these weapons to defend yourself against Russia,

but you have to dig up dirt on Joe Biden first. So this same guy is now calling around to House Republicans, pressuring them to help Vladimir Putin. There's no other way to put it. This is a zero sum game. If those weapons go to Ukraine, then Putin doesn't go to Kiev. If those weapons don't go to Ukraine, Vladimir Putin not only goes to Kiev, the message is sent to China. She goes into Taiwan and then Vladimir Putin's next next country to invade. Maybe it's Poland. Who knows? Anything's possible because of Donald Trump's fealty to that man. It is so, so dangerous. And the question is, will Republicans in the House allow Vladimir Putin to win? So is that what they want? That would be number two in a week,

passing on closing the border and then passing on peace in the world. This will be their brand. Yeah. Every step of the way. And and they'll pay for it. So they'll pay for it. So coming up. They will pay for it politically. Wall Street Journal warned them. We've warned them. They're now down. They're now down, as the New York Times lead says. And then there were two. Yeah.

They've got a two vote margin in the House. And they're going to keep losing if they keep kowtowing to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and an open border. So as House Republican leadership continues to block sending aid to Ukraine, one of our next guests is asking, will Ukraine survive? We'll talk to Richard Haass about the new concerns on the battlefield as Russia's unprovoked war enters its third year. Morning Joe will be right back. Hey, welcome back to Morning Joe. You know, when I first started running for office,

it was about the federal debt. I'm just going to do the bell. Oh, you want to do that? Yeah. I have to say when I was in Congress, that's why I didn't do it. You hit the bell. When I was in Congress, I ran because I was concerned about the debt and deficits and that I thought Washington was being too reckless. At that time, the national debt was $4 trillion. We're well into the 30s now, in large part, mainly because of Republican administrations. Balanced the budget four years in a row, and then Republicans took control of Washington, and deficits exploded, the debt exploded. It continued. Then Donald Trump got elected. It exploded faster than at any time, even before the pandemic. And so it's a real threat.

It's a real threat to America's future. And while a lot of Washington's focus has been on the recent foreign aid package, few are talking about years of budget deficits that keep getting made worse by federal spending that was during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it's taken a U.S. national debt to historic new levels, threatening not only the future of economic growth, but also of our economy. Let's bring right now former Treasury official, Morning Joe, economic analyst Steve Ratner. You know, Steve, we've been talking about this for years, just like we were warning about inflation for years. And there were certain people. Well, let's just say it. A lot of progressive, a lot of liberal economists that said, oh, inflation is never going to happen. Oh, we can keep paying down, you know, keep spending too much money.

Oh, we can. Well, here we are with the debt. And this is sort of thing when the debt crashes, you know, the implications are so horrible that it's not something that a Fed chairman is going to be able to fix in a year. Take us through the situation, because you've been on the forefront of this as well, warning Americans for some time. Well, there's no question, Joe, that the deficit, the debt member, Admiral McMullen, when he was head of the Joint Chiefs, said that the debt and the deficit was one of our greatest national security problems because it threatens even things like our defense. But let's take a look at some of the things you were just talking about over here. So you mentioned

when you were a congressman. So when you were a congressman back during the Clinton era, you can see that deficits were extremely mild, like a quarter of a trillion dollars kind of numbers, $250 billion a year. And then famously, of course, Bill Clinton left the country with help from Congress with a surplus. George Bush turned that surplus back into a deficit. You may remember Dick Cheney's famous comment that deficits don't matter. Reagan proved that. So they were pretty, they cut taxes twice. They didn't really care about the deficit. Obama, in fairness, had the financial crisis. But once that started to pass, he worked the debt down, down, down. So you had a Democratic president, positive fiscal policy. You had another Democratic president with positive fiscal policy. And in between, you had a couple of Republicans. And as you just pointed out,

even before covid under Trump, the deficit was getting larger and larger. And then, of course, covid, which is nobody's fault, had to be dealt with. But it came after deficits already rising and Biden had to deal with most of the covid expenses. He got the deficit down a bit, but now we're still looking at deficits of two trillion dollars as far as the eye can see. And I'll show you some worse numbers in a second. And back here, we thought these kinds of deficits were scary. And now we've got these kinds of deficits. So what does it mean for the debt? As you pointed out, the debt is almost as almost thirty five35 trillion at the moment. It has gone up from $10 trillion back around here. In 1980, if you want a fun fact, the U.S. debt was $1 trillion. So from 1980 to today,

we've added $33 trillion to our debt. We've taken the ratio of the debt to GDP. This is an important measure of how much debt you have in relation to the size of your economy from the 40 percent range, which is considered healthy to the 100 percent range, which is considered unhealthy. All right. And what else what else do we have, Steve? What else are we looking at today? So what else we're looking at today is the fact that we have done we have been kind of oblivious to the fact that the situation only gets worse. And one way to illustrate that is to take a look at the Congressional Budget Office and how they have forecast 10-year debt numbers. And I'm not here to bang on the Congressional Budget Office. I'm here more to bang on Congress, which keeps changing policies in a way which adds to the debt. So if you go back to 2014, the Congressional Budget Office thought

that in 2023, our deficit would be a trillion dollars. In reality, it's a trillion and a half dollars. They do these projections every year. I've picked out a few to make the chart clearer. And you can see that every time they have projected the 10-year deficit numbers, it has just gotten higher and higher. And this one, which is the one they did this year, is really scary. Why does this line do this? Because of higher interest costs on all the debt that we just talked about, and because of paying for Medicare for people who are getting elderly, present company included, we're an aging society, and Medicare and Social Security bills are going to go up. And so you take that and then

you say, well, what does that mean for the debt? Not surprisingly, the same kind of scenario. Back in 2014, we thought we'd have modestly rising debt ratios, but not hugely rising ones. Then 2017, it gets worse. 2022, our projections get worse. And look out here, in this latest projection that they just did. They're looking at debt to deficit ratios of over 110 percent, getting closer to 120 percent. So, Steve, let's move your third chart, which is the debt to GDP growth. How does that look right now and why is that an important stat to look at? So people will say, well, so what's the big deal? You know, we're paying our debt.

Interest rates remain relatively low. Why are we worrying about this? We're America. We're the greatest, safest creditor in the world. OK, fine. But there are still big risks. So one risk I picked out is interest rate risk. All those projections I showed you assume that interest rates remain benign, 4%, less than 4%, a little bit over later.

What happens if that's wrong? What happens if interest rates actually go up faster? So here we are at the 120% level we talked about in 2035 that we're going to hit. If interest rates go up by 1% more than what the CBO is assuming. That ratio goes to 148%. If interest rates go up by 2.5% more than what the CBO is assuming, it goes to 174%. And then if you go out to 2050, the numbers get even more dramatic. In 2050, if interest rates are 2.5% higher

than what the CBO projects, nothing else changes in policies. Our debt-to-GDP ratio goes 303 percent. When you have a lot of debt, you're at risk to higher interest rates. And then lastly, lastly, there's been a lot of research. Talk about really quickly just how catastrophic that would be for the economy. Well, look, the idea of the U.S. not being able to pay its debt is catastrophic for the world. The intermediate step where we were borrowing so much money that the credit markets basically keep raising, raising interest rates, can throw an economy into a recession and create all kinds of economic shocks for countries that have too much debt.

Not just us, but other countries around the world. And by the way, it also squeezes out other spending. If you have to pay that much interest, you're going to have to cut a lot of other stuff, including potentially Medicare and Social Security, to keep the whole thing from getting out of control. But even before you get to a crisis, a high debt load is bad for an economy. And so what this last chart shows you, it takes all these little pink dots here which are economies and it compares the amount of public debt they have to how fast they're growing and so if you basically are at say uh on this is all averages and things of course not just us so if you're saying you're at 100 debt to gdp two two-ish percent may be your growth rate. If you get all the way out here with over

200% GDP, you may not be growing at all. If you have less debt, you're growing more. So there is a well-established relationship between the amount of debt you have and how fast your economy is likely to grow.