Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/17/23

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

The long-awaited report from the special grand jury in Georgia that investigated Donald Trump’s actions after the 2020 election has finally been released. 

So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. That conversation is the main reason a special grand jury in Georgia is investigating election interference. Yesterday, we got some of their report, and it reveals that the jurors believe that witnesses lied to them. And somehow, the former president, Donald Trump, thinks this report exonerates him. We'll explain why that's not even close to being true. Plus, the group Trump famously told to stand back and stand by now wants to call him as a witness in its trial tied to January 6th. And we'll have an update on Senator John Fetterman, who is in Walter Reed this morning for treatment of clinical depression. He checked himself in. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, February 17th. With us, we have the host of way too early White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan

Lemire, NBC News national affairs analyst, executive editor of The Recount, John Heilman, former aide to the George W. Bush White House and State Department's Elise Jordan is with us, and professor at Princeton University, Eddie Glaude Jr. is with us. A great group we have and a lot going on this morning, Joe. A lot going on and we're going to obviously start in Georgia. But John Heilman, you know, sometimes there's statements that are layered with ambiguities and you listen to them. And the more you listen to them, the more you think, well, maybe maybe there's a mitigating factor here or there. Maybe this person meant this. Maybe they meant that.

Now, the more you hear Donald Trump's call with the secretary of state of Georgia demanding it gets one more vote than he lost. It just keeps getting worse every time. And every time I hear it, I come away with the thinking there's just no way they're not going to indict that guy in Georgia. I would only the only slight amendment I'd say to that, Joe, is that like it was pretty clear from the beginning. I mean, I know we all heard it the first time. It was so stunning about it. When we first heard it was, man, that's really pretty naked. You know, there's like there was not a lot of there was not a lot of like parsing to do when you first time it was so stunning about it when we first heard it was man that's really pretty naked you know there's like there was not a lot of there was not a lot of like parsing to do when you first heard it what's amazing is that every time you go back to it it's just as clear as it was the first time you're kind of like wow i mean i think maybe i'll go back and when i listen to it

i'll find something new here but no no it's just it's as it's as it's as blatant and gratuitous as it was uh on on first. And I agree with you. We, you know, it would be more shocking and inexplicable by far, by far, if he wasn't indicted, given the evidence in front of this grand jury than if he was. I mean, you know, look, I mean, crazy things happen in American grand juries. Crazy things happen in the American legal system. You never want to say never. But no one will be surprised if he is indicted on the basis of the evidence. And a lot of people will be stunned. Certainly anyone who's even just a simple country lawyer

like you, but anyone I say familiar with the American legal system will be stunned if he isn't. And we'll ask the question of like, what is the point of the law if this doesn't get this man indicted? Yeah. So we'll take that first look now at the report the Fulton County grand jury put together on potential interference in the 2020 election. Three sections were unsealed yesterday. The introduction, conclusion and a section where a majority of the grand jury asserted that one or more witnesses may have committed perjury and recommended charges be filed. The identities of which witnesses the panel thought may have lied under oath was not revealed. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of several high profile figures to be questioned, told reporters, I'm confident I testified openly and honestly.

The unredacted pages revealed the jury unanimously concluded there was no fraud in the 2020 election. What a shock. The panel also voted to release the entire report to the public. The judge said that would not happen before the district attorney investigation is completed. Former President Trump took the release to mean he would not be indicted. Writing on his social media platform, quote, Thank you to the special grand jury in the great state of Georgia for your patriotism and courage. Why are we reading this? Totally exonerating. Why are we reading this? Because it's fun.

Why are we reading this? Because it's fun. It's so stupid. Take that off the screen. It's fun. It's just such nonsense. Well, it is. But it's beyond stupid. It is. It is almost it. I'm not the point where I think I have to laugh because otherwise I'd cry.

Yeah. Well, you know, let's bring in Chuck Rosenberg. Chuck, the president's babbling, notwithstanding, it seems that there are plenty of reasons for for Donald Trump and others who testify to be very concerned right now about criminal charges. What was your takeaway from just a little bit of the grand jury report we were able to see yesterday? Well, that's right. I mean, Joe, there's good cause for a whole bunch of people to be concerned. The district attorney in Fulton County has identified 20 or so targets. And a target is a likely or putative defendant. So, yeah, there's reason for people to be worried. It's certainly not, to Mika's point, a total exoneration, although it's possible that Mr. Trump doesn't understand what the word exoneration means. What I take away from the report is simply this.

A special grand jury sat for seven months hearing from scores of witnesses and believes that crimes have been committed. Now, it's not their job to indict those crimes. That's up to the district attorney. But she has a wealth of evidence, because don't forget, the important thing here is not that the grand jury wrote a report. The important thing here is that the grand jury heard all of this evidence, and all of this evidence is preserved for prosecutors to use at any subsequent trial that they may have. Right? Joe, if the important fact is that you saw the light as green, and we put you in the grand jury and under oath, you testify that the light was green, that's substantive evidence of the color of the light.

So if you change your story one day at trial, because you're nervous or scared or intimidated, and you say the light was red, we can use your old grand jury testimony as substantive evidence of what you actually saw, the truth. And that's incredibly important to prosecutors. And that's why prosecutors put witnesses in front of a grand jury to lock in their testimony. And the district attorney has all of that at her disposal. Don't lose that point because that matters a lot to prosecutors. Let's bring in right now political reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Greg Blustein. Greg, what can you tell us about the report yesterday and what should we expect next?

Well, first, as just mentioned, Donald Trump's statement that he was exonerated is a flat out lie. We still don't know whether the former president will face charges or members of his inner circle. But District Attorney Fannie Willis has suggested that she'll seek charges. We just can't be certain until she does. And if she does, we don't know what charges she'll seek, who she'll target, when they'll come. But we do we do know now that perjury charges are on the table. And we know that the grand jurors were unanimous in rejecting Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud. And that's a good baseline where her investigation can start. We also know that prosecutors can exert leverage over those witnesses who might have perjured themselves.

And so that could flip and that could lead to other charges. And we also know that Fannie Willis is not just looking at election fraud charges. She's also exploring conspiracy charges using georgia's pretty extensive anti-racketeering law so there's a lot of thing different statues that could be on the table right now hey greg you're the goat down there when it comes to covering local politics and and local government that in that state you know we hear about fanny willis willis all the time in this context of this case not that many people who uh follow this even closely know that much about her and what her kind of M.O. has been. Obviously, there's no case that she's ever gotten involved in that's been this high profile or this

consequential. But can you just talk a little bit about her, her background, her ambitions, and how she's gone about doing that job in the time she's had it? Yeah, she is not to be trifled with. She's a hard-nosed prosecutor here who led some of the prosecution against the Atlanta school cheating trial that was national news. It's been made into books and movies. Right now, even as we're talking, she's also leading prosecution against a massive gang, anti-gang charges involving different groups and different musicians and rappers. And so that's one of the biggest stories in Georgia as we speak. And she won an upset battle over an entrenched

Democratic incumbent. She's a Democrat as well, but an entrenched Democratic incumbent, Fulton County District Attorney, who had been in office for years. She's also facing reelection next year. So she's got to look over her shoulder. And meanwhile, as we're speaking, Georgia Republican lawmakers are thinking about debating legislation that would make it easier for voters to recall district attorneys. It's not directly aimed at her, but it could be used against her. Well, political reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Greg Blustein, thank you very much. We'll be following this with you. Thank you very much. And, of course, they're talking about finding no fraud in the presidential election. An appeals court yesterday rejected failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate

Carrie Lake's lawsuit challenging her election loss. A three-judge panel upheld a lower court's ruling that said Lake did not provide enough evidence to support her claims that the election results were tainted by illegal votes and misconduct by election officials. The chief judge wrote in part that the evidence ultimately supports the court's conclusion that voters were able to cast their ballots, that votes were counted correctly, and that no other basis justifies setting aside the election results. This ruling comes as Lake's lawyers are facing bar complaints over their work with the former candidate. The lawyers have already been sanctioned by a federal judge over an election related lawsuit.

Where are these lawyers coming from, Joe, that that Trump is getting and Kerry Lake who are these people who are these they get them like off the side of the road who are these men who are these men she asked and withstand on the verdict and women and women but you know Elise we can actually just step back for a second here and and and and look at all the times we asked. Are some people just above the law? Can lawyers just go in front of courts and lie? Is there is there no recourse? Is there no justice? We are finding now time and time again. Let's just look at the top two stories this morning. A grand jury found what was found time and time again by Republican-appointed judges in Georgia,

by a Republican governor in Georgia, by a Republican secretary of state in Georgia, by Republican-elected officials in Georgia. And we just had a three- three judge panel in Arizona find what Republicans in Maricopa County have founded, Republican appointed judges have founded, Republican officials founded time and time again, that there was no election fraud. And not only are these people facing justice in court and Donald Trump may face the ultimate justice in court with a coming indictment in Georgia. But even their lawyers are being held accountable for going in front of judges and just lying. And again, this is something I guess as a lawyer, it's kind of strange as a politician.

I understand everything's on the table. You've just you've got to swat everything away. But the lawyer in me has always been deeply offended by the arguments that these people have made in front of judges. And I asked myself from the very beginning, how can Rudy Giuliani get away with that? How can these other lawyers get away? I would have been disbarred the first day if I had tried to do something. Chuck would have been disbarred as a lawyer if he had tried doing something. How are these people getting away with this? And we're finding out as time goes on, Elise, they're not they're not getting away with this. Well, I think of the ordinary citizen who's

petrified of a traffic ticket, Joe, and they don't get away with it. And it seemed like all of these lawyers and former government officials have just gotten away with so much. It does look like in Georgia, Republican officials held the line well. And I think that's going to reflect well for their political fortunes down the road, potentially, especially looking at Governor Brian Kemp. But you have all of these top officials like Donald Trump. Is he ever going to face consequences? I still don't. Giuliani consequences. So I understand this feeling.

Everyone else is facing consequences. People are in jail. People are in jail. The people are charged with seditious conspiracy. They face consequences. But when will Donald Trump actually face consequences? That's my question for Professor Eddie Claude. Is it is it is it good that these people keep coming back to the trough and trying to find some sort of infraction against them, some sort of election conspiracy? And judges keep saying no, no, no.

Or is it or is it good because judges keep saying no? Or is it bad that they keep coming back? They keep coming back. Carrie Lake, Donald Trump. When will they ever go away and realize they lost and probably broke the law? Well, it's a good thing, Mika, that judges are saying no. It's a bad thing, though, that they keep coming back because it erodes the trust in the democratic process. Part of what Joe and we've been talking about is that Americans have been awash in lies.

And those lies have in some ways affected our ability to engage in reasoned deliberation, to do the work that democracy, that Madisonian democracy requires of us. And, you know, with Donald Trump tweeting out that, you know, the special grand jury's report is a clear exoneration of him, that's just fat Elvis running the Bill Barr move with regards to Mueller, right? So we know that these people are constantly trying to angle their way to pursue power and to protect themselves. But the ongoing effect, though, is in some ways, you know, the erosion of the foundation of our democratic process. So the ongoing effect, though, is in some ways, you know, the erosion of the foundation of our democratic process. So it's dangerous, Mika. It's dangerous. So Chuck Rosenberg, obviously, Georgia is just one of many places where Donald Trump faces legal

peril. To Elise's point, we don't know whether he actually will be have to face the music. He might. He hasn't yet. But as you look at where these threats remain, that's Georgia, that's the special counsel on January 6th, that's, of course, the Mar-a-Lago documents, that's cases in New York, D.C., just about everywhere, it seems. Where do you assess these plays

in terms of where he faces the greatest legal risk? And with the idea that, of course, for any case that involves someone as high profile as Donald Trump, it would seem to be prosecutors would only bring a charge if they're really confident they can get a conviction. Yeah, Jonathan. So let me take your second point first, because it's an incredibly important one. As a federal prosecutor, our standards, our guidelines require that we have a reasonable probability of conviction before we charge somebody. So a hunch doesn't cut it. My personal belief, Jonathan, that you committed a crime isn't enough.

To Eddie's point, we need this pesky thing called evidence. And the courts of the United States are where evidence matters. So you can say things that aren't true on television. You can say things that aren't true on the well, in the well, you know, the House floor. But in court, it matters. And so prosecutors need evidence. We only see a small portion of what prosecutors in Manhattan may have or in Fulton County may have or in Jack Smith's federal investigation what they may have. And so it's really hard for us to judge the totality of the case against perhaps Donald

Trump and others. But evidence matters in court. And Joe was talking about this earlier, right? If you show up without evidence, you lose. You may not lose in politics, but you lose in court. And if you think back to the 60 or so cases that the Trump folks brought challenging the election after November 2020, they lost every single one of them. And the reason they lost every single one of them is they didn't have evidence. It's not that complex. So, Jonathan, I don't know which case poses the greatest existential threat to Mr. Trump, because I haven't seen all of the evidence. But good prosecutors and good agents are working assiduously on these cases. And if they bring charges, it's because they believe they have a reasonable probability of conviction,

our standard. Because if you do bring charges, and this isn't just true for Mr. Trump, it's true for anybody, you want to bring charges that are going to hold up in court because they're evidence-based. And that's what we ought to be looking for and waiting for and watching for. All right, Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney, as always, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, Chuck. You know, John Hyland, speaking of losing and Trump lawyers lost time and time and time again on all of these cases. Let's talk about Carrie Lake, who lost yesterday. And let's talk about the very Trumpy lane she's decided to continue down.

And it's one of these things where I talk about how it just doesn't make sense that Republicans keep doing the same thing over and over and losing. With Carrie Lake, I mean, let's face it, she ran against a governor, a gubernatorial candidate who really didn't show up on the campaign trail. Everybody thought she was going to win. Any rational human being or any human being that's somewhat rational would look back at that campaign and say, well, she lost because she took the crazy lane and there just weren't enough crazy people in Arizona in those swing precincts, those swing districts to elect her governor. And yet she's doubling down and she's going to probably run for Senate in 2024. I'm just again, you don't have the answer to this, I'm sure. But the question that's raised, why in the hell would she be doing this when she knows it is a ticket to Loserville?

Well, so let's just let's just say let's break this down. Yeah, I mean, it's you've got to step back just to think about this. Joe, I totally think this is the great question, because, as you know, as everybody here knows, you know, Arizona, Georgia, they're the new frontline battleground states in the 2024 election, right? You know, as we headed into the midterms towards election day, you had this whole slate of election deniers in Arizona. We tied them in the circus. I think we did an episode about it. We called it a state of denial, Arizona, the ultimate test tube for the way Trump had taken over the Republican Party. And there was fear among Democrats. Jonathan, you know this, in the Biden, when Biden world, you know, if you imagine one or more of those candidates winning in Arizona,

especially governor or secretary of state, that Arizona would be off the map for Joe Biden. It was like, we won't be able to play there in 2024. That's a battleground state. We won't be, we don't want to, we won't dip our toes in because that state is going to have fair, free and fair elections undermined by the governor and or secretary of state. So then we get to Election Day, as Joe says, you know, not only does Carrie Lake lose, but they all lose. They all get beaten. Trumpism in its pure distilled form in Arizona gets beaten up and down in all of the five or six races where it was tested. Election denial in that state. And now, as Joe says, Carrie Lake is pursuing the same line. This is all political, right?

She doesn't think she's going to win in court. She's still campaigning. She is going to run for the Senate seat in 2024. And she is making the calculation that despite the losses up and down the ballot of election deniers in Arizona, that the way to win the Republican nomination in 2024 for that Senate seat is to

still be in that lane with Donald Trump, the loser lane, the crazy lane. And I got to say, you can't talk to people around Joe Biden. Arizona went, has gone from, we might, if, you know, if the election deniers went down there, we might not be able to play. It might not be a battle. I said, oh, we'll have to give it to Republicans to now. Hey, Carrie Lake is Joe Biden's best friend. You know, a Republican ticket dominated by more election deniers, proven losers. All of a sudden, that state never is going to be easy. It's a battleground state for a reason. But it's like that is the electorate.

That's the kind of Republican candidate. Carrie Lake as the Senate candidate down there with maybe another election denier at the top of the ticket. That opens the door to Joe Biden having the kind of electorate he wants to face in Arizona in 2024. Yeah. So let's expand upon that. Jonathan Lemire, again, it just wears me out that these Republicans can't learn. Because we just talk about it every day.

You do seem tired, Joe. He's very tired. Joe is very tired, too. No, it's like parenting a toddler that just doesn't learn. It's like, does Kerry Lake not understand? Do Republicans not understand that you just look at Arizona or Pennsylvania or look at Herschel Walker in Georgia. If I mean, does anybody question how Dave McCormick would have done in a race in Pennsylvania if he had been Senate, the Republican Senate candidate there? I mean, and instead you

had Dr. Oz ending up losing by five points. You look at Arizona and again, this is what I don't understand. Republicans take this as hostility when they should take this as an act of pain to love to say you will lose Arizona again. again if you have election deniers like carrie lake on the ballot go mainstream republican and by mainstream republican i'm not talking about being a liberal or a month probably a republican being what republicans used to be and you'll win states like pennsylvania you'll win states like Pennsylvania. You'll win states like Arizona. You'll win states like Georgia. But it's just so crazy. I mean, talk about how the Biden camp, all the things that Trumpers think, not conservatives, that Trumpers think they're doing to own the libs are the very things that the Biden administration are praying for. They want Donald Trump at the top of the ticket because they know that gets Joe Biden four more years.

And they want Carrie Lake on the top of the ticket in Arizona when he's running in Arizona. They'd love Doug Mastroianno to be running statewide for some. I mean, they want all of these people that took the most extreme views because that's just a win for them. That means they went in 2017. They went in 2018. They went in 2019. They went in 2020. They went in 2021. They went in 2022 and they went in 2024. Why can't Republicans figure this out? Yeah, the Biden campaign would probably endorse Herschel Walker moving to Wisconsin, running there. There's no doubt here that their path to reelection

starts with those three great late stakes. It is Michigan, it's Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. That said, to this point, Arizona on the map now, when a few months ago, maybe they wouldn't have thought it would have been. Georgia still on the map. These are key. There's going to be close.

No, no, someone's saying the president's definitely going to win, but he's got a shot now in part because of the candidates the Republicans seem to be putting forward again. And there is an interesting moment, at least right now, about where the Republican Party is going. You can be an election denier and still win your House seat. We saw that a lot of as much as the prominent election deniers lost in 2022, a number of Republicans in the House cruised to reelection, and they don't believe Joe Biden should be president. He was legitimately elected.

I thought it was interesting yesterday that Nikki Haley, who right now is the only candidate in beyond Donald Trump, she made a point of saying, Joe Biden's the president. He was elected. He should be in office. And the moment now will be, do other Republicans start to follow her lead? Not her lead, but just like away from Trump, leaving Trump that much more isolated as the one guy with a few accolades like Carrie Lake saying, no, no, no, Donald Trump should still be president. Are they going to be left that much more alone? Or do you think Republicans will just simply drift back down? I think there's 30 percent of the Republican base that's going to stick with Trump no matter

what. It's all going to depend on how many candidates get in, if donors put their money behind a wide Republican field or if they show discipline, because that's what I'm watching. That 30 percent means that Trump can win if there are four or five, six candidates. Welcome back to Morning Joe. It's half past the hour. A rainy look at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. this morning. President Biden received a clean bill of health yesterday following a routine physical exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland. In a memo, Biden's personal physician wrote that he, quote, remains a healthy, vigorous 80 year old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency. The medical assessment noted that Biden had a small lesion removed from his chest during a

dermatology consultation. It was sent off for a biopsy and the results are still pending. We tell you all of this so that we can, I don't know, take a trip down memory lane. Oh, this will be fun. Yeah. Why not? Right. It's always good. Here's here's Dr.

Ronnie Jackson after Donald Trump's physical, if that's what you want to call it, when he was president in 2018. Explain to me how a guy who eats McDonald's and fried chicks and all those diet cokes and who never exercises is in as good a shape as you say he's in. It's called genetics. I don't know. Yeah, called genetics. He went on to say, John Heilman, that Trump had such great genes that if he didn't eat badly, he'd live till he was 200 years of age. Did he mean dad genes?

I guess the shock of it is that actually people in the Obama administration actually vouched for this guy for 15 minutes before he started doing this. But again, just the lies just started rolling off of his tongue and i guess have continued uh over the past couple years i mean look i would say just to stand up for for for uh for the for the good doctor here on one point i mean you know if you think about trump's diet over the course of his life you think about trump's, the way he's taking care of his body, if you could use those words, taking care and his body in the same sense. You think about the stress of the presidency,

you think about his sleeping patterns, you think about all things we know. I mean, the fact that the guy made it out of four years of the presidency alive is an amazing thing. Like, I mean, his, with that, if I had that diet, that lack of exercise and those sleeping habits, I'd be dead now. You know, I mean, there is some there is something to the notion that he does have some kind of extraordinary genes. It is the case that the Trump men historically in his family have lived to be lived to ripe old ages in general.

So I don't want to give too much credit, Dr. Jackson. Obviously, you know, the dude is a whack job on a lot of levels. But there is something kind of amazing about donald trump that he's still out there they still that he's still a wreck that he's still upright you know it's like kind of an incredible thing didn't fred trump have really bad dementia at the end though yeah both of his parents lived to their 90s yes okay but the white house though certainly won this white house not running jackson's white house wanted to put this physical out to get it done of course because we know that the age, the president's age hovers over his reelection decision. And he is 80 years old. That is undeniable. But he got a clean bill of health yesterday. They'll get back to the reporters about that one skin lesion.

But they believe this should quiet some of the concerns that he's not up for the job he got did he have to identify uh like did biden have to identify like animals or say dog cat camera moose pig or anything like that i mean i don't i don't know like i think it's good i think it's good to do physicals and and say how is he doing at 80. but i will tell you my mom was operating a chainsaw making sculptures at 82 years old, completely a fit for what she was doing and was creating some of her best work in her early 80s. Like the eighth wonder of the world, your mom. She was amazing. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, it is different.

It is different with different people. It is. with different people. I mean, I will say I had a chance to meet in passing President Macron, and it was just jarring. It was absolutely jarring to spend time talking to a leader who wasn't in his 70s or 80s. And you're like, oh, wait a second.

No, I'm serious. This guy was in his 40s. And I remember, you know, talking and just being jarred by it. And you look back through history and Eddie Glad, how old was Martin Luther King when he changed the world? Wasn't he? He was a young, young man. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I mean, look, we know that President Biden's age has been an issue.

It continue. It will continue to be an issue. But this is a good thing. And we do know that people can be functional and actually exhibit excellence up until their old age. So but but it would be nice to begin to see a new cohort of leaders to take take take a leadership role in the country. Yeah, but you look, though, through history, of course, Jonathan O'Meara and you have Winston Churchill saved Western civilization, didn't become prime minister until he was in his 60s. Ronald Reagan, of course. What did he get elected? It's 69. I think he got elected in 69. So it really is. It's just it's really dependent on the individual who's in that office. And I will say Joe Biden's superpower,

if he were an Avenger, right, if Joe Biden were in the next Avenger movie, you would have Captain America with his powers. You would have four with his extraordinary strength. And you would have Joe Biden with his extraordinary ability to be underestimated. Yes. Underestimated time and time again. Underestimated by the people on the far left when he first ran for president, mocked and ridiculed on Twitter constantly, just completely, completely ridiculed after Iowa and New Hampshire time and time time again, the first year, people saying, wait a second, I thought this guy was going to pass legislation. He can't get anything done.

And then, boom, just an extraordinary streak of bipartisan legislation passed. And then, of course, the midterms. We heard red wave, red wave, red wave, red wave. Joe Biden, once again, makes history as a head of his party doing something that a leader, a president didn't do in his first midterm election since FDR in the 1930s. I don't think a single incumbent Democratic governor lost in the 2022 midterm. So again, underestimated time and again. And even as Newt Gingrich says, Republicans who continue to underestimate this guy will continue to be beaten by him.

Correct. Yeah. Reagan was just shy of his 70th birthday, Joe, when he was sworn in. And you made a good point there about Biden. We have certainly know his age is going to be an issue and it's going to be on the Republican side, too. We heard from Nikki Haley, Sarah Huckabee Sanders in recent days, two prominent Republicans talking about it's time for a new generation. But there are Democrats who say, look, President Biden is yes, he's he's 80 years old. He's going to be 82 years old come Election Day. But look at the record. And I'd add to the list you just gave. He's going to Poland next week because he is he is the focal point. His leadership, American leadership on the world stage,

has held this alliance together and supported Ukraine in its war against Russia. And that's an area where he has received bipartisan, robust bipartisan praise for what he's done. Lindsey Graham just yesterday saying this is like a signature accomplishment for this president. He deserves credit here, the way he's held the alliance together. So, Mika, this is age or not. This is something that this president and his team can point to his record. They're confident of it. And they also believe that his age was litigated the last time around. He was not a young man in 2020,

an American voter still chosen. Yeah, I agree. And Mika, you remember leading up to the midterm election, we kept asking people, should Joe Biden run again? And they said, I don't know. They would not come out and say whether they thought he should run for reelection again. Then, of course, Democrats had a massive success in the 2022 midterms, more so than anybody expected. Kevin McCarthy thought that they were going to pick up 50 seats. He's still hanging on by a thread. You look how well they did in the Senate. You look how they did with governorships.

You look how well they did. They took all of Michigan. And again, it's the underestimation. But you look, I think Jonathan's right. Perhaps his greatest achievement is an achievement that a lot of Americans may not be paying close attention to. But it's how he has put back together the NATO alliance, an alliance that was fractured, an alliance that Donald Trump quite clearly wanted to blow to pieces. And people close to Trump said if he's elected again, we're going to finish off NATO once and for all.

You see with Joe Biden, a historic NATO alliance, a historic response to Russian aggression and done so in such a subtle way that that I suspect when history books are written, many people will be saying of him what historians wrote about what Harry Truman did after World War II. It is really, it was very under, he was very underestimated. He's accomplished more than any modern president. Is that fair to say? In two years? Yes.

Yeah. I think legislatively, you'd have to go back to LBJ in terms of his ability to perform. Did you see his State of the Union? Like who's making his age an issue? You know, I'd like to know what evidence they have that his age is an issue. You know, one of the things, Mika, you know, there's there's always talk in the air about like who is and who isn't past their prime. And, you know, like like what the what the age of prime is. You know, no one doesn't want to delve into that into that discussion. But like most people would say that when you get, you know, into your Joe Biden's age territory, get to be 80, you know, you're definitely on the on the on the.

And then you look at the performance and you see. Yes, yes. Great. Like my mom with the chainsaw. But here's the thing, though, is that I do think this is a thing that's peculiar to our politics. And this is, I want to echo this point. Ron Klain made this point in one of his exit interviews about how we sort of have developed a political culture where we systematically undervalue experience. It's like the new guy, the outsider. It's the Trumpy thing. Forget history. Forget experience. But it was true. I mean, Obama had it. Clinton had it.

Everybody was the outsiders. You got to come in, you know, not having a lot of experience is seen as somehow beneficial. And Biden has been the guy, not just in terms of like proving that age is a mutable characteristic. You can still be accomplished a lot in your 70s and 80s. But that like experience actually in government. Wisdom. Wisdom and experience are things that actually matter. It's a big, complicated world, a big, complicated government.

I need to get our next guest in here. Joining us now, U.S. national editor of Financial Times, Ed Luce. It's good to see you, Ed. Your new column for the Financial Times is entitled The Republicans Have an Acute Trump Dilemma. And you write that the more crowded the 2024 race gets, the higher the chance that former President Trump will secure the party's nomination. Quote, in a straight matchup, Ron DeSantis would beat Trump, according to most of the polls.

But in a crowded field, Trump could repeat what he did in 2016 when he won primary after primary with less than half the vote. From Trump's point of view, the more candidates in the race, the merrier. In some ways, that understates his prospects that the weaker Trump seems, the likelier others are to enter the race. Call this Trump's heads I win, tails you lose strategy. Such is the familiar dread coursing through the Republican establishment. Few think Trump could beat Joe Biden, who shows every sign of running again. Most also believe that any other Republican could beat Biden. They are probably right. Trump has never won the U.S. popular vote and is unlikely to start now.

Elise, you want to take the first question from Mr. Ed Luce? Ed, have you seen any signs or heard from your sources that the Republican establishment is going to actually try to be a limiting force with the pool of candidates in the Republican primary? That's a really good question, Elise. I mean, the party decides sort of age of politics is, I think, over, particularly when it comes to the Republican Party. With the Democrats, you did see Jim Clyburn, who is a party elder, intervening in 2020 for Biden's benefit. But I don't think there's an equivalent situation or equivalent figure or an equivalent donor on the Republican side who could do this. And if there were,

they would be pulling that lever pretty soon. So I don't see that. I think that you're going to see a lot of effort expended to persuade Ron DeSantis to enter this cage. He seems to be a little bit reluctant. You know, I guess there's no prizes for guessing why. Meatball Ron is something that Trump apparently called him, although he now denies that he's used that Italianophobic nickname. But he's the only one who gets a nickname from Trump of this potential field. Nikki Haley hasn't got a nickname yet, I don't think. Mike Pompeo hasn't.

There are obvious sort of other contenders like Chris Christie and a whole bunch of other governors like Kristi Noem. But I don't think there's a structure there any longer in the Republican Party where the party decides that that model's been blown up. So we could get a repeat of 2016 where Trump won 45 percent of the primary vote, but he took 70 percent of the delegates because of of this winner takes all system. You know, he got 40 something percent in Florida, but 100 percent of the delegates. It benefits him to have a large field. And I don't know of anybody who can quietly tap Nikki Haley or Mike Pence on the shoulder and say, look, could you could you bow out for the sake of greater party interest. I don't think that exists. So this is Eddie Glaude. So I really found your piece fascinating, but it took me to another

aspect of this. Even if we narrowed the field, if it weren't if there weren't a lot of folks in the primary, would we still find the two candidates appealing to those disaffected white voters that the way in which Trump offered this strategy strategy to expand the electorate was by appealing to disaffected white voters by way of grievance and fear. So even if you narrow it, would we still see that kind of play somebody kind of struggle over that lane to appeal with grievance and fear? Does that make sense? Yeah, I fear so. I mean, I think Nikki Haley, part of her,

wants to be the Mitt Romney kind of candidate, the pre-Trump era candidate. But she knows that's not where the base is. The MAGA spirit is just as strong. If they don't get Trump, they want somebody like Trump. On paper, that's Ron DeSantis. I'm a little bit skeptical as to whether in practice, when we see the whites of his eyeballs in Iowa or New Hampshire or wherever it would be, if he did decide to run, I'm a little bit skeptical. He's got the retail, that visceral,

almost demonic retail sort of ability that Trump has. But it's certainly what all the big donors think. The Charles, the Charles Cokes, the Ken Griffins, the Elon Musks, dare I say it. They're all they're all big fans of DeSantis. And DeSantis is as MAGA culturally and is capable of dog whistling or bullhorning racially and on gender politics as Trump is. Ed, I want to first say something on behalf of meatball diversity. There are many meatballs that are not from Italy.

That's not necessarily the case. Swedish meatballs, meatball the cat. There are lots of other meatballs. So let's just be clear, not necessarily an anti-Italian slur. Yes. But here's the other lesson of 2016, right? About the multi, it's true. There was a big, wide multi-candidate field, and Trump was able to mow them all down.

And that it benefited him to have the split vote of his opposition. The other thing that benefited him was the fact that all of those candidates did not take him seriously from the beginning. They thought, in the end, he will fade. In the end, this is just a branding exercise for him. In the end, he won't stick with it. In the end, I will get him one-on-one. In the end, they didn't attack Trump at the outset. Trump was allowed to kind of march through from July until February when he started to actually win contests before anybody said, hey, I got to take Donald Trump on. They all had this theory that they would eventually get him one-on-one, so they laid off him. I wonder whether in this field, one of the things that all these

people know is that, yes, a split field helps him, but a whole bunch of candidates who've all realized that Trump is strong, he has been a dominant figure in Republican politics for all these years, that they all need to attack him. And whether you could have a world where this whole logic gets flipped on its head and you have a field of a dozen Republicans who all are just gunning for Trump from the very beginning. Is that possible? That is. Although if you look at Nikki Haley's very sort of careful, very delicate campaign launch in which the closest she comes to criticizing Trump is saying you need cognitive tests for people

over 75. You know, she can claim that's aimed at Biden, shows that it's one thing thinking it makes sense to attack Trump. And it's another thing doing it in practice, because when Trump goes for you, there are no limits. There are no moral limits to what he will say. There's no sort of truth based limits to what he will say. He will eviscerate you. He might well ruin your future career as a Fox News commentator. And so I think it's it's it's a tough step for people to take. Look at Marco Rubio. He was eviscerated by by by Trump and him attacking Trump didn't do him any good at all.

He diminished by the minute. OK. U.S. national editor at Financial Times, Ed Luce, haven't seen you for the while. It's great to have you on this morning. And Eddie Glaude, Jr., thank you as well for joining us.