Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/20/24

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Trump makes Navalny's death about himself

Quite frankly, the response to the first show last Monday was universally glowing. Jon Stewart is facing massive backlash from Democrats over his comments about Joe Biden. Oberman tweeted, well, after nine years away, there's nothing else to say to the both-sided fraud Jon Stewart bashing Biden except please make it another nine years. Christy Jackson tweeted, sorry, but I won't be watching you either. Okay. Maybe not universal. But that was on Twitter.

Everything on Twitter gets a backlash. I've seen Twitter tell labradoodles to go f*** themselves. Oh, my God. Jon Stewart last night joking about how not everyone is thrilled he's back at The Daily Show. We have a lot to get to this morning. That was good. Donald Trump making the death. Labradoodles.

Yeah. Donald Trump making the death of Russia's opposition leader all about himself. And Trump's resistance to condemn Vladimir Putin has him isolated from even far right Republicans. Well, I mean, there is, Willie. It's just extraordinary. We're going to be reading quite a few op-eds from people who are the conservatives, conservatives, also some reactions, not just to Navalny, but also to what's happening in NATO, where you have, I mean, you have everybody from Gerard Baker to Mark Levin saying, what are you people doing? Do you know what the stakes are here? Not just in the Navalny death,

you know, this grotesque comparison, talking about big lies, is grotesque comparison. People like Newt Gingrich comparing Joe Biden to Vladimir Putin. It's it is a rewind like nine, eight years, however long ago it was when Donald Trump came on our program and said, oh, basically, Putin's not bad. We kill people, too, Joe. And of course, Gerard Baker, the emeritus op ed editor for The Wall Street Journal, tears that argument to shreds. And he's certainly no fan of Joe Biden. But you've got that. And then even bigger than that, my God, Lindsey Graham and other Republicans willing, especially Mike Johnson, willing to turn Ukraine, central and Western Europe over to Vladimir Putin. Yeah, it's pretty stunning. In fact, Speaker Johnson was down at Mar-a-Lago over the last couple of days running around the cabanas and taking care of Donald Trump and showing that he stands with him. But, you know, this is one of those very, very rare moments where you're seeing some dissent in the Republican Party with Donald Trump.

His hardcore supporters and many of those members of the House, of course, do whatever he says and will be with him all the way. But in the Senate, especially in some of those media figures that always take care of Donald Trump, you're hearing their voices on this question saying, Donald Trump, you've got it wrong. And his response to the death of Alexei Navalny, not helping either. Grotesque. The whole thing's grotesque. Nancy Pelosi has the question spot on. We'll talk about that. Meanwhile, President Biden is considering new action against Russia in response to Alexei Navalny's death. We'll go through his possible options.

Also, Israel is giving Hamas an ultimatum on the remaining hostages. Free them by Ramadan or face an all-out offensive in a city packed with Palestinian refugees. We'll have more on that major development. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the host of way too early White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist at The Washington Post. Eugene Robinson joins us this morning. Good to have you, Gene. So three days after Alexei Navalny died in a Siberian prison, Donald Trump finally addressed the tragedy yesterday and made it about himself. In a social media post, the likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee compared Navalny's death to his own situation, writing in part, quote, the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our country.

Adding, quote, we are a nation in decline, a failing nation. MAGA 2024. So he made it about himself and his campaign, notably absent from Trump's message or any condolences to Navalny's family and no condemnation of the man most believed to be responsible for his death. And that would be, of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin. A lot to get to on this. There's been a lot of reaction to Donald Trump on on this and not everybody is falling in line. I think it's almost it's a little bit jarring to hear him talk this way. I hope it is. It is jarring. We're actually seeing a continued part of a process and process became in 2015 when Donald Trump there was just something wrong. Donald Trump would come on our show. He'd go on other shows. I know we talked to Bill O'Reilly and it was a

constant defense of Vladimir Putin. It was it was it was this this love of Vladimir Putin and this fear, this this this absolute fear of ever crossing him and led him in 2015 to say that Vladimir Putin was a strong leader, a great leader, that that you know, when I when I brought up that he killed journalists and political opponents, he said, we kill people, too, Joe. And he continued doing that. We've seen now it's hard to believe, but we've seen now other members of the Republican Party ape that line. And there is there is right now a connection. Donald Trump, Viktor Orban in Hungary, an anti West thug that runs Hungary and Vladimir Putin. And and you've you've seen the Trump right move in that direction. And it is just absolutely frightening and jarring. And unlike anything we've seen in domestic politics, that major figures are now going

to decide that, well, people who consider America enemies. And Wall Street Journal editor at large, Gerard Baker, wrote about this this morning in a piece titled The Moral Blindness of Putin's Apologist on the Right. And he writes in part, the only response of all decent people to the death of Alexei Navalny, the brave critic of Vladimir Putin's regime in a Siberian prison camp is grief, disgust and unqualified condemnation. It is a sort of event that defines the malevolent nature of Mr. Putin's Russia. But that sort of decency evidently was above the moral reach of some of the more prominent leaders of what used to be the conservative movement. Newt Gingrich saw a parallel that many others highlighted. Navalny's, quote, death in prison is a brutal reminder that jailing your political opponents is inhumane

and a violation of every principle of a free society, he tweeted. Mr. Biden isn't Vladimir Putin. Mr. Biden doesn't invade. Newt then, of course, compared Vladimir Putin to Joe Biden, which is just so grotesque. It's just beyond grotesque. I keep waiting for Newt to grow out of this. I really do. I really do. And he just he's incapable. He compares Biden to Vladimir Putin, to which Gerard Baker writes, Mr.

Biden isn't Vladimir Putin. Mr. Biden doesn't invade neighbors on a false pretext, killing indiscriminately. He doesn't make people who have fallen into disfavor fall from the windows of tall buildings. Has he knew? Has he knew? Why do you lie? Why do you keep lying for Donald Trump? Baker goes on. If you can't see the difference, then I say respectfully that if you lost, you have lost or discarded your capacity for moral reasoning. Let me continue. Jonah Goldberg, conservative columnist for the L.A. Times, wrote this. No, Donald Trump does not equal Alexei Navalny.

And he writes in part this. No, Donald Trump does not equal Alexei Navalny. And he writes in part this. For numerous right wing Republican figures, the real lesson of Navalny's killing is that Navalny equals Trump. Trump himself invoked the comparison on social media. His first mention of Navalny's name wasn't to condemn his death or Putin's role in it, but to cast himself as an American of only God condemning such false moral equivalence was once central to American conservatism. Trump is not an innocent anti-corruption crusader, brutalized and murdered for championing democracy and the rule of law. No, in fact, he does just the opposite. There are ample plausible criticisms of the legal cases against Trump.

But even if you agree with all of them, I don't. The notion that Joe Biden is the moral equivalent of Vladimir Putin is a slander, not merely of Biden, but of America itself. And why am I so angry? Why am I so angry about this? Because these are attacks on America. These aren't just attacks on Joe Biden. This is an attack on America that we've seen Donald Trump participating in since he came on our show in December of 2015, saying that American leaders were just as bad as Vladimir Putin, who openly kills opponents. Goldberg goes on and says, indeed, one reason we know it's not true, publicly criticizing Putin's treatment of

Navalny can land you in a Russian cell. Criticizing Biden's alleged treatment of Trump can land you in a Fox News studio. Gene Robinson. Incredible. There are a few words. You have these freaks, weirdos, insurrectionists, radicals on the far, far right. They're not even the right now. They're in the Trump death cult, a death cult for American democracy. And to make those comparisons are so grotesque.

To compare America to Russia is so grotesque. To compare Trump to Navalny, Trump, who flies around in a 757, who lives in a golden skyscraper, who lives in Mar-a-Lago, where you have Navalny dead, poisoned in a penal colony. All of this is so grotesque. And what is so shocking is this isn't one freak legislator, right wing freak legislator from Louisiana or Iowa. This is the next Republican nominee for president of the United States in 2024. And Republicans are falling in line and they're saying the hell with America.

We will we will trash America. We'll say it's just like Russia, just like Trump's been doing since 2015, just to elect this con artist who wants to undermine America's rule of law and American democracy. Yeah, you have to assume, actually, that that tweet or statement by Donald Trump is the new MAGA party line on Navalny. It is just incredible. Note that he refers to the sudden death of Alexei Navalny as if, you know, he had, like, you know, tripped down a staircase in his house or something like that. No, he was sent to a Siberian prison camp to die, to be killed, probably to be poisoned. Who knows?

But he was dead, like anybody who opposes Vladimir Putin. Trump mentions, of course, unfair courtroom decisions. He's still smarting from all the court judgments and rulings against him last week. And and so two things. First of all, you know, you have Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, the third ranking official in the United States government down there bending the knee to Donald Trump. It's this is this is Trump. This is serious. This is really serious. And you have the Republican Party essentially turning its back,

at least the people who are running the Republican Party, turning their back on NATO at a time when Vladimir Putin is making gains in Ukraine, refusing to authorize new funds, military aid for Ukraine so it can fight back. Talk to the Europeans very clearly and alarmingly, putting the security of Europe and the world in danger. And this is what the Republican Party is going with. This is what they believe now. It's it's just appalling. By the way, Jonathan Lemire, as we look at that picture from Mar-a-Lago last night, if you had any doubt about who's running the Congress, who's running the House of Representatives, there's your answer right there. Speaker Johnson making his pilgrimage to see Trump down there. Let's talk about the other side of this. The

president of the United States obviously quickly and strongly condemned Vladimir Putin for the death of Alexei Navalny a couple of days ago. How is the White House, how is the Biden campaign handling this issue now with Donald Trump so far out on the other side? Well, we should note the Biden campaign account took that post of Johnson and Trump and it captioned it. The Speaker of the House meets with Mike Johnson, which is making it very clear that who they think runs the show. And that is Donald Trump. And certainly, as some Republicans gathered in the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, that is where many American lawmakers, including the vice president, was there as well. they learned of Navalny's death and Navalny's widow then powerfully spoke.

You know, Mike Johnson, not there. He was at Mar-a-Lago. Lindsey Graham, not there. He was at the border. They're taking their orders from Donald Trump. They're going where he says they go. The Biden campaign is certainly trying to seize upon this. We heard from the president in the hours after Navalny's death saying, look, this is the way to stand up to Putin, to make him pay for what he did here to Navalny, to make him pay for what he's done in Ukraine, is to pass this supplemental, to arm Ukraine. These soldiers on the front lines, losing battles now, running out of ammunition. We have to help them. But we, and there's some hope among Republicans, you know, in the Senate and lots of Democrats that that could happen. Maybe Navalny's

death will be a galvanizing, galvanizing factor. But it's unclear that the votes are there. It's certainly unclear whether Speaker Johnson will be moved. We heard from President Biden yesterday, briefly addressed reporters, and he said that, yes, he would like that to happen, but he's not sure there will be any movement. So short of that, the campaign and the White House, Willie, will continue to be on the offensive in terms of driving home President Trump's refusal to criticize Vladimir Putin, his threats to upend NATO, his encouragement for Russia to invade NATO countries if they don't pay their fair share. He has deemed them un-American. So the rhetoric will continue. The issue is going to be fought up with actions. There's a limit to what the White House can do if the House won't cooperate.

You mentioned that aid stalled in the Congress. What are the real world implications of that? Well, on the ground in Ukraine, Russian forces have captured a key city in the eastern part of Ukraine, marking Russia's largest gain on the battlefield in nine months as Ukraine's military now faces a critical shortage of ammunition. Joining us now from eastern Ukraine is NBC News faces a critical shortage of ammunition. Joining us now from eastern Ukraine is NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel. Richard, what's the latest there? So I was just talking to soldiers out here in eastern Ukraine a few minutes ago, and they were telling me that the shortages of ammunition are now so extreme that they're counting bullets. They are rationing their artillery rounds. They're lashing their regular ammunition that they put into their rifles.

They still have enough drones, they say, because they have a local manufacturing base. They're using, in some cases, 3D printers to make drones. But they are not in a position right now to launch any new offensives. And they are not really in a position to hold the line. We saw the loss of Divka, which is not very far from here out in eastern Ukraine over the weekend. And that was a terrible blow for the Ukrainian military because Ukrainian military had been holding on to this small city for many years. It had been a contested area. But as they were overwhelmed, as they were outmanned, as they were outgunned, the government decided that holding it simply wasn't worth it. And as we've seen on the other side, as we've seen with the Russians,

once you start losing territory and once you start having to go on the back foot and retreat, you can lose territory quite quickly. It can cleave off a little bit like glaciers off the side of a mountain. It doesn't necessarily just go one little town and then stop. So right now, you have a situation where Ukrainian forces out here in the east are in retreat. And the concern is, can they stop that? Can they stop this wound before it spreads and they lose a significant amount of territory? And the way they do that, soldiers here tell me, the only way to do that is to urgently get more weapons, more supplies, particularly from the United States. We've heard that time and time again, but we're seeing it now out here in the East. It's not theoretical anymore.

Yeah, it's being felt. And that's why you hear President Zelensky desperately asking the United States and this Congress to get some aid in their direction. Richard, you've got some new reporting about renewed concerns about a nuclear power plant people may remember from earlier in the war in Zaporizhia. That's the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. What are the new concerns there? So major concerns. I'm not sure if you saw the story we had on Nightly News last night. It was about the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

So the Zaporizhia plant, the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, has six uranium reactors. And the plant was taken over in the early weeks of the war by Russian forces. So Russian forces captured the plant. They took over the facility. They captured the personnel inside and Ukrainian forces were able to hold on to the opposite bank of the river. And the IAEA, and I spoke to the director general, is deeply concerned about this facility. One, because it's right on the front line. Two, the knock-on effect of the war is having a tremendous impact on the plant. Now, the plant is in a semi-shutdown state right now. So it is in a kind of a safe mode, but it still requires outside electricity.

And there are four electrical lines leading into the plant. And Ukrainian officials, including the former director of the plant, told me that three of those four external power lines, which are essential for cooling and keeping the reactors stable, are not working. And the fourth, the final line, is faulty. So there have been eight blackouts at this plant recently, the last one just a few months ago in December. And the IAEA considers this plant the most dangerous nuclear facility in the world. Ukrainians are describing it as a ticking time bomb. And they say that if there were to be another blackout and the diesel generators, which luckily did kick in the final backup, don't kick in, then you could get a meltdown along the lines of Fukushima,

contaminating large parts of Ukraine and beyond and spreading out into the region, contaminating crops, livestock and potentially killing and making people, tens of thousands of people, either sick or killing them directly. A critical situation. NBC's Richard Engel with great reporting from eastern Ukraine this morning. Richard, thanks so much. Joe, Richard said something a few minutes ago. This is no longer theoretical. All these months of holding up this aid in the United States Congress is showing itself now on the battlefield. And as Richard said, Ukraine is in retreat in places that thought it was that it held, that it had captured and was going to hold on to. Europe is doing its part. Just this morning, Sweden passed

through six hundred eighty two million more dollars. They're trying to make up and fill that hole left by the United States. But the situation is critical. Same thing happening from Japan. Other American allies are stepping forward. You know, the hypocrisy of these Trumpers who always bitch and moan about other countries not doing their fair share, not doing their part. Right now, it's Donald Trump and Mike Johnson who are aiding and assisting. Right now, those two people are Vladimir Putin's Congress passing aid and not passing aid to help the Ukrainian people push back on a on a Russian invasion that's just unleashed one human rights violation after another. This is, you know, Willie, you had said this before that you have people on on actually all sides of the ideological spectrum trying to push back against the madness, this pro Putin madness of Donald Trump and Mike

Johnson. Here's Mark Levin, very popular, very conservative radio host who doesn't agree with what we say often. But Mark wrote this. Russia is gaining on Ukraine, which is running out of certain crucial weaponry and having to pull back from areas it had controlled. And faces losing the war, Russia started. Is that okay with everyone? Ukraine is a relatively small country without the capacity for a large industrial economy in which it can build the needed weapons. This, as you were just saying, Willie, is not theoretical. This is not theoretical.

This is reality. NATO countries border Ukraine. And if Putin moves on any of them, then what? He has said in the past he is eyeing Poland, Romania and the Balkan states. This is a grave situation. How grave is the situation? It's grave for Ukraine. It's grave for freedom in Europe. It's grave because we fought a Cold War for 42 years. to JFK, to Ronald Reagan, to Zbigniew Brzezinski, to Madeleine Albright, to Colin Powell, you name it. You name it. Republicans and Scoop Jackson, Republicans and Sam Nunn, Republicans and Democrats alike, dedicated, devoted their lives to freeing the lives of Europeans enslaved by Russia, by Soviet Russia. And here we are. Here we are. We have a guy who wants to be president again and his pathetic little speaker who were actually doing Vladimir Putin's bidding.

And Gene Robinson in Putin, you have someone who has said the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was America's victory in the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the freeing of tens of millions of Europeans. Right. And by the way, Ronald Reagan, a hero in Central and Eastern Europe, the same Reagan that talked about freedom in Europe is the same Reagan that talks about the importance of immigration, the same Reagan that talked about freedom in Europe is the same Reagan that talks about the importance of immigration, the same Reagan that Donald Trump does violence to his legacy every single day he opens his mouth. But Gene, there is Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, who was the one leader in in Europe, in the EU that is on Russia's side. And then you have Donald Trump. This is we've been warning about it for years. But there is a straight line from Trump to Orban,

who hates the West, to Vladimir Putin. And right now they're lining up to help with the spread of tyranny. And as Levin said, this is not theoretical. This is happening right now. Right. And Donald Trump has the perfect implement for this in Mike Johnson, who has consistently voted against Ukraine aid long before he became speaker. So you got to assume that he's all in on this, right? He's got, at some level, he actually supports Putin and actually opposes Ukraine and its freedom fighters and opposes NATO. And that's the only conclusion you can draw.

And Vladimir Putin is not just talking about reclaiming the territories that had made up the Soviet Union, which clearly he would like to do. And how nervous would you be if you were in one of the Baltic states right now, for example, watching what's happening in Ukraine? In that, I hesitate to call it an interview. In that lecture to Tucker Carlson he gave the other day, he talked a lot about Poland. Poland, Poland, Poland. How Poland was responsible somehow for the Second World War. He wants to invade it again, Gene.

He wants to invade Poland. He wants to invade it again, Jane. He wants to invade Poland. He wants to invade Poland. He was fixated on Poland. Was anybody listening? Does anybody understand what that means? And if they do understand what it means, they're okay with that? It's just, it's crazy, but it's tragic

because, as Richard Engel pointed out, the Ukrainians are losing ground now. And that is a terribly precarious situation to be in. And, you know, at the very least, we should be providing enough aid for them to hold the line. But as it is now, you have to wonder about the capacity, their capacity to hold on if we don't come in with that aid. We have weapons that nobody else has that Ukraine desperately needs. And the signals that we send are frightening.

At the beginning of our support for Ukraine, Mika, there were people in the far, far left that would mock and ridicule the argument that China was watching. That if we didn't support Russia, if we didn't push back on Russia, if we didn't support Ukraine, that not only would Putin get that message and keep going into Ukraine and go into the Balkan states, but she would get the message and he would go into Taiwan. He wants to go into Taiwan. And if America lost its will to support people fighting for their own freedom. Yeah, this the Johnson and Donald Trump. It's just devastating. And the message is this. Republicans. For the past 50 years. Have been the main force to push back hard on communism.

They've they've surrendered to the communists. They've surrendered. Mike Johnson surrendered to the communists, to the ex-communists, to the wannabe communists. Mike Johnson surrendered. Donald Trump surrendered a long time ago to Vladimir Putin, surrendered to Xi a long time ago. He has nothing but praise for Xi, for Kim Jong-un, these communist leaders, Mika. And that is a message that Xi is receiving loud and clear that it's not just Donald Trump now. It is the Republican Party. What's the bulwark against communist aggression? It is the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan's old party that is now collapsed. It's completely gone. And this is a terrifying inflection point. It is. And for anybody who doesn't take it seriously or think the election doesn't matter or says, oh, he's not serious. You're out of your mind at this point. You have

to look at what's happening. You also I mean, if you read read the judge's judgment in the civil fraud trial, it talks about Trump's behavior, not just being bad, not just being impossible to stop, being pathological. And so you have to ask the question, what is going on here? He's absolutely doing something for himself or for Putin. It is the opposite of patriotism and opposite of dedication to this country. Still ahead on Morning Joe, we'll have much more on the fallout over Alexei Navalny's death. When former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, joins the conversation. Plus, Israel issues a new threat to invade Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah next month if the remaining hostages are not freed. We'll have the latest on the growing tensions in the region.

Also ahead, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is expected to give a major speech today. We'll have a preview of that and a look at the state of the race ahead of this weekend's South Carolina primary. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. You've sat in a lot of these rooms, many of them. I just wanted to ask you sort of how does Putin, how does he consume what's happening here in the United States? Trump's words or lack of words, I should say, in some cases. Well, I think he sees things moving in his direction. And he really outdid himself in terms of disinformation a couple of days ago. But a reporter asked, well, what do you think of Biden versus Trump? And he said, well, Biden's predictable and so on, implying he was endorsing Biden.

What did you make of that when you heard that? It's a clear disinformation effort. Confuse people. To give Trump the opportunity, which he was foolish enough to take to say, well, I thought that was actually a compliment to me. I mean, if if Trump is elected, there'll be celebrations in the Kremlin. There's no doubt about it, because Putin thinks that he is now officially the Joe Biden bribery allegation? And do you believe that you will be able to prove that, Jim Comer?

I sure hope so. And I do believe that there's a lot of smoke and where there's smoke, there's fire. In just hours, a detention hearing will get underway in federal court in Las Vegas for the FBI informant indicted on two counts of allegedly lying to the bureau about President Biden and his son Hunter during the 2020 presidential election. Alexander Smirnoff is facing charges of making a false statement to a government agent and falsification of records in a federal investigation. The 37-page indictment alleges Smirnoff had been a confidential source for the FBI since 2010 and, quote, provided false derogatory information to the agency about both Bidens after Joe Biden became a candidate for president in 2020. Smirnoff has also been critical to the House Republicans impeachment inquiry into President Biden. So here we have, Willie, these- This was their person?

These informants that you kept having Comer and his chief counsel, Arnold the Pig, straight from Green Acres fame, talking about for some time. And again, it's just a joke. One of them, an international fugitive who smuggles oil, illegal oil from Iran to Russia or China. I forget. I forget what a communist or formerly communist country they

illegally smuggle oil to arms dealing again, a fugitive on the run. That's one of them. And now this guy who's who's been busted lying to the FBI. And of course, some some some people on other news networks trying to tap dance as fast as they can, trying to blame the Justice Department for this guy lying through his teeth to him. Yeah. I mean, this has become a ritual, hasn't as we just saw Mr. Comer trots out a witness. This is our star witness. This is the smoking gun. Joe Biden took five million dollars in bribes. And then the witness either goes on the run. I think the guy you mentioned is still on the run. They haven't tracked down

the fugitive or in this case with Mr. Smirnoff. Now, the special counsel, a Donald Trump appointee, if you're following the deep state conspiracies here, a guy not necessarily friendly to the president, the United States, the current president, United States. He says that the star witness for this committee was lying about everything he told the committee. So now on Fox and other places, they've had to run away from this guy. And Jonathan Lemire, we've talked about this. They really people have to understand this committee and other news outlets hung their hat on this man Smirnoff. This is it. This is the man who said in testimony that, in fact, Joe Biden himself took bribes. It wasn't just Hunter Biden. And it turns out, according to the Trump appointed

prosecutor who became the special counsel, that it was all made up. It was all a lie. Yeah, that special counsel, David Weiss, hardly a popular person in the Biden White House. You know, he's the one who brought charges against Hunter Biden that led to the plea deal collapsed. Hunter Biden now likely going to trial later this year. They're no fan of his. But this is someone who did his job here and realized that this informant was lying and brought charges subsequent to that. Republicans, though, seem to be going full steam ahead. You know, we will see if this measure fizzles out in the weeks ahead. But right now, those committee hearings on the impeachment inquiry are still scheduled. We're still

expecting to hear from both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden's brother. We'll be pulled before Congress in the weeks ahead. And I think it is it is not surprising, though, pathetic that there's been zero coverage of this informant's arrest on Fox News and other Republican leaning outlets, even if they had talked about him so much in the weeks prior. And we should never. There's been coverage. Yeah, they're saying this is weaponization of the government. They're they're silencing him. They're arresting him. They're taking, I mean, I don't. The lies continue.

I mean, the lies continue. It's just endless. The disinformation. It is an endless supply of disinformation to protect Donald Trump and to go after Joe Biden. It never stops. You would think after seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars for lying, you would think at some point, at some point there would be sort of. An attempt to get the facts right, there's not a front page of The New York Times today, you have Alexi Navalny's widow saying that she is going to continue the fight.

And she asks that opponents share her anger. And, Mika, same on The Wall Street Journal's front page. Yeah, Yulia Navalny, an incredible woman, a mother. And in the middle of all of this agony that her family is facing, she has stepped into the limelight, taken the mantle, really. He has passed the torch and she is going to continue the fight. She's tough and she's resolute, isn't she? Absolutely. And we're going to be talking to Ambassador McFaul, who knows her well. They have children here in America, grown children. They have a lot of work to do and they need a lot of help. So coming up, is there an anti-Trump burnout that's getting in the way of President Biden's

bid to energize Democrat voters ahead of the likely 2020 rematch? We'll dig into that new reporting from The New York Times. Morning Joe will be right back. But I'll promise you this. I am in this fight. I will take the bruises. I will take the cuts. This is going to be messy. And I'll take the hurt. Because I believe nothing in good comes easy. Director of Communications for President Obama, Jennifer Palmieri. She and Claire McCaskill are co-hosts of the MSNBC podcast, How to Win 2024. Jen, good to see you. A new poll just popped from Emerson. Donald Trump in South Carolina, 23 point lead. That's better. Down a little from what we've seen, but still a commanding lead, obviously, on her home turf, in her home state, where she's been campaigning for almost a month.

She hasn't gone full Chris Christie since New Hampshire, but she's knocked on the door. She's making the case at least how about how dangerous a Donald Trump presidency would be this time. Right. And then this weekend she was on a Sunday show and she refused to say that she was going to back Trump if he was the nominee. That's different because in the summer she said that she would. So that she is she is showing more fight that that poll. I think she was down 30 and other polls. And her metric. She's very smart about creating a metric by which she can continue to survive. So like last night, she was laying out how difficult it would be for her, you know, how difficult this process is.

But she's going to hang in there. And her metric before had been, let me close the gap, meaning do better than what the polling suggests. And then she's got a speech tonight at Clemson where I presume she'll lay out her theory for how she continues in the race. Yeah. And she has said, I'm staying in through Super Tuesday. So we'll see if she can survive. Right. To get some delegates, she could survive and continue through a big loss in her home state if that does happen on Saturday. On the other side of this campaign, a new piece in The New York Times is looking at a sense of burnout and exhaustion settling in for the so-called anti-Trump resistance. National political reporter Katie Glick writes in part interviews with nearly two dozen Democratic voters, activists and officials make clear President Joe Biden's challenge in energizing Americans who are unenthusiastic about a likely

2020 rematch are worried about his age and in some cases are struggling to sustain the searing anger toward Donald Trump that Democrats have relied on for nearly a decade. We're kind of like crisis out, said a security guard from Pittsburgh. Democratic pollsters and strategists say no one is more motivating or terrifying to their voters than Mr. Trump. Many believe their voters will grow increasingly engaged as the general election nears and Mr. Trump's legal problems unfold. Certainly, Mr. Trump is hardly a morning in America candidate. And while some have tuned him out since he left office, he will be unavoidable in an election year. Reminding voters Democrats hope of everything they have long disliked about him. And Katie Glick, the author of that piece, joins us now.

Katie, it's good to see you. So the exhaustion is understandable. This felt like it's been a decade of every morning waking up to some new crisis or some new outrage. Do you get the sense, though, maybe they're tuned out now and given the stakes of this election, they tune in in October, say? Certainly the Democrats hope and they point to elections as recently as last week, a special election on Long Island, another contest in Pennsylvania. And they point to those as examples of their voters remaining motivated when there are actual elections. But, you know, across the board, polling shows that Americans are exhausted and unenthused by

the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch. The challenge in the task for Democrats who have seen each of the last several elections as a true national emergency is to galvanize once more that broad anti-Trump coalition to kind of saddle up again at a moment when there are signs of some of those voters feeling fatigue. And what do, when voters, when they're expressing this sort of kind of fatigue that they have, do they express an acceptance of Trump and that somehow a Trump presidency would be it's not worth waking up to go and vote just because they're they're they're feeling that they have sort of absorbed him? Or do you think that or is the is there pushback that like eventually, yes, I will turn out to vote? So it depends on the voter. I did not speak with any Democratic or Democratic leading voters that would ever consider to really consider voting for for Donald Trump. is that and other party officials is that people will feel so disillusioned by their choices that perhaps they are not motivated to turn out and vote, which is certainly something that I know Democrats broadly are working to counteract.

They're working to energize now. And I think we can anticipate that growing in intensity moving forward. So, Joe, as I said, no one could be blamed for being exhausted by our politics right now. I mean, nobody could be blamed for that. But the fact of the matter is, if you thought 2016 or 2020 was an emergency, my God, look how much worse things could be in 2024. All the sirens are blaring. Donald Trump every day gives you a reason to understand the stakes are so much higher now, whether he's talking about terminating the Constitution, whether he's talking about assassinating generals that are. Does that does this sound familiar? Assassinating generals who are disloyal to him are shooting them for treason or whether he talks about how he has the right that he's legally protected, if he decides like Putin to assassinate one of his political rivals, he says his president, he should have complete immunity on that. We could go down the list.

What I'm finding is as far as exhaustion setting in, Jim, I'm finding exhaustion among Trump supporters that in my family, in my neighborhood, in my old church, people I grew up with who voted for Trump in 16, voted for Trump in 20. No apologies. Even as Trump was calling me a murderer, no apologies. They were just going to vote for Donald Trump post January 6th, post chaos of the last couple of years. They're the ones I'm talking to who are exhausted. And I must say also, and I do want I completely understand the whole theme of being exhausted by Trump. I'm exhausted by him every single day. But the fight continues until he's driven off the political stage and and the threat to democracy is in the background. But you just look. Here's here's what Dave Weigel said.

The electoral side of the resistance, invisible run for something. Moms demand action keeps grinding and winning, too. The performative stuff is faded. But these voters cram into any available polling booth. What a wonderful way to say it. Voters, and I start in 2017, and I think of those women standing in the rain in Virginia and shocking the political world, not only with their gubernatorial vote, but also the assembly. And it's continued one after another, whether you're talking about county races

in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, electing Democrats for the first time in a century, whether you're talking about Democrats winning governorships in Louisiana and Kentucky. We can go on and on. There's never been anything really quite like this. So, yes, I understand the exhaustion factor. Trump exhausts all of us. At the same time, it seems, again, going back to the Long Island race last week, the resistance against Donald Trump in its purest form is when voters, as Dave Weigel said, when voters cram into any available polling places

in their communities to vote against Donald Trump? Yeah. And I think that you have to you have to protect against is that people feeling that it doesn't matter. I mean, I'm exhausted. I think we're all we're all exhausted. I feared that voters might become sort of a nerd to Trump, which is what I was asking Katie about. If they if they if people just they can't absorb any more of the of the out of the outrage from him. But that is not you know, that's not what we saw in in in the Long Island race. Also, I'm a big fan of Sarah Longwell's focus group. She's the never Trump Republican group that does a weekly focus group with Trump voters, two time Trump voters. And they had the same example, the same experience that your friends did, Joe,

where they just decided this time they're too tired. It's too much. It's too hard. He's you know, the criminal indictments, Jan 6, all this stuff piled on top of it and expressed a willingness to to not support him this time around. And Jean, as Katie writes in the piece, Democrats are waking up to the almost certainty, but at least likelihood that Donald Trump is the nominee, that he is a serious candidate. Maybe there was some fantasy that the trials or one of these cases was going to take him out. But Katie has a line in the piece where after New Hampshire, people said, OK, this this is going to be the guy. Let's get serious now.

Yeah, absolutely. I don't think there's there's much doubt about it. Now, my one question to Katie is you talk to Democratic voters and strategists who are lacking in enthusiasm. Did you get a sense that any of them actually wouldn't vote, actually would not go and vote in this election and would be OK with that? Or or is it just enthusiasm short of not voting? So I heard a mix of things. I did speak with some voters who are not certain what they will do in November if their options are Biden and Trump. Again, not that they are necessarily going to become Trump voters,

but struggling to really think through getting activated around that. And, you know, weren't willing to commit at this point about, you know, to what they would do. Certainly many voters I spoke with, Democratic voters, are saying that whether, regardless of whether they are enthusiastic in this moment or tired in this moment, of course, they will vote for Joe Biden, assuming that he is indeed the Democratic nominee, as we all expect. But, you know, the thing that I did hear from a lot of voters, regardless of how they were thinking through November, was that they do want to hear a bit more of an affirmative case for President Biden. Certainly, as we noted, no one in the eyes of many Democrats is more motivating to their

voters than the specter of Donald Trump returning. But at the same time, a lot of voters do want to hear something beyond we have to stop Trump, right? And certainly a lot of Democrats in the Biden campaign have argued that it's not just about stopping Trump, although they certainly do see that as absolutely vital. But it's also about protecting abortion rights. It's also about trying to do more on things like gun safety. And, you know, as the Biden campaign puts it, it's the idea of building on what they see as the progress that he's made. The question is, is that translating to how voters are looking at this race? Those are the issues that perhaps might bring young people to the polls.

I think that the risk is young people might tune out a little bit. National political reporter for The New York Times, Katie Glick, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning.