Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/22/24

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Donald Trump's cash crunch just got much worse

And it is what it is. So it doesn't change the fundamental facts. We've got there are four fundamental facts that Hunter Biden gets put on the board of Burisma. He's not qualified to be on the board. He gets he gets put on that board, gets paid a million dollars a year. So it doesn't change the facts. It does change the facts. Those are no longer facts. Those are not true. The four things I just said, they're absolutely true. Oh, my Lord. Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry into President Biden seem to be, once again, detached from reality. That was Jim Jordan doubling down on false claims, despite his key witness admitting

that some of his information came from Russian intelligence officials. Russian intelligence officials. We'll go through the new developments in that case. Meanwhile, Donald Trump. Hold on. Hold on. I still can't get over it, Willie. Beautiful idiot.

Russia has got to be thinking, like, is Arnold the pig really not whispering in Comer's ears as his chief legal counsel. Hey, you better be careful because you guys might be taking Russian disinformation straight into the United States Congress. Talk about an easy mark. We thought Donald Trump was an easy mark for the Russians, and he is. But how about this Congress? They're just directly feeding false information into the American political system. And these guys in this committee, Jim Jordan and James Comer, they don't they don't have the character or whatever you want to call it to just walk away, to cut your losses and say, you know what? This thing is trumped up. Our sources, our star witnesses all turn out to be frauds and liars and Russian agents potentially. Maybe we should just walk away. But they dig in deeper and say things like the facts haven't changed when now fundamentally, again, the facts have changed. The facts have changed. And Jonathan Lemire,

we can go back one claim after another claim after another claim proven wrong. Comer's made how many times has Comer made fool fool of himself? You remember what Grassley was saying? Oh, we won't take doesn't it doesn't matter whether he's guilty or not. They just they they want the hunt, despite the fact they're chasing ghosts. Yeah, I've lost track of the number of times Republicans have said the quiet part out loud and said, yeah, we're doing this for political purposes. We're doing this to hurt President Biden ahead of his reelection bid. And even if there are no facts that support that accusation, they keep saying, well, we sure hope there's going to we're going to find something. And they haven't yet. And this

is obviously the latest embarrassment to this impeachment inquiry. But we played sound all morning that the Republican reporters are asking Republicans saying, well, the very thesis, the foundation of your case has now fallen apart because of this informant taking information from, again, Russian intelligence officers, and they dispute that, and they won't do it. And I'll just note this. We know that White House staffers, we reported this morning, received subpoena letters on this week saying you have to come and testify for this impeachment inquiry. One staffer told me he received a letter letter and then 90 minutes later received a second.

The second letter says, hey, disregard the first. Use this one instead. He looked at them and said, well, what's the difference between the two? It's because all the references to Smirnoff in the first letter had been stripped out and now they're going forward. So that's their acknowledgement. Republicans know it's falling apart. And again, Congress allowing it, like Willie said, Russian disinformation, it comes straight to the United States Congress. They are in the easy, easy mark for Russian disinformation. And while we're on the topic, Mika, of people who are suckers for Russia. Oh, the biggest.

Donald Trump standing by his comments about abandoning Article 5 of the NATO agreement. And encouraging Russia to attack. We'll play for you what he said. It comes as the EU just approved a new sanctions package against Russia ahead of new actions expected tomorrow from the Biden administration, of course, in response to the death of Alexei Navalny. Also with us, deputy managing editor for politics at Politico, Sam Stein joins us this morning. Good to have you, Sam. Let's get to our top story, though. I think he's running out of cash or maybe people don't want to give him money. Like, who would want to get involved with this? There was a Financial Times story yesterday that showed that Donald Trump's, the number

of contributors, have dropped $200,000. If you look at this point in the cycle four years ago with where he is right now, he has lost already 200,000 donors. Why do you think, do you think they don't want to pay his legal bills? They don't trust that he won't use the money for his legal bill. Well, they have a lot of legal. I think there's I think there is the understanding that if they're giving him money, they're not giving him money. To help whatever he says, help make America great again. They're giving him money because of the fact that the judge said he raped a woman

and he's going to have to pay her about $90 million. $83.3 million for defamation, sexual assault. Because his own lawyer decided she didn't want a jury trial. And so they had a judge trial in a fraud case. And Donald Trump was found guilty of what he's done for years. The civil fraud trial. Oh, my gosh. That's that's like bankrupt. Well, that's what I'm saying. So you have all this money. And so people are going, wait a second. Am I giving to him? Am I giving to like Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, like some PTL type scam to help pay this guy's bills?

And what you're seeing is, again, the number of his contributors going down. I think there's also just natural attrition. There are a lot of people that I know that voted for Trump twice. We talk about it all the time after January the 6th, after the craziness of the past couple of years, after saying that he's going to assassinate his political rivals if he wants to and and nobody can do anything about it. After he's saying he's going to execute American generals, American war heroes because they're not sufficiently loyal to him. All of this stuff adds up. And at some point there's an exhaustion factor that sets in. And I think we're seeing it in Donald Trump's money. Well, he's burning through his donors funds with his super PAC spending far more in January than

it brought in. As the Daily Beast reports, nearly three million dollars of the overall spending was used for one purpose, to pay lawyers. The campaign itself was also underwater. It raised about $8.8 million while spending over $11 million. Nikki Haley, meanwhile, flashed with a sign of strength with her campaign reporting $11.5 million in receipts last month. It is the first ever fundraising period where Haley's campaign outraised Donald Trump. Let's stop there for one minute. Stop right there. Let's repeat it. Nikki Haley outraised Donald Trump last month in fundraising after all of his efforts to try and undermine her and spread gossip about her husband. And also she seems to be just

plugging along there. She's going to hang in there and be the last woman standing, depending on what happens. It's probably a good gamble. You know, we have a lot more to talk about in this story, but I want to stop for one second and go to Sam Stein. And Sam, feel free to talk about if you want to talk about Trump having less donors than before, 200,000 less, if you have any any theories on that. But I just want to stop for a second and look at the fact that the month that Donald Trump threatened Republicans and man, that's that reverberated. People understand that reverberated around the Republican Party. Karl Rove's talking about it this morning in a Wall Street Journal

op ed. It reverberated. Donald Trump saying, basically, I'm going to crush you if you give Nikki Haley any money. What did that do? It caused Nikki Haley's donations to rise. And Sam, talk about the fact that that fact Nikki Haley outraised Donald Trump last month. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty surprising. I think, you know, we all expected Donald Trump to raise a ton of money. Obviously, he has the largest fan base in Republican politics and not just, you know, any fan base, a sort of rabid fan base that kind of rallies behind him. So theories as to why he has done worse than she has in this latest month. You know, I think you guys hit on the main one, which is, you know, the money.

People are, you know, nervous that the money is going to be going to non-political functions, obviously the legal stuff. But, you know, it's weird because obviously the polls show him doing well relative to Biden. But if you're on the ground and followed his campaign in New Hampshire and elsewhere, you can tell, like, this is not as enthusiastic a run as four years ago or eight years ago. You guys remember that arena in Manchester, right? In 2016, it sold out, right? To the rafters, the entire thing. I went again this cycle. They had a huge curtain to cut off about a quarter of the arena, and they didn't have the top sections. There was no one to sit there.

Just thought to myself that, you know, the enthusiasm is not quite the same. And I think that hurts Trump on the donor level, too, because he has been so reliant on small dollar donations in a way that other Republicans can't. I don't think, just to be clear, I don't think any of this translates necessarily into the primary polls being affected. I think Haley is not going to win in the South Carolina. There's very few opportunities for her to win any state, frankly. And the delegate math doesn't add up. But what it does do is, you know, to the degree she wants to continue running and continue losing these states, she can do it because campaigns don't end. They run out of cash and her campaign is not running out of cash.

She can sustain an operation. She can just sit there and be a thorn in his side. I don't know to what end, but that's what this money dynamic does due to the race. Boy, I'll tell you what, Willie, there are a lot of politicians that would love to be in Nikki Haley's position right now. I'm sure she's looking at it as a war of attrition. Donald Trump has so much in front of him. We don't know what's going to happen over the next two, three, four months between now and the convention. Anything can happen on the Republican side with all of these trials, with all of these judgments,

with all of his financial woes, anything can happen. But you look at you look at Nikki Haley and the fact that she outraged Trump last month and then look at Trump. And this is something people people love to talk about. Oh, well, you know, Biden's base isn't as excited as they should be. I'm pretty sure if you look at the last seven years, just look at data, look at history, they'll get there. But with Donald Trump, the stories we don't hear are the stories that Sam just said. And that is arenas half full, venue sizes being shrunk and reduced far below where he was in 2016. He still has his diehards. There is no doubt about that. He still has a movement, no doubt about that. But that movement has shrunk. And we haven't really seen that as much

in reporting as we have focus on, hey, what's the base think about Joe Biden? But right now, I mean, you look at the fact, again, financial time, crowd size situation in the first campaign. Yeah, well, that's what we're just saying. They were just massive. I don't see those. But I'll tell you what freaks Trump out even more is the fact that as small donors, which is absolutely critical in campaigns, small donors have dropped by 200,000 people, 200,000 donors from this part of the campaign to about four years ago. Yeah, that's a staggering number you cited from the Financial Times out with a report. In the second half of 2019, Donald Trump had 740,000 donors. In the second half of 2023, so four years later, ahead of election year, he had 516,000 donors. Contrary to that, Joe Biden has his number of donors have gone up a bunch since four years

ago at this time. So, yeah, I mean, you're right. Donald Trump is asking his voters, asking his base to fund this self-proclaimed billionaire to fund his legal bills. That's what the money goes to. And it looks like a lot of people are saying that's not really what I'm in this for. I don't want to give my money so that you can pay off all these more than half a billion dollars. Now, if you add it all up, rulings for defamation and fraud on the other side of it, President Biden's reelection campaign raised forty two million dollars last month, giving him one hundred thirty million dollars in cash on hand. That's the most ever for a Democratic presidential candidate at this point in the election cycle.

So quite a contrast there, Jonathan Lemire. And we had Jim Messina yesterday trying to speak to progressives, speak to Democrats, speak to Biden supporters, say, just calm down while there's all this noise on the background. We're raising tons of money. We've got this. So at least on the money, Joe Biden is doing pretty well against Donald Trump here. No question there. President Biden enjoys more than a $30 million advantage in terms of cash on hand, his campaign versus what Trump has. The president has been focusing on fundraising in recent weeks. He's on the West Coast right now, in fact.

A couple of fundraisers yesterday, which, as we'll get to later, he made some pretty strong remarks about both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. And he has another one today. So that is the message from Democrats saying, look, we're building a war chest. This is going to be a two billion dollar campaign. We're going to have the money we need to target voters in a way that's never been done before, because they do recognize they will need to motivate voters to come out. Poll after poll suggests this is not a race that Americans are particularly excited about a Trump Biden rematch.

But the Democrats theory of the case is that at the end of the day, when this becomes a binary choice, their voters will turn out. These worries about enthusiasm will dissipate and that there will be enough people out there who just simply look at Donald Trump and say, we can't go back to that. And even if they're not excited about President Biden, they still will vote for him. Now, the third party candidates do pose a bit of a problem. We'll get into some polling later that suggests that they hurt Biden far more than Trump. But right now, Democrats, despite what's been a pretty tough sledding last few months in terms of stories and polling for President Biden, they feel pretty good about where they are.

And they think that they can see Trump issues here with his fundraising and his first court case just around the bend. All right. Federal prosecutors are asking a judge in Los Angeles to review the decision to release a former FBI informant with links to Russian intelligence. Why would you release him? Why would you release him? Why is everything with Donald Trump goes back to Vladimir Putin? The guy has flight risk written on his forehead. And they go after Hunter and Joe Biden. And it's about Russia. Sonny, how charged with lying to the FBI about Hunter and Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.

The move comes after a federal judge ordered Alexander Smirnoff to be released during a detention hearing in Las Vegas on Tuesday, but with several restrictions, including GPS monitoring and surrendering his passport. Special Counsel David Weiss's team is now asking the federal court in California to keep Smirnov in detention because the California court will ultimately oversee the trial process. Prosecutors call 43-year-old Smirnoff a serious flight risk

and point to his extensive foreign contacts, which include someone in charge of a group whose job it is to carry out foreign assassinations. Yeah, I don't think that's not good. We want to release him on his own. And whom Smirnoff implicated in a lie about Hunter Biden. That Republicans in Congress swallowed up. Yes, they did. Russian disinformation. Great job. Prosecutors also contend Smirnoff's lies present a current danger of election interference. The judge has not yet responded and an additional court date has not yet been set. Smirnoff has been key to the House Republicans impeachment inquiry into President Biden and Republican House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan insisted yesterday that Smirnoff's indictment for lying to the FBI does not change

anything. Wait, wait. So so let me go. Hold on, hold on a second. So they've got a Russian, basically an informant that's spewing Russian disinformation. Yeah. And they say, oh, no, that's fine. Yeah. Right. It doesn't change anything. Then there's another key witness that they were freaking out. Oh, he disappeared. Where did he go? Where are they? We can't.

Well, he's an international fugitive. Doesn't change anything. He smuggled, illegally smuggled Iranian oil to the communist Chinese. He illegally sold arms. Like this guy, again, still, still talk about a flight risk. He's still flying right now. And look at all the people, Comer and Arnold the Pig and all the other people on that committee and and Borneo at Animals. Look at what they're doing right now. Like they're still holding on. They're holding on. Despite the fact they keep boom,

getting boom. Yeah. Keep boom. We would show you Jim Jordan trying to explain this, but it would make your teeth hurt. Here's House Oversight Committee ranking member, the Democrat Jamie Raskin, who says they just need to drop it. Yeah. Just drop it, please. I was hopeful that Chairman Comer would be announcing today the end of the whole impeachment investigation. It's been a wild goose chase built on conspiracy theory and lies from the beginning. And now we know that Russian intelligence operatives were behind creating the propaganda and disinformation at the very foundation of this investigation. So I think it's time for Chairman Comer and the Republicans to fold up the circus tent and we should get back to work American people. It's amazing. A congressional investigation built

on Russian propaganda and lies and built on international future. Not dangerous at all. Great job, guys. Let's bring in congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany and NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney. Jackie, Jackie, what next? I mean, this Comer Committee, and this is me talking, not you as a reporter. This is me talking. But the way it looks to me is this Comer Committee has humiliated itself time and time and time again. And now we find ourselves in a position where they just opened their arms wide and accepted Russian disinformation and propaganda to come in to the United States Congress. That's exactly right, Joe. And to be very clear, I mean, the impeachment inquiry into Biden was never quite alive in the House,

at least as compared to the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas. But there's always been skepticism and an inability for James Comer and Jim Jordan to convince more of their skeptical colleagues that there was a there there, that they had been able to unearth anything. And I mean, these accusations that Comer and Jordan have leveled for the course of a year, really, have never fully panned out. But the basis of this investigation, even before this whole debate over the 1023 confidential human source materialized, that James Comer and Jordan in that clip that you showed at the top of the show have claimed is true, has never been true. This is this idea that Biden fired Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin because he was looking into Burisma.

The Washington Post, The New York Times, many mainstream outlets have reported over and over again that there's been no such proof to show that Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma or interested in Burisma in any way, and that Biden deciding to fire Shokin was related to him investigating Burisma. So, I mean, this confidential human informant sort of blowing up in a really spectacular fashion on the heels of a number of other missteps that House GOP investigators have committed at this point is, I think, just a very public version and view into the double-dealing and the backspeak that that Republicans have been engaging in when it comes to presenting these pieces of evidence. Even at the time last year, I was on the show. We were talking about how Comer and Chuck Grassley were engaged in pure

political theater and really using process of the House to elevate what they knew to be unsubstantiated claims. And what we reported at the time were claims that the FBI and the DOJ, under Bill Barr, during the Trump administration, had looked into, found not to be supported by the facts, and subsequently closed the investigation into this guy. But now, you know, I think that that indictment couldn't make it clearer that this, again, foundational piece of evidence is it has been fabricated. But I do want to note as well that that Smirnoff is very clearly thought to be by the Justice Department, a liar and a very untrustworthy, confidential human source, and that he claims to have had contacts with Russian intelligence. But at this point in time, we don't actually know or have further corroboration that he has actually had those contacts with high level Russian intelligence.

So, Ken, the revelation of a Russian linked informant here comes nearly four years after many in the American Intelligence Committee warned Moscow was behind many of the allegations being levied at the Biden family. In a 2020 letter, 51 former U.S. intel officials expressed concern about the source of a much discussed story on the right. Hunter Biden's laptop as a refresher. Three weeks before the last presidential election, the New York Post ran a cover story based on information provided by Donald Trump's personal attorney at the time, Rudy Giuliani. The story centered around a laptop repairman who came into possession of emails allegedly showing corruption by then candidate Joe Biden. What we didn't know at the time, since has been alleged now by the Justice Department, is that both Giuliani and suspected informant Alexander Smirnoff, the man we're talking about here,

had contacts in the same circle of Russian intelligence agents. So, Ken, you've been looking into the details of this story. What else can you tell us? So, Willie, those 51 former intelligence officials, they paid a steep price for signing that letter. The House Republicans conducted an investigation. They brought some of them in to testify under oath. The Republicans said this was election interference. This was a bogus attempt to suppress a legitimate story. And as it turns out, they were right. Not in the sense, they said that the laptop was part of a Russian information operation or had all the hallmarks of a Russian information operation.

They didn't say that the contents of the laptop were made up. And obviously we know that they weren't. Many of them have been now corroborated. What they said was they were suspicious about why that story was emerging in the middle of an election campaign and whether Russian intelligence was flogging it or was somehow amplifying it. And now they've been proven correct in the sense that we now know that Russian intelligence, at least according to the statements of this informant, bolstered somewhat by this indictment, were feeding him information, false information.

And let's be clear, the allegation that this informant made that was false, remember, was that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden took a $5 million bribe. Now, that was always a specious allegation. Remember, Joe Biden answered it by saying, where's the money? He released his tax returns, after all, unlike Donald Trump. But nonetheless, that allegation was seized upon by House Republicans and it was used to fuel this impeachment effort. And by the way, it's not just congressional Republicans that have some questions to answer here. It's the FBI and the Justice Department, because although they concluded that there was no evidence to support the bribery allegation, they also said that this confidential human source was a trusted informant.

They relied on him for more than 10 years. And only now are they saying, oh, he's a liar and we're indicting him for lying. They need to explain that. Who is duped within the FBI here by someone who may have been a plant by Russian intelligence? That's very important because that information infected our political system. But back to those 51 intelligence officials, I mean, obviously what they were doing was trying to help Joe Biden. They've acknowledged that. They were Democrats. I knew it at the time. You could see it by who was signing the letter. But the point

that they were making in that letter holds up over time, which is that the Russians were trying to flog a story that Joe Biden and his son were corrupt. Ken, to your point, Congressman Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, was on CNN last night, made a pretty stunning allegation saying that Jim Comer and Jim Jordan both knew that this guy was a fraud. They both knew that Smirnoff was a shady guy, but they proceeded with their investigation anyway. He's saying that as a Republican who serves with them and has some insight into that question. Are you hearing anything more about that in terms of Republicans knowing that this entire case was shaky and the people upon whom they were relying to make the case were perhaps being,

maybe they didn't know they were Russian agents, but that their information was bad, just to have something to push out into the atmosphere, a fog machine of information, of disinformation about Joe Biden. Well, Willie, I always thought that was clear. Leaving aside the question of whether this informant was a Russian intelligence plant, it was clear that his information wasn't true. As Jackie said, the FBI and the Justice Department under Bill Barr investigated it out of the Western District of Pennsylvania and was unable to corroborate that bribery allegation or any allegations of corruption against Joe Biden. So it was pretty clear that this Republican effort was a cynical effort from the beginning. But and so to hear Ken Buck say that, it just underscores what a lot of people already believed. But what's really at issue here is when did the FBI, when did the Justice Department, when did Congress start to understand that this informant not only was maybe unreliable,

but was actually, you know, a fabulous who made up all kinds of things and was also talking to Russian intelligence. That is a big deal. That's a momentous development. So a lot of this constant twisting and turning wherever the disinformation leads you lands on Fox News, the lone liberal co-host of Fox News, the show The Five. Wait, wait a second. Now, Harold, I don't know. Willie, if you agree with both sides, you're not liberal, right? Harold's like, he's just an agreer, right? No.

Well, no, Harold, I agree with your side. He very smartly brings in his side by being kind to both sides. Do not mistake that, Willie. I'm not mistaking anything. What do you think about our friend Harold? What is he? I would just say I agree with everything Harold said.

I agree with everything you said. And I agree with everything Mika said right there. By the way, I saw Harold last night. No, what Harold does, he goes, I respect what you say. I respect what you say. But here's what I think. So anyhow, there's another Democratic strategist that comes on. Her name is Jessica Tarloff. And she had this take yesterday about these latest revelations.

I don't know why Jim Cuomo and Jim Jordan thought that perhaps it was going to be Joe Biden's brother that brought him down. But this is the path that they've chosen to take. And honestly, I'm surprised that they have this high of a threshold for humiliation. Every witness that they have called has decimated their arguments from Devin Archer to Peter Schwerin to Marvin Young. And then we have the guy behind the Holy Grail document, the 1023, Alexander Smirnov, who's found that he had lied, right, about the charges, the $5 million that went to both of them. And then it gets even better. Not only did he lie, he was lying because the Russians were feeding him the disinformation. It's so embarrassing.

I think Jamie Raskin was spot on when he said that this impeachment inquiry really ended yesterday when we found out that we have a Russian asset that was foundational to this impeachment inquiry. And Jim Comer and Jim Jordan should maybe try doing something for their constituents and let this go because it's going nowhere. Well, I mean, Sam Stein, I think it goes on. The show must go on. Right. I mean, where the smartest person on the committee comes from Green Acres and is a pig.

It's always about Russia, though. Arnold the pig who also speaks Russian. Thank God. so he can debrief the informants when they come in. Arnold the Pig's a lot smarter than you think he is. Snorts in Russian. In Russian. But they do,

Sam. They have, and you and I, we've been looking at these Congress people for a long time now. They do have an extraordinarily high threshold for humiliation because time and time again, they make claims and are embarrassed. You know, they go on Fox News. OK, this is it says you got to be a comer. I sure hope so. And you just keep going down the line. And now, again, we have we reached the

bottom here finally that like Russian informants are providing the foundation of this, these bogus inquiries. I mean, when does it stop? Well, did Arnold the pig is Russian, his native language, or did he study it at school? Like did he get the fluency, you think? He studied it. He went to Appalachian State. They have a very good Russian studies program, especially for barnyard animals. Great stuff. And Alabama.

He got his master's at Alabama. Exactly. I knew it. But go ahead. We can keep going with that, yeah. You know, it's funny. If you talk to Republicans. It's funny because it's true. It's true. If you talk to Republicans on the Hill privately and some publicly, they will say this has been an embarrassment and that Comer has not led the most professional or, you know, covered in glory process, let's put it that way.

But to your point, what is the off-ramp, right? I mean, I think that's the issue, is that on the one hand, you could pack it all up and suffer your humiliations and say we didn't do it. That's embarrassing, obviously. You wasted all this time. You basically have to confirm to the American public that you didn't find anything worth impeaching. And that's that. The other end is you just try to keep going and find something and wait and wait and wait and eventually hold some sort of vote or potentially just kick in until after the election. And it looks like that's what they're going to do just to save face.

But it doesn't change the fact that, you know, the series of developments recently is a humiliation. And Jessica on Fox was absolutely right. You know, when you're when you when it's discovered that you are one of your primary informants as a Russian asset, I mean, there's not really any good way to spin it other than to do what Jim Jordan did, which is say the facts haven't changed when in fact they have. But this is not a great process for Republicans. It's an embarrassment. And, you know, at some point they have to tell their constituents we failed to find the goods. They just aren't ready to do that yet. Yeah. Humiliation and embarrassment. Well said there, Sam. But they are they're forging forward. Jackie Hunter Biden

scheduled to appear next week. And the president's brother, James Biden, was on the Hill yesterday. Tell us what we know about what went behind, what went on behind the closed doors in that hearing. Yeah, well, as Jessica noted, James Biden was, again, a flop in line with the rest of the witnesses that Comer and Jordan have billed as potentially star witnesses that are we're going to deliver the smoking gun. But James Biden, who testified for, I think, around seven to eight hours yesterday before Republican and Democratic investigators, provided no there there. was this $200,000 loan that Republicans had delivered after obtaining it through subpoenas as proof that he was paying Joe Biden, his brother, in exchange for sort of enriching the family through foreign business dealings. He explained that this loan repayment to Joe

Biden was a result of Joe Biden loaning his brother money because he had episodic income and needed it to keep up with family expenses and payments. He needed to continue to pay for his children's tuition. He said that he, in his consulting business, you know, he wasn't consistently making as much money as needed to sort of maintain his lifestyle and that this loan was among several loans that he was getting from financial institutions and friends and other private citizens, and that this was simply a loan repayment. You know, my colleague Matt Visor reviewed 2,000 pages worth of transcripts of all of these witnesses that investigators have talked to behind closed doors for transcribed interviews.

And there has been no there there across the board. Essentially, what they found is that, yes, there have been some informal meetings amongst business associates of Hunter Biden and others that Joe Biden has met with in, again, informal settings. And it might strain credulity to think that Joe Biden was not aware of the kinds of people his son was doing business with, especially as he's consistently maintained that he had no idea that his son was doing business in China. But at the end of the day, there is nothing to show that Joe Biden was directly involved with the business dealings and that the family was being enriched from sort of some sort of foreign influence peddling operation.

The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany and NBC's Ken Delaney. And thank you both very much for being on this morning. And still ahead on Morning Joe, the European Union has approved new sanctions against Russia and the United States is expected to do the same tomorrow. We'll talk with Congressman Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, about the efforts to put new pressure on Vladimir Putin. Plus, there is new fallout after an Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. And also, I mean, just huge implications about that. Children and people who are trying to have babies through IVF are stopped in their tracks.

We're going to talk about the larger implications of that. We've got new polls. Quinnipiac poll out yesterday showing actually Joe Biden up by four points. I'm hearing Greenacres in the background. That's pretty funny. We need to get Arnold on the show as a guest. And also Donald Trump. Kind of hard to say this straight, but Donald Trump threatening Western democracy again in our NATO alliance.

That will be coming up. He doubled down on it. We'll show you a clip of that. And pretty harsh reaction from the right. Please cue Greenacres. New York is where I'd rather stay. I get allergic smelling hay. What worries me more, and that's just Tucker, that's a symptom of all this, is that they're curating sympathy in America. And they're helping nurture and develop an isolationist wing in my party and in our

country, which I think is very, very dangerous. They're developing, you know, people who want to see NATO reduced or NATO not adhered to. Obviously, President, former President Trump is pushing this line as well. So what I very much worry about is they're helping curate a line of thought, a school of thought that is isolationist, that is pro-Putin, pro-Russia, pro-tyranny at the end of the day. And that is extremely dangerous for all democracy, but for us as ourselves, democracy. Former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan in an interview yesterday with The Washington Post. You heard Ryan mention Tucker Carlson, who, as part of his propaganda mission to Russia, was amazed by decades old shopping cart technology at a grocery store. So, too, was our director, T.J., who doesn't get out

much. Take a look. Here he is in New Jersey. Here we go. So I guess you put in 10 rubles here and you get it back when you put the cart back. So it's free, but there's an incentive to return it and not just bring it to your homeless encampment. Okay. Wow. It's amazing. I'm at a shop right in Sussex. You wouldn't believe. They have these nifty coin things here.

It's quite incredible. It really is. Look. Look. They go like this. And it's a quarter. It's amazing. Therefore therefore now the cart won't end up in some encampment somewhere here in beautiful sussex county new jersey wow i mean oh my god communist sympathizer tj did the shop right in sussex learn that from Russia? I mean, or could it be, Willie, that could it be perhaps that Tucker hasn't been to the grocery store in a couple of decades? It could be that.

The other thing that mystified the shopper in Russia was the elevator for the cart when you have multiple stories. They got them all over the place in New York City. Go to the Bed Bath & Beyond on Broadway. They're everywhere. The other exciting thing in Sussex County, the average per capita income is not seven thousand dollars a year so that your money goes a longer way here in the United States when you do go grocery shopping and it might cost a little more than one hundred dollars. Well, and you don't actually, TJ, you don't. Well, TJ, maybe you do because, you know, we don't pay you that much. But most people in Sussex County don't have to pay half of their salary for groceries, right? Exactly.

TJ? TJ? That is true. Of course they don't. He's busy doing his job. I was amazed. I was just amazed by the coin in the grocery cart. It was unbelievable. I like that TJ's doing comedy bits now. That's what I do. Four hours isn't enough. I go shopping and then I decide to contribute to the show.

It's amazing. It really is. And you know what TJ said to me when he sent it to me on text? What did he say? He's like, why can't America do this? I know. Why is it only Russia that can do this? There's so much better. And I go, TJ, you're in Jersey.

He's like, oh, yeah, that's right. In fairness, though. Well done. TJ lives so far away from work. He's almost in Russia. But that's a story for another time. You can see it. You can see it from his. He's almost in Russia. But that's a story for another time. You can see it. You can see it from his window.

Takes his little horse. He can. He takes his little horse, Samuel, and goes. He lives in Pennsylvania. I know. I know. All right, Willie, go ahead. All right.

So let's get back to those controversial comments. Controversial, to put it mildly, from Donald Trump. We're hearing more of them now about protecting America's European allies. As fears grow about Russia's expansionist ambitions beyond Ukraine, Trump is standing by his recent threat not to defend fellow NATO members from attacks if he is reelected. Here's what he said in a clip first aired on Fox News yesterday from that town hall that was taped the previous day. You're getting slammed from some of your old adversaries about your NATO comments. Does this mean you're not going to defend NATO countries if they haven't paid their two point whatever percent? Yeah, sort of. It does. We have we have 28 countries.

We have 28 countries and they would take advantage tremendously. You know, look, the European nations. I happen to be a long time ago. My parents, my grandparents came from a place called Europe. So I love it. But they are very smart, and they take advantage. They've taken advantage of us on trade, and they've taken advantage of us on NATO. And what happened, what I did is I told them, if you don't pay up, I'm not going to defend you. And they said, I can't believe it.

Nobody else ever said that. The question was asked by the head of a country, very strong question at a big meeting, one night, 28 countries. Sir, does that mean that if we don't pay, you will not defend us from Russia or whoever? Am I open? Is the mic open? I don't want to hear this stupid lie again. I don't hear the stupid story again. And again, he's lying.

Everybody, everybody, he's lying. Everybody, everybody, Republicans understand it. Conservatives understand it. Everybody understands it, except for maybe some stupid people in the audience clapping are just willfully ignorant people in the audience clapping. But it's said a billion times, Willie. It's been said a billion times. And Donald Trump, I don't think he's so stupid that he doesn't know this. There are no dues for NATO. There are no dues. And by the way, a lot of these countries that he's trashing are countries that sent young men and women to fight with us in Afghanistan and in Iraq who paid their ultimate sacrifice. You know, this guy trashes Australia. Australia has fought with us in every single war.

But he had over the 20th and 21st century. Yeah, he couldn't serve. He had bone spurs. Instead of feet didn't work very well. And then also he talks about when he starts talking about, oh, and they're taking advantage of this, consumers duck. Because as a Wall Street Journal will tell you, and the editorial page will tell you, what Donald Trump's talking about is a 10% tax.

Willie, he's talking about tariffs again. And he's so stupid. He's so ignorant when he talks about tariffs because he's got it wrong. It doesn't come from other countries. It comes from consumers in Wisconsin. It comes from consumers. It's a tax on consumers in Michigan. It's a tax on consumers in Pennsylvania. It's a tax on consumers in Georgia. It's a tax on consumers in Pennsylvania. It's a tax on consumers in Georgia. It's a tax on consumers in Arizona. It's a tax on consumers in Nevada. And the conservative pro-capitalist Wall Street Journal opinion page says that, Willie.

And yet this stupid he continues. And as Paul Ryan says, he's convincing people in his own party that they need to be the party of Putin and tariffs, which, again, is a Wall Street Journal says he's proposing a 10 percent tax on consumers. It's madness and it's not conservative. And the reason he keeps digging deeper into this position on NATO, for example, is because he hears those applause in the room. He hears those applause and rallies. He hears those applause on certain podcasts. But here's the good news for the country and for everyone watching today. There was a poll out just yesterday, this Pew poll we're going to talk more

about later in terms of the presidential race. Only about 20 percent of Americans see any reality, see any anything valid in the position that we should step away from our NATO allies unless they pay their dues. So the point is, this is a very narrow position that he's casting to. It's a very narrow group of Americans who share this view. It turns out Americans think alliances are good and they appreciate that. Like you said, after 9-11, NATO countries rallied to our defense. They think we should be together as we have been since the end of World War II with Western Europe, unlike Donald Trump. So he can keep saying this and he can keep digging this hole deeper. But it's a very, very narrow lane he's driving in on this issue.

You know, you talked about this Q poll and it's so interesting. I don't know why the media does what the media does, but but a poll come out that will show Joe Biden down by 87 points and everybody will start jumping out of windows. And that's all people will talk about for weeks. This has been happening now for months. Right. And then a poll, another poll will come out that's just as legit, just as highly rated. So Joe Biden tied or ahead. And it's like a tree falling in a forest where no one is there. Here's the Q poll from yesterday. And you're exactly right. And for people that freak out, you know, we don't know. Is it 49-45? Is it 46-45? Is it 45? It's too early to tell. But Willie really, Jonathan Lemire, while we keep this up, Willie really did. He did drill down on the important part of this. And when you go to the issues like like Ukraine.

And and and whether we should abandon our European allies, Donald Trump's talking to a small subset of people. When he talks about these mass deportation camps, Donald Trump is talking to the 20%. When he gets extreme and he defends Vladimir Putin, he's talking to the 20%. All of this adds up over time, Jonathan Lemire. It absolutely does. He's talking to a small subset of even Republicans. Most Republicans, including those in Capitol Hill right here, support Ukraine and want to help our ally there

stand up to Vladimir Putin. But there is a small but powerful group of in the GOP who are doing Donald Trump's bidding and are saying no. And right now they're in leadership in the House. And yes, it will get Trump applause lines at the self-selective audiences that he appears before. We saw what happened when he appeared in Philadelphia at that sneaker convention over the weekend, a rare hostile crowd. And he was booed. He didn't know what to do. He only appears in front of his true fans. So these are things that will hurt him. And this is what Democrats and the Biden campaign have said all along, that Trump has staked out these radical positions on things

like immigration, on things like standing up to Putin abortion, abortion, IVF in Alabama. We're going to speak about in a few minutes. That's that's going to have blowback for Republicans there. And most Americans simply don't agree with them. And as they start paying attention, as the year goes on, because right now, most Americans are not doing this day to day, in part because they're not in love with this choice. But once they start realizing, OK, this is it, it's Biden or Trump, and they start paying attention and they listen to Trump, they're going to want no part of that. That's always been the Biden theory of the case to win those independents.

And Willie, it looks like a good theory of the case. I mean, you you you you again look at the fact that most Americans don't want this matchup. They just don't. And most Americans didn't think they were going to get this matchup. They're doing a lot of different things right now. Right. I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're busy working.

They're busy keeping their kids focused in school until spring break to give them, give them a rest. They're busy doing, they're busy doing a lot of things. I mean, you know, I mean,

look at Barnacle. Barnacle's busy now setting up his fantasy baseball team. He's right over there working on it now. Working on it right now. Unfortunately, he can call the GM's of most baseball teams and they will give him. And it's seriously. He talks to Theo. It's a lot.

He talks to Theo. He's tired with help on his fantasy baseball teams. Yeah, it's just not fair. Did I call that? Did I call that? So that's not what all Americans are doing. But Americans are busy right now, Willie, and they're not focused on this race. As they do focus, as it becomes clearer, you're going to have a lot of young Americans right now who are like, ah, Joe Biden's too old. Donald Trump, man, I don't know. He's kind of funny sometimes.

You're going to have younger Americans go, wait a second. This is a guy that went around bragging about terminating Roe v. Wade. This is a guy whose actions led to little 10-year-old girls who were raped in Ohio having to flee the state so they didn't have to have a forced pregnancy

of the rapist's baby. These are now, and now it's gone to South Carolina. Let's see if Donald Trump will come out or Alabama. Let's see if Donald Trump will come out or Alabama. Let's see if Donald Trump will come out and criticize the Alabama Supreme Court, the Alabama Supreme Court. Because, again, all of this has come from Donald Trump's radicalism, saying I will terminate Roe v. Wade. I'm the one who killed Roe v. Wade. Hey, you can thank me, Donald Trump said. People tried

to do this for 50 years and only I could do it. Only I could force 10 year old girls to flee the state of Ohio. So after being raped by an illegal immigrant, they didn't have to carry that baby as a 10 year old child. And this is this is what as the election comes into focus. I think the Biden campaign has a pretty damn good reason to feel pretty confident that Americans will make the right decision. Yeah. And Donald Trump's been scrambling on that issue. We had the reporting just this week thinking maybe we should have a 16 week abortion ban. He knows it's a problem for him. He knows it's on tape taking credit for the end of Roe versus Wade and that that may not be a popular position. I would also add in, as we're talking about younger voters, just yesterday, the Biden administration canceled more than tons. Let's put it that way. More than a billion dollars of student loan debt.

That's going to be popular. You can agree or disagree with that, but that'll be popular with younger voters. And you're right, Joe and Mika, people are normal. They're not like us. They don't wake up in the darkness of morning and think about this stuff and study every poll and every data point. They're outliving their lives. They're going to get through summer. They're going to come back in the fall and really start to evaluate this. And one last point of as we talk about this poll, you were talking about Nikki Haley earlier. If you look at the Q poll matchups again, she beats Joe Biden head to head. And that, I think, is part of her theory of the case. She has the money to stay in the race. And she says, I'm the one who can win this. Donald Trump is going to lead Republicans down a path of destruction.

Stick with me. So she's going to hang around as long as she can. All right. Coming up on Morning Joe is Donald Trump continues to bash NATO. President Joe Biden is set to announce new sanctions against Russia in response to the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. We'll have that after the break. Steve Ratner has charts. Wake up the kids. Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country. It's kleptocracy. It's corruption. It's a nation that is really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy. And so economic sanctions are important. Get some military assistance to Ukrainians, at least so they can defend themselves. Wow. That was the late Senator John McCain back in 2014 with an eye on Vladimir Putin's economy and his intentions for Ukraine. I wonder,

well, I don't wonder. I actually know Willie because I spoke with John McCain in the last year of his life. I was going to say, I wonder what he would say about Lindsey Graham. You know, we had a conversation and he rolled his eyes and he said, Lindsey's so excited about playing golf with the president. He's like half gone already. Well, you know, he's fully gone now. I don't think even Senator McCain would ever, ever have imagined that Lindsey Graham would go from supporting Ukraine's fight against Vladimir Putin to following Donald Trump. And there are people inside the Senate, Republicans inside the Senate, outraged at Lindsey's flip flopping and the fact that he actually voted against. And it made a difference to them. If Lindsey had voted with him, then there would have been at least half of the Republicans or maybe even a majority of the Republicans in the Senate voting for this Ukrainian aid package.

But he voted against it. And to think that that guy once called himself John McCain's friend and saw McCain as a mentor for him, man, it's just ridiculous. And it would make Senator McCain really sad. Yeah, Senator Graham always, you know, fancied himself a defense hawk. Right. He was the guy who was going to stand in the breach and help democracy survive and push Russia back. He talked like that until Donald Trump told him not to. And again, it goes back to the thing we talk about all the time. Is there anything that these Republicans will not do for Donald Trump if he asks them, if he tells them?

You can say no once in a while and maintain your relationship. You still get invited to Mar-a-Lago to play golf. You can still hang out in the cabanas and have fun down there. Maybe if he gets reelected, he'll put you in his cabinet, which I suspect is what Senator Graham's up to here. Or just being close to power is his goal. But, man, you got to stand for something. And Donald Trump has stripped away whatever principle there was, if it was ever there, has stripped it all away. And so many Republicans. Well, I've known Lindsey since 1994. We came in together in Congress. And, you know, Mika, a lot that he does does not surprise me because he yeah, there you go.

That's for his fingers always in the wind. He always tries to find a sponsor and he follows his sponsor, whoever that may be. It went from being John McCain to Donald Trump. abandoning Ukraine in its most critical moment, where its nationhood is at risk, its liberty is at risk, its freedom is at risk. And Lindsey Graham has made trips over there. He knows Ukrainian children are being kidnapped. He knows innocent civilians are being killed. He knows that Vladimir Putin, he knows this. He's talked about it throughout his career. He knows Vladimir Putin will not stop at Ukraine. After Ukraine, it's Latvia, it's Lithuania, it's Estonia, it's Poland. Lindsay knows this. And yet. Washes his hands of it, washes his hands of it and betrays not only the Ukrainian people,

but he betrays NATO. He betrays Western democracy and he betrays the whole idea of the West. The whole idea of the West, that Vladimir Putin and communists across China and North Korea and the mullahs in Iran, that idea of the West that they hate and that they are at war with every day. And it is a battle. It has always been a battle. And right now, Lindsey Graham is siding with the enemy. He's siding not with the West, but he is siding with Vladimir Putin and with with with with with communist China. So so are many House Republicans with with with with with communist China.

So so are many House Republicans with with with with communist North Korea. Because Lindsey voted no to supporting Israel. You voted no to supporting Ukraine. You voted no to supporting Taiwan. Oh, my God. The message that sends to communist leaders across the world who want to destroy us is just shocking.