Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/26/24

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Trump beats Nikki Haley in South Carolina GOP primary

Senator Rubio, of course, have a seat. Thank you. Guess we better toast to President Trump. That was a big victory tonight, 21 points. Yes, sir. Well, there was never any doubt. I guess Trump owns the Republican Party now. Yeah.

I got to admit, though, sometimes I do not know what my party is doing. I mean, I've been pushing for Ukraine funding for the past six months. It's essential to American security. And Trump just killed it with one phone call. The man doesn't care about this country one iota. Sometimes I think he's downright dangerous. And you just endorsed him, right?

Yeah, big time. Big time. I mean, he's great. So great. Yeah, he is incredible. You know, he once doxxed me. Oh, he doxxed you? No.

Oh, no, really? Yeah, back in 2015, he gave out my personal cell phone number in a speech to all his supporters. Had thousands of his people call me up to yell at me. Threatened my life. Had to get a new phone. You okay? Oh, phone. You okay? Oh, gosh.

You okay? Switch to Verizon. But you know what? I still think he's the greatest president since Reagan. Oh, he is greater than Reagan. Oh, he's greater than Lincoln. Oh, yeah, right? He's so darn handsome, and it makes me jealous.

He happens to be a little bit further left than some of the people on the stage. But I always say, when I'm in trouble on the left, I call up Lindsey Graham, and he straightens it out so fast. And I'll tell you, no, no, no, no. Remember, remember. I love him. He's a good man. Come up here, Lindsay. Come up here, Lindsay. OK, are you ready? Wow. If you couldn't tell, the comedy sketch was the first clip that we played. Yikes. Good morning.

Yeah. Welcome to Morning Joe. It's Monday, February 26. With us, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House spirit chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Patty Kaye, NBC News, national affairs analyst John Heilman, president of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton and senior columnist for The Daily Beast, Matt Lewis. So, Joe, a great group this morning and quite a weekend for Donald Trump and his supporters. Well, I don't know. I had somebody run against me in a primary once and they got, I think, 19, 20 percent. And I melted down. I thought it was the end of all time.

I think most politicians would. But if you're if you're the basically the incumbent and about to get the nomination for the third time and you're still losing 50 percent in Iowa and 60 percent in South Carolina, which is your strongest state. I mean, Wall Street Journal editorial page this morning has a point. Before we get into the news, I know a lot of people have been talking about South Carolina, but I think the Wall Street Journal editorial page has it right here. Let me read it. Yet Ms. Haley won nearly 40 percent of the vote, which, as she said in a remark Saturday evening, is not some tiny group. That's especially true running against a quasi incumbent who's endorsed near who is endorsed by nearly every GOP official in the state. None of them want to risk getting primaried. Yet, as in New Hampshire, the size of her vote shows that millions in the Republican Party do not want Mr. Trump in the White House. A Fox News voter analysis found that 59 percent of

Ms. Haley's voters said they would not vote for Trump. Let me say that again. Fifty nine percent of Haley's voters said they would not vote for Trump if he's the GOP nominee. And the exit poll showed that 36 percent of all Republican South Carolina voters said a conviction in one of his criminal trials would make him unfit to be president. So even if most of those voters hold their noses and vote for Trump in a race against Mr. Biden, the question is, how many stay home, vote for a third party or go over to Mr. Biden? Even a 10 percent defection could be divisive and decisive. If Mr. Trump can't win over more of her voters, he could make Ms. Haley a prophet, of course, and they're talking about when she said, if Donald Trump wins, we're going to lose. And let me just real quickly go to John Heilman before we jump into the news here. John,

you've got a guy that's about to win the nomination for the third time and he's losing 50 percent of the Republican vote in Iowa, 40 percent of it in South Carolina, which we've all always said is the strongest state. And so, yeah, I mean, if if I'm running for the first time and I'm getting 59 percent, I'm happy if I'm a three time and basically a three time incumbent. Those are those are the real warning signs. You know, we hear people warning about Donald Trump and I certainly get it. He is a threat to American democracy. But right now, 40 percent of his electorate is a threat to him even getting there. Well, yeah, Joe, I point we have a reasonable comparative point here. You know, the Democratic primary in South Carolina took place quite recently.

Not the same day as the Republican primary. Joe Biden, the incumbent president, Donald Trump, as you point out, kind of a quasi incumbent. Everybody says he has an iron grip on the Republican Party. Joe Biden won 96.2 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary. Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips, his two challengers combined, got about 5,000 votes. About 5,000 votes, about 4%. Whereas Nikki Haley got 298,681 votes for about 40%. So, I mean, it's not apples and oranges. Joe Biden is an actual incumbent.

Trump's a quasi-incumbent. Trump, however, has it's not apples and oranges. Joe Biden is an actual incumbent. Trump's a quasi incumbent. Trump, however, has run in South Carolina three times. He ran in 2016, 2020. And now this time. So, you know, there is a you know, there is a if you talk about who has an iron grip over his party, who has total control over the party, who has the loyalty of the base of the party. It's not Donald Trump compared to Joe Biden. And it's certainly not Donald Trump compared to even where Donald Trump has been in the past in South Carolina. So look, I mean, all those exit polls you cited should be worrying for Trump. There's also financial stuff we could talk about that should be worrying for Trump. That's that's more that's not down the road. That's coming real soon. Right. This is not that was not an alloyed. Look, give the man the win. He's won three. You can't

take that away from him. A win's a win. He's going to be the nominee. He's going to be, I probably have the 12, 15 delegates by the middle of March. But man, if you don't see the warning signs, if Chris Lasavita and the people around him do not see the warning signs, and they're smart people, I'm sure that he and Susie Wiles, they see it. They're pretty clear. Smart people. They want him out of the race. I mean, that he and Susie Wiles, they see it. They're pretty clear. Smart people. They want him out of the race. I mean, they want her out of the race. And for good reason.

And for good reason, they want her out of the race. But Mika, I'll give you, again, a couple of numbers here. And I will say, I have said this before, and, you know, I got enough problems on Morning Joe. Like, I'm just trying to avoid flop sweat. Mika will tell you I'm a flop sweater. I just am. I'm a big guy. I sweat all the time. So I'm just I'm just I'm just trying, you know, to not look like Elvis 77 every day.

So I don't want to judge other news outlets. I will just say I've been surprised, Mika, by the alerts that I get when Donald Trump, Donald Trump smashes Haley for victory or whatever. And a couple of weeks ago, I think it was New Hampshire, Donald Trump routes wasn't it. You know, we're hearing Trump's going to win by 30, 35 points in South Carolina. How long have we heard that? We heard he was going to win by 30 points forever. Again, he always underperforms as far as margin of victory in the polls. Always does. And yet this was supposed to be a 30 point win. It ended up being 20 point win. But again, that's not the issue here for Donald Trump. If you're Chris or Susie inside his campaign, what you're concerned about or what I would be concerned about, I don't want to speak for them.

What I'd be concerned about is she won 40 percent of the vote. But here we go. Fox News voter analysis found that 59 percent of her voters, 59% said they would not vote for Donald Trump if he's the GOP nominee. And 36% of all South Carolina Republican voters said a conviction in just one of his criminal trials would make him unfit to be president. Now, why am I underlining this? I'm underlining this because I've been saying on this show

for months now that what I've been hearing from my Republican relatives, my Republican friends, from Republicans who voted for Donald Trump twice, sat with us last summer and said that he and his friends in, I'll just say, a suburb, a contested suburb, always voted Republican, will not vote for him, will leave the slot open. And again, these were hardcore Trumpers who, you know, I'll just say really concerned me in 2020 when they voted for him again. They're gone. And so when you see these numbers that, you know, a third are saying they're not going to vote for Donald Trump, that's where it's starting to show up. And that is something the Trump campaign is going to have to focus on between here and the end of the year. You mentioned Fox News exit polling. There's, you know, different exit polls that have potential trouble ahead.

That's even more for Donald Trump in a likely general election rematch with Joe Biden. As Politico points out, Trump lost moderate and liberal voters to Haley by a wide margin, citing exit polling from the Associated Press. In addition, a little over one in five GOP primary voters said they would not vote for Trump in November if he was the party's nominee. When asked by NBC News, 81 percent of Nikki Haley supporters said their vote was more of a vote against Trump than it was for Haley. Haley also beat Trump with college educated voters, 54 percent to 45 percent. Thirty six percent of all voters also said they would consider Trump unfit for office if he is convicted of a crime by Election Day. And despite Trump's continued efforts to push the big lie, 36 percent of Republican primary voters said Joe Biden was legitimately elected in 2020. I'm sorry, who are the Nimrods that are 61 percent? I mean, come on, come on. Who are those people, Matt Lewis? Let's talk about our former party,

my former party. Who are the Nimrod 61 percent that that that still can say that with a straight face? Matt Lewis, I think part of part of the story here is that Donald Trump narrowcasts. Right. He loves fan service. And so if you are that 60 percent, you're getting what you want. You know, you're getting the entertainment, you're getting the anger, you're getting the humor, whatever. Trump narrowcasts. He does the fan service. What he doesn't do is he doesn't persuade. And so I think Donald Trump has created this scenario whereby he's painted himself in a corner. He really can't grow his constituency. He can fire up his base. But look, Donald Trump has even said, if you're with Nikki Haley, we don't want you.

It's too late. Get on board now or you're done. And it reminds me of Carrie Lake out in Arizona. Remember what she said? If you're a John McCain supporter, we don't or you're done. And it reminds me of Carrie Lake out in Arizona. Remember what she said? If you're a John McCain supporter, we don't want you to leave. Now she's changing her tune, but it's a little too late to do the right thing now as the Tanya Tucker song goes. So this is what Donald Trump has created. It is a movement. It is a cult. It is never meant to be 50 percent plus one. It is never

meant to be a mainstream movement. And the only reason there is even a chance of victory is that because of the way that our system works for the Electoral College and various vagaries of the American system, it's possible Donald Trump can win with like 46 percent of the vote. Otherwise, he'd be completely toast. With so many moving parts in his life, Katie Kay, given the legal challenges, it seems to me that Nikki Haley, even losing funding from the Koch brothers, whoever along the way, probably should hang in there. Certainly from the White House's point of view, they're thrilled that she's hanging in here, that she's one of their best surrogates out there on the campaign trail at the moment. She's saying the kind of things and reaching some Republican voters in ways that Joe

Biden never can, saying very similar things about Donald Trump. And she's right. You know, if you take that 60 percent and the 25, it's about ends up at about 25 percent of the South Carolina people who voted in the GOP primary say they're never going to vote for Donald Trump. Twenty five percent. That's a big chunk. I mean, he can't afford to leave 25 percent of the Republican Party, even if some of those are switchover voters. So she's doing damage to Donald Trump. But she's also revealing things, I think, just as importantly. She's revealing things to the Biden campaign about his weaknesses. And that's very useful information for them. Jonathan Lemire, she's slowly, I mean,

there's still a long way to go, but every day she goes a little further against Donald Trump and says the truth about him in a way really no one else can as a Republican. Yeah. And there was some speculation, despite Haley's public insistences, that she might bow out if she were to be routed in her home state. And she didn't. She lost by 20. That wasn't as much as the polls had forecasted, but it was still a decisive loss. But she's clearly staying in Michigan tomorrow night, Super Tuesday next week. As she said, there's 21 states and territories. They're going to have their voices heard here in these next eight or nine days. And she is going to be able as she said, there's 21 states and territories. They're going to have their voices heard here in these next eight or nine days.

And she is going to be able, she says, we'll stay through there. And yes, the Koch brothers is a blow, but she's still raising money. She's still got a bunch of fundraisers scheduled later this week, too. So we will hear her voice for at least a little while longer. But Reverend Sharpton, I think it can't be overstated, though, that some AP exit polling from Saturday, a little over one in five GOP primary voters in South Carolina said they simply will not vote for Trump if he's their party's nominee in November. Now, let's assume that when we get to that binary choice of Trump and Biden, that those

numbers change a little bit. Maybe it's not one in five, but maybe it's one in eight. Even it's one in 10. Some of those Republicans will come home, but if they all don't, that's going to be a real problem for Trump. Remember, this is South Carolina. Think about how that's going to look in other more moderate states where Republicans look differently in Michigan or Wisconsin than they do in South Carolina. We talk a lot about this show, about how President Biden has some worries about his base and yeah that may be true but maybe just maybe donald trump does too donald trump definitely has uh problems in his base when i look at the vote in south carolina you couldn't get a more conservative red state

than south carolina and if you have those numbers of people voting against him, just about 40 percent voting against Donald Trump, which is no, I think it was three or four percent in the Democratic primary voter against Biden. I mean, there's no comparison. And then when you have 20 percent saying if he's convicted, they won't vote for him. Imagine you say whether the numbers will change slightly by November. It may change slightly or even more than slightly the other way if there is a trial and a conviction by then. So if I were Donald Trump, I would take the victory. But I would be very concerned because he's clearly within the numbers of being a real detriment to him in November if he, in fact, will be the nominee. But I do not think these numbers mean that this will help him if South Carolina is any measure. Well, coming up in just one minute, we're going to play something that Donald Trump said that's quite incredible.

He explains why he says more black Americans are supporting his candidacy. Well, yeah, yeah. Because he's been convicted of crimes. Wow. We'll talk about it in 60 seconds. 19 past the hour live look at Washington ahead of his win in South Carolina former President Trump spoke at the Black Conservative Federation annual gala on Friday and here is some of what he told the audience these lights are so bright in my eyes that I can't see too many people out there. But I can only see the black ones. I can't see any white ones. You see, that's how far I've come.

That's how far I've come. I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing. They were doing it because it's election interference. And then I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that's why the black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against.

And they actually viewed me as I'm being discriminated against. It's been pretty amazing. I'm being indicted for you, the American people. I'm being indicted for you, the American people. I'm being indicted for you, the black population. The mugshot, we've all seen the mugshot. And you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The black population. It's incredible. You see black people walking around with my mugshot. You know, they do shirts and they sell them for $19 a piece. It's pretty amazing.

Millions, by the way, millions of these things have been sold. Yes. So, Rev. Yeah. My God. Curious, Rev. Do you do? I don't know.

I mean, I suppose we could do a poll of black Americans and ask whether they are more likely to support somebody because they stole nuclear secrets from the White House. They stole secret war plans against Iran. They lied to the FBI about having those nuclear secrets and secret war plans, lied to the FBI and the Justice Department about having classified documents hidden in their beach beachfront resort. I mean, maybe black Americans relate to that. I don't know. I wouldn't think they would. Do they relate to Trump telling his I.T. director to destroy all the evidence? Another I.T. director testifying against him or to maintenance people to flood the room where the IT department is to destroy all. I just don't know. I just, boy, it does seem like a

stretch, doesn't it, Rev, to think that Donald Trump doing all of that and illegally paying off a porn star, according to the Manhattan DA, and trying to foment a riot on January the 6th. I'm not so sure. Rev, help me understand. Why would black Americans relate to Donald Trump? I don't understand the connection. Well, first of all, let's be clear. Donald Trump is using the stereotype of blacks being criminals, and therefore we would gravitate towards somebody in a mugshot. He's in a mugshot for trying to interfere with an election. Blacks were arrested to get the right to vote. That's what the marches were about. It is the epitome of an insult also when you think of the fact that it is a black man that is prosecuting him in Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, a black woman in Georgia, a black woman, the New York state attorney general, Letitia James.

So he's saying that black people would relate to someone indicted for trying to undermine the elections by blacks. But we would go with him rather than them. The other part of this that is so amazing is Donald Trump himself has death penalty of five young black and brown boys of raping a white woman in Central Park who went to jail falsely. It was later proven they didn't do it because of DNA. Donald Trump said no, punish them anyway. So all of a sudden, I've been in this movement for 40, 50 years. I've never seen him stand up for blacks that were treated wrong by the criminal justice system. But now he's a symbol of being persecuted.

He's being persecuted by black prosecutors, a black woman judge in the federal court in Washington, D.C. And any shameless blacks that are standing there applauding him needs to check the facts. Well, and Mika, he is also making racist comments against Letitia James, against Fannie Willis, against those prosecutors that happen to be people of color just because they're black. He yeah, I guess he didn't. Maybe they didn't fit that into his speech. Listen, first it was Navalny and now it's the African-American community. It's these comparisons are sick and grotesque. Biden Harris campaign co-chair, former Congressman Cedric Richmond responded in a statement, quote, Donald Trump claiming that black Americans will support him because of his

criminal charges is insulting. It's moronic and it's just plain racist. He thinks black voters are so uninformed that we won't see through his shameless pandering. He has another thing coming. So, John Heilman, I just, you know, then there's Tim Scott. I don't know. It's very on the Republican side, the the Trump acolytes, those that just stay with him through anything. It's beyond hard to watch. How do you think the overall black community will respond to this? Remember his comments the first time around. What do you have to lose? I mean, honestly, Mika, I don't think most of the most black voters are paying attention to the race at this point, and I don't think they're going to respond to this in particular in any way. But I would say that if you think about, you know, the things that people talk about as being correctly, think about what are the concerns

of the Biden campaign has going into a general election against Donald Trump. It's the it's not so much these head to head polls. It's that they've seen their support among certain core constituencies slip, including nonwhite voters dramatically. And at the core of that is there's a lot of black voters in the Biden campaign comes back and says, hey, wait until the race is clear, clear that Donald Trump is the nominee. We get to the fall and it's this binary choice between the two. The African-American community in America is going to remember that Donald Trump is an existential threat and they are going to come home to us. We have a lot of work to do, but they're going to come home. These kinds of comments and not these comments specifically, but the fact that Donald Trump

will make this kind of comment. He's made these kind of comments for years. As Rev points out, he will make them into the future because this is who Donald Trump is. I only see black faces. Look at how far I've come. Ha ha ha. That is the kind of thing that Trump will say, has been saying it for a long time, will keep saying it. And that is why the Biden campaign is right. They have at least something to cling to there when they say, hey, you know, when people start to focus on this race, our core constituencies will come back because they'll remember who Donald Trump is. And he'll be in front of them showing them who he is day after day after day. This is kind of a preview of the kind of thing they're counting on in the fall to bring African-American voters back to Joe Biden

with the kind of intensity they had back in 2016 and, or sorry, back in 2020. Yeah, a Trump advisor told me and made the same argument that the indictments would make black voters go for Trump, that the mugshot would make black voters go for Trump. Went on to add that the new line of Trump sneakers would appeal to black voters and would make them go on to try, which of course we can all leave that aside just how grossly offensive that is. So, Matt Lewis, let's just get, especially with those sneakers. Well, yeah, it also insults. I mean, my God, this is the worst. Matt Lewis, let's let's give you the final word here on on this particular moment. It's true. Haman's right in that the Republicans and Trump in particular think they've made inroads with black voters,

although he may have just hurt himself with these comments. It is an area of concern for Democrats. They know they have to work hard to get them back. And their constituencies are saying, hey, don't take us for granted. How do you see this dynamic playing out as November approaches? Well, to me, what's so interesting about this is, first of all, this is almost trickled down, right? So like Donald Trump didn't come up with the bogus, I'm Navalny, even though he unveiled it at CPAC last week, he didn't come up with that. That came from Dinesh D'Souza, Lee Zeldin. Similarly,

this racist notion that the mugshot would make Trump popular with African-Americans, that's like a year and a half old. I think it came from like Dinesh D'Souza and Laura Loomer, kind of fringe right wing activist types. Trump then at some point it gets to him. And, you know, there's an old expression in politics, hang a lantern on your problem. How do you put how do you make a mugshot into a positive? How do you make the fact that you've been supporting Putin for all of these years and his opposition leader was just poisoned or not? He was poisoned, then went to jail, died in jail. How do you put a happy face on that if you're Donald Trump? Their ability to come up with these bizarrely devious, in some cases, almost evil, brilliant, but also entirely flawed, obviously,

and bogus excuses is pretty unparalleled. I can't believe the audacity of doing it. Some of them, I think, are better than others. But look, I imagine that there's someone out there in middle America right now who's not paying that close of attention to politics, who now thinks, oh, yeah, Trump is just like Navalny. He's the victim. He's casting himself as the victim once again. If nothing else, it's impressive that he keeps trying. Well, and he keeps saying, I was indicted for nothing and they indicted me again and again and again, Joe. You know, that gets repeated. That reverberates across many news outlets. I guess I'll call them news.

But, you know, websites and TV networks without any contradiction, without any answer back to it. And so, like Matt says, people go, oh, my God, they indicted him for nothing. Now, you know, I just want to circle back really quickly. Again, we're talking about the media and its coverage. We have been hearing now since 2020 breathless coverage because this is what Trump campaign people constantly are telling the media. We're going to do really well with black voters. Black voters are breaking to us. It's going to be historic. We're going to I had I had one of the top people say we're going to get 20 percent of the black vote. You wait and see. You just we're doing better. And and it's all we hear. Why is Donald Trump? You hear it all the time. Why is Donald Trump doing so much better with black voters? Historically, perhaps it is because black men like him because he plays a macho. You know, can we just actually deal with the facts here for a second? In 2020, Donald Trump, according to AP, got 8% of the black vote. It's about what he got in 2016. 8%, 8%. Editors, think about it. John McCain in 2008 got 12% of the black vote. Not a landslide. You know, maybe Donald Trump will get

8, 9, 10, 11% of the black vote in 2024 if he's the Republican nominee. But I'm constantly hearing this. I'm constantly hearing, oh, he does so well with Hispanics. You know, Joe Biden's in. And by the way, we heard that in 2020 as well. Biden doesn't relate to Hispanics. Trump's going to do well. He got 32 percent of the Hispanic vote. When I was a Republican, all I heard were and all I read were stories after story after story after story about how Hispanics hated Republicans because Republicans like Mitt Romney only got about a third of the vote. Now, Trump does it and he's somehow breaking. You know, this is like Trump running around saying, I have the best economy ever, when he had the worst economy ever since Herbert Hoover and the worst economy since Herbert Hoover.

And even before COVID, he ranked seventh since like 1960. It just just he said it. So people believed it. But could you bust open this lie about Donald Trump doing well against black voters? Because it's a lie. The data shows it's a lie. And the data shows that people in the media keep repeating this lie that Trump somehow has some magic with black voters and is doing better than other Republicans when he's just not. He is not doing what they are saying. He clearly,

as you stated, did less than John McCain and other Republican candidates. And let's be real clear. We're talking about a man that was just found liable for lying about how many square feet he had in his bedroom. So why are we being surprised he'd lie about how many blacks are voting for him? He did not get the overwhelming majority or even a significant amount of black male voters. And he won't get it this time, particularly with insulting people over and over again. You must remember when they campaigned, the Republicans saying, well, Joe Biden didn't deliver on voting rights. It's because every Republican in the Senate and the Congress voted against the John Lewis bill. Joe Biden was pushing. Joe Biden pushed the George Floyd criminal justice reform act and gave an executive order when the Republicans wouldn't do it. Donald Trump instructed Republicans against every civil rights and voting rights efforts that we have tried to do since Biden has been president. We are not stupid, just like the judge was not stupid in New York, saying you gave square footage, false information to banks to get bank loans and you defrauded banks.

You're dealing with a con man. Why should blacks be exempt from him conning people about the number of blacks he has with him? He has Tim Scott, maybe plus a few senior communist for The Daily Beast. Matt Lewis, thank you so much for coming on this morning. We really appreciate it. And now to Ukraine. Saturday marked two years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And as the country enters its third year of war, soldiers on the front lines are reporting that they are running out of ammunition. Joining us now from Kiev is NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel. And Richard, you spoke with President Zelensky yesterday. What did he tell you?

So this is a very tough time for Ukraine. And President Zelensky gave first a major press conference here. And then I sat down with him as our our fifth conversation since the war began. And he stressed the need not to appease Vladimir Putin. He says that Vladimir Putin is still intent on conquering all of Ukraine and that he won't stop, that he will keep driving across this country and that he has a plan all the way through 2030. President Zelensky said he was quite convinced that Putin would win the rubber stamp elections next month, giving him another term, keeping him in office until 2030. And he said that people are mistaken

if they believe that Putin will stop. And he said that for the United States, helping Ukraine now is actually in the U.S. interest, because if you allow Putin to keep going and you appease him, that the U.S. at the end of the day will be drawn into a much larger war, as happened in World War II, where a dictator was appeased and then ultimately you had U.S. troops machine gunned on the beaches of Europe. So this was a this is a historic moment, a moment of reflection. And he said on practical terms, the hold up of U.S. weapons, because currently USAID is being held up by the House and Congress, is costing Ukrainian lives. And he said that Russia

is taking advantage of these delays to go on the offensive. He says that the Russian offensive is going to get worse and intensify over the next two months. And I asked him specifically, OK, so what happens? What do you do if the weapons and ammunition from the U.S. don't come? We will lose a lot of people. We will lose territories. United States focused also on interior questions, political questions, you know, this tough period, election period. And that's why it's a little bit slow. But the answer is, if to give us us strong package in one time, our steps will be more strong on the battlefield. We will lose less people and we will win.

Richard, you've spoken about how the troops are being rationed in terms of the ammunition that they can use. Can you talk a little bit about the manpower itself? I've heard that the median age of troops on the front line in Ukraine is now 40 years old. Are they running out of young people to fight this war for them? Yes, they are. They are right. They're running out. The troops that are on the front line are exhausted. And it is the probably number one domestic issue here. President Zelensky spoke to two audiences over this this weekend that Ukraine is using as a moment to reboot the war, to reflect on the war, to see what worked, what isn't working. And the main question he's been asked from from the Ukrainian population, from Ukrainian journalists, is what about the troops?

When will we get more a better system to have rotations in place? Because the troops that are on the front line can go out there and be on the same position in the frozen, muddy trenches for months at a time, sometimes many months at a time. And yet there is another segment of the population that is more or less sitting the war out here in the rear in places like Kyiv and other areas. And they're trying to figure out a way to get more consistent rotation to push people who are at the back out toward the front without losing military capacity. So it is something that they are deeply concerned about. They don't want to overextend and exhaust their troops because they do expect this is going to be a long war. And it all goes back to the weapons.

Without the weapons, Ukraine has to send its troops closer into combat. The weapons systems that they're asking for are long range weapons. And it's all about range. This conflict is all about range, because the closer you are to the front line, the more likely you are to be hit by Russian mortars or artillery or drones. If he could fire back from a few kilometers further back with a little bit of extra range, 10, 20, 30 kilometers of extra range, then Ukraine doesn't need to send as many troops right to the front line, lowering the exhaustion, lowering the casualty rate. He also, for the first time, said that 31,000 Ukrainian troops

have been killed so far in the war. Now, that figure is lower than some U.S. estimates, but that is the figure that he released officially this weekend. All right. NBC's Richard Engel reporting from Ukraine. Thank you very much. Let's go to Jonathan Lemire. I'm just curious if you have any indication from the White House or Capitol Hill as to the status of the aid package and how much hope it has it going through anytime soon. Well, the Senate returns this evening. The House comes back Wednesday from their President's Day recess. All eyes will be on the White House tomorrow, Mika. President Biden is hosting a bunch of congressional leaders, including Speaker Mike Johnson, to discuss a number of matters. And I've got some new reporting this morning that really looks at the lack of relationship between Biden and Johnson. Johnson is sort of an unknown when

he ascended to the speakership to the point where a lot of senior Biden aides called around to, because they didn't know Johnson, they called around to their congressional allies on the Hill, Republicans, Democrats alike, asking them what they thought of Johnson. And most of them, they didn't know him either outside of that big lie legislation, legal words in 2020. So and White House aides really doubt that Johnson can get a big deal done because his grasp on power is so tenuous. So right now, aides tell me they do think a Ukraine package is still possible, but it will come after a deal to get the government open. There's a government funding shutdown, Mika, at the end of this deadline, at the end of this week.

That has to happen first. The earliest a Ukraine package could get passed, I'm told, probably the middle of March. So that will mean more weeks with Ukrainian soldiers not having the ammunition they need. Even then, it's not a sure thing, as there still is a possibility of at least a partial government shutdown for a few days. All right. Coming up, a conversation on disinformation and the harm it is doing to America. It's the subject of the new book from former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuaid. And she joins us next on Morning Joe. So it's all the way you go Don't you wanna talk Don't you feel like you know

I did for nothing, for something that is nothing. They were doing it because it's election interference. I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident. I am a dissident. November 5th will be our new liberation day. But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day, their judgment day.

That was former President Trump campaigning over the weekend, once again blaming the numerous indictments against him as an attempt by Democrats to sabotage his reelection campaign. That argument seems ridiculous at first, but when it's parroted by officials over and over again, it becomes more believable in the eyes of voters. A new poll this month shows nearly three-fourths of Republicans now agree the federal election interference case against Trump is being conducted unfairly. The rise of disinformation, especially in politics, has become one of the biggest threats to free and fair elections. The new book from former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuaid, Attack from Within, How Disinformation is Sabotaging America, explains how it's done and what to do to stop it. I don't know if it can be stopped at the rate we're going, Barbara, so I can't wait to hear about this. I mean, you saw right there just over and

over again, Donald Trump either exaggerating things or lying flat out. And we know it reverberates across many TV networks and websites completely not answered to with the truth or not pushed back upon. And it just lives out there, those lies. How do you how does one in America counter disinformation so that voters get the truth? So, Mika, one of the things I talk about in the book is how people are choosing tribe over truth. And so it doesn't matter so much what the statement is. What matters is who says it. And so what Donald Trump and others have done is to so demonize their opponents and create the impression that there are only two sides to every issue, that I'm on the side of good and my opponent is on the side of evil. I have so demonized them that you shouldn't believe anything they say and that all of these allegations against me are fake news. It's all just an effort to

interfere with the election and other kinds of things. So what can we do about that? Well, there are a number of things we can do. I think at the government level, there are things we can do, for example, with regulation of social media, which has been allowed to grow in some ways wonderfully. There's been a lot of innovation in tech, but we have allowed things like anonymous accounts, like bots to amplify messages that may be not very popular, but appear to be garnering likes and shares. We allow algorithms to push us toward content that outrages us. So that is one thing I think that we need to cover at the governmental level. I think we need to reform the way we do campaign finance after the Citizens United case. There is all kinds of dark

money in our system and the people who have the power are benefiting from that. And so it's difficult to make headway there. But I think there are also things we can do at an individual level. Number one, we have to have the discipline ourselves to try to figure out what is truth and what is false. One of the things that disinformers do is to create an illusion that truth doesn't matter. Truth is for suckers. People become cynical and then numb and then they disengage altogether from politics. We need to take responsibility for ourselves to make sure that we are learning the truth. And we can do that with fact checking websites and by turning to media that is credible, things like factcheck.org and Snopes and other organizations that work to debunk false claims online. You know, Barbara, this is this is Barbara.

This is such an important book come out right now. Thank you so much for for doing this, writing this book. And thank you for being with us today. I want to let's let's blow up a myth here that it's just rubes, you know, in some far away place away from media outlets, mainstream media outlets that are believing this because it's not. It's highly educated people with advanced degrees repeat a lot of these lies. I have two friends of mine who will say, oh, well, one said, oh, I don't I don't look at news anymore because it's just so hard to figure out who's telling the truth. And yet she goes on, you know, every every trash Web site out there is spreading, spreading these lies.

And the second thing is, is, you know, I had another friend that I tried to work through, a very close friend, for months. Bring me your lie. He brings a lie. Of course, most of them were from Epoch Times, a Chinese cult's conspiracy website. And I found that after I disproved one thing after another, if he'd even admit to that, then another lie would pop up. Well, what about this? Well, what about that? And it just reminds me, Hitler talking about, you know, just flooding the zone with lie after lie, after lie, after lie, after a while, people get exhausted and just give up. This is happening to people with advanced degrees. Yeah. So this is this concept and we see it in Russia, too, with Vladimir Putin.

They call it the fog of unknowability. I'm going to flood the zone with so much information that people don't know what to think. And so they check out of politics altogether. But as you said, it isn't rubes. It's plenty of smart people. But we have been convinced that we should choose tribe over truth and care more about which party is aligned with this and which is not. People don't want to change their minds because they've been told that the other side is the devil and is the radical leftist that will ruin America, you know, woke culture and other things. I find that one tactic that I talk about in the book that can be useful is to talking with people and asking about the evidence that supports their claim.

You know, it isn't so much the facts that are out there, but what are the underlying facts that support it? What's the data and what is the evidence? You know, I come from a world of courts where you can't just say things and have a jury believe it to be true. You have to show them evidence to back it up. And instead, if all they're talking about is somebody said something, that shouldn't be sufficient. And so I think being patient, being kind with our friends, but also recognizing that there are people out there who are deliberately going along with the Khan to advance their political agenda or personal agenda or profit agenda. We saw it with Fox News when they had to pay the $700 million defamation settlement to Dominionion voting systems when they fostered and sponsored lies about machines flipping votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. And so we need to overcome.

There's a lot of force out there for lies. But I think to have America means a democracy that is based on truth. Barbara, so great to see you here on set and congrats again on the book. In terms of combating disinformation, you point out some of the tactics that Donald Trump uses when he is spreading disinformation. One of them is the power of repetition. He says things over and over and over and over until his followers just believe them. They accept them as truth. How do we as the media or as everyday Americans combat that, which is a very potent tactic? Yeah, it sure is, especially if people are in their own news bubbles, watching Fox News or on Facebook or other social media

outlets where they are seeing their own little bubble of information bombarding them with the same kinds of claims. One thing that's really difficult, I think, is we don't always see what they are seeing, right? We all have our own social media feeds where, you know, everyone we see is saying something that makes sense and is consistent. I know from time to time, my sister will say, well, everyone on Facebook is saying it. So it's not just one person. It must be true. And I say, well, not everybody on my social media feeds is saying that kind of thing. And so we need to encourage people to expand their horizons, to talk to other people. I think one thing is just that we've lost is social capital, getting out there and talking to real people, whether that's in the workplace, people are working from home or in labor unions,

in social clubs, with our neighbors, and talking to real people, as opposed to relying online to what we're seeing in our social media bubbles. Barb, I wonder, you know, there's this problem, the problem of disinformation has been a problem, and particularly in our elections for a very acute way since starting in 2016, where it's become a much more pervasive and acute thing. And we just saw this example of a new form of this, which was this story in New Hampshire, where this guy we just discovered the other day, someone who decided to go on to use some very cheap voice technology, AI technology, to be able to imitate Joe Biden. This guy just got

hired to do that and then mess around with the New Hampshire primary. I wonder whether how much the in your book you get into this question, because although the AI problem is it's really it's an accelerating this. So the larger problem, which is this information, but you have to have these pervasive, very powerful tools that allow for deep fakes of video, deep fakes of audio, indistinguish, making things indistinguishable between truth and lies that people see on their screens. Is there a regulatory solution to that? Is there a legal solution to that? Is there a norms-based solution to that? It's coming, and it's coming really fast. And everybody's kind of looking up right now and going, man, this election could end up being the AI election and not in a good way. Yeah. So the deep fakes and artificial intelligence that you speak about, I do talk about in the book.

And I think we need to address it before it gets out of hand. I think we failed to do that with social media. We are already way behind in terms of regulating social media. Let's not fall behind so quickly when it comes to AI. And there are a number of very simple regulatory steps that we could take. Number one, not including AI in political advertising, just saying that is not to be done when you've got creating false recordings of Joe Biden, for example, that you just mentioned. Or you can imagine a visual of a political opponent saying something or doing something that would offend many voters. And so keeping that out of politics, social media itself could have norms that says we don't take ads that include AI when it comes to political ads.

And I think another part of it comes from educating ourselves to not be susceptible when we see something to question it, to understand what it is, to ask what is the source before we believe something. I once fell for a fake social media post about Patrick Mahomes saying that he would not play another down for the Kansas City Chiefs until they changed their name to something that was inoffensive to Native Americans. And I believed it to be true. So I spread it all around. And only later, when I was talking with my husband and son,

did I realize that, hey, you know, now that I say it out loud, I wonder if that's really true. And so before you pass something on and share it with others, questioning the source. Oh, my goodness. John Heilman, I've been there. I've done that. I, you know, it's always bad if I get a call from Alex in the middle of the day.

I'm like, oh, my gosh, who did I retweet that passed on some false information? There is one this weekend that was questionable. I didn't pass it along. But we always have to be careful. And speaking of misinformation, you you you're you're now officially the morning Joe Alms Budsman. I'm just now reading a tweet from you from 603. So that was at the top of the show. You'd said that at one point I said Trump had been, quote, convicted of crimes. Correct. Did I say that? I didn't tweet anything, Joe, anywhere. No, no, no, no.

You sang, though. I said that at the top of the show. Yes, earlier in the show you said a thing about Donald Trump getting convicted of crimes, and I was trying to point out to you that he'd been indicted for crimes, but not convicted of crimes. That's correct. Okay. By the way, yeah, if I ever do anything like that, because Kat is going, yeah, you did, yeah, you did. Please, everybody. OK, by the way. Yeah. If I ever do anything like that,

because Kat is going, yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. Please, everybody. Hey, oh, hey, because this is so important as we're wading through 91 counts. It's so important. Like, for instance, in New York, do not say Trump was found guilty of sexual assault by a jury. He was found liable for sexual assault and he wasn't found guilty of raping E. Jean Carroll. Actually, the judge said that, yes, we we know he's been found liable. This is a civil, not criminal suit. But what he did was, in fact, rape. If you judge it by how the dictionary would define rape, if you judge it by how the dictionary would define rape if you judge it by how the u.s army defines rape if you judge it by how most uh entities define rape donald trump raped eugene

carroll but you have to you have to say the jury didn't find him guilty of rape It's the judge who had said that after the jury found him liable for I think it was sexual. Was it sexual assault, Jonathan Lemire, sexual abuse? What was it exactly? Well, you're right. He said it would meet the definition of rape. Well, actually, let's go to Barbara McQuaid, the lawyer here. Let's go to Barbara here who will answer this more expertly than I can. What was the finding the judge found in that case? Yeah, sexual assault. Right. And liable is the correct term. But then the judge did go further to say in common parlance what Donald Trump did and what the jury found he did would constitute rape. Yes. There we go. Would constitute would constitute rape against E.G. Carroll. OK, we need to be careful. Thank you so much, Barbara McQuaid, for being here.

The new book is titled Attack from Within. How disinformation is sabotaging America. It's out tomorrow. And we want to have Barbara back on tomorrow because this book, Attack from Within, is so critically important in 2024.