Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/9/24

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Biden won’t be charged in classified docs case; special counsel cites instances of ‘poor memory’

Remember how a while back they found classified documents at Joe Biden's house and Merrick Garland appointed a special prosecutor to look into it? Well, today we got the results of the investigation in a report and the special counsel will not seek criminal charges against President Biden. So if you're in a fantasy league for presidential indictments, it's still Trump 91, every other president ever, zero. Now you got that? Can you clean that up? Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, February 9th. Good to have Joe, Willie, and me here together.

Along with us, the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. NBC News National Affairs Analyst John Heilman. Former U.S. Attorney and MSNBC contributor Chuck Rosenberg. And NBC News Justice and Intelligence Correspondent Ken Delanian is with us this morning. We have a lot going on. We'll start with the special counsel investigating President Biden for his handling of classified documents will not bring charges against the president. That's the conclusion. Robert Herr wrote in his report

released yesterday, quote, our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. He goes on to write that the president's actions, quote, present serious risks to national security. But then later in the report, Herr conceded that the evidence, quote, does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The special counsel wrote that the president could also portray himself at trial as an elderly man with a poor memory who would be sympathetic to a jury. Her description, a neurologist and a lawyer. Let me just finish. But I agree. No, but we kind of need to stop there. A neurologist. You're talking about her. Her from Trump University. No. And I mean, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've just I've got to stop right here. I know we want to go on and finish this report, but I've just got to start. And Ken Delaney and so bizarre. And there's so many people that immediately heard this.

These random, random conclusions, irrelevant conclusions, politically charged Trump like Trump like ramblings who, first of all, wondered why in the world he would put that in a report, his neurological assessment of Joe Biden. And secondly, why Merrick Garland would release garbage like that in the Justice Department report. Can you give us any insight? Because it sure sounds like James Comey in 2016, who July couldn't indict Hillary Clinton legally. So he decided to hold a press conference and indict her politically. Joe, I understand where you're coming from on that. I think a lot of people feel that way.

But let me give you the explanation that I have heard from Justice Department officials and some insight into why that was in there, though it did seem gratuitous to a lot of people. If Rob Herr is saying, I have evidence that Joe Biden willfully retained classified information, then in fact, he didn't just find those documents in 2022, as we all thought. He actually found them in 2017, and he's recorded saying that to his ghostwriter. So why isn't he charging him? Well, he has to explain that. So the explanation is Joe Biden said he didn't remember. He was recorded saying, I found classified documents in my house in Virginia to the ghostwriter.

He's recorded disclosing classified information to the ghostwriter according to this report. But he says he forgot that. So Rob Herr has to explain that, in fact, the larger context here is that Mr. Biden has forgotten a lot of things. He forgot the dates that he was vice president, according to this report. He forgot at one point during the interview when his son died. He forgot a key figure in the Afghanistan debate that he cared a lot about, which side of the debate he was on. And so Rob Herr felt like he had no choice, I'm told, but to lay out in detail the faults he found with Joe Biden's memory and explain how that would be

perceived in front of a jury, because he's going to have to go up to Congress and justify to a bunch of angry Republicans why Donald Trump is being charged with retaining classified documents, but Joe Biden isn't. So that's the explanation. A lot of people may not like it. Maybe people thought he went too far. And, you know, I've obviously heard from people who speak for Mr. Biden who say, you know, look, how did Rob Herr evaluate his memory in a five hour interview? I've been with him, you know, for years, and I think his memory is a lot better than that. That's a fair point, I think. You know, Rob Herr is ultimately going to have to go to Congress and he's going to have to answer for this. But that's the explanation. Well, I mean, it's so gratuitous. And John Heilman, something else that jumped out is,

again, the word willfully, that he willfully retained the documents. Then you go a couple of hundred pages in, it goes, well, it's natural to assume that Mr. Biden put the Afghanistan documents in the box on purpose and knew they were there. Quote, there is, in fact, a shortage of evidence on these points. So 200 pages early, he goes, he willfully and then 200 pages later said, well, we actually don't have evidence on that point. And he did that a couple of times throughout here. It certainly seemed like a politically charged document. It used to be pre-James Comey. You would either indict somebody or you wouldn't indict somebody. But now in the political sphere, again, James Comey can't indict Hillary Clinton during a presidential election legally. So what does he do? He holds a press conference and indicts her politically.

Same thing happened yesterday. He didn't have any evidence. There's so many. And we're going to go through these. It is the one thing that he did right. He talked about the distinctions between Donald Trump, who lied, stole, lied, hid, obstructed, lied again, had his lawyers lie under oath, continued to lie, continued to hide, continued to obstruct, told his employees to lie on and on and on.

Joe Biden turned it over immediately. Of course, I don't expect liars on other news channels or liars in other parties to actually tell the truth. I don't expect them to do that. But that is there are those clear distinctions. But even here, though, John Heilman, you have a situation where he says time and time again, we don't really have any evidence that he willfully took and retained this evidence. Right. Well, first, Joe, I'll say that literally before we before we started the program, I was saying that Chuck Rosenberg sitting here, can you explain to me how this is different from

what Jim Comey did in in what we think of as in 2016 as Comey won his first intercession in the election in that case you're referring to in July, I think, of of of 2016 when he did what you just said. And I, like you, am old enough to remember when prosecutors either charged someone and issued a charging document or they issued a declension. And the declension was one sentence, which says we decline to prosecute. Chuck, I think, is going to talk about something that I don't know as much about in the detail of it. The difference between back in those days when we had the independent counsel statute and what we have now, where we have special counsels and what the regulations are and what they have to do.

I will say that there's no doubt in my mind that this special prosecutor could have written the same report without using these words,ly man with a poor memory. I'm, you know, like you, I'm a simple country journalist. I can find a lot of different ways to say this without saying something like that. John, I'm a simple country lawyer. John, I'm a simple country lawyer. And I know. What's the headline?

What should the headline from this report be? Not indicted. Not guilty. Not the evidence to indict him. It's not there. And the clear differences, as he wrote, between Trump and Biden. That should be. And I would have thought. Hold on, John. Hold on, John. Do you think that this guy is so naive? You think this guy is so stupid? Do you guys think this guy is so clueless that he didn't know by putting words in that Donald Trump would love for him to put in there that that wasn't going to be the headline for the New York Post, that that wouldn't be

on everything I knew? He's a Trumppper who knew. Right. So why in the world? Why in the world would would the Justice Department allow that dicta to be in there? It's gratuitous. Well, and he knows it's gratuitous. And it was bad faith. It was bad faith that he did it. And it was even and it was even worse judgment that the Justice Department allowed that garbage to be released. Right. And I think that's now raising the second point. I mean, I'm continually stunned by people who I think should know better in Washington, D.C., who turn out to be just that naive or just that stupid. I remember met this man. I'm not going to impute his motives. I've never spoken

to him about it. So I will say, I think you would have, you, probably you, I, Jonathan Lamere, Willie Geist, Chuck Rosenberg, at least, I think we all would have known that if you wrote elderly man with poor memory, that that would end up right here on the wood of the New York Post and will be echoed in campaign advertising out of Donald Trump's mouth, et cetera, et cetera. We all would have known that. I don't know if the special counsel did know that. I do think that you've raised a really fundamental question. And it's a question that what I hear from inside the Biden administration is that a lot of the fury last night was directed as it may be more at Merrick Garland than at her, I think because

of the fact that they have always thought that this special counsel was unnecessary. The facts here suggest that they may be wrong about that in the sense that things that Biden has found to have done here and some of this, some of the evidence that the special counsel brought to bear just on terms of how badly mishandled some of these classified documents were, they may be wrong. Garland may have been right to appoint the special counsel to look into this for a variety of reasons, but they've been mad at him since then. And now they're really mad at him because the question of why you would allow this report to come out with this language in it, that does rest in Merrick Garland's hands, does rest in his lap, so to speak.

And that's where I think the buck may stop here when we ultimately talk about who's responsible. It is so, it is such a repeated James Comey. And the fact, you know, James Comey writing the letter he did 10 days beforehand, acting like, yeah, I'm just playing it down the middle. Really? And for Merrick Garland to not learn from 2016 that actually when you're involved politically, when you're involved in a political situation like this, that you don't actually take care to be careful at what you do. Well, he didn't. Comey didn't. Her just like Comey decided, I want to put myself in the middle of this campaign.

Yeah. Well, to your point, Willie, her wrote that unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts. Herr continues, quote, most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then lie about it. Whereas Biden said, turn it over like this is the clear information that should be important to the American people in reading this. But it's clouded by all this information that this guy put in,

her included, about the president's age, that seems very distracting. In many ways, the conclusion is the most important thing here. And when you think about the alternative, which he mentions in this, Donald Trump and what he did with documents, you would think that's where the outcry would be.

That's exactly right. You nailed both of the important points. The first line of the executive summary before her even gets into the report reads like this. We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this manner. He goes on to say, and this isn't just because of a Department of Justice policy that you shouldn't prosecute a president, all of those things. No charges are warranted. And then, as you just outlined, he goes in some detail to lay out how Biden's case is different from Donald Trump's case and all the ways in which Joe Biden did the right things, that he opened himself up to a voluntary interview, that he agreed to have his home

and offices searched, that he did not obstruct justice as Donald Trump did time and time again. And then Chuck Rosenberg, the special counsel here, peppers in all of his personal observations, his views about Joe Biden's mental acuity and his ability to recall. Obviously, Joe Biden's legal team has come out to rebut all that and to point out that it's wholly inappropriate for any of that to be in here. This is supposed to be a legal analysis of the case. So when you first read through this as somebody who's been through some of this, what was your reaction? Yeah, so let me start down a path, Willie, that will make me unbelievably unpopular this morning. So number one, under the special counsel regulations, her, the special counsel, has an obligation. He shall write a report. He must write a report. If you're writing a report

to the attorney general of the United States and you're recommending that someone not be prosecuted, which I think is the right recommendation, then you would tell the attorney general why you think that person ought not be prosecuted. I was a federal prosecutor for a long time. We assess our witnesses. We assess our cases. We talk about them. We talk about it. We talk about the factors that we think will and will not play in front of a jury. If Rob Herr's assessment was that Mr. Biden was sympathetic or that he had a faulty memory, that is absolutely something you would tell the attorney general in a confidential report. When the report goes from Herr to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, it is a confidential report.

Then it is up to Merrick Garland whether or not to release it in part or in whole. I think this is a flaw in the special counsel regulations. When I was a prosecutor, if I decided a case was not meritorious, I would close it. Period. The end. I wouldn't talk about it. I would close it. But as a special counsel, you can't do that. You must write the report. So it doesn't make sense to me, Willie, that if I'm telling the attorney general of the United States why someone ought not be prosecuted, that I wouldn't also tell him exactly why I came to that conclusion. So I was speaking to senior Biden officials all last night, and they shared a lot of this

unhappiness with this report. They do feel like some of the comments were gratuitous. They do point out that when Mike Pence, another former vice president who had classified documents, who also, unlike Donald Trump, didn't obstruct, simply return them, there was no special counsel. There was no investigation of this magnitude like it was for President Biden. They do feel like they made the same Comey comparisons that we are making all morning long. At the same time, comparisons that we are making all morning long. At the same time, they recognize that though legally this is a significant win for the president and it's a relief, politically it's a very damaging day. The president was already for a few days pushing back against, he had mixed up foreign leaders with their deceased predecessors a couple of different times in recent days. Poll after poll shows that age is his biggest vulnerability,

that there are questions even among Democrats as to whether he is up for the job, even though those close to him insist absolutely he is. And now this, this characterization by the special counsel, the details of the things that he forgot are going to be damaging for this president. And President Biden, I am told and reported last night, Willie, was furious in particular about the claim that he forgot when Beau Biden died. He put he

spoke to some House lawmakers at a retreat yesterday, privately cursed out this idea. They said this is nonsense. This is my son. You could see his anger last night in that hastily called news conference that really struck a chord with him. And he felt like he had to respond. And now this is going to be once again, a major political issue as Republicans, first of all, claim double standard because Trump got indicted and Biden didn't. Although, of course, we know the facts support those conclusions, but they, again, they're going to lean on Biden's age, even though Trump, of course, himself has had many of misstatements in recent days as well. So, John, let's get to that point. You're right. In special counsel

Hurst's report, he said that President Biden could not recall the day his son, Beau, died here in that quickly called press conference last night is how the president responded to that. I know there's some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There's even reference that I don't remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly when I was asked the question I thought to myself wasn't any of their damn business. I don't need anyone. I don't need anyone to remind me when he passed away passed away simple truth is i sat for a five-hour interview over two days of events

going back 40 years at the same time i was managing international crisis their task was to make a decision about whether to move forward with charges in this case. That's their decision to make. That's the council's decision to make. That's his job. And they decided not to move forward. For any extraneous commentary, they don't know what they're talking about. It has no place in this report.

The bottom line is the matter is now closed. I'm going to continue what I've always focused on, my job of being president of the United States of America. I'm well-meaning, and I'm an elderly man, and I know what the hell I'm doing. I've been president, and I put this country back on its feet. I don't need his recommendation. My memory is not good. My memory is fine.

My memory, take a look at what I've done since I've become president. None of you thought I could pass any of the things I got passed. How'd that happen? You know, I guess I just forgot what was going on. So Joe and Mika, the president echoing the language in the report when he said, yes, I am a well-meaning and an elderly man. But in a moment that should have been a vindication for him, that there are no charges warranted against him.

And let's turn the page. The White House, obviously, as John said, felt the need to rush out there at eight o'clock at night from the White House and get in front of and push back on some of the other language, the gratuitous language about his mental acuity. Well, look, I think that when you look at a very bad day for President Biden and then you compare it to Donald Trump with 91 counts, sexual assault, fraud, sex with a porn star and everything he says every day. The day the day that President Biden had yesterday is like just another Tuesday for Donald Trump with far worse things. Well, that he's putting on the table. It's actually another.

It's Tuesday. I'm not as freaked out by this. Without the 91 counts against him. that he's putting on the table. It's actually another. It's choosing Donald Trump without the 91 counts against him. Let's bring you right now, Democratic member and judge saying he's guilty of rape. Let's bring a Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee, Congressman Dan Goldman of New York. Congressman, this this seems an awful lot like 2016 and James Comey saying, well, geez, I can't indict Hillary Clinton legally, so I'm going to indict her politically and hold a press conference and attack her. This language that he used, this gratuitous language that he used, again, given the sensitivities of the case, he knew it was going to end up on the front page

of pro-Trump newspapers. He knew it. And it's exactly what happened. What's your reaction? Well, my reaction is there are a number of highly questionable and seemingly partisan and political assessments by the special counsel. First of all, the evidence that President Biden knew he had classified materials while he was a private citizen, and that's important because otherwise he was perfectly legal. It was perfectly legal for him to have it, was so thin. And for him to even conclude that he willfully retained, I think is a flawed conclusion. The evidence does not support that. So that's right off the bat that you have this questionable conclusion. And then he goes on to do a full

analysis. And while I agree with Chuck that the credibility of witnesses matters, the credibility of the potential defendant is something altogether very different, especially when one volunteers for an interview, because he's not going to testify. A jury is not going to end up having to analyze Joe Biden. And especially when you're saying that the charges or the evidence does not meet the charges, that is completely gratuitous and completely unnecessary. My understanding as well, Joe, is that during these five hours, President Biden went through in great detail many conversations that he had with various other people from years and years ago. So he cherry picked a couple of examples that perhaps we don't know, perhaps are in context, perhaps are out of

context, related to very sensitive issues such as his son, really just to bash him, just to impugn him. And it is excessive. It is gratuitous. And the last thing I'll say, Joe, is it's wrong. I have had a number of conversations with President Biden over the last couple of years, including on October 7th, the day before this interview when I was in Israel, and he called me. And his mastery and understanding of the geopolitical situation on the ground in Israel and in the surrounding region was remarkable. He was recounting to me all the various different things they had done in the first couple hours of the war. He was completely on top of everything that was going on.

And his experience because of his age and his wisdom has been invaluable to this country as we have navigated through the Russia-Ukraine war and now the Middle East. So there is a flip side to the age thing, which Joe Biden has has demonstrated very well over the last couple of years. Congressman, good morning. As we just laid out for the last 20 minutes or so, the headline is clear out of this report, which is that no charges are warranted and also the distinctions between what President Biden did and what former President Donald Trump did in terms of obstructing justice, sitting voluntarily for an interview and all of those things. Like it or not, all that stuff from the special counsel about the age now is out in the public view, even some Democrats cringing a little because it raises an issue that's been out there.

Do you have any concerns at all, not just because of what we read in this report, which a lot of people on this show don't think should have been in the report, but do you have concerns right now about President Biden's age as it moves toward the general election? No, I don't have any concerns. And that's from personal interactions. He's got a terrific team around him. He is very knowledgeable and experienced. And understanding is that he was behind the scenes. And with because of his experience negotiating over so many different years, he knew exactly where the negotiation was going to go. And he took Kevin McCarthy's shirt. I think President Biden is incredibly experienced, knowledgeable, wise.

And I don't have concerns about his age. Remember, the job of the president is to guide our country. It is not to be a cheerleader for the United States. It is to govern our country. And I think when you see the juxtaposition of how he handled this case, fully cooperating, respecting the rule of law, respecting the independence of the Department of Justice, and you juxtapose that with Donald Trump, what you see is someone who really cares about our country and cares about our democracy juxtaposed and opposite to a criminal, to someone who is clearly out for himself, does not believe the law applies to him and is a danger to this country. And that's the choice that the American people are going to have.

All right. Democratic member of the House Oversight and Homeland Security Committees, Congressman Dan Goldman, thank you for being with us this morning. So, Chuck Rosenberg, this was not the only major story yesterday. The morning was dominated, of course, by the Supreme Court. And they heard oral arguments based on Colorado's efforts to take Donald Trump off the ballot. And it seemed, for those of us listening along from the audio stream provided, that the justices just simply weren't buying it. They were pretty sympathetic to what Donald Trump's lawyers were saying. And certainly there seems a suggestion that Trump is going to remain on that ballot. Give us your assessment, some of your major takeaways from what was truly a historic day at the court. Yeah, a fascinating day. I kind of nerded out

a little bit on that, Jonathan. The Colorado voters, the plaintiffs, the ones who brought the case challenging Mr. Trump's eligibility to be on the ballot, had a very tough path to navigate. They had a win essentially on seven or eight questions, including whether Mr. Trump took an oath that would subject him to the operation of that disqualification provision, whether the presidency is covered by the 14th Amendment Section 3 removal provision, a whole bunch of questions. And so the odds of them winning at the outset were relatively small. But I was surprised a little bit by what seemed to be the unanimity of the court, liberal and conservative justices. For instance, Justice Katonji Brown Jackson suggested, I think stated, that the 14th Amendment post-Civil War was not created to give more power

to the states, such as Colorado, to make determinations about federal elections, but really to constrain the states. And so she thought that the Colorado voters' position was flipped, that they were off, that they were wrong, that the intent behind the amendment, again, was to constrain the states. And that was a position that Elena Kagan seemed to embrace, that Chief Justice Roberts seemed to embrace. There's a lot of paths for Trump to win here and for the Colorado voters to lose. I was a little surprised by the apparent unanimity. It strikes me that it's going to be a lopsided decision, not as close as some people might have imagined it to be. Lots of reasons for that. I found it very interesting. I'd be very surprised, Jonathan, as I sit here, if Mr. Trump didn't prevail. Ken Delaney in The New York Times headline says Supreme Court appears set to rule that states can't disqualify Trump. And the headline on The Wall Street Journal, Trump ballot

spot appears safe. Do you agree from what you heard yesterday? Yeah, 100 percent. I think Chuck got it completely right. It's really it was so interesting listening to the liberal justices because it's you know, it's clearly against their partisan interest to argue the way they were and to see it the way they did. So it's a lesson for us all. Right. Be intellectually honest. And when Elena Kagan spoke first yesterday, I remember the moment she really took the air out of the balloon of people that want to see Donald Trump excluded from the ballot. She said, wait a second, is it really does it really make sense that one state could decide this for the rest of the nation? And, you know, and then she went on to sort of argue and explain why she thought the 14th Amendment didn't say what the plaintiffs are saying it said. And Katonji Brown Jackson pointed out that the presidency is not one of the lists of office specifically enumerated in that provision that would be excluded. So it was a fascinating day. It was an interesting day reading the text of the Constitution and learning about the intent of

the people who wrote the 14th Amendment. And at the end of the day, if people want to get rid of Donald Trump, they're going to have to vote against him. He's not going to be excluded from the ballot. All right. NBC's Ken Delaney and former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg. Thank you both so much. Thanks, guys. So 60 years ago today, this happened. Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles. The Beatles! And if I'm out of the way, I'll ride home every day. And I'll send all my love to you. You know, 60 years ago. 60 years?

60 years ago. And I will tell you, my parents were young, 20-somethings when they watched that and were just shocked, telling me they were just absolutely shocked by what they saw. I know Billy Graham stayed home from church that night. He heard that it was going to be such a big event and I guess John Heilman's so concerned about it. So it would be easy to say, well, who would have guessed that these four guys from Liverpool playing on Ed Sullivan's show on a Sunday night in February would have changed music and culture

and the world we live in? But it did. Yeah. I mean, an audience that night, Joe, almost as big, almost as big as the audience for Jonathan Lemire on way too early. 73 million people, 73 million people watch that, uh, that first appearance on itself. And they did a bunch of them over the course of, uh, 64 into 65, but that was the big one. Uh, they did all my love until there was you. She loves you. Took a break, came back and saying, I saw her standing there and I want to hold your

hand. Five songs, uh, 73 million people among the people watching that night live, uh, who would make some music that we all care about. Bruce Springsteen, Chrissy Hine from the pretenders, uh, uh, Billy Joel, Tom Petty. Do you think that generation of people who shaped rock and roll, all of them say the same thing. The people I just mentioned, and you can make a list of five times that long, they all say they watched the Beatles that night and it changed their life.

The world shifted on its axis. They decided that this was what they were going to do, that something new was being born. Not just a new kind of music, but this is the moment when the American teenager was born. This is like the moment when youth culture in the world, global youth culture, born that night. There's almost, I mean, you can't pin it to one single thing ever in these situations, right? These are large movements. But in a rare circumstance in which that performance by that band at that moment, you can basically say that

was where a lot of what the modern world is now in culture started. And there were two events, Willie, that changed different parts of America, different parts of American culture, American politics three months before that. just three months before that was the assassination of JFK, which changed American politics forever and so many other things for all of all, it seems for the worst. Three months later, you have the Beatles there on Ed Sullivan. And again, you talk to any musician, you talk to any any leader, young young person who became a leader in a later generation, you know, chances are very good they'll tell you that they were watching that night.

And it really did. It shifted youth culture and later American culture on its axis that night. Yeah, John, you have to underline that number that John just said. It's 73 million viewers. And that was in a country at the time of like 180 190 million people so you can do the math on that that's absolutely incredible and you're both right you listen to any rock star of the last 60 years now and they will tell you that that night february 9th 1964 was like a lightning bolt that just came down and struck them and said

okay the culture is different now and i want to that. I want to be some version of that. Also, Joe, we always talk about the big moments. Two days earlier, February 7th, the Beatles arrive at JFK. And I think, you know, you look now we have such access to celebrities, we have such access to stars. They film themselves on TikTok eating breakfast and all that, that just the very sight of these guys who were in some ways mythological getting off a plane at JFK brought out thousands of fans. And then they had that famous press conference at the Plaza. It was such a different time and culture that to lay eyes on these guys was thrilling. And it really was, Joe, I think,

a couple of days that changed not just American culture, but global culture. The press asked George Harrison, like, how did you get your hair that long? And he said, you should have seen it yesterday. Oh, my God. All right. Coming up. And then ask Paul McCartney. Everybody's here. Are you really are you guys really, you know, that good? What do you say to people who say you're not good? And I think it was Paul McCartney who said, we're not. So why are you here? Everybody laughed and they were off to the races. All right. We'll talk about this more a little later. We do have four hours coming up on Morning

Show. We have a packed show ahead. Israel has stepped up airstrikes in Gaza, even as the White House warns against an Israeli offensive in one southern city. We'll have the latest on the ongoing war and how the president's comments last night impact that. Plus, our next guest says the Republican Party appears to have entered a new level of capitulation to Donald Trump. Mark Leibovich joins us to explain. Also ahead, NFL legend Emmett Smith will join us with his Super Bowl predictions ahead of Sunday's big game. Pensacola's own. And a pretty in pink reunion. Almost. Actors John Cryer and Molly Ringwald will both be here separately with their previews of their brand new shows. You're watching Morning Joe.

We'll be right back. We deserve leaders who stand for principle, who unite us all behind shared values, who cast aside anger for love. That is the standard we should expect from everybody. If you love our country and love your children as much as I know that you do, stand and speak and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution. That was Texas Senator Ted Cruz back in 2016. Remember him? When he was booed for refusing to endorse Donald Trump as the party's presidential nominee, instead famously

telling Americans to vote their conscience. Fast forward eight years later and Cruz has fallen in line, along with the vast majority of the Republican Party behind Trump, endorsing him to be the party's presidential nominee for a third cycle in a row. Joining us now, staff writer at The Atlantic, Mark Leibovich. His latest piece is entitled The Validation Brigade Salutes Trump. And in it, Mark, you write, quote, The GOP once prided itself on being an alliance of free thinking frontiersmen who embraced rugged individualism, a term popularized by Republican President Herbert Hoover. This is no longer that time. Full acquiescence to Trump is now the most essential Republican ethic, such as it is, or at least the chief prerequisite to viability in the party. This near total submission to the former boss has persisted no matter how egregious

his actions are or how plainly he states his authoritarian goals. Yet the Republican party now appears to have entered a new level of capitulation to Trump, a kind of ho-hum acceptance phase where full support has become almost mundane, just like a grocery line. There's a certain power in bland and seemingly harmless gestures from people who know better. Permission structures strengthen over time. Complicity calcifies in obscurity. And, you know, go ahead. No, you're going to do the list. I was just saying what, you know, it used to be that that Republicans are in the early days would have to justify mean tweets. If you listen to what if you listen to what a certain senator said from Utah, Mike Lee.

But now he's classifying as, quote, mean tweets, rape. Donald Trump raping a woman, according to a judge. Defaming her. Defaming her. Saying nasty things about a lot of women. Well, and also saying nasty things about generals he's going to execute. Talking about being a dictator on day one. Talking about terminating the Constitution, talking about using SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political opponent, being OK for him.

And of course, talking about banning news outlets. We can go down the list. The bar keeps getting higher and Republicans keep jumping. Mark Leibovich, what say you? Oh, Joe. Hi, guys. Basically, I wanted to. Good morning, Mark. Good morning. What did you want to do? Did you want to talk about the Beatles? Is that why you're here? Well, I mean, I'm kind of an elderly man with this. He is now. He's a kind man, elderly man, memory, a short memory. Very short memory.

And thought he was here to talk about the 60th anniversary. Can you imagine how big the Beatles would have been if one of them were dating Travis Kelsey's sister or something like that? Anyway, so my piece, it's sort of taking it back to Ted Cruz, what I wanted to do was to juxtapose really what was, you know, quite a spirited, relatively speaking, internal fight in the Republican Party about what Trumpism certainly was looking like then or what people have their worst visions of Trumpism and what it's become now. And what I wanted to look at was, frankly, the very mundane and banal kind of adding to the list that the likes of John Cornyn, John Barrasso, Shelley Moore Capito, Marco Rubio, Cruz, Tom Emmer, just your standard garden variety, quote unquote, prominent Republicans

who in the last few weeks have just sort of almost as a matter of rote, just sort of put little releases out saying, I stand with Donald Trump. And, you know, you can ignore everything they said about him after January 6th, everything that they've said about him in the last however many years. This is just what they do now. And what I think it's really emblematic of when you look at what Cruz said eight years ago, and I remember being in the hall that night, it was one of the most riveting things I've ever seen in politics, because it was even then quite rare to see someone stand up as fulsomely. But really, it's just so mundane now. I mean, Ted Cruz put his name on a list. Everyone else just sort of went along. And that's kind of the nature of complicity in general. You lose your you lose your fight over time. You become

totally numb to it. And this is what the Republican Party is. And Mark, then there are the people who have taken it a step further, those particularly who want to be Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate, perhaps Elise Stefanik, the congresswoman from New York, was on CNN last night where she said she would not have done what Mike Pence did on January 6th, meaning she would not have certified the election. She went on to say just repeating the lies about the 2020 election. This is a prominent member of Congress who could potentially be vice president of the United States. So setting themselves up now that if Donald Trump loses, if Donald Trump doesn't like the results he gets when he becomes president, that you have a group of people who will go along with whatever he says, that there will be no guardrails, a group of people who will perhaps violate the Constitution in the service of Donald Trump. Yeah, I mean, you can focus on the at least

dephonics of the world, the Vivek Ramaswami's of the world. I mean, these are very flamboyant sycophants at this point. I mean, they're they're really kind of in a very undignified way, I would say, kind of competing for his affection, you know, maybe to be his running mate or some high level position in the administration. Clearly, you know, if he is elected, he is going to have a level of even greater authority, certainly in the party. And it's not like a a senator Congress, you know, made up of his party, you know, whether they're the majority or not, is going to not sanction that. So he's going to have these sycophants around him. But again, I wanted to focus on the people who know better, the quote unquote serious Republicans, the people

who have said as much in the past, who certainly have said this privately and continue to say it privately, who continue to go along. And that's really where the strength of his power and just how he's just sort of led an entire party of people who know better to bend their collective knee. Hey, Mark, do you think there's a I mean, you've written about this fair amount and did a book on it in some way. The book was essentially about this. And it's been obviously a gradual that the capitulation of the party to Trump has been a gradual unfolding kind of horror story over the last X number of years. When you think about the ways that that emboldens Trump, you know, that there were guardrails, right, that constrained him, especially importantly,

at the end of his term in office and around January 6th in the courts, et cetera, et cetera. Trump's aware that the supplication is getting deeper and deeper. He's a cagey reader of his own power and and of the kind of sycophancy around him. And he demands it and courts it. How do you think it affects him tangibly in terms of how he actually governs and how he what how far he's willing to go in the next four years if he gets reelected and he sees all of this around him? Yeah, I mean, the fact is, as far as he can, I mean, I think I still to this day don't think enough attention is paid to the people that allow him to happen. I mean, Donald Trump, for all the obvious reasons, you know, is a singular figure, a dangerous figure,

but he would not exist if there was not a major political party to sanction him. So he understands it. I mean, I remember eight, nine years ago, back when Trump used to talk to people like me, he was talking about how weak politicians are. He said, look, I've been in real estate. I've been in entertainment. You know, compared in these in these early months, in this like early sort of part of my career in politics, I'm shocked at how easy it is to sort of turn around politicians. They really are just very weak. And if Trump has one really well-developed sense of himself, it's how to identify weakness in people to exploit it, and in some cases,

entire political parties. You know, and it's crazy. Mark, that's what I've been telling Republicans since early 2016. The only way you have a shot of him respecting you is by standing up to him, being tough and giving back as much as he gives you. I remember having a conversation with Paul Ryan after he became speaker and he just sort of slumped his shoulders and said, I just I want to pass policy. And there's just been. I don't know what it's been. I just a lot of people just wish that he was going to go away. Well, most Republicans think he's a joke, but they're just going to pay lip service to him and hopefully they'll get their bills passed. They'll get their highway funded. But the consequences are just catastrophic for the Republican Party. If you want Republicans to win elections for the conservative movement, if you believe in balanced budgets and the free markets and the sort of things that I believed in. And and then finally, for for America, for the republic. I mean, each one of

those those steps, those, you know, mundane statements. So just, you know, one more hammer in the nail of conservatism and the Republican Party. Yeah, no, I mean, people I mean, they the nature of politics in many ways is, is that people figure out a way to rationalize decisions they want to make anyway. And usually it comes out in a way that, um, will be politically beneficial to them. Um, ultimately you can listen to all the tortured logic here. Um, this is the decision they've made. This is where Donald Trump is. And again, it's impossible to think that this could have existed or gone on this long without the backing of a major party. And again, that's made

up of individuals who think of themselves as well-respected leaders. And many of them in some world and some very isolated worlds are. But, you know, ultimately, you would hope that history, if there is, you know, some kind of reckoning for this, will condemn them in some way, because it's certainly not the Republican Party that's condemning Donald Trump or stopping him at this point. The new piece is online now for The Atlantic. Mark Leibovich, thank you very much for coming on the show. We appreciate it. Thanks, guys. We're OK with your memory gap there. No, he's well-meaning. He's an elderly. He's a kind, kind elderly writer. Coming up, a scathing profile.

Did you see that, though? You read it, and he was like, wait, did I? I read that? Yeah, he had forgotten. In a couple days. A scathing profile on someone who was very close to Donald Trump. Robert Draper with the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, joins us to talk about his piece on former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

But first, it's time to talk football with Pablo Torre. We'll get his takes on the Super Bowl storylines and his pick for the big game. We'll be right back with much more Morning Joe. thing, even my monologue. For example, the odds of a joke about the Cowboys not making it past the wildcard round? Five to one. Five to one. And of course, the biggest lock of the night, will we keep cutting to an influential blonde superstar? You bet we will. Roger Goodell. There has never been a season like this, everybody. I mean, who'd have thought we'd see a year when Taylor Swift went to more playoff games than Bill Belichick? That is Keegan-Michael Key in his opening monologue as host of last night's NFL Honors Awards ceremony, where Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson won his second most valuable player award

as expected. And now the league's full attention turns to this Sunday's big game in Las Vegas, where the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers will face off in a Super Bowl rematch of a few years back. And joining us now, the host of Pablo Torre finds out on Meadowlark Media, ESPN's Pablo Torre. Pablo, great to see you, my friend. Hello. This game's got everything you want, right? Two great teams, superstars all over the field.

Of course, the Taylor Swift factor. So give us a little viewer's guide. What are you going to be watching for on Sunday? Yeah, I want to start with 1967, Willie. Super Bowl I was 1967. It was a funny thing, right? The game wasn't sold out. The teams didn't really want to play. It was the NFL and the AFL before the merger. And what we get to here, just to complete the arc, is peak NFL. This is 115 million people

last year, a record that will be broken pretty obviously this year because of Taylor Swift, because of the 18 to 34 demographic and younger among women in America. And then you have the actual football, right? And it's Las Vegas. And it's a place that the NFL, once upon a time, was loathe to be at for all of the reasons around competitive integrity and so forth. So you lather that all alongside Patrick Mahomes, the most talented young quarterback we've ever seen, alongside a team in the 49ers that's actually favored in this game. We can talk about the nitty gritty of this game, but just let's start with the top line. The Chiefs are the national story, the historical story, the pop cultural story,

and the 49ers happen to be favored by two. All of these things are happening. So you mentioned the first Super Bowl in 67. The Chiefs also played in that Super Bowl. And Joe and I wouldn't be doing our duty if we didn't mention that's the game where Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson was ripping a cigarette on a metal folding chair while drinking a fresca at halftime of the game. You can find that photo online. So, Pablo, let's talk about the actual, the game itself. What do you expect to see? Mahomes has been there a million times. Kelsey, all those guys, they know what this game means. There's no shock value to it for them at this point. So how do you see it playing out?

Yeah, I want to start again with the Chiefs offense because as good as the 49ers are, what Patrick Mahomes has done, Willie, he has done the thing that's hardest in the NFL. The NFL football itself is a sport defined by its randomness. I always say this. The ball itself is oblong. It is meant to bounce randomly and unpredictably. And what he has done, Mahomes, Andy Reid, Travis Kelsey, what they have done together is impose predictability on this game in a way that we haven't seen since the New England Patriots

of Jonathan Lemire's youth, right? This is the obvious successor to that. We got it immediately and it's astounding. But the defense of the Kansas City Chiefs, I just want to highlight them, right? I don't want to bury the lead here, actually, in terms of what's the most different thing about this year's Chiefs team. It's the fact that this is the best defense of Andy Reid's tenure in Kansas City. They are really, really good. And so all you need to know is the 49ers are excellent. They're favored. But combine Mahomes, most talented young quarterback, with a Chiefs defense that is unlike any that we've seen in their run to imposing predictability on unpredictability. And I like the Chiefs. I do like the Chiefs. Yeah. Yeah. And boy, you know, 1967 Super Bowl with Linda Dawson, you know, the Beatles at Ed Sullivan. That's right.

And then you got and then you got the New England Patriots that when they actually were good of Jonathan Lemire's youth. I don't know what's more in the rearview mirror, actually. They all seem like they were like forever ago. Everyone's punching him today. Well, let's flip the script here, Pablo, a little bit and just talk about how great the San Francisco 49ers are as well. And the story of Brock Purdy, Nick Saban, we call him a great point guard. He knows how to spread the football around across the field. He has been talking about

consistent for the most part, extraordinarily consistent. But then Christian McCaffrey, I mean, you just go down the list. They have one superstar, Devo, one superstar after another. Yeah. When those three guys play, when it's Brock Purdy and Devo Samuel and McCaffrey, I believe they've lost one game. They're like 22 and one. And so all of which is to say that I understand if there are people who are watching this this early in the morning thinking to themselves, I thought that the 49ers side of the ball had some pretty good storylines, too. Joe, in a more meager Super Bowl, narratively speaking, Brock Purdy's the number one story. Let's just be honest about this. The guy was the last pick of the draft, and he ends up being the guy who might, don't want to count my chickens here, but might actually fulfill the whole thing about like Kyle Shanahan

being the boy genius coach who is running this offense as a perfectly old machine. He's tried many quarterbacks. This guy, the least likely of them, ends up being the guy who might be the perfect pilot, the perfect point guard, as your good friend Nick Saban would say. So Brock Purdy being here and blending into the scenery as if he's supposed to be here

is one of the most unlikely things in the history of the sport. And he is the guy who has, yes, helped Christian McCaffrey potentially be the MVP of the league and Debo Samuel be this weapon that there really is no answer for in terms of a guy who can run and catch inside of this system, which for NFL nerds has already established itself as, yeah, the most terrifying game plan in the NFL specifically. So Pablo, Brock Purdy has started slow in each of the previous playoff games. I think there was a fear he could turn one or two over. I think if the Niners win, your best path is just McCaffrey, it's McCaffrey, it's McCaffrey. I think Chiefs are going to win 23-17, my pick.

And I want to just finish on the idea of as good as this end. John's trying to move betting lines. Lamere's like, draft kings? It's the Super Bowl. You're supposed to make a pick. You can give yours. The Niners defense is actually not as good as people thought it was. I think that's where this game

comes down to. Is it Mahomes at the end either for a winning score or bleeding the clock to run the game, making plays on a defense that's not as good as it used to be. Yeah. So my pick for the record here is Chiefs 32, Niners 26. It's a score that has never happened in NFL history. A score-a-gami.

Yes. NFL nerds like me and John know it's what happens when, yeah, a totally unique score historically happens. And I think they're going to get there. Heilman's laughing at me. I'm just laughing at how, like, but what is the, I mean, I like the idea of the score. That's right. That's cool.

But like, is there any underlying logics of that? You just put your numbers on the half of it. The logic is, I want to be regarded as a prophet on cable news for getting this correct. I see. Okay. If I want to bring you behind the magician's curtain here, I'm totally in this for self-interest and ego boosting. There's no particular scenario in my mind that leads to those scores, though, basically. Well, how dare you? Of course, of course there is. And it does, in all honesty, it does get to this notion that I think it's going to be close, right? Niner-Saver by two, I think it'll be less close than that. But to me, here's the stat, okay?

Patrick Mahomes has been beaten by more than eight points, I believe, here's the stat. Patrick Holmes has been beaten by more than eight points, I believe, four times in like 120 games. So the guy does not get blown out. So do you believe in... Look, there's an interesting philosophical... I'm going to go on a tangent here.

There's an interesting philosophical argument briefly. Are you an individualist or a collectivist? Do you believe in the great man theory of quarterbacking? Or do you believe in a larger collective unit? To me, the Chiefs just happen to have the guy who transcends. I'm sorry, guys. It's really early.

I'm sounding like Aaron Rodgers now talking about my ideological theories. I believe in the Holmes. 32-26. That's my pick. There you go. You are a believer in the Henry Luce version of Super Bowls. That's right. The great midterms.

Time life. All right. So let's go around really quickly. Pablo, again, your prediction is? 32-26, Joe. And for America. Mark it down. And, Lamir, what is yours?

I also have the Chiefs, 23-17. Okay. I also, and I'm embarrassed because, of course, the 49ers are favorite and best team. I've got the Chiefs 20-16. John Heilman, what about you? Taylor Swift, 41. San Francisco 49ers, 11. Holy cow.

That's crazy. Okay. And then Willie Geist. What say you? That is crazy. I think it sounds like Heilman has a safety in there or something to get to that 11. I want to do it all in skorigamis. I heard that's the thing we're doing around here now.

So I figured let's do a skorigami squared or something. I don't know. I am just pulling numbers out of the heavens. I don't have any method to the madness. I just can't get myself to betting against Patrick Mahomes, who's been there, knows how to win. 31-27 Chiefs. And so here's the crazy thing, Pablo. You have a great 49ers team.

They are favored. And we've all picked the Chiefs. Let's go, though, to Mika's pick. Maybe she will go to the Niners. Mika predicts. Holy cow. The Chiefs, 49. The 49ers, six.

Whoa. Yes. Whoa. Yes. Whoa. Mika and I are kind of like in the same vein here. I think it's got Taylor and- You kind of are. Taylor and- There's going to be a close game.

Team of destiny. I love that. I love that. America wants points. America wants points. Mika has the pulse of the nation clearly read better than us. There you go. I do.

There you go. So two things. One, if you are a betting person, you now definitely know the Niners are going to cover the spread because we have all gone the opposite direction. So you can bet on that. This is what the pros call a sucker's bet. And we all fell for the sucker's bet. Kind of like everybody that bet on Alabama in the Rose Bowl.

And number two, Willie Geist. Here's the picture that launched a thousand football careers. History. Willie, young kids across America said, if Lynn Dawson can do it and make it to the Super Bowl, Ma, so can I. Lynn Dawson can do it and make it to the Super Bowl, ma, so can I. Lynn Dawson. And just to be clear, that's during the game.

That's during the game. That's how far we've come. Not celebratory after the game. That's during the game. Okay. You can listen to more of Pablo Torre. No. Through his podcast, Pablo Torre finds out on Metal Arc Media, ESPN's.

Pablo Torre, thank you so much for coming on this morning. We will be talking about the big game on Monday, right? I think we will. We're going to be watching. We're going to have a Super Bowl party. There you go. Right? Willie, you ready?

Okay. Yeah. We'll all be there.