Morning Joe - Morning Joe 3/17/23

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Trump and DeSantis in tight two-way race in hypothetical Florida 2024 match-up

The Cavaliers are playing with four guards, and the four guards out there, along with Shedrick, are their best free-throw shooters. Clark in a straight check. Oh, he didn't even do that! He threw it away! Heading, Pagese! Goal! Furman leads!

Clark going bound, 2.4. They added a little bit of time. It's Beekman. Good if it goes! Furman is one! One possession game. it's Beekman good if it goes one possession game Arizona needs three to send this thing to overtime you don't have to check it three don't get it quick to a few came 15 seconds left that's not it beot tries to keep it alive. Grease off.

No good. Princeton's going to win this thing. Arizona with a prayer that will not go. And the Tigers of Princeton row their way into round two. How many of you had number 15 Princeton over second-seeded Arizona? And number 13 Furman. Furman knocking off UVA. Jonathan Lemire, unfortunately for me, I had the whole thing, the final four wrapping up with UVA beating Arizona.

How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing? Do I have a chance? No, I actually talked to some people that had UVA and Arizona in the Final Four. Ouch, that hurts. That bracket is officially busted. Anyone who had that. President Biden picked Arizona to win the whole thing.

They were a popular choice. And this is why march madness is so great joe we know college basketball maybe during the regular season matters a little less on the sporting landscape than it used to but for this month it still owns the stage and we had some great games yesterday my brother's a uva grad so he's in a state of mourning this morning and then there's princeton you know number 15 c doing it again with Peter's great, great, great fun. They do. They do this. They do this all the time. Who's called who's coughing? Joe, let's let's see. Let's see who on this show possibly could be trying to possibly could be trying to butt in when it's, you know, when he's not on camera.

It's John Heilman. Go Cats. Go Cats. Northwestern University. Big first round victory, Joe, over Boise State. Therefore, my bracket is attack because I have Northwestern going all the way. I love it. Going all the way, Northwestern is. I'm a proud alum, Joe. I'm with them all the way to the end. We're going to plow right through UCLA in that second round.

Don't worry. Yeah, I don't follow it too closely during the season. I'm too interested because in the offseason, about this time of year, I'm too busy looking at all the prospects that the Red Sox have gotten in the offseason. And you know, Lemire and I have a huge white board. And you know, we've got to figure out

how those 38-year-olds are doing. And so we're writing it down, seeing if any of them have bursitis, if they're cataract problems with any of the Red Sox new signings. But I do know this. I talked to Joey Scarborough yesterday who told me that now – I didn't know quite how good Arizona was. He said that now that Arizona has lost and they're out,

Alabama is favored against the field. That they were just seen as that much of an obstacle to Alabama being able to move forward. So anyway, it's crazy. Not as crazy, though, as the back pages, Jonathan Lemire, of the New York newspapers. Crazy for trying to highlight the Metsiest thing that has ever happened. Now, Mets fans tell us this isn't the Metsiest thing that's ever happened, but it's pretty close. Daily News, tell us this isn't the Metsiest thing that's ever happened, but it's pretty close.

Daily News. Tell us about it. So let's remember resetting the stage from yesterday. Edwin Diaz, the Mets all-star closer who just signed a $100 million extension, probably the best reliever in the league last year. Yesterday during the World Baseball Classic the night before, while celebrating, mind you, not while pitching, but while celebrating a win, was jumping up and down with his teammates, landed awkwardly, suffered a major leg injury. You're seeing him here.

He had to be wheelchaired off the field the other night. And news came yesterday, which all Mets fans feared and, frankly, some of them expected. He is out for the season. He will not throw a single pitch for the Mets this year because he got injured celebrating with his teammates and his brother, who's actually the one hugging him right there. So the back page of the tabloids, as you might imagine, they had their takes. The Daily News goes with stop the music. That's because Diaz last year had a very popular intro where it was the song called Narcos, where he came in with a trumpets blaring. And then the New York Post goes with the sound of silence.

And Mr. Met is weeping. I just want to point that out. There's a tear rolling down his giant baseball head. So Mets fans, this is a pretty tortured franchise, Joe, for a long time. They have come to expect things to go wrong. There's that clip that was sent along yesterday. There's a family guy clip from the show Family Guy where it says, oh, it's a shot of the crowd. It says opening day Mets fans.

And then literally that says season over. You see the fans throw the hat down. So that is where the Mets are right now. They feel like season over. Yeah. When their theme song goes, meet the Mets, beat the Mets. You know, this is not a franchise. It's had a storied history.

Let's also bring in a member of the New York Times editorial board, Mari Gay. If you want to talk basketball, if you want to talk to New York Mets, if you want to talk, whatever. The floor is open to you. Did you fill out a bracket? Oh, no. That is not my land.

I'm just here to observe. Michigan? You're more of a football powerhouse this year. I'm a Michigan fan in every way. I'll watch the gymnastics. I'll watch football. Michigan gymnastics? Is that a thing? Of course.

I'm just asking a question. I don't know about Michigan gymnastics. Sorry. I was just thing. I'm just asking a question. I don't know about Michigan gymnastics. Sorry. I was just asking the question. No, I mean, let me tell you. I mean, I don't fill out the March Madness, but Maura and I always call each other. And we fill out, for the gymnastics finals, we fill out the brackets for the gymnastics finals.

It's in April. You guys are way down the sports rabbit hole for me. Well, Maura, you're dressed up for St. Patrick's Day. I am. She's got green beer. I'm Irish. Look at that. I forgot my green tie. Let's also bring in David Ignatius. He, of course, is columnist, associate editor for The Washington Post, also former White House press secretary, now an MSNBC host. Jen Psaki is Also appropriately dressed, unlike me. Her new show, Inside with Jen Psaki, debuts this coming Sunday.

But on St. Patrick's Day, she and Mara know what to wear. I forgot the green tie. What's wrong with me? Mara and David and I are going to be filling out our bracket over here with no knowledge of basketball. And we're just as likely to win. So that's a little scary. I know. I know.

Well, let's let's start with a new poll that just came out moments ago. See what Mr. Hyland has to say about Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Statistically tied to Florida, New Emerson College poll has Trump leading DeSantis 47, 44 percent among registered voters. But, you know, the thing is, I think it's interesting how you have these these themes take off, these narratives just break out, John. And the new narrative is, oh, Donald Trump is way ahead of DeSantis and he's blowing up. You know, this is not going to be close. We've seen some polls that show that. But this Emerson poll shows it close in Florida. And there are other states that show DeSantis doing very well.

This is not a fait accompli. This could be a long, hard battle if DeSantis were to actually step in. Yeah, Joe, you know, the classic cliche is, it's real early for these matchups in the field. DeSantis is not even in the race, and the rest of the field is not taking shape. But look, you're a man who knows something about Florida. So, in some ways, I defer to you on this. If I'm Donald Trump, and I have spent my entire the last year, and certainly the last few months, denigrating Ron DeSantis in every possible way, claiming that he wouldn't have been governor if it wasn't for Trump, but also that he wasn't that good a governor because Florida's success has very little to do with DeSantis, these kind of conflicting arguments. But he's trying to find any angle in on why Tiny D, Meatball Ron, DeSantis, DeSanctimonious, you know, take your pick,

why he's not a problem. And if I'm Donald Trump and I'm the man of Mar-a-Lago, am I not a little bit troubled by the notion that I'm in a statistical tie with Ron DeSantis for the hearts and minds of Florida voters at this stage? If I was Trump, knowing his not fully robust ego, I imagine he does not like the look of that poll. He would like to see a little more distance between him and Ron DeSantis. Oh, no doubt about it. And the fact is that not everyone knows who Ron DeSantis is. Of course, in Florida they do. But there's other polls when they actually get on the trail as crazy things happen. You just look at Barack Obama in 2007, 2008. By the way, at this

time in 2007, the runaway prohibitive favorites in every single poll that we were showing our first year on Morning Joe were Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Of course, that was not to be in 2008. So we still have a very long way to go, Jonathan Lemire. But again, this race, we don't know how it goes. I do know this, though, that we've all been asking, what will it take for Republicans to turn against Donald Trump? I've heard more negative comments about Donald Trump when he attacks Ron DeSantis than I have for when he tries to

overthrow American democracy. Then when he tries to get his attorney general to arrest his opponent and his opponent's family and put them in barges off of GetMo, that when he does, commits one impeachable offense after another, the Republican base, they don't really care too much about that, I guess they think. It's just democracy after all. But when he attacks Ron DeSantis, there is a political cause for that. And this is all he's doing right now. He doesn't understand that since Ron DeSantis was the only Republican to have a good night in 2022, Republicans see him as a winner. They see Trump as a loser, and they don't appreciate him attacking Ron DeSantis. They don't look at this guy like he's Lindsey Graham or Rand Paul or our little Marco.

Yeah, I think the interesting dynamic here is and again, we'll stress it's so early, but this is a two person race. And it's DeSantis and Trump and all the anti-Trump forces. And to be clear, they've definitely grown in the Republican Party, have all coalesced around DeSantis, who also has a lot of very favorable coverage on Fox News, a literal softball interview this week that, Joe, we talked a little bit about. And so therefore, I think members of the Republican base don't want to see these sort of attacks here.

But I think I'm going to take the other way on the poll, though, where I think we just saw DeSantis win in a landslide, get reelected in November, that we have seen that his political purposes in pulling the levers of government to achieve them in Florida has been pretty successful. He's got a rubber stamp state legislature in Tallahassee. The fact that Trump's in a tie with him there isn't terrible because we are seeing that Trump is doing much better than he is everywhere else. And that's the unknown, is that when the voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina and Iowa, Mara, get to know DeSantis more,

will they like him more or less? There have been certainly questions raised about his retail political skills. We know what he does works in Florida. What we don't know yet is whether it's going to work everywhere else. Yeah, and whether he has that same magic, so to speak, magic we don't love necessarily, but magic that propelled Trump to victory and, you know, nearly won him the election twice. You know, DeSantis might be popular with a base of Republicans who just wants to win and is sick of Trump. That doesn't mean that he's going to be able to connect with voters in the same way that Donald Trump did, drawing those enormous rallies. I think we're going to start to kind of find out when we get a roadshow going for DeSantis

pretty soon here, whether he has that thing. And that's the thing Donald Trump had, Barack Obama had. So we'll find out. You know, the other awkward element here, I think, is age. I was talking to some Republicans this weekend down south, actually. And, you know, there are some people who say they would rather see somebody around DeSantis' age, you know, go up against the president. And so that's another factor. You know, you just don't know how voters are actually thinking about that consciously or not.

But there's a lot of factors here. This is why it's early in the game. And this is why we're going to have to just kind of wait and see. So, David Ignatius, we've got some other stories to move on to. But I just want to circle back since we're talking about DeSantis, we're talking about the Republican Party. And I mentioned Marco Rubio's name. It reminds me of what really I think the big story was this week, not just for the

United States and not just for the United States, not just for Republicans politically in this little intramural battle, but also for the United States and how people see us across the world. Ron DeSantis, who's most likely, more than likely going to be one of the two Republican nominees for president, said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was nothing more than a territorial dispute, echoing the Kremlin's own language, and that it wasn't in the U.S.'s interest to stop Russia from invading other countries in Europe. That's, first of all, deeply troubling and something that was heard in capitals across the world. But also, though, I thought it I thought it important that we heard from Marco Rubio.

We heard from Lindsey Graham. We heard from John Cornyn. We heard from John Thune, the sort of things that Mitch McConnell and other Republicans have been saying. And that is that that this is insanity. Lindsey Graham, especially outspoken against it, saying this is this is Neville Chamberlain thinking this is appeasement. And it's it's and Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey said what I've said and what a lot of other people have said for some time now, the Chinese are watching very closely. And anybody who doesn't think that weakness against Putin will not be translated into a green green light for China going into Taiwan just doesn't understand geopolitics. Well, this was the first big mistake, I think, that DeSantis has made.

And it's interesting that he got called on it right away and aggressively. A lot of the voices, Republican members of the Senate who were silent about Trump's excesses, spoke out loudly, as you say, people like Lindsey Graham, who seems ready to support anything Donald Trump says. But when DeSantis made these comments about Ukraine, bam, very, very strong response. So I think that was significant. I'd be encouraged if I were the Ukrainians that there's broader support in the Republican Party for sticking with it. Certainly the people watching this race most carefully right now are the Russians who wonder, can we if we just last it out, if we get through to a Republican president after the 2024 elections, is this over? Do we get a pass? And listening to Ron DeSantis, you'd think, yeah, if Ron DeSantis wins or Donald Trump wins, you do get a pass.

So I think it was a big week. The pushback was important. I sure like to hear those people push back on some other things that Trump and DeSantis have been saying that are harmful to the party. But this was a start. Well, as John Hyland's pointed out, they push back against Ron DeSantis, not against Donald Trump. But the positions are the same. So they apply to both. Former President Trump, speaking of this, is laying out his plan to, in his words, stop World War III. He says, hit end the war in Ukraine. And here's one of his points.

Finally, we have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re-evaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission. Our foreign policy establishment keeps trying to pull the world into conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat. But the greatest threat to Western civilization today is not Russia. It's probably more than anything else ourselves and some of the horrible USA-hating people that represent us. It's the abolition of our national borders. It's the failure to police our own cities. It's the destruction of the rule of law from within. It's the collapse of the nuclear family and fertility rates like nobody can believe is happening.

It's the Marxists who would have us become a godless nation worshiping at the altar of race and gender. You know what's boring to me? What's boring to me is the hatred for America. The hatred from America that you hear spewing from Donald Trump's mouth. Donald Trump hated America before he became president of the United States, talked about how the American dream was dead. Yeah, try telling that to the immigrants, the migrants, the refugees risking their lives to come to the

United States of America, because what do they believe in the American dream? In fact, talk to immigrants that get here. They will tell you about the American dream. It's it's talked about all over the world, all over the world. And here's Donald Trump. Jen Psaki. It's crazy. I mean, Donald Trump hates America. You listen to him talking about the United States, the United States, the country, as Fox News anchors used to remind us. The country that has fed and free. Wait a second. That was Roger Ailes who would say this country has fed and freed more people than any other planet in the history of the world.

And Roger was right on that one. We have and we continue to. The United States, we won World War One. We won World War Two with the help of our allies. We were the driving force. We were the arsenal of democracy. Look what we're doing, helping Ukraine pushback against war crimes daily. And yet all Donald Trump does, all other people do is they bash the United States of America. They attack the United States military or men and women in armed forces.

They attack our intel community. They hate America by their own words. And if they hate it so much, why don't they move to Russia? Russia will take them. They've taken Steven Seagal. They'll take Donald Trump and everybody else saying that the U.S. military is going to use helicopters that are used in Afghanistan to kill Americans who voted for Trump. Like they hate us. They hate America. So why are they still here? Well, you heard it here first. You're sending people to Russia. So Putin, welcome some Republican candidates. Look, I think, Joe, it's Trump,

as you said. It's DeSantis. It's Sarah Huckabee Sanders. if you listen to the rhetoric from the most powerful voices and the Republican right wing of the party, they are painting the country and painting the future as this dark, depressing, ominous dystopia. Right. That everything is terrible. All things are terrible. Everything is dark. It's all I think Ron DeSantis actually called it a wokeocracy, which I don't even know what that means, but I just feel like I needed to use that phrase. And that is not who the country is, of course, but that's also not people, not what people in the country want to vote for. We're always a work in progress, but people want optimism. They want solutions.

They want something that they can get excited about and support that's going to make their lives better. And instead, it's this this race to a darker dystopia on the right, which is kind of fascinating. And I also don't think is the right strategy to win. It's also it's just a lie. And how crazy Donald Trump says America, the American dream is dead and America is a horrible place. Then he's elected and then he loses. And then suddenly America is this horrible place again. You know, David Ignatius, you've been you've been across the world. You've seen the good that America does. We make mistakes.

We talk about it here. And we are are struggling towards becoming a more perfect union every day. At the same time, Abraham Lincoln said America was the last best hope for a dying world. Ronald Reagan said that America was a city shining on a hill brightly for all the world to see. And yes, maybe inside America, sometimes we don't recognize it, but go around the world. And there are millions and millions of people who do. And yet Donald Trump says instead of a city shining brightly on the hill for all the world to see, he says America is the greatest threat to Western civilization. Those are words taken straight out of the mouth of Orban. Well, I absolutely agree that Trump's criticism of the United States is misplaced and can

be very harmful to us. I would say, Joe, that the biggest threat to our future, in my judgment, does not lie outside our borders. It lies within America. Unless we can make our democracy work better, unless we can get our economy going reliably, strongly, unless we can make people feel they're all part of one country that they believe in, we're in trouble. And so I think in that sense, looking inward, taking care of our country, of our economy does make sense. Something that I think Joe Biden has tried to do. It's been a centerpiece of his foreign policy from the beginning.

He said, I want a foreign policy for the middle class, meaning that everything we do needs to benefit ordinary Americans. And I think that's that's that's right. So I'm I'm in sympathy with the idea that our problems aren't just overseas. They're here too. Yeah, but you know, John Heilman, so much of it are problems that are ginned up by people

who said they want a civil war, by people say they want two Americas. You know, unemployment, 50-year low. Dollar at a generational high. Childhood poverty at 60-year lows. Teen pregnancy at 60-year low. Dollar at a generational high. Childhood poverty at 60-year lows. Teen pregnancy at 60-year lows. You look at the U.S. economy, we're still the standard, still the strongest economy. Our military relative to the rest of the world, stronger than it's been since 1945.

And yet all these Republicans do when they're not in power. If they lose one election, they hate America. They hate our military. They hate our intel services. They say America's going to hell when, in fact, you look at the numbers, we're doing pretty darn well. Yeah. And look, I mean, Joe, it's the out of power party is going to, they're not going to say, hey, America's doing great. It's morning again in America. That's an argument for sticking with Joe Biden and the Democrats. So, there's going to be a critique. The question is kind of what the kind of tenor of the critique is and what the proposed vision for making America better, both parties are going to have competing visions.

I think what you guys are all, what you've been, we've been talking about this for months, is if the thing for Donald Trump and for Ron DeSantis and the rest of the Republicans who want to be the first Republican standard bearer and then the next president of the United States on the Republican side is, what's the path to being able to win that Republican nomination fight? And it's then the case that Trump's base has been a grievance caucus since the 2015-2016 experience for Trump, got him the nomination, made him the president. It didn't keep him the president in 2020. The grievance caucus was not enough to win then, and it hasn't been enough for Republicans to win ever since, as we pointed out repeatedly. In 2020, down ballot,

it wasn't. If you were with Trump, it didn't help. It didn't help the election deniers in 2022. It didn't help Republicans to fare better in the midterm elections more broadly. And the question right now is for the Republican Party, saying that there are things that Republicans think that Joe Biden's not good at. That's not doing well. That's going to be that's what the election is going to be about. That's all right. The question is just whether the rage caucus and the snowflake caucus and the grievance caucus is going to dominate this Republican nominating fight or not. And if and right now, if you believe as to go back to our first topic in this morning A Block here, is that it's a two-person fight. Really? Only two people right now, Randy Bate, can be the Republican nominee, DeSantis and Donald Trump. And they're both racing further

and further, not just to the right, because I don't think that's the right way to describe it. They're racing further and further into the dystopian, as Jen Psaki put it, sketching out the dystopian view of America and not putting forward any kind of an optimistic vision for how to fix it. It's just going to be all complaint, all grievance, all rage, all snowflake ism. If that's where the Republican Party is going, if those are the two main guys, I'll say that there's an opening for somebody else who can come in and make a different kind of critique of Biden and a different kind of vision for it to take the country. Yeah. I mean, and also you, you, you forgot a little bit of autocracy or maybe a lot of autocracy sprinkled in there. Uh, and,

and, and just look at their words, look at their actions, look what they've done. And, and yeah, and yes, criticize Joe Biden. I mean, there, there, there are things to criticize Joe Biden. I mean, there are things to criticize Joe Biden about. You could go after whether you're a Republican and you want to go after Afghanistan, his retreat from Afghanistan. You want to talk about him spending too much money on this program or that program. You want to blame him for inflation with the COVID relief act. You want to talk about the border. Talk about all of those things. We've talked about them on the show here, right? So there are legitimate things to criticize Joe Biden about and have a debate over. But talking about how America is the greatest threat to Western civilization, I just think it's really important to keep things in perspective here, Maura. We have a guy who talked about American carnage at his inaugural

address when crime was at a 50 year low, illegal crossings across the southern border. It was at a 50 year low. The economy was doing pretty darn well, a hell of a lot better than when he left. But he talked about American carnage because he wasn't in office. And and at the same time, he was talking about on our show, on our show. How he respected Vladimir Putin so much more than Barack Obama, that Putin was a strong leader. And we kept saying, well, he kills journalists, he kills politicians. He is a strong leader. And we kept saying, well, he kills journalists. He kills politicians. He is a strong leader. And so he respects Vladimir Putin while attacking the United States. And then, of course, at the beginning of the Russian invasion, what did he say? He said it was beautiful. His words said Putin was savvy for doing it. And he said, we need that here in the United States.

This is Donald Trump's vision of America. You talk about dystopian. His vision of America is being a Putin like leader. Don't trust me. Trust Donald Trump's own words. Well, Joe, I'm glad we're having this conversation because I think, you know, this is the language not just of dystopia, but of fascism, of white supremacy. This is coded language. And I think it's really important that we just kind of break down what that means. And in this case, say to Donald Trump, what America are you talking about that is this greatest threat to Western civilization? What is it? Is it pluralism? Is it the fact that immigrants want to still come here, as you pointed out, Joe? Is it the fact that

there are thriving cities in the United States that are filled with a diverse group of people that's a threat? I mean, I think that the anxieties underlying this rage and coded language have to be confronted. They're very real. And even though, you know, that rage caucus, as John said, aptly so, wasn't enough to get Donald Trump over the finish line, it has remarkable staying power in American politics. We should take it seriously. And I think it's never a bad thing to ask that question. Why, at a time when we could be having very important debates over climate change, over how to make the economy work for everyday Americans and make sure that our children aren't being mowed down. Why are we still talking about this dystopia? Because the fears that Donald Trump and the radical Republicans are playing to have very real resonance with Americans. And it doesn't make them bad people. That means that there are real fears that need to be addressed. A lot of them have to do with demographics. A lot of them are very, you know, ancient in this country. And I think until we can kind of confront that,

it's really hard to have a rational political conversation in this country. Well, you know, the thing is that I've seen time and time again, it doesn't matter whether it's come from a Democrat or Republican. Optimism sells. I go out and I talk to people. I tell them that that that we're going to win, that things are going in the right direction, that I really do believe that America's greatest days are ahead of us. And I do. I really do. It gives them hope.

You start talking that way. People start believing that way. Instead, we have politicians that run America into the ground. And I've spent my adult life listening to people whose party's not in power talking about how the world's going to hell because their party's not in the White House for those four years. I'm sick and tired of it. When Trump was president, I said the same

thing. We had a hell of a lot of challenges, but America's greatest days were ahead. And I will tell you, Jen Psaki, optimism wins. It just does. Yesterday, the words Trumpism doesn't scale, was used on this show. I wrote it down. It is true. Trumpism, Molly said it. Trumpism doesn't scale. I'll tell you what else doesn't scale. And I'm dead serious. And Republicans need to hear me here. Let those who have ears hear. Hating America doesn't scale. Hope, optimism, faith in better days ahead. Scale. Believe it, then fight like hell for it and then make it happen. That scales, Jen. This hating on America doesn't. Yeah, I agree. Look, I also think fear doesn't sell and it shouldn't sell. And a lot of this, as Mara was saying, is fear. You know, and I think sometimes we get wrapped up in Washington about, you know, things not

being able to happen and government not functioning. And will Trump be benefit will Trump benefit from a potential indictment? And it's also dark and terrible. And the truth is, there's actually a lot of things that are happening out in states that should be a good, inspiring moment for everybody to look to. I was just in Michigan yesterday with Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She has been under threat. She has security with her. She was almost kidnapped, or they tried to kidnap her.

You know what she's doing? She's not governing with fear, Joe. She's trying to push through gun reform. She's getting a lot done in Michigan. There are other states like that. And some of that is a more inspiring, uplifting reminder of what's possible, as opposed to kind of this race to dystopian darkness and fear that we see on the Republican right wing part of the party that's running for president.

Well, and you know, the thing is, we so often talk about how things are going so horribly in America and our political system is broken. This is the disconnect, friends. Under Joe Biden, over the last two years, a 50-50 Senate passed more bipartisan legislation and got more things done legislatively than any president since. I think you have to go back to LBJ. Joe Biden passed bipartisan infrastructure legislation. Joe Biden passed bipartisan gun safety legislation. He passed bipartisan legislation to help us compete with China on chips. The Chips Act passed. He passed relief for vets who had been poisoned while at war. I could keep going. I could keep going. But but you this is only

a dystopian landscape. This is only a failure of a president and a political system. If you're Donald Trump and you don't want things to get done. Because Joe Biden's gotten things done. Whether you like Joe Biden or not, you can say, well, even in a 50-50 nation, Washington can work. I think that's something to be happy about. I really do. And I'm tired of people hating on America.

Hate doesn't scale. Pessimism against America doesn't scale. Hope does. And let's hope there will be a Republican out there that steps forward, can deliver that message and deliver it being strong enough to get some votes going into next year, to give us some hope that one day again soon we may have two functioning parties in America. Still out of the morning, Joe, we're going to be talking about a big move. This is a big move. I can't wait to hear what David Ignatius says about it, about Poland sending fighter jets to Ukraine.

Plus, some of the nation's biggest banks are stepping in to rescue First Republic Bank. We're going to go with extraordinary effort to reassure Americans that our banking system is safe. Also, the Senate takes a first step toward repealing the legal authorization for the war in Iraq. Twenty years later, you're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. In God's country. Sad as crooked roses. In God's country.

All right. This is New York City, of course, on St. Patrick's Day. I think I hear they're starting a parade this year in New York on St. Patrick's Day. I don't know. It may be the first, but why don't we look at Dublin? There you go, my friend. There you go. 1040 in Dublin, Ireland right now. Lemire, I think you and Maura and who else? Jen Psaki is, is, I don't think, is Psaki Irish?

I don't know. I'm not good at stuff like this. Very Irish. Very Irish. Okay. Not Psaki, not the name, not the name, but the rest of me. The rest of you. Look at her.

I know. I know. She's pretty Irish looking there. Fantastic. My mother is Eileen Daly is her maiden name. I'm very, very Irish. That's very, very Irish. And Mara, you are as well. Your father or mother Irish? No, my mother is Irish. Her last name was Linton. So, yeah. Okay. Similar here, Joe. The last name is Lemire, but my that's my father's father. But the other three grandparents, O'Brien, O'Neill, McKeon. So St. Patrick's Day, a big day in the house.

Are we getting no barnacle on here today? I mean, barnacles should be here. He can't be booked on St. Patrick's Day. He can't be booked on St. Patrick's Day. He can't be found on St. Patrick's Day. He is spoken for today, Joe. He can't be found today. You have no idea where he is.

Well, I know where he is. There are actually, I think they're restraining orders, keeping Barnacle away from every pub in New York and Dublin on this day. So perhaps he's, and just keeping him at home watching baseball reruns. That's got to be neurologist Bill Cairns. Get a check on the St. Patrick's Day forecast. And Bill, look at you wearing the green. I told him to say William O'Curran's with the forecast, but they wouldn't put that in there. Actually, I did. I'm just like, I had an O in front of my name and it was dropped when they came over from Ireland. So, yeah, it used to be O'Curran's.

Just so you know. Yes, I know. Now we know. Yeah. How what's the St. Patrick's Day forecast look like for let's start with New York, the big parade. Yeah. New York and Savannah, they're holding on. It looks like it's going to stay dry. It was going to be a close call. So we have a huge storm that's moving to the east. There's a lot of clouds. There's a lot of rain, but the rain is going to dry up. So it looks like just a cloudy forecast moving in for the afternoon for the east. So that's good. And it is going to be mild, too. Now, the temperatures are going to have one warm day, and then it's going to get cold this weekend.

But look at Boston today, 53 degrees. New York City is going to be in the mid-50s. So that's like jacket optional. And Raleigh, down the coastal areas, the Savannah, it's going to be gorgeous today, 60s and 70s. The cold air is going to be back here in Chicago today. Sorry about that. Only 35 degrees. So let's get to your parade forecast. So today is the parade in New York, clouding over about mid-50s, no problems there. Savannah, a little windy, but temperature is mid-60s, the low 70s. And if you've never been in Savannah for St. Patrick's Day, like the population, like quadruples. It's an insane amount of people and partying

and everything else that goes with it. Boston, the parade is going to be on Sunday. Cold and windy, about 34 to about 38 degrees. And then as far as we're going to deal with this weekend, it's kind of quiet. We've had a really stormy weather pattern. We've heard all the stories about California, how nuts it's been, but it's going to quiet down.

Not a lot of problems, just a little chilly for our last winter weekend, Joe. It looks pretty nice for St. Paddy's Day and everyone's plans. I love it. I love it. It's great to see you. And we need to get you in again some more, Bill O'Kerns. Is that it? William O'Kerns. William O'Kerns. Yeah, it's not going to work, is it? I think I like it. I like it. We'll do it once a year. My middle name is Joseph. If you want to use Billy Joe, we can go with that, too. We'll do Billy Joe, too. And I hear Heilman. He just doesn't stop, Joe. Joe, he doesn't stop. He does not stop. Would you like to add something to the classroom discussion, Mr. Heilman? No, I just think Karen's

is sounding very much like a leprechaun this morning. It's very appealing. I think it's funny. Bill looks great. Sounds great. All right. This is awkward. Can we see a picture of Doblin, please,

to get a good segue out of this mess? All right. Thank you so much, Bill. It's always great seeing you. And there you go. Let's have three seconds of silence. No. One. All right. Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Russia next week. We've learned that Xi's expected to hold talks with Vladimir Putin, according to China's foreign ministry. And the state visit is going to take place from Monday

to Wednesday. And new this morning, big news. NATO member Slovakia is announcing that its government has approved a plan to give Ukraine 13 Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets. It comes after Poland announced that it, too, will provide jets to Ukraine, the first member of NATO to do so. Poland's president announced the move yesterday and said the four MiG-29s jets would arrive in Ukraine within the next few days. These are not like Abrams tanks. We'll give them to you in a couple of years. NSC spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged Poland's decision, but added to the U.S. position on sending jets to Ukraine has not changed. Dot, dot, dot, yet. So this is something actually, David Ignatius, you could see coming eventually.

You knew the jets were going to be moving in that direction eventually. But I just I just want to focus on Poland, because here's Poland who broke the ice on tanks and did that a couple of months ago, now breaking the ice on jets and they're being followed by other NATO members. Talk about that. How important Poland has been in this NATO alliance in this war? And what could we see next? What impact will these jets have? How big of a decision is this? So, Joe, Poland has been rock solid in supporting Ukraine. When you're in Poland, as I know you and Mika have been, you just feel this intense identification that Polish people have with Ukraine's fight. They think this is our fight, too. I have to say, I think the initial impact of the Soviet fighters

coming from Poland and Slovenia to Ukraine will be most important on morale. This is a tough time for Ukraine. They're getting battered on the front lines around Bakhmut. The level of casualties, the loss of human life, the way in which Ukrainians feel that deeply, that's a hidden part of the war for most of us. But it's powerful. So this will be a shot in the arm. Our allies stand behind us. We're going to get some air power in terms of actual effects on the battlefield. Most of the people I talk to say don't expect radical changes. A key issue is whether they'll be useful in in close air support in the Ukrainian offensive that we all believe is coming in a month or two. Whether these old Russian era jets will be much use in that still remains to be seen.

They won't be great in dogfights if they get in fights with more modern Russian jets. But I don't see that as being a likely future either. For now, I think it's a sign that Ukraine's close allies, close neighbors want to help more, want to help them in this time of enormous difficulty. When, as The Washington Post story said this week, morale in Ukraine is a little bit shaky as people struggle with this very long, bloody war. You know, Jonathan Lemire, though, this is a step by step process. We've seen it before leading up to the tanks going there. Step by step process. Poland says it's going to give them tanks, push the Germans to approve tanks. Then the Germans say we'll do it if the Americans do it. The Americans approved sending Abrams tanks. There started to be talk of F-16s. When you

start hearing Admiral Stravitas coming on the show talking about tanks have to go there next or Barry McCaffrey, General McCaffrey saying tanks have, well, a couple of weeks later, month later, suddenly tanks are in the discussion. We started hearing talk about jets a month or so ago. And so now we've got the MiG-29s. At some point, I think we're going to be seeing F-16s over there. It's just a step-by-step-by-step process here. How important is this, does the White House think, for them to get the MiGs? Yeah, this is a pattern that we've seen established previously. And to this point, let's be clear, White House has said that no plans to send fighter jets. But there is a sense of inevitability. So it's grown more louder voices on Capitol Hill pushing the White

House to do so. And we're seeing the domino effect. Poland going first, now Slovakia. There may be other NATO nations that do the same in the coming days. And there is an anticipation that at some point the U.S. will do the same, even if it does take a little while longer. That's the pattern that they've set up here. But to David's point, they can't get there soon enough. Even if they don't have much of an impact in the combat, at least right away, there is a sense, there's a pretty delicate moment in the battle. Ukrainians have really prioritized Bakhmut.

Much to the surprise and, frankly, at times, dismay of their U.S. officials at the Pentagon who think it might be sort of a waste. It's not a very strategically important city, but it's become this psychologically vital battle. The Ukrainians have poured so much resources, manpower into this battle, as have the Russians and their Wagner group of mercenaries, that losing it now would be seen as a pretty devastating blow, even though Secretary of Defense Austin just said a few days ago that he didn't think it would be a change the trajectory of the war. The Ukrainians feel differently. But it does, because they're putting so much into that battle. There are real concerns that they're draining their ammunition supplies,

their manpower supplies. A lot of their top troops have been wounded in that battle, and that may hinder their ability to launch this counteroffensive that has been so anticipated for so long. Well, and the Russians just continue to get slaughtered every single day. And so that battle rages on. I think it's important we talk about Republicans running for president that are taking Putin's position on this war being a territorial dispute. It's important we talk about chats. Republican Chairman Mike McCaul actually went to Ukraine after Joe Biden the day after. And he went over there saying, we need to get you F-16s. Other Republicans are saying that in the Senate and in the House.

So we still have bipartisan support for pushing back against Vladimir Putin's invasion. Hey, David, I wanted to get your read on President Xi and Vladimir Putin getting together again. There are two ways to look at it. Maybe it's because Xi wants to get closer to Putin, support him, help him in the war. Or maybe it's because they're talking about how to bring this thing to an end because Xi needs his economy to start moving again. What do you think? So, Joe, I'm going to be watching. Hard to make a prediction about anything that Xi does. But it's interesting that there are two things that have been pushed by the Chinese. First, that he is going to see Putin as no-limits partner, as they said back in February. And he's also likely to be

talking to Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. And that suggests that the Chinese are trying to position themselves as some sort of mediator, interlocutor, that they don't feel comfortable simply in the position of Russia's best friend and partner in this war. They know the war is unpopular. The Chinese seem to have a longer view about their diplomatic role. We just saw this extraordinary moment where they brokered a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I was going to ask you about that, David. I mean, that seemed even that I would get to say that

would seem from a distance even more unlikely than a Russian Ukraine resolution. But the Chinese stepped in, sort of elbowed us out of the way and got in the middle of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and brokered a peace deal that is pretty remarkable. So, Joe, they did the kind of thing that the United States traditionally has been very good at, which is playing people off. So they knew that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had been at loggerheads a little bit. And they came in and said, you know, we'll be your peace broker. We'll make the deal with Iran that America could never help you make.

And they went ahead and did it this last week. So Saudi Arabia and Iran will reopen embassies after a break of seven years with Chinese help. I talked to Henry Kissinger this week about this. Nana knows more about this kind of triangular diplomacy than anybody in the world. And he said, these are the new rules. This is the first phase of Chinese diplomacy that accompanies their rising economy, their growing military. They're going to have power in this way, too, as a convener and a diplomatic force. So it's a different world.

If people want to deal with the Iran problem, they're going to have to deal with China as part of that. That was another thing that Kissinger stressed. Yeah. So thanks for being with us this morning, David. We greatly appreciate it. What are you working on today? Well, today I'm going to try to finish my new novel, which I've been working on for the last six months. It's my 12th novel. And then I may go play some tennis. OK, well, good luck with that. I greatly appreciate you being with us. Hope you have a great weekend.

Thanks. And coming up, a look at this morning's must read opinion pages, including the piece of the L.A. Times asking why we're praising Mike Pence. You're simply following the law on January the 6th. Plus, Donald Trump goes on defense amid new developments and two separate investigations against him. We have the latest in the former president's legal troubles. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. The man out of time. Will you still love the man out of time? Pentagon today released footage of a Russian jet forcing down a U.S. surveillance drone. Apparently what happened was they both tried to take off from LaGuardia at the same time. You just can't do that. Welcome back to Morning Joe.

It's Friday, March 17th. We've got Jonathan Lemire and John Heilman, Maura Gay and Jen Psaki still with us. Seventy five percent of our St. Patrick's Day panel, Irish. And you're joining and you're joining the conversation. Pulitzer Prize winning columnist at The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson and senior national politicalist at The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, and senior national political correspondent for The Washington Post, Ashley Parker. Thank you all so much for being with us. And this morning, we've been talking about just Republicans' really dark, dystopian view of America that we're especially hearing from Donald Trump. And it's sort of Donald Trump's view of America for any days that he's

not sitting in the Oval Office. The former president said in a video post yesterday, quote, the greatest threat to Western civilization is not Russia more than anything else. It is ourselves and some of the horrible USA hating people that represent us. Ashley, your new reporting is actually on these sort of themes that we're hearing much about from the 2024 Republican field. Let's take a look at this clip. I am your warrior.

I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. We refused to let our state descend into some type of Fauci and dystopia where people's rights were curtailed and their livelihoods were destroyed. On Biden and Harris's watch, a self-loathing has swept our country. It's in the classroom, the boardroom and the back rooms of government. If you were looking for a blueprint to ruin America,

you would make sure that our borders are unsafe. A blueprint for ruining America? I mean, again, it's so dystopian and it's so out of line with what's actually happening day in and day out. We can wake out. But actually, they have decided that hating on America, that being negative all the time is going to scale into election victories. What's going on? Well, they certainly have. And they're following the lead of former President Trump. You played that clip of him at CPAC where he says, I am your retribution. He is perhaps sort of the darkest and most apocalyptic among the group. But what's been interesting is these

2024 hopefuls, some of them declared, some of them expected to declare, are really, at least in the primary setting, following the former president's lead. And you have people like Nikki Haley, like Senator Tim Scott, who, if you looked at them just a couple of years ago, their language and sort of their political rise was predicated on a quite optimistic personal story intertwined with the story of the nation, especially for someone like Tim Scott. So to see him in that clip you played, that was his first visit kind of this season to Iowa, not so much telling that positive, affirmative personal story, but saying that the Democrats, the opposition, are trying to ruin America and then ticking through a list of the ways they would do so.

It is just a divergence of how the two parties, as you remember, Joe, used to fight. It used to be about the size of government, policies at the border, how we viewed Russia and foreign policy. And now you're seeing Republicans just simply demonize the Democrats in a way that people say is apocalyptic, but also quite problematic for the country and for discourse. Yeah. And of course, I guess I guess they're being fed it by a news channel, John Heilman, that says that helicopters that we use in Afghanistan are coming to America and the army is going to kill people who voted for Trump. FBI is going to knock down doors of people and kill them who voted for Trump. And it is so again, this is self-defeating.

You can look back through American history and the laws of gravity still hold for gravity, for law, for politics. And just think back, think back to some of the bleakest moments in the 20th century. The Great Depression, FDR gets sworn in. My parents, my grandparents living in rural Georgia, my granddad losing his job, four kids, no idea how they're going to survive. FDR gives them hope by saying the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. When people literally didn't know where their next bite was going to come from. You even go to 1980 when the economy was an absolute wreck.

We were still in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis. Ronald Reagan running for president. And he said, I truly believe that America's greatest days lie ahead. You can look 2008 after the absolute mess of Iraq and the catastrophe, economic catastrophe of September 15th. What did Barack Obama talk about? Hope and change. Even Kennedy talking about let the word go forth that the torch has been passed to a new generation born in this century. Hope, optimism. It wins.

It scales. It's not hard. This is a losing proposition, hating on America, saying that we are responsible for the collapse of Western civilization. I mean, John, again, this is so simple. I don't know how they get this so horribly wrong and lose elections year after year. Yeah, well, I mean, I was thinking as you were going through this, Joe, when you were in the first hour of the show this morning, there was a little Jesse Jackson, keep hope alive vibe coming off you in the first hour.

And now you've got you found the kind of all the hope candidates. There's so it's such a consistent theme of winning candidates, both parties. Of course, Bill Clinton in 1992, someone who did an incredibly acute analysis of what was wrong with the American economy, put forward a kind of view of how to fix it, was in the middle coming out of the 1991 recession. It was a dark time. In some respects, he was very much campaigning on a critique of George Herbert Walker Bush, obviously. But, John, do you remember what his takeaway line was in the speech? I still believe in a place called hope. Joe, you're reading my notes. You're reading my notes. That's where I was going. That's where I was going. Hope is a consistent

thing. So, you know, even Donald Trump in 2016, for all the grievance that he tapped into, you know, make America great again was, and it was a revanchist kind of thing. It was pining for an America that was a whiter America or more homogenous America and obviously tapped into deep wells of racial resentment and white grievance. At the same time, there was a tinge, at least, of optimism about let's rebuild the country. Let's make America. That was, as a brand, part of it, there was at least something that was not just dystopia. It was not bad moon rising America is a threat in the world, you know, the kind of stuff he says now. It's like Trump has become

so consumed in his own sense of grievance over what he believes happened to him in 2020, that it's all he talks about now. He's a Johnny One Note. And with Ron DeSantis, who's racing, who thinks that he's the only Trump competitor who has a chance in the field, DeSantis is basically saying, I've got to protect my Trump flank. It's not really the right flank or the conservative. It's like, I've got to not let Donald Trump be any distance between us on the MAGA front. And so, you have the two leading Republican candidates now who both sound like they're the authors of a couple of dystopian sci-fi novels. That's all they talk about is how terrible everything is, how terrible the country is, how terrible these phantom things

that they conjure out of almost nothing to kind of animate the fears almost entirely of that part of the Republican base that's animated by those things. And I will say that there is a market for it. There clearly is a market for it in the Republican Party today. But there's also, I believe, and I think you and I agree about this, there is also a silent majority within the Republican Party, I would say, who are like desperately hoping that someone can articulate a more optimistic, more positive, more pragmatic, more forward-looking vision of what the Republican Party could be in the future. And no one has come forward and taken that mantle. And if it's going to be Trump and DeSantis just being grievance, grievance, grievance, dystopia, dystopia,

dystopia, rage, rage, rage, that leaves a big opening for someone to come in and say, I'm going to be more like Reagan, more like Bush, more like Clinton, more like Obama, and try to take that mantle and be able to take it to Donald Trump. We'll see if it happens. We'll see if it happens. But this is a cottage industry. You're right. It works. If you've got a podcast, it works. If you've got a cable news show, it works. If you only have to reach a certain number of people to be a big success in your field. But it doesn't it doesn't scale. It doesn't win elections. And so why Republicans keep winning elections? And Gene Robinson, the Republicans now have as their front runner, not only a guy who's probably going to be indicted several times before his election, his campaign even gets moving.

But you've got a guy who is now called for the termination of the United States Constitution. His words, his words. He called for the termination of the United States Constitution. And he's now said that the greatest threat to Western civilization is not China, is not North Korea, is not Iran, is not Russia, but it's Democrats that are running the United States. That's about as far away as you can get from Ronald Reagan and FDR's optimism as you can get. It sure is. And so, you know, let's talk for a minute about the market out there for this sort of swill. I mean, this is Donald Trump's new brand, I guess. It's not make America great again. It's the America is going to hell. And yes, it is all about this dystopia and it's very dark and very ugly. And there he believes clearly that there's

that's the market. That's what the market wants to hear. And all these other candidates don't want to be outflanked by Trump on that front. My question is, do they also really believe that there are that many Republicans, because they're playing to the Republican base now, who want to hear this, who believe this, who have so lost faith in this country, that they're eating this stuff up. They really believe the stuff that Trump is saying. And so they have to say it, too. Are they doing it tactically now in hopes of getting the nomination? And then they would pivot to a more optimistic vision if they reach the general election or try to do so? Or do they think this is where a big chunk of the country is? I'm pretty sure it's not half the country or half the country plus one. This does not win a general election. But does this win a Republican primary? And what does that say about where what we used to call the Republican Party

is now? It's nothing like the party of Ronald Reagan. It's nothing like the party of the Bushes. It's nothing like any Republican Party we have known in our lifetimes.