Morning Joe - Morning Joe 3/20/23

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Law enforcement planning for possible Trump indictment

Could you ever support him again for president? I think that's yet to be seen, John. I must tell you that I think we'll have better choices. We're going to decide as a family whether we offer ourselves as one of them. But I think different times call for different leadership. Yeah, you know, he tried to kill my family and tried to kill me. But, you know, it remains to be seen whether I may support him. he tried to kill my family and tried to kill me. But, you know, it remains to be seen whether I may support him for the Republican nomination.

And there you go. Seen. We're done here. We're done. There you go. He admitted last week, Mika, that Donald Trump put his life's family in danger and his own life in danger. For, I got to say, for me, for everybody that I know, that's the end. In an attempt to subvert our democracy. In an attempt to subvert, but let's just keep with the family. Like, let's go a little John Dutton here. Like, you know, you protect your family.

And he admitted last week that somebody tried to kill his family. You know, don't go all John Dutton on the revenge part and drive him to the other side of the border. I mean, but at least you can say I'm not going to support him. No, no, Jonathan, you know, he tried to have me and my family killed on January the 6th while trying to subvert democracy. I think he'll probably try to find somebody else instead of that remains to be seen. It's it's just, again, one more bizarre answer from a string of Republicans who who just can't quit Donald because they're so afraid of his face. And that's a lot of what we're going to be talking about today. Mike Pence dodging a chance to take a stand against Donald Trump as the former president is calling on his supporters with the same language that was used on January 6th. We're going to go through the latest developments in the Manhattan DA's case

and the possibility that an indictment could come this week. Plus, we'll have reaction from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other prominent Republicans that Joe was talking about who are all pushing the same narrative about the justice system. And we are watching what's happening in Beijing and Moscow this morning as Chinese President Xi Jinping is meeting with Vladimir Putin for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, March 20th, a busy day. With us, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, the host of MSNBC's Sykes, presidential historian John Meacham,

and former U.S. attorney and senior FBI official Chuck Rosenberg is with us this morning. He's an NBC News legal analyst. And we will start this morning in New York, where amid mounting legal trouble across multiple states, former President Donald Trump could be criminally charged for the first time as early as this week. According to five senior officials familiar with the plans, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are discussing security measures ahead of a possible indictment from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. This is in connection with a hush money payment the former president allegedly made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 campaign to keep her quiet about an affair she claims to have had with Trump back in 2006. Trump denies having an affair with Daniels and any wrongdoing. Although we are told law enforcement's plans are precautionary,

Trump claimed on social media over the weekend that he would be arrested on Tuesday. In that same post, he also called for protests to, quote, take our nation back, drawing comparisons to his calls for violence in the lead up to the January 6th insurrection. Despite those claims, a Trump spokesperson tells NBC News that the former president has not been notified about a possible arrest. As a precaution, however, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg told his staff in an internal memo over the weekend that he would, quote, not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law. In fact, Bragg is continuing with his investigation, even as talk of an indictment reaches a fever pitch. Today, a one time legal adviser to former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, Robert Costello,

says he will testify before the grand jury in the case. A person with direct knowledge of the situation says Trump's own attorneys asked the DA's office to have Costello testify. Cohen also confirmed yesterday on MSNBC that he was asked to make himself available to the DA's office as a rebuttal witness to Costello's testimony. Cohen denies that Costello ever represented him. And Joe, I just think it's worth reminding everybody that Donald Trump, if you think about what he posted on Truth Social and these calls to take the country back, is the same guy who said, run to the Capitol, run, go there now, I'll meet you there. And he never died. Same guy who watched gleefully for for several hours while violence was was being let loose by rioters on the Capitol. Police officers being bludgeoned and and just brutally, brutally hurt.

Four later died that were there that day. I wonder, though, there's been a lot of, let's just say, amateur lawyering going on on news networks over the weekend. I want to bring in somebody who actually knows what they're talking about, Chuck Rosenberg. Chuck, let's talk about what crimes Donald Trump could be charged with. I hear a lot of people saying, oh, this is much ado about nothing. All I will say is that if when I held events as running for federal office, if I had 20 volunteers together and somebody bought the barbecue from Sonny's Barbecue, if I didn't report that. Thirty dollar, fifty dollar, sixty dollar in-kind contribution, that was a violation. And if it's serious enough, I could be charged for a federal federal crime. In this case, you have Cohen making a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star at Donald

Trump's request. He's repaid double, not by the campaign, but by the Trump organization. None of this is reported on FEC reports. And when I hear people saying this is much to do about nothing, I think about all the members of Congress I served with and understanding every single one of them would have been charged and sent to jail had they done this. Yeah, Joe, it's a fair point. So let's be clear. This is a state investigation. And so it would be a state crime, not a federal one, but I take your point and

here's how it works. It's not the hush money payment that's illegal. That may seem improper, it may be vile, but it's not illegal. What would be illegal is the way you treat that hush money payment on your books and records. So if you're really paying the money to Stormy Daniels to have her remain quiet about an extramarital affair, and then you characterize that payment on your books and records as a legal retainer for Mr. Cohn, those are false business entries, and New York State has made that a crime, a misdemeanor. Now, if you commit that crime in order to conceal some other crime. To your point, Joe, an election law

violation, a false reporting, then that can also be a felony under New York state law. So it seems like potentially a misdemeanor coupled with a felony, all related to the same operative acts, falsely characterizing the hush money payments as a legal retainer. That's the offense. Michael Cohen got sent to jail for being part of this scheme. Why? Well, he pled guilty to, I believe, eight felonies under federal law and not just this scheme.

There was a tax scheme. He had made false statements. So there were more and more serious offenses to which he pled guilty. This is a narrower piece of what he pled guilty to. Now, he had an integral role, if he is to be believed, in the Trump hush money, false bookkeeping caper. But he, Cohn, pled guilty to many more offenses and that was in the federal system, not in the state system. You say if he is to be believed, uh, would, would this case concern you if you're bringing it as a prosecutor? You know, yes and no. I mean, look, if you want

to know how libraries work, you talk to librarians. If you want to know how crimes work, you talk to criminals. And so there's nothing at all unusual about having a criminal as a witness at another criminal trial. The key, Joe, is how well you can corroborate that person's testimony. Are there other witnesses? Are there other documents? The answer here, based on public reporting, seems to be yes, that there's plenty of corroboration for what Michael Cohen will testify to a trial. That said, you have to be careful when you put a witness on the stand who has a motive for revenge. And Michael Cohen has said many times he would like to get Donald Trump in one way or another. So does it concern me? Yes. Have I done things like that? Sure. How do I do it? Carefully and with corroboration.

John Meacham, at the end of the day, the overriding principle seems to be that no man is above the law. Donald Trump has seemed to be above the law not only during his presidency, but also during his life. Are you going to be wringing your hands if he ends up only getting charged with a misdemeanor and they don't have the felony count stick? Or do we still believe that no man is above the law, regardless of whether they're an ex-president or an accountant or a lawyer or a construction worker? Well, you know, you think about it, there are two different tracks here. There's the legal track that you and Chuck are talking about, and there's the political track. And as much as we would like those two to be entwined, they aren't.

And so one of the great questions for the next couple of weeks, and Mika alluded to at the top, is A, whether this has led to yet another example of Trump-inspired political violence. That's one question as this process goes forward. The other is, in this polarized time, does it matter politically? Legally, it's a different thing. But politically, does anybody who's on the fence about Donald Trump, and I suspect there's a lot of room on the fence at this point, I would hope, will this matter to them? And I'm historically speaking and sort of sitting back and looking at it, it's what's troubling is that we're at a we've long been at a point where nothing seems to matter. Facts and traditional rules of gravity, traditional codes within American politics don't apply here.

And I was thinking this weekend about there's a line in Thomas Paine. I can't remember if it's common sense or the American crisis, but both before Yorktown, who says that in America, the law is king. The king is not the law. The law is king. And that's true in that sphere. Politically, it's an unfolding and open question. So speaking to reporters in Orlando yesterday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was asked about Trump's calls for protests and urged Americans to stay calm.

But he also gave a full throated defense of the former president and condemned the Manhattan DA's investigation. Take a look. I don't think people should protest this, no. And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn't believe that either. I mean, I think the thing that you may misinterpret when President Trump talks, when someone says that they can protest, he would probably be referring to my tweet. Educate people about what's going on. He's not talking in a harmful way, and nobody should. Nobody should harm one another in this, and this is why you should really make law equal, because if that was the case, nothing would happen here. Lawyer after lawyer after lawyer will tell you this is the weakest

case out there. You see the Supreme Court. You see the statue out there of a lady sitting there with a blindfold on and a scale. It's supposed to be equal to all in America. And the last thing we want or have is somebody putting their thumb on the scale simply because they don't agree with somebody else's political view. That is what's wrong. And that's what infuriates people. And this will not hold up in court. Let's go to Jackie Alimany, who's following Republican reaction here. And just to touch on what Kevin McCarthy said right there, it, you know, it's defies logic, given that Donald Trump is using similar language that led up to the January 6th insurrection that led to death and destruction and an attempt to subvert our democracy. So I guess if he can completely ignore that part of Trump's legacy, he might then have an opinion that perhaps he's not actually trying to incite any type of

violence. But what are you hearing in terms of other Republican reaction and how do they handle this this balance between supporting Trump and what's potentially coming? Yeah, well, you know, Republicans, I think, find themselves are having a lot of deja vu right now in a situation where they were headed into this GOP retreat in Orlando, hoping to focus on bigger picture policy items like the budget that's due in coming weeks and making sure that the U.S. government doesn't breach the debt limit. And, of course, the timing of this deeply complicates their agenda, especially as Kevin McCarthy got out in front of this and said now he was going to direct congressional committees, specifically the Weaponization Committee, to investigate if federal funds have been used to conduct this investigation. But I will say the Democrats

are also sort of privately expressing some of the same concerns that Kevin McCarthy raised just there, that questions about why Alvin Bragg has decided to bring potentially bring these charges now after previous prosecutors had passed on this and after there's really going to most likely be no new details revealed. But Republicans, once again, regardless of the facts here and the fact, as Chuck very eloquently raised and laid out, that this is a potential felony, that they're rallying to his defense either way. And the polling, though, you know, we can get into this more later on. The polling doesn't necessarily bode well for them. And I think that Republicans are going to find themselves in an unusual situation for the first time where actually rallying to the former president's defense isn't necessarily doing much for them with their constituents, as they already sort of started to see in this past midterm election.

Yeah. Charlie Sykes, it's fascinating that Kevin McCarthy would look at Donald Trump's tweet and say he doesn't want people to protest when he's actually using language like January the 6th, protest and take your country back. And he wasn't the only Republican seeming to incite violence. This is again, this is we've talked about it daily here. This is a party that seems hell bent on scaring off swing voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, the Atlanta suburbs, Charlotte, all the places you need to win to win presidential elections. But here they are once again following right along, trying to undermine the rule of law and supporting a former president who seems to be inciting violence.

What's it what's it mean for the Republican Party moving forward? Well, the worst is yet to come. So let's try out this counterfactual that when Kevin McCarthy and others are asked about this indictment, they could have said, well, you know, no one is above the law. Let's let the criminal justice system work out, work it out. What is most important is to make sure that justice is done. And let's wait and see. Let's because we don't know whether there's going to be an indictment, what the indictment is going to say. So they could have taken that position. Right. Instead, once again, offered a chance for an off ramp. They would not take it. These Republicans had a chance to take an off ramp after Access Hollywood. They didn't take it. They had a

chance after he was defeated for reelection. They had a chance after he tried to subvert the I mean, extort the president of Ukraine. They had an off ramp after January 6th. They had an off ramp after this former president tweeted out or put out as a social media bleep that we ought to terminate the Constitution to put him back into power. But they keep falling back into line. You know what they ought to recognize is this may be in many ways the weakest case, but it's perhaps only the first. This is a long story and it's about to get longer. So, you know, Kevin McCarthy has to think what happens, you know, having, you know, given his full throat of defense of this, if there is in fact violence, what happens when the second indictment comes down and the third indictment comes out? What is the cumulative weight of all of this? But so far, we've seen nothing but what we've seen over and

over and over again, which is Kevin McCarthy's willingness to do Donald Trump's bidding to intervene in a case that he has no business intervening in and other Republicans rallying around. This will help Trump in the short term. But as you just mentioned, in the long term, this continues to be toxic. And it continues to help them lose. If you look at what's happened over the past one, two, three, four, five, six elections, Reverend Dow, another off ramp was listening to the phone call to the Georgia secretary of state. I mean, what more do you need if you're a Republican who has to make a decision about Donald Trump, who is potentially facing an indictment this week? And if this is the weakest case, then look at all the others that are in line behind this one that appear to be, according to legal experts, much stronger. Even in this case, what a lot of us are not remembering is that we had a case

involving a personal relationship with a woman that did go to court around finances called John Edwards. It was a different situation, but he was using campaign money in a way that was improper to cover a situation and handle a situation of an extramarital affair. So before people start rallying around this, Democrats didn't do that with John Edwards, who had been a vice presidential candidate. Right. Now, much different circumstances. But I think that this may be, according to legal experts, which I couldn't question.

Well, different circumstances because John Edwards was flying high and doing great. And his political career and legally everything came to a screeching halt. That's exactly when that came out for Trump. It's they just keep turning away. Fellow Republicans, they they seem to think that he'll somehow get around every legal challenge against him. Rather than asking, should he get around? But even if this is deemed the weakest case, I would argue that as one who has known Donald Trump as you and Joe has, this is the heaviest case for him because he is a guy I will never

forget. You and Joe and I sat in this building upstairs, a kind of audience that morning and talked about he had won for president. And I said, you have to remember he was an outsider out of borough guy in New York, looked down by the New York elite, and now he feels he's got him. And when I left the studio and I went to a board meeting of National Action Network, I got a call from Donald Trump and he and I fight. And he said, Al, I saw you on Morning Joe this morning. You got it. You you were right. You know me. We both been outsiders and I've arrived.

But now the elite that he thought he'd proven is looking at him saying, we told you he was nothing. We told you that he would do things like this. We told you he would desecrate. And to think that he was the one that took out ads calling for the death penalty of the Central Park Five, five young black and brown boys falsely accused of raping a white woman, that he will be going possibly in the building they had to face and be arraigned in the same building. While my good friend John Meacham was reading Thomas Paine, I was reading the Bible, which said that that a man's souls that he may also weep. So I think we shouldn't we should not overlook the idea that Kevin McCarthy appeared to be threatening the Manhattan district attorney's office.

They're looking to investigate investigators and potentially cutting off funding. So that's a point we should return to as the morning and the days go on. But I think to John Meacham's point, there is a difference here. There's political and legal, and they are both viable. And I do think there is concern. The Democrats I've spoken to, including some senior members of the White House who do fear that because this case is weakest, that if it is brought first, that it will be potential. Allow Trump to then paint this one as illegitimate, that it's weak and suggested all of the other cases against him are as well. And that is something they're worried about, though, of course, we know each case will be treated legally on their own merits, Joe.

The politics of this do get confusing. And I think that there are some Republicans who are fully expecting that Donald Trump's poll numbers will go up after this indictment, that he will be able to paint this as a witch hunt, that we might even it might even call some Republicans to think twice about challenging him because he will have solidified his grip on the party that much further and animate his base. That said, it's a very different story for a potential general election. It's hard to imagine any sort of indictment being at all helpful for Donald Trump come November 2024. The trick is, will Republicans see that between now and then? You know, and my I think my over under for indictments is two and a half. I mean, I'd be shocked if he just stayed at this one.

Georgia, certainly there's some compelling evidence there. Same thing with the documents at Moralago, the obstruction of the retrieval of those documents. I just I just have to say right here, though, I understand about politics. I understand about the law, but I don't understand is people saying, well, we need to worry about politics and maybe avoid a possible possible indictment. The law is the law and politics is politics. And if there's any prosecutor, I understand prosecutors can be very political. But if there's any judge, if there's any any any prosecutor that's going, well, gee, I don't know what would this look like? Instead of looking at what the law is there, they're not doing their duty. And I do agree with you, Jonathan Lemire, when you have members of the first branch of

government talking about defunding the third branch of government because they don't like the fact that that one of their political players may be indicted. That's that's really that's deeply disturbing. And Charlie Sykes and I had a conversation very early in the Trump administration when Trump started attacking federal judges. And Charlie said, I know federal judges and I know that federal judges, either whether the federal. Well, let's talk about this for one second, Charlie, because it's important revisiting. We talked, I think it was in February of 2017. And you told me that in your conversation with federal judges, it didn't matter if they were Federalist Society, federal judges, or whether they were card carrying members of the ACLU that became federal judges. An attack against one federal judge was an attack against all federal

judges. And Donald Trump paid for that for four years for his his lack of respect for judicial independence. I got to say, when Kevin McCarthy and other people, MTG and other people start talking about defunding the courts, defunding the Justice Department. They're making that. I believe they're making the same mistake because most judges, they actually they actually care a because what we're seeing are the fruits of years long attempts by Donald Trump and many of his supporters to delegitimize the entire justice system. I mean, Jonathan's point is very, very important. I mean, you have the former president who is talking about, you know, possibly fomenting violence, but you also have the speaker of the House who is basically internalizing the idea that obstructing justice is part of the

mission of the House Republican Party, actually threatening a prosecutor, actually trying to intimidate a prosecutor from going ahead with the rule of law. Look, it's one thing to attack individual federal judges. But when you are undermining the entire concept of an independent judiciary, when you are undermining the entire concept of the rule of law and whether or not you should be subject to it there, you know, this has to cross ideological lines, disturb people who recognize what happens if Donald Trump now launches a jihad, not just against prosecutors, but also against juries, against judges, against the entire system, because this is just the beginning. You know what he's going to do down in Georgia. You know what he's going to do when the Department of Justice comes forward, when judges rule against him. So this really is going to be a long term challenge about whether or not we have an independent judiciary and whether we have an independent justice system and whether or not we have a political party that is rejecting the concept of the rule of law when it comes to their political leaders. And Mika, let me just follow up with what Jonathan said as well

and what Charlie was just saying. Make no mistake, Make no mistake. This may rev up the base of Donald Trump for a couple of weeks, just like Mar-a-Lago did for a couple of weeks. But he loses voters in Wisconsin. He loses voters in Michigan. He loses voters in Pennsylvania. He loses voters in Atlanta. He loses swing voters when not only if he gets indicted, but when the Republican Party starts talking about declaring war against the rule of law, declaring war against judges, declaring war against the judiciary. This has never worked for them and it's not going to work for them now. So as Jonathan said, yeah, maybe Donald Trump gets more support from the Republicans because Republicans just love losing. They just love losing. I've decided I'm going to stop trying to reason with them. They just love losing. And if you love losing, just keep on losing. But they're going to put themselves in a position where they're hurt more in the general election by rallying around an indicted guy.

If he's indicted two or three times and the more he's indicted, the more fervor they have for him, the more they declare war against the rule of law, the bigger they lose. Well, it's just that simple. It's just that simple. For God's sake, this is not hard. Just think about it. McCarthy says this is the weakest case out there. Think about that. He's referring to the fact that there are many others. This is just one.

So that's just right there. That's a very weak position to be coming from when you're defending a man who has maybe four or five huge legal challenges ahead of him. And Chuck Rosenberg, if you could talk about the law and the justice system, do prosecutors and judges think about protests or media coverage or politics when they are doing their jobs? No, no, no and no, Mika. And because I think the precision of language is important, let me also draw another distinction for you. People keep referring to the New York case as the weakest case. To me, as a former prosecutor, weak means a case where the evidence is thin or perhaps you don't have a reasonable probability of conviction.

What I think they might mean is that it's a less serious case. And how serious a case is, is reflected in how it's categorized or classified. In this case, under New York state law, it's a misdemeanor. So it's admittedly less serious. And how serious the case is, is also sort of explained or demonstrated by how it is sentenced. Murder is a very serious case, and people often go to jail for a very long time, if not for life. Falsifying business records under New York state law is a less serious case, and so the penalties are less severe.

It doesn't make it a weak case. And if you look at it from the perspective of a prosecutor, you bring your case when it is ready. And so it would be a political decision to bring it too soon for some other purpose or to wait for some other purpose. If the case is ready and as the elected prosecutor in Manhattan, you believe it's an appropriate charge, you bring it. It may be less serious than the other cases out there, but that doesn't make it weaker. Yeah, I get it. John Meacham, I'm curious.

You had said before the election of 2020 and also 2022 that we might be in the 1850s historically. more like 1868, 1869, as we decide whether people who broke the law are in turn against the country actually have to face justice. Yeah, it is a lot like Reconstruction and the debates over actual accountability for having taken up arms against the constitutional order. And I think, to go to your point about Republicans liking to lose, this is not a partisan point. I think that's the only way to get out of this. The fever's not just going to break. We're not going to wake up one morning and, you know,

talk about the Wizard of Oz when, you know, everything's in color and, you know, suddenly, you know, they're going to be amatronic founding fathers talking again. It's just not going to happen. Republicans have to keep losing until they break themselves. This is part of this of this cult of personality. to have the Speaker of the House sit up there and play legal pundit, and to have the former President of the United States once again call for protest and violence, or protest. I don't agree with Speaker McCarthy, but let's just, the words themselves are bad enough. The only way to do this, the only way to get a functioning two party system again is to defeat the Trump party. And the only because, as Lincoln said, to go to the 1850s, all men act on incentive.

So what is the incentive of all the folks we're talking about? The quasi establishment Republicans, the aspiring Republican political class, they want votes because they want power and position. You take away the votes. They don't have power. They don't have position. They will change their behavior. Our talking to each other about this is not going to do it. They have to keep losing.

Well, it's a meek. I got to say, it's a hell of a losing streak. 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. You would think they would have been broken of their bad habits by now as far as supporting a guy that wants to, quote, terminate the Constitution. Yeah, but they haven't. And so John's right. I guess they keep losing until some Republican says, hey, I've got an idea. Let's turn our back on the guy that's been responsible for us having the longest losing streak over the past 30 years. And only then can the Republicans

party start rebuilding and give themselves a shot at winning elections when they turn their back on that past. Yeah. John Meacham, Jackie Alomany, Charlie Sykes. Thank you all. Chuck Rosenberg. We'll see you again later in the morning. We appreciate your analysis. All of you. Thank you so much. And still ahead on Morning Joe, we are marking 20 years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, plus the latest from Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin's surprise visit to Mariupol in his first trip to the occupied territory since the war began. It comes as Putin hosts China's leader, who arrived in Moscow just moments ago, seeking to cement Beijing's role as a global peacemaker. We'll discuss the diplomatic

implications with retired Navy Admiral James Tavridis and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. It's 40 past the hour. Welcome back. Turning now to the war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol, located at the southern edge of Ukraine's Donetsk region. Video from Saturday shows Putin driving through the city, touring reconstruction sites and more. In over a year of fighting, it was Putin's first trip to the territory captured by his forces, and it's the closest he's ventured to the front lines. Meanwhile, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is in Moscow right now as he prepares to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He touched down moments ago and the visit is Putin's most notable diplomatic engagement with another country since he launched his invasion. Russian media claims both leaders will sign a total of 10 documents, including two joint statements, one on comprehensive partnership and the other on economic cooperation up until the year 2030. Joining us now, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, retired four-star Navy Admiral James Tavridis. He's chief international analyst for NBC News and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. Joe? Richard, taken together, you think that Putin's visit to Mariupol, as well as Xi's visit to Moscow, sends an ominous message to Ukraine and the world. What is it? The message is not peace is at hand. The fact that Putin is

physically there, so personally associating himself with Mariupol and Crimea the day before, essentially, this is not a man, shall we say, on the brink of peace talks. This is someone who's saying these are Russian territories from his point of view. China, you know, Xi Jinping is flying into it. It's been, what, 13 months, 14 months since Xi Jinping closely linked himself to Vladimir Putin. China may posture Joe talking about peace, but there's no way, based on its 12-point plan or anything else, China is going to be a force for peace here. So what this suggests to me, this reinforces the prediction that this is likely to be a long war. Yes, certainly no time soon. But this war continuing for a long time is not in the best interest, Admiral, of either of those men or their countries.

I'm just wondering, I think maybe I always go one layer too deep on these things. But I would think if Putin were in a position of weakness before she was coming down and thought she was going to pressure him to move towards peace, the first thing he would do would be to visit Mariupol and say, don't even think about asking me to negotiate back the land bridge between Russia and Crimea. What are your thoughts? I think that makes sense. And, you know, I just happened to be in San Antonio, Texas today. I'm a couple of hundred yards from the Alamo. We ought to remember that Mariupol is the Alamo of this war. This is where Ukrainian commandos held out till the very end. Putin was forced to essentially destroy the city in order to conquer it. And look at the optics of the visits, Joe. He goes there effectively in the

middle of the night so the cameras don't pick up the blasted landscape all around him. And he's driving himself. And, you know, he's trying to show he's a manly man, I guess. But it's just a pathetic send up if you stop and think about it. So flash back a year, he's whispering, sipping vodka, telling his best friend forever, President Xi, hey, I'm going to be in Kiev in two to three days. Well, here we are 14 months later, and he's like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, as the Ukrainians have been saying. So it's it's a real downfall for Putin, frankly. But is he trying to signal his intransigence, his defiance in this moment in the face of the the arrest warrant issued for him just a couple of days ago? Yes, he is. The question is, as Richard says, is Xi really going to throw down 100 percent here? I think the thing to watch

is whether China begins sending significant arms shipments to Russia. That's what Putin desperately wants. I don't think Xi is going to fall into that trap. Richard Haass, you tweeted over the weekend about the Iraq war. You said, the U.S. government, my boss at the time, Colin Powell, did not lie about WMDs. The word lie involves intent. There was no intent. We got it wrong. We misinterpreted intelligence and assumed Saddam was hiding WMDs when he was hiding his lack of WMDs. No more, no less. That, of course, received quite quite a response on social media. Richard, I will I will say that, of course, as you wrote later, the Iraq war was an absolute disaster, a war of choice that was a disaster. Going back to the time, you had the director of the CIA jumping up and down saying it was a slam dunk,

that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. You had overwhelming majorities of both Republicans, Democrats in the House and in the Senate supporting this war. Bush actually put together a large coalition to go in. Looking back, a lot of that seems to be forgotten. But bottom line here, the Bush administration got it terribly wrong, horrifically wrong. What are the lessons 20 years later from that debacle? Yeah, Joe, I think it's useful to distinguish between the WMD issue and the decision to go to war. People did think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. If you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail, almost confirmation bias. Every piece of intel that came in, people saw through the framing that the assumption that he had weapons of mass destruction. I thought even so it was

still a mistake to go to war. We had other options. It just simply wasn't worth it. And I thought the idea that we were going to bring democracy to Iraq to Iraq was a preposterous. So can I ask you, Richard, what was the take us back? What was the absolute obsession after 9-11 to link Saddam Hussein, who was the most bloodthirsty leader, who killed more Arabs than anybody else in history? But what was the obsession linking Saddam Hussein to September 11th when there just wasn't the evidence there. Well, some people were looking for an excuse to go to war against Iraq. So there was either trying to link them or there was the fear that he had WMD and somehow he would use it or give it to terrorists. But I thought all that was a stretch. I thought the real reason, Joe, is after 9-11, people wanted to do something big and bold. They wanted to transform the Middle East.

This was what the president wanted. This was most of his age. Probably Cheney was the one person who only had, the vice president, a narrow security focus. I think the lessons here, going back to your original question, was one, if you're going to invade a country, this may sound really silly, but if you're going to invade a country, you better understand it. The United States did not understand the demographic and political and cultural basis of Iraq. And you need to think through what it's going to take to succeed, not simply to win the battle

up front, but how you're going to secure the peace. We didn't think that through. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had way an inadequate force to do that. The big winner of this was Iran. And what we did was we made the region safe for Iranian influence. We alienated many Americans from the government and from American foreign policy. Looking back to where you began the show, a lot of the populism you see in this country can be linked back to the Iraq war. Clearly, the isolationism of it can be. This is a classic case, not just a war of choices, I dubbed it, but this was a classic case of overreach. And that, to me, is a big lesson. The United States cannot go about the world,

to quote John Quincy Adams, let me put on my John Meacham hat for a second, in search of monsters to destroy. We need to be active in the world, but we can't overreach in the world. And that, to me, is the real lesson of Iraq. We overreached the region, the United States, the world paid a real price for it. And to further Richard's point, right now we are seeing a bipartisan group of lawmakers trying to claw back some of the authority to declare war from the executive branch, pointing to this 20-year mark of the Iraq invasion. So, Admiral Stavridis, I just want to get your thoughts on the anniversary. Here we are 20 years later. What you think about when you reflect on that conflict,

but also where you think stands with America's decision and ability to wage war today? First, as always in these scenarios, it's important to put yourself back in that moment when these decisions were made. I was in the Pentagon on 9-11. The aircraft struck 150 feet to the right of my office. I'm very lucky to be here today. There was a huge emotion in the country. And I think that Richard's right, that emotion translated into a series of policy decisions that haunt us today. But it's important to put it in that in that context of the emotion of the moment. And then secondly, the real question is, what does this tell us about the limits of American power in the world? And I think we have to recognize that, as Fareed Zakaria has said, we're not the sole superpower, but we're not a declinist nation

either. Others have risen. We have to deal with that. We have returned now to an era of real great power politics. It's a very different world than taking on this war of choice in Iraq, but avoiding the deeply dangerous idea of a war with China. That's why this meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, the leaders of autocratic nations, is so important for us to watch carefully this week and see what comes out of it. Now, I want to ask Admiral just a balance. If you could talk about the tragedy of Iraq. We have well over 4000 U.S. troops killed there, well over 100000 Iraqis killed from the violence that sprang from that war. I'm just curious, what was the cost to the United States long term?

Exactly as Richard says, it is now being thrown at us as though it's a moral equivalent to what's happening in Ukraine. In other words, I often hear from not just people from the global south, Brazil, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, but also Europeans will say, well, why is it so terrible that Putin is invading Ukraine? After all, you invaded Iraq. That's a real cost to us. There are correct answers to that question that makes it different. What's your answer? What's your answer to that question? Yeah, my answer is the moral equivalent would be if the United States decided to invade Canada, annex it, absorb all of its mineral resources, took Canadian children and moved them back to the United States. That's what Russia is doing in Ukraine. So dismiss that moral equivalency.

The point we have to continue to deal with as Americans in the world is that we have to have humility about it. We need to recognize that nations are like people. They make mistakes. The measure of any nation, just like the measure of any person, is how you come back after that mistake. And I think standing up to Vladimir Putin is the right thing to be doing now. And we need to push aside that false moral equivalency. But boy, I'm hearing a lot of that on my circuits. Yeah. Yeah. Retired Admiral James Stavridis. Thank you, Richard Haas. Thank you as well. It's always good to see you both. And before we go to break, let me let me just really quickly, let's talk about your dad, because your dad would want us to talk about your dad right now.

Your dad, because he was right. Your dad spent his entire life as a Cold War hawk. He offended people on the left because he really believed that the Soviet Union would be defeated, not by detente, but by confrontation and was always considered a warmonger, a war hawk, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then a remarkable thing happened on the lead up to the Iraq war. He said it was wrong. He and Brent Scowcroft were two men who stood alone, actually, against most of official Washington, at least against the great foreign policy minds of official Washington. And it caused some consternation, even in your own household with brothers. But your dad, your dad was right. And so many of us

on the other side, the overwhelming majority of us were wrong. Joe, it's interesting how much more support there was for the 2003 Iraq war, which history is going to be correctly brutal about in its assessment, as opposed to the 1990-91 Iraq Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. And that issue, the 1991 war, is exactly analogous to Vladimir Putin. That's the analogy. He took territory through force. He invaded a neighboring country. And it's just interesting. People say we need bipartisanship. We didn't have bipartisanship, much of it, in the Gulf War. We had enormous amounts of bipartisanship in the Iraq War in 2003.

Bipartisanship is not always a guarantee of correctness. As we see today. It was really remarkable. You're exactly right. There wasn't as much bipartisanship in the 91 Iraq war. And then you had Democrats going into the second Iraq war who were afraid to look like they did after the first Iraq war. So that's why, despite all of the attacks that George W. Bush took in 2004, you look back and you see that the Democratic ticket in 2000 and in 2004, they all supported the second Iraq war. But again, Mika, all the more extraordinary that your father, who was in the center of all the action. He did not and warned people what would happen.

I heard it. I heard it. And he was always right.