Morning Joe - Morning Joe 3/23/23

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Grand jury in Trump hush money case expected to reconvene today

Do you acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the Georgia election? I am focused on being a criminal defense attorney. That's an easy one. Do you acknowledge that, Drew? No. No, I'm focused. Let me tell you what I'm focused on. I'm focused on being a criminal defense attorney. Do you acknowledge that he lost the state of Georgia? You can talk to other political people. Why don't we even talk about that?

I don't know. We want to watch you get fired on TV. I don't even why would we even talk about that? I don't know. We want to watch you get fired on TV. I don't know. It would be. That was Ari Malberg. Really? Donald Trump's lawyer, one of many. He's done this in the Georgia election interference case. Yes. And one of the many legal issues for the former president just ahead, we'll go through the latest developments in the Manhattan hush money investigation after the grand jury got an unexpected day off yesterday. What does that mean? Plus, expert legal analysis on a significant and rare ruling connected to the former president's

handling of classified materials. Also had a preview of what we can expect on Capitol Hill today when TikTok CEO testifies, hoping to ease privacy concerns that have led to many lawmakers calling for the app to be banned in the U.S. Listen, Mika, I tell you what, the last words, Willie and I, I got to tell you, this morning we're a little shaken. Why are you shaken? Well, as you know, we have our routine. I wake up, you know, at 2.15 every morning. We're 5.52 a.m.

I walk outside. I got my boots on, my snow boots on. I walk next door to Willie's house. We go down in the basement, right? Crack open some Red Bull and some orange juice, and we start going through this process. No, we do. I call my contacts across the process. Now we do.

And I call my contacts across the world. Willie calls his and we're sitting there and we're drinking coffee and everything else and take a break once in a while to watch some Highline matches that we bet on. OK, but we got we got this. We get this super supercomputer. And by the way, we use that in diagrams. And by the time we come with the air, it tells us what the top stories are. Yeah. Hold on. Tell us what you know. This is a process. And I know why I know you don't like opening up the curtain to let people see how we actually do

this. But this is our process. Do the Venn diagrams pop a couple of vitamin C's, right? And then Willie gets an IV some mornings. Yeah, creatine shakes. Yeah, all that stuff. Creatine shakes. So we do all this, and then we get the Venn diagrams. We line it all up on the wall, and we get a foam board, and we put it there. And I'll be damned if this morning, this is how we get our stories. But this is the top story that got coming up this morning for Willie and me.

And we're just a little shaken by it all. It's the Lindsay Lohan crypto charges. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. SEC charging. Tron founder. Lindsay Lohan and Jake Paul with crypto violations. And Willie, I guess this is what the kids want to hear about.

No, they don't. It is. It's a lot like Homeland when Claire Danes would be in her apartment and you've got circles and the threads going from one thing to the other. And it's yeah, it's we're pulling back the curtain. It's not always pretty. It's how the sausage is made. But it works for us.

It's worked for almost 16 years of doing this show. And here we are. And it did. The supercomputer kicked out Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, a group of celebrities in a little bit of trouble now for their support and backing of cryptocurrency, retweeting information, getting paid to support it. And they're not alone, by the way. There are a lot of famous people who lent their names to failed cryptocurrencies and now perhaps facing legal trouble. Which number two, number two, and we thought it was going to be all the Trump stuff. Number two is Giselle also losing some money in crypto, identifying herself as a quote, witch of love. OK, right. No, that was number two. I'm not. I'll tell you what we're going to do,. For Mika's sake. Yeah. We're going to go past those two for now. We'll get to them later.

We'll get to them later. We'll get to them later. Also talking about Beethoven's hair and his DNA. That's an interesting story. We'll get to that later. But first. The fact that we're getting dumber. That was number four, by the way. Beethoven was number four. Okay. So along with Joe, Willie and me, and Willie just really triggered me by saying almost 16 years, almost 16 years of mourning Joe. Think about that. We have the host of White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan. You know, you know, I'm just thinking, I'm just thinking, Willie, maybe we should have Panama as our theme song. You get the middle part where David Lee Roth starts talking.

Right. Where I reach down. Yeah. Pool. I mean, this is like this is a you're killing me. This is 16. I'm trying to get Jen Psaki to come on board here. By the way, she is not going to.

Can we talk about Jen Psaki for a second? No, I mean, in general, she's just not going to be interested in being on board here. By the way, Jen just left. Can we talk about Jen Psaki for a second? No, I mean in general. Hey, Jen. She's just not going to be interested in being on this show. I want to know what kind of coffee Joe had this morning. What kind of coffee he had? Because I want to know over here. The fact is, no coffee.

I had the Jen Psaki brew, and let me tell you, Jen. Let's all talk about Jen Psaki for a second, y'all. Come on, y'all. Let's talk about Jen Psaki. I love Jen Psaki. Jen Psaki, she hasall. Come on, y'all. Let's talk about Jen Psaki. I love Jen Psaki. Jen Psaki, she has a debut show, right? It was so good. Thank you.

I find out yesterday, find out yesterday, Willie, you're not going to believe this, more people watched Jen Psaki's show this weekend than saw the Beatles play on Ed Sullivan. Huge numbers. Wow. It was massive. That might be an exaggeration, but thank you.

We feel good about the first show. On to the second. On to the second on Sunday. That's really exciting. Congratulations. We're really proud of you. And I'm sorry for everything that just happened. All right, Willie, let's get to the news.

The focus this morning is, again, on the Manhattan District Attorney's office awaiting a possible decision in a criminal case involving former President Donald. You think they're going to do anything? You know, I'm not. Because Michael still what I found out and Mika wanted me to just bring this up in the middle of the script. We find out that Donald Trump, the grifter, it's always a grift. He teases us out on Sunday. He raises one point five million dollars. Oh, they're about to arrest me. Send me money. They're about to put me in handcuffs. Send me money. He wants to be in cuffs because he wants to raise more money.

What are you? And I always tell people for six years, it's all about the money. Thank you. Thank you. The thing that kills me about all of this, Joe, is that people just absolutely freaked the hell out when Donald Trump sent out this tweet talking about he's going to get arrested on Tuesday. And I'm sitting there going, did the D.A. make a public announcement or is this just coming from Trump? And guess what? It's just coming from Trump. And here we are on Thursday and it hasn't happened, but he's raised the money. And I think, I mean, the lesson, Joe, as you and I have been saying for a long time now, it's a sobering one that people just don't want to learn is that he is not the authority of these things.

He is not the authority of any of the externalities that are going on around him, whether it's legal, whether it's political. He's not the authority, and yet he inserts himself to change the direction of the narrative. And he saw people probably got a heads up. His lawyers got a heads up that the DA you know, the D.A. was making certain moves or thinking about making moves. And he wanted to get out in front of the narrative, just as he has done time and again from the Mueller investigation on down to sort of set the stage for what he wants people to think and what he wants them to believe. He's got his base fired up. They're willing to create a human ring around mar-a-lago right for what for what the d.a didn't say jack and yet everybody's beating their breasts special you know specials on television about something that hasn't happened

yeah and also griffs build the wall right We know they took money from supporters. They're also a grift. Stop the steal. Also a grift. I need your help to pay my legal bills. It's all a grift. And now two sources familiar with the matter say D.A. Alvin Bragg has called a grand jury to reconvene today in Manhattan after an unexpected unexpected day off yesterday. The reason for that delay was unclear since the group usually does meet on Wednesdays, but there could have been a scheduling conflict. Sources also tell The New York Times the grand jury may hear from at least one more witness in the case, which could push a vote on a possible indictment of Trump back until next

week. If that's coming, the former president is accused of paying one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to porn star Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an alleged affair the two had a decade earlier. Trump has denied that affair and, of course, denied any wrongdoing in the matter. Let's bring in former general counsel of the FBI, NBC News legal analyst Andrew Weissman and NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney. And good morning to you both. Andrew, you've long said you believe an indictment is coming in this case.

What do you make of this brief delay over the last 24 hours or so? Well, I don't think anyone should should overreact to it. It could be anything from a new witness in scheduling. People have speculated it could be that the grand jury wants to hear from Stormy Daniels herself or maybe even Alan Weisselberg, the former CFO, chief financial officer who pled guilty in October. But it also could be something that had to do with just scheduling or even a security issue where the NYPD or the Secret Service raised some issue about the timing of an indictment. So it could be all of those things. We may know more today if we learn that there's another witness going in. If there's no other witness, then I do expect that we'll have

prosecutors going in to present the proposed charges to the grand jury. So, Ken, one thing we can rule out is that extra witness potentially being Michael Cohen, because Lanny Davis, his attorney, just put out this morning saying, ruling out the talk, that it would be Cohen, because there had been some speculation that he might be coming back. So if there is another witness, it's not going to be him. But walk us through as to where things stand right now in terms of what the process would be if the grand, grand jury, were to hear another witness or if they don't? How much longer can this whole thing last?

To anybody's guess, Jonathan. Sorry, for Ken. I'd like to hear Andrew's answer on this, but it's a secret process. And so we don't know exactly where they are in their deliberations. And we don't know whether any grand jurors are balking, for example, whether everybody's on the same page, because it's been appearing that this train is going down the tracks and they're wrapping up this investigation, moving towards an indictment. It's possible that there's a fly in the ointment. It's possible there isn't. We just don't know. You know, we anticipated seeing Cohen come back to rebut the claims of his former lawyer, Robert Costello, who tried to raise a lot of questions about his credibility. For whatever reason, they feel they don't need that. You know, and Andrew could speak to this, but it's possible that Alvin Bragg or his prosecutors want to sum up the case.

One final sort of summation before the grand jury votes on a possible indictment. We just don't know. Hey, Jen Psaki. So so Trump did this as a giant grift, did it on Sunday, knowing he wasn't going to be indicted on Tuesday. He's been playing the press. He's been playing his political opponents time and time again for six, seven years, always seemingly a step ahead again to raise money, to get attention, to get headlines. What's your advice to Democrats? How do Democrats handle this in the coming days and weeks, whether he's indicted or not? Stay out of it, Joe. I mean, I think what the Trump team, you mentioned the fundraising, huge part of it, but you also just mentioned the public attention.

What's important for a lot of people to also call out here is that the Trump team wants all of the public eyes, the media, to focus on the Manhattan DA case and Alvin Bragg. He sent out his bat signal to all of his people, and they have followed suit, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Kevin McCarthy to Elise Stefanik and even Tim Scott and people maybe running for president. They are targeting the Manhattan DA. What is inconvenient for Trump is that now there are developments, thanks to the reporting of Ken Delaney and others, in other cases, including this news report over the last 24 hours that he lied to his attorneys as it related to his handling of classified documents. So largely for Democrats, let this happen. Don't redirect your strategy or focus your public arguments onto explaining the Trump cases would be my advice.

But also, if you have to talk about it, make clear there's a range of cases and try to get the spotlight off of just the Manhattan DA case, because that's what the Trump team wants. Well, there is a range of cases. A range, a healthy range. A range as big as the Yellowstone, right? I'm telling you. I mean, you go Georgia. That's a big one.

That's a huge one. That's the one that you kind of go, what's going on there? Moral lago. Obvious evidence. But let's the one that you kind of go, what's going on there? Moralago? Obvious evidence that, but let's talk about that. There was a development in another legal case involving former President Trump in that range. NBC News can now confirm that a U.S. district judge ruled the Department of Justice did present sufficient evidence to establish Trump committed a crime through his attorneys relating to the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Judge Beryl Howell issued her decision in a sealed

filing last Friday. It's important to note Judge Howell was not ruling on whether Trump was guilty of a crime, but was making a decision on whether his attorney could be compelled to testify. The judge ruled in favor of applying the so-called crime fraud exception, meaning Trump attorney Evan Corcoran cannot claim attorney-client privilege to avoid testifying. This is pretty big. The judge ruled in favor of ordering Corcoran to testify before the grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith, who's currently investigating the former president's handling of the classified documents after leaving office. ruled yesterday to uphold Judge Howell's ruling, ordering Corcoran to turn over notes, transcripts and other evidence to prosecutors and to return to the grand jury to answer prosecutors questions more fully. CNN and CBS News both report Corcoran is scheduled to testify

before the grand jury tomorrow. Andrew Weissman. Wow. You know, Meek will tell you, I'm just a simple country lawyer. I'm not one of these big city lawyers like you. This seems more pressing. But even a simple country lawyer like me can look at this and know this is really bad news, not only for Donald Trump's attorney, but for the client himself.

Can you just talk about, seriously, can you just talk about how unusual it is for a judge to allow prosecutors to pierce attorney client privilege? And what are they looking for? Exactly what that means. Sure. right that this could be a critical and huge development in the Mar-a-Lago case, because this could be opening the door to Mr. Corcoran giving direct evidence with respect to the former president obstructing that investigation. Now, why is that? It's because Mr. Corcoran drafted the certification in June that was given to the Department of Justice. And that certification said that all documents responsive to a subpoena had been produced. And everyone knows that, in

fact, was not true because a search was done and there were documents responsive to the subpoena all over Mar-a-Lago, including in the former president's office. So let me ask you, Andrew, is this to stop also, stop the attorneys from pointing at Trump and Trump pointing at the attorney? So the attorney said, well, we only did it because Trump lied to us

and told us that he'd given us all the documents and to stop Trump from saying, well, the attorneys lied. I mean, this really stops that, doesn't it? Calls it out. And we find out exactly who was lying. Absolutely. This is and the reporting is that Mr. Corcoran is going to say it wasn't me. I wrote

this, but I was told what to put in there by my client, meaning Donald Trump. So you're absolutely right. This is a way of getting that direct evidence is how did that certification come about? And yes, it is very unusual for the prosecutors to seek this kind of order from the court. It is not something that's never happened. It happened during the special counsel Mueller investigation with the exact same judge. But it is unusual. And in order to make this ruling, the judge has to find that it is likely that Donald Trump committed a crime. It's not necessary that the lawyer did, but at least the client did. And the standard is likely. That's exactly what she wrote in the Manafort case that I handled. So this is a huge deal. But in terms of the case, this really could be the key evidence of obstruction.

And it also differentiates this case from what we know about the Pence case and the Biden case, because there there's absolutely no no circumstance where we're thinking there's obstruction of all statements made. So this could be a critical difference as to why the department treats Donald Trump differently than those other two cases. And it's key for everybody listening. What Andrew just said is court's not going to do this unless it is, quote, likely that Donald Trump or his attorney are both committed a crime. And, Ken, I want to underline one other point that Andrew just told us. People are looking, Republicans saying, oh, this is the same thing that Pence did.

This is the same thing that Biden did. This is the part of the Trump case that we've been saying for a long time and other people have been saying for a long time is the key. It's not the documents themselves. It's the obstruction in returning those documents and swearing that you have returned those documents when, in fact, you haven't. This talk about how this goes to the very heart of that issue that many people say is what differentiates this case from the Mike Pence case or the Joe Biden case. One hundred percent, Joe. That is the significance of this development.

And look, even if you leave this aside, the Trump situation with more than 100 classified documents found in an FBI search, some of them TSSCI, is much different from the Biden and Pence situations because some of those documents were found in his office. This wasn't an issue where they were inadvertently packed and stored and he didn't know about them, at least according to that circumstantial evidence. But now you take it a step further. I mean, when I talk to current and former DOJ officials about whether this case will be charged, there's always a reluctance. The idea that you're going to charge a former president with simple mishandling of classified documents that he once had access to and that were sent to his house.

That's a tough case. It's not impossible, but that's a tough one for the special counsel to bring in for Attorney General Merrick Garland to sign off on. But when you when you have clear evidence of obstruction of justice, of lying to fail to comply with a grand jury subpoena, that's an easy decision for them to make. In fact, they can't turn away from that. And now we have a federal judge saying there's substantial evidence to believe that's exactly what happened. And it's always been a question, you know, who lied to the government? Was it the lawyers or was it Trump? Or I guess the third possibility is nobody knew those documents were there. Well, the evidence argues against nobody knew they were there. And now it's looking increasingly like the evidence suggests that it was Donald Trump who caused that false affidavit to be submitted to the Justice Department. And those attorneys drafted and signed a document that

said all clear, there's nothing left here. Then, of course, the FBI went in later and found more than 100 more classified documents. So, Andrew Weissman, there's been a lot of talk, including some people who've come on our show and said, boy, they shouldn't have gone first with the Manhattan case. They shouldn't have gone first with the Stormy case. It feels like old news. Georgia's more important. The documents, January 6th, these are more important. But obviously, these four cases are being conducted in these investigations by different people with different sets of facts without concern to the others. So what's your sense of the way these are rolling out and how they may impact each other as they do come down? Well, I think, Willie, your point that these are different prosecutors is key.

Yes. You know, if this was one prosecutor, you might ask the question, why this one first? I don't think that the Manhattan case is negligible, but it certainly is not as serious as the events that happened in January 6th. The, you know, overthrow, potential overthrow of a Democratic presidential election or the retention of highly classified documents and obstruction of the federal investigation. But these are three separate prosecutors. This is not like a TV show with one producer where you figure out what should we lead with and what should go second and what should go third. And I basically say to people a little bit like what Jen Psaki said, which is, you know, have patience here and let the process play out. We could find ourselves in a matter of weeks or months where all of this is something that is indicted. And the fact that this case in Manhattan goes first becomes sort of

a footnote to history because we really could have a very different set of facts very soon. Andrew Weissman and Ken Delaney, and thank you both very much for being on this morning as we watch all of this. Now, a judge in Delaware says he will decide soon if Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Fox News will go to a jury next month. Both sides spent the last two days in court arguing that the judge should rule in the case before that happens. Dominion says that there is no defense for the false claims of election fraud Fox News aired following the 2020 election. Lawyers for the voting system company have presented internal communications and depositions that show Fox executives and hosts knew the claims were false but aired them anyway. However, Fox believes it is completely covered by the First Amendment

and has asked the judge to dismiss the case. Its lawyers argue that the network and its hosts were reporting on newsworthy allegations from newsworthy people and that executives were not directly involved in airing any defamatory statements. The judge told the lawyers yesterday they would have to agree on live or video testimony from witnesses for their jury presentations, adding that he would prefer live witnesses. The Washington Post reports that Rupert Murdoch might be compelled to take the stand. Earlier this week, Fox's lawyers submitted a submitted hardship claims requesting that Murdoch, his son Lachlan and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a board member at Fox, not be compelled to testify at the trial. The judge signaled that Rupert Murdoch's role at Fox may warrant his

testimony, but he cautioned that he has not yet made a ruling. We'll be following that. And still ahead on Morning Joe, new polling shows Donald Trump making significant gains over Ron DeSantis in a potential 2024 GOP White House race. We'll dig into the new numbers. Plus, we'll take a look at how DeSantis is trying to clean up recent comments he made about the war in Ukraine. Also ahead, a preview of today's TikTok hearing on Capitol Hill. The company's CEO will appear before lawmakers and try to calm national security concerns. And is working from home really working? Steve Ratner joins us ahead with his new piece for The New York Times. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. The smoke that moves the time. The smoke that moves the time. The smoke that moves the time. Letting the days go by.

Let the water hold me up. Letting the days go by. Water flowing under. Into the blue again. Into the silent water. Under the rocks and stones. There is water under. Letting the days go by.

Letting the days go by. Letting the days go by. Letting the days go by. The new theme song of Morning Joe Panama. David Lee Roth jumping off the speakers in his chaps. Those were good times. Oh, yeah, baby. Those were good times. Good times, my friend. Coming up on 630 here in New York City, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seems to be modifying his stance on the war in Ukraine.

Responding to a questionnaire from Fox News two weeks ago, DeSantis referred to Russia's invasion as a, quote, territorial dispute and said the U.S. should not get more involved. Now, though, in an interview with Piers Morgan, Governor DeSantis is calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal. I think he's got grand ambitions. I think he's hostile to the United States. But I think the thing that we've seen is he doesn't have the conventional capability to realize his ambitions. And so he's basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons. And so for us,

one of the things we could be doing better is utilizing our own energy resources in the United States. We could be permitting natural gas pipelines from Marshallis, doing a lot in Alaska. That's where he gets all his power. And obviously, he's influenced Europe by having so much energy. There is a move now to hold him accountable for war crimes, bombing maternity hospitals and genocidal activity in parts of Ukraine, wiping out whole cities, Mariupol and others. Would you support that? I mean, I think he is a war criminal. This ICC, we have not done that in the United States

because we're concerned about our soldiers or people being brought under it. But I do think that he should be held accountable. So, Michael Steele, there you have it. Governor Stantz is calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal, certainly a change in tact when he talks about the war. I'm curious about your sort of assessment in the last couple of days of the way he has performed and particularly the way he's talked about Donald Trump. Donald Trump put out a long pointed post about DeSantis saying why his record as governor isn't actually as good as you may think it is. Donald Trump, very concerned about Ron

DeSantis. Ron DeSantis, so far now, his approach seems to be kind of laughing him off, mocking the charges in Manhattan about paying off a porn star, taking him on a little bit more, at least, than he has while still trailing Trump by double digits in polls. Well, therein lies the problem he has, is that the Trump base is a solid base. And so how does he tactfully chip into that base and pull some with him and hold conventional Republicans, such as they still exist inside the GOP, together? So let's take these in quick succession. So you've got the reboot on Putin and Crimea, I mean, Ukraine. And that's because he did not expect the blowback he got from senior members of the party, especially in the Senate, where they started raking him over the coals for something that was absolutely an asinine position to take,

that this was some territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine. And so he was getting a big clap back and he had to close that up. He had to tighten that up and fix it. That's what the Piers Morgan interview was about, was trying to fix that. Then you look at the relationship between him and Trump. Yeah, he went out and he did a little pity pat. But at the end of the day, when you go back, you listen to it. He never called the man's name out. He never said directly to Trump, Trump. You know, he never put it in his lap. So at some point, you know, you're going to have to stop doing the cute dances and trying to get the giggle out of the press and take the man on because you're hemorrhaging points in the polls and you're not closing any ground.

You're losing ground. And Trump hasn't done anything. Trump has sent out some die trap on his truth social and said a few other things offhanded here, but he hasn't really hit this guy yet. And and if you can't if you can't take advantage of this moment when it gets ugly and tight and hot, when Trump decides to actually leave Mar-a-Lago and get seriously on the road and go around the country into your backyard in Florida, then it becomes a different problem if you haven't begun to figure out how to close that gap. And I just don't see it happening, at least in the short term, if not the long term. Yeah. You know, Jonathan Lemire, it's one thing if you're sitting back while you're tied with Donald Trump in the polls. And again, these polls are early. They may mean absolutely nothing

in terms of who wins ultimately. But it does matter to fundraisers, to people that want to give you money, that people want to get behind your campaign. If it looks like Donald Trump's 20, 30, 40 points ahead of DeSantis, suddenly things cool off very quickly than when they were tied just a couple of months ago. So it's one thing if you want to be weak towards Vladimir Putin

and you want to be Neville Chamberlain of 2023 because you think that's what the party likes because that's what you want to stay as close to Donald Trump as you can. That's one thing. But if you start bleeding points and suddenly you turn around to your 20, 25 points behind. Yeah, it may start to make a difference. You may want to differentiate yourself on something like Russia and say, hey, Donald Trump's a weak old man. He's the guy that said Vladimir Putin was savvy for invading Ukraine. He's the guy that called Vladimir Putin a strategic genius. And DeSantis is now calling Putin a war criminal. He's saying Putin needs to

be prosecuted, held accountable for those war crimes. He said something about Russia that I would not say. It's about the whole gas station thing. But anyway, but he's saying those things. He's talking tough on Russia. Maybe is he trying to get a little bit of distance between Donald Trump and himself? It's possible. I mean, he obviously received a lot of blowback from other Republicans, particularly in the Senate, about his depiction of the Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a mere territorial dispute. But to your point, if we go back from December, the poll, that is a 27 point swing, 27 point swing from DeSantis to Trump. Now Trump up 14 when he had been down 13. And it's not like Donald Trump, to Michael's point, has been out there doing a heck of a lot other than potentially getting indicted. So he but he is, you know, the CPAC speech was the sort of one signature moment.

And we saw around then like the seeming like, oh, yeah, the base kind of started to revive itself again. And we know we have talked about it nearly every day, Joe, about how Donald Trump is a deeply, deeply flawed general election candidate. And these indictments are going to hurt him there. But we're seeing in this snapshot and again, it is early. Trump is still the clear favorite for the nomination. And and Jen Psaki, I want to get your take on this. Like if you were advising Governor Ron DeSantis and I'm sorry, pity if you are. But if you were advising Governor Ron DeSantis and I'm sorry, pity if you are, but if you were advising Governor Ron DeSantis, I can confirm I'm not. Let's have a full disclosure. Jen Psaki is not consulting with Governor Ron DeSantis. You look at those polls and look,

you're still the best alternative, right? You're here. You're DeSantis. You're still way ahead of the Pence, Pompeo, Haley group. You know, the anti-Trump forces seemingly have coalesced. You're still getting the media attention, but you are now trailing. How do you reverse that trend? Well, I think, Jonathan, first of all, they're trying to find their lane here. In addition to kind of switching his language on Russia and Ukraine. And I will note, by the way, he also said in the same interview that his larger point is he doesn't think Russia can take over Ukraine or threaten NATO, even if the U.S.

doesn't escalate. So he left himself a little bit of space there also not to support additional funding. And who knows what else he meant by that. But that wasn't totally full throttle. But the other thing he did yesterday was he doubled down on this culture wars argument. He wants to be the culture war hero. Now, I don't know that that's going to win him Republican primary voters, but that's another place where he seems to be experimenting.

So my advice, which he's not seeking or looking for is, but I'll give it to him right here, is that you have to find your lane. Are you going to be the person who is smarter and more steady than Donald Trump? Then you better have a slightly better answer on Russia, first of all, because that wasn't super sophisticated in a lot of ways. Are you going to be the guy who is the culture war hero? That doesn't help you in the general election, but maybe that helps you in the primary. Right now, he's flailing in a lot of directions. And my advice would be to find the one lane and the one place and continue to drive that home. And Joe, it's been interesting. We've been talking. You've been looking at a lot of how

the sort of Murdoch empire has been boosting Ron DeSantis against Donald Trump. And there is a four page spread this morning summarizing Piers Morgan's interview in The New York Post, including this headline. Ron's heart is with the people of Ukraine. If you turn the page, then it's a two page spread about how he's gotten fit and slim. Ron DeSantis apparently has lost a bunch of weight as he prepares to run for president. He's looking fit for duty, says The New York Post. Sounds like Al Gordon 2000 jogging on the beach. OK, great. But, you know, it's so interesting. I'm sure he got so much blowback with with his first answer on Ukraine and the fact that he was actually lifting Kremlin talking points by calling it a territorial

dispute. I'm sure he heard from I'm not saying he heard from the Murdoch's would not be surprised if he didn't hear from people close to the Murdoch's, as well as a lot of huge fundraisers saying, hey, dude, listen, we're not getting on the Trump train again. If you think we're supporting a guy that's going to try to take us out of NATO, a guy that's going to be complimenting Vladimir Putin, a guy that's going to be repeating Kremlin talking points. No, no, no. We're not on that train. And and and it sounds like somebody got to him and said that because calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal, saying that he should be held accountable. Miga, that is him finessing this. But I agree with Jen. He's got to find a lane.

It's not enough to not talk about Trump. He's looking for it. Yeah, and I will say in the Piers Morgan interview, that was the best as far as just his demeanor. He's not scowling at press conference. And I know, you know, Ron DeSantis also, Jen Psaki, not asking me for advice. Turns out he's already he's already checked the box, though, on I am angry and I yell at women reporters about woke issues and I attack teachers and I attack. He's got that box checked, right? Yeah. Check the box. Now move on and show, like you said,

I'm the steady, competent guy that knows how to get things done. And I win. He's shown the anger there on his side. Now he can grow the base. He's never going to out Trump Trump. Right. So he's checked the box. Stop the stupid press conferences and screaming at reporters.

We'll see. Now, no, I'm just saying the smart move would be though, Jen. Now, like you said, show Republican voters, I'm steady. I'm not going to make you cringe every time I get in front of a microphone. You're not going to have to worry

about what I'm going to say. I'm going to actually get things done. Look at all the things I'm getting done in the state of Florida. Donald Trump passed to absolutely nothing other than a huge tax cut for billionaires in D.C. You know what? And most importantly, I know how to win. Don't you think that's the

differentiation between Trump he needs to make? Well, look, I also think if you're Ron DeSantis's team, you're looking at Mike Pence and you're seeing Mike Pence dropping in favorability and also going up in unfavorability. What's that connected to? Is it connected to the fact that he finally sort of spoke out against Trump? Is it connected to the fact that he also hasn't criticized Trump? So what's tricky here—and, yes, if this were a sane Republican primary, my advice and your advice would be, I think, exactly it, which is find your lane to be the steady choice that has conservative policies, but not the insanity dose of Trump.

But they're also looking at the other candidates and how they're impacted by their strategic approaches. And what's good for Trump, hard for others, is there isn't a good playbook for any other Republican candidate for exactly how to do this, to kind of take him on and dent his support. Find a way to be the alternative. Pence still lumped with Trump, even though he made those comments behind closed doors about Trump. He still lumped with him and he still may be. We have reporting about testifying, so he could be lumped with potential indictments and testifying in those cases.

He could be he could start to make himself Ron DeSantis the alternative. Coming up, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by another quarter point yesterday, despite concern over signs of stress in the banking system. Surprised by that. Yeah. Steve Ratner joins us next with charts on what drove the Fed's decision. Look at those charts. Wow. New high tech charts with Ratner when Morning Joe comes right back. Bigger than time. Go on, take the money and run.

Billy Mac is a detective. 15 minutes before the top of the hour, a live look at the White House. The Federal Reserve once again raised interest rates by a quarter point as it continues trying to tame inflation. The decision comes as the Fed is under scrutiny for failing to properly oversee several banks that have failed in recent weeks. NBC News correspondent Tom Costello has the details. With its reputation on the line, the nation's central bank chose the path most anticipated, hiking interest rates for the ninth time in a year, making clear that despite low unemployment, inflation running at 6% is still too high. The process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go

and is likely to be bumpy. The increase a quarter point. The Fed was reluctant to raise rates more after three bank failures in recent weeks. Higher interest rates over the past year were a contributing factor to Silicon Valley banks collapse after it took a big loss on bond sales. For the first time, the Fed chair publicly addressed the banking crisis, insisting the cases are isolated. Our banking system is sound and resilient with strong capital and liquidity. On Wall Street, the key indices lost 1.6 percent. Had the Fed not raised rates, the markets might have inferred that more banks are at risk. Still, the Fed's regulators are under fire for failing to recognize

the bank failure warning signs before it was too late. These people have ready access to anything that they need to be able to stop a problem in its tracks. And now it is coming under pretty heavy scrutiny from people saying, where were you? Why weren't you paying attention? Fed Chair Powell promised a thorough review. My only interest is that we identify what went wrong here. How did this happen? Is the question. What went wrong? All right. Well, what what what what went wrong? And Willie,

how did it happen? Yeah, that's a question. Not only a lot of people at the Fed are asking and banks across America, well, not just America, but across the world are asking, but it's something Steve Kornacki's asking too. He's thinking like, okay, wait a second. I built out this whole chart thing. Yeah, that's my thing. It's taken me from the heart of 30 Rock to the Kentucky Derby. NFL.

Sunday Night Football. Madness to the NFL. Sunday Night Football. Madness to the NFL. Sunday Night Football. He's got to be asking, how did it happen that Ratner not only gets charts, but he gets the big board. This business is cruel. Come on. This business is cruel. One day, Kornacki, he's the lemonade.

One day wonder. The next day, he's the lemon. And look at this. The kids. Let me just say, the lemonade. One day wonder. The next day, he's the lemon. And look at this. The kids, let me just say, the kids across America right now, the TV sets are turning from SpongeBob to Morning Joe because they already had a weakness for Ratner's charts. Yeah. Forget the big board, Joe.

Steve has the big wall. Look at the big curved wall. And I thought it was uncharacteristic, butve ratner walked in the studio said good morning and then he said quickly there's a new steve in town and i thought wow that's a shot across the bow then he said something about cornacki there was all kinds of trash talk by the way steve is on our show a little bit later so he'll get the last word perhaps on this battle of the Steves. It's very uncomfortable. You know, as far as in the chart world, people say actually Ratner is sort of the Larry Bird of charts.

Trash talking from the beginning to the end. Biggest trash talker in the chart business. And here we have it. So we'll see how the wage responds. When Larry Bird walked in the locker room at the three point contest, I think in 1988 and said, which one of you blankers is coming in second tonight? That's effectively what Steve said when he walked in.

OK, enough. It's very concerning. Let's bring in right now a former Treasury official and morning Joe economic analyst Steve Brenner. He said all of it and more. We want to know what the heck is going on with the banks. We're going to beat this out. OK, Steve. So charts aside, I was actually a little surprised yesterday that that the Fed went ahead and jacked up interest rates, I thought, just because of the volatility in the banking. You know, it settled a little bit, but maybe they'd give it a little breather. But they did not. I mean, now we've gotten to a point, as you point out here, where the Fed's expectations for

where interest rates end up at the end of the year, actually above Wall Street's expectations. Well, look, first of all, I have to say, I want to be sure everyone knows I'm a pale imitation of Steve Kornacki. And while I do have a big board, I can't make it do magic the way Steve Kornacki can. So I'm only getting the junior big board, but maybe at some point I'll graduate to the senior big board. But for now, you're going to have to make do with me. Make do with me, just pointing. So, look, let's start. It's been It's been a really volatile time in the markets, not just the stock market, which most viewers watch, but also the credit markets, which is

where the Fed operates. And let me just give you a sense of what's been going on here. If you go back to early February, the market was predicting a slight rise in interest rates and then a decline by the end of the year. Then we started to get much stronger economic data come in and Powell made a speech acknowledging that. And suddenly the market shut up and said, well, we think that by the end of the year, interest rates will be above 5.5 percent. Then you had the Silicon Valley bank event. And lo and behold, the market completely reversed itself and expect a cut in interest rates by the end of the year. And now here's where we are, where the market is expecting a couple more increases possibly and then a decline. But here's the

great conundrum. The Fed, and this is part of why the stock market went down yesterday, the Fed is projecting that interest rates actually will continue to go up and stay up through the end of the year. And Powell kind of said, don't expect a cut this year. And so the Fed and the market have a very different view of life at the moment. And the market was disappointed a little bit in the Fed's reaction yesterday. Which leads you to the second chart, Steve, and gets at this sort of balancing act for the Fed, which is we want to tame inflation, which is kind of stubborn and sticking around with us. But now we've got this instability in the banking system to deal with as well.

Exactly, Willie. And so the Fed was trying to weigh this. I think before Silicon Valley Bank, given what I just showed you, the market thought the Fed would go up by half a point. Others thought the Fed should go up by nothing, recognizing that there still are issues in the banking area. And they ended up splitting the baby and doing half. And here are the two things the Fed's had to think about. One is the banking crisis. And I illustrated it here with a chart showing how much banks borrow from the Federal Reserve on any given day through what's called the discount window.

And so you can see at the peak of the 08 crisis, banks were borrowing a bit over $100 billion. As of yesterday, they had borrowed $153 billion, more than they had at the peak of the financial crisis. It doesn't mean we're in a banking crisis. It simply means we have a fragile and volatile financial system the Fed has to worry about, as you heard in Tom Costello's run up. And the other side of the coin is inflation. And so if you look at inflation back in February, when the Fed last had its meeting, it was running at about 3 percent, these dark blue bars. And we divide inflation between overall inflation and what we call core, where we take out food and energy because it bounces around a lot. When it showed up at its meeting this week, this is what the Fed was looking at. Headline inflation above 4% and

core inflation above 5%, a long way from the Fed's 2% target. And therefore, the Fed felt it had to do something to keep this economy slowing down. So all the focus, Steve, as we look at your third chart yesterday, is on the hike of a quarter of a percentage point. But also these announcements, the Fed also gives economic projections for the rest of the year. How did that look? Exactly, Willie. And this is, again, part of what is a little disappointing because the economic outlook has been getting a bit weaker, especially for this year. So if you start with inflation, if you go back to last September, and the Fed does this four times a year, the Fed thought inflation this year was going to be about two and three quarters. By its meeting in December, it was a bit over three. And yesterday, it was at about

three and a quarter by the end of the year. Again, a long way from its long run target of two percent over here, which the Fed is still hoping to get to sometime in the next two or three years out there somewhere. Unemployment, not a lot of change, expecting it to go to four and a half percent up from about three point six at the moment. That doesn't necessarily mean a recession, but it does mean a weaker jobs market. The Fed needs help slow down inflation. We'll see if that means recession or not. And then in terms of growth, we've also had a deterioration.

Again, last September, expecting growth to be about 1.2 percent. And now the Fed is expecting growth this year to be less than half a point. So, again, not quite a recession, but we're kind of operating at stall speed and then lower growth projections for 2024 and then hopefully a resumption, but never getting really all that much robust growth in the immediate future. So, Steve, you also have a new op-ed in The New York Times entitled, Is Working From Home Really Working? And in it, you write, quote, quiet quitting, working from home, the great resignation, whatever you want to call it. The attitude of many Americans toward work has appeared to have changed during the long pandemic and generally speaking, not for the better. The new approach threatens to do long lasting damage to economic growth and prosperity. The changing work habits have spawned a push for a codification of what may already be a reality, a four-day work week.

Proponents argue that with an extra day of rest, diligent workers can accomplish as much as they did in five days, perhaps. But put me down as skeptical about that and much of the notion that when it comes to work, less can be more. So right now, Steve, I have to say a lot of women are not going to like hearing that because working from home has made it possible for them to deal with all the other priorities that they are dealing with in life. And for a lot of women working from home, especially post-pandemic, has been the only option because the workplace has changed so much. Explain more your thesis here. Mika, look, I'm fine with working from home if that's what people choose to do. But I think we have to recognize that there are disadvantages to working home. You don't get to collaborate

with your colleagues. You don't have mentorship. I personally find you can do a lot on Zoom, but not everything on Zoom. And there's really no substitute in many professions for being in the office. It's also, look, important to note that this is a kind of form of white-collar privilege. The vast majority of Americans do not have the option to work from home. They have to go to the factory. They have to go to the hotel to work at housekeeping or behind the front desk. They have to go to the restaurant to be a waiter. This is something that those of us in this class, so to speak, get to get to try out. And I'm all for flexible work if that's what people want. We just have to recognize that it comes at a cost. And that very end of my piece where I basically

say that if I think that people can be somewhat more productive, but you still have to put in the hours. And the question is, when you work from home, are you able to put in all the hours with the distractions, with the other chores that you have to do? And I think this is going to be an interesting question as we look at the next generation, Steve, young people, especially who, you know, are drawing some lines and only wanting to work from home? Are they getting the are they building relationships? Are they making those connections? Are they learning how to function in the real world? I think that's a whole nother layer to this. But there is a dramatic change happening where a lot of people, not just women, are drawing some lines about what they're

willing to do in order to do a certain job? Well, I mean, I mean, let me answer the first part. No, you won't get the mentorship. No, you won't get the person coming, looking, looking for sure. What if you try doing this versus that? What you know, you're not going to get the conference, the conference meetings where everybody gets in. And before the meeting, the three or four minutes before the meeting, more of this stuff happens. Like you're talking back and forth and you're building relationships and you're figuring out where to where to take things. I mean, you're going to miss all of that. And some people may choose to do that. It's also far more isolating. We talk

about loneliness. We talk about depression. We talk about anxiety. Sit in your apartment all the time. I'm dead serious. And I know people have been working at home since the pandemic. It's going to cause anxiety. It's going to cause depression. I mean, you talk to mental health counselors. They'll tell you that. But Steve, it's interesting, though, we're talking about what the workers are deciding they're going to do and what they're not going to do. I called somebody that I hadn't spoken with since the pandemic. I said, oh, how many days are you working from home? Are you still at home? And he was like, nope. Boss called me back in a year and a half ago. And he was a partner in this firm. But he said, I'm here four days a week.

And they let the partners and the older people that they don't think need the mentorship quite as much be in four days a week. But younger workers are in five days a week. So we're talking about choices. At the end of the day, this all comes down to, does it not, what the company's policy is and the companies that decide they're going to let people come in whenever they feel like coming in. They're probably the ones based on the business, but probably the ones who are going to suffer the most. Right. Sure. Well, first of all, Mika made the point and you just referred to it as well about choices. People make choices and I'm often people making choices. And if people choose that they don't want to be part of that rat race completely, they want to dial it back a bit,

whatever, that's all fine. But you have to accept that there are consequences economically. If the country becomes as a whole less productive, people are going to have less incomes. And those who make those choices have to accept that they may have lower incomes as well. And as far as going back to the office is concerned, it's a kind of tug of war between the bosses and the workers. Every boss I've talked to for that piece, and I talked to many, believe that everything you just said about it being better in the office and they want people back and they're trying to get people back. But it's also a competitive world. And if you work at company A and company B says you can work remotely and that's important to you, you're likely to go to company B.

So there's a big tug of war going on. And I think for the most part, people are not going to be back and are not back in the office five days a week. The world seems to be settling out at three or four days a week. And that's where the tug of war sits at the moment. We'll see where it goes. Yeah. And of course, there is no hard set rule. It depends on what you do. It depends on your skill sets. If you're a great graphic designer and you're an artist that's much better in your loft apartment or somewhere else, you know, that's something that with decades of experience, that's something that the business owner can be.

If there's more of a team, though, more of a team setting, obviously it's something that bosses are going to have to figure out and that employees are going to have to figure out and that unions are going to have to figure out and everybody's going to have to figure out. What I want to figure out, though, is Jen Psaki. I want to figure out what Jen is doing this weekend because, you know, last weekend, as I told you, more people watched than watched the Beatles when they played on Ed Sullivan.

Nielsen says one out of every three TV sets this weekend was tuned in to Jen Psaki. Can you believe that, Willie? So this weekend, Jen Psaki, what do you got for us? Well, we don't have any guests to preview yet. Maybe today. We're waiting on a few developments, Joe. I don't know if you've heard of this out there to see what happens. But what we are planning to do is really deep dive into all of these legal cases, help viewers better understand what exactly is happening here, because it's a lot to follow. It's hard to follow. We're also going to take people behind the scenes, as we did with Eric Adams last weekend, with someone new this weekend. So stay tuned.

Uh-huh. You see, like all great operators, Willie, she keeps the cards close to the chest. I'll have more later today. Look what happened to Kornacki. Okay. Exactly.