Morning Joe - Morning Joe 3/28/23

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Nashville school shooting: 3 students, 3 adults killed

Three precious little kids lost their lives, and I believe three adults. And the shooter, of course, lost their life, too. So it's a horrible, horrible situation. And we're not going to fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals. And my daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese. And he told me, he said, buddy, he said, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn't mind losing their life, there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.

That is Republican Congressman Tim Burchette of Tennessee reacting to the deadly shooting at an elementary school in his state, telling reporters that no laws existing or proposed could have prevented what happened yesterday in Nashville. It's such a deeply offensive thing to say. It really is. I mean, you know, if this had been a Muslim shooter, then we would have seen a thousand bills being proposed for more things that Homeland Security could do. And Willie, this whole idea that every time a horrific tragedy like this happens, if you even talk about trying to do something to make our schools safer for our children, people say, oh, there's nothing you can do. They say you can do something for everything else but this. And that's why we find ourselves in a position where our children are afraid to go to school.

We're parents. And this is the leading cause of death. It's the leading cause of death among children. You know, it wasn't always that way. It's hard. I was explaining to some people a bit younger than me yesterday that when Columbine happened, there was just such a shock to the system. That was really the first time something that massive had happened.

And we thought it was a one off. And then a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. And then it just started rolling. Virginia Tech. This for people who say it's always got to be this way. No, it doesn't. And it didn't used to be this way until just I've got to say the extreme glorification of guns and and and and hyper individualism that suggests that all the rules that used to apply just no longer apply anymore. Well, what we just heard there from the congressman was the throw up your hands argument against doing anything about gun safety. What are you going to do? There are a lot of crazy people in the world. Sometimes they're going to walk into a little Presbyterian school

in Green Hills and Nashville and kill three nine year olds and three staff members. The good news, I would say, before we get into the awful details of the story, is that most of America disagrees with them. We've talked about this so many times, the widespread support for universal background checks for safe storage. Are you against safe storage of a weapon? No gun or gun owner I know is. Are you against red flag laws? So people who might commit harm cannot purchase a AR-15. Most of America says, no, we're for those things. So it is a small minority, but a loud and powerful one that is controlling the conversation right now. Well, and that's the thing, Mika, the overwhelming majority of Americans want more gun safety laws.

The overwhelming majority of Republicans want guns, more gun safety laws. The overwhelming number of members of the NRA want more gun safety laws. They want universal background checks. They want these red flag laws. They would love, every gun owner I know would love tougher gun laws, forcing safe storage at home because every gun owner like myself, they're they're locked up. They're safe and they're they're accessible, but they're locked up and they're safe from children or from somebody else who may be troubled, who would get that gun and cause harm to others. Yeah. And, you know, what kids want, they want to feel safe at school. And we've had a mental health crisis in this country. We also have a generation of children who have grown up thinking that somebody may burst into their classroom and kill them. And that's not a

blanket statement that's exaggerated at all. This is what our children face. This is what our children talk about. And our children don't want to go to school and get killed. And yet today we're going to talk about three nine-year-olds that went to school and were gunned down, were shot to death. So that is where we are again to talk about a mental health crisis and an epidemic across our country with mental health and guns, the leading cause of death in children. And you look at Tennessee specifically, the gun laws there are just so permissive. It's just extraordinary. Just so permissive. And and you can look at data. People people can say, oh, you're playing this where there are more guns.

There are more gun deaths. It's that simple. And one study after another study after another study after another study. And and Willie, you have little kids that are shot up and killed in a Christian school in Nashville. You have people going to a grocery store in Buffalo that are that are gunned down. We can we can just keep going down the list and we can keep going all the way back to Sandy Hook 10 years ago. And even before that, like I said, Virginia Tech and these other tragedies, the tragedies keep coming. And you're just a loser. I've got to say, and I would say this about anything. You're just a loser if you say, oh, our little children keep getting gunned down in school. This didn't used to happen, but it's happening now.

And my daddy fought in World War Two. And so there's nothing we can do about it. Doesn't make any sense. It really. Are you that scared of an extreme element in your base? Are you that scared of the NRA? Because I'm going to tell you, one of these days, people in Congress are actually going to give a damn about what the majority of Americans think. One of these days, they're actually going to have rules in the United States Senate where you don't need like 80, 90 people to do what 90% of Americans want. 90% of Americans want increased,

they want universal background checks. They want all these things you're talking about. And we're letting some yahoos run around saying there's nothing we can do about this. Well, members of Congress put their little children on Christmas cards that have AR-15s there. And like, is that what Jesus wants? Well, like these people, it's just another pure example. And we see it all the time. And this is also in the data.

People who identify themselves as Christians who actually don't believe in the faith. That it's like Christian nationalism, which weirdly enough, bizarrely enough, ignores everything that Jesus said in the Gospels and instead focuses on this, this hyper individualistic, hyper violent. A set of facts that would even have one member of Congress whose name doesn't bear, doesn't deserve repeating this morning. One member of Congress telling constituents that if Jesus had an AR-15, he would not have been crucified. Where do you even begin with someone saying.

If Jesus had an AR-15, he wouldn't have been crucified. And God's perfect plan for humanity, as over a billion Christians believe, God's perfect plan for humanity would have never happened. And she celebrates that. It's really sick, Willie. It's really twisted. And we're getting tired of doing this, but it just keeps happening. I talked to a young mother yesterday who talked about taking her daughter to school for the first day and she broke down in tears. And she said, I didn't break down in tears for the reason that my mom broke down in tears because she missed me. I broke down in tears

because I've seen too many stories where her daughter was going to a Jewish school and there are threats there. She's seen too many stories where parents drop children off at school and then they walk in with police and are trying to identify them because they've been so shot up by AR-15s. This is a sickness and it's not an American sickness. Let's be very clear about this, because 90 percent of Americans want to do something about this. This is a sickness among a small subset of Americans who have twisted and perverted the meaning of the Second Amendment in a way that is unrecognizable and is leading to the deaths of our children, leading to parishioners in Christian churches, leading to the death of Jewish worshipers in synagogues, leading to people going out shopping for groceries,

leading to people being gunned down at sporting events. Leading to people. I could just go on and on and on, Willie. It just keeps happening. Country, you know, we had people, so many people gunned down at a country music festival in Las Vegas. And that was like a one or two day story. Like we never really figured out what the hell happened there because the, these mass murders just keep coming every day. And we have losers in Washington, DC losers who would be fired from any other job. If they said, yeah, boss, we got, we've got something that's killing people and we can't do anything about it.

Three kids, I read yesterday somewhere, three kids were killed by lawn darts. Back in the 1970s, they were banned. Like when kids start dying from faulty products or kids start dying for other reasons. The government steps in, the people step in, the people's representatives step in. But with guns, Willie, let's just let's read the news, but let's just end it where Mika started it. The number one killer of children in America. Guns. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it used to be motor vehicle accidents and now it is guns. So it talking about things that perhaps on the margins might stop someone like the person yesterday who killed three nine-year-olds in a little school in Nashville. Here are the details. Six people, including those three children, are dead following

a school shooting that has left a community shattered and, of course, heartbroken. Evelyn Dickhouse, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs were gunned down yesterday inside the Covenant School. That's a small private Christian school in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville. They all were just nine years old. Sixty one year old Mike Hill, a custodian at the school. Sixty one year old Cynthia Peek, a substitute teacher and six year old Catherine Koontz, who's the head of the school, also were killed. Police say the shooter, a 28-year-old transgender person, was a former student armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun.

Surveillance video shows the shooter blasting into the school yesterday morning, shooting in. The rest of the video shows the shooter stalking the hallways with the rifle. Police say all of the victims were shot in a common area on the second floor of the school and that the suspect was firing at police cars through a window when those officers arrived. Two officers did return fire, killing the shooter just about 15 minutes after the suspect

first made entry into the school. Investigators say the shooting had been carefully planned. The attack had detailed maps and surveillance, but the students likely were shot at random. Police also believe the suspect had planned shootings at several other locations, if not stopped there. There's one photo in particular that illustrates the terror and the trauma experienced by students, families, and staff. This picture, captured by photographer photographer Nicole Hester showing children on a bus being taken to a reunification center at a nearby church. That is where parents were anxiously waiting for an update on their children to find out if they were alive or dead. Look at that face.

The Tennessean reports Democratic State Senator Heidi Campbell spent hours at the site, which was just two miles from the school. She described it as the, quote, worst waiting room she's ever been in. One mother was in the room when she found out her child had been killed. Campbell telling the paper she heard the woman's primal scream and that it took several hours to reunify other parents with their children. She went on to say, quote, it did not have to happen. We have a horrible gun problem in our country. Joining us now from Nashville, Democratic State Representative of Tennessee, Bob Freeman. Mr. Representative, I'm so sorry what's happened in your community.

It's a special place to me. I went to college in Nashville. I know that area well. I know that church well. Tell us how your community is doing this morning on this shocking, shocking day. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Sorry it's under these conditions. Yesterday was absolutely horrible. I've started receiving phone calls from friends and friends of friends around 1030 asking for any help I could get to get any information they had on their children.

They didn't know, as Senator Campbell said earlier, they were at the unification site and just didn't know where their kids were. And as a parent myself and a parent of a 10-year-old right in that same age range, I can't even begin to imagine what that felt like. I was just watching the videos before this came on of the shooter breaking into the school. It's just terrifying, heartbreaking, angering. Here in Tennessee, we actually, instead of restricting guns, we actually continue to expand them. We've got a serious problem and we know it and we're just afraid to do anything about it. So, Representative Freeman, can you talk a little bit about the gun laws in the state of Tennessee?

Most of the country isn't familiar with the particulars of it. And what do you think might be done in your legislature to prevent something like this from happening again? I think the red flag laws would be a great first start to allow people to identify somebody who is in crisis, flag them, allow law enforcement to step in to try and do something about it, to extend the waiting period, to expand the age in which you can conceal and carry. We have bills right now running through the legislature that could allow people as young as 18 to carry long guns in public without a license anywhere within our state. We're going the wrong way. And there are solutions out there. We just need to be brave enough to take them. You, you, Mr. Representative, Tennessee has permitless carry. Is that correct, where you don't have to have a permit, you don't have to have training to be able to carry around guns? That's absolutely correct.

And they're trying to do so. And you're an open carry state as well? We are. Yeah, so it's it's a it's, it's a broken culture. And I will tell you, I had somebody close to me who actually owns guns, grew up in a gun culture. And I know this might be hard for some people to believe, but they have children and they said they got tired of walking around Nashville, having people carrying around guns outside, going into going in to grocery stores, going into, you know, people carrying it. And it just said it was, you know, they didn't want to live there. They they actually left the state because the gun laws in Tennessee have become so radicalized.

And I so when this happened yesterday, you know, I'm sure everybody's saying, oh, thoughts and prayers and everything. And yet the radical gun calls, you know, I listen, I'm not I'm not I'm not afraid of guns. I've got I've got several guns. But, you know, in the state of Florida, at least the way it used to be, I had to take a course. I had to do training. I had to apply. And it actually took me a year to get. I thought it was too long, but I actually had to wait to get a carry a carry permit here. And in Tennessee, it's just the the laws are crazy. Well, listen, when this bill passed a couple of years ago, the TVI law enforcement sheriffs, they all came up and spoke out about how this would this would be dangerous for not only the citizens, but the law enforcement. And it passed anyway.

You know, yesterday I was speaking to another group about exactly this. What could we do? And I spoke a little bit about red flag laws and, you know, maybe extending the age that you can legally conceal carry. And instead of getting phone calls from people across the state saying this is great, I did get some of those. But I received, you know, hundreds of phone calls threatening me, calling me a coward, saying they were going to come after me. The culture and the special interest in the lobby is such a stranglehold. And I wish those people could have been with me last night while I was sitting in my church where one of the children deceased went to and to see the, the, the little girls and little boys that were in her Sunday school class, walk in one after another, see each other, uh, give each other hugs. You know, it's, um,

it's unbelievable. And, and, uh, we lost six lives, seven lives yesterday, uh, that, that could have absolutely, uh, uh, been averted. Had we, you know, done something about it. And, you know, we're going to continue to pray. We're going to continue to, you know, thoughts and prayers. And somebody else in my position is going to have the same conversation in another city because, quite frankly, until we change our leadership and get some people with some real backbone in there, it's not going to change. There's going to be no meaningful law change in Tennessee from this that I can see. And it's heartbreaking.

It is heartbreaking. Everything about this, Representative Freeman, is heartbreaking. What's also heartbreaking is those people that you were talking about, they could have been with you. They could have seen everything and they just wouldn't have cared. They really wouldn't have cared. I've talked to these people. I know these people and they just don't care. They they have this twisted view of hyper individualism where America is all about their hyper individualistic rights and no responsibilities. No responsibilities are linked to that. Some people even pushing back on doing what I do and what I'm sure you and other responsible

gun owners do and make sure that our guns are locked up even in our own house. We make sure that everybody around is protected. And again, it's just it's it's so disheartening. What what what is next, though? I mean, because, again, for for the state of Tennessee, it seems that all of these laws are becoming even more extreme, even when cops, even when sheriffs are begging representatives not to do these things that put our children at risk. Yeah. And, you know, the sad thing is, is behind closed doors. I've had several members come up to me and kind of tell me, golly, they don't like this bill or they, you know, they don't think it's really needed, but they've got to run a gun bill this year or else somebody's going to beat them from the right. And we've got to have, again, people stand up and be courageous, grow a

backbone and do what they know is right, because the people passing the laws know in some cases, know that what they're doing is not right. And it's going to take the people of Tennessee to speak up and, you know, and really make their voices be heard. Because, you know, as you said earlier, the majority of people want some type of gun control. They want licenses. They want to ensure if we're going to have this good guy with a gun theory, we need to ensure that only good people are getting guns. And right now we have nothing.

We are allowing anybody at any point, anywhere to get a gun, carry a gun. And, you know, Joe, as you said, I'm a gun owner. I'm an outdoorsman, but all of my guns are locked away. I have regular conversations with my kids. When we have friends over, we have conversations with their parents and and we're open and honest about it. And, you know, quite frankly, this is making me rethink that. Do we need as many guns as we've got in our in our culture today? And I don't think we do. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you're sure you're a gun owner. I'm a gun owner. I, you know, I talk to, you know, everybody I grew up with, whether it was First Baptist Church in Meridian or First Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, they were, you know, so many of them were gun owners.

They went out hunting from from an early age and not one of them, not one of them thinks that open carry is a good idea. Every one of them supports red flag laws. Every one of them supports universal background checks. Every one of them supports red flag laws. Every one of them supports universal background checks. Every one of them is against open carry. They don't think they need AR-15s to go around. It's just, well, I'll just stop there. I mean, the numbers are devastating. You know, twice as many people have already been killed by guns in America in the first three months of 2023, then died in over a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Twice as many. And and that's that's where we are. Well, Representative, listen, our our our thoughts and prayers are with you, the people of your district, all the people who are in so much pain this morning.

Our thoughts and prayers are also with the representatives that you work with, that maybe they will put the fears of parents, the concerns about the fears of parents sending their kids in school above their own political fears and speak out like you do. Thank you for being with us. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. It's time for action. Thank you. Yes, it is. And as we noted, the number one cause of death for children isn't car accidents, cancer or any other form of disease. It is guns. According to the Gun Violence Archive, nearly 1,700 young people under the age of 17 lost their lives in the over 44,000 acts of gun violence in 2022. This epidemic of gun violence, which has already resulted in 131 mass shootings this year, 2023 alone, appears to be uniquely American compared to other countries, other Western countries.

The United States is losing more children to guns by a massive margin. And since 2000, the number of children dying by firearms has skyrocketed. We'll have much more on yesterday's school shooting in Nashville. We'll talk to the city's mayor ahead. Plus, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will join us to weigh in on the president's renewed push for an assault weapons ban. Also ahead this morning, the former publisher of the National Enquirer testifies again in the Manhattan DA's investigation into Donald Trump and the latest from Israel as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pauses a plan to overhaul the country's judiciary. We'll get a live report from Tel Aviv. And as we go to break, we want to welcome those of you watching us streaming live on Peacock for the first time. Thanks to the morning news live offering on Peacock. We now have our very own Morning Joe channel where you can stream our show live every weekday from 6 to 10 a.m. Eastern.

For more information, head over to PeacockTV.com slash Morning Joe. We'll be right back. You guys tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings? I'm from Highland Park, Illinois. My son and I survived a mass shooting over the summer. I am in Tennessee on a family vacation with my son, visiting my sister-in-law. I have been lobbying in D.C. since we survived a mass shooting in July. I have met with over 130 lawmakers. How is this still happening? How are our children still dying and why are we failing them? That was an extraordinary moment

yesterday. A survivor of the mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, happened to be in Nashville when shots rang out at the Covenant School. Her name was Ashley Beasley, and her son hid when gunfire broke out during that Fourth of July parade in Highland Park last summer. Seven people were killed in that shooting. Now, Beasley is an advocate for gun safety legislation. She stepped in front of the microphone after a press briefing to talk about that shooting there in Nashville. Let's bring in the host of way too early White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kaye and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist at The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson.

Good morning to you all. John, I'll start with you for the president having to step in front of microphones yet again and say this is a dark day for the country. He called on Congress to pass his assault weapons ban. We know that's a nonstarter for Republicans. What more can the president do? Does he have anything else in his power here? Yeah, it's a sadly familiar ritual for President Biden to stand before the microphones, go in front of the cameras in the wake of another mass shooting. And the answer is there's not going to be much that gets done here. There is, we know after the Evaldi, Texas school shooting, then that massacre of young children last year, there was a bipartisan effort for some gun safety regulations and some stuff got done.

But everyone involved, even in the moment, said this is modest at best. It's a step in the right direction, but a small step. And there doesn't appear to be any appetite for that now, particularly with a divided Congress. Republicans have control of the House of Representatives. So yes, President Biden yesterday renewed his call for an assault weapons ban. He will surely do so today when he travels to North Carolina. There is no suggestion that will go anywhere. So White House aides tell me that they are looking at if there's on the margins, some more executive orders, some more executive actions, they can be done. They'll certainly, but it's unclear what those will be and if they'll make any meaningful difference. They'll ramp up the rhetoric. They'll keep the pressure on Republicans to try to get something

more meaningful done, but they're not sure where that will go. And instead, they're left with, as one aide put it to me, just another moment where we have failed the children of this country. They have failed the children of this country who are now terrified to go to school because of moments like this. Well, this just happens time and time and time again. And you can go back to Sandy Hook and you can see where Barack Obama, even after Sandy Hook, the horrors of Sandy Hook, Congress wouldn't move. Congress wouldn't do anything. They finally did something after 10 years of pressure after Sandy Hook and Evaldi. And that combined together actually got some modest gun safety reform.

And it's a step in the right direction. It's a step. We need to make another step towards safety, protecting the Second Amendment and protecting our kids. You know what? Those two things can be done at the same time. Right now, though, it is so twisted. The imbalance is so twisted. Our kids keep getting gunned down. They keep getting killed. Christians that go to church keep getting gunned down. Jewish worshipers that go to synagogues keep getting gunned down. People that go to country music festivals keep getting gunned down. Grocery shoppers, gunned down.

Movie goers, gunned down. It just continues. It just continues. And so far in 2023, 131 mass shootings. And Katty K, I won't even waste my breath asking you if Europe understands, if Britain understands what's going on here, because we've seen examples of mass shootings in Australia. The country moves.

They move to make a difference. New Zealand, a mass shooting. The country moves. Look at these statistics in the United States. How what what what our lawmakers allow to happen every single day. And if you look at that number, we're not that far out there because we just have a lot more people than than than than other countries. That's per one hundred thousand. So that is per capita. And the United States caddy still with this screwed up, sick culture that that that a subset of Americans worship. That's the impact. This only happens in the United States. Yeah, I mean, you answered your own question, Joe,

when you asked whether you're not going to waste your breath asking what the rest of the world makes of this. And you're quite right. This is America's exceptional problem. It just doesn't happen. I woke up this morning. I'm in London. I watched school kids going along the street to school. And those children aren't going to get done down. Those parents are not going to risk losing their children in a school shooting. It just does not happen here. United Kingdom, they had a school shooting decades ago. They changed

the gun laws. They haven't had one since. You're now 100 times more likely to die from a gun than in the United States than you are here in the United Kingdom because they changed the laws. Why are guns the leading cause of death for children in America now? It's because the laws around safety were changed in cars. So America is capable of changing the laws, of implementing safety laws to regulate things like seatbelts so that children do not die in car accidents in the way that they used to. But they're not capable of doing it around guns. And that's, you know, it's it's American democracy not working to reflect the will of the people on an issue that is, as you've pointed out many times. We've spoken about it on the program. You said it again this morning. The majority of American people, we saw it there with that Politico poll, 63 percent of Americans want more gun safety in the country. But America's democracy, the institutions of democracy don't work to reflect the majority will. And that's a uniquely

American problem. You know, Eugene Robinson, we just heard a soundbite from a Republican congressman up on Capitol Hill. And we heard it again yesterday. And we seem to hear it after every shooting, this argument that what are you going to do? It's a big country. There are a lot of guns. There are a lot of crazy people who want to do bad things. You can't stop all of these shootings. That cannot be an acceptable answer.

We can't just say sometimes a nine-year-old is going to go to their little school in Nashville and not come home because somebody charges into the school with an AR-15 and kills them inside their school. How do we break this conversation? How do we get through that? This can't be the way it is in America. You know, Willie, it's sickening when you hear hear remarks like that, it makes me want to throw up. We're going in the wrong direction on guns in this country. And that's absolutely incredible with the carnage that we're seeing every single year with the children who are dying every single year, and we're going in the wrong direction, loosening the gun laws further in Tennessee, which already has these incredibly loose gun laws. You know, when he wrote the famous or infamous Heller decision, Justice Antonin Scalia made clear that there can be gun control. There could be reasonable gun control under the Second Amendment. So our elected officials are

complicit in this slaughter because they have the tools to stop it. They have the tools to vastly reduce it. And they refuse to do it. And it is the most outrageous thing. And once again, you have families who are devastated. You have children who are traumatized. You have a city that will never be the same after a shooting like this, after a slaughter like this. And it will happen again and again and again. Jonathan Lemire, it's interesting just how isolated this subset of American political culture is. And yes, they've been able to stop gun safety

measures. But you think about Sandy Hook, and it's very easy to look at that tragedy and say nothing came out of that. I will say people's attitudes on gun safety reform changed after Sandy Hook. That's when 90 percent of Americans started supporting universal background checks. That's when a majority of Americans started supporting a ban on AR-15 military style weapons. That's when the majority of Americans started supporting red flag laws. And you can go down the list. And I don't know the exact specifics of all of them, but we saw a break there. We also we read stories and maybe you can help out here during the 2020 campaign about the first time it was the first time that like the NRA was actually overwhelmed by by supporters of gun safety reform and actually contributions to gun safety reform.

Candidates actually at times were outpacing contributions from the NRA and other other people representing gun manufacturers. There there are some changes. It just seems that some of these Republican lawmakers, they're the last ones to be impacted by the dramatic changes that started with Sandy Hook. Yeah. So maybe those changes are coming, but they're coming entirely too slowly, of course, for those who are victims of gun violence each and every day. You're right. The NRA is a diminished political entity. They've been scandal there, fundraising issues, leadership issues.

They're nowhere near the force they were a few election cycles ago. But the vestige of them, they're still the remnants of their influence. The Republicans are still scared. It's become a cultural issue. It's become, as you always say, and I think rightly so, that hyper individualism where this is my gun. I'm not giving it away. And there's no suggestion there for the common good. And, yes, they're a minority. Polling suggests that they're minority. But they're a loud, influential one that has still had their hands gripped tightly on power and they're not willing to let it go.

And there's no anticipation of anything being done on a federal level here. Now we are seeing some good news in the states. We've talked about Michigan in the wake of the shooting there in Lansing at Michigan State University. That state legislature and all Democrats, Democratic governor, they feel like they can get some things done there. That may be replicated in a few other states, but there doesn't seem to be any political courage or appetite in the calls of Congress to get anything done beyond that. And President Biden's cries will fall on deaf ears. And as a side note, just hours yesterday before this

shooting, before this shooting in Nashville, The Washington Post did a remarkable story and graphic that shows the impact of what a bullet fired from an AR-15 does on a human body. I recommend it to everyone, but it's a very, very difficult thing to read and to watch. There are graphics to go with it. And there are two children, children, one killed in Newtown, one killed in Parkland, Florida, whose parents allowed, allowed the autopsies of their children to be part of this story, to show what the impacts of those bullets did to those kids, one, a young child, the other one, a teenager in high school. It is devastating. It is devastating to see what happened there. And that is, will continue to happen until something is done about these guns. And Jonathan, the piece you just

mentioned, we're going to have the reporter behind that investigation on Morning Joe later on in the show. And we're going to be showing that graphic as well. We'll talk about also whether lawmakers can get anything done on gun safety when Senator Dick Durbin, the chamber's number two Democrat, joins the conversation, plus a look at where things stand in Israel this morning after weeks of protests across that country. Morning Joe is back in a moment. 47 past the hour, protest leaders in Israel are calling for continued demonstrations, despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's move to delay his judicial overhaul plan. Protesters want the prime minister to completely abandon it.

Mass protests erupted across the country on Sunday and continued yesterday after the Israeli defense minister was fired for speaking out against the plan. The country's main trade union also went on strike but ended it after Netanyahu's announcement. His overhaul plan would allow the government to select judges and overturn Supreme Court decisions. Joining us live from Tel Aviv is NBC News foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez. Raf, what's the latest at this point? Well, make a good morning. There is a sense of wary calm here in Tel Aviv today. I will tell you, it felt for a lot of Israelis Sunday into Monday like their country was going off a cliff

after Netanyahu abruptly fired his defense minister. You saw these absolutely enormous protests blocking main roads like this one here in Tel Aviv. And then this unprecedented general strike yesterday, which paralyzed the economy. It shut the country's airport. It closed banks and businesses all over Israel. Today, following Netanyahu's announcement that he is at least putting on pause his plan to weaken the Supreme Court, that strike has been called off.

Businesses are open again. In terms of the protesters, they have no major demonstrations planned today, but they say they do not assume Netanyahu is acting in good faith here. I spoke to one of the protest leaders a few minutes ago. She told me she fears the prime minister is trying to lull them into a false sense of security before bringing this legislation up again, possibly in a couple of weeks. Now, in terms of the politics, the opposition parties here in Israel have agreed that they will sit down with Netanyahu. They will try to see if there is some kind of compromise that can be thrashed out.

But they, too, are very wary that this may be a smokesc the deep divisions Netanyahu's plan has been eroding into Israeli society. I want you to take a listen to a little bit of what the White House press secretary had to say yesterday following the prime minister's announcement. We welcome this announcement as an opportunity to create additional time and space for compromise. Compromise is precisely what we have been calling for. And we continue to strongly urge Israeli leaders to find a compromise as soon as possible. Now, Mika, there were some words from the White House yesterday, but there is a lot of concern, both in Washington and here in Tel Aviv, about the concessions that Netanyahu has had to make to the far right of his coalition in order to get them to agree to this delay. One of those is he is allowing for the creation of a national guard, something that Israel has not had before,

under the national security ministry. And in charge of that national guard will be Itamar Ben-Gavir, one of the most far-right members of Netanyahu's cabinet, a man who has criminal convictions for inciting racism and supporting a terrorist group. Protesters here in Israel are extremely concerned about what it'll mean for them if this National Guard is formed.

So the feeling here, this is not over yet and very possible these protesters may be back on the streets sometime soon. Guys. NBC's Raf Sanchez, thank you very much for your reporting this morning and joining us now, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. And Richard, what do you make of the fact that Netanyahu has just put off his plans? It appears the people of Israel, those protesters, are not buying it. Well, he had to make a choice between keeping his government together, Mika, or keeping his country together. So he punted. He basically will try to buy a few weeks through the Passover holiday.

And we'll see. There may be some compromise, maybe on this judicial reform issues. There's a couple of components on it. There's, as you just heard from your correspondent, there's other things he can do to satisfy his far right government. But let me just make a larger point. I think this is about a much more than these specific reforms. I think what you're seeing in Israel are people coming out in the streets because they're worried about the future of the country. They're worried about the future of the country? They're worried about the divide between religious Israelis and secular Israelis. They're worried about the whole question of how Israel deals with the Palestinian issue.

This is really a struggle for Israel's future, as much as it is something more specific about how the Supreme Court in Israel is going to operate. Well, this was remarkable, Richard, what we've seen over the past several days. Have you seen anything like this? Any such civil unrest in Israel? Or have you even read about it since its founding in 1948? No, Joe, this is unprecedented. And again, I think it's because I lived in Israel for a year. I've spent a lot of time there as a diplomat. I think what happened here is the cumulative changes in Israel for demographic reasons, for political reasons, finally reached a point.

And this judicial reform proposal was the tipping point. And people came out in the streets because they said, wow, if this happens, this is no longer a liberal democracy. Essentially, it becomes an illiberal democracy. So no, I've never seen this kind of broad pushback in that society. And obviously, Netanyahu wanted to go the way of Orban, wanted to go the way that Trump has been wanting to go for quite some time, wanted to move away from Western democracy, liberal democracy and become an illiberal state, just like Hungary, a very, very bad direction for the

Israeli people. And they stood up against the plan. Gene Robinson, I know you have a question for Richard Haass, but I just just wanted to talk to you first about this. It really, really is remarkable what happened over the weekend. But we sort of we sort of saw in Israel what we saw in the United States leading up to January the 6th, where you had all of the all of the secretaries of defense sign a letter, sign a letter saying Army, Navy, Air Force, we'd stay out of politics. You, of course, had the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Milley, stepping up, pushing back hard. And in Israel, you had the same thing where Netanyahu was cornered when it was the military establishment and the security establishment that was pushing back the hardest. Exactly. And Netanyahu was really in an impossible position. He had gone too far, even for members of his very right wing government. This was just

unacceptable and clearly so clearly being rejected by a huge percentage of the Israeli population, they saw the country being torn apart. And that, to the security establishment, was not acceptable. I guess my question to Richard Haass is, you know, is this all Bibi Netanyahu in his eternal quest for power, to have power, to accumulate more power, to stay in power? And is there any alternative to more years of Netanyahu and more years of Israel going in what many people see as a calamitous direction. Gene, I think on one level, it is Bibi Netanyahu, who's the longest serving prime minister in Israel's history and his ability and willingness to make whatever deal is necessary to keep himself in power. But I also think it's something else.

And I think it will transcend Bibi Netanyahu. This is a somewhat different country. If you look at the statistics about the society, the years of immigration from Russia, a much more conservative group, more Israelis are devout religiously in various Orthodox sects. So the people coming out in the streets are probably better educated, more secular, more liberal. But as a result, I think these tensions in Israeli society now transcend Bibi Netanyahu's and his own immediate short term efforts to keep himself out of jail, to keep himself in power. I think there's something underneath, almost tectonic plates are colliding in that society. And that, to me, is more worrying because it's not so simple as simply the machinations of one politician. So, Richard, let's shift gears here and talk about Africa, a continent that many feel the United States is sort of ceded to China in recent years. China's influenced their gigantic with its investments across across Africa.

The vice president, Kamala Harris, is there now beginning her multi-day trip to Africa. One of many visits by administration officials this year to Africa, including eventually President Biden, probably this fall. She pledged that the U.S. stands with the continent. Are you seeing that happen beyond rhetoric? Is that something where this administration is taking concrete steps to enact? Not enough. Look, I think it's great that she's there. People forget Africa is the part of the world where you will have by far the largest demographic increases over the next couple of decades. Africa is going to go up by over a billion people. At the same time, Europe, Asia, much of the rest of the world is going to be shrinking and aging.

So demographically, Africa is on a totally different trajectory. But no, we don't have enough there. We don't have enough aid. We don't have enough trade going on. We don't have enough diplomatic engagement. You know, a lot of Africa was disappointed that we didn't make vaccines available cheaply, readily during the pandemic. We then went to Africa and said, hey, support us on Ukraine, oppose Russia. A lot of them said, no, thank you. The last really big African initiative that was successful, which George W. Bush was PEPFAR's, probably saved 20, 25, 30 million lives in Africa because we made vaccines available against HIV AIDS. I think the United States needs to think bigger about Africa. It's hard to generalize.

We're talking about over 50, 50 countries south of the Sahara. Some are really model democracies. Some, shall we say, are anything else, anything but two biggest countries, Nigeria and South Africa are in terrible condition politically. So it's not easy to fashion a policy. But no, we need we need to put more focus on it.