Morning Joe - Morning Joe 3/5/24

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

The Morning Joe panel discusses everything headed into Super Tuesday

Over the weekend, Trump was speaking at a rally in North Carolina when he stumbled over a few words a bit. Take a look at this. We are a nation that just recently heard that Saudi Arabia and Russia will repeat their... What? Wait a minute. Suddenly, Trump turned into a Spice Girls. I really wanted to say, uh, sound like his brain got a flat to make it seem like he meant to say that they made his new campaign slogan.

Trump 24. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, March 5th. Happy Super Tuesday, guys. It's good, right? Along with Joe, Willie, and me, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Beer Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. I liked it. NBC News National Affairs Analyst John Heilman's here.

Why are you here so early? I don't know. That's a lot for us at 6 in the morning. He rolls in right from the club. God, it's too much. Just crashing. Hey, it's super. It's like, see, I don't want to start Super Tuesday on a super note.

I have to prepare emotionally for Heilman to be in the room. U.S. Special Correspondent for BBC News, Patty Kaye, is with us as well. And, you know, so important that it's Super Tuesday. I just have a little announcement to make, though, personal. Hobson is now an emotional support dog. Congratulations. Joe, I know you love Hobson so much

except for his humping problem. Oh, wow. I don't know how we stop a dog from doing that. Why is that a problem? Some dogs can't be stopped from that. I was just stretching because Joe was still getting his mic on. So I was helping you out. You know, I really need.

Congratulations, Hobson. You could have stretched just a little bit less. He's a good dog. I just, I do want some advice. No, he's not. No, no. You know, sweetheart, you will find I may talk a lot. Sweetie, I should. Yeah. Hey, sweetie. Rapidly. I may talk a lot, but I want you to know that it's the things, it's the things that I don't say that have kept me on the air here now for 16 years. No, this is not just specific. A lot of dogs suffer from this problem. Yeah, okay.

So, Willie, Super Tuesday today. The stakes, well, they just couldn't be any lower. Take us through it. You know, the word that comes to mind, Joe, on Super Tuesday is not the one Mika raised. It has totally derailed the show. It is anti-climax, I think it's fair to say, which is that Donald Trump expected to roll through the states. Joe Biden unopposed as well. I'm going to power through right here.

Watch this. Voters. Can we throw a sign or something? Let's get to something else here. They're going to go to the polls. Voters are 16 states. Yeah, I will say this, Willie. They're going to go to the polls, but they're going to wake up tomorrow on hump day for the week.

And I think they're going to probably see. Yeah, we were starting to recover. Oh, look at that. Yeah. So, anyway. Just come out come out. Take us through it. And now you sucked us back in. Sorry. So 16 states, one U.S. territory. Oh, yes. Samoa also on the board. Oh, yeah. Thank you. It's the busiest day. Republican primaries, caucuses in 15 states, 865 delegates at stake. Former President Donald Trump, widely expected to sweep the races in all of the states holding contests today. Last night,

Trump won the North Dakota Republican caucuses, beating Nikki Haley by about 70 points. Trump likely will be awarded all 29 of that state's delegates. In an interview with conservative media company RSBN last night, Donald Trump expressed confidence heading into today's vote while Nikki Haley made her closing arguments to voters in Texas in front of a packed rally in Fort Worth. I just say to the people that are watching now, if you could go out and vote because it's not Haley.

She's not a problem. I think she's very negative for the party, but she's not a problem in terms of winning because we're winning by a lot. The only place we expected to lose was D.C. because that's the swamp. Tomorrow, we could very well win every state in record numbers. That's what we're hoping for. They call it Super Tuesday for a reason. And I think it's going to be record setting. I think, I hope so. Republicans lost a vote on Mayorkas. They lost a vote on Israel. The RNC chair lost her job

and Donald Trump had his fingerprints on all of it. At some point, maybe we should say the reason that America keeps losing is because of Donald Trump. We can change all of that. But in order to change it, it's going to take a lot of courage. Courage from everybody here.

Courage for me to run. And courage for every one of you to know, don't complain about what happens in a general election if you don't vote in this primary. We are blessed to live in America. And we know that America's better than this. Now we have to do something about it. So this is what I will tell you.

Tomorrow, you got a job to do. I need you to Tomorrow, you got a job to do. I need you to vote and I need you to take 10 people with you. I tell you this, John Heilman, just watching Nikki Haley and watching her grow on on the campaign trail. And I will say again, Mika and I have known her since she was a state legislator. She's pretty darn good as a state legislator as far as her skill set as a politician. But watching that Nikki Haley on stage and understanding that she's running in Donald Trump's party, I just can't help but look at that person and think if she were to run as an independent candidate, let's say she could run as an independent candidate and get access in all 50 states, which, of course, I don't think she could.

You know, that person, that message could do better than Ross Perot, especially this year. That's somebody who could actually be a contender as an independent candidate. I don't know. I mean, there's obviously there's been there's the there's a chunk of voters who are obviously, as we know, vastly dissatisfied with the two with the choice at the top of the of the presumptive tops of both tickets. Right. You also have this growth in the independent sector in the independent segment of the electorate. And there's been a lot, you know, in a period for the last 20 or 30 years, we've seen this intense polarization. There hasn't been really much space for,

you've got to bet, 40%, 42%, 43% of both parties of the electorate on one side or the other. It didn't matter whether the candidates were anyone they liked. There was just never really space for a third party. People copined for it. But the truth was, beyond even the ballot access questions, in a hyper-polarized climate, the parties were generally pretty satisfied with their respective candidates. This is a different situation. And Joe, I think we're in such uncharted territory in terms of the amount of voter dissatisfaction with Trump and Biden that you might be right. I don't know. The interesting question to me is not so much

what would happen if Nikki Haley were to be an independent candidate or a third party candidate? The interesting question to me is what would have happened? It's the question I think will haunt a lot of people on the Republican side is what would have happened if she had found her way to being to the clarity that she's found and the strength that she's found, the voice she's found, whatever you want to call it. If she had found this position, not in January of this year, but last a year ago, January, or even last a year ago, June, in June, if she'd been doing this, if she'd been not necessarily just this good, but this clear about the space she occupied, the Republican firmament, how much more of a challenge she might have been. I think she was trying to be vice president. She seemed I mean, she has toggled between kind of Trump skeptic and Trump admirer for her entire career since Trump's

been on the scene. But if she had been in this place and consistently campaigning this way from the middle of last year, how much closer would this Republican nomination fight have been? She just came to them. She found clarity way too late. And I think that's the big question that kind of hovers over over what might have been. And in some sense, what happens in the future, because there are still a lot of people who wonder what will happen to Nikki Haley, whether she'll have this clarity after she leaves the race, whether that's tomorrow or or some other day soon to come. Yeah. Well, and perhaps after I'm sorry, really, perhaps, Willie, after she after this race, after the general election, if Donald Trump loses again, then she has a great argument.

If Donald Trump wins, of course, it's a completely different situation. You know, the thing is, Willie, a lot of people made calculations, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis and others, that they could ignore Donald Trump, that they could push him aside, that they could pat his followers on the head, that Alvin suitably damaged, they probably would try to ignore that Democrat and chart their own path. So it has been a very tortured run. But there's always been this lane. And I don't know how big the lane is. Liz Cheney would tell you and Adam Kinzinger would tell you not very big. I'm not so sure if you just came forward from the very beginning with the strong conviction, I can win, this guy can't. I'm not so sure she wouldn't be doing better right now, but we are where we are, and this is actually a strong message.

She'll probably lose everything tonight, but I don't think she's playing for tonight. I think she's playing for tomorrow. I think she's looking over the horizon. Yeah, she may have a future. I guess the question is, would it have mattered? We'll never know. But if she had done what John suggests last year and come out stronger and not use the vagaries of kicking sideways and no one quite knew what any of that meant, trying to have it both ways and keep Donald Trump supporters. Maybe that would have made a difference. Also, maybe it wouldn't have. Maybe this is just Donald Trump's party and the loyalists are so strong in his corner that it wouldn't have mattered. We just won't know. It is strange, John, to be sitting here on the morning

of Super Tuesday, something we've covered so many times before, and really to have no drama whatsoever. Not to say, OK, is this candidate going to steal this state or that state? It's just Donald Trump expected to roll through the 15 states. I guess the question is, will Nikki Haley drop out tonight or tomorrow morning? Will she hang in for a couple more weeks? It'll still be two more weeks, probably before Donald Trump technically secures the nomination in terms of the number of delegates. But here we are just rolling toward this general election now as we turn the corner to a state of the number of delegates. But here we are just rolling toward this general election now as we turn the corner to a State of the Union and everywhere. This feels like a

milestone week where now we can see these two candidates going head to head. Yeah, the general election is upon us as of this week. President Biden, of course, going to have a clean sweep tonight on the Democratic side. For Republicans, Nikki Haley's team suggests maybe they have a shot at Vermont, but probably not in everything. So therefore, Trump's going to win everything there, too. So the question is, what happens next to Haley? Could she even drop out tonight? Is there an event later this week, perhaps in her home state? Her team's not saying.

They're also, she herself has all along said, I'm in this through Super Tuesday. Recently has suggested she left the door open to maybe staying in longer than that, that maybe she'll stay a few more weeks until Trump mathematically becomes the nominee. Or even beyond that, that she wouldn't suspend her campaign. We know that Trump's first criminal trial now just three weeks away. Maybe she keeps her eye on that. Maybe she tries to suggest something could happen at the convention. She just wants to keep her options open. She now campaigns to truism. And when they run out of money, at least for now, that's not an issue for Haley. She's still got enough money to keep this going for a while.

And what she has done, though, is she has displayed Trump's vulnerabilities that we have seen her put up, even though she's only won one contest, the one in Washington, D.C. She's put up a fairly impressive size of the vote in a couple of states, New Hampshire, South Carolina, among them, and revealed some concerns for Trump going forward, some issues he's going to have to address come November. We've seen these polls where a lot of Haley supporters say, I'll never back Donald Trump, even if he's the nominee. I won't do it. I'll either vote for Joe Biden or I'll stay home. And Mika, as long as she stays in this race and she continues to deliver messages, these anti-Trump messages, she's delivering them to audiences who otherwise

wouldn't hear them. She's being covered on Fox News. She's being covered in conservative media who would never play Joe Biden. And one thing to keep an eye on tonight, Mika, is turnout. We've been talking about this since Iowa, which is, yes, Donald Trump has a big win, but the turnout is tiny, and he gets 50-some percent of that turnout. If you look at last night in North Dakota, which he won by 70 or 72 points, that sounds like a big number. He got about 1,800 total votes. So, yes, the margins will be huge. But people are not turning out for him in this primary.

I guess we'll learn a lot by what people do and how they're feeling from the results tonight. Katie Kaye, to Willie's point that it's so interesting that there's just no drama heading into Super Tuesday and pointing out that on the Republican side, one of the candidates is probably one of the most controversial candidates in the world. And yet no drama. What are you watching tonight? Yeah, I mean, in a way, Nikki Haley has revealed two things, right? She's revealed that this is Donald Trump's party and it really is his party, that nobody can make a dent on him. And I don't know if she'd gone for the Chris Christie lane right from the beginning. Would it have helped her? Would she have done better or would

she have done worse? She made the calculation clearly that that was just not an option to her. But she's also revealed his weaknesses. She's revealed his vulnerabilities and the number, you know, the team, Charlie Sykes, our friend and Sarah Longwell, who I chatted to the other day making this calculation. How big is that lane? How big is that group of Republicans who will never vote for Donald Trump? That's what I'm going to watch tonight over those exit polls. Are we going to get a better sense of how many Republicans there are who are voting in these primaries, who like Nikki Haley, who like that message that she started delivering

so robustly, and who will never vote for Donald Trump, because I think that will give us a sense of November. That's going to give us the best indication of whether Joe Biden has this chance because a better chance, because there are Republicans who aren't going to vote. In the end, the election will come down to how many Democrats won't vote for Joe Biden and how many Republicans won't vote for Donald Trump. And that's what elections like today's are going to show us. Yeah, I will say, John Heilman, one of the things I'm looking for is is what Willie brought up. And that is a turnout because we do see every year, every four years to turn out from parties.

It does make a big difference. How excited are they? How energized are they to get out and vote? But the contest last night, can you believe you can win a Republican contest? And Trump's crowing about it with one thousand six hundred and thirty two votes. Most city council members in midsize towns get more than one thousand six hundred and thirty two votes. And again, we keep going back to Iowa. Fourteen percent of Republicans in Iowa voted. That's 14 percent of about a third of registered voters in Iowa. And he got 50 percent of the 14 percent of the 33 percent of you. You just keep going on and on. And he ends up with about 50,000 votes and wins the storied Iowa caucuses. These numbers are way down.

And there are a lot of Republicans that are disaffected by Donald Trump. And if they're voting for him, they're doing it holding their nose. Yeah, I'd say, you know, Joe, that number, I think that's from North Dakota. You just mentioned there. It's like there are probably some condominiums and our condominium association votes in your state of Florida that are bigger than that. So, yes, look, what's been revealed, I think, in this period are two things. One thing about each party. One thing is that on the Democratic side, Joe Biden has a problem with Democratic voters in the sense that he lacks some enthusiasm among his base.

Donald Trump's basically claiming almost all of the people, percentage-wise, and in polls we see this too, people who voted for him last time around. Joe Biden has a problem with people who voted for him last time around who've drifted away from him. He's got to get those people back. Donald Trump's problem is not, he's got 98% of the people who voted for him last time, but the pool is shrinking. So the problem on the Republican side is this enthusiasm problem. And I will just say, having been there in Iowa, having been in South Carolina, having been in New Hampshire, the lack of enthusiasm, I've said it on this show every single, and all those

contests, and I'll say it again, the lack of enthusiasm for Donald Trump outside of his core base is palpable. It is less than it was in 2020. It was less than it was in 2016. You can feel it that people in the Republican Party are much more acquiescent to Trump en masse, are acquiescent to him rather than enthusiastic about him. And that is going to be a problem for him for sure, because he's going to need every single one of those people if he's going to try to if he's going to be the nominee and win in November. All right. Still ahead on this Super Tuesday, Steve Kornacki will join us from the big board with a look at what he's watching today. And up next in 60 seconds, we're going to get to the new Supreme Court ruling that Donald Trump cannot be kicked off Colorado's primary ballot.

We're back in just one minute. Speaking of former President Trump today, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Colorado is not allowed to remove him from the 2024 ballot. Then out of habit, Trump immediately appealed the decision. This is a wish. Oh, wait a minute. That's right. The Supreme Court ruled that states cannot keep Trump off their ballots, which means that the Supreme Court remains the only place where Trump can

win the popular vote. Yes, the Supreme Court knows you can't just let states decide who goes on their ballots. States are too busy deciding that life begins in the freezer section. Next to the pearl onions. Yeah, OK. I don't know.

I didn't like that one. But it's true. I mean, tough crowd. OK, Donald Trump will remain on the ballot despite efforts in some states to make him ineligible for the 2024 election. The Supreme Court yesterday unanimously rejected the ruling from Colorado Supreme Court that removed the former president from the ballot based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Now, the justices ruled that a patchwork of decisions around the country could send elections into chaos if state officials

had the freedom to determine who could appear on the ballot. The decision makes clear that it is up to Congress to enforce the insurrectionist clause against federal office holders and candidates. But the three liberal justices accused their conservative colleagues of going too far by ruling Congress must enact new legislation in order to ban a presidential candidate. They wrote that this decision will make it harder to bar, quote, an oath breaking insurrectionist from becoming president. Willie, let's bring into the conversation former U.S. attorney and MSNBC contributor Chuck Rosenberg. So, Chuck, this was widely expected. I don't know if it was expected to be unanimous, but it is at nine zero on the vote here. I should point out conservative justice

Amy Coney Barrett also wrote a concurrence critical of some pieces of her colleagues ruling on this. This talks about federal office holders, which is to say the state does not have the right to keep a federal candidate off the ballot. It can do that with state candidate and local candidates, but not federal. Are you surprised at all by anything you saw in this decision yesterday? Not really, Willie, with one asterisk. If you had listened to the oral argument last month, it was pretty clear that the vote was going to be lopsided, 8-1, 9-0, turned out to be 9-0, to prohibit states from determining the qualifications for candidates for federal office. So the 9-0 vote didn't surprise me very much. There was, as you noted, a concurring opinion and a disagreement, not just the three so-called liberal justices, but Justice Amy Coney Barrett as well, who thought that the majority on the court went a bit too far.

A bit too far, Willie, by deciding a question not before them, which was, how do you give effect to the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment, the one that Nika just so ably described? Do you have to do it through congressional legislation? Five justices said yes, and four said you don't need to reach that question. But on the core question, the most important question, it was a 9-0 vote prohibiting states from determining whether or not someone can stand for federal office. So conservative columnist David French writes about the decision in a new piece for The New York Times entitled The Supreme Court Just Erased Part of the Constitution. And here's

part of it. As of Monday, March 4th, 2024, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution is essentially a dead letter, at least as it applies to candidates for federal office. Now, Section 3 is different from other sections of the amendment. It requires federal legislation to enforce its terms, at least as applied to candidates for federal office. Through inaction alone, Congress can effectively erase part of the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court has effectively replaced a very high bar for allowing insurrectionists into federal office. A super majority vote by Congress with the lowest bar imaginable congressional inaction. The fact that Congress has not acted should not effectively erase the words from the constitutional page. Chaotic enforcement of the Constitution may be suboptimal, but it's far better than not enforcing the Constitution at all. What do you make of that, Joe?

Well, I was going to ask Chuck his opinion on on David French's insights. Chuck. Yeah, Joe, I read it this morning. I read his article and he makes a really important point that Congress, by doing absolutely nothing, which is absolutely what they do best, has essentially stripped the disqualification clause from operation, right? They've essentially made it, they've rendered it moot. Here's the problem. By going too far, the Supreme Court has really limited the ways in which someone can be disqualified. You need Congress to pass federal legislation. Now, Amy Coney Barrett and the three so-called liberal justices would have said something different. A, we don't have to decide this, but B, there might be other ways for Congress or federal courts

to breathe life into the disqualification clause. So I think David French's article is an important one to read. Like I said, I read it myself. I even understood it, which doesn't happen all that often. But he's right. It has essentially become a nullity. The ability to keep an insurrectionist from the ballot turns on Congress acting. And as we discussed earlier, that's what Congress does worse. You know, Willie, this this underlines a point that we've at times said about what could be happening on the left, like the criticisms of Alvin Bragg bringing a case under a new theory or are sort of piecing things together in a way that make constitutional scholars uneasy on both sides. In this case, you have the Supreme Court lurching too far to the right, making, as David French said, this part of the 14th Amendment a dead letter. You could also raise a lot of the same questions, which we need to do, about some of these state cases as well. Right now in Fulton County, there's mess down there with the prosecutor.

What happens if there's a prosecutor in West Texas that wants to, you know, charge the next Democratic president? These are all questions that do need to be raised. And we've been raising them on one side on is there overreach on the left that will impact future Democratic presidents? Here you have overreach, it seems, by a conservative Supreme, again, has nullified effectively, as David French said, nullified an extraordinarily important clause in the 14th Amendment. Yeah. And that's why it was so interesting to see that concurrence, not just from the more liberal members of the court, but from Justice Amy Coney Barrett saying to her colleagues, guys,

we need to turn down the temperature, not turn it up and create more chaos in our system. So she, while voting with the majority, of course, unanimous, critical in some ways of the specifics of the ruling. That's the legal side of it, John. Let's talk about the politics for a second. I think we all have heard from some Democrats and maybe people working on other campaigns saying this was worth pursuing. But perhaps even a little relief that it turned out this way, because if he's kept off the ballot, it gives him rocket fuel for the next eight months to say the Biden administration, the Justice Department, et cetera, et cetera. Everything he likes to say is trying to strip away your right to vote, to keep you off the ballot. So they say we can beat him in Colorado, put him on the ballot. Right. A sigh of relief

from a lot of Democrats yesterday. The idea being that if a few blue states had taken him off the ballot, yes, that it would just fuel his grievances, his deep state conspiracies and would just fire up the enthusiasm. I think chaos is the right word. I think that they were right to rule the way that they did. A lot of campaigns would concur on that. Now, Donald Trump, of course, appeared yesterday in Mar-a-Lago. He praised the decision. And also, Chuck Rosenberg, we heard from Trump talk about the other matter that's about to be in front of the Supreme Court, that of presidential immunity. We know those oral arguments are scheduled for next month.

Just give us your latest thinking as to how those arguments could go and when, perhaps most importantly, when we'll hear from the justices in terms of their decision, because that will impact whether or not any of these trials happen before the election. Let me start with the when, Jonathan. The argument in the Supreme Court on the question of presidential immunity from criminal process is April 22nd. The Supreme Court term ends at the end of June. So we will certainly have a decision, or we should have a decision by the end of the June, although it could come quicker.

The decision in the case we were just discussing on the 14th Amendment disqualification clause took about four weeks. So no later than the end of June, we should have a decision. I am still somewhat bullish. I may be the last person on the planet who believes that this case could be tried before the election, the January 6th insurrection case in federal court in Washington. The sooner the Supreme Court makes a decision, the clearer it will be whether or not we can have that trial. So to your first question, Jonathan, Mr. Trump lost decisively in the district court and again, decisively and unanimously in federal court of appeals on the immunity

question. I expect he will lose again. The answer seems pretty clear. A president is not immune for conduct while president, except perhaps in a very narrow band of cases involving official acts and trying to thwart a fair and free election cannot possibly be an official act. So the sooner the Supreme Court gets to that determination, the clearer we will, the better we will know whether or not we can have a trial before the election. I still think we can. Like I said, I might be the last person on the planet, but I'm I'm somewhat bullish.

OK. Former U.S. attorney and MSNBC contributor Chuck Rosenberg. Thank you very much for coming on the show and coming up on Morning Joe. We'll bring you the latest developments out of the Middle East as Vice President Kamala Harris continues to press for a ceasefire in Gaza. Plus, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, will join the conversation. Morning Joe is expected to airdrop more aid into Gaza soon. President Biden posted on social media about expanding aid deliveries by air, land and sea. But the White House has not yet shared exact details on timing. The U.S. dropped 38000 ready to eat meals over central Gaza over the weekend. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris is pushing Israel to pause the fighting in Gaza.

Harris emphasized the need to secure a hostage deal and get more aid into the Strip during a meeting with Israeli War Cabinet member Benny Gantz yesterday. According to the White House, the two also discussed the situation in Rafah. Harris wants Israel to implement a humanitarian plan before launching a major military operation. Gantz is expected to continue these discussions today with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Gantz is a political rival to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His visit to the White House could signal wider cracks between the White House and the Israeli government. Reporters asked Gantz yesterday if the White House should just deal with him instead of Netanyahu.

But Gantz responded, quote, No, Israel has a prime minister and everything is OK. Joining us now, President Emeritus on the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. He is author of the weekly newsletter Home and Away, available on Substack. And I would argue that everything is not OK, Joe, as it pertains to the Israeli government, I think losing support from within Israel and around the world. Well, Israel is obviously losing support in the United States, losing support around the world. And right now, I think perhaps most importantly for them in the long run,

they're losing support among their Arab neighbors. And Richard, there is a real urgency. And I know you've spoken with with Arab neighbors and leaders and diplomats around Israel, as have I, over the past few weeks. And they keep saying the clock is ticking. We have to resolve this crisis. We want to help. We want to help in Gaza. We want to help you toward a two-state solution, but the killing of civilians has to stop. The famine, the coming famine has to be averted. All of these things suggest a fierce urgency of now that perhaps Benjamin Netanyahu and too many in the Israeli government just do not understand. Yeah, Joe, it's hard to talk about this without almost noting the tragedy or irony of it. For decades, what was Israel's goal? It was to gain acceptance in the region. It was to get the Arab countries to basically see Israel not as a Western

implant, but as part of the region. And that was happening. You had all sorts of countries normalizing. And most important, you had Saudi Arabia, critical in the Arab world, critical in energy, and obviously critical in the Islamic world, on the cusp of doing that. And what's happening now, and you allude to what Arab leaders are so frustrated about, is what Israel is doing has in some ways radicalized a new generation of young Arabs who, six months ago, really didn't care much about the Palestinians. They were open to economic and other interactions with Israel, and all that's been put on hold or even reversed. And like it or not, these Arab leaders, even those that are pretty authoritarian, have to take into account the public opinion, even in authoritarian countries, you can't ignore it.

So Israel is essentially undoing what had been for decades its principal foreign policy or national security goals. So right now, relations with the Palestinians are at a low, and relations with the Arab states have been frozen. So this has really been, I would argue, again, it's not over Israel's right for self-defense. It's how Israel has interpreted it and implemented it. And I would argue it's been counterproductive from just about any and every consideration. Well, and you look at the pictures that we've been watching over the past month, and you understand, and the Israeli people, many should understand with bitterness that this is exactly the way Hamas wanted this to play out. Just commit unspeakable acts of terror, promote or provoke Netanyahu's government to overreach in a way the United States did after September 11th

and raise their standing, raise Hamas's own standing in Gaza, where Hamas was fairly unpopular before this, raise their own standing across the Middle East, raise their own standing in the United States. And really, that's exactly what happened. You know, on the surface, the initial reaction from from some Israeli leaders and Israelis may be, well, Hamas did this to us. We have to continue the attacks for our long term security. We've gotten to a point now where continued attacks of civilians, continued killing of civilians actually undermines Israel's long-term security. And this isn't even a close call. This isn't, I'm not saying this, you know, I'm saying this

as a conservative that believes Israel has a right to protect itself, has a right to be secure. But what they are doing is undermining their support in the United States. We could show we show the polls just about every day, undermining their support among Arab neighbors. It just entered into peace treaties with them over the past few years, undermining their support across the world. Yeah, I mean, when you consider that the truth that Hamas is a terrorist death cult and reminded the world of that on October 7th, this is precisely what it wants. You don't need any more evidence than to know that it hides in schools and hospitals and behind civilians because the death of a civilian in Gaza, they view as a victory because it hurts Israel. That's just the way they calculate

it. So, Richard, on this question of the ceasefire, short term ceasefire that we keep hearing about, President Biden raised it two weeks ago ahead of the Michigan primary, perhaps didn't turn up. We heard a couple of days ago Israel has all but signed on to a temporary ceasefire, just waiting for Hamas to iron out a few details. Vice President Harris calling for that, a six-week ceasefire again yesterday. Are we ever going to see this, or is this just kind of wishful thinking? I've been a minority here. I actually am skeptical that Hamas wants the ceasefire. You know, we're, what, less than a week away from the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan.

So if you're Hamas, going back to everything you and Joe were just saying, what would you like? You wouldn't mind there being pictures of people trying to get to Mosque or people praying and being attacked, or this being the imagery in the Arab world during Ramadan. So I actually don't think it's, shall we say, a slam dunk that Hamas goes along with the ceasefire. Part of me thinks they're actually hoping. And that would be consistent with, as you both were saying, with everything up to now. This is station identification for Hamas. They want to show that only they can deliver, only they are the real defenders of the Palestinian

cause. Just think about how different this conversation would be today if Israel on October 8th had taken a breath, allowed this to play out, put the focus on Hamas, on the sexual and other depravity that went on, on the killing of individuals, and then gradually and quietly went after this leader or that leader, kept the focus on Hamas rather than put the focus on itself. It seems to me that this has been a colossal mishandling. This was an opportunity to isolate Hamas, show it for what it is. It's DNA. Put something out there politically where you could have said, hey, here's a better way. If you really care about Palestinians, Hamas does it. They just want to see dead Palestinians.

Here's a better way to go. I actually think this was strategically every step of the way, a total loss or misguided, understandable, but all the same counterproductive responsibly. Absolutely. But understand why itctive responsibly. Absolutely. But understand why it happened that way. Sure. Because you had Benjamin Netanyahu, who had just told Qatar three weeks earlier to keep funding Hamas. You had Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, who knew about Hamas's secret funding in 2018,

and they refused to do anything to break it up. This is the same Benjamin Netanyahu whose government had the attack plans for one year before the terrorist attacks came. This is the same Benjamin Netanyahu that had divided his country apart and by going to war against the rule of law and had extraordinarily low approval ratings even before the attack. This is the same Benjamin Netanyahu who has indictments leveled against him and knows if he leaves office, he is going to face the music in courtrooms across Israel. This is the same Benjamin Netanyahu that knows, Richard, that sort of response was a response he did not have the ability to project because he knew that if there was a pause,

if it was measured, if they went about it in a way that would kill Hamas leaders while continuing to have the world see these horrid pictures of October 7th and actually build up support for Israel and the Israeli people and the cause of Israel. Well, Katty K, he knew that he wouldn't survive because that pause would also show that it was Benjamin Netanyahu that funded Hamas through Qatar. It was Benjamin Netanyahu that allowed the funding of Hamas to continue from 2018 forward. It was the same Benjamin Netanyahu that allowed the funding of Hamas to continue from 2018 forward. It was the same Benjamin Netanyahu that had the secret war attack plans for a year. It was the same Benjamin Netanyahu that that was asleep at the switch and was so obsessed with the West Bank and illegal settlements there that, well, he just kept the gates open, basically, to the raping and the killing. And, Katty, we didn't even get into the fact that it took five, six, seven, eight,

ten hours for Netanyahu to get his army and get the police down to protect these people, or to try to save some of these women's lives. Yeah. And by the way, that is the one fact I keep hearing from friends and colleagues and people I speak to in the Middle East who say, you know, why did it take the Israelis so long? And it's being used as a conspiracy theory in Arab countries, in the Arab street to say, actually, was this something that the Israelis allowed to happen in order to be able to go and attack Hamas and Gaza?

Of course, that's not true. But this is an area of the world where conspiracy theories run rampant. And I think it exposed the vulnerabilities of the IDF, of the Netanyahu government. And look, this is the same Netanyahu who has all those things you just pointed out, Joe, of what happened before the attack. Has he changed at all since the attack? Not one bit. He is the same Netanyahu who has done nothing to rein in the settlers on the West Bank, which has stoked tensions in the West Bank.

He's done nothing to say, look, let's look at the two-state solution, knowing that that is part of the big picture deal that needs to be done in order to have Saudi-Israeli security arrangements. He hasn't allowed food aid into Gaza. He hasn't done as much as the Americans have asked at all in terms of trying to protect civilians in Gaza. So all of the things that the White House, no wonder Benny Gantz is in Washington today, because all of the things that the White House has asked Netanyahu to do to try to protect civilians in Gaza, but also, frankly, to try to protect Israel's own security in the long term, Netanyahu has decided not to do. He's thrown cold water in the faces of Washington. So now the question for the White House, I think, as it meets Benny Gantz this week

is, what do they do? Do they go to the U.N. and vote for a ceasefire? Do they do what Richard is suggesting? Does President Biden go to the Nesset and give a speech? Do they start touching attaching conditionality to American weapons? Because it's not just the Middle East that's wanting this. Increasingly, American voters, younger American voters are asking the White House to do more as well. That's the key right there, the next generation. And Richard, I'm just going to take it to Katty's point to you, but ask, has there been any answer to the question about the response time to October 7th? Because many times we and many others who've asked have been told, if I may, condescendingly,

that it's not the time to ask. When is? It's not a big country. Why did it take seven hours? Look, what the government obviously wants to do out of self-interest is push off any investigations. That's the position of the prime minister. We're too busy fighting this war. We don't have the luxury of doing this. Just the other day, there was a big article in Israeli and the Israeli press about how the

Israeli intelligence had hours of warning from the night, basically about six or seven hours before the attack, that over a thousand Hamas fighters had substituted different SIM cards into their phones. They had strategic warning that something was up. And again, they didn't scramble to defend areas against them. So my guess is one of the, there's going to be a big issue, not just the timing of the investigation, Mika, who carries it out? What are the terms of reference? What is it? How much do you look at the intelligence? How much do you look at the military response time?

How independent is the commission? What access do they have to people, intelligence? There's going to be a major debate about what does this investigation look like? There are some precedents in Israeli history, particularly after the 1973 war. But the timing, the terms of reference, the independence, all of that is being pushed down the road because, obviously, it will be politically embarrassing for the entire Israeli political, intelligence and military establishment. Richard, I ask you this question because the domestic politics in Israel matter to the world and matter to U.S. relations. Two related questions. The question of when political accountability, political accountability, when the bill was going to come due for Netanyahu

as someone who's been a controversial figure, not just abroad, but at home for quite a long time, when is that bill going to come due? Is this finally the moment where we don't know exactly when, but that this is going to, in one way or the other, eventually lead to the unraveling of Netanyahu's prime ministership and is Benny Gantz the next prime minister of Israel? On the former, maybe not. This war has a ways to play out in Gaza. I actually think there's a respectable chance or all too high chance this war is going to expand to the north. Eighty percent of Israelis still can't live in their homes. I do not think that is a tenable situation for any Israeli government. So I think the possibility this war spreads to the north. 80% of Israelis still can't live in their homes. I do not think that is a tenable situation for any Israeli government. So I think the possibility of this war spreads to the north

can't be extended. And right now, you know, Benny Gantz is a possibility. But I think people have been underestimating, like Bibi Netanyahu is a survivor. He's got more lives than a cat. And there's a lot of self-interest, not just his own, but collective self-interest keeping him there. So I just wouldn't rule out the idea. The indictments. But he could, he could look, you know, I think he is playing to November at a minimum and I wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily bet the house against him. So let's talk about the white house and how they've been handling this as discussed. They've been pulling their punches on Israel quite a bit, privately pressured, but publicly president Biden still hasn't really broken with them. The vice president was pushing for a ceasefire this weekend, but that was more aimed at Hamas than Israel,

though they're certainly urging Israel to let more aid go in there. And frankly, after the first few weeks of the war, President Biden really hasn't had much to say about this conflict at all. That's going to change Thursday night, State of the Union. And we know this is hurting him domestically. The politics of this has become bad for President Biden in his own party. What does his message need to be Thursday? How does he reframe to the biggest audience he'll face all year how America is handling this war? I think what he's going to do is try to merge sympathy for Israel with criticism and essentially saying what Israel is doing is not in Israel's self-interest. And he is going to try to put on the table some elements of a political horizon for the Palestinians. He'll talk about aid. But I think the big difference,

John, he's going to step up the criticism. It's going to be more in sorrow than in anger, because again, that's where he is on this. He's going to basically say, I'm the more pro-Israeli person. But he's also, I think, going to say that this is unacceptable. What Israel is going on is not the Israel that he recognizes, not the Israel that he knows. He's looking at Thursday night. He's also looking at a larger speech on the, where he can actually, you know, he'll only have however much percentage of the speech Thursday night. He's also looking at a much larger, much longer address,

where he walks through the entire issue and lays out essentially an alternative path ahead. And I think that's still being debated at the White House. Richard Haass, thank you very much for coming on this morning. And still ahead, Vanity Fair's Molly Jong-Fast says the Republican Party under Donald Trump has forgotten how to even pretend to be normal. She'll join us with more from her latest column. Plus, Donald Trump ramps up his anti-immigrant rhetoric. Now comparing migrants to Hannibal Lecter. We'll discuss his new remarks. Morning Joe is coming right back. welcome back to morning joe foggy day at reagan national airport in washington dc time to get up and go to work a lot of people already are time now for a look at the morning papers the austin american statesman is reporting on the supreme court's decision to keep a controversial texas

border law from going into effect on On Monday, the court said it would temporarily keep a hold on a Texas law that empowers state law enforcement officers to detain and deport migrants entering or living in the U.S. illegally. The Justice Department called the law flatly inconsistent with the high court's past decisions, which recognize the power to admit and remove non-citizens lies solely with the federal government. And the Boston Globe is taking a look at how Massachusetts is moving to cut funding for gambling addiction just a year after the state legalized online sports betting. Governor Maura Healey's $56 billion budget plan includes a $6 million cut from that program that helps identify the harms of addictive betting and the research

behind its effects. Gamblers have wagered nearly $5 billion on various online platforms since mobile sports betting became legal in the state. The plane dealer is reporting on the alarmingly high levels of flu cases in Ohio. According to the CDC data released last week, the state has the highest level of flu activity in the nation. Overall, there were 726 hospitalizations due to confirmed cases of influenza in the state, up 15 percent from the previous week. This as ER visits for flu symptoms continue to rise. And the advocate is covering Louisiana's use of artificial intelligence to help scores of students get back on track after falling behind during the pandemic. As the state races to ramp up tutoring for students testing below grade level,

it has struggled to find well-trained professionals to fill those roles. Now the state is turning to AI to fill the gaps at a fraction of the cost. While intensive human tutoring can run up to $3,000 per student, some AI tutoring programs cost as low as $20 per child. Wow. And let me just say, and there are great examples of this. By the way, it's such great news. And I've got to say, Willie, I'm not going to lie to you. COVID really set Hobson back. He had been trying. I was wondering where this was going.

He'd been trying to get through his classes to be an emotional support dog. He's a good boy. He's perfect. Turned to AI. He turned to AI. It still hasn't really gotten him through some of his worst behavioral problems. He's perfect. I guess AI, Willie, can't fix that. Joe, I filed a challenge. Dogs are still dogs. I filed a challenge in federal court, and I think the Supreme Court will take it up.

We won't hear it until June challenging that certificate. I don't think he should have it based on some of the behavior that you and me have described this morning. Oh, no, he's very deserving. He's a good boy. I think it should be enjoined. Let's move for an injunctive relief. Let's move for injunctive relief right now and just put that on hold because, man, he puts Mika on hold often. It is distracting.

It is distracting when you're trying to walk a dog through the neighborhood. Now, Joe, let me tell you, this is such good news for us. And you notice, there's a reason. Can we show that? There's a reason why I got him on a tight leash here. You have to pull that thing really tight. No, he's a good boy. You know, it's like a Shetland pony kicking out of the stall.

Mika got into the commercial break some of the specifics of the behavior that you're describing kind of vaguely here. It's when Joe hugs me. It does. There may need to be some kind of intervention here from a professional. I think so.