Morning Joe - Morning Joe 4/22/24

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Opening statements and first witness on tap for Trump hush money trial

This trial is really wearing on Donald Trump. I've been watching him. Oh, my God. Because, you know, people get to talk about him. And he has to sit there for hours without saying anything. Kind of like he did on January 6th. And we'll get you caught up on Donald Trump's hush money trial with expert legal analysis ahead of opening statements, which are set for later this morning. And who will reportedly be the first witness called by the prosecution?

A lot of talk about that. Yeah. All weekend long. Twitter was going wild. Also ahead, it appears Ukraine will finally get the critical funding it needs after the House passed a package of foreign aid bills, which includes more military support for Israel as well. The bill now heads to the Senate, despite efforts by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who got called out, yes, by the New York Post. Yes. Kind of sums it up, though. Got to tell you. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe.

It's Monday, April 22nd. Good to have you all with us. Also with us, former aide to the George W. Bush White House and State Department's Elise Jordan, Rogers chair in the American presidency at Vanderbilt University, historian John Meacham and U.S. national editor at the Financial Times. Ed Luce is with us. We're going to get to the lead story in one moment, which are the opening statements in Donald Trump's hush money trial. But first, John Meacham, I don't want to ever be melodramatic on things like this. But that Saturday vote was one that

will be remembered for quite some time. It certainly will be remembered by our European allies who are beginning to question whether America was still in the fight for freedom. I think it was remarkable. And I think that I know it may not be popular in a polarized time to say so, but I think the speaker of the House did exactly the right thing. There was a very good New York Times piece about how he got there. And if you read that piece, you see it was a case where he educated himself. He listened to people who knew more than he did, did not prejudge it in the end. And it's a reminder that, you know, so much of the time, if you actually take the effort to understand the complexities of something that seems simple, you get to a different place. And that's what we want in leadership and citizenship.

Yeah, we will have loose, as we say here all the time. Meacham and I, of course, being from the South, Protestants from the South, we're we we we take conversions anytime, anyplace, anywhere. If you want to go down to the river and pray, you do it, sir. And it looks like Mike Johnson, at least on this one issue, stopped sounding like Donald Trump, started sounding like Ronald Reagan and Dr. Brzezinski and others who have understood the danger of an aggressive Russia. Yeah, I think it was not not so much a come to Jesus moment as a come to Bill Burns, the director of CIA moment, because clearly the briefings Speaker Johnson got were strong and shocking enough for him to realize that he would be on the wrong side of history if, he did do the right thing. And he really deserves applause for that, even though it was it was several months too late.

But the the price he's going to pay for this is yet to be seen. And, you know, I, I do expect there will be some kind of motion to vacate soon. Well, the Democrats most likely will will support in that. We'll see what happens there. Elise, though, you know, it's so fascinating about these briefings that the speaker received, made him understand that he really didn't have much of a choice if he wanted to do what was best for America, the best for Western Europe, the best for the West, the best for freedom. But we hear this from time to time from presidents, whether it was when Bill Clinton was going into office, he got the briefing. When Barack Obama was going into office, he was saying a few things on the campaign trail that he stopped saying after he got and forgive my language here.

But in the intel community, they call it the oh shit briefing. And that's what he got, where you look at this material before you and you say those words and understand just how dangerous the world is out there and just what is required by American leaders to keep it safe. Now, Bill Burns is a legendary diplomat, and I would have loved to have been in that room for the meeting, as I'm sure we all would have to learn and hear what really was his take on the stakes here. I do hope that the Biden administration is doing whatever they can to push the Ukrainians to not only to success, but to start seriously thinking about negotiations and what are going to have to be the concessions they want from Putin, what are going to be the concessions

that they're willing to make. Because if at the end of the day, we're just funneling billions and billions without any end state in mind or any strategy to lead to that end state, that does feed into what the other side's argument was, that there has to be some kind of strategy and some kind of end in sight instead of just spending money on endless war. Well, I will say inside the White House, the belief has been we need this money so we can move both sides toward a settlement. Without this money, Putin goes wherever he wants to go with this support, with the United States and Europe behind Zelensky's fight, behind Ukraine's fight. That's the best hope of ending this war. And I certainly agree with that assessment. It makes

a lot of sense. I do want to say, yes, it was the CIA director's briefing and other briefings that Mike Johnson got. But as we learned during Donald Trump's administration, being told the right thing to do, the responsible thing to do, doesn't always lead leaders in this age of Trump to doing it. Again, very grateful that that that Mike Johnson listened and came out, did the right thing. Made his own decision. Made his own decision, put his job on the line. What do we call that? That's courage. Profile in courage.

In this case, that's courage. Applause going up along the Ukrainian line. The Russian invaders enraged that America was still there to fight. But, you know, I will say the speaker also, I've got to say again, had Chairman McCaul behind him. Chairman Turner had other Republican chairmen who kept stressing the importance, not just of pushing back on Russia, but pushing back on Xi and pushing back on Kim Jong-un and pushing back on the mullahs in Iran and showing them through supporting our allies who are under duress that America will be there.

Right. Message sent across the world on Saturday. Can't overstate it. We're going to have much more with David Ignatius on this in just a moment. But our other huge story this morning starts today. Opening statements set to begin this morning in former President Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial. After jury selection wrapped up on Friday, the 12 person jury is made up of seven men and five women, along with six alternates. Later this morning, both the prosecution and the defense are expected

to lay out their cases during opening statements. According to The New York Times, the prosecution plans to frame Trump's actions of payments to keep adult film actress Stormy Daniels quiet about an alleged affair as election interference. The defense, meanwhile, will seize on three apparent weak points, witness credibility, the president's culpability and the case's legal complexity. One of the potential first witnesses expected to testify is David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Incorporated, who bought and buried damaging stories about Trump. It's called Catch and Kill. He is alleged to have worked with Trump and his former attorney,

Michael Cohen, to bury the Stormy Daniels story. Other witnesses expected to testify include Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, former Trump aide Hope Hicks, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also alleged a sexual relationship with Trump. And as former President Trump left court on Friday, he continued to insist that he plans to testify in his own defense. Joining us now, former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, and also MSNBC legal analyst Danny Savallo. Sorry about that. We thought we were going to hear Trump, but obviously we've heard what we have to say a thousand times. So, Lisa, what do we expect today? We know that one of the first witnesses is David Pecker, but do you expect that opening statements get finished today? Or just technically, what are we looking for in terms of getting accomplished today in court? Mika, a lot of the judicial housekeeping that you would expect to be taken care of before the trial

really starts has all been brushed off Judge Marchand's plate. He's decided all of the pretrial motions. We have a jury, as you noted, that's been set. So I expect that very soon after 9.30 this morning, we will get to opening statements. And while neither of the parties has outlined exactly how long they will take, as Danny knows better than anyone, an opening statement is your opportunity to preview your case for the jury. And while you want to do that in a way that gives them an overview, you also don't want to exhaust them. I expect that neither side will take more than roughly 60 to 70 minutes. And that means that we will have time to get to the first

witness who, as you noted, is expected to be former chairman of American Media and the National Enquirer, David Packer. Lisa, where are we on jurors these days? Because two had to leave and there were only six spares to begin with. So does that mean we're down to four potential spares or there's still, how many do we have left and are they sequestered? Can you just talk a little bit about how they are being managed, so to speak, during this process as all this intense scrutiny and there's so much press surrounding it? Right. So the two jurors that we lost were replaced that same day, leading to a total of 12 jurors who have been seated. In addition to that, we do have six alternates. The jurors, however, are not sequestered, Elise. There have been accommodations

made to ensure their anonymity. However, we don't know, for example, what provisions are being taken to get them to the courthouse for their departure from the courthouse, what the lunch provisions are. In federal court, in the E. Jean Carroll trials, both of those juries were not only anonymous, but steps were taken to ensure that, for example, they didn't come directly from their home to the courthouse. They met the U.S. marshals at an off-site location and then were brought to the courthouse underground so that nobody would see their comings and goings. I'm hopeful that Judge Mershon is able to make some similar provisions for the jurors in this case so that they can remain protected throughout the duration of the trial. So here's the thing. I think juror attrition could be a real problem in this case. I mean, just do the math. Last week, we lost two

jurors before the trial even began. When you think about it, you do lose jurors during a trial. I've lost them. They fell asleep. They don't follow the judge's orders. But you don't normally lose a juror after the moment they're selected and between that and the time that the trial actually begins, because ordinarily nothing happens during that time. But in this case, you have an example where a juror goes home. They start really thinking about their duty and what this is going to entail. And they come back and say, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. By the way, that's also something that happens from time to time. I've had it in organized crime cases. You have jurors who come up to the judge and say, I'll do anything, please. I do not want to be on this jury. I'm afraid. That's not

obviously the same situation here, but you do have jurors who are going to have second thoughts. And the question becomes, will six alternates be enough to cover this trial? I hope so. But if what we've seen so far, if that's the rate of loss of jurors to or before we even start the trial, that could be a real problem. And that could lead to a mistrial, which in I think the defense's view is a win, even though it doesn't mean you start the trial again in a year or something like that. Mistrials, normally, the court schedules the retrial as soon as they possibly can. But yeah, juratrician is going to be a real issue in this case. And again, I couldn't agree more with Lisa. Opening statements are not going to be all day. Look for an hour from the prosecution and probably less from the defense, because all they're doing today is offering a preview. You're going to hear this probably many times.

The evidence will show that dot, dot, dot. The evidence will show that dot, dot, dot. It's really just a promise to the jurors of what the facts will show. And if you're the defense, you do not want to be making a lot of promises. For example, you will not hear the words you're going to hear from the defendant himself, because if you make that promise, nobody's going to forget it. So they will say, I expect the prosecution will try to focus on something they've already seated the jury on, which is you're going to hear from some people who are not that credible, but they're not credible because

they're Donald Trump's friends. On the defense side, you'll probably hear some version of try to keep an open mind. The evidence is not all in. We don't have the burden and just sort of the standard fare. But you're not going to see anything as flashy, anything as dramatic, as exciting as we're going to see during closing arguments. This is only going to be a preview and it will not take the entire day at all. You know, as Danny said, in mob cases, there are jurors that will tell the judge that they're afraid for their safety and they want to get off. He said this isn't exactly like that, but really it is in many cases and that a lot of jurors are fearful of repercussions if they're in on a jury that's impaneled

that rules against Donald Trump. I mean, because they want their names out, the judge trying to keep the names from getting out there. But this is over time. This has proven to be very, very dangerous and tough. In this trial, everybody is under duress. You know, Donald Trump's past statements before the gag or even with the gag order about the judge, about the judge's daughter, about with the jury. Everybody is under a great deal of stress and concern about their safety. And I would add that it's Donald

Trump, no matter which way this goes, that you got to keep your eye on because Donald Trump right now is enduring something that he's never had to endure in his entire life, where he has to be somewhere every day and do what he's told. When he's told to sit down by the judge, he has to sit down. That happened on Friday at least once. When he tries to get on his phone, he's told to get off of his phone. He has to be there watching his former friends, David Pecker, Hope Hicks, and two alleged former lovers testifying for or against him. This is not what he's used to. This is a guy, as we look at pictures of Donald Trump here, this is a guy, John Meacham, that has spent his entire life

creating this warped reality that goes wherever his mind wants it to go and keeping people around him that allows him to avoid reality, keeping people around him that does exactly what he wants to do. He was so proud of having a button on his White House desk. He goes, I press this button and somebody brings in Diet Coke.

He loved the complete control and command and he has his entire life. And now he's sitting down six, seven, eight hours a day. And at 78 years old, 78 years old, judge telling him what to do, falling asleep, being mocked, getting angry about that. Yeah, it's this is quite quite a situation and new territory for Donald Trump. And arguably, no American in history has so warped everyone else's reality as well. Right. I mean, it's not simply his imaginative universe. He's imposed his imaginative universe, his grievances, his vision of enemies versus himself on everyone. And we're living in this this warped reality. And so one thing about the last couple of weeks and about these images that I think maybe this isn't a particularly popular thing to say,

but this is actually a somewhat reassuring set of images because it suggests that there is something more important than one single man and the will of one single man. And that is the rule of law. And he is submitting himself to the legal processes of the country. And it should remind people not of somehow or another his victimhood, but of that great Thomas Paine insight that we don't have a king in America. In America, the law is king. And what we're seeing in the New York courtroom, however tawdry the narrative around it is, the facts of the case, that doesn't matter. What matters is that the law itself is supreme. It's not just about the appetites and ambitions of one person. And Lisa, there's more coming in other courtrooms pertaining to former President Trump this week.

Also happening today, a hearing in former President Trump's civil fraud case. Remember that? On Friday, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a judge to void the bond Trump secured so he can appeal the decision. James is questioning whether the company that issued the $175 million bond actually has the funds to back it up. Lisa, what's the math she's doing here? And is it possible the bond could be voided? And if it is voided, what happens? Well, let's start with if it's voided, what happens? The current bond would stay in place until Donald Trump posts new security, either by posting one hundred and seventy five million dollars and putting it in escrow with the court himself or finding another bond company. have hit the ball that they did have an offer from Don Hankey, who is the insurer here,

to cover all of the bond had it remained at $454 million plus. But they never told the court that. Instead, what they told the court was we had 30 different bond companies that we went out to, and none of them would cover the entirety of it. So let's start with today. What Judge Ngoran has to decide is whether this existing $175 million bond is sufficient. And the AG's office is saying, no, it's not, for a few reasons. One, this isn't a company that's licensed to do business in the state of New York. Two, they've never issued a surety bond in New York, and they haven't even issued a surety bond anywhere for the last two years. And three, and perhaps most importantly, when you look at the financials of this company, the difference between their assets and their liabilities isn't enough to cover the bond.

And that coupled with the fact that they don't have control right now of the $175 million, but rather would have to let Charles Schwab, which holds the account that's collateral, know that they want to exert control and that it would take at least two plus days to do that. That has the attorney general concerned that essentially Trump could run off and abscond with this money and nobody who has enough to cover the bond would be left holding the bag. So, Mika, I'm very much interested in what happens at that hearing today, even as I'll be in the courthouse watching opening statements. Wow. MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin will be following your coverage and MSNBC legal analyst Danny Savalas.

Thank you both for coming in today. So stay with us in just one minute. We're going to be joined by David Ignatius and Ali Vitale to talk about the drama on Capitol Hill that culminated in a lifeline for Ukraine. We'll have all the details coming up next in one minute. And Moscow Marjorie. Well, President Zelensky, it is an historic morning. I want to get your reaction to this major news, the House approving $61 billion in aid to Ukraine. Will you get this aid in time to make a difference? Yeah, it's been so important. First of all, I'd like to say thanks to the Congress for the

bipartisan support. And I'd like to say thanks to Speaker Johnson and President Biden. Can Ukraine now win this war, or is the United States merely giving you enough aid to prolong this war? Thank you. I think this support will really strengthen the armed forces of Ukraine. And we will have a chance for victory if Ukraine really gets the weapons system, which we need so much. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Meet the Press yesterday reacting to the House overwhelmingly voting in favor of new funding for Ukraine, as well as Israel and Taiwan. The Senate is expected to pass the legislation as early as tomorrow and send it to the president's desk to sign. Really incredible moment. And I have to say,

wasn't sure Mike Johnson had it, but he does. Certainly does. I mean, Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei wrote this this morning in Politico. He defied the loudest, most threatening J.O.P. personalities, dug deep into government intelligence and shifted his position on the most vital foreign policy legislation in years. Why it matters? It's hard to overstate the importance of Johnson's road to Kiev political conversion. He not only shifted his own position on funding and arming Ukraine, but defied a majority of his party to do it. Let's bring in columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Batali. David, if you will, give us your thoughts on what we saw this weekend. So, Joe, I thought it was a tremendously

emotional affirmation of the ability of the United States, despite all of our political divisions and difficulties, to get to the right thing, to have a speaker, despite considerable personal danger to him and his speakership, decide that he was going to stand for what was best for the country, not for himself. I think back last month to when I was sitting with President Zelensky in Kiev, talking about what he would do if USA didn't come soon. And he took out a piece of paper and kind of drew lines that symbolize the Ukrainian front. He said, without enough ammunition to match the Russians, we're going to have to retreat. We'll have to pull back. You can just

see in his eyes what it meant that this brave struggle was beginning to collapse at the front. So to get that aid finally, to have people stand up and be counted, starting with Mike Johnson, really meant something. I'll mention one other thing. I was at a social event yesterday with the Ukrainian ambassador, with a lot of the generals in the U.S. military who are most responsible for this war. At a certain point, a performer who was performing for the group sang Amazing Grace beautifully, stretching out every word. And I don't think there was a dry eye in that room listening to this amazing grace that the American political system had delivered, had discovered to pass this aid. So it's a big deal. The key question, obviously,

is how soon can the aid get to the Ukrainian forces? They're getting pounded right now by the Russians. The Russians are on the advance. They need this aid as soon as they can get it. Yeah, Ali, I don't know if they're singing Amazing Grace in the Republican cloakroom or not. Hardly. But Mike, Mike Johnson stepped out. He had a lot of powerful allies in the House GOP caucus that stood beside him. And it seems that Republicans really don't have the stomach for another challenge to the speakership. All that being said, as Republicans go back to work this Monday, what's the atmosphere there and what's the future of Speaker Johnson?

Well, look, I think they might not have the stomach for it, but they might get it nonetheless. We thankfully, if you're Mike Johnson, have a week of a cooling off period right now, because although they were in on Saturday, they've now got a week of recess. And the fact that Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene did not privilege her motion and effectively make this a more urgent crisis upon their return in a week, that's probably good news for the Speaker's office. But there is a reality here where in my conversations with Republican members, they are very frustrated at the fact that this is once again a looming threat to their majority. They don't know who could possibly take the position of this Speaker.

I candidly don't know why anyone would want the job, especially not at this point. But the reality for Mike Johnson, I think, is that even if he keeps the job, it's a question of the power of the position. And there are open questions about whether or not a sort of coalition governance can work in the House. It is a very majority focused body, as you guys all know. But for Mike Johnson, there are the votes right now. Three Republicans say that they want him to no longer be the speaker of the House. There seems to be a difference of opinion on how they get him out of that job, whether it's a motion to vacate or just pressuring him to resign. There are also enough Democrats right now that would save his job.

But that's where we come back to the idea of the power of his position. And I think that's the explanation for why I have heard from Republican members of Congress who support the speaker, who also say he's basically done in his role. Now, whether or not they mean he's done tomorrow or whether or not they mean he's done in November when they start thinking about what the next Congress looks like. That's, I think, the question that we're waiting to see the answer to. But certainly this is a vote that they took over the weekend

that you guys have been right to point out is a marked change in Johnson's personal opinion from when he was just a member to now being a speaker. But it's also a moment where we heard him time and again say that he was willing to put the selfish reasons and his job on the back burner to do the right thing in his words. Ed Elise here. If this 61 billion in funding for Ukraine had been held up even longer, would other European allies have stepped up or would it have just been the beginning of the end there?

I think the briefing that Speaker Johnson got was that this would be the beginning of the end. If American aid hadn't come in 2024, then he couldn't guarantee that Ukraine would not have fallen by the end of 2024. But look, I mean, Europeans have been putting a lot of money in and quite a lot of resources in a lot of artillery, a lot of tanks, a lot of air defense systems. So it's not like the Europeans have been doing nothing. I think something like 60 percent so far of the of the funding for Ukraine has come from Europe. It should be more. But the Europeans lack specific systems only the Americans can provide. The ATACOMs and systems like that, of course, the F-15s and 16s that the U.S. can provide, there is no European equivalent. So this is an enormous relief for Europe as well, which is, I think, doing its best to try and catch up. But there are a lot of countries in Europe and they don't integrate their military. They don't integrate their defense production. They are going to take a while

to do that. It's happening, but it's happening slowly. David, can you talk through the next, say, six months in terms of the aid getting there, what this looks like on the ground as Putin himself confronts what Zelensky is able to throw against him. So, John, Zelensky and the chief of Ukrainian military intelligence, General Budanov, both said to me that they expect significant Russian offensives this summer, starting maybe in June, perhaps even earlier, to try to consolidate their control in the areas in the east, in particular, Donetsk and Luhansk provinces that the Russians have claimed are part of Russia, but they don't fully control. The strategy being to try to have complete control by the time U.S. elections roll around, maybe Donald Trump is president so that they can then bargain to take those permanently. That's the way the Ukrainians see it.

Their strategy is to get powerful new U.S. weapons, including these ATAKOMs, long range missiles, that can put Crimea, Russian occupied Crimea, at risk, that can shoot from positions in Ukraine and pow, take out Russian airfields, supply bases, key areas in Crimea so that the Russians begin finally to have an incentive to negotiate. Crimea is probably what's most important for them. Sevastopol is their key naval base in the Black Sea. They don't want to lose it. If the Ukrainians using these weapons through the remainder of this year could really put Crimea at risk, you might have a situation where going into next year, the Russians say it's time to negotiate some satisfactory end of this war to get what we want. I don't hear

anybody saying that negotiation is likely this year. But the great thing about this aid package, the miraculous thing that Speaker Johnson and the Congress have done is to give Ukraine another year of life in this fight, maybe to get to the point where they can bargain from some strike next year. David Ignatius and Ed Luce, thank you both very much for coming in this morning. And NBC's Ali Vitale, thank you as well. And coming up on Morning Joe, we're going to read from Liz Cheney's new op-ed in The New York Times calling on the Supreme Court to rule swiftly on Donald Trump's immunity claim. That's happening this week as well. Also ahead, new polling shows

Robert F. Kennedy's third party presidential bid cuts deeper into Trump's support than President Biden's. We'll dig into the new numbers. How does Biden lead? Morning Joe is coming right back. 38 past the hour, new NBC News polling finds Robert F. Kennedy Jr. taking more votes from Donald Trump than Joe Biden in this year's election. In a one-on-one matchup, the poll shows Trump ahead of Biden by two points, 46 to 44 percent among registered voters. That's within the poll's margin of error. But when the field expands to include third party candidates, Biden takes the lead over Trump, 39 to 37 percent. That's because 15 percent of voters who previously said they would support Trump now say they would back RFK Jr. compared to just 7 percent of former Biden voters who say the same.

You never know how this is going to break. In 1980, John Anderson. I kind of get the thinking. Yeah, John Anderson ran. Well, yeah, they're conspiracy theorists. Exactly. John Anderson ran as a Republican against Ronald Reagan. Yeah. And Jimmy Carter, he ended up taking votes away from Jimmy Carter. Right.

When his intent was to take votes away from Ronald Reagan. Yeah. And Jimmy Carter, he ended up taking votes away from Jimmy Carter when his intent was to take votes away from Ronald Reagan. And so, again, in this case, so interesting. We're seeing the same thing. President Joe Biden's odds of winning reelection are the highest they have been in at least three months on the website predicted. It now costs 54 cents to bet on a Biden victory and 45 cents to bet on a Trump victory. The more likely an outcome is, the more like the more it costs to bet on. Biden's odds have been steadily increasing over the past month after Trump's odd reached a high of 48 cents in early March. We should know, though, that the sites tracker only goes as far back as late January. Let's bring in former Treasury official and morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner. Steve, I saw this yesterday. And before we get into all your charts, I know you you actually show these just where the betting markets are,

because sometimes they can be more accurate than even polls. But thought about you yesterday because Joe Biden has made move quite a move over the last month or so. Yeah, I think there's no question by almost any measure that Joe Biden has had really a good month since the State of the Union. I think that has been and may prove to be a turning point in the race, as you've shown your other polls. The betting markets, those of us who believe in markets, of course, believe that when you put real money down, even if it is a dollar, you're putting some skin in the game. And they have historically been very accurate. They've had their misses. And more recently, for various reasons I won't bore you with, they have been a little bit less accurate than in the past. But nonetheless, this is a pretty significant move for the betting markets. They've been sitting there at roughly 50-50 for these two candidates for a long time.

And so you are seeing some pretty positive green shoots, we can call them, I think, for President Biden is all of these numbers. Yeah. Well, and we're going to we're going to get Steve to your charts in one moment. I do want to go, though, to John Meacham. John, you never know how things are going to break. I talked about John Anderson, 1980, a Republican, fellow Republican, who believed he was going to draw from Ronald Reagan. He ended up getting a lot of liberals and getting a lot of college students voting for him. He got his 5%, but that came from Jimmy Carter, most of it. And of course, speaking of RFK, we go back to 1968, something you and I have talked about a good bit. The Kennedy family still trying to figure out how after Bobby's tragic assassination, his votes, many of his votes went to George Wallace and still can't sort it through so you never know how this is going to break but at least in this nbc news

poll it certainly looks like one anti-vaxxer uh is going to be you know and a conspiracy theorist i guess i should say uh is going to be taking votes from another conspiracy theorist that's certainly where sort of common sense barstool analysis would lead you. Right. I mean, if you are a if you're thinking about voting for an anti-vax person, I don't think your second choice is going to be the Democratic incumbent who believes in science and is a politician who's arguing for a consistency with a constitutional and rational order. That doesn't seem like exactly where you would go. Historically, look, you're right. Wallace in 68, John Anderson in 1980, of course, Ross Perot in 1992, who got 19 percent. Still a huge debate within Bush world. Both the senior President Bush believed that Perot cost in the election. When you dive into the data, it gets tricky.

But when you have an alternative to the duopoly, you end up in a very chancy place, particularly because and this is why every single vote counts, particularly when you're talking about such de minimis margins across seven or eight swing states, you know, 500 votes here, 500 votes there. And, you know, to paraphrase Everett Dirksen, suddenly you're talking about, you know, that adds up to the presidency of the United States. And so I think everybody has to have, if I may, a Mike Johnson moment, a Liz Cheney moment. They have to decide this year, where do you want history to judge you? How do you want history to judge you? And I think that this is that important.

Really do. Today marks Earth Day, the annual event to demonstrate support for environmental protection. And Steve, you have some charts on some concerning signs for the planet. We'll start with global temperatures. Go ahead. Sure, Mika. So, look, the whole issue of global warming should be very front and center. It's an existential threat that we face as not just a country, but as a world. You know, for a long time, as temperatures were rising, a lot of climate deniers said, well, it's just cyclical. It goes up, temperature goes up, temperature goes down. But boy, I don't think you can make that argument anymore because look what's been

happening in the last few years. They have just shot up. And in 2024 so far, which is only a few months into it, two and a half degrees above the very long-term average of water temperature. And you can see the jump in just two years. We have not had a year since 1976 in which the average temperature for the year was below the average temperature for the 20th century. It has all been straight up and to the right, which on Wall Street is a good thing. In climate temperature, it is a really bad thing. So what is that? That has had implications for the ocean, and let's take a look at the ocean. So these are average surface ocean temperatures. This dotted black line here is the average of all these gray lines of years and years and years of ocean temperatures.

This is 2023. It was a breakout year, as you can see. 2024 is off to an even tougher start. And this has terrible implications. That is implications for fish, believe it or not. In warmer water, fish don't get as much oxygen. They can literally drown. For coral reefs, obviously for rising sea levels, we have lost Arctic ice the size of Alaska and even more ice in Antarctic. And it threatens coastal communities, unfortunately, maybe even

Pensacola, hopefully not someday. And so this is really a pretty existential threat to our marine life and all the weather patterns that have come out of that. And you're also looking at emissions. Where do we stand? Sure. So the problem is the carbon dioxide that we've been pouring into the atmosphere for as long as we've been burning any kind of fuel to make heat and for other purposes. But now we're suffering the consequences. So we've been putting CO2 into the air. And here's what's happened. Total CO2 emissions. And I did this by region and by country because there's some good news and some less good news. If you look, for example, at Europe, Europe's emissions of CO2 peaked early, and they have actually done a decent job of getting them down to here. The U.S. peaked over

here. We've gotten them down a little bit. But look at China. Look at the rest of Asia. Look at India. They are shooting up. And so their share of emissions has gone from a relatively small part in Asia to the majority of emissions in Asia. Now, there is a reason for it, which is faster economic growth means more use of energy, means more CO2. That's a pretty straight line that is very hard to break. So when you look at the amount of emissions from places like China relative to the growth rate of their economy, you do get a somewhat different picture. All countries have succeeded in becoming more energy efficient. They have succeeded in reducing the amount of energy and the amount of emissions per unit of GDP, if you will, relative to the growth rate of their economy. This black dotted line is the whole world.

And down here, interestingly interestingly you see uk having done the best job you see germany china and the u.s actually pretty much tied in terms of their what they've accomplished and it's more the developing world india japan japan is not a developing country obviously but india and many other countries that have kept this line as high as it has and this is part of the whole debate that goes on where emerging countries say well you guys got to pollute pollute for 200 years. We need to be able to pollute for at least a little while so we can catch up economically. Steve Ratner, thank you very much for that. Let's bring in now Monica Medina into this conversation. She's former assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. Also with us, Dr. Derek Manzello,

the coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch Program. We'll start there, doctor. We were talking a little bit about this on Friday, this global coral bleaching event that the world is enduring. What is it and what's the impact on the environment? Well, since February of 2023, we have seen mass coral bleaching confirmed in at least 54 different countries in both the northern and southern hemisphere in all three ocean bases. Now, corals are an animal. They live in a symbiosis with a very simple type of algae. Now, these algae actually provide about 95% of the nutritional requirements of the coral animal. However, this relationship is very sensitive to elevated temperatures. So if temperatures are elevated by about a degree Celsius, which is about two to

three degrees Fahrenheit, and they stay there for about a month or more during the warmest part of the year, corals start bleaching. Thus, when you see a white coral, it's essentially starving to death. Now, bleaching isn't a death sentence. Corals can recover. But even for those corals that do recover, they have lasting physiological impacts. So a coral that bleaches and recovers will have slower growth rates for about two to four years. Its reproductive output will go to about zero for about five years. And they become immunocompromised such that they're highly susceptible to disease for one to two years. So corals are vitally important because they're the engineers of the coral reef ecosystem. So without corals, you no longer have a coral reef

ecosystem. And the reason that's so important is because about 25% of all known marine species associate with coral reefs at some point in their lives. So one in four of every living thing in the world's oceans is dependent on healthy coral reefs. Well, and Monica, you look at the rising temperatures and the warnings that Steve Ratner just gave us on the chart and heated waters, a lot of fish just, as he said, would die. And it keeps getting worse. Absolutely, Joe.

Thanks so much, Joe and Mika, for having me on today to talk about this important topic. We couldn't be at a more perilous place when it comes to our oceans because they're heating up extremely fast. The temperatures are off the charts, it impacts fisheries which billions of people depend on for their primary source of protein. And in addition, today's Earth Day, the theme is planet or plastic and we are seeing an inundation of plastic pollution in the ocean as well. There are 21,000 pieces of plastic in the ocean for every person on this planet. So our oceans are getting walloped

and we're finding plastic in our food web, in us. So I really think today we ought to be thinking about this as people or plastic, because plastic is incredibly harmful to humans. And there's a global environmental negotiating negotiation going on today, right now in Ottawa, Canada, to try to get a handle on this horrible plastic pollution problem that's really damaging both the environment and humans. So that's my next question for you, Monica. How does this happen? Because reading some of the information that goes along with this, you're right. It's showing up in

breast milk. It's showing up in human tissue, in the digestive tract. There's connections to cancer and plastic. And also, if you look at the American household, every single day, plastic is used. Plastic is thrown away. How do we root this out of, I'll just start with the United States of America in terms of our lifestyle? Well, there are lots of things that individuals can do, but it also takes leadership. So as an individual, you're out there in your kitchen. You probably just threw something

plastic in your trash can. Think about all the ways that you can cut your own plastic use, reusable water bottles, or go to the grocery store and instead of buying a big jug of detergent and plastic, look for the little containers of plastic of sheets of detergent that you can just throw in your washing machine., incredibly easy to use and very efficient and effective. There are ways there are substitutes. But on top of that, we need leadership at the state, local and national levels. And President Biden and Vice President Harris have been at the forefront of trying to get our arms around their arms around this plastic pollution problem from cutting it out of our drinking water,

there are 95% of US drinking water systems have plastic in them. The Biden administration just promulgated a rule to take some of the most toxic forever chemicals, the most toxic of these chemicals out of our water systems. They've also just promulgated a rule to take it out of the air. Every person, every year in inhales 22 million pieces of plastic microplastic a year. So getting it out of the air is incredibly important.

And the Biden administration has taken this on. And the Trump administration ignored this problem because, of course, they cared more about what the chemicals industry and the oil and gas industry cared about than about what people need and what people cared about. And by the way, plastic is the lifeline for the oil and gas industry, because as we cut back on our use of oil and gas in cars and transportation, increasingly we're ramping up our plastic production. And every piece of plastic that we have ever made is still in the environment because it never degrades. Former Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Monica Medina and coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch Program Dr. Derek Manzello

thank you both very much for coming on this morning for this important conversation.