Morning Joe - Morning Joe 4/25/24

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Trump allies indicted in Arizona 2020 election probe

Donald Trump still thinks windmills cause cancer. That's what he said. By the way, remember when he was trying to deal with COVID, he said, just inject a little bleach in your veins. He missed it. It all went to his hair. I shouldn't have said that. Oh, yes, you should have. That was pretty good.

Whoa. Psych. President Biden poking fun at Donald Trump's hair and an event where Biden picked up another major union endorsement. It was all in fun. Meanwhile, today is a big legal day for the ex-president. Not so fun. Hours from now, former President Trump will be sitting in a Manhattan courtroom as his hush money trial is set to resume. This as the judge overseeing the case has yet to rule if Trump violated his

gag order. In Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over Trump's claim that he is immune from criminal prosecution in the D.C. election interference case. Plus, Arizona's attorney general has charged Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and other key Trump allies, as well as 11 so-called fake electors with state crimes after they attempted to keep Trump in power following the 2020 election. I don't know. Did you see that coming? I did not. I didn't see that coming. All right. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. Willie, did you see that coming? Not this one. I mean, we suspected it was coming sometime, but didn't see it coming yesterday. And some bold faced names apparently among the group of aides to Donald Trump, Giuliani, Meadows, Eastman, apparently all in trouble here in Arizona. It is Thursday, April 25th. It's great to have you with us along with Joe,

Willie and me. We have U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kaye, and deputy managing editor for politics at Politico. Sam Stein is with us this morning. So where do we begin? Baseball. Oh, no. Will Yankees win again? We start in Arizona. Judge and Soto both went deep. I know you and Sam will be excited to hear that, Joe. Well, we're very excited. I mean, the Red Sox now have like 17 or 18 people hurt on the roster. There was a pitcher who picked up Sam, a rosin bag, and his arm got dislocated. We have so many injuries, but these kids, they keep calling up

are, I mean, these pitchers that wouldn't start on any other team have the lowest ERA combined of any starting staff in baseball. It is kind of a crazy season. Oh yeah, no, it's nuts. We're like trotting out a triple-A, maybe a double-A lineup at this juncture. Had so many injuries, and yet we keep chugging along. And Alex Cora, honestly, I don't know what magic he works. And it's going to be a real shame when the ownership doesn't bring them back because they're so cheap. Well, just give your manager of the year right now.

And, Katty, your household can breathe a collective sigh of relief uh our liverpool uh squad my liverpool squad and i don't know i guess i'm alone on this one uh lost yesterday to everton they're out of it so are i'm sure you had some happy arsenal and man city fans in your household yesterday afternoon. Yeah, they are feeling good. I don't really understand what is the antipathy between City fans and Liverpool fans. My house, I'm so sorry about this, Joe, but Tom, just every time Liverpool loses, it's as good as when City wins. Yeah, it's the same.

I just think that seems mean. It's the same at our house. Well, I mean, they're the two best teams in the Premier League over the past three or four years. Yeah. So it's crazy. All right. Well, Liverpool is very happy. They could make your husband gleeful yesterday. All right. They are genuinely bad. I'm grateful. So, Willie, let's start with our top story in Arizona. Yeah. Arizona grand jury has indicted 11 of the so-called fake electors,

along with several other allies of Donald Trump, for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A 58-page indictment includes conspiracy, fraud, and forgery charges related to attempts by the defendants to change the election results in Donald Trump's favor. This was the scene on December 14th, 2020, when 11 people met at the Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix to sign a certificate claiming to be Arizona's 11 electors. Oh, come on. Joe Biden winning Arizona by nearly 11,000 votes, proudly broadcasting it, by the way, the document also described. What are they thinking, Willie? I can't. I just can't. It's such a cult. Okay. We are fraudulent electors. There's a fraud scheme going on here. Let's put the cameras on. Maybe they're providing evidence. They were thinking ahead three and a half years down the road. They're going to really need this as evidence.

Here is us breaking the law. So the document, the indictment describes seven others in Trump's orbit who were indicted, had their names redacted. Those aides include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Christina Bob, Trump campaign official Boris Epstein and former campaign and White House official Mike Roman. Trump was not charged, but is described as an unindicted co-conspirator. One indictments mark a significant step forward in an investigation that has spanned more than a year. Here is Arizona's attorney general, Chris Mays. I understand for some of you today didn't come fast enough.

And I know I'll be criticized by others for conducting this investigation at all. But as I have stated before and will say here again today, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined. It's too important. Arizona now becomes the fourth state to file criminal charges against the so-called fake electors that sought to undermine President Biden's victory over Trump. So, Joe, we saw the video there. They also signed a fake certificate that they posted to social media. I mean, they were breaking the law, pretending they were the state's electors when they weren't because Joe Biden had won narrowly, but won broadcasting exactly what they were doing. And now the bill has come due. You know, I'm I'm not a prosecutor. We have plenty of former prosecutors on and we're going to bring them on in a minute. But Willie, it's like, thank you so much for waiting until the

day before the election. You know, all of these cases that were brought in 2020, late 2023, 2024, you know, look at the date there, December 14th, 2020. I really am, and I'm certainly not just pointing out this Attorney General in Arizona. I could bring in of all of them of the Justice Department. Why did they take so long? Georgia. We kept asking why Georgia was taking so long. Alvin Bragg said, no, I don't want to bring that case and then brings a similar case like a year

later. It goes on and on. But again, the timing, First of all, it frustrates people who don't like Donald Trump because he's not. If there were laws broken, it's not going to get resolved before the election. And for people who support Donald Trump, they're like, look, they're all doing this in election year. So, again, I just again, I know it takes a long time to build a case, but when you look at what happened on January the 6th, it's kind of like, I don't, I just, I don't understand a four year delay or a three and a half year delay on all of these cases. It's stupid. And, uh, and I will say there were were people there were progressives warning about this legal legal people warning about this for the past couple of years. And and here we are. Yeah. I mean,

it's been a long time coming and it seems pretty clear cut given the fact that we're just showing video of the crime being committed right here. And Donald Trump was not- Here's us breaking into the bank and a prosecutor's going, okay, let- People are in jail for January 6th. Let's talk about this for four years and then maybe bring charges. I'm sorry, go ahead. Instead of being the fake electors,

they called themselves the alternate electors. We are an alternate slate that we believe that it should be used to count the votes. Remember, it was President Trump at the time called the governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, a Republican, to try to get him to flip the state's results as he was certifying them. And he famously ignored the call from Donald Trump and certified it for Joe Biden. Let's bring in MSNBC legal analyst Danny Savalos and former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin.

Good morning to you both. We can get to the timing of this in a minute, Lisa, but let's talk about the substance of it. So you have these 11 so-called fake electors, seven aides to Donald Trump, including Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, all those names we mentioned. Just for the benefit of our viewers, what exactly are these people accused of doing around the 2020 election? Well, the 11 fake electors are accused of forging documents, right, by signing an elector certificate and then sending it on to the Arizona secretary of state, to the United States Senate, to the National Archives, which is what real electors do. They're facing three counts of forgery, but they're also facing counts that have to do with fraud, fraud in trying to sort of hold themselves out to be the legitimate electors. And of course, that's a scheme that they engineered with the help of the seven redacted individuals who, as you noted, include several Trump attorneys,

but also Mark Meadows and Mike Roman, who is the director of Election Day Operations. So, so Lisa, help me out here. It's all right there. If I got a document here. And a video. And a video. And like. And they come in and they put their hands up and said, we did it. I mean, that was in December of 2018. You've got them signing fraudulent documents. What are we missing? Why does it, and again, this sounds like I'm going after the Arizona attorney general. I'm not. I'm merely saying what a lot of people have been saying for a couple of years.

What's taking Merrick Garland so long? What's taking the Georgia case so long? Why would it take them almost four years to turn around a case where you've got the video and the fraudulent document in December of 2020? Joe, one possible explanation is that a number of states stood down on their own investigations because they expected the Department of Justice to charge some of these people. And when we ultimately saw that indictment against a single individual in the federal election interference case, it may have been that at that point a fire was lit under several states' attorneys general who said,

well, wait a second, if they're not going to handle this, then I guess there's nothing else to do but for us to handle it. So that's one possibility. Another possibility is that they needed things to come into the public domain and they needed cooperation. One of the things that's striking about this indictment vis-a-vis some of the others is that it reeks of Ken Chesbrough, who is unindicted co-conspirator force involvement. There are multiple citations to emails involving Mr. Chesbrough, but also others. And it's clear to me that this group of people in Arizona certainly benefited from all the investigations that went before it, whether it's the January 6th investigation run in Congress or even a civil litigation in Wisconsin through

which public records now include emails from Jim Troopas, who was a Wisconsin attorney who worked with the campaign, or Ken Chesbrough himself. A lot of those emails are quoted in this indictment. And that's what makes some of the other documents so damning. You know, fake electors could say we were just doing this as a contingency plan. But here in this indictment, you see a quotation to an email that was sent on December 14th, basically saying, well, we got to hurry and rush and get this lawsuit on file because that is intended to be cover for the fake electors. That is as transparent an admission as any that the dog was. I'm sorry that the tail was wagging the dog here. Right. Yeah. But Willie, so they they were

doing actually good legal work. They were rolling up other other witnesses and could use cheese, but on others or Chesborough, others to help make this case more airtight. This, of course, proves that I probably shouldn't have read Hunter Thompson throughout law school. And maybe I would be as smart as Lisa. No, I still wouldn't. But maybe I'd figure that. So that is an argument. I mean, just for people that say, why is it taking so long? Maybe they're building off of other cases. Yeah. I mean, they and clearly they swept up a ton of people in this indictment, including Christina Bob, who let's remember she just a few weeks ago was named by the RNC to run the Election Integrity Committee. Just a moment. Now she's indicted in this election scheme.

So, Danny, I want to ask about Donald Trump's role in all this and what trouble he potentially could be in. He's listed as unindicted co-conspirator number one. So he's not been indicted here. What does that mean? What are they saying about Donald Trump here? What's amazing is he's been an unindicted co-conspirator number one. His name was individual one several years ago when Michael Cohen came into federal court and pleaded guilty. So Donald Trump is no stranger to being an unindicted something who's named in a criminal document, whether it be an indictment, a complaint.

So is this bad for Donald Trump? Yeah. I mean, what we're seeing is that it's up to when you talk about the several states, any county prosecutor could decide, hey, you know what? This affected our state, our county. The attorneys general can do the same thing. And, you know, going back to why so long, what was the delay all about? I totally agree with what Lisa said. I'd just like to add to it. I mean, it's no surprise that prosecutors were probably waiting around to see who was going to be the first to do it, because it's scary. It's scary to indict a former president of the United States because he has and will fight like heck at every level.

And losing a case, maybe one of the first cases against the former president, would be a crushing defeat. So in my view, from a social perspective, it was no surprise that in just the last year, once the first indictment came down, everyone else felt much more emboldened to start indicting the president because, once the first indictment came down, everyone else felt much more emboldened to start indicting the president because, listen, I don't blame them. It's a scary prospect with just flaming disaster possibilities. So maybe we'll see more of it here. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, will hear arguments this morning in a historic case involving Donald Trump and his claim of absolute presidential immunity. Trump's legal team argues presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution

for official acts taken while in office. Special Counsel Jack Smith's office contends presidents are not above the law and that even if they're eligible for immunity for some official acts, Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election was not an official presidential act. Trump's immunity claim already has been rejected by two lower courts. And the special counsel argues justices should send the case back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkin to begin that trial. Lisa, what do you expect to hear in court today?

And what we've heard so far is that perhaps these justices, even the conservative justices, are very skeptical of the idea that a president is immune from anything. I think what I'm looking for in terms of today's argument is to hear how much allowance certain of the justices might give to the idea that presidential immunity is appropriate in certain cases and to listen to hear whether they're trying to make a decision solely in this case that sort of reserves for themselves the right to make a broader ruling on presidential immunity at a later point in time. For example, they could say Trump is absolutely not immune based on the allegations of this indictment. Whether a former president can be criminally immune is something we would decide

at a later date when the facts present itself. That's the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that Jack Smith's folks spend a lot of time on their heels in the back end of their reply brief, which is where they cover all the contingencies. I'll call it the even if section of their brief. If they end up in that territory for a lot of their argument, even if, for example, certain of these things are official acts, there are others that are not official acts, even if he has immunity for official acts, we can still consider evidence of those official acts

as part of the largely private conspiracy, those kinds of arguments. If the justices drag them into that territory, you know that this is not going to trial anytime soon. So, Sam Stein, let me read you the lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal today talking about the Supreme Court must consider the presidency, not merely the fate of one former president. They write this. The burden on the justices will be finding a balance that recognizes the unique duties of the presidency while also holding presidents accountable for genuine law breaking. A president needs to be free to make controversial decisions without having to worry that he'll be prosecuted for them after he leaves office. But he shouldn't be free to commit crimes that are unrelated to the office. And then they go

back to Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 1982, where the Supreme Court ruled that the president has absolute immunity from civil lawsuits for acts within the outer perimeter of his presidential duty. So that is the question here. Did what Donald Trump do, if you're looking at Nixon, could you define what he did in and around January 6th as being in the outer perimeter of the presidency? Of course, for you or me, and I think most people watching would say, of course not. But that that certainly is the question the Supreme Court has to be careful with, because, again, whatever holding they come down with will be applied to future presidents as well. And we don't want every president leaving office being indicted by a hostile Justice Department.

Yeah, I mean, this is obviously an extremely weighty case, even if it's the designs to get it to the Supreme Court were not weighty at all. And by that, I mean it's very evident that Trump's legal team wanted to do this just to throw sand in the gears and to delay their trial until after the election. Now, as to the specifics, you know, Jack Smith's operation has been very clear. The stuff that happened on January 6th is inherently not about the acts of the presidency because Trump had lost. I mean, he had lost the election. And so therefore, it is not a presidential act and therefore he should not get immunity for it. Whether the justices see it that way is a whole nother matter. But look, I think this is pretty evident that what's happening here is that Trump's

team wants to just muck things up. I don't think that there's anything more to it. They want to delay it. They want to get this out from the election. And ideally, they want to see Trump win and then just dispense with the matter. But I think the journal's editorial, there's nothing inherently debatable or objectionable about it. Of course, presidents should have some level of immunity for acts they take in office. The question is whether it should be blanket immunity. I think in that front, the vast majority of the legal profession is on one side saying, no, there should not be blanket immunity. And muck things up, of course, is a very technical legal term that Sam has just given us.

I studied law for many years to come up with that term. And your money paid back, Sam. Well done. Good investment on your parents' part. Danny, look, we see, we've got in real time, of course, a case where a former president

of the United States is going through the American legal system and is being proved to not that, you know, the law is applicable to everybody. No man is above it.

So let's go back up to New York. We've got David Pecker back on the stand today. We haven't even got to the Stormy Daniels stuff yet. What are you looking for out of what we got two more days of this week? What are you looking for? Look, I've said in the last few days, David Pecker may have emerged as really the people's star witness. We had a lot of focus on someone like Michael Cohen. But David Pecker is much better for the people for a number of reasons. Number one, he has some credibility issues, but not the credibility issues of a Michael Cohen.

Number two, he starts at the beginning. And prosecutors love to take you through a chronological. In the beginning, this was this relationship. And by showing this relationship where David Pecker had communication with Michael Cohen and, and I think this is critical, they've already shown that had communication with Michael Cohen. And and I think this is critical. They've already shown that that communication with Michael Cohen went from once a month to once a quarter and it escalated. And what did it escalated corresponding to the upcoming election? And that is going to be key to demonstrating that this was not a bunch

of hush money payments to protect my family or my reputation with my wife. This was to influence the campaign. That's a key element that the people need to prove in order to aggravate this crime from misdemeanor to felony land. But as good as David Pecker was, and he's not finished yet, we may still hear some interesting things about his relationship with Donald Trump, which was longstanding. But David Pecker, why I think he may emerge as one of the most powerful witnesses for the people is another great reason is they called him first. That tells me that they wanted to start out with a bang and they wanted a witness that would be their best witness, if not close to their best. And also, lastly, who hasn't been riveted by the testimony of David

Pecker so far? I have been fascinated to get a glimpse into the world of what he calls checkbook journalism in the world of cooperating witnesses. I call David Pecker the scoundrel character. He's unabashed. He's unapologetic. This is what I do. It may seem sleazy to you, but that's who I am. And I think juries, not only do they tend to like this kind of witness, sometimes they even laugh at him and find him entertaining. Well, and just like you and Drudge headlines. Well, I'll have to check the latest one. There have been some good Packer headlines on Drudge. It's been pretty amusing. But Packer back today and Lisa Rubin, the interesting point that I think Danny

was building on, and I'm wondering what your thoughts are in terms of what you expect today, is you saw in the Pecker testimony him really laying out plans for certain stories and even saying about a story that actually turned out not to be that, to really have legs was about the doorman and some baby that illegitimate child and how he would wait until after the election to put that story out if he could get more on it, showing really that they were framing everything they were doing around the election. It had to do with the election. It wasn't to protect Donald Trump personally, like they were saying. Right. It was everything was timed for the election. Exactly. And so, Lisa, with that in mind, what are you looking for today? I'm looking for more evidence, Mika, of direct conversations

between David Pecker and Donald Trump. He started with the direct conversation in August 2015 at Trump Tower. He ended the other day starting to talk about a phone call that they had in June 2016 when Trump called him up to say Michael Cohen had informed him about the allegations that Karen McDougal was making. And then Trump asked Pecker,

what do you think? I want to hear more about that phone call. But also, not only did Pecker say that he talked to Cohen with increased regularity after the announcement of Trump's candidacy, he also talked to Trump with more regularity. So I'm looking to see what other conversations did

David Pecker have with Donald Trump that bear on his knowledge and intent. That's critical to shoring up the flawed witness that Michael Cohen is and also giving him more credibility in the end. All right. Former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, we will be hearing from you and MSNBC legal analyst Danny Savalos as well. Thank you both very much for coming on this morning. All right. Still ahead on Morning Joe. Billions of dollars in USA now is finally on its way to war torn Ukraine. We'll talk to The Washington Post's David Ignatius about how he says Ukraine can make the best of it. Plus, we'll go over the disastrous impact of the war on Russia. Also ahead, the mother of American-Israeli hostage, Hirsch Goldberg-Holland, will be

our guest this morning following the release of a Hamas propaganda video featuring her son. I heard you gasp yesterday as you were reading through the news and I ran in to see what was wrong. And you saw the video. It was a video of Hirsch. And we will be talking to his mother today in so many ways. Yes. You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in 60 seconds.

So, Mika, Willie and I, we had a rough day yesterday. I mean. It's a little known fact that when we escaped from, I just, just our hellish situation in Turkey. Okay. We don't like to talk about this, but we escaped. We got some Turkish Arabian horses. We rode them to the border. We hung out in London for a while.

It wasn't safe to come back to the United States at that time, right? And so somehow we got in with the stables of the queen. This is a long buildup for this Wall Street Journal headline. But we're in charge of caring for the king's horses. Before it was the queen's forever, the king's horses. And we fell asleep on duty yesterday. And some of the horses broke free. And these are the king's horses running through the streets of London. It was for his birthday. And what can I say?

Willie and I went to the dogs. We were betting at the dog track. And Willie, you know, I guess all you can say is I'm sorry. Right? Calls for our resignation, saying we're getting a little long in the tooth for the job anymore. Come on. This morning, I think we have live pictures. There are protests in the streets of London. It's not pretty. They want us out, Joe. This is now this might be the last straw. These are beautiful. It's over. They

are beautiful horses. I hope they got them. All right. I'm going to move on now with something actually that happened. President Biden yesterday signed the foreign aid package passed by both the House and the Senate. And it delivered billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine, Israel and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. The next few hours, literally the few hours we're going to begin sending in equipment to Ukraine for air defense munitions, for artillery, for rocket systems, and armored vehicles. You know, this package is literally an investment, not only in Ukraine's security, but in Europe's security, in our own security. We're sending Ukraine equipment from our own stockpiles. Then we'll replenish those stockpiles with new products made by American companies

here in America. For months, while MAGA Republicans are blocking aid, Ukraine has been running out of artillery shells and ammunition. Meanwhile, Putin's friends keep keeping them well supplied. Iran sent them drones. North Korea has sent them ballistic missiles and artillery shells.

China is providing components and know-how to boost Russia's defense production. With all this support, Russia has ramped up its airstrikes against Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure. Rain down munitions on brave Ukrainians defending their homeland. And now America is going to send Ukraine the supplies they need to keep them in the fight. There's one thing this bill does not do, border security. You know, just this year, I proposed and negotiated and agreed to the strongest border security bill this country has ever, ever, ever seen. It was bipartisan. It should have been included in this bill.

And I'm determined to get it done for the American people. You know, it's really fascinating. Lindsey Graham on the air or on the Senate floor a couple of days ago said that they had a great border security bill. And unfortunately, Donald Trump killed it. So I'm surprised he even dared to say that. So we agree with that. But I just want to say again, President Biden, of course, has been a champion of this from the very beginning, helping Ukraine. He's done an extraordinary job. But again, we just I'm thankful that Speaker Johnson, that Chairman McCaul, that Chairman Turner, Chairman Rogers in the House Republican caucus were such strong advocates of this because it's it's still shocking to me as a former Republican. Still shocking. The majority of Republicans in the House voted against a for Ukraine.

Not so in the in the, Republican Senate, thank goodness. But there is a real split in the House. And unfortunately, the majority of Republicans in the House voted against. Well, I'll just put it this way. They took Vladimir Putin's side in this battle. Let's bring in right now columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius, staff writer at The Atlantic and Applebomb, and former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Matthew Brzezinski. David, your latest piece in The Washington Post

is entitled How Ukraine Can Make the Best Use of the U.S. Aid Package. Tell us, how can they do it? So, Joe, yesterday was a bad day for Vladimir Putin, no matter how you cut it. It was a good day for Biden, good day, as you say, for bipartisanship. But Ukraine is now, in a sense, Putin's forever war. We have said, the United States, with our European allies, that we are going to provide significant military assistance well through this year into next year. I think the key piece of new equipment that's going into Ukraine, we're already beginning to see the effects of it, are the long-range Atacom 300 missiles, which essentially put every Russian supply depot, command and control center, staging area inside occupied Ukraine, inside all of Crimea, inside the Donbass areas in the east,

the strip along the coast. Those are all at risk. And I hear people in the White House beginning to speculate that the Russians will not be able to maintain the positions that they have there easily. They're going to have to pull their logistics deeper. And that's going to mean a different strategy in this world, one much more difficult for the Russians. So we were at a moment a few weeks ago when momentum clearly seemed to be on the Russian side. And I think most analysts, including Russians, whose commentary I quoted in my piece yesterday, are now convinced that the momentum has shifted, that there's a big psychological boost for Ukraine. You know, Matthew, last time you were on, you were talking about the massive losses that Russia was taking, despite the problems on the battlefield. But but you've also written that that it has been a disaster.

This war has been a disaster economically, demographically, politically, diplomatically and strategically. And you lay out some some really strong arguments why that's the case and why it as as David Ignatius just said, it is now because of congressional support. It's turning into Vladimir Putin's forever war, his worst nightmare. Well, you know, as David said, it is turning into his forever war, and Putin cannot afford a forever war. Economically, Russia may have ambitions to be a global superpower, but it's basically a pipsqueak. Russia's economy is roughly half the size of California's. They cannot sustain this sort of military spending without dire consequences.

And we're starting to see that in many areas. For instance, we think that we have very high interest rates over here. To combat inflation, because their economy is so small and can't absorb all this military spending, they've had to jack up interest rates to 16%, which means if you're a Muscovite and you want to buy an apartment, you're looking at 21%, 22% mortgage rates. This kind of stuff goes right across the board. The Russian economy is not big enough and strong enough to sustain this indefinitely. Moreover, Putin very much miscalculated. Before the war, NATO was effectively dying an inalienable death. And outside of the United States, only two members were meeting the 2% of GDP threshold for military spending. Well, you know, that number is now up to 20 of the 32 members. And not just that, but Finland and Sweden have now joined NATO. So, you know,

one of the, Putin was railing that, you know, that NATO had expanded to his borders. Well, now NATO has gotten even bigger and they're outspending the Russians. You know, demographically, it's catastrophic for Russia. You know, Russia has lost its, basically, almost its entire tech sector. All the 20-something-year-olds. It's the equivalent of, let's say, if 2 million 20-something-year-olds left Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, San Francisco, New York, Boston. What would that do to this country long term? He is depriving Russia of its future generations of Elon Musk's and Mark Zuckerberg's, you know, speaking of Zuckerberg, I don't know if you saw, you know, the the the the spokesman of Meta was just sentenced two days ago in absentia to six years in prison for terrorism, because I guess they don't like what's being written on Facebook and Instagram. And that's another thing, you know, Putin has set Russia back probably 50 years as a civil society with the level of repression that he's needed, you know, that his apparatus is needed to inflict on people. Yeah. You know, this is absolutely catastrophic.

It is catastrophic. And Willie, we heard about it at the beginning of the war. We heard about demographically how all the young, smart I.T. people were getting out of there as quickly as possible. That's just continued over two years. And as Matthew said, the economy's wrecked. I mean, you say these numbers. I mean, it's really extraordinary that I always talk about the GDP the same size as Texas. But as Matthew put it, Russia's fighting the war, a war with it upsets people. Some people, when I say that with the strongest, most powerful, richest nation on earth should help helping Ukraine. And they've got an economy that's half the size of California. So it's amazing. Yeah, it is. And those great minds who actually want a future, a progressive future, did flee a long time ago. And you wrote a couple of days ago when this finally did pass through, when Joe Biden signed the foreign aid

bill, ninety five billion dollars that Russia over the last couple of months, while this money had been in limbo in the Congress, had started to win this campaign of demoralization, which is to say, Ukraine, no one's coming to help you. America's not coming for you anymore. We are now winning this war. So there's the tactical side of it that we've talked about what this money means for that.

But what about the psychological element of this money finally clearing the Congress and getting to Ukraine? Yeah, this is in some ways the most important effect of this bill. I mean, obviously, the ammunition and the missiles will make real difference on the ground. But for many months now, it's been clear that Putin was hoping to win this war without fighting, without having to destroy his economy, without having to devote so much of his GDP to weapons production. He was hoping that he would use propaganda and intimidation to frighten the United States, to inspire a part of the Republican Party inside the House of Representatives to block the aid. And that way way he would convince the Ukrainians that they were alone, that they couldn't win, that there was no point in fighting any longer. And that's how he was going to win the war.

And he came very close to succeeding. I know that this is the week in which we're cheering the fact that the bill was finally signed and people are now impressed with the way in which Mike Johnson finally in the, allowed this to become a bipartisan bill and therefore to pass. But the blockage of this bill for months and months and months by a very loud, very pro-Russian part of the Republican Party has also caused a lot of damage. People around the world saw that it's possible to manipulate Congress. They saw that Russian propaganda that appears lies that appear first on the Internet eventually make their way to the floor of the House and the Senate. And they and Putin saw that and the Ukrainians saw that. And and that was having an effect on the willingness of people to fight on the ground in Ukraine. So hopefully now that era has ended.

Can I can I ask you, because you you you know so much about this and usually you talk about how disinformation impacts countries in Central and Eastern Europe. But what is so shocking is Mitch McConnell a couple of days ago said this this vote for Ukraine aid was much harder. He put it at the feet of Tucker Carlson because of the Russian disinformation that he said Tucker Carlson was pushing out. Other Republicans in the House repeating Russian disinformation, just as if they were spokespeople for Russian television. And you had Intel Chairman Turner saying we've got Republican House members on the House floor spreading Russian propaganda on the House floor.

Chairman McCaul, again, God bless him and the other Republican chairman that stood up for the right thing. But. More Republicans voted against state for Ukraine than voted for. And if you're Vladimir Putin, yeah, you lost the bigger battle. But you've got to be looking at the fact that he was able to get Russian disinformation on the floor of Congress and on the airwaves of Trump right wing propagandists. And that Russian disinformation impacted a vote in the House of Representatives. You're right. It's extraordinary. I think I think it's goes a lot deeper than just Tucker Carlson. One senator, Tom Tillis, talked about a very specific lie. So there's a famous fake.

It's a fake that President Zelensky owns two yachts. And there were pictures of the yachts circulating on the Internet. Of course, those are really other people's yachts. But Tillis pointed out that there were Republican senators in the conversations about the bill saying, we don't want this money to go on yachts. But there are no yachts. The yachts are fictitious. But it's an illustration of how lies that emerged on the Internet, some of them were Russian, some of them may have been American, made it to the floor of the House without being checked, without anybody questioning them. We saw another version of that. We saw Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about Ukrainians as Nazis, which is actually an extraordinary slur, given that Ukraine has a Jewish president

and it has a Muslim defense minister and is a government that seeks to bring democracy to the region. And yet she uses this slur that was invented in Moscow and talks about it on the floor of the House. And so we see that this, you know, the effectiveness of this propaganda can't be downplayed. I mean, it was it played a role in defending aid and changing U.S. foreign policy for a year. So it really did. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Katie. Yeah, foreign policy for a year. Yeah, it really did. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Katty. Yeah, I was just wondering.

I mean, I know that this is the week that we're rightly celebrating the speaker who managed to listen to the facts and do something that is almost unheard of in U.S. politics at the moment, listened to the facts and then changed his mind and publicly changed his mind and approved this bill and put the bill to the floor. But I think what Anne is getting to is a broader sense that there is a growing isolationism in the Republican Party. It's not just this little group. There was a poll from The Economist showing that 20 percent of Republicans see Ukraine as an ally. For the first time in 50 years of polling, the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs says a

majority of Republicans believe that America shouldn't get involved in world affairs. So we've got over this week and we've given this tranche of aid to Ukraine now. But I wonder if actually we're looking in the longer run at something that is a real sea change in not just in those in the kind of MAGA hardcore in the House, but in Republican voters and Republican sentiment, perhaps in America more broadly? David. Sorry. Yeah, so I share the concern about an America

that is in retreat from its responsibilities. But just to speak to the point that Anne made so powerfully, what's happened, I think, in this debate is that despite this enormous machine of Russian lies, the truth won out. When Mike Johnson was confronted again and again by now security advisor Jake Sullivan, by CIA Director Burns, with the facts of what was happening, according to Washington Post article this morning, the date on which Ukraine would run out of ammo, it got to him. When I saw President Zelensky at the end of March, and he said, if we don't get more ammunition, we have to retreat. And he drew a map of the retreat.

And I think that truth began to penetrate for people. And it was powerful. I think we sometimes feel we're prisoners of disinformation. In this instance, we weren't. Republicans weren't. Republicans broke through. I just want to make one point. With all the positive news this week, we shouldn't forget that the Russian army is powerful. And what we've seen is it's become a learning army. It sees its mistakes and it's getting better at the arts of modern warfare, electronic warfare.

That's one thing that worries me for all the jubilation about this aid package. It's really something that Matthew, we've got to go to break. But really quickly, can you talk about I because we always talk about the military side of this. Can you talk diplomatically about how much this has isolated Vladimir Putin? Vladimir Putin, you know, as we recall, I mean, he was part, Russia was part of the G8. Russia, you know, was, had been welcomed basically into the West. And, you know, today, Putin's friends, it's a rogues gallery, right? You're Iran's, you're North Korea's. And the friendship with China is, frankly, the Chinese are very cynically exploiting Russia's isolation to get, you know, cut rate energy and natural resources. You know, this has been absolutely disastrous for Russia. And I think the longer this goes, the weaker Russia becomes. And at the end of the day,

you know, this may cost Putin his head. The Washington Post, David Ignatius, the Atlantic, San Apple bomb and former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Matthew Brzezinski, who brings the word pipsqueak to morning, Joe, that's a Brzezinski word. You said your mom would use that against your dad when she was mad at him. If he talked too much. Yes. She wanted to bring him down a notch. I love it. Coming up. Thanks for coming on, guys. China's economy is taking major hits largely because of its housing sector. Steve Ratner is standing by with charts to give us a look at how the country got to this point and what it means for the U.S. economy.

Morning Joe will be right back. A new report in The Wall Street Journal entitled The Folly of China's Real Estate Boom was easy to see, but no one wanted to stop it. Details how developers, how homebuyers and Western bankers all ignored the warning signs. But the bubble proceeded to get even worse because no one wanted the music to stop. The journal continues. Now China is paying the price for failing to act earlier to rein it all in. More than 50 Chinese developers have defaulted on their international debt. Around 500,000 people have lost their jobs. Some 20 million housing units across China

have been left unfinished and an estimated $440 billion is needed to complete them. Joining us now to explain the significance of this is former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Bratner. So, Steve, let's talk about why this matters so much to the world to do. America's worst chaos theory, the sort of butterfly effect, which is said if a butterfly flaps his wings in China, it could cause a hurricane in New Mexico. Economically, this could have a big impact, could it not, on the world economy? Yeah, Joe, look, it's in our interest. We can talk about national security considerations, but from an economic point of view, it's in our interest to have a strong China and a weak China, especially with these kinds of financial repercussions is something that the

world should worry about. But we can take a look at how severe the housing bubble and the housing bust in China has been. And you can see back here in 2003, the Chinese built only a tiny amount of housing, relatively small amount of housing. But then the boom took off. And this was part of the Chinese success story. People had more money, jobs were plentiful, credit was plentiful. So the builders build, small hiccup, but basically they took off up here and finally built 20 billion square feet of space in China at the peak year in 2018. And then it rolled over because there was too much housing. And now you can see the bus part of the cycle where they're headed almost all the way back to where they were back then. Meanwhile, by the way, Chinese population only grew by less than 10%. So when

you add this much housing and not a lot of population, you get overbuilding. And so what did that do to prices? Well, prices went up for a while. Chinese economy was doing very well. People were feeling flush. And then, of course, all that excess supply, why pay retail when you can in effect pay wholesale? Prices start to fall, fall, fall. They're now down 6%. They were at the moment year over year, which is not showing any sign of the decline abating. And so they have a housing crisis. Yeah. Talk about China's real estate situation versus America's. Well, can I come to that in one second? Because, yeah, we can come to it here, actually. So the important thing to recognize is that China households have a lot more of their money in

real estate than they do in other things. And so when you look at real estate in China as a share of GDP, it's almost 30 percent. In the U.S. is 18 percent. So much heavier dependence on real estate there. And then for households, as you alluded, it's even more significant. The average Chinese household has 78% of its wealth in its house. In the U.S., the comparable figure is 30%. So they are much more susceptible to those downturns in pricing that I showed you a minute ago. And then as a result of all the overbuilding, 20% of all the Chinese housing units are currently vacant, something like 20 million. So imagine if you had two people per unit, that would be 40 million people could be housed.

Imagine a city of 40 million people of basically empty houses in China. Our vacancy rate at the peak of the GFC, of the great financial crisis, only reached 11%, just to give you a point of comparison. So we got nowhere near there. And then if you look at the impact on the stock market and things like that, our stock market is up 87% since 2019. The stock market is only up 19%. Why is that? In part, because the Chinese property companies are down 33%. And Evergrande, which is one of the biggest banks, second biggest developer in China, and probably the most prominent bankruptcy in China, their stock has effectively gone to zero.

So it's pulled down the value of Chinese stocks, and that's inflicted more pain on Chinese shareholders as well as on the economy. Wow. And that, of course, will have a big impact on the U.S. I'm hearing we have to go to break, but why don't you give us your final chart, go through it quickly for us. I'll give it to you in two seconds and show the eerie parallels between what's going on in China now and our financial crisis. Housing starts for both countries during that period, China red U.S and blue see how they tracked as we hit a peak see how they tracked as we hit a collapse they China's still collapsing

we had our collapse we've rebounded partly but not nearly enough which is why we have a housing shortage at the moment and then if you look at home sales followed exactly the same trajectory up down China's still not having hit bottom, but the parallels are eerie, shall we say. Boy, they really are. Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner. Thank you very much. Thank you, Steve.