Morning Joe - Morning Joe 4/3/23

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Trump heading to NYC ahead of arraignment

And now, a message from former President Trump. Hello, thank you. It's me. Hi, I'm the problem. It's me. Well, folks, it happened. I got indicted, or as I spell it, indicated. And frankly, it's time that I come clean, admit that I broke the law and go quietly to prison. April fools. All right. Saturday night, lives cold open and their take on Donald Trump's legal troubles. The former president will be in court tomorrow for a historic arraignment. We'll take you through the timeline and also the security concerns outside the Manhattan courthouse. Meanwhile, the indictment has been a big moneymaker for his 2024 campaign with millions of dollars in donations in just a

matter of days. It comes as a new challenger is getting into the presidential race and calling Trump to drop out. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, April 3rd. With us, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany, attorney and contributing columnist for The Washington Post, George Conway, and NBC News legal analyst, Andrew Weissman. Good to have you all on board. A lot to cover today, but I know people are tuning in this morning, Jonathan Lemire, for one thing, to hear our take on the Boston Red Sox opening week and gives up, they give up runs after. I mean, it's horrible. Chris Sale finally comes back. He doesn't fall

off a bike, break every bone in his body. Gives up seven runs in three innings. But the Sox somehow managed to win the weekend, win the series. Yeah, this is clearly the biggest headline we're going to encounter this week. The Boston Red Sox winning two of three at home against the Baltimore Royals. They actually made some history while they did it, Joe. They scored at least nine runs in all three of their opening games. That's only the third team in history of their opening games. That's only the

third team in history ever to do that. That's pretty good. The bats have woken up. The pitching, less so. But hey, look, we'll take it. They lost. Opening day was dreadful. They fell behind big. They showed some fight to come back. OK. But yeah, if you hit it, Chris Sale was an abomination. We kind of wish you would enter the Tour de France and maybe get injured and miss some time. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. But they came back.

Stop it. A walk-off win that day. Adam Duvall, the home run. And then another win yesterday. Two out of three. Hope springs eternal, Joe. Well, I'll tell you what. Chris Sale is going to be just fine.

The guy came out throwing 97 miles an hour. He'll find his location. He's a pro. But Duvall, just out of his mind. Incredible. Also, a team about what, three, four hours to the south on the Acela. Also had a pretty good weekend. Two shutouts, but we don't really want to talk about them. Basketball. Basketball. I've got them basketball basketball I gotta say we are all uh at least in my house we were all heartbroken uh that uh that Boca you uh just had a terrible run down the stretch I just got turned into Jack I go Jack you know you don't give up this many offensive rebounds and won a game we've never seen anybody give up eight offensive rebounds in four minutes in the second half seconds and

win a game uh and that's exactly what happened. They just kind of fell apart down the stretch. Yeah, the two Florida schools had wonderful runs in the tournament but fell short Saturday night. San Diego State hitting the buzzer beater. Tremendous game against FAU, as you say, to get clinched half a berth in the championship game. We're going to watch it here in a second.

Just stone cold right here. Nothing but net. San Diego State goes on, completing the comeback and defeating Florida Atlantic, which was such a Cinderella story. And then in the nightcap, UConn just throttled Miami. Clearly the better team. This is their rank as a four seed. UConn's better than a four seed.

And certainly the favorite tonight against San Diego State, looking for their fifth national title. But this is, look, this has been a tournament of upsets, of thrilling games. So let's have one more tonight. UConn versus San Diego State for the championship. Now, Jackie Alamea, did you play basketball? Certainly did. Did I see you play basketball in college?

I'm washed up. But a Caitlin Clark fan. I'm a washed up player, but definitely a Caitlin Clark fan. So last night was heartbreaking. Yeah, it really was. I mean, LSU just looking great in the tournament and winning it. South Carolina bumped out. That was a huge shock, right?

Not a South Carolina fan. Can't contribute to that conversation. There we go. Okay. We just shorted our Yankees, Joe. Look at that. My gosh. I know.

All right. Well, we have a lot of news to get to. And Jackie does not want to talk basketball. So she's she's heartbroken about last night. I understand. She chooses her words wisely. I think she's going to have a thing or two to say about the next few stories we're going to get to. Why don't we start this week with Donald Trump expected to arrive in New York City later today? This is ahead of the first ever arraignment of a former president. In a series of late night posts on social media yesterday,

Trump announced plans to leave Florida for his old home of Manhattan at noon today. He will then spend the night at Trump Tower before reportedly surrendering to law enforcement ahead of his first court appearance tomorrow afternoon. Although all of these plans are subject to change, officials familiar with the matter tell NBC News that Trump will not be handcuffed, put in a holding cell or have his mugshot taken. He's going to be disappointed with that.

As of now, the plan is for the former president to be fingerprinted before hearing his charges and then leaving the courthouse on his own free will. Trump will then head back to Florida, where he has announced plans to speak publicly about the case tomorrow night. Sources say the former president faces about 30 criminal charges related to document fraud connected to a payment he allegedly made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016. To keep her silent about a sexual encounter she claims they had years before. Now, Trump has repeatedly denied the liaison or ordering the payment, although some of his posts over the past years and months have not completely denied it. Yeah, not completely.

And Andrew, I'm getting more and more impatient with people are talking with great confidence about how strong this case is or how weak this case is. We have no idea. We have no idea how strong or weak this case is because the indictment is still sealed. We won't know until tomorrow, right? You know, I hate to be disappointing, but we may not even know then. We'll certainly have a better idea about legal theories. And because I think everyone's anticipating that it's a so-called speaking indictment, that it's not just bare bones,

that it lays out a number of allegations, we may have a clue as to some of the evidence. But the DA's office typically doesn't put in an indictment all of their evidence, what all of the witnesses have to say, what all of the documents are. So we'll have a better sense of the legal theory of the DA. We may have a sense of some additional evidence, but we really won't know all of the evidence. And there are reports of substantial new documentary evidence, but we really won't know that for sure. So you're absolutely right. The people who are saying it's strong or the various Republicans who are attacking it as a witch hunt and weak don't know. So it's way too premature. And that obviously is

the government's burden is going to be a trial to amass that evidence. And to what you're pointing to the other reports, New York prosecutors are also reportedly investigating another payment allegedly meant to silence a second woman who claims she had an affair with Donald Trump. According to people familiar with the matter who spoke with The Wall Street Journal, the Manhattan district attorney's office is looking into a deal involving Trump and former playboy model Karen McDougal. Similar to the Stormy Daniels case, McDougal claims she was paid one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in 2016 between McDougal and a longtime friend of Trump's former National Enquirer publisher, David Pecker. McDougal and Trump's own former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, claim that Trump and Pecker agreed to what's known as a catch and kill deal. As the agreement would have it, Pecker would buy the rights to any negative story about Trump to prevent it from ever being made public. Last week, Pecker was called in to testify before the Manhattan grand jury in the Daniels case. Remember, that was sort of after a word of the indictment came out. And this was the second time he had been in there. Here's what Lenny Davis, attorney to Michael Cohen, said about this to CNN yesterday.

You're saying that your client, Michael Cohen, also gave documentation, evidence that will show that there was hush money paid in maybe an illegal way to Karen McDougal, who was a former Playboy model? The answer is yes. But so did others involved in that transaction, including, as we know publicly, the head of the National Enquirer, Mr. Pecker, was involved in that transaction that Michael Cohen was forced to plead guilty to, even though he didn't pay the money. National Enquirer paid the money in an arrangement with Mr. Trump.

All right. When asked for a comment, a Trump spokesman told The Wall Street Journal there was no crime. George Conway, we've been hearing this from news sources through the weekend that Karen McDougal, David Pecker may be involved in this indictment as well. And that's what we should keep our eyes on. Of course, we won't know until the indictment's unsealed. It is interesting, though, that they brought David Packer in at the very end before they came down with the indictment. What can you tell us? Well, I think it goes, the question of

a second woman goes to the intent, the fraudulent intent of the entire scheme to create false records and a false paper trail about what the nature of the payments were, what they were for. Whether they can be folded into a books and records charge against a Trump organization, I don't really know. We'll have to see what the facts are. And I agree with Andrew that there are things we don't know here. We don't know everything that the prosecution has. We don't know everything about their, we don't know their thinking about how they're going to plead the charges specifically to make it a felony as opposed to a misdemeanor under state law. There's just a lot of things that we don't know and we still won't know even after we see the indictment, which will, as Andrew says, be a speaking

indictment that's going to lay out a lot more evidence than a normal and then a regular indictment. And yet George members of our former party are going out, continuing to crow about how this is a weak charge. This is, this is a miscarriage of justice. This is the, the, the politicalization, the weaponization of, of, of, of government, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Again, they don't know. None of us know. None of us know the extent of this.

And it's just so reckless. It may end up, maybe it ends up being exactly what we originally thought this was going to be. But again, they're talking about possibly over 30 counts right now. But the exact nature of this, nobody knows. So it's impossible to pass judgment on whether it's a strong indictment or not. That's absolutely right. And I think one of the things about this that's really quite remarkable is how the Republican Party has put itself in the position of defending a man who paid $130,000 in hush money to a porn star in the waning days of a presidential

election and did that, you know, without compunction, did that. I mean, it would have been a scam. It was a scandal in and of itself. And yet they're completely inured to it. And the reason is, is because once you start admitting that Donald Trump does something that's wrong or does lies and does little things that are wrong or slightly bigger things that are wrong. You have to open up to the everything that you know he did that he lied about and that he was that you lied for him about if you're a Republican, pretended that didn't didn't exist. And that is the problem for the Republican electorate. I mean, people talk about we always hear discussion here about how, oh, the Republican Party, when is it going to come to its census?

Well, the problem here is you have millions of Americans who allowed themselves to be taken in by this man and decided they were going to ignore all negative evidence about him and pretend that he was a normal human being, pretend that he was a sane human being, pretend that he was a sane human being, pretend that he was a competent president, pretend that you know how to spell, pretend all of these things. And the reality is he was none of those things. And they engaged in self-deception for multiple years. And to admit that's really hard. And that's the reason why Trump will have a stranglehold, I think, on this nomination process. So interesting.

We have a lot more to talk about pertaining to this. Of course, it's going to happen tomorrow, but we're looking at security and preparations for that. Also, Trump's own words, ginning up support and action for him. And also the fundraising off of this, you know, which has begun and has been quite successful. We'll have all that coming up. But there is another big story that has been breaking over the weekend. The Justice Department and FBI investigators have accumulated fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction by former President Donald Trump in the investigation into top

secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago. People familiar with the matter tell The Washington Post. According to The Post, the additional evidence comes as investigators have used emails, text messages from a former Trump aide to help understand key moments last year. The Post continues, federal investigators have gathered new and significant evidence that after the subpoena was delivered, Trump looked through the contents of some of the boxes of documents in his home, apparently out of a desire to keep certain things in his possession. Investigators now suspect, based on witness

statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence, that boxes included classified material removed from a Mar-a-Lago storage area after the subpoena was served, and that Trump personally examined at least some of those boxes. The new details highlight the degree in which special counsel Jack Smith's investigation is focusing on whether the former president took or directed actions to impede government efforts to collect all the sensitive records and found at Trump's Florida home and private club. NBC News has not confirmed this report. In a statement to the paper, a Trump spokesman wrote in part that the investigation has no basis in facts or law.

And Joe, I've even seen Joe, I've even seen Trump interviewed saying, I have a right. I mean, it's lovable, but it's it's really not funny. I have a right to take stuff. It's just in his mind. He doesn't apply the law to himself. He said if he even thought about it, if he thought about it, he could declassify documents just with his superpowers as former president. Jackie Alomany, though, you look at the Washington Post report and suddenly you realize they've got they've got emails.

They've got correspondence. They have somebody on the inside that's been cooperating, it seems, with the federal government. And it looks at least from this story like Jack Smith and his team of investigators are very methodically trying to build this case and show some of evidence that Trump himself went in rummaged through some of these boxes of documents. And Cherry picked out things that he wanted to keep, which included text messages and emails obtained from one of his top aides earlier this year, who also appeared before the grand jury and had interviews with FBI and special counsel investigators, along with Walt Nauta, that person that you just mentioned, this top military aide to Trump, who worked with him at the White House, came down with him at Mar-a-Lago. And as we reported earlier, actually at the end of last year, I believe that Walt testified to investigators that Trump personally instructed him to actually move these boxes. that showed this storage room, people moving in and out of it before and after the subpoena was issued for that very now infamous search warrant that was executed by the FBI.

Yeah. And Jonathan O'Meara, we talked a week or two ago about the fact that Donald Trump was averting everybody's eyes to Manhattan, most likely, our belief, most likely, because it was the least serious charge. Maybe the charged prosecutors are going to have the hardest problem approving this. This obstruction case seems if we're going to judge from outside the courthouse, if we're going to judge not being in on the case and just looking at the four corners of the law. This case, this obstruction case was already stacked up pretty badly against Donald Trump. After the new reporting this weekend of information on how they're using those security cameras, how they're using people on the inside, using their emails, using their communications, knowing there's Donald Trump rummaging through the classified documents

after the Justice Department asked to get them back. It's this is this looks of all the indictments. This one looks like it may be the most serious against Donald Trump and the hardest for him to to sort of wiggle out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of Trump's tried and true strategies is to try of wiggle out of. Yeah, I mean, one of Trump's tried and true strategies is to try to distract and deflect. And that's what he's doing here with the Manhattan case, to your point, Joe. I mean, he's even posting about his itinerary as to when he's going to be where, because he's trying to generate as much possible media coverage as he can. Because, yes, there is a thought that this case is the least strong.

It's also the one that he probably can use most to his political advantage. Say, hey, it's Matt and DA. It's an old case, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The other ones on the horizon loom to be far more serious. We know about Georgia. We know the January 6th probe continues. And then there's Mar-a-Lago. And we have certainly know Republicans try to say, look, hey, Joe Biden was vice president. He had classified documents he shouldn't have.

Or even, hey, Mike Pence did, too. OK, that's true. But it's all about intent and cooperation. And both of those men, Biden and Pence, as soon as these documents, first of all, there's no suggestion these documents were taken deliberately. And once they were discovered,

they cooperate with the DOJ in returning them. Trump has done the exact opposite. There is a sense here that he was involved in packing some of these, or at least suggesting, I'd like to have some of these items with me at Mar-a-Lago. And certainly, as this reporting points out, he has taken many steps to obstruct it and to deny returning them. So, Andrew Weissman, let's just talk about the legal aspect of this. We can set aside the politics. There'll be that narrative we just talked about with this case if we're charged in

the future. But in terms of just the legality of this, is this, in your estimation, is this just make an obstruction charge that much more likely? There are two ways in which I think there are going to be obstruction charges. As you've noted with respect to Mar-a-Lago, it's important to remember that you already have a federal magistrate who found probable cause that there was obstruction. Remember, in the search, it included a search for evidence of obstruction. That was the allegation by the government in the search warrant, and that was approved by the magistrate. And it's for all the reasons that Mika outlined, which was the the actions of the former president after receiving a subpoena from the Department of Justice. So I agree with Joe. This could be sort of a rock crusher game over. the former president in the Manhattan case could just go over the cliff when and if we see charges in Florida that are really quite, could be quite strong based on what we know now. And then in Manhattan, there could be obstruction charges if the president,

former president, continues doing what he has been doing this last week, including last night, and is inciting violence. It'll be very interesting to see both the district attorney's reaction and whether that leads to additional charges, because those things can be charged as additional crimes. And what many people may view as the least serious of the criminal investigations into the former president may become quite quite serious in Manhattan as well. In addition, the judge can impose significant restrictions on what Donald Trump says and does if he continues this behavior. And George Conway, we saw the news breaking this weekend about the documents case, more information on just how Donald Trump could have committed acts of obstruction. Of course, a ruling last week that it was it was likely that Donald Trump and his attorney committed a crime and that the attorney client privilege was used in the commission of a crime.

Therefore, they're going to take a highly unusual step of piercing the veil of the attorney-client relationship. Do you suspect that we've now entered into a phase that now that we've had this first indictment, you've got all these other cases moving forward, the Georgia case moving forward. I suspect the pace will be quickening fairly soon. This is just the new sort of world that we are in, the new cycle where evidence of Trump crimes, Trump indictments are going to start moving at a faster pace. Given, again, just this weekend, everybody's looking at Manhattan. But we hear about, again, obstruction out of Moralago. We know Georgia news is coming. All of these things are moving faster. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I think

legal processes take time, particularly in white collar cases where you don't necessarily have video, although apparently they have video here. These things take a lot of time. And now all of these things that he has planted, these problematic things that he did to himself, Donald Trump, are now coming home to roost. And the question is how he deals with that. And I don't think he's going to deal with it well. I don't think he's capable of dealing with it in a rational manner. I think his only play that he

knows how to engage in is to attack and to ferment violence in the way that he did on January 6th. That's the scary thing about this. The arc of this story is clear. He is going to take himself down. He will have taken himself down. Only a genius like him could have paid one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to a porn star who didn't say who didn't stay hushed and get himself indicted for it. I mean, I mean, who else could possibly have done that? He's he is he is he's got that and just so much more. I mean, the the the Mar-a-Lago documents case, if one third of what Jackie and her colleagues have reported is true, he's dead to rights on that. The January, they got him on tape in Georgia, with Raffensperger. Apparently, there are more tapes involved in that case.

And we even forget, I mean, there's a civil case coming up in two or three weeks. We'll be back here, I'm sure, talking about it. And he's not going to do very well in that case. I don't even know he's going to have to be able to show up and testify because this is a man who could not withstand five minutes of cross-examination about what's true, what's not true, who's lying, what do you lie about other people, are other people lying about you, if you did a cross-examination of him, he would fall apart almost instantaneously. And that's why his own lawyers wouldn't let him talk to Mueller back

in the day, to Andrew Weissman and his people back in the day because they knew that he would immediately trip himself up. Well, it'll be interesting. The question here is, I wonder if during his arraignment tomorrow, if there's any constraints that the judge could put on him in terms of what he's allowed to say, because he has this event he's planning. And I'm sure it's going to be quite a fundraiser and quite a way to if if Trump's past behavior proves to be correct, he'll be ginning up support and all sorts of other things. And I wonder if there's any constraints that can be put on disinformation or on inciting violence. I don't know. Well, you know, the thing is, I've talked before about you have the political arena and then you've got the legal arena and in the political arena,

anything goes. And you have First Amendment rights in the political arena that are as expansive as any free speech rights that we have. But when you suddenly walk into a courtroom and you're part of a courtroom proceeding, obviously a judge has more power. Can a judge say, I don't want you to talk about this? You know, I just, Andrew Weissman, I'd just like to ask you before we go. Let's remove politics from this. Let's remove Trump from this. OK, and let's talk about the threats, the attacks against the legal system. I mean,

I can tell you when I was a young lawyer in northwest Florida, I was I was intimidated enough with the state court judges. But man, my goal was to stay out of federal court because federal judges, they didn't play. It didn't matter if they were appointed by Republicans or Democrats. And so I just I just want for everybody who's watching conservative, liberal, independent to understand that if I had said the sort of things about prosecutors, about the court system, about things being rigged, or if you had said the sort of thing or if our defendant had said the sort of thing, how quickly a judge would come down and how hard a federal judge. I mean, my God, I think one of those federal judges, I mean, at least the federal judges that I knew, by the way, I'm thinking

about Roger Vincent, who passed away, a good friend of mine, a federal judge in Pensacola, Florida, thinking about him and his family right now. But I can tell you those federal judges, man, they would, it'd be like you'd be buried under a penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. If you were going around threatening prosecutors, threatening judges and saying that the system was rigged. It just is. And so that's why when people say this is tilted and slanted against Trump, I just think it seems that judges and everybody else are giving this guy a lot more, a lot more space than it give any other lawyer, any other prosecutor, any other defendant. You're totally right. And it's a it's a trap, I think, that we get in your to his behavior and then we treat him with more leniency than anyone else. To Mika's question about what can a judge do, it's important to remember there are two things that a judge will be looking at.

One is just sort of polluting the information stream. You're not really supposed to be doing things now, once you are arraigned, that improperly influence the jury pool. You're not supposed to really be talking about the case. You're trying to keep sort of a fair jury pool. That's going to be incredibly difficult. But the other that is much more serious in the short term is this idea of potential violence. And that's one where I wouldn't be surprised tomorrow if Judge Marchand, who, Joe, is very much like, by all accounts, the federal judges that you're talking about, a no-nonsense judge who keeps a very tight rein on his courtroom. It'll be very interesting to see

what he says, not just because he's attacked the judge already, but because of the really horrific things that he has said with respect to the prosecutor, the prosecutor's family. I mean, those are things that it's very hard to imagine the judge isn't going to have some words to the defendant, meaning Donald Trump, about that particular conduct. And as I said, that can lead to additional charges and all sorts of bail restrictions. You can be confident that Donald Trump's defense lawyers are going to be very focused on that. And as was mentioned, Donald Trump, because he has such an ability to control himself, may find himself in a whole lot of legal hot water as he tries to foment his base politically.

NBC News legal analyst Andrew Wiseman, thank you. And George Conway, thank you as well. We appreciate your both being on this morning and still ahead on Morning Joe. We'll get a live report from Palm Beach as former President Trump prepares to leave his Mar-a-Lago estate for Manhattan today. Plus, a look at how New York police and other law enforcement agencies across the country are preparing for potential protests ahead of Donald Trump's arraignment. Also ahead, what the former president is saying about Russian President Vladimir Putin possibly taking over Ukraine. And former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson announces he's jumping into the 2024 GOP White House race and says Donald Trump should drop out. Plus, deadly tornadoes another round caused catastrophic damage across parts of the Midwest, South and Mid-Atlantic over the weekend.

We'll go live to one area of Indiana where the severe weather turned deadly. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. I'm laughing at myself. Why the tears roll down? Because it's the world I know. Oh, it's the world I know. Recovery efforts are underway in the South and Midwest after a deadly tornado outbreak killed at least 32 people confirmed dead. So far, that's the number that we know in terms of the death toll. Tornadoes steamrolled through a dozen states, destroying homes and entire neighborhoods. Joining us now from Sullivan, Indiana, NBC News correspondent Jesse Kirsch. Jesse, what's the latest?

Yeah, Miki, you can see behind me here, debris, and if you can imagine, it's dark right now, but it goes on block after block here in Sullivan, Indiana, about 90 minutes from downtown Indianapolis. This is one of the harder hit communities in this state, replicating scenes we've seen across several parts of the country, totally across the U.S. We have 32 confirmed deaths from tornadoes over the weekend, including three in this community where I am. Late yesterday, officials here said that the search for missing persons is complete. Everyone is accounted for. Again, unfortunately, three people have been found to be dead here, according to officials, including a woman in her early 60s and her son in his late 30s.

Now there's this call for volunteers here. And as this cleanup goes on amid all of these piles of debris, we've seen splintered wood, sheared off trees, shattered glass, homes destroyed in this community again and again. There's now concern about another threat of severe weather here. That's expected tomorrow. We spoke with a man yesterday who described going down to his basement to take cover and just minutes later hearing the wind howling overhead. Here's part of what he described to me about what he saw when he came back outside minutes later. As I passed, I had a flashlight. It was so dark. I had a flashlight and I shined it on my car just to check my car. And it looked like it had been rolled over a cliff. I thought, well, I got to get out of here.

And when you look at all of this now, do you recognize this? No, it's not my neighborhood. I always had a nice neighborhood. I have really good neighbors, and it was a nice, quiet. We're good neighbors down here. And it's just, I don't recognize this. 30 to 40 homes and businesses, according to officials just behind me here, that are very badly damaged.

Some of them appear to be completely gone. That man told me that he planted a flag in the pile of rubble that was his home previously. A sign, a reminder that this community, though, is still here. NBC's Jesse Kirsch, thank you for that report. We appreciate it. And coming up, a look at the stories making front page headlines across the country, including the push to create a new no-fly list for unruly air travelers. Plus, one of our next guests says Republicans are missing an obvious opportunity to free themselves from the former president. We'll explain that ahead on Morning Joe. 44 past the hour, live look at the White House and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle joins us now.

Good to have you on board, Mike. Mike, quite a weekend for the Red Sox. They've got no pitchers, but they've got some bats. Huge. Oh, yes. Just huge. It begins. You know, Thursday opening day, that was tough, but what a weekend. What a weekend. I mean, jumped right out of my chair when Adam Duvall hit that home run.

Everyone did. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. Just crazy. And let me say, we've all been behind Hein Blum from the very beginning. Right, right. This is the guy. This is the guy. You know, branch rookie. Oh, no doubt. No doubt about it. So, Lamir, we we, of course, I mean, talking about Jack Smith and he's moving, let's just say, with confidence and swiftly.

I don't know. I would just never like to be on the other side of Jack Smith in anything. You look at, first of all, this is him as a judge in The Hague, and I'm sorry, this looks like it's out of Andor or some other Star Wars deal. Please, please, hammer don't hurt him i mean that guy looks tough and apparently uh he is moving very swiftly yeah it's an it's sort of an imperial guard uh robe he's wearing there that's fine i find deeply intimidating and we combine that with the beard and the fact we've never seen a picture of him smile just gonna put that out there uh yeah no it is something that this is where the real concern is.

And people close to the former president I've been talking to all week long, we've had mixed reporting, shall we say, about Donald Trump's mood in terms of his arraignment tomorrow in Manhattan. Some people say he's almost looking forward to it. He thinks it's going to be good for his political cause. Others acknowledge he's scared to death. And I think the answer is probably somewhere in between, that he's almost looking forward to it. He thinks it's going to be good for his political cause. Others acknowledge he's scared to death. And I think the answer is probably somewhere in between, that he's going to be both nervous about legal peril while also thinking that at least in the short term, this could be

politically beneficial, though, as we always note, a very different story come 2024. There's nothing exciting in Trump world. There's no excitement about these other cases. They're much more concerned about Georgia, the election interference. And then these two tracks that Jack Smith is working on, the January 6th and now Mar-a-Lago documents, it does seem like that case in particular is fast tracking and it's moving its way up. And there's hardly a good explanation that Trump can provide that doesn't seem really damaging to him. Well, and he does seem like such an intimidating presence, probably like the judge that slapped the gag order on Jackie Alemany and said,

you will not talk about women's groups on Morning Joe or else, Jackie, right? So, Jackie, what position did you play in college? I was what they call a defensive specialist. I was a two, three, four, depending on the year and the amount of muscle milk I was drinking. Nice. I have no sympathy for South Carolina, so I just, you know, I had to take a pass on that. The judge came down hard, like really stern. He came down hard. You shall stern don't talk about it you shall not speak of the game cocks okay here we go during an appearance last week on fox news former president donald trump was asked to respond to sort of a lightning round style of questioning and towards

the end of the interview we miss this by the way. No, I want to say I want to say it's scrolled by me on Twitter. And sometimes one becomes so desensitized to all the different ways that he is anti-democratic and pro-fascist that you just you let it pass. And so we caught it. Here's what former President Trump said about Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. Give me a quick short sentence, narratives, whatever comes to your mind. Putin. Well, I'm going to have to go a little short, but I got along with him great. Had I been president, he would have been much better off because he wouldn't have gone into Ukraine. But ultimately, he's going to take over all of Ukraine. OK, first of all, Mike, there is not a military analyst, a political analyst,

a foreign policy analyst, a NATO analyst on the face of the earth that thinks Vladimir Putin is going to take over all of Ukraine. This is, again, the same guy. It's it's really it's shocking, not surprising. This is the same guy who said how brilliant Vladimir Putin was for starting a war, that he was genius, that he was savvy for starting a war that is absolutely ravaged his country, killed over 100000 of his troops, completely weaned Europe off of all Russian energy needs. It's been devastating for his economy. And I talked to world leaders. I talked to the OPEC people, leaders in OPEC nations who say this guy is only, you know, some more variance in the in the oil markets and the energy markets away from his entire economy collapsing. I was trying to figure out the best way to say that. But he said they are a gas station and they're a gas station about to go bankrupt. If oil prices go down even more over the next couple of months. They are really in deep trouble. And yet Trump is saying

that he's brilliant, that he likes him, they get along well, he's savvy, and that they're going to take over all of Ukraine. Nobody, nobody in the world is saying that but Vladimir Putin, his lackeys, and Donald Trump. Joe, it is hard to measure the danger and the damage that Donald Trump presents on a daily basis. If you're sitting in Paris or Berlin or London or any other capital in the world around the globe where you measure democracy with a large D and not a small D, you're worried because you don't know what's on the horizon. You don't know what America is going to do in 2024. You don't know what part this man might play in the future of our democracy. And so if you're thinking about planning ahead,

you can't plan ahead because of the danger and the damage that he represents every time he opens his mouth, every single time. And it was that same interview with Sean Hannity where Hannity tried to lead Trump to the, quote, right answer about those documents where he'd say, well, you would never take those documents. Trump's like, well, I have the right to. And he never quite said that. But, Jackie, there aren't many areas where Republicans are willing to criticize Donald Trump. But one is the relationship with Vladimir Putin. More than outside of a small minority, the Republican Party, even some of Trump's fiercest allies say, look, we've got to knock this off. We need to support Ukraine. But yet he keeps doing it. You know, do we what do we anticipate here from Republicans in the week ahead with inflammatory comments like this, but also this with the indictment coming? Are they going to just be more lockstop support or do we

think we'll hear shades of gray? Well, it is interesting the way I think Republicans have sort of some of them, at least these hardliners who really dominate at least the House GOP conference, have seized on Trump's Putin comments to sort of use that to talk about their isolationist view, how we shouldn't be spending money, all this money in Ukraine. It should be dedicated towards the U.S. Of course, that is largely contradictory to some of the rhetoric on China and this committee on China that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has really put so much emphasis on as he sort of tries to forge ahead without being distracted by the constant distractions that Trump israignment tomorrow, that we haven't heard House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan come out and say we're subpoenaing Alvin Bragg. We haven't heard at least as robust of a defense as we at least anticipated. Yes, people have sort of attacked Bragg, but there hasn't been a huge defense of Trump explicitly. I think that I think

there is a little bit of a wait and see here. What the indictment says is obviously sealed. Trump's lawyers haven't even seen it. They'll be seeing it for the first time tomorrow. We'll see how many details come out of it. But if there are really damaging new pieces of information in there, we could see Republicans sort of take this continue with the approach that they're taking now, which is, again, using Bragg sort of as the boogeyman and not doing this full embrace of Trump. Yeah, I'll be looking for any new details in the indictment, what it spells out, but also directives from the judge. That will be interesting. Jackie,

thank you so much for being on this morning. And for having me. And we're back in just a moment with the Morning Papers. Few minutes before the top of the hour. Time now for a quick look at the morning papers. We begin in New York where the Post Standard has a front page feature on a federal bill to create a no-fly list for unruly passengers. Under the measure, anyone who is convicted of, quote, serious physical violence and abuse will not be allowed to board a commercial airplane. The Transportation Security Administration would have to create and manage the list. The legislation has bipartisan support. The Tennessean has a front page feature on a push to make schools safer. Here's how.

Republican Governor Bill Lee is expected to propose increasing funding for security measures. Lee also wants to place an armed guard at every public school. This is is this not the same governor, though, Mike Barnacle, that signed a law that allows people to carry long rifles on the outside of their body. So if somebody is walking up with an AR-15 to a school, see that had nobody. Nobody has the right to stop them because they have the legal right to carry around an AR-15 on the outside of their body wherever they go because of this governor. It is indeed, Joe. And I'm not sure, but I'm fairly certain that it's also an open carry state, Tennessee. So you can walk around with your Glock, with your Luger, whatever you want to

walk around with. Yeah, that's what we're talking about here. I mean, it's crazy. We're also talking about a permitless carry. And I brought this up a good bit as a gun owner. I applied for a carry permit in Florida, waited a really long time to get it about a year, which I thought was kind of crazy. But I waited a year. I went through a training course. I did all the things that the state reasonably asked gun owners to do if they were going to carry. And it's concealed carry. But these states, as we see more and more people dying from guns, and we get to a point where more children are dying from guns than anything else, there's a race to the bottom when it comes to gun safety, whether it's Tennessee, whether it's in Florida, wherever it is, where they're pushing permitless carry. Now, let me ask you, Mike, why does it make sense, even if you're like me, if you're

a gun owner and you believe people have the right to keep and bear arms, why does it make sense to actually weaken gun safety laws and tell people, you know what, you can carry in public wherever you go, you can carry and you don't have to get a permit for it and you don't have to even train for it. Well, it's the same simplistic thinking, Joe, that has a lot of people, too many people suggesting that one of the answers to this is to have teachers carrying guns in classrooms. Arm the arm, the teachers. Mike, what a nightmare. What what happens? You have a hothead teacher that has a gun, makes a bad move. It's it's it's numbers. Listen, Mike, the reality is data shows this everywhere. States that have more guns have more people

dying from guns. Can you imagine the the number of deaths that would skyrocket if we started arming teachers? I mean, they're not qualified. They're not qualified. Like just handing out, oh, here, here, here's, here's your, here are your books. Here, here are your supplies. Here's your gun. And they're going to do that without any training. It's asinine thinking.

The more guns people have, the more deaths from guns. That's data. That's reality. And going against that is just stupid. You know, if you want to witness one of the cruelest changes in our country over the last, I don't care, 50 or 100 years, take a morning off, Joe, get in your car and follow a school bus, an elementary school bus, and look at the parents as they watch their kids board the bus, because you know some of them, maybe most of them are thinking, oh, God, please let my child return home safely from elementary school, from elementary school.

Mike, when you and I sent our kids to elementary school, we were concerned about how they were doing in class. We wanted to make sure that, you know, they didn't have problems with friends, that all that. And and now I talk to young parents and they all have this concern. It's front of mind and it's front of mind in the kids mind. And the kids have have nightmares. They're concerned. They've got all of these active, active shooter drills. It's it's just insanity. Again, you have governors like Lee in Tennessee that makes it more permissive, takes away more gun safety laws to keep the people of Tennessee safe, to keep people and children in classrooms safe. And now he's saying, oh, look what I'm going to do to make make schools safer. No, it doesn't work.

No, no. You know, the headline in the Tennessean says, you know, Lee moves to make schools safer. I would argue that's I'm not sure it's a move to make schools safer. I feel like everybody's thinking in Tennessee a little bit is too focused around whether or not a security guard can stop a gunman. Overall, the safety of children is is that's debatable. Let's put it that way. Well, listen, you've seen it in Uvalde. You saw it in Tennessee. You see it in all of these school shootings. They're coming in with AR-15s. A security guard at a school is not going to stop someone with an AR-15.

Not even what just happened there. And I mean, look at just the horrific, nightmarish video from what happened at Parkland. Exactly. Well, the video from the latest in Tennessee and Tennessee. Let me finish papers real quick. In North Carolina, the Charlotte Observer leads with the bill to lower the state's drunk driving threshold. Right now, drivers can be charged with a DUI if their blood alcohol level is above 0.08 percent. Lawmakers are looking to lower the legal limit to 0.05 percent. Supporters say this could help stop impaired driving and save lives. And the Kalamazoo Gazette reports Michigan is one step closer to dropping the letter grading system used to rate a school's performance. House lawmakers

approved a measure that would give public schools an index value ranging from zero to 100 instead of A through F grading scale that's currently used for annual reviews. This ranking looks at things like student growth, proficiency, and graduation rates. Some, however, say it's confusing and that letter grades are easier for parents to understand.