Morning Joe - Morning Joe 5/15/24

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

The Morning Joe panel discusses the latest in U.S. and world news, politics, sports and culture

Speaking of Cohen, today he continued testifying in former President Trump's hush money trial. During his testimony, Cohen laid out tons of evidence, including tapes, emails, photos, and calendar events. It's pretty impressive. One of Trump's lawyers might actually win a case. While outside the court defending Trump, Ramaswamy made a bit of a Freudian slip. Let's pray for our country being stronger on the other side of this disgusting sham politician prosecution. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Wednesday, May 15th, along with Joe, Willie and me. We have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire.

Do you know how long it took us to book him? It took us years to get Stephanopoulos, even longer to get Lemire. My agent's tough. I'm happy to be here this morning. Couldn't make a deal. Hardball. NBC News national affairs analyst John Heilman is here. He just wandered in.

He did, but I'm kind of excited about this. He's a partner and chief political communist at Puck. How are you liking it? I love it. I'll tell you, I got here today. Don't give me a hard time. I'm excited. Just like I've been here in this seat for at least three and a half minutes.

Three and a half minutes. Early. Right. You were early. Yelling. Yeah. While there's that. Lamira was trying to do his show.

I'm shocked. The audience heard everywhere. I'm shocked that John couldn't modulate his voice. It's really unbelievable. I usually go over and do that at Good Morning America to distract Stephanopoulos, but now I'm Stephanopoulos. Phil Heilman's here. MSNBC contributor and author of the

book, How the Right Lost Its Mind. Charlie Sykes is with us. Charlie, I mean, Charlie's going to have some fun today. You know, Charlie, I'll be honest with you. Charlie's agent, also extraordinarily tough. We usually have to, like, blow our budget for two months to ever get him on. But we saw something you wrote last night and said, we need to get the Wisconsin badger in to take it to those sycophants at the courthouse. Is that what?

Grim, depressing, depressing, depressing courthouse. Yes. All right. Tight to time this morning. And also with this former U.S. attorney and MSNBC legal analyst, Joyce Vance is here. She has just joined the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law as a senior fellow. My goodness. Congratulations. Is he roll tide?

Roll tide. I saw yesterday, you know, we're always talking about, despite the fact that Donald Trump and his supporters say how horrible America is and how terrible and how we're in decline. We're number one economically. We're number one militarily. By a long shot, we're number one culturally. Our hard, soft power, stronger than everyone else. I say universities. There's some wackos there. But universities, best universities on the planet. Yesterday, a study came out that comes out annually. America had 19 of the top 25 universities on the planet, and the list didn't even include

the best one. Really? Alabama. So, no, it just means America's even stronger. Well, you know, it's just like, we got tired of being number one. Yeah. So we decided to let Harvard do it. Take a year off. Okay. So we've got a lot to get to this morning. But we have to start, Willie, with? Yes. The New York Knickerbockers.

Really? If we may. Okay. 30-point win last night. There were a lot of concerns. Did they run out of gas after they got blown out by 30 points in India? The Mother's Day massacre. It was bad.

It was bad. There were concerns of the injuries. No depth on the bench. But, man, the Garden came alive last night for the Knicks. Jalen Brunson had 44 points, 28 in the first half. That guy, Isaiah Hartenstein, was incredible on the boards. They just – they're all heart, John Heilman. Were you there?

No, I was not there, but I was watching with George and Lucy Geist on the couch. It was – I mean, look. What an effort. Were you there? I was not. And I will tell you, I'll be there on Sunday night. There's a game set. How are you getting that?

No question. You got a guy? Yeah. You know a guy. I know a guy. I'll say, you know, they were all hard. You know, Tom Thibodeau is a great coach, but everyone, the concern around him has always been he runs his players into the ground. He has great players.

And that was the concern coming out of that Mother's Day massacre. But yesterday, man, they were just on fire. And Jalen Brunson keeps making the case for he's as good as anybody in the league, as good as anybody in the NBA. His fourth time going over 40 points in these playoffs. Incredible. Yeah, and he looked worn down on Sunday, but he really bounced back. And credit to that crowd.

That crowd can't carry. I mean, MSG and the Knicks are in the playoffs, and I say this as a Celtics fan, but MSG is a special place. and that crowd carried the Knicks. They rolled over the Pacers. Look, winning game six in Indy, that'll be hard. This is a series where the home teams won every game so far, but that means you feel pretty good about a game seven. You just believe in these guys, the way they play.

Yes, they were kind of left for dead in Indy, all the momentum with Indianapolis, but we have a season's worth of evidence that told us don't give up on these guys. They play too hard. They play too together. They're too good, and they showed it last night. Well, as we said yesterday, when people were freaking out, you know, when there was the Memorial Day massacre, when the Celtics went into L.A.

and absolutely crushed them, and I think it was game two, game one or game two of the 85 series, Lakers came back and won. So, you got to play all seven and put it behind him. You know, a guy that wishes he could put something behind him. You know where I'm going. Are we getting to the Trump trial?

Close. I just got to say in real time, Meek and I were watching the Brady roast with a friend. Everybody was laughing. I was like, why is he doing this? I know. We're watching the Brady roast with a friend. Everybody was laughing. We were just kind of here.

No, I was like, why is he doing this? I know. Right? You got to help the pacing of my story, sweetie. Yeah, but it's going to be like. I'm talking to the jury here. So we saw it. We were laughing.

And then as we walked across to our house, which we did, we looked at each other and go, did he forget that he has kids and he's got a mother of the kids? And friends. And friends. We figured that out in real time. And I think most other parents who saw that figured that out in real time. I really am completely shocked that it took Tom Brady this long and the backlash that he had to figure out that this was horrible.

And I get to say, especially when he is angry when they tell a joke about the guy we love, but his billionaire owner, but lets him skewer the mother of his children and his children. Yeah. His Giselle and also Bridget Moynihan, who's the mother of his son. They went after both of them. And it kind of happened in real time. I think it was Ben Affleck maybe who said, dude, why are you doing this? How much is enough? And when people said, well, they're paying him twenty, twenty five million dollars. He just signed a four hundred million dollar contract. He doesn't need 20 million dollars more so i think it was about self-deprecation and humanizing himself and what does fox sports think about their 400 million dollar investment i mean this guy and i'm dead serious i we're cheering for tom brady everybody likes tom brady seriously who is around him i want to know who is around him? I want to know who is around him. Like, does he listen to anybody? You're you're you're something you were so brave. No, no, you know, you've got to have

people around you that protect you that say, no, Tom, don't do that. No, Tom, if you're going to make a statement, don't say how sorry you are and then finish it by going, I hope everybody had a great time. I mean, it's just who's around this guy, Lemire? We blame you. Yes, I can tell that I am getting the brunt of this. He didn't listen to me. I wouldn't have advised him to do this, to be sure. I mean, I do think to Willie's point, I think that he is transitioning to this new part of his life. He's finally, we think, giving up on football and moving into this media portion. He's trying to humanize himself. He's doing a lot of ads, too. But this was clearly a mistake. And yesterday he said, look, I gave an interview on a podcast and he said that it's fine

to take jokes at me. I enjoyed those. But I recognize that some of them were very hurtful to people I love the most, including his children and the mothers of his children. So he expressed real regret about that, John Haman. And you could. But the question is, why didn't he see that in real time? Why didn't someone get ahead of it and say, you know, Tom, there are other ways to humanize yourself, not a roast. Have you ever seen these things? That's it. They're so mean. There are two times in a person's life when you should do a lot of self-oppo. You bring the team in to do like, what are you going to get attacked with? Or what are you going to get joked about?

One of those is if you run for president, you got to hire people to look in your background. This is what the attacks are going to be. If you're going to go dooked about. One of those is if you run for president, you got to hire people to look in your background. This is what the attacks are going to be. If you're going to go do a roast, a live television, you got to have a team that's going to go, hey, you know what? What's the worst case scenario? What are the jokes they could make about who in your life? And you would think that if you had the right team doing that right, kind of that kind of self-oppo, you would look at it if you were Tom Brady and go, I think I'll pass. Well, you know, the thing is also, he says he did it because he knew Jeff Ross. It's also where he's going to Jeff Ross, like, here's the deal, Jeff.

I'll do this. You say whatever you want to say about me. I don't really care. I'm fair game. Make fun of me all you want. Call me stupid. Call me this. Call me that.

The second anybody makes a joke about my kids or makes a joke about my kids' moms, I'm walking off the stage and you're going to be sitting there tap dancing for the next two hours. That's all he had to say. That's all he had to say. And they would have said, OK, Tom, he didn't say it. He didn't think ahead. I ask again. It's it's his responsibility. But who in the hell is around him? Does he have nobody taking care of him? Saying, Tom, don't do this. Because listen, when I say taking care of him, yeah, he's a grown man. He's been playing football since he was eight. I don't expect him to be like James Carville. You know, he's a football player. He needs to be protected and he needs to protect himself. And why are we talking about this right now? He did an interview with the Pivot podcast where he talked about all this.

And part of what he said is exactly that. He said, I got out of football. He said, I'll be honest, I'm drifting around a little bit trying to figure it out. I'm gobbling things up. Oh, that sounds fun. Let's do that. And I think he now realizes he's got to focus a little bit. Here he is on that podcast yesterday. I loved when the jokes were about me. I thought they were so fun. I didn't like the way that affected my kids. So it's the hardest part about like the bittersweet aspect of when you do something that you think is one way and then all of a sudden you realize I wouldn't do that again because of the way that affected actually the people that i care about the most in the world uh the oppo that john

was talking about that they could have done just go to youtube type in nikki glazer and i think you'll know what was coming oh my god lordy okay let me just looking very crestfallen yeah does the defense rest? As I said, I've been sitting out on this one here, but he's made a lot of curious decisions since that comeback. When he answers retirement and coming back, he's clearly, as he said, he doesn't know what to do with his life. And this was a mistake. We should all turn the page. Yeah.

Speaking of mistakes, Mika, I have said for the past couple of days, as I've said for the past couple of months that and I believe now that there is a conspiracy. I do believe in conspiracies. I think psychiatrists in blue states have conspired with the New York Times, Sienna pollsters and said, listen, we'll split the profits on psychiatric care if you guys will have the craziest methodology, which they always have. Maybe they're trying to make up for 20 when they skewed in Biden's direction by about four or five points. But every one of these New York Times, CNN polls have been wildly skewed when you compare them to other polls that come out at the same time. And for those who say that's not the case, we'll be glad here at Morning Joe. As you all know, we have a betting line. We'll be glad to take all comers who think that Donald Trump is going to win Nevada by 12 points. OK, we're going to get to that in just a moment. But first, exactly one month into Donald Trump's trial, there is new polling that finds for the first time the majority of Americans believe the former president is guilty.

In the latest Yahoo News YouGov national poll, 52 percent of adults say Trump did indeed falsify business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star. That is up four points from last month and up seven points from when the charges were filed last year. If convicted, 51 percent would approve of Trump serving prison time, while 36 percent would be against putting him behind bars. Willie, look at that. 51% would support Donald Trump. So I guess this isn't a far left-wing conspiracy. No, that's a majority of Americans. Yeah, that would be... Wait, again, I went to Alabama.

51, that's a majority. Yeah, once you get to 51. Okay. Joyce confirms. Okay, fantastic. As for the political ramifications, the poll shows Trump and President Joe Biden tied at 45 percent in this year's election among registered voters. But when asked who they would support if convicted, if Trump is convicted in the hush money case, Biden takes a seven point lead, 46 to 39 percent.

So can I look at some other polling? Yeah. Why not? The latest morning consult tracking poll over 10,000 registered voters finds 44 percent for Trump and 43 percent for Biden. That's within the poll's margin of error. It's not 12 points. It's a tie. OK. And separate new polling of registered voters finds President Joe Biden leading Donald Trump in this survey from The New York Times and Ipsos. Biden is up four points, 47 to 43 percent. We should note, though, that the margin of error is plus or minus six percent for the poll. So so so I get to say it's fascinating, Willie, and we'll get into this.

The New York Times ran a few polls. They ran the New York Times Siena poll, which they roll off. It's a serious 15, 16, 17 stories that make people run around Manhattan with their hair on fire and Washington with their hair on fire. At the same time, put this New York Times Ipsos poll. Put it back. One at the same time. Put it this New York Times Ipsos poll. Put it back. One at the same time by the New York Times. Biden's ahead by four points nationally. Four points nationally. Not even an article about it. Anyway. As for that New York Times Philadelphia Inquirer college polling of six key battleground states that came out Monday morning. There was a lot of reaction to that. As we know, some of the most trusted pollsters in the country are calling into question the methodology and results.

You think the CEO of the Nevada Independent, John Ralston, calls Trump having a 13 point lead in the state, quote, bizarre, adding that nothing remotely similar has been seen in the state in decades. The founder of UVA's Center for Politics, Larry Sabato, says he laughed after seeing the Nevada numbers and recommends others do the same. National political reporter at The Bulwark, Mark Caputo, also calls the Nevada poll, quote, a total outlier. Meanwhile, the director of polling at Harvard's Institute of Politics, John De La Volpe, is raising questions about how Biden could be losing the youth vote by 27 points in Michigan while winning it by 24 points in Wisconsin. A million monkeys with a million cell phones making calls as pollsters. That's how you do it. Finally, the New Republic's Greg Sargent expressed dismay at the survey's methodology.

This is important, which shows 20% of the likely voters polled either didn't vote in the last two midterms. Wait a second. Wait a second. They're likely voters. But they did not vote. The 20% of what the New York Times is calling likely voters. So let me finish. Didn't vote in the last general election or the last two midterms.

And the didn't vote in the last general election or the last two midterms or they have never voted at all. But wait, John Heilman, there's more. And by the way, people calling you going, oh, this is just a reaction to one poll. No, you can go back. You can look at the tape. We do this every time the New York Times Siena poll comes out. It's always an outlier. And the New York Times always gets 15 or 16 articles out of them that everybody rushes to because it says Earth ends at five o'clock. You know, go hit link at New York Times 15 times and they keep writing articles about it. There are an NPR has has found some of these voters that said, well, you know, a voter for Biden before. But and they said, but wait, this guy, we checked the voting rolls. He's never voted. Other news organizations, right? Like

three, four more examples, not just of people in the surveys, but people, the New York Times quoted in their articles of, well, here's one of many people that we interviewed that said he's disillusioned and is going to vote for Trump. No record of them voting. Yeah. OK. You know, are you feeling something? Well, I'm feeling that I'm feeling that there's I think sometimes as a general matter, there's maybe a little bit of an overreliance on voters telling the truth about things in general. Heat to say it. Reporters find this occasionally that liars, that reporters lie. Here's what I'd say about this, about this poll.

If I were to ask you this question, Joe, do you know anybody on either side who, who doesn't think that it's the case that of the battleground states that Joe Biden is stronger in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, than he is in Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. It sounds about right. I've seen some polls that show that Georgia is very close. Greg Blustein actually had an article that also says the CNN poll is wildly off. I'm not saying it's not close. I'm not going to carry water for the New York Times or for the methodology of this poll. I'll keep going back to a thing that I try to say every time we talk about these things, which is that I'm really interested. And I know you know this is like, what are the polls telling us directionally about the race? I understand there is a difference, though, with the New York Times Siena poll.

And you know this. It's given disproportionate impact. I understand. This year, this cycle, it is skewed wildly in Donald Trump's direction. Hold on. And the New York Times feasts on it with clickbait stories like a dozen at a time. And I and what I'm trying to focus on is what I think people should pay attention to. But what I'm trying to focus on is the New York Times right

now is actively shaping the election cycles where this poll comes out on a Sunday and on Monday, people go, oh, and I heard it and I'm sitting there going, oh, don't be so stupid. That's why we're doing this. So we're not. No, hold on a second. Hold on. What I hear is after these Sienna polls come out every time, New York Times poll is, oh, well, everything that Joe Biden's done since the since the the State of the Union address, all of these all this money that he's put out, all of the campaigning is for not. No, it's not. No, it's not. There's one poll that's wildly skewed every time. And it does shape if it's a New York Times poll versus a morning consult poll and the New York Times amplifies it 15, 16, 17 times. It warps reality, and everybody responds to that in the media and in the political world.

So if you're, all I'd say about this is that I agree with you that the problem to me, unless you want to suggest you think there's a conspiracy at the Times about this, which you're... The methodology is bizarre. And Larry Sabato said this. But Joe, you're saying something more than that, though. You're saying The New York Times is systematically putting these polls out in a way to try to amplify them to drive the news cycle. Yes. And I'm yes, I am saying. And I'm not I'm saying I'd like to know.

I'm curious as someone who understands your level of sophistication about reading the media, why you think that's true. What I'm trying to say is, I agree with you, the best bulwark against any polls, outliers, or anything else from people who are actually consumers of this information is to not let any given news outlet or any given poll shape your perception of the race unduly. But John, that's not realistic. And I'll tell you why it's not realistic. Because and I'll say to you, because I know people come up to you after every New York Times, CNN poll comes out. It completely changes the political battlefield out there for about a week, week and a half.

It distorts the questions that are asked of the White House. It distorts the questions that are asked of the White House. It distorts the questions that are asked of Donald Trump. It distorts all of the opinion. It distorts everything. And that keeps happening every month when this comes out. And then finally, about two weeks later, after the residue of the New York Times-Siena poll leaves, people go, oh, I think Joe Biden's on a winning streak. And then two weeks later, it comes out again and it's garbage. It's an outlier. And yes, the New York Times, when they have all of these experts questioning the methodology, when they're calling like 20 percent of the people likely voters who

have never voted before or didn't vote in the last two primaries, when they're when they're when they're even quoting people who said they're switching their vote from Joe Biden who have never voted before. I'm sorry. The New York Times has to know what they're doing. You know, most of the voters in this country don't live in Washington or New York. And certainly most of the electoral college votes are in a different part of the country. So these polls have an outsized influence on the people who are doing most of the voting. Yeah. And certainly, I mean, the White House, as you might imagine, the Biden campaign reacted with some anger about these polls. They feel like and aides have been telling me the last

couple of days this simply doesn't match up with what their own internal numbers show and what they're seeing on the ground. They do feel like the state of the union was an inflection point in this race. They think they acknowledge it's really numbers show and what they're seeing on the ground. They do feel like the State of the Union was an inflection point in this race. They think, they acknowledge it's really close. They acknowledge they're losing most likely in some of these Sunbelt states, but they think not by 10, 12 points. They think they have work to do there. And they feel that the blue wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan are right now toss-ups, but they feel like they're pretty good where they are. So let's ask Charlie Sykes. Charlie Sykes, you're there in Michigan. You're there in Wisconsin, I should say. You're one of those states where the polls suggest a tight race. Wisconsin more

consistent than others, not an outlier like in Nevada. But how do these polls match up what you're hearing each and every day, what you're seeing there on the ground? Well, it's going to be very, very close here in Wisconsin. It's always close here. And I certainly can't imagine that the youth vote in Wisconsin would be dramatically different than the youth vote in Michigan or the youth vote in Pennsylvania. That just doesn't make any sense. So, I mean, you know, we're a battleground state. I haven't seen any dramatic movement. There have been no significant developments that would suggest, you know, a major shift in the dynamics toward either candidate at this point. So I think Wisconsin is going to end up being what Wisconsin

always is in this election. You know, as if, by the way, anything about this election is predictable. And I have to say, Joe, I gave up obsessing over polls for Lent and decided that that I'm not not not not going back. I've got about 24 years of Charlie. Charlie, I did, too. But of course, unfortunately, everybody around us did not. And they they're always coming up asking. They're ready to jump off of like window ledges. And when I hear reporters going, yeah, well, you know, the Biden, all of Biden's gains, obviously for not it again, it it it twisted this one poll specifically. I don't pay attention to polls day in, day out. But Charlie, don't you agree? This one poll specifically has a disproportionate impact

when The New York Times runs 15, 16, 17, 20 stories on a poll that has horrible methodology. And by the way, I agree with your conspiracy theory about the psychiatrists and the Siena poll, because you can you can almost predict that that all the helplines just light up every Monday morning when these when these polls when these polls come out. There's a reason why it's kind of like when George W. Bush won, you know, the second time, Charlie. We've taken crazy pills. Not to pour kerosene on the fire and above the fold story about the poll this morning. Oh, my God. They will. There are there have been 15 stories so far about this one poll

that the smartest people in politics say has a screwed up. But I'm distracted by the picture of Speaker Johnson at the trial. Excellent turn. Excellent turn. Let's turn to you. Talk about a segue. Well, she's good. She's a pro. We'll talk about the politics of this in a moment. But first, let's talk about the testimony. Joyce Michael Cohen was back on the stand. We turned from direct questioning to cross-examination from Donald Trump's defense team yesterday. What were your takeaways of the day in court? So, look, it's still early times. There's another full day of cross-examination coming.

But I think it's safe to say that Michael Cohen exceeded expectations. He kept a calm demeanor. And a big part of this is less the evidence that's coming out and more the way the jury perceives Michael Cohen. They have to believe him in order to convict. There's just too much in his testimony. If he continues on this path, he may just pull it out. So it seemed to be that Todd Blanche, the attorney for Donald Trump, was pushing the idea that Michael Cohen was sort of a jilted former employee of Donald Trump. He brought up the social media posts about the Cheeto dust and all that stuff, said this is personal for you effectively and also that you've been a proven liar before not to be trusted. Did he make a convincing argument of either of those yesterday? You know, he may have more, but I think what we saw yesterday won't work. I've had a lot of cases

where that's the strategy on cross-examination and where the defense lawyer tries to imply that the witness is biased against the defendant. Well, look, these witnesses, they're always biased against the defendant and the prosecution handles that. So the prosecution also suggested that Cohen would be their last witness. And we don't know if the defense is going to call any. I mean, Trump still toys the idea that he might take the stand. I think we all are skeptical of that. So what sort of timeline are we looking at here? Could this all we've been moving to summations and wrapping up as soon as next week?

Yeah, I think that's a possibility. I'm a little bit surprised that we're not hearing expert testimony on the campaign finance violations that have to be proven. It's possible the defense could put on a witness that'll talk about that. But closing argument, that's not going to take a full day, I wouldn't think. And then the jury is off to the races once they're instructed by the judge on the law. And how do you think from from beginning to this point, how how do you think it's going for the prosecution? You know, it is tough to say what we're doing right now is we're listening to the story of all the evidence. I mean, America is obsessing line by line over the questions. But the judge is about to tell the jury, you have to find two things. You have to find that Donald Trump created or caused to be created false business records.

And you have to find that he did that with an intent to defraud, an intent to commit or conceal another crime. We haven't really been looking at the evidence in that legal framework so far, but that's what the judge will tell the jury they have to do. And that's a little bit different from listening to the story and saying, oh, I really think Donald Trump did this, which is more of the zeitgeist approach. On those two questions, is the prosecution carrying its burden? You know, that's up to the jury, Joe, as you well know. Right, right.

From what you've seen. I mean, I think on the first one, the issue is, have they successfully put Donald Trump in the mix? There is no doubt that false business records were created. We've seen 34 of them. Michael Cohen, his testimony is corroborated to the extent that there are people who say meetings took place. There are phone records of calls. And then it comes down to, do you believe him?

Based on all the other evidence that's out there? Right. Alan Weisselberg's handwritten notes on an invoice saying gross this up. There is a lot of corroborating evidence. The jury doesn't have to take a huge leap of faith to believe Michael Cohen. It's more like taking a couple more steps on a straight line. Can I ask you a layman's question? In a nation where 77 million Americans voted for Donald Trump, what's the possibility that the prosecution is going to

get 12 people finding him guilty? You know, juries are very different than public opinion. And I'll just say as Pollyannish as I think it sometimes sounds, as a prosecutor, you're used to looking at 12 American citizens and asking them to do their job, to listen to the evidence, to understand the law, to set aside any external noise. And you've seen they they take it seriously. I mean, they do it and they do it in public corruption cases. And I think the question that we're struggling with is whether there's something about Donald Trump that's different, even in this context of a jury. Can I ask you two quick questions? One, do you think that in the end that Michael Cohen is crucial to this? Or there's this counter argument, which is they don't necessarily even need to put Michael Cohen on. You think he's important or not important?

Yeah, I'm firmly in the camp that believes that Michael Cohen's testimony was essential. I don't think the prosecution could have tried this case without putting him on simply because the defense would have asked for an adverse inference, right? If the government has Michael Cohen available and they don't put him on, you should assume, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that something he would say would be harmful to them. And as we sit here today, do you see a path to reasonable doubt for one juror? There is always a path to reasonable doubt for one juror. Our MSNBC legal analyst, Joyce Vance. Thank you so much.

So great to see you. Thanks for joining up with all this. Still ahead on Morning Joe. We're going to get to the political side of Trump's trial and how some of the former president's sink events. Oh, my God. The matching ties. The matching ties.

Oh, my God. The matching ties. They're wearing matching. Look at this. I think we should all do this in the press conference in front of Jonathan. Who is coordinating that war group? That's what I want to know. So that hurts me.

Especially when this guy, the governor, Burgum, said he would never do business with Donald Trump several months ago because you are judged by the company you keep. Right. And yesterday he said, I'm here voluntarily. Plus, after withholding weapons last week, the Biden administration is moving forward with the one billion dollar arms deal for Israel. We'll have that new reporting also ahead inside the strange, strained courtship of Donald Trump and one of the biggest donors in the 2024 election cycle. Vanity Fair's Gabe Sherman joins us with States Capitol, 633 in the morning. Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville. I like purple.

Oh, man. Says he accompanied Donald Trump to court this week to, quote, overcome the gag order imposed on the former president. Interview yesterday with Newsmax, the Alabama senator discussed his decision to speak outside the courthouse on Monday, where among other things, he called into question the citizenship of the jurors serving on the trial. Mental anguish is trying to be pushed on Republican candidate

for the president of the United States this year. That's all this is. He's been here a month. He's been here a month. I am disappointed in looking at the American, supposedly American citizens in that courtroom. This judge has pretty much got everybody hogtied, I would call, from President Trump on down, anybody on his side. Hopefully we have more and more senators and congressmen go up every day to represent him and be able to go out and overcome this gag order. And that's one of the reasons we went is to be able to speak our peace for President Trump. Supposedly American citizens, says Senator Tuberville. Donald Trump was joined in court yesterday by more of his allies who are

willing to help him get around that gag order, among them House Speaker Mike Johnson, who repeated many of Donald Trump's false claims about the cases against him. The man who was second in line to the presidency also criticized Michael Cohen's testimony and attacked the judge's daughter. Well, really, let me ask you something. What would happen if Nancy Pelosi went to Hunter Biden's trial and attacked the key witness against Hunter Biden and then attacked the judge's daughter. Let's just play that game out for a second. Wall to wall coverage, full meltdown, full meltdown.

It's something she wouldn't do because, of course, you never do it. Alex, do we have the suits, the matching outfits? I think that's do we have that? That's the picture of the day. Let's go to Cyborg from the multiverse. So this is all the the men who showed up to support Donald Trump yesterday, Republican congressman, a governor of North Dakota doing, of course, the people's business of North Dakota by lower Manhattan. Vivek Ramaswamy was there as well, all wearing the same suit and the same tie, the red tie favored by Donald Trump.

Charlie Sykes, what do you see in these images? I see politicians running toward the sound of the sleaze because that's what their master is demanding them. I suppose at this point, we shouldn't be surprised, but it's still shocking. It's still amazing that you have these politicians embracing Donald Trump in the middle of a hush money trial, a felon. He could walk out of that courtroom as as a convicted felon. Look, you know, it's one thing for Republicans to say, OK, we like Donald Trump because of his policies on taxes or on the border or on education. But what's happening now is that it's become the new litmus test. You have to embrace it all.

You have to embrace the election denial, the lies. You have to embrace the insurrection. You have to embrace the hush money to a porn star, the multiple affairs. You have to embrace the obstruction of justice. You have to make yourself part of the obstruction of justice. I mean, that's that was one of those moments where you go, OK, we need to remind everybody that this is not remotely normal, that the speaker of the House of Representatives would show up at the felony trial, supporting Donald Trump, not in spite of his character, but embracing all of it and then basically using his position to to to to

violate the gag order, to say things that the judge says do not, you know, do we know this? This would affect the trial. Now, whether this is going to have any effect on the jury, we don't know whether it is going to intimidate the jury, whether it's going to impress the jury. But again, we're seeing a scene in American politics that we have never seen before and which was unimaginable until the last two days. And by the way, as you guys have pointed out, so much for the party of of morality, so much for the party of law and order. Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney mocked Mike Johnson for his appearance at the trial. She posted on social media, quote, I have to admit, I'm surprised that Speaker Johnson wants to be in the I cheated on my wife with a porn star club. I guess he's not that concerned

with teaching morality to our young people after all. Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland also called out the speaker, sarcastically telling the Daily Beast, quote, I don't find anything unusual about a fundamentalist theocrat who thinks the Bible is the supreme law of the land, attending the legal proceedings of an adjudicated sexual assailant and world class fraudster and con man for cooking the books to cover a posh money payments he made to a porn star to conceal his adulterous affair. Do you? Raskin making a reference there to Johnson telling Fox News about his worldview shortly after he was elected speaker last fall. I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media,

they said, it's curious, people are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That's my worldview. That's what I believe. Joe, I know you're a Bible scholar. We've talked about the Bible a lot on this show various times. I remember when Mike Johnson said that thing about how, you know, I'm just, if you don't want to know who I am, just look to the tech commandments, basically. It's an incredible spectacle. I mean, it's almost more of the two things that are incredible about this. One is that the Speaker of the House is doing this. The other is that it's this Speaker of the House that's willing to come down here and stand up for Donald Trump. I mean, it's like he has no memory of things that he said just apparently.

There's barely no memory of things he said just a few months ago. Not a Bible scholar, but my parents did drag me to the church four times a week. Yes. Well, that makes you a Bible scholar. I loved it. I loved every second of it. But Charlie Sykes, again, here's a guy I thought. I mean, you go back to the very beginning. We criticized Mike Johnson for saying, just look at the Bible. When Mike Johnson's speakership was built on the biggest lie in American politics. Right. Specifically, the big lie. He was the guy that went around with with the sign up sheet to support Ken Paxton's big lie out of Texas, trying to

overthrow American democracy. So you could start there and you could go all the way to what happened yesterday, unfortunately. And, you know, like I said yesterday, Charlie, and I'm sure you're the same way. I'm cheering for Speaker Mike Johnson, just like I would cheer for Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, just like I would cheer for any speaker. I want them to succeed because I want America to succeed. And yesterday was a very, very sad spectacle for America and for an institution I love. It was a bizarre spectacle. No, I mean, it's worth remembering that Mike Johnson became the speaker because he had a coup on his resume, because he did play the role in the big lie. But, you know, I mean, the reality is that that Mike Johnson, that Mike Johnson

as a speakership hangs by a thread that that he depends upon the the favor of Mar-a-Lago, that all Donald Trump has to do is turn on him and he's out. So here you have Mike Johnson, who survived that that vacate the speaker vote with Democratic support, basically showing where the real power in the Republican Party is. And by the way, also not a surprise that he was fundraising off of it. We know with a picture of him and Donald Trump, you know, live from Donald Trump's trial for the various frauds to try to raise money. But this is who Mike Johnson is. And the hypocrisy is almost too obvious to have to mention that here is somebody who has built his entire identity

on his christian morality and and apparently he and his son have a deal where they monitor one another's porn you know use whatever um this is a trial about donald trump having an affair i mean well having a having a fling with a porn star and a playboy model and then lying about it. And there's Mike Johnson. I am there with you. I am with you on this, not just with you on taxes, not just with you on the border. I am with you on this.

And I'm willing to help you obstruct justice by violating the gag order. I'm still thrown off by the whole thing. You were a little too deep in the shag carpet, as they used to say in the 1970s. I heard nothing after that. Charlie Sykes, please figure out what those youngins are doing in Wisconsin and Michigan and why there's a 50 point swing between the two. According to the New York Times, see in a poll, there will be 38 articles about that coming up in the next two days. Thank you, Charlie. We appreciate it. Listen, you know, I said on the show I was very grateful for Mike Johnson for finally approving aid to Ukraine.

But the New York Times right right next to this poll story right here, which one of 800. But but a very important story here about Russia starting to make really rapid gains in Ukraine. The reason why? Because Donald Trump wanted to help Vladimir Putin and he froze the House of Representatives. And Mike Johnson was obsequious for far too long. And when Johnson finally changed his mind, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt just because. But, you know, I think by that point, I think the chairman, the responsible people in the party had come to him and said, listen, we're going to get this through with or without you. So that's what he did. But but I just want to I just want to say, even while we thank him for what he did, the cost of his delay,

devastating to Ukraine and a gift that keeps on giving to Vladimir Putin. Yeah, two quick things here. Charlie said Speaker Johnson clearly paying a debt to Donald Trump. Trump pushed off MTG's motion to vacate. This is Johnson saying, thank you for keeping me in my post. However, as Charlie also noted, he stayed in the post also because Democrats came to his aid. And in the aftermath of his appearance in the courthouse yesterday, a number of Democrats saying, some I spoke to, others giving interviews to other media outlets saying, that's not happening again.

He just burned that bridge. We will not bail him out if there's another effort to push him out. So that's a consequence of what Johnson did yesterday. And to a larger point, yes, Joe, the U.S. officials I've talked to the last couple of days watching the progress in Russia say, yeah, USAID is starting to show up in the front, but it's going to be a process. And that delay was costly. And we're seeing Russia take over a number of villages near Kharkiv. They think that advances will continue as Russia sets up for what they think will be a significant spring-summer offensive. All right. Let's turn to special correspondent at Vanity Fair, Gabe Sherman. He joins the table and you're looking into the strange, strained courtship of Donald Trump and mega donor Jeff. Yes. Who is that? Earlier this year, Donald Trump appeared to be flip on his his position on TikTok,

the app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, and posting on social media in March to warn against banning the platform. Compare that to his comments four years ago, shortly before announcing a ban on TikTok for, quote, impairing the national security of the United States. Take a look. We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options, but a lot of things are happening. So we'll see what happens. But we are looking at a lot of alternatives. He at the time, he thought TikTok was a TBS game show that came on at 630 weeknights.

But it was the metronome on the piano at Mar-a-Lago. But Gabe, Donald Trump finds himself in this position where he actually is supporting the communist Chinese government continuing to control political thought, especially of younger voters, while the rest of Washington is now saying, no, no, this is too dangerous for America to let the Chinese communist government. Yeah. It government into our- It's a rare source of bipartisan agreement in Washington. Right, exactly. But he shifted and he shifted in part because of this huge donor.

Yeah, I mean, Donald said, we'll see what happens. Well, what's happening is that Donald Trump needs money badly. One of the campaign's real weak spots this cycle is a lack of major fundraising and donors. And Jeff Yass, who's a financier based in Pennsylvania, he's the largest single political donor this cycle, has yet to donate to Donald Trump's campaign. And what does Jeff Yass own? His firm is the single largest American investor in TikTok. So connect the dots. Donald Trump flips his position, throws his weight behind this investment,

perhaps seeking to get a donation. This boils down to a very simple thing. Donald Trump looks at politics through the prism. What helps Donald Trump? It's not about ideology. It's not about policy. It is about what advances his own personal and financial agenda. And so Jeff Yass went to Mar-a-Lago. They met. He met with Donald Trump at Palm Beach. A week later, Donald Trump puts out that post we saw on social media, making the case to keep TikTok around. But I note that Mr. Yass is a libertarian and a never-Trumper. Exactly. Who spent a lot of money to buy ads to keep Donald Trump from winning.

So is he really going to throw his support behind Trump? Well, this is what's fascinating. Jeff Yass came up through the world of professional gambling. That's kind of his framework for investing. And in gambling, you always try to play the sucker, right? So Jeff Yaz has gotten Donald Trump to flip his position on TikTok to support his investment without having to donate to his campaign. I mean, who's the sucker? I mean, that really points to how desperate the Trump campaign is, because we keep hearing, right?

You see the numbers. Yeah. People, we keep going, well, you know, I guess maybe some of the same people that do the New York Times, Ciena poll, but they go, you know, Donald Trump, he's got a lot of billionaires that are down at Moral Lago. They're behind the gates and he's going to, you know what? It's all talk. Yeah. Because he's so desperate.

They're pulling people in. You know, any billionaire they find on the street, they drag them in. But anyway, this guy, though, again, he still hasn't given, has he? No, he's not given. And as I reported on my piece, his team says he doesn't plan to give. So again, he has all the leverage over Donald Trump.

He's dangling his money. Art of the deal. Art of the deal. Dangling his money to get Trump to flip on TikTok. John Heilman. Just give me a sense that you're we gave you you spent a lot of time thinking about trump and money right so this is a really good example it's like yes it's almost like kind of trumping trump at this point right because he's he's going to betray him on the base of your reporting yeah yeah he's like chris christie's camp he's been at race camp is this the greatest sign of trump's desperation financially

or do you know of other things that are illustrative of the fact of how desperate Trump is in financial terms heading into the general election? He was selling Bibles, we know. Yes. Selling sneakers. So again, between his legal bills and his campaign's anemic fundraising, I mean, this is, as Joe said, a sign of desperation. Joe Biden's campaign has something on the order of 100 million more on cash on hand than the Trump campaign. You know? Yeah. Could I ask, could you at least take one of us with you where you're going next? And please let that person be me.

No. Taking my two kids. I think you were talking about going to Cannes on Friday. Oh, it's gone. You're taking your kids instead of me. I'm taking my kids. And tell our viewers, if you will. Let's see the reason why you couldn't swap one kid out for you.

Exactly. Tom Brady would. Could you tell us why you're going to Cannes? Very excited. I wrote a movie about Donald Trump's rise in New York City in the 1970s and his relationship with Roy Cohn. It's called The Apprentice. Right. Reclaiming that title. And it's a character study about the formative years where Donald Trump became Donald Trump. And he learned that at the feet of his master, Roy Cohn, who taught him everything he's using today.

You know, it is still hard to believe, Willie, that when you're looking at, is it Turning Point? Is that the Netflix series on the Cold War? And you're looking at these 1950s pictures of Roy Cohn in the middle of McCarthyism. And it's still hard to connect something that happened that long ago with a guy who is channeling Roy Cohn every day in front of our eyes in Manhattan. It is. He's at the middle of that timeline, reaches back to the McCarthy hearings and forward to Donald Trump, although he's long since dead. But to Donald Trump of twenty twenty four and never apologize, attack, attack, always be on the offense. Now, do you go up to the point where Roy Cohn got AIDS and Donald Trump dropped him as a friend? It's the whole relationship. OK, so that is what happened right now. That's incredible. Look forward to that. Very intimate character. Congratulations.

I cannot wait. And by the way, Lily Gladstone was asked at the press conference yesterday about you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I was grateful. They said, let's keep an open heart and open mind and just judge the movie as a film, as a piece of art. It's art. There you go. Vanity Fair special correspondent Gabriel Sherman. Thank you so much. We'll be reading Gabe's piece online. It's online now for everybody. Coming up, a former New York Times reporter is questioning whether the progressive movement is actually helping people. She joins us ahead with a look at her new book entitled Morning After the Revolution Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History. Morning Joe.

A few minutes before the top of the hour. Our next guest questions the current state of the progressive movement and whether it is actually helping people. In a new book entitled Morning After the Revolution Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History, Nellie Bowles calls out major progressive actions over the past few years and explains why she, a Hillary Clinton voter who lived in progressive San Francisco, decided the movement was too much. And Nellie joins us now. She's a reporter and head of strategy at the Free Press. Also with us, the president of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton is back with us this morning. Welcome. Congratulations on the book. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

And Rev Nelly says you say this better than she does. So maybe I'll just ask you what you can give my book pitch way better. When you talk about the latte liberals, you talk about some time. And this is something took a while for a lot of people to figure out the disconnect, the disconnect between the let's just say it really extreme white progressives and black Americans, Hispanic Americans. And you see it in polling one poll after another. Right. I think you see it in the polls because that's the reality. And I think what she's writing about is real. There are those that are committed toward real progressive change, moving the country forward. And then there are those that come on that are removed from the reality that we're fighting and just exploit it because they want to charge. They're the latte liberals that sit up all day and philosophize and romanticize rather than deal with the reality of people's lives.

I can't tell you how many cities we've gone into to fight for certain cases, certain situations with National Action Network. And you get those latte liberals and say, oh, no, we don't need the old God. And then two months later, the families never hear from them again. The community never hear from them again. And all they have is left is the people that they were told to stay away from. And they exploit it. They're performative. They are not people that really believe in anything long range. You had a movement with very beautiful rhetoric that didn't actually want to engage with a lot of the tangible, hard work of doing kind of anti-racism, of doing progress, which involves compromise and getting legislation done and involves the hard work of talking to people you disagree with. And the movement instead said that anti-racism or progress can be sort of an internal process, that we actually can, instead of trying to make

laws that make things better for black Americans, that we can actually work on our internal whiteness and our internal, there was a list that came out that I read in the book, the characteristics of white supremacy, the characteristics of whiteness. And this list includes things like perfectionism, a sense of urgency, individualism. I mean, this is a crazy notion. Right. And fragility, where they get you coming and going. If you if you say you're racist and you're racist and if you don't say you're racist, then you're fragile. Then you're right here. But, you know, the thing is,

just to follow up with what Rev says for people who are watching or say, wait, what are they talking about? We went back to 2020, right? When there were all the chants, mainly from white people, about defunding the police and Park Slope and places like that.

And Rev and I brought up that the New York Times and the Rev saw it on the ground that actually black representatives in the Bronx, in Brooklyn said, no, no, no. Don't defund the police. We need more in our schools. We need more protecting our children as they walk from home to school. We need more guarding our stores. You people in Park Slope and you people in Brooklyn Heights, fine.

But we actually need help. Yeah. And I think you had a media movement that said, basically, let's not cover this complexity. Let's not cover the reality on the ground. Let's just look at the rhetoric. Let's just look at the language. Let's look at the beauty of the movement and the ideals. But the reality on the ground, which I tried to do in the book, was go to different scenes, go to different places, talk to people. And the reality on the ground is, of course, more complicated. And, of course, people in black communities wanted more police.

Or a lot of the protests in 2020, not to just harp on the Black Lives Matter movement, but a lot of those protests and the neighborhoods that were burned out, those were poor minority neighborhoods. The people who suffered the most were the people who had underinsured shops. And these were not the rich white business owners. And you've got to remember, one of the reasons that I talked about that with Joe is that in the 80s and 90s, we were fighting to get more blacks in the police department to reform how policing was done. One of them was a cop named Eric Adams, who's now the mayor. So how do you go from saying, why do we have less representation of blacks and browns

in the police department, in the hierarchy, to defund and destroy the whole? It's an idealistic thing for people that are removed from the ground. It's more fun. It's revolution. We've gone through the same thing with a lot of the uprisings. We go, you see George Floyd killed two days of riots. Four days later, when we're fighting to get the special prosecutor who ended up getting the case, the attorney general, and when, what happened to those people that burned down Target? The family of George Floyd hasn't heard from them since then because this whole idealism does not make real change.

So now I can ask you to branch out to other issues where you think that the progressive movement has maybe fallen short or is not actually helping people. I think that when we talk about let's say, I mean, there's, I could give you a laundry list. When we talk about, let's say, homelessness and the drug situation, I'm from San Francisco. I have a chapter in the book all about San Francisco and kind of how that, how anyone who's honest with themselves and who's walking around the city realizes that the reality on the ground is very different from what we're being told. And the reality is that people are dying on the streets and dying of fentanyl overdoses. More people died of fentanyl overdoses than died of COVID in the height of COVID in San Francisco. And we're being told that

it's the progressive response to walk past someone who's overdosing on fentanyl on the sidewalk and to just walk past it, to know that the government's taking care of them in some way and that we just allow them to stay there. And Nellie, what happened in Oregon? Oh, well, yeah, then it was criminalized and the death soared, addiction soared. And now now they're having to completely walk it back because it was an abject failure caused more suffering. Yeah. And this was a place where in the book I write about kind of my own transformation or my

own realization that I was wrong about some things. Not super wrong, just a little wrong. But like I used to be really for drug legalization. I thought that seemed really intuitive and it made sense. But if you open your eyes and you look at an American city, especially in the American West, it's less out here. It's more in California, Oregon. You have to be honest with yourself. And I think that's what a lot of the progressive movement hasn't done. And that makes it ripe for a lot of reporting, but also makes it ripe for a little bit of fun because they're not they're just like

refusing to see reality. So if you look at reality, you see the absurdity. Now, do you think some of the most extreme elements of progress? Progressivism are given too much attention. They're amplified too much that TikTok, for example, feeds them a narrative about Israel that feeds some of the protests that you see on college campuses, which many of those students were there in good faith. They don't like what they're seeing. Like we've said, we don't like what we're seeing on the ground in Gaza in terms of the humanitarian crisis. But we learn later what most people suspected. There were professionals behind a lot of it. Do you think that we talk too much in the media or other places about the most extreme elements? I think that happens for both sides.

But I think when it comes to the progressive movement, yes, very much. Because the average American is really normal politically, is mixed politically even, is a complicated political mess, doesn't fit in one of these boxes. But the reason that the progressive movement is talked about so much

or has such a prominent place in our conversation is because a lot of our American media in the mainstream is super progressive and bought into a lot of these ideas and a lot of these philosophies. And so it became the operating system of a lot of our great media companies. No, but I think your point is very well taken because I consider myself progressive. A lot of people are progressive, but not extreme, just like you have people on the right that are not extreme. And and I know people that are very conservative, that are very supportive of the conservative movement, but they wouldn't go down and join the trumpets in the chorus line. And I think they're not all in Charlotte. And I think that that is where we've got we've got to recapture what is progressive.

And the real definition is progressive should be people that are getting concrete progress, not just making noise. Yeah. All right. So interesting. The new book is Morning After the Revolution Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History. Nellie Bowles, thank you very much. Congratulations on the book. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.