Morning Joe - Morning Joe 5/19/25

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Former President Joe Biden diagnosed with aggressive form of prostate cancer

I was on the phone with Doug McMillan, the CEO of Walmart, yesterday. And Walmart is, in fact, going to, as you describe it, eat some of the tariffs, just as they did in 18, 19 and 20. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant yesterday saying Walmart won't pass along the cost of Trump's tariffs onto consumers after the country's largest retailer warned last week it would have to raise prices because of those tariffs. That comes as Besant is also downplaying one agency downgrading the United States credit rating.

The downgrade was fueled in part by the federal government's growing budget deficit. But late last night, House Republicans advanced the president's multi-trillion dollar spending package. We're following that new development also today. President Trump is set to hold a high-stakes phone call with Vladimir Putin later this morning. And a big win over the weekend for journalism. Journalism has won the Preakness Stakes! The horse journalism won the Preakness Stakes on Saturday with a move by the jockey that's being described as bravery.

It was incredible. I mean, Nika. Frightening to watch in some ways, but it was incredible. It really did. And we'll show more of it in a little bit. But to see the horse jammed against the railed and then actually burst through two other horses and charged down the end like that, one of the most memorable preaknesses that anybody can remember. The ending, the home stretch just on the last second decision making here was was uh... one for the history books truly now good morning and welcome to morning joe it's monday may nineteenth with us we have the cohost of our fourth hour john from the mayor he's contributing writer at the atlantic covering the white house and national politics u.s. special correspondent for bbc News and the host of The Rest Is Politics podcast,

Cady Kay, and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle is here this morning. And it's good to have you, Mike. We have a lot to cover. And we'll start with this. Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. According to his personal office, Biden, who is 82 years old, had been experiencing symptoms and was officially diagnosed on Friday. The cancer has spread from his prostate to other tissue in his body, a source familiar

with the matter, tells NBC News. The Biden family is now reviewing treatment options, including hormone therapy. It's unclear where he will receive treatment, but the former president is currently at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. Several Democratic lawmakers offered their sympathies and prayers yesterday, including Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi. President Trump also extended best wishes to the Biden family writing on social media, quote, We wish Joe a fast and successful recovery. And Joe, we've all been taking this news in incredibly sad for Joe Biden and for the family. It's very serious news when you have prostate cancer

and there are some reports that it's spread to the bones. And I think there's a lot of questions as well. Yeah, there are. Mike Barnicle, you have been a friend of Joe Biden's, have known Joe Biden for decades. Just curious your thoughts this morning. You know, Joe, it's, he is certainly used to being surrounded by death and dying. He's carried a cross for his children and his wife who were killed within days after

he won his first election to the United States Senate in the early 1970s. He lost his son, Bo, during the later parts of this, you know, the decade, last decade. So he's used to the sadness. And there's a permanent sadness to Joe Biden that is hard to register. On this one, the diagnosis, you know, I don't know enough about the diagnosis in terms of the medical future for Joe Biden, but there are treatments. As Mika pointed out, the family is going to seek second opinions and further treatment

options. So we'll see what happens. But he's had a tough ride these past six or seven months, both publicly and now personally. Yeah. Let's bring in right now former Obama White House advisor for health policy oncologist, Dr. Zeke Emanuel. Zeke, let's talk first of all, just based on, again, it's just a scarce bit of information that you have, but prostate cancer that spread to the bone, what's the prognosis?

Well, first of all, I want to express my sympathy and I hope Joe responds to treatment, President Biden, very well. The fact is that very few people get diagnosed this advanced. About seven percent of all prostate cancer in the country gets diagnosed when you have a lesion that's in the bone. And therefore, it's metastatic and incurable. The prostate cancer will not go away. He will have it. That doesn't mean he's going to die from it because there are a lot of treatments. There's androgen blockade

that's basically preventing the testosterone from circulating. There's also androgen receptor signaling inhibitors, a second line of treatment that prevents when the antigen does bind to the cell from it doing its action and turning on genes. So there's a lot there and then there's chemotherapy beyond that. There's also treatment for that metastatic lesion near the spine if it's a threat. So he has a lot of treatments and he could live a long time. We just don't know. Right. Yeah, you had said that very few people have it actually diagnosed at this late stage,

that that's rare. Doesn't it take some time for prostate cancer to develop to a point where it would spread to the bones? Oh, he's had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading. That's right. It's a little surprising. I look back at the records and there's no evidence that when he got his health status and the medical records were released that he had a prostate specific antigen. Now it is true that a lot of people recommend

not doing a prostate specific antigen after 70, but President Biden's been in public life a very long time. He was vice president and had a lot of exams under 70. So it's a little surprising that they didn't do it. And maybe President Biden decided he didn't want the test. Many men do decide they don't want a PSA. But this is, it is also aggressive. When we talk about aggressive, part of what we mean is that Gleason score, that score is from two, well, it's two up to 10, and he's at a nine. And that means that the cancer doesn't look normal.

It looks very abnormal, which is probably why it's in the bone. And as you point out, Joe, it's been around for a very long time in President Biden years. Exactly how many we don't know, obviously. And it is a little surprising to many of us oncologists that he wasn't diagnosed earlier. So you had said that some men do not get prostate exams after the age of 70. But some men, most men, aren't President of the United States. If you were a President's

physician and trying to figure out how the state of his health and how he was doing, would this not seem to be a very normal routine task that you would insist a president have? Well it's a complicated area. So because it's slow going a lot of people say unless the individual has 10 or more years to live, you know, estimate it, that you don't do this test. And then if they do you have a discussion with them about whether to actually perform the test. I don't know what happened in that discussion.

There are people, and I'm actually one of them, that would say, I don't want to see that test because part of that test is you get a lot of over-treatment. It's not a very accurate test. Sometimes people say, take the test and then you can do an MRI to evaluate whether if you get a high score, whether in fact there is cancer, there are a lesion that would require biopsying. So there's a lot of recommendation to discuss it. I don't know what President Biden and his doctor discussed, but I think you are hinting at the other element, which is that President Obama had this test, President Bush had this test. It is a little surprising that the doctor didn't take it.

And if he took it and didn't report it and it was elevated, that is another case of doctors not being straightforward with us. We've had several of them with President Trump, especially around his COVID diagnosis. And if that is true, that would be very troubling. Again, Zeke, you're an oncologist, obviously, incredibly respected, you believe that it is likely, just for those just tuning in, you believe it is likely if this prostate cancer has spread to the bone that he could have had it for up to a decade, but certainly it's likely, would it be fair to say it's likely to have had this for at least

several years Oh More than several years you don't get prostate cancer Again, I just I just want to stop you so yours This is this is not speculation if you have prostate cancer that is spread to the bone Then he's most certainly, you were saying, had it when he was president of the United States. Oh, yeah.

He did not develop it in the last 100, 200 days. He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021. Yes, I don't think there's any disagreement about that. And I'm just curious again, if your doctor to President of the United States that is a male, that is an older man, would prostate test, and again we're just talking about a PSA screening, a blood test that you could do along with all the other blood tests, it's not even that it would be intrusive, would this not be one of the first tests that you would conduct

as a White House doctor? If you're a White House doctor in this situation, I think you would certainly discuss it with the president and talk about the pros and cons. I think if you then ask, well, if President Biden says, well, if I'm your father, which patients often do, what would you recommend? I think the fact is that most White House doctors would recommend getting the test.

And again, the evidence is look at President Obama, President Bush, younger than President Biden, and they both got the test. There was some criticism when President Obama got the test that he got it too young in things. But I think in this case, if especially for the president thinking that he's going to live another decade, you would probably you would recommend to him to get the test. Now, I want to say there's people and I'm one of them that are sort of skeptical of this test and don't really want to have this test.

But that is quite common and I should say I have had this test mostly to get insurance, interestingly enough. If you apply for insurance, this is one of the tests that they require just like an HIV test and cholesterol screening tests and other things. So I think your speculation, Joe, while most White House doctors would recommend this test to the president and would say, I think you should get it, is probably true.

Now, the president has the ultimate decision. They just can't take his blood and not talk to him about it. Yeah, but certainly, especially if you're, we're not even talking about living another 10 years, we were talking about the decision to run another four years, certainly this would be a test that would need to be taken. Yeah. Zeke, are we operating on, just listening to to you and Joe here, trying to figure out what to deduce here, but are we operating on the assumption that

President Joe Biden had prostate cancer for at least several years and either did not test for it and then discovered it just now? Is that possible? And would a doctor, a White House doctor and the team, would they agree not to test for that? Again, if you're a doctor respecting medical ethics, you talk about it with the patient, do they want this test or not? You talk about the pros and cons. You talk about it with the patient. Do they want this test or not? You talk about the pros and cons. You talk about what the recommendations are of various organizations, including the American Neurological Association,

the American Cancer Society. So the ultimate decision is President Biden's. I would say that it is surprising he did not get this test, given the fact that the proclivity of presidential physicians is test more rather than less. And I think it is a little it's a little strange. We do know from the population, like I said, seven percent of people diagnosed with prostate cancer get it diagnosed at the metastatic moment when it's already metastatic.

So it's not unusual that people can say, no, I don't want the test or their doctor doesn't recommend it or they don't get the test for one reason or another. Grasping at every option here, is it possibly had the test, can this test miss it? Given the fact that, the answer is of course, but given the fact that he has an annual exam, test is unlikely to miss it. Given the fact that it's a Gleason 9, which means it's pretty wild looking in the sense of underneath it doesn't look like a normal prostate cancer, a prostate cell looks like a prostate cancer cell which is looks more of you know atypical. It's not likely that his

prostate specific antigen, his PSA which is the test we're talking about, would have been in the normal range. It would have been elevated above four and that is it. That does say you should do something about it. Now, you might test it again a few months later and see if the number has gone up or gone down, that you've gotten ever in reading for one reason or another. But I don't, that doesn't seem likely in this situation. Either they didn't test for it or they test for it, they didn't report it, and we didn't

get the information as a public. And Jonathan Amir, this from the Washington Post, as to Mika's point and what Mika and Dr. Emanuel were just talking about, the Washington Post reports, Otis Brawley, a medical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University who treats patients with metastatic prostate cancer, said it would not be surprising in previous prostate exams or screenings while Biden was president, failed to turn up indications of cancer. Quote, we need a better test. To that, though, I would just say, Jonathan, as Zeke said, if you are having regular screenings and regular testings, as we would suspect any president would or at least should, even over the age of 70, especially if they're going

to run for another term, then of course questions would arise if a test would miss it that many times, especially with the spread as far as it has spread. Yeah. I mean, it's really not a perfect test, as the doctor said, but seems sort of improbable that a president of the United States wouldn't be tested, wouldn't have the full array of exams here. And the questions surrounding this come, of course,

at a moment when President Biden and his team and his family are facing a whole slew of other questions about the last few years, about his health and fitness for office, about his decision to run again for reelection. And this is certainly just gonna add to that. Dr. Emanuel, obviously you're not the president's physician. You have not examined the files, but in broad terms, from what you know about this case, he's you know,

he's no longer president, he's not running again, but he is still father, grandfather, former president of the United States. What sort of prognosis do you have here? What sort of chances are there that some of these treatments may work for an 82 year old man whose the cancer has spread to his bones? You would start with this androgen blockade treatment. That's probably what he's going to get to reduce the testosterone level. That is going to probably work and then you're going to... one possibility is it could work for a very long time and one possibility is it'll work for a while and then he'll become what we call androgen resistant and then they will have to switch treatments. The other thing that you have to watch in this case, again I haven't seen the file,

haven't seen the scans, is he has a lesion to the bone and the bone is the spinal column and you have to worry about that encroaching as if it grows encroaching on the spinal cord and that there's radiation and radionucleotide treatments, radioisotope treatments for that. I think, again, here the prognosis is probably very, very good. I should mention it's very important for the public to understand this and men out there in America. Every year, 288,000 men get diagnosed with, American men get diagnosed with prostate cancer.

34,000, 35,000 American men die with prostate cancer. Thirty-four thousand, thirty-five thousand American men die of prostate cancer. Many more men will have prostate cancer and die of something else and not the prostate cancer in part because as Joe mentioned, it's slow growing, in part also because we have very effective treatments and I think the president is very likely to respond and the tumor is likely to shrink with treatment here. So I think we're looking at prognosis of years, multiple years and not a short time. Well that's obviously welcome news, would be welcome news to the Biden family. I apologize for getting back to the timeline here, it's just that obviously with questions around trust, this is going to be an important issue

for looking at this story. So he had his last medical exam in February of 2024 as president. And you're saying that there's no chance, had he been tested then, but didn't have the PSA test, is there any chance the cancer could have metastatized as fast as it had since February 2024 and had a test and gone undetected? That's not possible, right, according to what you're saying? I wouldn't say it's not possible. Very unlikely. I don't know. I mean,

look, we don't have the scans. We have a sketchy report. we don't have the medical record like how big is the metastatic lesion and other things. But from what we're, I mean, you can see the metastatic lesion on scans because that's how they know it's there. It's not tiny and typically prostate cancer is not a galloping disease, it's a slow growing disease. So if you line all that up, he was last examined 15 months ago. It's hard to believe if he had the PSA test 15 months ago that it wasn't elevated. Dr. Zika Manuel, thank you very much for your analysis this morning. We appreciate your insight.

Thank you. I hope I clarified things. And again, deepest thoughts to the president and Dr. Biden. Yes. Thank you very much, Zeke. And still ahead on Morning Joe, President Trump says he'll be speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this morning. We'll talk about what to expect from that high stakes phone call.

Plus it appears a deal has been reached to get one of the nation's largest transit systems back on track. Want an update on the New Jersey transit strike ahead on Morning Joe, we're back in just 90 seconds. Welcome back. At 25 past the hour, Pope Leo XIV presided over his first inaugural mass yesterday. He presented his homily to a crowd of nearly 200,000 people in St. Peter's Square. Several world leaders were in attendance, including Vice President J.D.

Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The pope called for unity across the church and vowed not to rule like an autocrat. After the mass, Pope Leo met privately with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who thanked the Vatican for its readiness to hold direct talks between Ukraine and Russia. And some other stories making headlines this morning. A former mathematics professor has won the presidential election in Romania. Nico Chordone, the centrist mayor of Bucharest, beat the hard-right candidate who is aligned with President Trump.

That candidate, George Simien, has opposed military aid to Ukraine. The mayor's election to the presidency is being welcomed by European allies. Joe? Cady, Kay, here is one more example of someone who is considered a sort of MAGA-style candidate was considered a sh shoe-in. I mean, we've seen this time and again, and once again, a moderate shocks the political world. Yeah, and he had this kind of outsized personality background in football, played, you know, to the MAGA card,

very clearly, you know, invoked Donald Trump as well during the election campaign. And the polling had suggested that he was in a good position, particularly after, you know, last year's debated Romanian election. But it is a sign that, you know, we've seen it in Canada, we've seen it in Australia, and now we've seen it in Romania. And the losing candidate, we should say at the moment, is claiming that the election was rigged. Again, kind of we've seen that MAGA playbook and that it was stolen from him. But it is a sign that, you know, populism doesn't work everywhere at the moment. All right. And New Jersey Transit and its engineers have reached a tentative deal to end an historic

strike that brought the nation's third largest commuter rail system to a halt. an historic strike that brought the nation's third largest commuter rail system to a halt. The walkout, which began on Friday, was the state's first transit strike in more than 40 years. The main sticking point had been wage increases for train engineers. Specific details about the agreement have not been shared, but the union says its members will return to work tomorrow when the trains resume their regular schedules. And Harvard University spent $27 for a copy of the Magna Carta after World War II.

Turns out it's actually an original dating back from the year 1300 and likely worth millions of dollars. Scholars helped authenticate the manuscript, which is one of just seven still in existence. The document helped establish the ideas of liberty, including quote, "'No free man shall be seized or imprisoned

or stripped of his rights or possessions or outlawed or exiled or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land." Just FYI, that's what it says. President Trump is expected to speak by phone with Russia's Vladimir Putin later this morning. Trump made the announcement on his social media platform yesterday, saying their discussion will focus on finding an end to the war.

Last night, French President Emmanuel Macron said he'd spoken to Trump, as well as his counterparts in the UK, Germany and Italy. Macron called on Putin to accept the 30-day ceasefire proposed by the U.S. and Ukraine. It comes days after Ukrainian and Russian teams held their first direct talks since the war began. Let's bring in President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas. He's the author of the weekly newsletter, Home and Away, available on Substack. And columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius. Good to have you both.

And Joe, this phone call, of course, after talks that involved lower-level staff members that didn't have some progress. Lower level staff members and the pope. The pope talked about this too. Richard, we have much to talk to you about. Golfing, the preakness, just the extraordinary ending of the preakness. But why don't we start where Cady and I were talking, and that was the election held last night.

Once again, to quote John Meacham, populism is a strong starter, but not always the strongest of finishers. And if you look at the last two elections in France, look at the election in Poland, look at Poland, I mean, I could go around Europe and time and time again we have seen that in the ultimate races for power in European countries, well, and of course we can talk about Canada, we can talk about Australia, the same story is being rewritten time and time again this year, is it not? Absolutely.

These things go in cycles, Joe. You know this. Politics has pendulums, and there's nothing automatic, and often there's an anti-status quo, and that could help populists. It could also hurt populists in some ways if they're the incumbents. Well, there's some very interesting tests in this country, in the midterms and then again in 2028, because ultimately elections become referenda on the status quo and on the trajectory, as people see it, of the country.

So populists don't have, shall we say, any sort of structural advantage. David, let's turn to the call that President Trump is going to have, what, in four hours time. I'm looking at the clock with President Putin. Clearly, an important call in the context of Putin not turning up in Istanbul, the two high-level principals not having that meeting in Istanbul. What do you think, what are you looking for to come out of this? Is it as simple as just setting the date for a meeting or are you going to look for more tea?

I don't think there'll be a breakthrough in this call other than to have a face-to-face, President Trump has set up his own personal intervention as the key dynamic, basically saying, this can't be solved without me. And he's now interposing himself. The phone call follows a series of rejections by Putin and his lower-level officials of virtually everything the United States has requested to end the war. The US asked for a 30-day ceasefire. Ukraine said yes. Russia said no. The US asked for meetings in Turkey at a high level. President Trump was prepared to go from the Middle East to Turkey for those

meetings. Ukraine was there. President Zelensky, President Zelensky was in in Turkey, Putin stayed away. Everything we know says the Russians think they're winning and don't want to stop the war without significant gains. Right now they're demanding as a condition for a ceasefire Ukrainian agreement to give up land that Russia hasn't conquered yet. It's quite a demand. So I think that Trump is facing a real problem here. Unless he pushes Putin back and makes him understand you're not going to get the whole pie here. I think he's heading toward a meeting where he either makes a

concessionary settlement to Putin, which will stay with him for the rest of his presidency, or he ends up in a real confrontation with Putin, and the meeting breaks up in a difficult way. But today's phone call will be a prelude to the real action which is coming. But there are a lot of storm clouds in the sky as they pick up the phone. Yeah, the sequence of the calls, interesting. Trump speaking with Putin first, then Zelensky, then Zelensky again with NATO allies. When he spoke to Putin for the first time earlier this year, there was a lot of criticism that he spoke to Putin first and then sort of then Zelensky and sort of just informed

Zelensky, hey, here's what Putin and I talked about. You should live with it. There's a slightly different tenor this time around, Richard Haas, but David Ansh has kind of hinted at it. The great question is, will President Trump ever stand up to Vladimir Putin? He has not. They've passed his prologue, he's never done it, and yet we see Putin defy American calls for ceasefire.

Some of the largest drone strikes of the entire war happened over the weekend in Kiev with the loss of civilian lives. People I've talked to close to President Trump say he is eager, has been for a while, eager to have a face-to-face with Vladimir Putin. But usually, if the president reaches a, if something reaches a presidential level, the deal is basically done. And then you go and shake hands. They're nowhere close here.

So what do you anticipate coming out of this call? Is this the moment where Trump is finally going to get tough with Putin? They're not in the same zip code. Let's be honest. Putin shows no interest in a deal. David had it exactly right. Putin wants to continue the war because he thinks he can accomplish his aims militarily. Then he'll turn to diplomacy.

So for Donald Trump, at most he'll get a meeting with Putin. And Putin, by the way, looks forward to that meeting because he thinks he'll get a lot of what he want, maybe a concessionary agreement. The real issue is not going to happen at the table. It's not going to happen in the call. It's going to happen in Washington. And it's going to be a decision by this administration whether they are going to resupply the pipeline to Ukraine.

Are they going to continue more military and intelligence support of Ukraine? If they do that and they say, we're going to keep doing that, that is the only way to begin to shatter Vladimir Putin's confidence that time is on his side. So it's quite simple. It doesn't matter what the president says on the phone. It doesn't matter what Witkoff says at the table. The only thing that matters is whether they create a context or a structure for these negotiations where Putin realizes he either needs to compromise or he's going to have to continue fighting a

war he cannot realize his objectives. It's almost that simple. David Ignatius, we've been reading all weekend stories about how the Middle East and many of the fault lines, many of the alliances, the lines of alliances have been completely, it has seemed over the past week redrawn by Donald Trump. You look at everything that's going on from Syria to possibility of Iran to it could just go on and on. And it is obvious Donald Trump's not going to Benjamin Netanyahu before doing that. And also, I think the greater tell is just, again, the focus on Saudi Arabia, on the UAE,

and on Qatar, because that's where the money is. And it appears now that's where a great deal of investment in AI will be going as well. It seems a real game changer. I'm curious your thoughts on all of the sort of shifting plates that you saw over the past week and what the impact of those will be? So, Joe, I thought that last week the center of gravity in the Middle East moved east toward the Gulf and moved away from Israel, which has been kind of big tentpole of U.S. policy around which all other Middle East commitments were arrayed.

I think Donald Trump is frustrated with Bibi Netanyahu. We expected the war in Gaza to end some months ago. He felt that he was being jammed towards a military confrontation with Iran, which Netanyahu was really promoting when he came to Washington in February. I think the reaction to that from the Trump administration, from Trump himself, was pretty intense. And we're seeing the results. Trump, I'm sure, will come back to Bibi and to Israel with his usual ebullient, you know, I can fix this, there's a problem here. But he'll make a demand.

You have to end the fighting in Gaza. You have to do this. You have to do that. So that he can claim a win in the process. This is a period in which a lot of the assumptions surrounding U.S. policy in the Middle East, but really, frankly, everywhere around the world are up for grabs. Trump as the disruptor has an ability to create space where you suddenly think about new possibilities. There's some good in that without question. I think the fact that we're negotiating seriously with Iran about a new nuclear agreement is

very positive, even though the agreement that they're likely to get, if they get one, will be very similar to the one that Trump threw out the window in 2018. But that's okay, it's still a good agreement. But the final worry that I have as I watch this, Trump simply doesn't have the staffing, the infrastructure to be doing this kind of ambitious peacemaking around the world. He needs to figure that out better. Richard, let's talk about that idea of personality a little bit more. We heard Witkoff say over the last couple of days

that just because he has this force of personality, unlike other people, Donald Trump can pull off these kinds of deals that have eluded previous presidents. Jared Kushner said something very similar to me about the Middle East at the beginning of the first Trump administration. I've just come back from Europe,

and there's still a lot of confusion about whether this president, with his big ambitions, can actually deliver on Ukraine, Gaza, the Iran deal. Where do you stand at this moment, after this week around the Middle East, ahead of these kind of talks around Ukraine? Do you think there is something to what Wyckoff is saying? The short answer is no. But the table is set, if Donald Trump wants to take advantage of

it, for him to be a remarkably successful president in foreign policy. We just talked about Ukraine. If he's willing to stand by Ukraine, I believe he can set up the possibility of a cessation of hostilities With Iran, what he has to do is give Iran something. He can't humiliate Iran at the table The Israelis have set things up through their military attacks. If he's willing to give Iran a token amount of uranium enrichment That's highly verified. I believe he can get a deal, and that's clearly what all the Arab countries he visited want, because they don't want to see military attacks on Iran,

which then lead to retaliation against them. With Israel and Gaza, he'd have to be willing to lean on the Israelis. A lot of people in Israel want that. But right now, you essentially have an Israeli policy, which is military force, open-ended occupation, and then some kind of potentially even settlement or annexation of Gaza. If he wants to set up, for example, Saudi-Israeli normalization, he has to be prepared to lean

on Bibi Netanyahu. He's distanced himself from Bibi on virtually every other issue. So I actually think Donald Trump has remarkable opportunity, not because of his personality, but simply because how things are set up. And the real question is whether he is willing to make some big decisions to see them through. The Washington Post, David Ignatius, thank you very much for being on this morning. Richard, stay with us.

We have sports coming up, coming up the subway series in the Bronx to the conference semifinals at Madison Square Garden. We're going to go over the big weekend in New York sports. Plus a closer look at the comeback for journalism at the Preakness Stakes. It is simply incredible. Morning Joe will be right back. And there was no joy in Mudville. Cody Bellinger's grand slam breaks the game up in the eighth inning lifting a certain team

to an eight to win over the Crosstown rivals some outs in the rubber game with the first subway series this season the teams will next meet for three game sets starting on July 4th at city field. But both fan bases last night put their

differences aside momentarily to applaud New York next forward Carl Anthonys at Yankee Stadium for the game after the Knicks series clinching victory over the Boston Celtics on Friday. The Knicks are now set to face Indiana Pacers in their first Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 25 years. Game one and it's Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden. With us now let's bring in the host of Pablo Torre Finds Out on Metal Art Media. MSNBC contributor Pablo Torre, a New York Magazine contributing editor and Washington Post columnist Will Leach. He's the author of the new book titled Loyal to McNeil's Last Ride, which goes on sale tomorrow. We're going to get to that in just a moment. Pablo, you know, we had, we had groused as we do about the fact that during the NCAA

tournament, every team that was supposed to win, win. Every team that was, you know, top seeded was, there were no surprises here. In the NBA, just the opposite. I mean, I really, even when the Cavs and the Celtics were down 2-0, I was sure, because the Celtics started historically bad, that they were gonna come back and both of those teams were going to win those series four to two because they were so dominant.

Not even close. Tell me, what's happening in the NBA? How could it be that the regular seasons just don't seem to be mattering right now? Yeah, well, right next to me what's happening is just the latent grousing from John Lemire, who's just, like, slapping newspapers in my face.

You might want to flip to the sports section, the good stuff's in there today. Joe, it's never been like this in the NBA, certainly compared to the NFL. The NFL, we've seen dynasties emerge, the Patriots and the Chiefs. The NBA, we've seen dynasties emerge, the Patriots and the Chiefs. The NBA, which is known for that, we're now gonna have seven different champions in seven years. And so that is a reflection of the economics of the

game, the salary cap stuff, which I won't belabor here. But the reality is the regular season, which has long felt like the preseason in the NBA, now feels even more unlike the postseason, which this year has been an incredible product, not least because I was at game six at the Garden. And I know, I know that John Lemire is waiting to weigh in on highlights like this. It's incredible. Let's hear it, John. It was incredible, John.

Who am I? What am I doing here? No, this, look, credit, the Celtics were banged up and played poorly. They blew games one and two at home. You're not going to recover from that. Porzingis was a ghost. Tatum got injured and maybe is going

to be out for another year or more. The Knicks were the better team in this series. Congratulations. They did deserve it. Will, we also know the Knicks are the one thing, as we saw last night at Yankee Stadium, that sort of unites the city. The Jets, Giants, Mets, Yankees, but everyone,

sorry Brooklyn Nets, everyone roots for the Knicks. And Pablo's right, it's a series of underdogs, with one exception, the Oklahoma City Thunder, who annihilated the Nuggets yesterday, they sort of do loom as, okay, the one great team that still left. Yeah, if anything, I wonder if we're gonna look back and be like, how did anyone take the Thunder to seven games?

Like, that team is stacked really across the board. Jaylen Williams was a player that really struggled for a lot of this series and really got it going yesterday. And that's kind of the problem with playing the Thunder. I mean, you've got Jokic, who is the best player in the world, but he took less than 10 shots last night because they just kind of focused on him.

They come at you everywhere. They're kind of the looming tower of all of this. It's really fun to see. Nick Pacers, obviously those 90s in the rematch of last year, it still feels like Oklahoma is looming up there. I love the idea of Minnesota and the Knicks playing each other in the finals after that trade last year, but I don't know if either one of them

is getting past Oklahoma City right now. The PGA and the freakness which is my favorite part but Richard Haas our golf correspondent the PGA go. Fantastic tournament what was interesting is not just who won we all know that but that's Chef La One but how the other stated it looked a few hours before the end it looked as though it was a really packed leaderboard. And then take John Rahm. Five over par on the last three holes. We probably don't have it. People should go online and watch John Rahm's press conference afterwards.

It was one of the great press conferences in sport about somebody who lost and basically said, yeah, I lost, but I'm not, I could have played better. But you know what? I'm not a first responder. I'm not a heart surgeon. Nobody died. But you know what? I'm not a first responder. I'm not a heart surgeon. Nobody died. I'll still go home to my wife and family. That's what really matters.

It was such an amazing moment. But yeah, Scottie Scheffler is at a level of excellence in golf that when he's on his game with his discipline, his ability to execute, there's nobody in the same zip code. Remember, by the way, the story from last year. Scottie Scheffler stopped on the way into the PGA before round two, and so it just covered this story.

Joe, you may recall this, how the officer claimed that he had pants, I believe, to an unacceptable level of disrepair. There was some phrase that was $85. The $85 pants. It's in there. And now you saw Scottie Scheffler, who by the way, was one of the guys who didn't go over to live, right? So he emerged as all those guys left and went over there. And meanwhile, he shows up wearing orange for a practice round a nod to that photo. Nike has a great eye, which it says it says guilty across the top, you know, because he's one of the greatest now.

Mika, it's just one of those stories where Scottie Shaffer emerging as a character. Golf didn't have that as the live thing was happening. Now it has it, and it's pretty remarkable. I see that. It is remarkable. Speaking of remarkable, you know, Mike Barnacle, my dad went to University of Kentucky

and just obsessed with the Triple Crown, of course the Derby, but he and his college roommate, Francis Bush, from their 20s through their 70s would go every year to the Preakness. And as I saw that stretch Ron, I could hear my dad screaming in heaven, go, go, go. What an ending to a horse race and what an ending to the 150th Preakness. This is just an extraordinarily bold move by a powerful horse. Well, a bold and dangerous move. We showed the clip from the front where the horses are coming down the stretch. Journalism is packed in with two or three other horses and he bumps his way out to the

front and begins his definitive stretch run. Here we go, right there. Whoa. Anyway, it's very dangerous, extraordinarily dangerous for both horse jockeys and the other horses around them. But the jockey did it and it was an incredible stretch run. He went literally by a nose. Miki, you don't know racehorses, but you grew up riding horses.

And a racehorse. And a racehorse. And I know that when you saw this, you said, some horses just have that in them. Others don't. Some were just born with this. Again, it's just not only did he push through in an extraordinarily dangerous situation, but exploded like a rocket on a rail afterwards. Unbelievable.

So these horses often, it's a terribly difficult sport on the horses. Yes. And they get sold at at auction and I got one at auction at a very low price and Look at this high strong for a long time But if you look at this fight the Decision was that the horse would fight as opposed to have to run around this or go into that let the horse would actually Become more competitive squeezed between two horses. I mean a good decision if you want to win this race.

But look at Sandman, that horse was at the end by far. So it's an incredible race among many levels. I don't know if we can play the sound. The final call is incredible. It's an all-time. Do we have the final call from NBC, Alex? It's extraordinary. The final call is incredible just because of the name of the horse

and the announcer is just nuts at this point. It's hard not to revel in it. Like again, journalism, a bit of a burying of the lead, but the kicker, the kicker was an all-timer. I mean, it's hard not to... Let's listen to it. To waddle with it. It's so good.

Journalism is still sixth. He's got a lot of ground to cover. He is still five links behind as they make their way toward the top of the stretch. Gosker trying to pull off a huge upset here. Has taken the lead on the outside. Clever again cuts the corner. Journalism is getting closer now. He's behind a wall of horses.

He's looking for a place to go. And he's got nowhere to go. Oh, he bumped hard. Bumped hard. He's got nowhere to go. He's got nowhere to go. He's got nowhere to go. He's got nowhere to go.

He's got nowhere to go. He's got nowhere to go. He's got nowhere to go. He's got nowhere to go. He's got getting closer now. He's behind a wall of horses. He's looking for a place to go. And he's got nowhere to go. Oh, he but parred! But parred with Golori at the end. In the meanwhile, Goskar's winning the race of his life. And Sandman has entered the scene. And he has moved up on the far outside. Journalism is still running on.

He's back into second. He might even win it, there's the wire, oh my goodness! Journalism has won the Brick the Stakes! Journalism has... I love it so much! Holy cow! So close to having a very bad metaphor for journalism. Oh my god! But it's a much more somber conversation.

And journalism is going upstate to a far... Yes, exactly. It has collapsed for the whole world to see. I've never seen anything like this. Oh my gosh. Needed the whip. Well, I mean, goodness. I mean, to me, the fact that it was one step,

one step from any of those horses goes differently. This is a much more somber conversation than we're having right now. Like, that's what it's kind of amazing man, to have the response to that takeoff like that in a terrific all-time call. So yes, again, the metaphors work. We can all have our journalism conversations, but seriously, that could have been very, very bad.

So hopefully that wasn't journalism's last ride. There we go. And it prevails into the future. But tell us about Lloyd McNeil's last ride. That was a wonderful segue. Thank you. Yeah, so Lloyd McNeil's last ride is about a police officer named Lloyd McNeil's last bride. That was a wonderful segue. Thank you. Yeah, so Lloyd McNeil's last bride is about a police officer named Lloyd McNeil who discovers that he's actually dying of a brain tumor.

He has glioblastoma. He's going to die in three months. He's divorced and has a son that's 13 years old. And he learns that his police pension will actually pay him about 50 times more if he dies in the line of duty rather than if he dies of his tumor. And so he keeps throwing himself into a bunch of insane situations to try to die, but he keeps failing and becomes like a big civic hero. And so, so that's the idea. And I like the idea of a metaphor. You know,

I think a lot of parents kind of have that feeling of, uh, of an ominous world and you don't know what kind of world you're leaving for your children. You're gonna have to fix a lot of the problems that were saying, I like the idea of a police officer who had to, of a dad who had to figure that out in a very short amount of time of like, what kind of lessons he wants to leave for his son

and what kind of role he's gonna leave behind. So it's a hopefully funny, I like to say it's one of the most uplifting, funny, action-packed books about a man dying of a brain. Well, that's where I wanted to ask you. The reviews have been terrific and I can't wait to read, but the people, it's comed Well, that's where I wanted to ask you. I think that the reviews have been terrific, and I can't wait to read, but the people, it's comedic.

It's feel good. And yet the premise is a man who has a terminal brain cancer type. Yeah, and it's told, you know, Lloyd tells the story in real time, present tense, so it's very active. You're very with him as he kind of experience it. And he's kind of bewildered by the whole thing as well. But the thing about him, you know, he is a very kind of mild mannered police officer. He's the son of a somewhat controversial police chief of Atlanta.

And he has always taken a lot of pride in being a public representative. I talked to a lot of police officers when I was working on the book. And the one thing they constantly said is like, hey, just remind people that we're people. Remind people that we are parents, that we are trying to figure this out. So I wanted to write from the perspective of a police officer who's really trying to actually make the world a better place and learn the things that he learns about himself. In the past he's like, I just want to get cats out of trees. I don't want to do anything. To have him be in this kind of consistently dangerous situation, I think to experience that

with him is hopefully kind of a fun experience. I'm guessing that the officer in the Scottie Scheffler story was not one of the inspirations for this character. However, no, no. Less obsessed with pants. That's right, that's right. But look, I'm seeing, well, a seven studio bidding war for this thing like the movie adaptation do you have an actor in mind to play Lloyd McNeil I'm looking around the table and yeah some options it was it was definitely a very strange experience to go through like to have Hollywood very Lionsgate ultimately ended up buying,

which is great, you have a studio that you don't have to pitch it to a studio, they've already bought it. I'm told I'm an executive producer on the project, and so when I find out what an executive producer on a movie does. They pick extras. Okay.

Who may or may not have been on cable shows. Okay. I will produce executively in a very serious manner. All right, Lloyd McNeil's last ride goes on sale tomorrow. Author, Will Leach, thank you so much. Great to have you in the studio. And Mike Barnicle, thank you as well.

Couple more stories for you. The NTSB is investigating a deadly crash over the weekend. Two people were killed aboard a Mexican naval ship when it collided with the Brooklyn Bridge. Nearly two dozen more were injured. The Mexican training vessel drifted backwards into the underside of the iconic bridge on Saturday night. Cell phone videos show the mast snapping under the impact.

Witnesses reported seeing some sailors who had been positioned standing on top of them dangling from the wreckage on ropes. After smashing into the bridge, the ship came to a stop near a Brooklyn pier. The vessel, which had 277 people on board, was in the middle of a months-long global Goodwill tour. It was set to head to Iceland after leaving New York. Officials say the cause of the crash is still under investigation, but preliminary reports indicate the ship lost power before the crash.

We'll be following that incredible story. And then this, authorities say a 25-year-old man, the FBI believes, was responsible for an explosion outside of a Southern California fertility clinic left behind anti-pro-life writings before carrying out his attack, two senior law enforcement officials tell NBC News. The suspect is believed to have detonated the explosive in Sunday's attack in Palm Springs, which claimed his own life. Investigators say the suspect died in the blast, which a senior official calls

possibly the, quote, largest bombing scene that we've had in Southern California. The FBI is calling the attack an intentional act of terrorism. Investigators are focusing on social media posts made by the suspect, including a 30-minute audio recording, which they say support anti-natalist views, the belief that no one should have children. Four others were injured in the blast, but officials say all embryos at the facility were saved.