Morning Joe - Morning Joe 5/22/23

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Trump lawyer resigns over conflict with top advisor

Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, May 22nd. There's a lot to get to this morning, including the new reporting on turmoil inside the Trump legal team that's representing the former president in the classified documents investigation. Meanwhile, another Republican senator is saying that the former president cannot win the 2024 investigation. Meanwhile, another Republican senator is saying that the former president cannot win the 2024 election. We'll have those comments and what they mean. It comes as the Republican field in the race for the White House is about to add another name.

Plus, the NAACP calls out Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. We'll have more on the organization's warning. Also ahead, we'll recap President Biden's trip to Japan for the G7 summit, which included a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and preview his meeting today at the White House with Speaker Kevin McCarthy as both sides are trying to find a compromise that would avoid a default on the country's debt. With us, we have the host of way too early White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. special correspondent for

BBC News. Katty Kay is with us. Also with us, U.S. national editor at The Financial Times, Ed Luce and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass joins us, U.S. national editor at the Financial Times, Ed Luce, and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, joins us this morning. So before we start, I wanted to ask Katty first and also Ed about the passing of Martin Amis. The New York Times yesterday said he was the most dazzling stylist in post-war British fiction. Also, Jonathan Yardley had said in the past of The Washington Post, a force unto himself among those of his generation.

Now writing fiction in English, there is quite simply none like him. Cady. Yeah, I think he was a once in a lifetime, a one generation talent. I mean, he came out of this storied literary family. His father was Kingsley Amis, also a famous novelist. And right from his very first work in his 20s, Martin showed the kind of brilliance that one might have expected from the from the Amis name. He had this ability, I think, Joe, in the books I read, particularly in the 90s, to combine humour with biting social commentary.

So you take a book like Money, which is an indictment of capitalism, but he always did it with this just incredibly clever use of words and sense of humour. And I think that was his real gift was taking... Even you look at Inside the Zone of Interest, which is now a major film. His first book to be made into a major film is opened, I think, the day he died in Cannes, which looks at the Holocaust and specifically at guards in a prison camp. But even there, he uses humor to some consternation in German review amongst German reviewers. But

he said he seemed to think that nothing in the world that was worth tackling was worth tackling without a sense of satire and humor. And I think that was brilliant. Including Adeluz himself. He he said in an interview, I believe it was around 2011 or 12 when he was going through his spell, he said there's a one word narrative for every writer. For Hitchens, it was contrarian. For me, it's decline. And then when he heard the news that he was being a grandfather, he said,

being a grandfather is like getting a telegram from the mortuary. An edge to everything. Yeah, one of his earliest novels was called Dead Babies. He really liked to shock. You know, he liked, even to the extent of being quite unpleasant sometimes, he liked to sort of really rile up the reader. He was kind of the bad boy of English letters.

He was the sort of Mick Jagger, I guess, of English novelists. His best friend, of course, as Katty mentioned, was Christopher Hitchens. Another of his great friends who I actually interviewed this weekend was Salman Rushdie, you know, who, of course, very, very tragically lost his eye the last time he was interviewed on stage, he was he was the sort of standard setter, but also the sort of tabloids idea of a of a of a bad, badly behaved, notorious man of letters. Brilliant writer. I mean, Kat, you mentioned money. There's the information, the Rachel papers, his nonfiction stuff on America was always really interesting. He died in America. Of course, he lived a lot of his time here. An enormous loss. A unique voice. We're going to get to the top story now.

The district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, Fannie Willis, is potentially previewing when she could announce charging decisions in her investigation into 2020 election interference. Last week, Willis sent a letter to the chief judge of the Fulton County Court and other officials requesting the courthouse be clear of trials or in-person hearings in early August. She did not provide a reason in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News. That request may provide a clearer timeline of when any potential charges could be announced. In a separate letter to law enforcement last month, Willis said she would announce any indictments during the state superior court's fourth term, which includes that August window. Meanwhile, one of Donald Trump's former attorneys took to the TV networks over the weekend to blast

another member of the former president's legal team. Speaking to CNN on Saturday, Timothy Palatore accused Trump legal advisor Boris Epstein of blocking he and others from getting information to their client. Parlatore had been one of three attorneys representing Trump in special counsel Jack Smith's investigations before suddenly resigning last week. It's proletarian. Several other lawyers recently tried to stage an intervention with Trump about Epstein, who they say has a habit of delivering the former president good news even when the circumstances are grim. Parletary also accused Epstein over the weekend of trying to stop Trump's lawyers from searching the former president's New Jersey estate for classified documents. He was not very honest with us or with the client on certain things. There were certain things like the searches that he had attempted to interfere with. You said that Boris tried to prevent you from conducting searches. What searches are those?

This is the searches at Bedminster initially. There was a lot of pushback from him where he didn't want us doing the search. And we had to eventually overcome him. Wow. The other lawyers representing Trump did not comment on Parletori's departure. A spokesperson for Trump called his accusations about Epstein, quote, categorically false. Despite the fact that so many other people are saying the same thing and have always said the same thing about him. Let's go to Jonathan Lemire right now. Jonathan, it looks like parliamentary. This might be a CYA operation. Obviously, there are going to be attorneys who are going to be found responsible. We've already

seen we've already seen some judges make some rulings for keeping information from the federal government. What do you make of this latest move? Yeah, I think there's a lot of the lawyers who represent Donald Trump who, as the joke goes, need lawyers themselves. And certainly that may be what he is doing here, trying to distance himself from what could be coming down the road. Boris Efti, though, it's worth taking a moment just to explore who he is. He's been in the Trump orbit since 2016. He worked on that campaign. He wanted a White House job, was denied it because the others in the sort of the professionals, the adults in the room during that 2017, after Trump took office in 2017, rejected him. But he's never strayed too

far from Trump. He's very close to Donald Trump Jr., close to Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, others. And there are plenty in the Trump Jr., close to Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, others. And there are plenty in the Trump orbit who say he's trouble. And indeed, echo what Pellatori said there, where he's someone who only delivers the good news to the boss and never wants to deliver the bad. And that, they feel like, has led to some of Donald Trump's legal trouble. And it's worth connecting that to what Mika just said about Georgia, too, that we now are getting a much more clearer idea as to when this could come. So many people, Joe, as you and I have talked about, feel like Georgia may be the case that poses the most legal peril for Donald Trump. Now looks like mid-August is the moment we're going to learn about it and that this is something where he and a number of associates could potentially face charges.

Well, you know, Georgia is going to cause most likely some of the biggest political problems if you look at polls and how Americans respond to each indictment and which ones they seem to be most disturbed by. Georgia has seemed to be that one. But Mika, as far as what case is going to get him in the most trouble? Well, according to one former Trump lawyer, one that may put him in jail is going to get him in the most trouble? Well, according to one former Trump lawyer, one that may put him in jail is going to be the Moralago documents case. And of course, Bill Barr, his former attorney general, this weekend also saying this is a case to watch.

This is the case that's going to bring Donald Trump down. We're going to get to that right now. But just in terms of Georgia and others, he uses these cases to spread disinformation. The former president still saying that he won't confirm that he lost the last election. And for him, it's more a tool, let alone something that he's waiting down the line to come to come down. He uses it as a tool. It's a witch. Well, he can't disinformation. Well, he is. He's preparing people for the bad news that is sure to come. And again, I'm to gin them up. Well, the gin them up. But I'm very skeptical about it working. I don't I don't think it's going to work in the end. He's got his base of support.

But as the U.S. senators, as the Republican senators keep saying, as other people in the Republican Party say off camera, every one of these indictments, I forget, maybe it was Chris Christie. No indictments. Good news. It's never good news. You can spin it and you can make your base get angrier. And I'm so tired of the stupid Washington takes from pundits. Oh, this is only going to make you more powerful. It's sort of the Obi-Wan Kenobi strike me down and I only get stronger defense. No, it'll make him stronger among a dwindling and more dwindling base. And therein lies the big problem. Yeah. And I don't think it makes him stronger and I don't think he wins those. But I do think he continues to cause further

damage with disinformation, even if it is a dwindling. Yeah. I mean, that's that's who he is. Yep. He's already said he'd terminate the Constitution if it stood in his way. So we know who he is. Of course, he'll damage the United States for his own benefit. If he can, he said it time and again. But perhaps most damaging for him legally is this next story. Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb predicting possible jail time for Donald Trump when it comes to the special counsel's investigation into the former president's mishandling of classified documents, take a look at what he told CNN. go ahead and include the Espionage Act counts and the possession, illegal possession of the classified documents, given the extent that, and solely because of the fact that Trump keeps lying about what the law is. I think this obstruction case is a tight case. And yes, I do think he'll go to jail. Feds are coming and I think they're coming fast.

Trump's former attorney general, Bill Barr, also weighed in on the seriousness of the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Here's what he said during a recent interview with CBS News. Of the cases out there right now, the one I'd be most concerned about if I were the former president is the Mar-a-Lago document case. And why so? Because it doesn't go a lot on intent

or anything like that. It's very clear that he had no business having those documents. He was given a long time to send them back and he was they were subpoenaed. And if there's any games being played there, he's going to be very exposed. And of course, he lied about it time and time again, Richard Haass, and then made matters even worse at a CNN town hall meeting by saying, yeah, I could show them to anybody I want to. I had them and I could have them if I wanted to. Slightly different experience than most of us had with classified documents. I will say that, Joe.

Look, unlike you, I'm not I'm not a lawyer. I'm not going to it's impossible to predict the political consequences. But it's interesting that people like Ty Cobb and Bill Barr, both of who are, shall we say, center right on the political spectrum, are as Sergeant Joe Friday-like as they are about this case, both about that, you know, where the former president is vulnerable and where they think the legal consequences of it was going. That's about as stark as anything I've heard compared to all the other cases that are out there or could be out there. Yeah, I mean, Jonathan Lemire, obviously the Trump team publicly forward facing will say witch hunt, witch hunt. But internally,

obviously, they're very concerned. They're very concerned about George and very concerned about the Mar-a-Lago case, especially because there's a prima facie case already laid out clearly against him. Yeah, the phrase rising alarm was used recently from a Republican very close to the Trump orbit as to how they perceive these investigations. They're there. If you tick through them, they're still pretty dismissive of the one in Manhattan over the tax business records. They think that one will largely go away and not have much political impact. But others are more legitimate. We shouldn't forget, of course, the E. Jean Carroll decision where Trump was deemed liable of sexual

assault. We haven't seen a lot of polling about Trump since that came out. But the cases ahead, they feel, people I've talked to close to the president, the January 6 investigation is so big and so sprawling and hard to prove. And January 6 has become so politicized. They feel like they can manage that one. And again, let's take a step back here and realize how ridiculous and terrible this all is for the nation that we're talking about a presidential candidate trying to spin the insurrection he caused. But that's the politics we live in right now. Setting that aside, though, you're right. They're zeroed in on two that they're worried about. Georgia, for all the reasons you just discussed, and indeed the documents case. They realize that as much as

they're going to play whataboutism and say, well, hey, President Biden had documents. Hey, Vice President Pence had documents. It's their response to documents was so different. They both gave them back. Trump did not. It is black and white, as one person put it to me. That's where they fear like the legal power really exists. Well, and Kat, you know what about is when, again, Biden and Pence said, hey, we found some documents. You guys come get them. Whereas Trump, difficult, lied repeatedly, even said after they'd come down that they'd returned all the documents that ended up being false as well. And so, again, the whataboutism routine doesn't really work here so much, especially with with swing voters, independent voters, the people who are going to decide whether he's going to win a general election or not in 2024. Yeah. And we're going to have reporting on later in the show from Hugo

Lowell at The Guardian suggesting that some of the documents were left kind of unattended in an open room, in a storage room, and that Trump had ordered, you know, various people to take them in and out even after he'd been subpoenaed for them. So he knew that they were there. He even said on the CNN town hall, as you said, Joe, that he had a right to take them. And I guess that's what makes this the more simple legal case against Trump, because the prosecutor in Georgia still has to prove the intent element, which is a harder one to prove. You know, when he said, find me 11,000 votes, did he actually mean steal them for me? Did he mean, you know, fabricate them for me, even if they weren't there? And I guess that is a slightly harder linguistic stretch to make, whereas this is the Mar-a-Lago

one seems more black and white. The problem, I suppose, is that were he, as Ty Cobb is suggesting, to face real legal peril over the documents, is that the biggest, most significant case of the January the 6th, the Georgia cases that potentially the president, former president could find himself in legal peril over. And that might have some concerns among people who are really trying to prosecute him. Well, and Ed Luce in Georgia, you've got the tape. You've got the tape where he's saying, find me the votes at the same time Lindsey Graham's calling over, trying to get the secretary of state to disallow votes at the same time you have them going around doing everything they can to overturn the election the intent caddy's right uh someone could try to to stretch as far

as possible the words from their proper context uh but I think that's what's so difficult for Donald Trump in the Georgia case they've got him on tape telling the secretary of state, just find me one more vote than I need to win. Yeah, I'd have thought, you know, I mean, I'm not a prosecutor, but I would have thought that is, as intent goes, pretty close to open and shut case. I have to say, you know, you probably noticed over the weekend, I'm sure you reported on it, that Putin is sanctioning Trump's enemies. Now, there's a sort of tip for tap thing. Brad Raffensperger is one of the people that Putin has sanctioned.

Letitia James is another. It's a fairly extraordinary sort of measure, measure of the closeness between between the two. But we are we are very probably going into a general election in which one of the candidates will be multiple, multiple criminally indicted. I just doesn't happen. It's an extraordinary situation. And the fact that Ty Cobb, you know, who is the un-Gigliani, Ty Cobb is a much, much more sober figure than Giuliani. The fact that Ty Cobb is saying he'll probably end up in jail, when of course you can run for the presidency from jail.

I'm sure that would happen after the next election is extraordinary. Yeah, it's remarkable. It really is. You know what else is extraordinary, Richard Haass? And you just brought it up. And you have people, and I even saw this weekend, people trying to dismiss the bizarre connections between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Still trying to do it this weekend, claiming that Durham somehow turns everything into a hoax. You have Vladimir Putin, a guy who considers himself to be America's enemy, putting more people on the Russian sanctions list, including a certain morning cable news host who goes by the name of

Joe and Brad Raffensperger and and these prosecutors that have absolutely nothing to do with Russia. He just selected people that had been considered Donald Trump's political enemies. Again, a foreign country. Sanctioning a secretary of state of Georgia. Not Georgia, the republic, the former Soviet Republic. But but Brian Williams, Rachel Maddow, Seth Meyers. I'm feeling a little left out. I mean, Brad Raffensperger. You have you have people who are Donald Trump's critics. Absolutely.

Again, think about how bizarre this is that Vladimir Putin, in the middle of a hot war, decides he's going to pick domestic political opponents of Donald Trump, who Donald Trump considers his opponents, and sanction them in Russia. How strange is that Putin-Trump connection? And how much stranger can it get? Well, first of all, Joe, I want to congratulate you for making the list. And like Mika and others here, I do feel left out. It's a bit of a mystery. Look, I think there's actually two serious sides of this.

One is we still do not know what is behind or at the Trump-Putin relationship. It's inexplicable on foreign policy terms. Let me just put it that way. There's something here. You know, remember Churchill's whole line about the Soviet Union, a mystery wrapped inside a riddle, wrapped inside an enigma. That's how I would describe that something just doesn't add up. The other thing is when you think about Putin's strategy on Ukraine now, what is it? It's to play for time. Things have not gone well, to say the least, over the last 16, 17 months. And what he's hoping is that Ukrainian or NATO or American resilience and staying power fades.

Right now, if you're Vladimir Putin, what is your what is your card in the hole here? It might be the 2024 elections that he might just be thinking, if I can just hold out through that, there is a chance that U.S. policy will fundamentally change if Donald Trump comes back into the Oval Office. type of diplomatic effort might simply be pushed off by Putin. Again, hoping that this is the one thing that can save him from what is clearly a colossal strategic defeat that he's brought upon himself. Yeah, that he's brought onto himself. And you look at what Donald Trump said about NATO. You look at what he said when Jonathan O'Meara asked a question in Helsinki, saying he trusted an ex-KGB agent more than he trusted Americans on Intel. You go back to what he said on this show in December of 2015, when we kept pushing him about Vladimir Putin killing journalists and killing political opponents. Donald Trump said in 2015, December 2015, he said,

yeah, well, America kills a lot of people, too, saying whatever he could say to defend Vladimir Putin. How much more do you need? It just doesn't line up. So moving now to the debt ceiling, President Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are expected to meet one on one today at the White House. This comes after a weekend of turbulent talks in Washington on the debt ceiling. Negotiators abruptly ended meetings on Friday evening after both sides accused one another of pushing for a deal that catered to the more extreme wings of their parties. Despite reported progress regarding unspent COVID relief funds and other items, negotiators hit a snag on overall spending. However, after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen yesterday

confirmed the U.S. will run out of money by early June, Biden and McCarthy spoke by phone and agreed to meet later today. After their call, staffers for both sides met again yesterday evening for just under three hours. Meanwhile, Biden confirmed he is not ruling out using the 14th Amendment to single handedly raise the debt ceiling, although he was not sure it could be invoked in time to avoid a default. Jonathan O'Meara, at the end of the day, you know, I know there are Democrats that are saying they're just going to go for a clean debt ceiling raise. You have McCarthy saying

he's got to listen to his more extreme members. That's not where this deal is going to get done. There's going to have to be a bill that passes, that'll pass the Senate, that'll pass the House, that Biden can sign. And what these leaders are talking about publicly is not going to be that deal. I mean, this is just this is gravity, man. This is political gravity. They've got to stop being up in the ether and need to come down to earth and say, OK, how can we get enough votes in the Senate? How can we get enough votes in the House? How can we get the president's signature? Yeah, there's still a lot of work to be done here and not much time to do it. We heard from the Treasury Secretary June 1st looms as a very hard deadline. So the president

called Speaker McCarthy from Air Force One on his flight back from Japan. He was leaving the G7 yesterday. The two men will meet later today at the White House. Talks at the staff level had seemed to make some progress during the middle to end of last week, but then really took a step back over the weekend. The rhetoric really ramped up. The White House has sort of bit its tongue throughout much of this process, making that pitch again to sort of staying above the fray, trying to work across the aisle, even risking alienating members of the left in order to get a deal done. That's really reflective of Biden's governing ethos here, believing that voters at the end will ignore the Beltway noise and reward him for getting a big thing to the finish line. But over the weekend, the White House ramped up their

attacks on the GOP, accusing them of bait and switch, of changing the deal at the 11th hour. The Republicans returned with a similar accusation. So clock is ticking here. And there's a lot of issues on spending that still need to be to be worked out. And I do think we should start looking towards the markets. They've stayed pretty calm to this point. We will see if that changes in the days ahead. And even if these two men, McCarthy and Biden, break a deal, to your point, Joe, there's gonna be a lot of work to do to get the votes done, because there probably are some extreme right wing Republicans who are not going to go for any deal McCarthy goes for. So therefore, you've got to get some Democrats on board. You've got to have a bill, then get to the House and that Democratic controlled Senate.

Right. A lot of work to do in the days ahead. Well, let's be very clear here. There are extremists that want to see this process crash and burn. But at least there are a lot more people that are going to be getting calls from contributors, from supporters, from business owners that say, hey, you guys can't let this thing go sideways. We've got to get this passed. I mean, what where where are you looking at for a possible solution here? Well, it's not clear that McCarthy, whatever deal that Joe Biden might do with McCarthy today or in the days ahead, it's not clear, as Jonathan was hinting at, that McCarthy can guarantee anything.

He's, you know, he went through 15 rounds to become Speaker. He is beholden to the most extreme people in his caucus. And even if they are getting calls from some of their funders, some of their donors, they're not paying attention to them. Clearly, they want to burn this house down. In terms of the budget bill McCarthy passed and the cuts that are proposed, I think the cruelty is the point here. There is no economic or fiscal rationale for those kinds of cuts to public assistance, to food stamps, to sort of basic support for Americans who need it the most. So what I'm looking at is, I guess, you know, McCarthy is John Boehner squared. Boehner couldn't control his caucus, his party in 2011, the last time this happened,

when, of course, Biden was vice president and Biden eventually made a deal with Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell isn't really playing that kind of role this time. He fell over. He was out of work, away from work for six weeks. And McCarthy has Banerjee's problems, squirts. So can can any deal with McCarthy stick? It's a it's it's an open question. Yeah, it really is. U.S. national editor at the Financial Times, Ed Luce. Thank you very much for being on this morning. We'll be reading your

latest piece entitled The Kamala Harris Question. We appreciate your being on this morning and still ahead on Morning Joe. The NAACP is warning travelers not to visit Florida. We'll tell you why the civil rights organization is calling out Governor Ron DeSantis ahead of his expected presidential campaign launch. Plus, another Republican senator says Donald Trump can't win the 2024 election. The argument from Louisiana's Bill Cassidy is ahead. Also ahead, a live golfer wins the PGA Championship. We'll have the highlights from the final round at Oak Hill, including one major moment in a storybook weekend for a little-known club pro. You're watching Morning Joe.

We'll be right back. Baby, please keep me. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. The Marine veteran who choked a man to death on the New York City subway three weeks ago is speaking out for the first time. Daniel Penny is charged with second degree manslaughter in the death of Jordan Neely. NBC News correspondent Emily Ikeda has more. Nearly three weeks since this subway encounter, the man seen holding Jordan Neely in the deadly chokehold is breaking his silence, suggesting he would take action again under similar circumstances.

I would, if there was a threat and danger in the present, Daniel Penny told the New York Post. In the interview near his hometown on Long Island, the 24-year-old Marine veteran and college student said this had nothing to do with race, adding, I judge a person based on their character. I'm not a white supremacist. Penny, who was accused of second-degree manslaughter, wouldn't go into detail about what led up to the confrontation, but indicated it wasn't like anything I'd experienced before. His lawyers say Penny acted in self-defense after Neely, who was homeless and long suffered from mental illness, aggressively threatened him and others on board. Penny wasn't initially arrested, quickly spawning protests that spilled onto subway tracks

and dividing political leaders nationwide over crime, so-called vigilantism, and the response to record levels of homelessness. On Friday, hundreds gathered to remember the 30-year-old street performer. Justice for Jordan! White and for Jordan! We keep criminalizing people with mental illness. They don't need abuse. They need help.

When asked what Penny would say to Neely's family, he said, I'm deeply saddened by the loss of life. It's tragic what happened to him. Hopefully we can change the system that so desperately failed us. Penny faces up to 15 years in jail if convicted of manslaughter. A charge lawyers for Neely's family say doesn't go far enough. Joining us now, president of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton. And as we saw in Emily's piece, Rev. Al gave the eulogy at Jordan Neely's funeral on Friday.

Reverend Al, first of all, if you could tell us more about the funeral, how his family is doing, and what do you think needs to happen moving forward? Well, his family clearly is struggling with the loss of life of someone that they loved right at the same church that we had the funeral on Mount Nebo Baptist Church with Reverend Johnny Green, one of the most respected pastors in the country, was the same place 14 years ago that they funeralized Jordan Neely's mother. Jordan sitting there, and they felt that this was what triggered a lot of his mental illness even going further. So they're sitting there in the same church looking at a casket of a young man who should have had help and who the system did not, even though they knew he had problems, kept letting him go, never really dealing with the mental illness issue,

which is the center of what they're saying, that he should have been helped. I think the mayor's even said we need to sit down and have summits on how we deal with how he was able to fall through the cracks of the city bureaucracy. And he's choked to death by someone who is not in law enforcement, not in mental health services, and who came up from behind him and claimed self-defense. It was very difficult for the family, and it still is. And luckily, Lyndon Edwards, the attorney, and the other attorneys are really trying to seek justice in this matter. And I just, there is a lot of discussion about mental health,

especially a crisis among the nation's youth. We have Seth Moulton coming on later who wants to propose a solution to it, that a need for sweeping changes as it pertains to mental health in this country. And I've heard you even describing the situation. Most of what you just talked about was how the system let him down. I guess I'd ask that critics are arguing here that this man is being charged with maybe something that the system had a role in as well, which was Jordan Neely's mental health and the lack of help that he had out there. What do you say to his comments that he made that he's not a white supremacist and that he was acting in self-defense? I think that, first of all,

the comments, if you look at my eulogy, is that what we said was, why was he let go at the precinct? And whether or not if he was black, would they let him go if it is the other way? No one said he was a white supremacist. We questioned what happened at the precinct, which we also questioned five black cops that killed Ty uh kairi uh uh and uh uh tyree uh nichols in memphis this year i did that eulogy and we said even though these five black cops were black they were wrong so this has nothing to do with trying to charge him as a white supremacist he was charged with manslaughter he wasn't charged with a hate crime. So they're trying to, with the help of the right wing media, move the argument into something no one is making. We're saying, how could someone coming from behind that was not

under any threat, an unarmed man who was making noise, maybe annoying, how do you choke him to death, hold him down, feel him go lifeless and still not let go? That's what he's charged with. Let's not try to make this something that is not. And I think that they're trying to move the premise so we can go to the wrong conclusion. This is not about a hate crime.

This is about why you defended yourself against no apparent threat. Obviously, Mika, you came from behind the guy. How could he have been a threat to you? And you held him with two other people holding him down until he was limp, and you held on anyhow. Everyone that has been interviewed in the media that was in that car said, yes, he was annoying, yes, he was making noise,

but we did not feel that there was any immediate threat on us. And even if someone down the car felt he could become a threat, this guy was not a policeman. Who appointed you to get up and kill a guy in the name of I'm protecting someone? Why didn't you call law enforcement? Why? Let's look at your cell phone. Did you try to call 9-1-1? Did you try to call an MTA officer? That's what he's asked to defend against these charges, not fabricate some charges. Someone called him a white supremacist. We're going to be following this. Also want to ask you about this. The NAACP is warning against visiting Florida. The organization issued a travel advisory on Saturday

citing Governor Ron DeSantis' quote aggressive attempts to erase black history and restrict diversity, equity and inclusion programs. In January, DeSantis blocked high schools from offering an advanced placement class on African-American studies, saying the course is, quote, inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value. The Republican governor specifically took issue with six lessons, including black queer studies and the repararations Movement. Reverend Al, your thoughts? I mean, I think clearly Governor DeSantis has set a hostile environment for blacks, for women, for LGBTQ.

He has gone overboard trying to say in every opportunity he could get that he wants to see certain people, the history not be discussed. We in National Action Network, as you know, had a march down there in Jacksonville around this. He's gone after the LGBT community. We're seeing where different pride events have been canceled in the state. And this tone does make it dangerous. I agree with the NAACP that you need to have your antennas up if you're in any of those segments that he has in many ways demonized and made appear

different. He even has interjected himself in what we just talked about by calling the subway accused manslaughter person, saying he's a good Samaritan, which is a distortion of the Bible. The Bible said a good Samaritan helped someone on the side of the road, didn't choke him out. And I think that he's just trying it any way he can to come with some division and play on people that are usually the ones that are the butt of some kind of bias. And I think that the NAACP is right to say you need to be very careful going through Florida with the tone DeSantis has set. All right.

Coming up, we're going to discuss a major development coming out of the G7 summit, an effort to provide Ukraine with more fighter jets. And we'll have President Biden's response to Russia calling the plan a colossal risk. Plus, Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina is expected to announce today that he is entering the 2024 presidential race. We'll tell you which colleague is already endorsing him. Morning Joe is coming right back. Back, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and bestselling author Timothy Keller died on Friday at the age of 72. The New York City and bestselling author Timothy Keller died on Friday at the age of 72.

The New York Times remembered the evangelical Christian leader as someone who shunned fire and brimstone, delivering pointed professorial messages and avoided being identified with a single political view. In an interview with The Atlantic in 2019, he said, what we need is a non-oppressive moral absolute. We need moral absolutes that don't turn the bearers of those moral absolutes into oppressors themselves. Keller was a frequent guest on Morning Joe, including an appearance last November, to talk about his book, Forgive, Why Should I and How Can I? Here's some of what he said about forgiveness. You really can't have a relationship without forgiveness. You can't have a marriage. You

can't have a friendship. And you really can't even have a society. Desmond Tutu, you know, wrote a book called No Future Without Forgiveness. And he was basically saying that you have endless cycles of retaliation between various classes and groups. It goes on for centuries unless you learn to forgive. So I'm not sure we can have a human community without forgiveness. So your thoughts, you knew Tim Keller with he went to his services and had such, such great respect for him. I, you know, I found it ironic that I came to New York City to find one of the best evangelical pastors I'd ever heard over, over five decades. What was it about him? He he really he really challenged you. He really made you think he he he was never on the surface. And it was there were no he didn't provide easy answers.

And what I thought was so fascinating about him is we would always go up, we would always walk over actually to their service on 64th and the Upper West Side. And it was always packed. You had to get there early. I remember one time I missed the morning service. So I said, well, there's one on Amsterdam. I believe it was on, or maybe it was Broadway and 72nd. I'll just walk up there. They have a 530 service there. I walked in this huge church. Ten minutes beforehand, it was packed. There was no place to sit. Then I noticed something else.

At the time, I was a younger man. At the time, I may have been 50, 51, 52. I was, by 10 years years the oldest person there. You had young professionals in their 20s, 30s, 40s on a Sunday afternoon at 5.30 p.m. going to one of seven or eight Redeemer churches, Redeemer services across New York City that day. And here's one at 530. And it was packed. It was like nothing I had ever seen. And it's a wonderful example about how one person can make a difference. One person with a positive but challenging message about God can bring people together of all political stripes, of all races, of all nationalities. It was extraordinary. And we have his books now to read, but he will really, he'll be truly be missed.

Absolutely. I mean, you saw him when he came on the show. He didn't come on. He wasn't Mr. Sunshine. No, he was not. Hey, you know, he was he he he was an extraordinarily thoughtful man. And and he'll be he'll be missed very, very much. Also, as we mentioned at the top of the show, Martin Amis, the British author known for his comic novels in the 1980s and 90s, died on Friday after a battle with cancer. He was 73 years old. Amis published 15 novels throughout his life, as well as several works of nonfiction, essays, and short stories. Joining us now, Washington Post books editor,

John Williams joins us. Thank you for being on the show this morning. John, thank you so much. The novels, also, he was an extraordinary critic and was known for being a critic, but he had a quote that said something like, when you're young, saying awful things about other people in print is a vice. As you go to middle age, it becomes more unseemly. And just, I think he said something like, it's just like nearly

ghastly as you move toward the twilight. He was always evolving, always challenging himself, and especially challenging. I was just talking about a pastor, an evangelical pastor that never made it easy for his listeners. Always challenged his listeners in a completely different world. You can say Martin Amos did the same for his readers, right? Challenged them always. Absolutely. You could also say that he was in his own way, definitely not a Mr. Sunshine like Tim Keller. He was quite a reverend. So making this transition is a little funny. He never quite gave up that

vice of insulting other people. It sometimes got him into a little trouble, especially later in his life in the wake of 9-11. But he always just had this irascible tone to his writing, both as a critic and a novelist. And, you know, he was quite literally born into the job, or at least the world of the job. His father was Kingsley Amos, a very well-known British writer in the 50s, 60s and onward. And so from the beginning, there was an air about him of what now we would call maybe a nepo baby and maybe a suspicion that he was born on third base. But he actually proved over time to be one of the best writers of his own generation, along with a lot of people of his age who were considered kind of a cohort. Ian McEwen, Salman Rushdie, of course, his great friend Christopher Hitchens. Yeah, I mean, he almost

overshadowed by the end of his life Kingsley Amis, and I think did prove his own literary worth, whether or not he came from a famous family. Martin used to say that he had a high style to describe low things, and he was unrelenting in looking at capitalism, looking at people's vices, looking at the kind of seedier side of life and people's desires. When you think of the transition that he made from the U.K. and then came to America, what was it about America that appealed to him? Did he feel it liberated him to explore that even more, frankly?

I think so. I think he looked a little slack-jawed at America in those ways for all the reasons that the books get at, especially the early novels where there's a lot of talk about the sort of increased public nature of pornography and drug use in the culture. And he was a satirist, especially in the early books. He was quite famous in the UK early on because of his father, mostly. It took him a little longer to catch on in the early books. He was quite famous in the UK early on because of his father, mostly. It took him a little longer to catch on in the States. But when he did, it was for books like Money, which was published in 1984, set mostly in New York, about a filmmaker who is, as he puts it, addicted to the 20th century. And it's interesting because Amos was sort of an equal opportunity offender and could

be proactively vulgar in a way that isn't very fashionable right now. I don't think he's quite in at the moment. But in a book like Money, he's both sending it up and also when you're satirizing something like drugs and, you know, the 20th century manias, you get a little bit of that. You borrow some of its energy. So he had this verbal energy and I think people sometimes mistook his gimlet eye on it for what he actually believed and felt. You know, it's interesting. Katty was talking about,

and you were talking about he'd be seen as a, quote, nepo baby today, and yet it's something that he struggled with for some time. He said, I've been delegitimized by heredity. At the same time, how fascinating that, as Cady said, he may have actually in the end actually even outshone his extraordinary father, Jonathan Yardley at the Washington Post, who had written this in the past, a force unto himself among those in his generation. Now, writing fiction in English, there is quite simply no one else like him. How fascinating that a man who, again, said he was delegitimized by his family actually exits this earth,

considered one of the finest stylists in post-war Britain. Yes, and arguably more famous than his dad at the peak of his fame, for sure. And someone who proved himself. And it's hard to take the delegitimization too seriously. I know people probably looked at him askance early on, but he proved himself over time and it didn't hold him back, certainly. Washington Post books editor John Williams, thank you so much. Thank you, John.

We really appreciate you coming in. Absolutely. Thank you both.