Morning Joe - Morning Joe 5/25/23

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

DeSantis’ 2024 launch marred by technical problems

high in the cascade mountains of washington the world's largest radio transmitter its one million watts can flash a message around the world in a tenth of a second um all right well it's certainly uh an incredible honor to uh have governor sent us uh make this stark announcement the general sends the first message using the type key on which he relayed the Titanic disaster messages. Yeah, I think so. A ship or installation anywhere on the globe

can be instantly reached from Radio Jim Creek as the station is known. Sorry about that. We've got so many people here that I think we are kind of melting the servers. Answering messages begin coming in over the station's teletype. The problem with Ron DeSanctimonious is that he needs a personality transplant are kind of melting the servers. Answering messages begin coming in over the station's teletype.

The problem with Ron DeSanctimonious is that he needs a personality transplant, and those are not yet available. Billed at a cost of $14 million, the station embodies the last word in radio transmission. So let's see. Let's see if we can keep crashing him. Wow. OK, you got to get a give a hat tip to Dan and the gang for putting that together. Good job. Well, well, that was awkward to morning, Joe.

That was that was our producers putting together their their view of his failure to launch, Rhonda Sennis. We're going to obviously talk about this an awful lot. Good morning, Joe. It's Thursday, May 25th. You know, Willie, the thing is we're in the age of Twitter. We're in the age of social media. So everybody's going to freak out at that exact moment. And they certainly did.

There was a meltdown over the meltdown. It was bad. I mean, it was bad on so many fronts. But he raised some money. He got people talking about him today, not in a positive way. And there is a long way to go. This would be like the first game of 162-game baseball season and your star pitcher getting the ball and accidentally throwing it and hitting

himself in the face. It happens. But there's 161 other games left. And I mean this. But it does. It just shows, you know, they may just have to start talking to some people who have done this before instead of relying just on themselves because they don't want to repeat this too many times moving forward. Yeah, some candidates launch their campaigns by walking in front of the Statue of Liberty with their families as the wind blows at them. Other of them go with a choppy Twitter spaces feed with Elon Musk. No video. I had the same thought you had. Yes, this is amusing in some ways out of the gate. It was supposed to be a finger in the eye to the establishment. We're not playing your game. We're not going to do it the way it's been done. We're a different kind of campaign. I'm going to sit down with Elon Musk

and do it on Twitter. And that completely backfired. It'll matter for what, 24 hours? And then he steps out there and becomes a real candidate. And we'll see if he can do it. Yeah, it's the long game we'll be watching. Along with Joe, Willie, and me, we have the president of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton, former White House Director of Communications to President Obama, Jen Palmieri, and NBC News National Affairs Analyst John Hallman. They are both co-hosts of Showtime's The Circus. And before we get to politics, Reverend Dow, she was electric on stage ahead of her time, simply the best. Tina Turner, talk about her passing. What an

incredible, what just an icon. She was not only ahead of her time, she redefined her time. Correct. I think what she did to music, you couldn't even really put in words because Tina Turner broke through so many barriers in the rock R&B era for women, for blacks, and for people that were recovering from adversity. I mean, she very openly took her suffering and pain in her personal life and showed people how they could overcome and survive and thrive. Because I think everyone talks about how Ike Turner, her husband, used to brutalize her, and she was very open about that and talked about it. But what they don't talk about is that he also came at a time where men could dominate and rule women's careers. She not only got by his abuse, she proved that a woman can come back without the man managing her. And way better.

Without the man being the front man and go way better and sold more records, packed more auditoriums. Without Ike, who she more auditoriums without Ike, who she was supposed to need Ike. She proved women don't need a man to become the queen. Whether you crown us or not, we're going to be the queen. I mean, in so many ways, Tina Turner was the ultimate. And, Joe, it shows the impact she had. It's front-page news on literally every paper we have in front of us here,

not just the New York tabloids, but it's above the fold in The Wall Street Journal. And, of course, in the front page of The New York Times as well. And as Rev said, she had hits with Ike Turner. You know, she covered Proud Mary, won a Grammy for that, which was a Creedence Clearwater revival song. But then in the 80s, when she came out with Private Dancer, that's when she really blew up and became this international phenomenon on a tour where she was selling out football stadiums around the world and had this renaissance and won a bunch of Grammys for that award, too, and was in poor health and was living in Switzerland in the last few years. But she's been called the queen of rock and roll. And it's hard to argue with that when you think through her career it really is i mean you

look john heilman 1970 proud mary uh and then uh seemed to disappear from the public spotlight a good bit then 1984 she comes back bigger than ever with private dancer what's love got to do with it then into the 90s simply the best She just kept coming back more and more. And what a massive presence in rock history. Yeah, I think, you know, you think about that 1984 was a really incredible year for pop culture and for rock and roll. And people, hard back to that time, you think about Michael Jackson, you think about Prince, and people think about Bruce Springsteen. Three enormously, all of them had huge records in 1984.

All of them were all over MTV, were huge. She was the fourth. And at the time, as inescapable in a lot of ways on music television and in arenas, as Willie pointed out, across the world, she was as big a star. No one was as big a star as Michael Jackson with Thriller at that time. But they were the Mount Rushmore in a lot of ways in a year of the American Olympics. The U.S. had the Olympics that summer. And American music kind of triumphed around the world.

And really, she was, and Madonna was in that group too, but she was really inspirational in a way that almost no one else was. Because of that feminist iconography, the fact that she was very early, in some ways, maybe the first woman in rock and roll who seemed to overcome, you know, all of everything. The egg turner's relationship and the way she was treated by the industry for a long time. She was, they were, it was like the crystallization of every form of misogyny in the, in the music business, the entertainment industry had all landed with a giant crash on her head. And when she kind of came back at a time when a lot of people were like, ah, she's too old, she'll never be back in the eighties. Even, uh, it was an incredibly inspiring thing. Uh, and, and really like kind of set a certain kind of template for the way

that a lot of women came in later in the 80s and then in the 90s. She was a hero to a lot of people, white, black men, women. Man, she was just huge and beloved, as beloved as any of these people to today. No one liked her in terms of performance ability. I mean, just dynamic. There's no words to describe just the power of her performance. We're going to have much more ahead on the life and legacy of Tina Turner. We'll turn to politics now. And as we said, Ron DeSantis has officially entered the 2024 White House race. And as we said,

the live stream event on Twitter got off to kind of a rocky start, crashing several times with the announcement delayed by more than 20 minutes due to a series of technical glitches. All right. Sorry about that. We we've got so many people here that I think we are we are kind of melting the servers. Let's see. So we are. Yeah, I think we are kind of melting the servers. Let's see. So here we go. Yeah, I think so. Just to simplify this.

So let's see. So if we just keep crashing, huh? I think we're back online here. Great. All right. Well, it's certainly an incredible honor to have Governor DeSantis make this stark announcement. The technical troubles drew mockery on social media. President Joe Biden posted a link to his donation page, writing simply, this link works.

And former President Donald Trump had a series of posts on Truth Social calling the announcement fatal and a disaster. He also had one strange post where he wrote, quote, Rob, my red button is bigger, better and stronger and is working. Truth. Wait, I'm so I'm so uncomfortable right now. Yours does not. Per my conversation with King Kim Jong Un of North Korea, soon to become my friend. I'm going to let that just sit right there. OK, that's one of those of a relative post that you send somebody to the house. You do. You really need at this point. You need to intervene. You need to help. It's going to step in there. Meanwhile, a senior DeSantis campaign official later defended the launch, writing, Governor DeSantis broke the internet. That should tell you everything you need to know about the strength of his candidacy. All right. DeSantis also tried to spin the technical difficulties as excitement for his campaign. That was during a Fox

News interview last night. We had a huge audience. It did. It was the biggest they'd ever had. It did break the Twitter space. And so we're really excited with the enthusiasm. But ultimately, it's about the future of our country. Meanwhile, a DeSantis spokesperson tweeted that the campaign raised a million dollars online in just one hour, while a top adviser claimed more than 700000 people joined the virtual rollout. The Florida governor enters the race with a big cash advantage. Politico reported last month his state reelection account had $80 million left over from his gubernatorial race.

Didn't need that. Won by 19 points. That now can be transferred to a federal PAC. And a super PAC for DeSantis reportedly has raised $33 million. That official number will not, though, be made public until July. So that may be the point, Jen, for the campaign, that they got some attention. They were not the kind they wanted, but they raised a bunch of money and that this won't matter in the long term. But as someone who has been a communications director on many campaigns and in the White House, as John Heilman listens to some Tina Turner over on his

phone there. Give me your phone. That's fair. It was a small glitch. Miki, you've had these before. Wait, that was Bill Clinton. That was Bill Clinton in 1992. I was doing some research for this segment. It just really excited. You were showing us how dissent is launched and how you. There was a little bit. That was a technical glitch. the morning joe seth okay the great news is fix this in post exactly yes exactly um so jen as a communications professional you thought what is that rolled out last i mean it was an abomination but um and and just so much hubris all around from desantis from musk like you know oh by the way seven thousand people is not that much like twitter should be be able to handle 7,000 people. But for the MAGA base, which surprisingly is the group of voters that, you know, DeSantis does seem to be going for, not the moderate Republicans. He's going

for the MAGA base. I'm sure they love the unconventionality. They love the finger in the eye of the of the press. And, you know, Tim Scott needed a good launch. You know, he needed a good launch to introduce himself. And DeSantis doesn't need a great launch to have a great campaign. You know, he everybody knows who the Republican voters know who he is. They're interested in him. They like him. It was probably I think in the end they're thinking this is worth the trouble that we did. Joe. Yeah. You know, it's it's it was really a really bad start. I again, I've been saying it's it could be a one day, two day story depending on what happens as we move forward. It's a very long campaign. I will say just backing up, though, thinking of it.

I always tell people when they're running for office, I said your two most important days are the day you launch and the day you count the votes. And the day you launch sets sets the tone of everything, shows people how professional you are, that you actually know what you're doing. That's the one day that's kind of like the the first attack. You know, you know, Mike Tyson always had the joke that everybody has a plan until somebody gets punched in the face the first time. This is the first punch and you control that. And as Jen knows far better than me and Rev knows who's run before far better than me. After that punch, you don't control anything. It's all incoming and it's all how you respond to incoming.

It responds to what kind of candidate you are. And so, John Heilman, based on that measurement, it really was an embarrassment for the DeSantis campaign. I mean, they say they broke the Internet. They ended up with 200,000 people watching, listening, whatever they were doing. If they'd gone on Fox, they would have had well over a million people. If they'd gone on, well, a lot of cable news shows, they would have had over a million. If they'd gone on broadcast, they would have probably had even more people. If they'd gone on, you know, some other show. So it seems they made the worst of all choices. That said, though, this was for a candidate and also for like Silicon Valley tech engineers who hate the mainstream media, not engineers, Titans who hate the mainstream media, who hate wokeness, to put that in quotes, and always want to play the aggrieved.

It probably worked. I don't know. I'm not sure it worked for anybody. Your point, Joe, I think you can launch a presidential campaign poorly and still win your party's nomination. It's happened. But it's a free shot at doing something really well. And if you do it really well, it can be something that people remember forever. And I think of my friend Jennifer Palmieri here, thinking back to, for example, 2008, where Hillary Clinton announced from her sunroom. And then you had these images, the Sargent Strike, within a few days.

I think Obama went first. But you had Barack Obama at the old statehouse in Springfield, Illinois, on a cold day, giving an inspiring speech. That produced not just a huge audience that watched it initially, but it was in thousands of Obama campaign ads. It was a moment that people looked back and set the tone and tenor for the campaign and gave them enormous amounts of coverage. And people at Hillary Clinton's world thought that she gave a very nice speech in that sunroom, but it was not a thing anybody would ever remember again.

It was a missed opportunity. You know, Donald Trump, for all the criticism and all the terrible things that he said when he got down to the end of that escalator in 2016, people still talk about it today. Donald Trump coming down the escalator in Trump Tower, he made an iconic moment for himself. And part of the reason I was trying to remember, Bill Clinton also announced the old state house in October of 1991 in Little Rock, a thing that, again, was in campaign ads for all of 1992. Can you win without a great slouch? You can.

But you have, as you said, Joe, there's a free throw here. And you have all the time in the world, as Ron DeSantis has, to set this up and get it right. And they blew it in that sense. A missed opportunity. And I will say, having come at the end of all of the flubs over the last, in the pre-campaign, all the things they've screwed up in the last two or three months, it is creating this question, which you never want to face if you're a presidential candidate, which is the filter, us, the media and people in the political world looking at you going, hey, can anybody here play this

game? That's not the way you want people to be greeting your entrance into the race. Well, and I do think that's a big question coming from donors, especially and also the base and people saying in the Republican Party who can beat Donald Trump right now. This is the one thing you completely control. It's all within your control. And he ceded the control to a glitchy platform with a guy who was, you know, he just knew he was going to take up a lot of the space, a lot of the oxygen. And he knew that, and he made the move anyway. But, Rev, John's so right.

You look back at Barack Obama's opening announcement. You look back at Ronald Reagan, the way he launched his fall campaign in front of the Statue of Liberty in 1980. I mean, you talk about the launch of your campaign and talk about how the launch matters so much. It does set the tone. And here again, this could all be forgotten in a week or two. That said, unfortunately, too often it foreshadows either problems or strengths in the campaign to follow. Well, I think you want to launch by giving the optics of your message and why you're running. I mean, I launched having a rally and having a lot of the people that mattered to the people that I was hoping would vote for me standing there with me.

That was the message I wanted to give. And I think those that you mentioned did similar launches. I think that not only was this a mess up, the thing we have to keep in mind is DeSantis is challenging Donald Trump, who will never let us forget that he messed up the march, the launch. So we can say for anyone else, it's one day tomorrow to be something else. Every chance Trump gets, he's going to say, how can this man run the economy when he can't run a launch? How can this man handle international global affairs when he can't handle a launch? I mean, if you were running against candidates that would move on, I would say don't worry about it, Governor DeSantis. But you run against Donald Trump, he will never let you forget it. And more

importantly, he will never let us forget it. That's how Trump is. You just served him a softball and he's going to keep hitting that ball over the fence every chance he can. Well, recent polls taken before his announcement yesterday have Ron DeSantis significantly behind Donald Trump in the Republican primary. In the latest CNN National Survey conducted last week, the Florida governor trails Trump by 27 points among registered Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters. In a March poll, the deficit for DeSantis was just four points. The latest Quinnipiac National Survey has DeSantis trailing Trump by 31 points. He trailed by 14 points in March. And a new Emerson College of Iowa Republicans out just this morning as Trump ahead of DeSantis 62 to 20 percent.

Let's bring in former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party. She knows a thing or two about this. Jennifer Horn. Jennifer, he's Ron DeSantis has a long way to go. What do you make of this botched rollout and the impact in the long run? Well, there's no question that this was there. There's nothing good. You know, he went on Fox and tried to kind of spin it.

Oh, yeah, we broke the Internet. That's not what happened, unfortunately, last night. And it is possible that in a few months, as you look back, that it might be that we learned that the Internet broke Ron DeSantis. You know, there's it created a moment for Donald Trump. But but more equally important to that, it also when you look at those poll numbers and the degree to which DeSantis is, his numbers are declining. It's probably undermined the confidence of a lot of those primary voters that he really pretty desperately needs right now. You know, there was a hashtag going last night, disaster, you know, D-E-saster, you know, Ron disaster.

Those kinds of things can stick. You know, he's got to get on the ground into Iowa, into New Hampshire, and start impressing people face to face, you know, a little bit more than he has now if he wants to have any chance at this. He may have hit, you know, to Joe's point earlier, he may have, you know, hit his peak already. And we look again, as you look at those numbers, last night did not help him in any any manner. So, Jennifer, if we move past the technical side of this, which most people will probably by tomorrow, and you get to the meat of what he and Elon Musk were talking about and you try to find what the message is, what the rationale is for the campaign, why he would beat Donald

Trump. And it was a pretty arcane conversation when you get down to it. They were talking about the college accreditation process and taking that away from schools that use DEI. And they were talking about ESG. And he was complaining about, you know, Vanity Fair magazine, all these other things that he believes are unfair to him, but didn't really go after Donald Trump in any direct way. He complained about some of the appointees, about Jerome Powell and Christopher Wray, and said, I'd fire them. And Donald Trump appointed them. But other than that, didn't really go at the guy he has to go at if he wants to be the nominee. Is that going to change or is he going to try to tiptoe around Donald Trump somehow? You know what? It sounded a little bit whiny last night, didn't it? Parts of it.

And and I saw some people talking about, gee, it was an hour of talking about policy. We never get that in politics. It was, to your point, Arne, it was so in the weeds in some areas. And just honestly, I think not particularly engaging for a lot of voters. He has to get past that. It seems to be a fear that they all have to confront Donald Trump. Somebody has to do that. That's how you win a campaign. And the other folks sitting at the table will tell you that. When you're in second, third, fourth, fifth place, you got to go after the guy in first place.

And they all appear to be afraid to do that. And I think with DeSantis, it's starting to come across a little bit or a lot bit like he's just kind of an empty suit. Like he's got all this bluster and look at me, I'm the authoritarian governor of this one state. But when push comes to shove and he's announcing, he's afraid to call Donald Trump out. He's afraid to say what has to be said. I don't know how you win like that. Yeah, I totally agree. Former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party, Jennifer Horn, as always, thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you. And Rev, I wanted to follow up on what Willie said. You know, you're sitting there talking about college accreditation, ESG. And yeah, I mean, I want people to talk about policy and everything. But so many of these things that they're talking about care to such a small, small subset of the Republican base. You know, Ronald Reagan, people always talked about the genius of Reagan. Reagan would talk about things that 90 percent of Americans would agree with. Right. I mean,

he always he picked the issues. He understood what moved Americans. He understood, you know, how to how to talk in a way that united people. And, you know, listening to some of the policy discussions last night where they're going deep in the weeds and this woke ism that, again, I understand a small portion of their base are going to make decisions on. I mean, that's like if you're getting up and you're reading, you know, all you do is preach on Leviticus and you're going in and you're going through the history of the text here. And let me get you. Now, I'm going to read you the Hebrew text and then let me give you the interpretation of what that means. And, you know, compare that to some Greek texts that's found later in the scriptures and people are glazed over. But yeah, there'll be a couple of nerds in your church that want to hear that. A couple of people that went to seminary. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And

they'll rub their beards. But for these people that are like wanting to figure out, do I want this guy to run America? Does he believe in the greatness of America? Does he believe that America is still a city shining brightly on the hill for all the world to see? Does he believe in the power of small business and entrepreneurs and family businesses and restaurants to build up a community? Build up. You get the idea. The big picture. What's your vision? Not NerdQuest on ESG regulations. No, you're exactly right. You must know some seminarians that I know that can give you 12 translations, but never really gives you the meaning of the text. And I think that's what happened with DeSantis. The other part of that is that it says to people,

you really don't understand me. So why should I vote for you? If you're not addressing my concerns, then why am I choosing you over the alternative? You're running against someone who was president as corrupt and and mean spirited as I think he is. He was the president. So you've got to tell Republican voters why I'm a better candidate, why I understand you more, why I can answer and fulfill your needs better than he can. That's the route that you have to go if you're going to be successful. He didn't even come within miles of that last night, even when he did get on. And I think that that is going to be, if that's a forecast, that's going to be something that will lead to a disaster for him.

He has got to not only take Trump on, he's got to show that I know you and will stand for you better than Trump will. Mika, did you have any of your bingo card this morning that this would be the morning that Joe would go negative on Leviticus? That was not what I thought when we came here this morning. I thought Joe usually, like his favorite, he likes the Old Testament, he likes the New Testament, just like Trump. But I've never heard him single out a part of the Bible for an attack. You're shocking us yet again, Joe. Shocking. I'm a New Testament guy.

I'm a New Testament guy. And Rev will tell you that whenever somebody brings up Leviticus, there's a lot of eye rolling going on in the church. Today, I am going to preach on Leviticus. There's a lot of eye rolling going on in the church today. I am going to preach Leviticus. Oh, sweet Jesus. Let's slip out and get to the Morrison's line now. I mean, come on. Let's slip out the back, Jack, make a new plan, Stan. So, so the thing is, again, to some of these people, and I understand this, this ESG stuff and college accreditation. I'm not saying this doesn't matter to people and I'm not denigrating it. Let's have the debate on all of this stuff.

That's great. But let me repeat what we've been trying to say on this show to Donald Trump since he got he ran his campaign and continue getting more negative politics, politics. It's a game of addition, right? Again, staying with it, just staying with a church analogy. You want to throw open the doors of that church. You want people hearing the music. You want people to hear the good news, not the Greek version of chapters of ancient scripture. You want to do what Reagan knew how to do. You want to do what Clinton knew how to do, what Kennedy knew what to do, what Obama, what all of these people knew how to do. And right now, it's a game of subtraction. It's been that way in the Trump Republican Party.

That's why they've been losing. They need, like I say, throw open those church doors, preach the good news, and man, make it for a big audience instead of the angriest people in your base. And if you do, a weird thing happens. You win elections. I know someone who's good at that, by the way, aside from the people you've named Joe Biden, quietly, very good at the game of addition. Still and always underestimated. Yes, he is. Still ahead on Morning Joe with lawmakers struggling to reach a deal on the debt ceiling. The ratings agency Fitch has placed the United States credit on a negative watch.

That will go over what that could mean for the U.S. economy. Plus, the January 6th rioter who was photographed with his feet on a desk in Nancy Pelosi's office gets serious prison time. We'll have that story also ahead. DNC chair Jamie Harrison joins us to discuss the state of the 2024 race on the heels of yesterday's announcement by Ron DeSantis and Grammy Award winning singer songwriter Sarah Vare Bareilles is our guest this morning. She joins us with a look at her brand new project for Audible. You're watching Morning Joe. We will be right back. Just come off the key and get yourself free. Sleep out the back, Jack. Make a new plan, Stan.

You don't need... Beautiful live picture of the United States Capitol at 6.34 in the morning. A rioter who was photographed with his feet on a desk in then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office in that building during the January 6 insurrection has been sentenced now to four and a half years in prison. Sixty three year old Richard Barnett was convicted in January on eight charges, including theft of government property and entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.

In addition to a stun device, prosecutors say Barnett armed himself with a 10 pound steel pole. Barnett's lawyers argued the retired firefighter and bull rider from Arkansas came to Washington for the first time to peacefully protest. Didn't turn out that way. Unfortunately, they say he was caught up in the events that took place on January 6th, but the judge disagreed with that version of events, sentencing Barnett to 54 months behind bars for his actions that day. Wow. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican congresswoman, temporarily presided over the House of Representatives yesterday.

And she made an attempt to quiet the chamber by calling for decorum. Here's how Democrats responded. The members are reminded to abide by decorum of the House. The House will be in order. Yeah, as you heard, the Georgia congresswoman's calls for composure were met with a burst of prolonged laughter. It comes just months after Green heckled President Biden repeatedly during his State of the Union address when she broke decorum and shouted liar. And that, among many other things, Jen, I think the Democrats just that was very natural. I just came from everywhere. That was not yet. That was very organic. Yeah, that was not that was not that It was not planned. That was not planned. Are you kidding me? Yeah, a rare moment of sincerity on the House floor.

Yeah. I wonder if they ever got it together. All right, coming up, we continue to remember the queen of rock and roll, a look at the life and lasting impact of music icon Tina Turner. That's next on Morning Joe. Do it for me. Oh, what's love got to do? It's got to do with it. Hey, welcome back to Morning Joe. And we're back with more on the passing of music legend Tina Turner. She left an indelible mark on rock and roll and influenced a new generation of artists.

NBC's nightly news anchor Lesser Holt recounts her life and incredible legacy. Left a good job in the city. That powerful voice. Rolling, rolling, rolling down the river. That electrifying dancing. Poked a lot of pain down in New Orleans. No wonder Tina Turner was known as the queen of rock and roll. When I walk out onto the stage, it's one big healthy party.

That's the feeling, and that was what I always wanted. After an iconic career and a life of hardship and resilience, the 83-year-old legend died at her home in Switzerland following a long illness. Born Anna Mae Bullock in Tennessee in 1939, Turner was the daughter of sharecroppers. As a teenager, she was discovered by Ike Turner, who gave her that famous stage name. In the 60s, they performed together as the Ike and Tina Turner review. But in their 16 years of marriage, Ike's abuse was brutal and unrelenting. There was no control. There was no freedom. You just get fed up and you say, life is not worth living if I'm going to stay in this situation. Tina fled in 1976. She said she had just 36 cents and a mobile card to her name.

A scene recreated in the 1993 biopic, What's Love Got To Do With It? I'm Tina Turner. My husband and I just had a fight. It was after she broke free from Ike, she truly became a superstar. I got to be known as a great performer. I never tried to change my style because of any other style. I just stayed true to what I do. Along the way, she won eight Grammys and had six top ten hits. A Super Bowl halftime show, and a Broadway

musical about her life. I love sitting there watching them do a show that it took me years to learn and do. And here it took them a matter of months to master. In a recent HBO documentary, Turner reflecting on all she'd been through. I had an abusive life. There's no other way to tell the story. A survivor and performer, Tina Turner was simply one of the best. I think I have something very special to do. It makes sense to me that I'm here for something more than my dancing and all of what I've done.

So much more than that. And what a story she leaves. What a legacy she leaves. Let's bring it right now. The host of Sirius XM's 80s on 8, Mark Goodman. Mark, you know, you were there, man. You were there in 83, 84. Those are really the years, all just dominating the stage. I'm just curious what you first thought when somebody said, hey, we got Tina Turner. She's got a new album coming out and we're going to put it into the rotation. Who could have ever imagined Mark, right? Crazy. For sure, Joe. I got to say, first, thanks for having me on. But Tina was a has-been. She was washed up.

The fact that someone like her would come back and come back at the time that she did. Think about what was going on in music, as you just pointed out, Joe. For some woman who was in her mid-40 to actually make it on MTV. Stunning. Yeah. And it's hard, again, for some people to remember just what MTV meant to music and breaking artists in 82, 83, 84. Obviously, a visual medium, a lot of young bands from all over the world, the 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds. And again, here comes a woman in her 40s, a has been supposedly whose last massive hit was in 1970. Tina Turner helped MTV and also how that powerful engine of MTV catapulted her back into fame because she fit she fit the medium so well. I think we all know those of us who loved MTV back in the day, some artists really just segued right into video. It was as though the medium was waiting for them.

And Tina Turner, absolutely the case. You're right. She was perfect for what was happening on MTV at that time. Who was more visual? Who was more electrifying? Who clearly, we knew the history by this time. We knew what she had been through. We knew that Mick Jagger was studying her.

We saw her in Gimme Shelter. Just that moment for her, and she has said it, that moment was the pinnacle of her career. Hey, Mark, good morning. It's Willie Geist. It's so great to have you on the show this morning. Something that Rev was just talking about a little earlier I think has to be said again, and we heard it in Lester's piece there, which is how she walked away from Ike Turner in a way that in a very public way and talked about the abuse she suffered and said basically to a lot of women, you can get out of that abusive

relationship and then go on to thrive as you've just documented. That part of her story, that feminist side of the story was such an important part of who she was as well, wasn't it? It's true. Massively important. And I think that we know that she really sort of was a signpost for so many women who were in that kind of relationship. Yes, you can get out. You can survive and thrive. All of that. She pointed the way. But she has said the reason that she didn't show up at the 1991 induction when she was inducted into the Rock Hall with Ike, she wanted to separate herself from that. She wanted to be Tina Turner, the star, the queen of rock and roll that she was.

She wanted to separate herself from that without leaving those victims behind. Yeah. But that story, I mean, it just gives me chills. John Hellman, I mean, she left an abusive relationship with literally pennies in her pocket. Talk about sort of knowing your value to its core. Seriously. And, you know, I was just showing Jen, I was thinking about this, you know, those three big songs from that record, um, private dancer, uh, and, uh, what's all I've got to do with it. We're huge. You better be good to me. And Mark will remember this of the videos was the one that really, really punched through as the upbeat song. And again, feminist anthem. I, I, I kept a certification to quote, uh, lyrics. You read back to this, you listen to

her singing because I don't have no use for what you loosely call the truth. And I don't have the time for your overloaded lines. So you better be good to me. Like, a mid-40s black woman singing that song in America on MTV and in a video that was, you know, as ubiquitous, Mark, as like anything. Summer of 84, I feel like I watched that video. It was on probably in rotation every hour on MTV. And that was at a time when MTV was popular culture.

For sure. Tina, at that moment, when Private Dancer came out and that first single started to become a hit, all of a sudden we kind of realized it really was this kind of wave. I was lucky enough to interview her when she came in for Private Dancer. This is, in fact, I know you just showed one of the pics from that interview. This was pre-wigs. This was right at the beginning of Private Dancer. And we talked about how thrilled she was to finally get to what she had set her mind to all those years ago that's what she wanted I want to be the queen of rock and roll just nothing nothing like that woman no one can top her mark al Sharpton one of the things that I want you to talk about is the fact

that she not only broke from the abusive relationship would I what you to talk about is the fact that she not only broke from the abusive relationship with Ike which you know one should minimize but also the autistic side of her that broke because one of the things that you know in show business is a lot of the misogyny was the men would say you're not that good I'm making you good. And I tried to convince her she was not a talent unto herself. So not not only did she break through for women that you don't have to become enslaved with an abusive relationship, you can stand on your own as an artist. I didn't make me good. I'm good. And I think as she blossomed, she taught a lot of women during a time where in music men were dominant,

that you don't have to be under the thumb of a man. You can express yourself. And I think that a lot of people are missing that message with Tina really made clear to us. Tina Turner absolutely showed what a woman can do on her own. She really, she blazed that path for not only women,

black women, I think for performers in general. She showed what belief in yourself is. She showed what it means to pull yourself out of an abusive, difficult relationship and to somehow. And she was she was a practicing Buddhist. And this meant a lot to her and it saved her life. She really focused on her faith.

She prayed every day. She believed. And this is what happened. You know, Mark, that's what I want to touch on really quickly here with you as we end. I'm going through all the tributes to Tina Turner. And they're all talking about Tina Turner, the woman, Tina Turner, the person, not the queen of rock, not not the great performer, the great singer. Mick Jagger said this. She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer. She was inspiring, warm, funny, and generous.

She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her again, nothing in there about the music, all about the incredible person she was. You know, I forgot about this, but Martha Quinn, my fellow former MTV VJ, posted something last night that I had completely forgotten about. Martha saw Tina wear this incredible, iconic sequined gold dress. And Martha commented to her at the time how much she loved that dress. A week later, in Martha's dressing room, a box arrives and she opened it up and there was the dress. Tina had sent her the dress. Sirius XM's Mark Goodman, thank you very much for that tribute this morning.

We appreciate it. And still ahead on Morning Joe, Maryland Governor Wes Moore is our guest. He's a National Advisory Board member for President Biden's re-election campaign. Plus, we'll have the latest on the debt ceiling negotiations as many House lawmakers are leaving Washington without a deal. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back to Morning Joe at 657. Three minutes of seven. Beautiful look at New York City. My God, I love New York this time of year. May, June, it's just phenomenal. So that's my weather forecast and my sort of babbling around about my loves. I'm sorry.

Yeah, it's weather on the sevens. So, John, we're talking about popular culture and music, obviously, as it pertains to Tina Turner. But we've left out a huge part of that story, and that's the Mad Max movies, which she was a part of, went from a cult favorite to a massive hit, and again, just part of the culture you and I grew up in. Yeah, I mean, we talked a lot about 84 and her breakthrough, which she did a single with Bryan Adams after that breakthrough with Private Dancer, and then was in the third Mad Max movie. It had a cameo and did the theme music for We Don't Need Another Hero in 1985. Again, all those movies,

they were getting progressively bigger, but that movie, Thunderdome, was the movie of the summer of 1985. She was in it, And she had a number one hit. I think she may have won a Grammy for that performance. She was, again, it kept rolling. She came out of that can in 84. But she then had a very big second half of the 1980s, too. And that was part of it. So cool.

All right.