Morning Joe - Morning Joe 5/31/24

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

Donald Trump found guilty in historic New York hush money case

And while this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes to the courtroom doors. By following the facts and the law and doing so without fear or favor. Many voices out there. The only voice that matters is the voice of the jury, and the jury has spoken. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaking yesterday following the historic conviction of former President Donald Trump on all 34 counts in the criminal hush money trial.

Trump becomes the first former U.S. president in American history to be convicted of a crime. The verdict was read just around 5 p.m. in a New York City courtroom after the 12 jurors deliberated for roughly nine and a half hours over two days. Each of the 34 felony counts is associated with a falsified business record pertaining to Trump's reimbursement of his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen for a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump back in 2006. Trump has denied her claim. Sentencing is set for July 11th, just four days before the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee. The maximum sentence for falsification

of business records is four years in prison. But incarceration is not a mandatory sentence. It will be Judge Juan Merchan, who ultimately decides the punishment. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bear Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kay, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, former U.S. attorney and MSNBC contributor Chuck Rosenberg, and MSNBC legal analyst Danny Savalas. Good to have you all with us. Chuck, I'm curious, your first impressions of what happened yesterday,

what Americans should be looking at, what they should be focusing on as we move forward? Yeah, it's going to be hard, I think, for our very divided country, Joe, to look at this the way I do. I mean, I think it's relatively simple. The government presented a compelling case. They adduced the facts they wanted to adduce. They called the witnesses they wanted to call. They asked them the questions they wanted to ask them. And the jury understood it. Juries often do.

I mean, statistically speaking, most juries convict most of the time. And that's what happened here. But, you know, I was thinking about, believe it or not, a National Science Foundation poll, Joe, that shows that about a quarter of Americans, and this has been consistent over time, York happens routinely and regularly around the country. Juries hear the facts, they deliberate, they deliver their verdict, and we need to accept that plain and simple. So, Lisa Rubin, you've been covering this so closely down at the courthouse right from the beginning, giving us your analysis and sort of reading some tea leaves in the last few days. I think the prosecution hoped for, but probably didn't expect a clean 34 for 34 sweep on every count to get convictions on those. What's your reaction to the verdict? Willie, I was in the courtroom yesterday for the verdict, and I can tell you that

just the very existence of a verdict was a huge shock to everyone there, given the fact that Judge Mershon assembled the parties at 4.15. He came in. He said that he was prepared to release the jurors at 4.30 and that he just needed to take care of a couple of things. And then he stepped off the bench and 4.30 came and went. And at 4.36, there was just this tension all throughout the courtroom as everyone was waiting, thinking, what in the world is happening? Could we possibly have a verdict? And indeed, when he retook the bench and said, I have a note from the jury, they have a verdict. Both people on both sides of me gasped audibly. You could just hear it reverberate throughout the crowd. So just the very existence

of the verdict was shocking. But I think the reactions of the parties was also so telling. Former President Trump tried to put a good face on the verdict. When he walked out, you could see he set his jaw in that Trump-like way. He pursed his lips in the way we're all used to. He set his face to look ahead. And yet he looked like a man defeated and resigned. He walked slowly and lumberingly. And then once they were out of the courtroom, we, the press corps, about 100 of us, were left in there with the DA's office. I don't know if I've shared this before, but when Trump moves out into the hallway for security purposes, everyone is frozen.

And that includes the staff of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. If you were counting on them to look as if they just scored the biggest score in that office's history, you wouldn't have seen it on their faces or on Alvin Bragg's face. He looked straight ahead and the prosecutors on his team didn't crack a single smile among them. Maybe there was a little twinge of relief in their shoulders and body language. But this was a group of people that knew that all eyes of the world would be on them in this moment if they were lucky enough to get a conviction, let alone 34 of them. And they met the moment with their seriousness of purpose. This is not a group of people, despite what Donald Trump and his Republican allies are saying, that relished this victory, that are rejoicing in it. It was a somber and sad day for America that we have now

seen a former president convicted on 34 felony counts. And you could see that in all of their faces. Gut punch to the country. Danny Savalos, let's talk about what's next. Sentencing is July 11th. What happens between now and then and what are the options with sentencing? And of course, I take it an appeal can't start until after that. Probation will prepare what's called a pre-sentence investigation report. Now, that normally involves interviewing the offender to find out about the offender, but who honestly needs to interview Donald Trump to find out about his biographical details

and all the other information that normally goes into a PSR. Then the sides will submit their sentencing memoranda. The Trump side will unquestionably ask for a probation-only sentence. The real question for me, what I'm really curious about is what the DA's office asks for. Will they say, ah, this is kind of a political decision. Let's ask for probation only. We've won. Let's call it a victory.

Or will they ask for incarceration? I believe they will ask for an incarceration sentence in this case. The real question is what Justice Merchan will do. Now, there are plenty of arguments to be made for a probation only sentence. Number one, this is a 71 plus year old offender. You have a nonviolent offense, a first time offender, no guns, no drugs, no violence involved. And I would make an additional argument. And I think reasonable minds could disagree here that I would say that loss and the great Chuck Rosenberg will

tell you that in fraud cases, especially in the federal system, the single biggest driver of a sentence is the dollar amount of loss and losses measured in many different ways. But as a defense attorney, I would argue that the loss in this case is zero point zero. It's not a traditional fraud case where you have traditional victims who handed over their money. Let's say and I'm just thinking of an example. Let's say I made up a fake university and charged people fake tuition for my fake university and kept all that money. I'm just giving a hypothetical example. That might be a case where you could measure loss in terms of the number of victims multiplied by how much they paid. You don't really have that here. You could make the argument that the loss and the victims are the people of the state of New York. I get that. And I think reasonable minds could disagree. But as a defense attorney,

I would be arguing that loss in this case is zero. So I think that you will see a request for a non-incarceration probation only sentence. But I also think you're going to see the prosecutors asked for jail time. Let me let me up in the sub to our lawyers to Chuck, Lisa and Danny and just ask what happened. I mean, I I must say that I said it and I've said it here before, that in a nation where 77 million people voted for Donald Trump, I just, you know, maybe I was being cynical, but I just thought there would be one out of 12 jurors that would have said, no, not going to go along with it. We're going to, you know, we're going to drag this thing out forever. So I was surprised by the quickness of it. I was surprised by the resounding, the resounding 34 of 34. What what do you all think happened in there that that that moved the dynamic in such a dramatic way against Donald Trump?

Who's first? Lisa, I'll start with you. Well, Joe, I think what happened is evidence happened. And the evidence in this case was overwhelming. Todd Blanche can go on as many cable networks as he can find and say that his client was convicted solely on the word of Michael Cohen. And nothing could be further from the truth. His client was convicted largely on the words of two categories of people, his acolytes, starting with David Pecker and ending with

Hope Hicks and Madeline Westerhout, and his own words heard by the jury in a recording that Michael Cohen made on September 6th, 2016, and even including his tweets, which were consciousness of his guilt in 2018, his legal filings where he admitted that this who are loyal. Loyalty above all else. Don't trust anyone, even if you have the best people around you. Micromanage, micromanage, micromanage, because at the end of the day, your checkbook belongs to you and you alone. Donald Trump was convicted because evidence happens. Yeah. And I think one of the things that we may not know for some time until we talk to jurors, but I don't think the jurors spent a lot of time parsing out each and every count. I think they looked at them as a group and they could have done that because the facts involved with each transaction were so similar. Yes, there were minor differences. I did wonder if they might

seize on the fact that Donald Trump signed some checks, but not all the checks. Or, for example, that the checks came from the Trump organization, then they came from the trust. Those were examples of differences between these transactions. But of course, each count really could have all these counts could have been divisible by three because you had a voucher related to a check related to an invoice. So in that sense, they could have grouped those together. But unlike many financial crimes cases where the transactions are very distinct and involve very different facts, this could have been a case where they really just could have grouped all these together and said that Trump's intent applied to all of them broadly based on the evidence they heard of Trump's involvement. And they could have arrived at this relatively quickly.

Maybe we'll find out that they took a straw poll right away when they got into the jury room and there was a minority. And going to your question, Joe, you know, you're right. We often speak of there. It only takes one juror. But practically speaking, if you're that one of 12 and you get in that jury room and you find that, oh, I'm the only one who doesn't agree with my 11 fellow jurors. Those folks, I don't think, tend to hold out for too long. I think that just

mass psychology is that, well, at least I better listen to what they have to say. I'm convincible. I'm somebody with an open mind. I said I was someone with an open mind. And when you have one or two in the minority like that, I don't think it takes too long. Maybe that's why they read back the testimony to say, hey, Steve, are you convinced now? Maybe your memory is refreshed. Are you with us? And that's probably why this happened. Relatively speaking, in my view, this was a short deliberation. And we've wondered for so long whether or not this trial was breaking through. But that one word, guilty, sure seems to be doing that. Chuck Rosenberg, let's get you in on this to Joe's question as to what you think happened. Why do you think this

happened the way it did over the last few days, but also to get you to focus in on the idea of sentencing? What would your thoughts be as to what Donald Trump will face? Yeah. So first question, first, Jonathan, my experience has been overwhelmingly that when jurors assemble and they tell a judge that they can be fair and listen with an open mind, they actually mean it. And so, yeah, I understand that it only takes one juror to hang a jury and to create a mistrial, but that's not what tends to happen. And I think Danny is right about the psychology of it. But just listen to their own words during jury selection. People who said they couldn't be fair, or I'm sorry, people who couldn't be fair said they couldn't be fair and were removed from the jury. And a number of people said they could be fair and they were impaneled. And by and large,

that's true. That's my experience, that people really do listen to the facts and they follow the instructions of the judge. And if the facts are compelling, and they were in this case, apparently, then you have a conviction. Was it quick? It was relatively quick. Quick verdicts tend to be government verdicts. Quick verdicts tend to be prosecution verdicts. But I don't think it was unduly quick. I think 10 hours is plenty of time to sit down and talk to your brothers and sisters on the jury and to agree on the weight of the evidence and to, you know, fairly deliberate the case. So not unduly quick. And then finally, Jonathan, with regard to sentencing, look, it's always a bad idea before the first pitch to tell the umpire that he sucks.

It's just not the way you want to sort of go into the first inning of a baseball game. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Nevertheless, as Danny articulated earlier, this is a first time nonviolent offender. And typically in New York state courts, a first time nonviolent offender. And typically, in New York state courts, a first-time nonviolent offender does not get a jail sentence. That said, continuing to yell at the umpire to denigrate the ump, the courts, the jurors, the system, the prosecutors, is just a bad strategy. And one thing that judges look for at sentencing is what the defendant has to say, because all defendants have a chance to speak at sentencing. We call it allocution. And, you know, I sit there and listen as a prosecutor to whether or not the defendant is remorseful, whether he or she apologizes, whether he or she takes responsibility. And I think Mr. Trump is constitutionally incapable of doing that.

And so, you know, might that be determinative here? Perhaps the typical defendant in a case like this would get a sentence of probation. Danny is exactly right. But Mr. Trump has been and always will be a wild card. And his fate now resides in the hands of one person. And he's been spending a lot of time denigrating that one person. So we'll see. You know, Mike Barnicle, I learned early on the campaign trail that the rules of evidence and civil procedure and all the things that kept things sane inside of a courtroom did not apply when you get out in politics.

Now it's like, oh my God, people can just say whatever they want to say. And it was a bit of a courtroom did not apply when you get out in politics. Now, it's like, oh, my God, people can just say whatever they want to say. And it was a bit of a shock. Well, we reversed that here. And we've talked about it a good bit over the past year. Gravity returning the lies that people could say outside of a courtroom about stolen elections that they would never say in front of a judge. Well, in this case, you have Donald Trump. And I have no doubt the abusiveness that some people, for some strange reason, are drawn to on the campaign trail,

it caused him inside that courtroom. They had a mild-mannered judge, a judge that the jury seemed to like. And Trump was constantly being abusive toward the judge. He had a witness that the judge had to dress down. And time and time again, you know, Trump and his lawyers thought they could bully their way through through these proceedings. It's a very small room. And if the jury is they like the judge, they're looking at what's going on through the eyes of the judge. That had to hurt Donald Trump from the very beginning. Joe, I think you're probably talking about the most important point that happened during this trial, including the verdict.

And it overshadows the big headlines that say guilty on every front page in the country. And it is the fact that 12 ordinary American citizens, perhaps of different political beliefs, different religious beliefs, different ethnic backgrounds, we don't know that, 12 average Americans sat in a room and guess what? They didn't get information or evidence from TikTok or Instagram. They got evidence presented rationally by the prosecution in this case. And they made a decision that Donald J. Trump was guilty. And Donald J. Trump's reaction to the guilty verdict was once again, he's already demeaned and destroyed much of our electoral process by saying it's rigged and corrupt. And now he took on the rule of law.

He took on the definition of justice itself by saying this verdict was corrupt and it was rigged and it's a rigged system. Well, if he was correct in both his assertions that the electoral process is rigged and corrupt and that the judicial process is rigged and corrupt, then there is no more America. There is no more America. And Lisa, I'm wondering if you, as an officer of the court, worry about the fact that Trump and his followers, we've seen Ted Cruz, we've seen Marco Rubio, are going to continue to do damage to the rule of law. Absolutely. That's a huge concern of mine. I couldn't believe Ted Cruz's statement last night about the verdict, that this was an outrage and an upset to the rule of law. And I kept thinking, you were involved in this. He kept dragging your father into this.

He had David Pecker do mock-ups of your father with Lee Harvey Oswald. And yet you're defending this guy. The competitive sycophancy going on here is Olympic level. And what's going to suffer are democracy and justice, which should be the twin pillars of our country, right? And yet they are all falling all over themselves to say this is not how the justice system should function. This is exactly how the justice system should function. Chuck said the other day that win or lose, whatever happened here, we should respect the verdict of this jury. Everything I saw from this jury showed an engaged, invested, serious group of people who were coming together to make a grave

decision. And they understood that what they were doing was particularly serious given who the defendant was. It wasn't like they took this flippantly. And yet we have Donald Trump and his Republican allies continuing to call the process, the sham, the judge corrupt, the district attorney, a sham with with racial overtones that I find particularly grotesque. There is nothing wrong with what happened here. And they're not being called out on it. Yeah. I mean, speaking of grotesque, we have a guy whose family escaped Castro's Cuba, communist Cuba, a country that Castro ran with an iron fist. There was no rule of law there. There were just there was just repression.

There was tyranny. What an insult. And Marco, like these other people, all because they want to cozy up to Donald Trump and maybe be his vice president. That's it. They degrade themselves and they slander America. They hate on America, Katty Kay, talking about how, you know, Rubio said in the E. Jean Carroll case, a jury of Trump's peers were, quote, a joke because he didn't like the outcome. And now he's comparing America to Castro's Cuba, which I will say, yes, it's meant to kiss up to Donald Trump and shock everybody else. Doesn't shock me. All it's going to do is hurt Republicans.

It's going to hurt them in Wisconsin. It's going to hurt them in Michigan. It's going to hurt them in Pennsylvania. Americans know that Marco Rubio's lying. Americans know that we are a nation of laws. Americans know that these jurors and jurors do do a noble job. And so you have you have these people going out there saying these outrageous things. And at the end of the day, yes, it hurts to see people hate America. It hurts me as a patriot to

hear people hating on America. But I do know at the end of the day, it's only going to end up hurting Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, and the Republican Party anymore because people don't buy their propaganda. Yeah, I mean, Marco Rubio, of all people, knows that this is absurd, that American justice system is not remotely like Cuba's justice system where there is no system of justice. He knows that. And he's only doing this to suck up to Donald Trump. It does remind me a little bit of when Tucker Carlson suddenly decided that Russia was a little bit better than the United States. I mean, maybe just there are people in the Republican Party at the moment that are having a problem with law and order. It's not going their way. And so they're throwing a hissy fit about the system itself. But I don't think many people

will buy it. I mean, Marco Rubio doesn't stand up very well this morning compared to, say, somebody like Stormy Daniels, who went to the justice system, and Eugene Carroll, two women who went to the system of justice and played out the system of justice, and both of whom have had victories in courtrooms against Donald Trump. I mean, it's some kind of irony. I was thinking this this morning. As we look at all of the cases that faced Donald Trump, it was in the end, it was Stormy Daniels who got the guilty verdict. And even if that tawdry sex never happened in that conference room, Donald Trump was worried about the perception being that it might have happened enough that he paid her off anyway.

So Stormy turned out to be the person that actually had perhaps the most legal and political impact on Donald Trump's career this time around. Chuck Rosenberg, it's interesting to watch last night, Todd Blanch, the defense attorney for Donald Trump, making the rounds on cable news. And some of the networks, places he was interviewed, tried to lead him to attack the jury. And he stopped well short of that. He went to other places and said, no, they did their job. They came in on time. They listened to the evidence. They did what they had to do. So when people like Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or all the people you would expect go after the process, what they're going after is a jury of Donald Trump's peers. He is an icon of New York, right? He's Mr. New York.

And if you want to talk about facts, you look in when they were asked during jury selection, the 12 jurors and six alternates who were chosen. One of them gets news for their news from Fox News. One of them said got their news from Truth Social. Many more of them say they got their news from Wall Street, the Wall Street Journal than from MSNBC. I think only one of them said they get it from MSNBC. So this was a jury of Donald Trump's peers in New York City, despite what he came out of the courtroom and said, who looked at the evidence and were able to put their biases aside, which is how the process is supposed to work, and decided he was

guilty on all 34 counts. So whether or not you believe the case should have been brought, it was brought. The prosecutors made their case, the defense made theirs, and a jury of Donald Trump's peers from across the spectrum in New York City decided he was guilty. Well, that's right, Willie. And I was struck, too, by the fact that Mr. Blanch, for all of his criticisms of the process and the trial and the decision making by the prosecutors to file charges really did not insult or denigrate the jury. If I may, Willie, just a word about the rule of law. The rule of law did just fine here. The rule of law, however, is a construct, right? It relies on the good faith of the men and women in this system to keep it alive and breathing. The law of gravity is not a construct. The law of gravity applies all the time and

everywhere. So if you drop an apple in a place that doesn't have a strong rule of law system, that apple will still hit the ground. Law of gravity always applies. Rule of law is fragile. Rule of law is a construct. We can lose the rule of law very quickly if we're not careful, if we don't tend to it. But it did fine here, Willie, right? As you said, 12 men and women, ordinary citizens of Manhattan came in, listened to the evidence, and rendered their verdict. If you recall, after the election, when the Trump campaign challenged results in 60 different places, state and federal court, they lost every time. Why? They didn't have the evidence to support their claims. The rule of law did just fine. So is the rule of law under

threat? It is always under threat. It is always a construct. It always has been and it always will be. But it did just fine yesterday. It did just fine. It did just fine after the 2020 election and all the challenges 63 times in a row. It did just fine. It did just fine at the Supreme Court and did just fine here. I think, though, Mike, again, if we want to look at the political impact of this and even putting the verdict aside, I think, again, Republicans continue to damage themselves and continue to say really anti-American statements and in such a way that explains why they lost the election in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 and why I believe they will lose again in 2024. Think about this. You have, as as Katty alluded to, you have you have these Republicans, these these Trumpers

who are embracing countries that have no rule of law, that hate the rule of law. Katty mentioned Tucker Carlson, Russia's latest media star. You have Marco Rubio comparing communist Cuba, Fidel Castro's Cuba, to our United States of America. Actually going over to Orban, they have made Orban this illiberal tyrant, a guy who has gone after the press and undermined judicial independence. You have them raising all of these authoritarian figures up. Now, yeah, it's a threat to democracy if they end up winning. But my point here this morning is that if you're making an argument to a jury, it better pass what Professor Pearson, who was my professor of torts at University of Florida Law School, said. It better pass the straight straight face test, say it into a mirror. And if you can say it without cracking a smile, maybe you can say it in front of a jury. Well, none of these, you know, Tucker Carlson praising the greatness of Russia doesn't pass a straight face test, nor does, you know, Marco Rubio yesterday comparing the United States of America to Castro's Cuba. They're losing it. They're losing the jury, which in this case are American voters.

Yeah. And both sides should take notice of just exactly that, Joe. I mean, on the left, on the progressive side or whatever, this is no reason for glee. This is no reason to be in the streets cheering and yelling. This is a reason to stop and think and maybe even get depressed over the reaction on the other side. The anti-Americanism that filled the air last night from people like Marco Rubio, from people like Ted Cruz, because as we indicated earlier, if there is no rule of law in this country, if they really believe the rule of law is rigged and corrupt and there's evidence of the rigged and corruption is the guilty verdict, then there is no more America without a rule of law. And the reason why Republicans are racing to back up Donald Trump and attack this legal system,

because the threats have already started. Larry Hogan, former governor of Maryland, now Senate candidate, had tweeted even before the verdict was announced. He wrote this. Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process and warning against how dangerously divided we already are. After the verdict came down, Chris LaCivita, Trump's campaign manager, tweeted at Hogan, you just ended your campaign. So the threats are coming from Trump world that already to Republicans who dare stand up to him.

And we don't know yet how this will play in November's election. The Biden team is proceeding very cautiously and we'll get into it later this morning. We did not hear from the president yesterday. We did hear from his campaign warning that Trump could still win. We expect to hear from the president himself later today or in the days ahead. But his first message will be, as we've reported, about how the legal system needs to be respected. The process worked no matter what side you are on. Understanding what a perilous moment this is right now, Joe Amica, for our country. You know, it's going to be interesting to see that allocution process. If Donald Trump is at all capable of expressing remorse to the judge to try and

get a more lenient sentence, he's just not going to be able to do it. That will be fascinating to watch. MSNBC legal analyst Danny Savalos, MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin. Great job following all of this. And it continues. And former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg. Thank you all for your analysis this morning. Still ahead on Morning Joe, we'll have much more on the guilty verdict for Donald Trump. Now, the first former president ever to be convicted of a crime. John Meacham will join us with some historical perspective. Plus, we'll dig into the potential impact on Trump's White House campaign, including a warning about how the conviction could cost him some key battleground states.

You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in just 90 seconds. If he is found guilty, let's not underestimate that there is a problem. Think about this. Those numbers are like 11% less likely to vote for him. Think about Michigan, where they're in the real clear politics average. Donald Trump is up by one half of 1%. Or Pennsylvania, where he's up by 2%.

Or Wisconsin, where he's up by two percent or Wisconsin, where he's up by three tenths of one percent. So in a close race like we're likely to have having five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 percent of the electorate less likely to vote for you is a problem. That is Republican strategist, former adviser to President George W. Bush, Carl Rose, speaking before yesterday's verdict, warning a conviction could cost Donald Trump in some key battleground states. Right now, though, not much has changed in terms of Trump's ability to run for president. The Constitution has only three qualifications for someone to campaign for the presidency. None of them mention felony convictions. This is not the first time in

American history someone found guilty and then ran for the White House. In 1920, Eugene Debs campaigned from a prison cell in Atlanta as the Socialist Party of America nominee after being found guilty of sedition. Trump also likely will be allowed to vote in the upcoming election so long as he is not sentenced to jail. The state of New York only restricts voting rights for people who are incarcerated at the time of the vote. Join us now, Rogers chair in the American presidency at Vanderbilt University, Pulitzer Prize winning presidential historian John Meacham, also Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post,

Eugene Robinson, and the host of the podcast On Brand with Donnie Deutsch. Donnie Deutsch, good morning to you all. John Meacham, I know you perk up when you hear names like Eugene V. Debs, so I'll start with you. What do you make of what we saw yesterday, not in terms of the convictions and the legal questions, but in terms of the long lens of history? Yeah, that Canton speech that Debs gave was very important. If you want to go into it, Mika. No, we're good. Are you sure?

Another day. Another day. Okay, absolutely. I think that at this point, Trump is no longer on trial. The country is. This is a test of mature citizenship. Are we are a majority of us going to react from our partisan gut or are we going to assess the realities we see and make a judicious choice? And I think it's pretty straightforward. I don't know how many votes are

going to be changed. I don't know how many opinions are going to be changed. But I do know that what matters for the future of democratic capitalism and the Constitution and a lot of the things that so many of us value so much is in the hand, is going to be decided between President Biden and former President Trump. And that's the choice. And so this is another data point for people who I think have to weigh what do they want? Do they want more of what we saw yesterday? Or, you know what President Biden spent the week doing? Dealing with Ukraine and fighting aggression in Europe, the oldest form

of tyranny. He worried about Israel and Gaza. He was doing the work of the American people while this drama unfolded. And I think it's worth remembering historically that what we remember, what matters to us is the legacy that presidents leave. That's for us, not the not the actions that are for them. Yeah. Eugene Robinson, I'd love to hear your reaction to the verdict. I think we were all a little stunned that it came down 34 guilty, all 34 counts. Maybe at this point, we're we just don't know what to expect when it comes to Donald Trump. And I think at this point, it's very difficult to see how this will play out politically and probably not smart to guess. Yeah, it's so we just don't know.

We don't know how this will play politically. You know, I'm struck with struck by something that Willie mentioned earlier on On this jury, there's one jury juror who said he or she gets all their news from Truth Social and X. There are other jurors who get their news from social media. There are other jurors who watch Fox News. So and what this verdict, 34, I mean, a clean sweep, 34 counts, is that when you're in an environment in which you can shut out all the noise, all the yelling and the shouting and the events and search for truth, then you have a very different outcome. And so I think, you know, the challenge politically, I think, is to try to shut out that noise and to try to get people to, you know, to focus on what's real and what's not real. And the other thing that's really striking to me is the Republicans who, after the verdict,

are coming out and trashing the American justice system. And, you know, I am not, I believe deeply in this country and so forth, but I'm not a reflexive rah-rah America. We're always perfect. We're always, you know, do the right thing. However, as a foreign correspondent and a foreign editor, I saw how justice system I saw the justice system in Cuba and how it works. I know how that works. I've in democracies in Argentina, in Peru, in Brazil, in England, in France. And I, I will testify and believe to my dying day that there is no justice system in the world that is better than the U.S. justice system at finding truth and justice. It is an amazing thing. It is an amazing gift to all of us who live in this country. And the spectacle of leaders of one of our two major political parties trashing this incredible institution is just appalling and shame on them. Just shame on them.

So, Donnie, the public, the public's attention span, there's two competing brands out there now. One was registered yesterday when Donald Trump was declared to be guilty, and now he's a felon. The other is the other side saying no the rule of law applies here and we have to stand behind the rule of law which brand which avenue which track can compete and survive it's interesting you mentioned branding what hit me yesterday when i heard those guilty the 34 guilty uh verdicts was that from here on in, Donald Trump, the ultimate brander, the guy that gave you Little Marco or Lion Ted, is simply branded convicted felon Donald Trump. He's in the most simplistic way from here on in.

The other side has the ability to take the great brander and brand him in the most simplistic term convicted felon. And that's powerful, I guess. And I went on the show the other day and I said, you know, convicted felon. And that's powerful. Yes. And I went on the show the other day and I said, you know, I don't know if it's going to matter that much. When I heard that guilty verdict, it hit me. He simplistically is in a box now. And two other things happened to his brand.

Number one, he's not invincible. And I think that that armor got pierced. And that's a big deal. If he had been acquitted, it's you can't get this guy. He's bigger than everybody. He's bigger than life. He's not. He's invincible. And Joe, to your point, we're eight years into a losing streak for Republicans. He lost. Once again, Donald Trump lost. So he's a loser. He's anything but invincible. And he's branded permanently a convicted felon. That's a big deal. Well, you can watch Fox News and feast on how unfair this is,

or you can look at the evidence that was presented. And I mean, there's a lot of different ways to look at this that can help you understand what happened. But ultimately, a jury of Donald Trump's peers made this decision. Well, yeah, they did. And I just want to say, as Mika was flipping over to other channels, Willie, and they seem to be in an alternate universe. And she said and she was distressed that the facts just didn't seem to matter. I reminded her of what happened in 2012, which is Fox News kept telling everybody that Mitt Romney was going to beat Barack Obama up until election night.

And they were so sure of it and they kept pushing that information so disinformation so much that even Mitt Romney and Ann Romney that night couldn't believe it. They're like, wait a second, we're winning this because they just watched this one channel. And so, again, I don't mean to be Pollyannish about it, but if people want to just watch Fox News between now and the election, if they want to just feast on disinformation, if they want to be blind to what swing state voters want to hear about and what they care about, does not hurt Joe Biden, doesn't hurt the Democrats. It ends up hurting Republicans, because I will say again, they've lost. They lost in 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. They have lived in this echo chamber that they have chosen to stay in.

And they still are in the echo chamber right now. So again, it's their decision. I keep trying to tell them, open up. Don't be boy in the plastic bubble. Open up. Go out there. Get information from other sides. Be more competitive. They just can't do it. Yeah, I flipped over, too, just to get a sense of the reaction. I saw what Mika said, too, which was anger, a sense that I think one of the panelists said they have awakened a sleeping giant. But with this conviction, they said the trial was a sham.

All the things you would expect to hear that New York City was ungrateful to the man who built the New York skyline. Side note, he did not build the New York skyline. He licensed his name to a few buildings. That's a whole other conversation. But to your point, Joe, the sleeping giant that may have been awakened yesterday was the giant that was already on Donald Trump's side, that was already with him, that listens to everything he says and listens and believes what Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were saying yesterday. They were already with Donald Trump. The question for this election will be, it seems to me, the people who are sitting there considering these two options and probably don't love either of them going,

gosh, when he becomes a convicted felon at his sentencing on July the 11th, is that a guy I want to send back to the White House? Do I want to take everything that comes with him? I believe that he did the things he's accused of, they might say. And the jury decided after listening to all the evidence that he did, in fact, pay off a porn star to keep her quiet ahead of the 2016 election. So I would just say, John Meacham, perhaps that, yes, this will inflame a lot of Donald Trump's supporters, fire them up, get them ready to go for the election. But there remains a persuadable middle, maybe not huge, but maybe just enough to win a couple of these swing states. Yeah, look, American history is full of moments where we have moved forward because just enough of us made a choice.

This is not a 90-10 country. It's not an 80-20 country. It's not a 70-30 country. It's not a 60-40 country. It's about a 52-48. And in a polarized era, it's probably 51-49. And that's just the way it works. I mean, we've come through, you know, 20 percent of the country didn't want to break away from Britain. where Joe and I are from, left the union over human enslavement not all that long ago in terms of the sweep of history. Fifty five years ago, we lived in a segregated country. So and it took a lot to move forward. And it's never everybody waking up and saying, oh, I'm going to do the right thing today because it's the right thing. That's not really how human nature works. And to Joe's point about the losing record, Lincoln taught us all men act on incentive. And at a certain point in politics, at least in the professional political class, victory is the most important thing. And it is very clear that on the right, victory has become the organizing principle over constitutional principles. It's funny,

you mentioned Romney. Can you imagine Fox News rooting for Romney today? I mean, that's how rapidly we we've moved. But we don't. It's a choice that people have made. And if just enough of us Jews, you know what? I'd prefer the Constitution and some sanity. We'll be all right, too. Author and presidential historian John Meacham, thank you very much. And coming up on Morning Joe, we're going to take a closer look at the international reaction to Donald Trump's historic guilty verdict and what this says about America's judicial and political system. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. Fifty three past the hour. Donald Trump's guilty verdict is garnering attention not just across the U.S., but around the world. Newspapers such as The New York Times

and The Washington Post have full spread covers of the former president's conviction. And internationally, Trump's face is plastered on papers from Brazil to Spain, the UK and Ireland. Joining us now, former Supreme Allied commander of NATO, retired four star Navy Admiral James Stavridis. He is chief international analyst for NBC News. So from a global perspective and just also from your perspective, your reaction to this resounding set of verdicts. Let me start internationally. Certainly yesterday, my phones lit up from literally all around the world. And it it's like the scene, the way they look at it, it's like the scene in The Wizard of Oz where the house falls on the wicked witch and her little feet are sticking out. This is from

Africans in those S-hole countries. This is from Mexico, where Mexicans were rapists and killers. This is from NATO, the freeloading Europeans. This is from Asia. So pretty universal belief that suddenly this is all going to change everything. What I've tried to convey are the two things that I think we've talked about this morning quite effectively. One is this is the system working as it's designed to work. And what we need to do is kind of project that internationally because that is our brand. And then secondly, I try to convey, hey, internationally, there's a big day coming up and that's in November. All of this is white noise if that day breaks in a different direction. So that's the nature of the conversation. One final tactical thought about overseas that folks are, I think, underweighting is what's going to happen in

Beijing and Moscow as a result of this. Clearly, they have favorability toward a Trump presidency. But are they going to, and I would argue they will, use this moment to try and further divide us? At the end of the day, we can solve all of the international problems we constantly talk about on the show, from Ukraine to Gaza to U.S., China, as long as we can avoid immense division in the country. That, I I think is where John Meacham's point, this is a test for us, is coming. And to those foreign powers' ability to influence elections. We had Senator Warner on this show just a few weeks ago, chair of the Intelligence Committee,

saying we're more vulnerable now to outside influence than we've been in the last couple of cycles. But Donnie, to the Admiral's point is that this is how the system works. I'd submit another example as to why it does. We've heard from Republicans say this is two tiers of justice, saying that this is a witch hunt, that only Republicans get prosecuted by the Biden Department of Justice. Counter, the president's own son, Hunter Biden, goes on trial Monday. Charges brought by the Biden Department of Justice. That does seem like an example

that the system is working as it should. I mean, I think you answered it right there. I mean, it's that simple. And I think the Biden trial, let's also remember this is Hunter Biden. This is not Joe Biden. But as you said, it works on both ways. The other thing I want to talk about

that I'm thinking about going forward is that how Donald Trump will, this almost puts him constantly on the defensive. He will not be able to stay away from this. That's the other thing where every rally of his is going to, instead of opening up with about something about inflation or opening up about what's wrong with the Democrats, he's going to open up with his grievance talk. And I think people are just, that just doesn't work. And, you know, I think about a parent getting up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania or Birmingham and Birmingham, Michigan, and looking at their kids and going, do I want to live in a country where I can say to my kid,

oh, you can grow up to be a convicted felon and be president of the United States. And I think on the margins, this is really going to make a difference. I was I was really blown away yesterday, but just viscerally what this says and what this means. Yeah, Donnie, it probably will inflame the base, as we said earlier, and they're going to be motivated to go out and support Donald Trump. But what about the people in the middle, the normies that we talk about all the time? Admiral, I want to step away from the trial for just one second. An important development that NBC is actually reporting this morning about the war in Ukraine, which is that, according to NBC News and some other networks, President Biden sort of quietly gave permission to Ukraine to use American weapons at targets inside of Russia, which is a change of

the stance this administration has taken. What's the significance there? It's enormous. And on the graphic, you're showing the upper right hand corner of Ukraine, a city called Kharkiv. That's their second largest city. It's the Los Angeles of Ukraine. And let's face it, it is under some stress from Russia at this very moment. So what I think the Biden team has done, I think it's smart military strategy, it's smart diplomacy and it's smart politics, is unleash the Ukrainians to use systems we've given them, long range missiles principally, to strike at the Russian forces that are massing on the Russian side of the border. I think it's a good move. It lines us up with other NATO allies who are already permitting the use of their weapons

against targets in Russia. We should not ask the Ukrainians to fight this war effectively with a hand tied behind their back. To do so just gives Russia sanctuary in their own country, something they ritually do not disturb. So without question, this is a smart move on the part of the administration. I think you'll see that they're not going to trumpet it or talk about it in great public ways, but it's going to have real impact in preserving that vital city in Ukraine, Kharkiv. Retired Admiral James Tavridis, thank you so much for being on this morning.