Morning Joe - Morning Joe 5/3/24

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

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

We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent. The American people are heard. In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues. But, but, neither are we a lawless country. We are a civil society. An order must prevail. That's President Joe Biden for the first time publicly addressing the protests on campuses across the country. We'll have more of his comments and bring you the very latest on the demonstrations. Plus, we're still six months away from the presidential election,

but Donald Trump is already suggesting that he will not accept the results if he loses. We'll bring you that and President Biden's response. And we'll have Joe's conversation with Jerry Seinfeld and the cast of his new Netflix comedy, Unfrosted, a movie about the creation of the beloved breakfast treat, Pop-Tarts. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday. We made it to Friday. It's Friday, May 3rd.

I'm Jonathan Lemire, along with U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kay. We're in for Joe Mika and the birthday boy, Willie Geist. And with us this morning, we have White House Director of, former White House Director of Communications

to President Obama, Jennifer Palmieri, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, and deputy managing editor for politics at Politico, you just saw him post way too early, Sam Stein. So, Cady, we made it to Friday. We have a lot to get to this morning, but we should just note what we played at the top there. That was President Biden, after days and weeks of unrest at college campuses, finally making some public comments.

It had been more than a week since he addressed them. He had asked his aides the night before to start prepping some remarks, if in case he did need to speak about them ahead of his major speech this next week about anti-Semitism. And then when the White House and the nation woke up yesterday morning to the scenes of unrest at UCLA, they felt they couldn't wait any longer. And we heard from the president. Yeah. First of all, Pop-Tarts for breakfast. That's a very bad idea. We've all been told not too much sugar at breakfast time. So I hope we're moving on from that. We're too old for Pop-Tarts. Oh, I haven't touched a Pop-Tart in a while, but they are delicious. We all know. And apparently it's this is apparently, this movie is akin to a Sputnik-esque space race, the race to create the Pop-Tart.

It's supposed to be hilarious. I can't wait to hear what Jerry has to say. So we could land a man on the moon, or we could create a Pop-Tart, and we're putting those in the same breath. But anyway, I'm going to move on from that. We made it to Friday. The White House is just hoping they're going to make it to graduation. That seems to be the kind of message from the White House, right? Like get

these. They want to get these kids home. They want to get these kids home from the summer. They felt they had to say something. And, you know, there's two conflicting bases here that the president has to reach out to. There's the base who are the kids in universities who are very focused on Gaza, who are upset about the government's policies, who don't like the idea that their tax dollars are being used to fund those weapons that are being used against Palestinians. But there's an equally important base for the president, and that's swing voters, who may be looking at the kinds of scenes that they saw in Colombia, who may be looking at the kinds of scenes that they saw in UCLA. And the president had to try

to reach out to both of those. But I thought it was really interesting. It sounded to me like he was much more focused on the swing voters. This is the kind of speech I think that administrations in universities will have been happy to hear because he was saying what the universities themselves have been saying, that there's kind of the violence that's unlawful. Yes, peaceful protests, but this kind of disruption, that doesn't work. OK, we're going to begin this hour, though, with the latest developments surrounding Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial. Court will resume this morning after Keith Davidson, the former lawyer for both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, completed his testimony yesterday. NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett has the big takeaways from his day on the stand.

Former President Trump arriving at court watching his defense team go on offense, casting a key prosecution witness as out to extort him for money. The defense hoping to discredit Keith Davidson, the lawyer who negotiated payoffs for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Both threatened to go public with stories of sex with Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Mr. Trump has denied the allegations of both women and denied any advanced knowledge of the payoffs. His defense team suggesting Davidson had a habit of shaking down celebrities like Charlie Sheen for money. Davidson saying he never extorted anyone, testifying at length about his negotiations with Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump's former attorney, but admitting he never met nor spoke to the former president.

Instead, he dealt exclusively with Cohen, who he painted as desperate and despondent that then President-elect Trump would not make him attorney general or White House chief of staff, describing a phone call where Cohen lamented, I can't believe I'm not going to Washington. Cohen saying he'd saved Trump so many times you don't even know. Davidson testifying about Cohen. I thought he was going to kill himself. A helpful point for the defense as it tries to cast Cohen as having an axe to grind against Mr. Trump. The former president is accused of illegally doctoring his internal records to disguise his repayments to Cohen, making Cohen's testimony critical for prosecutors

who are now seeking additional fines against Mr. Trump, saying he violated a gag order again by calling his former fixer a liar, while the defense argues the former president should be allowed to defend himself against Cohen's frequent criticism. I'm unconstitutionally gagged. He gagged me. So I'm not even supposed to be, I would say, talking to you because he gagged me. We can fact check that as not true. That was NBC's Laura Jarrett reporting. And let's now bring in former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin. Lisa, you've been following this trial so very closely. Let's just start with

your broad takeaways from what we heard yesterday from Davidson. What did you see? I think with Davidson, we were swimming in a place that nobody really wanted to be, just drowning in the muck. But when you take away the Hulk Hogan and Lindsay Lohan and all the other people with him, Keith Davidson dealt at base, Jonathan, Keith Davidson is a person who testified about his transactions with Michael Cohen and how desperate Michael Cohen was to get these deals done. And the ultimate takeaway that he had, even though he never dealt with Donald Trump directly, was that Donald Trump was the ultimate source of the funding. In other words, while he understood that Cohen at some

point put up the money himself for the Stormy Daniels deal, it was always his understanding that Trump was going to be the ultimate source and the payor. So Cohen looms large here, obviously such a key player throughout this. Have we gotten a better sense as to when we might hear from him, when he'll be called to the stand? And we know that Trump's lawyers, the defense, are really going to try to make an issue of his credibility. Are you seeing enough efforts here from the prosecution to bolster that, to sort of counteract what's coming? I think we see a lot of it in a couple of ways. One is surrounding the case with other sources of evidence, whether they be audio recordings, for example, we heard a couple yesterday, or all sorts of paper, text messages, emails. And then, of course, there's the effort

to surround Cohen with other people that he dealt with directly so that they can corroborate his story. Mary McCord, our colleague, made a really good point yesterday. They are trying to inure the jury to the fact that Cohen was not a particularly well-liked or admired person, even in Trump world, so that by the time they encounter him, they are sort of immune to the fact that he's not very likable and yet are willing to hear his story because it's already been bolstered by so many of the people they've heard from, whether it be David Pecker or Keith Davidson, or maybe some of the witnesses we've yet to hear from, including potentially Hope Hicks. Okay, so that's yesterday. What's up next?

Well, we're still hearing from a man named Doug Dowse. He is a forensics specialist in the DA's office, and his role here is to authenticate lots of the stuff taken off of Cohen's phone. How did it get from Cohen's phone into the DA's hand? One of the things I thought was really interesting yesterday was the insinuation by Trump's team that the data on Cohen's phone could have been manipulated or deleted before it was in the DA's hand. That is a deep state conspiracy waiting to explode over the weekend. And perhaps engineer, Jen, not for the audience of the jurors in this case,

but for the larger populace of jurors, a.k.a. voters, who might be interested in hearing something that dovetails with Trump's frequent refrains of, this is rigged, this is a witch hunt, they've always been out to get me. This is a Biden trial, right? Hearing that the FBI, for example, could have insufficiently protected this data or worse, even manipulated it themselves. That's a narrative that goes straight into that feedback loop. So, Gene Robinson, let's talk about these two audiences here. Yes, there's the 12 jurors and the alternates, but a much broader the electorate. And Trump and his team could be playing for them as well. And look, Michael Cohen, even his friends acknowledge,

a problematic witness, an unsavory character. I and dozens of other reporters during the 2016 campaign used to get threatening phone calls from Cohen. We know who he was. But this is also, yesterday in particular, such a tawdry display of just the unseemliness of this world. How do you think that's playing to that larger audience, those broad voters, particularly those who might still

be trying to decide where to vote in November? You know, it's a highly unattractive world. And as you said, seamy and kind of, you know, salacious and awful. I think most people watching this might take issue with the question of whether or not this lawyer is an extortionist. That doesn't get to the question of the trial, though, the falsification of business records as a felony. And so I'm not quite sure which way it cuts. I'm curious to ask Lisa, Lisa, how do you think it played with at least inside the courtroom and maybe outside of the courtroom? Because this is really like tawdry, tawdry on steroids, the whole story that we heard yesterday. It's absolutely tawdry on steroids. And to your point about whether Davidson engaged in something akin to what he'll call extraction, if not extortion, to the extent

that jurors believe that Trump lowered himself into this world, as opposed to the fact that he might have been floating well above it. That's really the question that the D.A. has to answer. They have to show these people not only that this seamy underbelly of American gossip existed, but that Trump was willing to dive into it with those folks. Lisa, Sam Stein here. I guess I'm caught up on the same issue, which is if you can't establish that people like Keith Davidson were actually in direct communication with Trump. In fact, it was only established that he was talking to Michael Cohen. Isn't that a problem, right? I mean, don't you need to say, yes, Trump knew of this stuff and directed it. Otherwise, what are you hanging this on? Well, you're right. You have to show that

Trump knew about this stuff and directed it, which is where Cohen comes in, but also where people perhaps connected to the campaign come in. Remember, David Pecker, for example, spoke extensively with Trump, albeit about Karen McDougal. What we might need to see now is how Trump interacted with other people in his orbit, even if it's after the fact, Sam, after the payments were made, I mean, in acknowledging that this stuff actually happened. And that's where I'm particularly eager to hear from Hope Hicks. Hope Hicks has previously testified to the House Judiciary Committee that during the campaign itself, she was not aware of hush money payments and everything she knew about Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. She learned from the press. On the other hand, she refused to testify about any knowledge or involvement she had in these issues once she got to the White House. We're now at a point five

years later where executive privilege has been litigated extensively. Hope Hicks probably cannot rely on executive privilege to get her out of talking about those things now. So what I want to know is how did Hope Hicks go from the campaign to a point in time where David Pecker says he talked to her and Sarah Sanders about whether it was worth extending Karen McDougal's exclusivity arrangement with the Enquirer, for example? That means that Hope Hicks at some point had an understanding that David Pecker did pay Karen McDougal what she knew about McDougal and Stormy Daniels during that period of time in Trump's employ. What she might have even discussed with Trump himself, I'm really eager to hear in the days to come. And Lisa, let's close with an update on the gag order. Trump saying yesterday that it's preventing him from testifying. Please fact check that. But also just what we heard in that hearing. And how do you think this plays out going

forward? I think the strongest point for Trump's folks was pointing to recent tweets by Michael Cohen, because that gets them the closest to their defense of Trump is really just trying to defend himself. On the other hand, Trump's statement about the jury coming from a pool of 95 percent Democrats, the jury had already been seated when he made that comment. Juan Rashaun didn't seem particularly friendly to the arguments that the defense was making. And then when they sort of trotted out the look what you made him do defense, I'll call it, you know, Biden's talking about stormy weather, Michael Cohen's on Twitter, even look at the press behind us. They're talking about every whisper that we make to our client and candidate. Mershon was having none of that. And he basically said, look, your client is the criminal defendant here. None of those folks are subject to my gag

order right now, nor could some of them be. I'm interested in talking about your client, his behavior and his choices. Those reporters also reporting when Donald Trump seems to fall asleep. Trump took to social media yesterday to rev up that, saying he was simply resting his beautiful blue eyes. So we'll we'll leave it there. MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, invaluable as always. Thank you, Lisa. And coming up here on Morning Joe in just one minute, order has been restored on the campus of UCLA after police arrested more than 200 protesters there. We'll bring you the latest in the fallout. Plus, President Biden breaks his silence on those nationwide demonstrations.

We'll play for you his new remarks. And also ahead, we'll talk to retired Navy Admiral James Trevitas about where things stand in the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, as well as the new worries about China's involvement in the war in Ukraine. Morning Joe is back in just 60 seconds. The campus of UCLA remains orderly this morning following the chaos that we saw play out yesterday morning. Police arrested more than 200 protesters from an encampment. Officers in riot gear swarmed the university early yesterday morning. They confronted protesters and dismantled the camp.

The clash lasted several hours. Police had to launch flares to try to disperse the large crowd. According to the chancellor of UCLA, about 300 people did, though, leave voluntarily. The university called the police earlier in the week after the protests turned violent. Fights erupted between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli supporters. UCLA then declared the encampment illegal. The chancellor explained the school's decision in a statement yesterday, writing, quote, While many of the protesters at the encampment remain peaceful, ultimately the site became a focal point for serious violence, as well as a huge disruption to our campus.

Meanwhile, President Biden, as we said earlier, has broken his silence on the unrest at college campuses. Yesterday, in an unscheduled address delivered from the White House, the president condemned the violence and anti-Semitism. Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is. It's against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations, none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It's against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the

rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education. Look, it's basically a matter of fairness. It's a matter of what's right. There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. Let's be clear about this as well. There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for anti-Semitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it's anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It's simply wrong. There's no place for racism in America. It's all wrong. It's un-American. And then while answering reporter questions, the president rejected the idea of deploying the National Guard to quell this unrest.

He also said he will not change his policies on the Middle East. Let's bring in former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, retired four-star Navy Admiral James Trevides. He is chief international analyst for NBC News. And we will remind you all that the admiral also spent five years as the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. It's kind of with that hat on that we want to speak to you this morning, Admiral. When you look at how the president responded and when you look at how police are reacting, do you think the appropriate measures are now being taken on campuses or are administrations going too far in bringing outside law enforcement onto campuses? Where do

you stand on it? I stand in favor of what you just heard from the president of the United States. Key word here, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. We are a nation of laws and a peaceful protest is fine. Look, I spent much of my life in uniform defending the rights of people to protest of free speech, of all of our values. But free speech is different than hate speech and peaceful protest is different than criminal behavior. So I applaud the administrations that I think are doing about as well as you can in this difficult circumstance because you're trying to find a balance here. But when the protests bleed over into overt criminal behavior, you have to react, take them off campus, arrest them. And I would argue and I say this as a former dean, a simple arrest and release, a catch and release program, if you will, is not a good idea. These students, if they are students,

by the way, many are not students, they need to receive some kind of sanction from that institution, a suspension or in extreme cases, an expulsion. So, Jen, let's talk about the politics of this. We know President Biden reflexively pro-Israel has been throughout. He said, again, he's not going to change his policies. But this is a tough moment. We know that the people who are protesting here are young voters. Biden's having trouble with them. A lot of them are apparently students and voters of color. Biden is having trouble with them.

But yet at the same time, these scenes of unrest, as we mentioned at the top of the show, risk turning off sort of independents, moderates. So give us your analysis. Give us your evaluation as to what he said yesterday. Was it enough? And what does he also need to say Tuesday? And what they're billing is a pretty major speech on this moment. So I think this is probably a placeholder to get to Tuesday. Right. And I think that when you Joe Biden will win reelection by by gaining a diverse group of supporters that are going to have very different views. So you're going to have young people of color and you're going to have older white people. And that's like

how he's going to win. Right. So he can't when you're trying to put together that kind of coalition, I don't think you can get tripped up about thinking, what am I saying to this audience? What am I saying to that audience and trying to differentiate that way? And that's when you get lost and you're not leading. Right. That is a recipe to not lead. And this is a moment to lead. And I think so what he did yesterday, come down on the side of law and order. You know, I thought that that was I thought that was well stated. But I think it's a placeholder to get to Tuesday where he can and where he can get into the bigger issues about what's actually happening in the conflict. It's billed as a speech on anti-Semitism.

And I think, you know, he talked about fairness, the question of fairness. Last few days, we've heard a lot about fairness and decency from him. And I think that's where he's going. And that I think the Tuesday speech, the country needs to, you know, they need him to tell us what to think of all of this, because it is people do have a lot of mixed feelings about it and are concerned about the protests and if it turns into violence. And I think we really do need to hear him set the table for the whole country, not different voting

populations, about what's happening here, what where the U.S. should stand on it. Yeah, it's becoming a significant moment this Tuesday speech, Gene Robinson. And let's remember, for any president, scenes of chaos, scenes of the country's out of control is deeply damaging for an incumbent running for re-election. Let's flash back just four years ago, 2020, when Donald Trump's running for re-election. Obviously, there's the pandemic, but we also had scenes of tumult with the protests surrounding George Floyd's murder. Most of that, of course, let's remind viewers, very peaceful. But there were some exceptions. And we saw polling that hurt Trump. He was blamed for fostering that sense of unrest.

That's the tripwire here for Biden, too. Yeah, I mean, it is very perilous. And you can go way further back than that. You can go all the way back to 1968. And I think history records that the days of rage at the Democratic convention in Chicago that year contributed to Richard Nixon's victory, to the Republican victory in that presidential election. And people were definitely turned off by what they saw. At the same time, I think the protests did sort of move the needle further on the Vietnam War.

So in that sense, they could say they kind of succeeded. I have a question for Admiral Stavridis, though, if you'd put your dean hat back on for a second, Admiral. You know, I don't know the current president of Colombia. I knew her predecessor, Lee Bollinger, very well and was talking to him once. And he was complaining that there was somebody he really wanted to hire in the political science department or somewhere, somebody who was really terrific, and he just couldn't get the faculty to say yes. And I asked, well, you're the president, why don't you just tell him to hire the guy? And he just smiled and laughed and said,

oh, you're so cute that you'd think that. You have no idea how this works. And so the faculty is a major constituency on these university campuses, and they have said the thing they're concerned about is protecting the students, protecting the right of free speech, free and open debate,

and they've been kind of angry, especially the Columbia faculty. Talk about that as a consideration that all these administrators have to take into account. Great conversation between you and your friend, the president. You know, the last the last sentence of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is isn't it pretty to think so? And that's a pretty good, a pretty good way to think about it. I'll give you a one word answer that the president could also have used. He could have said tenure. These are tenured faculty members. They enjoy extraordinary privilege in that regard. There's a long conversation about why that is. There are pros and cons to it, but it's a very protected workforce.

So that's kind of the answer there. In terms of today's events, many of these faculty come out of that 68 generation, the older tenured one. So that becomes a force in this. And then finally, I would just say to everybody, as we look at these protests, they flash large on the screens. Got it. But to my eye, there's about 100 campuses or so that are affected right now. Gene, you may know there are 4000 institutions in the United States that grant a bachelor's degree. We're not seeing protests, therefore, on thirty nine hundred of them. I think we're going to be OK and get through this moment. Going to require some balance, some sensibility and approach. But ultimately, we can't allow this behavior by students or by faculty.

Yeah. And actually, I did have a conversation with somebody in the Columbia administration, to Jean's point, who said that there are perhaps about 300 faculty who have been supporting the protesters over the administration. But Columbia has a faculty of about 7000 and that the vast majority of the Columbia faculty are actually in support of President Shafiq and the administration, the actions that they're taking. So I think so far, at least the president does have faculty on board with her, which of course is a big help. Admiral, let me switch the conversation and turn it a little bit to the kind of root of the actual problem that we're seeing in the Middle East that's causing all of this. We're hearing reports that the latest round of hostage negotiations that could lead to a ceasefire is going a little better.

Hamas reportedly viewing this with some kind of positive light is what we're being told. What's your reading? What's your understanding of where we are on that? It looked like it all just was, you know, stop, start, stop, start, which put the administration in a difficult position because they keep doing this shuttle diplomacy and then they come back with nothing.

Do you think we are at a moment where we could be looking for some sort of a deal over hostages in a ceasefire? Well, as we say in that part of the word, oh, let's hope so. I think it's a better than even chance at the moment, which is higher odds than I would have given three weeks ago or a month ago. Key indicator Hamas is sending a delegation, physical presence to Cairo. I am hearing that the conversations are progressing. And here I give credit to the Biden administration, who've done a good job, both putting pressure on Israel, rightfully so, to get to some kind of yes.

And through the Arab world, through the leadership and the moneyed side of the Arab world, putting pressure on Hamas. So these are two unwilling parties being somewhat forced toward a compromised position. But, Katty, I think we're probably better than even. That's wonderful. Can I tell you one other thing that's going well? As we look at a small percentage of the youth of the United States who are protesting on campuses. Another group of American youths, U.S. military, are off Gaza building a pier that's going to open in the next few days, a floating pier, a maritime miracle that's going to move 150 to 200 truckloads of humanitarian aid. That's a pretty

good accomplishment. You'll see a spark of good news there. Let's hope it increases with a ceasefire in the next few days. Yeah, but looming over all of this, the potential Israeli invasion of Rafah, which Netanyahu has said is going to happen whether a ceasefire or hostage swap deal breaks or not. Covering a lot of ground for us this morning, retired Admiral James Trevitas. Thank you, as always. We'll talk to you again soon. Coming up here on Morning Joe, Donald Trump says that he will only accept the 2024 election outcome if it's honest. I think we know what that means. And President Biden is weighing in. We'll play for you Biden's message for voters when Morning Joe comes right back. You just saw Josh Hart drill the go-ahead three-pointer late in the fourth quarter, and the New York Knicks hang on just barely to beat the Philadelphia 76ers 118-115 in Game 6 last night

to advance to the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Jalen Brunson, what a star. He led the way once again, finishing with at least 40 points for the third consecutive game of the series. The Knicks now advancing to the conference semifinals in consecutive seasons for the first time in nearly a quarter century. And those Knicks will play the Pacers in the second round opener. That'll be Monday night after the Indiana Pacers knocked out the Milwaukee Bucks with a 120-98 win at home last night.

Frustration set in for the Bucks in the final minutes of the game six blowout. Milwaukee's Patrick Beverly, watch this, will most likely face a disciplinary action from the league after an altercation with Pacers fans sitting behind the Milwaukee bench. Beverly was seen twice throwing a basketball at fans, hitting at least one in the head. That's going to be a lengthy suspension. I would wager what a disappointment for Milwaukee. Giannis Hurt didn't play. They bring in Doc Rivers, first-round exit. And Sam Stein, what does that set up? Knicks, Pacers, and you, my friend, remember those playoff wars that those two teams used to have.

Punctuated with Reggie Miller, Pacers hero, villain of MSG, giving the choke sign to Spike Lee and the rest of the Knicks fans. This is a fun Knicks team. They're a little banged up. They have captivated New York City. What are you looking for in the second round? Well, I want Reggie to put it back on. I want Rick Smith to be back on the court. You know, get those old school guys.

Latrell, maybe, you know. Those are some great series, I have to say. And probably the best, most iconic Madison Square Garden playoff atmospheres in the last three centuries. I don't know if we'll get that. You know, it's not the same villainous characters. But Brunson's incredible. I mean, let's just be honest. He should be MVP.

He's been a marvel to watch. No, he should be MVP, okay? Three straight 40-point games. It's just a remarkable. And whether you like him or not, it's just wonderful to have good basketball in the garden, playoff basketball in the garden. There's just not another atmosphere like it.

Yeah, well, who doesn't like Jalen Brunson? I mean, he is fabulous. What a great player, kind of a blue-collar player. But he's so tricky and so strong. He's got that upper body strength, and he's a scoring machine. I mean, he's amazing. I'm a little punchy this morning because I had to stay up and watch that game. It was so exciting.

No, because the Knicks went way up by 20 points, and then here came back the Sixers, and it was back and forth, and you really didn't know until the last five minutes how this was going to work out. But, Lamere, does it matter? I mean, whoever gets through, eventually somebody is going to have to beat your Celtics. And they're awfully strong. And then whoever comes out of the East is going to have to beat one of those monster teams from the West. I mean, if you watch the Timberwolves look amazing, and, of course, there's the champs, the Nuggets. Does anybody from the East have a chance this year? Yeah, the Celtics are set up well in the East.

Assuming Porzingis comes back at some point, he got injured, they'll get the winner of Cavs' Magic Game 6, and that series is tonight. The Celtics dispatched with the hated Miami Heat with ease earlier this week. But you're right. The Western Conference is loaded. T-Wolves Nuggets is a second-round series that feels like a conference finals. The Thunder are really good, too. But let's focus on what really matters.

The Lakers are already gone home. Coming up here on Morning Joe, we will play for you Joe Scarborough sitting down with the all-star cast of the new film, Unfrosted, which follows the birth of the iconic Pop-Tart.

We will hear from Jerry Seinfeld about his directorial debut in this hilarious new comedy. That's coming up next on Morning Joe. Just like a sailboat sailing on Morning Joe. 6.43 a.m. here on the East Coast, a beautiful live shot from the top of our building, 30 Rock. And a man familiar with NBC is comedy legend

Jerry Seinfeld. He's also no stranger to assembling an all-star roster of talent, but his latest project may just take the cake. The movie, titled Unfrosted, which is available beginning today on Netflix, chronicles an alternate history of the invention of the Pop-Tart. You heard me, the Pop-Tart. And it features a star-studded cast, including Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer, Christian Slater, Jim Gaffigan, New Girl co-star Max Greenfield, and the comedian Sarah Cooper, who you might remember from these Donald Trump parodies. So it's person, woman, man, camera, TV. Okay, that's very good.

If you get it in order, you get extra points. Okay, now he's asking you other questions. She owns social media there for a stretch in 2020. So Joe recently sat down with Jerry and some of the unfrosted cast to discuss the making of their film and the experience working together. I grew up in a time where cereal was king. Tell us about it. Quisp versus Quake.

Yes. You remember that. Quisp versus Quake. Quisp versus Quake. That should have been in the movie. You have the Archie's records on the back. Yeah. It really did.

It really did have a huge cultural impact. Yeah. That's probably why we're a country of obese people. I mean, it really did. It really did have a huge cultural impact. Yeah. That's probably why we're a country of obese people. We weren't fat then, though. Yeah. Everyone was thin in the 60s. That's what I don't understand. Eating the same junk. I don't know what happened.

Really bad junk. So you came up with this idea during COVID. My friend Spike Ferriston, who wrote The Soup Nazi, No soup for you We used to joke for years about doing a movie about the Pop-Tart because I used to talk about the Pop-Tart in my comedy set The biggest food thing that happened to me when they invented the Pop-Tart the back of my head

blew right off and just as a stupid idea and then he said let's talk about it and andy robin another writer from my series was talking with us he said why don't we do it like the right stuff and when i heard that you were in i'm in i'm in that's comedy and your first uh your your first uh directorial well bit at a feature film? Yeah, definitely. But when we were doing the series,

Larry and I were always directing. We weren't moving cameras or doing all the prep and stuff like that, but, you know. Any trepidation going into it as far as directing? Or did you look at other directors and go, I'm better? No, I just thought if I have funny people like this, funny people just, it's about getting them in a good mood. And the fun will just happen, you know. Sarah?

The food was great. Were you in a good mood during this? The food was great. You had a horrible time? It was awful. You were telling me beforehand this was one of the worst experiences of your life. It was one of the worst experiences I've ever had. But you endured.

Yeah, he made me stand on an apple box for several hours and kept my eyes open. It was one of the worst experiences I've ever had. But you endured. Yeah, he made me stand on an Apple box for several hours and kept my eyes open. It was really awful. It was horrible. But you know what? It's a good movie. And you know, if that's what you have to do to get a good movie. You say as a director, he was sort, he was kind of obsessive. He was like Christopher Nolan as far as

you know, where you place your hands. Where you place your hands, where your eyes are, you know, how loud your voice is, how quick you talk. I mean, this guy. I had a great time. Yeah, of course you did. You want to be in the next movie. So when Max had had the tongs, the metal tongs in the toaster, remember that?

Yeah. Must you be so dramatic? I said, OK, Max, now you're getting electrocuted. Right. But you're going to fight through it. Right. It was beautiful. And that was one of my favorite funny moments.

One of your favorite moments? Yeah, because most people would let go, you know, and back off. I said, no, you're going to fight through. So, Max, what was it like working? Actually, you were playing the rival of a guy that was your idol. It seems to me it'd be like any musician getting a chance to jam with Paul McCartney. Yeah, well, I mean, just working with Jerry. They had called me and said, you bring up Oppenheimer.

I got a call about it. They said, hey, do you want to audition for Oppenheimer? And they sent me something, dummy sides. And I read it and I go, this is, no one's going to believe me as a scientist. And they go, are you sure? And I go, yeah, this is not, no one wants to see this. And then like three weeks later they called, hey, do you want to audition for Jerry Seinfeld's Pop-Tart movie? And I went, 100%.

Oh, this is amazing. I'm all in. All in. And you played the Kellogg that would fail. Yes. Edsel. Yes. I played a nepo baby.

The third. No, it was great. I played Jerry's boss in the movie. I know you did. Which is very similar to our everyday life because I tell him how to do everything. And Christian, I would have not expected you to be a milk mafia Don. Yeah, yeah. There was an element of danger, I felt.

Yeah, elements to the character that were brilliantly written. And I like the guy's backstory. You know him. He's got children. He's got mouths to feed. So, you know, this guy coming along and creating a thing that doesn't need milk was very upsetting. So what was it like, Jim, just the people you got to work with? We were joking a lot about Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan. And they

always say, well, you know, when he calls, you do it. I would guess, and I'm serious here, the same thing, Jerry Seinfeld wants you to be in this movie. Oh, yeah. No, I definitely wanted to be involved immediately. But to your point, I mean, every day it was, you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this person's coming in.

And it's just all these funny people upon funny people. And then some people people you're like, how did Jerry pull this off? Because it is an enormous cast and it is it really kind of covers the spectrum of everyone. It's an incredible cast. You made light in these politically correct times. I wrote this down. Mussolini, JFK, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the JFK assassination. The aside about JFK Jr., very gutsy maverick. Are you making any progress?

It's not to scale, but what are you guys, five years old? Little John John draws better than that. And I think there's something wrong with him. I'm just curious. Yeah. How did that writing go? Oh, yeah. And just throw this line about JFK Jr. Because everybody's making jokes about him.

Yeah, that was a Bill Burr's ad lib. I'm not surprised. We just loved it. It was really funny. I love using ad lib. I didn't know that. Yeah, he he it got much worse. The he had Eleanor Roosevelt coming over for a naked swim in that scene.

And we couldn't quite put the history of that together. So Eleanor Roosevelt's coming over and you're going to swim in the nude. What is that called? Skinny dipping? Sarah, what was the part for you that was the most exciting? What did you enjoy the most? Well, watching the movie was great. I mean, I've watched it many times now, but actually when we were filming it,

the funeral scene was actually one of my favorites. When I saw the box of Kellogg's that said funeral size, that was where I was like, this movie is brilliant. And it's just punchline after punchline. Jerry, let me ask you, where did you come up with the idea for the funeral scene? I'll credit Andy Robin, who said full serial honors. And I thought, well, what would that be? And then I came up with we're going to turn the gravesite into a cereal bowl. And then that's why we killed the guy.

There was no reason to kill that guy. I just wanted to do the funeral scene. So we killed somebody to have a funeral. Being a cereal, you know, obsessive, anything that's a hole, I want to put milk and cereal in it. Anything that's a hole. Which brings us, which brings us, Jim, to the awards ceremony.

The awards ceremony. Yes. And some of the cereals that did not make it past the first year. What are they called? What are they called? Grandma's holes.

Grandma's holes. You know what? I never liked that joke. I never liked that joke. But you laugh at it, right? Yeah, but it doesn't mean I like it. That's some of what's so amazing about this movie is we're talking about one

of a thousand bits and layers and like when we talk about the funeral there's like six different elements that are so absurd Ave Maria Ave

Maria and he's fruit loom but like the top of it is a nest for some reason. But that's the detail like that is so fun about this movie, but it's thought out and there's a strong point of view with it. That's what I kind of associate with Jerry.

It's point of view driven, not to be all nerdy, but it is. And what's the strong point of view? Well, the strong point of view is just in every situation, there's a strong choice made. And some of it makes sense and some of it intentionally doesn't make sense. Yes. So it's like- Never put the horizon in the center, right? Yeah, right.

Or it's oddly kind of like this reference of like how our culture was OK with that. It's like it's a strange kind of commentary. So I love watching movies over and over again. Sure. And I just watch them over and over again. Yeah. This is a movie that I know I'm going to watch five, six, seven times because things move so quickly. And I talked about the JFK Jr. joke, which 90 percent of the people who see it the first time will probably miss it. You talk about all these other things that it's layer upon layer upon layer, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It goes very deep into a very peculiar time. Yeah. And so even even the whole milkman thing, it, it's not just like, oh, the milkman are bad.

There is a complexity and a hierarchy that is completely justified. At one point, I give a speech explaining big milk. We have a commentary on the influence of corporations and all this. It's like, no. But it all makes sense. It all makes sense. I'm curious. How did you pitch that?

I mean, I guess you don't have to pitch anymore. You're like, hey, I'm Jerry, and I'm going to do this movie. If you want a lot of money, I wanted it to be big. This is a big Hollywood movie. It was. I better say, I heard the concept. And one of the things that surprised me, Max, was this is like a big, there's a big feel to this. You feel like you're in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1963.

Well, if you look at, you know, a little town in Michigan with two gigantic cereal companies that hate each other. Yeah. It's a perfect comedic setup. Perfect. None of it makes sense, but we all know that it was true. Yeah. They were in Battle Creek, Michigan. The name of the town is Battle Creek.

Come on. It was there. It's all there. The story writes itself. Yeah, it writes itself. It's a love story. It is a love story. It's a love story.

We even put a love story. There is a love story. Absolutely. But a love story. There is a love story. But it is also, it's America's love of sugar. It is. And that was Joe's thoroughly enjoyable conversation with the cast of the Netflix movie, Unfrosted, directed by Jerry Seinfeld, and begins streaming today.