Morning Joe - Morning Joe 5/9/24

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Biden: U.S. won't give Israel weapons to attack Rafah 

The RFK Jr. said that years ago, a doctor found a dead worm in his brain. And this is strange. Instead of using dewormer, he injected himself with the COVID vaccine. He's got it all wrong. Wow. He's got worms in the brain. That explains the ivermectin. It is a dewormer. For a guy who seems to believe doctors are con artists trying to scam you into getting a vaccine, he sure did get to one fast when a worm started eating his brain. The inside of his head is basically the movie Dune. But you should definitely vote for him. I just want to say to any of RFK Jr. fans who might be watching do not despair just because he has admitted in a sworn deposition

that he has parasitic brain damage doesn't mean he's going to drop out because bobby kennedy jr does not know the meaning of the word quit because that information was in the part of the brain that the worm ate hi good morning and welcome good morning joe it's thursday may the 9th with us we have the host of way too early, White House Bureau Chief of Politico, Jonathan O'Meara, former aide to George W. Bush, White House and State Department, Elise Jordan, and congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany.

A lot talking about it. I think we probably on TV, Willie, we broke the worm in brain story first here. We're very proud of that. In fairness, we read it off the New York Times website. Exactly. 17 great years of sort of, you know, grabbing things out there. But a couple of big events in sports last night. First of all, for us Red Sox fans, we got to see a guy who would eat worms

and go on the disabled list for five years and a guy who would ride a bike and fall over and break 12 ribs. This is memorable. Well, Miro will remember when he got into a fist fight with a TV screen when he was down in the minors and basically threw about four pitches over five years for the Red Sox and cost us over 100 million dollars, the biggest bust in Red Sox history. And so we went to Atlanta and I guess he's not riding bikes or eating apples or eating worms anymore. He just shut us down, Willie. He shut us down. But the big news,

of course, in New York, the Knickerbockers seem to be playing fairly well. So that was Chris Sale, who we were talking about before, dealing last night for, not the Red Sox, the Atlanta Braves. Looking really good down there.

Against the Red Sox. Wow. Yeah. Against the Red Sox. Sale, of course. It's hard to keep. Yeah. Go ahead, Joe.

No, you go ahead. I was going to say something mean about him. You say something mean about him. Yeah, I'll say something mean about him. I'll say, look, they don't win the 2018 World Series without him. So we'll be grateful for that. But then he signed a massive contract extension and pitched, as you say, about four games a year. And, you know, managed to outdo himself each and every season to the nature of his injuries, the best being when he did fall off his bike and shattered every bone in his body.

He was like the character in the Bruce Willis movie. But, yes, he has since been traded to Atlanta. And he was terrific last night, Willie. He was he was struck out 10 over six innings, didn't give up any runs. Sox have been all right this year, but that was a tough loss where the Yankees are pulling away in the American East. But we know that most of the New York sports scene is focused on basketball. It is. And what a game. Another game last night at the Garden. Yankees not pulling away quite yet. Tied with the Orioles in first place. Incredible game last night at the Garden.

Jalen Brunson echoes of Willis Reed. He gets hurt in the first half. Hurt his foot. Misses the entire second quarter. Will he come back? Knicks fans holding their breath. And he does come back. Leading the Knicks to a comeback victory they were down by

12 points in the third quarter came back to win by 9 130 to 121 so now a commanding two nothing lead as they go back to indiana but jalen brunson joe has been an absolute revelation in new york a great guy a solid guy incredible chemistry on team. Three of the guys played together at Villanova, of course, the Nova Knicks. He is a bona fide superstar. Jalen Brunson is in a way. I don't think all of us fully understood before he got here. Yeah. And now, Lamir, it looks like we may be having the biggest showdown between New York and Boston since, I mean, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams got into fistfights in Washington's cabinet. I just made that up. But it looks like you might have the Celtics against the Knicks and might have the Bruins against the Rangers. Yeah, this is New York-Boston, such a white-hot rivalry. Red Sox-Yankees, of course. We've

Patriots-Jets, A couple Super Bowls against another New York team that I'm not going to bring up right now. And, of course, now we have this. And the Celtics and Knicks really have not had that much of a rivalry because, frankly, Willie, the Knicks haven't mattered all that much for a long time. See, we're starting it now. With the Celtics having 17 championships.

But look, the Knicks are good. They're tough. They're well-coached. MSG, that's a tremendous home court advantage. The Pacers have to be kicking good. They're tough. They're well-coached. MSG, that's a tremendous home court advantage. The Pacers have to be kicking themselves. They had leads both games this series. Gave them both up. That series now shifts to Indiana. Boss Celtics play game two tonight against Cleveland after winning game one handily.

Also, Rangers up 2-0. Bruins are 1-1 in that series. But yeah, there's a possibility for a really fun-slash-dangerous spring along the SLA corridor. By the way, Jackie Alomany knows more about basketball than all of us combined. A big star in high school and college. Now, who's your team? Are you a Knicks fan or no? I grew up, like, idolizing Patrick Ewing and the 90s Knicks. So this is, I'm having a year.

This is great. Women's basketball is back. I love the Knicks. Although, I was a little worried last night. We'll see if OG is out. We've got to get the hospital for special surgery. They've got to do their thing on his left-hand string. Yeah, that didn't look good, did it?

But I think Jalen's fine, it seems. I mean, he came back fourth quarter 15 points. Yeah, yeah. But it's so fun when the Knicks are good. We had, like, the Knicks were good during Linsanity. It was 2012. We had a little bump. We finally got rid of Carmelo.

That needed to happen. It was long overdue. All due respect to Carmelo. Go ahead. And now we're here. Yeah. And I'll say really, like, I'm no Knicks fan whatsoever, but there's a certain energy the city gets when the Knicks are good.

Yes. When the Knicks are on a playoff run, it's the one team that unites the city. I mean, no offense, but no one really cares about the Brooklyn Nets. That doesn't happen in baseball because you have split allegiance to the Yankees-Mets. It doesn't happen in football because the Jets and Giants. But in basketball, it's about the Knicks, and the city's on fire right now. It's no better than a night like that. They even got a blank Reggie Miller chant going, the despised Indiana Pacer,

from 30 years ago because he was at the game announcing it for TNT. So the garden is on fire. Long way from over, going back to Indiana now. But let's turn to the news. A rare bit of bipartisanship yesterday. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle overwhelmingly voted to save House Speaker Mike Johnson after Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tried and failed to oust him from leadership. Greene, who's threatened to force the issue for weeks now, introduced the motion to vacate after two days of back to back meetings with Speaker Johnson. Her own colleagues were quick to boo and jeer her on the House floor. The form of the resolution is as follows.

Declaring the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant. There are the boos. The vote to table Green's motion to vacate was 359 to 43. Only 10 Republicans even sided with Green. Speaker Johnson spoke to reporters after the vote. I want to say that I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort. That is certainly what it was. Hopefully this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress. It's

regrettable. It's not who we are as Americans and we're better than this. We need to get beyond it. In this moment, the country desperately needs a functioning Congress. And that's what the overwhelming majority of the members in this body demonstrated today. So, Joe, it was pretty clear before the vote yesterday that it was going to fail. Marjorie Taylor Greene was going to fail in her attempt to oust the Speaker. I'm not sure we fully understood how bad the margin against her would be that only 10 Republicans after all this fury and all this sound and all these press conferences and all her interviews where she said she's leading the charge to get rid of him just completely was blown out in the vote, falling flat in her attempt to get rid of the speaker. Right. And all the threats that were made against him, if he did a continuing resolution, if he kept the government open, if he provided aid to Israel, if he provided aid to

Ukraine, if he provided aid to Taiwan, all of all of those threats just fell by the wayside. And, you know, it raises the question that that that extraordinary profile, that Atlantic profile asked as a subheading. What what if this guy may end up being good at this job right now? Jackie, it's looking like he's going to far outpace all expectations for him. That is until November, Joe. I think Johnson made a little bit of a miscalculation when he was negotiating the Ukraine and the Israel supplemental package in not changing the rules around being allowed to sort of bring up the motion to vacate on a snap vote, as we've seen Marjorie Taylor Greene do. You know, Democrats stepped in to save him this time around, but we'll see how long that

good faith and this sort of mutually beneficial relationship continues. As Trump said in his statement last night, now is not the time, Marge. Basically, there is this sort of feeling that this mutually assured destruction within the Republican Party is not good for keeping the majority and Republicans' reelection chances. Hence, I think Trump's statement is a political calculus here. And I think we're going to see this basically play out until November. And then after that, we'll get back to the Republican civil war that we're so used to seeing play out. Yeah, at least we had fellow Republicans calling Marjorie Taylor Greene Moscow Marjorie, saying she fails again. She's what does this moment tell us?

And maybe the Ukraine vote as well. The Ukraine vote tell us about the power of MAGA extremists inside the House. Is it waning? Is it there? Is it just to raise money? I mean, to some extent, Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't care that this failed. She's going to raise money in her district and get reelected and all that and make perhaps Donald Trump happy in some way. But what do we learn by this vote? Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't care about governing. So for her, she gets headlines, failed headlines, not the best headlines, but she gets to show fealty to Trump.

And at the same time, she doesn't since she doesn't care about the outcome. It doesn't matter to her. But then as the months go by, how much is the foreign policy and the supporting votes of these House lawmakers, how much is that going to be an election issue in this contentious election year, especially in these swing districts where people are a little bit more divided, frankly, over Biden's foreign policy and also what the GOP's isolationist bent has wrought, too. Yeah, I think they've both come out of this sort of weakened. I mean, Johnson gets to keep his job, but Democrats had to save him.

We'll see how he's able to lead it going forward. Marjorie Taylor Greene, obviously, that result yesterday was embarrassing, but she's still getting favorable news coverage on a lot of conservative sites, and she's going to raise money off of it, no doubt. White House aides I spoke to in the last day or so about this. Look, they give Johnson credit that at the end of the day, he got to where he needed to. He did the right thing on the Ukraine deal, even though he knew he would pay a political price. They now expect that he'll have to be a thorn in their side going forward to sort of get some political cover and appease those on the on the far right.

But there isn't that much in terms of serious legislative business. It's going to get done the rest of the year anyway. Jackie, do you think the MAGA extremists are weakened by this vote yesterday, or is this just a moment in time? I think because of the way the House is structured, with districts being so gerrymandered and some people's districts just being so red, that catering to the base is never going to really hurt some of these far-right lawmakers whose constituents completely buy into the strategy of actively trying not to govern. None of these people have viable primary challengers. They're going into November pretty safe. But who it does hurt

are their colleagues in vulnerable districts. And I think it increases the chances the more they have this kind of infighting of Democrats Actually being able to take back the house even if potentially Trump does win the presidency Judge you know the crazy thing really is though They don't care if they lose the majority. They really don't in fact Being in the minority is better for these people because they're on the back bench. They can attack the Democratic speaker. They can attack the Democratic president. They can attack the Democratic Senate. I mean, this this is actually it is such a bizarre, backward way of thinking. But they now think they can raise money, whether

than the majority or the minority. And if they're in the majority or the minority. And if they're in the majority, they actually are looked to to get things done. That actually cuts against their business plan, against their governing by gesture, because you actually have to do things in the majority. And when you don't, people start to notice, like they're starting to notice with Marjorie Taylor Greene. You're in the minority, no responsibility. You're not going to get anything done. So your gesturing can become even more grand.

And that's the real problem for Marjorie Taylor Greene and these others that they present to the Republican Party. It's like Chip Royce screaming on the House floor, name one thing that we've gotten done. And it's going to be a real challenge going into the election for the Republicans. Yeah. Objectively, one of the least productive congresses in the history of the country. As you say, much easier to just throw bombs from the back bench politically when you're not in power. Republicans a little more unified on some national security issues.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing to agree to a ceasefire deal unless Israel can move forward with its military operation in Rafah. Four current and one former U.S. official tell NBC News Netanyahu is demanding Rafah be walled off from the proposal. Negotiations are still underway in Cairo, but yesterday Hamas announced it will not make any more concessions. The terrorist group agreed to a three-part ceasefire, which includes a 42-day pause in fighting, as well as the phased release of hostages in exchange for many Palestinian prisoners. The main sticking point is in the second phase, which calls for a, quote, sustainable calm, a vague term. Hamas sees that as an end to the war. Israel does not.

Meanwhile, President Biden says he will halt the shipment of some weapons to Israel, including 2,000-pound bombs, if the IDF invades Rafah. Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers. And I made it clear that if they go into Rafah, they haven't gone into Rafah yet. If they go into Rafah,

I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem. We're going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks like came out of the Middle East recently. The president's interview with CNN aired just hours after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin publicly acknowledged the United States did pause a delivery of thousands of bombs last week. Many top Republicans are outraged by that decision.

In a rare joint letter, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanded an explanation from the president, saying, quote, security assistance Israel is an urgent priority. The Republican chairs of the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees also blasted that decision, calling it appalling. In the Senate, Lindsey Graham grilled Secretary Austin about the delay in arms during an appropriations committee hearing yesterday. OK, so Israel's been hit in the last few weeks by Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, dedicated to their destruction. And you're telling me you're going to tell them how to fight the war and what they can and can't use when everybody around them wants to kill all the Jews? And you're telling me that if we withhold weapons in this fight, the existential fight for the life of the Jewish state, it won't send the

wrong signal? Do you still think it was a good idea, General Austin, to get out of Afghanistan? I support the president's decision. Yeah, I think you do. I think it was a disastrous decision. If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the state of Israel at a time of great peril. We will pay a price. This is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need to fight the war they can't afford to lose. This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids.

Oh, my God, what a hypocrite. What a hypocrite. What a hypocrite. What a hypocrite. What a hypocrite. Republicans sat on their hands for months refusing to give Israel aid. Republicans sat on their hands for months refusing to give Ukraine aid. Republicans sat on their hands for months refusing to give Taiwan aid it needed to push back the communist Chinese from invading their island for months.

And now, Lindsey, first of all, try some sunscreen, buddy. Lindsey is talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We saw what? Hey, Lindsay, I don't know if you're on a golf trip. When Iran fired thousands of missiles at Israel. Maybe you didn't remember this. Maybe you don't want to remember this. Maybe Donald Trump told you didn't remember this. Maybe you don't want to remember this.

Maybe Donald Trump told you not to remember this. Maybe you've been hanging out with RFK Jr. and maybe a worm like ate out part of your brain. So you don't have this memory. There's the United States of America who stood up for Israel. There's the United States of America that provided the main defense in stopping those Iranian missiles from coming in. It was the United States of America that provided the main defense in stopping those Iranian missiles from coming in. It was the United States of America. It was Joe Biden. It was the administration that told Iran we would always stand by Israel's side. And we are standing by Israel's side now and forever. But that doesn't mean we send 2000 pound bombs for Netanyahu to drop on a densely populated area that has over a million people there right now and no place to go.

That's your definition of of of an existential threat. They're killing Hamas commanders as we speak without 2,000 pound bombs. They will kill and continue to kill Hamas commanders. Hamas isn't taking Gaza over again and you know it. So stop lying. Stop lying. I know it's hard because Donald Trump wants you to say things like that. I just, you know, Willie, if I'm going, I support Ukraine, I support Ukraine.

And then Donald Trump says, don't support Ukraine. And his hound dog barks, don't support Ukraine. Suddenly he goes, I don't support Ukraine and his hound dog barks, don't support Ukraine. Suddenly he goes, I don't support Ukraine no more. We're going to lease them weapons. What? A country is dying because of Russian invaders? And Vladimir Putin says he has his eyes set on Poland and the Baltic states.

And Donald tells you, Lindsay, not to support Ukraine and to hold up funding for Israel and to hold up funding for Taiwan. And you're providing lectures to the secretary of defense? What a joke. I don't know if you know this, but we have video. Right?

They create, okay, so they film, like, you know, and I don't know, Willie, maybe they created film in, like, maybe the 1880s or something. And then it turned that film at some point turned into videotape. I don't know when it was. Everybody was buying VHS in the 70s. My dad decided he had a Betamax. He was OK. That tells you all you need to know. My dad played the long game, Lindsay. But even my dad's Betamax could record you saying we're not giving support for Israel and Taiwan and Ukraine unless we loan them the money. What are you watching World War Two movies? This isn't 1940 and you're not FDR.

Good Lord, Willie. I tell you, this has got my hackles up. What's he doing? Does he really think we're that stupid? They were the ones holding up support for Israel for months. And now he's doing the Jimmy Swaggart routine, crying, being self-righteous. We know. We know what happened. Come on, Lindsay. We we may have been born at night, Lindsay, but we weren't born last night. How's that? Was that pretty good, Willie? And the good people at Betamax. Thank you for that reference to they're trying to get trying to get things going again. It's been a long road. I'm trying to get

free supplies. I got my dad's Betamax machine. I just don't have the tape. They stopped making them in 1984. You know how vinyl came back? Beta's about to come back. I can feel it. I can feel it in my bones. You're of course right.

Lindsey Graham, first of all, has long held himself out as a supporter of Ukraine, a defender of Ukraine, until Donald Trump yanked the chain on the leash and said, don't do that right now. We're not. So he stepped away from that. And we should point out it took months and months and months. But finally, there was a foreign aid package passed last month that got $14 billion worth of aid to Israel. So they are getting what they need. In this case, John, the White House is just making the point that Joe just made. We're not going to supply. We're going to see how you go into Rafah, but we're not going to give you 2,000 pound bombs to be dropped in an urban setting. But the idea that the White House has

cut off aid to Israel is preposterous and just objectively wrong. Right. So the president made that point clear just a few weeks ago. It was Americans. Not only you sent weapons to Israel to defend itself against Iran's barrage of drone and rocket attacks, their Iron Dome. The U.S. continues to do that. And in fact, U.S. assets helped shoot down a lot of those rockets. They're defending Israel. The president this week in his Holocaust memorial speech made clear, he's like, we stand with Israel, but you can at times disagree with a friend. And they disagree right now with the plan to go into Rafah. The president in this interview said, look, there's been limited Israeli incursions into Rafah. We think that's acceptable.

They've been targeted at Hamas leaders. What we oppose is an all-out invasion that will lead to devastating civilian casualties and add to the humanitarian crisis. And President Biden last night, look, he's finally, he's reached his red line. He's like, we are not going to give you offensive weapons to go into use in an invasion of Rafah, whether that's bombs or artillery or anything of the sort. He acknowledged for the first time that, yes, undoubtedly, it has been some American weapons used by the Israeli military that's killed civilians in Gaza. And he's like, that's unacceptable. We do not want that to occur. So, Jackie, we just got the Republican reaction. A lot of Lindsey Graham speaking for many of them, though others perhaps not quite as hysterically, about their anger about this. And we heard

McConnell and Johnson also expressed concern about the delay in weapons. Tell us, though, about the Democrats' response. So many of them have been voicing this concern that Israel was going too far in Gaza. Did what they hear from the president satisfy them? I think for now, as we were talking about earlier this morning, you know, there is this report coming from the administration that's basically going to take an assessment of just how many civilian casualties have been caused by U.S.-sourced bombs. I think this is something that's also really been a source of concern and trepidation for Democrats as they're kind of bracing for the ultimate findings from the intel community on this. But this is long overdue in the minds of Democrats, many of whom have become increasingly vocal about the Biden administration adjusting their policy towards Israel.

There have long been complaints from the progressive flank of the party that the relationship is far too friendly, that we hold Netanyahu and Israel to a far different standard, especially when it comes to human rights abuses and actually taking stock of what is going on and sort of the lack of oversight of the civilian casualties. And so it's something Democrats are keeping a close eye on. Of course, as we also were talking about, it's a really tricky political dance right now, especially as Republicans are trying to weaponize this against Democrats, painting Democrats as anti-Semitic and as wavering in the face of turmoil in the Middle East.

Elise? He's not going to win necessarily politically on this by this stage in the game. This might be a more sound policy move. Indeed, we do not need to be just indiscriminately handing out 2000 pound bombs when they already have dropped more tonnage in Gaza than we did. You know, the kind of bombs that we dropped in against ISIS in Mosul were, you know, about these bombs are about four times that. We don't need to just feel that when there already is such a humanitarian crisis. But he's not necessarily going. This is, you know, a baby step for the left. It's not going to satisfy the hard right, who also, as you see with Lindsey Graham, are all over it. And it doesn't matter if they're completely hypocritical

and nonsensical. They're still going to weaponize it. Well, I mean, I just typically they are hypocritical. They are nonsensical. Willie also, I mean, they know absolutely nothing about history. And I guess you don't have to if you just look at tick tock and, you know, and Instagram reels, I guess. I mean, because you look back at the history, the United States history, and I could talk about Democratic presidents all day. But let's talk about Republican presidents. It was Dwight Eisenhower during the Suez crisis that pulled the Israelis back and said, no, enough. That's it. That said, just said no to the Israelis and to the British and stopped an attack with a threat. And that was that was an existential crisis for both Israel and Britain. You can look at Ronald Reagan, who in 1981, after the bombing of Iraq, Ronald Reagan actually suspended sale of F-16s

to Israel and said, because of your attack, your bombing, we're not going to give you F-16s. A year later, over strenuous, strenuous objections from Begin and the Israelis, he sold AWACS to the Saudis. It was a huge crisis for Israel. Reagan went ahead with it because he was worried about U.S. interests. He was worried about regional security. He was worried about what was in the best interest of the United

States. And a strong Israel is in the best interest of the United States. But even Reagan knew throughout his entire administration, we could talk about what happened in Beirut, where he had an angry call with Menachem Begin and threatened him and said basically the same thing we're saying here. You better not bomb. There's a hotel that Reagan wanted to bomb in Beirut. Reagan called him up, had a really tense conversation with Menachem Begin and told him he couldn't do it. So we can talk about George H.W. Bush, James Baker. We can go through the long list of every Republican president. Nixon, they didn't hand Israel a blank check. When Israel was doing something that they felt was not in Israel's best interest

and in the United States' best interest, every one of these Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan, said enough. We will support you. We will defend you against any existential threats. We will help you root out terrorists. But that doesn't mean we give you a blank check. And so in this case, you have Joe Biden acting an awful lot like Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower. I guess I guess the new Trump Republican Party now hates Ike and Reagan. I don't know. It makes no sense to me.

And as I said, $14 billion last month just went out the door in aid to Israel. President Biden making clear yesterday they'll continue to support the Iron Dome program. There is support. There are weapons. But now the president says also a red line. Congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post and four year starter at Scarsdale High School. Oh, yeah. Nice to have a fellow Knicks fan on the set with me, Jackie Alameda. Good to see you. Thanks, Willie. Likewise. Trump used the day off from his criminal hush money trial yesterday to host a dinner

at Mar-a-Lago. A source tells NBC News Trump welcomed buyers of his digital trading cards to Mar-a-Lago last night. According to a copy of the invitation obtained by Axios, the dinner was for supporters who bought at least 47 of the cards priced at $99 each. Some of those same buyers also were expected to receive physical pieces of the suit Trump was wearing when he had his mugshot taken after he was arrested in Fulton County, Georgia back in August. What the holy F is going on here? Who are these people?

I mean, what do you do? You frame the piece of the suit and you sniff it. Do you keep it at your bedside. Well, I don't know what you do in the bomber jacket. Now, that is really quite a what did they do? Take Tom Cruise and then just put Trump's head on it. I mean, that is actual just complete propaganda. And he had him at Mar-a-Lago. He had a day off from his criminal hush money trial. So what do you do? You bring in the people who spent 10 grand on your NFTs and little pieces of the suit from your mugshot, which undoubtedly are not from that suit. But that's for another day. As for today, Stormy Daniels set to return to the witness

stand this morning where the defense will continue its cross-examination. On Tuesday, Daniels described a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006. The judge denied a defense motion for a mistrial after Trump's attorneys called Daniel's testimony unnecessary and prejudicial toward Trump. Prosecutors have indicated they plan to redirect or ask Daniel's follow-up questions once the defense wraps up its questioning. Trump denies charges of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment made to Daniels by Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen. The former president also denies any sexual encounter with Daniels.

Let's bring in former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent, Lisa Rubin. All right, Lisa, a little bit of a day off yesterday. Back at it this morning. Where do we pick up from where we were on Tuesday? Well, where we were on Tuesday was sort of a scorched earth cross-examination of Stormy Daniels. But among the subjects touched, guess which one wasn't really touched? Whether or not the episode happened as she described it. So Susan Nicholas really going after her for a variety of perceived inconsistencies in her story, and most notably,

whether or not in 2011, she had been approached in a parking lot in Las Vegas while she was with her infant daughter and threatened not to reveal more of the story. That was largely a focus of the cross-examination. So one of the things I'll be looking for today is, do they actually return to the story itself and try to counter its veracity? Or do they poke around at the margins trying to make Stormy Daniels seem not credible and focused only on money? I will tell you that at one point they did try to focus on her interest in money. And I thought she got the better of them in this exchange. Question, well, do you recall testifying that you started acting in pornography because you wanted to make more money, right? Answer, correct.

Question, and it's that simple. You wanted more money, right? Answer, don't we all want to make more money in our jobs? Question, and that's why you started acting in pornography, right? Answer, to get a pay increase for my dancing, yes. Question, that motivates you a lot in life, making more money, right? And then Stormy Daniels with this classic answer, well, it is the United. That's what we do here.

So I'm looking forward to Stormy Daniels sort of giving as good as she gets today. I thought she was a more focused witness on cross-examination. The longer that cross-examination goes on, so long as she can keep her answers tight and her temper in check, I think that makes her more sympathetic to the jury and more credible as well, Willie. They also tried to get her to sound like someone who has an ax to grind with Donald Trump and just asked explicitly, do you hate Donald Trump? And she said, yes. Does that hurt her in some ways, making it sound like this is some personal vendetta? Well, she was then asked, and you want to see him go to jail, correct? And she said, I want to see him held accountable. I thought the honesty of the answer was a good thing to try and hide from that, given the multiplicity of her public statements about her feelings about Trump.

You can't really run away from that. So it was good for her to be candid in that moment and also to focus that hatred on her own experience with him and her pain. That's an encounter that, as we've talked about previously, she understands maybe differently now than she did at an earlier point in time, and certainly maybe differently than we all understood it. You know, this was a late-night punchline for many of us for a long time. The Stormy Daniels who came into court on Tuesday, who talked about her sexual encounter with Donald Trump, painted it in a very different light. I

wouldn't call it a sexual assault and neither did she, but it was clear that it was something less than full consent for her and a very painful experience. And so given that the hatred was somewhat more explicable. Yeah. And Lisa, you know, I mean, as far as a jury looking at the witness, you know, getting pushed. Did you do this for money? If she said, no, I did it for the art. Yes, I did it for the money. Do you hate Donald Trump? Yes, she says she hates Donald Trump. And and there have been some commentators suggesting that somehow across the cross-examination hurt her credibility, I think you'd probably agree with me,

with the jury looking to try to pick apart somebody's credibility. The fact that she told the truth in both of those cases, as you just said, actually makes the jury go, yeah, all right, for good reason. If somebody did that to me, if somebody called me a horse face, if somebody was constantly mocking me on social media, if somebody was ridiculing me and lying about an encounter that we had, I wouldn't like them. And yeah, we're in we're in America. We want to make more money. She said she wanted to make more money. Seems to me both of those answers that were supposed to undermine her credibility only built it up. I think that's true. Joe, I will tell you the one place where I think she has significant problems with her credibility is sort of the pendulum swing between not wanting her story to come out in 2011 and by 2016 wanting it to come out. Now, one of those differences is the realization that you could make money from it.

And that's not something necessarily to shy away from. But she says that wasn't her motivation. She said that safety was her motivation, that in 2011, she was threatened to be quiet and she did keep quiet, not even telling her husband about that encounter. But by 2016, she testified the ballgame had changed. Once he was a major party presidential candidate and not just a reality TV star, she felt that the best way to keep herself safe was to get out in front of the story, make it public so that she was therefore almost untouchable once he was the GOP nominee. Whether or not that story holds up on Continued Cross is going to be interesting to see because she sort of vacillated about that and whether money was an

interest for her. But at the end of the day, what prosecution needs to get out of this is not whether Stormy Daniels passes the beer test, right? That's the test we apply to our presidential candidates. Do you want to have a beer with this person? That's not necessary for a key witness in a trial. They just have to believe that if she came forward in 2016, told the story she told the jury, that that would have been hugely damaging to Donald Trump. That's the reason that she's there. And that's what prosecutors want the jury to walk away with. So, Lisa, let's move to another Trump legal case. The former president got a win earlier this week down in Florida when Judge Cannon delayed that trial. And now Georgia, where a Georgia court says it will take up the Trump

team's appeal of the DA's disqualification ruling there. Is that going to lead to how do you think that plays out and what sort of delays might that produce? Well, right now, it doesn't stay the case necessarily. However, practically speaking, I think it will cause delays in that case going to trial. And so if you're Donald Trump and your M.O. is not to go to trial in most of these cases before the election or even at all, the Georgia case can't obviously be stopped by his reelection. But I think it's a huge victory for him and his team in that this is one more case that's not likely to go to trial any time this year. MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin on her way back downtown to the courthouse. We'll talk to you again tomorrow morning, Lisa. Thanks. Welcome back to

Morning Joe. Moments from now, the Bank of England is going to be making its next interest rate decision. Economists predict inflation is going to remain at a 16 year high there. They've got elections coming this fall, most likely. And man, it's lining up to be a massive win for labor. Labor will be back in back in government for the first time in a very long time. But those interest rate hikes come a week after the U.S. Federal Reserve left our interest rates unchanged here in the United States with us now, former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst and board member of HSS, which, by the way, Steve, you'd be glad to know, got special mention this morning on Morning Joe in our Knicks basketball report. So it's a very, very complete, very, very New York

report. HSS is a fantastic hospital. If you have an orthopedic problem, they are the place to go. It is. We've got friends that have been there. And, yeah, it's pretty extraordinary. So I'm thinking a lot of Knicks fans are hoping that those remarkable services won't be needed, at least until the offseason. So let's resolve. I want to talk about the Fed rate prediction.

But first, I just got to ask you about what's happening right now in Britain. Interest rates at a 16 year high. The Tory government, it just in just an absolute free fall right now. It looks like labor, whenever the elections are finally called, they're going to sweep to victory. Talk about that. And I know you don't follow it every day, but do you think we're looking at an election most likely this fall in Britain? Well, there has to be an election by early next year. So it's simply a question of when Sunak decides to call it. And I think the betting is probably this fall sometime. Look, the Tories have had a very long run in power, I think something like 13 years. And the country is kind of tired of them, in part because the country is frankly

not doing that well. The economy there is very, very slow. And they have a productivity problem. They have an investment problem. And the kinds of things that touch the Brits, they have a real problem with their National Health Service, which has been underfunded and is and is really having trouble delivering the kind of health care it used to. And so there's an enormous amount of unhappiness in Britain about the state of the economy. And as you said, the by elections did not go well. And as you said, I think the probability is overwhelming that there's going to be a Labour prime minister sometime in less than 12 months from now. Yeah, you look at Britain's economic numbers, you look at America's economic numbers, and the Brits have a good reason to be scratching their heads wondering what all the complaining is about, because they would do anything to have an

economy as strong as ours right now but sometimes a strong economy causes problems on Wall Street causes problems with car loans causes problems with house loans with inflation so obviously Wall Street in America looking at what the Fed's going to be doing on interest rates. Talk about that and talk about the prediction of what we may see in the year ahead. Sure. Well, look, every country in Europe would love to have our economy. There's no you've talked about that before. It's not even close whether you look at Germany, France, Italy, any of those places. We are certainly the star among the developed world. But that brings with it some challenges. And as you mentioned, interest rates and getting interest rates down, inflation under control has been our challenge. So last week, the Fed did not lower interest rates. We didn't think they were going to.

But not that long ago, back in January, the market thought interest rates would start to really drop sharply as inflation came under control, get down to three and a half percent by the end of this year, by around election day. But as the economy has stayed as strong as it stayed, the market has revised those projections. And in fact, the market now thinks there'll be only a modest decline in interest rates between now and the end of the year. And that is what was implicit in the Fed's decision last week, not to lower interest rates. People had expected it some months ago. By the time we got there, they didn't. Interestingly, on Friday, we had a jobs report,

which I'm going to talk about in a minute, that wasn't quite as strong as we expected. And as a result, the market got slightly more optimistic about interest rate cuts. But it looks like interest rates are going to stay higher for longer. What does that mean for consumers, the people who are going to go to the polls in November? It means, unfortunately, mortgage rates, the rate that affects probably most Americans, is not coming down the way we'd hoped. It peaked back at 8% back last year. It had started to come down as we thought interest rates and inflation were going to get under control, but it stalled out. and we're looking at mortgage rates of seven point four percent, which is obviously hugely high. Home sales as a result of that, in large part, are down 35 percent. Really tough for first time home

buyers. And so all of this, unfortunately, is not the best news as we head into the fall. So talk about what inflation looks like at an annualized rate. If it keeps going the way it did the past quarter, what is inflation going to be on a yearly basis? The problem is, as you suggested, that in the most recent quarter, and this is an inflation gauge that the Fed happens to like, called the PCE in any event, inflation on a quarter-over-quarter basis shot up to 1.4%. That would be an annual rate of something like 5%. Nobody expects it really to get back up there. These are what are called core services. This sort of focuses in on labor, on services.

It takes out energy, takes out food, takes out housing. This is the stuff that drives the ultimate inflation rate. And so why is that happening? It's happening for a couple of reasons. First of all, wage increases have stayed high. Now, we all want people to get wage increases. Obviously, you want people to make more money. Too much wage increases does feed into inflation.

And so the most recent report, which also came out just in the last few days, shows wage costs, this is the whole cost of wages to a company, rising back up to 4.5%, back where it was in the early 2023 period. That's not ideal. That, however, has driven a lot of demand, a lot of sales, people buying a lot of stuff. And so you can see that consumer demand remains above the average. So the point is that you have higher wages drive people buying more drives inflation. And again, we want people to make higher wages. We want them to buy more, but we can't have inflation at this rate and expect interest rates to come down.

And finally, let's talk about payrolls, the growth payrolls, also the unemployment rate and how that plays in. The question about inflation, about interest rates, about all the things that Americans are worried about right now when they talk to pollsters. And again, so why are wages going up as fast as they're going up? They're going up in large part because of such huge demand for labor. We are still creating jobs at an extraordinary rate. In this short period here, we created jobs at a 270,000 annual rate, well above 100,000 jobs above the longer term average. This Friday, last Friday, we did have a slightly softer number, but still at the average.

So the great American jobs machine grinds on and then you have a very low unemployment rate. We've been 27 months below 4 percent. It has edged up. You can kind of see it edging up a little bit to 3.9. We for many Americans who need to borrow money to buy a house or for other purposes. Morning, Joe. Economic analyst Steve Ratner bringing the charts and bringing the heat. Steve, thanks so much. We appreciate it.