Morning Joe - Morning Joe 6/11/24

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

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

Unlike the vast majority of felons out there, Trump was allowed to do his interview at Mar-a-Lago over a video conference call. Yeah. Yeah. Must make the mandatory drug test kind of difficult. Hard to get the pee right into the USB ports. The final probation report will remain sealed, but one thing that probation folks usually ask convicts is about their employment okay um okay mr trump it says here you got fired from your last job for being uh terrible at it and and for is this correct is this right here and for trying to kill a mr mike pence but i see oh i see down here you are actually currently applying for a new job, which is the same job, okay?

Have you thought about learning to code? Okay. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, June 11th. Good to have you all with us this morning, along with Joe, Willie and me. We have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. And Sam Stein will be joining us in just a moment. So we have a lot to talk about this morning. We thought we'd take a step back and take a look, big picture, starting out with a column in The Washington Post by Eugene Robinson,

which asked the question, is Donald Trump OK? Gene focuses on what we heard from Trump in his Las Vegas campaign rally on Sunday, writing in part, we in the media have failed by becoming inured to Trump's verbal incontinence. Not just the rapid fire lies and revenge seeking threats, but also the frightening glimpses into a mind that is evidently unwell. The White House press corps would be in wolfpack mode if Biden were in the middle of a speech and suddenly veered into gibberish about boats and sharks. There would be front page

stories questioning whether the president at 81 was suffering from dementia. And the op ed pages would be filled with thumbsuckers about whether Vice President Harris and the cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment. House Republicans would already have scheduled hearings on Biden's mental condition and demanded that he take a cognitive test. The tendency with Trump at 77 is to say he's just being Trump, but he's like this all the time.

As a reminder, just some of Trump's rally in Las Vegas on Sunday. I went to a boat company in South Carolina. The boat, I said, how is it? He said, it's a problem, sir. They want us to make all electric boats. So I said, let me ask you a question. And he said, nobody ever asked this question.

And it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. Very smart. He goes, I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you're in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over there. By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark.

I watched some guys justifying it today. Well, they weren't really that angry. They bit off the young lady's leg because of the fact that they were they were not hungry, but they misunderstood what who she was. These people are great. He said there's no problem with sharks. They just didn't really understand a young woman swimming now really got decimated and other people to a lot of shark attacks. I said, so there's a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here. Do I get electrocuted? If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery. The boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted?

Or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he didn't know the answer. He said, you know, nobody's ever asked me that question. I said, I think it's a good question. I think there's a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I'll take electrocution every single time. I'm not getting near the shark. So we could end that. We're going to end it for boats. You know, so one of the tells one of the tells on just how crazy he was, was looking at the people that had driven hours to be there, put on their Trump hats. And through the whole time, we're going like this, looking at each other in the background, going, what? What? What's exactly going on here? Turning around, whispering.

What's he talking about? Well, he's talking about really what he always talks about. I mean, you know, we have Trump and he's been doing this. And this is why the Biden campaign and John, John O'Meara has been reporting on this. And this is why the Biden campaign has been desperate to get Donald Trump out of a courtroom where he has to be quiet and on the campaign trail where they can actually hear him. Because, you know, Trump spews an hour of bizarre non sequiturs and he's been doing it for the past year or two about sharks, electric boats, Hannibal Lecter. And what a great guy he is about executing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not paying the teleprompter company. Not paying the teleprompter company.

Mosquitoes. World War II. The gathering storm of World War II that's coming. President Obama still being president of the United States, which he continues to do eight years after President Obama went home. And I do think Ching makes a great point. If Joe Biden had given one of those speeches, it would be on the front page of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and everybody would be doing exactly what they were saying.

But for Biden, Biden goes to D-Day and we're going to talk about this in a little bit. The Washington Post just posted a story this morning. He does a fantastic job and they actually use cheap fakes where they're trying to make it look, oh, he's trying to sit down and oh, my God, they're for a chair that's not there. Everybody on the stage was because Lloyd Austin wasn't done with his speech yet. There were about three or four different things where the Republican Party is lying. So they have to make that up, which is a lot like the Wall Street Journal story where they knew they were lying to their readers. They knew that Kevin McCarthy, what he was telling the Wall Street Journal was a lie. They knew. And because Kevin

McCarthy had said before what a great negotiator Biden had been in the very meeting where they tried to get Kevin McCarthy to say, oh, well, he was out of it. It's also a big tell that they talked to senators and Nancy Pelosi and others who said, no, no, let me explain to you what happened to that meeting. And they went into great detail about how Biden was pulling people together. I remember in the same meeting, it was Biden and everybody else trying to move Mike Johnson along. We reported on it at the time. The Wall Street Journal runs a front page story, a lead story that they know is a lie. So with Biden, the Republican Party has to make shit up. And I'm sorry, I can't think of a better way to say that, to try to make Biden look old

and demented. Trump, he does it every day. He's out on the campaign trail. And people just laugh. Oh, well, yeah, he's crazy. Well, look at that. Can you believe he's so stupid that he's talking about this and he melts down when his teleprompter goes down? That's funny. And that's the political world we're living in in twenty twenty four. It is in that moment. That's sort of a one example in a larger point. We could talk about all the lies. He does it enough and he does it for so long and so consistently that people sort of get numb to it. There he goes again. But we say all the time on this show, for example, when that Wall Street Journal piece came out, you could take any one rally. And this is maybe the best example of it.

As you say, Joe, it was one hundred and two degrees. Those people are standing in the heat. He said, by the way, we'll get to this quote. I don't care about you. Literally talking to his supporters, his voters. I just want your vote suggesting, yeah, it's hot out here, but I'm the one who's suffering. I don't care about you more on that in a moment. But he goes on this story about batteries and sharks and he makes that tie because of my tie to MIT. His uncle, my God, His uncle worked at MIT in the 1940s. Oh, my God. He just can't.

He feels something. There's something about MIT. He knows that's prestigious. He knows it sounds like he's smart. It was his uncle 80 years ago. All that. His uncle. Oh, my God.

Like, what a loon. What a loon. That was just the latest and perhaps one of the most extreme examples of something that happens. Again, we say it all the time here. You can watch or not. Maybe you don't want to watch his rallies or not. It happens every time he steps on a stage. So if you really think that Joe Biden is the one losing it, pour yourself a drink, sit back and watch that performance in Las Vegas over the weekend, Nevada over the weekend. That's it. That's the argument right there. So what Sam Stein, what Republicans don't understand, and I keep trying to explain this to them, but I think I'm going to just give up.

When they lie about Joe Biden's mental acuity, when they lie and they make things up, all they are doing is lowering expectations, lowering expectations, lowering expectations for the biggest campaign event coming. And that is the debate. And they do this time and time again. They say, oh, Joe Biden's out of it. Joe Biden's whatever. He goes to the State of the Union.

He kicks him in the teeth. And then everybody's like, oh, my God, where did that come from? And then they say, oh, he's on cocaine. He had to be on cocaine because he was so good. He was jacked up. No, he was just Joe Biden. And I've said this before. I'll say it again.

I've talked to the guy for hours at a time. The guy is all there. You know, years ago, I talked to Donald Trump hours at a time. Not all there. And so here we are. They're pushing down. He's much worse now. They're pushing down expectations for Joe Biden by lying about him. All they're doing in the end is helping him

because the whole country is going to be looking at those debates. And Biden, once again, is going to exceed expectations because of their false narrative. This happened in 2020, too. People might forget it, but there was this big narrative going around that he had an earpiece that was feeding him the questions and the answers. And he had to it actually took off so much on right wing media that he and his campaign had to put out a tweet joking about it with the earpiece and a pint of ice cream as his debate prep routine. I will say it does diminish the expectations. It helps him ultimately clear a very low hurdle.

So from a strategic standpoint, it does benefit Biden. Also, Trump's giving away one of the debate questions that will come up, which is how would you rather die? Electrocution via an electrical boat or a vicious shark attack? And so now Joe Biden has one of those questions, too. So in two ways, they've benefited Biden. And then let me just say on the larger scale, like, look, I don't think I think two things can be objectively true here. Right. One is Joe Biden is, you know, old. I think that's objectively true. He's different than he was four years ago, eight years ago. We all are right. That's just how it goes. The other thing that is objectively true is what you said, which is if Joe Biden had gone on stage and talked about, you know, a shark attack or being electrocuted in a boat, I think it would have been the dominant media story for a week. It would have spawned a whole round of Democratic agitation and freak out. It would have spawned a whole slew of editorials wondering if he should drop out.

I think there are different standards here. And I think part of it is exactly what Willie says, which is we've become sort of calloused and numb to the Trump routine. And so that, you know, shades how we view Trump. And that is if you look into the history of authoritarianism is a component of that desensitizing a population, a population becoming inured. And Jonathan Lemire, I mean, I said it yesterday. I'll say it today. If anybody made a speech like that, anybody, I wouldn't even need to say some on the left feel this person is on. That's unfit behavior. That person is unfit for the highest office in Atlanta, unfit to be on this show, even unfit to do any job.

He sounded crazy because he was. What corporation would hire that guy? Nobody. What corporation would hire that guy? Nobody. What corporation would hire that guy in leadership? My question is, and I'll leave it hanging and toss to you, LaMere. The Wall Street Journal did a front page piece quoting Republicans and some Democrats about Joe Biden losing it. I didn't quote any Democrats. Where is the deep dive in the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal front page? Where's the deep dive

into this crazy man who's giving so much material that backs up to the fact that he is unfit, that it's almost hard to keep up with? Where is the good, solid journalism on this? Yeah, certainly there's been exhaustive reporting about Donald Trump's record and what he plans to do in 2025. I do think what we've seen a couple publications in recent weeks, a little more about raising the idea of what Trump's mental capacity for this job. And certainly on this show, we talk about it all the time. But Sam couldn't be more right. It's more of an issue for President Biden. And that is, by most Democrats believe, deeply unfair. Biden only a couple of years older than Trump. But poll after poll suggests, in part, shaped by what the Republicans have done, shaped by media coverage. It just it looms much

larger for Biden than Trump. I'll give you an example of a bad faith effort, even newer than the last week in France. I was print pooler last night for the Juneteenth concert on the White House lawn. And, you know, President Biden was there for the whole thing, which lasted about two hours. And the Republicans and some of their allies took clips and tweeted them out of the president, you know, standing a little slower

than some of his colleagues. He wasn't clapping quite in tune. I mean, but he was, I was there. I had my eyes on the whole time. He was totally fine. But it's just the latest example of them trying to paint this picture. Yeah. I try to paint a picture of him being unfit for the job. Meanwhile, the Democrats in the Biden campaign have ramped up their own attacks on Donald Trump, really trying to create a contrast that was in many ways the implicit subtext of that France trip. Mika, look, here's President Biden on the world stage,

reaffirming our commitment to allies, vowing to stand with Ukraine, standing up for democracy, contrasting that with Donald Trump, who's doing none of those things, and Donald Trump seemingly expressing very little interest in the health, safety, and well-being of his own rally attendees. As Willie just mentioned, the Biden campaign pounced on that moment from Las Vegas over the weekend and put out this ad. Because I don't want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don't care about you. I just want you to vote. I don't care. I'm Joe Biden and I approve this message.

Short and sweet. There you go. I don't care. And we've heard that from the Biden team before. And they're making this, though, that obviously in a sort of a jokey fashion. But that's sort of been one of their central arguments in the wake of the criminal conviction, Joe and Mika, that, look, this is the latest example of how Trump put himself before everything else. And that's what he'll do when he's back in office, too. And unfit. All right. Moving on now to our other top stories of the morning. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is in Israel this morning where he met earlier today with retired Israeli General

Benny Gantz, who resigned from the country's war cabinet on Sunday. A readout of their meeting said Gantz emphasized the importance of exerting maximum pressure on mediators in order to get Hamas to agree to a hostage release deal. And in Jerusalem yesterday, Blinken met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Blinken says Netanyahu reaffirmed his commitment to a ceasefire proposal. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council has adopted a U.S.-backed ceasefire plan for Gaza. Three other ceasefire resolutions have previously failed. This measure lays out a three-phase plan to secure the release of the remaining hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. In the second phase, the ceasefire would continue so long as Israel and Hamas negotiate a permanent end to the war. If the

deal falls through, the White House has discussed potentially holding its own negotiations with Hamas to secure the release of the five American hostages still in captivity. This comes as we learn more about the Israelis' military, their daring rescue of four hostages over the weekend. Newly released helmet camera footage shows forces rescuing Al-Maghmar, John, Andrei Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv. The video has been edited by Israeli authorities. The Israeli military says the men were being held captive in the home of a Hamas member. You can hear heavy fire as the

operatives enter the apartment. In an effort to give the rescuers ample cover, the military says the Air Force started striking dozens of nearby targets. That led to scores of civilians, including children, to be killed. Hamas health officials say that at least 270 people died in the raid. Israeli sources say less than 100. Right. Israeli forces also rescued a fourth hostage, 26-year-old Noah Arghamani. She was being held in a different building just 200 yards away. So, Willie, there's so many cross currents going on right now in this war between Israel and terrorists, Hamas terrorists. You have, of course, the hostage release, extraordinary hostage release.

You have Benny Gantz resigning from the cabinet. You have the United Nations backing the U.S. peace proposal. Just again, a lot, a lot going on in Israel's northern border. I mean, this is so much going on, so many cross currents. You wonder if this point, this sort of the climax of it, where maybe we move to that U.S. authored ceasefire. Yeah, there are some sticking points, obviously, for the Israelis in there. And Hamas obviously cannot be trusted as a terrorist organization in the negotiation. But we will see. It is, you know, it got the votes in the unanimously,

except for Russia abstained in the U.N. Security Council in the U.N. So we'll see. But it's that hostage rescue. When you look at the video there, the fact that they were those four hostages were alive, that the special services of the IDF were able to pull that off. Extraordinary. Obviously, the civilian death that came with it makes things worse, makes things more complicated. But Hamas also could not could have avoided this by not taking hostages and not hiding behind them inside of Gaza. Let's bring in the columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius. David, so let's get to Joe's point about everything that's going on right now in this critical moment and your assessment of that peace plan from the White House, the peace plan from the U.N.

How viable is it? Is there enough in there that there somehow, some way these two sides could come to the table? So, Willie, the first thing to say is the White House is really putting on a full court press on this. It took this peace plan first to the G7. Other major industrial nations got support for it. Now they've taken it to the U.N. Security Council, gotten it passed with Russia abstaining. They now have the world's leading powers behind this proposal. And they now want to, in effect, impose it on both Hamas, which has been resistant, and Israel, which sometimes is a little bit hard to read about exactly what it agrees to and what it doesn't. Right now, the main focus is on Hamas.

Secretary Blinken in Israel made that point very strongly. It's up to Hamas to come to the table and do this deal. You ask, what is the difference about? And really, I think it's about language in the three-part agreement that in the minds of Israel and Hamas determines who can say they won the conflict. Hamas is demanding a written statement from Israel that there be a permanent end to hostilities. Israel says we don't want to sign a permanent statement. Instead, we want negotiations about the transition to the permanent ceasefire, where we get to work out all the details of how the future of Gaza will go. Israel does not want to see, will not accept future Hamas governance of Gaza. That's been made clear from the beginning of the

war. So I think what we're going to see is continued intense pressure. The problem is, what is the U.S. plan B if this pressure doesn't budge Hamas? There's no sign that I see that they're really ready to give up that demand for the permanent ceasefire. And there's not an obvious answer right now for the administration except keep banging, keep pushing, keep pointing to all the international insistence that this happened. Right. And you look at the end, the third phase of the peace process, and it is the movement to a non-Hamas governed Palestinian authority running Gaza. Obviously, a big win for Israel, if in fact that that is where we end up. David, it's interesting. We saw pictures of the secretary of state, America's secretary of state, shaking hands with Benny Gantz and then Benjamin Netanyahu.

Interesting, again, shaking hands with Benny Gantz right after he resigned from Netanyahu's cabinet, a man who many consider to be a possible successor to Netanyahu. We've seen support. We've seen signs that Israelis still are backing President Biden and still see President Biden as a friend. I'm curious, what's the power of Secretary of State Blinken shaking hands with Benny Gantz a day or so after he resigns from the cabinet? And what kind of impact do you think that has domestically inside of Israel? Well, Joe, the first thing to say is that the polls still suggest that Gantz is significantly more popular than Netanyahu. So to have the American secretary of state, symbol of Israel's

most important alliance, they're shaking hands with somebody who could be prime minister, gives that person a kind of validation. We're going to enter a very strange period now. The war cabinet that's been steering the war for eight months has been effectively dissolved. The remaining people who matter are Netanyahu himself and the minister of defense, Yoav Galat, who's from Netanyahu's party but has ambitions of his own. Is Gantz going to try to conduct a strident campaign against Netanyahu even while the war is going on? That would be difficult. That might cost him some of his support. I'd mention one other thing that I hear from every Israeli I talk to now, and that is, don't forget about Lebanon. The situation on our northern border is getting worse by the day. The number and intensity

of Hezbollah rocket fire on those northern towns is insupportable. Israelis say they have to get their families who fled the north after October 7 in fear of an attack back there by the start of school in September. I think if that doesn't happen, we could see major conflict in the north later during the summer. All right. Senior European Union party officials met yesterday to discuss what the next five years of parliament may look like, as far right parties appear to have made major gains in this election. So while the current center-right party is expected to hold on to a majority, the far-right gains mean it could now influence EU policies on immigration, climate change, security, and more. Party presidents are expected to hold their first formal talks today,

while European leaders will hold a summit next week. And Joe, important to point out that you've been making the point for years that if Europe continued practicing its pretty extreme approach toward open borders, there wouldn't be a place for the middle to go other than to the far right. So here's what you had to say the last time nationalists gained ground in Europe. And this is back in 2019. Take a listen. It echoes what I've been saying about European leaders for about five years, where they are so absolutist on open borders. They are so absolutist about letting a mass flow of immigrants into their country that if you don't do that, then you're a neo-Nazi. There's never been a middle ground in Europe over

the past five years, which has naturally led to the sort of right wing nationalist governments growing in Europe. And that certainly wasn't the first time. And it'd been about five years that we've we've heard that. And here we are. And it's exactly what happened. This was so foreseeable. It was so foreseeable because, you know, what happened was we had the Syrian Civil War and

then one of the greatest migration crises since World War Two and post-World War Two. And there was an absolutist view in the EU. And so you had countries like Sweden taking 40,000 Syrians overnight. Germany, you could go through the list and anybody, anybody that suggested that having an absolutist view in the EU, where somebody could come in one country and go across the entire continent of Europe, anybody that suggested that that might not be wise was branded a right wing extremist, was branded a neo-Nazi. And my warning starting in, I believe, about 2014 was if you don't make space in the middle for a reasonable compromise on immigration in Europe with. And I said, because Europe is not America. France is not America. Germany is not America. Sweden's not America.

We are built, as Ronald Reagan said, on immigrants. We have been called the melting pot of the world for a reason. Nobody's ever said that of France. Nobody's ever said that of Germany. Nobody's ever said that of Sweden. They were not built on immigration like the United States. And this absolutist view, I warned for a decade, would lead to far-right parties becoming more powerful in Europe because nobody in politics was allowed to go to the middle ground without being called a neo-Nazi.

David Ignatius, the outcome of that is that we now have far right extreme parties because mainstream parties have not practiced reasonable immigration control. And the question is, have they learned? Will they will they learn or will we continue seeing the rise of right wing parties in Germany and France especially? So, Joe, my guess would be that you'll see a process in Europe similar to what you're seeing in the United States. One of the things that I think really is significant in this election season that's gotten relatively little notice is that Joe Biden basically endorsed the idea that it's OK to have a border. It's OK to enforce your border, that citizens who want border enforcement aren't wrong, that you can't just have undocumented people streaming across without adequate controls. And so he is, because he

couldn't pass legislation, because the Republicans refused, he's had to impose it by executive order. I think something like that is going to happen in Europe as well, where people will say, it's okay to have a border. You just have to have justice. You have to have adequate rules to accept people who really need asylum and make sure those are as fair and well adjudicated as possible. But I think your basic point that people lost sight of something that's fundamental to your sense of a country has definition. It has borders. People who believe that were made to feel that they were wrong.

And that had some backlash. And Willie, not just wrong extremists, neo-Nazis. We heard it all the time. If you were against 40,000 Syrians overnight going into Sweden, you were a neo-Nazi. You were a fascist. You belonged like in Hitler's party. And this serves as a warning. It serves as a warning to Democrats in the United States. And David's exactly right. Joe Biden is taking a tougher stance on the border. But it also you can go

back to Brexit. Why did Brexit happen? It wasn't about complex economic issues. I talked to one friend in Britain after another and a lot who had voted Labour their entire life. And we we spent the last decade debating Margaret Thatcher. Me, of course, on the pro Thatcher side and the other side. She was the worst prime minister in history. And so when I called and asked, hey, are you voting in Brexit? And they were going, oh, we're for Brexit. They always talk about immigration. And that's why we got Brexit. That's why we have extremists now winning in EU elections in Europe. And that's why right now immigration is a top issue in America. Yeah, it could be decisive in our own presidential election here at home. And also, we talk about the G7 coming up just a couple of days from now in Italy, the prime minister there, Maloney, she came in on that issue as well, on immigration. And her party, you know, back two, three, four years ago was getting single

digits. And now in these EU elections, many more. She is in now a position of leadership hosting the G7 this week in Italy. And, you know, aside, making very clear that I agree with what you're saying, I still think it's incredible what Poland did at the start of the Ukrainian War. Four million Ukrainians. Incredible. Crossing the border in three months.

Still incredible what the Poles are doing. Yeah, that will go down in history as a major moment. The Washington Post's David Ignatius, thank you very much. And still ahead on Morning Joe, what we're learning about Donald Trump's probation interview yesterday ahead of his hush money sentencing and his criminal trial next month. Plus, Joyce Vance joins us with some of the lessons special counsel Jack Smith could take away from Trump's Manhattan conviction. You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. Today, a New York City probation officer

asked Trump a series of questions ahead of his sentencing, and Trump actually agreed to join us right now to answer some of those same questions on the record. Let's speak to him right now. Mr. Trump, thank you for talking to us. You've been criminally convicted. Where do experts think that you should serve your sentence?

Prisons and sane asylums and mental institutions. Okay, all right, okay. Now, you own several homes. If you get house arrest, which house would you like to stay in? Waffle House. Got it. You're also facing a prison sentence. Do you know anyone that has gone to prison?

All my friends. Okay. All of them. Okay. In prison, you might sleep in a bunk bed. What would the climb up to the top bunk be like for you? Mount Everest. Oh, that's interesting.

Of course, some inmates get things by trading cigarettes, candy, or cash. What would you trade in prison? Don Jr. Okay. All right. All right, yeah. And Eric. All right, boy, you're gonna throw in Eric, too. Okay, I understand. Look, a lot of inmates also spend time exercising. What would it be like for you to do some weightlifting

in the yard? Ah! Ah! Ah! Okay, all right, all right. Take it easy. take it easy. Just so we have it, what size handcuffs do you wear? Tiny little, tiny little. Last question, what do you think you'll be doing after one night behind bars?

Thumb in mouth saying, Mommy, take me home, Mommy. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Wow, that was some interview. Jimmy Fallon upstairs last night on The Tonight Show. Yes, former President Trump did complete his interview with a New York City probation officer yesterday. A source familiar with the matter says the interview was short, lasting less than 30 minutes, described as, quote, uneventful.

It was conducted by private video conference with Trump's lead attorney, Todd Blanch, by his side. The interview, part of a mandatory process ahead of the July 11 sentencing following Trump's conviction last month on 34 felony counts in his hush money trial. The probation officer who conducted the interview will deliver a report to Judge Mershon, who will use it when determining Trump's sentence next month. Joining us now, two members of the Sisters in Law podcast, former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance and Barbara McQuaid. Barb is author of the book Attack from Within How Disinformation is Sabotaging America. More on that in just a moment. Ladies, good morning. It's great to have you both with us. So, Joyce, take us inside one of those hearings, the less than 30 minutes yesterday that we're hearing about that interview, I should say, with the probation officer.

What kind of questions would the officer be asking former President Trump? Right. So the goal here is for the probation officer to conduct a pre-sentence investigation that lets them write a report that the judge can use to arrive at the appropriate sentence. So I think we can all readily understand the kind of questions that are relevant. Background, social background, financial background, mental health, physical health, all of the sorts of information lines that the judge needs to decide what's the most appropriate sentence

under the law for this defendant. You know, what's so unusual here is that Donald Trump had his lawyer sitting next to him. I know, what's so unusual here is that Donald Trump had his lawyer sitting next to him. I know we've focused heavily on the fact that it wasn't in person, but New York does provide for that with someone who's out of state or whether there might be exigent circumstances. Here, I think they avoided focusing unfairly on other defendants who were in the probation office that day by doing this remotely. But this notion that Donald Trump gets to have a lawyer sitting next to him,

making sure that his answers don't subject him to any sort of inappropriate write up in the report is a little bit startling, Willie, because this is supposed to be a candid conversation between a convicted defendant and a probation officer. And just quickly following up, Joyce, and then when I get to your piece, but how do they how does the judge use these answers in terms of deciding what the sentence is. So when judges sentence, they use something called the principle of parsimony, which says that you shouldn't impose a sentence that's any longer than what's necessary to achieve the principles of the criminal justice system. You want to think about rehabilitation. You want to think about deterrence. You want to think about appropriate punishment. And so the judge will use all of this to arrive at his discretion at a sentence that's within the bounds dictated by law. It's really much more art than it is science, Mika. All right. And you've got a new

piece in the Brennan Center for Justice entitled Lessons from Trump's Manhattan Conviction for Special Counsel Jack Smith. And you write in part, quote, one of the most dangerous tactics Trump has used to convince the public that our norms and expectations about democratic processes like the criminal justice system no longer apply. We spend more time contemplating how Trump might derail the system than we do assessing how it should work and what we are entitled to expect from it. That's perhaps the most important lesson Jack Smith can learn from the Manhattan district attorney's successful prosecution. Bragg treated his case like any other in that sense, ushering it from indictment through pretrial motions and onto a trial where it would be up to a jury to decide on the defendant's guilt. Justice doesn't require a guilty verdict, but it does require a fair process that allows the prosecution to proceed against defendant Trump,

just like it would against any other defendant. And Joyce, where has has Jack Smith gone in a foul in this or what is it that he can glean moving forward? Right. So in this piece, I try to emphasize that Jack Smith, who has been dealt in some ways a bad hand with some of the decisions that we've seen Judge Cannon make, the delay in the Supreme Court, I think has performed really admirably. And the problem that we face as a society is that there's this real malaise, this sense that Donald Trump and Donald Trump alone isn't subject to the dictates of the criminal justice system. So this is an institutionalist point. I know it's become a little bit of a dirty word, institutionalist, but I believe we need strong courts and that it goes without saying that no defendant is above the law. But somehow Donald Trump has perpetuated this myth that he alone is above the law.

And that's an important point for Jack Smith to take on, not in public, not in press conferences, but in the way he and his team conduct themselves in court and in their pleadings. So, Barbara, one of the tactics here, as just outlined, is disinformation and misinformation, a topic of your recent book. Talk to us about just how pernicious and worrisome it is when it comes to these legal cases, particularly those against former President Trump. Yeah, I think one of the things, as Joyce just said, is this effort to undermine respect for the rule of law, people choosing their political tribe over the truth or over the law. And what

that has a tendency to do is to cause a loss of respect for the rule of law. If people believe that the law is simply one more partisan political tool, it loses all of its value. Some of the calls we've seen recently to go after Donald Trump's rivals, to go after Democrats, suggest that this is just a political tool. It is not about fairness and accountability.

And ultimately, that leads ordinary people to feel that they don't need to obey the law or even vigilante violence to achieve the result they can't get through the political process. Barbara, just to follow up on that, I mean, we're already seeing House Republicans say they want to bring Alvin Bragg in to testify about his trial of Trump. We've seen efforts underway to try to defund potentially what Jack Smith is doing. And then, of course, there's been nonstop talk from Trump people about retribution. And by that, they mean turning what they call lawfare against Democrats and going after them for what they perceive to be their targeting of Trump and his allies in this time period. Can you just talk about the long-term? I mean, we're speaking about it there, but among those, what is the one that seems most pernicious,

most problematic to the system of justice? And do you see this getting worse? And if so, how does one make it better? I mean, what is the remedy here? Yeah, this idea of that law enforcement has been weaponized simply to go after Donald Trump, I think is incredibly dangerous. Investigating the investigators. And I worry that it has a chilling effect on law enforcement officials who are not going to want to touch Donald Trump. I think we've already seen it when we've heard the reports that the FBI was very reluctant to go in and search at Mar-a-Lago. And I suppose that response is understandable in light of what happened to them after they investigated Donald Trump in 2016 for connections with Russia in relation to the election. And so not only might we see law

enforcement sort of short-arming their investigations. But I worry about what it says about the public. We've also seen Donald Trump try to normalize corruption with pardons for people who have engaged in public corruption crimes, giving pardons to his own cronies and to people like Rod Blagojevich and members of Congress and former mayors who were convicted of crimes for extortion and bribery and fraud. All of that normalizes corruption in politics and make people become very cynical that this is just how the game is played, that truth and integrity is for suckers. And what matters more is just getting what you can when you can. And that really, I think, makes the entire system fall apart.

Well, my gosh, that's what makes the attack from within your book so, so important for people to read and understand. And, Mika, you know, at the end of last hour, John Lemire was talking to David Weigel, who talked about how you looked at polls before the prosecution, before before Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts. And the polls said it would have an impact on the election. And then, as Dave Weigel said, the entire Republican Party now has been weaponized to attack the rule of law, to attack the judicial system, to attack jury members. Marco Rubio attacked the juries to say that our law, the rule of law in America, is no better than Castro's Cuba. That's what they're doing and going to continue to do. They want to tear down confidence in America's judicial system,

just like they wanted to tear down America's confidence in our electoral system because Donald Trump lost. They're willing to sacrifice America and the institutions that separate us from the rest of the world, all because Donald Trump has run afoul of them. Except when it comes to Hunter. Except when it comes to Hunter Biden's trial, all of a sudden Hunter deserves this and that, and let's watch this and that, and let's talk about Hunter, Hunter, Hunter. Not mentioning that our current president of the United States

has so much respect for the law that he has said he would not pardon his son. I mean, what? You know, again, it's all about the contrast. But some Republicans, all Republicans, I haven't I haven't seen Republicans are complicit. So Republicans and also networks that amplify this and don't cover it fairly. Again, it's just like the way we started this show. Trump is literally crazy on stage. And I say it not in a good way, not well, not fit, not mentally capable of holding together a sentence when his prompter goes down. And yet Biden is constantly covered for being old,

but yet travels onto the world stage doing speeches, dinners, important ceremonies, recognizing people who suffered and survived D-Day, spending time with them, connecting with them. You see it all on video, except if you go to these places or you talk to those Republicans, you see the one time where he couldn't find his chair. But even that was a lie. It's disinformation. It's doctor. This is where we are right now. It's lies versus the truth. It really is. And and let Republicans keep lying about Joe Biden. It's only going to help him in the end. It's only going to lower expectations so much that he's going to come out and do what he does at every State of the Union address. He's going to outperform because of all the lies that are told about him. Former U.S. attorneys Barbara

McQuaid and Joyce Vance, thanks so much. Sisters in Law podcast. Sisters in Law podcast. It's so good. And Barbara is so excited. Again, your book is more relevant today than ever. Perfect. Coming up, the Biden campaign is trying to take advantage of a new swing among the nation's oldest voters in favor of the nation's oldest president. NBC's Mike Memoli will join us with his exclusive reporting. Plus, the popularity of streaming services might soon make the summer movie blockbuster a thing of the past. Steve Ratner will join us with charts on the changing media landscape. We love the charts. Well, I'm telling you.

The kids are so excited. Well, across America, moms and dads are going and they're nudging their kids. It's like Christmas morning. Wake up. Ratner's charts. Ratner's charts. They're on downstairs. That's next on morning chat. Beautiful shot of Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. at 53 past the hour. Apple is making its A.I. debut with the launch of Apple Intelligence. The tech giant announced several new AI features for iPhones and a partnership with OpenAI

at its Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday afternoon. The company says Apple Intelligence will prioritize messaging and notifications, along with major upgrades to Apple's virtual assistant, Siri. Oh, Siri needs some serious upgrades. FYI. Anyhow, the main shipping channel to the port of Baltimore has reopened after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse that killed six workers there. A months long cleanup effort concluded yesterday after federal and state authorities restored the channel to its original 700 foot width and 50 foot depth. Although temporary shipping channels

were opened while crews worked on removing bridge debris, disruptions from the March 26th collapse have cost the Baltimore economy an estimated $1.2 billion. And Reverend James Lawson, the principal architect behind the iconic nonviolent protests of the civil rights movement, has died. As a young missionary, Lawson traveled to India and studied the principles of the civil disobedience used by Gandhi against British rule. After returning to the U.S., Lawson met the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957 and led protests at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The school eventually expelled him after his sit-ins gained national attention. Lawson was one of the first Freedom Riders arrested in Jackson, Mississippi. He was also among the protesters beaten on Bloody Sunday on the Edmund

Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Lawson died of cardiac arrest on the way to a Los Angeles hospital on Sunday. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy Wood, and two sons. He was 95 years old.