Morning Joe - Morning Joe 6/16/25

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Suspect who terrorized Minnesota's political leaders after deadly shooting found crawling in rural field

Can you give us a sense of what you're doing to fight the escalating situation between Iran and Israel? Well, I hope there's going to be a deal. I think it's time for a deal and we'll see what happens. But sometimes they have to fight it out, but we're going to see what happens. I think there's a good chance there'll be a deal. That's President Trump at the White House yesterday responding to questions about the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran in an extraordinarily dangerous situation right now. We're going to have a live report from Tel Aviv in just a minute

also, Ed. We're going to recap this weekend's protests across the country in response to President Trump's administration policies. And it comes as the president is reportedly ordering ICE to stand down on raids that target certain industries. We're going to go through the clashing directives coming from the White House. Plus, the suspect in a pair of targeted shootings in Minnesota, of Minnesota lawmakers, is in custody this morning. He was caught last night and he's been charged with two counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder after a multi-day manhunt. For details on that overnight development, let's bring in NBC senior national correspondent Jay Grave. He's live from St. Paul this morning. Jay, what's the very latest?

Yeah Joe, we're at the Capitol where there is a growing memorial. I want you to take a look behind me for the victims here. We've already seen people early in the morning here coming by to pay their respects. This all began to unfold yesterday in the afternoon. A massive team of officers and agents stalking the suspect in this case, Vance Belter, through the woods about 50 miles or so from Minneapolis and just miles from his home.

They continued to pace and follow him, encircling him using drones as well as a chopper overhead to pinpoint where he was and then made their move just after nightfall there arresting him. What we're told is that they circled him, closed that net and then gave him commands and he accepted those commands, crawled to officers, the FBI, the first to grab him, state police, the ones who put the cuffs on him, according to Governor Tim Walz. And he was arrested without any type of confrontation, though he was armed at the time of his arrest. Now, on the legal side of all this, Joe, we expect to see him in court this afternoon.

He right now faces a multitude of charges, including two charges of second-degree murder and second-degree attempted murder. We expect to see those go to first degree as well. And there are discussions already underway that he could face federal charges in this case as well, including a charge of terrorism. So a lot to work through on the legal side. And investigators are telling us this is really just the beginning of their investigation, that they still have a lot of work to do trying to understand the motive in this, though they do believe it was politically driven. They do call this a political assassination, and they are going to work to gather more evidence.

They pulled evidence from his car. They pulled evidence from his home as well. We know he had that kill list and he had multiple weapons to carry it out, Joe, a frightening situation. All right, NBC's Jay Gray. Thank you so much. We greatly appreciate it. And we're going to continue the conversation about these horrific attacks in a minute. We're going to be speaking live with Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

Let's turn now to the conflict that's of course escalating in the Middle East between Israel and Iran as both countries keep trading direct strikes with each other. Earlier today, the Israeli military said it struck the command center of Iran's Quds force, as well as missile sites in the central part of the country, citing Iranian state media. And BC News is reporting that Israeli strikes in Iran have killed over 220 people since Friday with over 90% of the fatalities reported to be civilians. The initial Israeli strikes took out multiple Iranian military leaders and top nuclear scientists.

On Friday, Iran launched ballistic missiles into Tel Aviv and has continued its attacks in the days since. Overnight, missiles hit the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office released a statement this morning saying 24 Israeli civilians have been killed in that retaliatory attack. With us now live from Tel Aviv is NBC News International correspondent Matt Bradley. Matt, what can you tell us about the situation as it stands right now? Well, I can tell you, Joe, what I saw, what I heard late last night here in the southern part of Tel Aviv.

I was woken up in the middle of the night, as I have been for the past couple of days and nights, including during the day. We saw a brazen daytime attack by the Iranians just yesterday. We get up, we hear this siren, you hear these alerts on your phone. Everybody rushes into these safe rooms or sort of bunkers inside these buildings. And I got to tell you, Joe, this is what is the cause of these low fatalities amongst Israelis. You saw in the numbers you just gave, the numbers of Iranian civilians who have been

killed in Israeli attacks are about 10 times the number that we're seeing killed here in Israel. And we went yesterday to Bat Yam, which was one of the areas also here in southern Tel Aviv, where there was an entire 10-story building, but the front of it just sheared right off. Six people were killed, a very high number of civilians killed in one attack by Israeli standards. But according to the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces,

everybody who was killed had not managed to make it to the safe rooms, to these bunkers. So really, the reason why we're seeing such a low fatality is because of the early warning systems, because of the Iron Dome, the Aero systems, the other air defense systems like David Sling that have been swatting a lot of these Iranian projectiles out of the sky, and because almost every building in this country has one of these bunkers, has one

of these safe rooms that allows people to get to cover and that essentially means you're going to survive in almost every case if you make it to one of these rooms. So that's why we're seeing such a low level of casualties here in Israel. In Iran, we're also seeing a move to targeting economic targets. Oil facilities and gas fields, that's a big escalation by the Israelis. All right, NBC's Matt Bradley, live from Tel Aviv. We greatly appreciate it. Please stay safe.

And with us, we have now the co-hosts of our fourth hour contributing writer at The Atlantic, Jonathan LaMere, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, and co-founder and CEO of Axios, Jim Van De Hei. So Richard Haas, let's begin with you. The situation continues to escalate with Israel and Iran trading attacks against each other. I guess the question that's being asked right now by a lot of observers is how much longer

can Iran continue this? It seems in just about every category Israel has the upper hand. What are you hearing well for joe for ron they've got to decide uh... just that and in particular let me give you one analogy when they were fighting the iran-arab war the decade long struggle in the eighties the ayatollah khomeini at one point said you'd never accept to ceasefire and then he did and he said this is like

drinking poison to me. But he decided to drink poison in order to preserve the Iranian revolution. So the question is whether the authorities in Iran essentially find this an analogous situation and they would accept some type of a peace deal. We can talk about that, what the details would be, or whether they basically say they worry they can't survive after this defeat militarily, and they go the opposite direction, which would be war widening, to essentially try to bring the Arabs into the war, to attack oil refineries and installations, attack shipping. And the theory behind that would be they could then make the war so expensive for the United States in Europe that they would hope that the

US would put diplomatic pressure on Israel to end the war. So I think the Iranian authorities are very much coming to that fork in the road where they've got to decide whether to widen and escalate on one hand or whether the whether to begin to get diplomacy and gear and to bring this to an end and then they would have to decide sorry sorry, go out so long, how much they would give up on the nuclear side. So Richard, let me ask you, for those of us who have seen since 1979,

Iran being the epicenter of global terrorism, of being the most feared power in the Middle East outside of Israel. The question is, how did their defenses become so stripped down? How did they become so weak? How have their air defenses been crushed to a point now where they really are at the mercy of Israel? Israel can do just about anything that it wants to do with Iran.

What happened? When did it happen? Why are they so ill prepared? The New York Times reporting that they're not even communicating with their people. They don't have the bomb shelters that Israel has. People are standing on top of the roofs because they don't have bomb shelters to go to. What's happened? Why was this supposedly fearsome Islamic, Islamist republic, why are they now seemingly helpless?

I have two thoughts about that, Joe. It's a really interesting question. One is they had a layered defense. Think about it. You had Hezbollah, you had Hamas, you had the friendship with the Syrian government. So they had all these proxies and partners getting help from Russia, from China, and their strategic position just deteriorated dramatically over the last year. And then secondly, Israel took it to them in ways that my guess is they didn't imagine,

that the Israelis, almost like the Ukrainians and the Russians, had upped their game and introduced a new level of warfare. And the Iranians, I think, were, I guess the word I would use is complacent. They thought they could hide behind their proxies above all Hezbollah, which they thought was keeping Israel in check. And they just didn't imagine the degree of innovation that Israel could bring to the war. And they were essentially a generation or two behind.

Now, let's bring in our columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius, to get more insights on this. I guess, David, the question right now is, as escalation continues, and again, as Iran seems at least, based on the reports we've heard, to be basically helpless from stopping these Israeli attacks, even they're saying as much. Question is, why would Israel stop against an implacable foe who since their creation in 1979 has made their existence about the destruction of Israel and the destruction of America about as much as anything else? It's hard to see a Netanyahu who the world couldn't bring to the peace table for Hamas or Hezbollah.

Hard to imagine Netanyahu basically stopping the attacks now that Iran seems so helpless. What are you hearing? So, Joe, first, I think your description is entirely accurate. Israel now has operational control of the skies, certainly over Tehran and it appears over much of Iran in a way that it can just choose targets now it decides this is going to take out the Quds Force leadership and it appears in an operation overnight that they did just that. It's said that they could have targeted the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei but decided against it. So they get to choose targets now, but there isn't really a target that says here's how to end the war. I think Israel

faces a problem a bit like what it faces in Gaza. You can have total dominance. I mean, you know, Gaza is just almost undefended and yet Israel's had trouble ending the war, getting somebody with whom it can make a deal that finally brings the conflict to an end, and who is prepared to surrender to Israeli power. You're not going to find an Iranian surrender mandate until you have regime change there. So I think inevitably Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel has talked more and more over the last several days about a regime change option. Talking yesterday to Iranians who monitor the situation back home very closely, their view is that the

Israelis are not really much closer to having a regime change plan than they are to having a strategy for a new Gaza. They're not good at that strategic thinking. So I think that's really the bottom line for me today, Joe, is how do the Israelis imagine bringing this to an end? They're going to have increasing pressure from, I think, from President Trump, who would like to be the peacemaker, who's talking with Russian President Putin about what appears to be a joint effort for peace.

The Israelis are going to have to have a very clear, well-enunciated plan for where they go next to resist the pressure that they'll make down the war. Jonathan O'Meara has a question for you, David Ignatius, but just Jonathan, a quick aside here, one thing for people that are watching this wondering where the Arab nations are, Arab states aren't protesting, actively protesting what Israel is doing with Iran, it bears noting that over the past decade or so they've sided more with Israel and seen Iran, if you talk about the Gulf states especially, as the greatest danger. That's why you've seen Jordanians and also the Saudis and this exchange between Israel

and Iran, intercepting Iranian missiles headed toward Israel just like they did, I think, about six months ago. So when we're talking about a peace deal to end this war, Americans may hear and others may hear Gulf states, Arab states protesting Israel's attacks against Iran, but they want regime change as much or even possibly more than the Israelis do, don't they? Yeah, that's precisely right. The alliances there have shifted somewhat. And we hear much more from the Arab world, the Gulf states being far unhappy with Israel's

treatment in Gaza than we would here with Iran. Those are two very different matters. A lot of anger about how Israel's handling Gaza. It's much more muted about the situation in Tehran. So David, let's talk about, you him briefly, President Trump's role in this. He made it clear he didn't want this to happen. It was a week ago, he spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu. He made another effort to say, look, I believe this can be done diplomatically.

Let's go back to the negotiating table. Netanyahu deferred, said, nope. I think this, he gave him a heads up that a strike was likely coming in a few days, and then it did. Now, the president didn't flat out say to him, don't do it, but he certainly wasn't happy about it. And we've heard from President Trump in several days since saying, look, it's time for peace, it's time for peace. We heard about the White House yesterday on his way to the G7. He's taken it to a social talk about it, as you mentioned, perhaps even involving Vladimir Putin. At the same time, the U.S. is helping Israel defend itself, its military assets helping

shoot down rockets and drones heading towards Israel. So where does Trump go next? Do you think he does let Netanyahu sort of have free reign here for at least a few days or week two, whatever it might be? Does he start really pushing the pressure to negotiate? If he does that, what would that look like? So Jonathan, the best model that we have is the Gaza war. And in the Gaza war, the president wanted that war ended as soon as he took office.

He made that clear. There was a ceasefire, but Israel decided to go back to war. And although Trump was obviously unhappy He didn't do much couldn't do much to stop Israel, and I think this is going to be a similar situation Israel having gone this far has an enormous incentive not to stop until it truly has Essentially demolished Iran's ability to enrich uranium and continue on the path toward a bomb. They stop now, they leave an angry country that reconstituted elements of its program.

If diplomacy is going to resume, if Trump is going to have his Nobel Prize moment, to put it in the vernacular, he's going to have to come up with a plan that actually convinces Israel that it's going to be secure, that the Iranian nuclear threat that's been building now for several decades is over, that there's real monitoring of it, and that Iran has turned a corner. One way that this ends, obviously, is completely new leadership in Iran, and that means the death one way or another through Israeli attacks or something else of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. That's the fundamental way this changes.

I think otherwise it will be hard for President Trump to force change. It really is hard to imagine. Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel backing off now that Iran is so vulnerable. And until they achieve in Iran the same thing they achieved in Iraq back in 1981, I believe it was 1981, when they destroyed Iraq's nuclear making capability. So we shall see. Jim Van De Heide, let's talk about the domestic politics of this. And it's not so much Republican against Democrat that's garnering the most attention,

but Republican against Republican, specifically MAGA against MAGA. You have Tucker Carlson and several others attacking Donald Trump, saying this is the ultimate betrayal, going against what he promised in the campaign on one side. Then you have on the other side, Mark Levin, other Fox News commentators, saying that those people are weak

and are basically betraying the Israelis. Take us down that rabbit hole and talk about the MAGA on MAGA infighting that's going on because of Israel and what it might mean to President Trump if he decides at some point to trim his cells. I mean, it's substantial and it's real. Like if you just watch any part of MAGA media right now, there's a massive divide. You've talked about it with Tucker Carlson.

I think it was Mar- Marjorie Taylor Greene, who put out a statement overnight, basically saying this is the test. If you are for us getting engaged in Iran, you're not true MAGA. And you're hearing that from more and more people who kind of share that view. And I think it's one of the reasons that Trump has been a little bit all over the place on this. I don't think the attacks would have happened if he didn't want them to happen. So, obviously, I think he gave a tacit green light for Netanyahu to do this initially.

But he's been under a lot of pressure the last 48 hours from the Israeli government to get more involved, to use missiles that we have that the Israelis don't have to take out some of these nuclear facilities. The Israelis, at one point over the weekend thought that that might actually be happening, and it didn't. So I think you're going to continue to see that jam that Trump is in play itself out. And I don't think it's going to be.

I don't think you'll get a verdict on it anytime soon. Yeah, Jonathan Elmire, what can you tell us about the president's position, the White House's position over the weekend? He seemed at times to be playing both sides against each other. What's the latest reporting out of the White House? Yeah, I mean, Jim is right there. There's an uncertainty.

He's casting about for the right approach. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, he didn't want this to happen. But now that it has happened and Israel has been so successful... No, no, hold on. Let me stop you there. All right. Let me stop you there. Are you sure he didn't want this to happen? I'm just curious because I mean, I've read the same news reports.

He didn't want this to happen, but at the same time, then he'll go into an interview and brag about it happening, brag about knowing that it was going to happen, bragging, hey, yeah, of course we were there from the very beginning. And then threatened the Iranians saying they're using a lot of very powerful American weapons. I think it's a little more nuanced than that. I think he did not, he still wanted to give the talks a chance. There were some scheduled for this past weekend. But once, and he did not tell Netanyahu no, because if he had flat out said no, odds

are Israel wouldn't have. Remember, President Trump did tell him no back in April and Israel held off. But once it did happen, Trump was very quick to, and Trump saw how successful it was, there was a rush there to say, look, this is okay with us, this is gonna be all right. He then shifted to think, well, maybe because it has been successful, that might push Iran to capitulate,

to go back to the bargaining table. So he still wants there to be talks, but now he views the strikes as a means to get there. Now, others may disagree with whether that will happen or not. They think that Tehran needs to fight for a while just to stay face domestically, but that is what I am told the president now thinks, which is why he said yesterday. So the position is, Jonathan, if I understand it, the position is he would prefer peace talks that he managed and that he brought to a successful conclusion more than he would prefer regime change and all-out war.

So, is that what you're saying? That is correct. And there are some reports out yesterday, which Israel has disputed, that Trump had told Israel, do not assassinate the Supreme Leader, do not target the leader of Iran, like leave him off the list. Now there's been some, as you see here, there's a couple news reports cited that yesterday, Israel has denied that that occurred.

So we will see what happens in the days ahead. But your basic assessment is correct. He would still prefer there to be a negotiated end to this rather than the continued assault, but because the assault is going so well, Richard, he has sort of gotten on board a little bit. prefer there to be a negotiated end to this rather than the continued assault. But because the assault is going so well, Richard, he has sort of gotten on board a little bit. I mean, yes, there is a confusing time in the White House right now.

They're trying to adjust. What's your read of how Trump's handled this? What does he want? Well, he's straddling it, and he's going to have to decide at some point. Israel has launched this war of choice, Jonathan, without clear goals. One possible goal is regime change, but that's not something you can bring about militarily. The other is denuking Iran. They can't achieve that without U.S. help.

We have to provide essentially munitions and targeting information that we haven't yet done. So Donald Trump is going to have to decide whether he does that. Israel, if they can then carry out one of those goals, hopefully, from their point of view, if they can't. The other possibility is this goes on. We're all thinking about this having a neat end. Another possibility is you have a kind of on-again, off-again war situation between Israel and Iran. And I wouldn't rule that out as a possibility.

Rather than a neat end, this could just stay messy for a long time. So I'm curious, David Ignatius, before we got to break, I'm curious. Richard talked about the possibility of Israel moving forward with the denuking of Iran. Let's take this out of President Trump's hands. If Joe Biden had had the opportunity to tell Israel, press ahead and get rid of Iran's nukes. If Barack Obama, if George W. Bush, if any of these presidents in the 21st century had this opportunity, would they have told Israel to hold back or would they quietly have sat

back based on your best guess, your best judgment and let them go ahead, let the Israelis go ahead and rid the world of Iran's possibility, capability of creating nuclear weapon programs. Joe, in every instance I can think of, the United States has been a more active partner with Israel in its operations in the Middle East than in this case. From Secretary of State Marco Rubio's initial statement through Trump's conversations after talking to Vladimir Putin, his other posts yesterday, you just see the United States standing back more from Israeli actions than has been the case in the past. I think in part that reflects a

general American frustration not limited to Trump with Israel's inability to reach a stable settlement in Gaza even when it's achieved what its general says is an acceptable military solution even so the fighting goes on fewer and fewer Gazans are killed, but Netanyahu doesn't seem to know how to or want to end the war. I think that that's led to some frustration. On the fundamental question of whether this war leads to a different Iran than what we've seen, what we've been struggling to deal with since 1979, remember, I think the key question is whether Iranians can be convinced that the reason they're

so vulnerable today, there's cities across the country are under attack, is because the leadership has been spending all this time focusing on other proxies outside the country. They've been working with Hezbollah, they've been sending weapons and people to Syria and Yemen, helping Gaza, they've done everything but defend the homeland. That's the argument, I think, that a successful challenge to the Iranian regime would make. You closed all, fiddled around with all the windows, but you left the door wide open, and here they are.

And that might be, over time, it would take some weeks, a winning argument. Well, and it may be a winning argument, especially if you look back over the past decade, the last 15 years, and look at the unrest that's been going on internally inside of Iran, the Green Revolution, and other flare-ups that we've seen over the past 10, 15 years. A regime in Iran that was unpopular with a large segment of the population well before this war began. The Washington Post's David Ignatius, thank you so much. Always greatly appreciate you being here and hope you had a wonderful Father's Day. And still ahead on Morning Jail, we're going to turn back to this weekend's tragedy in Minnesota. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, who knew the state representative who was killed, will join us.

Also, President Trump looks to ramp up deportation efforts in Democratic-run cities, but at the same time, exempting certain businesses from ICE raids. We'll try to sort through all of that. And remember, the Morning Joe podcast is available each weekday featuring our full conversations and analysis. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. We're back in 90 seconds. Welcome back. We turn now again to the breaking news from overnight. The suspect in a pair of targeted shootings of Minnesota lawmakers is now in police custody this morning.

Vance Luther Bolter has been charged with two counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder after a multi-day manhunt. Joining us now, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Senator Klobuchar, thank you so much for joining us this morning. We should also offer condolences. This is obviously a very hard moment for the state, large, but especially for you. I know Melissa Hortman, one of the victims in this shooting, was someone you knew very well, you had seen recently. Tell us a little bit about her, please. Of course.

Just as we talk about political violence and people talk about statistics and motives, I hope one thing that comes out of this is people will understand what some fine public servants are about, and that is Melissa Hortman. This is a woman that went in—I got to know her. We were both moms with young kids running for office. She knew practically everyone in her district. She worked at her dad's used auto parts store. She juggled being a Girl Scout leader and a Sunday schoolteacher and trained dogs.

She loved dogs. And she and her husband raised two great kids. All that time, she moved up in the legislature and became what many are saying, including Republicans in our state, one of the most consequential speakers of the House in Minnesota history, ushering in major changes to law, like school lunch and paid family leave. And just this last year—and I think Joe would especially appreciate it. The legislature was tied. And she and Representative DeMuth, her Republican counterpart, through the year negotiated a budget and were able to negotiate a budget for the state with the governor's support. That is Melissa.

And I cannot tell you what a decent person she was. So, I do hope, as we call for bringing the temperature down and less horrific rhetoric and posts, that people remember her face and what she did, as well as my friend, Senator Hoffman, who is thankfully and somehow recovering with his wife, Yvette, despite multiple, multiple gunshots. Senator, you talked about bringing the temperature down. It feels like the temperature is only rising, right? The threats against lawmakers,

but at the federal state and local level. Can you talk a little bit about that, being a US Senator, how many, are you seeing a massive surge in threats? Are you taking precautions? Are you guys getting more security compared to say a couple years ago? getting more security compared to, say, a couple years ago? We have been.

And certainly in the last few days here in Minnesota, a number of elected leaders have received more security. And I thank Senator Thune and Senator Schumer for asking for that security on the Senate side. But when I was chair of the Rules Committee, I worked really hard to get more security for members' homes and offices. And that is because of the facts. 2016, there were about 1,700 threats against members of Congress.

Now, in the last year of 2024, there were over 9,000 threats. You're seeing the same in the judiciary, with judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents and governors. You're seeing the same thing with election judges. People are reading things online. This is just my view. This is a lot of it. Look at the unbalanced sick man who bludgeoned Speaker Pelosi's husband.

They read things online. They believe them. They start acting them out. they already are in balance themselves, and they actually go do what they're reading online. So, that has been a contributor, as well as, of course, a lot of hateful rhetoric, and there's a lot of politicians that should be looking in the mirror and bring their rhetoric down. Well, one politician, and I will say a man that I've known and in the past have had a

good relationship and seemed like a soft-spoken man, but somebody that posted this weekend, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, obviously facing strong criticism for a social media post about the Minnesota shooting suspect. Yesterday, Lee posted a picture of the suspect at the door of one of the lawmakers with the caption, this is what happens when Marxists don't get their way. It is a pinned tweet at the top of his page. 25 minutes later, the Senator posted another picture of the society shooter with the caption, Nightmare on Walt Street, mocking, of course, the situation with the name of the Minnesota governor.

But those posts came hours before Lee tweeted a Happy Father's Day message. A conservative journalist, Brad Palumbo, responded to one of the posts, writing, quote, What the hell is Mike Lee doing? Has he completely lost it? Meanwhile, contributing editor for The Atlantic, Norm Ornstein wrote, even for Mike Lee, this is beyond disgusting, disinformation beneath contempt. We're used to, Senator, we're used to wackos on the extremes on both sides, posting bizarre things on social media. What happens when it's mainstreamed by a senator?

Again, a guy that I've known and who used to try to be a thoughtful, conservative voice for small government conservatism when he starts posting things like this. And what's the United States Senate's answer to that? I only ask that because I can tell you, back in my days, I guess in the Stone Age it is now, I mean, a senator on either side

would have been roundly condemned by members of his or her own party if they had done this. I have condemned what Mike Lee did here at home, and I will speak to him about this when I return. And what I'm going to tell him is, you know, this isn't funny what happened here. This was an incredible woman, her husband, her two kids yesterday on Father's Day. There was no Father's Day for them.

They lost both their parents. I'll tell him about the law enforcement that did incredible work here. We had a 43-hour manhunt, the biggest manhunt in Minnesota's history, hundreds and hundreds of officers, 20 SWAT teams, going door to door to door, citizens on edge, hiding in their homes. And they finally were able to arrest this man, who was armed, but there was not a shooting, and bring him into custody and did their jobs. And by the way, if the police had not, on their own, decided to go over to Representative

Hortman's home without a call because of what they noticed, of course, had happened, the tragedy at Senator Hoffman's house, they thought, well, maybe we should check this out. Well, they weren't able to prevent the deaths. They were able to identify the suspect because he ran out and his car was left there. Otherwise, more people would have been killed. So that's what I'm going to tell Senator Lee when I get back to Washington today, because this is not a laughing matter.

And certainly what we're seeing in increasing violence and this evil man who did this, this is not a laughing matter. And certainly what we're seeing in increasing violence and this evil man who did this, this is not a joke. All right, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, thank you so much for being with us this morning. Thank you. And please send our thoughts and prayers and love to the families and the people of Minnesota. I will do that. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So Jim Van De Hei, we obviously over the past several years, we've had the bludgeoning of Paul Pelosi, two assassination attempts against Donald Trump, Josh Shapiro's Governor's Mansion, attempted arson

and parts of his home scorched. Then these assassinations in Minnesota. Is there any thought among leaders on Capitol Hill and also in the administration throughout the country on how to curb this political violence? I don't think there is, right? The fact that you... I think you nailed it, right? The fact that you have a sitting US senator tweeting out such jackassery.

People were killed. There was a manhunt ongoing. And a US senator thought that the best use of his time was to mock, was to accuse it of being part of an ideological plant. And the fact that that's normalized, that there wasn't more of a response Shows that there's just no real solution coming from lawmakers And by the way, it is hitting liberals and conservatives anybody who gets on social media

understands algorithms Understands how they're meant to get you all hopped up on topics. You're already hopped up about eventually you become disassociated I think I mean, How else can you explain senators taunting or tweeting things that we might have done when we were drinking when we were 18? You're a U.S. senator. Yeah. I mean, and Jim, you and I got to the Hill about the same time. You as a reporter, me as a member of Congress, can you just underline for everybody what I said

that let's say a Republican senator had done something like this after a tragedy, how you would have had then majority or minority leader, Trent Lott, call them to their office, tear them to shreds rhetorically, and then they would go you know, we yeah go to the floor and You know weep and apologize So they wouldn't be censured same thing with the Democrats if a Democrat had done this You would have seen the same thing happening. I mean And again with Mike Lee there's a guy again who for the most part was a soft-spoken guy Conservatives conservative small government conservative. I'm just I'm just curious there's a guy again who for the most part was a soft-spoken guy, conservatives,

conservatives, small government conservative. I'm just curious, I mean, how did we get here? And talk about how radically things have changed since you first got to Washington on this score. And we're asking this question because when this continues, the violence is sure to follow. The thing is norms slip slowly than suddenly, right? And I think the root cause here probably is social media as an outlet for any idea, any absurd thought that you have to be distributed at scale instantaneously. The fact that the more provocative it is, the more likely you're gonna get engagement creates kind of a mental, almost like a dopamine jolt

when you get people applauding things no matter how silly the things are that you're saying. And the only way you change that is what you're talking about, is you somehow have to get back to the fact that you live in the same country, you run in the same government, you can have ideological differences

and not taunt each other or accuse the other of the most awful atrocities. You can do it. It was done. When you were in Congress, like you said, people would have been censured. You literally would have been a vote on the House or Senate floor censuring you for your behavior.

And those votes almost never took place, because there were norms that people stuck to to and there's nothing soft about norms. There's nothing whiny about norms You can have political debate You can have differences without doing what Senator Lee did and Senator Lee is not alone We're picking on him today because he had the dumbest tweet of the day, but there's other lawmakers that do it all the time I even watched Democrats now responding to Republicans, and it's almost like they're picking up the Trump habits, the amount of profanity, the amount of taunting,

the amount of making fun of people. It feels good, but it doesn't really solve anything, right? And I think that's why the American people wake up every day and they're just exhausted. They're exhausted, they don't know what to believe. Think about this weekend. I feel so bad for people who don't have to marinate in this crap all day. How would you even know if the crowds were big this weekend or whether or not the shooter

was a liberal or a conservative? It depends what channel you went into. It depends what social media feed you were into. The amount of nonsense that was filtering out there. And that's why I think a lot of people just say to hell with it. I'm not going to pay attention to anything. I'm going to go have a life and I'll let politics be politics and maybe I won't go vote and I won't demand that you return to those norms.

Right. And you can say the same thing about what happened out in LA. If you're in one media ecosystem, then there were riots on every street corner in LA and burning cars, you know, millions of burning cars, just absolute chaos. If you're on the other side, it was like, you know, springtime and, you know, people handing daisies out to each other. There was no sort of in between there. Even Bill Maher said on Friday night just how frustrated he was that, you know, people

on the hard right were trying to suggest that there were riots on every street he said there just wasn't it's just again it's a skewed reality that that these people that that are locked into one political ecosystem are seeing it's it was far more balanced than that now Jim before you go we want to follow up on AI you had a great conversation with you on AI a few weeks ago, but you got a new Behind the Curtain speech for Axis this morning that you wrote with Mike Allen, and it's a continuation that you look at AI and you ask, what if they're right? And of course, the they are those people that are saying that human existence, let's just

stop and take a deep breath for a second. Human existence may be at risk as the power of AI rises, and you decided to dig deeper, talk to people who are actually responsible for creating these models, creating AI models. And you say for many of those, they believe there may be as much as like a 20% chance that humans may be at the end of the day wiped off the face of the earth because of AI. Explain.

Even hearing you frame this, like we sound nuts, right? It sounds like what? You're talking about a technology that could destroy humanity, and I think it's too much for people to get their heads around. But we've been trying to do with this column, and I think you've been trying to do with this show, is tell people this isn't make believe. This is what the people who are creating the technology, the people building the technology, the people quitting the companies after helping build the technology, because they actually believe there's not an insignificant chance that this technology could grow smarter than humans and literally wipe out our species, which seems to me like a pretty big deal.

And we talk in there like Elon Musk, who's building his own AI, there's this thing called P-Doom. It's the percentage chance that you think that AI could wipe out humanity. Musk's P-Doom is 10% to 20%. Dario Amadei, who's anthropic, who we interviewed, his is somewhere between 10% and 25%. Lex Friedman, the popular podcaster who had Sundar Prakash in the last week said his numbers had 10%. I'm like, that's a big deal.

Would you get on an airplane if you thought there's a 20% chance it's going down? Would you build an airplane if you thought there's a 20% chance that people on it could be killed in a plane crash? So, Jim, so explain this. So explain why they keep building it, because it's very interesting. As I've talked to AI leaders, people in the industry that are just at the forefront of the AI revolution, any time you start asking about safeguards, guardrails, to stop this technology that they don't even understand, and that's a great point that you brought out.

They feed these models all of this information. They don't even understand. That's a great point that you brought out. They feed these models all of this information. They don't even understand what's going on. That's so important. They don't understand how this is happening. It's not like Oppenheimer, who's explaining what happened with the atoms, came to... No, these people don't understand what's going on. And there have been several times you report that they've actually caught the AI models trying to deceive the humans who actually were feeding the information in there and

Every time you ask well, why can't we have safeguards like the US government had? after after Hiroshima, Nagasaki I hear it. I hear it time and, whether you're talking about AI curbs, whether you're talking about a kill switch, whether you're talking about breaking up some of these monopolies in Silicon Valley, the answer is always the same. Can't do it, China will beat us. Talk about how they're waving the China flag to basically say, yeah, might wipe out all of humanity, but my gosh, we can't let China get ahead of us, can we?

It's why people should pay attention to this. It's not an unrealistic argument that they're making because there is this battle to create kind of superhuman intelligence. And if China were to beat us to it, and right now, almost everyone believes we have probably a year plus head start on China. Well, that technology is what is going to basically power the future of war.

Drones, robots, satellites, space, the amount of money we're talking at play here, you're talking trillions and trillions of dollars. The largest companies in the world, US companies, your Alphabats, your Metas, your Opening Eyes, these companies in many cases are the size of big nations, and all of them are investing in the exact same technology. So those people that say, ah, it's all overhyped or I don't want to pay attention to it, then why are the biggest, most successful companies in the history of humanity investing more money than we've ever seen pushed in one direction ever? Because they think it's going to be as powerful as they say.

And if we beat China to it, it probably does give us a much better chance at setting the worldwide rules. So I don't think there'll be regulation. That's one of the reasons we've written a lot about this is that Congress and others should probably pay a little more attention. A lot more attention. Jim Van De Hei, thank you so much. Greatly appreciate it. Appreciate your reporting. And we're going to recap the military parade in Washington that happened on Saturday to honor the 250th anniversary of the Army, but also happened to fall on President Trump's birthday. That was going on as many Americans took to the streets and cities across America

to protest Donald Trump's policies. We'll try to sort through all of that with you straight ahead on Morning Joe. Welcome back. Look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. At least four people were killed by severe weather in West Virginia. Heavy rains caused flash flooding and destroyed homes, roads and bridges. A state of emergency was put in place yesterday and it's possible that the National Guard may be activated to deal with the fallout.

Elsewhere, two union leaders have quit their posts in the Democratic National Committee. They are Randy Weingarten from the Teachers Union and Lee Saunders, who represents public workers. According to the New York Times, their departures are seen as a major rebuke to the party's new chairman, Ken Martin. The newspaper reports that the two union chiefs suggested that under Mr. Martin's leadership, the DNC was failing to expand its coalition. And over the pond, former England soccer captain David Beckham received British

knighthood. It comes a quarter century after this announcer first floated the idea. Beckham could raise the roof here with a goal. I don't believe it. David Beckham scores the goal to take England all the way to the World Cup finals. Give that man an item. to the World Cup finals. Give that man an item. And they did. After that, one of the most famous goals the last couple of decades,

Beckham was honored with the title by King Charles III. Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman and The Who's Roger Daltrey were also knighted, among others. Singer Elaine Page and novelist Pat Barker were given daemons. The titles are meant to recognize outstanding achievements and contributions to British society. Coming up, Pablo Torre joins us to break down the big weekend in sports, including the blockbuster MLB trade that could shake up pennant races on both coasts, as well as the Red Sox sweeping the Yankees.

Morning Joe, we'll be right back. Cozy it up. Don't need to make it. Two putts. Oh my goodness what a way to win. JJ spawn weather tough conditions in a wet round at Oakmont yesterday doing a little Tom Watson there to capture his first major in a

memorable finish at the one hundred twenty fifth U.S. open after burning the previous hole to take a one shot lead spawn 125th US Open after birding the previous hole to take a one-shot lead. Spawn sank that 65-foot birdie putt on 18 to win the tournament by two strokes. He was the only golfer to finish under par at 1 under 279. Let's bring you right now the host of Pablo Torre finds out on Metal Art Media MSNBC contributor Pablo Torre. But first we must go to Morning Joe's senior golf analyst Richard Haas. Richard, what a putt, what a win.

Oakmont, one of the toughest courses in the country, made that much tougher, made unplayable really by that weather. It looked more like the open, the British open. Look, it was fantastic. Let's show it just a couple things. JJ Spahn, here's a guy he shot 40 on the front nine and then 32 on the back and when he talked about how he collected himself during the hour and a half rain delay, it was only a second tour win ever. He chose pretty pretty good day. But Joe, what was amazing, the real winner was the course. Oakmont,

unbelievably difficult and actually it was fun to watch because what the guys who hit the ball a mile and then have like a driver wedge on a par-5 they didn't do well the Rory McIlroy's and de Chambos this was a win for someone who hits his drives 260 yards and has a totally controlled game it was almost a throwback to the days of old so I was I thought it was as good as golf gets nowadays yeah extraordinary final putt obviously Pablo. But one take I read over the weekend was that it was going to be the first because the course was so hard and players were struggling so much

that it was going to be the first major ever without a winner. Oh, look, this was this whole day. I mean, there was like a Father's Day vibe to it for me personally, both because I am not good at golf but could enjoy people struggling who are good at golf. Also, JJ Spahn, if you don't know him understandable had never won a major before just like me a

Filipino descent just like me has a daughter named violent just like me who began his day yesterday going to CVS at 3 a.m. because said violent was puking. This is the man who just walked off at Oakmont it's an incredible. Dare I say inspirational story to you know the people who maybe aren't quite as as clutch in such service so in areas I would say so what is the CVS anecdote is really great we turned out of the Major League Baseball and another weekend of

the Yankees losing to the Red Sox. Shot in the 5th inning helping them lead the Red Sox to a 2 nothing win and a 3 game sweep of the Yankees that being the Bronx Bombers 5 out of 6 times in the last week or so. But New York will no longer have to worry about Devers in the boss lineup. He's owned the Yankees for years. But after the game, the Red Sox traded, a stunning trade, traded the 3-time All-Star to the San Francisco Giants in exchange for two pitchers, including lefty starter Kyle Harrison as well as a pair

of prospects. Joe the Giants also picking up all of Devers his contract and it's a big one. So this is a right pretty polarizing trade for Red Sox fans. I think you and I don't totally

see eye to eye on it. I think that like look Devers rightly came under real criticism this year. He they they brought in Bregman Devers was sulked about moving off third base when they then approached him including the

owner of the team approached him about playing the field again whether it's third base or first Devers said no he and core of the manager have really clashed those are real issues the contract also huge Devers the kind of player who may not

age well he is though still their best hitter they do this at a moment where they're playing really well. They do have a a moment where they're playing really well. They do have a lot of young players they need to fit in the lineup. But I think there are baseball reasons for this trade Joe, but I think that there are elements of the fan base who are upset this is another Red Sox star gone. Yeah.

Yeah, you know the thing is though this this to me at least and we do disagree on this. I think pretty strongly to me this isn't a Mookie Betts trade this is more of a no more trade you're getting no more as we got rid of no more in 2004 one of our best players and fan favorite out of the clubhouse you seen by many as being a disruptive force in the clubhouse not a not not not great with the team not great with the fans they got rid with of him and they won their first World Series since 2000 since 1918, but Pablo Obviously there are a lot of people in Red Sox nation going crazy online Yeah about this trade, but let me just ask you this question. I'm dead serious

If you got a guy who shows up Wildly overweight to spring training he tells the coach he's not going to play in spring training. He spins spring training, tossing the ball on the back lot with young kids. He then refuses to take grounders in spring training for third base and first base. Decora. He then has the owner after their first baseman goes down, fly out to Kansas City. John Henry flew out to Kansas City, had the first meeting with him, said, hey, we really

need you. You're the face of the franchise. We really need you to play first base. It opens up so many things and makes us such a better team. He says no. Sean Henry takes a second meeting later that day, comes back with a no. He tells his two front office people that are with him, you know what? We're gonna stay another night. I'm gonna sit, talk to him, again,

try to sort through what we did wrong here, and I'm gonna ask him man to man, can you please play first base? We're paying you a lot of money, we need you to play first base. And, Raffy Devers looks at John Henry the next morning and says, quote, according to my sources, very close to the conversation, quote,

I will never play first base for the Boston Red Sox. Fast forward a couple of weeks, maybe a month, and last week, he hits a ground ball in a competitive game that the Red Sox desperately need, and he dogs it running the first base. Refuses to run out a ground ball where he would have been safe. And he's laughing as he goes to the dugout. Alex Scorsco, what? And I know Core is thinking, wait a second, so let me get this straight.

You won't take grounders for third base or first base. You won't play first base and now you're not going to even run out ground balls that you can beat out in a competitive game. I'm sorry. But if you're in Red Sox nation and say you don't want to dump that $250 million and invested in somebody that wants to help the Red Sox get to the World Series. I'm sorry. We're from different universes because if he doesn't want to play in a way that's going

to help the Red Sox, why do we want him? How many points do I get for that? I was just checking to make sure there wasn't more. I love the genealogy, the biblical genealogy of the dissolution of a guy whose name, when I show up to this table, Joe, and I listen to you and John talk about the Red Sox, Devers is in the thousand point font in the word cloud. And it's for the reasons you mentioned, of course,

also for the reasons of me getting to laugh at you guys. I will not apologize for how deliciously unrelatable this story is to a Yankee fan. We made A-Rod play third. You know, we do this sort of thing. You don't want to play position, guess what? You're doing it. In this case though, what you're totally right about,

and by the way, there is some reporting in that. For those watching it, for those scoring at home, Joe Scarborough maybe just reported some stuff in that litany. This is clearly a story about labor and management. It's a story about your boss and an employee who just got a massive deal who doesn't want to do the things that contractually they have a disagreement about. And that's an age-old story. It's a funny story to me, but this is, you know,

who's in charge story. And the Red Sox said, actually it's us. Well, who wants to help the team win? It's that story too. Who wants to run out grounders? That's not a good look. And run it out to first base. It's not a good look for sure.

And who laps it off? It's not only, it's only not a good look. Like, you know, we're the little engine that could Pablo we're desperate to get above five hundred. We're just a bunch of kids that just scraped a team together and made Aaron Judge go one for 12

this weekend. We're just a team that sometimes our pitchers have trouble finding Fenway and yet we somehow managed to strike him out nine times this weekend. We're just a team that's got a kid from Texas that says if he's if he if if there's no other team in the universe but the Yankees, he refuses to play for

the Yankees. I would get the mute button around. Then points down two times. Hunter Dobbins for the Hall of Fame. This is a team that made the Yankees look like a triple A squad. Jonathan Lemire. So we need all the help we can get. Let's just forget about Devers for a second.

I personally think again, when you have Roman Anthony, when you have Marcelo Meyer, who by the way looks like Brooks Robinson. Come on this weekend. Unbelievable. With when you have the young players that we have. Jonathan is taste and I'm serious here. I'm serious here before we go to news and Alex is stroking out

right now. Alex knows how you listen to John Smalls. You listen to you listen to the guys on Fox. You listen the guys on ESPN over the past week. They all said the same thing. This team it doesn't make sense none of

the pieces seem to be fitting it's like everybody's just sort of they're jamming people in in different places they can't get into rhythm why can't they get into the rhythm because their best player their highest played paid player is saying I'm not going to do what my manager says what my general manager says what my owner says will make the Red Sox the best team in the East. So what do you do. Well you go out and you pummel

the New York Yankees and make them look like a guy. I wouldn't say a triple A team. I'd say a double A team. Jonathan it was a delicious weekend. Let's be sure I just really have an amen for Joe

Scarborough everything he just said right there. I think it first of all also Raffy Devers he's not going to play third base San Francisco either because they got Matt Chapman one of the best in the league.

I assume he'll have to D.H. out there. But you're right that there's roster construction issues with this team. This does free it up. They have some young players who are all very excited about.

There are reasons for this is not. Let's underline this. This was not the Mookie Betts trade. That was unforgivable. There are reasons for this one. Part two of this will be the money the Red Sox just saved. They now need to spend. They need to spend. Fans need to see that. Let's keep winning.

MSNBC contributor Pablo Troy, that is enough smugness out of you today about the Red Sox. I'm sorry. I can't hear you from, was it fourth place in the analyst? That's it. I can't really hear you down there. It's hard to just. Five out of six in the Red Sox. I'm sorry, I can't hear you from where's the fourth place in the analyst? That's it. I can't really hear you down there. It's hard to just. Five out of six in the last 10 days. I was trying to wish you a happy Father's Day to Joe and all that but not after.

Look at this. Here come the Sox. We are actually only a half game out of the wild card. Breathing down the Blue Jays guys. Congrats. Pablo, thank you, thank you, thank you. All right. Still.