Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/12/22

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Biden leads Trump in hypothetical 2024 rematch despite 33 percent job approval

A live look at Capitol Hill as the January 6th committee prepares to reconvene for its seventh hearing into the attack on the Capitol today, focusing on the extremist groups that led the attack, how the committee plans to tie the far right militias to the Trump White House. And, you know, Mika, this is as we look at the United States Capitol, which, of course, so beautiful, was besieged by terrorists on January the 6th. If you call people that actually try to take something over and brutalize cops and and and and try to destroy American democracy terrorists, it's I guess it's all a definitional thing. You're really starting to see the impact of these investigations, not just the January 6th investigation, but we're going to be talking this morning about what's going on in Georgia.

Lindsey Graham has tried to escape a subpoena because the secretary of state in Georgia said the Republican secretary of state said that his fellow Republican, Lindsey Graham, called and tried to get him to throw out legal ballots. Graham's trying to get out of that. jury about whether Donald Trump tried to steal the Georgia election. And of course, we know he did. We have the receipts. We have the recordings recorded again by Republicans who actually voted for Donald Trump. A lot of news to cover this morning. We're also following new reports that Iran is now supplying Russia with weapons to use against Ukraine. We'll have the latest on that, and we'll set the stage for President Biden's trip to the Middle East when we speak with the

National Security Council's John Kirby. And with inflation, gas prices and crime, the political environment seems to favor Republicans right now. So then why is the GOP concerned about the Senate? And why is Joe Biden, with his record low ratings, still beating Donald Trump in a hypothetical rematch? Such an interesting dynamic happening in the polls. Willie, Joe and me, we welcome you to Morning Joee good morning it's thursday july 12th and we have the former aide uh tuesday i apologize guys i don't know what day of the week it is but it's only tuesday it just feels like thursday willie getting it right willie oh my god they're all

the same it doesn't matter yeah one day i'll get it right. You guys are sweet. Former aide to the George W. Bush White House and State Department, Elise Jordan, joins us. Former chair of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, is here. And Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, joins us this morning. So willing to set this up on our our show yesterday, which of course was Wednesday, or perhaps it'll be next Friday. It's Tuesday today. We were talking about having a little fun with the Joe Biden poll, which shows Joe Biden's numbers just absolutely tanking. He's at 33 percent and, you know, 64 percent of Democrats don't want him to run again. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's beating Donald Trump to head 44 to 41 percent.

And, you know, we had a lot of fun a couple of weeks ago about the fact there has not been a positive profile written about Kamala Harris in at least two years. And this is not just, you know, the far right that constantly attacks her, thinking that white people in their mother's basement who are 44 years old with Cheetos smeared all over their face and their boxers are going to love those stories because it's going to make them feel superior as white men who are at such a good station in their life. But also we're hearing it from maims mainstream media uh one outlet after another one leak after another the kamala harris is the worst vice president ever the worst politician ever and yet you see these head-to-head match-ups with the great white hope ron desantis and she's always ahead of him so

i think what we're saying is actually starting to show itself in polls that as bad as the democrats have been the republicans are just crazy and voters like yeah listen i got my problems with the democrats but those people those insurrectionists and those weirdos and those freaks and those people that are saying 12-year-old girls who were raped by their uncles have to have a forced birth in our state. Yeah, I'm not for them. And I'm not for people that want wacko 18-year-old kids being able to buy AR-15s and shooting up schools. And then Republicans go, what? That's about freedom. That's freedom, man. No, these polls show they are rejecting these national Republican Trumpist candidates on a nationwide level from the body politic.

They don't want it. Yeah. And we're going to talk about these Senate and House races in a minute, too. But my goodness, when you look at a president who is at 33 percent, the wrong track number in this New York Times poll is 70 something percent. Only 13 percent of Americans think we're on the right track. And yet you have this batch of candidates, especially on the Senate side and some of the governor's races who are so bad that Republicans may not even take the Senate. They may. They have a lot of things working in their direction, but there are states where they should be running away with it and they're losing because of the candidate choice, to your point about the freaks and weirdos. And Mika, the numbers, there's no sugarcoating it. These numbers in the New York Times poll and consistently now in a series of polls, just

not good for President Biden. But as Joe said, there's a wide swath of the country who said, I don't want the guy who now clearly led an attempted coup on the country based on what we've seen in these hearings and we'll hear again later today. I don't want him back in the big chair. Yeah. So more now from that, the new polling from The New York Times and Siena College that, again, shows just one third of Americans approve of the job President Biden is doing.

And yet there's also terrible polling. The same survey shows he would once again defeat President Donald Trump. I'm sorry. Now, that's terrible. That's just that's unbelievable. And this is like this is like, Mika, This is like I know you always have sports analogies. This is like a college basketball team shooting 14 percent from the field and still being ahead at halftime, like 33 to 32. You're like, you know, the second half is going to go really bad for the other side. Yeah. Biden's support is underwater with virtually

every major group, with him faring the worst among 18 to 29 year olds and the best among black voters. But when paired against Trump, however, Biden enjoys double digit leads in many of those same categories. Trump does hold sizable advantages through the white voters with white voters and those between the ages of 45 and 64. It's interesting. Joe Biden would say that he decided to run for president when in Charlottesville, he watched all that go down at the beginning of Trump's presidency, didn't want to do it. And this is why he did it, to try and beat Trump and Trumpism. And it appears even when the country is struggling with a lot of different issues, which would absolutely impact polling and the way people

vote at the ballot box, he is still doing that. And that's quite a feat, given what we've been through. Yeah. You know, Michael, still, we've been talking for some time about parallels actually with France. Yeah. You know, as goes Fulton County, so goes France, as the old saying goes. And in France, you had an election where voters, they didn't like Macron. They thought he was too arrogant. They thought he was too elitist. They thought he was too detached. There were just a lot of things they didn't like about him. His approval ratings were low. They thought Le Pen understood how they lived better. She probably had policies they supported more. But they said, she's a freak. She's a weirdo. Like, we don't want that wackadoodle running our country. And what we have here, and you're starting to see it now in not only when you look at Ron DeSantis against Kamala Harris

and Kamala Harris beating Ron DeSantis, or when you see Donald Trump losing to Joe Biden, despite the fact that Biden has a 33 percent approval rating right now. Despite that fact, you you have Americans not only saying in these head to head matchups, but also saying in these Senate races in 22, whether you're looking at Ohio or looking at Pennsylvania and some of them in Georgia, they're like, we don't want the crackpot. Like we don't want the crackpot in our state. We may agree with them on policies. Maybe we think the Democrats are too progressive, but we just can't have a weirdo representing us in Washington, D.C. I think I don't know, maybe Republicans have finally pushed the envelope too much with some of these insurrectionists and freaks. So, yeah, I think Rick James did a song about some of those freaks. Just made me think of that when you said that about Le Pen.

But the reality of it is, Joe, for me, an interesting thing is beginning to happen, which I was curious about at the beginning of the summer, which now seems to bear out. And the difference, I think, is the January 6 hearings. I think a lot of folks were told beforehand, some by the media, that were wringing their hands about what this hearing would do and how it would play out and, oh, my God, oh, my God. do and how it would play out and oh my god oh my god uh and and the committee has put together a compelling narrative um a something that is believable for the american people it's not far-fetched how do we know that because they lived it they watched it unfold real time so now you have

the rest of the story coming in filling filling out that narrative. And I think people are sitting there going to your point. OK, we'll leave the freaks over there. We're not happy about the direction of the country, but at least we know we don't have this threat, this ongoing threat to our democracy in front of us. And I think that begins to matter a lot more to people as these hearings have done the thing that people were some worried about others curious about they would be able to do and that is to capture the american people in such a way that they would bifurcate they would separate their concerns about the economy and and gas prices and other things apart from what they saw happened on January 6th and give real meaning to that and the kind of men and women that are going

to be potentially leading us going into next year that boils down to the Lindsey Graham episode in Georgia why Lindsey Graham are you afraid to go testify about what you know unless what you know leads to some type of criminal concern for donald trump maybe even yourself and people are looking at that and they're seeing you know this gadfly of characters running around trying to avoid accountability when what the January 6th committee has done is created an environment, if you will, in which the voters want that accountability. And I think they've separated that from how they feel about the economy. And we're not talking in generalities anymore, Willie, when we're talking about these issues. Americans have been hit in the face hard day after day over the past

several months with horrible mass killings. And then having Republicans say, oh, 18, you know, we're against universal background checks when 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks. We're against teenage girls who are raped being able to decide what to do with their lives, with their own bodies. We support forced pregnancies that that's executed by the centralized state. And then they see these January 6th hearings. Trumpists can't say, oh, my God god look what these liberals are doing these stories liberals are telling when these are all loyal donald trump supporters people who stood by him during his lowest of lows in the white house people who defended him during his two impeachments they're

the ones now coming forward testifyingifying against them. So they're seeing insurrectionists. They're seeing what happened on January the 6th. They're seeing what happened with the overturning of Roe. They're seeing policies that 80 percent of Americans are opposed to as far as rape and incest. They're seeing these one killing after another killing with military weapons of war. And and and beyond that, Willie, they're they're hearing every day these Republicans like Ron DeSantis, who is playing to the lowest common denominator in his base, whether it's banning books, whether it's fighting Disney World, having a political war against the Magic Kingdom, Mickey Mouse. I mean, whether it's going against like the best baseball team in the state of Florida, like these are bizarre things that they're doing. To raise money from the most hardcore members of the base. And maybe they've got that 31% lockdown hard. But you look at these general election matchups

and they all get themselves in trouble. I mean, you look at the big states, you look at Pennsylvania, you look at Ohio, you look at Whitmer in Michigan. She was supposed to be in trouble six months ago. My God, she's rolling up huge numbers in most of the polls that we're seeing out of Michigan now. Yeah, there's some great polls. And one thing to point to in that New York Times poll, just to go back to it for one second,

there's a lot of attention paid yesterday to that 64 percent number. 64 percent of Democrats say they want someone different nominated in 2024, different than Joe Biden, which raises the question, who is that person exactly who you think potentially could beat Donald Trump? Joe Biden just beat him 18 months ago. But when said when asked, OK, let's say Biden does run again, would you vote for him against Donald Trump? Ninety two percent of Democrats say, well, of course I would. So when the question when there's a choice, when they're sitting side by side, they do come home. But let's get back to what you were just talking about. A couple of polls on the state level in Ohio, an online survey conducted by Center Street

PAC found Democratic Representative Tim Ryan with a wide lead over Republican candidate J.D. Vance, 49 to 40 percent. That's among likely voters in pennsylvania suffolk university poll from last month of likely midterm voters found democrat john fetterman with a lead over his republican opponent for u.s senate memed oz 46 37 there so again joe uh those are one poll uh in each state that we had the one out of georgia uh last week where it showed Raphael Warnock beating Herschel Walker by 10 points. And so you're seeing snapshots inside these states that some voters there now are starting to say this candidate, now that he's been nominated, is too extreme

compared to what I'm seeing on the Democratic side. Yeah, no doubt about it. And of course, The Washington Post has written about this, Mika, about Republicans having concerns about their chances of retaking the Senate amid what and this is what's important. And what I've got to say, Mika, is the most positive political climate for any party. Yeah. Republicans should be rolling up massive victories this fall perhaps they will i still think they're going to win in the house but they're making it so much harder in the senate and they're making it so much harder in these governors races that aren't gerrymandered because that's of course only in the house and you see it the the further you get away from the gerrymandered house races the harder it becomes for Democrats in these swing areas that where they should be rolling up huge numbers because Joe Biden's doing so poorly with voters and especially independents. rising crime and persistently high gas prices, Republicans are worried about some of their

candidates, with GOP operatives growing increasingly nervous behind the scenes. One strategist who spoke to the paper on the condition of anonymity likened the situation to 2010 and 2012, when the party fell short of winning the Senate majority because of undisciplined and polarizing candidates. One of those big concerns is over the Republican Senate nominee, Herschel Walker, in Georgia. Over the last several days, news reports have come out about three children he fathered, but had not acknowledged publicly. He also continues to face scrutiny over his business dealings, as well as

past domestic violence accusations that surfaced before the primary. Walker has denied any criminal wrongdoing. He's also making headlines this morning for comments he made during a recent campaign stop regarding air pollution. The Trump endorsed Republicans spoke to a group of supporters in Hall County, Georgia, over the weekend and presented a unique argument for not enacting clean air laws. Listen, since we don't control the air, our good air decided to flow over to China. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. And now we got to clean that back up. You know, I I've seen so many clips of Herschel Walker, Gene, and I just never know what he's saying. I always thought that Donald Trump was just it was was impossible to interpret when he ever got into policy.

But you actually wrote a piece for The Post. It's titled If Hershel Walker wins in Georgia, America will have lost its mind. And you write in part this. The flashing red lights and blaring sirens are not just about the former football star's myriad of lies and stunning hypocrisy. That kind of stuff doesn't necessarily trouble GOP voters in the least, given their continued devotion to Donald Trump, who counts Walker as a longtime friend. It's Walker's combination of utter ignorance and total confidence, which challenges even that of the president. Mind you, Walker does challenge even Trump's record of dubious achievement on the lies and hypocrisy score.

I'm old enough to remember when one secret love child was enough to win the political career of John Edwards, who twice was a credible candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Three secret offspring haven't slowed Walker down any anymore than would-be tacklers did when he was barreling down the field for touchdowns at the University of Georgia. To an alarming degree, even for his senator, Walker seems to believe he knows everything about everything. Well, his words suggest he knows nothing about anything at all.

It truly is stunning. And I've seen conservatives actually say that America is in a very, very dire state when especially the Republican Party, when the party can nominate somebody like this to represent them in the Senate. It's unbelievable, Joe. It's absolutely unbelievable. This is a major state. This is Georgia, in many ways, ground zero for American politics these days. Look, if Republicans nominate a normal, sensible Republican candidate for Senate, they have a really, really good chance of taking that seat away from Raphael Warnock. But with Herschel Walker, you know, I mean, I think they're going

to lose that seat. And the reason is that Herschel Walker, you know, scandal after nonsensical rambling about this or that, after questions about his business practices, questions about this, questions about that. And as you said, when he talks, you know, you have no idea what he's what he's talking about. It's worse than Trump. In many ways, he's Trumpier than Trump. And this is the problem for the Republican Party. They are nominating Senate candidates who potentially cannot win. Can Mehmet Oz beat John Fetterman in Pennsylvania? I don't think so.

Can J.D. Vance really beat Tim Ryan? J.D. Vance is a novice candidate. I don't think he's got the moves. We'll see. If it's a huge GOP wave in the fall, then that's one thing. But elections are choices, and voters are going to have to make these choices, and they're not going to choose wackos to represent them. Those independents in the middle, trying to take an honest look at the candidates, are going to say, we just can't elect this Republican because this is just not a senator. And that's certainly the case in Georgia.

And as far as where the Democrats stand right now, I think your analogy of the college basketball team that shoots 14% and is one point ahead at halftime is about right. I mean, the Democrats and President Biden have had crisis followed by catastrophe, followed by calamity all along to this point. And Biden still beats Trump in head to head matchups.

If you assume the next two years can't get any worse in terms of circumstances, you know, their Democrats are not looking that bad for 24 and they're not looking near as bad as many people thought they were for 22. So at least on the state of Georgia, Herschel Walker has frustrated, obviously, people like Mitch McConnell and others who believe it should be a layup or a short touchdown run to put in Herschel Walker terms to take the Senate back. But with candidates like some of the ones we're seeing, they know that that may not happen. There's a reason that the National Republican Party is rushing in advisors and aides and debate prep people to get around Herschel Walker, because when he's on a stage outside of a primary next to Senator Warnock, it may not be pretty for him. And it'll be a test, as you know, very welcoming from Mississippi of the power of football and of celebrity in politics. Is that enough to carry Herschel Walker, despite all of his problems,

into the United States Senate? You know, Willie, before we went and did our Morning Joe focus groups in Georgia, I watched pretty much all of Herschel Walker's ads. And watching those ads, you were, you know, you really feel, wow, you watching those ads you were you know you really feel wow you're brought back into you know his athletic legacy and for a second i was just like oh wow and then i remembered oh this is herschel walker who has no policy chops whatsoever and has you know questionable mental fitness and then that's what we actually heard from our Republican voters, that they were concerned about Herschel Walker's mental fitness. And they thought that there were a lot of things that were problematic in his background.

And this was before the primary. And that kind of doubt is really a blinking red siren. And it's one that certainly Mitch McConnell saw. And there was nothing he could really do about it because Herschel Walker was Donald Trump's candidate. So you're you're looking at a Georgia Senate seat that should have gone Republican that twice. It's probably not going to because of Donald Trump. Boy, it's really it's remarkable what Donald Trump's done to the state of Georgia. He, of course, lost it in 2020. He started a scandal down there now with his stupid

calls to the secretary of state. He got obliterated. His candidates got obliterated a couple of months ago. And of course, he turned the Senate over to Mitch to away from Mitch McConnell over to Chuck Schumer by going in and just destroying the Republicans chances in December of 2020 with those two special elections. And it continues now with Hershel Walker. But before we go to break on this, Michael Steele, it's very important. I want to underline this fact. Republicans had a choice in every one of these these states that we're talking about.

They had a choice to pick an arch conservative, to pick somebody who said they supported Donald Trump, to pick a pro-life candidate, to pick a pro Second Amendment rights candidate, to pick a pro free market candidate, to pick a capitalist. Yeah. And all of these places. And you had Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, but they picked a freak in Dr. Oz. You had Matt Dolan in Ohio. They picked this hypocrite, J.D. Vance, who's acting like a freak, talking about stolen elections in Ohio. So Republicans had up. This is not about us going, oh, they can never win because they're pro-life or pro-government. No, no. Those are the candidates that win in Georgia. Those are the candidates that win in North Carolina.

Those are the candidates that win in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin. But they didn't pick the rational, reasonable candidates. They picked insurrectionists, wackos, freaks, and conspiracy theorists. So let's just be very clear here. From one former Republican to a current Republican, we're not talking about their policy positions, their mainstream policy positions that are hurting them. We're talking about the fact that these people are weirdos.

Well, all of that is right. And it does remind me to all that's exactly right. And here and here's why it's so important to understand what Joe just said, because you go back and people like they're making the comparison to 2010. I know 2010. Well, I had to deal with some candidates who were, how should we say, a little freakish of their own. What I did as a national chairman, along working with my state party leadership in the various states was, OK, we've done enough crazy. We're not doing that anymore. We're going to focus on the on taking the policy battle to the Democrats on climate, on the big type of topic of the day of health care. Joe, the party has abandoned that. They can't they can't talk. Candidates can't talk about that because there's no position on any of those issues that you mentioned. You know, you got Herschel Walker out there basically talking about the Republican position on the climate. Oh, well, good air leaves America and goes to China and we get China's bad air.

And everybody in the room is like, yeah, that's what we do. So what do you think is going to happen if you're Mitch McConnell? You're sitting there looking at it again. Well, A, we don't need that in the Senate. And B, with that, we're not getting the Senate. And so that's the problem. There is no structure. The leadership has abandoned control over the kinds of candidates they're putting in place. The state parties are running amok with their primaries and conventions, elevating these individuals to these positions. the regard of actually winning an election, capturing the policy opportunity against Democrats who have been floundering over issues like filibusters instead of dealing with some of the things that Americans are concerned about. And that's just so terrible, though, with the

wackadoos, what they've done, you know, to people in this country, because there are people who believe the insurrection should have happened and wants to see more because there are people who believe the insurrection should have happened and wants to see more. There are people who believe all this stuff. And that's the issue. I mean, there there are which we meet them all the time and they've been misled. And that's that's the one scary part of this. Hopefully that when people are at the ballot box, they will think about this country and the difference between right and wrong. Still ahead on Morning Joe, we're counting down to this afternoon's January 6th committee hearing. We'll go over what to expect as the panel prepares to link the Trump White House to the extremist groups that led to the assault on the Capitol.

Plus, a federal judge has denied Steve Bannon's request to delay his contempt of Congress trial. The latest on that legal fight and what the Justice Department is saying about his new offer to testify before the House Select Committee. Also this morning, President Biden leaves for the Middle East tonight. The National Security Council's John Kirby will join us for a preview of that trip, including the president's stop in Saudi Arabia. And President Biden unveils the first image from the world's largest and most powerful telescope ever. We'll take a closer look at that brand new photo that has stargazers very excited. And as we go to break, another Republican politician

who spoke at length about the environment without really saying anything at all. I want clean air. I want clean water. I want the cleanest air with the cleanest water. The environment's very important to me. Somebody wrote a book that I'm an environmentalist that actually called The Environmentalist, actually, before I did this. But they wrote a book. I'd like to get that actually called the environmentalists actually before I did this but they wrote a book I'd like to get it I have it in the other office so I'll

bring it to my next news conference perhaps sure you'll be thrilled to see it I'm sure you'll report all about it but no I'm a big believer in that word the environment I'm a big believer but I want clean air I want clean air, I want clean water. The United States Capitol peaceful this morning at 636 in the morning. The next hearing into the January 6th attack on that building will be held this afternoon at one o'clock with a focus on the violent mob. The committee says it will examine how former President Donald Trump summoned his supporters to the Capitol to threaten the certification of the election when he tweeted, big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there. Will be wild.

His words. The committee says that tweet was the siren call for extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, whose top members have been charged by the Justice Department with seditious conspiracy for their roles in the attack. An aide on the committee says it also will present evidence of ties between these groups and Trump associates like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. In terms of witnesses, a source close to the investigation says we will hear from former Oath Keeper spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove, who has been critical of the group since walking

away in 2017. A source also telling NBC News an Ohio man named Steven Ayers, who pleaded guilty last month to storming the Capitol, also will testify. He posted an image to Facebook days before the attack, saying Trump was, quote, calling on us to come back to Washington on January 6th and then quoted the president's be there will be wild tweet. We also expect to see clips of the deposition of former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who met with the committee last Friday. Joining us now, congressional reporter for The Guardian, Hugo Lowell. Hugo, good morning. It's good to see you. So it's been a couple of weeks since this committee got together back in session

now. So just pick up where we left off. And how does this hearing today about the Oath Keepers, about the other groups that arranged to come to the Capitol brought there by President Trump, how the committee sees this fitting into its larger story? Yeah, so we left off with Republicans seeking pardons, with John Eastman seeking pardons and Rudy Giuliani seeking a pardon. And now we're going to focus today at the hearing on this tweet that Trump sent on December 19, that, as you say, kind of committee members see this as a clarion call to the extremist

groups that storm the Capitol and the far-right groups that were organizing the protests surrounding January 6. But they're going to start first with the 18th of December meeting at the White House, at least according to my reporting. They're going to talk about how, you know, Mike Flynn, Trump's former National Security Advisor, Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock, and Emily Newman, this Trump aide, and Sidney Powell all showed up at the Oval Office uninvited and unannounced and tried to get Trump to seize

voting machines and tried to install Sidney Powell as special counsel. And this goes on for hours and hours. They go to the residence. And at some point, a decision gets made, whether it's by Trump or whether it's by his aides, or we're not entirely clear. But at some point, he makes a decision. And at 1.42 in the morning, Trump sends this tweet on 19th of December saying, big protest. It's going to be wild. See you there on the 6th. And all of the machinery around January 6th springs into action, right? Ali Alexander and Stop the Steal start going to get their permits.

Cindy Chafian, who already had a permit, changes the date of her permit to January 6th. The Proud Boys start prepping. They start creating their group chats for the 6 the sick literally hours after Trump sends that tweet. And it all sends us down the path towards January 6th. And the committee is going to say Trump was responsible because he sent that signal and he green-lighted the operation. So, Hugo, Steve Bannon's contempt of Congress trial will go forward as planned next Monday. A Trump-appointed federal judge rejected Bannon's request to delay the trial. The former Trump adviser was indicted last year

for ignoring a subpoena from the January 6th committee. The judge dismissed several motions from Bannon's legal team, leading to Bannon's lawyer asking the judge, quote, What is the point of going to trial if there are no defenses? The judge agreed and told Bannon's team to consider that. Meanwhile, the Justice Department says Bannon's sudden wish to testify before the January 6th committee is nothing more than a last ditch attempt to avoid accountability. Over the weekend, Bannon's legal team said he would give testimony after former President Trump waived executive privilege. But a new filing from the DOJ says there was never any privilege to begin with. A Trump lawyer told the FBI the former president never actually invoked executive privilege over any particular information or materials. The Justice Department also says

Bannon's willingness to comply now will not help him. Writing, the criminal contempt statute is not intended to procure compliance. It is intended to punish past noncompliance. So, Hugo, how much trouble is Steve Bannon in, and what's he trying to do? I think he's in a lot of trouble. I mean, Judge Nichols yesterday really eviscerated his defenses. In fact, the only defenses he really

has left is that he somehow misunderstood the deadlines in the subpoena, or he was misinformed about the deadlines in the subpoena, and that he might have possibly interpreted the committee coming back to him after the deadline when they sent a letter saying, you know, we hope you still cooperate, as somehow that he was not in willful default or willful noncompliance of that subpoena. Those are the only avenues left for him to argue. I mean, there is just nothing left for him. I mean, Judge Nichols stripped every other legal defense he had. And of course, like, you know, David Schoen, his lead lawyer, was aghast. I think he made a very interesting point, though, about, well, Judge Nichols made an interesting point about the executive privilege.

He said, you know, even if there was executive privilege concerns or arguments to be made, it wouldn't apply in Bannon's case because the DOJ legal memos that his lawyers are citing don't apply to a private citizen like Steve Bannon, who was a former aide to a former president by the time January 6 rolled out and was in no position to be ignoring a subpoena. So I think Bannon's next option is either to take his chances and go to trial and try and convince a jury. And then when he loses to go to the appellate court and try and overturn the controlling case law, or he just pleads at this point. Hugo, let's hop down to the state of Georgia. We mentioned this story a bit earlier. A judge in Fulton County has ordered Senator Lindsey Graham to testify before a special grand jury investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia. Graham was one of a handful of Trump confidants subpoenas last week, but his lawyers

say he will fight it in court. In his ruling yesterday, the judge called Graham a, quote, necessary and material witness to Georgia's grand jury probe and has ordered him to testify on August 2nd. So, Hugo, are we going to see Senator Graham down in Fulton County? Remember, Brad Raffensperger says that he, too, Lindsey Graham, called Brad Raffensperger, Lindsey Graham from a neighboring state, not from the state of Georgia, of course, to discuss the vote in the state of Georgia. I mean, I think so, right? I mean, the Fulton County investigation, we believe, may be the most dangerous legal investigation for Trump.

And that could really ensnare him because we have such clear evidence of his efforts to overturn the election that, I mean, the whole call was recorded. I mean, he's trying to find one more vote than he got in order to overturn the election. So, you know, I think it's a very dangerous investigation for him. It's a treacherous legal moment. But Lindsey Graham, I mean, he would have known, no doubt, in real time because he was so close to the former president. And the fact that he's calling Brad Raffensperger roughly at the same time trying to get him to do Trump's bidding, almost like Trump's lackey, shows that there was a meeting of the minds here.

Both Trump and Lindsey Graham were trying to get Brad Raffensperger to do the same thing. And that makes him a very important witness in this investigation. And even if he is litigating this, I expect the Fulton County investigators to really push for his testimony because he's so important and clearly knows inside information here. Yeah, Raffensperger says Lindsey Graham called him December 2020, asking him to reexamine absentee ballots. We'll see what happens down there. Congressional reporter for The Guardian, Hugo Lowell. Great reporting again today, Hugo. Thanks so much.

We will have more coverage of today's hearing coming up at the top of the hour. Again, that hearing is at one o'clock this afternoon in Washington. January 6th committee member Jamie Raskin will give us an exclusive preview of the testimony from Pat Cipollone. Also ahead, a father whose son was killed in a school shooting calls on President Biden to do more to stop gun violence. We'll show you that moment and the president's response. And a little later, we'll go through what you need to know about the new dominant strain of COVID in the United States. Morning Joe's coming right back. 49 past the hour. Joining us now, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, is with us. Good to have you on board. I'm wondering if you feel the January 6th hearings

are breaking through and really getting Americans to think about perhaps Americans who might have supported Trump, to really think about whether or not they wanna push Trumpism in America forward. Right. I don't know. It seems that there's some softness in Republican support. We're seeing some interesting polling on that front. Obviously, Donald Trump is

still the favorite of at least a large plurality of Republican voters. But on the other hand, there is this kind of softness and they and people have a ready alternative now in DeSantis. Whether that holds or not, I don't know. None of us can can know. But they see. But some people see a plausible alternative. We'll put him aside for a second and just acknowledge that, you know, the effort was never focused on the hardest core, 25, 30 percent. The effort is has always been focused on, let's say, you know, people people who voted for Trump have some qualms about his personality, his character, et cetera. And, you know, these hearings have been so much more effective than than than people speculated they would be.

Maybe that was expectations management, clever expectations management on the part of the committee. I don't know. But it's been shock after shock. And the hearing that's coming today is fascinating, because it's very, very simple. Donald Trump went on social media and said, come to Washington, etc. It's going to be wild. It was an invitation to the rabble to come and do what the rabble then did. It's fairly clear to, well, me at least, that he knew what

he was doing and that the people around him knew what they were doing. They needed the energy and chaos that that kind of person would bring, and they got it. And so, you know, maybe this is working in the sense that people who are closed off to the idea that January 6th was a coup attempt, maybe they're open to it now. Yeah, you know, we've been talking this morning, Jeffrey. First of all, thank you so much for joining Morning Joe's Atlantic Ideas Festival. We seem to have your writers on nonstop here. Great writers. The lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal today echoes what we've been talking about, Donald Trump and the midterms. And the Wall Street

Journal editorial page talks about how Donald Trump time and time again has hurt the Republicans, Republican Senate candidates, says that he's doing the same thing that that Mr. Trump, who may announce his presidential candidacy before the midterms uh and and then at the end talks about how if democrats lose which brings us back to this week's sienna new york times poll for all of its bad news for mr biden he still beats mr trump in a theoretical 2024 presidential matchup what does it say that joe biden the least popular president in modern times, still beats Donald Trump. And the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page tells Republicans basically that they would be fools to once again allow this guy to be the standard bearer for their party. And you see it in the

polls right now. All right. You know, this this reminds me of a saying or an idea that's being passed around, which is that in five or 10 years, no one will admit to ever support it, to have ever supported Donald Trump. Right. Right. I expect The Wall Street Journal editorial page in 10 years to sort of go Trump. Oh, you know, the dalliance, the long dalliance with Trump will be long over. You know, the other the interesting thing, and I was listening to previous discussions. One of the interesting things here is and one of the worries that Republican strategists have and Republican supporters have is that you're having these lesser Trump's Herschel Walker, J.D. Vance, come in to races, extremely polarizing figures without the populist talents, let's call them, of Donald Trump. And people are beginning to see a kind of writing on the wall. There was, I'm mixing a lot of metaphors here, but there's a pretty easy opportunity for a layup in November for the Republicans.

But in state after state, you see what professionals might call the wrong candidates up. And so this is feeding the general anxiety on the Republican side that maybe maybe this is the wrong horse.