Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/18/24

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Reports: Top Democrats warn Biden he could hurt party

If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down? It depends. If the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me that, I might do that. You earlier explained confidence in your vice president. Yes. If your team came back and showed you data that she would fare better against former President Donald Trump, would you reconsider your decision to stay in the race? No, unless they came back and said, there's no way you can win.

Me. No one's saying that. No poll says that. We will 1000% in your words, see you on the ballot this November. Unless I get hit by a train. Yeah. Let's hope that doesn't happen for your safety's concern. Is there anything that you would look to, you personally, not anybody else, not other pundits, not even perhaps family members, that you would look to to say,

if I see that, I will reevaluate? If there is some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, you got this problem, that problem. Biden. Since the debate, President Biden has given a number of responses as to what could drive him from the race. The last response came in an interview taped on Tuesday. And now his covid diagnosis is adding to the growing concerns about his chances of defeating Donald Trump in November. All of that comes as there's new reporting.

The president is becoming more receptive to conversations about stepping aside. We'll go through all of that in just a moment. Plus, from never Trumper to running mate, Senator J.D. Vance accepted the nomination for vice president last night at the Republican National Convention, giving the keynote address. We'll bring you some of the big moments from his speech. And we're learning more about the timeline of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, as well as new details about the gunman. And the news keeps getting worse for the Secret Service. It does. We'll be covering that. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe.

It's Thursday, July 18th. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Peer Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, NBC News National Affairs Analyst and a partner and chief political columnist at Puck, John Heilman and co-founder of Axios, Mike Allen. Great team this morning. Your thoughts on this? What we're seeing is potentially an evolution of thought on the part of President Biden on whether to stay in. We've had so many momentous days over the past several weeks i i i can't believe there won't be history books that just detail what's happened maybe over the last three weeks the last 21 days it's it's really

it's dizzying and it it it feels like when when you you see documentaries on 1968, when when you the chaos that that went on just one event after another, after another. But yesterday, Willie, was just a day in and of itself that may be determinative that may lead to that March 1968 moment when LBJ announced that he wasn't going to seek the Democratic nomination again. I mean, you think about yesterday morning we're on the show and I brought up a series of polls that showed very little movement post debate and very little movement, even post the tragedy that occurred on Saturday. And also just one Democratic pollster after another saying it wasn't the debate that caused damage to Joe Biden. It was probably all the Democratic infighting afterwards. And so there was a belief in Biden world that he could survive. But then we get off the air and one thing after another happens. And, of course, we heard that that Senator Schumer, the Democratic majority leader in the United States Senate, called on Joe Biden in so many words to step down. Hakeem Jeffries, basically the same thing. Real concern. Perhaps still one of the most powerful people among grassroots and Democratic donors. Nancy Pelosi still out there. And that's the one. What I keep hearing is Speaker Pelosi, Speaker Meredith Pelosi,

so brilliant. She's not getting on phone calls saying Joe Biden must go. She's conducting a listening tour and she's calling one Democratic House member after another that are in vulnerable seats and all she's getting back, bad news. And so she's letting them know just enough based on reporting that she understands their concerns and she is very concerned, too, that they cannot lose the House. You have that. And so that sounds like elites. But then on top of that, of course, the Associated Press poll that two thirds of Democrats want Joe Biden out of the race. That's not the elites. That's the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. And there's no way a candidate can win a general election of two thirds of his own people say he needs to withdraw. And then I think those are backwards.

Yeah, that's backwards. Two thirds actually want him out. And so you add all this up. And then finally, he gets the word from Jeffrey Katzenberg in Las Vegas, who before had been sort of the hero of fundraising, who had raised all of this money for Joe Biden, just telling the president the spigots run dry. Donors are not not giving money anymore, Mr. President. We can't get donors to give money. You then hear about not infighting inside the Biden campaign, but just just a sadness and understanding that they cannot win with a man that they respect and love and basically waiting for orders. Who are they going to help beat Donald Trump? And so all of that, all of that happened yesterday, along with so much more. Yeah. And then at the end of the day, we learned that the president of the United States has tested positive for COVID,

which felt like a coda to the day you just laid out where Democrats just went, well, how much more of this can we take? And I think what we saw yesterday was everything we've been hearing in private, not just frankly, for the last three weeks, but for a long time spilled out publicly, which is that the polling now shows private polling and now public polling that we're seeing internal polling and public polling, that this is an uphill climb, not just for the president, but for everybody down the ballot. And that's why you heard Adam Schiff, who's very likely to be a senator from the state of California, coming up here in just a few months, starting the day with a public statement saying that Joe Biden should step aside, that he's going to take down with him others who hope to become senators, hope to hold onto their seats in the House, for example. And then this sort of the dam broke. And we heard the reports of Chuck Schumer,

as you said, and Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries. And it went on like this all day, saying we've looked at the data. Yes, we've seen the national polls, but the election is not a national referendum. We're looking now at our district polls. We're looking at state polls, including one this morning from Emerson that shows Donald Trump now leading in the state of Virginia by three points in Virginia. So that's a snapshot of where this race is right now. And that's why you're hearing more vocally Democrats saying it is time to get out. And I wonder, Mike Barnicle, what you think about the president's state of mind right now. Obviously, we saw him after the COVID diagnosis looking frail getting onto Air Force

One last night. He respects Nancy Pelosi. He respects Chuck Schumer. We know that. What will this weekend of isolation at home in Delaware be like for Biden and his family? I think it'll be a reflective weekend for the family, taking a look at the reality of the landscape. And I think the sadness of it will finally penetrate the entire Biden family. And the sadness of it, by sadness, I mean, when you have elected officials, many of them unnamed in these newspapers, stories about Democrats indicating that they don't want Joe Biden to be on the ballot this fall, running for reelection as president. The sadness of it

is you keep hearing the word that they're bitter. They are bitter. And the idea that Joseph Biden, Joseph R. Biden, who is a magnetic personality with people, loves to grab people, slap them on the shoulder. How are you, buddy? How you been? That he would be referred to as bitter is really something. It's really something. And that, Jonathan, is, I think, epidemic now within the House candidates and some of the Senate candidates. Yeah, we're seeing another real push by Democrats to try to adjust the top of the ticket. Every time the Biden seeing another real push by Democrats to try to adjust the top of the ticket. The Biden campaign since the debate has been out there. They've been trying to fend this off. He's done a number of interviews. He's done a number of campaign events,

some of which were very well received. He has been out there publicly saying, I'm saying this, stop asking me. And the questions have only grown. The Biden team's efforts to push this aside simply haven't worked. And as Joe just ran through yesterday, felt like a really significant day. And we should note the Schumer meeting was over the weekend. Pelosi was several days ago. Jeffries was several days ago. But what was not coincidental is they all leaked yesterday. And I think that there is a sense that this is the time the Democrats see this as their final moment, as a contrast to what we're seeing at the RNC, where, like it or not, the Republicans are totally unified around Donald Trump. They've embraced his running mate. We're going to hear from Trump tonight.

There's confidence there. And they're also expected to put up a record fundraising total in the wake of the assassination attempt. You contrast that with the Democrats, their own fundraising drying up and the sense of doom that's permeated the party. And maybe that's not fair to President Biden, but that's where the party is right now. And it does feel like as the president now heads home to Rehoboth off the campaign trail and what would be a crucial moment to provide counterprogramming to the RNC, that if this is going to happen, it's going to happen in this next stretch. And again, publicly, the president saying he's staying on. We'll have to see if that changes. Yeah. And Joe and Mika, you, Joe, you pointed to this AP poll. The argument from the campaign has been it's elites. It's the media trying to push Joe Biden out. What we've said all along over the last three weeks is that's just not the case. All you have to do is go to the grocery store or go to the dry cleaner or the gas station.

It's what people are talking about his age after that. And frankly, there were a lot of people rooting for Joe Biden in these last three weeks, waiting for these interviews, watching the performances and clearly not assured when you see that 65 percent of Democrats, not just Americans, of Democrats believe it's time for him to step out of the race. Right. And you can look at all the polls. Listen, here's the deal. There's 110 days left. We've said this time and time again. We've seen polls. Anybody that remembers 1980 remembers that on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, before the election, the race was too close to call. And suddenly there was a massive break toward Ronald Reagan the final weekend. Reagan wins a massive landslide in 1980 over Jimmy Carter. You can go to 1988. There's Michael Dukakis. He's up by 15, 16, 17 points in this summer. George H.W. Bush mocked, ridiculed. This race is over. Democrats were saying completely confident George H.W. Bush wins in a landslide.

We remember here in 2016 being mocked and ridiculed for even saying in late October, early November, that Donald Trump had a pathway to 270 electoral votes. Everybody likes to say, oh, we knew he's not. They didn't. Nobody was saying it. The very few people who were saying it were being mocked and ridiculed. That was in 2016. So, yes, a week in politics. I think Macmillan may have said it. Maybe Harold Wilson, one of those British prime ministers from the 1960s, said it. That in politics, a week is a lifetime and you got 110 days. So many things can happen. So many things will happen. That said, show me any candidate from any year running for any position where he gets to the general election and two thirds of his own party do not want him to run, I don't care if it's Joe Biden in 2024, if it's Joe Scarborough

in like 1996, if it's a mayor running in 2014, that candidate is going to lose. Those are numbers you just can't get past. Given what you've just said, Joe, this is goes back to the point that you made a week ago, perhaps more, and that the Dems need to get get it together. They really need to get whatever they've got going, going, whatever it is. The problem should not be our candidate. The focus should be on Donald Trump. You know, it may or may not be Joe Biden. I trust Joe Biden's abilities. I also trust Nancy Pelosi's political acumen. Nobody knows politics more than her and nobody more than Nancy Pelosi. She does not get out there without information to back it up.

She doesn't take risks and she knows her politics. She knows her numbers. She doesn't lose votes. she knows her politics. She knows her numbers. She doesn't lose votes. You remember whenever Nancy Pelosi, well, is this going to pass or not? We would always say when Nancy was speaker, we'd say, well, if she puts it on the floor, it's going to pass because she knows where the votes are better than anybody I've ever seen. If there is a change, it's got to be a change that gets Barack Obama behind the candidate, Michelle Obama behind the candidate, George W. Bush behind the candidate, former presidents

and world leaders and people who understand the importance of democracy, because it's going to take citizens who care about this country to to bring this back together or Trump will win. Trump right now is on the path to winning. Yes, he is. Let's go to NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles. Ryan, what a day yesterday on the Hill. I ask, what did you hear? I guess I should ask, how much did you hear of what we just talked about? Where to begin? Yeah, you know, Joe and Mika, I think you guys have crystallized it really well. The issue here is that rank and file Democrats have just not felt comfortable about President Biden at the top of the ticket since that debate took place. I think part of the reason that you

saw the calls and the angst subside a little bit was because of that assassination attempt on former President Trump. It just kind of pushed this story to the back burner. But I can tell you from my own reporting that the conversations were still ongoing and that people were still very nervous. In fact, you know, right before the assassination attempt was this phone call that President Biden had with the New Dem Coalition, more than 100 rank and file Democrats, mostly moderate to left Democrats, which was a very uncomfortable phone call. It was supposed to last an hour. It only lasted 35 minutes. President Biden could not be heard very well by people on the call. He got defensive at one time, at one point during an interaction

with Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado. And I know that many of these Democrats got off that call feeling a lot worse about the situation than they had going in. And they already didn't feel good about it. So I think that is kind of the foundation of what you see in this maybe third or fourth round of angst and concern from Democratic leaders about President Biden's role in this campaign. And what is interesting is that Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, they had been very quiet about their own personal feelings about the situation. And to be clear, they're still being very quiet. But what they're allowing to let happen right now are the rumors and the speculation about what went on in these closed door conversations between Schumer, Pelosi and Jeffries and the president. And they are not going to great pains at all to deny the conversation and the tone of those

conversations. And what I was told is that the conversation between Schumer and Biden on Saturday was blunt, that Schumer laid out for President Biden in detail, the polling that he is showing about these races, not just at the national level, but in individual states and in individual districts. And that it was a conversation just between Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer. And what is interesting about this conversation is that there's been a concern among many rank and file Democrats that perhaps the message wasn't getting directly to Joe Biden, that he was being insulated by some of the closest, some of his closest associates and family members, and that he wasn't getting a real reality check as to how his party was feeling and how average voters were feeling. Well, now we know that he's had these direct

conversations. We know he talked directly with Hakeem Jeffries and Jeffries has said on the record that he conveyed the feelings of his caucus. And we know that his caucus is upset. The still lingering question that hangs above all of this is that there is only one person who can decide that Joe Biden is no longer going to be in this race. And that is Joe Biden himself. There are now reports that he's at least open to that idea, something that was not even leaked out early on after the debate, that that was something that he wasn't even considering. So if that door is open, even a crack, my guess is that at least congressional Democrats are eager to bust it wide open and try and convince him to find a path to exit this race gracefully. And then the conversation can be who comes next, which I think is still a very open conversation within the Democratic Party.

And obviously, Nancy Pelosi coming out yesterday, not coming out, but the leaked information that she suggested he get out of the race because of what's going to happen down ballot now gives permission because of the respect she commands in the party for other members to make their voices heard. You start to walk down the path to my next question, Ryan, which is do all the people calling for Joe Biden to get out? Do they have a plan? Because I think that's the concern among Democrats. OK, 65 percent of us now say we want Joe Biden to step aside. We respect his service. We like the job he did in his first term. But we need to know what comes next. Is it definitely Vice President Kamala Harris? Do they open it up at the convention? What's the thinking there? Well, I think that has been the biggest problem that Democrats have dealt with as they've fought through this process.

And in the in the early days after the debate, the conversation I had over and over with congressional Democrats in particular was we're not comfortable with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, but we're even more concerned about the mess that could be created if he were to leave. And there was a fight for who would take over that top slot. And you seem to see a growing, almost kind of a group of Democrats being more and more convinced that the easiest path would be to nominate Kamala Harris. And that would allow them to keep the party infrastructure in place. It would allow them the opportunity to move with a degree of ease that may not be afforded if they were to try and open the process up. And we've already seen many of these congressional Democrats, even some who have been defenders of President Biden, the most prominent being Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, specifically saying that if Joe Biden is to step down, it better be Kamala Harris. Obviously, she has strong support

within the Congressional Black Caucus. She obviously has a lot of support with the women in Congress as well. I think it would be a very difficult proposition for congressional Democrats to bypass her unless there was a clear alternative. I don't think they want to get into a situation where they are fighting over this nomination. I know James Carville suggested this idea of town halls around the country. I don't hear too many Democrats thinking that that's a good idea. So the short answer, Willie, is there isn't a plan right now,

which is part of the problem. And I don't think that conversation begins in earnest until we know that President Biden is willing to step aside. All right, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent, Ryan Nobles. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you so much. Good luck out there today.

So so, John Heilman, this this sort of three part political drama for the Biden's tragedy, this this three part drama. It seems that Democrats keep moving to different possible options if he does leave. I mean, I know during the second act, we'll we'll call it the Clooney years, which was like six or seven days ago. There was a suggestion not only that op ed, but from other Democratic leaders that they were going to have an open convention. This would make Kamala Harris stronger if she ran against three or four other people. All the better if she won. She would want when with the wind at her back going into the fall. My reporting at least suggests that's changed dramatically over the past 24 to 48 hours. And they are coalescing more around Kamala Harris. But I'm curious, what is your reporting there?

And what is your reporting on the general state of the Biden campaign? Well, so just to start with that, Joe, I think what Ryan just said is the truest thing, which is that there really has been an attitude among everyone in the Democratic political class, elected strategists and donors, that they have kicked ideas around the two obvious ways to think about this, who are the kind of coronation or competition. And the coronation wouldn't be legal. It's not like Joe Biden can't just transfer those delegates over to Kamala Harris, but he could lay hands on her. And if the party wanted to circle around her,

they could do that. And then she could be effectively coronated. There's been another school of thought, which has been, let's figure out some kind of competition, whether that's mini primaries or whether that's these town halls, and then have an open competition at the convention. I think you're right there. As people confront the likelier reality now that Joe Biden will step aside, not 100% guaranteed, but the increasingly likely scenario, just the riskiness of that, that everyone acknowledges that this is a wild thing to do, to take a sitting president, switch them out in the summer before a general election, that they have to kind of try to get grip on the risk factor of who they're going to put at the top of the ticket. And whatever else

you want to say about Vice President Harris, she's a known quantity. The rest of these governors out there, many of them incredibly attractive, compelling figures, they have not been vetted nationally. They have not run for president before. They are not known in the way that she is. And so there is a gathering feeling like that that you're talking about. But it's still a large question mark, because what Ryan said, I think is right. Most people have been like, we don't need to engage this question of what comes next unless the guy in the big chair in the Oval Office decides he's going to step aside. The last thing I'll say is you talked, Joe, earlier about how much news there was yesterday, how fast things seem to be moving. That was definitely true. But I will just say that yesterday was not this is not an accident

or a chaotic day. It was a day in which a series of carefully orchestrated sequence things took place. I said a couple of weeks ago on the show that there are only a handful of Democrats that Joe Biden might listen to on this topic. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, the Clintons, the Obamas, but only secondarily, that those key congressional leaders and Jim Clyburn, that they were the only ones who Biden would take this argument seriously from. What we learned yesterday was that at the end of last week, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer all had similar conversations directly with Joe Biden saying, you need to seriously consider stepping aside. The polling is so bad that it could doom Democrats in

the House and Senate. And then nothing happened after that. I mean, we had the assassination attempt. This all went quiet. And it's not a coincidence that Adam Schiff, one of the closest allies of Nancy Pelosi, went public with his call on Biden to step aside. And then the sequence of leaks of the Jeffries leak, the Schumer leak, and then the Pelosi leak in the space of 12 hours. That is not an accident. That's not a coincidence. That is former Speaker Pelosi and those other leaders sending a very public signal to Joe Biden that they are not going to keep their concerns quiet anymore. They are going to make them public. They made them public yesterday. And I think that the pressure publicly will ratchet up on Joe Biden over the coming days

from those people if he does not decide to bow out. As Bill Clinton once said, if you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, it didn't get there by accident. And you didn't have one leak after another leak after another leak and Adam Schiff all coming out the same day saying Joe Biden should get out of the race by accident. It was planned. Let's go right now to Milwaukee. I don't know if you all know that this or not, but there's a political event going on there. And, you know, Mike, speaking of the National Review's Dan Laughlin said going into 22, if you're talking about if people are talking about Donald Trump, Democrats are winning. If people are talking about Joe Biden, Republicans are winning. Here we are, 26 minutes after the top of the hour, and we've all been talking about problems inside the Democratic Party for good

reason, because that's the news. I mean, it is news what's going on. So get us up to date, though, with what's happening in Milwaukee. Also, what you're hearing from the Biden campaign. Yeah, we'll start with the Biden campaign, Joe, and exactly right about the sequencing. So on your air, I talked about the fact three weeks ago that there was an effort among top Democrats to give President Biden the chance to walk off the stage. They said he is proud. He's stubborn. We love him. We appreciate him. We want to give him the chance to walk off the stage. President Biden, in the view of these top Democrats, did not take the hint. And the way that one top Democrat, someone very close to the West Wing, put it to me Sunday as I sat here

on the floor of this hall with my laptop doing reporting at the Republican convention about what was happening in the Democratic Party. They said, we don't want to humiliate him. That was the effort. Then we saw this sequence yesterday. And as my brilliant colleague, Zach Basu, puts it at the top of Axios this morning, President Biden is now self-isolating both medically and politically. With COVID now, he had given the sequences, he had said, what could get him out of the race? The president had said, the Lord Almighty. Then Then he said data polling that showed I couldn't win. Then he said health. Then privately is reporting saying that he's being told that Vice President Harris can win. So so all his boxes now are checked. One more thing about

Vice President Harris, a very specific plan for her to run. Democrats are going to be able to start fast, would be able to start fast with her if they go that way. One, she instantly makes Roe the center of the race. Very important to Democrats. The fall of Roe, Dobbs versus democracy, as they have put it. Second, the way that Democrats cleverly put it is that now age and fitness would become the Republicans' problem, the Republicans' issue if she were the nominee. And third, they would frame it as prosecutor as she was in my home state of California, elected DA of San Francisco, former attorney general versus convicted felon. But as Ryan Nobles was saying, the president has to choose this.

He has the delegates, the statements yesterday from both the campaign and the White House. He is the nominee or soon will be. They can't take it from him. He has to make that choice. And Joe and Mika, if you watch this convention over the last three days, coming into the former president's speech tonight. This is not an endorsement of the policy or a lot of the rhetoric that's being put forward there, but it has been party unity. If a convention is a campaign rally, this has been a good one for Donald Trump as he walks into the hall to a standing ovation every night and sees all those candidates that he's vanquished over the years come before him and endorse him. There was a very powerful moment last night that we'll show later on where the families of the 13 Marines killed in the exit from Afghanistan came forward

and talked about their their daughters and their sons and about what happened that day and endorsed Donald Trump. So it's been a rally and a convention where two thirds now, according to an NBC poll of Republicans, believe in their candidate. Two thirds of Republicans say, OK, here we are now. Donald Trump is our guy. And contrast that with what we've been saying this morning, where 65 percent of Democrats say their candidate, the sitting president of the United States, should step aside for someone else. Yeah, it really is something. As Jonathan Martin said, Donald Trump used to divide Republicans and unite Democrats. Yeah. Right now, we're in a stage where Donald Trump is uniting Republicans and dividing Democrats on how to best beat him. We will see what happens.

Still ahead on Morning Joe, the Kremlin is voicing support for J.D. Vance as Donald Trump's running mate. What Russia's foreign minister is saying about the Republican senator you're watching. Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Together, we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer. Together, we will put the citizens of America first, whatever the color of their skin. We will, in short, make America great again. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.

And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first. Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance with an America first message in his acceptance speech last night at the RNC. Just which allies is he exactly talking about? Meanwhile, Russia's top diplomat appears to approve of J.D. Vance as Donald Trump's running mate. Wow. That's my point. At the U.N. in New York yesterday, Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, held a press conference. When asked about Vance's position toward Ukraine, Lavrov said Vance is, quote, in favor of peace, in favor of ending the assistance

that's been provided. And we can only welcome that. Lavrov went on to say what Russia needs is for Ukraine to stop being pumped full of weapons and then the war will end. Of course, it will. Vance has long been a critic of U.S. support for Ukraine. And here's what he told Steve Bannon in February of 2022, when Russia was about to launch its full scale invasion of Ukraine. And he was still a candidate for Senate in Ohio. And when I graduated from high school in 2003, two kids on my block graduated from high school in 2003. Both of us enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. We did not serve in the Marine Corps to go and fight Vladimir Putin because he didn't believe in transgender rights, right, which is what the U.S. State Department is saying

is a major problem with Russia. At the end of the day, we serve to defend our own country. I think it's ridiculous that we're focused on this border in Ukraine. I don't I got to be honest with you. I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another. Joining us now, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, and former aide to the George W. Bush White House and State Department, Elise Jordan. Richard, it's hard to know where to begin. I will say he certainly is lined up with where Donald Trump was, heaping scorn on allies and doing the bidding of our enemies,

or at least appearing to do the bidding of our enemies. You know, Donald Trump would always attack democratically elected governments and talk about how great Putin was and Xi and Kim Jong Un. Well, you look at J.D. Vance. Yes, he said he said that, which, of course, makes a Kremlin thrilled. He also has recently said that Britain is the first Islamist country to have a nuclear weapon because he doesn't like the fact that Keir Starmer has a diverse government. Fascinating, of course, I guess, I don't know, maybe it wasn't in the history books when he was growing up that Pakistan already has a nuclear weapon. But be that as it may, here we have again,

somebody whose words provide aid and comfort to Russia, who is attacking a democratically elected Western government that is one of our strongest allies. Lots to say, Joe. Just begin with where he began. He basically talks about his experience with Iraq and says that's why he doesn't support helping Ukraine. But Iraq in 2003 was a war of choice for the United States. What Ukraine is doing is a war of necessity. They have been invaded. Russia's goal is to essentially eliminate it as a sovereign place. Second of all, the United States sent thousands and thousands of troops to Iraq. We're not sending one troop to Ukraine.

We're helping Ukraine indirectly. And over the last two and a half years, in part thanks to our help, it's been a remarkable success. If you look at the territorial, you know, who controls what after two and a half years of fighting, Ukraine, because of its own efforts and with American and European help, has fought Russia to a standstill. So this has actually been, I think, a remarkable success for Western, for American foreign policy. And if we allow Russia to win there, well, then J.D. Vance's nightmare would happen because Russia would not necessarily be content. They then would challenge NATO. And then what? Then we would have the challenge about

responding with the American troops. Richard, yes, then American troops are put in a position to defend other countries in Europe and American troops die. It costs us more money. This is bluntly this is like us getting out of Iraq overnight and creating a vacuum. And in that into that vacuum came ISIS. That's something Donald Trump talks about all the time. This morning, also on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, they rightly questioned Donald Trump's abandonment of Taiwan, saying basically we're not going to do anything for Taiwan. And as the Wall Street Journal editorial page says, this position will end up causing American lives. These shortcuts that they're talking about, it's just like 10 percent tariffs, which are massive taxes on the American people. Really stupid policies that may sound good in a soundbite. But if you think through it as a Wall Street Journal editorial page, it ends up costing

Americans more money, more lives, more hardship, whether it's the abandonment of the centerpiece of our Asia policy in Taiwan or turning over Central Europe to Russia. If you read the full Bloomberg interview, it is quite stunning. Essentially, the president dismisses our ability, President Trump, let me make it clear, to defend Taiwan, talks about the impossibility of it, and basically sees Taiwan as an economic competitor or adversary. What this tells you then is two things. It's actually so emblematic, Joe, and it's where these two issues go together. One is the Trump fans team sees the world through this narrow

economic prism. It's as if geopolitics and history never happened. Everybody's an economic competitor and all that matters is trade. And if they're producing things, it's bad for us because anything other than American manufacturing is unacceptable. Secondly, they seem not to care about geopolitics. So what do they think would happen if China moves against Taiwan and we weren't there to help? What do they think ultimately would mean for the security and stability of what's the most important part of the world in the 21st century, which is the Asia-Pacific? That's where the wealth, that's where the money is. What do they think the Japans and Koreas would do? Is a world where everybody gets nuclear weapons of their own necessarily a

world that's stable? What happens to American influence? It's as if the last 75 years didn't happen. People are ignoring all the benefits we've accrued from this post-World War II world, and they seem ready to essentially deconstruct it without putting anything in its place. I just think this is short termism of a really, really dangerous variety. Well, Mike Barnicle, let's talk about the consequences of America in retreat. Because what happens when America is in retreat? Chaos is unleashed on the world. We are the indispensable power. Let me say it again, America is the indispensable power. So you don't have to go back long. I talked about Iraq.

We get out of Iraq overnight. What happened? Sounded good. Everybody cheered it. And then ISIS goes in, fills that void. We have to send American troops back and we have to fight with our allies there and go door by door by door in Mosul in bloody urban warfare to try to wipe out ISIS. You can also talk about Syria. You can go back and look at this show with us asking during the Syrian civil war, how

long is America going to stand by? 10,000 dead, 20,000 dead, 50,000 dead, 75,000 dead, 100,000 dead, 200,000, 400, 500,000 Syrians dead. And we did nothing because people were concerned that, well, we don't want to be like Bush and Cheney. So what happened there? Not only did half a half of a million Syrians die, Arabs die, Muslims die. It also unleashed the greatest humanitarian crisis across Europe since World War Two.

So there are two recent examples of America going, you know what, it's just better that we just retreat, lead from behind, put up a fortress and do nothing. But we always have to go in and clean up the mess, whether it's ISIS or whether it's it's it's a massive humanitarian crisis, because it always ends up back on our doorstep if we try to retreat. You know, Joe, the interesting element of what you're just saying is that there was a touch of pre-World War II isolationism, oddly enough, in today's Republican Party, it seems. Apparently, they think that two oceans, that we're surrounded by two oceans,

separate us from the world, separate us from the globe, and give us a safety, a false safety that just isn't there today. But Elise, you worked in a Republican administration, and the fact that we are assisting Ukraine against Putin, and the idea that we ought not to care about Ukraine, as J.D. Vance has said, is shocking. No. What would be the second and third order effects on the economy if we just abandon our aid to Ukraine immediately and the ripple effect within Europe especially? I am, though, concerned by Germany's announcement that they're going to have their aid to Ukraine by 2025. I think this is the gradual direction that so many allies are going in after, I guess it's been two and a half

years now that Ukraine's been at war. The spigot is going to end eventually. And so you have allies signaling that they're going to start reducing their aid. And I think that what you hear from Trump and J.D. Vance is what Republican voters want right now and some Democratic voters, too. I've been struck doing focus groups in Wisconsin and Michigan by the tenor of foreign policy in this time of economic hardship. And voters simply do not want to be spending money abroad, even though it's a very small portion of our budget, when they feel that inflation and other problems at home aren't being addressed. So what it means is that people who care about these issues, one, have to show why it matters, why what happens there affects here.

Also, though, for Ukraine, it's a conversation we've had on the show. We have to choose goals. We have to define success in a way that is achievable at a reasonable cost. The definition of success in Ukraine cannot be we fail until Ukraine is able to liberate all the land that's lost in 2014. It's not going to happen. We've got to choose a definition of success where people can say we're going to put in this amount of aid. This is an achievable goal. We can protect core Ukraine. Russia will not get what it wants. And that would become the basis for diplomacy. And if Putin realizes that, I think then he will essentially be potentially willing to compromise himself. So I do think we've got to

adjust our policy towards Ukraine. It can't be whatever Zelensky wants, Zelensky gets. That is an unsustainable policy. It's not going to succeed. But you're right. The European position is this kind of wavering is worrisome. Again, we've got to have realistic goals and then stand behind them. If you don't have public support because you brought up pre-World War Two and look at how long it took FDR to convince the American public that, yes, we need we had to go in. It took after Pearl Harbor. It feels like a lifetime ago. But the NATO summit in Washington was just last week. And Mike Allen, not only did President Biden deliver a strong defense of alliances there, but Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, said that protecting Ukraine, protecting NATO,

we wanted that to be his sort of final legacy here as his time in office. He was going to put that the centerpiece of going forward. And yet here we are time in office. He was going to put that at the centerpiece of going forward. And yet, here we are now in Milwaukee. And as you well know, they were handing out placards last night to delegates that reads, Trump will end the Ukraine war. But we know what that means. He has said what that means. That means he will push Ukraine to accepting the current battlefield positions and give Russia a win, allow them to achieve that new territory. Talk to us about the tension with the Republican Party. But it sure seems like the Trump Vance side of it is winning and winning big. Well, no question. And the naming of J.D. Vance was so consequential, both on economic policy,

national security policy. The three finalists, these were not three eggs in a basket to mix up expression. Picking J.D. Vance sent a real message that Trumpism, as it's been defined, will be the Republican Party going into the future. If J.D. Vance wins twice himself, if he becomes vice president, then president twice. That means Trumpism is in the White House, would be in the White House until January 2037. And the flip side, you saw behind the scenes until the very final day on Monday, we're told Rupert Murdoch, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina calling President Trump to to form President Trump to lobby against J.D. Vance. And you saw the pictures last night of Murdoch and Senator Graham in a box watching J.D. Vance's speech, both with pretty grim looks on their faces, even though now they're going to say they support him.

They fought against him. And Ukraine was a big reason why that J.D. Vance has made a very strong argument against against continuing policy for against continuing aid to Ukraine. And that's part of J.D. Vance's superpower. Part of why he was chosen was the ability to make the argument at length, including on what they call adversarial media. All right, Mike Allen, thank you very much for being on this morning and still ahead on Morning Joe. We are learning new details about the investigation into the attempted assassination of Donald Trump,

including what Secret Service agents knew about the gunman before the former president even took the stage. Which raises the question why they allowed Donald Trump to even take the stage. NBC News Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainsley will join us with her new reporting. Morning Joe is coming right back. You know, the more we're learning about what led up to the assassination attempt, the worse it looks for the Secret Service.

It's just the unspeakable errors they made one after another after another. I don't know how anybody could justify the head of the Secret Service staying in her job. Well, we're learning new details this morning about the investigation into the attempted assassination of former President Trump. NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk has details of the disturbing timeline. In an FBI and Secret Service briefing with members of the Senate, troubling revelations about the hour before a 20-year-old gunman opened fire on former President Donald Trump.

Senators learned that he was identified as being suspicious and photographed more than an hour before the shooting. According to multiple sources familiar with the briefing, a detailed timeline was shared with senators. At 5.51 p.m., Pennsylvania State Police notified Secret Service of a suspicious person with a range finder. 5.53, the Secret Service notified its snipers. At 6.02, Trump takes the stage. At 6.09, people in the crowd saw Thomas Crooks on the rooftop and shouted to law enforcement. And two minutes later, shots are fired.

Senator Ron Johnson reacting to the briefing at the Republican convention in Wisconsin. Congress has got to do detailed and intensive oversight, leave no stone unturned, no question unasked or unanswered. Senators also learned the shooter visited the rally site several days in advance of Trump's appearance to scope it out. It was a cover your ass briefing by the by the Secret Service. The director of the Secret Service needs to go. A Secret Service spokesman told NBC News a local SWAT team was positioned in the complex where crooks fired the shots, but not in the same building. Would one of the goals of a team securing that area be to keep people off the roof? For sure. The plan, whatever it was, failed and we need to understand why.

Pressure is mounting on the Secret Service in the wake of these revelations. Trump was allowed to take the stage even though a suspicious individual was spotted in the area. Maybe he's carrying a range finder, but not a report of a weapon. You would not necessarily be considering moving your protectee or delaying his entrance onto the stage. Senior law enforcement officials say Crooks was also found with this device, a fireworks detonator. Federal agencies said suspected improvised explosive devices were in his car. The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General now opening an investigation into the agency's handling of Saturday's rally. Among the many unanswered questions, when did law enforcement first see the

gun? Joining us now, NBC News Homeland Security Correspondent Julia Ainsley. Julia, you've been following this story so closely. We should note that Director Cheadle was at the Republican National Convention last night. A number of Republican senators tried to confront her right there in Milwaukee to demand more answers as to what happened. What is the Secret Service offering in the ways of explanation or defense as to how things could have gone so wrong? Well, Jonathan, you know, one of the actual downsides of so many investigations from Congress is independent review panel that has been launched from DHS and the White House. And now we have two separate DHS IG investigations, the second one being opened yesterday into the counter sniper team preparedness. It means that Secret Service in many ways can tell the media we can't comment because of ongoing investigations. And so that's why that briefing yesterday

to Congress, to both the House and the Senate was so important because we're able to get more details of the timeline, also more details about how Crooks planned for this. We understand that he scouted the scene days prior. There's been some reporting recently this morning from The New York Times to say that he looked into images. He'd done a research on both Biden and Trump, looking at their schedules, looking at the DNC. And there still doesn't appear to be a very clear motive about why he targeted this event in Trump, or perhaps he was politically motivated across both parties to carry out some kind of attack. A lot of answers they're still searching for. But as far as the Secret Service Director Cheadle, we know that she's due to testify before Congress in two hearings next week.

She's likely to come under a lot of fire. Not only are we hearing from Republicans, and you mentioned those at the convention, but also police unions. There was a lot of people, including the Fraternal Order of Police, who have come back against Sheetal, even putting out statements saying that she mischaracterized the way these local police acted. When she said that there was a local sniper team in the building, they later had to backtrack that yesterday, Jonathan, to say, oh, they were actually in another building in the same complex. That's in part because of the heat that she's getting from police unions, because the initial word from Secret Service right after this incident, we heard it over the weekend, we heard it earlier

this week, they're starting to shift their tone tone was that this building was not in the Secret Service's perimeter. It was outside of their perimeter and fell to local law enforcement. We know there were a number of different agencies from the state, from the county and the township who were around that area. But it's not clear at all when you speak to former Secret Service agents and officers why they wouldn't have included this rooftop in their perimeter, which where there was such a clear shot. Also, why they allowed Trump to take the stage. The other big question. At 6.02, he takes the stage. We know that Secret Service notified the snipers about this person at 5.53. And an hour before he took the stage, the police had already identified him as a

suspicious person. They later shared that information with the Secret Service. He had a range finder and a backpack. Again, there was no indication he was armed at that point. But a lot of questions about why Secret Service didn't act sooner and why they didn't secure that rooftop, Jonathan. So, Julia, what do we know about the elements of the Secret Service that apparently were within the complex where the shooter was hiding on top of the roof? What was that all about? What were they doing there? How many were there? What aspects of the Secret Service units were there? So, surprisingly, none of those people were part of Secret Service at all. They did have Secret Service snipers positioned in other places around the event.

But inside that complex, that we understand was made up of what they call an emergency security unit, which is taken from different counties around this area. Butler County, Beaver County, these are rural areas where they could maybe each chip in one officer to be part of this sniper team. They were in another building within that same complex. But as we just learned yesterday, when the Secret Service had to back off their initial reporting about how they staffed that, there was no one on the roof or inside the building that the shooter chose to take his position. They were in another building inside the complex. It's not clear why that decision was made or if the Secret Service was part of that. But we do know that based on planning meetings and documents in the days ahead of this rally,

the Secret Service and local law enforcement identified that roof as a vulnerability. All right. NBC News Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainslie. Thank you very much. Usually situations like this, it's easy to question and you sort of have to wait for the end. But the questions just keep getting worse. It just keeps getting worse. Well, really. And really, it was obvious all the questions that we and I think some of the other Americans were raising when it happened. What is how did it happen? How was there that clear shot? You can go on and on. How was the president allowed to be exposed for nine, ten seconds as he was walking off the stage?

So many questions.