Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/19/24

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

CrowdStrike confirms global disruptions caused by Windows update, not cyberattack

There's an interesting statistic. The ears are the bloodiest part. If something happens with the ears, they bleed more than any other part of the body. For whatever reason, the doctors told me that. I said, why is there so much blood? He said, it's the ears. They bleed more. So we learned something. Donald Trump took a more somber tone for parts of his speech last night at the RNC, recounting Saturday's assassination attempt. That tone and message of unity lasted for about 30 minutes. The final hour of his address was much more meandering, and he seemed to lose steam. It also included some of his usual lies about the 2020 election and on the issue of immigration. And it also included threats of mass deportation. Meanwhile, there is mounting pressure on President Biden to end his campaign this morning as he recovers from covid.

But the president's campaign remains defiant. We will have the very latest reporting on all of that. But first, Willie, we need to let our viewers know about some technical issues we may be facing. Go ahead. Yeah, this is a major story impacting the world and impacting us here on our show. A major technology outage hitting businesses worldwide, including some of our production. The Wall Street Journal reports an update from the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike appeared to cause the outages for Microsoft users. In response to the outage of Microsoft, spokesperson telling NBC News, we are aware of the issue affecting a subset of customers. We acknowledge how impactful this is

to our customers, and we're working to restore services for those still experiencing disruptions as quickly as possible. The tech issue forced American, Delta, and United Airlines to ground all flights this morning. The FAA says the grounding is caused by a communication issue. All flights. In a statement, American Airlines says, quote, we're aware of a technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers. American is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. And we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. CrowdStrike just released a statement saying this is not a security incident. It's not a cyber attack. The company says the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix, they say now, is in the works, Joe. So this obviously, yes, it's hitting our show and you may see say now is in the works joe so this obviously yes it's hitting our show

and you may see it in some of the production here but more importantly obviously airlines grounding flights uh across the country this morning well i i love the language it's affected a subset of our customers people just north of cooperstown, New York. No, no, no. It's impacting the entire world. And, you know, not to get too far into it, but it's just a little frightening, Willie. This is what happens when you have companies like Microsoft that many people consider to be a monopoly. If something goes down with microsoft that with microsoft software uh it just just about everybody is impacted and just about everything is as far as commerce goes seems to be shut down yeah i mean we're all so tied into technology obviously every

facet of our lives and that one piece of that goes down it takes down an awful lot with it they are working through it we hope those flights can get up and moving again but really nothing concrete yet just saying CrowdStrike we've identified it we've isolated it we're working on it so bear with us this morning as we put on this four hours of television. Well, you know, here's the great thing. TJ. Oh, well, I mean, it's sort of like normal for us. Yeah, TJ has an excuse now. Yeah, my bad. Three months from now, he's going to go,

Microsoft outage. Microsoft outage still impacting. Joe, Willie, and me, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, NBC News, National Affairs Analyst, and a partner and chief political columnist at Puck, John Heilman and Pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of the Washington Post. Eugene Robinson joins us this morning. A lot to get to. We'll start huge stories. But I tell you, once again, it's strange

this week. Drama in the Democratic Party has almost completely eclipsed what's going on at the Republican National Convention. Where Donald Trump has officially accepted the Republican Party's presidential nomination for the third time. The former president delivered a record-setting 93-minute address last night at the RNC in Milwaukee. It was his first speech since the shooting at his rally on Saturday. And he described what may have saved his life. In order to see the chart, I started to, like this, turn to my right and was ready to begin a little bit further turn, which I'm very lucky I didn't do, when I heard a loud whizzing sound

and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear. I said to myself, wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet. And moved my right hand to my ear, brought it down. My hand was covered with blood. There was blood pouring everywhere, and yet, in a certain way, I felt very safe

because I had God on my side. If I had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin's bullet would have perfectly hit its mark. And I would not be here tonight. We would not be together. My God. Trump made the remarks while standing next to the firefighter suit of the man who was killed in Saturday's shooting, Corey Comperatore. The former president also said, quote, the discord and division in our society must be healed.

I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America. He then called on Democrats to drop the federal and state cases against him, calling them a, quote, partisan witch hunt. When Trump turned to his policy agenda, he focused on immigration, promising to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history if reelected. It's a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction. We have to stop the invasion into our country that's killing hundreds of thousands of people a year. No hope or dream we have for America can succeed unless we stop the illegal immigrant invasion. They're coming from prisons, they're coming from jails, they're coming from mental

institutions and insane asylums, the Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country. I will not let these killers and criminals into our country. I will keep our sons and daughters safe. Just a couple of things right here. We're going to continue going here. But I do have to say, Jonathan Lemire, it is worth reminding people that are watching here that illegal crossings from Mexico into the United States reached a 50 year low under Barack Obama, and they were at that 50 year low.

At the same time, Donald Trump is running in 2016 talking about an invasion, an illegal immigration invasion. And those numbers have gone up. They went up under Donald Trump. Then they exploded under Joe Biden. They've started to go down just like crime numbers have started to go down as well. But this remains a very potent issue and a very potent issue, not just for Republicans, but also independent swing voters and a lot of Democrats, the Democratic Party got behind a Republican's very tough bill on illegal immigration to actually have more border security than we've ever had. And it was killed by Republicans. Killed by Republicans because Donald Trump wanted to preserve it as an electionary issue. Senator Lankford of Oklahoma, that conservative Republican, was in the room last night. I would have liked to have seen a couple of thought bubbles from him while he listened to Donald Trump complain about the border.

And I do think it was we need a moratorium here in the media about Donald Trump's praising Donald Trump's new tone. That doesn't ever happen on this show, mind you. And certainly the first 20, 25 minutes of the speech last night, this lengthy recitation of what happened on Saturday was new. It was different. It was the room was silent. People were listening. There were some in the crowd who had tears in their eyes and streaming down their cheeks as they talked, as Trump talked about his brush with death. But once that moved on, it was suddenly a Donald Trump rally again, maybe a little more subdued in terms of tone, but full of false claims about things like immigration and a rambling, dark rhetoric

that does seem out of place, Joe and Mika, with what so many Americans do face, with reality in this country right now. And I will say, and we're going to spend so much time this morning talking about it, but there are a number of Republicans who sort of expressed that it was a missed opportunity last night for Trump to actually try to, for the first time ever as a political candidate, reach out beyond his base.

And a number of Democrats say, look, this is the guy that we can beat. What a flawed candidate he is, which is why, of course, there's so much scrutiny about President Biden's upcoming decisions. Well, there is so much scrutiny about that. I will say, Willie, there is Republicans at the RNC are are supremely confident, regardless of any misgivings there may have been from Republican consultants last night. is their man. He's going to win. He's going to restore America's greatness and that he has the hand of God on him. Not not meaning to upset people who are watching, but that's what Republicans feel in there. They feel confident. Oh, extremely confident. The most confident I think any Republican Party has ever felt going into an election late summer. Also, you notice he had the Elvis lights behind him. I noticed that. You know, the Trump thing had the Elvis lights behind him.

So he's going full full Elvis here. But it was there. It is Elvis 68, baby. The 68 special. I think I've seen you in front of things like that before, Willie, as well. Just missing the leather jacket, Joe, the black leather. Yeah, but there will be people throughout the day picking through the speech, talking about what he said, the Hannibal Lecter stuff, rambling stuff that, again, just didn't make a whole lot of sense. But was standard fair.

But make no mistake of it, this is a Republican Party that goes into the general election more unified than they've been at any time, my gosh, in 20 years. Yeah. And you go into an NBC poll going into this convention this week that showed nearly three quarters of Republicans support their pick for president, Donald Trump. Now, after all the debate and all the discussion after January 6th, you think about where the party was. It's time to turn the page. We have to move on. They are there. Donald Trump is their guy.

And you saw it in the room last night. And the confidence comes not just from their candidate, but from, of course, what they're watching on the other side. And they believe in some ways they can stand back and let the Democrats beat each other up and do the damage to themselves. They're looking at these new battleground polls that show Donald Trump making up more ground and joining leads in most battleground states at this point. So there is a reason for the confidence. But I will say, and I'm sure you guys heard this last night, too, there Democrats have been depressed lately, let's just say about the state of play. And as they watch that speech and the really was an excellent convention, the way they put it on again, not an endorsement of the rhetoric or the policies, but just the enthusiasm in the room. Democrats were getting more and more depressed, except last night as they watched the speech, obviously the beginning, the first 30 minutes were very moving, as he talked about

in very hushed tones, talked about the man who died, Mr. Comparatore, talked about his own experience on Saturday. But then as that page turned for the next hour, Democrats had a moment of, oh, right, this is Donald Trump. This is a guy we can beat when he talks this way. This is rally Trump. So whether it's Joe Biden or someone else, Democrats, for a brief moment anyway last night, Mika thought, we're still in this thing. This is the guy we can beat. Yeah. And also just to cap off this conversation, Trump went into foreign policy. He boasted about his meeting with the head of the Taliban, as well as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and claimed that he could, quote, stop wars with just a telephone call. He also falsely claimed that Democrats cheated

during the 2020 election. So the big lie still out there in a big way. He didn't, of course, touch on abortion or January 6th. So stayed away from that. We'll turn now to the continued and growing pressure on President Biden to drop out of the race. Several people close to the president tell The New York Times they believe Biden is beginning to accept the idea he might not win in November. This comes as grassroots fundraising is not keeping up with the demands of the campaign. One source tells NBC News that Biden's team expects to only raise 25 percent of the big donor money it had originally projected to raise in July. Meanwhile, former President Barack Obama reportedly has concerns about President Biden's ability to stay at the top of the ticket. That is what two sources told NBC News.

The former president sees Biden's victory as, quote, getting harder. One of the sources said the Washington Post reports former President Obama has said President Biden needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy. And with those comments, he really finds himself in a situation that is getting more grave. Yeah. And the Biden camp, though, pushed back. They did. The Biden camp offered some of the most aggressive pushback, with one source telling NBC News, quote, Can we all just remember for a minute that these are the same people who are trying to push Joe Biden out, are the same people who literally gave us all Donald Trump in 2015? Obama, Pelosi, Schumer pushed Biden aside in favor of Hillary. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. The source also pouring water on

concerns over Biden's poll numbers, pointing to polling back in 2016, the election that showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump by as much as nine points. That source adding, quote, how did this all work out for everyone back in 2016? Perhaps we should learn a few lessons from 2016. One of them is polls are BS. Just ask Secretary Clinton. And two, maybe just maybe Joe Biden is more in touch with actual Americans than Obama, Pelosi, Schumer. So, John Highland, this is fascinating because there was sort of a tale of two Biden campaigns yesterday and a tale of two Democratic parties. You would listen to most of the people that were talking yesterday were suggesting that the president is moving in the direction of getting out of the race. And this is very

specific discussions taking place. But you also had campaign officials who aggressively pushed back on the fact. But again, let's let's let's be clear here that you have had Schumer, Pelosi, Jeffries, Barack Obama, just about every major Democrat expressing their concern directly to President Biden. Reverend Sharpe, and I saw in the New York Times in an article, expressing their concerns that he could lose and he could damage his legacy. And a spate of polls, now even public polls, CBS has him down five points. Swing state polls seem to keep going in a bad direction. New Mexico, Minnesota, Virginia, New Hampshire, a lot of states that were not in play leading up to the debate, suddenly more than in play for Donald Trump. So what happens? Well, I think one thing I mean, one thing that happened yesterday was as this this we were on this yesterday morning, the the din, the kind of the clamor on cable news,

I think for some people around President Biden started to feel kind of disrespectful and that there was not a world where he in an isolated state, you know, where he was sick, not, you know, not not I'm not trying to overblow it. But I think there was a little bit of an effort on the part of some people around around the Biden campaign to kind of put the brakes, especially when some very specific reporting people started making very specific claims about timetables and that that the decision had been made and there was a timetable and here was what he was going to do. And I don't know about the quality of some of that reporting, but I'll say that they pushed back hard on some of that. And I think it kind of got overboard to with them in

that regard. And they wanted to throw a brushback pitch and sort of say President Biden needs time, still needs some time, especially given his his the fact that he's ill. It is the case that the factors that you, Mika and I and everybody else in the show talked about yesterday did not get better yesterday. And by that, I mean, you know, some very basic things. How do you run a presidential campaign without any money? That problem has gotten got worse yesterday because donors and again, say what you want to say about them, you know, have now gone to the Democratic congressional campaign committee and the Democratic senatorial campaign committee and basically

said, we're not just shutting off Joe Biden right now. We're going to shut off the congressional campaigns because your guy's job is, from our point of view, is to talk sense to Joe Biden. And if and if if you can't talk sense to Joe Biden, why are we giving if we're not going to give him money because we think he has no path? He's going to drag. We believe on the basis of what the metrics that we're looking at. I'm speaking as a fake donor here. You know, he's going to drag you down. Why should we give why should we throw good money after bad into the into a lost cause in the House and Senate. So we're not talking about donors flexing

their muscles in a way that threatens not just the reelection campaign of the president, but also all of those people who are running for reelection or seeking election in the Democratic caucus in the House and Senate. And so that has exacerbated the problem. And some of the things that how grave that problem is, is rapidly becoming very clear. So that pressure is still very much on. And I think that and then, as you said, some of the polling numbers as they become increasingly public. And I would just focus on one thing in particular, where some of these numbers forget about what you think about battleground state horse race numbers, the attribute numbers, the number now about whether President Biden is mentally fit for office, those numbers are just getting to the point where

they're quite scary. And you can't, it's very difficult to be reelected president if upwards of 80% of voters in the country don't think you're equipped for office. And that's so there's polling around that that I know the Biden team, Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, all those people have seen just in the past few days that say that. And those numbers are not only are they bad, but they're very hard to turn around. It's hard to imagine how you're going to turn that around going forward. Right. So so, Mika, just to underline a couple of things that John said, that's nailed it. The biggest issue, immediate issue, is money. The donors have stopped giving money. And it's almost completely ground down to a halt. The story of Jeffrey Katzenberg

telling President Biden this got eclipsed from the COVID diagnosis. So that is a problem. I will say also, you got a lot of information yesterday. There was a lot of information, a lot of off the record conversations, a lot of plans being made about President Biden moving toward getting out of the race this weekend. That stopped when there was some very specific reporting later in the afternoon. Mark Halprin being very specific on some reporting that other reporters, newspapers and networks had parts of that reporting, but not all of it together. I think at that point is when we started to see the campaign pushing back because what people close to Joe Biden have said all along is he's a man of great pride. He can be stubborn and tough. Don't back him into the corner. If he's going to do this, let him do it his way on his time frame. And when all of these reports

started coming out, that's when the campaign started pushing back. And I think part of that is giving him the space to make this decision, to finish making this decision with his family this weekend. It's also a man of faith and a man of tremendous historic accomplishment. And look, it's impossible to ignore where this is going and exactly what started it. I'm not unaware of that. At the same time, I still believe that you don't know what you have until it's gone and that there will be that feeling at some point. You think there'll be when he if he leaves the race, you think Democrats will regret it? I do. Yeah, I do. Because among many reasons, which I've already stated and I won't say it again, don't worry,

but none of these notions are backed by a strong alternative, an alternative that has beat Trump before, an alternative that is vetted, an alternative that is tested. And so that's a lot to throw away. Welcome back to Morning Jail. You're looking at Reagan National Airport at 625 in the morning. Microsoft outages have impacted businesses across the country, including airlines. American and Delta have had flights interrupted this morning. American, I think, moving towards resolving some of those issues.

So, Gene, some issues that will not be resolved so quickly is the future of the Democratic Party and specifically who's going to be running for president this fall. We all heard a lot of reporting yesterday that Joe Biden was considering getting out this weekend. We also I will say I heard a good bit of reporting last Thursday and Friday and talked about that, Gene, about talk that he was getting out of the race last weekend. That didn't happen either. So it ain't over until it's over. That said, an awful lot of talk about President Biden considering stepping aside, which the campaign quelled when the when the reporting got, let's say, a little too specific.

Yeah, we did have those discussions last week, Joe. And and so here we are once again. And, you know, one does think that maybe as that reporting gets more and more specific, it becomes less and less likely that President Biden, or it becomes more likely that he gets his back up and says, you know, hold on, wait a minute. And his team gets more defiant in that respect. And that's kind of understandable. So, you know, who knows? That could certainly happen again this week. You know, I think those two, the two stories that we've been talking about this morning, the former President Trump's speech and President Biden's fate as a candidate, are linked.

And I think, in a way, that speech last night will kind of intensify this angst and debate in the Democratic Party, because I think a lot of Democrats will, you know, who watched that speech, I watched all 93 minutes of it, I'm a little sleepy this morning, I stayed up to watch the whole thing. And, you know, that thought that everybody has, this guy can be beaten. This is not a juggernaut candidate. This is not, you know, Ali in his prime or anything. This guy can be beaten.

When he got to Hannibal Lecter and all of that, it was like, this is not really even the same old Donald Trump. This is a Donald Trump who is more meandering, who is less focused, who is less able to stay on a theme, who had a layup to make last night and couldn't and flubbed the layup. I mean, he didn't make it. All he had to do was come and say some kind of unifying things and and accept the nomination and let the balloons drop. That's all he had to do. And he couldn't do that.

So I think, you know, a lot in the party are going to say, if only we have a younger, more vigorous candidate, I mean, then we can beat this guy. And I think, conversely, there could be the reaction in Biden world, in President Biden's inner circle, that we can beat this guy. You know, we can still beat this guy because he's not, you know, this towering, unbeatable figure that the Republicans seem to portray him as. So we'll see how that happens. Senator John Tester came out yesterday and and it was the second senator to come and come out and say that President Biden should withdraw just flat out. We know that's significant to President Biden because of his long tenure in the Senate. So we will see how things develop hour to hour.

And obviously, Senator Tester has a very difficult race ahead in the next few months in Montana. So he came out publicly yesterday. For more on the thinking inside the Democratic Party, let's turn to NBC News Washington managing editor Carol Lee and White House reporter for The Washington Post, Tyler Pager. Good morning to you both. So, Carol, I was reading all your reporting yesterday and you had a lot of it, you and your team there in D.C. On the one hand, you had Biden's senior aide saying we have a plan to get through this. We're hanging in. We're going to weather this storm. And then at the same time, you have another Biden aide saying we are close to the end, talking about Biden's campaign. So how do you assess from your reporting the state of play as we wake up today? It's a great question, and I would assess it this way. We've been covering the story for literally three weeks now, three weeks today. And all of us have had conversations

with allies and aides to the president inside the White House, the campaign close to the White House and the campaign. And yesterday, those conversations were a little bit different in the sense that some of the people that I've talked to and some of my colleagues have talked to over the last three weeks who were really intent that the president was in this, that there was a path ahead and they were plowing forward, changed their tune a little bit. And to that point, to saying we are close to the end, the writing is on the wall, those were the kinds of things that you're hearing from people who are close to the president.

It's because of a number of things that we've been talking about. The erosion of support, both from top, very public Democrats, and in the polling, the money that's drying up, that 25%, that projection that the campaign is going to raise 25% of what it had originally projected for the month of July. That's down from last week when they thought it would be 50 percent of that. So it's not going up. It's going down. It's not getting

better. It's getting worse. And so we also know from our own reporting that's factored into this is that the president privately is a little more open to considering stepping aside. We have reported that his conversations in the past week have become, quote, reality based. There is discussion about what his place in history might look like. Things like that. Just the tone and the tenor of those conversations are kind of changing. And at the same time, this is his decision. And everybody is clear about that. And until he says otherwise, he is the nominee. And that's why you saw people close to his campaign and close to him come out so forcefully yesterday saying, hold up, we need to give him the space that he's in this, you know, basically back off.

Because the other thing that's happening here, Willie, is there's a lot of resentment that's building up among the people closest to the president. Resentment for the way that he is being treated by some of the party's leadership, specifically former President Obama, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, saying that their silence in all of this is feels like a bit of a betrayal, but also the leaks that they're seeing. And so what one person described this to us as is, in one word, sad. Yeah, and as Mika reported at the top of the show, the pushback much more forceful, anonymous quotes around Joe Biden saying these are the same people talking about Pelosi, Obama and others who skipped over Joe Biden in 2016. And look what happened there. So,

Tyler, you're looking at the the angle of President Obama, who is a fascinating figure in where this decision goes. You broke the story yesterday that President Obama believes that the path to victory has narrowed perhaps too far for President Biden. What is the relationship like right now, not just between President Obama and President Biden, But between those two camps, I mean, there's obviously the feeling among some in the Biden world that President Obama could have stopped the George Clooney op-ed, for example, because they are so close. What is that dynamic like right now? Yeah, the camps, the Obama and Biden camps have always had a good deal of tension that have ebbed and flowed throughout the two men's presidencies. But right now, there is a lot of frustration and resentment from some of Biden's inner circle toward former President Barack Obama. They have blamed him for, as you said, the Clooney op-ed and feel that he could have kept the party united behind Joe Biden. He put out a statement after Joe Biden's debate, you know, expressing support for the sitting

president, but since then has been largely silent. He has been taking calls from anxious Democrats in the weeks since that debate. And what he has conveyed to his allies is he feels his best role in this process is as a sounding board and counselor to Joe Biden. The two men have only spoken once since that debate in which Obama said to the sitting president, he's here to support and wants to be that sort of counselor to the president. But Obama has told his allies he's concerned about the president's legacy and about the president himself. He thinks that Biden has been a great president and wants to preserve and protect his accomplishments and his legacy. And that is his primary concern. But in those conversations,

he has conveyed to allies that he is concerned about Biden's path, saying it's, you know, believing it's been greatly diminished in recent weeks and thinks it's really important to think about Biden's viability as a candidate. Look, all of these party leaders are greatly concerned about Donald Trump. For years, Obama has been warning Biden in private about Trump's political strength and, you know, has met with the president over the years to discuss that. And so I think this is all part of this great angst within the Democratic Party about ensuring they defeat Donald Trump in November. And Jonathan Lemire, to Carol Lee's reporting to the point she was making, the way Joe Biden is being treated right now does feel like a deep betrayal of a

presidency of a president who has performed at a top level on multiple fronts, outwardly on the world stage, domestically with historic bipartisan legislation. And no one knows more than Joe Biden that this is exactly what Donald Trump wants. He wants chaos. He wants dissension in the Democratic Party. He wants a lack of loyalty and he wants infighting that makes Democrats extremely weak and that makes Trump win. Yeah, there's no question there. I was reporting yesterday as well about just the deep resentment from the president's inner circle, both family and his closest advisors, as to how he is being treated here.

But we are seeing some top Democrats, former Speaker Pelosi among them, just simply making a calculation. What is the best decision to win? The threat Trump poses is so great. We need to just figure out and set sentiment aside. How can we win? And they've made the decision clearly that they don't think President Biden is that person to beat Trump anymore, even as fond of him they are personally, even as they think he has done a great job as president. And it does seem as the president is in isolation. That's going to slow this process

down a little bit in terms of when he makes his final decision, Carol. But there are deadlines approaching. The Democrats are going to have their virtual roll call sooner than next sometime next week or so. The decision is going to have to be made by then. So tell us what sort of timetable you're hearing they're going to operate under and also the role that Vice President Harris plays in all of this, because that's one of the open questions here is that if Biden were to step aside and again publicly, they're not saying that he is. But if he were to, would this be would he then anoint Harris's successor or might we have some sort of open convention? It's very tricky, right, because the vice president is in a very tricky situation because she's obviously very aware of all the conversation that's going on and all of the chances that she may actually be in position to be the party's nominee, but can vice president, really having the president's back.

I think that that has had an impact on how the president feels about her. I think he values that. And so the president has several choices to make. One, obviously, whether or not he stays in the race. And then two, to your point, what he does in terms of who's next. And when in our conversations with people close to the president, there's not a clear answer there because it's all it's it's a it's a little bit tricky for him because as he come out and back somebody like, does he have the juice to do that? Does that make sense? At the same time, you have people who have been some of the strongest factors of the president, including Congressman Clyburn, who have pretty much made clear that

if it's not Biden for him, it's Harris. And so there's a number of factors that are at play here. And in terms of the timing, this is a decision that I think from all of my reporting and talking to people, and I'm sure you too, it's a sooner rather than later decision. Nobody really wants to drag this out. And one of the questions is, can you make that decision? And when they do make the decision, if it is for the president to step aside, can there be a plan in place? What are the contingencies there? All right. NBC's Carol Lee and The Washington Post's Tyler Pager, thank you both very much for

your reporting this morning. It's a beautiful live picture of the White House at 645 in the morning on this July Friday. The director of the Secret Service says she has no plans to step down following the assassination attempt on former President Trump. The agency released a statement yesterday saying Kimberly Cheadle is fiercely committed to transparency during the agency's internal investigation. The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Cheadle, seeking testimony from her on Monday. But the Secret Service tells NBC News her schedule will not allow her to appear, and they're working with the committee on an alternate date. Let's bring in NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney.

And Ken, good morning. It was interesting in his speech early on last night, former President Trump went out of his way to praise the Secret Service and its response anyway to the shooting. We've talked about that a lot over the last week or so. What more can you tell us about the investigation this morning? Good morning, Willie. Yeah, well, President Trump, former President Trump was praising the Secret Service. There are reports that behind the scenes, his campaign is growing increasingly annoyed with them. And you even saw public calls by some of his campaign officials for the resignation of the Secret Service director. And of course, we all saw that video of those Republican senators chasing her down at the Republican National Convention,

yelling questions at her that she was refusing to answer. So that's never good when you're a federal official. In terms of the investigation, you know, we're almost a week later, and the motives of this 20-year-old shooter remain an enigma. And that's really the most perplexing thing about this. The FBI has been through his phone and his devices, and they're no closer to figuring out why he did this. They found photos of both President Biden, former President Trump on his phone, and also Merrick Garland, the attorney general.

But they really, he has so little in the way of both public and private postings. One of the theories going around is that he was simply an alienated young man looking for notoriety, that there was no political motive here whatsoever. And then in terms of the timeline, we're learning a lot more, and it's very troubling. We learned from that congressional briefing that it was almost an hour before the shooting that police first flagged Thomas Crooks as a suspicious person near the magnetometers. And then a half hour before the shooting, they

actually sent a picture of him to the Secret Service. And then 20 minutes before the shooting, we're told Secret Service snipers on the roof, on that roof behind the Trump rally, detected Crooks on the roof of that building. Unclear at that time whether they viewed him as a threat. And then, of course, we know that at some point local police confronted him on the roof and then flagged that there was a man with a gun. What we don't know, the big question yet unanswered, is how many seconds elapsed between that report over the radio, a guy on the roof with a gun, and the time that he fired the shots at Mr. Trump? Because that's a crucial question. Did the Secret Service have time to pull him off the stage? It's unclear. But we do know that they knew he had a range finder. They knew there was a suspicious person out there with a range finder, and they still allowed Mr. Trump to take the stage. So there are a lot of questions about that.

There's also questions about how the Secret Service acted after the shots were fired, guys. Right. And I wanted to talk to you about that, Ken. But but but still, the failure to secure the roof is, as you were talking about, as we've said all along. The failure to notify any, you know, in an aggressive way, the fears of a suspicious person well before President Trump took this stage. The range finder that they saw, again, how they didn't immediately get the Secret Service around there is beyond me. But then something that you wrote about yesterday and we've talked about on this show, the amount of time that it took to get President Trump off the stage after he was shot.

I mean, this remains to me just an enduring outrage that they didn't immediately grab him and pull him off the stage. That's what they're taught to do, isn't it? Absolutely, Joe. You were one of the first people to flag this because a lot of people thought, well, they acted heroically after the shots were fired. And they did in the sense that they these Secret Service agents rushed into the line of gunfire to cover up Donald Trump. Most experts I talked to praised those initial seconds. But then after that, they are appalled, just as you are, about what happened because Mr. Trump, they allowed the protectee to dictate the pace with which they got him off the

stage. That is not what they are trained to do. They're trained to manhandle, to tackle, to pick up the principal and rush him to safety, regardless of what he wants. And we talked to both former Secret Service agents and then outside experts in close protection, people who've worked with the State Department and the British military. They were all flabbergasted that, first of all, you hear Mr. Trump saying, I need to get my shoes, and they slow down. And then they appear to try to be hustling him off the stage. And by the way, at that point, as you noted earlier, Joe, his head was above their head. So he was in danger.

There was a second shooter. He was exposed to fire. And then you hear Mr. Trump say, wait, wait, wait. And then he pumps his fist at the crowd in a gesture of showmanship. That was a brilliant political move. But if there had been a second shooter and remember, they had intelligence that the Iranians are plotting to kill Donald Trump in retaliation for his ordering of a targeted killing of a general. If there had been a second shooter, Mr. Trump was exposed to that gunfire. And we are just told that's not how it's supposed to happen. And what's perplexing to me is you're seeing retired Secret Service agents defending that conduct, what my sources say is indefensible. NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney.

And thank you very much. We'll be looking for more follow ups on that. Thank you, Ken. And still ahead, Senator Bernie Sanders will join us live in studio. We'll ask him whether he thinks President Biden should step aside the Republican Party. And what would happen if Donald Trump is reelected? That and much, much more. Morning Joe will be right back. Comedy legend Bob Newhart died at the age of 94, his career full of milestones, a variety show, 14 feature films, three Grammys and two Emmy Awards.

NBC's Dana Griffin looks back at Newhart's life and legacy. Hello. A pioneer in show business, Bob Newhart would blaze a trail as one of the first standup comedians to find broad success in TV sitcoms. Here he is, Bobby Newhart. His career began on stage. His trademark, the one-sided phone conversation. Something has come up and it isn't covered in the guard's manual. Known for a stammering yet endearing delivery, the deadpan comic got his big break with a comedy record, the first to win Album of the Year at the Grammys.

I didn't realize the significance of having the Album of the Year, and it turns out it beat out Sinatra and Harry Belafonte. He made the move to TV in the 1970s, playing a psychologist on the beloved Bob Newhart show. In the 80s, he struck comic gold again as a Vermont innkeeper on Newhart. In its final episode, revealing the entire run was nothing more than a dream, waking up on the set of his old show. You won't believe the dream I just had. The president of the United States. He also starred in more than a dozen films, playing roles from the Oval Office to the North Pole. I can't complain. And after seven nominations,

what is this? In 2013, he finally won an Emmy for his appearance on The Big Bang Theory. I think laughter is essential to life. I really do. And Bob Newhart kept us laughing for more than half a century. Dana Griffin, NBC News Los Angeles. Bob Newhart was 94 years old, Joe. So funny, such an influence on so many of the comedians that we grew up loving. And we heard from almost all of them yesterday talking about how Bob Newhart made it cool to be funny and smart at the same time. And as he referenced in there, it's kind of staggering that 1960 comedy album, his big breakout, The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

That's amazing. Not Comedy Album of the Year. Album of the Year. He beat Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole to win that. He was also Best New Artist at the Grammy. So his impact was felt over, what, 70 years or so. One of the funniest guys to ever live, and he will be missed. So such a funny, wonderful, beautiful guy, and such a sweetness to him. It's a word that doesn't

get attached to most comics, but Don Rickles, he was not. He was a lovely guy. And I will tell you also, Newhart, when my family watched it in the 70s, you know, it was such a turbulent time. And there was Bob Newhart in the middle of it all. And again, just a sweet, wonderful guy. And then, of course, reprised his role at the end of his New Heart series a decade or so later. It's just perfect. He also made it cool to be sweet and adorable and befuddled. Well, I'm also so glad, Willie, that my kids and kids for as long as they're watching Christmas shows and TV will get to see him play the role that he played in Elf.

Yeah, he said, I worked for 50 years, but the biggest thing I ever did came when I was 70-something years old in 2003 and he played Papa Elf. But you're right, that plays on a loop every Christmas season, and kids of all generations will always know who Bob Newhart was. Yeah, no doubt about it.

So, John Heilman, you and I have talked a great bit on this show about The Bear. Man, it set a new record ahead of the 2024 emmys the fx network series dominated the comedy category despite the fact it's not a comedy with a whopping 23 nominations a record previously held by another great show 30 rock with 22 nominations back in 2009 meanwhile another fx uh show shogun led this year's drama category with an impressive 25 nominations. The Bear, though, again, anybody that thinks it's a comedy series, just just look at I think was episode seven. When we there you go. When we meet Jamie Lee Curtis and a bear's mother. But one of the, one of the great series out there and boy, it,

it, it got the nominations it deserves. It's incredible. Yeah. I mean, look, I think it's good. There's a consensus that the second season of the bear is greater than the

first season of the bear. I mean, as great as the first season was, and this is what we're talking about here. The second season, not the one that just came out, you know, the Emmys are always behind. So this is back to the season. We've talked a lot about on the show before Joe, and you think about the way the bear for season one dominated the last

Emmy awards, uh, this, uh, year, I think, uh, the, the, the smart money is going to be that, uh, they are not just going to get nominated for 23, 23, but they're going to take home a lot of those awards when the Emmys come around. Yeah. Is it a comedy? It's not a comedy. It's not a comedy, but it's a comedy. Okay. John Heilman, Eugene Robinson, thank you both very much for being on this morning.