Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/2/24

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

Supreme Court gives win to Trump, ruling he has immunity for some acts in election interference indictment

President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office. As an ordinary citizen, unless the statute of limitations is run, still liable for everything he did while he was in office. Didn't get away with anything yet. Yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.

That was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivering those remarks after Donald Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial. But with the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity yesterday, it is not clear if McConnell's argument was entirely accurate. Our legal experts are standing by to go over what this all means now. Also ahead, we're following the continued fallouts running President Biden's debate performance and new internal polling. His team is now circulating. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, July 2nd. Along with Willie and me, we have managing editor at The Bulwark, Sam Stein, former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent,

Lisa Rubin, former U.S. attorney and MSNBC contributor Chuck Rosenberg and Willie, a perfect group for our top story this morning. Yeah, a lot to sift through and some different views of where this all shakes out. The landmark decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted former President Donald Trump partial immunity from criminal prosecution for some of the actions he took while in office. NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett has details. A monumental win at the Supreme Court for former President Trump. The conservative majority finding the presumptive GOP nominee must receive sweeping immunity for any official acts taken during his presidency. The 6-3 ruling a defeat for special counsel Jack

Smith, with the court bulldozing through the charges against Mr. Trump for his alleged criminal efforts to stay in power, making the completion of any trial before November virtually impossible. Today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. Chief Justice John Roberts laying out a new sliding scale of what can be prosecuted, saying a president may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, that he has immunity from prosecution for all his official acts, but that a president has no immunity for private unofficial acts, while cautioning the president

is not above the law. A federal grand jury indicted the former president for orchestrating a conspiracy to retake the White House. Prosecutors alleging he leaned on his DOJ, VP and state officials to help him reverse the election results, mobilizing meetings of fake electors, it all culminating in the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6th. Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and argued without immunity, every president could be prosecuted by political opponents. If you don't have immunity, you're not going to do anything.

You're going to become a ceremonial president. You're not going to take any of the risks. The majority agreeing the commander-in-chief must be able to carry out his constitutional duties without risk of political prosecution, writing without immunity, such types of prosecutions of ex-presidents could quickly become routine and that would weaken the presidency, which is exactly what the framers intended to avoid. The special counsel had pushed to get the case to trial before November. My office will seek a speedy trial. The ruling now dramatically chipping away at parts of Smith's case. The justices finding

Mr. Trump's urging the then attorney general to investigate voter fraud now absolutely immune from prosecution. What remains in the indictment, including his pressure on his former VP. Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. Are now entitled to a presumption of immunity. The liberal justices with a blistering pushback, Justice Sotomayor writing, when a president uses his official powers in any way under the majority's reasoning, he will now be insulated from criminal prosecution, orders the Navy SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, immune, organizes a military coup to hold on to power? Immune.

Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, the damage has been done. NBC's Laura Jarrett reporting for us there. So, Chuck, I'll start with you. The reaction to this as it came down yesterday ranged somewhere from democracy is dead, we now have kings instead of presidents to it's a little bit murky. And the murkiness comes in that definition of official acts by a president versus personal acts by a president. Who gets to define that? How you define that? What's your take?

And once again, Willie, I find myself in the rather lonely middle. So I think it is logical that some acts are immune. The core constitutional responsibilities of any president, put Mr. Trump aside, ought to be immune from prosecution. Purely private acts ought not be immune. And so the hard part, again, is in the middle, right? What is and what is not an official act? I think we have to avoid the following construction. You know, I don't like Mr. Trump. This opinion is good for Mr. Trump. Therefore, we are on the brink of a constitutional apocalypse. I don't believe that's true. But part of Jack Smith's case is now gone, and he's going to have to fight for the rest. His road to prosecution is longer and bumpier and more narrow. All of those

things are true. And I disagree with certain particulars in the case. But in the main willy, it makes sense to me that there is immunity in some cases and no immunity in others. And to your point, we have to figure out the rest. So Lisa, let's take the federal election interference case. Judge Tanya Chutkin, U.S. District Judge, a federal judge. Now it is on her, according to the Supreme Court, to decide which of these acts, which of this evidence constitute official conduct and which constitute personal conduct. If you are Judge Chutkin this morning, you're feeling how about that assignment? You're feeling very despondent

about that assignment because you've just been given 119 pages that lays down some very broad principles without a whole lot of guidance. And you've been told that one of the things you can't consider in determining what's official versus personal is motive or purpose. And that was a really big deal at the oral argument here. Chief Justice Roberts giving the example of what if a president, for example, is charged with bribery? The act of bribery itself is a personal act accepting the money. But let's say a president is bribed for appointing someone to an ambassadorship. That's an official act. And he was trying to untangle an oral argument. Is that a official act? Is that a personal act? How should we consider it? Well, now we know the majority

is saying in a situation like that, the motive or the purpose for which someone does something that arguably could be official can't be considered in untangling what's personal or official. That will mean that a lot of what we consider to be unofficial actions, if taken at the White House, if done with the cooperation, for example, of people at the Department of Justice or White House counsel's office or other aides, that might fall on the line of official because her hands have been tied. She can't consider what Trump's ultimate aim was in making that determination. So as we heard in Laura's report, President Biden weighed in on the Supreme Court's immunity ruling. In brief remarks from the White House yesterday, the president warned the high court's decision will allow Donald Trump to do whatever he wants

should he be reelected. Biden also criticized the ruling for delaying Trump's federal election interference case, calling it a disservice to voters. For all, for all practical purposes, today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. This is a fundamentally new principle, and it's a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States.

The only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone. American people must decide. They want to entrust the president once again, the presidency, to Donald Trump, now knowing he'll be even more emboldened to do whatever he pleases whenever he wants to do it. Now the man who sent that mob to the U.S. Capitol is facing potential criminal conviction for what happened that day. And the American people deserve to have an answer in the courts before the upcoming election. The public has a right to know the answer about what happened on January 6th

before they asked to vote again this year. Now, because of today's decision, that is highly, highly unlikely. It's a terrible disservice to the people of this nation. Chuck Rosenberg, I'm curious. I'd love to hear your response to what the president had to say. And also, I'm curious if you thought this 119-page decision, if you thought that the points they made, what they came to was extremely complicated and fraught and time consuming and difficult to get to. I'm just I'm wondering if you have any question about the timing of this on the very last day, basically giving Donald Trump a win because of the timing, it seems to me,

that a case like this, but who am I, should be dealt with first. And are the deductions that they made so complicated that it took this long, in your estimate? Yeah, Mika, lots of good questions. So Justice Jackson, I think, properly criticized the majority opinion for its indeterminate standards. And I think that's right. As Lisa Rubin had remarked earlier, it's a bit of a muddle and it's unclear precisely how she proceeds from here, except that it's going to take a long time. I think Mr. Biden is quite right. There is no chance, no chance virtually for this to be tried before the election. You know, that said, right, sort of like, forgive this simple analogy. Remember in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy always had the power to

get back to Kansas. All she had to do was click her heels three times. We always had the power as a nation to remove Mr. Trump from office and make sure he was never president again. The Senate completely abdicated its responsibility there. And instead, as Mr. McConnell described, you know, threw this into the courts of the United States where we thought we were going to get some sort of perfect solution. The courts of the United States are very good at what they do, but they are not perfect. They move slowly. They're designed to move slowly. And the notion that the Supreme Court would have expedited this case simply because a bunch of us wanted it to be heard expeditiously, I think, was a bit of a fool's errand. So I'm not surprised by any of this. These things take a long time. And if we're looking to the courts for a perfect

solution, you're frankly not going to get one, Mika. That is not the place to go for a perfect solution. Mr. Trump is a unique and uniquely vile character. And the notion that we can fill in all of the gaps in our laws to account for an actor like him, I think is foolhardy. And this illustrates the difficulty of holding a man like Mr. Trump accountable in the courts of law. It's really hard to do. It's almost impossible when he's a former president. And this opinion makes that clear. So, Lisa, in the long run, if Donald Trump is reelected, this gives him the immunity he was seeking.

In the short term, in this presidential campaign, it effectively pushes everything past Election Day. You could ask questions even about the Georgia case. Was the call to Brad Raffensperger, the infamous call in early January of 2021, was that an official act? Was he just checking on the results in Georgia? Was he asking for a recount? I mean, you see my point. They could his team can argue every detail of every case. It seems correct me if I'm wrong. There's no chance that any of these are taken up or go to trial anyway before Election Day. Absolutely not. And Willie, one of the reasons that it doesn't is because it will take 32 days just before Judge Chutkan even gets the case back. That's because under Supreme Court rules,

they have 32 days to issue the judgment back to the lower court unless somebody asks for it. The other thing is Judge Chutkan has to resolve what is in and out of the case before anything can proceed further. And what's in and out of the case has to go through the appeals process again before those pretrial proceedings can continue, because immunity isn't just immunity from liability. It's immunity from the whole thing. Right. If you're immune from prosecution, you shouldn't have to go through the process to begin with. So I think there is no chance we see any trial before the election. And the case is going to disappear if Donald Trump is reelected. He will direct the Department of Justice to dismiss the case. He will get rid of the special counsel somehow. We should suffer no illusions that this case continues through the courts

if Donald Trump is reelected. And the Biden campaign continues to say the voters have to decide this. The courts are not going to sweep in and save this. So Donald Trump is trying to use yesterday's Supreme Court ruling to get his recent felony conviction thrown out in New York. Two sources telling NBC News in a letter to Judge Juan Mershon yesterday, Trump's lawyers claim, given the Supreme Court's decision, some of the evidence presented by prosecutors during the trial now should be inadmissible. They also requested the former president's July 11 sentencing be postponed. That's a week or so from now, so they can brief the judge on their argument. Chuck, do they have any case here? On one hand, I think the letter to Judge Merchan

was entirely predictable. On the other hand, I think it's entirely wrong. I mean, if you look at the Supreme Court's decision from yesterday, Willie, right, the conduct that underlined the New York case seems to me to be purely private. And so perhaps Judge Mershon grants them a hearing, but I have a hard time imagining that they would prevail on it. This seems to me the type of case that a president ought not be immunized from. He also, Lisa, was not president, right? It was during the campaign of 2016. So how does that factor in? Well, so first of all, I don't think that they're necessarily asking for the case to be dismissed because of presidential immunity.

What they're saying is that the trial and the verdicts that arose from it were faulty because Rashawn admitted evidence that under this ruling no longer can be admitted. What does that evidence look like, Willie, given that he was not president for most of it? Well, for example, prosecutors relied on a series of tweets that Donald Trump issued in 2018 after the truth about the Stormy Daniels payments came forward. Those kinds of tweets, my understanding is Donald Trump's lawyers are saying you should never have admitted that evidence. And because of that and because of today's ruling, the entire verdict is in question. It's not he should have been immune because of this ruling. It's more like

the verdict is predicated on the admission of evidence that this ruling tells us should never have come into the case. Yeah, Mika, you know, Donald Trump, we know the people around him. They're going to contest every piece of evidence, every tweet, every document, every piece of testimony now in any of these cases based on the ruling from the Supreme Court yesterday. Yeah, they will push every envelope and Chuck's description of the murky part. So he will he will go there and try and push whatever he can. And we've seen that this isn't surmising on my part. Sam Stein. The interesting thing is that Joe Biden says this is in the hands of the voters, which raises questions again about where the state of his campaign is. What are you hearing in circles around the White House, around the campaign about the fallout from the president's debate performance last Thursday night?

I'm hearing that he's moving forward full steam ahead. But then I get calls saying they're hearing something else. But I don't know. I'm not hearing it directly from the inner circle. Yeah, this is a dynamic situation, to say the least. The prevailing sentiment from the inner circle is let's forge forward. We can get through the fog here. Biden has been counted out before and he can power through. But if you talk to the next concentric circle of donors and operatives in the party, it's panic. I mean, that's just what it is, right? If we're being blunt about it, people who are not comfortable with the state of the campaign have very little to no confidence in Biden's own ability to turn it around, are frantically

imagining other possibilities for candidates to run in his place. And I think it's sort of predicated on a few things, right? One is you get decisions like this from the Supreme Court, which make it very clear what the stakes of the election are. Maybe that in some ways crystallizes the choices for voters and works to Biden's advantage. But in other ways, it makes it very clear that the prosecution in Donald Trump only happens if Democrats win this presidential election. On the other hand, I think, and this is a big one, is that there's real doubts about whether Biden has the capacity to do what's necessary to turn around his campaign. I mean, what's necessary essentially is for him to go out there in the public in unscripted moments, in interviews, press conferences, maybe even another debate, although that's

not coming for several months, and prove that he has a vitality and that the Thursday night debate was a one-off. But so long as he doesn't do that, you're going to get these persistent questions and doubts. So they're kind of in a catch-22 here, unless in fact he he does have the capacity to do it and they should put him out right now. So let me ask you, Chuck, about Jack Smith, because in the concurrence yesterday, Justice Clarence Thomas took things a little bit of a step further and said, we're not so sure even the appointment of a special counsel named Jack Smith was legal. We'll leave that to somebody else. Are there concerns that even Jack Smith's being there is in jeopardy at this point?

Perhaps, although it ought not be. This is an issue that has been litigated many times. And each time, courts of the United States have determined, Willie, that special counsels like Jack Smith are constitutionally permitted, that their funding is constitutionally permitted. They still are inferior officers to the Attorney General of the United States. Basically, no problem with the appointment of a special counsel. But this is an issue pending before Judge Cannon in the Southern District of Florida. And I am not quite sure why Justice Thomas did this, but he may have breathed some life into Mr. Trump's argument in front of Judge Cannon that Jack Smith was improperly, unconstitutionally appointed. That is not the law.

That is not the case. If she rules that way, I imagine she would be overturned on appeal. But it is a pending issue. And it seems to me that Justice Thomas was trying to give some sustenance to this argument. I believe it's a faulty argument. Every court that has examined it so far has found it to be a faulty argument. Reading from the concurrence of Justice Thomas, he writes this, if there's no law establishing the office that the special counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. That's from Clarence Thomas. So let's take one step back. Big picture.

Where does this leave us now, Lisa Rubin? I think a lot of people were surprised perhaps by the extent of this holding yesterday, by the murkiness that left for judges going forward about what's official and what's private. What's your final assessment now after what we've seen yesterday? Based on yesterday's opinion, a big chunk of the indictment is going to have to come out. That's the allegations having to do with Donald Trump's interactions with the Department of Justice. I think the allegations about the pressure campaign on Mike Pence are much at risk. That's the sort of second category of allegations that the court says it will be a high bar to rebut the presumption of official immunity there. And then you've got everything else. And that includes the fake elector scheme.

I am heartened to some extent that Justice Barrett and her concurrence drops a footnote and says none of that should ever be considered official. Not only did you have a concession that it wasn't an oral argument, but also the president has no role in the administration of federal elections. It should never have been considered or even thought of as remotely official. We'll see how Judge Chutkan, when the case comes back to her, whether she schedules hearings or briefings

to try and untangle this. The best we can hope for is maybe a hearing where evidence is presented and witnesses are called so that even if the public doesn't get the satisfaction of a real trial, some of the things that the Department of Justice has been holding back that clearly they have to justify this prosecution, we will see as a public before November, Willie. Last word to you, Chuck.

Lisa's right. Prosecutors are going to lose some evidence. The question is how much. As a former prosecutor, I hated losing evidence, Willie. There's no thing as too much evidence. And so here the prosecutors are going to need to see where they stand at the end of the day, at the end of those hearings. What do they have? What have they lost? Can they go forward? We shall see. MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin and former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg, thank you both very much for coming in this morning. And still ahead, we're

going to expand our political panel. One of our next guests says President Biden's 2024 survival requires a lot more than hope. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson joins us with his new piece. And Richard Haass is out with a warning this morning. The world should prepare for Trump. You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. Welcome back. Following last week's debate, President Biden's team is circulating new internal poll numbers that show his standing remains unchanged. In an effort to calm some Democrats about Biden's debate performance, a campaign official suggested the poll numbers indicate the concern over Biden's age is something voters have already taken into account. Some White House aides tell The Washington Post many who support Biden have long recognized he is showing signs of age and his debate performance did not significantly change the dynamics of the race. Meanwhile,

as of last night, President Biden still has not reached out to top Democrats on Capitol Hill following his debate performance. Five sources tell NBC News the president has yet to personally call Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, though White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients was making calls. While Democratic lawmakers are standing by Biden publicly, at least four have told NBC News they privately believe Biden needs to drop out now to avoid a lopsided defeat for Democrats. Joining us now, former White House director of communications for President Obama, Jen Palmieri, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of the Washington Post and MSNBC political analyst, Eugene Robinson, and co-host of MSNBC's The Weekend,

Simone Sanders Townsend, up way too early for us this morning, and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. He is the author of the weekly newsletter Home and Away, available on Substack. And Gene, we'll start with you and your new piece entitled Biden's 2024 survival requires a lot more than hope. What does he need to do? And do you think he knows that? Well, look, I think he needs to do everything he can to reverse the impression, the clear impression that was that was left by that debate five days ago, that debate on Thursday, because, you know, I have I've been coming on the show for a long time. I am a longtime critic of Democratic bedwetting.

I don't you know, I think it's it's crazy. A lot of the time, I think this is different. I think a lot of Democrats were shocked by what they saw Thursday night. And I think this sort of hunkering down and saying, you know, nothing to say, nothing to see here. You know, the polling is unchanged. They set out that memo over the weekend saying the polling is unchanged, so it didn't really hurt us. But that's internal polling focusing on the swing states that actually shows him trailing Donald Trump by a slight margin, you, we're still behind, but we're not behind any worse is not exactly the best ad for your campaign. some sort of unscripted appearance that shows that that erases the oppression that was very clearly left Thursday night. I think this is this is potentially a really big problem for the Democratic Party, for Biden's reelection campaign. And I think, you know, I think Democrats are right to to send up the alarm. Simone Sanders, what are you hearing?

Look, what I'm hearing from. Well, it depends on who we're talking to. Make it to be honest. When you talk to strategists and operatives, not folks that work for the Biden campaign or in the White House, but outside of that elected officials. Right. The political professionals, donors, they are echoing some of the same things that Eugene has noted in his piece that we're all hearing, that they are concerned, that they want to hear more from the White House, that they want to see the president do a town hall, do more interviews.

They want to see him more. But then when I talk to nonpolitical professionals, if you will, as I like to say, everyday regular folks who don't do this every day, they look at this and say, and Melissa Murray and I talked to black women in Montgomery County just this weekend on Sunday, and they all said, we asked them about the debate. They said the debate, it wasn't good for Trump or Joe Biden. But the women who were supportive of the president in that room said, look, at this point, we can't get anyone else.

There was someone that noted we should stand by our guy. There was someone else that noted how realistic is this talk of removing him. And they were more concerned with the broader picture. And they also unprompted

brought up democracy in the Supreme Court. So I would just argue that the best way for the Biden campaign to really, they won't be able to stop the talk

because the chatter is going to continue because every single thing that the president does between now and November is going to be parsed every single which way. If he stumbles walking,

if he walks a little too slow, if he walks a little too fast, you know, if he forgets a word, every single thing is going to be a view to the prism of what happened on that debate stage. So the chatter will not end. But I think a way to really blunt some of the criticism is, in fact, to, you know, let the president put the president out there in various ways in which that, you know, he will shine. And again, I think town halls doing doing things with voters, real people, where he is answering questions from regular folks will make the difference. And I do think the president could rise to that occasion.

And I will just lastly say that I think we have all heard chatter inside, and I was struck by that Washington Post reporting about concerns that folks said that they had about the president's health. The last time I saw the president, he seemed and looked fine to me. But yes, on that debate stage, it was not a good performance. And so the only way to assuage people's concerns is to let them see for themselves.

And Joe Biden, I believe, thinks that he is his best political consultant. And I'm interested to see what the president decides to do this week. So, Jen, the campaign releasing those internal polls, other polls tell a little bit different story about what people saw on Thursday night. The argument that some in the campaign and around it are making that it's just bedwetting Democratic donors and insiders just isn't true. I mean, it's at the dog park. It's in the barbershop.

It's at camp drop off and pick up. The people are talking about that performance on Thursday night. Voters, real voters. And by the way, voters who like Joe Biden, voters who are sympathetic to him wondering, oh, are we going to lose to Donald Trump with this guy? So how should the campaign you've worked inside them? Yeah, obviously successfully many times. How should they be? Sometimes it's always a mixed bag. How should the campaign be looking at this? OK, so it's Tuesday morning. So here's like where, you know, I mean, it's it's I mean, it's only you know, it's only been that that happened Thursday night. So this is where I think we are. I mean, I think the campaign did the president did a great job on Friday. The campaign did a great job, you know, that first 36 hours, it was critical that they be able to effectively make a case,

you know, that, that this was going to be okay. I think they have taken that as far as they can. And now it is up to, you know, now it's like sort of like two weeks, you know, before you really know where the public is on something in public polling. And then it's what does the president do now? Right. So, you know, I think, you know, he needed to take a couple of days off, sir. You know, he's been through a lot in the last month between Europe and, you know, Hunter's conviction and, you know, the debate. And and now I think people want to see they want to see more of him. And until we you know, there's a lot. It's like the base is rallying to his side,

grassroots money and, you know, and they're in claim their internal polls. Elites are continue to be concerned and have certain bars they want the president to meet. And, you know, we don't know yet which who's right, right. You know, who's right there. But the president brought him saved America from Trump. He ran because he thought he was that right person to beat Trump. And I think if the moment ever came where he thought I have taken this as far as I can and now it's up to all of us to continue the fight, I think he will make that choice. But, you know, that's not there now. Yeah. And I think the hope from the campaign is get some distance, as you say, from this show that he's still up to this. And as Governor Westmore put it very well the other day

in campaigning for President Biden, let's not talk about a debate performance. Let's talk about presidential performance, how these two presidents, one former, one current, and the job that their jobs. Yeah. So, Richard, your latest piece for Project Syndicate is titled After Biden's Debate Performance, the world should prepare for Trump in it. Richard writes, Richard, your latest piece for Project Syndicate is titled After Biden's Debate Performance, The World Should Prepare for Trump. In it, Richard writes, quote, Elections have consequences and this one more than most, given the differences between the candidates far exceed any similarities. In the wake of a debate that appears to have tipped the scales against Biden and with no way of knowing if someone else will be the Democratic candidate and how he or she would fare. U.S. friends and allies should prepare themselves for potentially major changes come January. Changes like what, Richard? What could be coming down the pike if Donald Trump is reelected? All sorts of changes in domestic policy and even more of a concern to the rest of the world,

which, by the way, watching this is really unnerving for much of the world. This is not the United States they thought they knew. The idea that they've got their security in our hands and they watch things like the other night, that does not make them feel good, shall we say, about the choices they've made. But, you know, look at the foreign policy. We've had a 75 year run in foreign policy where you get up every morning and things were mildly predictable. The United States would play this role, supporting alliances, supporting institutions, standing up to tyranny. The last I checked, we won the Cold War. It stayed cold, didn't go hot. We ended it on our terms.

It is impossible for anyone to sit here and argue that over the next 75 years, things are going to turn out as well, or the United States is going to play that kind of a role. And what Donald Trump does is accelerates the arrival of a very different United States and a very different world. Can I say two things really quickly now that I'm just sitting here? One is that we're looking at a very different United States. If Donald Trump wins, we're looking at him, not just in the White House with this new Supreme Court decision. We know what the Supreme Court is. It's no longer the arbiter. It's got its thumbs on the scale of American politics. And you're probably looking at a Republican Senate and a Republican House. That's called a run of the table. That means we become essentially a de facto parliamentary

system without checks and balances. This could be a truly radical moment with all the implications it would have for policy. The only thing I really disagree with the previous conversation, and Mika won't like this, is I don't think it's simply enough to say, looking back, whether Joe Biden's been a good president. Yes, he has. Or whether he's even a good president today. He's 81. He's going to be 82 in November. He's going to be 86 if he's reelected while he's still in the Oval Office. So when you elect a president, you're basically buying an option. You're buying a four-year option. And does anyone seriously think that in four and a half years from now, Joe Biden is going

to be what he needs to be to be an effective president, as he himself would say, come on, man, that's not going to be the case. And I hate to say it, but we've got to say it. So we've got Donald Trump, who is unfit by temperament, character, you name it, to be president. But I really believe that Joe Biden is no longer positioned that he can be a successful president four and a half years from now. That is why I think we really need to change. He needs to be urged to step down. Yeah, you're right. I don't like it. So I think one of the things that you wrote, Richard, is the most important thing to look at. And that was, you know, we have no idea

how another Democratic candidate would fare, which would be an argument for Joe Biden to absolutely stay in the race, especially if he feels up to it. And again, I don't think you can take what happened Thursday night, which I have said repeatedly was an unmitigated disaster. OK, I go way further than the campaign. I don't try and sugarcoat what happened. It was horrible. But I look at all the other things he did in the days leading up to it, which are things Donald Trump could never even do in his life. He could never even try to be as presidential, to be as respected, to go to Normandy and connect with people in the way he did. He literally doesn't have that gene. He doesn't have empathy. He doesn't have it. And many think that actually

his goals are only for one person. And I don't know anybody else I've ever met in my life who is as self-centered, as completely focused on his own personal gain in a position of service to the country, but using that position of service for his own personal gain and to destroy the foundation that this country is built on. I've never seen anything like it. And I think I'm not alone. I think Joe Biden has few choices here. Go ahead, Richard. No, I didn't mean to interrupt. I apologize. I wrote a book about obligations and the 10th obligation, as you just said, Donald Trump violates every day, which is to put the country before himself and his party.

I think the real question for us to ask, how does Joe Biden honor that obligation now? And is by running again, is that putting the country before himself and his party? I say this with real sorrow. I've known Joe Biden for 50 years. I've worked with him. I like him. I speak with him from time to time. And again, I think he's been a good president. I just at this point think he's reached the point in his trajectory where the best thing

he could do for this country is to be a one term president voluntarily. By the way, the last two one term presidents, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Not bad. OK, and so then we go Sam Stein to let's take Richard's concept, which I completely disagree with, to let's let's hash it out like exactly. Then what happens? We go with someone completely untested, completely inexperienced because they seem cool because they're younger, because they have less experience. Like, what does that look like? I'm just not willing to walk away from someone who has worked this hard and has performed this well and gotten this much done on every level, more than any president before him, including the ones Richard Haass worked for.

Right. Well, there is a sort of semi-middle ground here, right, which is Kamala Harris. She's been vetted. She's the vice president. She would inherit the campaign infrastructure. She would inherit the money, whereas anyone else in this hypothetical universe could not. She would be the logical person to take on the mantle. And on top of that, she has some experience debating Republicans at this level, including making the case against Donald Trump. That would be the logical extension here. I agree with you. The other ones, they are untested. We've got a big sigh there on air. A lot of the other ones are untested, and that would be problematic in its own right. But look, I think this ultimately comes back to Biden and Richard's points valid, which is

Joe Biden was the one who set the standard for himself, right? Every time that there was questions about his age and vitality, his response was, watch me. That was his response. We watched him on Thursday night. I think we around the table agree he did not pass the test that he set for himself. I will say this. There is some indication of what it would take internally in his internal thought process for him to decide to quit the race. I went and looked at this historical record because he has quit a presidential race before. In 1988, the run for the White House, he quit that presidential race because he was under a cloud of allegations about plagiarism and exaggerating his academic credentials. At the same time, he was overseeing the confirmation hearings for Robert Bork.

He met with Jill and decided, if I left the race, would that help me defeat Bork? And they came to a decision that, yes, if he left the race, he could defeat Bork. And from that, you can extrapolate that the decision he's going to have to make is, is leaving the race this time around enough to help defeat Donald Trump? If he concludes that no, him being in the race is what is necessary to defeat Trump, stays in. It's pretty simple. If he decides that no, in fact, I need to leave the race in order for Trump to be defeated,

then he leaves the race. Obviously, he's not at the point where he's made that decision, but that's what the next week, two weeks, whatever it is, is going to be about. Willie, Sam brought up Jill and Jill just did an interview saying 90 minutes of Joe's life are not going to define his presidency and we are continuing with it. I just wonder, as we question this again and again and again, instead of wait for things to play out, including major polling, which may change the course of the race, who knows? You know, are we listening? Because they don't seem to be budging and they want to move forward. Yeah. And this is a we should be under no illusions.

This is a very difficult decision. Joe Biden could decide to stay in the race if he loses. It's viewed as a historic mistake. He could get out of the race and whoever comes after him could lose and it would be viewed as a historic mistake. This is not easy at all, Simone Sanders. So I'm curious, as you talk to people in the White House, some of your old colleagues there, I know you say it depends on who you talk to people in the White House, some of your old colleagues

there, I know you say it depends on who you talk to about how they're feeling right now. But some of the stuff that's come out, you know, the night of the debate, they said he had a cold. Then they went to it was nine o'clock and then they went to he was in Europe two weeks before that. I don't think any of that is reassuring to voters to say, do you mean to say that the president of the United States can't do anything after nine o'clock, that he can't do anything if he has a cold? So what is the message? What is the strategy? Is it that he beat Donald Trump once and he still can do it again? Yeah, Willie, I think it boils down to your last point.

And, you know, Anita Dunn joined our show The Weeknd this past weekend to talk about the fact that after that debate, I asked very point directly. I said, you know, did you all have a conversation about him dropping out? Is that something you talked about? And she said, no, what we discussed was how to move forward. And that is, by every indication of all my conversations, what they are focused on. Now, I did ask, this is something that I did ask folks who are very well adept and knowledgeable of DNC and convention rules, because these these hypotheticals that folks are posing about, you know, the president has two weeks to make a decision or it's only him and the two weeks are very critical. I hear that. But then I also know the rules. And just so folks at home are aware, there are a little over 4,000 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. These are people who run and are elected, save about 744 of those

folks are superdelegates. These are appointed people that are elected officials, folks who have a DNC chair appointed them, the president appointed them them at one point in time in a previous life. I was a superdelegate, one of those, you know, 744 folks. Joe Biden in this primary that was run because there were primary elections that happened across the country. Democrats. He got about a little over 3600 delegates in order for Joe, if Joe Biden were to decide prior to accepting and confirming the nomination of the Democratic nominee for president, those delegates were going to free fall. He could not dictate where those delegates go. OK, so the best possible scenario, to be clear, as it was explained to me by the people that know well in the numbers, is that Joe Biden accepts this nomination. And if if for whatever reason he decides that he does not want to be in this race anymore, again, by every indication, we know we don't have that indication that any of that is the case. Joe Biden himself and all of his closest aides are saying

he is in this to win it and he is staying in the race. If he decides, though, he doesn't want to be in the race anymore. The best possible scenario is for him to accept the nomination and wait to decide after. Because then instead of 4000 folks deciding, it is a very small five group of people that will pick who will be the Democratic nominee. I just want to put that on the table for folks. That's how it works. That's important. I appreciate your explaining that. Simone Sanders Townsend, a super delegate and a super host carrying the network this morning, hosting way too early the weekends. Now with us on Morning Joe, she'll be back on way too early tomorrow morning. And Sam Stein drawing size from the group for his commentary, as usual. Sam, thanks so much. That was me. That was me. Thank you, Sam. We love you, buddy. We love you. Richard, can we talk

quickly before we let you go about the French elections and what happened in that first round? The snap elections called by President Macron, Marine Le Pen's party, far right party doing very well. What happens from here? Well, you have the second round, July 7th. The center cannot hold. This turned out to be a colossal mistake by French President Macron. The far right coalition has the plurality of seats, probably can't get an outright majority. You could possibly have a situation where you can't form a government after the second round. It's not clear these three blocks can come together. Macron's block, by the way, is going to come in third of three, which ain't a great place to be.

So you could have a French president without essentially a French government in the parliament trying to work everything out tactically. This could actually create pressures for new French presidential election sooner. Just the opposite, by the way, in the UK. There you're going to have a blowout victory on July 4th. Blowout victory. Labour is going to win a landslide, almost unprecedented in British politics. What these things together show, Willie, bad, bad time to be the incumbent. Both of these are a vote against the status quo. You've got a center left government winning in the UK and you've got a far right government and a far left party, far right parties and far left parties winning in France. It just shows that if you're the incumbent, you are you you have real

headwinds at this moment in history. And fascinating, Francis, all comes a couple of weeks before the Olympic Games taking place right there in Paris. Richard Haass, thank you so much. Good to see you. Coming up next, today marks 60 years since the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. Doris Kearns Goodwin joins us with a look at the historic legislation and its lasting impact.

Morning Joe is coming right back. 52 past the hour, just hours after slamming the Windward Islands as a powerful Category 4 storm yesterday. Hurricane Beryl has strengthened even further, becoming the earliest Category 5 hurricane ever observed in the Atlantic Basin. The storm first hit an island in Grenada yesterday, ripping doors, windows and roofs off homes. At least two people have died. At this point, the National Hurricane Center says wind speeds have reached up to 160 miles per hour. The storm is now headed toward Jamaica. The risk to the U.S. is very low, but the White House says it is monitoring the path of the storm. And still ahead, we'll get back to the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential

immunity and the implication it now has on Donald Trump's other cases. Barbara McQuaid, Jay Johnson and Joyce Fence will join us. Plus, a special report from Vanity Fair on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Our most immediate tasks are here on this hill. First, no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's assassinated, urging Congress to take action on the late president's civil rights bill. Months later, Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and hours after it passed, President Johnson signed it into law 60 years ago today. Afterwards, President Johnson called on the country to fulfill its founding promise that all its citizens were created equal. Tonight, I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every working man, every housewife,

I urge every American to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people and to bring peace to our land. Joining us now, Pulitzer Prize winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin to think about where we are now versus where we were headed back then. And Gene Robinson has the first question for you. Doris. Doris, I remember the impact of the personal impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because that's when segregation finally, Jim Crow segregation finally started to be dismantled in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The Brown v. Board didn't integrate our schools, but the Civil Rights

Act started that process. There were restaurants that would not serve African-Americans that started to open their doors. It was so more than significant. It was life-changing and world-changing, at least from where I live. Could you talk about the sort of larger impact on the nation and on our history of that piece of legislation? Yeah, I think it's so important, especially at this disheartening time, to remember there was once a time in this country when something huge went forward, just exactly as you say, at the very moment that President Johnson signed that legislation, all of those years, 78 years of Jim Crow legislation was gone. That next day, minutes afterwards, blacks could walk into hotels, department stores, and all the indignities of daily life would be beginning to be erased. You know, and it's interesting just hearing Lyndon Johnson at the beginning in that first speech he gave to the joint session of Congress right after JFK had died.

He made that decision. It was a very courageous decision to make his number one priority, the passage of that bill. His advisor said, you're crazy to do that. You'll never get it through. The Democratic Party is split in two. The filibuster will take two thirds. You won't be able to get it there. You'll be a failed president. You'll have to go before the country in 11 months as a failed president. You only have a certain amount of currency to expend as president. You should not expend it on this. And then what did he famously say? He said, then what the hell is the presidency for? I mean, that was a time when the presidency had huge ambitions for good in this country. And then immediately he set to work to get the Republicans to go with him to join the Northern Democrats.

And that meant old Everett Dirksen had to be brought into the fold, the minority leader. He said to all of his Democratic leaders on the floor, you drink with Dirksen, you talk with Dirksen, you listen to Dirksen, you give credit to Dirksen. We need a bipartisan legislation. And Dirksen came around. Finally, Johnson said to him, knowing that he cared, too, about his legacy, as did Lyndon Johnson. You know, Everett, you bring your Republicans to help the Democrats pass this bill. And 200 years from now, schoolchildren will know only two names, Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen. How can Dirksen resist? He brought 22 Republicans, 44 Democrats. They passed that law

that changed the face of this country. We've got to remember those moments in this disheartening time. You know, Doris, you look at those still photographs of the signing ceremony and they're just extraordinary portraits of American history. Martin Luther King Jr. is there. The attorney general Bobby Kennedy is there. Everett Dirksen, you said FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is there. Everett Dirksen, as you said, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is there. So can you speak, Doris, to how America got to that day 60 years ago? And by that, I mean the pressure placed on President Johnson by the civil rights movement, by Martin Luther King and many, many other people and the partnership between Dr. King and President Johnson to get the legislation through. It's one of those moments in history when the outside movement, the civil rights movement, comes into the highest councils of power with Lyndon Johnson and the Congress.

It starts really back in the 1950s with the Montgomery bus boycott, with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King coming to Montgomery to worry about segregation in buses. It takes the Freedom Riders. It takes the sit-ins during all that time of young people in the late 50s and 60s, all the way up through Birmingham, which really fired the conscience of the country when peaceful civil rights marchers were going through the streets to Montgomery to protest the failure of civil rights being still segregated. And what have they done? They're met by Bull Connor's dogs.

They're met by high-pressured hoses. Young kids are struck down. They're sent to jail. And suddenly the conscience of the country is fired. And then Martin Luther King brings that to the legislation. That's where John Kennedy finally introduces the bill in June. Then you have that great civil rights march in August. It took a long time.

And then finally Lyndon Johnson gets it passed. And I think what it illustrates is that for change to take place, we have to be patient sometimes. It takes a long time. But they kept moving forward, moving forward. And without the civil rights movement and the bravery of the Freedom Riders and the Freedom Soldiers in all those marches, it would not have happened. So they deserve those pens. So did the Democrats. So did the Republicans. So did Bobby Kennedy, who was at the head of the Justice Department at that time. And to see that panoply of people there getting those pens and knowing that they had made an historic change, it just makes us feel we have to remember these moments.

We did it once before in our country. Once upon a time, we were a country that did these things. We've got to believe we can do it again. You can stare at those photographs from a long time. Just go around and see all who was in that room.