Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/26/24

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Obama endorses Harris for president in a whirlwind week of party support

Biden spoke for 11 minutes about his decision to drop out. The only hiccup in the speech was a guy off-camera yelling, please get back in the race, please. I'm a reporter from a... You've never met me before, please. It was a very graceful speech. Then at the end, Biden surprised everyone by announcing his candidacy for 2028.

And you're like, no, stop. Stop, please. Some late night laughs to start us off. Vice President Harris is calling out Donald Trump after his campaign refused to commit to the upcoming presidential debate. Meanwhile, her campaign also continues to highlight J.D. Vance's comments about childless politicians. We'll show you how they trolled

Trump's running mate. And we'll bring you the latest on the hush money verdict appeal from Trump's legal team. Former litigator Lisa Rubin will join us with expert legal analysis. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, July 26th. I'm Jonathan Lemire. Thanks for being with us. With us, we have a great, great group. Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson. Managing editor at The Bulwark, Sam Stein. And former White House director of communications to President Obama, Jennifer Palmieri. And the weekend starting a little early this morning as we have two thirds of the hosts of MSNBC's The Weekend.

Former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, is here, as is former senior adviser and chief spokesperson to Vice President Kamala Harris, Simone Sanders Townsend. Joe and Mika, we should note are off this morning. They're starting a planned vacation, but they will pop back on if there's big breaking news, which, judging by the events of the past couple of weeks, will be any minute now. So we'll be hearing from them. Willie, of course, lucky guy, is on assignment in Paris for the Olympics, and he actually will be joining us live from France later this hour, ahead, of course, of today's opening ceremony, the Olympics kicking off. And there is a developing story out of France breaking right now this morning, where a series of coordinated malicious acts have targeted part of the country's high-speed rail network, disrupting service for

hundreds of thousands of passengers. This is developing. We'll bring you the latest. And again, we'll get an update from Willie in Paris just ahead. But we'll begin this hour with a big development in the race for president here in the United States, where former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama have officially endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Here's a video released by the Harris campaign showing the moment that the Obamas called the vice president to offer their full support. Kamala. Hello. Hi. Hey there. Oh, hi. You're both together. Oh, it's good to hear you both. I can't have this phone call without saying to my girl Kamala, I am proud of you. This is going to be historic.

We call to say Michelle and I couldn't be prouder to endorse you and to do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office. Oh, my goodness. Michelle, Barack, this means so much to me. I'm looking forward to doing this with the two of you, Doug and I both, and getting out there, being on the road. But most of all, I just want to tell you that the words you have spoken and the friendship that you have given over all these years mean more than I can express. So thank you both. It means so much. And we're going to have some fun with this, too, aren't we? Jen Palmieri, no surprise here.

This is, of course, part of a coordinated rollout of endorsements, though there had been some chatter on the right, nonsensical, that the Obamas were having doubts about the vice president. That could not be further from the truth. So no surprise, but still important. Tell us what you think this means. Well, I think one of the things that's important about it is that Mrs. Obama was on the call. Right. And the president said that they're both going to do everything they can because she is, you know, she politics is her husband's thing. And she's a phenomenally effective campaigner. But it doesn't always it doesn't doesn't doesn't necessarily look for opportunity to spend a lot of time campaigning. But I think for her to be on the call, too, says how important it is to her and that she wants to help as well. And, you know, the two of them are just such a major force.

And, you know, they are longtime friends. And I think President Obama had stepped back from endorsing, as other party leaders had, to sort of give their room to be a process for somebody else to get in the race if they wanted to, but also to show that this is a real, you know, legitimate nominating process. And now you're at the point where both of the Obamas are fully able to express being on board and wanting to campaign for her. And that's going to be a huge help. Yeah. And Sam Stein, I think also the Obamas wanted to give room to President Joe Biden. He, of course, a friend. And yes, the Obamas behind the scenes certainly had concerns about his ability to win. But after Biden dropped out, they wanted to give

him a little more space. And we also shouldn't lose sight of the history here, Sam, where this is the nation's first black president endorsing the woman who could be the second. Oh, yeah, completely. I think that is getting a little bit lost amid what has been a very dramatic, to put it bluntly, four-week process here is that history is being made. This is going to be the first nomination of a black female candidate for president in our nation's history. I'm also struck by just, and Eugene, I'm kind of curious for your take on this, the convention in three weeks is going to, for months and months and months, we were expecting it would be a dreadful affair, potentially filled with protests, shades of 1968. It's shaping up to be something quite different.

And I couldn't help but make the contrast. I was in Milwaukee. The lineup was interesting. The lead-up speakers included Hulk Hogan, Dana White. On Thursday night at the Democratic convention, you could potentially see the sitting president of the United States being the warm-up act for the vice president to take a historic victory lap as the presidential candidate. Talk about just what that convention will be like, how star-studded it will be, and just the contrast between that convention and what was the Milwaukee convention for Republicans. Well, I think the Democratic convention this time is going to be the party of the year. I mean, it just, can you imagine? They'll do a whole lot better than Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock.

Let me put it that way. I mean, I can imagine the stars who will come out. I can imagine the production values. I can just imagine. And the delegates, just the general sense there is, as you know, as everybody knows, just subjectively, this incredible feeling of energy within the Democratic Party right now that certainly wasn't there a week ago. And and it is, you know, it's it's on a scale of one to ten. It's like a 12 right now. And who knows where it will be when they get to the convention. So I think this is going to be a dramatic contrast. And as Republicans look back on their convention, you already have the kind of questions about J.D. Vance and really the right guy.

Their candidate, Donald Trump, is clearly in a sour mood and kind of doesn't know exactly where to go and what to say, how to try to attack all of this. And most important of all, the convention, once again, will keep Trump out of the headlines, right? He has been doing whatever he could to get the spotlight, but it's not on him. It's off of him. It's on Kamala Harris and the Democrats. And that has to be driving Donald Trump crazy. One note about the Democratic

Convention. There still should expect probably widespread protests about the situation in Gaza based on what we just saw in Washington this week. But you're right. Certainly inside the arena, it's going to be celebratory. And a number of Democrats last couple of days who have told me, imagine the thunderous ovation President Biden is going to get now after making that decision to step aside. It will be a remarkable homecoming for him. But let's talk about the race we do have now, Harris versus Trump. And the latest New York Times-Siena College poll shows the vice president closing the gap on former President Trump. According to the survey, Trump leads Harris by just a single point among likely voters and two points among registered voters nationwide. That is within the poll's margin of error.

In the previous time Santa survey conducted immediately after last month's debate, Trump led President Joe Biden by six points among likely voters and eight points among registered voters. Those results were outside the margin of error. And another poll now, according to a new one from Axios and Generation Lab, Vice President Harris has opened up a wide lead among young voters. In this survey, Harris leads Trump by 20 points, 60 percent to 40 percent among 18 to 34 year olds nationwide. For comparison, Biden led Trump by just six points when those same voters were asked who they would support if Biden were still the presumptive nominee. And given that apparent momentum, Vice President Harris

says she is ready and willing to debate former President Trump on September 10th, which is the date previously scheduled with Trump and Biden. But now the Trump team is not confirming if they will still participate. In a statement released last night, Trump communications director Stephen Chung wrote in part this. General election debate details cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee. That would likely push back any discussion of a debate schedule until after the DNC in Chicago. Trump, of course, previously debated Biden without either of them being formally nominated. Vice President Harris, who has already secured support from enough delegates to become the nominee once it becomes official, called out the Trump team yesterday for backpedaling.

I'm ready to debate Donald Trump. I have agreed to the previously agreed upon September 10th debate. He agreed to that previously. Now it appears he's backpedaling, but I'm ready. And I think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage. And so I'm ready. Let's go. So, Simone, it does feel like Donald Trump's got some cold feet. He obviously got the best of President Biden in their debate in Atlanta a few weeks ago, but it certainly seems like he's anxious about this time around with the vice president. Yeah, he doesn't seem to be waiting with bated breath to debate the

vice president. And I mean, look, we know from Donald Trump's own statements that he does not like the enthusiasm that he does not like the enthusiasm that he is seeing around the vice president. He's talked about the crowds and how the media apparatus has been talking about her crowds. And he has not actually figured out how to debate her, really. I mean, it seems as though the Republicans, again, they continue to resort to racist and just sexist, misogynistic stereotypes and tropes because they cannot talk about the issues. So I don't know, Michael, what the Republicans are going to do and what Donald Trump is going

to do here, because the clock is ticking, is it not? I mean— Here, there are a couple of things at play here. First off, there is among a lot of the Washington Republicans quietly in corners where they tend to hang out when they don't have, you know, the backbone to actually come forward to say that the pick of J.D. Vance was a problem. There weren't a lot. There was not a lot of enthusiasm among a lot of the Washington types around this pick. It was something that was brought to Donald Trump by his sons. That was their pick. And so here they are. The second part of this does play into how Donald Trump and his campaign narratively figure out the new terrain in front of them. I look at this race right now and I don't see a world in which Donald Trump mans up and debates Kamala Harris. The felon is not going to debate

the prosecutor. That's just not going to happen. When the question comes around about his 34 felony convictions, what do you think she's going to do? I mean, really? You want to walk into that buzzsaw in the conversation so you can throw the border all day long, but you'll mismeet on everything else. And that's where you're seeing now the campaign beginning to make tactical decisions around, A, introducing Kamala, B, taking off the table some of the noise around the border, the borders are crazy and all of that. So this is a nimble campaign in the early stages. And I think for a lot of folks, and Sam, you're out here covering this stuff, man. I know you see it and hear it up close and personal personal that this feels different from a campaign style and function perspective that really has thrown Republicans for a loop right now in terms of exactly how do you come at this?

And now you want to debate, too? I just don't I just don't see this scenario playing out. And Donald Trump is already doing the backstroke. You know, he's like, I don't need to swim in that direction. I just don't see this debate coming off right now. And let me marvel at your backstroke. It looked very good. You got to sign up for the Olympics, Michael.

Yeah. We have reporting coming out actually from Mark Caputo today at the Bulwark about this, which is the Trump campaign had prepared a campaign to run against Joe Biden. They did. That was what they were, that's what they believed was going to happen. Even in sort of the midst of the post-debate despair among Democrats, they thought that Biden would probably survive, and then it became clear that he couldn't. And now they're scrambling. It doesn't mean that they never knew how to attack Kamala Harris. It doesn't mean that they hadn't prepared attack lines for Kamala Harris. But it's a wholly different election now. And all that slack and Democratic enthusiasm that was there

has quickly been made up. And not only that, but we're seeing some potential to expand what had been a narrowed map. So Joe Biden's paths were very clearly the industrial Midwest, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. In the last two days, you've seen polls from Georgia that show almost a statistically tied race. So this is going to revamp a lot of resources. Now, the challenge, of course, is on both sides, right? Kamala Harris has been vice president for three and a half years, but voter perceptions of her aren't as baked in as they were of Joe Biden, which means that in the next three windows, she can be easily defined, or more easily defined, I should say, by her opponents. And what we see now, I think, is very telling, which is that the Future Forward PAC, which is the supportive political action committee, is going up with a multimillion-dollar biographical ad to make sure that that doesn't happen. Long story short, it's a remarkably confined, compressed race where a ton of money is going

to be spent and strategies are just being thrown out the window and revamped. Yeah, we've heard the Trump team openly boast about this Death Star-esque campaign operation they built to take down Joe Biden. But now, of course, they have to adjust. And we'll see if Trump ends up debating or not. Of course, if he ducks it, he'd have to deal with calls that he was being a coward and afraid to go head to head with the vice president. That's not something he traditionally enjoys being called. We'll have much more on that throughout the morning. And next up here on Morning Joe, we'll show you how the Harris campaign used World IVF Day to take on J.D. Vance amid resurfaced clips of him criticizing people without children.

Plus, what the vice president is saying about her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and her new calls for an end to the war in Gaza. But first, Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan joins us at the table. We'll talk to him about the state of the race in his district. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. It is the weirdest thing to me. Democrats say that it is racist to believe. Well, they say it's racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they're going to call that racist too, but it's good. I love you guys.

What was weird was him joking about racism today and then talking about Diet Mountain Dew. Who drinks Diet Mountain Dew. Who drinks Diet Mountain Dew? Folks, I've been a person that when sometimes I've gone over the line, I've wanted to make sure that I set the record straight. So I do owe an apology to Diet Mountain Dew. AL81 is definitely the soft drink of Kentucky. But I don't believe that government should be making your decisions. So if you enjoy Diet Mountain Dew, UBU, we want to support you. And to Diet Mountain Dew, very sorry.

Didn't mean to say negative things about you. Perhaps not the best of our politics here, but that's Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear taking a jab at J.D. Vance's take on Diet Mountain Dew. Meanwhile, on a more serious note, the Harris campaign used World IVF Day as an opportunity to go after Donald Trump's new running mate. A press release went out yesterday afternoon that read this way. Happy World IVF Day to everyone except J.D. Vance. It comes as Vance faces renewed criticism for comments he made in 2021 during his Senate campaign. He talks about people who don't have

children. We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it? And here's another clip that's also from 2021 that's recently resurfaced. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent,

you should have more power. You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic Republic than people who don't have kids. Let's face the consequences and the reality. If you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice. Now people will say, and I'm sure the Atlantic and the Washington post and all the usual suspects will criticize me about this in the coming days. Well, doesn't this mean that non-parents don't have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn't this mean that parents get a bigger say in how our democracy functions? Yes, absolutely. Jen Palmieri, boy, I don't know.

It seems a risky calculation to alienate a significant portion of the voting block. In addition to being deeply insensitive, people make their own choices about not having children. Some people can't have children. This feels like something that's going to resonate and perhaps a sign of just how rushed and poorly thought out Trump's vetting selection of Vance was. Or just how, you know, are just how certain they are that they're going to that they're going to win with a male vote. And it's I mean, it was, you know, one of things that was really surprising to me was Thursday night at the Republican convention, when you had Hulk Hogan and Dana White, who like I did not know who that person was until that night. Eric Trump and Donald Trump, you thought that that time they had the advantage that they would make an effort to reach out to women. But

they seem with the Vance pick, with how they're programming when Republican the Republican convention to not just not try to appeal to women, but going out of their way to alienate them. And, you know, particularly, I mean, to to make childless parents, you know, childless parents, a political issue when you know it's such a painful thing for so many people in America, but then also just alienating so many women. I think I saw a Morning Joe fan who recognized me in the grocery store yesterday, and she had a towering stack of cat food and like threw it in her cart. This gave me the biggest grin. So this is just it's just it's just igniting people and and

particularly women. And I think that, you know, one thing that's been interesting to me also in watching, because obviously I worked for Hillary Clinton. I'm a big observer of how women are treated in the political arena. And I want to go to Simone on this, how there are memes that are starting on the Republican side about the vice president, whether it's about her laugh or about her mom saying that she fell out of a coconut tree that they thought would would mock the vice president that that would be seen as a turnoff. And instead, people are picking that up, picking these memes up and they're and they're celebrating them and saying, you know, we have your back. It's like whatever that we know what you're trying to

do to her and whatever you whatever you throw at her, we're going to embrace and we're always going to have her back. And like smoke, like what's your take on what's going on there? Well, look, I think that it shows a generational divide, right? Because the attacks that have been lobbed against the vice president as of late, frankly, are not new attacks. They have been lobbed against her since she exploded onto the national political scene when she became a senator. And then definitely during the 2019-2020 campaign, her own campaign. And then when she joined President Biden's, then-candidate Biden's ticket as his running mate.

And so there has been this sustained attack to paint her as someone that is somehow unserious, who did not earn her position where she is, and someone who just, you know, isn't—there's just something not right about her. And that's what the attacks are about. That's what the memes are—the original memes from the conservative right-wing media are about. But when young people got a hold of the clips that had been playing incessantly on Fox News, what they saw there was someone that they connected with.

They connected with what she was saying. They connected with the stories that she was telling. They found it, frankly, like a breath of fresh air. And that is why there has been this virality, if you will, that has become the Kamala Harris effect. I do think, though, when it comes to the campaign, they have to figure out what tone they're going to take. And you always have to strike the balance, I think, between what the candidate is saying and what the campaign is saying. I think that this campaign is just not even a week old yet. And there are folks there that have not worked—you know, they've worked for the vice president as the person who was on the ticket, the Biden-Harris campaign.

Now that it is the Harris campaign, they have to figure out her tone. And while the press release, I thought it was very, very good, a little snarky, jabbing J.D. Vance. I don't think it was something that the vice president herself would do or say. And so how do you strike the tone, given the fact that this is an election that is serious? It is an election, though, where the Republicans have—where Donald Trump has chosen a running mate that seems very unserious. And this goes back to why vetting is important. I hope the Karis people are watching, like, well, maybe we need to check again. Some of these people we're looking at. But the tone here is going to be very, very important because the voters are looking at this and watching both of these candidates as they make their decisions in less than 100 days. Yeah, the tone is exactly right. It does seem like some of those young staffers in Wilmington and their sort of attitudes might more closely align with the vice president than perhaps President Joe Biden. We're seeing some of those attacks and the memes come out. And Michael Steele, it's also an effort, it seems now, for the Harris campaign to flip the script on what was President Biden's biggest vulnerability, age.

In fact, one of those snarky press releases that went out yesterday flat out said, you know, 78 year old Donald Trump statement on a 78 year old criminal's Fox News appearance referring to Donald Trump appearing on his favorite cable network. So they're trying to make the traction here that Donald Trump is old and also the Trump and Trump and Vance are just weird in addition to being dangerous to democracy. Yeah, it's the weird part that's the most engaging side of all of this, I guess, because, you know, look, I love the leaning into the age. I love the pivot in that regard right out of the gate. Now, will it be sustainable down the down the lane? Maybe, maybe not, depending on how the Trump team handles some of that. But what all of this shows me at this point, Jonathan, is flexibility. And it was something that was not necessarily inherent any longer in the Biden campaign. And there's a lot of reasons for that that have nothing to do with Biden's age and everything to do with being the incumbent president and the trappings of the office and

all the nervous Nellies who want to protect that side of the equation, meaning the president. And that goes to what Simone was just saying. There is a difference in voice between the candidate and oftentimes not just their staff, their in-house staff, vice presidential staff, but the campaign staff, which tends to be a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more edgy. Finding that balance is something they'll do over the next couple of weeks. They'll have to layer into that, obviously, a vice presidential pick whose tone and the nuance of that will also have to get factored in. But I love the flexibility here. I love the in-your-face, we're not going to lie down and curl up in the corner just because Donald Trump is rage-tweeting at 2 a.m.,

which says a lot if he's doing that, which means this team has gotten under his skin. This team is going to be competitive. Will there be stumbles? Yes, because that's the nature of the game. But how they recover from that and how they set that up, I think, becomes the next side of this conversation going into the convention and then whipsawing out of the convention into a full-throated campaign. One last point about this process that I love right now. Joe Biden has been transformative on so many levels. And I think Joe Biden may have unlocked for us a very important key in our electoral process, because what we're seeing now is the reason why we don't need two years of a presidential race. Sorry, consultants. I know. I know. But we can do this in a very short time frame because Kamala Harris is doing it. She's standing up a national campaign.

I'm going to advocate for every staffer in America for every future presidential campaign. They don't want it. They don't want it. I'm not saying you don't need to do it in three weeks, but you can do it in six to eight months. You don't need two years to ramp up a campaign. Trust me, I know that. You don't. But it does show flexibility,

the ability to engage a conversation with the American people. I think, Jonathan, that is something to watch. I'm not saying the next cycle, we're going to do this in six months, but it shows it can be done. We don't need two years of TV commercials running for president. The future here in the United States, snap elections, per Michael Steele.

And certainly it has only been a few days since Kamala Harris's campaign has come together. They are showing that nimbleness. They are showing sort of a sense of taking it right to Trump. But they're also focusing on some serious issues, they say, will define this year's election. And one of them, of course, abortion health care. And it has become one of the vice president's central pieces of her presidential campaign. And our next guest is also highlighting the current threat to reproductive rights in his quest for reelection. Joining us now, Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan. He represents New York's 18th district, one of the state's key swing districts. Back in 2022, Ryan scored a

narrow victory over his Republican challenger in his congressional race. It was his second win in less than three months after claiming a vacant seat in a neighboring House district in a special election earlier that year. Congressman, thank you so much for being with us this morning. You know, sometimes issues get siloed and abortion health care sometimes is all too often seen as a woman's issue. And it should be the province of a female candidate to talk about. You're making it clear that is not the case at all. This is an American issue.

I mean, you saw the video that came out yesterday morning from the Harris campaign, which was incredibly compelling. It's an issue of freedom, which is the most universally agreed upon value in the United States of America. You try to take away Americans' freedoms, they stand up, say no way. We saw that in 2022, in my race, as you mentioned, in all these special elections. And we're going to see it again because people have not forgotten how extreme Trump and Vance and Project 2025 and their desire to use this Comstock Act, this antiquated legislation from the 1800s that would allow them to put in place a nationwide abortion ban. So people are on the ground already aware of that. Harris is marshalling that energy and putting it in this frame of we are the ones standing up for, fighting for, protecting your freedom, not just reproductive freedom, economic freedom, freedom from gun violence, freedom to breathe clean air. I mean, this, I'm so energized and

excited that she's centering this campaign on freedom. And certainly post-Dobbs, abortion rights basically undefeated at the ballot box, including in some pretty deep red states. Tell us how you see in your race, how it's playing out. Well, you're exactly right. The vast majority of the American people want their reproductive rights protected, not just women, men, women, people, Americans of all generations. In my special election, every pundit, every pollster, no offense, said we were not going to win this special election. This was back in August of 2022, the first House race after the Dobbs decision. We centered reproductive freedom against all the sort of consensus advice, and we won. And we had such energy. And I feel that same energy now. And Vice President Harris knows that in her gut, in her heart. And to see her bring

that forward, it's firing the country up. And Gene Robinson, it is striking how the word freedom, where so long was a Republican campaign buzzword, has been absolutely effectively taken by the Harris team and Democrats. Yeah, I've thought for a long time that progressives and Democrats should take back these words and these symbols of America. They belong to us as much as they belong to the right. And so, yeah, take back the word freedom. Take back the word liberty. Take back the American flag. It's ours. It's not just theirs. And we can't allow them to own it. I do have a question for the congressman, just stepping back for a second. In the Democratic Party's attempt to take back the House of Representatives, New York state is crucial. The Democrats lost a bunch of seats in New York the last time around that they had won

before and that perhaps they should have won in the recent midterm. Are they going to win those seats back again now? What is your sort of gut feeling about how things are going in those New York house races? I think now, especially in the last few days from the top of the ticket, certainly in critical house races in New York, across the country, we are on the offensive. And your point is so right that when we lean forward into freedom, into patriotism, into these are shared American values that transcend party. And I'm telling you, in my district, this is what people want. They want a future looking, forward looking, optimistic, but tough American view of this. That's what we're doing in my race. That's what we're going to do in all these critical New York races. I am confident that we are going to take back the House, hold the Senate, and we are

going to have an historic President Kamala Harris. All right. We'll be watching all of those races, and it will certainly be a fierce fight for the House. Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan of New York, thank you very much for joining us this morning. Thank you. Coming up next here on Morning Joe, Manhattan's district attorney is urging the judge presiding over Donald Trump's criminal hush money case to keep the former president's conviction. We'll break down the arguments as Trump's legal team looks to toss out the case entirely in light of the Supreme Court's recent immunity ruling. Morning Joe, we'll be right back with that. Welcome back to Morning Joe, 6.40 a.m. here on the East Coast. We hit some of the morning's other headlines now, and Manhattan's district attorney is urging the judge in Donald Trump's hush money's immunity for official acts while president has no bearing on his conviction on charges of falsifying

business records in New York. Bragg contends that the charges exclusively stem from conduct for which Trump is not immune. The former president's attorneys have argued the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling should lead to the case being tossed entirely. Joining us now to help us sort it out, former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent, Lisa Rubin. Lisa, good to see you again. So let's talk about this case. Do you think the Trump team's arguments have any merit? Because it is striking, I think, to most people watching this saying, well, wait a minute, this all happened. This is about conduct that happened before he was president. Yeah. And it's important to sort of take a step back and remind people that the Supreme Court's

immunity ruling isn't just about immunity from liability. It's also about immunity from the use of evidence. And that's what this fight is really about. It's not them saying, hey, he should be immune from prosecution for things that he did largely in 2015, 2016, and then privately. It's more that they say that there is a bunch of different pieces of evidence used at the trial that stem from the period of time during which he was president and even relate to his official acts as president that should have been excluded and without which the jury could not have come to the verdict that they reached. So this would seem to put into question whatever the next steps are, the sentencing date, which is mid-September, I believe. How confident are you that that will happen when it's scheduled? Well, I think, first of all, the judge has to

make a determination about whether or not there's going to be a sentencing. But what's really important here, and I think this plays into the political calendar here, too, is that the judge has already committed that he's going to make a decision about whether to set aside the verdict by September 6th. So when you hear the Trump campaign sort of backing away from the anytime, anyplace we'll debate Joe Biden, which should have applied to Kamala Harris as well, note that part of that may be contingent on what's going to happen on September 6th. If this conviction is upheld, as many people suspect, you can understand why Trump would be very eager to avoid a debate with the person we are all referring to now as

the person who's prosecuting the case, the biggest case against Donald Trump, if he is still going to be a man convicted of 34 felony counts here in New York. Sam Stein, the legal and the political completely intertwined. Yeah, it's wild. We could end in September with a presidential campaign coming to a crescendo, a potential debate, and one of the candidates facing a sentencing in his criminal trial. Lisa, I just want to go back to what Jonathan said. The sentencing itself, what is the likelihood that we do end up seeing some sort of action prior to the election? And I know you're in the legal punditry, not the political

punditry, but I'm sort of curious for your take. How would you imagine the Trump people are approaching this on a psychological level? The Bragg indictment and conviction did help them, but that was in the context of a primary campaign. This would be in the context of a general election coming to a close. I agree with you. You know, again, my larger frame is always legal and not political. But as you noted, the legal and the political have all but collapsed into one here. And I do think that they are eager to avoid a sentencing because a New York state sentencing is something that a future of President Trump can't wish away. He can't dismiss. There's no Department of Justice policy or executive power that could rescue him from this case. And I do

believe that the New York D.A. here will ultimately have the better of the argument, because even if all the evidence that the Trump folks say should be excluded is excluded, they make a great argument in the middle of their brief about all the other evidence that supports each and every element of the falsification of business records counts that were sustained against Donald Trump. That means we are likely barreling toward a September 18th sentencing. That's a firm date. We'll see if they can somehow persuade Judge Marchand to change that. But if, as I suspect, on September 6th, he comes back and says, I'm going to keep this conviction, then September 18th is the date for sentencing, Sam. And there's nothing that a former or future

president could do about that. Well, we will be watching carefully as that date approaches. MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin. Lisa, thank you for being with us this morning. Still ahead here, we'll bring you the latest storylines from the Summer Olympics just hours before the opening ceremony. Look at this guy, Willie Geist, standing by live in Secaucus, New Jersey. We'll check in with him next on Morning Joe. That's about as good as it gets right there. The opening ceremony for the Paris Olympic Games is tonight, and our own Willie Geist joins us live from Paris right now. Willie, good to see you.

As we mentioned earlier, part of France's high-speed rail network has been paralyzed by what officials are deeming a series of coordinated malicious acts. And this comes as to fears of terror at a high-value target, like a highly visible target like the Olympics. Tell us how that, what we saw with the trains are impacting these first hours of the games, really. Yeah, John, good afternoon from Paris. We're just a few hours away from an opening

ceremony that promises to be spectacular seven years in the making. But as you say, a snag this morning, things complicated by what the prime minister here in France is calling a massive coordinated attack on three separate train lines serving the high-speed trains that come into Paris from different parts of the country. The suspected activity was arson. They're calling it an act of vandalism, which seems a bit to understate the problem, given that now trains have been canceled, trains have been diverted with hundreds of thousands of people coming in today for the opening ceremony and for these games over the next couple of weeks. So we don't quite know who's responsible yet.

Authorities here are working on that. But as I said, there are tens of thousands of officers. The security state here is extraordinary, especially here today for the opening ceremony. Fires set inside some of the cables that serve the switchers, obviously crucial to the operation of those high-speed trains. So even the Eurostar train, the one that comes from London, has been diverted. So very difficult to get into a city that was already locked down. So we'll keep an eye on that story, get more developments as they come through. But as I say, we're just hours away now from what promises to be, honestly, one of the most spectacular events.

Forget just Olympic events that we've ever seen on the international stage. Unlike anything in the history of the Olympics, for sure, which is an opening ceremony with athletes not coming into a stadium, but floating down four miles of the Seine, the famous river here in Paris. You're going to have athletes from 205 delegations, more than 10,000 of them on 85 boats with about 300,000 spectators lining the Seine, cheering them on. We are expecting a little bit of weather. Perhaps you might be able to see here it's spitting a little bit this morning. We hope that pushes through and doesn't interrupt this event, which, as I said, has been planned now for about seven years. Every detail, these boats going past the Louvre, ending up at the Eiffel Tower, passing the Notre Dame Cathedral. It's going to be incredible.

The flag bearers for the United States on their float will be LeBron James and tennis star Coco Gauff, who actually just won the doubles French Open title a few weeks ago here and won the French Open singles title a couple of years ago. So some talk that Lady Gaga may be performing, some talk that Celine Dion may be performing a lot, kept under wraps. But it's going to be incredible with about a billion people watching around the world. There was some early action already last night. The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team defeating the African nation of Zambia 3-0. Trinity Rodman scoring the first goal of these Olympics. She is the daughter of Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star. Also, Mallory Swanson scoring

twice in under two minutes for a pretty easy 3-0 win for the American side. Things get much more difficult, though. This weekend, they play on Sunday, Germany, one of the best teams in the world. So a lot going on here already, John. As I said, the disruption of the trains is a problem. The source of the attack is something authorities here are looking at. But by 7.30 Paris time, 1.30 you can watch it live on NBC, Eastern time and again in primetime on set, 7.30 Paris time, 1.30 you can watch it live on NBC, Eastern time and again in prime time on set, 7.30. This is going to be a spectacle like no one has ever seen on that river behind me.

Yeah, I think really such real excitement for these games. The last couple, of course, impacted by the COVID pandemic. There really couldn't even be fans there. Athletes' families couldn't go to cheer on their sons and daughters, husbands, wives. And now here we are, though, a full on games and it couldn't be a more spectacular setting. Yeah, it's true. And honestly, as you know, John, being here, you feel the history around you. The Arc de Triomphe behind me will be figuring to these games as well. When you think about the fact that in 1940, the Nazis, when they occupied Paris, walked under the Arc de Triomphe.

And four years later, American troops rolled their Jeeps under that arc behind me when they came back and liberated the city. So there's just so much here. And to pull off a Games, an event of this magnitude in an old European city, London did it 12 years ago in 2012. But you're right. The crowds are back. The enthusiasm is here. The city is fully locked down for security today. And tonight, 7.30 Eastern time and prime time, if you can't catch it live at

1.30 Eastern time, do tune in because this is going to be unlike anything we've ever seen before. And really, I can't help but note that it's nearly 1 p.m. local time where you are. And I have to say some real advantages doing a morning show in the early afternoon, a much more reasonable hour, more sleep. Yeah. Highly recommend. Highly recommend. I think we should have an all-hands meeting after the Olympics and talk about moving the show. Even to London would be fine, five hours ahead.

But this six-hour ahead, morning TV at noon, this is the way to do it, man. Yeah, start scouting some real estate for us, please. Willie Geist, live in Paris. Enjoy today. Thank you for joining us. And, of course, as Willie said, you can watch the opening ceremony at 7.30 p.m. Eastern on NBC, as well as streaming on Peacock.