Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/11/22

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Trump invokes Fifth Amendment nearly 450 times in N.Y. AG’s civil probe of his business practices

Taking the Fifth, I think it's disgraceful. What happened? He pleaded the Fifth, right? He pleaded the Fifth. Fifth Amendment. Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment. Horrible. Horrible. The mob takes the Fifth. If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? You sit there, Meek, and you listen to him and he goes, Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment. What's he doing? Well, obviously, he was practicing. Well, there is that. Donald Trump's thoughts on taking the fifth before invoking the fifth more than 400 times yesterday while testifying in New

York State's investigation. Four hundred times. Of the Trump organization. He took the fifth. How long does that take? 400 times. So does he still think it's disgraceful? 400 times over disgraceful. Does he think it's something you only do if you're guilty? 400 times guilty. And does he still think it's something that the mob does?

400 times. Well. Is he mobbed up? We'll get into that. Is he telling us? Is this confession? Is this projection? Plus, time will tell. New information on the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and how officials learned about the possibility of more classified documents on the property. Here's a just a teeny

tiny insolency hint. It came from inside. Wait, hold on. Hold on. Are you telling me the call came from the inside? Wow. Just going to leave that there. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. It is kind of like the mob, isn't it? Oh, boy. Welcome to Morning Joe.

It is Thursday, August 11th. With us, we have columnist and associate editor from The Washington Post, David Ignatius. David, it's so good to see you. Let's frame the morning. Donald Trump can gaslight his supporters and grift money off of them. But the one thing he can't do is erase history. It's not just that he used to mock the Fifth Amendment before invoking it yesterday hundreds of times. It's also his attacks on FBI Director Christopher Wray, a man whom he nominated to the job as, quote, impeccably qualified individual and a model of integrity. A model, Donald Trump said.

Christopher Wray was a model of integrity. After all, why would the feds be worried about top secret documents floating around Mar-a-Lago? Remember when Trump and his top aides coordinated their response to North Korea's missile test in full view of club members who then posted pictures of it on Facebook? Or when a Chinese businesswoman made her way onto the grounds of Mar-a-Lago with a purse full of electronics, she was sentenced to prison. Well, lucky for the ex-president, he has supporters like Rand Paul of Kentucky, who once called Trump a fake conservative clown. But now parrots a conspiracy theory that America's top law enforcement agency was planting evidence.

Let me circle back. Christopher Wray put there by Trump, put there by him, Joe. A man, a man of integrity. David Ignatius, we haven't talked to you since this all came down. Obviously, when you have the FBI going in to Post columnists saying that the DOJ needs to be more transparent. We have Walter Isaacson, a very respected newsman who was on our show a couple of days ago, saying the same thing, that the DOJ needs to show their hand a bit more than usual and let Americans know why they did that. But you talk to legal scholars and they will say it's not the DOJ's job. It's not the FBI's job. They don't do what Comey did during the 2016 election and keep a running commentary going while while pursuing possible criminal charges. I'd love to know what your take is on where this is, what the DOJ's responsibility is, as far as transparency goes. Joe, the first thing I think is that as you look at all these

different investigations, you just see this classic picture of the walls closing in on somebody who is suspected of criminal activity. This is a multidirectional series of probes. Most of them go through the Justice Department, but not all. Our Attorney General Merrick Garland is the most reticent Attorney General I can remember. I began covering the Justice Department in the late 1970s. I don't remember an AG who spoke more quietly or carefully. We have to remember Merrick Garland was a federal circuit court judge. He was nominated for the Supreme Court. He has what we call judicial temperament. He is cautious. He's conscious of the rules that guard prosecutions. He wants to make sure that those rules are enforced. Grand jury secrecy is absolutely central to our system.

Grand juries collect information in secret and prosecutors should not disclose it. But he's also conscious of his role leading the Justice Department in this divided time where he is now a subject of personal attacks by the Republicans. So I would guess that in coming weeks, he's going to say a bit more about what the department is doing. He, for the last year, has said he's going to be conducting a wide-ranging investigation of the insurrection on January 6th using every U.S. attorney's office in the country, every FBI office. He said that openly, publicly, repeatedly. We're now beginning to see the fruits of that investigation. People didn't believe Merrick Garland when he said that this was going to be a probe of that scope,

but it is. And we now see that each of these investigations has a slightly different beginning, Joe. There are different causes. The New York Attorney General's Office of Investigation is entirely different from some of these others. We still don't know exactly what the FBI agents were going after when they searched Mar-a-Lago, except Trump's attorney has said they took 12 boxes of materials, which implies that these were 12 boxes they didn't get before when they went into search and took 15. There was more they were looking for. They knew what they were going after. But I think the basic point that people should remember is that Merrick Garland is an unusually careful and sensible attorney general. And I think he'll do well. A country may focus on what's he doing? Is he being too aggressive?

Merrick Garland's demeanor is going to, I think, for most reasonable people, disprove that argument. Yeah. You know, George Conway, let's bring in George Conway. He's a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. George, you know, there have been people like myself that have been saying for years that it seems that Donald Trump is above the law. You have, of course, Manhattan DAs who have prosecutors who say they've got him dead to center on criminal charges. And then the DA backs down. You have other people in the past who have backed down. Mueller investigation just sort of stopped despite the fact Mueller said he didn't exonerate Donald Trump. But here, I guess what's so so surprising about this is we're talking about classified documents,

which, of course, are extremely important. But you have what's going on in New York state. You have what's going on in a larger DOJ investigation, most likely over the insurrection and over the president leading a seditious coup. And of course, then you have what may end up being the most troubling for him, the grand jury in Georgia. I'm curious, do you agree with David Ignatius that this is just the beginning of the president, ex-president's legal problems? And I also am curious your thoughts on the DOJ's handling of this thus far. Well, I do agree. This is this is the walls are closing in on him. There are so many different

investigations and there and there are also civil suits that are chasing him down. And I think bit by bit, we're finally going to see the processes apply to him. He had his deposition taken yesterday by the New York Attorney General. There are some civil depositions coming up, and he's being forced essentially to put up or shut up in these investigations. And yesterday, he took the fifth 440 times, which is basically the most respect I think he's ever shown for the Constitution of the United States. But the Georgia case, I think, is particularly one to keep looking out for, looking out at, because it's the one that sort of seems to be moving ahead the most quickly. But I think this documents investigation is one that we haven't heard the last of. I mean, David is absolutely

right about the cautiousness, the innate cautiousness, and by-the-book nature of Merrick Garland. And I think that he's handling this absolutely perfectly. I don't think the Justice Department should be saying anything more than it already has said, which is basically nothing about this, because that's what the rule of law requires. That's what grand jury secrecy requires. And the whole point of this exercise is that nobody is above the law. The law applies to equally to to you and I, to the rich and the poor, to ex-presidents and just regular citizens. And one of those aspects is one of those protections that people have is grand jury secrecy and and the presumption of innocence. And the reason why the Justice Department does not say anything about ongoing investigations, except in unusual circumstances or when indictments are issued, is precisely to protect the reputations

of those who are the subject of investigation. And if he really thinks that there's a witch hunt going on with these documents that were at Mar-a-Lago, then he should tell us exactly what happened. Show us the search warrant. What was the government looking for? And what did they take? He has a list of what they took or should have a list. And that would tell us a great deal. But he doesn't want to say anything because he knows it's not going to be helpful to him, I'm sure. And just as actually answering questions from Letitia James yesterday wasn't going to be helpful to him.

So let's bring in former U.S. attorney and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuaid and MSNBC legal contributor Charles Coleman. A lot of questions floating around in the media. Why doesn't the DOJ come forward to the FBI and tell us what's going on? This was a legal search. This was a peaceful search. They got a heads up. It could not be more boring.

And the only parties involved here that are making it exciting or sound like something more than it is, is Trump and his followers and clowns on television who want to make this some sort of invasion of the American people's home. I think that happened on January 6th. That's just me. Also, it's great to catch him in the middle of, you know, the five thousandth moment of blatant hypocrisy about taking the fifth or whatever. Those are great headlines.

That's great TV. But Barbara McQuaid, where do you see obvious legal exposure here? Is it connected to a potential FBI search or might it be, as George Conway pointed out, in Fulton County? Yeah, I think the Georgia investigation is at least the one that is the most imminent. I don't know that ultimately it'll be the one that is the most significant or brings the most prison time. But I think that's the one that's moving the most quickly. Part of it is the scope of it is much more narrow than the scope of DOJ's investigation because it relates only to the activities occurring in Georgia. In contrast to DOJ's, which sprawls all across the country, involves members of Congress, seven states. And so for that reason, it's easier for Fannie Willis there to get her arms around it. I also think that we just have a little more visibility into that case than we do into what's

happening at DOJ. And that's because as a state prosecutor, if she wants to subpoena witnesses from out of state, she has to get court orders to do that. And so those court orders are public. And so we know about all the witnesses that she's been bringing in to the grand jury there. We don't have that same kind of visibility into the grand jury activity at the Justice Department. But I think based on the pace at which she is moving and the scope of it, it seems that that's the case that's going to come to a head sooner. I also think she has fewer levels of bureaucracy to deal with in the Justice Department. If she thinks that a crime has been committed and it's worth bringing charges, she has the power to do that on her own. And so I think

that's the place to watch, at least in the short term. Charles Coleman, I want to know if you agree. Just a note to a lot of the Republicans out there who, you know, really should let this play out and see where it goes instead of playing into violent rhetoric, which is causing danger right and left. But, Charles, to Barbara's point, where do you see legal exposure here for the former president of the United States? Well, I think, Mika, there are a number of different places where the president or former president is facing significant legal exposure. He has on all sides been embattled by a number of different legal entanglements that he has to now sort out. I would agree with both Barbara, George and David, and I've said it on this program and others before, that Fannie Willis and Fulton County G.A. need to be the number one priority for the Trump legal team as they sort of

sort out what's in front of them. And the reason I say that is because of all of the things that are they're facing. That's the one that is going to be hardest to kick down the road. When you look at the investigation that is occurring out of the New York attorney general's office with Letitia James, that's something as a civil matter that is going to be able, you know, they're going to be able to fight that in a way that pushes that further and further down the road, which is ultimately his plan. He did not give anything during his deposition. He pled the fifth over 400 times, as you've already said. And that's a means of trying to get that office to, number one, make a decision. Are you going to sue me or are you going to look for a settlement?

Either way, it still pushes it further and further out. We know that with respect to Merrick Garland and the DOJ, those investigations are slow moving and they're meticulous and they're methodical and they're strategic. That all takes time. So when you're thinking about the most important and the most eminent investigation, I think Barbara used that word, it is clearly what we're seeing come out of Fulton County. So I think that has to be the priority. Ultimately, what we're seeing, I think, in terms of Republicans and Donald Trump is that now, as a last resort, they are looking to put pressure on the court of public opinion. You know what time of year it is. You have midterms looming. There is obviously the consideration of

Donald Trump running in 2024. And so all of these things have now created a political firestorm, where as a last resort, it's not a legal strategy, but it is a strategy intended to put pressure from the public on these different entities as a means of seeing if that may ultimately provide him some sort of breathing room in a space that, as many people have already said, appears to be closing in very rapidly. Yeah, you know, we want to talk in a second about the search and how the call is coming on from the inside. But David, I must say, over the past several days, I've been talking to people who and by the way, I agree with Walter is as transparent as a DOJ can be while being fair to Donald Trump and being fair and being clear to the process.

I've been saying they need to be transparent as possible. That said, so many people have been talking about the midterm elections. So many people have been talking about we're 90 days out from you can't do this or you can't do that. I understand those concerns. I also understand, though, that justice is supposed to be blind to such matters. And as you talk about the attorney general, talk about Merrick Garland and you talk about him being the most reticent. We have elections every two years. And if you're always looking over your shoulder at the next election or the political consequences of an investigation, you're never going to be able to conduct that investigation in a manner possible. I have no concerns about this investigation leading the DOJ, where it leads them on the time frame it does. I'm curious what your thoughts are. Do you think the DOJ needs to halt before the election? No, Joe, I think you can be so worried about being political that that you become political,

that you that you pull back from investigations that you'd otherwise conduct for which you have sufficient evidence. I think that Merrick Garland has tried to be as careful as he can. But it seems to me that as the evidence here accumulates, and when Merrick Garland has spoken publicly about this investigation, he said that what you see is just really the tip of the iceberg. We have been conducting this vast nationwide investigation, every U.S. attorney's office, every FBI office. And we've accumulated a lot of material. They have the ability to gather phone records, other records. They have the instrument of grand jury secrecy to propel them forward. So I think Merrick Garland must have made a decision that

he can't hold back simply for fear of being seen to be political. He has to pursue the evidence that he has where it takes him. I have just two thoughts that play off something you said at the outset. First, I think it's entirely possible that they do have significant assistance from people within the Trump inner circle. We've seen in the Senate and in the House January 6th hearings how many Republicans who were part of that inner circle, the White House counsel, the former attorney general, are now just sickened by what they've seen and prepared to share information. That may be happening on a much wider scale. If you look at the raid on Mar-a-Lago, it appears that the FBI knew what they were looking for. They were going after something very specific. We don't have the

warrant, the search warrant. Trump presumably does. We don't certainly don't have the affidavit in support of that warrant that they gave to a federal judge, which enumerates what they were looking for. But they knew what they were going after. Why? Because I think they must have had some some assistance on the inside. Second point that I'd make is that one thing that unites many of these investigations is they appear to be focusing on issues of possible criminal intent by the president. If you look at the Georgia investigation, you've got him on tape saying, I want these votes. You know, I want you to give me X number of votes.

And then a series of actions coming from that. If you look at the seizure of phone records of Representative Scott Perry, of John Eastman, of Jeffrey Clark in that separate probe. Again, you have questions of what they were instructed to do by the president. What was his intent at the time that he that he issued orders to people, made statements? So I think those two things, people on the inside who may be saying things about Trump, things that Trump said to others, I think those may be central to a number of these investigations. And clearly, to David's point, Joe, I think of the phrase that you came up with yesterday, tortured logic. No matter what Merrick Garland does or says to,

you know, answer to those demanding what happened right now, no matter what he says, it's going to be brought up by Trump followers and Republicans and twisted. And they're going to have this tortured logic about it. And whatever they do, it's going to be to fight it. It's not going to have any connection with reality. So there's really no point of trying to appease the public in the middle of an investigation that is now 36, 48 hours old in terms of a search being made public. There's no winning on that front. Right. The only front they can win on is facts and the law. Well, you say appeasing the public. You're talking about appeasing conspiracy theorists, insurrectionists,

weirdos, crazy people, freaks, fascists, fascists who are now going online talking about violence against the federal judge. These are people like you said, you're never you're never going to win with this group. But, you know, you look at the people that are squawking the loudest. They're the people. It's, you know, it's what you expect someone who's guilty and know that justice is about to come down on them. It's how you expect them to squawk. So I really I think there's way too much chatter about the concern about these right wing extremists and fascists. I think you call fascists fascists. And if people are and if fascists are going out making threats, I think what you do is, you know, you go after them with the law and there's that. But there's also the rule of law. And if you have people on cable news channels that inspired violence leading up to January the 6th

and then were shocked on January the 6th by the violence that took place and then after January 6th pretended like they weren't shocked by the violence that took place on January 6th and they're doing it again. Well, you know, there are legal channels for that, too, when people obviously get hurt. There's they're being very reckless or being irresponsible. But there's an underlying theme about what's been going on in Trump world since January 6th. The investigation really took off. And this this is the thing. He's not being taken down politically or legally by people on the left. No, it's from people that worked for him for years, his most loyal supporters. And you look at the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and even the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

Again, George Conway, the call came from the inside. The Wall Street Journal says that it came after weeks of internal deliberation among senior Justice Department and FBI officials. And according to the journal, quote, FBI officials showed up with instructions to keep the search as unobtrusive as possible with agents dressed in plain clothes and told not to take weapons. The paper also reports that someone familiar on the inside with where boxes of government documents were stored told investigators there may be more classified documents on property even after 15 boxes were sent to the National Archives earlier this year. George Conway, a call came from the inside, just as we have seen on January 6th. The most damning testimony in those hearings came from the inside, came from lawyers

who defended Donald Trump during the first impeachment, came from lawyers who defended Donald Trump through his second impeachment. It came from the inside. It's happening again here. Absolutely right. And it's going to continue to happen. I mean, the people who are on the inside knew the truth about Donald Trump. The biggest scam of the last five years was the pretense that he was in any way morally, intellectually, psychologically fit to be president of the United States. He wasn't. He wasn't fit to hold any public office. The only thing that he was morally, psychologically or intellectually fit for is running a Ponzi scheme. And the truth is something that they all know. And but they're afraid to go public and say these things for whatever reason. I mean, you had Lindsey Graham the other yesterday, I guess, on on some cable news network saying basically nodding when when the host was suggesting that the FBI had planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago on the basis of nothing.

It's completely insane. The cult, the cultishness continues. But behind closed doors, they know the truth. They know what he is. And they these people may be afraid to go on Fox News and and tell the truth or afraid to come here and tell the truth. But, you know, when it comes to federal agents who have subpoena power and who can issue search warrants and the potential for, you know, criminal obstruction charges, if you don't cooperate or you interfere in any way with the investigation, people are going to tell the truth. And that's what we've seen in the January 6th hearings. And that's what we're going to continue to see in, and I'm sure in this leak investigation or the stocking investigation. Joe, to your point, Newsweek matched this reporting of where this all came from on the

inside. Two senior government officials told the magazine the search was largely based on information from an informant who told the FBI what documents Trump was hiding and where they were located. Trump World is now reportedly trying to figure out who flipped. According to Rolling Stone, Donald Trump is worried that he may have a rat or multiple rats in his midst. He's wondering if his phones are tapped or even if his buddies could be wearing a wire. And Barbara, I would think that's a very good thing to be concerned about. Yeah, absolutely. If this is an ongoing investigation, as it appears to be, then it would be appropriate to continue to collect evidence. And so the ways that those are done are through listening devices, surveillance techniques, confidential informants,

consensual monitoring, and other things. But one thing that's really important to remember to use all of those techniques requires court oversight. So they're not planting bugs on their own. They're not tapping his phones without great scrutiny by a court. And so just as we saw for this search, it required a court to review and determine whether there was probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed and that evidence of that crime would be found on the scene to engage in any of those other investigative techniques would also require court oversight. So I'm sure that Merrick Garland is doing this by the book. He has told us so by all appearances he's doing so.

But I think you're right in that if we know that there is an informant who shared this information, which is not surprising. It is often the way that the government learns about misconduct in cases is that someone who's close to the wrongdoer shares that information. But I think Donald Trump does need to watch his back because it sounds like the rats are fleeing the ship. Yeah. And of course, in a bitter irony, Charles, Donald Trump actually strengthened the law that he may be charged under regarding the mishandling of classified information. Again, it's all it's all a perfect circle. Here he is. He's screaming and yelling and bellowing about mobsters who take the Fifth Amendment because he's trying to attack Hillary Clinton's people, not Hillary Clinton, but Hillary Clinton's people. And then he pleads a fifth hundreds of times.

He, of course, you know, has everybody getting up, chanting, lock her up. And my gosh, has any president had his had his many people indicted? Is this guy only the best people, only the best indicted people? There's irony there. But here, you know, he strengthens a law for people who are mishandling classified documents because of Hillary Clinton's emails, a few that may have been mislabeled or that she put on the wrong server. And here you've got a guy with boxes and boxes of documents, some of which so highly classified they can't even summarize the contents of the documents. And if he's going to be charged, he's going to be charged under a law that even he made tougher to try to make a phony political point against Hillary Clinton. Well, you know, Joe, as the old saying goes, it's no fun when the rabbit has the gun. And I think that's where Donald Trump finds himself.

He is essentially getting a very different view of how the legal system works. You know, this is one thing, by the way, Charles, I grew up in the South. And I heard from my grandmom and my mom and my aunt, I heard just about every hearing, every saying. It's no fun when the rabbit has the gun. I've never heard that one. So I'm going to write that down right now while you continue. Go ahead. Please feel free.

It's not fun. You know, Donald Trump is getting a very different perspective on how the legal system works. And this is the perspective that does not shield itself from privilege. And he's enjoyed that. If you know anything about how he's tended to operate, he almost likes to make a mockery of being sued. He has made depositions in the past, these verbal sparring matches between attorneys, and he's been notably a very difficult person to depose. But what we're seeing now is he is very clear about the magnitude and the gravity of

what's at stake. And that's why you're seeing a very different tune than you have from him in the past. I think that it's absolutely accurate. Viewers need to understand, and I think Barbara touched on this, there's no way that you get a search warrant issued, particularly for someone's home, if you cannot describe with specificity and particularity where the information or where the evidence that you are seeking is actually located within the domicile. It has to be a part of how search warrants are written because I've written them before and how they are executed because I've seen how they are executed. That type of information does not come at random. It comes because someone knows and

because someone has supplied that information. So everything about what we're seeing now in this change of tune from Donald Trump going from someone who basically derided other people for taking the fifth and now has decided to take the fifth himself is a very clear indication that he understands that he's in serious hot water. Charles Coleman, thank you very much. George Conway and Barbara McQuaid, thank you as well very much for your insight this morning. We really appreciate it. And before we go to break, a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. The Justice Department has announced a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard has been charged in a plot to kill former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton. The 45-year-old Iranian operative is accused of attempting to arrange Bolton's assassination likely in retaliation for the killing of an Iranian Quds Force commander in 2020,

offering to pay $300,000 to individuals in the U.S. to carry out the act. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was also reportedly the target of an assassination plot. David Ignatius, obviously, it just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. I was going to say very often. Does it? They're just usually. How do I say this? Countries are not dumb enough to target former American officials because they know the hell that will rain down on them after. What are your thoughts about this plot to murder a former U.N. ambassador and national security adviser. So, Joe, I think it's very serious. It's a sign that Iran has attempted to take what it sees as revenge for the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force. I've been aware that officials have been operating under unusual security in the several years since that since that attack for fear of Iranian reprisals.

This is the first specific evidence of a plot. But the the the Iranians are dangerous. They use force all over the Middle East and they think hard about about taking revenge for what they see as attacks on their own people. John Bolton was part of the decision-making process, but there are many other officials who were closer to the point of the spear, if you will, who were involved in this operation. I'm sure there's concern about their security as well. But this is an unusual disclosure about Iran. It comes at a time when the U.S. and Iran are just getting back to the negotiating table to talk about the revival of the nuclear agreement that makes it harder to do a deal with an Iran that is known to be trying to kill a former

national security advisor. Keeping in mind the Justice Department, the Department of Defense, all connected to this, trying to figure out what happened. And Mike Pompeo, a huge Trumper. So the very departments that right wing extremists are now castigating, they're doing their job when it comes to Mike Pompeo. So I don't know how you square for all Americans. And they do every day. And I think this is what's so deeply offensive to me. And it has been for quite some time. And actually, again, I talked about it a couple of weeks ago before this raid was was moving forward because the attacks against the FBI had slowed down a little bit. I thought it'd be a good time to just reflect on the fact that Republicans who used to support law enforcement before January the 6th, Republicans who used to

support the FBI before Donald Trump came into office have been slandering the FBI for years now, for years. And it is, of course, ironic because it was the FBI that helped elect Donald Trump because of some of the things that James Comey did. He died not saying he did it deliberately to elect Donald Trump and certainly did. And there was there was a faction inside the FBI. We're we're quite aware of it. That was anti Hillary. And that was widely reported. That said, even though there are human beings inside the FBI, just like they are human beings inside the church, just like there are human beings inside of government, it is an organization that is dedicated to protecting all Americans when they get on airplanes, all Americans when they move about their daily lives. And for Republicans to continue to slander and trash professionals who've dedicated their lives to making all of us safer is just so deeply, deeply offensive. One more quick headline. Flash

flooding yesterday hit the nation's capital with water consuming highways, city streets and metro stations. More than four inches of rain fell in the area in less than two hours. Flash flooding happened so quickly that it caught multiple drivers off guard, prompted several water rescues from emergency crews. Flooding also occurred in local metro trains. The National Weather Service issued several flash flood warnings in the nation's capital and surrounding areas through the evening hours. And still ahead on Morning Joe, Beto O'Rourke shuts down a heckler in a big way. We'll play for you the town hall moment that is all over social media this morning. Also ahead, numbers some drivers haven't seen in months. Gas prices under four dollars a gallon. We'll ask Morning Joe economic analyst Steve

Ratner if those prices are here to stay. We'll be right back. I love you. 41 past the hour. This is Washington, D.C. After a day of heavy rain and flooding. Look at this. Such a beautiful shot of the sun coming up over the Capitol. Some good news. Look at that plane, TJ.

He cued the plane. He cued everything. Gorgeous. Brunco harem, wider shade of pale. How does he do it? I just don't know. We have good news for drivers at the pump. Gas prices have fallen for 58 days in a row. AAA is reporting the national average for gasoline is now under four dollars, holding at three dollars and ninety nine cents a gallon. Couple the gas prices news with the better than expected numbers in July's inflation report. Is there relief on the horizon? Let's bring in former Treasury official and

morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner. Steve, let's talk first of all about yesterday's inflation report. What do you got for us? Well, let me let me try to unpack it a little bit for you, Joe, because sometimes these inflation numbers are confusing month over month, year over year, especially when you have so much going on in the economy. And so if you start with the chart on the left, that red line is what is happening month by month, so from June to July in this case. And you can see, hopefully, that the red line has gone all the way down to the zero line. In other words, there was no inflation from June to July. Why was there no inflation from June to July? You have to look at those colored bars below, and you can see that gasoline declined, as you just mentioned, very substantially, and that exactly offset the increases in other prices. And so they, in fact, zeroed each other out.

Without that change in gasoline prices, you would have had inflation at around a 5% rate, still a lot better than what we've seen, still a bit more than what we want. Now, if you look at it year over year, so this July compared to last July, you can see that prices are rising still steeply, although slightly less steeply. Last month in June, they were up 9.1 percent. That came down to 8.5 percent in July, a little bit less than people expected. And that is all good news. That is all good news. But it is important to note that even if prices didn't go up at all the rest of this year, we'd still have six and a half percent inflation this year. Now, let's talk about gas prices. I saw several people who are not fans of of Joe Biden seem to be angry about the fact that gas prices have gone down and wanted

the world to know that the only reason they went down is because demand went down. I don't know if that's the case or not. I'm just glad if a consumer, if a working American wants to get a gallon of gas, it's a lot cheaper than it was a month ago. What can you tell us about falling gas prices, even in the midst of a Ukrainian-Russian war that just keeps going? Yeah, it is kind of un-American to be against falling gas prices, to be unhappy when gas prices fall. They have fallen for a few reasons, and most of them do have to do with the demand side. Obviously, there isn't a lot of new supply coming on. We are producing a little bit more, but that's not enough to matter. What's really happening is a couple of things. First, China is very slow at the moment, and their gas, their oil, overall oil usage has been very uncharacteristically low.

And that's had an impact on prices. And secondly, there has been demand destruction in the U.S., for example. People are driving less. They're using less gasoline. I think I saw the figure of nine percent less this season than last. And the and and the Europeans, because of the war in Ukraine, are also taking measures to cut back on their oil use. And all of that has had a very positive effect on oil prices. Yeah. You know, I want to go. Let's see. Let's see how nimble we can be here. I want to go to the third chart, falling real wages, hurting sentiment. And in the third chart, we look at wages versus consumer sentiment. Take us through that chart, if you will. Sure, we can be nimble. That is that is the crux of the matter to some degree. And the reason why we've had so much pessimism or unhappiness among the American public

is in large part because they are falling behind. If you look at the left side of the chart, the blue line is what's happening to wage growth. And you can see that both before the pandemic, through the pandemic, and until earlier this year, the blue line was substantially above the red line, which is price increases. And therefore, Americans were getting better off every month or every day for that matter. If you look at the right side, those have flipped around. As inflation took off, wages have also gone up, but not by nearly as much as how much prices are going up. And that is the crux of the matter for most Americans. You have 6.7% wage growth and 8.5% price growth. And then you can see the implication of that on the right in consumer sentiment, which has reached a record low. It has for a month,

and we should never make too much of a month. It does look like it bottomed out for one month, whether it's because of falling gas prices or the president's great successes on so many other things, I can't say. But we'll see what happens next month. But the yin and the yang of this also, and this is the point that people don't like to always say out loud, is that to get inflation down, the rate of wage increases has to come down. Wages are obviously the biggest component of what any company does. And if you're paying out wage increases of 6.7 percent, you obviously are going to drive inflation way above the Fed's 2 percent target.

Steve, this is David Ignatius. I just want to ask a quick question. The financial markets, to look at their performance, seem now to be baking in the idea that there's going to be a soft landing, that we turn the corner on inflation, that the economy still seems to be humming along pretty well. What's your view about that? Is the news as rosy as the financial numbers from the markets would suggest? It is interesting, David, and a little bit unusual in recent years anyway, that the financial markets are more optimistic than economic forecasters. And the optimism is particularly driven by optimism around interest rates. The financial markets simply don't believe that the Fed is going to have to raise rates as high as it says it will have to, let alone how high as people like Larry Summers says it has to.

And those low rates are a friend of the stock market. High rates are the enemy of the stock market. Low rates are the friend of the stock market. And so, yes, the market is beginning to think that there's a potential soft landing here. And that's in large part why you've seen the market so strong over the last week or two, and especially yesterday after those numbers came out. Morning, Joe. Economic analyst Steve Ratner, thank you very much. Always good to see you. And coming up, David Ignatius weighs in on that major strike against Russian forces deep behind the front lines. What it says about the state of the conflict next on Morning Joe. As Russia continues to suffer losses in its invasion of Ukraine, there is new reporting this morning that Moscow is struggling to replenish troop numbers.

According to the Associated Press, billboards and public transit advertisements have been placed in different regions around the country, urging men to join the professional army. Meanwhile, at least nine Russian warplanes were destroyed in a deadly string of explosions in the Kremlin-controlled Crimea region yesterday. In a statement, the Ukrainian Air Force said the airfield, which housed Russian fighter jets and military planes, was rendered completely unusable. Satellite images released yesterday by Planet Labs, an American imaging company, appear to show the aftermath of an explosion. The images show at least three blast craters and eight wrecked warplanes.

And David, that is deep inside of Crimea. We've been talking about possible counter offenses in the south, but this is going to the heart of Crimea. Talk about the significance of that strike. Joe, it is deep in Crimea. It shows the reach of Ukrainian forces. What it really shows, I think, is the beginning of something that's been predicted for months, which is a phase of partisan warfare inside areas that the Russians control, where pro-Kiev Ukrainians use the tactics

of special forces, where they attack bases with rockets or bombs, where individuals are subject to assassination. There have been assassination attempts, some successful in areas of eastern Ukraine in the last few weeks. We're entering this new phase of the war in which the Ukrainians are trying to show the power they have to make life miserable for Russia. They think that there's a moment of opportunity because of what you and Mika discussed earlier, the disorganization of Russian forces. Let's remember that Vladimir Putin is only called a partial mobilization. This is still a special military operation in his phrase. It's not a full mobilization. That means he's having

to offer bonuses to try to get recruits on the front lines as people end their contracts and want to go home. So for the Ukrainians, it's a moment when the Russians are disorganized. They're on their back foot a little bit. And there's a lot of expectation in Washington and in Europe that over the next few weeks, we'll see a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south. And David, I know it's impossible to predict what Putin is going to do next. But obviously, you look at intelligence numbers, whether it's from the Pentagon, whether it's from British intelligence, the casualties just keep going higher and higher for Russian troops. And I just have to keep asking the question, how long is he going to be able to continue

fighting this war? Well, that's the number of questions that I hear from Pentagon analysts here, Joe, the same one. The casualty numbers range a bit and they're not obviously highly reliable, but the numbers are enormous. The latest is that the Russians could have suffered as many as 80,000 casualties totaled, killed and wounded since this began in February. That's an enormous number. It's nearly half the size of the army that they sent into Ukraine. If you can imagine that half the half your army gets chewed up in this battle. The Russians simply don't have the forces to replace those numbers easily. So this is this is a moment where Putin is reckoning with the cost of this war.

U.S. officials warn Putin in private again and again. You think you can go into Ukraine easily, but you're going to be there 10 years. And that's the kind of scenario they must be thinking about now in the Kremlin. David Ignatius, thank you very much for joining us this morning. Great to see you. And coming up, more on former President Trump's decision to plead the fifth hundreds of times during his deposition with the New York attorney general's office yesterday. Plus, the unexpected triumph of Joe Biden. We'll read from that new column. And we're joined by a senior White House adviser for a look at what's next on the president's agenda.

Morning, Joe. We'll be right back.