Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/1/22

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Five states hold primary races on Tuesday

Such a beautiful shot of Washington, D.C. this morning at six o'clock on the East Coast. It's Washington in August, which, you know, you talk to the Chamber of Commerce people and they will tell you, get to Washington, D.C. in the middle of a hot August afternoon. I don't think they'd say that. I think they'd say, I think they'd say, get to Washington, D.C. at 6 a.m. in the middle of August. And what you'll see is simply beautiful. It's Monday, August 1st, everyone. A lot to get to this morning. New reporting that investigators with the Department of Homeland Security wanted to try and recover those deleted Secret Service text messages from around the time of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. But then the Trump appointed agency watchdog stepped in.

Mika, is somebody going to gel over that? That doesn't make any sense on any level for any department in government. I just don't. Something is definitely wrong. And perhaps plus NBC's Steve Kornacki is standing by who helped break down several key primary races ahead of tomorrow's elections, which feature a number of candidates who deny the 2020 election results. What is the anger meter? What's the rage meter on the rage this morning? Well, the rage is going to join us. The rage will be on. You mean the rage is going to be here?

We're very lucky this morning, Joe. I thought he only did rodeos in August. No, we're very, very lucky. The rage is back. That's fantastic. One of the reasons we're going to be hearing from Rusty. There he is. Wow.

I just got a chill down my spine. We're going to be hearing from Rusty. Oh, wow. I just got a chill down my spine. We're going to hear from Rusty Bowers, the Arizona State House speaker who may pay a price for defending his state's 2020 election and then testifying about it before the January 6th committee. Remember that he calls, you know what he calls this party that this Trump wing of the party, a cult. Imagine that a cult. Well, and he just told the truth, which is that's the most disturbing part about it. Also reports that Ukraine may be turning the tide in its fight against Russia. And for someone who is obsessed with crowds, he likes big crowds.

He's obsessed with them. Yeah. It seems Donald Trump had a tough time turning out fans while hosting that Saudi funded golf tournament at his club in New Jersey. And I mean, they counted their attendance. It was low. They had two hound dogs that were just making their way across the golf course, chasing a squirrel. And they put that, actually, in the attendance figures. And it was still low. It was extraordinarily low there. I mean, he started his presidency by trying to make sure America knew

that a large crowd gathered for his inaugural ceremonies. I will say, Mika, even all these years later, you compare the size of that crowd. I can't even do it with the straight face on Monday morning. Hold on. It wasn't really. Hold on. Ready? Take two. OK. You know, you compare Barack Obama's crowd. I can't. OK, you can't. But his crowd was so small. We just look at the pictures next to Barack Obama's crowd. Barack Obama's crowds were like massive. And he made his poor spokespeople lie. And then you have Donald Trump's crowds, even at his inauguration, he had just won. And Barack Obama's so much bigger. It was really something to behold.

Now he's having a golf tournament in partnership with the Saudis and folks are like, I guess we won't go. So he didn't have the crowds he wanted. But let's begin with those key elections taking place right now. The first big test of abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade will take place in Kansas. Voters there will decide whether to get rid of an amendment to the state's constitution in order to be able to then pass abortion bans. Now, this is important because this is obviously a very strong Republican-leading state. You occasionally have some Democrats that do win some statewide races there and even occasionally a congressional seat.

But it is, looking at the Kansas City suburbs, seeing how those suburbs break, it's going to really test this Dobbs decision, because a lot of people are already saying, looking at the polls, that pro-choice voters are not as motivated to vote based on the Supreme Court decision as pro-life voters. So tomorrow is going to be a massive test there. So over in Missouri, Republicans are trying to stop Eric Reitens from

winning their party's nomination for Senate. The disgraced former governor is accused of abusing his wife and he threatened in a campaign ad to hunt rhinos, carrying a gun, AR-15 along with tactical gear. Everybody was kicking in doors. Yeah, not not not not a helpful look. In Arizona, three Trump backed Republicans who support the big lie are all leading their primary opponents. They support the lie about the election in the latest polling for Arizona governor. Former TV news anchor Carrie Lake leads her closest rival, Karen Taylor Robeson, by nine points. Robeson is backed by former President Mike Pence and the Arizona Republican Party. The winner of that race will currently will likely face current Arizona secretary of state, Katie Hobbs. Trump backed candidate for Senate, Blake Masters, is also surging toward victory.

The winner of that race will challenge Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly. And leading the Republican primary race for secretary of state is Mark Fincham, a state lawmaker who claims he has proof Trump was cheated out of the election, but has yet to provide it. Show it. He's now in position to be the Republican nominee to oversee the state's elections. It also seems that Rusty Bowers, the Republican House speaker who refused to go along with Trump's big lie and who testified before the January 6th committee, is headed for defeat.

Bowers spoke to NBC's Von Hilliard this weekend. The party has thrown me out, basically. The state party, the county party, now my district party. If you do not win on Tuesday, why will you not have won? Probably because I stood up. And when they asked me to tell the truth, I told the truth. I wasn't the, I didn't go looking for a fight, but the fact that I would break ranks

and somehow find what the president, the former president did was unacceptable. But that's like I broke some type of taboo. And I did break a taboo, and it's kind of a cultic thing, you know, that you have to be in with the cult. It is a cultic thing. You have to be in with the cult. There you have, again, nothing to do with ideology. But this Republican Party has been moving away from ideology for for quite some time. It's just about blindly following the leader. And, you know, that didn't really just start with Donald Trump, but it certainly intensified under Donald Trump. But Rusty Bowers,

here you have a guy in any other world and any other time, Rusty Bowers, Liz Cheney would be seen as two conservative bulwarks against progressives. But in this case, these people with some of the most conservative voting records in America are being called rhinos, probably socialist, whatever idiots mischaracterize them as simply because they're opposed to Donald Trump lying and trying to steal an election. So you go you look at states where Democrats have set themselves up to actually have very good chances to win some statewide races, to win some governor's races. That's happened not so much because of what the Republicans or what the Democrats have done. It's it's happened because of who the Republicans keep nominating. And there have been some crazy choices. If you look at Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, he's near the top of the list. The Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania near the top of the list. You look, of course, what what's

what's happened in Ohio with J.D. Vance. I won't even get into how confused that poor guy is. I feel sorry for him. J.D. Vance in Ohio getting trounced right now in poll numbers. These are states in a year where Democrats should be crushed in these statewide races. You can look at Herschel Walker in Georgia, but Republicans keep selecting crazier and crazier people to run in the fall in statewide races. You get away with that in a House race. I mean, look at me. I'm a perfect example of that. But you go statewide. Things get real, real fast. And of all the states, I think, where Republicans have let the crazy out of the barn and let it just take over and run wild. It's just a crazy stampede through the streets in political debates. Arizona's at the top of that list. That's bringing right now NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornacki, the big board. None of my comments I previously stated are the opinion of Steve Kornacki or the Bull Riding Association that

he works for every August. It's only the opinion of me. He's going to take us through this also with his host of way too early in the White House, Bureau Chief at Politico. Did you know he wrote a book? I don't know if you've heard this or not, but he's the author of a new book. It's called The Big Lie. It's really good. It's a great book. Steve Kornacki, you don't actually work for any bull riding association, though I think you should. I love your work. I love your work But I've been absolutely stunned by just how self-destructive, in my opinion, not yours, the Republican Party has been by the people that they put up to run statewide erases in swing states. And there is not a state that's more of a swing state now than Arizona. And my God, the people who look like they're lining up to win are all in for the Trump conspiracy theories. Take us through all of the tech is through those races and all the races. We're going to take us to crazy town. Yeah. Well, what you're outlining there is the Democrats hope here in the face of a climate that otherwise, if you just look at Joe Biden's approval rating, state of the economy, a political in the history of how midterm elections go for White House

parties, Democrats are hoping you just outlined will be a major mitigating factor that would allow them to defy history and to keep the Senate. Let's focus on the Senate here right now, because right now it is 50 50 in the Senate. And so basically you the Senate here right now, because right now it is 50-50 in the Senate. And so basically you're looking at what I think the potential battleground looks like for the Senate is shaded by the party that now controls these seats, seats that are all up this November. Republicans just need a net gain of one seat and they get control. And again, just given the environment, everything we're talking about, you would think looking at this map that that one seat wouldn't be too hard to come by. So right away, you take a look at it here. What would the two most likely options be for Republicans?

Well, the two Democratic held seats that were the closest in the 2020 election were Georgia and Arizona. They both went for Biden in 2020. But remember, about 11000 votes was Biden's margin in Georgia inside of 10000 votes. And there is a razor thin margins for Joe Biden, meaning coming into a midterm like there's no margin for error for Democrats. But like you mentioned, the polling for Republicans has been concerning so far. When you look at Herschel Walker in that Senate race now, again, Republicans will tell you, hey, this will end up being, in their view, a wave year. In wave years, all of the races end up breaking towards the opposition party at the very end of the cycle. Herschel Walker will get carried by the wave. I think that's what Republicans are counting on. What Democrats are counting on, though, is that Walker in Georgia and potentially, you say, Blake Masters. The polling shows him with a clear lead

in this Republican Senate primary in Arizona tomorrow. Potentially Blake Masters in Arizona could put both of those otherwise on paper clear pickup opportunities for Republicans at risk. And then you compound it. You were mentioning the name of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. Again, Oz, the Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania. The polling has also been very concerning for Republicans when it comes to Oz, when it comes to his standing head to head with the Democrat John Fetterman, when it comes to his approval, favorable, unfavorable number with voters, very high unfavorable numbers. So if you just looked at this map and you didn't know who was running in these states, you would say, hey, Pennsylvania now is a Republican held Senate seat. Pat Toomey's not

running. Yeah, maybe Democrats have a chance of picking up Pennsylvania, but all Republicans got to do is win Georgia or Arizona and there's their net gain of one. But then you start looking at the individual dynamics in this race. And Georgia may be a tough poll for Republicans. Arizona may be as well. You have Colorado on the map. Colorado is the kind that could come into play. Republicans have nominated a much more moderate candidate there. But Colorado is much more Democratic than Arizona or Georgia. So it starts to get more complicated, at least from this vantage point. We're just inside of 100 days from Election Day. When you look at the individual dynamics in the Senate race,

you can start to see a scenario where Democrats keep the Senate. When you take the individual dynamics out of it and you just think about the basic ingredients of the midterm climate, you still do see the makings there potentially of a Republican wave. So two things are in tension with each other here, I think. Yeah, you know, Steve, I'd be the last to suggest that polling in July makes any difference. It does give you a snapshot for that time. We'll see what happens in the fall. I'm thinking right now, especially of Ohio, where you actually have Tim Ryan doing extremely well against J.D. Vance. I suspect that's a race that's going to end up, you know, we're going to be staying up late in the night, most likely to see who wins that race.

But I just want to circle back. I know it's not a Pennsylvania day, but you just outlined something that some numbers that I just I read and I found shocking. I said, OK, this is going to be hard for any candidate to get around. Dr. Oz's negatives in Pennsylvania are off the charts. I mean, I don't know how any candidate gets around that. Would you suggest that more so than Herschel Walker, more so than the former venture capitalist who loved Silicon Valley in San Francisco? Would you suggest Dr. Oz probably has the biggest hill to climb between now and Election Day of all the Republican candidates? I think probably true. And again, when you when you look at the 2020 results in these states, we said Arizona inside of 10,000 votes for Biden, Georgia, about 11,000 vote victory margin for Joe Biden. When you got to Pennsylvania, Biden's margin was stronger.

You're looking at about two, two and a half points for Biden in Pennsylvania. So it's also a little bit more Democratic, less Republican than these other states. So I think that makes it a steeper hill to climb. You know, and yeah, I think what Democrats are hoping here is Oz's weakness. The other thing you hear from Democrats has been has the Roe decision motivated some of their Democratic leaning female voters? If you if it has if it has motivated them to get interested in the midterm elections, we'll see that in those Philadelphia suburbs that were so decisive in 2020 as well in that state. Is that a dynamic to look for as well? But, yeah, you think back to that Republican primary in Pennsylvania.

It took like three weeks to resolve. Mehmet Oz finally won the thing. I think the official margin was about 900 votes. The candidate he beat out there was the one that the Republican establishment was very much hoping would win. David McCormick, they thought he had a much better chance in the general election than Oz. But Oz did carry that Donald Trump endorsement. We've talked about Trump endorsement having a mixed record, 900 vote margin in that Republican primary. I don't think Oz gets that 900 vote margin without Trump. And that is who Republicans now have to rely on in Pennsylvania. And again, what they're relying on, I think, is less Oz and more the national climate.

And they're just hoping that when you get to October and November, voters are in a mood to say, I don't care who the Republican candidate is. I want to vote against Biden. I want to vote against the Democrats. So Oz losing by 11 points already there. What a huge difference it would have made if McCormick had actually won the Democrats. So I was losing by 11 points already there. What a huge difference it would have made if McCormick had actually won the nomination. I mean, I know him, but I'd be saying it even if I didn't know him because he would be polling very well. Let me let's talk. You brought up abortion. Let's talk about Kansas. Obviously, a huge vote there that a lot of people are going to be looking at to see how much impact Roe being overturned after almost 50 years has, especially in those Kansas City suburbs.

How motivated will people be in the suburbs to go out and vote because the Supreme Court overturned the right to privacy in Roe? Yes. So this is interesting. What's on the ballot in Kansas tomorrow is it would add language to the state constitution that says the state constitution does not protect the right to abortion. So if the referendum passes in Kansas tomorrow, what it would open the door to happening is the state legislature controlled by Republicans potentially moving to enact strict restrictions, maybe an outright ban on abortion if a Republican governor were to get elected this fall, potentially to sign those laws into effect. So that's what's on the ballot tomorrow in Kansas. We have seen before this Supreme Court decision this year, basically the exact same referendum

on the ballot in four states. It was on the ballot in West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana all within the last eight years. It passed in all of those states, although I will say it was close when it was on the ballot in West Virginia. It was just a couple of points. And there has been some polling in Kansas. We think of Kansas as a deeply red state, and obviously it is in most ways. But there's been polling in Kansas that suggests this could be a close race, this referendum tomorrow. And I think that issue that you're raising about specifically, you talk about like Johnson County, you know, the suburbs on the Kansas side, the Kansas City metro area. That's an area that's trended towards the Democrats. That's an area that has a lot of those kinds of voters who I think are more moderate to liberal on social issues. Be

interesting to see if they are motivated to turn out in large numbers by this tomorrow, if they were. And if this referendum were to fail in Kansas tomorrow on the strength of that kind of vote, I think that could be some kind of potential portent for November as well. All right. And I know you're going to be covering every aspect of this in the next couple of days. 24-7, Steve, you also have a special tonight. Tell us about it. 10 p.m. tonight, countdown to the midterms on MSNBC. What are you going to be looking at? A lot of what we're just talking about. You know, I mentioned that we are inside of 100 days now until Election Day. So we're going to try to set the stage, the big picture stage for what to look for between now and Election Day. Realistically, you know, look at this Senate. We're going to go into some of these races deeply as we just started to talk about right here.

Going to look at battle for the House. We're going to look at abortion politics. We're going to look at Biden. We're going to look at the economy. Hey, 100 days to go. Ninety nine days to go at this point. So let's set the stage. I think it'll have a lot of a lot of fun tonight. I look forward to it. Steve Kornacki, thank you so much. Still ahead on Morning Joe. Some veterans spent the weekend protesting in Washington, D.C. after Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would help vets exposed to toxic burn pits. OK, so they were against the vets. No doubt about that. Republicans were against the vets, but they say a mitigating factor was at the same timeP leadership against U.S. vets for China actually whipping their members to vote that way. We're going to take a look at really it's kind of I got to say, even for this Republican Party, it's kind of screwed up. Yeah, well, we'll take a look at where the legislation stands and the new back and forth fight between Jon Stewart and Senator Pat Toomey. Plus,

Democrats have the chance to push forward President Biden's economic agenda. But will everyone get behind the new reconciliation bill? So far, Kyrsten Sinema is staying quiet. We'll also have the very latest from Capitol Hill when we're joined by Senator Chris Murphy. Also ahead, a look at the ongoing effort to bring WNBA star Brittany Griner home from Russia. Former President Trump is sharing his thoughts on that. Oh, boy. And we're going to be remembering an NBA legend, really one of the greatest basketball players of all time, maybe the greatest. Bill Russell has passed away. We're going to take a look, of course, at his long-lasting legacy, both on the court and off the court.

Just a civil rights champion, a guy who accomplished so much in his life, and he did it his way. A remarkable, remarkable American hero. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Back to Morning Joe. It's 26 past the hour. The Department of Homeland Security's top watchdog reportedly abandoned plans earlier this year to try and recover deleted Secret Service text messages. Sources tell The Washington Post that after learning of the missing messages in February, Inspector General Joseph Khafari planned to contact data specialists to help

retrieve the messages. But later that month, Khafari's office reportedly decided it would not collect or review any Secret Service cell phones. Who did he talk to? I wonder. I mean, who did he talk to? What was behind that decision? Congress was demanding these texts. It would take until July, Joe, for Khafari to inform members of Congress that the messages were erased. Those texts from January 5th and 6th of 2021 were deleted in what the Secret Service says was a device replacement program, which everybody at this point knows is completely bogus. Well, I mean, you know, maybe they maybe it was maybe it was lined up to be that way. Their explanation, though, it's riddled with lies and it's riddled with lies because, again, the process they went through is a process that no government agency in Washington, D.C. ever goes through.

This was reportedly done despite multiple notifications. The two agents that they had a legal responsibility to preserve their communications. Jonathan O'Meara, this one stinks to high heaven. that they had a legal responsibility to preserve their communications. Jonathan Lemire, this one stinks to high heaven. I mean, this one is bad. I find it hard to believe that the Justice Department is not going to look into this to see who deliberately destroyed government records or allowed government records to be destroyed that were being demanded by the United

States Congress. But here you have, I mean, it's just one story after another story after another story of malfeasance on the part of this inspector general and the Secret Service leaders. Yeah, it's hard to come up with any other phrase but cover up, Joe, for what has happened here. These are text messages from January 5th and 6th. These are not routine days on the calendar for the Secret Service. But we know records are to be preserved even on routine days. That's how it works when you work for the federal government. There's a Federal Records Act that demands that there be retention of said records. That didn't happen here. And these are obviously days where getting that information would be extraordinarily helpful to investigators,

both the Congressional January 6th subcommittee, as well as the Department of Justice, because it would provide insight to what the Secret Service was saying about what's happening with the vice president at the Capitol, as well as with President Trump at the Ellipse and then his demands to try to go to the Hill himself. And now we have, despite knowing the timeline that this request was made from Congress a few days after January 6th, preserve these records. Not only were they not, but then the internal investigation into them was scuttled and that the watchdog said, we don't need to pursue this further. And now it does appear those records are lost forever. Mika, it is it is is something that the committee is

zeroing in on. They are frustrated. It is certainly possible that there could be disciplinary, if not more criminal charges being looked at least looked at here. But at least for now, in terms of the investigation, January 6th, those messages seem like they're gone. Well, they're gone. Well, they're gone. And if they're gone, they're gone because there was a deliberate attempt by the inspector general to allow them to be gone. There's a deliberate attempt by people inside the department to allow them to be gone. You read one article after another. We're going to be having the Washington Post's Carol Lenig, who's at the center of all of this, this investigation for The Post.

Everything they did seemed calculated to destroy the messages and make sure those messages could could never be retrieved. Jonathan O'Meara brings up Mike Pence. Think about this. The Secret Service deliberately destroys records that can tell us what the Secret Service was doing. Think about this. What the Secret Service was doing. Or seeing. What the president of the United States was doing. And what the vice president of the United States was doing on a day when the president of the United States was trying to overthrow election results. And the vice president of the United States and his family were hiding

in fear for their lives, in fear for their lives. Secret Service agents calling home to say goodbye on January the 6th. People were holding a noose in the audience and the chant was hang Mike Pence. That was the day. I would say, obviously, one of the most extraordinary days, one of the most difficult days in the history of the Secret Service. That was the day that the Secret Service, which had been politicized by Donald Trump, decided to destroy records of what their agents were saying and doing. Well, and it also, Joe, it makes you wonder, like if you ask somebody who says, oh, it was nothing, a member of Congress, a fervent Trump supporter. What if this happened at your house? What if your house became the target of a violent attack and there were people outside screaming that you should be killed? And the police came and the county police came and then the state police came. And then you want to find out what happened because your family's traumatized

months later, going through the process of bringing this to justice and everything's deleted. Yeah. How would you feel? I mean, you know, this is wrong. We not only know it's wrong, we know what happened. You know what happened. We know what happened because we've already had the Secret Service lying off the record to try to undermine Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony, which lines up with what other people said. We already have them lying off the record from a guy who was so highly politicized that he's been caught lying time and time again. And so now they're they're trying they're hoping to completely cover this up for Donald Trump. The IG also politicized by Donald Trump. The Justice Department needs to get

to the bottom of this. We need to know what happened and people need to be held accountable. They destroyed records critical to understanding what happened with the president of the United States while a coup was taking place at the United States Capitol. And the ability to do this makes us different from other countries. As the January 6th committee prepares for an additional round of public hearings in September, it's possible those hearings will include a new area of focus. Sources tell NBC News the September hearings may detail new information behind the intelligence and law enforcement failures at the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. That oversight, leaving police woefully underprepared for the mob that stormed the Capitol following the former president's incitement.

A committee aide told NBC News last week an entire team of investigators known as the Blue Team is focused on the response by law enforcement, intelligence agencies and the military. Let's bring in congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany. She's an MSNBC contributor. Also with us, former senior operations officer with the CIA, Mark Polymeropoulos. I got to say, it is kind of this kind of cute. The Red Sox win one game and Mark puts on a Red Sox jersey. He's got his little Soxies. Thank you. Thank you for not being a frontrunner, Mark.

Mark, I want to ask you, what the hell happened with the Secret Service records? How in the world could something like that happen? Again, this would be like the CIA destroying its text messages on 9-11. 11. I mean, for the Secret Service, there is no bigger day in Secret Service history than this day when you had Americans trying to find Mike Pence so they could hang him and they destroyed the records. Well, Joe, you're right. And I think there's a lot to be, you know, that people have to be held accountable for within both Secret Service with, with, with DHS. And of course the DHS inspector general, I'll get to that in a second, but the way I look at these scandals or controversies that I always have in my

career is that there's two things that happens. First you look for government incompetence. You know, when I was at CIA things, you know, programs would go wrong and, you know, maybe money was misspent and often it was incompetence of government officials, but then it switches to malfeasance. And I think that's where we are now. You know, it's like, you know, the old movie Hunt for Red October when the national security advisor is looking at the Soviet ambassador. He says, you know, you lost another sub. So, you know, we lost more text messages here. So ultimately, it's something that we have to get to the bottom to. Let me just make a quick moment,

a quick point on the inspector general itself, because, you know, there's the story of the Secret Service text is a story of now DHS senior officials text missing. But now the inspector general is is apparently did not inform Congress that they were looking into the Secret Service messages. That's really important. The inspector general is really the nation's last line of defense against government malfeasance. I was subject to numerous inquiries from inspector generals at CIA for decades. And when you get an inquiry, you know, you keep records. You know, there's no option on this. And so, and the inspector general who performs audits and investigations, you know, ultimately is an institution that is really respected. And so I think, again, as we go on this kind of period of drip, drip, drip from now incompetence to malfeasance, you're right, absolutely critical that the investigation

continue and perhaps the Department of Justice gets involved. So this is what I, Jackie, I guess that's what's so surprising to me. And I mean, we all live in a Washington where very little surprises us anymore. But you hear the words inspector general and you're like, oh, OK, here comes the Calvary. They're going to clean this up. But in this case, we have an inspector general who in February decided I'm not going to retrieve those texts. We don't know why he decided not to retrieve those texts after saying he was going to make an effort to do so, but then waited from February all the way to July to notify Congress who had asked for the records

that they didn't have the records and that he had proactively decided not to save the records. What can you tell us about this, Inspector General? And what else can you tell us about this story that just keeps growing by the day? Yeah, Joseph Koufari, Joe, has a questionable reputation in the Democratic administration. He was a Trump appointee. And the fact that he opened up a criminal investigation into these missing text messages last month is viewed very skeptically, especially in light of the new reporting from my colleagues, Maria Sicetti and Carol Lennig, which contains a former senior executive at the inspector general's office, telling them that Khafari's office instructed Khafari to call the agency's top forensic expert who was pursuing forensics work on the Secret Service phones to stand down. So Kavari was actively trying to quash

this investigation as it was going on last year by experts, people who were competent and could follow through on these directives. But this is also going to be a thread that the January 6th Select Committee is going to continue to pursue this month leading up to the fall series of hearings, that whether or not there was a cover-up and just how far that cover-up goes and whether it extends beyond these text messages and if the committee can actually obtain and recover some of these text messages that have gone missing from key figures during a key moment in time on January 5th, 6th, and 7th. So Jackie, you just started to go where I wanted to hit next. There's some signals from the committee that when they have their next

hearing, likely in September, a real focus is going to be about the law enforcement and intelligence agency's response in the days before January 6th, the day of January 6th, and the days after. Tell us a little bit more about what that would mean. It feels like it would go far beyond these missing text messages. Yeah, I think the best way to look at these fall hearings, John, is the first eight hearings, the summer series, so to speak, focused on the period leading up to January 6th and on January 6th. And this next set of hearings is going to focus on the Jan 6th to January 20th, Biden's inauguration time period. There are several different threads that we have heard from our sources that the investigators on the committee are pursuing right now.

That includes Secret Service. And it goes way beyond just these text messages. It includes going back potentially to revisit witnesses like Tony Ornato, Tony Ornato and Bobby Engel, names that we all became acquainted with via Cassidy Hutchinson during her blockbuster hearing. And then they're also going to focus on just various loose threads that they weren't able to sort of button up in the prior hearings, including law enforcement intelligence failures, RNC fundraising practices, really a host of things. And there's actually concern amongst our sources that the committee simply doesn't have enough resources or time to get done what they need to get done prior to January 3rd in the case that House Republicans ultimately take back the House. The Washington Post's Jackie

Alimany. Thank you once again for your reporting on this. And Mark, stay with us. We do want to get your analysis in just a few minutes on the very latest out of Ukraine. A lot happening there and the Red Sox bullpen and that since he's got his socks on. But first, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is a big focus for Democrats this week as the party awaits her decision on whether she supports the new reconciliation deal. An NBC News source says Senator Sinema is not upset that she wasn't included in the negotiations. Why should she be? She doesn't talk, at least not in public. There is a tax provision in the bill that she has consistently opposed in the past.

Despite that, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who brokered the legislation deal with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, says he believes that she will support it. Let me say that Kyrsten Sinema is a friend of mine, and we work very close together. She has a tremendous, tremendous input in this piece of legislation. This is things that everyone has worked on over the last eight months or more. And she basically insisted that no tax increases. We've done that. She was very, very adamant about that, and I support and I agree with her. She was also very instrumental in making sure that we had drug prices that Medicare could compete on certain drugs to bring it down so that there wouldn't be an impact on individuals on Medicare across.

She's done all this. She has a tremendous amount of input in this piece of legislation, and I would like to think she would be favorable towards it. But I respect her decision. She'll make her own decision based on the contents. Joining us now, NBC News senior congressional reporter Scott Wong. Scott, what's going on here? Well, you know, all the focus had been on Joe Manchin and now the spotlight is on Kyrsten Sinema. And she has, you know, as you guys know, has been at the center of other big, you know, bipartisan deal. She likes to be in the middle of things. She likes to negotiate

things behind the scenes. And so the fact that she has been fairly quiet on the big reconciliation package is no surprise. But the fact that she's in the middle of this now is no surprise either. And if you remember, she cut the deal, Prasial, with Republicans, cut the deal on the bipartisan infrastructure bill last year. Earlier this summer, she was at the center of talks on the gun reform after Uvalde and Buffalo shootings. And so, you know, she will be, you guys pointed out correctly that there is a provision in this Manchin-Schumer deal that she has long opposed, the carried interest loophole, closing that loophole for, you know, so private equity managers can't take advantage of lower tax rates. And so that is one big area of focus that we are all

going to be watching very closely. There's the contours for a potential deal as everyone on Capitol Hill sees it. And so, you know, right now it's going to be heading over to the parliamentarian. She's Republicans and Democrats are going to be making their case to the parliamentarian this week uh whether certain aspects of this package can pass muster with her can can go through the uh what we call the bird bath process uh and see what stays in what what comes out maybe all of it can stay in um so you you know, that's that's sort of where we are. That's the state of play. Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, really want to press forward on this. This could be a very consequential week for President Joe Biden and the Democrats. So, Jonathan O'Meara, did Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin strike a deal, declare peace for all time without having all 50 votes.

Joe Manchin made the rounds on the Sunday shows yesterday. The full Ginsburg even hit them all. And he said at each stop, look, he did great. He's hit at every stop that he believed that Senator Sinema would come on board. But I think, as Scott just mentioned, there's going to be some negotiations here. Sinema has said that that carried interest tax loophole is something she does not want to see part of this. Manchin has said that he still does.

There's probably going to be some sort of deal-making. There's some sausage-making still to be done here, and then it will have to go to the House. President Biden, of course, unable to play the role of in-person closer because of his covid isolation. But White House aides say he is working the phones, though they have taken a largely hands off position on this, letting Schumer and Manchin broker this deal, a deal that, frankly, would give Democrats a huge win heading into this November's midterms,

but also, frankly, change how we'd all have to be looking at the Biden presidency. It would be a significant accomplishment. But Scott, before you go, I wanted to turn the page and talk about something else. Last week, of course, we know that the Republicans blocked what would have been aid to veterans who were suffering illnesses because of their exposure to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. They had signaled support. The bill had to get redone for a technical reason. And then suddenly it came back and Republicans said no, which most observers believed was out of spite because they felt like they had been outmaneuvered on the reconciliation bill. Where does that stand? Is that going to come up again for a vote this week? And is it going to

pass? Yeah, you mentioned Chuck Schumer holding that press conference yesterday. He also insisted that this bill would come up for a vote sometime early this week. We thought it was going to be today, but it looks like it's going to be pushed on a little bit further. You know, Republicans, 25 Republicans changed their position. They had originally supported it earlier this year. They flipped to no votes and blocked it, successfully filibustering it last week. You know, in the timing of that is very suspicious. It came right after Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer announced that bipartisan I'm sorry, that partisan deal on the climate and economy package. And so Republicans are do appear to

be taking some retribution on that and and are now, you know, Pat Toomey, the senator from Republican from Pennsylvania, who's been sort of the outspoken voice on this package, you know, helping veterans has said, look, we are very concerned with the spending. We're concerned that this money is not going to be going towards veterans. It's going to be used for other purposes. And Democrats, including John Tester, have said, no, that's entirely incorrect. There's really no significant changes that we've made to this legislation. You guys supported it last time. And, you know, this is going this is money that's going to help veterans who are exposed to toxic

chemicals during war. And and so it's put Republicans in a really, really difficult spot. Obviously, we saw over the course of the four days that veterans have been camping out on the steps of the Capitol, protesting the Republican opposition. This is not going over well for Republicans. And at the end of the day, they're going to have to get behind this bill and let it move forward. Yeah. NBC News senior congressional reporter Scott Wong, Thank you so much. Greatly appreciate it, Scott. And Mark, let me bring you in here really quickly. Just how stupid can Republican leaders be to actually to to get upset at a procedural game that Republicans and Democrats are playing against each other regarding reconciliation, and then to get angry and take it out on some of the most vulnerable vets that are suffering because they serve this country in war. You know, Joe, a friend of mine, Matt Zeller, is down there and I see him on Twitter and I'm proud of the individuals who are there at the steps of the Capitol protesting,

because, you know, as Jon Stewart has said in much more colorful language, of course, that I could ever use, you know, this is an outrage. You know, you know, we have we have veterans who for 20 years have fought, been injured and died for this country. There is serious health effects that Jon Stewart and others have really pushed for, you know, for years now that would be addressed, you know, care would be addressed in this in this bill. So it's unconscionable that the Republicans are blocking this. And look, I think it's going to be resolved shortly because the American people see what's happening. But for a party that often professes to be pro-military, you know, this is not a proud moment. So I think this is going to be reversed quickly. And look, you know, I certainly understand this. I've been, you know,

I have health issues from my government service. And so at the end of the day, when the government doesn't care for you, you know, it's certainly damaging. We're, you know, we're almost there. I applaud those who are at the Capitol now. Again, Matt Zeller is a good friend of mine. God bless them. And Jon Stewart. But I think the Republicans are going to have to cave on this. And very quickly, because the American people are seeing what's happening. All right. We're going to be following this and coming and coming back to it coming up. We're following a major development in Ukraine where a ship loaded with grain is leaving the country for the first time since Russia's invasion. Meanwhile, there's new reporting on the Russian army. It appears

Putin's troops are stalled out in eastern Ukraine. And Ukrainians may be starting up a counteroffensive in the south. We'll get expert analysis from retired four-star Navy Admiral James Tavridis. Plus, is Fox News turning its back on former President Trump? Kind of looks that way. It seems that way based on a lack of recent coverage on the network. We'll get into that new reporting and what it means from The New York Times and also what it could mean for 2024. Give speeches, Mika. They don't cover it. Yeah. Like, throws tantrums. They don't report on them. Yeah.

It's awfully sad. I think they're all in for DeSantis. Yeah. Bevor Chuck comes on. He gets clapped by the Gladys Frees. He gets clapped by all four sides. And he gets clapped by both sets of players come on Paul

come on Paul he didn't know he was going to do this 55 past the hour the Everton Football Club honoured a fan during Friday's friendly against Ukrainian side Dynamo Kyiv dubbed a match for peace Paul Stratton

a 44 year old Everton fan who has been helping Ukrainian refugees amid Russia's ongoing invasion, was subbed into the game to take a penalty kick and slotted it home past an unmoving goalkeeper. The goal did not count on the final score sheet, but Everton still finished the friendly with a 3-0 win. After the war, there is a significant breakthrough this morning. There's a ship carrying Ukrainian grain set off from the port of Odessa for the first time since the war started in February. Ukraine's minister of infrastructure tweeted this video of the vessel, which is carrying more than 26,000 tons of corn and headed to Lebanon. The ship is expected to reach Istanbul on Tuesday, where it

will be inspected before being allowed to proceed. The move is part of an internationally brokered deal between Kiev and Moscow to release millions of tons of grain to foreign markets and ease a growing food crisis. Ukrainian officials say 16 more ships are waiting to depart Odessa's port as part of the deal. Meanwhile, Russian advances have slowed almost to a standstill as newly delivered Western weapons are helping Ukrainian forces reclaim much of the advantage they lost in recent months. The Washington Post reports Russian troops have made no significant territorial gains since the Ukrainians retreated from the east on July 2nd. According to the Post, analysts suspect Russian forces are close to exhausting their capacity to make further

territorial gains as their depleted army confronts Ukrainian troops with newly acquired capabilities. A senior U.S. official says the weapons provided by the U.S. and its allies have given the Ukrainians the ability to strike almost 50 miles behind Russian lines with a high degree of accuracy and Ukrainians have used them to destroy more than 100 high value Russian targets. According to The Wall Street Journal, Ukraine has destroyed Russian ammunition dumps, command and control centers and air defense systems. With the help of these Western weapons, Ukraine says it is mounting a counteroffensive to take back the southern port city of Kherson. One example of the Kremlin's struggles was described by senior U.S. military and defense officials during a background briefing at the Pentagon. Quote, there was a video of a Russian tank just driving around in a circle and it's turned out because the driver was not trained. He didn't know how to drive the tank. It wasn't because they were having fun.

Joining us now, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, retired four-star Navy Admiral James Tavridis. He's chief international security and diplomacy analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Also still with us, former senior operations officer with the CIA, Mark Polymeropoulos. Good to have you both on board with us this morning. Thanks so much for being with us. You know, we never really knew what was going on in the Soviet Union. We'd guess what was going on. What happened in 1989 caught a lot of us by surprise. I mean, reading through Paul Kennedy's old, I say old book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, written in 87.

And he was writing as if the United States and USSR were sort of on parity economically, because that's what a lot of people thought at the time. But I'm reminded of that now because it's like we're seeing through a glass darkly, as the scripture says. We really we don't know what's going on in Russia. We keep hearing they're about to exhaust themselves, but we really don't have any details. And then we seems like we hear every three or four weeks are running out of missiles, are running out of ammo, running out of troops. What's your best guess on where we are right now as this war goes into August? And we have this rush for both sides to try to make gains before winter sets in. Yeah, like in Game of Thrones, winter is coming and it will be an inflection point, I think, in this war, Joe. But here's my base source to look at. Not so much Ukrainian

intelligence. Understandably, they're going to hype the successes. U.S. intelligence, very conservative in making its judgments for a variety of very good reasons. I think British intelligence is kind of in the middle. And their call is that Russia is somewhere north of 20,000 killed in action, thousands of vehicles destroyed, hundreds, if not thousands of tanks destroyed. This is a moment where you really feel the steam coming out of the Russian engine. And you couple that with the two stories you highlighted a moment ago. The Ukrainians are, in fact, preparing for a counteroffensive, probably at Kyrgyzstan, which is the guardian city, if you you will of crimea it's only 150 miles from sevastopol the black sea fleet and then thirdly the start of these grain exports which is

the economic side of this thing look it's a small number going out this minute but look at that map three ports in and around odessa to the left. You're going to see that ramp up because Vladimir Putin has no real options to stop that at this point. So from where I sit this morning, I take the hand of cards that Vladimir, that Volodymyr Zelensky holds, not the hand of cards that Vladimir on the other side of the firing line holds. We hear about a counteroffensive possibly going down to Kherson. How important would a Ukrainian victory be in the south going into winter? Immensely important, Joe, for two very focused reasons. One is the psychological value. Kyrgyzstan was an early conquest. It was

really the only major city that the Russians were able to overwhelm in the early days of this conflict. So this would be psychologically a striking blow. And then secondly, geographically, look at where it's located. It sits on top, for example, the water supply going into Crimea. That's where the Black Sea fleet is based at Sevastopol. So it's got both geographic and psychological power to a counteroffensive there. I would bet on the Ukrainians to succeed here. Yeah. So, by the way, we're following new details on the scandal involving those deleted Secret Service text messages from around the time of the attack on the Capitol. In just a moment, we're going to speak to The Washington Post reporter who has been on top of the story, breaking all the latest details. Later this morning, the National Security Council's

John Kirby will be our guest after rejecting Russia's counteroffer in a prisoner swap aimed at freeing imprisoned WNBA star Brittany Griner. We're going to go live to Arizona as well for the latest on tomorrow's key primary races as candidates backed by Donald Trump appear poised for victory. Is that good news for Democrats? Our panel is standing by for that in just a few minutes. I just wanted to recap all that's going on at the top of the hour here. But back to Ukraine, Admiral Stavridis, the question I have is, given that people in the Donetsk region are being told to leave their homes by the weekend, you know, evacuate. There are still massive killings and atrocities happening in Ukraine.

The narrative seems to be that Ukraine is winning. But is it? And how long can this go on? Well, let's stipulate, Mika, that war is the most unpredictable of human activity and it can spin in turn. Let's also recognize that Vladimir Putin has a lot of capacity for dirty tricks. He's still got the ability to move terrorists, Chechens, Syrians into the fight to bring in mercenaries. He's got chemical weapons. God forbid he should think about using one. He could do a false flag operation and attack one of these grain ships coming out. So he's got a lot of capacity to throw sand in the gears here. This is far from a sweeping new moment in the war, but you just

feel those tectonic plates starting to shift in favor of the Ukrainians as we sit here this morning. Hey, Mark, let's talk manpower and morale. Senior U.S. officials I spoke to last week say that Russia is really struggling here. It's a sort of dovetail with our conversation. And they made some advances, but now they've stalled. And they're having a really hard time getting people to the front. That as much as the conventional wisdom has been that time was on Putin's side because he doesn't answer to voters, he's not worried about a cold winter because he's not the one whose gas supplies are being shut off. But time is not on his side because it seems to be exhausting his troops.

Give us a sense as to what you see in the manpower issues, but also the strain it then puts on the soldiers who are on the front, who are being made to stay there day after day with poor equipment, poor training and winter approaching. Jonathan, you're 100 percent right. You know, since since the invasion, since February 24th, one of the things I've been saying over and over again, it's kind of brutal and stark is what really matters is Russians coming home in body bags, because that has an effect on, you know, obviously, the increased U.S. assistance and Western assistance has been incredibly effective. But if you think back to the Russian or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the casualties that the Russians have taken in Ukraine far outstrip that now. And so, you know, there has to be continued Western resolve because ultimately, just the morale, the fighting spirit of the Russian military has been severely degraded.

And again, it's the simple idea of Russians going home in body bags. And that is a reflection of not only incredible kind of Ukrainian fighting spirit, but also Western assistance. We have to keep our foot on the gas. You know, winter is coming. You know, the admiral is 100 percent right. There's there's certainly time remaining for the Ukrainians to to launch their counteroffensive. But again, Russians coming home in body bags, morale of Russian forces, just a critical component of this conflict. Admiral, I want to reference a few things that are in your shot. First of all, from your latest book, great, important book. Just to risk it all, could you, for somebody that's getting up, getting ready to go to work, maybe somebody who's getting ready

to start college or maybe start a new career, what's a lesson they can draw from the book today? Number one, and we see it in Ukraine, and Mark discussed it perfectly a moment ago, it's determination. And, you know, six months ago, there were young men and women in their late teens and 20s getting ready to get up and go to work. They had no idea that their nation would be plunged into a war that would require them to volunteer and go to the front lines. Men and women who are now risking it all. So the lesson I would say from the book is this idea that everything can change in a moment. You may be called upon and you have to be determined in that moment. We're seeing that in Ukraine.

And finally, behind you, most importantly for me, a risk. It looks like an old retro game of risk. I'm going to guess that Mark and Lamir played risk growing up a good bit. And in college, I don't think Mika did because she thinks I'm very strange whenever I start talking about playing it. What was your strategy in Risk? We need to know. Did you start in Australia? Did you start in South America? Did you just sit back and wait and see what mistakes your friends would make? Here comes the cliche answer from the Admiral. I looked to the sea. I looked at ports and choke points and wherever I

could find ways to close off my opponent and choke them in, I would do it. At the end of the day, sea power matters if you want to control the world. And it also matters if you want to defend the world. That's what the U.S. Navy does. So, Joe, I started on the periphery and worked my way in. How about you? I try to figure out how we get Australia and just let everybody fight each other, constantly being nice to everybody around the board and just kind of sit and wait and let other people destroy themselves and then just slowly, slowly take over. But my college roommates figured that out about three or four weeks in and and they destroyed me first. Then they go around the rest of the board. So we I think we need to get I think we need to have a 15 year anniversary risk game starring Admiral James Trevitas. I think that would be a lot of 15 risk. Got it. Retired four star Navy Admiral James Trevitas.

I'm sure that's what he thinks he needs to do with his time. We'll do it for charity. Senior CIA officer Mark Polymeropoulos. Thank you both very much. Really appreciate it.