Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/12/24

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Trump falsely claims Harris is faking massive crowds

Hello Arizona! Wow! Hey! Yeah! Wow! Well, you might have seen a few people showed up in Philadelphia the other night. And then 10,000 plus walked into a field in western Wisconsin. And then on Wednesday, the largest crowd of the campaign showed up in Detroit, Michigan. But Arizona just couldn't leave it alone, could you? You know, it's not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything.

OK, vice presidential nominee Tim Walz poking the bear just a little bit during his rally with Vice President Kamala Harris. On Friday, we've seen thousands of supporters show up for the new Democratic ticket since their debut last Tuesday in Philadelphia. Wow. What a difference a week or so makes. Look at those numbers. I mean, Mika, I mean, look at the numbers. I mean, the Philadelphia event, I remember when we first, I mean, that first came out, it seems like two weeks ago, doesn't it? And you saw it was so huge. And then the Wisconsin seemed to be even bigger. Detroit was mammoth. Then Glendale reports of 15000 people there more than Barack Obama had in his 2008 campaign. And then the the Vegas show last night. And let's let's just say what it is. These are like these have transcended politics and gotten into popular culture. They just have. It's something that we've talked about before. We talked about with Barack Obama. We talked about

how it happened in 1980 with Ronald Reagan. But you have people talking about these things like their rock shows, like their Taylor Swift events. People talk asking if, you know, their parents, if they can younger people who weren't even interested in the campaign asking their parents. I've heard several times. Hey, you think we can get into one of these events? Can we drive? And you, of course, know people that have not only been Republicans their entire life, but actually worked as Republicans on the Hill talking about driving five hours with friends to go to these events. It's it's going to be one of the great challenges for Republicans and for the Trump Vance team to try to figure out how how to slow down this momentum, because right now it just seems day in and day out to keep getting more powerful by the day. And unfortunately for Republican strategists, Donald Trump is doing the opposite of what they want him to do. Really quickly, let me just read this. This is from The New York Times talking about over the past couple

of weeks. Mr. Trump has questioned Ms. Harris's racial identity at a conference for black journalists. He later attacked Brian Kemp, the popular Republican governor in the key swing state of Georgia. He's seen new polling that put him behind this Harris in several key states. And Mark Halpern reporting that numerous campaign contributors who spent the weekend with Trump on his Western money swing came away shaken by his fixation on press coverage, crowd size and election stealing to the exclusion of issues on which he might actually win back the White House. And of course, everybody was talking. We will get to this, Mika. This also from Halperin's newsletter this morning.

Taking the cake online, Halperin writes, was his truly politically worse than claiming 2020 was stolen and politically worse than celebrating January 6th accusation that Kamala Harris used AI to generate a fake crowd at her Michigan rally, an accusation so unhinged, writes Halperin, that I can barely type this paragraph, a charge so fundamentally ludicrous that Stephen King himself at first thought it must be a joke. Right. I'm the post is really it's it deserves a place of its own in the conversation coming up. We'll get to that. Well, we're going to have to read through it because you make a great point. It's it's just hard to believe that is how much Kamala Harris's crowds have gotten to him. Meanwhile, the vice president is trying to flip the script on the issue of immigration, putting the blame for the problems

at the border squarely on the former president, of course, because he told Republicans to not go with the best deal they could ever get on immigration. And former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown is questioning Donald Trump's memory after Trump claimed the two rode in a helicopter together, which Brown says never happened. And now it seems it was a different man that Trump was thinking of. Super cringeworthy. But we'll get to that in just a moment. With us, we have the host of Wait Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kay, is with us. President of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton is here. And MSNBC contributor and author of the book, How the Right Lost Its Mind, Charlie Sykes, along with us.

And conservative attorney George Conway is here as well. A lot to get to, Joe. A lot of movement of the Harris-Waltz campaign across the country. Right. Also in the polls. Yeah, of course, Jonathan O'Meara, we could talk about the polls, the New York Times, which have always trended Trump, took a sharp turn over the past week. Now, Harris up in the three key industrial states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Just a really dramatic shift. That's something Donald Trump obviously is seeing. And there you see, again, all three states and the

numbers inside the numbers are even more surprising how quickly, how dramatically things have changed. And if you look at those numbers and you look at the numbers inside the numbers, you are reminded what Americans have been telling us for the past four years. They do not want they did not want a repeat of 2020. And and so they don't have a repeat of 2020. You look at those numbers. So first of all, really quickly, the economy, we haven't seen the economy that close in several years. It's just a six point gap, obviously, on abortion. Kamala Harris, well ahead there. Immigration, only five points. And, you know, it's it's fascinating. I think if they continue the

argument, Harris-Walls continue the argument that she she put forward in Arizona, you're you're going to actually see those numbers tighten up even more because she has she has a winning argument because it happens to be the truth. Donald Trump killed the strongest border protection bill in the past 30 years for political reasons. But, Jonathan, let's let's start this week with a big picture. One, Kamala Harris is doing very well in the polls for now. It's only August. We said it when it was only July and when it was only June. It's only August. Things don't get real until the end of September when people start to vote. So it's only August. She's certainly doing very well right now.

But there's two sides to this coin. Not only is she doing well and doing far better than I think most anybody expected her to do. Donald Trump, according to his supporters, according to his staffers, doing worse, doing everything they begged him not to do. So he's talking about January 6th, as this Mark Halpern report says about the fundraising and everything else, a near meltdown with a lot of fundraisers because he kept talking about crowd sizes. And of course, you can go back to his first day as president of the United States and what he did there. So so Harris doing well on one side, Donald Trump doing everything his staff does not want him to do on the other side. And then we got to say that I was with Stephen King on this one. When I read that Truth Social post about her crowds being fake, I was sure I said I'm not going to fall for this one.

I was sure that it was a fake post. In fact, I remain sure it was a fake post for several hours until we got confirmation. This is truly. Well, again, I'm just going to I'm going to quote Halperin here. Politically worse than claiming 2020 was stolen and politically worse than celebrating January 6th. This accusation even more unhinged than that. And I think a lot of people are there, Republicans who are now fretting that he seems to be getting worse at the very worst time for Republicans. Completely disconnected from reality. And let's do big picture. Let's start with the Democratic side. And first of all,

what a successful barnstorming tour here for Vice President Harris and her new running mate, hitting battleground state after battleground state, drawing these huge crowns, sharpening their message. And yes, in Arizona, that's important. The vice president saying, look, I was a border state senator. I can talk about immigration. And here, this is a deal that was on the table, authored by one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, Lankford of Oklahoma, and Donald Trump killed it for political gain. And if she can keep hitting that message, those numbers in that poll we just showed will continue to close. I mean, I don't think there are many Democrats who think they're going to win on the issue of immigration, maybe not even win on the issue of the economy. But if they can mitigate the damage and those that Trump's

advantage in those two categories shrunk dramatically from the lead he had over President Biden. That's significant. And we have seen now we talk about trend lines on the show all the time in polling. Yes, those three states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, they're all still within the margin of error. They're all so close. But the trend is heavily towards Harris and it's rushing towards Harris. In recent weeks, The vice president at this point throwing the equivalent of a no hitter in the first three weeks of her campaign, hoping to keep that going with the Democratic convention next week. She will have obstacles in front of her, no doubt. But right now she's on a roll. George Conway, not on a roll. Donald Trump,

who is imploding. And there's been some terrific reporting over the weekend. The New York Times had a great story. I've been talking to sources who back up what Joe is just saying about how the Republicans are freaking out because Trump can't stay focused. We had that unhinged news conference last week. We had these fundraisers where he's giving private remarks, talking about crowd size, doubling down on his attacks about the vice president's identity, and then culminating in that truth social post which i also i have truth social i'm sorry to say and i triple checked it to make sure it was a real post on his site and it was it was real and george we now know that

this point donald trump is so rattled about crowd, he's taking up conspiracy theories from the fever swamps of the right, elevating it, maybe even believing it. It just reeks of desperation. Yeah, as I've been yammering about for five or six years now, he's a deeply unwell man. He is a deeply psychologically disturbed individual. If he were a member of your family, you'd be taking him, you'd be staging an intervention and taking him in to a psychiatric hospital. And if Melania and Ivanka and Eric and Don Jr. care about their father, and I assume their father and husband, I assume they do, they would be doing that if they could. He is, as I've been saying, a narcissistic sociopath, a pathological narcissist, and a sociopath as defined by

the American Psychiatric Association. And these are, historians will tell you, the traits of authoritarian dictators throughout history. And what we're seeing now is, as you put it, an implosion. And this, I believe, is what ultimately was always going to happen, the final implosion of Donald Trump. I mean, it's like Hitler, when Hitler was moving around divisions that didn't exist in the last 10 days of the war in the Führerbunker. I mean, he has completely lost it. This post is beyond question delusional. Anybody, I mean,. But it was also inevitable because what's happening here is he realizes he's under more pressure than ever because he's not just running for the

presidency. He's running for his freedom. He's going to go to jail if he does not win the presidency. And he can see that now. And that's why he's doubling down on the unreality. It's it's partly it's for self-soothing. Partly it's just because he can't help it. He's a pathological liar being a sociopath. And what we're watching is is I mean, we're going to make fun of it because it helps provoke him into self-destruction, which is what the country needs. But it's actually very, very sad. Well, and and I will say, Charlie Sykes, you don't have to have George Conway's point of view and you don't have to be voting against Donald Trump to look at what happened this weekend and not be horrified at a time where they need him to act rationally, at a time they need him to push back hard against Kamala Harris. He's going in the direction that they believe is the most destructive. And you can go back as The New York Times neatly summarized the past week and a half.

It's been terrible for him where first he questioned whether Kamala Harris was black or not. Laughable for a woman who was in a historically black sorority at Howard University and has identified as a black woman her entire life. And then he goes to Georgia and not only does he insult the extraordinarily popular Republican governor of Georgia, but he insults Brian Kemp's wife, which enrages Republican women across the state. And now, of course, this obsession at fundraisers that are that's unnerving his biggest supporters. He wrote a letter. I'm sure you saw this. One of his biggest contributors insulting her, Miriam Adelson and the widow of Sheldon Adelson, scaring some campaign workers into believing she won't contribute to him in the future. And now he's coming forward with the AI generated stuff. And so Republicans fearful that he's doing the exact opposite of what he should

do. This morning, the Wall Street Journal editorial page is suggesting that he attacks Kamala Harris on health care. I don't I with with all due respect to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, I don't think that's going to stem those 15000 person crowds. But I must say, were I a Republican strategist right now, I wouldn't know exactly what tack to take, because this is so reminiscent of how we Republicans were feeling in the run up to the 2008 election. There was a freight train going, you know, 200 miles an hour and Republicans had no idea how to stop it. Yeah. And if only they had been warned. And by the way, you know, as we're watching this, you know, decomposition meltdown by Donald Trump, notice that not a single prominent Republican is

looking at this and saying, hey, you know, let's get off this train. This is deeply wrong. Let's go go in a different direction or change my vote. They are they're completely locked in. I also agree with you that what's really rattling Donald Trump is that this has become a cultural phenomenon and not simply a political phenomenon. But I want to go back to what George was saying. You know, yes, it is. It is sad and we can make fun of it. It is it is alarming, but it's also profoundly dangerous what is going on because you look at that insane tweet and it's not just that he's he's going down this rabbit hole of fever swamp conspiracy theories. He's he's going down this rabbit hole of fever swamp conspiracy theories. He's he's using this as as as, you know, as as a way of saying that the Democrats are cheating, that Kamala Harris should be disqualified. Look, put this in the larger context of what's happening. This is pre-election denialism by Donald Trump. It's no mystery. Donald Trump is never going to graciously concede defeat in this election. He is

already laying the groundwork for what's going to happen after November. And I think this is going to be an extraordinarily dangerous period. He has election deniers in key states. His base is psychologically not prepared for him to lose. And as George mentioned, this is a desperate man. Donald Trump will not simply lose the election. Donald Trump knows that if he is not elected president, he may be going to jail. He will do and say anything. And you see in that tweet, not merely the fact that he is rattled and losing it, but that he's already coming up with his lines for why he can deny the results of the election, how Kamala Harris's nomination is unconstitutional, how this is being stolen, all of that in advance. So no one should be surprised or think that this fever is going

to break on November 5th, because whatever happens, we are about to head into a very dangerous period in American politics led by Donald Trump and obviously assisted by Republicans who simply have decided that they're not going to draw the line. Well, and, you know, Mika, yesterday, several Republicans, certainly commentators, started asking questions. I know Eric Erickson did after after the the Kemp insult, basically saying, you know, what's going on? Tim Carney, of course, who just a great author, love having him on the show. Great author, also Washington examiner, columnist, AEI scholar. I thought he put it very well. He said Republicans, when he was talking about this

Truth Social post, said Republicans, you only have yourself to blame. Republicans, you are here. We are here because of the choices you made in primary season. And it just reminded me, and I haven't said this yet on the show, but we've talked about it. You know, there will, of course, be conspiracy theorists who say, oh, this was always rigged against us. If Kamala Harris goes on to win. Oh, this was this was our fate. Our fate is no. They chose their fate. We warned about what they were doing. I will tell you that I heard I know you heard I know so many people heard real excitement about another woman who is running for president. Another woman that was was younger and also had a diverse background. And that was Nikki Haley. We I can't I can't count the number of people I heard talking about what how excited they were about Nikki Haley, whether they were Republicans,

independents, Democrats. I heard a lot of Democrats talking about Nikki Haley being excited about her much in the same way they're talking now about Kamala Harris. I mean, this this is a choice that Republicans have made for what the past nine years. And this is where it has led them. And you just you just wonder when they're going to start focusing on winning elections again and not running, not running a grievance campaign. They have an uphill battle. Donald Trump spent part of his weekend rallying in Montana. The former president was in Bozeman on Friday where his campaign played a video that included the 1997 Celine Dion hit, My Heart Will Go On.

Dion objected to the campaign's use of her song, saying it was, quote, unauthorized. And also, really? That song? Think about it, Titanic. As for his speech, Trump went after Joe Biden, who is no longer running against and also attacked the incumbent Democratic senator that he's trying to unseat. And he attacked him for his physical appearance. Here's how it went. What do you like better? Doesn't matter anymore. But what do you like better, Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe? Sleepy Joe or Crooked Joe? Okay, ready? They're both correct. I think Crooked Joe is more correct. You're like, all right, ready?

Crooked first, right? What do you like better? Crooked Joe? Sleepy Joe? Or Sleepy Joe. Crooked seems to always win. I mean, he's a crooked guy. All he had to do is think of it.

If he didn't do the debate, he'd still be running. One of the biggest phonies in American politics, his name is John Tester. And I don't speak badly about somebody's physical disability. But he's got the biggest stomach I have ever seen. I swear. I swear. That's the biggest stomach. I have never seen a stomach like that.

Because he doesn't look that heavy. You're not allowed to use the word fat. So if you use the word fat, you can say obese, you can say anything, but you can't say fat. That's the end of your political career. I said it the other night. Somebody in the audience said, Chris Christie is a fat pig and I said sir Chris Christie is not a fat pig you should not and we argued about it for three or four minutes so that was no he's not a fat pig I remember about three weeks ago when we kept hearing about the

new more mature grown-up Donald Trump. Let's please never have that conversation again. Reverend Sharpton, it was about three weeks ago when we had those, we heard that talk about this new reform Trump. That was at the Republican National Convention. When at that moment, Republicans thought they were on a glide path, a glide path to a route to win back the White House, both chambers of Congress. A GOP onslaught is what they were looking at. That has changed. What we're seeing here from Donald Trump is someone who has completely been knocked off balance and has yet to recover. And his campaign seems like they can't either, including by getting him out there in front of voters. OK, Montana, there's a

competitive Senate seat there. That's why he went. But he hasn't been in a battleground state in over a week. There's nothing on the calendar coming up. He you know, the Democrats have their convention next week. And this is leaving Trump to being on through social, just posting screeds about fake polls and crowd size. This is a man you have known for a long time. He's panicked. He's not only panicked. You must remember Donald Trump is a narcissist and narcissists are deeply insecure. So they need validation from external things that would confirm and embellish in their mind this sense of narcissism that they are obsessed with. And when he sees the 15,000 crowd going to his opponent, all of these

things go to his core insecurity. He goes back to his father and how he grew up and not being good enough for his father. All of his worst fears has come into his reality. So he's become unwinded here. He's become someone that has totally eroded in public. And I'm not surprised about it. I think that the fact that his campaign people cannot cover for him and cannot shut him down is probably the only political surprise. As far as him saying he was going to be a different person after his assassination attempt, that would happen to normal people. I mean, I was stabbed once leading a nonviolent march. It helped me focus. But he is more of a narcissist than anything. And Kamala Harris represents everything that invalidates who he tries to propose himself

to be, even to himself, to where I I really feel this time for somebody to intervene. You know, as you said, I've known him 40 years. I know Donald Jr. and I know Eric to some degree. They need to come get their daddy because he is going to really continue to spiral down. Well, Katie Kay, it makes one wonder where this is going to go, because it doesn't appear that Donald Trump is able to flip the script or try and take on a new tone. There's also like his entire record that proves that that could be problematic. But really, this is we're just about to hit the time, less than three months before the campaign, where really people start to focus on who are they going to vote for in the next election. And the Democrats have really set up the ultimate

contrast, haven't they? Yeah. And that's what's frustrating for people around Donald Trump. I mean, I'm getting texts from them saying there's so much we could go after Kamala Harris and the waltz ticket on. We could talk about immigration. We could talk about inflation. We could talk about the amount of government spending that there's been in the Biden-Harris administration. We could talk about the border. I mean, literally, they're laying out all the policies that they would like to see Donald Trump go after Kamala Harris on to try to define her when there isn't very much time left. And instead, there is the candidate talking about that it's unfair that her honeymoon is lasting so long or that she's getting just only overwhelming positive media coverage. And that's unfair. Or maybe that it's unfair that she's even on the ticket at all, that somehow there's something unconstitutional about that.

He's even suggested at one point. So, George Conway, I mean, when you listen to what he's saying about the candidacy at the moment. Do you think he is setting himself up for a position in which if he loses in November, he can turn around and say, OK, 2020, the election was stolen with me from me because they changed the rules around voting because of covid. This time the election was stolen because somehow her candidacy in and of itself was illegitimate. I absolutely agree. I mean, Charlie put it quite well earlier. I mean, it is profoundly dangerous, the way, the where he's going with this. And he's done it before. I remember famously, he said, I remember that Leslie Stahl once said, the reason why I lie about the media is that when you say something about me, then I can, then I can, then I can

discredit you before you even say what you're about to say about me. And he did the same thing in 2020, saying, oh, the ballots, the mail-in ballots are fraudulent. And he's doing the same thing again. Everything is unfair. His narcissism makes him want to play the victim. He cannot lose in a fair fight is his narcissistic view. So therefore, if he perceives himself to be losing, and he clearly is on the enthusiasm scale and the swing state polls are turning against him, he wants to say the other side is cheating. And it's a massive form of

psychological projection. Donald Trump always accuses the other person, the person who is opposing him or the person he wants to beat up on, of being exactly what he is. And he's calling Kamala Harris a cheater, cheater by using A.I. and a cheater by other means. And, you know, that's his M.O. And it's just again, it's just it's just this classic psychological profile of a deeply disturbed narcissist, and he's playing it by the book. And when it's somebody running for president and has a large, massive following of tens of millions of people, it's just extremely dangerous to the country and to our democracy. So, Charlie Sykes, we're looking at this remarkable turnaround, the quickest turnaround I've seen in presidential politics in my lifetime.

But I mean, I guess we could compare it to 1988. But but Kamala Harris is not Michael Dukakis. again, this is the last thing you want to see in your opponent's campaign where something's taking on a life of its own and it does move from the political into the pop culture sphere. And that's where we are. candidate that you could effectively employ a conservative candidate to try to stop this momentum, what you're hearing on the ground in Wisconsin, what we're hearing wherever we go. What what is the best Republican tact? What would the best Trump tact be to slow down this remarkable momentum? Well, sometimes you can't slow down the momentum. I mean, there are moments where you have this organic ship that becomes very, very difficult to push back. You cannot manufacture those crowd sizes. You can't spend enough money to get that

kind of enthusiasm. But the frustration that I'm hearing from Republicans is they feel they actually have issues. If they could just get Donald Trump to talk about the issues, they think that immigration is a powerful issue. They think that inflation is a powerful issue. They think that some of the comments that have been made in the past by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can be weaponized. They would want to talk about crime. They would want to talk about

the excessive government spending. But all of that is being drowned out by Donald Trump's grievances and the craziness. And, you know, what I'm hearing from people is that that, you know, as you point out, and again, this we need to keep coming back to this kind of, you know, cultural wave. How do you counter that? I mean, I've seen this, you know, you've seen this in 2008, you know, or maybe even in 2006, where there comes a moment where there's nothing the campaign can do. There's nothing you can say that's going to blunt something like this. And the extraordinary thing about this is not just the sort of the, you know, the politics of joy,

the politics of optimism, is that, and this is very unusual in American politics, an incumbent vice president is now running as the agent of change. People are exhausted. They want to turn the page. And I don't know, maybe, Joe, you can think of a time when a vice president has run for the presidency when they are the change agent. And that's what Kamala Harris is at the moment, because in part, well, I mean, obviously, she represents dramatic change as as a black woman, but also because Donald Trump is kind of a de facto incumbent. And because of all of that baggage.

So we are in a very, very a very problematic moment for Republicans. And they are flailing. It is it is she is the change agent, Mika, because, again, for three and a half years, we've heard Americans on both sides, 75 up to 80 percent of Americans saying we don't want the Biden Trump rematch. We don't want that. Give us somebody else. And the parties moved in that direction. But you now have somebody who is younger. And it's it's a pretty it's a remarkable split screen right now. And by the way, I'd suggest that Donald Trump, who knows politics in his gut as well as anybody,

understands that the world is shifting. The political world is shifting not only underneath him, but underneath everybody. And this is so much like 2008. I was watching the 2008 convention sitting next to Mike Murphy. And, you know, two Republicans watching Barack Obama accept the nomination was over. He turned to me, goes, Houston, we got a problem. This race is officially over. And yeah, it was to Paris Hilton. They were throwing everything against the wall and nothing stuck because hope and change ended up being impossible to run against.

And right now with Kamala Harris, you have joy and change. And as Charlie said, change, change agent being a vice president, that's hard for Republicans to get their arms around. But they they've got three months to figure out how to do it. Among other chance, we're not going back has become, you know, all of a sudden in a week, we're not going back. Mind your own damn business. You name it. The Harris Waltz campaign has captured something. Charlie Sykes, George Conway, thank you both very much for being on this morning. We're going to take a moment now to look at some of the other stories making headlines. There's a lot happening overseas. It's not yet clear what caused a passenger plane to crash in Brazil on Friday, although there is some suspicion

that a buildup of ice may have played a role. The bodies of all 62 victims and the black box recorder have been recovered from the scene. Family members of those affected are gathering in Sao Paulo as they await official answers from authorities. U.S.-made weapons will begin flowing again to Saudi Arabia, starting with an opening shipment of air-to-ground munitions. The sale of certain American arms was frozen in 2021 in response to the Saudi military campaign in Yemen, which included strikes on civilians. The White House, however, has grown closer to the kingdom in recent years amid an effort to prevent Iranian expansion in the region. And Ukraine continues to

march inside Russian territory. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged for the first time that his military is conducting a cross-border offensive. It is the deepest raid inside the Russian Federation since Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. And still ahead on Morning Joe, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown is weighing in on Donald Trump's claim that the two of them almost died in a helicopter crash. We'll show you those new remarks and explain who Trump may actually have been thinking of. We're back in 90 seconds. There's a lot of amazing stories from his life.

As we all know, he was a businessman and a celebrity for decades prior to entering politics. And I'm just stood at that. And they are amazing. The national press secretary for the Trump campaign, when asked about on Newsmax about this story that Donald Trump told in his news conference last Thursday. I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing. And Willie was he was a little concerned. So I know

him. I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven't seen him in years. Trump also implied that Brown shared with him some unflattering information about Kamala Harris. But then the next day, Brown reacted to those comments, telling CNN that he and Trump had never been in a helicopter together. Have you ever been in a helicopter with Donald Trump? No, never happened. Period. And I think my memory is probably better than his. You know, I remember I was in a helicopter.

I'm here. George Clooney's here. Brad Pitt's backseat. And Tom Cruise, always a show off. It's like he's like the new we're going through the mountains and almost crashed. Yeah. And as we land. No, I say, I don't know.

I can't remember. Yeah, it turns out Trump may have confused Willie Brown with someone else. On Friday, Politico published a piece with a Nick. Yeah, it's unfortunate. On Friday, Politico published a piece with an exclusive interview with former Los Angeles City Council member and state Senator Nate Holden, who said he remembered a choppy helicopter ride with Trump several years ago from Trump Tower to in New York to Atlantic City, New Jersey. What's more, former Trump Organization executive Barbara Rez on Saturday confirmed it was Nate Holden who was on the helicopter and not

Willie Brown. So, Jonathan Lemire, that's just unfortunate. Well, first, I didn't realize how close Joe was to joining the Ocean's 11 cast. That's that would have been close. It was that would have been an alternate. Yeah, that would have been really good for the Matt Damon role, maybe. But, Rev, we know that Donald Trump lies and then he lies some more than what he's done lying. He continues to lie. But this one, you think you were just telling me at break, you think there is something a little more insidious here that might it may have been more than just him mixing up men. In my opinion, it was definitely more. I think that the real point a lot of us are missing. He said it to say that Willie Brown, who had dated Kamala Harris, had told him a lot of things, insidious things about Kamala Harris.

The objective of the story was to muddy up Kamala Harris. Let's not miss. He didn't just mix up black guys. He needed a guy that he could say told him these scandalous things about Kamala Harris. That was his goal. And that's what he tried to do. And the fact that he was exposed, having the wrong guy, people are forgetting that. Well, then who this guy holding couldn't have been telling you scandalous stories. No one has come with that part. What was then? How does he fabricate a conversation if he was talking to somebody that didn't have that kind of background? And we should know, Katty, that Willie Brown has had nothing but good things to say about Kamala Harris these last few weeks.

Yeah, and he was certainly not going to suddenly start spilling things to Donald Trump that Donald Trump could, you know, produce out on the campaign trail. You know, when you're 79, you're an older man and you make mistakes and your memory starts to go. And we saw that, you know, very publicly with Joe Biden. And Donald Trump is not that far behind him in age. And one of the things that's really remarkable about the turnaround of the last three weeks is how the spotlight of age has now been put on Donald Trump. The spotlight that was turned so firmly on Joe Biden.

There is now the reality that at the top of the ticket, you have the man who would be the oldest man to become president if he wins in November. And it's very different from the kind of youth and energy that we're seeing on the Democratic side at the moment. Coming up, we're going to bring you the highlights from the Olympic competition over the weekend and the closing ceremony in Paris, as well as the final medal count for Team USA. That's straight ahead on Morning Joe. Really a spectacular games. Revive the Olympic movement. Paris couldn't have been a more perfect host. And the U.S. finished up with a couple more gold medals. It is so amazing. Every four years, I think this Olympics is not going to be like the last Olympics. I thought the same thing here. I was talking to my kids about it earlier as it was starting. And I said, you know, it used to be my mom and dad and brother and sister would all gather around TV, would all watch the Olympics. We had some family reunions that were gathered around the Olympics, and that's what people did. And it's just too bad that doesn't happen anymore. And

a couple of my kids said, well, have you heard about, and they named some athletes I hadn't heard about, who they had found out about on social media. And everybody was back around TV set or streaming it on online. It was pretty incredible all around. This was this was the most successful Olympics ever in so many different ways. And The Washington Post had this to say about the hosts of the event. France's plan for the 2024 Olympics was a gamble that was fraught with risks. For the most part, the big bets paid off. Before the games were underway, there were concerns about terror attacks, cyber attacks, crowd crushes, labor strikes, political tensions, heat waves, bedbugs, etc., etc., etc. And an international polling firm found that only one third of French citizens were enthusiastic about the Olympics.

The rest of them were angry. A chorus of critics, though, were hushed. Paris managed the Washington Post writes to all visitors and viewers with the spectacular venues which showcase some of the city's most familiar sights. These Olympics welcomed spectators back for the first time since the pandemic, and the roar of the crowds witnessing athletic feats pumped new energy into the capital. Some Parisians who had left on vacation to escape the Olympics returned so they wouldn't miss out. Let's bring in right now a man that everybody returns from their vacation for when they hear he's on the show. The host of Pablo Torre finds out on Metal Arc Media, ESPN's Pablo Torre. Pablo, there's so many storylines and that is what makes the Olympics great is, of course, it is the grand, spectacular international event, but also it's individual stories.

Steph Curry, I still can't believe that shot. Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles, Brittany Greiner weeping. The women's soccer team beating Brazil in the finals. The women's rugby team, that last second or a rush for glory, Noah Lyles. And of course, I think the most inspiring, and I know you'll agree with me, moment from the whole Olympics that I think a hundred years from now, they will remember much, much like they remember the great moments. Mark Spitz in 72, 1980, U.S. hockey team. The Australian breakdancer.

I mean, she's united us all, hasn't she? Ray Gunn, a nation cries out for you, Ray Gunn. Crying out for an academic, potentially writing an ethnographic thesis, masquerading as an Olympic performance that has embarrassed the sport that all of us were meeting for the very first time. It's a tale as old as time itself, Joe. It's Tina Fey. It's a Tina Fey gag. Come on.

A zero-point routine. It feels like Rebel Wilson will be starring in this movie in about three months. All of us were wondering, are we being pranked or is this actually just art? And if there is a more French sentence in that, Joe, I challenge you to find it. It was hard to discern performance art from performance. Ray Gunn upside down there on the screen. I've spent so much time learning about Ray Gunn. I am actually just mad at myself at this point.

I have to give credit to the performer in question who, again, 0.0 phenomenal. I'm telling you. And I talked to a college friend who would always sing breakdance and break out making fun of it. And I said, I'm thinking about you this weekend. My wife has been online trying to learn everything she can learn about Reagan or whatever her name is. I don't know. Professor, academic, writing a thesis. So what are your headlines from this? What were the great moments?

We have great moments that we remember over the past 20, 30 years, 40 years in Olympics. What were the great two or three moments for you? Yeah, look, you mentioned this theme of of the Parisians coming back because they realized, wait a minute, we're not too cool for this. We're not too cool to celebrate the Olympics. That's how America felt. That's how NBA players felt. And so I want to start with Steph Curry, Joe, because I know that you are just sort of getting reintegrated into the NBA subculture that I've been swimming in. And if you had missed the Steph Curry experience over the last decade or so, this was as good a time capsule, just encapsulation of what it was like, because this dude is the perfect he I believe he's the perfect American

metaphor because he does things like that shot over two French players that he had no business taking. I mean, I should say he had every business taking it because he's Steph Curry, but LeBron James is over there open. Kevin Durant was over there open. It was a six point game. He does this to win it. And the reason it's so perfectly American to me is that it is so deeply arrogant what he pulled off. But because Steph Curry is a guy who launches these these parabolic miracles, it justifies the very basis of the experiment. These are miracles draped in arrogance that because they work, it's just so magical. And so, Joe, the NBA players delivering truly a survival of a near death experience when it comes to their ego, their greatness. I want to start with that because

I'm still in awe of how much that was going to be a moment I'm going to remember forever. And Pablo, you know, the one thing I also loved about that shot and I love about Seth Curry is he comes from sort of the Kobe school of dedication, practice. You know, he goes out, he takes 250, 300 shots every day. He'll take 100 shots before a game. He's maniacal about his practice routine. I guarantee you people like me tuning in, look at Wade. How could he have made that shot?

I bet you in those 250 shots a day, 100 shots a day, he's tried a thousand different variations of that. So for people that just tuned in and said, oh my gosh, what a lucky shot. Thing I love about him is nothing lucky about it all. Like Kobe, he just works harder than everybody else around him. Well, he's the most fun player I've ever

seen, Joe. And he's so good, Steph Curry, is that he has convinced a nation of aspiring basketball players that they can do that. The thing about a three-point shot, of course, is that it makes everybody feel, because it is a shot that you don't need to dunk, because it is a shot that is from long range, it's just fooled people into thinking that, oh, we can be like that guy. And I think even all the hard work in the world will, you know, you can't prevent all of these windshields and car hoods and suburban driveways from getting dented because kids are thinking, I'm going to be like Steph Curry. You can't.

But when it works, it looks just that fun. Most fun play I've ever seen, actually. I can certainly speak to his influence on my 13 and 9-year-old who are just chucking threes. But I'm trying to teach them Kevin McHale-style low post play. Not working. Let's switch to a couple other teams. We just saw some highlights. The women's basketball team, gold. Very emotional moment for Brittany Griner. And also the women's soccer team, gold, redeeming itself after a tough World Cup. Yeah. So the women's basketball team, again, 61 straight victories. The women's soccer team had not won gold at the Olympics since 2012. And so this team, the U.S. women's national team, is a new team with an old problem in that sense.

And they had a new coach. They have a new trio. The players you may remember, Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Abby Wambach, obviously, they're all gone. In their place are a new big three, Trinity Rodman, you know, being, by the way, Dennis Rodman's daughter for those soaring at home. She is arguably the most talented young women's soccer player in the world right now. But here you have Mal Swanson scoring this goal. They had won three straight 1-0 games to win the gold medal. And so here was a team that offense, offense became their calling card. And it was with three new players.

They're going to take this team and this program into the next generation. And that is something that was not guaranteed when these Olympics started, but yet another gold medal to add to that medal count. Yeah. And by the way, just so many great track and field stars as well. I mean, we saw the drama of Noah Wilds. We could go on and on. The women, the men, extraordinary. I want to end though. Oh, my God. Yes. I want to end though on really the two big superstars coming out of this Olympic game that we knew about before,

but two completely different tracks to victory this time. Katie Ledecky, who just keeps on keeping on. And Simone Biles, an extraordinary story, an extraordinary movie in the making. Yeah. So Katie Ledecky tied for the all time lead in gold medals won by a female Olympian coming out of America, Joe. And this is somebody who leaves their competition out of the frame. And the crazy part about Katie Ledecky is that she's done this four straight Olympics. She's won gold. She started age 15. She's going to do this in 2024, in 2028, excuse me, in LA, probably breaking Michael Phelps'

record for four straight gold medals in the same event, a distance swimming event. It's brutal, that event in specific. And then Simone Biles, of course, the last time we had seen her in Tokyo, she had withdrawn from the competition because of the twisties, because she had the yips, the equivalent of that, a psychological problem that prevented her from having confidence in herself. And she comes back and she increases the degree of difficulty. She has now, I believe, five skills, as they're called in gymnastics, named after her. The Biles is how you know you've made it in a sport. They name stuff after you. And then, of course, she helps win the team all around. And so to me, Simone Biles never said anything like it. I don't think we ever will again.

And the fact that all of these Olympians, Joe and Mika, were there at the same time in Paris over delivering on insane hype is why this was my favorite games I can remember. Yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable. MSNBC contributor Pablo Torre, thank you so much. We appreciate you.