Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/2/24

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Biden and Harris greet freed prisoners in emotional return to U.S.

Well, good afternoon. And this is a very good afternoon. A very good afternoon. Today we're bringing home Paul, Evan, Alsu, Vladimir. Three American citizens and one American green card holder. All four have been imprisoned justly in Russia. Paul for nearly six years. Vladimir since 2022. Evan since March of 2023. And Alsu since March of 2023, and Alassu since October of 2023. Russian authorities arrested them, convicted them in show trials, and sentenced them to long prison terms with absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever, none.

And now their brutal ordeal is over and they're free. President Joe Biden speaking at the White House yesterday about the most substantial prisoner swap since the Cold War. We'll have more of the president's comments and the emotional reunions for the wrongly detained Americans in just a moment. Plus, Donald Trump is doubling down on his race-based attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris after falsely claiming this week that she only recently decided to become a Black person. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, August 2nd. I'm Jon Thlamir, along with the BBC's Katty Kay. Joe Amico will be back on Monday. Willie continues his hardship assignment at the Paris Olympics. Katty, good to see you this morning. This story, of course, unfolded while we were on air yesterday. You and I, for a while, were talking. We knew that a

prisoner swap was underway for security reasons. We didn't want to get into too much detail as to who was involved, as to where this was all happening. And then, of course, a little later in the day, it did come to be. And late last night, around midnight, these Americans back here on U.S. soil. We're going to show you a really emotional video of their homecoming. Truly an important day, a process that was months in the making. And these Americans now home. Yeah, I was gripped to those scenes, as I'm sure many people were yesterday of watching them being

reunited with their families. As a mother of a 30 year old young man, I couldn't help but feel for Evan Gerskovich's mother as she was being lifted off the ground on the tarmac. That was an extraordinary moment. It was a very, very good day for those families. It was also, John, a very good day for international alliances and a reminder of why America needs allies and friends around the world and why it's worth investing diplomacy and time and hard work in cultivating those alliances, because you never know when you're going to need them. So three wrongly imprisoned Americans released by Russia in a multinational prisoner swap deal arrived late last night in emotional reunions with family members at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, they were on hand as Paul Whelan stepped onto U.S. soil for the first time in years. He'd been imprisoned in Russia since 2018 on spying charges and is now a free man. Next off the plane was Wall Street

Journal reporter Evan Gerskovich, taken into Russian custody in March of 2023. He spent over a year in prison before being sentenced to an additional 16 years by a Russian court. He and his family and, yes, his mom were reunited last night. And finally, journalist Alsu Komasheva embraced her family. An editor for Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, she was arrested in October and accused by Russia of being a foreign agent. Last night, she saw her husband and her daughters for the first time in months. Green card holder Vladimir Karamuza, a Russian national and dissident activist, is in poor health. He was met by his family in Germany, where he will receive medical treatment. After greeting the released Americans

last night alongside their families, President Biden and Vice President Harris spoke about the significance of the moment. What's your message to the American people? There's nothing beyond our capacity when we act together. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I don't know who the hell we are. We're the United States of America. The. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Who the hell we are? We're the United States of America. The United States of America. We put back together relationships with countries we haven't had before. We rebuilt NATO.

We rebuilt the circumstances allowing this to happen. That's why it happened. This is an extraordinary day. And I'm very thankful for our president and what he has done over his entire career, but in particular as it relates to these families and these individuals, what he has been able to do to bring the allies together on many issues, but in particular this one. This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy. And prior to meeting with the released Americans last night at Joint Base Andrews, President Biden spoke alongside their family members at the White House. The president discussed the importance of diplomacy and of working with allies. This deal would not have been made possible without our allies.

Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey, they all stepped up and they stood with us. They stood with us. And they made bold and brave decisions. Release prisoners being held in their countries who are justifiably being held and provide a logistical support to get the Americans home. So for anyone who questions whether allies matter, they do, they matter.

And today is a powerful example of why it's vital to have friends in this world, friends you can trust, work with, and depend upon, especially on matters of great consequence and sensitivity like this. Our alliances make our people safer, and we begin to see that again today. Let me say this. It says a lot about the United States that we work relentlessly to free Americans who are unjustly held around the world. It also says a

lot about us that this deal includes the release of Russian political prisoners. They stood up for democracy and human rights. Their own leaders threw them in prison. The United States helped secure their release as well. That's who we are in the United States. We stand for freedom, for liberty, for justice. Not only for our own people, but for others as well. And that's why all Americans can take pride in what we've achieved today.

I was truly struck by two things while doing the reporting on all this yesterday. First, the president talks about the importance of alliances. And indeed, many of our fellow nations stepped up. And how Chancellor Scholz of Germany said he told the president he gave his personal assurance for this. I will do it to make to release to sign off on the release of a Russian hitman that Putin wanted back. That was key to this exchange and also how the president in the final weeks has closed this deal as his own president, his own presidential campaign was faltering. That, in fact, just an hour before, just an hour before he announced he would not seek reelection while he was recovering in his Delaware beach house, saddled with COVID.

That's when he called the prime minister of Slovenia to say, look, let's get your part of this piece of this puzzle done so we can move forward. The president still keeping his promises to these American families, American hostages, even as his was putting the end to his own political future. Let's now bring in Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, managing editor at The Bulwark, Sam Stein, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, editor at The Insider, Michael Weiss, and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, retired four-star Navy Admiral, James Tavridis. He is chief international analyst for NBC News. Admiral, we will start with you on what you saw yesterday, the importance of alliances and what was a historic day, the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War. Quite remarkable across the board. And

of course, I've been in and out of Andrews Air Force Base so many times. I can't think of a better day on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, which has seen more than its share of dignified transfers and the new arrival of various heads of state. Really a marvelous moment to see this. And you're showing some spectacular photos right now. Point two that struck me, you know, we always think of NATO correctly as a war fighting alliance. We go to war. We're in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Syria, Iraq, counter piracy. We fight alongside each other. Here's an example of an alliance practicing diplomacy together and doing it both at scale across all of these nations that pulled together, but also doing it retail, making sure we bring out these Americans. And I love the point

the president made that these are also Russian dissidents who are being taken out. That's standing up. That's walking the walk for America. And third and finally, you know, you kind of ask the question, why now? Why did this all come together? There's never a specific answer to that. I think that Putin probably heard the election coming. I think secondly, there's a sense of all of us coming together in the West at the moment because of Ukraine. And then thirdly, there's kind of in any negotiation, there's a critical mass moment when the deal makers sit around the table and close the switch. And Jonathan, you're right to highlight Joe Biden and his personal ability to do that. I saw it on full display when I was Supreme Allied Commander and had come as the

vice president. We really saw a master diplomat at work here. A very good day for America. So, Richard, watching the footage last night of these reunions at Joint Base Andrews, which is where Air Force One is, it's hard not to be emotional, particularly of the hug between Evan and his mother. Motherhood works so tirelessly to keep his story front and center, to help advocate for his release. Give us your thoughts as to what to this moment, what it means. To me, an interesting moment was Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, getting very emotional talking about it. You know, when you're in the foreign policy business, Jonathan, so much of what you do has a degree of abstraction. You're talking about deterrence. You're talking about national interest. For the people involved in this, the president, the vice president, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State,

you know, this was real. This had a kind of detail about it. This wasn't an abstraction. Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, would carry in his pocket a card, an index card, with the list of names of Americans. So I think for a lot of them, this was different. This was different. This was not balance of power. This was people. And this was something they felt a real personal commitment to get done. The other side of the personal thing, we've talked about that the relationships really matter. The idea that the Chancellor of Germany didn't want to do this, did not want to release a Russian hitman, which is the reason Putin seems to want the deal. But he did it because of the larger relationship. That's what alliances are meant to be.

Alliances are not transactional relationships. Alliances are relationships where you think big, you think long-term, and even if you sometimes disagree on the immediate, you say to yourself, I'm going to put that a little bit on the side because I have such a larger stake in this relationship. I'm willing to play the long game. And it's interesting because we don't always, let's put it bluntly, we don't always see it. So I thought this was interesting in the context of a lot of Middle East news, where the United States is very frustrated with the relationship with its ally Israel. So I thought this was it. But again, this to me was an interesting moment where, one last point very quickly, Jonathan.

This thing had been cooking for a long time. Sometimes in diplomacy, you make something more possible by adding to it. We always think of kind of reducing it one for one, two for two. But no, dozens of people, half dozens of countries. It's an old ploy in diplomacy is when you can't get somewhere, sometimes you add to the mix rather than subtract from it. And that gives everybody a stake in it. And that clearly happened here. There had been some momentum for a deal earlier this year that would have also involved Alexei Navalny and the Russian dissident. But after he died, that was seen as a setback. But the sides were able to keep going. Richard, you just mentioned the emotional

moment with Jake Sullivan. Let's watch that here. From the president on down, we've stayed in regular and routine touch with them. I spent a lot of time with the families of Evan and Paul and also. And most of the time, as you can imagine, those are tough conversations. But not today. Today, excuse me. Today was a very good day. So, Gene Robinson, we're seeing Jake Sullivan, our national security advisor,

while briefing the press yesterday. That was after the exchange had happened. It was in Turkey, was a third party country. And then from Turkey, the Americans flew back here to the States. Certainly, as we've been saying to start the show, a real triumph of diplomacy yesterday. Absolutely. It was, you know, I want to go back to just something that Richard Haass said. Sometimes you have a problem that you're having trouble solving. And sometimes the way to solve it is to make it bigger. And they did this, and I believe the Russians released something like 16 people, all told. The Allies released eight. It was an enormously complicated deal. Just the pure joy that we saw last night when those families were reunited is something

that, you know, I will never forget. And I just think that you could just see how the principals who were involved in this, Sullivan, the president, the vice president, the secretary ofident who were involved. They were all journalists. And what they were doing was writing and speaking truth. And that's not a crime. And that can't be a crime. And I'm so, so happy that they're home. Sam, I know you interviewed on way too early a report from The Wall Street Journal, and it's worth everybody reading that TikTok.

In The Wall Street Journal, it's incredibly detailed. It reads like a kind of combination of a spy novel and a masterclass in diplomacy. And his mother's commitment and the role that she played, I think, was not something we had all appreciated. But talk a little bit, picking up on what Jean just said, the power of the Wall Street Journal and of the journalistic community after Evan was arrested in keeping all of these prisoners' names in the public eye. I mean, it seems to me that, you know, if Evan had not had that, you know, bank of power behind him from the journalistic community, I don't know that we would be where we are today. But it really was, this is a tribute, too, to everything that the journal did to make sure that he was not forgotten. Yeah, I think that's 100% accurate. It's not that it would have gone by the wayside,

but I think the public pressure campaign, the attention paid by the journal and other outlets to the case of Evans' imprisonment, that added a type of political force to the issue that I think helped expedite, it's weird to say expedite because it took so long, but it helped bring to conclusion this ordeal. And I think the journal was put in this incredibly difficult scenario for a paper, which is you're both reporting on a story, but it involves your reporter. And now you're not just a journalistic actor in this, you're almost a political one. And as I understand it, the paper almost had to compartmentalize, create a unit to help advocate and push for Evan's release,

while at the same time overseeing detailed and vigorous reporting about his imprisonment. And so when it all came to fruition yesterday, the paper was, of course, elated, not just because their colleague was coming home, but because months and months of painstaking professional work had paid off. And I thought it was incredible that at the end of that piece, and I do encourage people to read it, Evan has to write this pro forma letter asking for clemency to Vladimir Putin. And in the letter, he says, essentially, I would like the chance to interview you, which goes to show you that through the entire ordeal, he never stopped actually being a journalist, which is remarkable. He never stopped being a journalist. I can't echo that enough. Read the piece. It was in the Wall

Street Journal yesterday. We should note, we'll have one of the top editors at the journal join us this morning to discuss that paper's efforts. And I think all of us, all of us, when we saw that news alert from the journal saying that Evan was free, hard not to get emotional yesterday. Michael Weiss, so this is definitely a good news story, but there is a darker side of this too. In some ways, this validates what Vladimir Putin has been doing, snatching Americans, snatching Westerners, collect them, trade, trade for people he wanted back. In this case, notably this hitman who was held in Germany. Tell us more about Putin's calculus as to why he did this and tell us about some of these people that the West had to give back to Moscow to get this

deal done. So Vadim Kraskov isn't just an FSB officer. He's a part of a unit called VIMPL, which is their special forces unit. It's the heir to an infamous KGB unit. Funnily enough, it's tasked with counterterrorism, although you might say that what Mr. Krasikov was sent to do was an act of state terrorism. He brutally gunned down a Chechen dissident and actually an asset, an intelligence asset of the Georgian security services in Berlin in broad daylight in 2019, a man called Zelenheim Kangashvili. The Germans arrested him, convicted him, sentenced him to life in prison. They did not want to trade him. The only person that they wanted to trade him for was the late Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.

Why? They felt the duty of care and responsibility for Navalny. Remember, Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, also by the FSB, the domestic security service. The Russians let him out to get medical care in Germany. remember. Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, also by the FSB, the domestic security service. The Russians let him out to get medical care in Germany. He spent a year recuperating there and then chose, rather bravely, to go back to Russia to fight as a politician. So the Germans said, we'll do a deal for Krasikov for Navalny. Well, what happened? He was murdered in prison on the eve of what should have been a similar deal to what we're seeing now.

And the German government, particularly the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, was sort of adamant, we don't want to trade Krasnokov for anybody else. So as you were saying, you know, it's an Eisenhower quote, when you're faced with a small problem, make it bigger, right? The Germans were persuaded by a very fleet-footed group of American State Department diplomats. Why don't you ask for more? Not just for Americans, including journalists, including my friend Vladimir Karamazov, who's a resident here, ask for Russian human rights activists, right? Including one of the founders of Memorial,

which is a celebrated organization that was tasked with anatomizing Soviet totalitarianism and all the crimes of Stalinism. A lot of the human rights activists from Russia, dissidents in Russia, went to prison for what reason? They spoke out against this full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They were convicted of treason for even talking about the Bucha massacre or the Maria Pole drama theater bombing. So, and let me just give you an anecdote that I think is very telling about how the Russians behaved in all of this. I just got off the phone about an hour ago with Christo Groza, my colleague at The Insider, who quite literally on the back of a napkin in a restaurant in D.C. with Jamie Rubin there, with Roger Karsten, the negotiator who was responsible for this deal there,

mooted the idea, you know who Putin wants the most? Krasikov. It's his personal hitman. He is deeply wedded to getting this guy back. Why don't we do a deal for Navalny? Christo is in Berlin, and he said that some of the Russians who have been transferred, they didn't go to Ankara, like Evan did. They went to Berlin. They did not know they were being transferred to the West, even when they were put on a plane to Germany, until they disembarked from the plane, and they met a short, bald guy who'd introduced himself as Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor of Germany.

So the Russians had no idea they were part of this deal. Whereas you can bet everybody that the West are trading back to Mr. Putin absolutely knew. And these included, you asked me, two illegals that were caught in Slovenia. You've seen the show The Americans, right? Deep cover operatives who are posing as other people with fake identities, two illegals and their children sent back to Russia. Krasikov, hackers. Basically, what Putin is doing is drawing moral equivalence between American journalists, human rights activists, dissidents, and on the other side, murderers, spies, and cyber criminals. Admiral, a question for you. One of the debates going on is how to understand this.

Was this just a narrow, cynical trade set up by Putin of, if you will, guilty people for innocent people? Or does this tell us something about him, about his potential willingness to cut deals, to basically engage in diplomacy? Could this, for example, in what and over the next two years, all the nuclear arms control agreements expire? We've got all sorts of issues in the Middle East, obviously Ukraine, where people are beginning to talk about diplomacy. Do you see anything in this that leads you to say just maybe, maybe as difficult as Putin is, as much of an outlaw as he can be, that there still might be a potential for diplomacy here? I absolutely do. And let's start with Evan Gorshkov sitting in jail. what's he doing? He's playing chess with his cellmate. That's the Russian

national game. If there's a universal gold medal in the idea of Russia, it's probably rooted in chess. And Putin is an heir to that. He loves moving those pieces around the chessboard. He thinks he's a combination of Henry Kissinger and Al Capone all put together. And so he will, Richard, absolutely cut a deal. And we've seen him do that. And frankly, he did a very similar kind of deal here to get Victor Boot back. And that was a year ago to get to trade another American who was taken illegally, Brittany Griner. So, yes, I think it can be expanded. A word we're using a lot today, maybe expand the idea of Putin. And then secondly, I think it's important here, by the way, no one said it yet, but I'll say it. Americans do not go to Russia. Do not put yourself in this position. And I don't care if

you're an academic or a journalist or a wonderful Russian American with family there. This is not a good moment to go because you could very well end up as one of Vladimir Putin's chess pieces. Yeah, some U.S. officials made that point yesterday as well. Retired four-star Navy Admiral James Chavitis, thank you for joining us again this morning. We really appreciate it. Editor at The Insider, Michael Weiss, terrific stuff. Thank you for bringing it to us and thank you for being here this morning. Still ahead on Morning Joe, we'll take a look at what former President Trump had to say about yesterday's prisoner swap after previously claiming that he was the only person who could obtain the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. Plus, we'll be joined by White

House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be back in just 90 seconds. I mean, great that Evan and Paul Whelan are coming home. I think that really what this shows is that a lot of bad guys across the world are worried that Donald Trump is coming back into office. And I think that they're trying to clean house before Trump comes back because they know that when he comes back, it's no more easy streets. The Republican tickets vice presidential nominee, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, speaking yesterday about the historic prisoner swap and saying that it happened because of Donald Trump. Trump himself appeared to only have negative

things, though, to say about the prisoner swap. In a social media post, he wrote in part, quote, We never make good deals at anything, but especially prisoners hostage swaps. Our negotiators are always an embarrassment to us. He then went on to claim that as president, he was able to negotiate the release of wrongfully detained Americans in exchange for nothing before claiming the U.S. had been, quote, extorted yesterday. President Biden was asked yesterday about Donald Trump's criticism of the deal. President Trump has said repeatedly that he could have gotten the hostages out without giving anything in exchange. What do you say to that? What do you say to President Trump now, former president? Why didn't he do it when he was president?

Yeah, why didn't he do it when he was president? Yeah, why didn't he do it when he was president? Paul Whelan specifically, for example, was arrested by Russia during Donald Trump's term in office. And a quick fact check on the former president's claim that his administration never secured the release of Americans without giving up anything in return. Well, for example, in February of 2020, the Trump White House agreed to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1,000 prisoners. And later that same year, the administration agreed to give up 250 Houthi rebels in exchange for two wrongfully detained Americans. So, I mean, I don't know, Maybe the former president, John, thinks that there is nothing that he can get out of this.

And so he's just going to attack the deal itself. But on a day, obviously, when everybody's celebrating, we all understand there are complications around this deal. We all understand that compromises were made. But it's hard to look at those scenes of the Americans coming home and meeting their families without being able to express some joy, perhaps, at what happened. Yeah. And Donald Trump simply incapable of doing that. Trump, everything is politics. Everything is about what he can try to turn to his advantage or attack his opponent. And let's remember the dangerous rhetoric we heard from him over the last few months where he kept saying that only he could make a deal, only he could do it. He would talk to Putin and get it done the first day after he won. That, of course, turned out not to be the case.

Joining us now, professor at Princeton University, Eddie Glaude Jr. and MSNBC contributor, Mike Barnacle. Mike, we'll start with you. Just your thoughts on what we saw yesterday, a triumph of diplomacy, a triumph for a president who has spent decades in the international arena. And yes, to Katty's point, there were compromises made. There were hard decisions that had to get done. But at the end of the day, America saw some of its own come home last night. You know, the contrast that you just raised, talking about Donald Trump's reaction to this, implying that he could have done

it better, that we gave away too much. The contrast between the former President Trump and the acting, sitting President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden, could not have been more stark than it was yesterday. You had a confident, knowledgeable President of the United States standing up, telling the American public exactly what happened and then singing happy birthday with a young with a young woman with his arm around the young woman. Happy birthday. A smile on the president's face. The deep knowledge and relationships that he has with leaders around the world got this done more than anything else. He got this done. Yeah. The happy birthday to the daughter of one of those released yesterday. Richard, we were just talking about how there was almost this subtext to everything yesterday.

The president sort of put a fine point on it occasionally, but really there was this undercurrent of how yesterday reinforced how different the foreign policy approaches of Biden and Trump are. Absolutely, Jonathan. If I had to sum it up in a phrase, you get the difference between an alliance-first foreign policy, a collaborative foreign policy, which is the Joe Biden, Kamala Harris foreign policy, and an America-first foreign policy, which is Trump. United States acts unilaterally in many ways as we withdraw from the world. And that was the subtext. When the president was talking about power of alliances,

that's the great force multiplier of the United States. Think about it. Does Russia have any allies? Answer no. Does China have allies? Answer no. The United States has dozens of allies in Europe, many of whom were involved in this. We have many allies in Asia, probably the Japans, the Australias and others.

That's the great comparative advantage. We have countries willing voluntarily to work with us to tackle regional and global challenges. And that's what you heard the president talking about. You didn't have to mention Donald Trump, but that is the stark contrast in our relationship with the world under, again, what this traditional administration is doing and the outlier approach of Donald Trump. And Eddie, I mean, that's what the United States has been about since World War II, embracing the world, forming these alliances. Let's get your thoughts here, though, because Donald Trump, we saw it in his four years in office already, and he's threatening to even go further in that direction to be transactional, to be isolationist, and at times just to turn

America's back to the world. Oh, absolutely. He wants to turn his back on that post-World War Two consensus. But I think what's really important here, that we keep track of the human element. We saw those families on the tarmac. We saw that he lifted his mother up. We saw loved ones hugging each other. We can talk about the geopolitical realities. We could talk about the difficulties of the choice. We could talk about the difference between President Biden and former President Donald Trump. We could talk about how ignorant the latter is in relation to these questions. But what we cannot lose sight of is that these people, these families are together now. And they didn't think they would see their loved ones again.

So this is a wonderful, wonderful day. You know, Jonathan, I think that the reaction from both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance yesterday, the only word that comes to mind is just pathetic. I mean, it is just absolutely pathetic and incredible that they couldn't just say, we're happy that they're home. We're happy that these Americans who were wrongly detained by Vladimir Putin are home. And just leave it at that. They are, I don't understand why

they felt they had to attack, attack, attack. I mean, I guess that's who Trump is. And then J.D. Vance seems to be trying really, really hard to be kind of a mini me and giving credit to Donald Trump for something that he couldn't have been bothered to do when he was in office. And I think in part, it's their frustration. They just can't buy a news cycle right now. They have been, and that has to be driving Trump crazy, that Kamala Harris has dominated the news cycle. And he thought he he maybe had a little momentum by going crazy and saying offensive things at the NABJ meeting on Wednesday. And then, boom, on Thursday, attention is away from him again. Nobody is thinking or talking about Donald Trump.

And so maybe that pathetic reaction was just frustration on the part of Trump and Vance that nobody is really paying much attention to them right now. Gene, you couldn't be more right in terms of Trump's default is to attack and to divide, that it's always us versus them. It can never be about an American consensus. And I do think you're right. And I've certainly talked to some close to the former president last couple of days. There's a real sense of frustration as to the moment where this race stands right now. A little later, we're going to get to some eye-popping fundraising numbers that also show where momentum lies. And as this was going on,

Trump also, in addition to attacking the deal, he doubled down on his false accusations that Vice President Harris is lying about her race. During an appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists conference earlier this week, Trump claimed that America's first black vice president, quote, became black. Harris, of course, is biracial. She's always been biracial. She was born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother. The backlash to Trump's comments swift, with many drawing parallels to Trump's earlier birtherism conspiracy theories against former President Barack Obama. On his Truth Social page yesterday, Trump continued to question Harris's identity. In one post, you're seeing it here, he included an old photo of Kamala Harris's family in traditional Indian attire, writing this, thank you Kamala for the nice

picture you sent from many years ago. Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian heritage are very much appreciated. In another post, Trump included a clip of an interview that Harris did with Indian-American actress Mindy Kaling and captioned it, quote, crazy Kamala saying she's Indian, not black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. Everybody. She uses everybody, including her racial identity. In this clip, Harris's Kaling looks like, quote, one half of her family.

She made the point right there. She is proud of her Indian heritage. She's also proud of being a black woman. She always has been. I mean, Eddie, these attacks, they're offensive. They're racist. They also seem deeply ineffective. Absolutely. Calling Donald Trump a racist at this point is like saying, look, there's a deer. It has no real real effect. Right. In some ways. But let's be clear. This is it. By him saying this, it makes the choice stark. Are we going to double down on a view of America in which race is used as a divider, where we have these reckless appeals to grievance and hatred? Or are we going to finally leave the 19th and 20th century behind? of the United States is making these ignorant comments, right, revealing that he has no

understanding of how race works in the United States. He has no understanding how ethnicity works within black communities in the United States. And people are finding this, at least some people are finding this appealing. So we have to respond to it accordingly. It's ignorant. It's hateful. It's racist. But it's also Donald Trump and he's on the ballot. Where are you going to land? What America are you going to choose? You know, it's it's all of that, plus maybe a little bit more. Gene raised the issue quite cogently a couple of minutes ago. Why is it incapable of Donald Trump to say in the hostage release that, you know, hey, this is great.

Good luck to them. I'm happy they're home. He can't. And he can't let Kamala Harris go. He can't let that go. Why? Not because it's politics, not just because he's filled with hate and envy. I think and I would submit, Gene, I don't know whether you'd agree with me or not, but he is a badly, deeply damaged individual. Yeah, broken. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I would absolutely agree. There is a deep, you know, beneath all that bluster, who am I to diagnose him? I'm not a psychologist, but there's clearly some deep insecurity and feeling of inadequacy that causes him to continually lash out and puff himself up and adopt this air of infallibility, which is absurd. But that's who he is. I think he is a really, really damaged person. And and, you know, because of that and for a lot of other reasons, he's really he's really dangerous. He proved that in four years as president. He would prove it again if he were ever allowed near the White House again. This is a this is this is not a well man. And the dangerous part of it, though, is also, and it's a consistent thing here, is you have someone running for president who is in some ways

unwilling and unable to put the country first. And we see that in the ungenerous reaction to getting these Americans home. It's a good thing for the country. Maybe it's not a good thing for his political campaign, but there's something else going on. It's good for the country. It's good for these families. And there's a consistent pattern here. It's just an inability to put anything other than himself first. And that's what we're seeing in capital letters here. Yeah. For Trump, campaign comes before a country. There's no question there. Eddie, we're also so glad you're here today because it marks the 100th birthday of the late legendary author and civil rights activist James Baldwin. Baldwin's books, poems, and essays fiercely confronted America's issues with race and sexuality. His

no-holds-barred style forced many readers to look critically at the standards of American life, and they remain very relevant today. Just in time for his centennial, publisher Penguin Random House has added some of Baldwin's most beloved works to their Everyman's Library series, a collection of books from well-known and awarded authors. The compilation, which is on sale now, includes a brand new forward from none other than Eddie Glaude. And Eddie, you also wrote a New York Times bestseller, of course, about the life and legacy of James Baldwin back in 2020. It's titled Begin Again, James Baldwin's America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. I know he is a very important figure to you. Here is the book. Certainly people should pick it up. Tell us more about why he is so

meaningful to you and why he is so meaningful today. Well, first of all, we used to play a game. Every time I would drop a James Baldwin quote, you would say, I'll take a drink, right? Because he's so important. I was in tough shape by 630. I'm tough shape by 630. Look, Baldwin taught me how to love and how to be angry, how to not allow my anger to overwhelm, but to understand the importance, the nature of love so that I could reach for a higher form of excellence, so

I could release myself into a different way of being. Baldwin has this wonderful formulation, and I'm paraphrasing him here, that the messiness of the world is actually a reflection of the messiness of our interior lives. That if we can't deal with the emptiness in us, we can't understand and speak to the emptiness and the ugliness of the world out there. Donald Trump is broken. He's not dealing with something inside of him, right? So here we are in 2024, as I said, and Donald Trump is appealing to the ugliest base of the nation. And Baldwin would say until we confront honestly who we are, we cannot release ourselves into a different way of being

ignorance. He said allied with power is the most dangerous, most ferocious enemy to justice that can be ignorance allied with power. Sounds like Donald Trump. And so in this wonderful edition, you have nobody knows my name in 61. You have next the fire next time in 63. You have, you know, no name in the street in 72. The devil finds work in 1976. This work is Emerson across the railroad tracks. Ralph Baldo Emerson meets the ugliness of America's underbelly. And we get a sense of who we take ourselves to be. Baldwin is one of our greatest white writers coming from the ghettos of Harlem, finding his way to France and offering the world some of the most beautiful, beautiful words we've ever read. I love him. I have this perfectly.

You know, here's a question I've always wanted to ask you, which is, you know, Baldwin was a great seminal thinker, but man, that brother could write. He was such a great writer. How do you read all of that and then sit down and write about it? How did you do that personally? You know, because I would feel so inadequate and so just incompetent to try to write about someone who was just such a magnificent writer. You're absolutely right, Gene. And, you know, in Toni Morrison, in Toni Morrison's eulogy of Jimmy, she talked about she found language in his writing, words in his words. You know, part of what I remember, I was writing begin again and the sentences weren't coming and

Reverend Bishop Barber sent me a saint's candle with Jimmy's name on it. And every time I started to write, I lit the candle and I was having this trouble. And I remember hearing his voice. He says, he said to me, like it was right next to me, Gene, if we're going to do this together, oh, boy, you're going to have to deal with you. And that meant that I had to deal with the fact that I had my own daddy issues that I had to go inside. And once I did that, Gene, the sentences started jumping because my pain is mine. Jimmy can't write about that. Right. But also the honesty. He scared the living daylights out of me because he was asking me to interrogate the scaffolding of my world. And I felt like it was all going to collapse. And with that, I learned that courage is is a necessity.

If we're going to write or attempt to write beautiful sentences. Eddie, off of what Baldwin wrote for his entire life is in all of his works. Do you think we will ever as a country, white people in this country, come to understand the roots of anger among black people in this country? You know, Mike, reading Jimmy. Reading Baldwin closely. I call him Jimmy because he's he's my saint as I write. In order to answer that question, white people are going to have to deal with themselves. You're going to have to you're going to have to delve deep in order to understand my rage.

You're going to have to understand you, the world that has been created, the world that denies us dignity and standard. We're going to have to see Baldwin's life is so complex. You have to see the relationship between race and desire, how race has deformed and distorted the very ways in which we understand love, the very ways in which we understand our relationship to each other, what it means to be a human being. But if you are to understand my rage, you must understand you. You must. And that becomes the precondition for a different way of us being together. Important, beautiful sentiments this morning from professor at Princeton University and bestselling author,

our friend, Eddie Glauginier. Eddie, thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. Coming up here on Morning Joe, we've got some brand new reporting about an investigation into whether Egypt's president sought to give Donald Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign. We'll bring in one of the reporters behind that piece. Plus, we'll recap a massive day in Paris for Team USA with men and women's teams making history and two Olympic legends adding to their prolific career totals. Morning Joe, we'll be back in just a moment. The FSB stole my iPad and my iPhone. So this is a replacement so I can be normal again. That's something else. That's for medicinal purposes.

Oh, yeah, President Biden gave me his pin from his... That's an American flag. He wore it on his lapel. so we were chatting and he took it off and gave it to him so it's a keepsake could you describe the moment of coming back oh it's nice it was nice um you know it didn't feel real until we were flying over england i'm a british citizen irish citizen canadian and American. So as we came over England and I looked down, you know, that's when it became real. We flew over Ireland, then Canada, and into America, and then I knew I was home. So getting off the plane, seeing the president, the vice president, that was nice.

It was a good homecoming. So looking forward to seeing my family down here and just recuperating from five years, seven months, and five days of just absolute nonsense by the Russian government. Kevin, how are you feeling? I'm all right. It was a good flight. Those were recently freed Americans Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich after landing on American soil last night.

The two were part of the largest prisoner exchange in post-Soviet history. Joining us now, Evan's colleague at The Wall Street Journal, one of the leading voices to bring him home, assistant editor Paul Beckett. Paul, let's just start with how are you feeling right now? What's the mood of the paper to see Evan home? Smiles of joy, tears of relief, exhaustion, exhilaration all at once. So it's been a remarkable moment. And that's just at the Journal. And we think of what it must be like for Evan and his family that you saw reunited on the tarmac last night. It was extraordinary. So take us through the process. We talked about it earlier. Sort of a tricky moment here for a newspaper, which is both trying

to recover, return one of its colleagues and friends, but also while reporting on the story. To walk us through, what have this last 16 months been like? Very, very, very intense. And, you know, news organizations don't like to be the story. So we separated off. We had reporters going out reporting and we had reporters like me and editors and others at Dow Jones, parent company of the journal, working very specifically on his release. And we just thought it was important to treat that as a story the same as we'd treat another story and just have that other piece of it separate that was advocating for his release. And yesterday happened. So talk about the day-to-day travails of all of this

on you running a paper here in the United States of America every day you knew that one of your valuable employees was being held in captivity by Russia what kind of an impact did that have on you on your day-to-day job it gave us a sort of fist in our collective gut for 16 months and that will start to clear but that's's what it felt like. That was incredibly tough to know that he was there. Toughest of all on, excuse me, toughest of all on Evan and his family. And we've been so impressed by them and so impressed by him. You saw his composure last night. That's the same composure he has displayed for 16 months.

And whenever we were flagging, we would almost look to him when we saw him in those glass cages in the courtroom, and he would inspire us all over again. Paul, stay with us. We have more with you in just a moment. But, Katty, let's now bring in, learn more from the White House. Yeah. Joining us now, White House National Security Communications Advisor and Assistant to the President, Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby. An extraordinary day for the United States and for the White House yesterday. John, the Germans, an ally of Olaf Scholz's has tweeted out that he supports this deal, but he did describe it as making a deal with the devil.

He said it was worth doing on humanitarian grounds. It's notable that five of the seven countries involved in this deal are NATO members. What were the conversations with America's allies to persuade them to take part in this in this prisoner swap that involved compromises for them? Very complex deal put together again over many, many months, Katty. And the conversations began many, many months ago with these nations, as we realized that in order to get this over the finish line, we were going to need some help. And boy, that's when you want to pull on your alliances, your partnerships and the relationships,

particularly the personal relationships that President Biden has forged, not only as president, but in his previous life as a senator and vice president. And it came down to that. It really came down to the president's personal involvement, getting on the phone with these leaders and asking them to make these tough decisions. There's no way when you do a negotiation like this that you're going to you're not going to have to compromise. And now we had to ask allies and partners to compromise. But as the president said so eloquently last night, this is why alliances matter. This is why he's invested so much energy into reinvigorating our alliances and partnerships around the world, because when you really need to

tap that reservoir, it's there. And it was the result, again, of many, many personal conversations he had. Were there any promises made to those NATO countries? Were there any things that were offered, for example, to Germany or to Slovenia, Poland, for example, in order to take part in this? No, this was not about trade space here with our allies and partners. It was really about coming together to try to free up not just Americans, but other nationalities as well, and Russians as also Russian dissidents as well, and trying to do the right thing for a lot of innocent people that had no business rotting in Russian jails. John, is there anything that the United States can do now to try to stop this cycle of hostage taking, hostage negotiation, prisoner swaps? I mean, of course, there is a risk that a prisoner swap of this deal just perpetuates the idea amongst these countries like Russia that it's

worth taking prisoners around the world. Is there anything you can do to try to mitigate against that? Well, you know, the State Department has listed a D designation on many, many countries to warn Americans traveling to countries overseas that there is a detention risk to try to inform them and increase self-awareness. We obviously will continue to do what we can to hold rogue states and rogue nations accountable for their activities, include the wrongful detention of Americans overseas. But ultimately, this is something that Mr. Putin has been doing for decades. And at times when there were negotiations, he was still taking people wrongfully detaining. And when there weren't, he was still doing it when there weren't and when there were. So it's not as if the idea of negotiating for for Americans wrongly held overseas is necessarily going to

increase the risk that they will be. As a matter of fact, Roger Carson's our special envoy for hostage affairs has done some analysis. And quite frankly, it's an open question whether there is, in fact, a causal link between the ability to negotiate and the desire by a rogue state of trying to take hostages or wrongfully detain people. So, Admiral, talk to us about what happens next in terms of relationship with Moscow. The war in Ukraine obviously continues. There is, though, this channel, this diplomatic channel that has remained open, that has now a couple of times been able to arrange for prisoner swaps. There are still Americans held in Russia. What are the next steps here with this relationship?

Two things, Jonathan. First of all, we are going to continue to try to get wrongfully detained Americans overseas back home with their families. We're also working on other Americans that maybe haven't been classified as wrongfully detained, but we want to get them home, such as Mark Fogle in Russia. Those conversations are going to continue. And as we negotiated this deal, every time we do this, we learn. We gain some knowledge and perspective about what the Russians are thinking. And that was the case here. So even though we couldn't get Mark in this deal, we're still going to do what we can to try to get him home with his family where he belongs as well. As for the larger relationship, Jonathan, don't look for some major policy shift here. Don't look. There's no rapprochement. There's no detente here with Russia. We can compartmentalize. We can do what we have to

do to negotiate on the behalf of American citizens that are being wrongfully detained and at the same time hold Mr. Putin accountable for all his aggression and activities on the European continent. We're going to continue to do that. Look for us to continue to make sure Ukraine has what it needs to defend itself. Look for President Biden to continue to make sure that NATO alliance remains strong, relevant, and viable well into the future. Don't look for any major policy shifts here in the U.S.-Russia relationship.