Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/3/22

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

Kansans vote to uphold abortion rights in their state

Relief, excitement, joy. I'm very proud of our fellow Kansans. Only weeks ago, we were telling patients in neighboring states that we serve that their rights were no longer intact and that they had to flee their home states to get care. The cards were stacked against us. That was the intention with this amendment from the start. As a husband, I did not look forward to trusting the legislature to protect the rights of my wife. We're avoiding a huge horror that would have come to Kansas. One of the things I heard was you may be against abortion for yourself,

but you can't be against it and make the choice for someone else. This was my life on the line, too. This was my right to bodily autonomy. Tonight, we get to say to Kansans, you can still get care here. You are still recognized and able to make your own private medical decisions. Reaction from Kansas last night as voters turned out in high numbers to protect abortion rights in that conservative state. It was the country's first test of the issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And we are awaiting final results from several key races from last night's primaries, including Arizona, where the Republican primary for governor is still too close to call.

But that didn't stop the Trump endorsed Carrie Lake from declaring victory already. In the race to oversee Arizona's elections, Republicans have picked Trump backed conspiracy theorist Mark Fincham as their nominee for secretary of state. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, three of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump were on the ballot last night. We'll tell you how they fared. NBC's Steve Kornacki is standing by to break down the results from a big primary night. Also this morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, undeterred by China's threats,

visits Taiwan, sitting for a series of high profile meetings while pledging strong U.S. support, knowing her value and the value of democracy. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Wednesday, August 3rd. What a night. There's a massive headline, though, coming out of Kansas, a massive headline that is reverberating around Washington this morning in both Democratic and Republican circles. Republican legislators deciding the future of of decisions that are made by their wives, by their daughters, by their loved ones. And and it's astounding. This comes from a state that voted overwhelmingly to protect. I you know, I don't I don't you don't really even say abortion rights to protect the rights of women to have control over their own bodies instead of state legislators who have just been extreme and radical across America, whether it's forcing a 10 year old girl to flee her state after being raped, whether it's Texas Republicans deciding that they want to retain the right to let mothers die on operating tables. You go, I mean, my God, in other states, I mean, I saw a debate on a state legislative floor where they were actually in Idaho talking about the right of rapists, relatives to sue a woman who was raped to sue a rape victim and get twenty thousand dollars

per rapist relative. This this is the crazy stuff that this is the Republican Party of 2022, Mika. And you look in Kansas and the Kansas voters, even people who are pro-life, said, no, we're not going in that radical, freakish direction. And really quickly, just about Kansas, they haven't voted for a Democratic candidate for president in over 50 years. Yeah, they haven't had a United States senator that was not a Republican in over 50 years. So on national issues, they are as conservative as can be. And last night, overwhelmingly, they voted to preserve the right of privacy, the right for women to make medical decisions, the right for women to decide, the right for parents to help their 10-year-old daughters, their 11-year-old

daughters who have been raped, to make life-changing decisions. And there is no doubt that that message from Kansas, Mika, reached Washington, D.C. late last night. And Willie, just for the midterms, I'll say this just as the woman on the set. Watch out. I mean, I'm surprised by Kansas and I'm not surprised because women are not going to stand by idly and say, yeah, you can take away our rights. You can take away our personal rights. You can take away our sister's rights. You can take away our daughter's rights. Forget it. Watch out. And Kansas is your example this morning. Yeah, well, the Supreme Court's decision on Dobbs, which overturned Roe versus Wade, said we're actually going to kick this back to the states. It's up to the states to decide

what to do about abortion. Well, Kansas was the first to speak very loudly about what it wanted to do about abortion. And to Joe's point about what kind of state this is, obviously a very red state. But even last night, there weren't competitive Democratic races. In other words, you wouldn't expect a ton of Democrats to rush out and vote on this, but they did. But in that state, it's got to be Republicans, too, because it was not close. As we showed just a minute ago, the voters in Kansas rejected the effort to remove the right to an abortion from the state's state, it's got to be Republicans, too, because it was not close. As we showed just a minute ago, the voters in Kansas rejected the effort to remove the right to an abortion from the state's constitution. That was the question on the ballot. Fifty nine to forty one was the vote. It marks the first time the issue has been put to a vote since the Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade in June. With the November midterms coming. As Mika said, the Kansas vote signals

abortion will be an energizing issue. Look at those numbers. Look at that. Look at those numbers. But before beforehand, the predictions were that the yes vote would win by a couple of points. Every poll showed that this is one of those. And there are people that were afraid to tell pollsters how they were going to vote. This is sort of the. And there are people that were afraid to tell pollsters how they were going to vote. This is sort of a reverse Trump effect, the reverse Bradley effect. This this is a tsunami. It is just not close. And again, in Kansas, this is in the state of Kansas. The Associated Press had an estimate.

The turnout for yesterday's primary far exceeded other recent contests with about 900,000 Kansas voters casting a ballot. So, Joe, clearly this is a statement from the state of Kansas and perhaps a signal to Republican candidates, obviously Democrats who want to run on this come the fall, that this is an issue where many, many, many Americans, including in red states, have made up their mind. And Kansas is a big red flag. You know, we need to send Elise Jordan out to do another one of our focus groups because we learned so much from these focus groups. I remember back in 2016, Mark Halperin and John Heilman had that focus group for Bloomberg where you had the working class woman in West Virginia, I believe, saying, Donald Trump, he's one of us.

And it was like a thunderbolt. And you go, oh, my God. OK, wow. Trump, he's one of us. And it was like a thunderbolt. And you go, oh, my God. OK, wow. That's what's happening out there. And then, you know, I'm still thinking about Elise Jordan's Georgia trumper, the man who, again, fed into every conspiracy theory. He was a trumper's trumper. And she asked about abortion because I'm a man. What are you asking me about abortion? This is not of my business. I'm pro-life. I identify as pro-life. But this is a woman's decision. And Willie, I just think you look at Kansas and I think it's an example of a lot of people who identify themselves as pro-life looking at what's happened since Rose has been overturned, looking at the extremism, looking at the 10 girls being the 10 year old girls being chased from

their state, looking at the Texas attorney general fighting for the right to let mothers die on an operating table to tear away the protections that the federal government is trying to to put in place to protect moms to have a choice on whether they die on an operating table or not. You look at all the extremities in it now, again, in another Republican state legislature trying to give the right to members of a rapist's family to sue a rape victim for twenty thousand dollars unless she has a forced pregnancy. This is a rapist's bill of rights that these Republicans are passing a rapist's bill of rights for forced childbirth on children. This is a Republican Party in 2022. And even in a pro-life state, even in a Republican state that hasn't elected a Democratic president in 50 years, they are repulsed by the radicalism of this new Republican Party.

Yeah, it's to call it an extreme position is an understatement. Talk about no exception for rape or incest. That's where a lot of Republican candidates are right now. And as you said, Kansas sending a thunderbolt of a message last night. Let's go straight to the big board where we find NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornacki. Steve, good morning. What more can you tell us about what happened in Kansas last night? Yeah, look, I think you're covering the big point in terms of turnout here now. More than 900000 votes are counted in this primary, typically in a Kansas primary. At least if you went back just to 2018,

when you had competitive primaries on both sides, the number was really half of that. It was about 450,000. When you've had you've had presidential election, general election turnout in Kansas in 2012, it was just under 1.2 million. In 2016, it was about one point two million. And again, you're over nine hundred thousand here in a midsummer primary. So I think it shows you the level of interest clearly that this referendum brought out among the electorate. I think one thing that's interesting here, too, is, yeah, you think of Kansas as a red state. It did go for Donald Trump by 15 points in 20 in 2020 in that Trump Biden election in 2020, five counties in the entire state of Kansas, five counties voted for Joe Biden. When Laura Kelly, the current Democratic governor,

got elected in 2018, she won statewide. She only actually carried eight counties. You can see the no side on this referendum is actually going to end up carrying 19 counties. So that that is a much more sweeping verdict than even the Democrat who won the gubernatorial election in 2018 got. A couple of things that stick out to me in this. First of all, to get a number up near 60 percent where the no is going to land on this. There were some Republicans who voted in the Republican primary just mathematically and then voted no on this. There were some Republicans who voted in the Republican primary just mathematically and then voted no on this. So there was crossover voting in that direction, trying to figure out exactly how much. But that's an ingredient that had to be part of this. Another ingredient, though, is I think something that Democrats have been talking about politically since that Supreme

Court decision to overturn Roe versus Wade. They have been saying that it would have a particular effect in the suburban areas of the country where Democrats have been making the biggest inroads over the last decade, particularly with college educated voters, particularly with college educated female voters in metro areas, in suburban areas. And so I want to call attention to one county here. This is Johnson County, Kansas. And actually, I mean, if you could just do the math in your heads, you could see this is the biggest in the state. This is a massive suburban metropolitan Kansas City County here. And the vote was overwhelmingly no. 68 percent no. In terms of the share of the statewide electorate that Johnson makes up, this is always high.

This is unusually high. Right now, you're looking at about 27 percent of all the votes cast in this Kansas primary came out of this county, Johnson County. More typically, that number is going to be between 20 and 25. So that shows an extreme level of interest in just the place Democrats were saying after that Supreme Court ruling that you would have new political engagement or higher political engagement. And now the question, if Democrats were right about that point, the question is, this is a referendum on abortion. What Democrats have also been saying is that this sentiment, this energy will attach itself to the general election, to the Democrat versus Republican races in the general election. I don't know if that's the case, but just take a closer look here at Johnson County, because I think this is so fascinating. There are counties like this all across the country, big suburban counties that have made this kind of a journey over the last decade. In 2012, Johnson was just a bedrock Republican county. The Republicans won it by almost 20

points. In 2016, Donald Trump came along. Trump carried it, but by a vastly reduced margin. His presidency further alienated the voters in that county. And Joe Biden ended up winning it by more than eight points in 2020. Now, on this referendum, Johnson is a no by a margin of 37 points. And again, what Democrats have been saying is there are a lot of Johnson counties across the country, the suburbs of Philadelphia, the suburbs of Atlanta, the suburbs of Phoenix, places like that where Democrats have made similar inroads over the last decade and where they think this issue is going to be resonant, is going to give them a boost in the fall. It's a two-pronged argument Democrats have been making here.

I think on the first argument they've been making, they've got proof from what happened in Johnson County, Kansas last night, that yeah, this did bring out a lot of political energy in the suburbs, in particular in Kansas. The second argument they're making is that this will resonate as well in the partisan November general elections of Democratic candidates, Republican candidates from a referendum here. We can't answer that yet, but that's what they're hoping for. We'll see if that's what happens. Well, let's look at just, Steve, if you can, let's look at the journey that the Republican Party has taken in this one county from Mitt Romney's election in 2012 to what happened last night. And this really underlines we had reporting that Donald Trump was just aghast when Republicans started passing what they the anti-choice laws in Texas, also very concerned that he would be hurt in the areas where Republicans were already bleeding support. And sure enough, I think a lot of Republicans needed to be concerned about that because look at those numbers again.

You brought it up that that it's incredible in a decade, in just one decade from Mitt Romney's election night to last night. Democrats have lost 20. Our Republicans have lost 26 points in in in this county. Of course, we're we're comparing apples and oranges a bit here. But but you look at Mitt Romney's 57 percent and you look at the Republicans, 31 percent last night. That's pretty incredible. Yeah, I know. And as I say again, this is there are counties like this across the country. You just think of these big suburban counties, Cobb County in Georgia, for instance, you know, that you used to when George W. Bush was president, even when just Mitt Romney was running in 2012, you used to just look at him on election night and say not if the Republicans are going to win him, but just what's the margin Republicans are going to get out of them. And that's where Republicans have suffered their erosion. That was also when you think back to 2018, that blue wave in 2018, what keyed it?

It was suburbs. It was metropolitan areas of cities all across the country. So when you look here to 2022 and what Democrats are trying to pull off in terms of hanging on to the Senate and I mean, maybe, you know, having some kind of fighting chance in the House, it goes through the Johnson counties of America. So that's why I paid particularly close attention to this. But it is also true that if you look at other counties, we could just look at counties in rural Kansas here. I mean, again, this is what I say. There were Republicans who voted no on this. Here's just one random county in rural western Kansas. You know, Donald Trump

won 85 percent of the vote. Joe Biden barely got 10 percent in 2020. The no side got basically triple what Biden got. You know, again, this is a win in this county for yes, but not nearly the margin Republicans have been posting there. So that's another ingredient of what happened here in Kansas. Steve, stand by. Let's bring in U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kaye, and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, and the host of Way Too Early, White House PR chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. Katty, talk to me about Kansas. I know you've been traveling the country this summer. Yeah, I mean, what happened in Kansas is really interesting.

And I think it's Steve's point just now that you have districts that have become heavily Republican. We can talk about the suburbs later. But these rural districts that are heavily Republican, where the margin of the vote for yes does not correlate with Donald Trump's election results in 2020. So you had Republicans, I don't know if they are Republican women or if they are more centrist Republican men and women deciding that the Supreme Court went too far. And I think part of what's happened is since the Supreme Court ruling, we've had not only the stories that Joe raised about young girls being raped and the implications of that, you've had horror stories from doctors of women who had had miscarriages and couldn't get a DNC that would potentially,

you know, save their life, save their health or make them wait in agony in order to get some kind of procedure because of the Supreme Court's ruling and the chaos that it's thrown up around the state. So the ruling has had far more radical implications than I think people on the day of the ruling realized it would do, both in terms of young girls being raped and in terms of mothers who might be having a miscarriage. And I wonder whether some of that is playing into the extraordinary wave that we saw in Kansas. It's a bad sign for people like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, the person who's the man who's running for governor, who's running on a very firm anti-abortion platform. And you

wonder whether those Republican candidates now are going to have a look at how they run their own races in the light of what happened in Kansas. But, Gene, it's not just an anti-abortion platform, which typically was that you're pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother. That's where that's where most Republican candidates used to be. We now are moving into an election cycle where Gretchen Whitmer is going to be going up against an opponent who said the raping of a 14 year old girl was the perfect example of why we had to ban abortion. So she is what wants to force that 14 year old girl to carry the rapist's baby.

And the state, if she's governor, will compel the 14 year old girl to have a forced birthing of the rapist's baby. And the state, if she's governor, will compel the 14 year old girl to have a forced birthing of the rapist's baby. Again, it is a rapist's bill of rights that these Republicans are pushing. Gretchen Whitmer was already looking strong in Michigan. My God, what is this? This is a rhetorical question for my Republican friends. What is this going to do in the suburbs of Detroit? What is this going to do in Grand Rapids? This radicalism that the Republicans continue to push. And I'm just saying this analytically, it's going to destroy so many of their statewide candidates in swing states this fall. Yeah, that's right. And it's because some of those candidates are taking these radical, unacceptable, ridiculous,

cruel positions on choice, even in the post-Dobbs context. There are Republican candidates out there saying, well, you know, that 10-year-old girl who was raped, you know, she really should have carried that baby to term, you know, two wrongs don't make a right. I mean, that sort of thing, which is horrifying to people. And this is, I mean, this is a thunderbolt out of Kansas, this massive, massive turnout for a midterm primary with general election numbers in terms of turnout and that huge gap. It's just I was absolutely amazed. We saw the early numbers last night and said, well, this, you know, this can't actually be real. But it turned out it was real.

It was basically 60, 60, 40 all night. And it should send shivers of fear down the backs of Republican candidates women and men who just simply aren't going to take it, are not going to take it, and they're going to speak out. They just aren't. I mean, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in Georgia, in Arizona, make a one radical Republican nominee after another winning. And again, we go to Michigan, where last night, Michigan Republicans selected, as their nominee to go up against Gretchen Whitmer, a woman who said in a podcast that a 14 year old girl raped by her uncle. Stay with me here. A 14 year old girl raped by her uncle was the perfect example. Of why abortion needed to be banned with no exceptions at all. A perfect example, I don't think 80, 85 percent of Americans think that way.

That's one of the reasons we had and we keep using the word thunderbolt. That's one of the reasons why thunderbolt struck in Kansas last night. And the after effects are being felt in Washington this morning. Well, and I think you put your finger on it at the very top of the show here when you said that Republicans basically are running and standing on the platform of a rapist's bill of rights. And that's the choice. And women are saying, forget it. So Kansas, a big indicator, perhaps this morning. That's the big story of last night's elections. Although there are many more, we still need to get to the results from Arizona and

Michigan, where the big lie had a big night. Steve, stay with us for that. Also ahead of Morning Joe, Nancy Pelosi is pledging ironclad support for Taiwan. We'll talk to Richard Haass and Jeremy Bash about the House Speaker's controversial trip and China's reaction. Plus, after days of pressure, a number of Republicans reverse course and sign off on legislation to expand health care for veterans. Senator Amy Klobuchar will join us to discuss that bill now headed to the president's desk. How many mistakes can one party make? I mean, I thought the Democrats were clueless in politics. No.

Republicans have given them such a run for their money this summer. Also ahead, it wasn't just the Secret Service. Court documents reveal that phones of top Pentagon officials were also wiped. Send them to jail. And January 6th messages deleted. Send them all to jail. We're digging into that staggering new reporting. And the baseball world is mourning the loss of a beloved broadcaster, Vin Scully.

The voice of the Dodgers for decades has died. We'll remember his incredible career ahead. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Beautiful sunrise over Washington at 629 in the morning. The Republican primary for Arizona governor too close to call this morning. That's the one between Kerry Lake and Karen Taylor Robeson. As expected, Lake prematurely declared victory last night in Phoenix, despite her trailing at that time.

And she continued to lay the groundwork for distrust in the results of the election. There is no path to victory for my opponent, and we won this race. We are going to win this when the votes are counted. Overnight, Lake took the lead over Robeson, but the race still categorized as too close to call. Meanwhile, Mark Fincham, a state representative and election conspiracy theorist as well, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, is projected to win the Republican nomination to oversee voting as Arizona's Secretary of State. In the Senate primary, Blake Masters, also endorsed by former President Trump and funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, is projected to defeat businessman Jim Lehman and Attorney

General Mark Brnovich. And State House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who you will remember testified during the January 6th hearings, is projected to lose his primary for state Senate by a wide margin. Let's go back over to Steve. Steve, let's start with the governor's race. Too close to call this morning. But what's it looking like from where you're sitting? Yeah, no. Carrie Lake had in the very overnight hours here on the East Coast, I'd say the last four hours or so. Carrie Lake got a lot of good news. If you remember from 2020, the way they do the vote counting in Arizona is the polls. They started releasing the results about 11 p.m. last night.

The initial vote that was reported out was everything that had been cast basically up until Monday of this week. Remember, extensive early mail voting in Arizona. So what you saw there with that first batch of votes late last night was that Karen Taylor Robeson actually opened up a lead of close to 10 points over Carrie Lake. And that was what we thought about what she might need to have a chance to win the primary. We knew she would have to do best with that group of voters. That's the least sort of Trump friendly group of voters you're going to get. What happened then is overnight they counted up the vote that was cast in person at the polls yesterday.

The folks who just went out to their poll places and voted yesterday. And we also knew that was probably going to be the most pro Trump vote that's out there. And indeed, that's what happened in county after county. In the last few hours, we just got batches of that same day vote reported out. And Kerry Lake was winning it by margins of 25, 30, 35, 40 points over Karen Taylor Robeson. Enough that I'd say about two hours ago, Lake actually jumped ahead of Taylor Robeson in the count. So now where do we stand? We got about 80 percent of the vote counted in Arizona. What's left to come? Well, it's anybody who had an absentee ballot and dropped it off at the polls yesterday. Didn't go in and vote in the polls yesterday, but dropped it off.

Those ballots, they are going to process them, review them, verify signatures. This is where things can sometimes drag on for days in Arizona. But we're going to get a sense of exactly how many of those ballots there are. But again, if you remember 2020, even that group of votes was pretty friendly toward Donald Trump. So if that same trend kind of holds here, it bodes well for Lake having now taken the lead here over 10,000 votes over Taylor Robeson. And again, we saw some similar movement in that Senate race overnight as the same day vote came in. lead here, over 10,000 votes over Taylor Robeson. And again, we saw some similar movement in that Senate race overnight as the same day vote came in. Blake Masters, the Trump candidate,

went from a four point lead up to a double digit lead. Same thing in the secretary of state's race. So the momentum here seems pretty well established across the board behind these Trump candidates. John, I'm looking at your book, The Big Lie, sitting right here. The Big Lie swept Arizona effectively last night. We'll see the final result from Carrie Lake. But it looks like, as Steve says, she will become the next governor of that state. Blake Masters will excuse me. She'll be running for to become the governor of the next state.

Blake Masters, all attorney general, secretary of state, all people, some of whom have said, in fact, I'm going to introduce a resolution to go back and decertify the 2020 election results. And who knows what they'll do in a 2024 presidential election if, in fact, they are elected in the general. Yeah, there were two major storylines coming out of last night. One we just covered in Kansas with abortion rights. But this is the other. It was a big win for the big lie. We'll get to Michigan in a minute. It was triumphant there as well. But Arizona, which is such a key battleground state, it was in 2020. It is going to be in 2024. And it's certainly possible Republicans, maybe they're shooting themselves in the foot here.

They're nominating candidates who will be considered too conservative, too fringy come the general election. But right now, in terms of assessing the state of the Republican Party, Donald Trump has it in his grasp, certainly in the state of Arizona. All of his endorsed candidates won. Blake Masters, we mentioned, is the one backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, who is very friendly with Trump. We have the election deniers in there. Carrie Lake, of course, had already planted the seeds that if she were to lose, that would have meant the election was fraudulent. It had been rigged against her.

Now, of course, we do see that she is ahead. And Rusty Bauer, someone who made a lot of headlines, drew a lot of praise for standing up for him, for his party, for his constitution by defying Trump when he testified on January 6th. He didn't just lose. He got crushed. So certainly this is where, Joe, that the Republican Party, at least in this state right now, very much in Donald Trump's grip and with real consequences of the sanctity of the vote going forward. Well, and the cheers that you hear going up are going up in Democratic offices across Washington, D.C. and Democratic campaign offices in swing states across America because Donald Trump got his wish. He got crackpots, freaks and insurrectionists winning primaries. And the impact is likely to be the same impact

if you listen to Republicans on Capitol Hill that we saw in Georgia in 2020 in those special elections when it was Donald Trump who single handedly helped Democrats win those two seats and put Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in charge of the United States Senate. Katie Kay, we now have in the most important swing states in America, these crackpots, these freaks, these insurrectionists you have. And I think we should just I think we should just start calling them. We have the class of Todd Aiken. This is the Todd Aiken Memorial class of candidates in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in North Carolina, in Georgia and in Arizona. In fact, in Arizona, it seems to me the collection of the winners on the Republican side are the most extreme. You you almost expect them to come together this afternoon, hold the press conference and all declare into the microphone. I am not a

witch. I was just thinking of the witch when you were mentioning Todd Akin and wondering whether it was that you were going to go for. But I think Arizona, if Democrats are hoping that by nominating Carrie Lake, Mark Fincham, Blake Masters in Arizona, that gives them a strong chance, the Democrats a strong chance of winning that state because they are too extreme. I'm not sure. I spent some time, in fact, I interviewed both Carrie Lake and Mark Fincham, who's now been nominated as the Republican candidate for secretary of state. And they have a lot of support in that state. There is a very strong conservative group of people outside Maricopa County who will turn out and vote. And somebody

like Mark Fincham, who's going to run to be and probably will be Arizona's next secretary of state, will have an enormous amount of power to have the way the vote is counted. He is somebody that wants to do away with mail-in voting. No surprise, mail-in voting seems to have favored Carrie Lake's opponent rather than the Trump-back backed candidate Carrie Lake. He wants to do away with mail-in voting. He would have an impact over the way that the vote is counted afterwards. So for Democrats to think, well, we've got these really conservative extreme people who believe that the 2020 election is stolen. That's going to help Democratic candidates in a state like Arizona. It may do. I'm not convinced it will. And if it

doesn't, you end up with a trifecta, the Senate, the governor, the secretary of state who could have a real material impact on the way that Arizona's electoral, 11 electoral college votes go. They could tip that state, the way the votes are cast, the way the votes are counted, they are people who do not believe that a Democrat, as they told me, Mark Fincham told me, he doesn't believe a Democrat can win Arizona. Mark Fincham could be in charge of the way the vote is counted. That's a pretty terrifying prospect for people that believe that the election should be free and fair and you shouldn't have somebody in charge who's already predetermined the outcome. For sure. Let's go to Michigan. NBC News projects Tudor Dixon has won the Republican nomination for governor there.

The former conservative media personality won an endorsement from former President Donald Trump just last week and will face off against incumbent Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer this November. The truth is this upcoming campaign, the next four years, they're not about Gretchen Whitmer and they're not about Tudor Dixon. They're about all of you.

They're about how together we can rebuild our state. And of course, she was the Washington Post article that I was quoting that was actually her, Tudor Dixon, who had said a 14 year old girl being raped by her uncle was the perfect example of why all abortions needed to be banned. And she's the one that's going to be running against Gretchen Whitmer. Yeah. And pushing a rapist bill of rights. I mean, these are the choices that we'll see in the midterms. And I think Kansas is a great sign of how women step up for themselves and the people who love them do as well. Nobody wants their daughters' rights taken away. And I think it becomes even more personal for even some men when they have daughters and they actually realize what is happening.

This has been a seismic shift, what has happened with Roe, where you have a lot of men and women across this country who are reacting in a very, very negative way to Republicans because of their stance on abortion. Now that the rights are in jeopardy, now that their rights are gone in some states, gone. Governor Whitmer was renominated in Michigan's Democratic primary without opposition. Also in Michigan, NBC News projects John Gibbs as the winner in the Republican primary for the state's third congressional district. The Trump endorsed challenger to GOP Congressman Peter Meyer declared victory last night in the nationally watched race. Gibbs was a political appointee in Trump's Housing and Urban Development Agency and pitched himself as an ultra conservative replacement for Congressman Meyer. Meyer was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then President Trump after the January 6th attack on the Capitol. He called Gibbs early this morning and conceded the race. Gibbs is one of several Trump backed candidates that Democratic groups have been boosting with campaign ads during the primaries.

The idea is that the Democratic candidate will have a better chance of defeating a more extreme Republican opponent this fall. So, Steve Kornacki, talk, if you could, a little bit about Meyer's loss. There were two other Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach Trump running in primaries yesterday. How did they do? Yeah, interesting story here. As you can see, Meyer close, but not close enough to pulling this thing out. The back story here you started to get at it is Michigan changed the way they do redistricting for this cycle. And that resulted in really just a blown up political map, congressional map in Michigan. This third district was changed

dramatically. It was changed in a way that makes it much more friendly to Democratic prospects in November. So that's what piqued Democrats interest in this Republican primary. And they came in with money, real money, trying to prop up Gibbs in this Republican primary with the calculation that he would make for a beatable candidate for them in the general election. And of course, that prompted the reply from Meyer. I mean, Meyer certainly just didn't like money being spent to hurt his campaign. But Meyer said, hey, you Democrats are saying that people like Gibbs are a threat to democracy. You are literally spending money that could help get them in power. Can you reconcile that? I think it's an interesting question when you look at the money Democrats spent and the

very close margin. Meyer almost pulled this thing out last night. He's going to lose again. Right now, it's inside of 4000 votes. So we had one Republican who voted to impeach Trump before this, who had a primary against a Trump back challenger who was trounced. That was Tom Rice in South Carolina. Meyer did a lot better than Rice. Meyer came very close. Now, you mentioned the other two who were on the ballot last night. It's out in Washington state. Remember, Washington state does its primaries different. These are top two primaries, Democrats, Republicans. They all run on the same ballot. The top two primaries, Democrats, Republicans. They all run on the same ballot. The top two, regardless of party, advance to the general election. So where

do we stand? One of the two Republicans to vote for impeachment, Jamie Herrera Butler. Here is the top two primary in the third district of Washington. You see the Democratic candidate is going to advance to the general election. We're still waiting on a verdict here. But Herrera Butler does have a lead of close to 5000 votes right now over the Trump backed candidate in this race. And that is Joe Kent. So Herrera Butler. Now you see 52 percent or so in Washington is another one of these states. We're going to get an update sometime later today. We're probably going to get one a day updates for a while here. It may be a while before this actually gets fully settled in Washington. But that's an encouraging start,

certainly for Herrera Butler. She's helped by the fact that you've got other candidates here. Heidi St. John, a very conservative Republican. There was a lot of money that was thrown in behind her. Did that split some of the vote that might otherwise have gone to Kent? That's a possibility here. Herrera Butler, though, very much alive as this days long Washington vote progresses. And then the other pro impeachment Republican, this is the fourth district of Washington, is Dan Newhouse. And you see, actually, he is in the lead right now in that top two primary. The Democrat a point behind him. This is Lauren Culp down here. This is the Trump backed Republican in this district. So, again, you've got Newhouse actually on top here. More votes to come. But just one

thing you say is is this. If Newhouse and Herrera Butler both end up surviving and advancing, there would be three House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump to actually make it to the general election. All three of them would have done it this way in these top two jungle primaries. It would be Newhouse, Herrera, Butler. And then there was David Valadao in California's Central Valley earlier this year. He voted to impeach Trump. He survived the primary. So far, the two that have had traditional Republican primaries with Trump waiting in have lost. And the only one after this is in two weeks. And it's Liz Cheney. And we've seen the polling there. All right, Steve Kornacki, thank you very much. What a night. We appreciate your coming on early this morning and coming up. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls out China during an historic trip to Taiwan. Why she thinks Beijing made a big deal about the visit. And boy, did they ever.

A lot of threats. But there she is. Also ahead, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema is keeping quiet on whether she'll support a crucial bill for Democrats. It's a vote that some in the party could determine her say could determine her political future. Plus, new developments in the DOJ investigation into January 6th. The grand jury is demanding testimony from a high ranking Trump White House official. That's all ahead on Morning Joe.

I'm not a witch. I'm nothing you've heard. I'm you. None of us are perfect. Memories light the corners of my mind. Misty watercolor memories Of the way we were It's important to note that members of Congress, several of them had made trips just earlier this year. Five senators, bipartisan, came, again, including the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee,

Mr. Menendez, came. Not too much of a fuss was made. Individual senators have made trips or plan to make trips. And I just hope that it's really clear that while China has stood in the way of Taiwan participating and going to certain meetings, that they understand that they will not stand in the way of people coming to Taiwan. It's a show of friendship, of support, but also a source of learning about how we can work together better in collaboration. So, yeah, no, I don't. I think that that they made a big fuss because I'm speaker, I guess. I don't know if that was a reason or an excuse because they didn't say anything when the men came. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with the president of Taiwan yesterday, Pelosi becoming only the House Speaker to travel to the island in 25 years. In

April of 1997, then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich made a visit to the island, also meeting with the president. Pelosi made the visit despite military threats from China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory. Pelosi praised the, quote, vibrant and flourishing democracy and said the U.S. delegation used the trip, as she said, to make unequivocally clear we will not abandon Taiwan. Last night, Pelosi was awarded Taiwan's highest civilian honor with the president calling her a devoted friend. Joining us now, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, and former chief of staff at the CIA and Department of Defense, NBC News national security analyst, Jeremy Bash. Guys, good morning. Good to see you

both. Jeremy, I'll start with you. So Speaker Pelosi's right. Just back in November, a group of senators, including some Republicans, John Cornyn, Crapo, Mike Lee was there. There was a group of them who visited. So why is this so different? Why has it caused such a stir for China? Well, I think China overplayed its hand. Had they not made the threats, had they not amped this up, this visit probably wouldn't gather any headlines. People wouldn't have noticed at all. But they went out there, tried to deter her from traveling, threatened military action across the Straits of Taiwan, threatened to punish Taiwan with missiles and ships and airplanes. And she wasn't

backing down. So good for Speaker Pelosi for sticking to her guns. But China really, I think, botched this and they gambled and thought they could call off the trip and they lost. And, you know, she didn't slip in and out under the cover of darkness exactly for a couple of hours. She made a big show of it. She went to this event with the president. She stayed there. She just left, actually, Taiwan a short time ago. But there was some consternation, as John has reported in the White House, that I don't know if we want her to go. But she stood firm and decided she was going to go and make a big point of being there. Interestingly, the Biden administration sent out its major national security principles to actually give her a threat briefing and say, look, Madam Speaker,

this is your call. If you go, there could be consequences. But she said, look, I'm making my own decision. And to Joe Biden's credit, he did not call her. That was the question presented. Should he call her and ask her not to go? He did not call her and ask her to stand down. And so, in effect, the Biden administration, I think, played this exactly perfectly. They had some deniability. They let the speaker travel. They can't be accused by Republicans of backing down from China's threats. And as a result, a number of Republicans last night came out and actually endorsed Speaker Pelosi's trip. Oh, Richard Haass, I think one of the more underreported stories over the past, I'd say past year or two, has been the consistent overreach by President Xi. Ouijers, whether you're talking about with Hong Kong, whether you're talking about with Jack Ma, whether you're talking about going after entrepreneurs, whether you talk about going

after NBA stars, the overreach, the extremism, treating people in the West and across the world as if they are subjects of the Chinese Communist Party. And it's one overreach after another. And so now here we have Nancy Pelosi doing what Newt Gingrich did, what I did, what a lot of Republican members of Congress did through the years, meeting the president of Taiwan, going to the inauguration of the president of Taiwan. And they say nothing. And now this massive overreach where they back themselves into a corner and embarrass themselves. I wonder why are there no political repercussions for him inside the Chinese Communist Party?

When you look at it, even as zero covid policy, his his policies have been disastrous for China over the past five years. Joe, you're right. We can argue whether or debate whether this is about arrogance or whether about insecurity. I think it's important to remember the economy has slowed dramatically in China. And economic success, high economic growth was for years the principal source of political legitimacy in China. Taiwan also represents a liberal, Western, market-oriented, democratic model, which just inherently, intrinsically is a threat to Xi Jinping and his rule. There's no one who can push back against him right now. He's the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao. So again, I think a lot of this is about him. You're right. He could have, Jeremy's right. They could have

ignored the Pelosi trip. We would not be having this segment had it not been for China's reaction. And I think this is about the problems this leadership is facing, its own insecurity, the growth of nationalism, which they've whipped up, and now in some ways is putting pressure on them as he tries to get this unprecedented third term, which he will get when the party Congress meets in a couple of months. So this is not about Nancy Pelosi. This is all about this leadership in China at this moment in its history. Jeremy, how do you think this plays out? How does she, at this point, try to save face? Because, I mean, a big deal, you know, she can't come,

we'll freak out. She came, she met with the president. It was very high profile. And so so he looks pretty bad right now. How does he save face? And is this because of that a dangerous moment? Yeah, I think China is going to have to cause things to go boom in the Taiwan Strait. In other words, I think they're going to run some exercises. They're going to they're going to fire off some missiles. But I think they're going to quietly transmit to the Biden administration, either directly to the NSC or through their channels at the embassy that, hey, we're not looking to escalate the situation. We're not looking for military conflict. And after a couple of days, I think they're going to back down. I think Richard is exactly right. Xi Jinping is

taking enormous risk. And in every place in history that you look, Chinese leaders most often step back from the line of risk. This leader is looking towards the party Congress. He's looking to solidify his position and he's looking to take some more risks. And I think this is backfired completely on the Chinese leadership. Yeah. And Richard, Xi has made it pretty clear that he sees taking back Taiwan as part of his legacy. To what extent is his calculation going to be affected? Not by Nancy Pelosi's visit, but by what's happening in the war in Ukraine, by the zero COVID policy, which is having disastrous effects for his economy at home by the slowdown in economic growth, the aging population. Politically and economically, he is looking weaker. And then

you add in what's happening in Ukraine and Russia's troubles there. Does suddenly his desire to make Taiwan part of his legacy look less attainable for him? Not yet, but it's the big question. I think he's watching the war in Ukraine really, really closely. He's looking at the sanctions, what it could mean for him if he were to move against Taiwan. He's looking at the military lessons. He's looking at the sanctions, what it could mean for him if he were to move against Taiwan. He's looking at the military lessons. He's looking at the nuclear balance. One of the things China's doing is massively accelerating its nuclear buildup. They've basically concluded that the US has not sent direct military help to Ukraine because of Russia's nuclear arsenal. So they're thinking, if we had a much bigger nuclear arsenal,

maybe the United States would not send military help directly to Taiwan if we ever moved against it. My hunch is they're not yet ready to move against Taiwan. But over the next five to 10 years, I think you're exactly right. He sees this as part of his legacy. He sees this as central to his legacy. So we had better be prepared. And I think the Speaker of the House was exactly right in saying we need to explicitly state we would come to Taiwan's defense if China moved against it. And then more important, we've got to put ourselves in a position where we can do it. And that means strengthening Taiwan, working with Japan, working with other partners in the region. It also means reducing our collective economic

dependence on China. We don't want to put ourselves in the same position that Europe put itself, vis-a-vis Russia, over energy. We need to make sure that a push comes to shove. The economic leverage works against China rather than in its favor. So interestingly enough, Patty, both sides now have a couple of years to position themselves. China is going to try to strengthen its ability to move against Taiwan. We, working with Taiwan and others, have to strengthen our ability to deter and, if need be, defend against China.