Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/5/24

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Trump and Harris tied in new poll, but Harris leads with Black voters by a wide margin

Remember, better to look at an average of polls, and we just don't have a lot of battleground state polls since all these things began to shift. Take a look at the national number, though, and you get a sense of this. Remember, before the first debate with Biden and Trump, Trump was leading by close to three points or above three points, depending on when you looked at it. Trump today in the real clear politics average is leading by 1.2 percent, 1.2 points. There's an outlier in there. Their poll that gives him a five point lead. Without that outlier, he's leading by less than 1 percent, 0.8. In fact, if you look at it, there were five polls in the RealClearPolitics average that

occurred before the 25th of July. Trump leads in all five of those of the five polls that have been held since the 25th of July. Trump leads in all five of those of the five polls that have been held since the 26th of July. He leads he leads in only two. She leads in three. So I fully expect that the momentum she has is going to is going to carry her through unless it's a disastrous vice presidential choice. This momentum is going to leave her in the lead at the end of the Democratic convention. You might see that choice soon. Longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove on Friday predicting Kamala Harris's momentum will soon give her a solid lead over Donald Trump in the polls. And it appears he is correct with new polling showing Harris's gaining on the former president

in battleground states. Meanwhile, the vice president is expected to name her running mate before tomorrow's rally in Philadelphia. We'll have the latest on the Veep stakes. As for the former president, he was in Atlanta over the weekend, just days after Harris held a rally in the same place. And during his rally, Trump complained about the massive crowd that turned out for Harris attacking the state's Republican governor and congratulating Russian President Vladimir Putin on last week's prisoner swap. Wow. I mean, because he also, of course,

congratulated Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine. There's that. It was a brilliant move. And yeah, some people would say it's bizarre. I would agree, too. I would also agree that Robert Kennedy Jr., once again, in the news for all the wrong reasons. It's really bizarre, this story about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is claiming to have dumped a dead bear cub, a baby bear, in Central Park years ago. Was he going to eat it? Skin it and eat it or something like that. And then he got rid of it? Jonathan Lemire, I'm so confused. I'd heard that he was going to skin it and eat it, but just ran out of time.

I don't know these things. Then made it look like a biker ran over it. And then the New York Times story was written by his cousin, 10 years. It's all very weird. But you know what? In times like these, when little things make sense at all, that's when you want the person right there, sort of as the the leveling wind to be Roseanne. And Roseanne was there going, what in the holy hell are you talking about? Yeah, it's a political staple that when you're trying to get ahead of a story, you have to involve it.

Roseanne, you need to go to Roseanne and say, look, you're my audience. You're my audience here, Roseanne. This is, I will say, there are very few things that bring a nation together. The revelation of RFK Jr.'s video last night united us collectively with a, what the? Exactly. And let's quickly, very quickly recap this, as we're getting into it later. But basically, he was hiking. He was upstate New York, found a dead bear.

This is what he says. He decided that, oh, I'd like to have this dead bear. I could skin it, eat it, bear meat for a later meal. He throws it in his truck. He then heads to the city, New York City, for an expensive dinner at a steakhouse, Peter Luger's famed dinner. Realizes then that he has to, the bear meat's still in his car. He then says he has to, he realizes he has to catch a flight.

I mean, he's full. So he went to Peter Luger's. He was going to eat the bear cub. Is it winter? Because the bear's getting warm in the car. He was going to eat the dead bear cub, right? But no, but he went to a stick. But then he forgets that he's got reservations at Peter Luger's.

So he gets out, he's full. He goes, well, I guess I'm not going to eat the dead. I got the bear. We have to keep the bear. Who are us? We've all had that dilemma when you realize, like, oh, I've got the bear meat in the car. Oh, man, the steak here is so good. I should probably eat this.

I walked out of, yeah. You know, Jonathan, I walked out of the polo bar a couple of weeks ago. Walk outside. I forget. I got an elk's head in my trunk. And I'm like, wait a second. I can't eat that anymore. Right.

So it happens to all of us. I really had a roadkill in my car. What's he do next? Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, he would have had to have made a stop at an ATM because Peter Luger is famously cash only. Then he realizes, oh, wait, I've got to get a flight.

I got to get to the airport. But I've still got this bear meat in the car. So he says, he consults with his dinner companions. What should we do? What do we do? And they hit upon this idea, to drive to Central Park, dump the bear, dead bear cub there, and stage it as if the bear had been killed by a bicyclist. And then that story, 10 odd years ago, was a national story. A bunch of outlets covered it. They said there's a dead

bear at Central Park. That's newsworthy. And yes, as you mentioned, it was a Kennedy family relative, unbeknownst to her, who had the story for The New York Times the next day. And apparently, The New Yorker was about to drop a major profile of Robert F.K. Jr. This anecdote was going to be involved. So RFK Jr. tried to get out ahead of it yesterday with the help of Juan Rosanbar. Wow. There it is. Okay.

So we have dead baby cubs, bear cubs. In his car. Brain worms. Warming up. Yeah, brain worms. We're ready to go here. Let me just say, if you're going to pick up roadkill. Rested 10, rested ready to go.

My mother always taught me that you make sure that it's freshly killed. Freshly killed. Still warm. And you get it right to cut it up and freeze it. Cut it up fast. You don't leave it in your car to smell and get grosser. But we have with this former aide to George W. Bush White House

and State Department, Elise Jordan. Elise helped. She's an MSNBC political analyst and has no roadkill stories for us. Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor

of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson. I understand. Yeah. OK. Gene, Eugene Robinson. I got to talk about the bear. I understand. Yeah. Okay. Gene, go ahead. Go ahead. We will bear with it.

Go ahead. Oh, there it is. I just want to say, this was not a youthful indiscretion. This man was like 60 years old when this happened 10 years ago. That's what I go for. Okay. So recently, he recently did this, and it was bear roadkill. Yes, that's all I got.

I'm just going to say I wrote about this when actually this happened in my family. My parents are refugees from World War II and starved for two years, and it was a deer. So I'm really concerned about someone picking up a baby bear and thinking about skinning it and then faking its death in Central Park. There's a big difference. It's not even about eating roadkill. Congratulations on trying to make the story about your deer.

The fact is, if you can read about it and make his book, that there was actually a deer that had been struck and killed on the side of the road, Old Dominion Road or whatever, Old Dominion Road. Old Dominion Road, McLean, Virginia. And Mrs. Brzezinski. I've told the story some now. With a farmer and she got the best part.

She did get the best part. Let's bring in NBC News national affairs analyst and partner and chief political columnist John Heilman. John, how does the how does the bear folk impact the northern swing states? Oh, baby. Oh, wow. The guy had a worm in his brain, right, before this? Right.

Isn't that right? Yeah. And there's been a thing about a very sexually harassed babysitter, right? And was not apologetic at all. And said afterwards that there might be more of those. And now we got this bear straw. I think on the scale of the weirdness, this is, I mean, as weird as this is, it doesn't really rate compared to the weirdness of the worm in his brain. And in terms of disqualifying this,

there's a rate compared to the sexual harassment claim. Also, I'll note, Joe, that this man, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. right now, according to that CBS News YouGov poll that we've been talking about, and we're probably going to talk about some more here in the morning, Bobby Kennedy Jr. is at 2% nationally now. What's going on? I'm looking forward to the day when we won't be able to talk about the... I mean, the man, his political significance is dwindling pretty fast, and hopefully we won't have to talk

about it any more soon. Yeah, and you know, interestingly enough, that's good news for Donald Trump, because it seems that in the most recent polls, he's taking straight from Donald Trump. So very interesting. Vice President Kamala Harris.

Who would have ever seen that coming, that weirdos. By the way, I want to say, everybody's talking about weird, weird. Oh, we got this weird thing, weird, weird. Who's been talking about weirdos, insurrectionists, and freaks for like three years? I think it might have been. They're weirdos, insurrectionists, and freaks. That's how you, and Democrats are like, I'm so shocked. I don't. I said, don't be shocked. Call them what they are. They're weirdos, insurrectionists and freaks. That's how you and Democrats like, I'm so shocked. I don't.

I said, don't be shocked. Call them what they are. They're weirdos, insurrectionists and freaks. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are essentially tied, according to the latest poll from CBS News and YouGov. In the survey, Harris is supportive. Fifty percent of likely voters nationwide compared to 49 percent for Trump. That's within the margin of error among likely black voters.

The poll shows Harris leading Trump by 63 points, 81 percent to 18 percent. That's lower than 87 percent of black voters who voted for the Biden Harris ticket in 2020. But an eight point increase from Biden's numbers in the last poll conducted before he ended his campaign. They would say most definitely going in the right direction. Among young voters, Harris's lead over Trump is similar to the one Biden held in his last poll. According to the survey,

Harris leads Trump by 26 points among 18 to 29-year-olds after Biden led by 22 points last month. In 2020, exit polls show Biden beat Trump by 24 points among that same group. CBS News is also out with its first battleground states estimates of the 2024 election cycle, which are gathering what gathered based on past polling, census data and historical trends. According to the tracker, Trump and Harris are deadlocked in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump holds leads within the margin of error in Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin, while Harris leads within the margin of error in Nevada.

So, you know, not really surprising here, John Heilman. I mean, obviously surprising if you look at all the polls, how most of them, the most recent polls have all, we've had a bit of a reversal where you heard Karl Rove coming in talking about the momentum seems to be on her side. And it does seem to be on her side right now. It seems to be on the Democrat side. She's pulled ahead by one or two points in most polls, which means it's tied. You look at the swing states. It means it's tied.

What I find fascinating and completely predictable is the fact that Joe Biden was having biggest problems. And we've said it on this show forever that Joe Biden would have to bring home younger voters. He would have to bring home people of color. That's what Kamala Harris appears to be doing here. She's bringing home people of color. She's bringing home younger voters of the Democratic Party. And the big question on who's going to be the next president of the United States is whether she can perform almost as well as Joe Biden did among older working class white voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. So that's a sixty four thousand dollar question. Well, it is. It's among the I would broaden that sixty four thousand dollar question now,

Joe, to ask the question whether she can perform as well as Joe Biden did in 2020 with young voters, African-American voters and Latino voters, because although she has, there's undeniably the momentum is with her right now. She is performing better than Biden was prior to his decision to bow out and actually better than he was throughout the whole last couple of years with all those groups. Her number, though, is his number was way down from where his numbers were with those groups in 2020. She has made up. She's overperforming him in 2023, 2024, but she's still not up to the levels that he was at in 2020 with any of those groups. That gives you that's that's one of the things that she has to do. There's reasons to think if this momentum continues with all those voter segments that she

can do that. But and the numbers are all going in the right direction. But she's still not she's still not there. You know, if you look at, you know, even when this I'm trying to look at what the the number here is on with African-Americans as an example, she's she has right now is at 81 with 81 to 18 over Trump. You know, Biden hasn't had 90 percent of the black vote in 2020. So I just say that there's no one on the on the Harris campaign doesn't realize that those are categories where they need to ride the momentum, the rise that she's had and try to get her back to Joe Biden, the level of 2020, if she's going to be able to win the election in November. So, Gene Robinson, the poll also has this tidbit about black voters. Back on July 18th, those surveyed, 58 percent said they were definitely going to vote. That number

jumps to 74 percent now. So that that is significant. We know that the Trump campaign has said they've tried to make inroads with those communities. Obviously, we've seen his numbers dwindle. It's a priority of the Harris campaign. So speak to us about the state of the race. That's part of it now. But it seems like the map's expanding because by the final days of the Biden campaign, he seemed to only have one path to victory. The Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan route. While for Harris, she's got options.

Yeah, no, she's got options. You know, this just in, she is going to match Biden's numbers among African-American voters. I just, I mean, I am sure of that. And so, yes, she expands the map because now all of a sudden, what about Georgia? What about North Carolina? You know, there are, and what kinds of vote margins can she get out of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, out of Milwaukee in Wisconsin, out of Detroit in Michigan? I think these are significant gains that she has made. If you even if you just look at African-American voters.

And she's been a candidate for all of two weeks, right? So let it sink in at least for another couple of weeks, and we'll see where we are. It's very clear what direction she's headed. You know, Donald Trump's always been obsessed with crowd sizes. Obviously, his first day as president of the United States was embarrassing for everybody involved in the White House because he was so obsessed with with the sparse crowd. He forced people to lie about it. Right. But you saw that still play out again in Georgia. And it played out with Kamala Harris's rally in Atlanta, which was was pretty massive. And Donald Trump upset by the fact,

I think, that it was it was larger, that hers was larger than his. Also, that people started to leave AP reporting that a steady stream of people left during his 91 minute speech. But again, this is the sort of thing crowd sizes don't win elections, but it's something obviously that has gotten in Donald Trump's head. Yeah, it shows excitement. Donald Trump was in Atlanta Saturday. That's, as Joe mentioned, the same building where Vice President Kamala Harris held a rally just four days earlier. Before Trump even arrived at the Georgia State University Convocation Center, he was tempering expectations for the size of his crowd, writing on social media that Harris only filled the building

because she had entertainers perform at her rally. But the Associated Press notes that was not the case. In the 25 minutes Harris spoke, in fact, Trump lost sizable chunks of supporters across his 91-minute speech. Yet Trump frequently returned to the topic of crowd size, even suggesting that school administrators conspired with the Harris campaign to keep his supporters outside the arena. Crazy Kamala, ultra-left, you know that.

She was here a week ago, lots of empty seats. But the crowd she got was because she had entertainers. The school administration stopped us from getting another 500, 600, even 1,000 people in. Thousands of people were told, no, I'm not happy about it. If they're going to stand in the way of admitting people to our rally, just imagine what they're going to do on election day. They got thousands of people they won't let them in. A Harris presidency, you know why?

Because they don't want to show that we're successful. That's all it is. They don't want to show. She has to go get entertainers. They start leaving as soon as she opens her mouth. By the way, the entertainer couldn't fill the place either. Even with the help of the school, the school's trying to get students,

please go, this is embarrassing to us. Please go. There's one of these things where you ask, are you going to believe me or your lying eyes? The fact is the Harris rally was packed. There was a lot of excitement there, more excitement than we've seen at a Democratic rally in a very long time. It certainly certainly reminded a lot of reporters there of Barack Obama in 2008. Just again, excitement that a lot of people have been saying is sort of been bottled

up for quite some time for Democrats. And they're out there now. But, Alicia, no, we've always said we've always believed I've always told people running for office that that campaigns are about the future. They're not about the past. I could add to that. They're not about crowd sizes. They're not about grudges. They're not about resentments. They're not about all the things that fuel Donald Trump's campaign. And people say, well, he won. Yeah, he won in 16. And I'm not going to go through the litany of years that Trump Republicans have lost from 2017 all the way through 2023. And it's because it's always resentment. It's always crowd sizes. It's always who he's going to, you know, who's treasonous.

It's always praising Vladimir Putin. It's all these really weird things. What if I said weirdos, insurrectionists and freaks, the extremists that that that are are far out there pushing a lot of a lot of the crazy stuff? And it's just again, that badly about popular GOP governor. That was a great move in a state you need to win. And you can just see Donald Trump is responding to all of the enthusiasm surrounding Kamala Harris's campaign. And you've got the enthusiasm comes first. Then comes the uptick in the polling, which we're starting to see. And then it's going to be the ballot. And Donald Trump is responding to a chain of events that is probably starting to feel a little bit out of control as he is just groping around, getting nastier and angrier and losing all sense of discipline. Every modicum that he had summoned for a week long period. That's just

clearly gone, evaporated. And he's back to old Donald Trump. The new Nixon. Old being the key word. The new Nixon with you now for the next 24 hours. You know, Jonathan O'Meara at the Georgia rally where we're really burying the lead. Donald Trump has been a scourge, a scourge to Georgia Republicans, and they've said as much. He was responsible for for their loss in the 2020 Senate race and which, of course, kept Republicans from being the majority party in the United States Senate. He was responsible for the Senate candidates loss in 2022, which also helped Democrats control the Senate again. He goes in in 2024. Kamala Harris makes Georgia a swing state once again, as you said, and that the numbers are

all showing it. And what does he do? And, you know, he's raging behind the scenes, according to my sources inside the campaign. So what does he do? He does the exact thing that his campaign staff, that members of the Georgia GOP would not want him to. He picks a fight with an extraordinarily popular Republican governor. And I will say also with a secretary of state in Georgia that, yes, recorded Donald Trump trying to rig the election. And then Brad Raffensperger then went to the polls the next fall with Donald Trump trying to defeat him. And what happened? He won in a landslide victory in the primary. But this is what Donald Trump, instead of doing what would have been good for Donald Trump and good for Republicans and either making peace with Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger or at least not saying anything.

This is what Donald Trump did at a critical moment in this campaign. Your governor, Kemp and Raffensperger, are doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win. What are they doing? I don't know. They got something in mind. You know, they got a little something in mind. Kemp is doing? I don't know. They got something in mind, you know, they got a little something in mind. Kemp is very bad for the Republican Party. Under these kinds of woke, radical left policies, Atlanta is like a killing field and your governor ought to get off his and do something about it. He's a bad guy. He's a disloyal guy. and he's a very average governor. Little Brian, little Brian, bad guy. But think of it.

I got this guy. Just think. And then that's it. I got this guy nominated. I then got him elected without me. He doesn't get nominated and he doesn't get elected. He's a he's a bad guy and he's not doing this country a good service. People are looking at Georgia with Fannie and her lover and all of the other things saying, what the hell is going on in Georgia? What the hell is going on?

The radical left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020. And we're not going to let them rig the presidential election in 2024. The new Trump. Wow. You know, getting ready for a fight. The thing is, Jonathan, in so many ways, this is so bad for him. It's so bad for his campaign. And I would just underline to everybody again, when I talk about what Brian Kemp has done, he not only won easily in the general election, he won a landslide in the GOP primary. Republicans like him there. Donald Trump's biggest problem was that a lot of Republicans stayed home in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. People, Republicans in the northern suburbs of Atlanta love Brian Kemp. Republicans that Donald Trump need the most love Brian Kemp.

And he used his rally in Atlanta. Trashing their governor. And again, you just there's there's nothing logical about it. There's nothing rational about it. There's nothing logical about it. There's nothing rational about it. There's nothing sane about it. And so the question for Republicans inside and outside of that campaign is what's wrong with Donald Trump? Yeah. Remember that Georgia arrived as a swing state ahead of schedule in 2020 because of Trump's poor performance in office. And then, of course, no one anticipated Democrats would get both Senate

seats. But Trump, while fighting the big lie, you know, refused to go down there and campaign. The one event he had was the screed against all the Republicans there, turned off GOP voters. Democrats get both seats and then the majority of the upper chamber. And we have seen now all that talk of this professional, disciplined Trump campaign. That's gone. That's out the window right now. The candidate himself is making the decisions much to the consternation of those around him. And he is rattled. We have seen, we always say this here, when you want to know how Donald Trump really feels, look at Truth Social in the middle of the night.

And it's just been screed after screed since Vice President Harris ascended the top of the ticket. That campaign, the Trump campaign, has no answer yet how to respond to her. He is rattled by the crowd size, obviously. Look, they both filled that arena, but Harris could do it. Biden, that was something he couldn't do. And now Trump thinks that was a huge advantage, a blow to his ego. That's now gone. And it can't be said enough, Joe. You're right. Brian Kemp is really popular there in Georgia. And the combination of Harris at the top of the ticket and Trump reigniting this feud with with Kemp, a couple Republicans said to me over the weekend, Georgia is very much in play right now and they feel like it could slip away from Republicans. Hey, Joe. Yeah. And John, you do have Donald Trump raging right now out of control.

You have the campaign manager posting pictures of Tony Soprano flipping flipping the bird, which, again, gives you a nice look into the state of mind. And I suspect the meltdown will continue even more if Kamala Harris selects Josh Shapiro, as many believe she's going to do, because that is the one vice presidential pick that the Trump campaign fears the most, because it really moves Pennsylvania, the most important state. It's leaning sort of in Harris's direction? It's, well, first, you know how popular Brian Kemp is? Anybody have any idea? Brian Kemp's approval rating in Georgia? 63%. Now, 63% is a high approval rating.

If you're going to attack somebody, you know, it just boggles the mind. 63% approval rating, Brian Kemp. So that's basically all the Republicans in Georgia and a decent chunk of the Democrats in Georgia who like Brian Kemp, and yet Donald Trump thinks that's the right way to try to win the state of Georgia. Now, to get to your second point, Joe, this is why this matters so much. The Trump campaign, back when they were riding high, you used to talk about, I'm talking about around the convention time, you used to talk about all the pass they had to 270 electoral votes. And oh, God, we see so many pass, pass, pass, pass. We're going to get 320 electoral votes. Maybe we'll get 350 electoral votes. They had all these pass. But what they also would say, Tony Fabrizio, Trump's pollster, sat in a small room with a bunch of people, a small room with a few people

in Milwaukee, including me, and said, we have all these paths to 270, but here's the easiest path we have. And I raise this because it goes right to your question. So the easiest path we have to 270, and this is what it's going to come down to, I think, for them, is we hold all the states that we won in 2020, and we win Georgia and Pennsylvania. We don't have to win Arizona. We don't have to win Nevada. We don't have to win Wisconsin. We don't have to win Michigan. If we win the states we held in 2020 plus Georgia and Pennsylvania. Look at Trump's ad spending right now and what they bought over the course of the next couple months. The biggest states, Pennsylvania and Georgia. And so here we are, Donald Trump attacking Brian Kemp in Georgia.

And worried a lot, as you just said, about Josh Shapiro being the running mate because of Pennsylvania. Because that's the ballgame for them. That's their easiest way. It may be as much as the blue wall states were Joe Biden's only way to get to 270. This may be the central way and maybe the only way for Donald Trump to get to 270. And these are not, these does not augur, if those are the two states that Trump needs. Well, and Mika, the problem is you can spend as much money as you want to in Georgia. You trash an extraordinarily popular governor with a 63 percent approval rating and Republicans probably

approval rating in the 90s. Right. You do that. Then then you're going to get blasted with earned media. It's going to be negative. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution day in and day out and day in and day out going to be showing how this feud is playing out. And that's something, again, that just has the very real possibility of cratering support in the suburbs of Atlanta. There's just also strong, strong contrast in terms of optics where Donald Trump seems angry and bellowing. Right. And now the other side just seems hopeful and happy. Right. That matters.

Still ahead on Morning Show, former President Trump congratulates Vladimir Putin for another great deal after last week's historic prisoner swap conducted by U.S. President Joe Biden. Richard Haass joins us with his take on those weird comments. Plus, Donald Trump is backing out of an upcoming debate against Kamala Harris and he's proposing a new one on his own terms instead with a big audience. He needs safe space. He needs his own safe space. You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. Time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. The death penalty

is back on the table for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of plotting 9-11 and two of his co-defendants as well. That's after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin withdrew the plea deals that were signed early last week. The Pentagon chief now has direct oversight of the case. We'll keep you posted. Violence erupted across Britain over the weekend, fueled by misinformation about a mass stabbing suspect who killed three children last week. Far right and anti-immigrant demonstrators took over the streets in several cities after false rumors spread online that the person who committed the crime was in the country illegally. Several officers were injured in the fighting. A new tool could help teachers stop students from using artificial intelligence to cheat. The technology exists, but OpenAI hasn't released it. The company says it's concerned that the program, which has existed for years, would disproportionately affect non-native speakers. The tool is said to be

99.9 percent effective. And it was another huge weekend at the box office for Deadpool and Wolverine, which took in over 28 million dollars on Friday alone. The Marvel blockbuster could soon top one billion dollars worldwide. Disney has become the first studio to cross the $3 billion mark in global ticket sales. That dude on the right looks like TJ. A little bit. He's got the same muscles. All right, let's turn now to Hurricane Debbie slamming Florida's Big Bend coast today. Officials are warning of catastrophic flooding and heavy rainfall across the southeast this week. Right now, winds are at about 80 miles per hour. You know who else he looks like? Who?

Our own dear friend and meteorologist, Bill Kerens. It's good he's in with the storm. Let's turn to Bill Kerens right now. So Bill, very good to see you. You and I have been doing this now for well over 20 years. I mean, talk about what we're looking at in my home state. So, Joe, a Category 1 does not typically scare Floridians too much. It's kind of built for that. But this storm is different. This is a stalled-out storm over the next week, and that scares everyone, especially the coastal plain of South Carolina, Georgia, the flood prone cities of Savannah and Charleston.

The pictures that I'm fearful that you'll see in the days ahead. So let me explain it first. So this is Naples. This is the west coast of Florida. It was a rough day yesterday. The seas are rough today. We're now waiting for the official landfall from the National Hurricane Center. We're lucky this is making landfall or it would get much stronger than this.

But now that it's starting to cross over the coast here, it should begin to weaken in the next couple hours. So it does add its peak intensity probably throughout its entire life. So the wind is not the issue. Power outages would not be the issue. It's at 80 mile per hour winds. It's moving at 10. The forward speed is going to come to a crawl. This is going to stall out.

A stall out tropical cyclone that just takes a ton of moisture from the ocean and the atmosphere and dumps it on land is very problematic. You see Cross City right here. This is where the landfall is. This is the eye. And within the next couple of minutes, we'll get that official landfall. Then we're going to drift the storm. And here's the problem.

By the time we get to Wednesday, we're just off the coast of Savannah. By the time we get to Thursday, Friday, we're still in the Carolinas. A storm that's going to sit here this long, even if it's weak, only a tropical storm, still has a ton of rain with it. And if it dumps it in the same locations, we're talking about maybe historic rainfall totals in some of these areas. And here's our spaghetti lines, all the squiggly lines. After about three days, we really don't know where this thing's going to go. It's just going to drift. It could sneak up here towards the northeast of New York City next weekend.

Or it may just kind of sit down here over areas of North Florida. So within the next three days, Carolinas, Georgia, we're very concerned for you. And the rainfall totals, this is 10 to 20 inches of rain. If you follow Charleston on a rainy afternoon and a thunderstorm, they get bad flooding. You're talking the potential for up to 30 inches of rain, two and a half feet in some areas, isolated. Wherever that happens, we're going to get extreme river flooding. You're talking the potential for up to 30 inches of rain, two and a half feet in some areas isolated. Wherever that happens, we're going to get extreme river flooding. We're going to get houses underwater, towns underwater, roads washed out, that sort of thing. And that's why we have what we call a high risk of flash flooding. It's almost like if we told you there was a high risk of tornadoes coming. This means catastrophic, life-threatening flooding for this area here

from North Florida all the way through the Carolinas. Yes, we are getting right now some storm surge issues and wind damage, Joe and Mika, but the rainfall is very fearful. This could be another Florence. This could be like what we saw in the Houston area. That's what we're concerned with with this storm. Just because it's a Category 1, that only describes the wind. If I was to say for the rainfall, this would be like a Category 4 or 5 rainfall forecast. It's that serious. We'll be closely following this. Bill Cairns, thank you very much for being with us this morning. We'll see you soon. So back to politics in that Atlanta rally that we discussed last block. Former President Donald Trump again weighed in on last week's multinational prisoner swap that resulted in Russia releasing four wrongly imprisoned U.S. residents.

This time, Trump congratulated Vladimir Putin on the deal. You know, by the way, I'd like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. Did you see the deal we made? Now, look, we want to get people in. You know, we got 59 hostages. I never paid anything. I mean, what do you even call that when you're congratulating Vladimir Putin? Sorry to say, let's bring around the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. He's author of the weekly newsletter Home and Away, available on Substack. Richard, we could talk about the fact that he's always praising Vladimir Putin, always praising President Xi, always praising the worst dictators,

the most bloodthirsty dictators on the face of the earth. We could also talk about the fact that he called Vladimir Putin brilliant when he invaded Ukraine. We could say all of that, but we could also talk about the bad deals that Donald Trump made when he was president of the United States and actually talking about bringing the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. So I'm just going to throw this to you. You can either talk about that or you can talk about how Joe Biden was able to do something diplomatically that Donald Trump could never do. And that is actually lean on years of friendships and make people do things. You know, I was always told power was making people do things politically that they didn't want to do, that they wouldn't naturally do. That's exactly what Joe Biden did. But he didn't do it by bending arms. He did it by having

great relationships with world leaders that Donald Trump would never have unless they're autocrats. A couple of things, Joe. You know, some ways it's 2016 redux, the support for Putin and other dictators. Nothing new. They are just head shaking. What the deal with that we negotiated, the Biden approach to the other leaders, the reminded me a lot of the 41st president. People used to make fun of George Herbert Walker Bush when he do telephone diplomacy. He would call people not when he needed them, but he'd call them just to check in. He would bank goodwill. And then when there was a crisis, say when Iraq invaded Kuwait, he had a lot of capital to draw down. That's in some ways what diplomacy is. You bank it. And then when you

need it, it's there. And I think the Biden administration deserves credit. These deals are always like they're awkward. You had a trade for spies and murderers. OK, but that's in some ways who we are. We support our own people. We support American citizens. I get the complexities of these deals. Nobody feels 100 percent comfortable. But who feels comfortable leaving these innocent Americans in a Russian jail? I mean, come on, the president did. He did the right. He did the right thing. And I think what we're also seeing from Donald Trump is a total inability to ever say anything supportive, gracious, whatever word you want to use about another

human being, particularly on the other side of the political, even on his own side of the political aisle. He's just incapable of putting anybody or the country before his own sense of his place. So I think this is, you know, it's about that. You know, and by the way, other presidents in the past have been gracious enough. Bill Clinton used to always throw us off when a reporter said, well, what do you think about the Republicans' plans to do such and such? And you go, well, I agree with it. It's a great idea. And you'd be like, what? You're not supposed to say that. And then he would take that issue away from us and say, but I really want to talk about. And then he would go to. So so you you get any good lawyer

gives up points that are any good politician gives up points that that you don't need to fight. And this incredible homecoming was part of a really difficult, intricate, complicated, multinational deal. It was part of an extraordinarily complicated deal that you're exactly right. Very few presidents. I'm thinking of George H.W. Bush, like you said, and Joe Biden being able to pull this off a lot of other people. And and I will say, you know, it is somewhat ironic that the same publication that said Joe Biden was an old doddering man and incapable of doing his job and incapable of negotiating. That's the guy that that brought Evan home after after all these years. And they and they know like they know they understand that Joe Biden making calls to foreign leaders an hour before he's going to get out of the race, going to the chancellor of Germany, who knows this is going to be extraordinarily unpopular, using all just like George H.W. Bush did in the lead up to the first Gulf War,

using all of his years of diplomatic skills to make this come together. This supposedly old, doddering president was able to do something that very few presidents in our lifetime would have been able to do, Richard. Absolutely. And also, Joe, you can often get deals and you've got to ask yourself whether you're worth it. Donald Trump got a deal in Afghanistan. What he did is he sold America's partner, the Afghan government, down the river. He went behind their back and he negotiated a deal to bring the Taliban back in power. OK, he got the deal. If you want to say that makes him a successful foreign policy president, you know, over to you.

But there's deals and there's deals. And so there the Trump administration, again, really pulled the rug out from under. A longstanding American ally, a flawed one, I get it. Couldn't win the war, but it was holding its own. U.S. combat deaths had essentially dialed down to less than one a month. We had reached something, some kind of stability there. But we, again, we forged or forced a deal that raised real questions about overtime American reliability. Here again, again, I'm not going to say that I was 100 percent comfortable with this deal, but that was the only deal we could get. And sometimes you've got to ask yourself, are you better off with an imperfect deal than with none? And I think, again, President Biden here, Vice President Harris and Jake Sullivan and the others made the difficult but right choice.

Richard, it's the 11th month since the horrible attacks in Israel. And regional war seems to be moving closer and closer and closer. And you've got U.S. officials are predicting that there could be a big attack in Israel today from Iran and Hezbollah. How close are we? Are we just on the cusp of a full-fledged regional war? Well, we're on the cusp of something. The Iranian government was humiliated. Let's just put it bluntly. It was humiliated in their own guest house, the inauguration of the new president. One of their main partners was assassinated, was clearly an inside job and so forth. So they have to retaliate. But then there's retaliation and retaliation. Nobody knows

exactly what they're going to do. When they retaliated in April after the last Israeli assassination that killed an al-Quds force leader in Syria, they sent over 300 drones and rockets into Israel. It's amazing that none of them killed any Israelis. If this time they do something similar and several, one or more Israelis are killed, the Israelis will respond. And then the question is, can you manage that? The Israeli-Hizballah exchange has never faded. Israel is still active in Gaza. I would just simply say, it's not clear to me what is in this for Israel. It's stretched on multiple fronts. It's got a reservist force that can't sustain this.

I don't understand why the Israelis won't wind down what's going on in Gaza. They basically run out of military targets. They're still fighting a conventional war against an unconventional foe. It doesn't make any sense to me. If I were Israel, I would try to freeze Gaza right now. I would try to avoid a war, if I could, with Hezbollah, see what you can do diplomatically to get the two sides to pull back. Iran is going to do what it's going to do now that the Israelis, I think, did the unwise assassination of the guy who was trying to negotiate for Hamas. But Israel does not want to fight, quite honestly, a four or five front war against the Houthis, against Iran, against Hamas, against Lebanon and Hezbollah, and against these radical groups in the West Bank. That is not a

recipe that is good for the state of Israel. So Israel now, I think, has to decide what its priorities are, what it can live with and what it can't. And the problem is it's now handed the initiative over to the other side. And then so we're going to see what Iran does. And then Israel is going to have to make some fateful choices. All right. President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass,

thank you very much for being on this morning. And coming up, the latest from the summer games as Team USA looks to rake in more gold. Willie joins us next from Paris to break down the events to watch for today. Morning Joe is back in a moment. It has been a spectacular Olympics so far, and the race for the gold coming down to the water. I mean, and poor Scotty, after winning the gold medal, French police dragged him to jail for trying to steal a loaf of bread. Ripping their pants.

It's very, very sad and ripping their pants. But let's bring it right now. You're trying to think of a segue. Willie Geist. No, I'm not. I guess I know. I know. I've got 12 segues.

I don't know whether I talked about it. Oh, look how good. He looks so troncé. He does, exactly. I'm trying to figure out whether I talk about when looks so false he does exactly I'm trying to figure out whether we talk about when Willie and I won the gold in synchronized swimming for the U.S. in 1996 which still swells my heart uh with pride for this country and also the teamwork that we showed uh or or if I could talk about how you know I was off the Twitter machine and I was off the Google

machine for quite some time. And I tuned back in to find out that a lot of right wingers hated, uh, hated the Olympics now. Why did they hate it? They said that like that there's a, there's like some festivus Greek God thing that they got angry about that they said was Jesus. And then they said this boxer, woman boxer was a dude, but ended up wasn't a dude. But it's like, so Jesus, Greek God, dude, woman. It's all so confusing to us. Willie's going to sort through all of this for us and tell us how things are going. Good morning, guys. Good afternoon from Paris. It's been a long time. I'm very happy to see you. I'm standing, I wish you could see where I am. i'm on a tiny sliver of a balcony that looks like

the place two people would come out for cigarettes after a night of romance in paris i'm just dangling over the edge with the arc de triomphe behind me just perfectly parisian out here um yeah so just looking at yesterday lamere gave us some of the highlights, but Noah Lyles, that 100-meter win, which is the first for an American, by the way, men since 2004, an event we used to own with Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson, everybody remembers that,

came down to.005, which is five thousandths of a second. He was running 27 miles an hour at his peak and did not lead the race until his nose crossed that finish line in the photo finish. Wow. So close, in fact, that he congratulated the Jamaican, his rival, Kashane Thompson, after the race said, I think you got me there. The photo showed otherwise. Incredible race. Also, I love yesterday seeing Novak Djokovic in tennis and Scotty Scheffler in golf. These are two of the best professional athletes to ever play their sports. They've got everything they could want in the world in terms of fame and money and success on the professional level.

And yet, Novak Djokovic said this was the one he wanted more than any other. This gold medal. And at 37 years old, he got it. He now owns the Golden Slam. Only five people in the history of tennis have done it, which means he won all the Grand Slam tournaments plus a gold medal. Djokovic now is in that group. And for Scotty Scheffler, he shot a preposterous 62 yesterday, including a 29 on the back nine to win the gold medal. And to show you what this means to these guys, you saw him on the medal stand wiping the tears away as the national anthem played. Very cool there. Looking

ahead to today, Simone Biles competing two more times. Today is the end of her Olympic game. She's on the beam and on the floor in those individual competitions with a shot to add to her three gold medals already. She has dominated these Olympics in the gym. And guys, over the last couple of weeks, I've been giving our viewers here a look at some of the venues. Incredible to have beach volleyball in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Incredible to have fencing under the glass ceiling of the Grand Palais. And I had to go out yesterday and see equestrian at Versailles on the grounds of Louis XIV's Versailles. It's where they're holding.

It's just, I mean, it takes you back a couple of hundred years. These beautiful animals. Yesterday was Dressage, which it's kind of horse dancing. You know, you watch it and they're kind of dancing around a little. Very precisely, very beautifully. To pick your music, a little Edith Piaf. Some were going with like 80s hits. It was very interesting.

But my gosh, I don't know how anywhere ever again could replicate the venues that Paris has using these existing landmarks to host an Olympic Games. It's been incredible, guys. Well, I mean, it's absolutely extraordinary. And again, where Willie is right now, again, I love that description of the place where he was, right? You know, two lovers going out, very romantic, which shows you the relative popularity of Willie and myself in our past lives, because that's the sort of place where I'd go out

and I would report back to you. This is the sort of place where you'd walk out, you'd sigh and go, I'm so lonely. But that's the difference between Willie and me. And that's why there's great variety in this show. Willie, you talk about what's going on there and all the incredible locations, you know, there there has at the beginning of every Olympics. I think this is going to be the last Olympics, right? Because we're just we're so splintered. People are not going to the last, you know, sort of global event. And it ends up that this Paris Olympics is one of the most successful. Certainly, you talk to NBC executives and the people, the Uncle Billy's in the back counting the receipts for the Bailey banking and loan.

They will tell you that this has been an extraordinarily successful Olympics and people are really, really tuned in. Why do you think that is? What are some of the main storylines that have made this Olympics one of the most successful Olympics ever? It helps when Team USA is doing well, when you have superstars like Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles and the Dream Team doing so well. And honestly, I think it's this city, this location. It's just the beauty, even if you're not a sports fan, to watch these events carried out at these places you're so familiar with and to be a part of this city. And then the other thing, Joe, is that the last two Olympics were played. Obviously, Tokyo is right in the middle of COVID.

No fans. I think the athletes here have been telling me that this has been a relief to be here and be with each other and experience the city a little bit, not to go from your event back to your room in isolation. Beijing also, remember, had no spectators. So that excitement and that energy wasn't there. So you take that kind of a downtime for the Olympics the last few years to come back here in the summertime in this city and to have our team doing so well. You put all those together. Great storylines, viral stars, the pommel horse guy that America's fallen in love with. There's just so much going on, and it continues this week. Simone Biles today, and we've got a lot more ahead in sprinting and track and field

and basketball coming down the pike well. So an opportunity for a bunch more gold for the U.S. here. And finally, let's talk about the superstars who were superstars independent of the Olympics. You talk about the men's basketball team, talk about Scotty Scheffler. You talk about Djokovic here. Here are guys that are most of them wealthy. They have all the fame, all the celebrity they will ever need. And yet you saw Scotty Scheffler breaking down after his victory in a way he never does. Djokovic yesterday, it was remarkable. What a tennis match that was. But Djokovic falling to the ground and shaking.

You know, they ISO'd on his thumb thumb shaking because he was sobbing so much. Here's here's a hard customer. This Serb. I mean, he's not he's not like a war. He's not like one of those warm and fuzzy Serbs that you hear about. This is a tough guy. And yet the Olympics have this magic that make even the mightiest break down and weep because it means so much to them. Yeah, and I think for Djokovic, this felt like a capstone to his historic career, widely now believed to be the greatest player on the men's side of all time. He's won 24 Grand Slams, but he was very outspoken this week and leading up to the Olympics. I want the gold medal. Something will feel incomplete if I don't win a gold medal. And he did it and he won

it. And you saw, I mean, like you said, these guys are rich and they're famous and they're the best at what they do, but collapsing to the ground and convulsing because he was just so happy and so relieved and running up into the stands and finding his family. You can see how much it meant to him. And even I'll say these dream team guys, LeBron and KD and Steph, they want this very bad. And at the same time, what's beautiful about the Olympics is those guys are going out and cheering on other lower profile sports. So you had beach volleyball a couple of nights ago. LeBron was there going crazy. There was a big rain delay. A bunch of the crowd left. He stayed. So by the end of the match, LeBron's up top yelling down to the volleyball players and

they're pointing up to him. You had Anthony Edwards from the basketball team who's become a huge table tennis fan. So he's showing up at all the American table tennis events. So it's that kind of camaraderie, that patriotism, that genuine feel of this being something really special and maybe once in a lifetime for a lot of them that's contributing to the huge success and interest in these games. All right. Thank you so much, Willie Geist. 1996 gold winner in secret ice swimming. Come back to your room. Thank you so much for being with us, Willie.

Can't wait to talk to you tomorrow. Thanks, guys. We should not, Joe, have been stripped of those medals in Atlanta. We can talk about that another day. No, I take it. It's just like my master's win. It's just, yeah, same here. All right. Very good to see you, Ellie.