Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/9/23

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

In a win for abortion-rights supporters, Ohio voters reject Issue 1

You know what they'll say? Trump didn't look well. He was extremely wet. It's 104 or five degrees in this room, but we're OK with it, right? Geez, no, we're not going to say he doesn't look well. We're going to say he looks like Elvis in 77. Well, the thing is, I think he was actually making fun of the appearance of other people. Well, no, he was making fun of himself. You have to wonder if the former president is feeling the heat. I expected him to sing my way and, like, get the scarf, swipe the sweat off his face and throw it into the crowd. It's hard for me to... Special Counsel Jack Smith turns up the temperature in federal court

amid the back and forth over the protective order in that case. There's new reporting this morning on a secret memo. No. I mean, I'm sweating. No, I'm just saying I'm sweating that much. Do you think he's... In a million different ways, I don't think he's well. You think he's unhealthy?

I just don't... I mean, Marco Rubio didn't sweat that much. Correct. Ron DeSantis doesn't sweat that much. Anyhow. That was a lot of sweat. Yes. New reporting on a secret memo that laid out the plot to overturn the 2020 election. We're going to go through that major development in just a moment. Meanwhile,

we're getting a better idea of the timing for the next possible indictment for the former president. By 2028? No, seriously, can she delay this any longer? I think it's coming. 2028, maybe 2029. It could be his fourth indictment. We'll talk about that and what the timing looks like now. Also ahead, more instability in the DeSantis campaign. We'll tell you about the latest shakeup for the Florida governor in his twenty twenty four. The shakeup is going to be dramatic as we look at these pictures of DeSantis, where it is he may stop zipping the vest up three quarters of the way. Yeah. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. Who wears a vest in the summer when it's like 800 degrees?

There's so much news. And I guess that's how we survive is laughing once in a while. I'm not laughing. It is Wednesday. I'm wondering why you guys wearing a vest when it's like 800 degrees outside. It's Wednesday, August 9th. And I guess I should say it's only Wednesday. With us, we have the host of Way Too Early,

White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. Not wearing a vest. Looking very good this morning. Dapper, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kay, always elegant, and White House editor for Politico, Sam Stein. So sharp. Sam's here. All right. I tell you, this is this issue. This abortion issue is is turning into a remarkably politically potent issue for people who want a return to, well, where the United States was for about 50 years, where women had a right to make health care decisions and make choices about their own bodies. We've seen in Kansas. We've seen in Kentucky. We've seen in one red state after another. We saw in a Supreme Court race in Wisconsin landslide victories, all because Republicans are taking extremist views. And we saw it last night in a state that has gone deep red, Ohio. Yes, voters overwhelmingly rejected a Republican backed measure that would have made it more difficult to change the state's constitution. More than 3 million people

went to the polls in Ohio's special election, voting to defeat issue one, which keeps the threshold for passing future constitutional amendments at a simple majority. This is all about abortion. Then 60% supermajority that was proposed. Of course, this is all about abortion

because they were going to have a referendum this fall. And suddenly the pro-life groups and the Republican legislators, Patty, decided we're going to rig things. We're going to change the rules. We're going to require 60 percent because we know the majority of the people don't want women to have their health care decisions decided by men and state legislators. Fifty seven percent of Ohio voters say no to rigging the process. Forty three percent said yes. But, Gaddy, that almost certainly ensures that this fall, Ohio will be yet another Republican state that pushes back against the abolition of Roe. Yeah, Republicans wanted to make it so that you couldn't change a law in the part of the Constitution without 60 percent. Having

60 percent for decades, it's been 50 percent. That's been fine for all the other amendments that they've had in the past. But when abortion was on the ballot, they wanted to make it that much harder for pro-abortion rights people to do it. Actually, that 57 percent is not far off the 60 percent that they were mandating. What's extraordinary about this is that it's August, a quarter of Ohioans. August. This is not even a vote on abortion. This is a vote on an amendment to the Constitution that had been campaigning on pro-abortion rights had thought this might be close. This reminds me of Kansas. This reminds me of that first vote we had where we were all surprised by the margin of the victory for the pro-abortion rights group. And here we are a good more than a year after Dobbs, and it is still rallying people 57 percent.

That's a big victory for the pro-abortion rights group. A huge victory, just like a huge victory in Wisconsin, a state that's always been very close. A huge victory in Kansas, another state that was red. Time and time again, you look at these polls and they just don't tell the tale. People like a year and a half out. Are you going to vote for the guy that, you know, for people that don't follow closely? It's like, are we going to vote for the guy who falls off his bike and stutters once in a while? Or the guy who tried to take over the federal government with a riot and said he wanted to terminate the constitution. And then you don't put other issues in there and suddenly

you get closer and it's just like 2022. Remember the red wave of 2022? Yeah. Neither do I. You know why? Never happened. You know why it never happened? Abortion's a big issue. Also, some people, I know it's quaint if you write this morning for the Wall Street Journal editorial page or on Fox News. Some people love American democracy. We're kind of old fashioned that way. I don't know. It's worked for us for 240 or so years. We'd like to keep it for another 240 years. So you had abortion and actually American democracy because Americans aren't as stupid as editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal editorial page over the past week have believed them to be. They see through the lies. They see through the gaslighting and they decide, hey, this is really

troubling what this guy may. I mean, maybe this guy over here could ride a bike if he wasn't sweating so much. This other guy, he falls off a bike once in a while. But wait a second. He actually believes in the Constitution of the United States. You add that and abortion together. Yeah. And it has been a potent, potent political punch in the gut against Republicans who've been trying to take away women's rights and women's rights. You bring up a good point here, because I think what we're seeing here is that men and women are seeing health care being taken away from their families, from their loved ones. And while it is an issue of a woman's right to choose, it's also an issue of a family's health of a husband watching her

husband, her, his wife have to bleed out because she can't get the medication she needs for a fetal abnormality. This is an issue now that goes across the board. Men and women understand what has happened over the past few years with rights being taken away. And when you write to health care, when you look, Sam Stein, at these numbers, 59 percent in Kansas, 57 percent in Ohio, again, red, red states, a landslide victory in the Supreme Court race up in Wisconsin, the Republicans called the most important race in years. When you see that happening, you don't get to 57, 58, 59 percent with only the women that went to the Women's March like in 2017.

You don't get there with left wing activists. You don't get there with women. You get there with women, men, young, old, black, white, Hispanic, you name it. This is an issue that cuts across all demographics. And it's shocking to me that the Republicans still have their head buried in the sand on this issue, because another election, I don't know if they know it or not, is coming up next year. Yeah, I mean, to make his point, it's men are involved in the pregnancy. Obviously, we don't carry the burden of the pregnancy, but we know what happens. We're there with our wives. We feel very much part of the process. And I think it resonates the issue of abortion for men as much as women.

And if you look at the issue on ideological grounds, I mean, there's a recent poll that showed that something like 35 to 40 percent of Republicans were upset over the Dobbs decision. I mean, those numbers don't really happen in many other issues. And I think the proof now is in the pudding, so to speak. We have three major elections, probably more are missing, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Ohio, where it's very evident that abortion rights is an incredible motivator. I would just add that in Ohio, you know, Cadi's right. I mean, they tried to sneak this in on some municipal election in the middle of August. It was fairly transparent what the anti-choice crowd was trying to do. And I think that backfired pretty badly, obviously, with voters who felt like they were just being hoodwinked, who felt like they were being taken advantage of. It's already a bold proposition to ask voters to willingly vote to reduce their ability to

change their state's constitution in the future. But to do it in the fashion that they did, that these organizers did to try to sneak it in in a municipal election in August, I think was insulting, frankly, to a lot of Ohioans and it proved to be insulting by these numbers. Think about Donald Trump's Republican Party. One, they try to take away a presidential election. Two, they line up in support, and I won't name the editorial page again that does it. They line in support of a fake electors conspiracy plot, right? That their own people knew was unconstitutional, that their own people knew would be overturned by the United States Supreme Court. But they were doing it to confuse the issue and delay a constitutional

process. And they wanted to throw out the votes of millions and millions of Americans in seven states. Then go to Tennessee. Again, more anti-democracy nonsense. They actually kick black members of the Tennessee legislature out because they dare raise their voices. They let the white woman stay in, by the way. That's interesting. Justice blind? I don't know. Republicans certainly aren't blind. You're a black legislator in Tennessee and you speak up and speak out. They kick you out. Right. And now you go to Ohio. And what do we have? You first of all, have the women of Ohio have the right to make health care decisions for themselves. Our parents of 10 year old girls who are raped. Who have to flee the

state so they can make health care decisions themselves. First, Republicans take that right away from Ohio women and Ohio families and Ohio doctors. Then they come up with this scheme and they say, and now we're going to take away your right to amend the Constitution the way we've done it for years. And we're going to sneak it in in August. And you're going to now have to get 60 percent to try to claw back to get the right we've already taken away from women in Ohio and across America. And as Cady said before, this is August. August is such a dead month politically. I will tell you, any campaigns, the four campaigns I ran, you basically shut down in August because everybody's gone. Nobody's focused on anything. They're finishing their vacations or they're getting their kids ready back for school. They're getting ready for the fall. They're getting ready for everything. And as Katty said,

Ohio voters flooded to the polls to tell these anti-democracy Republicans, no, one person, one vote, majority rules in these referendums. You can't change the rules midstream because you want to continue taking away the rights of women to make decisions over their own bodies. President Biden celebrated after issue one failed, releasing a statement that reads this measure was a blatant attempt to weaken voters voices and further erode the freedom of women to make their own health care decisions. Ohioans spoke loud and clear. And tonight, democracy won. In recent years, Republicans in a handful of states have sought to make it more difficult to pass citizen led initiatives from expanding Medicaid to raising the minimum wage, according to The Washington Post. I mean, they lost in really liberal states, I bet. I bet these efforts lost in really liberal

states. Last year, such efforts to raise the voter threshold failed in South Dakota. South Dakota. And Arkansas. Who won those states? Was that Trump or Biden? Did they win South? Those are really liberal states. And attempts to schedule a similar vote in Missouri were unsuccessful this spring. So Jonathan Lear, I mean, they're not even trying to hide it anymore. I mean, they're not even trying to hide the fact that they're trying to make these these processes more difficult. They're trying to change the rules midstream. They said as much that anti-abortion groups, the anti-women's rights groups said as much. We're changing the process or else we're in big trouble. Guess what? If taking the rights of women away to make their own choices over their own bodies puts your organization in big trouble, I think it's safe to say after the past year and a half

of election results, those people that want to strip women of their rights, they're in big trouble. Yeah, it is a fundamental effort and a unique effort in American history to take away a right. And we are seeing the consequences here in these deep red states, including in Ohio, as well covered a frankly bad faith effort to schedule this in the middle of August to try to sneak it in like they did. And it's just the latest defeat for this effort. And frankly, the anti-abortion movement in this country needs to come to a reckoning here in terms of how they're handling politics in the ballot, because they're just being handed defeat after defeat after defeat. We also should note this comes on the heels of two years of Republicans in a number of state legislatures also trying to take away

another right, the right to vote, restricting access to the ballot. And we have seen the consequences there as well. That played a role in the 2022 midterms. But abortion here is by far the biggest. And it is even one where Republicans are threatening, some believe, many believe, our national security because of Senator Tuberville's hold on military promotions. right now. Army, Marines, both without a commander because of his hold about because it's an abortion related issue there as well. Jonathan, can I ask you a question on that point? You've got Republicans who used to criticize Democrats for using the military to push their radical social agenda. Oh, wait. Now you have Tommy Tuberville that stopped the United States Marine Corps from having a commandant leading it for the first time in 150 years.

Now you have radical Republicans in the Senate who are lining up meekly behind Tommy Tuberville, who are now stopping the United States Army from having a leader there as well. Like the readiness issues and Republicans know this, the readiness issues that this poses for our men and women in the United States Armed Forces. Devastating, devastating. And yet they're letting this guy from Alabama basically lay waste to readiness in the United States Marine Corps, the United States Army and across all the services. Have you heard of any Republicans in the Senate who actually give a damn enough about the readiness of the Marines and the Army and the Air Force and the Navy and the Coast Guard? Have you heard any of them saying they're going to stand up to Tuberville and stop this madness?

There's been some private grumbling, but very little in the way of public concerns. We did hear from Nikki Haley yesterday who said that she didn't like how this was going down, that she sided with the idea of Tuberville, that the military shouldn't be doing this, but did said that shouldn't be carried out like this. Maybe that'll be the start of something. It remains to be seen. But of course, Republicans were proudly declared the party of national security, of defense. And yet they've turned their back on this particular issue. And it's 100 percent. That's exactly right. It's hard to make that claim now. And it also should be noted that this is further proof that abortion, a defining issue in 2022, clearly still a driver this year. It will

be again next year, too. And some Democrats feel like it could even potentially expand the electoral map for them. So as we follow this major news out of Ohio this morning, there's a lot of other news to get to. A major development in a new reporting on a secret memo to overturn the 2020 election. We haven't heard about this before. This definitely laid out a strategy for Trump to actually overturn President Biden's win of the 2020 election. Again, not free speech, more like a strategy to actually do it. Well, an illegal scheme to actually delay a constitutional count. A free speech? Nope. Just an illegal scheme to stop the constitutionally mandated count of electoral votes on January 6th

by making a bad faith argument to sow confusion among the electorate and to delay the constitutional process. And this is the thing we're going to really explore, Mika. They did it even though they knew it was unconstitutional and the Supreme Court would stop their plot. Not only did you have this person that came up with an illegal scheme saying that from the very beginning, but after Eastman adopts it, takes it into the White House, Mike Pence turns to Eastman saying, is the Supreme Court going to uphold this? And Eastman goes, well, I don't think, I don't know. And then you have Pence turning to Donald Trump and going, see, your own guy knows the Supreme Court's going to overturn this in a legal scheme. Nothing about free speech there. Nothing about free speech. We'll have more on the secret memo. Also,

news on potential timing for a fourth indictment for former President Donald Trump. We'll be right back. White House celebrating this morning the crushing defeat of an anti-choice referendum procedure actually in Ohio. Three million people turned out to vote on this. And, Katty, as you said, in August, it's crazy that that happened. A special election. In a special election in August. Yeah, I mean, look, I was just checking, actually, as we were off air, the population of Ohio is 12 million. So three million turned out to vote. That's a quarter of Ohio's turnout to vote. If this is we're not talking about a presidential election, we're not even talking about a primary vote here. We're talking about a vote on an amendment to change the Constitution. But everybody saw this for what it was. This was the prelude. This would have set the stage for anti-choice forces in Ohio to severely restrict women's rights to health care in the state. And Mika's right. This is not a women's

issue. I think this is so often portrayed as a women's issue. But the last I checked my biology, it takes two people to get a woman pregnant. And men are intimately involved in this process. They see what their wives are going through. And we've had one story after another, including the case that's going through the courts in Texas of women whose health has been very dangerously put at risk because they couldn't get access to the health care they need because they had pregnancies that had gone wrong. I mean, and I think we've had now so many of those stories right around the country that people in Ohio, where, of course, there was a famous case of the girl who was raped,

had to go to Indiana. They know what this means for women and for girls. Men are stepping up. And by the way, at the top of the hour, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown will join us to talk more about this. Now to one of the other big stories that we're following this morning. A previously unseen memo is providing potentially damning new evidence about the plot to overturn the 2020 election results by Donald Trump and members of his inner circle. The memo, which was obtained by The New York Times and has not been verified by NBC News, was allegedly sent in early December 2020 by Trump lawyer Kenneth Cheeseborough.

Cheeseborough was one of the co-conspirators identified, but not charged in the Justice Department's most recent indictment of the former president. In the newly obtained note, Cheesebro outlines what would become known as the fake electors scheme, which falsely claimed former Vice President Mike Pence had the power to block the certification of the state's votes on January 6th. And to lie about people who were going to be the electors, fake electors, to create a fraudulent slate of electors. And this, this is what Trump's defenders are calling free speech? No, no, no. defenders are calling free speech. No, no, no. That's not that's that's like an attempt to defraud Americans.

He's for a lot of their vote to another Trump lawyer about what he acknowledged was a, quote, bold and controversial strategy, but claimed he was not necessarily advising this course of action, despite trying to distance himself from the plan, though. The Times reports that just one day after sending that memo, it ended up on the desk of Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Oh, that's just not good. Not good for Rudy or anybody. The fake elector scheme itself. Cheese, bro, even admitted that the Supreme Court was likely to end up rejecting the plan. But even in that case, he claimed that airing it out publicly would, quote, buy the Trump campaign more time to challenge the election. Jonathan O'Meara, this is as clear as day. They're coming up with a fraudulent scheme that they know is illegal. They know the Supreme Court will reject it.

But what are they trying to do? They're trying to illegally delay a constitutional proceeding. The Constitution of the United States says that the electors get together and they count the votes. The date is January the 6th. And here's a plot, a plan, a complete, a completely illegal scheme where they're going to get fake electors, have people lie that they're certified to be electors before the United States Congress. And in so doing, steal what? Seven million? Eight million? Ten million? I mean, how many millions of votes are they stealing from people in swing states who are elected by actually the real electors

who, again, are part of a constitutional process that Trump's trying to undermine. Again, the argument that this somehow free speech to have this illegal scheme that they knew was illegal is just it's stupid, even for Trump supporters and certain editorial pages. Yeah. One of the charges Trump faces is violation of rights, trying to defraud, deprive rights. Right to vote is one of them. And they were trying to disenfranchise millions of Americans here by tossing out their vote and trying to install these fake electors. And this memo puts in one place sort of A to Z the scheme that we have known has been out there and now is going to be clearly central to the prosecution against Trump in Jack Smith's case there in Washington. This idea that it would they knew the Supreme Court, even a Supreme Court that was pretty Trump friendly in most ways, had ruled against them on election issues. We have documented how badly they fared in courthouses across America in the weeks after Election Day, November 2020.

They were something like 63 and 1, and their one win was a very small procedural one. They knew this wasn't going to pass legal standing. That said, they were trying to buy time. They were trying to buy time to push for more cases. They were trying to buy time to install these fake electors and then put it to Mike Pence on January 6th. And if he had said, well, look, we've got competing sets of electors here. Let's throw them all out. Let's just put it to the House. And that's how Trump wins, because the math worked in Trump's favor there.

That's the scheme. That's how they wanted to stay in power. And that's how Jack Smith is going to proceed with his prosecution. Yeah, I just add this. I mean, this reads to me like a plot, an overt plot to subvert the vote presented publicly as an insurance plan in case the courts somehow intervened on Trump's behalf, even after, as Jonathan said, 63 or whatever decisions against the Trump campaign at that point. The other thing that stands out to me, though, is just how little and again, most of the Trump's actual lawyers, the professionals in the Justice Department and at the White House, did actually care about the real-world consequences, the laws that may have been pushed or violated.

But there were a select few people here, including Kenneth Cheeseborough and John Eastman, who simply it didn't occur to them or they didn't care enough about what the consequences and spill-out of such a strategy were. I mean, Cheeseboro in this case is saying this is bold and controversial. In another memo, Eastman, I believe, said, you know, something like, you know, well, there may be riot in the streets, but that's why we have the Insurrection Act, as if a little sort of blood in the streets was just the price you pay for this type of strategy.

And it's remarkable, I guess, to me, maybe a little bit shocking, that people were willing to just let their minds wander to those places in pursuit of what they understood privately to be controversial, perhaps even illegal steps to subvert democracy. Well, and you look at their interactions, Cady, and again, they understand that this this scheme is is is not going to be seen as legal by the United States Supreme Court.

They say as much. Mike Pence confronts Donald Trump later, saying even your own lawyer is telling you that this is not legal. The Supreme Court is going to overturn it. But they talk about how this will cause delay. It will cause confusion. It may cause riots in the streets. And when that's brought up as a possibility that this will cause riots in the streets, they say, yeah, that's why we have the Insurrection Act. That's why we have the army to put down riots that they're responsible for by pushing something they know is illegal. Part of Donald Trump's defense, presumably when this goes to trial, will be, well, I genuinely, as he said last night in New Hampshire in that, you know, rather moist appearance. I will swear I genuinely sweaty. I genuinely believed that the election had been

stolen. This is what my lawyers were telling me. I had I had good lawyers like Eastman telling me that this was the case. And so you can't get me for that because this is what my belief was. Well, then Jack Smith will come back with this kind of evidence. You know, these here you are. You were presented with a plan, but you were also told by people like Mike Pence that this would not go anywhere, that this was the Supreme Court would not think that this was OK. So you're going to have a lot of this during the course of the trial. But maybe part of this was just I mean, we talked about this a lot around 2016. What was the aim of Russia? It was the aim of Russia was to sow chaos and a sense that democracy was not strong and dissatisfaction. So dissatisfaction in the democratic system. And when you read this secret memo, it sounds like

that, that part of the aim of this is to show is to sow chaos and to and make people think the system is not working. Right. It wasn't about actually having a system that works, a process that works. They knew the Supreme Court was going to overturn it. It was about creating the delay, creating the chaos. And if riots happened, as they said, that's why we have the army. That's why we have the insurrection act. Then we can use the insurrection act, get the army in the street, put down the riots from people whose votes have been stolen. And then Trump can declare martial law, which is basically what they're talking about doing. And yeah, this is what Russia,

Wall Street Journal editorial page, this is what Russia was trying to do in 2016. This is what Russia admitted they were trying to do in 2016. This is what the head of the Wagner group bragged about, saying, do you remember how successful our campaign was in America in 2016? I mean, come on, Russian hoax. You shame yourself every day. You shame yourself every day if you don't see a linkage here, right? If you don't see the linkage of the Russians trying to sow confusion and then Donald Trump

on his own learning from people that he's always admired on his own to just create a process that will sow confusion, that's illegal, that will sow delay. And if he's lucky, will create riots in the streets and they can use the Insurrection Act to declare martial law. And you call it free speech. I call it un-American. And guess what? Most Americans agree with me and not you. You're disgusting. You're absolutely disgusting if you're going to forgive this type of behavior. And I say that to the Republican establishment that's been going, oh, you know, there's two standards of justice here. Hunter Biden's laptop, Hunter Biden. And over here, we're talking about an illegal scheme to overthrow an election. To get riots in the streets so Donald Trump can declare martial law.

And you're saying there's some sort of legal equivalency. There's some sort of moral equivalency. That's grotesque. And what's so sad for you is, youency. That's grotesque. And what's so sad for you is, you know, it's grotesque. The entire Republican establishment knows it's gross. You've got a guy trying to steal an election and you've got a prosecutor that's trying to bring him to justice. And if this guy were a Democrat, you'd already have him locked up. Jack Smith's trying to bring this guy to justice.

And what do you do? You sit back silently. You talk about, oh, two standards of justice. And then you're silent as Donald Trump threatens a federal prosecutor, an officer of the United States court system saying, I'm coming after you. Silence. And you wonder why you keep losing elections. It's not going to stop. You're going to keep losing. You're on the wrong side of history. You know who's on the right side of history? People that support American democracy. You know, Warren Buffett said it after September the 15th. If you bet against the United States of America, you lose. And you all have been betting for a guy that's been talking about

terminating the Constitution of the United States, that's tried to overthrow a presidential election that worked his hardest to undermine Americans' confidence in American democracy, in the American democratic process. And you're still standing behind him and then said, come to Washington. It will be wild and encouraged these riots with a speech on January the 6th and sat back and did nothing for three hours while his children, while his lawyers, while his campaign people, while everybody he knew begged him to stop the riots. His response? Well, maybe Mike Pence deserves to be lynched. And you're still supporting him because you say, oh, there's two. I mean. Hunter Biden, weaponization, Hunter Biden, weapon to say that you say those words and you think actually that provides you absolution.

No, no. That will provide you no absolution in history books. No absolution at all. And it's going to get you routed at the ballot box again. What's sad is they know better. They actually know better. A lot of these guys know better and women. Speaking of delays, Donald Trump's lawyers have been called to appear in court later this week after a judge rejected their apparent attempts to delay what is normally a routine procedure in the 2020 election case against their client. After days of back and forth regarding a protective order requested by prosecutors, Judge Tanya Chutkin put a scheduled hearing on the matter for this Friday morning at 10 o'clock. This is where the lawyers will come and hash this out. Doesn't really need to be done,

but they're doing it. Trump is not required to attend. What do we expect there, Jonathan Lemire? We expect the judge is going to make a decision on whether or not Trump can keep talking so freely about the case. He did so yesterday. Defiantly so. Yeah, and threateningly. During while profoundly sweating on stage in New Hampshire, he went on to say that, look, if this happens, I will. A lot of sweat. It was an extraordinary amount.

It was an extraordinary amount of sweat, of perspiration. We really probably shouldn't dwell on it further. But he did went on to say he was like, look, I'm not going to be able to go to Iowa. I'm not going to come here like New Hampshire and talk about this. So his his team, of course, is going to make the argument. Yes, free speech. But more than that, he's a presidential candidate. He needs to be able to talk about these things.

So we're going to have to see what sort of guidelines or guardrails are going to be established. That will likely happen Friday or possible. Evidence will be presented Friday and she'll make the decision soon thereafter, the judge. But Jack Smith and his team has made it very clear that this is something, these are threatening rhetoric and it shouldn't be part of the case. He shouldn't be talking about potential evidence of the case, trying to intimidate witnesses or influence a jury pool. This is all extremely important stuff. And legal analysts have suggested that if it were anybody else, Trump would.

He potentially could either lose his social media or even be locked up for this. So it is an early test in this case for a judge who is clearly trying to accelerate the timetable of the case. Two standards of justice, we would say here. My gosh, two standards of justice. Sam Stein, I'm wondering, and I asked this as a guy, I'm a sweater from way back.

OK, so I understand. But Donald Trump is so bathed in sweat. I really I was worried for his health. Do you think this is why he's afraid to debate other Republicans, because he's got a sweating condition? No, I don't. I think it's just that he was really hot. But what's funny is that he was making fun of Chris Christie. There was a lot of talk about body temperatures this morning and moisture, and it's just making me genuinely uncomfortable. And I think we should, you know, move on.

Okay, well, I'm going to get on. There's actually so much real stuff to say. But having said that, it's just a little bit fitting, given that he just makes a living out of making fun of people's appearances. I mean, I was once someone he made. He literally made worldwide news making fun of my face. Yeah, yeah. OK, let's bring in NBC News correspondent Von Hilliard.

Call me a murderer. I think you were a murderer and I was face shamed, but people thought what he did to me was worse. Psycho. He always called you psycho. No, you're psycho, Joe, aren't you? No. Am I? Oh, no, I'm psycho, Joe. You're my neurotic wife. Crazy. Oh, neurotic and psycho. Yeah, I'm a psycho. I don't know. I could be psycho. I don't know. OK, we'll ask Michael Schnell about this.

Von Hilliard was at the Trump rally in New Hampshire yesterday. Also with us, congressional reporter for The Hill, Michael Schnell, who wants nothing to do with this. Nothing to do with this. He's got new reporting of all, take a, okay, and I swear this has nothing to do with, it's nothing to do with how much he was sweating last night, but just politically, give us a temperature of the room. How were they feeling about Trump? How were they feeling about, no, you know, people say, take a temperature of the room. Read the room. Read the room for us. I would take it if they're going to a Trump rally, most of them are going to be

rock-ribbed Trump supporters. Is that what you found there? Were there any people that were questioning whether he could actually win in a general election, or were they all in for Donald Trump? My dry idea worked perfectly fine yesterday

to know. But look at when we're looking at that gymnasium yesterday, I think this hits at the point here that, Joe, you were just making for all the attention on the past. I think that what was so striking to me yesterday was I've covered a heck of a lot of these rallies over the last nine years. And that was the most defiant Donald Trump that I have ever witnessed. For Donald Trump, this is not just about him. To a certain extent, he's powerless as a defendant in the courtroom, unless he takes a stand. But what Donald Trump is able to do is mobilize his political operation to use it as a bludgeon against the U.S. justice system. We have seen him do it against the U.S. election system. We have seen him do it against the U.S. election system.

We have seen him do it against the U.S. media. For now, here in this moment, it is about mobilizing these millions of Americans to initiate a distrust in the courtroom proceedings that are about to take place. I want to let you hear from two of the folks I talked to because when I stood there in that room and talked with these voters here, for Donald Trump, you know, he told that crowd that his base,

the MAGA base, is the most passionate and spirited that it's ever been. And while may that MAGA base may have shrunk over the last three years, I don't think he's wrong in his assessment about those that still remain. Take a look. That's Nazi Germany, Hitler. You can't silence your political opponents because you don't agree with them. Joe Biden should be in prison for his bribes. The vote was stolen. I believe it in my heart. Remember, they blew up one of the election quarters where they kept all of the Dominion machines. Why'd that blow up? If Donald Trump were to be found guilty by a jury, where do you see this going? Civil war.

Civil war. Divide it up, because we can't live together, obviously. And if he wants me to protect him, I'm going to go in there. I'm going to let him know that I'll do it. Guys, I think this is about the inherent danger of where Donald Trump takes this from here. Forget about the election. Forget about general election 2024 and whether he can win or not here.

If Donald Trump is found guilty by a jury, where does this go from here? I know that we did not foresee an actual physical attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. And I can't begin to foresee an event of what may metastasize coming out of a guilty conviction or another election loss from Donald Trump. But what I'm increasingly convinced by from conversations like those across this country is that we are increasingly getting closer to an event, whatever that event may be. That event is becoming increasingly closer here because Donald Trump does have millions that may not win him an election, but will be there to defend him to the very end, whatever that end may look like. Joe, this is where Republican leaders are so needed and they are so not present for the truth, for reality. We need 100 McCain moments, 100 times over. Remember when he said to that member of the audience, no, you're wrong.

When the disparaging comment, the untrue comment was made about Barack Obama. Right. This is why this is pervading, because other Republican leaders, members of Congress, Trumpers, people who have either been infected by his lies or know Kevin McCarthy, that he is a liar and has committed crimes against this democracy. You know it to your core and you play that game. And these people are caught in the middle. These people are infected with lies. And people like that went to the Capitol on January 6th. But if Kevin McCarthy, if Mitch McConnell, if members from from New Hampshire's Republicans, they know better.

Hampshire said that they would immediately become the outsiders. They would immediately become part of the deep state, which is which is part of the problem. It's also part of the reason why you've seen a boiling down of of the number of Trump supporters. It's gotten smaller. It has gotten I think it has gotten more intense. And as people have made the point, it's not really a political campaign. It's a movement, a threat. But it's a movement, Michael, that that you have the leader of the movement who started by calling the press enemies of the state. He then undermined Americans confidence in elections when he knew he was going to lose. He started talking about how American democracy was rigged. And so he turned his supporters against that. Now he's turning his supporters against

the judicial system, the rule of law in the United States, because he knows he's going to be found guilty of some of these charges because he committed the crimes. And the question is, what are you hearing on the Hill? We certainly hear what members say publicly. Are you hearing any concerns privately from Republicans about the continued radicalization of Donald Trump and his supporters? Well, look, Joe, absolutely. Some moderates and more centrists in the party have been voicing concerns about this. There are a number of lawmakers up on Capitol Hill who have said, a number of Republicans rather, more of those moderates and centrists who have said that they don't want to see Donald Trump be the Republican nominee come 2024. There are a number of other lawmakers, Republicans, who have endorsed some of Donald Trump's challengers. But look, the reality of it is that Donald Trump is still the leader of the Republican Party. He's, of course, the overall frontrunner in the GOP primary. And when we talk about some of these followers, particularly those ones up on Capitol Hill,

who could become the minority of the party if they were to speak out against Donald Trump, we saw some lawmakers try this out after January 6th. You talked about Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Back when he was minority leader, we'll all remember that days after the January 6th Capitol riot, Kevin McCarthy went to the House floor during that impeachment debate and actually said President Trump bore responsibility for the riot and said that he needs to take responsibility for the actions that happened on January 6th. But then everyone will remember it was just days after that Kevin McCarthy said that, well, he doesn't think that Donald Trump provoked the

riot. And he thinks that while Donald Trump bore some responsibility, there are also people all across the country bear responsibility. And then after that, of course, there was that infamous trip down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the president. So after January 6th, Kevin McCarthy and some other Republicans tried out this this state of being of going against President Trump and criticizing him. But the fact of the matter is, is that time showed that the party was sticking behind Donald Trump, that the GOP was staying behind Trump. And because of that firm grip and that firm grasp on the party, a number of these lawmakers careened back to President Trump's side. And that's what we're seeing play out right now in the wake of this indictment after indictment after indictment. And Kevin McCarthy, where does Kevin McCarthy go from here? Again, the party continues to get more and more radical. They're pushing for

impeachments. They're pushing last night. He was on Sean Hannity, I think. And Hannity kept talking about Biden's bribery scandal. Kevin McCarthy knows there's nothing there. He knows it's a lie. He knows that every time they talk about these scandals and these tapes and this and the other, he always ends up getting humiliated. So talk about the tightrope walk Kevin McCarthy is having to take every day. It's an extremely tight rope and it's a tight rope because of that small majority that Kevin McCarthy has in the House Republican majority.

And just to go back to what we were talking about, what you guys were talking about at the beginning of the show, that was in large part because Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections, which polls showed was a large reason for that was because abortion was a large issue for Democrats and for voters across the country. So, yeah, Kevin McCarthy has been walking this very fine line on a number of matters throughout this Congress. You bring up impeachment. Kevin McCarthy has said that if the facts and the situation rises to the level of a need for an impeachment inquiry, he makes that distinction that it's not actually voting on articles,

but accelerating investigations into President Biden or other administration officials, that if they got to that need for an impeachment inquiry, they would go there. The understanding and the assumption is that a formal vote would be needed to actually open up that inquiry, which, of course, no Democrats are voting for that. Kevin McCarthy is going to have to do it all on his own. But that's going to put a number of Biden district Republicans in a really tough spot. So, again, another fine line he's being forced to walk because of the former president. That's yeah, that's a real problem for him, for the the Republicans that are sitting in Biden won districts. There's so many of these radical

positions that the MTGs are trying to get them to take. The more extreme members are trying to get them to take the Lauren Boebert. It puts McCarthy and these Republicans in Biden districts in different difficult positions. Vaughn, let's finish. I just want to ask you this randomly. I saw that Kerry Lake was talking about jumping into the Arizona Senate race with or without Kerry Lake. That is a fascinating race. You look at some of the numbers and see it split three ways. We don't know whether Sinema is going to continue to run in that race or not. But talk about Arizona. And I mean, just a lot of different pieces of that puzzle in that Senate race.

Right. Kerry Lake, essentially the rest of the Republicans have sat it out. Governor Doug Ducey still lives in Arizona, but he has shown no indication or desire to jump into this race. There is a sheriff in Pinal County who is running for the Republican nomination. You can see him there, though. But this is Carrie Lake's to lose if she, in fact, gets into this. And I think it's important for folks to remember Carrie Lake lost Joan Mika by 17000 votes here. She has a firm base of support still in the state of Arizona, a longtime conservative state. Kyrsten Sinema has not officially announced her independent run here. But if she gets in, early polling has suggested that Carrie Lake would be a very formidable candidate here against Ruben Gallego and against Kyrsten Sinema. There are a lot of dynamics at play.

But I think it always comes back to the to us remembering the potency of that MAGA base that still exists. Well, in a plurality election, it's not enough to get over 50 percent, but in a race that would be split three ways, it could very well put Jerry Lake into the U.S. Senate. NBC's Vaughn Hilliard and congressional reporter for The Hill, Michael Schnell. Thank you both very much for your reporting this morning.