Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/9/24

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Harris, Trump deliver contrasting visions for America

We're saying we just want fairness. We want dignity for all people. We want to recognize the right all people have to freedom and liberty to make choices, especially those that are about heart and home. We have a lot of bad things coming up. You could end up in a depression of the 1929 variety, which would be a devastating thing. It took many years, took decades to recover from it. And we're very close to that. And we're very close to a world war. In my opinion, we're very close to a world war. And we know we are a work in progress.

We haven't yet quite reached all of those ideals. But we will die trying because we love our country and we believe. We have a very, very sick country right now. You saw the other day with the stock market crash, and that was just the beginning. That was just the beginning. It's going to get worse. It's going to get a lot worse. That's a big part of this campaign. You know, when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. We know what we stand for, and we stand for the people, and we stand for the dignity of work,

and we stand for freedom. We stand for justice. We stand for equality. Some of your allies have expressed concern that you're not taking this very seriously, particularly at a time when there is enthusiasm on the other side. Why haven't you been campaigning? Because I'm leading by a lot and because I'm letting their convention go through and I am campaigning a lot.

Welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, August the 9th. With us, we have the host for Way Too Early, White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. Also, U.S. Special Correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kaye, President of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton, and also NBC News National Affairs Analyst and a partner at and Chief Political Columnist at Puck, John Heilman. I was just going through these. Can I just going through some of some of these things, some of these quotes. Donald Trump was talking about John Heilman. Yeah. And I think Peggy Noonan's column in The Wall Street Journal hits it on exactly where Donald Trump and Kamala Harris find themselves in this very topsy-turvy political season. First of all, Peggy writes, I continue to believe the woman isn't creating a movement, but a movement is creating her and they are showing up. And man, are they showing up.

Mr. Trump spent most of the week having what a GOP strategist told Politico is a public nervous breakdown. It's Donald Trump. And then finally, another telling quote from Peggy. And this is fascinating. For the first time this week, I thought people were wondering about the impact of Mr. Trump's age. He is 78. He hasn't been able to focus, make his case. Is he and another irony of 2024 turning into Joe Biden. And the split screens have not been good for him at all this week, John. And you look at the polls and you can read these polls that are coming in and it is only August. But there certainly is momentum. But but there's also, again, something that we haven't seen from Donald Trump since 2016.

And that is just the complete failings of his political instincts to rise to a moment. Well, I think you're seeing fear, Joe, apart from everything else. And I just want to say, kind of playing off that last bit of sound there where he said, you know, he's letting the Democratic convention go through. I wanted to announce right here, I heard the show that I'm going to allow Morning Joe to continue for the rest of the morning in the same spirit as Donald Trump. You know, I have about as much control over that as Donald Trump does over the Democratic convention. So I think, you know, you're that it is people predicted that this would happen. The thing related to Trump becoming now the old man of the race and that and that the focus it was that there was a lot of discussion about this when Joe Biden was still in the race. People would say, you know, correctly, Donald Trump is also an old man. Donald Trump is also slipping, losing miles an hour off his fastball, has difficulty processing as a cognitive matter. And they would say, there's a double standard

here. And you would say, yeah, there's a double standard here. I'll tell you what the double standard was always. The press is terrible at focusing on two things at the same time. And for a long time, the fact that Joe Biden's affect, that he seemed less energetic than Trump, gave Trump, not saying it's a good thing or justifying it, it was just what happened was that people focused on Biden and Trump's failings in this area got ignored. Even though we, on many occasions on this show, we would point to various Trump mental failures. Now, though, without Joe Biden in the race, the press is focused on that question. And it's much more glaring to people how many cognitive failures Donald Trump has, especially when he stands in

an unscripted way in front of the press. And part of it's cognitive, part of it's psychological, part of it's emotional. The ticks going back to the same grievances over and over again, the inability to process really basic facts, the massive errors that he makes all the time, the incoherence, all those things are standing much starker relief now, which gets to your point that I think is the key point and the point that Peggy's making. It is just the case that the split screen now is a split split screen that is much more punishing to Donald Trump than the split screen when it was Joe Biden on the other side of that screen. And again, you can talk about how you want the world to be. I'll tell you about how the world is. That's the reality. So it's so funny. You said that last weekend, you know, Katty, last weekend, my my kids and I were watching the Olympics and there was a local news break

and they showed a, it was one of these, you know, poll came out and it showed the split screen and the two candidates on both sides. And it was the first time that I had seen Kamala Harris, 59 year old Kamala Harris, I think she's 59, next to 78-year-old Donald Trump. And it was actually, it was quite jarring. You know, politics is all about contrast. That's what I learned in the first campaign school I went to 30 years ago. They said, the campaign is about contrast. The visual contrast is striking. You look at the press conference yesterday and the exaggerations and the outright lies that were told in Donald Trump's press conference is also talking about us being on the verge of a

depression when the United States is more powerful economically relative to the rest of the world than it's been in 20, 30, 40 years. And I could go down that list again, but there's no need. People know that that's the truth. But you have Kamala Harris saying, we love our country. We believe in our country on one side. And then you have Donald Trump on the other side saying our country's lousy. That is, and again, going back to Peggy Noonan and her life's work, regardless of ideology, Americans want optimism. They want hope. They want someone looking to the future. And boy, that is another stark contrast that you see in yesterday and in the previous few weeks. Yeah, there's a lot more kind of sunny Reagan about the Democratic ticket at the moment than there is about the Republican ticket. And you see that in all the rallies. I mean, you see it in the fact that Donald Trump is not really holding rallies. He's holed up in Mar-a-Lago. He's doing one rally today in Montana, a state where he's 15 points ahead. So that's kind of head scratching. But it was a it was a case of grievance.

And that's what we're seeing from the campaign. And case in point about Donald Trump's mental acuity during yesterday's news conference. He told us a weird story about weird about nearly dying during a helicopter ride. But as The New York Times points out, there was only one problem with the story or maybe two or maybe three problems. Here's the ex-president yesterday at Mar-a-Lago when asked about former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who briefly dated Vice President Kamala Harris nearly three decades ago. Take a listen. Well, I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together

and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing. And Willie was he was a little concerned. So I know him. I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven't seen him in years, but he told me terrible things about her. But this is what you're telling me anyway, I guess. But he had a big part in what happened with Kamala. But he I don't know, maybe he's changed his tune, but he he was not a fan of hers very much at that point. OK, so it's an odd story. But what's the real issue with that story? Well, it appears it never actually happened.

First, Trump was never on a helicopter with Willie Brown. He's apparently confusing him with former California Governor Jerry Brown. Take a look. The two don't really look terribly similar. Secondly, there was never any emergency landing, as Trump claimed, and the helicopter's passengers were never in any danger. Mayor Brown, who, as The Times notes, loves regaling anybody who will listen with stories, said, quote, you know me well enough to know that if I almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it. And according to Gavin Newsom, who was also on that ride, there was never any discussion at all about one Kamala Harris. For his part, Willie Brown isn't saying terrible things about Harris at all. In fact, he remains an avid supporter of hers.

You understand why they use the word weird. The group took a helicopter to survey wildfire damage in 2018, an event where Trump would confuse the name of the town that was destroyed and also claim the solution to California's wildfire crisis was to, quote, rake the forest floor. So do you remember that raking the forest floor? Joe, that was that was one of those particular. Anyway, the story didn't make sense. It didn't really happen. The people were different from the people he said it was. Otherwise, I guess all good. I mean, it's unbelievable. I mean, you know, Rev, it reminds me when we get into that sort of dust up on the International Space Station, stayed up there longer than we expected. And it was tension city. You know, yesterday, the Wall Street Journal editorial page wrote an op ed talking about how Donald Trump now seems primed to lose yet another race that he should win. And you look at this press conference, you look at the fact that his people just don't want him to go out and give give speeches. Don't you know, I'm sure they didn't want him to go out and give the press conference yesterday.

But Donald Trump probably still driven by that belief. I alone can do it. But again, it just there's nothing comforting about that. And again, I go back to Peggy Noonan asking the question or saying for the first time this week, I thought people were wondering about the impact of Mr. Trump's age. He is 78. He hasn't been able to focus to make his case. Is he in another irony of 2024 turning into Joe Biden? Well, he's certainly nothing that's happened the past week would suggest otherwise, would it? Nothing would suggest otherwise. But I would I would say to anyone that Joe Biden never just started remembering emergency landings of helicopters with people that didn't exist.

I mean, even the story within itself. Can you imagine in the middle of an emergency landing? You start talking about somebody you dated years ago in bad terms. I mean, the whole story doesn't make sense aside from the fact that he had the people mixed up. And then he said that his rally, January 6th, drew as many people as Martin Luther King's March on Washington. I assume he's talking about 1963 because that's the only March on Washington Martin Luther King had. He said they said Martin Luther King had a million and I had twenty five thousand. That's what they said. Well, first of all, the million man march wasn't until ninety five, twenty five, twenty seven years after King was dead. King didn't call that march. And the fact that he would compare the million man march or the King march of two hundred fifty thousand to who he had January 6th and not remembering the January 6th was an attempt to overthrow an election

shows that I think we might have chose the wrong old man to walk off the stage. Well, first of all, I was on that trip, the presidential trip to California with those wildfires. There was no emergency landing. Everything went smoothly, though he did, of course, say that the California should be raking the floors. And I know we do this a lot, but could you imagine if if President Biden had told a story with that many inaccuracies, what the reaction would be from both the media and frankly, his own party? We know what Nancy Pelosi would be doing. She'd be trying to get him out of the race. But yet Republicans aren't doing that. They've never done that with Trump.

It continues to be he calls the shots. He calls all of them. And John Haman, that's what yesterday was about. I'm told by Trump insiders, Joe's hunch is right, that there was a campaign briefing scheduled the day before for some reporters to come down there and the Trump aides were going to talk to them about the state of the race. Trump got wind of this and said, well, if they're here, I'm going to have a news conference. And they're trying to draw a contrast because Vice President Harris hasn't taken that many questions since she's been the nominee. She should. But that's not going to be an issue that's going to move voters. I don't think that's something that really matters.

But really what this is about was Trump trying to say, I am angry at my staff. They're failing me. I'm going to go out there and try to fix things. And yet, if the goal here is to win over some new voters, hard to see that it happened. Well, first of all, this is all just another just another blow to the new Trump narrative, which was insane. We look back on that one moment there right before the Republican convention, when there were serious people who were talking about how Donald Trump might there might be a new Trump after the failed assassination attempt on him. And boy, as we sit here today, that narrative, the fact that anybody ever believed that even for 24 hours looks more and more embarrassing. You know, I think to Rev's point about the March on Washington

and Martin Luther King, I think there's a chance that Trump is confusing that with the famous March on Washington launched by Larry King. Or maybe it was Alan King or Billie Jean King. That's one of the kings. There was a king who once marched on Washington, the march on Washington that Stephen King waged with 14 friends. He had more people there in his crowd. You can get these things confused. And Jonathan, you know Donald Trump better than I've been on more trips like this. As you said, you've been on that trip in California. Is it possible that Trump is just so nervous flying in a helicopter that every

helicopter landing seems like an emergency landing to him? And it lives in his memory as one where, you know, just bringing that bird down while we nearly died, you know, that thing that very difficult, every one of those landings is difficult. I don't know what's going on with him. But again, you know, to the Peggy Noonan point, the presidential campaigns are split screens. That's what they are all day long, every day. And this split screen, I mean, is is who knows tomorrow will be another day and the split screen can change. But so far, since the moment that Kamala Harris became retook the space on that split screen, it is not going to look good for Donald Trump. I would say anything. There's not been a news cycle that Donald Trump has won since since she became the presumptive nominee. And until that changes, he's in trouble. Yeah. On that

helicopter ride, Governor Newsom has said that on it, Trump repeatedly talked about, hey, being concerned about crashing. That is something he does think about, Joe. But really, it's just more than anything. It came that the vibe from Mar-a-Lago yesterday was panic. Yeah. That it has now been three weeks since Harris became the Democratic presumptive nominee. And they haven't been able to land a finger on her. They haven't figured this out at all. And we know the one thing that gets under Trump's skin more than anything is crowd size. And she is outdrawing him.

And he can't handle that. And they're trying to change dynamics of the race. And one truism, Joe, is that the candidate who wants to have more and more debates is the candidate who's losing. And that's what we got from Donald Trump yesterday. Yeah, really, really, really has been surprising how they just not been able to lay a glove on her or waltz. Their failings have cost them at the polls. You look again, we talked about this a couple of days ago. You can turn down the volume and you see that the Democrats smiling on stage. It looks like a joyous rally.

It looks like a joyous occasion. They're happy to be there. They're just they're they're they're excited. And it does turn the volume down and look at the crowds. It does. It does seem a lot like the 2008 hope and change election, if measured only by the reaction and the crowds. But they're smiling on people's faces. There's just a lift in their step. They are excited. And then you go to the other side and you turn and you have J.D. Vance scouring and saying, again, just negative things. And you have Donald Trump at this press conference, it's glum. It's distressing. And so, you know, I've been surprised, as have most political observers, been surprised at what a lift has occurred in the Democratic Party over the past several weeks. And as Peggy Noonan wrote again, I'll say it again, that there is a movement. And in this case, it seems the movement

is going to the candidate. The movement is creating the candidate instead of the candidate creating the movement. And she has stepped in. She's doing extraordinarily well. If you look at how how she's she's handled the last three weeks and they don't know what to do with it. And Katty, this is a Wall Street Journal editorial page yesterday, says Mr. Trump seems to think he's still leading in the polls against a feeble opponent. That overconfidence is what led him to choose Mr. V seems to think he's still leading in the polls against a feeble opponent. That overconfidence is what led him to choose Mr. Vance, who hasn't reassured voters on the fence about Mr. Trump. The former president doesn't seem to realize he's now in a close race that requires discipline and a consistent message to prevail. And his struggles are hurting GOP candidates for the House and the Senate.

All of this underscores the risk GOP candidates for the House and the Senate. All of this underscores the risk GOP voters took in nominating Mr. Trump for a third time. They had younger alternatives who would have been fresher voices and could have served two terms. This is still Mr. Trump's election to lose. But as we learned in 2020, he's more than capable of doing it. And Caddy, new polling out today or yesterday, again, could be an outlier. But again, I always looked at trends in polls. I didn't look at the specific numbers. I saw where I was a week, two weeks, a month ago and where I was at a given day. And, you know, there's a new Marquette poll that shows Kamala Harris up by eight points. I'm sure that is probably an outlier, but perhaps not. And this is all before

the Democratic National Convention launches and celebrates her for a week. Yeah, I read the headline of that op-ed yesterday, that editorial in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, will Donald Trump blow another election? But you're right, Joe, the most brutal part of that whole article was that little bit you just read with The Wall Street Journal's suggestion that actually the Republicans had chosen the wrong pick and they should have gone with somebody younger and stacked up against Kamala Harris. It's that split screen. He just doesn't seem to know how to to take her on. You've got

joy on the Democratic side. And Donald Trump walked out in Mar-a-Lago yesterday looking cross and he looked grumpy when when J.D. Vance was asked what made him happy. He sort of dismissed the question as if happy. Why? Why would anyone ask me what makes me happy rather than just saying, you know, puppies or football games or something? Anyway, I mean, Katty, Katty, isn't that fascinating? I mean, he's asked you talk about a softball question. Jamie Vance was asked what made him happy. Right. Well, that's I mean, I could I could go on for three hours right now. That's the easiest question in the world. And he snarled and took it as a negative and and then said something about on either that question or another really simple question.

What doesn't make it happen is stupid questions from reporters. No. What makes me happy is a politician's softball right down the middle of the play. And he couldn't do it. No, no, no, he couldn't do it. And I think that, you know, they are they're in a funk and they they don't really know how to get out of it. And I think the the crestframed since in Mar-a-Lago wasn't about news. There was no real news that was about trying to get the attention back. And within minutes, there were Kamala Harris and and Waltz up in Michigan speaking at a union event and the cameras had left them again. And it was kind of like a—it was a sort of metaphor for the whole campaign. They cannot stay in the limelight.

And up until now, the Democratic playbook has been, let's keep the focus on Donald Trump. That's how we win. Now the Democratic playbook is, let's keep the focus on us. We have a great message to sell. Let's keep the focus on us. So I think, you know, there's been a flip there in strategy and Donald Trump doesn't know how to handle it at the moment. No, no, definitely does not. Well, we have a big show today, as Ed Sullivan would say,

a really, really big show. We this is the 50th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon. We're going to have we're going to have John Meacham on in a minute to talk about that and the impact and any parallels he draws with today. Also still ahead, we're going to be talking about the Democratic National Convention. It's just over a week away. And we're going to be talking to DNC Chairman Jamie Harrison about the renewed optimism among the party as Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to formally accept the nomination. You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. People criticize me for being a little too serious, a little too angry sometimes. What makes you smile? What makes you happy? Well, I smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media, man. I mean, look, I think if you watch a full speech that I give,

I actually am having a good time out here and I'm enjoying this. But look, sometimes you got to take the good with the bad. And right now I am angry about what Kamala Harris has done to this country and done to the American southern border. And I think that most people in our country, they can be happy-go-lucky sometimes. They can enjoy things sometimes. And they can turn on the news and recognize that what's going on in this country is a disgrace. To fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the president and the Congress

in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office. 50 years ago today, Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency in the wake of Watergate. You just heard part of the speech from the day before announcing that decision. The scandal began two years earlier when the DNC headquarters located in the Watergate office building in D.C. were broken into. The investigations revealed subsequently that Richard Nixon's

participation was in the cover up and he remains to this day the only American president to resign from his post. Let's bring in our friend, Rogers, chair of the American presidency at Vanderbilt University. Historian John Meacham. John, that that, of course, was was a shocking moment in American political history. The next day, extraordinarily revealing. Richard Nixon said goodbye to his staff, said goodbye to some of his close friends. And in an address where he talked about his his father being poor, he talked about his mother. And he had this confessional, always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself. His daughter, Tricia, years later, would say it was the first time she was glad that people actually got to see her father as he really was, as he was sitting there talking personally about his family.

But an extraordinary day 50 years ago. What are your thoughts? You know, President Nixon, I think it was Tom Wicker, argued this, and then Bob Dole picked it up at Nixon's funeral in 1994. In many ways, that was the age of Nixon. Our politics as we experience them now, in a way, are bracketed by both Nixon's checker speech in 1952, which was a massive television event at the dawn of the medium. And then the moment you just played was this incredible inflection point in the life of the post-war era. I think it was somebody, someone's wife who pointed out that JFK and Richard Nixon, their rise was that the young officer, the junior officers of World War II had finally come into command. And so it's this generational seismic moment where you have this cohort of people who were, as President Kennedy said, tempered by war and then guided us through

the Cold War for good and for ill. And Nixon, in many ways, represents the best of us and the worst of us. And vivid political figures often do. Yeah. And you said the best of us, the worst of us. It reminds me the title of Tom Wicker's book, a guy who studied Nixon as closely as anybody. One of us, one of us, again, for better and for worse. You talk about the age of Nixon. I'm not mistaken. More Americans voted for Richard Nixon. I could be mistaken, but this was the case at least 20 years ago. I don't think anybody's eclipsing. But, you know, Nixon, you got more national votes, I believe, than any person in American history. He ran on the national ticket in 52, in 56, in 60, in 68 and in 72.

And, of course, in 72, along with LBJ and I guess FDR in 36 against Al Flandin. Those are three of the greatest landslides in American history. What what was it about Richard Nixon that drew so many Americans to him in 72? And and how remarkable of a system we have that a man that could be at the height of all powers in November of 1972 run out of office less than two years later because of his crimes. Well, the rule of law worked. I mean, one of the things about Nixon, and this is an argument that both Wicker made, also our friend Evan Thomas, I highly recommend a book he published seven, eight years ago called Being Nixon, which is a terrific portrait of this dichotomy, which, by the way, aren't we all?

Aren't we all a mix of good and bad? And so it's I think to some extent the American people recognized in Nixon or enough American people, the people who voted for him, a representative figure. He was a striver. He had come out of Yorba Linda, California. He had not gone to Harvard. He'd gotten in, but didn't have the scholarship money, didn't have enough money. So he he went to Whittier, always had a chip on his shoulder about that, was someone who was locked in this fundamental struggle for all those years with John Kennedy, for whom life had given almost every break. Nixon had gotten almost no breaks. Nixon represented the hardline side of the Cold War argument. And again, parenthetically, he was right about Alger Hiss.

I mean, that's you know, there there there there is there's a grain of truth. And it's not as simple as a lot of people want to make it. And I think that's what I think what he tells us about America today. And this is vital in an age where Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, is that the constitutional system has withstood remarkable stresses and strengths. And one of the things about Nixon is, yes, he broke the law, but in the end he had a sense of shame. And he did what he did on August 8th, leaving on August 9th, 1974. And I think that for him at the very end of the day, the Constitution, the country did matter. Yeah. And he, of course, the most important moment in the rule of law and the battle against Richard Nixon was the Supreme

Court ruled against Nixon and to turn over the tapes. And immediately he knew it was over there. There was no part of him that thought he would go on denying, uh, denying what the Supreme court had told him he had to do and pushing back on it. And that is one of the great fears of, of what a second Donald Trump term may look like. Um, you talked about Alger Hiss and for, for younger people who didn't grow up during the age of Nixon or even at the end of the age of Nixon, it's it's impossible to really understand why Richard Nixon would be so popular without understanding how the Cold War framed so much. I mean, my family raised my father, Cold Warrior. And so there was Nixon fighting against Alger Hiss, fighting against the communists in the 1950s as vice said, the age of Nixon. It was like cold warriors supported Richard Nixon. And yet, again, Nixon is an extraordinarily complicated political figure, Watergate aside. You look at the horrible things about Nixon, whether you talk about Watergate,

whether you talk about the bombing of Cambodia, whether you're talking about undermining peace negotiations in 1968 to help get him elected in 68 against Humphrey. There's that side of it. Then you have Nixon, the Cold Warrior, opening China, going to China, opening China. You have Nixon, the hard hard line conservative, being the founder of the Environmental Protection Agency. And also Nixon fighting against more moderates in in his administration, pushing for a detente with the Soviets. Again, very, very complicated policy-wise. Richard Nixon would be, I think even Noam Chomsky one time said about 30, 40 years later that Richard Nixon would be seen as a left-wing radical by most Republicans, current-day Republicans. Oh, my Lord. Absolutely. I mean, so he, one of the questions people ask is how did we survive 1968? When you think about that tumultuous year,

Tet, President Johnson gets out, McCarthy and RFK challenge him. Dr. King is killed. Senator Kennedy is killed. The Chicago Democratic Convention is chaotic. George Wallace gets 13.5 percent of the vote in November. Incredibly fraught time. And I would argue that it's worth thinking about the fact that Nixon is part of the reason the republic endured. Again, complicated, counterintuitive argument. A lot of people in the 212 area code, you know, wouldn't agree with this. But the EPA, he proposed a health care plan to the left of President Obama's. He proposed a guaranteed family income. Remember the influence of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was a domestic policy advisor, on the one hand, wanted to take Nixon into this kind of progressive Toryism.

And again, the complications of life, the complexities of life, Daniel Patrick Moynihan arguing that on this side. And then you have Pat Buchanan and the political operation working the other side of the street. And so I think one of the things we've learned this summer anew is that anybody who thinks that history works in a straight line or that there's somehow these clinical forces that always shape who we are and what happens, you know, the Greeks had it right. Character is destiny and character is complicated. Yeah, no doubt. And by the way, if you are interested today at home and reading any books about Richard Nixon, I think John and I would certainly recommend Evan Thomas's Being Nixon. I will also say one of the best books

written about Richard Nixon and none other than the aforementioned Pat Buchanan agreed. Rick Perlstein, no, no right winger by any stretch of imagination, wrote an extraordinary book called Nixonland. You want to also take a look at that if you want to have a better understanding of the forces that drove Richard Nixon. John, we need to move on. I am curious, though, just a quick, quick thought about where we are right now. We've been talking about contrasts between a campaign of hope and optimism on the left and a campaign of dourness and just just anger on the right. Talk about where the different directions are going. as many of us share this belief that in many ways, the rule of law, the constitutional order, politics, as we have understood them for all their imperfections, are in fact in the balance

and that a reelected President Trump would be an even more potent threat to the constitutional order as we have come to understand it and which has kept us moving, however, Herculean jerkily toward a more perfect union. I think that stake is constant. You then take, as you've been talking about, the wave of excitement and novelty about Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, and you have a pretty potent combination at the moment. Donald Trump hasn't changed and that those who believe in the Constitution, those who believe in this unfolding story, need to assess far beyond ordinary policy disputes with a Democratic ticket and realize that we can argue about policy if we have a Constitution. If we don't have a Constitution, it doesn't matter what we argue about policy if we have a constitution. If we don't have a constitution, it doesn't matter what we think about policy. Well, and if we have leaders, whether they be on the left or the right, that respect the checks and balances of Madisonian democracy, then America will move forward as it always has, with the sharp edges, the extremes being rounded off and frustrating, frustratingly fantastic legislative process.

But if you have someone who wants to be like Orban promises to be a dictator on day one, then that's obviously something that you may be throwing away. Presidential historian John Meacham, as always, thanks so much. And a little later in the morning, Joe, we're going to be talking to the Pulitzer Prize winning chief White House photographer for Gerald Ford, David Kennerly. This is going to be a treat. He's going to bring with him some incredible photos that he took from the day of Richard Nixon's resignation. And coming up next, we're going to have a recap of the big moments from Paris for Team USA, including a world record on the track, an incredible comeback in men's basketball. Also, much more on Kamala Harris's rallies and the momentum that is at her back that has her right now in the

latest Marquette poll up eight points over Donald Trump. Jonathan, a look at Paris. Just again, it's been an extraordinarily successful Olympics in just about every way. You look, though, Jonathan, yesterday at some of the high drama, whether you're talking about track and field or to really just a historic comeback on the court for the men's basketball team. What a day in Paris yesterday. Yeah, truly sad the Olympics are winding down, but yesterday was a real high light. Team USA put nine more athletes on the Olympic podium there in Paris, and that includes American track star Sydney McLaughlin-Lebrun,

who successfully defended her Olympic title, as you see there, in the women's 400-meter hurdle. She set a world record for the sixth time with her gold medal finish, while her teammate Anna Cockrell took silver. Meanwhile, Noah Lyles could not add another gold to his 100-meter win, finishing third in yesterday's 200-meter final behind U.S. teammate Kenny Bedarek. But there's more to this story. Lyles fell to the ground seconds after crossing the line and needed to be helped off the track. It was revealed minutes later that he had been diagnosed with COVID just two days before the competition, but elected to compete anyway, which makes his bronze medal showing all that much more impressive. And perhaps the biggest moment of the day,

Steph Curry lifted the U.S. men's basketball team to a comeback victory over Nikola Jokic and Serbia. Curry scored 36 points, including nine threes, as Team USA surged from down 17 points. Kevin Durant had just nine off the bench, but his clutch jumper in the final seconds put Team USA up for good. LeBron James, the best

player on the court, he had a triple-double. The U.S. beats Serbia 95-91, and they will advance to face France on Saturday in a rematch of the Tokyo Olympic final. And Joe, they were down big in this game. There were moments where you felt like Team USA, which go into the tournament thinking

they're invincible, they might lose. But some of our biggest stars, the stars who have carried the sport for a long time, came up huge at the big moment. And now they face France, with France, of course, having home court advantage. And they were down against a really good Serbia team. Let's bring in right now bestselling author and veteran sports columnist Mike Lupica. Mike, you've written about this today for the Daily News. An extraordinary comeback by Team USA. Talk about it historically. Joe, I wrote and I believe this was the great moment for Olympic men's basketball that I've ever seen that fourth quarter yesterday.

And the thing that I loved about it, because the original dream team, they never got challenged in Barcelona. I was there in 92. It was like a scrimmage against the world. They got tested yesterday. And Joe, you know this and John knows this watching sports. When you're in a one-game season, this wasn't just a one-game season. It was a once-every-four-year season. And the other team is playing what Steve Kerr described afterwards as a perfect game. Sometimes you're defenseless against that. And then when it was all on the line in the last few minutes, who was it for America? LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, three of the

greatest players to ever play the game and beat it at a wonderful fourth quarter. But then those three guys became the latest dream team. And Steph had a game that we kept waiting for him. LeBron is 39 years old, Joe, and he was playing like a kid who didn't want to leave the playground, didn't want to give up the court. And Kevin Durant only had nine points yesterday. But as John mentioned, with 36 seconds left, he said to everybody, give me the ball. I got this. And he reminded everybody why he scored more points than any Olympic man has ever scored for this country. Joe, I have to tell you, I can't remember the last time I was as engaged and excited by a basketball game as I was watching those guys yesterday. Yeah. And Mike, certainly since 1992 and that dream team,

the world has caught up with us. You know, we have not won every gold since. It seems at least one game per Olympic tournament, Team USA gets really tested, whether it's been Spain or Germany and this time around Serbia. And let's just take a moment again to reflect on LeBron James, where this is a guy who's been doing it for 20 years. He is now should be winding down his career. He should have retired a few years ago, you know, but he is he's the exception. He's he's like Tom Brady was in football. He's playing with his son next year. That shows you how long he's doing this.

And yes, the Lakers have struggled the last couple of years, but in the biggest moment on a team full of the biggest stars, there's no question who the alpha dog is. It's still LeBron James. John, he was everywhere in the fourth quarter. Again, he had that triple-double, but you saw that he wasn't going to let them lose at the age of 39. And one of the things that made this dramatic, one more thing that made it dramatic yesterday was we don't know if we're going to see him in the Olympics again. We don't know if we're going to see Steph in the Olympics again. We don't know if Durant's going to come back.

So this might've been their last stand. And again, I'm not giving them the gold medal. We found out what can happen in one game, but when it was all on the line yesterday and you're right, the dream team started this around the world. We wanted the world to sort of start catching up with us. But we still think that this is our game. And for 10 minutes yesterday, it was in Paris. Yeah, no doubt about it. Mike Lupica, thank you so much. And Mike's new book titled Hard to Kill, co-written with James Patterson. I think it debuted at number three. These guys just like just just sell so many books. So come back. We'd love to have you guys come back and talk about the book again sometime soon.

Thank you, Joe.