Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/13/23

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

McCarthy orders House to open Biden impeachment inquiry

Have you found anything illegal while he was actually in office? Well, we found a lot that's certainly unethical. We found a lot that should be illegal. There's no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally. Well, if you look at the laptop and the emails between the president's son and his associates, they went to great lengths to hide Joe's involvement. Hold on a second, Congressman. Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?

Well, we we're hopeful that we could find the informant. Make it easy for us. What was the crime? Well, the crime is trading policy for money. Which policy? Well, we're going to get into that. Do you believe that this is now officially the Joe Biden bribery allegation? And do you believe that you will be able to prove that, Jim Comer?

I sure hope so. And I do believe that there's a lot of smoke and where there's smoke, there's fire. I sure, I sure hope so. I sure hope so. Also for site committee chairman, James Comer. Can we, next time we do that, can we have the theme song Green Acres behind? Because I really do think that Arnold the Pig from Greenacres, who, by the way, one of the great characters in 1960s television history. I actually remember

Greenacres. Do a better job than James Comer. I love that moment where one of the hosts, Willie, goes, wait, wait, wait, are you telling me? Are you

telling me that the informant is missing? Well, we sure hope we can find him. You know why they had trouble finding him? You know why? Because he's an international fugitive. You know why he's an international

fugitive? Because he's an arms dealer. Because he's an agent of the Communist Chinese Party. Because he's been accused of selling illegal I mean, this is this seriously is this is a tic-tac-toe with Paul

Lynn in the middle here. You got an illegal arms dealer, an agent of the communist Chinese party. People are just waking up. I know. And good morning, Washington, DC. And then over here, X marks the square. And then you've got a guy, Willie, that was illegally smuggling Iranian oil to the communist Chinese party. That is who James Comer is running with. All to be able to say, well, I don't know. I sure hope so.

Awful lot of smoke, he says. Awful lot of smoke. And that might probably mean that there's fire. So they're going through with this, Joe. We're going to get into the details of it. But at least an impeachment inquiry, Speaker McCarthy announced yesterday without a vote. And an extraordinary moment, I thought, something we discussed yesterday, where Congressman Matt Gaetz just listened to the way he talks to Speaker McCarthy. It's beyond disrespect. It's we own you. We made you speaker. So if you don't do all these things that we're telling you to do right now, we're going to vacate the chair and

you're out of your job. It is a bizarre dynamic here. And still, still no evidence presented, no definitive evidence that Joe Biden had anything to do with all. This is all about Hunter Biden. So if they've got the evidence, they've had five years to show it since his investigation started. Let's see it. Thing is, the thing is, again, not to keep going back to pop culture. Another one. Wilford Brimsley, at the end of Absence of Malice. Show me your evidence, counselor. Show me your counsel. We'll get some subpoenas.

You can go upstairs and get some subpoenas and bring them down. But give me your case. And poor, I forget the guy's name at the end. He couldn't make the case against, you know, Paul Newman. But then again, who could? Paul Newman never looking any better than he did leaning up against the wall and at the end of absence of malice. God, I think everybody here is just doing their job. But anyway, they couldn't make the case and they can't make the case now.

I can make a case, though, for Kevin McCarthy. And that case is, Kevin, you need to tell people to go to hell. If somebody ever said to me. Immediate total compliance or we will remove you. Well, let me just ask you, Mika. What if somebody ever said to me in any situation at the gates of hell, if Satan said to me immediate total compliance or what? Yeah, we will remove you.

Yeah. Or we will remove you. I would say again, F and F. It is. Oh, it is not too early. You know, it's like almost noon in London. That's right. And we had a lot of people watching in London, Willie.

But I do ask this question. And I know maybe this means I'm an old man and I shouldn't talk this way. But I'm just going to talk this way. Willie, what kind of man would allow somebody talk to him publicly and bow down to him? I just I just I don't teach and forget about manhood, even though this is a question of manhood and masculinity. My daughter would never, never in a billion years. She's the toughest of the lot. She would never in a billion years. She's the toughest of the lot. She would never in a billion years allow somebody to talk to her that way.

I'm sure your daughter, your son, we don't teach. We wouldn't allow our children to act that way. Who is Kevin McCarthy? And why does he allow anybody to talk to him that way? It's just, it's astounding that he is that weak and timid. And he's speaker of the house. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. He's not a backbencher.

He's the guy, in theory, running the party, running that caucus. And we're going to play the clip. But the way Matt Gaetz talked to him, it was like you are sit, stay, roll over, do everything we tell you to do or else. And here he is doing it. Here he is doing it. It is an extraordinary moment in our politics. And as I say again, this is all so far about Hunter Biden. We've said a million times on this show, if he committed crimes, he ought to be prosecuted for the crimes. If he goes to jail, go to jail. So be it. Put him in jail if that's what he deserves. Still no line drawn to Joe Biden. And everything you hear is about these vagaries about a Biden crime family, a culture of corruption. But they're never specific about it because they don't have it.

Yeah, I mean, Jonathan Lemire, we even had even had the Supreme Court justice's wife talking about the Biden crime family. Let's overthrow American democracy and put them on barges. Nobody's got any evidence at all. Not at all. You've got some text messages. I'd love to know what the text messages mean. I'd love to get people under oath. I'd love to have them talking.

That's what investigations are for. So investigate. That's what criminal proceedings are for. Let those criminal proceedings go forward. And if there are any crimes, you know what? Let the chips fall where they may. But again, I keep going back to the Wall Street Journal editorial page. No fan.

No fan of Joe Biden, that's for sure. They attack him every day. But they even said of Comer, oh, get here some smoke. You got nothing else. And yet they keep chugging along. And I don't know, maybe they'll hire Arnold the pig as as as their impeachment counsel. He couldn't do any worse than James Comer. Yeah. McCarthy keeps using the word allegations yesterday. Never presented any evidence whatsoever. There has not been any presented that now President Biden had anything to do with Hunter Biden's business dealings. In fact, some of those secret witnesses they could find, as opposed to the fugitive who's still on the lam, Devin Archer even testified

that Hunter Biden and President Biden, they didn't discuss business. The Republicans haven't been able to put this case together yet. And it's McCarthy bowing down to the forces of the right from Matt Gaetz and others who they say gave him his speakership. It's also Donald Trump every day pressuring him publicly and privately to go through with this, to create a whataboutism about Trump's own legal issues going into next year's elections. And to be clear, the White House is not excited about this. No White House welcomes an impeachment inquiry. They are time consuming. They are draining. They can end up in unexpected directions, but they are prepared. They have spent a year getting ready for

this, and they feel like the politics of this are on their side. Poll after poll shows that voters just don't believe there is a there there. They think this could end up really backfiring against Republicans, helping Biden potentially in next year's presidential election, but also endangering Republicans in the House, particularly those that won in Biden districts who are going to be made to have to make a very uncomfortable decision. And McCarthy should be noted. He just a few weeks ago said that even an impeachment inquiry should take a vote in the full House. Well, that was some hypocrisy there. He flip flopped, didn't do it because he didn't want to expose those Republicans to that vote. And he knew he didn't have the numbers he needed. You know, the thing is, Willie, we talk on the show a good bit about these issues that are going to impact suburban voters, independent voters, swing voters.

We're not we're not just we're not just like throwing things against the wall. It happened. It happened in 22. It happened in 20. And it's being supersized now for a super value mill of stupid in 2024. I was talking to a group of people yesterday from the suburbs of Philly. Lifelong Republicans. No more would want to vote for Joe Biden and probably won't vote for Joe Biden. They'll probably just stay home. Lifelong Republicans. You know what they were talking about? How local officials around them their entire lives, their entire lives. And by the way, by the way, if you're sitting at home in Kansas City right now, you know, go Chiefs. And you're sitting there going, well, what's he talking about? Come on, what's he, come on, this, this is, this is,

these are just East Coast elitists. Well, no, no, I'm just, I'm just talking to people in the suburbs, suburbs of Atlanta, suburbs of Philly, suburbs of Detroit. And Willie, they're saying that they've had Republican elected officials all around in the suburbs of Philly their whole life. And he said they're gutted. You can't find them anymore. You can't find them in so many places around Philadelphia because Donald Trump and this toxic brand of

Trumpism, Republicanism is gutting the Republican Party in the suburbs of Philly, the suburbs of Atlanta, all these other suburban areas that have always been the foundation of Republican majorities, the foundation of Republican victories and the local levels, the foundation of Republican Party presidential races. And things like this impeachment inquiry, just like six-week abortion bans, just like people trying to claim that people that kill police officers on January the 6th, responsible for the deaths. That's gutting the Republican Party. So we're not sitting here going, hey, let's let let's let

progressives like pass their progressive vocation. No, we're not saying that. We're saying Republicans save yourself if you can. But they seem monumentally incapable of doing it, Willie. And this is just one more step forward. This is not going to hurt Joe Biden. This is going to help Democrats politically. And if you were in a parallel universe, if you were the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, you would smack aside these members who are making all these noise and say, let's stay focused. Let's get down to business. We need to win next year. We need to win the House. We need to win back the Senate. We need to win the presidency. And yet Kevin McCarthy goes along for the ride. We've been talking about it. Here's what he said yesterday, directing the House Oversight Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees to open an inquiry into President Biden centered, he says, on Biden's

family business dealings. These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives. That's why today I am directing our House Committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. It appears that the president's family has been offered special treatment by Biden's own administration. Treatment that not otherwise would have received if they were not related to the president. I do not make this decision lightly. And regardless of your party or who you voted for, these facts should concern all Americans.

Willie, I don't even know. I really don't even know where to begin. I mean, I know Jared, and I talked to him, and, you know, Jared worked for his father-in-law. And Ivanka worked for her father. Ivanka worked for her father. Jared got billions of dollars directly related to the work he did for his father-in-law in official capacity. From?

From the Saudis and from others. And Ivanka, while Donald was meeting with President Xi, get all of these like trademark waivers in China so she could sell her goods. They were fast-tracked in China after Trump was elected. And by the way, you know, we don't talk about it much on this show. This happens in politics, not as not as not as obviously as it did with Donald Trump and his family, and certainly not when you're talking about the billions of dollars. But Kevin McCarthy saying that we're doing this because the administration may have helped their own family. Does he think everybody is stupid as hell and don't realize that we're talking about billions of dollars going into the Trump family based on business dealings while Donald Trump was president

that they cashed in on right after the presidency? Yeah, if you want to have a good read today, Google Jared Kushner, Saudi sovereign wealth fund. I think you'll be interested in what you see there. But yeah, I mean, all this performative outrage about the alleged Biden crime family, they couldn't find a fraction of this outrage about, let's say, the former president stealing nuclear secrets, bringing back to his beach club about leading an attempted coup against the United States government. We've seen none of this level of outrage from these Republicans about that. But here we are. Let's bring in the Rogers chair in the American presidency at Vanderbilt University historian, our good friend John Meacham, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, Susan Page, and founder of the conservative

website, The Bulwark, Charlie Sykes. Good morning, everybody. John, great to have you in New York with us. You've been listening along here through Green Acres, Paul Lind, Paul Newman and Wilford Brimley checking all the boxes. It was no Operation Petticoat, but I live in hope. Guess what? It's a four hour show. It's plenty of time. So let's take the long view of this, of impeachment and everything else and what Republicans are doing here. We're at a point where it's politics is programming. That's what this is.

They needed a new season of something, so they've dropped it. And the hope, I think, is that there's so much confusion. It's what about this? What about that? That it clouds everyone's sense, their capacity. They are hoping that it clouds voters' capacity to make judgments and assign the correct weight to different issues. And

I go back to this question, are we up to this? Are we up to self-government in an era in which the leadership class of one of the two major parties has decided to be wholly captive to, at best, a 35 percent group in the country? And the delta here is, you know, and for what it's worth, speaking of McCarthy, 34 percent is the number of folks who still approved of Joe McCarthy after he was censured in 1954 or 55. What's so interesting about this moment is that there's another 14 or 15 percent of the country that, for various reasons reasons go along with this Trumpist base. And if enough of those folks is what you're talking about, if enough of those people can say, you know what, actually, the country and the Constitution is more important than winning the afternoon, then perhaps we're OK. But I really do think it's that it's that fundamental. And I don't mean to be overly grand or overly alarmist, but Kevin McCarthy is the guy who

accidentally told the truth about Benghazi. Remember, didn't that cost him the job once? I think I have that right. You do. When he said, we're just trying to create problems for Hillary. This and I'm not being naive. Jefferson and Hamilton hated each other. I understand that. But they've now gone to the most serious constitutional remedies as temporary weapons of war. And Jonathan, we should point out, James Comer did the same thing in this case, saying out loud, look at Biden's poll numbers since we started this investigation. Yeah. Representative Comer's done it. Senator Grassley has done it. There have been a number of Republicans who have showed their cards and basically said this is a political play.

And Speaker McCarthy, we note that he seems to be owned by the far right of his party. He's also someone that Donald Trump referred to as my Kevin for years and never pushed back on that either. So. So, John, you say that, I mean, we are seemingly in a new, a new place here. Are there moments in history that you can compare this to in terms of an impeachment push, something so, that's supposed to be so grave, so rare, so serious, but a party held and pushed back against the fringes and said, no, we're not going to do this. And yet this, this time McCarthy is seemingly unable to do that. No, I mean, the politics of impeachment in the major cases, you can always find a precedent for what you're looking for.

The radical Republicans tried to started trying to impeach Andrew Johnson in December of 1865. But the fact that that's the precedent, reconstruction, a civil war, is deeply disturbing. And I think that, sure, there could be a backlash. It may be that our analogies to the 1990s are pointless at this juncture. I think one of the things we all have to be careful about, or at least I'll speak for myself, what I feel I have to be careful about in talking about this is I think one of the problems at this hour is folks like us totally understandably still speak as if there's a conventional reality, as if gravity works,

as if, you know, the stars are somehow still in alignment. And they're really not. Right. Donald Trump was president of the United States and and tried to overthrow the government of the United States. And then we fall back, understandably, on, well, did Biden have a good week or a bad week? No, that's not really the question anymore. The question is, are you for the Constitution or are you against it? And I don't think this week is going to make that conversation any saner. You know, Charlie, though, I've been arguing for some time that gravity is returning. If you ask Fox shareholders, they will tell you they've got seven hundred and eighty seven million reasons to believe that actually just lying because you feel like lying about a private company costs you seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars with another billion dollars still out there. If you ask the InfoWars guy if gravity has returned, whether he admits it or not, there's some Sandy Hook parents

that'll show you that gravity's returned. You talk about the leader of the Proud Boys, you talk about all these other people who decided they were gonna use American flags that our soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen fought for for hundreds of years to protect and defend this country, but instead they used them as weapons of war against law enforcement officers.

They're going to jail for 20 years, 22 years. Some of them will die in prison. Gravity has returned. And I really do believe that the same will happen with this stupid impeachment inquiry. If they continue down the same path they've continued down, they're admitting at the beginning, we got nothing. We've got nothing. There's smoke. We've got nothing. I'm just curious your thoughts about it, what it says about Kevin McCarthy, that he is so weak that he allows himself to be bullied by backbenchers and what it means about

our past party and what kind of impact it's going to have in states like Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Georgia and Arizona. Well, you may be right that gravity is returning, but clearly the Congress is full of helium. And you're seeing what Kevin McCarthy is doing. He is trying to defy political gravity. And I think one thing is perfectly clear is this impeachment inquiry and James Comer are not ready for prime time. They don't have much, much substance. So, you know, again, I tend to lean toward what what John was was saying, that we are you know, we're we're in this strange new era where sometimes we go through the motions as

if everything is the same and yet everything is completely broken. And so we're going to have this massive stress test coming up with this hearing. And I tend to think that this is going to backfire, that in many ways Republicans in the House, by launching this inquiry without having the goods, have actually thrown Joe Biden the lifeline and that you will see a blowback against all of this. But it's also important to understand what they are doing and why Donald Trump has been pushing this so hard. Because if, you know, if everybody is a crook, then nobody's a crook, right? If everybody's impeached, then impeachment is no big deal. That's why they are flooding the zone. everybody's impeached, then impeachment is no big deal.

That's why they are flooding the zone. That's why they're throwing so much stuff up against the wall. So that at some point, all of Donald Trump's criminality becomes just simply lost in this mass slurry of what about is, of well, what about this? What about that? The confusion becomes the strategy. The distraction becomes the strategy. But to your question, things like impeaching the president are not going to win voters back in the suburbs. Trying to impeach a Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin is not going to tip that swing state back toward the Republicans. But apparently they cannot help themselves at the moment. And this is their strategy. Throw as much stuff against the wall. Try to attack every institution. Try to eliminate every guardrail. Discredit the media. Discredit

the courts. Discredit the judges. and now use the ultimate constitutional weapon of impeachment to try to discredit the Biden family. You know, and Susan Page, there's still the issue of funding the government and preventing a shutdown. But we asked at the top of the hour, who is who is Kevin McCarthy at this point? And the question is, is he whoever this guy wants him to be? Here's Matt Gaetz. Mr. Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role. The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate total compliance or remove you. I mean, Susan Page, your thoughts also on the status of trying to fund the government.

But how does he respond to that? Is he going to bow down to that? Well, first, Mika, I'd like to say I think that for the fourth hour of Morning Joe, you might have a segment called Stump John Meacham, where you just pose historical questions to him because we do we have done that so far in this hour. It's always very entertaining so far. Never stumped. We can we can always hope. But to but to your question, I was thinking, what would you know, Nancy Pelosi had a narrow majority when she was speaker of the House the last time around. Can you imagine a Democratic member of her caucus standing up and giving a speech like that, making a challenge like that to her? There would be consequences. They would not be for Nancy

Pelosi. They would be for the for the member who dared to challenge and humiliate their leader in that way. He is dealing from a position of weakness. This impeachment ploy is an effort to get through the spending battle. It's not clear he's got a way to get an off-ramp to fund the government. The most basic task of governing, the most basic task for the House of Representatives and the Senate, the contrast with the Senate, I think pretty striking, the Senate doing its business the way it used to be done. So I think, can McCarthy keep his job and get government done? It's not at all clear what the answer to that is at the moment. Well, and again, Susan, you're talking about funding the government.

I mean, you were there with me. You as a reporter, me as a member of the Republican Revolution of 94. One of the fat, we were going 100 miles an hour and then, you know, did the government shut down and ran into a brick wall. We just did. Bill Clinton beat us because, you know, the very people that made the difference in our victory in 94 started going, wait a second.

Wait, what? We didn't hire you guys to shut down the government. We hired you to get things done. And it was a real wake up call for us. So again, we're talking about impeaching somebody, starting an inquiry while admitting you don't have the evidence to do so. And then what's next? A government shutdown that, again, is going to fall on the Republicans. You know, I remember so clearly that showdown between President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich. And, you know, in the White House, there was considerable concern about what the blowback would be.

Would it be, could Clinton get blamed? What would happen? An enormous relief when it turned out that Americans blamed Gingrich and the Republicans for for the shutdown. And as you said, very damaging for Republicans who had been on kind of a role, having seized control of the House for the first time in so many decades. Yeah, I know it was shocking for us. John, why don't we go ahead and we don't have to wait till the nine o'clock hour. Petticoat Junction. The fourth hour. No, we're not going to talk about Petticoat Junction.

Let's talk about other times just just because I find and I think you probably do and others do find relief in reading history and seeing that maybe these just aren't the worst of all times. I know we're going through a terrible time, but you know, somebody watches Ken Burns' documentary on Vietnam and sees what happened in 1968. You're like, yeah, we're good. We just need to get more votes than the other side. You talk about McCarthy. Anybody that wants to be terrified,

that really doesn't understand how terrifying that was, read Larry Tye's biography on on John McCarthy, demagogue. And you see in there a situation that in many ways, even more frightening than where we were. People's lives were destroyed. People killed themselves. It was a nightmare. And the Republican Party, including one of my heroes, Dwight Eisenhower, not only went along with it for a while, but stepped aside as McCarthy was destroying his mentor, one of the greatest public servants of the 20th century, General George Marshall. We could we could we could find other times. I mean, you look at the horrifying laws regarding segregation,

the Jim Crow laws. We've been through a lot of bad times. I want to focus, though, on a guy you wrote about, and I think you may want to pull a surprise for writing about Andrew Jackson. Here's a guy that when he was president of the United States, the governing class and the ruling class and the elites and whomever else, the establishment of Washington, D.C., horrified by what he did. And he did some pretty horrifying things in retrospect. Talk about it. Talk about how maybe we haven't been through this before. But the United States has not been a bright, shining experiment for 240 years. We've had some rough patches we've had to sort through. Absolutely. I mean, it's remarkable that we've made it this far when you think about it, because fundamentally, it's a human enterprise. It's this sounds somewhat cliched, but it's true.

Governments are as good as we are. Right. Our dispositions of heart and mind determine what's possible, what seems illegal, what's beyond the pale. You know, it's it's not just the letter of the law. It's the spirit of the law. What Andrew Jackson did for all of his manifold sins, he did two important things. One is he faced down South Carolina, who wanted to pick and choose which federal laws they followed, which everyone saw as an attempt to begin to protect slavery from abolitionism. And secondly, when in 1824, when he lost the presidential election, he won the popular vote, lost the presidential election in the House of Representatives. He gave it a hashtag.

He called it a corrupt bargain. But he went back to Nashville and ran again. He didn't summon troops. He didn't call for insurrection. He followed the rule of law. And we are as a country at this point, you know, we all have this debate about 1619 or 1776. I'd submit we're a country that really, as we understand it, has been in existence since 1965, that the Civil Rights Act of 64, the Voting Rights Act of 65, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 65 really created for the first time a multi-ethnic, multi-racial democracy.

So therefore, if you think about it, the first major federal election we had in this country was in 1968, 20 minutes ago, historically. And so, of course, it's been difficult. Of course, we have failed to realize the promise. The point is that at critical moments, just enough of us have done the right thing. And it's never been 90-10. Sometimes it's been 60-40, but not often. More often, it's been 52, 48. And let's just hope that we can get to the

52 and that 52 are in the right states in 2024. And Charlie Sykes, to that point, the Wall Street Journal's op ed this morning says impeachment is becoming the new censure, which is it's OK to open this inquiry if you've got something here. But let's not use this as a volley back and forth. And to what John is saying, just enough Republicans, as Joe said earlier, also may walk away watching all this, exhausted by it and finding it distasteful that they're using it so cheaply. So when you look at that clip of Matt Gaetz scolding the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, in that way, talking down to him in that way. It is the product of the deal Kevin McCarthy made back in January when it finally took 15 votes to make him Speaker of the House. He made that deal, and now the bill is coming due

for him. No, absolutely. This was inevitable. inevitable. And, you know, this was the ticket that Kevin McCarthy bought. This was the bargain that he struck that he figured he was going to carve off, you know, one part of the soul after another, one concession after another. You know, he made too many promises to too many lunatics. I'm trying to remember who said that, you know, and now and now the bill is coming due. So he he apparently felt that becoming speaker was worth giving up every shred of his self-respect. And and the the downside of this, I mean, there's a certain, you know, you know, the tragic comic element to all of this. But the tragic part is that he is so desperate to hold on to his power that he's about to drag the country, the rest of us, through this month of hell that will not just include the impeachment of the president and this ongoing humiliation of the speaker, but also a potential government shutdown. I mean, he's prepared to go along with this agenda, to burn it all down, to destroy whatever institutions stand in his way in order

to hold on to this gavel, which is so hollow, which is so weak, which is so pathetic. And he will be remembered as one of the weakest speakers we've ever had, you know, succeeding one of the strongest speakers we've ever had. And apparently he thinks that's worth it. All right. Charlie Sykes, John Meacham and Susan Page, thank you all very much for being on this morning. And still ahead on Morning Joe, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has arrived in Russia and has met with President Vladimir Putin. What we can expect from their talks today, plus what Putin is saying about U.S. politics. Also ahead, a live report from Fulton County as District Attorney Fannie Willis now insists Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants all be tried together as part of a sprawling Georgia election interference case. And the New York Jets will officially be without their star quarterback for the rest of the season.

What Aaron Rodgers' Achilles tendon tear could mean for the team and his Hall of Fame career. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. I was lost, I am found. I was the one. Zach's our quarterback. We've got a lot of faith in Zach. We're really excited about his opportunity. But we're rolling with Zach and excited for him and, like I said, this opportunity that he's going to get. I don't know why people are trying to put an obituary under our team name. Aaron is an unbelievable piece to this whole thing. going to get. I don't know why people are trying to put an obituary under our team name. You know,

Aaron is an unbelievable piece to this whole thing, and we love him, but I think there's 52 other guys in the locker room, plus the 16 practice squad guys that believe that we can do a hell of a lot of good things here. That is New York Jets head coach Robert Sala doing his best to give Zach Wilson an endorsement as the team's new starting quarterback. He was the old starting quarterback after an MRI yesterday confirmed Aaron Rodgers did sustain a season-ending tear to his left Achilles tendon. Rodgers, who was hurt while sacked on the Jets' fourth snap of Monday night's season opener, his fourth snap as a Jet, was placed on injured reserve and will need surgery to repair that Achilles. Coach Sala did not reveal a timetable for the procedure, but said he hopes the four-time NL MVP will remain with the team during his recovery. Joining us now, the host of Pablo Torre finds out on Metal Ark Media, Pablo Torre.

Pablo, great to see you. Great to be here. So, front page of the New York Post has the time and date that the Rogers era began and ended at the top there. They're good. 8-17 to 8-28. So what, 11 minutes that lasted. I mean, I was saying to you in the break, I'm a Giants fan, so no love lost, particularly for the Jets. But it's just gutting for that team, for that franchise, for those fans.

Willie, there is no comparable story to this. Jet fans everywhere, they are used to pain, they're used to tragedy, they become used to cosmic farce. But this is unlike anything else you've ever seen. They had a docuseries, Hard Knocks on HBO, in which he was hailed Aaron Rodgers as a savior. In as close to actually messianic tones as you could possibly imagine he runs out on the field carrying the American flag and this is the moment everything is different and it is also the moment right after in which everything is not only the same but worse I just can't think of anything that's as painful but as familiar at the same time for a Jet fan yeah and you look

at like their defense is really good a top five defense their special teams were great they had the walk-off touchdown from the rookie gibson yep and he was that piece like that it was complete the puzzle they had a legitimate shot this year yes and as much as that now all feels like taunting to jet fans they are the team that is most obviously a quarterback away. And they have everything there. And now the question is, what do you do when the guy that you paid all this money to, who is 39 years old, fully tears an ACL? And you got to figure out, OK, is it this season?

Is this all over now for us as an experiment? Do we just, I don't know, fold as a franchise? I don't know. Like, this is, oh my God. That's horrible. Do we just, I don't know, fold as a franchise? I don't know. Like, this is. Shut it down. That's horrible. It's bottom of the earth, like, you know, core of the earth stuff. You don't get lower than this at this point.

Come on. Come on. I can't believe this. Now, listen, I like the Jets. I'm a Falcons fan. So I guess maybe I understand pain better than most when it comes to NFL teams. But a couple of news flashes.

They beat the Buffalo Bills without Aaron Rodgers. They've got a great defense. They've got above average special teams. They've got a really good running back with Hall. And you know what? I'll say the name Brock Purdy. I mean, look

at Purdy, Mr. Irrelevant. Look what he did. We always look, and the New York Yankees and baseball are the perfect example. We always look at the big shining stars without realizing you build Super Bowl champions and World Series champions from the ground up. And you start with a great defense and great special teams. I'm just saying, I'm throwing some cold water on this funeral procession because the Jets did beat Josh Allen and the Bills on Monday night after adversity. I just feel like Robert Sala should hire Joe Scarborough to go talk to the team at this point.

Like, I don't know if anybody has been more optimistic in a monologue about this story than you just now. The bad news about the backup quarterback, though, Joe, is that it's Zach Wilson. And Zach Wilson is the guy that the aforementioned docuseries proclaimed as not good enough, which is why Aaron Rodgers needed to step in. And so they've run that specific experiment before last year. They did not make the playoffs. All of it feels like, again, the most Jets thing imaginable. I mean, I could show you clips, Jonathan or Mir, of all of my heroes in broadcasting, starting with Colin Coward, who said that Jalen Hurts was basically a loser. He was a horrible pick for the Eagles.

Shannon Sharp said the same thing. This guy will never get them to the Super Bowl. He'll never get them to the promised land. You know, there's some athletes and maybe Zach Wilson's one of them. Tell him he can't do it. And he's even more determined than ever to do it. And again, I want to say of all of those things I was saying, this isn't like hope for a better tomorrow. I'm talking about what happened on Monday night with the whole world watching. They beat the Bills. They beat Josh Allen. And they did it in a spectacular fashion. I wouldn't bury this Jets team yet. Well, I think on Monday, though, it was Josh Allen beat Josh Allen in addition to the Jets defense was terrific.

That's what Josh Allen did all last year. So, I mean, you know, if you got him, smoke him. The difference being, though, you're right, that players who have been criticized and given up by the media have rallied and found themselves. The difference with Zach Wilson is his own team gave up on him. And it's surprising, frankly, that he was still even on the roster to start the season. So, Pablo, if they do seek an alternate, another quarterback,

run through some options as to who they could find. And please, right now, knock down the Tom Brady rumors because I, as a Patriots fan, could not handle that. I just saw Tom Brady going LFG on the sideline at their first game. I believe his jersey is retired. I believe he is only now showing a little ankle to the Jets, like not the whole thing. Andrew Luck is in a forest somewhere.

His birthday was yesterday. Go send him a book. Go send him John Meacham's book. Try to motivate him to come back. Beyond that, Jacoby Brissett is realistic. Joe Flacco, when I say that name, Jet fans are like, really, we're going to do Joe Flacco again? You might have to do Joe Flacco again.

But it's slim pickings, man. Carson Wentz, who off of the discard pile, is better than the guy that you drafted in the top five in the NFL draft in Zach Wilson. I think you've got to turn to a veteran just because they were carrying two quarterbacks. And now one of them is hurt. And now you actually need a body. A warm body is the new standard for New York Jet quarterback after going to one of the greatest of all time. Yeah, the difference between Zach Wilson and those other guys Joe was talking about, he already had his shot.

No one had seen Jalen Hurts play in the NFL. Zach Wilson had his chance. So we'll see. Let's give him another chance. The defense is great. It is. Really good. Before we let you go, Pablo,

all anyone's talking about in baseball is the fight for last place in the LA, AL East, right? Oh, man. Last night, Yankees take two from the Red Sox, tying the Red Sox. Now, the Yankees and Red Sox, the two-storied franchises, tied for last place in the AL East. Your thoughts, your analysis. I am a Yankee fan, and there is no pride I take in this graphic

or the potential of this graphic being slightly different at the very bottom. This is pathetic. And I know, look, John, as a Red Sox guy, I think we can all agree that I am not into kink shaming enough to be told that there is some value in this. I just think it's embarrassing. I want this to be all over. Like, this is OK. Thanks. Thanks. This just feels humiliating that I'm supposed to appreciate this on some level. No, let the Orioles, let the Blue Jays and the Rays make me feel like I'm. Yeah, I'm the one taking ayahuasca now, not Aaron Rodgers. That's how I feel watching this graphic. I'm growing up in this city.

We both need a darkness retreat to get away from the standings. So I'm going to first of all say something that's going to outrage Red Sox Nation. I think I think the failure of the New York Yankees over the 21st century, and I'm dead serious, proved that Hein Blum may be on to something. We are building we are building a farm system. We had Duran, a young guy, explode. He's going to be a superstar. We have Encasis, a young player who's going to be a superstar for years to come. Team them up with Devers. And you can see the Red Sox in a few years doing exactly what the Orioles have done. So, Jonathan O'Meara, please, I know this is not what you want to hear.

But I want to go to the Yankees, though, and talk to our two Yankees fans and say, if you guys don't agree that the Yankees failure and their continued failure year after year after year proves that in baseball, no, I'm dead serious. If you want to win, you win like the Rays, you win like the Orioles. It is money ball. You build a farm team, you build it from the ground up. And if you think you can go out and buy superstars year after year and win World Series, look at the Yankees. It just doesn't happen that way. Totally agree. Totally agree. Long contracts to aging superstars, not the way to do it. When we started this whole thing back in the early mid-90s, it was Jeter and Rivera and all those guys, Posada and Pettit, who came up through the farm system. That's right.

And as I've said on this show through this terrible season, there is help coming. Now, the Martian is hurt. That really hurts. Jason Dominguez, he'll be up to the middle next year at least. But there are a lot of young guys in the system that may be coming to help Aaron Judge and the boys. Yeah, look, between the, I guess, the solace is, oh, look, the Mets spend more money than anybody else in the history of baseball, and they can't do it either. The idea that money, to Joe's point, does not quite buy happiness in baseball. I grew up thinking maybe the pockets were just deep enough. We can find

World Series trophies at the bottom. Now I'm realizing the Rays have it figured out, which is jarring, truly jarring as a, a Yankee exceptionalist. Yes. Well, let's hang in there.

Stay positive. And by the way, what, what, what final thought? I'm so sorry, Willie, but what about the Orioles?

I mean, yeah, you've got the Orioles. They're going to win 105 games this year. They've got eight. Jack Scarborough tells me this. I don't They're going to win 105 games this year. They've got eight. Jack Scarborough tells me this. I don't know any of this stuff. My 15-year-old son tells me this. They have eight of the top

100 prospects in baseball right now. The Orioles, if they don't trade them away, Willie, they're built for speed for the next five, six, seven years. Yeah, they look good. They look really good. Orioles for the future? The biggest bummer is that the Orioles are now a team I have to respect.

And here we are. The host of Pablo Torre finds out on Metal Arc Media. Pablo Torre. Pablo, great to see you, man. Thanks so much. Mika? I think Pablo should come back. We love Pablo.

He makes me want to watch the Jets in sports now. He's great. He's sort of a Roger Bennett of football, baseball. It would be work. Or maybe Roger is the Pablo of soccer. I don't know if he'd want to come back. He may not want to come back. But I will say, as a parting gift,

we're going to be giving Pablo the John Meacham collection. A show to inspire and delight for years to come. Okay, a lot to get to coming up on Morning Joe. Cities across the country are reporting major increases in crime. But our next guest says police can defeat it. Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton joins us straight ahead. We're back in two minutes. Oh, there's Barnacle.

Finally, he shows up. Okay, we'll be back. All right. A few minutes before the top of the hour, we have a follow up now on a discussion we were having on yesterday's show that of cities and states across the country reporting major increases in total crime. And by the way, it, of course, surged after COVID. It surged after 2020. Then it went down. And now we're seeing in Washington, D.C. Actually, The Washington Post yesterday reported that there was a sharp rise over the past year

in Washington, D.C., with homicide shootings and armed carjackings really rattling the capital of America. According to Metropolitan Police Department data, violent crime is up 39 percent this year, with homicide seeing a 28 percent increase and sexual abuse up 6 percent. Meanwhile, property crime is also seeing a major increase. Total theft up 27 percent, while motor vehicle theft is up 110 percent. But this is not just a Washington, D.C. problem. New York City saw total crime rising 22 percent between 2021 and 2022, while Los Angeles saw an 11 percent increase. And it's not just a big city problem. Birmingham, Alabama, saw total crime rates increase 13 percent last year. By the way, Jacksonville having a lot of problems, a really high crime place. And the two cities with the most crime this year, Monroe, Louisiana, and Bessemer, Alabama, right outside of Birmingham,

Saginaw, Michigan and Detroit, the cities with the fourth highest crime rate in the nation in 2021. Joining us now, former New York City police commissioner, now the executive chairman of Teneo Risk, Bill Bratton, also NBC News senior law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander. He's now former chief of police for Dekalb County, Georgia. And MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle and former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill here with us as well. So former prosecutor. So, Mr. Commissioner, thank you so much for being with us. You wrote an op-ed actually recently talking about how police can make a big difference in pushing back on these crime waves. Talk about it. How do they do it? Well, first off, it's with leadership, Joe. One of the problems at the moment is that the leadership of American policing has been changing dramatically, that the vast majority

of American police chiefs in the 75 largest cities in this country have turned over in the last couple of years. So we have, if you will, a major change in leadership. The good news is that leadership has come up through those difficult times. They are better educated. The problems they're facing are the problems that America is facing. We have a phenomenal amount of new types of crime. And we also have a, over the last several years, a, if you will, a reduction in willingness on the part of public and politicians to deal with disorder, as evidenced by the shoplifting problems we're having around the country, as evidenced by so many of the behaviors that are being reported. So America's gonna have to make up its mind what does it want to do in terms of dealing with

this problem. It can be dealt with. We've dealt with it in the past, in the 70s, in the 90s, as recently as 2018. Safest year in the history of New York City was 2018. That was only five years ago. Fortunately, it's starting to trend down again, but the challenge is going to be to keep it going down. That's where the leadership comes in. Commissioner, as you mentioned, you don't have to go far and go into a CVS or a Duane Reade and see everything's locked up. Almost everything's locked up. You've got to get somebody to come help you get things because of the shoplifting problem. And you're effectively asking somebody who works a register at Duane Reade to become a

police officer in some way and stop people from committing crimes. What are police officers that you talk to in New York City, but also across the country? What tools do they need to help put a stop to some of this? Well, the problem is many of the tools that we had that I had when I was a young cop in the 1970s have been taken away. New York City, for example. New York City emphasizes civil summonses for shoplifting, fare evasion, public urination. A civil summons, which the majority of people who get them don't show up, don't pay the fine, basically throw them away. We are no longer allowed to arrest for a lot of those offenses. Why not?

In other words, to give a criminal sentence. Ask our city council. Ask our legislature in Albany. This is true throughout America that we have. Senator Monaghan many years ago took a lot of criticism for a comment he made about defining social deviancy down, redefining norms of behavior down. We are excusing away so much of the behavior that if left unaddressed becomes more criminal, more serious over time. And that's what we're facing right now. We are not addressing the root causes of crime,

which are these minor crimes that are not being addressed. So, Cedric, from your point of view, where does the problem lie and how do we reverse this trend where we've seen it across the country and not just at high end? They get all the attention, not just at high end department stores where people just walk in, clean the place out while nobody does anything about it, but it's smaller shops, too, at bodegas in New York City and small business owners are being hurt by all of this. Where does the problem start and what do we do about it? Well, Commissioner Bratton is right. I certainly do agree with him. This is a leadership issue, but it's not just a leadership issue within the police department itself that is going through a generational transition, if you will, where you have a lot of older chiefs that are going out,

you have younger chiefs that are coming up. They don't have the support they oftentimes have once had because every two, four, eight years, you have a change in leadership of elected officials who have a different philosophy of you are responding to the will of the community, what is best around public safety. The challenge here is really, really much more broad than we have time on this show to talk about. But I will say this. I think one of the important things that any community at this very moment needs to consider that is seeing this trend, this uptick, if you will, in crime that is just so brazen is that there's going to have to be some real action taken where there's concrete consequences that will result in a lot of this violent activity that we see that are taking, you know, that we see that's taking place, Willie.

Yeah, you know, Claire McGaskill, by the way, it's the top of the hour. You're watching Morning Joe. We're going to be talking about the Republican Party bringing impeachment charges or at least an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. The impact on the Biden administration and on Republican Party and in the election next year. Also, David Ignatius is going to be with us. He wrote an op ed that certainly has Washington, D.C. talking this morning, official Washington all talking, saying that Joe Biden has done a great job and now it's time for him and Kamala Harris to step down and open up the process. We're going to have that discussion very soon. We're talking right now, though, about crime waves in Washington,

D.C. and other parts of the country and what's what's happening and what's gone wrong over the past couple of years. I'm so glad that Commissioner Brett brought up the fact that in 2018, crime was at an all time low in New York City. I remember reading the New York Times article that said they had to go back to 1950s to try to estimate, estimate what year may have been as safe in New York City as 2018. Now they lock up toothpaste in Duane Reade stores. Claire, I think this is a thing that for most Americans is just so shocking. Small business owners having things thrown through their glass windows and people just going in, stealing stuff. People walking in to drugstores, just taking things out.

Nordstrom's being chased out of major cities because there are all these smash and grabs. People running into stores, stealing tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise and nobody stopping them. And a story I heard yesterday, small business owners leaving central Philadelphia and one grocery store closing up because the owner said people would just walk in the store, they would grab donuts, they would pour coffee, and then they would leave the store without paying. And it happened. They would go in, they would get milk, they would get bread, they would get whatever. And the pull is, and it's just like what Cedric said, there has to be consequences. The poll quote from The Washington Post yesterday that really struck me is there don't seem to be

any consequences. Claire, how did we fall so far so fast where people can just rob stores and nobody seems to give a damn? Well, as usual, public policy takes wide swings that usually miss. And what happened was in a reaction to some police misconduct, blatant and awful police misconduct, and some latent and apparent racism within the ranks of police forces around the country, people overreacted and said, what we've got to do is defang the police. In fact, that horrible phrase that was coined for a while, defund the police, which was a stupid, stupid phrase and never should have been uttered by anybody. What really has to happen now is we've got to modulate this and come back to a situation

where there are consequences for low-level crime, that you can't walk in and steal and know that nothing's going to happen. But we also have to get back to realizing the problem here is trust. And this is a mixed message on crime rates, Joe. I know this segment this morning is emphasizing increases, but there's many major cities across America that are seeing a downtick in homicides. And one of the reasons that's occurring in some of these cities is what the commissioner knows very well. Some of them are still focused on building trust in these communities so we can get witnesses. The main reason homicide rates spike is because nobody wants to come forward and testify. Nobody wants to be that guy or that woman

who points the finger at somebody who has committed a violent crime in their community. They want to keep their head down and hope that they're not a victim. So that's why community policing and community prosecutions are so important. And that's what we did back in the 90s when I was the elected DA in Kansas City. We had a record homicide rate. We went to work putting people in neighborhoods so the people in the neighborhoods got to know them and began to trust them that they were not out to just hassle their son on the way to work if he had the nerve to drive through a white neighborhood. So there is there is a whole lot of work that has to be done here. As as our guest said, it's way too complicated to get into in one segment. But I do think it's important to remember these crime stats aren't one monolithic issue here. It depends on where you are in the country. And Florida has, you know, I don't want anybody to blame New York. New York still has a much lower crime rate than many southern states,

urban centers in the country. And it is still a very safe place to be. And I, you know, I've been here for a week and I feel really safe walking around New York. You're walking on different streets than I am. No, well, I mean, I've been in Times Square. I've been, you know, I'm sure there's parts of New York that are not good. That's true in every urban center. But I think it's really dangerous just to paint with a broad brush here. I'm sure there's parts of New York that are not good. That's true in every urban center. But I think it's really dangerous just to paint with a broad brush here. Well, you know, so let's not paint with a broad brush. I've said very clearly over the past several days that in many southern cities in Florida, for instance, Jacksonville has a higher

crime rate than New York City. It certainly does. But I also know people walking around New York City that have worked there for 30 years say they don't feel safe. People in D.C. D.C. is getting much worse. Exponentially worse. I've been in and out of D.C. now for 30, 35 years. D.C. feels like it did in the early 1990s. It's out of control. I don't care what people say on their little blogs or little progressive blogs. D.C. is out of control. And they've got a city council that's that is perfectly fine with that.