Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/20/22

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Trump attorneys don't want to disclose which Mar-a-Lago documents he claims to have declassified

Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, September 20th. You can look at a live picture of the United States Capitol. I'm Willie Geist, still here in London as Joe and Mika make their way back home. A lot to cover today, including some new developments on the Trump documents case. The former president's legal team already bumping heads with that special master. The first hearing isn't even until this afternoon. What Trump's lawyers say they do not want to disclose to the judge overseeing the Justice Department's review of those documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. Plus, a Texas sheriff launches a criminal investigation into the move by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to fly 48 migrants from San Antonio to Martha's Vineyard.

The sheriff saying it appears the migrants were, quote, lured under false pretenses. Well, it's the very latest on that. And later this hour, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy will be our guest after President Biden's claim on 60 Minutes that the pandemic is over. With us this morning, the host of Way Too Early and White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist at The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, and U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kaye. Good morning to all of you. Katty, since we went off the air together outside

Buckingham Palace yesterday where you are, some extraordinary scenes here in London at that committal service at Windsor Castle, just west of the city here for the Queen as she was lowered into that vault. And then the private ceremony last night for the family. Some of the headlines here in London this morning. Look at the morning papers. Until we meet again in the mirror and a poignant shot, a lot of people have noted today, Caddy, of the corgis saying goodbye to the Queen. It's always tough on the dogs to say goodbye. I thought actually that ceremony at St. George's Chapel in Windsor was almost the most

moving bit of the day. And it seemed at the very end of that, just before the committal of the coffin, that somehow as they were singing the anthem, God Save the King, and the camera panned to King Charles III, it almost felt like in that moment it hit him that his mother had gone. He is now the monarch and the country turns its eyes to him. But it was an extraordinary day, wasn't it, Willie? The pomp and the pageantry, but also these moments of emotion, of course, for a family that is just a family in some ways grieving the loss of their grandmother and matriarch. It was. That was an extraordinary scene at St. George's yesterday and this morning.

Back to normal here in the city of London with King Charles III, now the monarch of this United Kingdom. Back home in the United States, attorneys for both the Justice Department and former President Donald Trump are set to appear this afternoon at a hearing before the court-appointed special master in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. The hearing will take place at a federal courthouse in Brooklyn before Judge Raymond Deary, where he currently serves as a senior U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of New York. Typically, this kind of procedural hearing establishes filing and practices and timetables for the review of documents in the case.

But just prior to today's hearing, Trump's attorney stated in a filing last night they do not want to disclose to Judge Deary which Mar-a-Lago documents they assert the former president may or may not have declassified. Pushing back against Judge Deary's apparent proposal, they submit, quote, specific information regarding declassification to him in the course of his review. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports one-time White House lawyer Eric Hirschman warned Trump late last year he could get into legal trouble if he did not return the government documents he took with him when he left office. That is according to three people familiar with the matter.

The precise date of the meeting is not clear, and Hirschman was not working for Trump at the time. According to the report from Maggie Haberman, Trump thanked Hirschman for the discussion, but was noncommittal about whether he would return those documents. Hirschman, as you'll remember, has testified before the January 6th committee and has been subpoenaed in the Justice Department investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Let's bring in senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, Kyle Cheney, and former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuaid. Good morning to you both. Kyle, I'll start with you. What is the significance here of Hirschman, according to this report

from Maggie Haberman saying he did warn Donald Trump that he should not take those documents from the White House, that he might in fact be violating the law? Well, I mean, if that's the case, that's sort of the origin point of almost everything here, which is that Donald Trump knew he had in his head the knowledge that what he was doing was potentially wrong and a foul of the law. And so a lot of this, all the questions here about his state of mind, what he knows about what was in the documents, about whether he had the right to take them. And lawyers, almost like the January 6th investigation, lawyers telling him, don't do X, Y, and Z. And then he goes and does it anyway. That tells you a lot about what prosecutors, what criminal investigators may be looking at in terms of state of mind. So, Barbara McQuaid, tell us about the legal ramifications of this, that this is the presidency.

Like yet another example, the former president was told like, hey, you can't be doing this. This is trouble. And we know that he and his team, his lawyers seemingly did not cooperate and then misrepresented and frankly, sometimes flat out lied to the FBI and the National Archives about whether or not they had those documents. So talk to us about how this could impact the DOJ's ongoing probe. Well, it's excellent evidence of one of the essential elements of the offense when it comes to the Espionage Act and also the retention of government records, which is willfulness. Did you do this knowing that it was against the law? And this could be strong evidence of that. One tricky aspect of this, I imagine he would assert attorney-client privilege as to these statements and say that the privilege belongs to him and cannot be

waived by a lawyer like Eric Hirschman. I imagine there'd be some litigation, but I think ultimately the government would prevail there because the client is not Donald Trump, the man. It is the president of the United States, and it's actually in the best interest of the office and of the nation for the government to retain these documents. So I think the government would win that battle there, but you can bet that Donald Trump will assert that.

I also think it could be relevant to the obstruction of justice charges, which is, I think, going to come down to, again, was it the lawyers who made these misrepresentations about whether they had the documents or were they directed to do so by Donald Trump? All of those are going to require some inquiry within the privilege. But again, to the extent that privilege belongs to the government, to the presidency, and not to Donald Trump, the no longer president, I think the government prevails on that issue. Barbara, later today, Donald Trump's lawyers will be appearing in federal district court in Brooklyn before Judge Raymond Deary, a longtime federal district court judge who has the reputation of being a no-nonsense jurist, and they are there in line with longtime Trump legal philosophy to delay every action ever filed against him for 40 years. What do you think the reaction will be from the federal court today about this

appeal to delay, delay, delay? Yeah, this filing that the Trump team made last night is really like the prototype. You know, what's the first item on the checklist? Make sure you ask for delay. And sure enough, there it is. You know, the government proposes one schedule. Even the judge's own draft plan proposes another. And the first thing they say out of the gate is, whoa, whoa, whoa, the schedule you propose is way too fast. And, you know, the only person bound by this schedule is the judge himself. And so what they're suggesting is you don't need to have this all wrapped up by October. Let's take our time. Let's make it realistic. Let's make sure it can be thorough. Let's extend this into November. So that's the

first part of it. I don't think the judge is going to entertain that because he's the one who's got to do the work. And if he says, I think I can do it within this time period, then I think he's going to be able to make the decision there. He'll hear them, but I doubt he will accept that timeline. The other thing, of course, is that they also say, we don't want to have to assert which documents we are claiming we've declassified. And I think this is a real tell that this is a lie, that there's no declassification and that the lawyers want to delay that answer because they know they don't have an answer to that question. If they make that same misrepresentation in court that Donald Trump has been making on social media, they stand to be disbarred. And so they are never going to make that claim. They want to delay it as long

as possible because ultimately they're not going to be able to make it. Kyle, you're writing about the special master in your latest piece for Politico in which you write, quote, Donald Trump put the Justice Department on its heels courtesy of a single federal judge who gave him the benefit of almost every doubt as he fought against the FBI's probe of documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate, talking about Judge Cannon there. Now, his team of lawyers is preparing to test whether they can replicate their fortune in front of a potentially more skeptical audience. And the first indication offered in a filing on Monday night suggests a tougher road ahead. Kyle, it's so interesting as you write in the piece that this is a special

master in Judge Deary proposed by the Trump team, agreed to by the Trump team, but so far no indications, nor does his history. Would that have given any indication that he's going to be lenient on this former president? Right. I mean, look, this is the situation Donald Trump drew up. He got this these sort of dream rulings from Judge Cannon that that kind of shocked the legal world left, right, not whichever side you were on. I don't think anyone expected it to go as far as it did. But he drew exactly the hand he wanted here. And now you see in that filing where he's complaining already, not just about the schedule, about whether he has to reveal new information, what he declassified, about all other issues as well. He's already quibbling. It shows you that even though he drew this great hand from Judge Cannon, it may not fly in front of both

the special master, Deary, and as well as the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is set to take up the Justice Department's push against Cannon's order. So while he had a good run there with Judge Cannon, it's now moved out of her courtroom, and that's going to be a very different story. So, Kyle, for people who have been trying to follow this and put it in some context,

significance in the larger Justice Department investigation, what happens at 2 o'clock today at this hearing? And then what happens from there? What happens afterward? Sure. So Deary, the special master, will essentially lay out some of the ground rules. They'll discuss what they want, how the probe is going to work. I think they'll talk about, you know, how to handle these documents that are marked classified. The Justice Department doesn't want the special master to see at all, and certainly doesn't want Trump's lawyers to see. And that would probably be the most important part of what comes out of today's two o'clock hearings, how they will immediately handle those 100 documents that the government thinks

have national security secrets in them. Senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, Kyle Cheney, former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuaid, thank you both. And we will go live to that courthouse later on Morning Joe. Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming shared new details yesterday about what she says she experienced on January 6th. Speaking at a conference in Washington, Cheney recounted a conversation she had with an unnamed Republican colleague shortly before the violence broke out, who she says was going along reluctantly with Donald Trump's plan to block the certification of election results. I, you know, in the cloakroom on January 6th, before the attack happened, there were so

many who wanted to show they were objecting that they'd set up these signup sheets in the cloak happened. There were so many who wanted to show they were objecting that they'd set up these sign-up sheets in the cloakroom. And as I was sitting there, a member came in and he signed his name on each one of the state's sheets. And then he said under his breath, the things we do for the orange Jesus. And I thought, you know, you're taking an act that is unconstitutional. Gene, it'd be funny if it weren't so awful what happened after he signed those papers and talked about Orange Jesus. But it is just so it's so telling about the state of the Republican Party that they know they know how dangerous and how bad it is. And they still sign those papers and sign along with whatever Donald Trump tells them to do. Exactly. They they all know all except the most extreme wingnuts know perfectly well what they're doing and they know it's wrong. But they do it for Orange Jesus. They

do it because Donald Trump is they they see Donald Trump as the master of the Republican base. And they if he gets mad at them, their career is potentially probably over. And so they do it out of that fear. It is it is stunning how craven Republicans have been in the face of Donald Trump. And look where it's gotten us. You know, if the people who knew that what they were doing on January 6th was wrong, had done the right thing, we wouldn't be in this mess. But they went along with Trump. And that's where the Republican Party is and likely will stay until it gets wiped out in an election.

Yeah, certainly hard to find a moment that better encapsulates Trump's hold over the party than that one. Mike Barnacle, we should note, Liz Cheney talking about efforts to reform the Electoral Count Act to prevent something like January 6th from happening again, making clear the vice president's role, just ceremonial. House and Senate working on bills, likely not coming up until after the midterms, however, because of the politics involved. But I want to also ask you one other thing about Liz Cheney. She, of course, was defeated soundly in her primary this summer. And yet here she is still trying to pass legislation to safeguard the American electoral process. And next week, once again, preside over a January 6th hearing, doing her duty to the end, putting patriotism over party.

Do you suppose Liz Cheney is the only member of the Republican Party who watched a portion or anything at all of former President Trump's rally in Ohio Saturday, the QAnon rally? Do you suppose she's the only Republican who watched that? That litany of danger that proceeded in an Ohio summer night? I mean, it was unbelievable just to watch the clips of it. And, Cady, I don't know whether you got the opportunity. You were overseas, obviously. But the rally that occurred that I'm talking about was frightening, to put it frankly, frightening to watch a group of people clearly devoted acolytes to something that very few understand, following a man who knows exactly what he's doing, but stands at the precipice of presenting an even further

threat to our democracy. And thus far, from what I've read, what I've heard, what I've seen, not a single important member of the Republican Party in either the House or the Senate has said anything about what occurred. Yeah, I mean, Donald Trump's tactics when it comes to things like this are always so interesting because he goes right up to the line of something he could be accused of but stops just short of it so you have his campaign team saying well that song that was being played that was not actually the q anon anthem it was just it happens to be a song that sounds rather similar to it and the sign that they were putting up with their one finger you know follow the one um they disavow that too as some kind of cultish

like salute but you know q anon is a they disavow that too, as some kind of cultish-like salute. But, you know, QAnon is a seriously dangerous conspiracy that has people committing acts of violence around the country. And President Trump in the past has refused to disavow the organization, even though he was pressed on it when he was in the White House. And here he seems to be in Ohio, flirting with it even more, aligning himself with it even more closely, but in this way that he has of being able to deny that that's what he's doing. I don't know if Liz Cheney was the only one to watch that. I mean, there's even a debate about whether Donald Trump was actually invited to J.D.

Vance's rally at all or whether he just showed up of his own accord. I mean, whatever the case is, you know, Republicans have to deal with Donald Trump, as Liz Cheney suggested on January the 6th. They are struggling to know how to deal with him, but they don't know how to stand up to him. And they still don't know how to stand up to him. And they still, I guess, feel that he is more of an electoral asset than he is an electoral liability. Well, then they fear his voters, of course, the man they call Orange Jesus. We'll have much more on Donald Trump's rally and that special master hearing coming up just a bit. Also ahead, most of Puerto Rico this morning still without

power after Hurricane Fiona dumped more than two feet of rain on the island. We'll have the latest on the recovery efforts there. Plus, could Florida Governor Ron DeSantis face legal trouble after dozens of migrants were flown by him to Martha's Vineyard last week? A new criminal investigation opened now by a sheriff in Texas. Also ahead in the race for Maryland governor, new polling shows Wes Moore with a double digit lead over his Republican opponent. Wes will be our guest later this morning. Plus, we'll be joined by NATO's secretary general as the war in Ukraine is set to dominate the U.N. General Assembly this week, with President Biden scheduled to speak there tomorrow. You're watching Morning Joe.

We'll be right back. And they come for a real nice girlfriend. So I fight to see me every once in a while. When I think back about those days, all I can do is sit and smile. That's when sport was a sport. Nearly all of Puerto Rico is without power this morning after the Category 2 storm, Hurricane Fiona, tore through the island on Sunday and Monday, packing speeds of 110 miles per hour and dropping up to 30 inches of rain in some parts. At least three people have died as 90% of the territory remains without power. An update out just hours ago from the National Hurricane Center warned of ongoing threats to life due to catastrophic flooding there. Fiona's strength triggering an island-wide blackout, which energy providers say could

take days to completely fix. We know it could be longer from experience. Puerto Rico's electricity grid has been fragile since 2017, when the strongest storm in the island's history, Hurricane Maria, devastated 80 percent of the island's agriculture, destroyed the power grid completely, and killed nearly 3,000 people. Forecasters believe Fiona will strengthen to at least a Category 3 storm as it nears Bermuda later this week. Today, the storm expected to pass over eastern parts of the islands of Turks and Caicos. We'll go live to Puerto Rico in just a bit. New data

from the government shows a record number of migrants already have traveled to the southern border this fiscal year. More than two million people have had encounters with border officials since October of last year. The government's fiscal year ends this month, meaning thousands more will be added to that total. Last month, more than 158,000 people tried to cross the southern border. A third of them are from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, which is a 175% increase for that group compared to last August. The number of migrants from Mexico and Northern Central America is down 43% in that same timeframe, but the headline crossing 2 million

border arrests this fiscal year. Meanwhile, a Texas sheriff is launching a criminal investigation into Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' decision to send migrants to Martha's Vineyard last week. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said his office is investigating whether the migrants were victims of crimes.

The sheriff said he believes a Venezuelan migrant was paid a, quote, bird dog fee to recruit 50 migrants from a resource center in San Antonio. He said the migrants then were lured under false pretenses, in his words, with promises of work and a better life. The sheriff said it was clear the migrants were, quote, exploited and hoodwinked into making the trip for what he called political posturing. Meanwhile, in an interview with Fox News last night, DeSantis again defended his decision to ship the migrants to Martha's Vineyard, saying they signed consent forms to go. So, Gene Robinson, we heard from the governor and from his office that there were consent forms signed, that they agreed to go.

Some decided not to go. But you have the sheriff in Bexar County telling a completely different story about the information those migrants had and what the people of Martha's Vineyard knew what was coming or did not know what was coming. Yeah, I don't think this has worked out the way Ron DeSantis intended it to. If you're explaining, you're losing. And he's doing a lot of explaining, trying to convince people that he was somehow justified in doing what he did, which was outrageous. And you know, back home in Florida, especially in South Florida, this is not playing the way he had hoped it would, because a lot of these migrants were Venezuelan migrants who were fleeing

repression and economic devastation that was brought on Venezuela by the brutal Maduro regime. They are seeking asylum legally in this country. And there are a lot of Venezuelans that have moved into South Florida who think this is wrong. The way these people were treated by DeSantis is wrong. And there are a lot of Cuban immigrants in South Florida who also are not wild about the precedent he seems to be setting.

So not working out politically quite the way he had hoped. Meanwhile, your heart has to go out to the people and, you know, who were the victims of the scam. And fortunately, they did get help and the sort of aid they needed in Martha's Vineyard and then in Massachusetts. And hopefully they'll be OK. Yeah, certainly the numbers at the southern border speak for themselves. Biden administration knows that's a real problem, Willie. But it does seem like this political stunt is indeed backfiring. First of all, any efforts to suggest that the blue staters wouldn't lend a helping hand to the migrants has been proven wrong, as those in Martha's Vineyard, New York City, Washington, D.C.,

other places have all stepped up to help the migrants in need. And it does seem like it's a competition between two Republican governors, DeSantis and Abbott of Texas, who both might be eyeing the White House in 2024 to come up with a more exploitative and frankly, downright cruel stunt. And there's certainly been a lot of backlash on both sides of the aisle. A lot of Republicans in those independents as well, seemingly repulsed by this here treating people, people as political pawns. And now we have a sheriff in Texas, deep red state of Texas, opening an investigation. Certainly doesn't think this is a political stunt worth making, Willie.

And competing in one sense, but in this case, it appears working together. Governors Abbott and DeSantis, these migrants were from Texas, but flown by Florida's governor to Martha's Vineyard. Coming up here, we will have a look at some of the stories making headlines in papers across the country. Also ahead, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy joins us. We'll ask him about President Biden's comments on 60 Minutes that the pandemic is over. What does that mean for all of you? Morning Joe's coming right back. Yeah Desert sky Jiminy Hey, so this isn't matching up with this, and I'm not sure which one's right.

Can you just hunt down the original for me? Yes, me too. All right. Hey, Kev, what were you saying before about the paperwork? Me doing now. Go. Stop worry. Kevin, do you feel okay? Me feel good. Body strong.

Sleep big last night. Yeah, I think we should get him to the hospital. Yeah, all right, Kev, why don't you come with us? No, no, guys. He's fine. He's always been like that. No, he hasn't. I mean, he's gotten worse over the years. He's making a statement.

It's an ironic comment on our expectations of him. A funhouse image of our model of Kevin. You keep thinking that. Me mechanic not speak English, but he know what me mean when me say car no go, and we best friend. So me think why waste time say lot word when few word do trick. And that is brevity, I guess. Kevin, an underrated character on The Office, by the way.

Joining us now, the co-founders of Axios, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. They're out with a new book today titled Smart Brevity, The Power of Saying More with Less. Guys, great to see you both. Congratulations on the book. Jim, you can comment on your favorite scenes and characters from The Office if you'd like, but I'd also like to hear about the book. Boy, is brevity in short supply these days, if you'll forgive the pun. We're bombarded with information, texts, emails, social media all the time. People like to talk a lot sometimes on TV, it seems like.

I don't know. So tell me about the book and why you think it's an important moment from it. First off, your producers are genius and always very funny. It's an awesome scene from The Office. And this book was really made for people in the office, for people in the classroom. And what we've learned from creating Politico and creating Axios is how to get people to pay attention to what matters. And a couple years ago, we had a lot of companies, we had the NBA and others come to us and ask them if we could help them learn how to get people internally or their customers to pay attention to what they

cared about. So we created this side company called Axios HQ, but it's built on this concept of smart brevity. How do you get people to pay attention to what matters? You think about how much the world has changed and how we're just diluged, inundated with information. And nobody's really taught anyone if people have shorter attention spans and less time, how do you actually get people to pay attention to what matters? And that's what this book does. It allows us to share what we've benefited from seeing in the data, in the science, so that if you are a teacher, you are a student, you are a manager, aspiring leader, you can become a much more effective and efficient communicator.

And Mike, when your newsletter pops into the box a couple of times a day, always click, you get the headline, then you dig in a little bit, smart brevity, it's your mantra there at Axios. But how do you then get into the depth so it's not just that sort of passing cocktail party knowledge? Yeah, thank you, Willie. A key point is short, not shallow. So what we have discovered is that a lot of times the words are because we're insecure. People are faking it on everything. And one of the ways that we fake it is too many words. And when you try by step how to isolate your idea and just say it. That's the magic. I came up as a political reporter in newspapers.

We were paid to write words. The more words that we wrote, the better play we got for our stories. The more words you wrote, maybe you were going to get a prize. It was all about the reporter or the publisher. And what we're saying with smart brevity is whether you are an intern trying to talk to your boss, whether you're someone who leads a team, whether you're a teacher, that think about the audience. Think about the person who's receiving it. What is the one thing that you want them to remember? Because Willie, you think about any show, any

podcast, any sermon, any article, any piece of content. If we come away with that, with one good idea, one thing to remember, that's a win. And Smart Gravity leans into that. It says, yes, gravity is real. People have best started to remember one thing we're going to say. Here's how to say it sharply, clearly, muscularly, memorably. Hey, Jim, let's make this quick. You list five things to make people a more effective communicator. What are they? What are the five things? I think there's a bunch of things you can do.

One is just sit down and distill your thought into what is the one thing you hope to get people to stick? Like that one thing will clarify how you write. Then write it in as few words as possible. Write it in your own voice. That is the biggest mistake communicators make. For some reason, whenever we get behind a keyboard or a typewriter, all of a sudden we like get starch in our shirt and we start to throw out SAT words or acronyms, speak like a human and then be respectful of people's time. Understand that you're not the audience, they're the audience and that the average person spends at best 18 to 20 seconds on a piece of content. So you have to grab them by the lapel, say this is what's important, this is why it matters, make sure you have a hierarchy

of the most important information at the top. And then they'll want to listen to you. They'll want to hear from you. It's so interesting. Stuart Butterfield, I was watching him on stage not long ago, and he's the CEO of Slack. And he was saying any business, any business leader, manager probably spends 70 percent of their time communicating. And yet nobody teaches you how to communicate better. And that's what we hope to do with this book, give you very simple, executable steps to be a much better communicator so you can be a better person at work, a better person at school, a better teacher, a better leader of your community. So, Mike, I'll go to you.

You guys are preaching to the choir when you talk to me in Barnacle. You're talking to old newspaper columns as I write to 750 words, right? And so I know how long it's going to be. It's got to get to the point. But I'm curious. So what is then the role of longer, more in-depth communication in the modern age. You're right that people are so distracted. There's so many words.

At the same time, sometimes there are very complicated things that need a lot of words to tell, long, in-depth stories in a newspaper, for example. And some corporate memos probably have to be like that, too, because they're talking about really, really big stuff. How do you approach that? Yeah, Gene, the key of smart brevity, the magic there is that nine times out of 10, the best experience for a reader is an efficient experience. We spend our time on the wrong words. If I'm communicating to you in an update, a memo, a newsletter, a news story, if I'm communicating to you sharply and efficiently, I'm giving you back time to read that one piece of content in 10 that's worthy of your time. We give you time to listen to

that podcast or read that New Yorker article or read the Atlantic article that is worth your time. But most of our time we spend on things that could be said very quickly. And as the communicator, we have to fight that. So we lean into gravity, recognize that we've got that 20 seconds. In that 20 seconds, I'm going to grab you. And what we tell our journalists, and good advice for anybody, whether you're a day one employee, whether you're a student, whether you're a leader, whether you're an aspiring leader, think before you type. Sharpen your idea. Know what it is. Like lots and lots of those long

pieces that you're talking about are disguising foggy thinking, a foggy strategy. Jim and our co-author Roy Schwartz, co-founder of Axios, we've discovered this in business that very often when someone is saying a lot, they don't know exactly what they think that we should do or exactly what the strategy is. So think, then type, and that's the way to have power. It's very rarely the person who talks the most who has the most power. So say less, be heard. Good advice. Clear and concise. So, Jim VandeHei, let's get into one of your smart brief scoops this morning, and that is Mitch McConnell behind closed doors speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday. And according to you all, expressing some more confidence now in his hopes for the Senate. He

had been, of course, publicly lamenting the quality of some of the candidates running in those important races. What did he say yesterday? Yeah, he's basically telling business leaders that he is a little more optimistic than he would have been two months ago. Make no mistake about it. Like in private, he dogs a lot of the candidates that they ended up getting in the states that he thinks they believe undoubtedly should be able to win. When you look at Pennsylvania or Georgia or Ohio or Arizona, he felt like, give me an electable candidate. I'm going to be the majority leader. What they are seeing, he's now getting behind some of these candidates in Arizona and other places that he was skeptical of before. There's a new poll out by the Atlanta Journal Constitution that

makes the Georgia race, which they were really worried about, look at least tight and potentially very winnable. They feel like they'll have enough money in these states to be competitive. But, you know, he's been frustrated for a decade. Like there's so many times where he felt like he could have had either the majority or could have had a bigger majority if they would just stop electing people that really appeal to the base and not to the broader electorate. So he's kind of trying to do the best he can with the team he has. And when you're talking to business leaders at the chamber, they have cash, right? You want to make sure you're trying to get them optimistic. So they're giving you more money for that final run. But, you know, this is going to be a close race that

probably in his mind shouldn't be close. They should have been able to win the majority. And now if you look at the map, he has reason to be pessimistic. Maybe a little bit of reason to be more optimistic today than a month ago, but not much. And he's going to hold his nose and fundraise for a bunch of those candidates he's been criticizing because he does, of course, want to win back the Senate. The new book is titled Smart Brevity, the power of saying more with less. Axios co-founders are good friends, Jim Vande Hei and Mike Allen. Great to see you. Congratulations on the book. Time now for a look at the morning papers. The Atlanta Journal Constitution covers the latest on the state's two most watched races leading up to November. A new AJC poll shows the state's Senate race is deadlocked, with Republican Herschel Walker leading Senator Raphael Warnock by 2 percent within the margin of error there. That same poll also shows incumbent Governor Brian Kemp with an eight-point lead over Democrat Stacey Abrams.

In Wisconsin, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reports Governor Ron DeSantis is predicting Wisconsin will pass Florida-style laws on elections if Republican Tim Michaels is elected governor in November. DeSantis made those comments at an event in Green Bay over the weekend during the Republican primary race. Michaels focused on the 2020 presidential election, but recently has been campaigning on the issues instead of crime and schools. In Rhode Island, the Westerly Sun reports federal authorities have seized more than 600,000 counterfeit Adderall pills containing methamphetamine. One man has agreed to plead guilty to possession with intent to distribute the fake pills

that are valued at more than four and a half million dollars. This is believed to be the largest seizure of methamphetamine-laced fake Adderall pills in the United States. To Connecticut now, where the Middletown Press leads with a story about a food insecurity crisis in the state. New figures show 17 percent of adults in Connecticut have been unable to afford food at some point in the past year. That is the highest total for the state in the last five years. It comes amid a rise in inflation and the expiration of federal benefits. In Mississippi, the Clarion-Ledger reports the capital city of Jackson finally now is seeing water clear of contaminants, thank goodness. A

series of independent tests by the paper mirror the state's results and show no bacteria. The results reinforce the announcement from Governor Tate Reeves last Thursday that Jackson's boil water notice could, in fact, be lifted. Coming up on Morning Joe, a check in with the nation's doctor after President Biden said on 60 Minutes, quote, the pandemic is over. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy joins us straight ahead. Plus, Democratic nominee for Maryland governor and rising star in that party, Wes Moore, joins us to talk about his campaign. And later, we will go live to the Brooklyn courthouse where attorneys for the Department of Justice and Donald Trump are set to appear before the special master in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

Morning Joe is coming right back. It is 649 in the morning at the White House, 1149 here in London. President Biden is facing pushback, including from some of his own top health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, after saying the COVID-19 pandemic is over. The president made that comment during an interview on 60 Minutes. Here's what President Biden said, followed by new remarks from Dr. Fauci. The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. It's what the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it's changing. But we are not where we need to be if we're going to be able

to, quote, live with the virus, because we know we're not going to eradicate it. We only did that with one virus, which is smallpox. And that was very different because smallpox doesn't change from year to year or decade to decade or even from century to century. Joining us now, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. Dr. Murthy, great to have you with us this morning. So two very different views there of the state of the pandemic. Is the pandemic over? Well, it's good to see you as well. I actually don't think they're all that different. What the president's reflecting is the fact that we've made tremendous progress against COVID-19. We're in a very different place now than we were at the beginning of this pandemic with significantly lower death rates. We have all of our children

back in school. We have people able to go back to work, families and friends able to see each other. But he also said, you know, we have more work, families and friends able to see each other. But he also said, you know, we have more work to do on COVID. And that's right. And that's what Dr. Fauci and others have expressed as well. You know, we're losing about 400 people a day on average for this virus. We need to get that number lower. We have people who are struggling with long COVID. We need to understand more about long COVID and how to prevent it. And we also thankfully have a new updated vaccine that's available that can extend people's protection, strengthen their protection against the worst outcomes of COVID. We need people to take that vaccine. So there is more work to do,

no doubt. But we are in a much better place than we were at the beginning of this pandemic. Well, of course, that goes without saying. And I mean, people effectively are treating it like like it's over here in London, where I am. I could count on one hand probably the number of masks I've seen in the last couple of days. New York is closer to that as well. But when the president of the United States says in no uncertain terms and says twice the pandemic is over, what should people watching this morning take from that? I think people should take is that they should feel encouraged about the progress that we've made. I feel optimistic about how far we've come. You know, we may forget just what it was like two years ago when schools were shut down, when people were not going to work, when

we were worried about our own health and safety and the safety of those around us. But right now, if you are updated on your vaccines and and if you are a high-risk individual who uses a medication like Paxlovid if you get COVID-19, your chances of dying from COVID are remarkably low. And that is hard-fought progress. But here's one thing I am worried about, Willie. In order to sustain this progress and to continue to advance, in order to develop the next generation of vaccines, especially mucosal vaccines that will help to block transmission even more effectively, we need to sustain our investment in COVID.

So what we can do is look at this like an on and off switch, like COVID has disappeared. You know, we've made tremendous progress, but we still have work to do that. It's going to require ongoing investment from Congress, ongoing investment in our country so that we can continue to make sure everybody in our country has the protection that they need from COVID-19. Dr. Murthy, I appreciate that you're trying to thread the needle here between slightly different points of view. But one of the things that doctors around the world have said right from the very beginning is that clarity of messaging when it comes to a pandemic is absolutely essential. And whether you listen to the president or whether you listen to Dr. Fauci, the message is not clear coming out of the White House at the moment. And the risks are still high. You still have the potential for variants around the world. You still have countries where people are not vaccinated and they are

traveling now and the potential that they could bring new variants. So why take the risk from the president's point of view of even saying at all that this is over? Because some people will hear that and say, I don't need to get a booster if a booster comes around. I don't need to get vaccinated if I'm not already vaccinated. Well, my job as Surgeon General is to tell people where we are and to talk to them about what they need to do. And the message here is clear, which is that while we should be encouraged about the progress that we have made, we still have to be vigilant and make sure we're taking steps to remain protected. And that means staying up to date on your vaccines,

knowing where to go if you do get sick to get Paxlovid. And we have testers, treat sites now available. People can go to their own doctor and get treatments for COVID-19 like Paxlovid. We want people to know what they can do. But it's also so important. This is something I learned when I was Surgeon General working on the Ebola and Zika crises, that when things get better, we can't, as a country, turn our attention away entirely. We've got to recognize that to stay in a good place and to continue making progress, we've got to keep our foot on the accelerator. We've got to not only continue to invest in better treatments, better vaccines, but we also have to look at the broader spectrum of issues that have been made worse by COVID. One of those, in fact,

is mental health. This is an issue that I have been focused on as Surgeon General because I look at what's happened in our country during COVID, but also prior to COVID. And I see a mental health crisis, particularly among our kids, that has exploded. That's why I issued a Surgeon General's Advisory on Youth Mental Health in December 2021. It's why, as I wrote recently, there's more we need to do at a policy, programmatic, and individual level to make sure our kids are okay. So, Dr. Murthy, I just want to go, you just started to lead us there, the idea of not letting your guard down when things are looking a little bit better. And we are, compared to other parts of the pandemic, in a little bit of a lull right now. But part of the reason why the president's comments

raised such a stir is for months, health officials, including those employed by the U.S. government, have warned us about an impending fall or winter surge of the virus. Are you seeing any early signs of that? How should Americans be prepared? Should we be bracing ourselves for cases to really take off again? Well, I'm glad you asked, Jonathan. Thankfully, right now, we are seeing cases continue to decline. Hospitalizations are coming down as well. That's good news. But look, if anything we've learned over the last two years, it's that we've got to be vigilant and we've got to be prepared, right? This is a time for preparation, not for panic. We've seen in the last two winters that we have seen a surge that's

usually begun around late November or early December. But the best way to protect for that is to make sure that you are up to date with your vaccines. If you are 12 and up and you're two months out from your last shot, you are eligible to get the updated vaccine. And that's what we want people to do. The other thing you can do is pair this with your flu shot. The flu season is also around the corner. And so we want people to get their flu shot. Flu shots should be available very, very soon. And you can, good news is you can go and get both shots at the same time,

get it out of the way and know that you have stronger protection against both COVID and the flu. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, thanks so much for your time this morning. We'll be talking to you much more as we move through this. Thank you. Coming up on Morning Joe, we'll have the latest developments in the special master case connected to the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. Trump's legal team made last minute filings ahead of what is supposed to be just a procedural hearing this afternoon. We'll have expert analysis from the lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation, plus new reporting on a warning the former president received

from former White House lawyer Eric Hirschman about taking those documents. Morning Joe is back in a moment.