Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/20/23

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

Attorney General Garland set to defend DOJ at House hearing

I think all of you know I'm not a fan of government shutdowns. I've seen a few of them over the years. They never have produced a policy change. And they've always been a loser for Republicans politically. At Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, without warning for House Republicans, and Mika, it's, you know, what we said yesterday here. I have been through government shutdown or two. Yes, you have. You never get what you want, first of all, because it's a democracy, right? But secondly, it always cuts against Republicans in favor. It always hurts

Republicans at the end of the day. It did for us. It did for the other government shutdowns. So I think that's why we're now seeing House Republicans looking at the clown caucus as people are starting to call them in the Republican Party saying, listen, we're going to get this done with you guys or we're going to work with the Democrats to get it done. And so we are going to see, I think, some movement on this. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is struggling to round up the votes to avoid a government shutdown and faces an uphill battle to unite his party. Meanwhile, House Republicans set a date for their impeachment inquiry into President Biden. We'll have new details on that effort and quote, I am not the president's

lawyer. You see, actually, Merrick Garland has to explain that to Trump Republicans because Trump Republicans actually thought that Barr and the rest of those attorneys were Trump's personal attorney. Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to speak those words this morning when he faces Republicans on the Hill who accuse him of weaponizing the Justice Department. NBC's Ken Delaney is standing by with a first look at Garland's testimony. I think that's precious, Willie. weaponizing the Justice Department when they got behind and still are behind a guy who went to his attorney general two weeks before the presidential election in 2020 and demanded that Bill Barr arrest Joe Biden and Joe Biden's family two weeks before the presidential election. And when he didn't, it was the beginning of the end for Barr. Yeah, this is an annual hearing that Merrick Garland, the attorney general, will go before the Judiciary Committee. Usually it's sort of a routine thing. It's oversight. But we know what

this is going to be. We know that they're going to sit and ask him about Hunter Biden, about the appointment of the special counsel, which, by the way, the attorney general Garland did to separate himself to sort of disabuse, hopefully, those Republicans of any appearance that he was running this on behalf of Joe Biden. He appoints a special counsel who is a Trump appointed U.S. attorney on and on it goes, trying to do the right thing to show this group of Republicans that, yes, there is a wall between the executive branch and the judicial branch. I have a sneaking suspicion that will not suffice for these members who will probably use this hearing to grandstand and yell at the attorney general of the United States.

Well, yeah, I mean, they're yelling appoint a special counsel. He points to a special counsel and they yell that he appointed the special counsel to lay things. It's exhausting. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Wednesday, September 20th. And along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bear Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, attorney and contributing columnist at The Washington Post, George Conway is with us this morning and congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, George Conway, is with us this morning. And congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, Jackie L. Maney. She's an MSNBC contributor. Good to have you all on board this morning. So, Jonathan O'Meara, should I ask, did the Red Sox win last night? It's the first

time I went to bed not knowing. You didn't look. When I went to bed, they were winning. When I woke up this morning, they had lost. Go team! That's what you ask. Those are our boys, Joe. Those are our boys. Well, I think you just neatly summed up, and I'm serious, our entire season. Good hitting,

go to the bullpen, lose games. Move on 2023 football. Yeah. All right. You guys can look at this. I'll give you more to commiserate about. House Republicans continue to fight amongst themselves over two critical bills to fund the military and full government on the government funding front. A vote planned for yesterday was scrapped after roughly a dozen Republicans said they would not support it. And some Freedom Caucus members are threatening to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy. If their demands are not met, they are very important. You're so

important. There are fewer. Why don't you try it? Then 11 days left before government funding expires and a full shutdown begins. Regarding the military spending bill, five Republicans joined all Democrats to kill a vote just to debate the defense funding measure. All five cited spending as their main reason for voting no. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and some Republican members who represent Biden won districts aired their frustrations yesterday. You're asking me a lot of questions. I go ask the phone backwards, please. Why are they voting against being? Think about what they're voting against. They're voting against even bringing the bill up to have a discussion about it, to vote on it.

If you're opposed to the bill, vote against the bill at the end. You've got more than 170 amendments. You could change it if you don't like it. But the idea that you vote against a rule to even bring it up, that makes sense to me. I'm disappointed. I am pissed off. Our inability to bring this package to a floor vote because of these five individuals who decided to put their personal agendas ahead of the basic requirements of our troops is extremely upsetting to us. It is a bad

look to not be able to get a rule through the floor. And when you do that, what you've effectively done is hand the keys of the majority over to the minority. This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity. The idea that we're going to shut the government down when we don't control the Senate, we don't control the White House. These people can't define a win. They don't know how to take yes for an answer. It's a clown show. You keep running lunatics, you're going to be in this position. Amen.

Don't know how to take yes for an answer. Don't know how to take yes for an answer. Don't know how to take yes for an answer. And again, you see this once in a while. I mean, I'll tell you, when I was in Congress, we were blessed to actually have people that wanted to balance the budget. So we balanced the budget four years in a row. Only time it's happened in a century. Here, though, George Conway, this is this is unlike that group that

balanced the budget, paid down the debt, did a lot of other things. This group doesn't really care about balancing budgets. They don't really care about policy. They've shown us that time and time again. It's all gesturing. So we're going to try to shut down the government. Why? Just because we want to gesture. We want to gesture to somebody. We really don't care about policy. We don't care about balancing the budgets. We don't care about the troops. We don't care about military readiness. So we're going to shut down the government. We're not going to even bring. We're going to say no. We're not going to even bring the bill up, the funding bill up for a vote. We won't let it get to the floor. Meanwhile, in the Senate, you got Tommy Tuberville and the

senators doing everything they can to gut military readiness to what a long, long distance there is between the Republicans we were and what we have now in the age of Trump. Absolutely. These these guys don't care about anything other than just getting on TV and being able to perform and, you know, have people send the money and contributions and and to get airtime. And they clearly don't have any policy positions that matter to them because if they were trying to do that, they'd try to work towards some compromise where they'd get some of what they want, even though it's just not possible to get all of it. It's all about performance. It's all about they don't even care about having a majority. They're willing to sacrifice those moderate Republicans that you just showed on air here, that they're

willing to basically jettison them because who needs them? They don't need a majority anyway because they're not governing. All they want to do is throw sand in the gears. And if the car keeps on going, they'll just say, oh, what should it's a terrible car. It's a terrible car anyway. So they just they're just nihilists. Jackie, we should point out for people listening in the car, all the voices you just heard, they're critical of those Republicans were Republican voices, as George said, moderates like Mike Lawler in New York, a swing district who won narrowly. We'll have a tough race ahead of them again next year as well. We should also point out that these votes that were thwarted by this small group of Republicans yesterday are just procedural votes.

They're just votes to open debate. These aren't even the big votes. So how is Kevin McCarthy? How is the speaker who clearly is frustrated, as you heard there? How does he clear this hurdle with such a narrow majority in the House? It's a really good question, Willie. And I think that the fact that these procedural votes fail obviously does not bode well for McCarthy, who's only a week and a half away from a potential government shutdown. He needs to get this resolved by October 1st. There are several lawmakers who have said that they'd be open to passing a continuing resolution if McCarthy actually promised a $1.47 billion top line discretionary spending for all of these various appropriations bills. There's 11 left

that need to be hashed out. But these handful of lawmakers who have continued to vote against these initial appropriations bills have said that they haven't heard that from McCarthy. They haven't heard him following through on his promise to cut the budget at the end of the day. But, you know, there are still this thought that even if McCarthy does agree to and sort of willingly continues to be held hostage to this very small vocal minority who is willing, who are willing to cut, shut down the government, people like Andy Biggs yesterday, who told me that his constituents realized that there was a difference between a government shutdown and a government pause, and that his constituents care more about cutting the budget than they did about allowing the government to keep running. There are several members who are going to vote no, no matter what,

which puts McCarthy in an untenable situation, which is why I think that there is concern growing, especially amongst McCarthy's allies, that the only outcome and option ahead here is that a motion to vacate the speaker from McCarthy potentially to lose his job is really the process that's unfolding at the moment. So I think it's important that we all just stop for one second here and remind each other this is a clown show. And these clowns, along with Donald Trump, over Donald Trump's four years in the White House, spent more money over four years than any Congress ever spent in the history of this country or any other country. They accumulated eight trillion. These people who are now saying we're going to

go to the barricades and shut down the government because he won't cut space. These are the people that were part of Donald Trump adding eight point two trillion dollars to the national debt over four years, over four years. Reagan only one point eight six trillion over eight years. Over four years. Reagan, only $1.86 trillion over eight years. Bush, $1.55 trillion over four years. Trump, over four years, Jonathan Lemire, contributed more to the national debt than the first 42 presidents combined through 2000 from 1789 to 2000. Those 42 presidents accumulated less debt than Donald Trump and these same Republicans, these same Republicans time and time again.

And by the way, I'm just going to repeat it again. It's not like we didn't warn them. It's not like I wasn't tweeting something out every other day. It's not like I wasn't going to the Hill talking to them. It's not like we weren't saying here, they need to stop being reckless. They can't be conservative only when a Democrat's in the White House. But a Democrat's in the White House. So suddenly they've remembered that they like balanced budgets.

It's just an absolute, it's an absolute joke. And the fact is, Kevin McCarthy doesn't need these clowns. You can just work with the Democrats because that's what the Republican moderate said yesterday in the Republican caucus meeting, saying to the clowns, hey, if you guys want to shut down the government so you can raise more money on social media, because again, that's what this is about. They don't give a damn if they have a majority next year or not. In fact, if they don't have a majority, they can be even crazier on social media, even crazier on the House floor and raise more money. You look at the craziest people in the House

Republican caucus that are destroying their chances of a majority right now. They're the people who make more money in the minority because they can say crazier things on the House floor and on social media. That's all this is about, gesturing for money. Yeah, it's predictable Republican hypocrisy when it comes to spending and the debt. We should note $8.2 trillion there for Donald Trump, you know, and the only portion of that is pandemic spending. And President Biden even factoring the pandemic spending of his administration well behind Trump's pace. And this, of course, was a deal on spending. The debt ceiling deal was struck earlier this year. And we have seen these hard right Republicans

decide to make that the hill they're going to die on, that that's their reason for this anger. So they can indeed appear on podcasts, put out campaign ads, raise money. To your point, yes, when you're in the minority, you get to have a bigger flamethrower. So maybe they're already thinking about that for next year. But we're now just days away from a government shutdown. The White House is preparing like this is going to happen. They have all along suspected that there would be some sort of brinksmanship here. They wondered if McCarthy offering an impeachment inquiry to the far right, that might be enough to get their votes here. That's clearly not the case. The impeachment inquiry is moving forward and these right wingers have not moved off their demands at all. The White

House is fairly confident that the political blowback here will fall pretty squarely on the Republicans, that they'll take the blame. They'll be viewed as the clown party. They'll be held responsible for a government shutdown, even just a brief one. But of course, there's anxiety to that, too, Willie, because this is any kind of shutdown could rattle voters who are already feeling anxious about the economy. That could already that could play into those concerns. So that's a worry for a president seeking reelection when the economy is strength. The economy is always paramount. And federal employees get furloughed. Credit ratings agencies are already looking at all this. And George, when you look at this group of five holding all this up, Ralph Norman is one of them.

This is a lot of these guys, the insurrection crowd as well. Remember, he texted Mark Meadows and said, martial law, have the president invoke martial law. But to Joe's point, Ralph Norman says this brings me no joy to have to do this, but I'm not going to stand by and watch us have runaway government spending as he participated over four years prior in runaway government spending. No, it's just amazing. I mean, he has a chart showed that Donald Trump raised increased the federal debt by the same amount by almost as amount the amount that Obama raised it for eight years, eight years, really twice the twice the fun. It's just incredible. All right. So but wait, there's more. Just Committee spokesperson says the panel will discuss,

quote, constitutional and legal questions surrounding the president's involvement in corruption and abuse of public office. Committee chair James Comer also says he intends to issue a subpoena. I hope we find something. I hope we do. I wonder if he's going to bring Arnold the pig. So he intends to issue a subpoena as early as this week for the bank records of President Biden's son and brother. So far, Republicans have presented no evidence showing any wrongdoing by the president himself. Wall Street Journal editorial page even said that. So in a statement yesterday, the White House blasted the planned hearing, writing that for Republicans, quote, baseless personal attacks on President Biden are more important than preventing a government shutdown and the pain it would inflict on American families. And I just you know, if you take the quote of what they plan to do, you literally could apply it to Donald Trump a thousand times over, which makes the hypocrisy of this even worse. But then again, they don't care about that. Because this is actually, you could apply it to Trump. This, you can apply to maybe people around Biden, but you can't apply it to the president, but they do. They just have to do it. As we

mentioned, Attorney General Merrick Garland will testify before the House Judiciary Committee today. The Republican-led committee is expected to grill the attorney general at the hearing entitled Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice. It is scheduled to start this morning at 10 a.m. Garland is expected to stress DOJ's objectivity despite the GOP's impeachment inquiry and anger over the special counsel's probe of Hunter Biden. An excerpt of the attorney general's opening statement reads in part, quote, our job is not to take orders from the president, from Congress or from anyone else about who or what to criminally investigate. As the president himself has said, and I reaffirm here today,

I am not the president's lawyer. I will also add that I am not Congress's prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people. How shocking that must be to Donald Trump and his supporters in Congress. Well, they still don't get it. Let's bring in a B.C. News justice and intelligence correspondent, Ken Delaney, and who's following this. What more can we expect today? Good morning, Mika and Joe. Yeah, these are some of Merrick Garland's most aggressive comments yet

pushing back against the idea that his Justice Department is politicized. Now, it's Merrick Garland. So we're grading on a curve here. He's a pretty subdued figure, you know, former federal judge. But, you know, they've been working on this for weeks over the Justice Department, prepping him for this hearing because they do take it seriously. To them, this is a big lie, equivalent to the notion that the 2020 election was stolen. The idea that somehow there are political operatives over at the Justice Department pulling the strings and orchestrating these investigations of Donald Trump or going easy on Hunter Biden. There's just no evidence to support that.

And in fact, Merrick Garland has appointed special counsels to the chagrin of the White House. In fact, a lot of people joke over the DOJ, you know, political appointees that they won't ever be working for the Biden administration. There's a bit of gallows humor for any other part of the Biden administration. So but in addition to pushing back on that notion, Merrick Garland also plans to talk specifically about the kind of rhetoric that House Republicans have been using, which he and others believe is dangerous because there have been threats. And we've reported on this to individual members of the Justice Department and the FBI, line prosecutors, line FBI agents.

Their families have been threatened. They've had to get security protection. And so, you know, he says, look, all of us at the DOJ recognize that the work comes with public scrutiny, criticism and legitimate oversight. But he says singling out individual career public servants who are just doing their jobs, he's going to say, is dangerous, particularly at a time of increased threats to the safety of public servants and their families. And he goes on to say or will say, we will not be intimidated. We'll do our jobs free from outside interference and we will not back down from defending our democracy. So this is something they've worked on. They've given considerable thought here. They decided it's time for the attorney general to push back against these bogus Republican charges and this environment that's

really creating dangers to their own employees, guys. Well, and of course, after the Mar-a-Lago search, you actually had reports of Trump and his allies trying to get the names of the FBI agents to put them under pressure. Jackie, I've got to say, this all has to be a real shock to Donald Trump, who went around telling everybody the Department of Justice was his Department of Justice, that he had control over the Department of Justice. And he thought that Barr was his lawyer. And of course, Barr often, despite what he's saying now, Barr often acted like he was Donald Trump's lawyer. So Garland's comments, though very normal to anybody else that's ever sat in the White House, must be a shock to Donald Trump and Trump supporters because Trump really did believe that the Department of Justice should act under his direction and arrest his political opponents. Yeah, Joe, and Garland has sought to be the anti-bar. And a lot of his allies even will say that that has come

to a detriment of his job performance, that his, you know, ambition to distance himself and to be as apolitical as possible has actually hurt some of his investigations and some of the Justice Department morale at a time when the Justice Department is clearly under assault from, you know, in an active bid by Trump and the House GOP conference and the Republican Party. But you'll hear today, Democrats try to really reinforce this idea that David Weiss was a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney. He was someone who was Barr's guy. He was expected to investigate Hunter Biden very aggressively. That investigation lasted through to Biden, obviously. That plea deal fell apart. And you're going to see, I think, Merrick Garland show that he tried to keep his

arm's length as possible from this, which, again, some of his allies will say that that potentially caused some confusion in terms of the communication between him and Weiss and the authority he was given. But the bottom line that you're going to hear from from Democrats and from Merrick Garland as well is that that David Weiss did have full authority to pursue whatever charges he wanted and obviously now still does, as we've already seen. An indictment was released last week from him indicting Hunter Biden on felony charges. But this this I want to underscore what Ken said about rhetoric here and sort of the what this does to the line attorneys, line agents and investigators, all of the civil servants and the people who make the Justice Department run every day. This is something that has come through in a lot of the transcripts that we've recently seen from people who have been disputing a lot of the whistleblower accounts,

the IRS whistleblower accounts in particular from Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, these two people who really were sort of the cause of a lot of the skepticism of the now special counsel David Weiss to begin with, but this fear that people are unable to do their jobs because of the threat environment and the rhetoric from Republicans. And you're going to see Merrick Garland, I think, really try to defend his rank and file today. So, Ken, it sounds like Merrick Garland will be one part high school civics lesson telling this the panel of Republicans, this isn't how it works. I'm not an attorney for President Biden. And another part, defense of the Justice Department.

Jackie just mentioned the name Gary Shapley. He's the IRS investigator who testified that he had been told to sort of slow walk the investigation that he couldn't go too far because it was the president's son. FBI agents who were in that same meeting with contemporaneous notes said, no, that's not the way that was communicated to us. And importantly, Mr. Weiss himself, the special counsel, the Trump appointed U.S. attorney said, no, that didn't happen, actually. But we can expect that to be a big focus of Republicans on the committee yesterday. That's right, Willie. And look. Go ahead. Go ahead, Ken. To be clear, look, the IRS agents who have come forward are credible figures. They're not like those previous FBI, alleged

FBI whistleblowers that this committee brought forward who had all kinds of problems in their past. These are real investigators who have come forward with credible allegations that the case, the investigation of Hunter Biden wasn't handled the way they wish it had been. By the way, that happens in almost every federal investigation. If you talk to people, prosecutors and agents get in disputes. And what we've seen, as you said, is FBI agents have come forward who are also working on the case and have told the committee that, no, they didn't see any political interference. They didn't see anything inappropriate by Weiss. But just to underscore what Jackie said, their names have been seized upon by the very Republicans who were interviewing them in transcribed interviews and put out.

And they've been the subject of threats. And one of the prosecutors in the Hunter Biden matter, I'm not going to name her again because she's been the subject of threats, had to go to the U.S. Marshals to seek security protection because, you know, her name was put out as someone who went easy supposedly on Hunter Biden. So this is so not only is there really no evidence to support the idea at the end of the day that there was political interference in the Hunter Biden investigation, those very charges are causing danger to line employees at the FBI and Justice Department. So, George, on a related matter, let's let's talk about the criminal investigations into Hunter Biden right now. Just get your analysis of the charge that have been filed. Would there's some suggestion that taxes, some sort of tax charge could still come. There's been hints from Republicans that may be something on foreign lobbying as well that we should stress. None of

that has actually been charged. But do you think what has happened so far was fair? Do you think that what's happening to Hunter Biden would happen to other Americans were their last name not Biden? Well, I mean, I think the Bidens, that Hunter Biden does have a case that he is being treated unfairly. On the other hand, if you are connected to a public figure in some fashion, you're more likely to be subjected to prosecutorial and other scrutiny than other people. It's just a risk. It's just a risk of being in the public eye. And I think that's partly what's happened here. I think the ultimate thing that matters is, I mean, if he's innocent or if these crimes aren't that serious, he's going to, he'll win in court or he'll get a light sentence. I mean, you know, he wasn't going to get,

I don't think he was going to get prison in the first place. But the ultimate test that we should ask here is what would Donald Trump have done if his son had gotten indicted for anything? Any of his kids have begun to the attorney general would have been gone. And the other thing about this is it doesn't matter what Garland does to the Republicans. It doesn't matter. If you appoint a special counsel, you should have done it earlier. Or you appointed one to fix the case. Or if you don't appoint a special counsel, how can you be handling the case? You're not independent. If you indict Hunter Biden, the charges weren't big, weren't strong, weren't heavy enough.

You should have done it earlier. And if you don't do it, well, obviously you're doing it to protect him. And so none of it and nothing Garland will say will matter to these Republicans because they're just looking for something. You know, they'll go from one thing to a completely inconsistent thing. The next moment, it doesn't matter to them. It's all about, as we were talking about earlier with the with the with the budget and everything. It's just all about making noise. George Conway and Jackie Alimany, thank you both very much for being on this morning and NBC's Candelani. And thank you as well. We appreciate your reporting this morning and coming up. President Biden yesterday urged the world to stand with Ukraine during his speech at the United Nations. We'll show you the new call to action as he tries to counter war fatigue at home and abroad. Plus, Donald Trump said he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.

Now President Zelensky is daring him to share his peace plan publicly. Also ahead, quote, the rage of a toddler caucus on Capitol Hill. Why our next guest says that not even a Biden impeachment inquiry can soothe Republicans out of a government shutdown. Also, some other stories we're covering this morning. As you look at the Capitol, Rudy Giuliani sued by his own lawyer for not paying his bills. The BBC has had enough of Russell Brand reports that he may be facing criminal investigations in London. That and much more as you look beautiful sunrise over New York City. Putin said, quote, We surely hear that Mr. Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis.

We cannot help but feel happy about it. What do you make of that? Do you welcome his support? Well, I like that he said that, because that means what I'm saying is right. I would get him into a room. I'd get Zelensky into a room. Then I'd bring them together, and I'd have a deal worked out. I would—

He can publicly share his idea now, not to waste time, not to lose people. Yes, and say that my formula is to stop the war and stop all this tragedy and stop Russian aggression. And he said how he see it, how to push Russians from our land. Otherwise, he is not, I mean, presenting the global idea of peace. So the idea is how to take the part of our territory and to give Putin. That is not the peace formula. That is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticizing Donald Trump for promising to swiftly end the Russian invasion without offering, of course, any specifics on how he would do that. He'd just get him in a room. Zelensky will address the U.N. Security Council here in New York today.

And he'll be in Washington tomorrow where he's expected to meet with President Biden at the White House. Let's bring in President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, and MSNBC contributor, our good friend, Mike Barnicle. Guys, good morning. Let's start with yesterday before we look at what's happening today, Richard. President Biden's address focused on Ukraine yesterday to the General Assembly. Zelensky spoke as well. What is the tone, the tenor of what's happening here in New York this week? It's interesting. What President did yesterday was a shift in words. Instead of talking about this is a battle between democracies and authoritarian systems, he talked about this is about world order.

This is about you should not be able to invade other countries with impunity. This ought to be a message that resonates because nobody wants to be invaded. But I actually think most countries in the world have already made their decisions about this war. And like the Indias, they've said, OK, look, we're going to stay close to the Russians because that's where we get our arms from. That's where we get our cheap oil from. So I don't think there was a lot of changing of minds yesterday, even though what the president said was right and what President Zelensky said was right. So Zelensky today will speak to the U.N. Security Council, potentially Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Is there a chance these two guys are face to face today? There's a chance, but it doesn't matter. They're not it's

not a negotiating session. And basically, if Sergei Lavrov is there, he's going to just exude contempt and so forth. So the U.N. is not a serious negotiating forum. At best, it's a talk shop. And we're really what we're seeing this week is how sidelined it is. Whenever you have the great powers on opposite sides of an issue, in this case, China and Russia on one side, the United States, France and Britain on the other, the U.N. is essentially just as gridlocked as the streets in New York. Richard, you once worked for a Republican president in the Republican administration, it seems like a long time ago, both ideologically as well as in general terms of time. In listening to President Zelensky yesterday, did anything occur to you having to do with the fact that it used to be that the

Republican Party specifically, Democrats as well, but the Republican Party specifically would be saying, yes, yes, go get Russia. You're way behind you 100 percent. And yet now the fracture within the Republican Party leads to a very real possibility that there'd be a shutdown or a diminution of funding for Ukraine to continue this war. And the Republican Party used to be the serious party of national security, of American leadership in the world. Not so much anymore. There's a kind of romance with Russia that is just bizarre. Obviously, Donald Trump participates in it. But think about it. Three decades ago, what was the big issue in the world? Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. President George Herbert Walker Bush was in office. Under the Republicans, the United States led the world, including the U.N., to resist and reverse this aggression.

Once again, the same principle is at stake. Republicans have changed over the last couple of decades. They no longer believe in American leadership in many cases, clearly are not as principled in terms of standing up for the rule of law. You know, Richard, I want us to step back and look at the UN General Assembly this week in the absence of China and Russia, obviously, two rivals who consider the United States their enemies. I remember Dr. Brzezinski back in the 1980s writing that the Soviets, they had no interest in contributing to the world order because they were inferior to the United States economically, militarily, politically and in every other way. So for them, disruption was their best play. Disruption was their only play. Disruption cynically was a logical play. It was always fine because that's who the Russians were. That's who the Soviets were. But now we have the Chinese doing the same thing, a sagging economy, feeling like they're on their back heel with the United States finally doing the Asia pivot. What is the impact with both China and Russia

deciding to de-link and disengage in the building out of the world order, which, of course, China was participating in from 1979, where they normalized relations up until a few years ago. You've got it right. It's a really fragmented world. So we talk about international community. There isn't an international community. We talk about world order. There really isn't world order. So you have China

having its own views clearly about Taiwan. Russia here has these romantic dreams of incorporating Ukraine into mother Russia. So principles of world order take a distant backseat to national priorities for both these countries, same as Iran, same as North Korea. We've reached a moment in the world in just three decades, if you think about it, from the end of the Cold War. Things have really deteriorated badly. There's much less consensus, much less will and ability to work together, no longer agreement on what ought to be the basic principles or the rules of the road. So let me ask you, what is our best play looking forward right now and moving forward for five years? Nothing is ever static. I understand you've got China and Russia

on one side going their own way. You've got the United States and the EU and our allies all across the world, the richest nations in the world trying to build up a world order that whether you're talking about, you know, for the economy or for the environment, et cetera, et cetera. We talk a lot about these non-aligned players. What what do we do to influence and to move India, to influence and to move Saudi Arabia, to influence and to move other countries who are more non-aligned, like a UAE, who considers themselves to be sort of in the middle of everything? What do we do to move these countries more to our direction? Because if you ask them, they'll say, well, the United States hasn't always been a great ally.

The first thing, Joe, is maintain really close partnerships with the countries we know we can count on. The NATO allies in Europe, Japan, Australia, South Korea and so forth. That's going to be the basis. How are we doing on that? How are we doing on that front? I actually think pretty well. I think that's one of the unsung accomplishments of the United States. The Indias, the Saudi Arabias, the others, they're up for grabs. They're not going to affiliate or align themselves with us. They're transactional.

They're hedging their bets. They're going to try to play us off against Russia and China, depending upon their narrow national interest. That's the future. So the basis of American foreign policy are the countries in Europe and the so-called Indo-Pacific out in Asia we can count on. We know we're not going to have anything cooperative with Russia or China. And then each time we're going to have it's almost like a pickup game. You show up and you choose and you decide who in the schoolyard you're going to have. Every issue that comes up, we're going to have a different constellation of countries working with us. We just know, though, we're not going to be able to count on with any confidence the Saudis,

the Indians, the Brazilians and others. They're going to basically keep their options open. Do the Saudis consider themselves to be in an adversarial position with the United States, or are they just hoping that Donald Trump's elected president? I think they prefer Donald Trump in the White House. I wouldn't use the word adversarial. I would think they want to keep a lot of independence or autonomy. One of the interesting things to watch is this U.S.-Saudi negotiation. We want the Saudis to normalize with Israel. Saudis want a security arrangement from us, even a treaty. They want a nuclear program we're going to support. What are they prepared to basically do to reassure us? What are they doing for us? I'm sorry. How much money do we give them a year? And what do they do for us? What do they do for us? What do they do for us? That's the question

Congress ought to be asking. If we're going to hitch our wagon to the Saudis, what are we hitching our wagon to? What are they going to do in the region? What do we get out of it? That's the right question to ask. Because you look what they've been doing. You look at what they're doing with oil prices. You look at what, you know, it's one thing if a country is doing what's in their best interest. But, you know, they've made some moves on oil that actually other people in the region disagreed with. Other countries in the region disagreed with. And it seemed focused only on hurting the United States or the political prospects of Joe Biden. Things about oil, also their human rights treatment, whether it's, you know, Mr. Khashoggi

or what they do with people at the border. So I think Congress has the obligation to ask some very tough questions. Normally, we only have alliances with countries whose social and political systems are similar to ours with democracies. Saudi Arabia would be something qualitatively different. Do we want to go down that path? What kind of conditions or stipulations would we set? That's where Congress has got to ask some tough questions. Richard Haass, thank you very much for your insights this morning, as always. And coming up next on Morning Joe, while President Biden was

calling for global cooperation, Donald Trump was calling for domestic chaos with comments about indicting Democrats if he wins in 2024. New York Times correspondent Peter Baker and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser joins us next to discuss the war of words, plus the BBC banning Russell Brand's content, saying that it falls below public expectations. We'll discuss the growing fallout surrounding the comedian as he faces sexual assault accusations. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. And look at that shot of New York City. Oh, my God. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. And then I followed it in I watched myself crawling out As I was crawling in

Now, if I win, and let's say somebody comes along on the Democrat side and they're looking very strong, I can call my attorney general, I guess. Am I allowed to call him and say, you have to indict him on something, just find anything? Well, you know, that's actually what he already did. We have learned again. That's what he did two weeks before the election, called Barr, told Barr he should indict Joe Biden and Biden's family. But that was Donald Trump saying if he gets elected president, he's going to just start

indicting Democrats for no reason. Let's bring in right now, staff writer at The New Yorker, Susan Glasser and chief White House correspondent, The New York Times, Peter Baker. They're co-authors of the 2022 book, The Divider, Trump in the White House, 2017 to 2021, which is now available in paperback. I don't want to, Susan, I don't want to catastrophize. I'm always telling people they need to stay calm. I do think, though, based upon reading your book and looking at what Donald Trump has been saying since 2021, it looks like four more years of him could be constitutionally devastating, catastrophic. He's talking about just going out and arresting people

for no reason. He actually called for my arrest back during his presidency. He's talking about terminating the Constitution. This is amped up considerably, has it not, even since he's left office? Yeah, Joe, I totally agree. I think that, you know, the two key words, like you said, one of them is definitely terminate, as in terminate the Constitution. The other thing is retribution and revenge. And Trump, as you saw in that clip there, he has made it clear again and again and again, this is the playbook he'll be turning to. It's not only, you know, there's a lot of talk from Republicans on Capitol Hill about weaponizing the government, that essentially is Donald Trump's approach to the White House, which is the idea that it would become a personal instrument of retribution.

He actually said in another recent interview, why should they launch an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden? Because they impeached me. It wouldn't be happening if it hadn't happened to me. And I think that this extreme personalization of power is the way in which Donald Trump is most an outlier from any president of the United States we can ever imagine. He truly sees no division between his own kind of strongman aspirations and those for the country. So, Peter, beyond weaponizing potentially the Department of Justice to go after his political opponents, which in itself was just a breathtaking breach of norms and the rule of law,

we know that the Trump team, were he to be reelected, are plotting to really gut the entire federal bureaucracy. Tell us about that, how they plan to just reshape Washington, reshape the federal government, and turn it into an instrument that Donald Trump could just use at his whim. Yeah, that's exactly right. And one of the things about this book that Susan and I wrote, The Divider, is we thought it was a work of history, but it turns out to be a work of prologue. If you want to know what he's going to do in his second term, look at what he tried to do in his first term, but couldn't get away with, including gutting the civil service, including turning, you know, positions in the government that are meant to be apolitical into, you know, political appointees, people who only do his bidding. You will not see in a second term the kinds of people in the first term who restrained him. People like John Kelly or Jim Mattis or H.R. McMaster, people like that will

not be there in a second term. Instead, you'll see the people who want to help him attack the deep state, as he likes to put it, who will help to reshape the federal government in his image to make more agencies that are currently quasi-independent or autonomous report directly to him to put more power in the hands of the Oval Office directly in his hands. He wouldn't appreciate it if Joe Biden did it because he doesn't think that Joe Biden should be president. But if he's in there, he wants all power to rest in his hands. And he's mapped out a plan for how to do that. And Susan, to that point, and that you all write about in the book, we should take Donald Trump at his word now when he says things like we just heard him say about prosecuting his opponents, because there was a sense, I think, when he was running last time that, well, he may be elected, but all of our institutions will hold and people

will put guardrails around him. As Peter just said, those people aren't going to be there next time. And if John Eastman or Rudy Giuliani is attorney general in his second term, they're going to carry out his orders, along with perhaps a speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in the House. So what are the fears in Washington about a potential second term for Donald Trump? Yeah, I think really that's a really important point is imagine Donald Trump without the guardrails. And that was the view in Washington in January of 2017. It was a legitimate view. It turned out to be in many ways a wrong view. If anything, I think studying what happened, especially at the end of Trump's term in office, you come away with the perception, accomplishing perhaps the unthinkable

thing of seeking to overturn the election. So, for example, impeachment, essentially a dead letter when it comes to being a meaningful constraint on the president. And of course, that was the Constitution's basic idea for how to constrain a rogue actor in the executive office. And now the meaningful prospect of a Senate conviction for any president, certainly including Donald Trump, is basically gone. So Trump doesn't really have a real impeachment constraint. If he is somehow elected, remember,

that will be after these four criminal indictments. Again, an unprecedented thing. And in this hypothetical, that means he somehow survived it and was reelected. So I think that it's really a much more radical prospect than the first term. The paperback edition of The Divider is out now. The New Yorker's Susan Glasser and Peter Baker of The New York Times, thank you both very much for being on this morning.