Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/5/23

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

The Morning Joe panel discusses the latest in U.S. and world news, politics, sports and culture.

Someone said, you know, that Biden, he's getting old, man, I tell you what. Well, guess what? Guess what? You know, the only thing that comes with age is a little bit of wisdom. I've been doing this longer than anybody, and guess what? I'm going to continue to do it with your help. President Joe Biden yesterday in Philadelphia brushing off voters' concerns about his age as he seeks a second term. It is an issue that continues to show up in polling, including a new one from The Wall Street Journal, which we'll get to this morning. That survey also shows Donald Trump's lead in the Republican presidential primary growing.

We'll have much more on those numbers and a hypothetical rematch of 2020 in just a moment. And I got to say, Willie and I, we've faced this off and on since 47. Yeah. A couple of young kids coming back from the war. Heroes.

Their word, not ours. Yeah. I never said it. I didn't either. I never said it. But it seems every 10, 15 years, they say they're going, they're growing a little long in the tooth, Willie, but we just keep on keeping on. Yeah, we do.

Despite the Wall Street Journal polling about you and me, actually, too, which was very negative, disconcerting. Yeah, I mean, we're going to dig into it. But this is a new tact that we just saw from Joe Biden in the White House, perhaps as we're turning the corner here now, about a year and change away from Election Day to confront this age issue. You know, I said another poll shows is real. Yeah. That's kind of like when I say, would you like a five spot? Yeah.

That's just the way we talk. There's 20 and change and whatever. Willie in your old category. Willie and I are old enough to remember we're old enough to remember when Duke used to beat Clemson in football. That's how old we are.

What a game. First of all, Duke beats Clemson, right? FSU, the night before, Routs. LSU never saw that coming. And Alabama. Alabama rolls over Middle Tennessee State.

I'm telling you, I thought Middle Tennessee State had won by two or three touchdowns. They're doing some good things in Murfreesboro, but not enough in Tuscaloosa on Saturday night. Yeah, Duke blew out, by the way, Clemson last night. So college football turned upside down this year, Mika. We'll get to all that as well. Meanwhile, half of Congress returns to Capitol Hill today with a long to-do list, including a new federal budget.

But demands from far-right members of the House could complicate getting a deal done before the end of the month. We'll follow that. Plus, Vladimir Putin is turning to another dictator for more weaponry for his war in Ukraine. Can you imagine, Willie, Russia's fate sinking so low that he's got to go to North Korea like to save his military. It's just unbelievable. Yeah, this is a real tell about where things are right now. If you have to go to North Korea, of all places, Kim Jong Un going to make a trip, which he doesn't do very often reportedly to visit Vladimir Putin. I don't know. Give him a pep talk along with some weapons. Now he counts among his allies, apparently Kim Jong-un and North Korea. That's where Russia is right now. Yeah. And we're going to make a nice segue here. Not a nice segue, a sad segue,

just not a very smooth one. Three musicians pass away over the weekend. Gary Wright, Dreamweaver, the lead singer of Smash Mouth, and also our good friend Jimmy Buffett. That sure came as a real surprise to us, and I'm sure to you too, Willie. We've known Jimmy

for a long time, and I've seen him regularly talk to him, uh and uh it's just a real shock i we knew uh we saw him last october was it we saw him uh we saw him at our place last october and he seemed to be doing pretty well but you could tell he was he was fighting something but he was very very quiet guy about that sort of stuff. But one of the loveliest, loveliest people you'll ever want to meet. Just a great, great guy.

Yeah, that was I woke up to that news alert Saturday morning. You're right. It was a shock. It seems like the kind of guy who's going to be here forever. And you hoped he would be. And we learned yesterday from his camp that he had an aggressive form of skin cancer that he'd been fighting for four years and died on Friday at his home in Sag Harbor out in Long Island here in New York. But, yeah, Joe, just first and foremost, a wonderful, warm man, as we heard from so many tributes. And I would argue, Joe, you're you're our music expert, but an underrated musician, if you can call him that, given his popularity, just in terms of his songwriting. I mean, when you hear Paul McCartney putting out that statement Saturday, just lavishing praise on him as an artist and saying they had just collaborated on a song or Elton John or years ago, Bob Dylan saying Jimmy Buffett, one of the greatest

songwriters he ever heard of and ever listened to. So he was a great, great man. And we miss him a lot, but also a great songwriter, a great musician. Always, always underestimated, I think, by the critics of his day. I think he underestimated himself. He said, I'm not that. Well, see, here's the deal. He's from the Gulf Coast.

We're from the same neck of the woods. We grew up together in that area. And so that may have been a little false modesty. Jimmy knew he was good, but he was humble. And by the way, it's a businessman, just extraordinary. Ended up a billionaire. So he played this like laid back, you know, sort of beach bum. But he was always working, just worked around the clock because he loved doing it. And but but, you know, it's so funny. Last time we were talking to him, we were talking about his music and how he'd always been underestimated.

And I said, well, yeah, I mean, it's pretty incredible. Bob Dylan. And he finished my sentence for me. He said, yeah, said I was his favorite songwriter. And he kind of smiled because not bad, huh? So if you get Dylan saying you're his favorite songwriter, you really don't care what rock critics are saying, do you? No, and just listen to this music. You said it, Joe. I mean, you can't go anywhere in any destination without seeing a Margaritaville restaurant or all the business imprint that he left that did make him a billionaire. But it's the music and the soundtrack, particularly on a long Labor Day weekend.

You could hear it everywhere you went. That was a soundtrack for so many people. Well, I mean, you know, he's an Alabama boy. It was so nice seeing Bryant Denny Stadium, all 90,000 of them erupting in Margaritaville on Saturday night. Beautiful tribute, and Jimmy would have loved that. So sad. He would have loved all the kind things, the wonderful things, as Willie said, that just came in from all over the place.

Would have been really pleased with Paul McCartney and all the beautiful things Paul said about Jimmy. And it meant a lot to him. It's just like he meant the world to millions of fans. I will just say ending here, I asked him during COVID when he was getting ready to go back out on the road. I said, well, you know, it's kind of tumultuous out there politically. He goes, are you seeing it in the shows? He goes, no, it's kind of tumultuous out there politically. He goes, are you seeing it in the shows? He goes, no, it's kind of beautiful.

He said, you know, the crowd's about 50-50. It's mixed. I can tell, you know, and when I talk to people, they're about 50-50. This was, you know, going into the presidential election. He goes, it's about 50-50. He goes, and what's so beautiful is when I come to my show, that stays outside. And it's about the music. It's about everybody getting together, having a good time.

Isn't that beautiful? That just about says it all. A hell of a lot more people like that. Absolutely. We'll have much more on his life coming up on Morning Joe. Along with Joe, Willie, and me, we have the host of way too early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. Special have the host of way too early White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News. Katty Kay is with us.

Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, an attorney and contributing columnist at The Washington Post, George Conway, is with us this morning. So the Senate is back in session today. The House is set to return next week and lawmakers have a long list of items waiting for them. At the top of the list, the federal budget, which is set to expire on September 30th and will need to be renewed to avoid a full fledged government shutdown. Also hanging in the balance is the fallout from Senator Tommy Tuberville's hold on military nominations. This is getting so serious. Branches. You now have the leaders of the branches of our services, armed services, saying we have that really,

really damaging readiness for our troops across the world. I don't know what he thinks he's doing. This is on military nominations. There's a hold because of him. Three of America's five military branches do not have a Senate-confirmed service chief in place. Many generals and admirals being forced to perform two roles simultaneously. That fact has prompted the secretaries of the Navy, the Air Force, and the Army

to co-write an op-ed for the Washington Post entitled Three Service Secretaries to Tuberville. Stop this dangerous hold on senior officers. And they write in part, we are proud to work alongside exceptional military leaders who are skilled, motivated, and they write in part, we are proud to work alongside exceptional military leaders who are skilled, motivated, empowered to protect our national security. These officers and the millions of service members they lead are the foundation of America's enduring military advantage. Yet this foundation is being actively eroded by the actions of a single U.S. senator, Tommy Tuberville, who is blocking the confirmation of our most senior military officers.

Thus far, the hold has prevented the Defense Department from placing almost 300 of our most experienced and battle tested leaders into critical posts around the world. Three of our five military branches, the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, have no Senate-confirmed service chief in place. This is just, it's sickening. Instead, these jobs and dozens of others across the force are being performed by acting officials without the full range of legal authorities necessary to make the decisions that will sustain the United States military edge. They can't make the decisions that they need to make.

That's impacting readiness. And I know Tommy Tuberville doesn't care, obviously. But he knows this. On a personal level, planning for service, for service families, for for children of service members. They should be in their new locations, in their new schools. Everything's been held up. Their lives have been put on hold because the promotions aren't going through. And then, of course, planning for our military, long term planning for our military can't be done because as these service Russians, saying that they're weak, saying that they're woke. That's all a lie. Our military is stronger than it's ever been. And relative to the rest of the world, the strongest it's been since 1945. And yet you have one Republican senator that other Republican senators are allowing him to do.

One Republican senator damaging the readiness of the United States Armed Forces in a way that just makes Vladimir Putin. It makes a communist Chinese, makes the North Koreans, makes everybody so happy that one senator is able to damage the United States military's readiness as much as Tommy Tuberville is able to do that. Again, you've got to start asking, why is he doing this? The Republicans supposedly don't want him to do this. The people of Alabama don't want him to do this. The Republicans supposedly don't want him to do this. The people of Alabama don't want him to do this. Why does he continue acting in a way that damages the readiness of the United States military? It just makes no sense. And he says he's doing it because he doesn't want the military to allow its service members to travel between states for abortions, for reproductive care.

So this is the political hill he's willing to die on. And you have, you're right, people like Mitch McConnell saying, I disagree with what Senator Tuberville is doing. But in our Senate, under our rules, he can do it. Well, do you not have any power? Do the other Republican leadership not have any power over Senator Tuberville to say, hey, knock this off. You've made your point. John, I'll add some some more numbers here. The Pentagon said last week three hundred and one generals and admirals are sitting in limbo right now, including 83 three star and four star nominations, generals pending right now. And again, a lot of Republicans in the Senate have

said they disagree with what Tuberville is doing, but he continues and he will continue. And this has become his pet issue. His argument last week, he said people have known for a long time that the U.S. military is top heavy, saying we have too many generals so that this isn't a big deal in his view. Right. And this is the first time in history that so many of these seats have sat open. Of course, this isn't just impacting generals. It's impacting regular troops and their families who can't know what the future holds because they're on hold, because they are in limbo because of this. And there are multiple things going on here. We just mentioned McConnell. This is one of the things that's raised eyebrows among those in Washington wondering if McConnell's grip on power is a little diminished right now with his ongoing health challenges.

You know, he pushes back on that, but that is persistent in D.C. right now. Democrats have been sharply critical of this throughout. Senate Majority Leader Schumer has denounced this at every turn. The unhappiness behind the scenes from Republicans is growing, but there hasn't been a push to get Tuberville to stop. They simply haven't. And they're willing to let him, even if they're privately unhappy, they're letting him command the stage like this. And it comes at a moment, of course, where we have a land war in Europe, where the United States is trying to increase its readiness posture because of that, because of potential challenges from China down the road, from rogue actors like North Korea and Iran.

Those in the White House are furious about this. And it becomes evident nearly every day from President Biden, who is loathe to criticize his former Senate colleagues by name, those he served with, those he didn't. But he has such respect for the institution. He is no longer loathe to criticize Senator Tuberville for what he's doing. I mean, George Conway, back when we were Republicans, we used to take great pride at how much we we fought for the strengthening of the United States military, the readiness of the United States military. It was on armed services, you know, for terms for for a reason, because that's what my constituents wanted. That's what Republican constituents used to want. Now we have Republicans who are saying the United States military,

which is the strongest in the world, just is. I mean, there's just not a close second. We now have Tommy Tuberville saying, Republicans saying that, oh, the military's top heavy. Who said that? Nobody. Nobody that knows anything about how strong our military is. Then you got Republicans saying we need to be more like the Russians. We need to be more manly like the Russians, like the Russians military. You've got Republicans that say that our military's weak and it's woke. And Republicans saying that our leaders are stupid and fat pigs. I mean, the insults just keep flying towards extraordinarily strong, vital United States

military. And if anybody thinks they're weak and woke, just ask the 500 Russian troops that tried to bum rush the United States military in Syria a few years back. You can't really ask them because they were all all gunned down, all blown apart in about three minutes. So why is it that just Republicans have this blind spot when it comes to how strong and how successful and how good our United States military is. Why do these Republicans hate the United States military so much? They hate the United States military because it's part of the United States government. And this is basically the Republicans have become anti-American, anti-government, anti-the United States. That's their shtick now. That's why you see them attacking law enforcement,

the FBI, the Justice Department, state and federal prosecutors, and they attack the institutions that normally Republicans were very, very supportive of. And what now is just this nihilistic attack on American institutions. And it also brings to mind the fact that we live in a completely different era now. I mean, the Senate rules that allow one senator to block a unanimous consent agreement to have these batch nominations sent to the floor. I mean, all these rules, these arcane Senate rules that we talk about that we don't really talk about, but have just curious effects, depend on good faith of the members, good faith and collegiality of the members. And that's one thing that the

Republican Party has completely abandoned, which is not just the truth, but good faith and just collegiality. Yeah, well, and we'll talk more about this. We do have new polling from the Wall Street Journal that has President Joe Biden and Donald Trump in a dead heat in a 2024 general election matchup. In the survey, 46 percent say they would vote for Biden, while 46 percent say they would vote for Trump. Eight percent say they are undecided. So in this conversation, mixing this and really shows you where the country's at, Joe. Well, and it's, Gene, I mean, just look at the numbers, Gene. You've got you've got 46 percent of Americans supporting a guy who's been indicted four times, indicted for stealing nuclear secrets, indicted for stealing war plans, called a rapist by a New York judge, saying that what he did was

akin to rape. You've got a guy that's being charged for his illegal payoffs to porn stars. I mean, we could go down the list. A guy who started a riot on January the 6th, an insurrection, had had fake electors, had this fraudulent scheme to steal votes from millions and millions of Americans in seven swing states. I mean, I could go on called the Republican secretary of state in Georgia and said, steal enough votes for me, find enough votes so I can steal Georgia. 46 percent of Americans are voting for the guy who said he would terminate the Constitution to get back into power. Yeah, those numbers are unbelievable, but yet there they are. I mean, The Wall Street Journal does good polling and, you know, any one poll can be an outlier.

But there have been a lot of polls that indicate that if it's a Trump-Biden rematch, this is going to be a close election. And again, that stupefies me. It should not be a close election. There is no way that any substantial portion of the electorate should support Donald Trump after we saw during what we saw during the four years since Donald Trump's presidency, after, the total number of counts against him yet, potentially 46% of Americans are willing to return him to the White House. It certainly lays out what this poll, I think, does. It should lay out to Democrats that this is going to be a close election. They can't take anything for granted. They should assume it's going to be decided by perhaps tens of thousands of voters in the swing states that we all know about.

And they better get cracking now because there's a real risk. And I can't believe I'm saying this. There is a risk that Donald Trump could return to the White House. Well, and there is such a disconnect, Katty K, between the polling numbers and the reality. And a lot of Democrats are trying to figure out exactly why that is. You look inside the poll, a large number of Democrats just say Joe Biden's too old. He's too old. The numbers don't add up, though. Like, for instance, you look at the economic numbers,

for instance. You go down the list, going into Labor Day weekend, Wall Street Journal headline, resilient U.S. economy defies expectations. That's in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. You look at other Wall Street Journal articles. They talk about strong job numbers, that wages are outpacing inflation, that Americans are getting, quote, another raise because of this economy. Another Wall Street Journal. Again, again, I'm sorry, Republicans. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. There's another Wall Street Journal article recently that talks about how despite what every economist has been saying over the past couple of years, the United States economy looks like it's going to be a smooth recovery without a recession. Again, all good news, but there's this massive disconnect. And you look at people giving disapproval, high disapproval numbers on the economy. 37% approve, 59% disapprove. In other polls, 74% of Americans say that their economic situation is good.

You look at inflation. The numbers are upside down. Inflation is cooling. It's just absolutely incredible. In improving infrastructure, he passes a bipartisan infrastructure bill, like a massive record-breaking infrastructure bill. He's upside down there. I mean, dealing with China, he's been tougher on China than any president. You look again, we talk about it all

the time, what we've been doing with our security partners in the Philippines, in Japan, in South Korea, in Australia, on and on. We could go down the entire list and the numbers don't add up, Katty. And a lot of Democrats are saying it's because he's too old. That's what's underlying this entire poll is Joe Biden's numbers are low because right now Americans think he's too old to do the job. Yeah, I read a piece about this in the BBC saying this is the Alice in Wonderland election. What's up is down and what's down is up because none of it seems to make sense. Here you have Donald Trump with a slew of indictments against him, and yet he's soaring in the Republican primary polls. And Joe Biden with an economy, as you say, you've got, you know, unemployment at 3.8 percent. It's just ticked up a little bit, but it's still low.

Inflation coming back down to 3 percent, incredibly low by the standards of certainly of most Western countries, where it's up at 6, 7, 8 percent. So America is really doing much better economically. And why is it that people aren't feeling this? I mean, partly, yes, interest rates are high and that is hurting people, some people, and prices are still higher than they were before covid. And I guess people are still feeling some of that. But I think you're right that there is the age factor is playing into this. And I know how frustrated the White House is on both of those counts. They hope that by sending Joe Biden out around the country and that wants more of the money that has actually been pledged in things like the CHIPS Act and the IRA actually gets out into projects around

the country, then maybe they'll start to see some kind of return in terms of the polls. But the age factor, Joe Biden can try and joke about it, but it's still a looming factor. And when Mitch McConnell has incidents like he had over the weekend, like he had a couple of weeks ago, then that doesn't help the president either, because it raises again the idea that just there's a group of leadership at the top that is where there is an age question about everybody. And, you know, he's just going to have to keep he's just going to have to keep stating the numbers like you just have in terms of the economy and hoping that the American public starts giving him some recognition for an economy that is doing better than almost any Western economy

in the world. Well, I mean, and you look at the news front page of The New York Times today, China's economy really teetering on the brink of a massive recession right now. We're doing China, Russia, please, even our European allies. Our economy is doing better than just about any economy in the world. And yet, again, there's this massive disconnect. And you go into these poll numbers and the massive disconnect comes from the central. And we got to go to Lemire. And because he's obviously been closest to this way, we were going to go to break because we have Frank for on the other side of this. He's written a book about Biden. But, John, we got to bring you in here, man.

I mean, the White House doesn't want to talk about age. I understand. But it colors everything. It colors everything. If you look at what he's done in foreign policy, you look at how the economy is going right now. These are numbers that should be giving any president a huge lift. And it's just not happening here. No. And the White House, they are aware of this. And the DNC is aware of this.

The reelection campaign is aware of this. And they point out with some frustration that Donald Trump is only three years younger than Joe Biden. That Wall Street Journal poll suggests, though, that almost twice as there you see it, 73 percent of those respondents say Biden is too old. Only 47 percent say that Trump is. And this is a lingering sort of baked in perception now. And that's something they're trying to overcome. Now, we should note this poll, relatively small sample. It's also done by half of the one of the pollsters involved was sort of a Trump affiliated Manafort group,

Tony Fabrizio. So let's put that aside, though, as we look at this. It is just one poll, but it's something this White House, but the overall metrics are consistent with what we've heard with others. Age is a concern. Now, the White House looks at the other side of this and they point to all these issues where they feel like the economy is improving. And though poll after poll suggests Americans don't feel great about it, there's underlying numbers that Americans at the same time say, well, I actually have a little more money in my pocket than I used to. Hey, I can go on a vacation now. I couldn't do that a year ago. And they feel like that's coming. They think that'll come to the surface sometime next year,

twinned with the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill. And Americans next year will feel better about the economy. They also feel like next year, when Donald Trump is actually sitting in a courtroom on trial, that that will also bring Trump's numbers down, that we're seeing sort of this artificial high from his base. And it'll be different when it gets to independent and swing voters. But here's the end line. At this point in 2015, at this point in 2019, Donald Trump was well behind Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, respectively. This time, they're dead even. Well, Joe Biden's a sitting president. I will say two quick things, then we got a break. One is Joe Biden's always underestimated. He's always going to lose. He's always the guy, you know, after Iowa and New Hampshire, he was dead in the water. Democrats said it then.

They said it before the election. They said it after he got elected. Time and again, he's too old. He's outdated. He can't get anything done. And then he passes more bipartisan legislation than anybody in 20, 25 years. They say the same thing, you know, before the 2022 election, he's too old. His party is going to get crushed. There's going to be a red wave. There's not a red wave. That's one thing. The second thing is you've got the abortion issue. It's going to be a huge issue in 24 again. It's been nonstop since that right was taken away from women. And so, again, there are again.

That and are you better off than you were four years ago? That's the question. You want to go back to that? Yeah, true. We'll have more from this poll coming up. Also ahead, President Biden mocks Donald Trump's time in office during a speech in Battleground, Pennsylvania. What it says about his campaign's strategy heading into 2024. Plus, a convicted member of the Proud Boys predicts he will be pardoned by former President Trump.

We'll have the very latest on those ongoing prosecutions and sentences. I mean, Trump has said very long he's elected. He's going to pardon the insurrectionists, the people who he told the people who he told them to go. They beat the hell out of cops. Four cops are dead now after after the riot and the country scarred. And yet Donald Trump says these are the people he wants out. Also ahead, what we're learning this morning about a possible meeting between North Korea's Kim Jong-un

and Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. NBC News Chief International Correspondent Keir Simmons joins us with more on that. And a rock and roll mystery. There's a new global effort to find a missing bass guitar that once belonged to Beatles legend Paul McCartney. That's been a mystery for a long time, but boy, it is taking center stage now. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Don't you do it, don't you do it Reporters have said they would happily go to another candidate.

They just need more time to look at them. So that's where Trump's weakness really is. It's not a fait accompli. I know a lot of you per se, but a lot in the media are like, oh, this is over. This is over. It's really not. Remember, remember this guy named Barack Obama, who they said had no chance against Hillary Clinton and the Clinton machine and all of that back in 08. In about six months, things got very,

very different. So you have to let the process play out. That is the Republican governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, on Meet the Press over the weekend. In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, 59 percent of Republican primary voters say Trump is their choice for 2028. That's up from 2024. Excuse me. That's up from 48% in April. All the way down there in second place, down 11 points from April, is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at 13%.

So he is down now 46 points in this national poll behind Donald Trump, all other candidates down in single digits. The poll also shows most Republicans think the criminal cases against Trump are illegitimate, especially the two relating to election interference. 70% of Republican primary voters believe they are illegitimate, while just 20% say they are legitimate. Overall, 48% of Republicans say the charges against Trump make them more likely to vote for him. Only 16 percent say the charges make them less likely to support him. Thirty six percent say the charges have no impact on their support for the former president. So, George Conway, we had that debate a couple of weeks ago where, you know, Donald Trump obviously wasn't there.

Nikki Haley did have a good night. Chris Christie was strong. Vivek Ramaswamy was at the center of it all. And yet they're still down toiling in single digits. This is Donald Trump's nomination to lose. We know it's a national poll. We know this is not the way a national election is decided. But my gosh, if you're up by 46 points after Labor Day, you got to be feeling pretty good about your chances. Yeah, I think there's no question he's going to win this nomination, whether or not he's convicted or indicted, I mean, convicted or incarcerated. I think he's going to win the nomination. I think he's going to clinch it even before the January 6th case here in the District

of Columbia goes to trial. And so we could end up with a guy running for president with a criminal conviction, a guy running for president from jail, possibly, if he acts up and gets remanded. And what's going on here is 2016 all over again. You have the one man with name recognition who everyone knows, And then you have 17 other people running against him, or I don't know how many. And it splits up the vote. The only way you can beat him, possibly, is you have to run head to head against him, one on one, and that's not going to happen. And you have to go after him hammer and tong to remind people of the things that they don't like

about him. And I have to do that differently for the Republicans saying he didn't build the wall and this and that and all sorts of things that wouldn't appeal to the general electorate. But they have to go hammer and tong at him and they just won't do it. Now, you know, the thing is, everybody wants wants these Republicans to consolidate behind one person to run against him and drop it. They're not going to do it. But, you know, the billionaire class can do it. The money people can do it. They can get on the phone and say, listen, you know, DeSantis just doesn't have it. He's not that or he does. Or look at look at Nikki Haley. She had a good night. We need to you know, Tim Scott didn't have a good night. A lot of these other people didn't have a good night. We need to get our money behind one candidate.

It seems to me, you know, it's just not logical. There's just no politician is going to step out of the way. But the money class in the Republican Party, their benefactors can. And if they want to save their party, they probably need to start thinking about that. Gene, what can I say about my former party? Very little that's good right now for indictments, indictments for they're more likely to vote for him because he got caught stealing nuclear secrets. They're more likely to vote for him because he got caught stealing war plans to invade Iran. They're more likely to vote for him because he got caught stealing an assessment about

America's weaknesses. He took them out of secure locations. He showed them to people. He's on saying, I shouldn't be showing this to you because it's classified. I can't declassify it because I'm not president anymore. If I were president, I could classify it. They've got him dead to right on all of this stuff. You know, and yet the Republicans say they're more likely to vote for him because he stole nuclear secrets, because he stole war plans, because he got caught with illegal hush money payment to a porn star, which weirdly enough, that's the issue that these Republicans say is the most legitimate, when it's also the one that most legal scholars say is the least legitimate. So what can you say about a party that actually is more

likely to vote somebody because they've been indicted four times for stealing America's most important military secrets? Well, look, I think I think we the voters have to destroy the Republican Party in order to save it. That's the only thing that that's what has to happen, because the Republican Party right now, your former party, is actually nothing like your former party. It's nothing like the party you came up in. It's certainly not the party of Ronald Reagan, who would be totally unwelcome in today's Republican Party. He's some sort of squish or rhino or whatever. I think this is this is a chaotic, in many ways, authoritarian, incohete kind of agglomeration that's not really an organized political party that doesn't really have a coherent philosophy or governing program, except tear it down. And that's that's not sustainable.

The way political parties reform is that they get crushed at the polls and then they change. Until that happens, they generally don't change. And so, until that happens enough times, it could have to happen repeatedly. I don't know how the Republican Party gets out of this sort of circling-the-d drain kind of stasis that it's in. It's just it's just appalling. It really is. We haven't seen anything like it in in in my lifetime. And Lord knows, I hope we never do again. For now, it appears voters, according to this poll and several others, want more of what they saw in Donald Trump. Let's bring in staff writer at The Atlantic, Frank Foer. He's author of the new book titled The Last Politician Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future. Frank, good morning. Good

to see you. Congrats on the book. Thank you. A lot of people talking about it. As you point out, a lot of people haven't read the book talking about it. I have opinions about it already. We were just talking a minute ago about this issue of age within that Wall Street Journal poll, something the White House can't run from because it's not just Republicans. It is Democrats, seven and 10, who say they're worried about Joe Biden's age at 80 years old, despite the fact he's only three years older than Donald Trump. How is the White House managing this? How seriously are they taking it? And has that changed in the last few months or so? And of course it's changed as we get closer to this election. And I think that they could have probably leaned into this issue much earlier because the story that I tell in my book is of

a president who is extremely experienced, who's dealing with these very difficult foreign policy changes where we're fighting a proxy war against a major nuclear power. Our relationship with China has become incredibly tense. And he has to thread the needle on these things. And the fact that he served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for all those years, that he was vice president, that experience has been the thing that's allowed him to do something that's extremely difficult and extremely consequential. But they've run away from the age issue and kind of ignored the fact that, you know, anybody with eyes can see that Joe Biden is extremely old. One issue that they have leaned into, of course, is his leadership on the world stage. And your book has some revelations about how he's managed the war in Ukraine and trying to keep that alliance together, but also his relationship with Ukrainian President Zelensky. Tell us about it.

So it's a complicated relationship. It began, it got off on the wrong foot. The first meeting that they had in the White House, there was this sense that Zelensky, who was just getting into politics, he was a comedian, wasn't up to the job. Biden, who is this wizened politician, didn't really, truly respect Zelensky at that first meeting. And it was tense. And over time, it's actually remained a little bit of a difficult relationship that when on the eve of the war, the United States had Russia's war plans in technicolor, and they tried to persuade Zelensky to take all sorts of defensive action.

And those meetings were very difficult because whatever Zelensky was doing in private to protect Ukraine, he wasn't communicating to the United States or to the president in public. And so that relationship was tough. Over time, it's become more mature. And now the United States military and the Ukrainian military are integrated in a very profound sort of way. And one of the things that I think Biden's political skills have allowed him to do is to overcome the fact that this world of ours only a couple of years ago was basically indifferent to global authoritarianism. And he's helped rally the alliance. He's helped get the aid moving through Congress in epic proportions.

And that in and of itself was not inevitable. Let me ask you, Frank, why has Joe Biden always been so underestimated? You write about it in the book. I think we're seeing it again in some of these polls. He always doesn't do well in polls. He does better. Certainly, we've seen it since 2020. He does better when people actually get out and vote. But, you know, Mika's family's known him for 40, 50 years. I've known him for 30. He's always been knocked. I mean, you go back to when he was on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

You know, people would mock him, say he was stupid. In 87, that just disastrous campaign, he went off and got angry and said some really angry things because he thought people were making fun of the fact that he didn't go to an Ivy League college. I remember sitting next to him after the New Hampshire results came in. And, man, he was dead man walking politically. We didn't Barnacle and I have known him for a long time and talk to him. And he's the easiest guy to talk to. We had nothing to say to him. It was weird.

It was a weird like five minutes. But he was good. But but, you know, he just kept his head down. He kept going. You look at 2022. There's going to be a red wave. I remember when he first came in. Progressives were saying Biden is so stupid. He's so old. He actually thinks he can strike deals with Republicans. He struck deal with Republicans in a way no president this century has.

I can answer this question. I can answer this question with the confession, which is that I was one of those people in Washington who would roll my eyes at Joe Biden because of the way that he talked. It's because the stories go on forever and ever. I remember when I was 24 years old and got my first call from Joe Biden. And even as I was excited to talk to a senator in a reporting call about five minutes in, I was like, get this guy off the phone. He's never going to he's never going to end. And but the thing is, is that there's an element, you put your finger on it, Joe, which is there is an element of social class into the way that Biden is received. That in the Obama White House, where you had these guys who went to Ivy League schools, they would roll their eyes at

Biden for the way that they talked. He talked, even though there was this respect there for his mastery of certain sectors of policy. And I think that his communication skills are something that the media has always have always pooh-poohed or looked down on and led them to underestimate Joe Biden. And that's the chip on his shoulder. That's the thing that's fueled him that every time that he seems like he's counted out, there is this persistence. I mean, obviously, it connects to his personal story, which is a tale about resilience. But I think can you can you talk about because you touched on something really important here that it's not just Republicans. It's not just the press. It's Democrats. I mean, Joe Biden felt the burn. We heard it for eight years, time and time again inside the Obama administration, not just the principals treating him badly, but staff being

rude to him, being dismissive to him after, you know, after he came out and said he supported marriage equality and forced Barack Obama to to change his position publicly. You know, the staff treated him. You know, I'm talking, you know, people close to Biden said the staff treated him like dirt. They treated him like he didn't exist. And that's still there's still some of that in the Clinton camp and in the Obama camp. I'm not saying from the Clintons and the Obamas, but certainly people all around act like they're too good for Joe Biden, even after he's president of the United States. Totally true. And Joe Biden is one of the

people who knows that fact most and it's and it enters into his psyche. I would also say that it's true in the Democratic Party at large, where there isn't this sense of affection for Joe Biden, that he hasn't he connected with the base at a crucial moment, obviously, in the primary campaign in 2020. But he hasn't really been able to rekindle that. I think it's in part the way that he, I mean, age is clearly a part of it at this stage. But it's also the inclination to talk about bipartisanship, the way in which, even though he's run the most progressive administration in American history, he avoids the culture war topics that are so incendiary to the

middle, but might rouse the left. And so he's navigating things in a general election sort of way. And as a result, he's never really had that that love of the base. Frank, President Obama, former President Obama and President Biden had a meeting recently to talk about politics, the coming election and where things are. How do you expect Obama world or what's left of Obama world to participate in this election that's coming up? There seemed to be some indication that the former president is going to jump in with both feet in support of Joe Biden. I remember those times when the West Wing was so dismissive of Biden when Obama was in office. Is that going to change in a big way as we go into 2024? I don't think so.

I was actually in the White House that day when Obama had lunch with Joe Biden, and I could see just how relieved Barack Obama was not to be president of the United States anymore. But I think I also had the sense that he was taking some joy in this. You know, as I write in the book, their relationship is complicated. It evolved over time. I think it was grudging and maybe a little bit dismissive. And then it became something closer to a genuine brotherhood that they experienced. And I got the sense that for whatever the distinctions are between their presidencies, I mean, Joe Biden has run a presidency that, as a matter of policy, has repudiated some of the ideological precepts of Obamaism and taken the Democratic Party

in its economics to a different sort of place. And a lot of his foreign policy builds on some of the mistakes that, corrects for some of the mistakes that Obama made as president. But I think all that is said, the friendship is real. And I think that Obama recognizes the stakes of this election and we'll be all in. Frank, you spend some time in the book writing about the withdrawal from Afghanistan. We just passed the two year anniversary of that. Thirteen Marines, U.S. service members killed in the bombing at the Abbey Gate at the Afghanistan, at the airport in Kabul. President Biden said at the time, has continued to say publicly, I was not going to engage in this forever war. It was time to leave after 20 years. Is that his public spin on this? Has he privately changed the view of this? Because we're even hearing to this day, we have Marines testifying

before Congress in tears, talking about how terrible it was, how hasty it was, how disorganized it was. Are there regrets inside the Biden White House about the way they got out of Afghanistan? I think the president himself doesn't regret it. I think that he didn't he obviously didn't warn the country that there would be chaos once we pulled the plug in Afghanistan. And nobody predicted in the intelligence community within the White House that chaos would descend on Kabul as quickly as it did. But one of the things that I think, one of the president's primal qualities on foreign policy especially is this stubborn determination that he's somebody who considers himself a contrarian on foreign policy. And so when the foreign policy elite, what some people call the blob, descends on Joe Biden to criticize him, his instinct is to double down. And one of the other things about the man, it should be said, was that there was all this pressure on him to

fire somebody, to offer up some sort of sacrificial offering to the pundit class. And he refused to place blame anywhere in the administration. He squarely owned the decision. And in that instance, the distinction between the public Biden and the private Biden is negligible. We have only scratched the surface of this excellent new book out today. It's titled The Last Politician Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future. Staff writer at The Atlantic, Frank For. Congrats again on the book. Good to see you. Thank you. Eugene Robinson, George Conway. Thank

you both as well. We'll see you again soon. Coming up next here, what House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is saying about a possible vote to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Some new reporting from Capitol Hill on that straight ahead on Morning Show. We're getting through this one of the greatest job creation periods in American history. For real, that's a fact. And, you know, it wasn't that long ago we were losing jobs in this country. In fact, the guy who held this job before me was just one of two presidents in history.

He was one of two. But here's an important point. One of two presidents in history left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected office. When the last guy was here, you were shipping jobs to China. Now we're bringing jobs home from China. We also passed the bipartisan infrastructure law. You can't have the strongest economy in the world

with a second-rate infrastructure. Guess what? The great real estate builder, the last guy here, he didn't build a damn thing. Under my predecessor, infrastructure week became a punch line. On my watch, infrastructure has been a decade and it's a headline. President Biden spending Labor Day in Philadelphia, touting his bipartisan infrastructure deal and the jobs his administration has created. Welcome back to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, September 5th. Jonathan Mayer, Katty Kaye are still with us and join the conversation. We have founder of the conservative website, The Bulwark, Charlie Sykes and Dean of the Columbia Journalism School and staff writer

at The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb, is with us this morning. We're going to get to the news in a second. But Charlie, I just want to go to you and talk about a poll we had last hour that is just, again, just so disheartening about our former party, a party that said in this Wall Street Journal poll they were more likely to vote for Donald Trump because he got caught stealing military secrets. He got caught stealing nuclear secrets. He got caught stealing secrets to invade Iran. He gets caught stealing assessments of America's military weaknesses. He got caught trying to lead a conspiracy to have fraudulent electors to steal millions of votes from people and from Americans in seven states. He got caught trying to rig the Georgia election, telling the Republican secretary of state who recorded the call, the Republican, hey, just just get me one more vote. Right. Then I lost by give me 11000 votes or so.

Just find them out there and on and on and on. And I just can't even believe I will. Actually, I have to believe now there are people out there, a lot of Republicans out there that actually are more likely to vote for him because he stole nuclear secrets. What does that say about the Republican Party, our former party? Well, it doesn't say anything that we haven't seen for a while. I mean, this is a cult, but this poll strikes me as a giant middle finger from the Republican base, basically saying we're in with this guy. We don't care what he did. We don't care about the coup. We don't care about the criminality. We don't care about the fraud. We don't care about the rape. You know, he is our guy. And we're going to ride with him not only despite what he has done, but what he will do in the future.

So, yes, the poll is alarming. It is also a warning the direction the party is going. Anyone who thinks that this party is going to develop a conscience and is going to stand up against Donald Trump or that it would provide any guardrails for a Trump 2.0 presidency, I think is incredibly naive. So it is it confirms something that's been coming for some time. But I don't think that we should understate how alarming it is.