Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/8/22

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

DOJ faces key deadline on special master

When people ask me what I miss most about the White House years, it is not Air Force One that I talk about. Although I miss Air Force One. It's the chance that I had to stand shoulder to shoulder with all of you. To have a chance to witness so many talented, selfless, idealistic, good people working tirelessly every day to make the world better. Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama returned to the White House yesterday for the unveiling of their official portraits. President Biden resuming a tradition that stalled under Donald Trump. We'll play more from the White House reunion. It was lovely, including poignant

remarks about from Mrs. Obama about why traditions like this are important for democracy. Plus, former Attorney General Bill Barr continues to speak out about the Trump records case, saying the Justice Department is close to having enough evidence to indict him, but shouldn't. We'll discuss his reasoning. And the 60-day sprint to the midterms begins today. And it seems whoever is managing the money for Republican Senate candidates can't get it right. How Republican Senator Rick Scott explains burning through loads of cash with little to show for it. Good morning and welcome

to Morning Joe. It is Thursday, September 8th, along with Joe, Willie and me. We have the host of Way Too Early, author of The Big Lie, White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire and NBC News national affairs analyst and executive editor of The Recount, John Heilman is here. Joe, a lot to cover this morning. A lot to cover this morning. And Willie, you know, I'm sure John Heilman and Jonathan Lemire will have a lot to cover this morning. A lot to cover this morning. And Willie, you know, I'm sure John Heilman and Jonathan O'Meara will have a lot to say about it. But Rick Scott is going to have a lot more to explain on the campaign trail in the final few weeks of the campaign than how we burn through all the money. I mean, here's a guy that's talking about taxing the poorest Americans while

trying to give tax cuts to the richest Americans. A guy who says he wants to sunset Social Security and Medicare every five years, kill the programs and then let the let the Senate and the House debate whether they want to restart those programs again. And by the way, he's not a backbencher. He is the guy in charge of running the Senate campaigns and has come up with the agenda for them. Yeah, he's talking like a backbench bomb thrower, isn't he, on some of these issues. And he's really irritating Mitch McConnell, we should point out. They're not on the best of terms right now. Mitch McConnell is irritated anyway because of so many of the candidates that have been put out there.

The slow fundraising, the where's the money with the fundraising that's there, and sort of the contrasting, conflicting message that Rick Scott has been putting out there. Still a couple of months till Election Day, but this certainly is not going the way Republicans, Joe, thought it would or expected it would go. Right. I think a week is a lifetime in politics. It really is. I've seen things change so dramatically in campaigns with a week or less. My gosh, one of the first presidential campaigns I followed closely, the Reagan campaign, one that I suspect you and your family followed very closely to on Friday. Perhaps Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were tied. And on Tuesday, something broke over the weekend.

And on Tuesday, it went from being a deadlock, as it was most of the year, to just being a massive Reagan victory. I say that only to say, if that can happen in four days, imagine what can happen in two months. We have a long way to go. Right now, though, Democrats outperforming history. We'll see if that holds up. Well, let's begin with a key and fast approaching deadline for the Justice Department following the FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and club. The DOJ must decide by midnight tomorrow whether to accept Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling, approving the request by Trump's attorneys for a special master to review the documents seized from his Florida club last month.

The New York Times reports that Justice Department officials are expected to oppose the judge's decision. But the paper points out that any appeal would be difficult, as the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is under a conservative majority. The consensus right now appears to be that Judge Cannon's ruling is more likely to delay than derail the investigation into Trump's possession of highly classified documents belonging to the government. Willie. Meanwhile, former attorney general under President Trump Bill Barr is at it again, speaking yesterday on Fox News, saying he hopes the DOJ appeals Judge Cannon's ruling. Barr also weighed in on whether he thinks the Justice Department ultimately

will indict former President Trump. The problem I have with the special master is what she's done on what's called executive privilege documents. And she didn't address the only question that's in dispute, which is, can the former president have standing to say that the investigators don't even get to look at the documents, the classified documents that he wrongfully had at Mar-a-Lago. And that's the only question. And she dodges it. And then she says that she's bringing in a special master to look at whether stuff is executive privilege or not. That's not where the dispute is. I mean, if the government came today and said, we'll stipulate that everything that's deliberative there, whether it's classified or not, would ordinarily be subject to executive privilege, it begs the question. That's not what the issue is. That's why I think it was that that opinion was a mistake. So you think it'll be appealed

and overruled? I hope it's appealed. You believe it? Yeah. Do you have a view on how it ends? Yeah, I think, you know, as I've said all along, there are two questions. Will the government be able to make out a technical case? Will they have evidence by which that they could indict somebody on, including him? And I that's the first question. And I think they're getting very close to that point, frankly. But I think at the end of the day, there's another question is, do you indict a former president? What will that do to the country? What kind of precedent will that set? Will the people really understand that this is not, you know, failing to return a library book, that this was serious? And so you have to worry about those things. And I hope that those kinds

of factors will incline the administration not to indict him, because I don't want to see him indicted as a former president. But I also think they'll be under a lot of pressure to indict him, because, you know, one question is, look, if anyone else would have gotten indicted, why not indict him? Joe, first of all, fascinating that Bill Barr has become the daily sort of in-house critic of Donald Trump on this issue anyway, on Fox News, given the way he performed and behaved during his time as attorney general under Donald Trump. But he asked the question, should not this man be indicted when anyone else on the planet would be? And if he is, what are the implications of that? What is it really implications for the country today, but also for the next president and the president after that? Yeah, I mean, given his his performance as attorney general, which for the most part was

was deplorable, I actually found myself saying that actually Barr is asking the right questions. I think he's come to the correct conclusions. The special master decision was flawed. The opinion was wrong. It should be overruled. It will be overruled unless the courts decide to become even more politicized. The government can indict Donald Trump. They have a case to indict Donald Trump. And then Barr asks the question that certainly won't be popular among many watching this show, won't be popular among many Democrats, but asks the question, should they indict him? Of course, I've made it very clear on over the past several years

that we can't send the message out that no man is above. We can't send the message out that one man is above the law. And I look back at the standards. It's the same standard I used in the impeachment of Bill Clinton on on the grand jury. And I asked what would happen if somebody lied in front of a grand federal grand jury. And I came to the conclusion that they'd be indicted, they'd be charged. And that's a question we have to ask also of of Donald Trump. The standards have to be the same at the same time. John Heilman, it is it is a bit horrifying to think about the consequences of this. And I I say that of all the terrible legacies that Donald Trump has left this nation. This may be one of the more long lasting.

If he is indicted, as the law would suggest, he should be indicted. Then you can you can bet your bottom dollar that Republicans will do everything they can, a Republican administration to indict the next Democratic predecessor that they have. And, you know, there's a reason why Jerry Ford got won his profile in courage, because he's willing to sacrifice a presidency to stop the long national nightmare that Richard Nixon was responsible for. And over time, when when when people cool down, they decided that was that was best for our republic. I think the extent of what Donald Trump's done is so egregious that no attorney general, no fair minded attorney general would have any choice to indict him. But that doesn't also make it true that it will set, as Barr was saying, an absolutely horrendous precedent. Yeah, I mean, I think, Joe, the question isn't so much

just to be not to like mince words or to be too picky about words here. But I think it doesn't set a terrible precedent in the sense that I think any Democratic president in the future who decided to abscond with dozens of classified documents, top secret documents and what The Washington Post is now. Right, John. But unfortunately, that's not that's not going to be that's not going to be the standard, is it? The standard is going to be lowered. Again, I'm not I'm not again. I'm just trying to say that, like, I think that precedent is a fine precedent to set. Do I think there's going to be the possibility that future administrations will use this as a pretext to indict future presidents for lesser crimes or no crime at all? Yeah, I think that's the problem. It's not that it a lot of unintended consequences if our politics continue down the path they're going down now,

where it's tit for tat and people use any excuse to take the next step. I fear that that is going to be the door that's going to get opened here. And yet I can't believe, and I think you and I agree about this, I can't believe that you would want to set the other precedent, which is that a president could leave office, steal a bunch of documents, take them off to their private home, including top secret documents, some of them dealing with nuclear materials of foreign countries, if that turns out to be true. And we're going to let that president get away with that. I think you set a precedent in either

case. And the consequences of Donald Trump's actions going forward are terrible in both cases. But the question is, which precedent do you want to set? Do you want to set the precedent where a president who's who's violated the law in this way is held accountable? Or do you want to set the precedent where he's not held accountable? And I think the only conclusion you can come to there is despite the possible political ramifications, the only possible, the right implication, the right decision on that is going to be, you can't let this go. If he's done what it looks like he's done, you can't let it go without accountability. And I'm sure the discussions that we're having right here have been had in the Justice Department for quite some time now. Jonathan O'Meara,

the other problem, of course, is as far as as and of course, getting way ahead of ourselves here. But just responding to what Barr said and raising the question that Barr raised, which is a legitimate question. The problem, of course, is that there have been a multitude of possible crimes Donald Trump has committed and that he's skated on time and time again. You can go to Manhattan where you have two prosecutors, two professional prosecutors who are ready to indict Donald Trump. And suddenly the Manhattan Diego soft decides not to do it, gets scared, decides not to pursue that case. You have 10 examples of obstruction in the Mueller investigation. It's hard to get Mueller to say absolutely anything. He just completely balks when he has an opportunity to at least come down and say whether Donald Trump committed a crime or not. The most that anybody could get out of him was that that that these 10 instances of of obstruction did not exonerate Donald Trump.

He was not exonerated for his bad acts. Well, thanks for nothing. And of course, we have January 6th. Any plain reading of the conspiracy to commit sedition shows that you don't have to connect too many more dots than the January 6th committee is connected to show that Donald Trump was engaged in a conspiracy that commits sedition against the United States government. So, yes, this does leave Merrick Garland in a I think a terrible position where he's going to have no choice ultimately, but to indict a former president of the United States. And certainly there's more legal peril than even this that Trump faces, of course, as the ongoing matter in Georgia as well. So we may be having this conversation in another venue down the road where there may be criminal charges brought there if the case continues to proceed.

But you're right, Joe. And Merrick Garland, as attorney general, has bent over backwards to try to not be political. The White House has thrown up bright red lines between what they're doing and what the DOJ is doing. They want nothing to do with Maine justice. And Garland, let's all remember a few months ago, Democrats really frustrated at him because he was moving too slowly. He wasn't moving after Trump. And now it is happening. And now he is in a nearly impossible predicament. And I go back to something that someone said to me a few weeks ago. It was the moment when Garland signed off on that search to the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, when he gave the OK for the FBI to go there, that that was the moment that at least the possibility of a criminal charge of Donald Trump became into existence, That that was up until then

they had kid gloves. They had given opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to return the documents, to avoid this exact scenario, to avoid the political ramifications and even potential violence that could come with this. But Trump didn't budge and they had to take that step and Garland took a deep breath, I'm told, and said, we've got to do this. And no, do we know they're going to indict Trump? No, we don't. That was the moment, Mika, that that became a real possibility. We're already through that threshold. Yeah. And that decision, I know Willie's about to go through more excuses Donald Trump had for having these documents. But Joe, no matter what happens, it's going to be painful for the country. This entire episode has been painful for the country. We're going to have

two former defense secretaries on today going on to tell us about the letter that they signed about the division and the polarization in this country that is at a dangerous, threatening level. We have election deniers being elected across the country into political positions, up and down ballot. And of course, we have people in jail right now who testified that Donald Trump drove them to come to the Capitol, to the United States Capitol, to our house, and they desecrated it. They used American flags to beat cops and they executed an insurrection on our election process. It doesn't get a lot worse than that. It really doesn't. And the question to indict or not to indict, if that's what the Justice

Department is grappling with, it will be painful. But I just wonder of the consequences of not holding the law to every man and woman in this country. Well, and of course, we're talking about terrible precedents. At the end of the day, Willie, though, the worst precedent is is the Justice Department, is the United States government saying no man is above the law unless he is a former president of the United States. It's just it's just not not what the United States strives to be. We're we're justice is supposed to be equal under the law. And that's the case, even if you're a former president. And it's Garland's it's Garland's job to enforce the law, I guess, not not to look to the history books

or look to political elections coming up in two months. And it's as clear cut as that for a lot of people in this country. Is one man above the law? Even based on what we've seen publicly, it would appear, as William Barr himself said, that there's enough there to indict. We will see. But Republicans continue to spin to defend Donald Trump, make excuses for his mishandling of classified documents more than mishandling, bringing them from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. On Twitter yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina blamed the Justice Department for not seizing the sensitive record sooner, writing this, quote, If they knew about this document for

a whole year, why wait and raid the home 90 days before an election? If this is a new revelation previously unknown, they owe it to the public to be transparent about that fact. why wait and raid the home 90 days before an election? If this is a new revelation previously unknown, they owe it to the public to be transparent about that fact. In separate interviews yesterday, Senators Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Marco Rubio of Florida accused the FBI of conspiring with Democrats in the media. Here's what they said. I think it's very intentional. You see the leaks coming from the FBI moving straight to the Washington Post. There's a very political move under place right now. I think this is all about distracting from the reality of the economy that Joe Biden has delivered, the collapsed southern border, the crime that's running rampant across America, the fentanyl deaths that we're seeing, the embarrassment that happened in Afghanistan a year ago.

This is about distracting the American public. That doesn't seem like the kind of thing you should have in your post-presidential desk drawer. Well, let's break this down. First of all, again, we really don't know. Because let's go back and understand that all of this information is coming from one side and one place. And that is sources with knowledge of the investigation. Who are the sources with knowledge of the investigation? The FBI and the Justice Department. And they are knowledge of the investigation. Who are the sources with knowledge of the investigation? The FBI and the Justice Department. And they are leaking to the media.

So leaking to the media, John Howellman, is the new defense such that it is. Marco Rubio a couple of days ago said this was merely a storage issue that the documents that it looks like. And the president is alleged to have taken from the White House, which just stored poorly or incorrectly, perhaps. And going back to Lindsey Graham, John, the idea that they just kicked down the door of the FBI all of a sudden flies in the face of everything we know. And that Lindsey Graham knows that the National Archives spent about a year and a half trying to politely get these documents back before they got some of them back. Trump's lawyers lied about giving all of them back. So the FBI had to get a legal search warrant that it executed a couple of weeks ago. Hey, Willie, this is the here's the Republican strategy on all this. Look at the bird. Look at the bird. Oh, look at the squirrel. Look at the

squirrel. You're talking about the Washington Post. You talk about the FBI. You talk about leaking. You talk about this. You talk about that. All of it's still not about talking about whether the there's a conspiracy or political conspiracy? Is it to that? What's the timing with the result with the relation to the midterm elections? All of it, just anything they could do to obscure, to distract from the fundamental question, which is, did Donald Trump break the law or not? Has he, as Miko has raised many times, he does not deny that he took the documents. And as all of us have raised the question over the course of the last three weeks,

we still don't know why. And now, again, it looks increasingly like we've not yet seen this document. We don't have proof of it. But the Washington Post has now reported repeatedly that at least one of these documents pertains to a nuclear weapons program of a foreign country. So, I mean, all of these other questions, I mean, is there some leaking? There's always leaking in Washington, is it? And is there some, is Lindsey Graham always leaking in Washington, is it?

Is there some, is Lindsey Graham making up stories here about pretending as though there was no effort to try? Yes, but all of it is not on point. What's on point is, did the president break a serious law here or not? And if he broke it, to get to Joe's question, should he have given the evidence that we have here? Should he be indicted or not? Everything else is just distraction and an attempt to kind of get us all to look at the bird, look at the squirrel and not focus on what we need to focus on here. Yeah. And by the way, I'd love to go back and do a LexisNexis search on how many times Marco Rubio complained and whined about the FBI office in New York leaking bad information about Hillary Clinton for a year and a half during her presidential campaign because it was a steady stream of leaks out of the FBI about their server, the laptop, the Clinton Foundation. It went on and on and it came out of the New York office daily. So so please, for people to be shocked that this happens. This is what's it this just has been happening it's what it's what it's what the cia did to bush on weapons of mass destruction

it's what the intel community i mean there are human beings inside the intel community and this is what they have done for years they did it unmercifully to bill clinton unmercifully to barack obama and yeah they did it to donald trump as yeah, they did it to Donald Trump as well. I do want to say, though, as far as the look at the bird, look at the bird over there, just trying to distract John Heilman. I'll tell people now I've been talking about a phone call or a text I got from somebody who texted me the morning that Republicans were warned by Trump, Trump people that that that it was going to be much worse than they thought. And maybe they should just sort of temper their remarks. That morning we reported on it.

When I got off the air, you texted me and you said, have you seen the new like conspiracy theory they are putting in place of the Donald Trump story? What are you talking about? And you told me about how Republicans were starting to to because they couldn't defend Trump. They knew that bad news was coming, that at least for that moment, they made up a lie about IRS agents carrying AR-15s, kicking down doors. And as one Fox News host said, killing people, killing Americans. And as one of the most senior Republicans said, knocking on doors of Kansans with AR-15s. What are they going to do? Shoot them?

That conspiracy theory came up, made up whole cloth one morning when they couldn't talk in shocked tones about what Donald Trump had done because they had just received word inside of Trump world that this was going to be bad. Yeah, I mean, if you if you if you watch right wing media, if you watch Fox News and the rest of the others, they're further to right. If you watch them and I don't suggest they may do this, it'd be bad for your health, mental and sometimes like for your ocular nerve. But if you do it, what you see is just it's an incredibly coordinated operation over there. And when the talking points go out, you see just across the day what the talking points of the day are going to be. And that day in particular, Joe, it was stunning to watch because no one had been talking about the IRS thing until that morning.

And then you had this reporting about the Trump people saying, guys guys stop attacking the fbi things are going to get bad and then that for us that day just like a a tidal wave of coordinated uh singing from the same songbook across right-wing media it all was suddenly about the irs and it went from from from fox news to oann to to to to newsmax up to uh all the up to Capitol Hill, where suddenly you had people like Chuck Grassley talking about about the jackbooted stormtroopers of the IRS are going to break into people with pass through income with holding AK-47s and AR-15s. You know, and now you don't hear about it again. You know, is that like that's another thing. That was like 48 hours of intense IRS. That's all they talked about.

And now no one's talking about that. And instead, the talking point of yesterday was it's all the collusion between the FBI and the law enforcement sources and the Washington Post. It's a direct line. It's a leak. Leak was the word of the day yesterday. Focus on the leak. It will be something new tomorrow.

And none of it, again, will be on point, which is did Donald Trump break the law? And should he be indicted? Why does he have the documents? Mika, very quickly, one last point as we watch Marco Rubio again trying to explain this away. It's worth underlying. He's the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, the ranking Republican member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, showing no concern or even curiosity about an American president taking boxes and boxes of classified top secret documents with him to his beach club. How do they do it? I'll never understand.

Still ahead on Morning Joe, more from that unveiling ceremony at the White House yesterday where the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama were finally unveiled. Plus, Senate Republicans had more than $181 million in the bank in July. And by August, most of it was gone. What the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senator Rick Scott, is saying about the money concerns ahead of the midterms. Also ahead, the latest from Ukraine as the United States accuses Russia of a war crime, arguing Moscow is forcibly deporting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and will be joined by a pair of former defense secretaries. Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel

will both be our guests this morning, Joe. And speaking of secretaries, some breaking news. U.S. the AP reporting U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has just made an unannounced surprised visit to Kiev and a show of support for Ukraine as Russia's war grinds on. You're watching Joe. We'll be right back. And I miss you when you're not around. I'm getting ready to leave the ground. 32 past the hour. Police in Memphis, Tennessee, have arrested a man after a shooting spree, left four people dead and three others injured yesterday. The 19-year-old suspect was taken into custody last night, hours after police sent out an alert warning people to stay

inside while they searched the city. Police say at least one of the shootings was streamed on Facebook Live. A spokesperson for Facebook's parent company says they flagged and removed the stream before police sent out their alert. Court records show the suspect was released from prison this year after serving three years for aggravated assault. He is charged with first degree murder in connection with yesterday's shootings. Willie, a public official in Las Vegas has been arrested on suspicion of killing a renowned investigative journalist in the city. Jeff German, a reporter at the Las Vegas Review Journal, was found stabbed to death outside of his home last week. Yesterday, police arrested a man named Robert Telles.

He's the Clark County Public Administrator that came after an hours-long standoff at Telles' home. Telles had been the subject of several investigative pieces written by German and recently lost his primary in the wake of their publication. Police may release more information on the possible motive this morning. The Clark County D.A. telling the Review-Journal, TELUS is facing murder charges. NBC News has reached out to TELUS for comment. He is scheduled to appear in court this afternoon, Mika. And Canadian police say mass stabbing suspect Miles Sanderson

died after going into medical distress following his arrest yesterday. The second suspect, Miles' brother Damien, was found dead a day after the attacks with injuries not believed to be self-inflicted. Ten people were killed and 18 others injured in the Sunday rampage in Saskatchewan, which spanned 13 crime scenes. Police say all but one of the victims are from the indigenous community, the James Smith Cree Nation. Investigators have not determined a motive for these stabbings. And coming up, new polling on a pair of major issues that could tip the scale for Democrats in November.

Plus, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall is standing by. He joins us as the military branch prepares to mark its 75th anniversary. Morning Joe will be right back. Beautiful shot of New York City. Welcome back to Morning Joe at 38 past the hour. A significant milestone for the U.S. Air Force this month as it marks its 75th anniversary. And the Air Force says its theme for this very significant year is, quote, innovate, accelerate, thrive. And joining us now, Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall. Very good to have you on the show with us this morning. So let's start with what perhaps you might say is the most significant challenge for the Air Force as it moves into the future.

Our most significant challenge and the reason I came back into government after being out for a few years was the competition for superiority that we have with China. I became alarmed about this in about 2010 when I came back into government and saw that China had been investing very heavily in the means to defeat the U.S.'s ability to project power in the Western Pacific. So we are in a race for technological superiority against as formidable a competitor as I have ever seen, frankly. So I know another challenge facing the Air Force and all the branches of the military right now is recruitment. There are fewer Americans who seem to want to enlist. And I'm sure you got a little bit of the public relations boost when Top Gun came out. I know Willie Geist was considering signing up himself. But how much of a challenge is this? And what sort of outreach are you doing

to convince young Americans to serve their country, particularly in the Air Force? We're actually going to meet our recruiting goals in the active Air Force. We're a little bit short in the Guard and Reserve, so we're not doing terribly badly. But we are paying a lot of attention to this. One thing that's changed is the propensity to serve by Americans has gone down. And during the COVID period, our recruiters couldn't get into high schools to interact with people. So we're back in the schools. We're increasing the effort we're putting into recruiting across the board. We're basically mobilizing the Air Force for everyone's a recruiter. And we're putting into recruiting across the board. We're basically mobilizing the Air Force for everyone's a recruiter. And we're offering things like bonuses and retention

bonuses as well, signing bonuses and retention bonuses to encourage people to come in and stay. So, Mr. Secretary, you talked about the great strategic challenge coming from China. What does the Air Force need as you go into 2023 and forward? What does the Air Force need to maintain America's competitive edge against a rising China? I supervise both the Air Force and Space Force. And so I have to worry about the modernization programs for both. In the first Gulf War, 30 years ago, the U.S. demonstrated a dramatic superiority in conventional military power. China paid a lot of attention to that, and they've been working very hard on specific things to try to defeat the United States, at least in their region of the world, ever since. We have basically been engaged

for the last 20 years in counterterrorism, counterinsurgency campaigns. So what we need to do is modernize thoughtfully, take the technology that's available today, and put it into field of capability for our men and women in uniform. That's one of the reasons that I came back to government. It's the primary reason. And we spent the last year identifying the specific things that we need to do to do that. And now we're in the process of resourcing those and getting those into our budget. Good morning, Mr. Secretary. Jonathan said I was going to sign up for the Navy. And I was going to say that, well, I'm too old for that. But Tom Cruise is 60 and he looks pretty good in that cockpit. So maybe there's hope for me. But you mentioned China.

As you look around the world, where are the other emerging threats, perhaps, that most of us don't think about or the average American doesn't think about? What are you all thinking about as you plan, not for just today, but out over the horizon as well? We generally consider China to be what we call the pacing challenge. We're also worried about Russia, of course. They demonstrated their capacity for aggression. They're an acute threat as well. But other parts of the world where we have had concerns, Iran, obviously, and North Korea, violent extremist groups haven't gone away. So we still have to deal with them. We have a lot of problems to manage. But our major strategic competitor comes back to China. I'm curious,

as recruitment, you say at this point, is fairly successful. What you make of the letter that some former defense secretaries have signed on to expressing concern about partisan politics, even pervading the military. I'm aware of the letter. I haven't had a chance to read it, but I know most of the people who signed it. One of the things I've always admired about our military, and I spent most of my time either in uniform or as a public servant in the military, is that it's very apolitical. We go through, I've been through a number of transitions of administrations, and they're done seamlessly. Senior leaders in the military, the entire chain of command,

takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution. And all the leaders I've been approached and involved with on the civilian side, who provide civilian control of the military, have been very dedicated to being apolitical. So that's been the tradition. And I think what the people who signed that letter are concerned about is that that might be in some respects changing. I don't see evidence of that. I see a military that is very loyal, very committed to defending the country, and very professional. I want to congratulate you, Secretary, on your restraint. I've heard two references now to Top Gun, and you haven't trash-talked the Navy at all. Would you like to tell the people why the Air Force is superior to the Navy and give four or five reasons why that is? I'm not going to knock my sister service

there. I came out of the Army, and I get a lot of ribbing for that from some of my West Point classmates. I bet. We did get an Air Force recruiting commercial into the beginning of the Top Gun movie. Okay. And flying fighter planes is flying fighter planes. And the Air Force has a lot more of them than the Navy does. There we go. All right.

There we got it in. All right. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, we want to thank you for your service to America from West Point forward, your service in uniform and your service to America now. Thank you so much for being with us, Mr. Secretary. And still ahead, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shares her experience with handling classified documents. Plus, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will be with us at the top of the hour. We're going to talk about that letter and the growing political divide in America's armed forces. The sun is up over the White House at 649 on this Thursday morning.

Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman has agreed to a single debate with his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz. The announcement comes after weeks of mounting pressure from Oz's campaign, which has questioned whether Fetterman is using his recent stroke as an excuse, they say, to avoid a public face off. Fetterman says the debate likely will take place in October. So, John Heilman, there will be one debate, at least in this key Senate race. Even the Pittsburgh Gazette had an op ed the other day saying of Fetterman, if he's not well enough to debate in public once or debate in public at all, it does raise questions about his ability to serve as a senator. So this question is certainly out there, Fetterman's health and the race. Well, I've been hearing about it from Democrats, worried Democrats for the last couple of months, you know, a little on the down low.

People have been worried about about the question of how rapidly Fetterman's recovering. He's not done, he's done a lot of video where he's been given sent out messages by video, but he's not done a lot, maybe not any, I don't want to say there's been zero, but very limited exposure to live interviews on camera. And so Democrats have been concerned. They can see that Oz, who's been imploding left, right, all over the place every day, another explosion of the Oz campaign, that this is a prime opportunity for Democrats to steal the Senate seat away that was held by Republicans and a net pickup here, right? Oz, terrible candidate. Fetterman,

in good health, a very strong candidate. But the question has been, how's his recovery going? And Mimidas has come out to try to rehabilitate his flagging campaign, his unraveling, melting down campaign, and has raised this issue in a very kind of clumsy, insensitive way. But it's been effective in the sense that it's kind of forced the media to talk about it. And it put Fetterman for the first time in a long time on defense. He's now said he's going to do this one debate. And if that continues to be his posture, which I, you know, the people of Pennsylvania deserve one debate, at least between these two, it's going to put an extraordinary amount of pressure on that debate on both candidates when that day comes in the last in the last month of the campaign.

Yeah, that's one to watch. Senator Rick Scott of Florida is defending his role as chairman of the Republican Party's campaign arm. Amid groups, the group burned through a record fundraising haul at a rapid rate. In an interview yesterday, Scott said on Fox News he was asked to respond to new reporting for The New York Times that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already spent more than 95 percent of the one hundred and eighty million dollars it has raised. Take a listen. How did that happen? Where did all that money go? Well, we did the right thing. We spent early. Here's the problem with campaigns. If you wait

until the last month, I mean, there's too much static. There's too much noise out there. Senator, you see a lot of these races that are tightening up in Florida, in Ohio, you know, and these candidates are in need of money at this point. So some of them are pointing fingers at your leadership and saying that that it's not working. What do you say to them? Well, let's look at let's look at the numbers. You know, we we're going to keep our we're going to keep our hardest races to keep. Ron Johnson is going to win. We've invested with him. He's behind by about five points right now. Right. Yeah. So Ron Johnson's either tied or up a little bit or down barely.

So, Joe, Rick Scott's had a tough couple of months back a few months earlier in the spring when the Biden administration was really flagging before their run of success legislatively. They pointed to Rick Scott as a lifeline, that his plan to cut Social Security, raise taxes was the one thing they could point to as an effective contrast between what Dems are offering this fall and Republicans. Things have obviously improved for Democrats back then. But that was strike one for Rick Scott. Strike two, this, the fundraising haul. And then strike three, oh boy, tension with Mitch McConnell.

The two men that stood at Capitol yesterday could barely look at each other. It's clear that McConnell, we know he blames Trump, starting to blame Rick Scott, too, for keeping, perhaps, the title minority leader rather than majority leader. Well, he has a lot to blame Rick Scott about. I mean, Donald Trump and Rick Scott have taken what should be an incredible Republican cycle in the United States Senate and botched it. Donald Trump, by endorsing, really, it's almost as if a Democrat, a Democratic operative

was whispering in his ear saying, pick Oz in Ohio, pick Butters and our pick Butters in Ohio, pick Oz in Pennsylvania, pick Masters in Arizona, pick Bud in North Carolina. Like time and time again, everybody that that he's picked has been has been disastrous. So Mitch McConnell has has good reason to be upset with him. The bigger problem, though, even bigger problem than the money, John Heilman, I'll go back to it. We know how campaigns run. In the last week of the campaign, seniors are going to hear that the person in charge of Senate candidates message is a guy who's saying, don't cut Social Security and Medicare and Social Security and

Medicare in five years. Sunset it and make people come and justify the restarting of those programs after five years. Kill it after five years and then debate whether it should start back up again. And again, protect tax cuts for billionaires, for hedge fund managers, for multinational corporations, but make working class Americans pay higher taxes. It's really bizarre. He seems to be working again for the left. It's a it's a kind of a rule of thumb. If you think about wave elections, Joe, like, you know, go back to 2018 with Democrats. Who was the head of the DCCC that year?

No one will be able to tell me the answer to that question because because the head of the DCCC, their job is to is to direct resources, not to make headlines, not to become the ideological polarizing person, the new face for the party. Let the candidates run their races. Right. That was true in 2014 with Republicans, too. The person who runs the campaign committee is supposed to be a tactician and an engineer, a fundraiser, not someone who's putting out policy pronouncements, not someone who's becoming like the ideological poster boy for the party, especially an ideological poster boy who's in favor of a bunch of unpopular positions that allow him to be made into a piñata that hurts the party's chances rather than help. So, yeah, I mean, Rick Scott has been a disaster thus far. And as you said earlier today, Joe, there's a week is a lifetime in politics.

There's still 60 days before the midterms. Who knows what will happen? But, man, as of right now, I'll tell you, Rick Scott's performance has not been what you want to see. And I'll tell you who most agrees with us with that assessment. Why I feel so strongly about it is because on this rare one moment, Mitch McConnell and I in total agreement. Wow. It doesn't happen that often.

Lockstep. That's just in lockstep. All right.