Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/9/24

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Trump mocks sexual assault accuser: "She would not have been the chosen one."

Donald Trump presents a challenge and a threat fundamentally to the Republic. We see it on a daily basis. Somebody who was willing to use violence in order to attempt to seize power, to stay in power. You have many Republicans out there who are saying, well, we're not gonna vote for him, but we will write someone else in. And I think that this time around, that's not enough, that it's important to actually cast a vote for Vice President Harris. I'm actually I'm honored to have their endorsement. both as leaders who are well-respected are making an important statement that

it's okay and if not important to put country above party. Vice President Harris reacting to getting the backing from now not only former Republican Congressman Liz Cheney, but now also Cheney's father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, the former Republican vice president, following the warning we heard from his daughter that it's not enough just to not vote for Donald Trump. He will take the next step and vote for Kamala Harris. In his statement released on Friday, he called Trump a threat to our republic and pointed to his repeated 2020 election lies. Quote, he tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself

in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again. Trump responded in a social media post calling Dick Cheney irrelevant. He also did a lot of other things on social media that we'll be talking about this morning. Good morning. Welcome. Monday morning. Welcome to Morning Joe. It's September 9th. Good to have you with us. With us, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, the president of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton. NBC News national affairs analyst and a partner and chief political columnist at Puck. John Heilman is with us and staff writer at The Atlantic.

Mark Leibovitz joins us as well. Strong words from Liz Cheney, her father, Dick Cheney. And I guess really, yes, one of the questions might be, will there be other former Republican elected leaders or members of their cabinet that would speak out like George W. Bush or Condoleezza Rice? You know, it's interesting that you have, Mika, now, of course, you have a coalition

for the Democratic nominee that goes from AOC and Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden all the way to Liz and Dick Cheney. Those are all people who are supporting supporting Kamala Harris. Democratic on the Republican side, you just don't have any former presidents, any former people that that really, you know, people running for president. Obviously, certainly not Mitt Romney. Certainly. Right. Yeah. Certainly not a variety of variety of people. Even Mike Pence, his vice president, wasn't wasn't there at all. Sarah Palin may be maybe supporting him. But, you know, and that's nothing. Go down the list of people that work for Donald Trump and see how many of those people, a secretary of defense, a secretary of state, national security advisor who refused to endorse him for good reason. Yeah, well, I think they they want a clean slate. They want a Republican Party back someday

and they see their unfortunate truth is that voting for Kamala Harris would then finally give them a chance to eradicate the party of Donald Trump, who is not a Republican, not a conservative and is not held his word on practically anything. And so they get a chance to rebuild, perhaps. Well, you see what Dick Cheney said. And, you know, you're talking about it. So why? Why would Dick Cheney, a lifelong conservative, do it? Well, as he said, Donald Trump tried to steal the election. It's obvious unless, again, you plug yourself into disinformation. He tried to steal the election. He's already trying to do it again. Using lies and violence to keep himself in power after voters rejected him. He can never be trusted. He's a guy that started the January 6th riots. And he tried to undermine American democracy. He's the guy who promised this weekend,

we'll get to it in a second, that he was going to arrest his political opponents. And not only his political opponents, but his political opponents' donors. He even got down into, I will arrest the donors. He talked about, of course, mass deportation and promising it was going to be bloody. He talked about terminating the Constitution, talked about being a dictator on day one. I could go down the list. And yet, despite that, even if Kamala Harris wins, even if Kamala Harris wins comfortably, which which right now, you know, it's a tie. We've been telling you it's a tie. So Democrats, if they want Kamala Harris to win, are just going to have to work harder than Republicans. But even with that, about half of Americans will be voting for a man who did all the things that Dick Cheney said. Yeah. Donald Trump did all the things that we've listed, all the things that they know.

And Americans, I think all of us just we need to we need to sit back and try to figure out, is it really just the disinformation that these people see every day that are leading almost half of Americans to support that? It's a mixture of that and a lot of other things, including, I think, the mainstream media that claims to be objective. They are there's some sort of instinctive sane washing that like I wonder if he gets asked about any of this during the debate. I would be surprised. I doubt it should happen. I doubt it.

It should happen. But it never does. And they never ask. Yeah, they'll probably start with monetary policy. Yeah. Quantitative acting like it's something like that. Seventy eight. Yeah. So but here's what Donald Trump was doing over the weekend. Again, I wonder if he'll be asked about this. Pushing false claims, threatening anyone who does not support him.

In a post on Saturday, the former president warned he would try to imprison anyone who engages in, quote, unscrupulous behavior during this year's race. What does he mean by that? Of course, people that aren't supporting him. Right. Right.

Political operatives, lawyers, donors. Yesterday, he continued to amplify false information about the 2020 election by referencing an outlandish claim from the far right that 20 percent of Pennsylvania's mail in ballots were fraudulent. Well, of course, those mail in ballots haven't even started to be sent in yet. And these these are the type of lies Chris Christie said he started telling in early 2020 because he thought he was going to lose. And he said that the more he realized he was going to lose in the spring of 2020, the more he started amplifying those lies. And he's doing it now. If I had an opportunity to ask him questions or moderate

anything, I would start probably with her with whether the 2020 election was stolen, but then head straight to this because this is the heart of the matter between these two candidates, not his made up policies on child care that make no sense. On Friday, Trump spoke to the paternal order of police and encouraged officers to watch for voter fraud because voters would be afraid of them. You want to run a country that is based on fair and free voting? You're in serious trouble if you get caught trying to find out what are the real results of an election. It's an amazing thing. Do you ever see that?

They go after the people that are looking at the crime and they do terrible things to them. But the people that committed the voter fraud and everything, they can do whatever they want to do. It's so crazy. And I hope you as the greatest people, just as great as there is anybody in our country, I hope you watch for voter fraud. So it starts early. You know, it starts in a week. But I hope you can watch and you're all over the place. Watch for the voter fraud because we win without voter fraud. We win so easily. Hopefully we're going to win anyway, but we want to keep it down. You can keep it down just by watching because believe it or not, they're afraid of that badge. They're afraid of you people. They're afraid of that more than anything else. They're afraid. So I hope you can watch. Well, they can watch all they want. You know, Donald Trump's own staff members watched in 2020.

And do you know what they said? The person who was in charge of actually watching the election that Donald Trump put in charge? Chris Krebs said it was the cleanest, fairest election on record. Of course, Donald Trump. See, and this is the thing. People go, oh, I don't know what to believe because Donald Trump says this, but then I turn on this cable news channel

that's lying for 24 hours a day on the right, and they tell me that what he's saying is the truth. Really? Or they don't talk about it. You know what the truth is, and you deliberately choose lies. You know where the lie is, and you deliberately choose the darkness. know what the light, where the light is, and you

deliberately choose the darkness. You do it deliberately because you know and I know 63 federal judges said there was no evidence of any, any fraudulent behavior, any widespread voter fraud in 2020. The United States Supreme Court time and again refused to listen to these because there was there was nothing there. The one time they did in a Pennsylvania case, the most conservative justices said, you know what, even if we responded to this case, it wouldn't change the outcome of the election. You had Republican officials in Michigan, Republican officials in Pennsylvania, Republican officials in Georgia,

Republican officials in Arizona repeatedly say that their elections were fair, and yet the lies continue. Now, am I saying this because I think Donald Trump's ever going to change his tactics? No, he knows he's lying. He admitted last week he was lying. He said he lost by a smidge or whatever he said. No, I'm saying this for the people that actually continue to spread his lies and know differently. And John Heilman, you know, the pace that has picked up so much over the past couple of weeks about Donald Trump saying, oh, they're going to steal the election, they're going to steal the it suggests the man doesn't have a whole lot of confidence that he's actually

going to win this election. Right. And I think, you know, the pace, it is eerie, Joe, the way I think if you went back and looked at the timeline in 2020, you would see the same thing. You know, I mean, Trump is obviously we remark about it all the time that there's never been a race that he's run where he has not tried to pre-frame a loss as the result of a stolen election, as a result of a fraudulent election, as a result of cheating. He did that in 2016. He did it in 2020. He did it this time. The difference between 2016 and 2020 was that in 2016, it was a relatively late phenomenon when he started to really lean in on that question. In 2020, he started to lay the groundwork a lot earlier, and he started laying it very early again this time around. And the pace right now is picking up in the way that it did immediately after Labor Day, heading into the fall

of 2020. And of course, we saw how that turned out in the period after the election up to January 20th. And I think that there are there is a widespread sense of concern on the part of across parties, but on the part of everybody who cares about trying to make sure that the transition of power after this election is peaceful. There's an enormous amount of concern, especially in the wake of January 6th, last time around with that precedent in the books that Trump is driving headlong into that again, if anything, amping it up even more so. And, of course, this race has been turning against him of late, and that makes it all the more unnerving. And let's be, again, let's be very clear that about half of Americans, little less than half Americans,

want to support a man who started riots and is doing exactly what John Hyland said. He's doing it again. And they know he's doing it, and they're completely fine with it. Not only is he sowing doubt in the election, the next step is violence to get people to protect him. See what you see. Read what you read, but actually go to somewhere where you can get real information.

A lot of people who are really busy. They don't want it. No, they don't want it. I'm not going to blame the voters. Blame them. Blame them. They plug in intentionally, intentionally to disinformation. I wonder what they think of this, because I don't know what they would think of one of their sons or brothers or fathers acting this way. Trump also mocked a woman who claims he groped her on an airplane in the 1970s, suggesting that she wasn't attractive enough for him to grope her. Take a listen. So think of the impracticality of this. I'm famous.

I'm in a plane. People are coming into the plane. And I'm looking at a woman and I grab her and I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening? What are the chances? And frankly, I know you're going to say it's a terrible thing to say, but it couldn't have happened. It didn't happen. And she would not have been the chosen one.

She would not have been the chosen one. Not a lot of people who'd want to be the chosen one in that situation being groped by that or anybody. Mark Leibovich, you spoke to Liz Cheney, and she had some choice words for Donald Trump on this. Yeah, I mean, she usually does. But I mean, what was interesting was I interviewed her in Austin, Texas on Friday. And I think what people took from that, a lot of them, was I asked her who her dad was voting for. She said that her dad would vote for Kamala Harris. But she went way further. She usually stays in the lane of

democracy, of election interference, of all the reasons that, you know, she's obviously been on the front lines of seeing, you know, why he is so dangerous. But I asked her if she had any advice for Kamala Harris in the debate tomorrow night. And she kind of, she said, basically, you know, one of the things about Donald Trump and J.D. Vance is that she actually used the word misogynistic pigs, which kind of got my attention, got the audience's attention. And I hadn't heard her sort of go down that lane before. And yeah, I mean, she had, she gave a much more frontal and sort of full comprehensive critique of Donald Trump than she does, which is usually pretty not narrow, but

she focuses pretty much on January 6th on the post-election stuff. And so this was pretty striking to me. And I'm curious to see what kind of role she plays going forward in the campaign. Yeah. Well, this is what this is. Liz Cheney's talking to you this weekend. If you were advising Kamala Harris going into this debate on, I guess, Monday or Monday or Tuesday, Tuesday with Donald Trump, you know, he's not a fun or easy guy to debate, obviously. What How do you think she should proceed? Look, I think that you know, every opportunity

that Donald Trump gets to show the American people who he is, he pretty clearly, and look, his running mate is doing this too. I mean, you know, this is my diplomatic way of saying it. They're misogynistic pigs. And I think I think it's I think that will become clear.

Yeah. And so so, Mark, what else was your takeaway, your main takeaway from the interview? I mean, basically, she just sort of kept going in that vein. I mean, it was a very, very, you know, spirited. I mean, the crowd loved her. I mean, just like so many liberal college towns these days. I mean, Liz Cheney, I mean, I never thought I would say these words, but it was really there were lines out the door. There were down the street blocks and blocks. That's great.

So, yeah, it was pretty boisterous. Got a lot of questions. But look, I mean, I think she is really committed to this and has been since the election in 2020 or even before, certainly before January 6th and then going through over the last few years. So, you know, I think we'll be seeing more of that. I mean, I'm really like I said, I'm really curious to see how she'll be deployed by the campaign and what kind of dealings she's had with Kamala Harris's team. And I'm not sure she didn't really get into that. But I think, you know, she certainly will play a role. So the former president is standing by his supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, promising to pardon them as soon as he takes office.

The moment we win, we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime. And I will sign their pardons on day one. I will sign it on day one. Now I need to get a little more on this. Yeah, Jonathan, let me hear you. You wrote the book on the big lie. And and here's Donald Trump talking about the rioters who tried to stop the counting of the electoral votes, the rioters that trashed the United States Capitol, the people's house, the center of democracy in the in the world, Western democracy, the center of it. And and. He's getting applause from people who understand that four police officers died in the aftermath, that police officers were beaten and bludgeoned and bloodied because of Donald Trump. And even though people don't like again with being plugged into disinformation like they're

in the matrix, some some sort of bizarre matrix like people forget cops getting beaten over and over again. They forget the lies and they forget that Donald Trump tried to even have his own vice president hurt. That the Secret Service that were guarding Mike Pence that day as they were rushed downstairs and the mob was searching for them and they were chanting, hang Mike Pence, and they retreated into another room.

Yet Secret Service that were with Mike Pence were calling their families, saying they probably weren't going to see them again because they thought they were going to be killed by this mob. So when Donald Trump calls these people patriots and more damningly says he's going to pardon people that beat the hell out of police officers and you have audiences cheering in america what does that tell you i think the phrase here we need to focus on is laying the groundwork we mentioned earlier

how in 2016 it began that summer trump began to lay the groundwork to question the integrity of the election. Election he did end up winning. He did so again in 2020, that time earlier. He's doing it again now about the election, but he's also laying the groundwork potentially for more violence because that message over the weekend is not just about pardoning those on January 6th. He's suggesting to those who might commit acts of violence for him in the future that he'd offer pardons for them as well were he to be elected. Hey, and Jonathan,

Jonathan, why is Donald Trump not talking about inflation here? Why is he going in areas that we heard, oh, his campaign staff didn't want him to go into? Because Donald Trump, people turning here, well, why are they talking't want him to go into because Donald Trump, people turning out. Well, why are they why are they talking about January the 6th on Monday morning in September? Why aren't they talking? Because he's bringing this up.

Because he's focusing on January the 6th, because he's focusing on political violence, because he's focusing on spreading the big lie, because he's focusing on violence. And so he's doing that for a reason. We didn't even show the clip where he talked about in his mass deportations how they were going to be, quote, bloody. Jonathan, he is choosing to speak on violence, on riots, on the undermining of American democracy. He is making that choice. He is leaning into that in his final stretch in the campaign. Why? That's his closing argument right now, because there is fears he could lose because this race is so close. And it's certainly it's not a given that he's going to lose.

But we know I've talked to people around him, he is concerned he might. He knows his freedom is on the line. And we know that he has received one legal win after another, and now we know his New York sentencing won't happen until after the election either. But at this point, but those delay tactics, as successful as they've been so far,

well, if he were to lose in November, well, then it doesn't matter again because all those cases spring back to life and he won't have the power of the presidency to make them go away. So there is real panic there. And he's trying to both, first of all, relitigate 2020, suggesting that he still didn't lose and defend those who rioted on his behalf. But he's setting up a permission structure for it to happen again. He is choosing the talk about this. We're not. We're simply reporting what he had to say. He is choosing it again. And we know, and let's talk again about that social media post from over the weekend. It couldn't be more dangerous where he's suggesting that those who opposed him in 2016, 2020, in his words, who cheated, and again saying those who are cheating this time around, were he to win, he will arrest, he will imprison at great length. And then you combine this with his deportation policies. These are the two most biggest police

movements this nation has ever seen. This is undemocratic and deeply dangerous. And he's talking about anybody that's working for Kamala Harris, lawyers that are working for Kamala Harris, people who contribute money to Kamala Harris, those people, political operatives, those people he says he's going to send to jail. And again, it's just more of the same. And you, again, you have people who are are you talking about permission structures? Yeah.

Yeah. Trump's giving them the permission structure to riot, to lead to the death of more police officers, to trash maybe the Capitol again. Who knows? But again, where does that permission structure come from? That comes from cable news and online talkers that will tell you that January 6th was nothing. It was much ado about nothing. And also who have said, you know, if we lose, we need we need to start a civil war that we need to stop.

According to them, they say we need to stop depending on voting and need to start a war. Yeah. So the question on some of the most popular programs, the question for debate monitors, but also for Republican former Republican presidents and members of former Republican administrations. Is this the guy you're going to say nothing about? Is this the guy who you want leading the Republican Party? Here's Donald Trump. It is. During his speech to police officers, again, making light of the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband. Kamala Harris and the radical liberals force anarchy on the American people while they they live in safety, in many cases behind walls. You know that Nancy Pelosi has a big wall wrapped around her house. Of course, it didn't help too much with the problem she had, did it?

But she had a big wall, a big wall wrapped around her house. And he gets laughs from the audience. About the problem she had? I mean, when her husband was home invaded and beat over the head with a hammer... They beat the hell out of him....and was severely injured. And then a lot of people in the mainstream media, like, started spreading lies quietly on the phone, trying to follow stories about if there was some conspiracy there and if he knew his attacker. It really is just absolutely sick.

The sickest part is, of course, that Donald Trump goes around and mocks and ridicules Nancy Pelosi's husband, who got the hell beat out of him in inches of his life. And he thinks that's funny. His audience thinks that's funny. I know we've seen we've seen clips of the California Republican Party just dying in laughter as Donald Trump jokes about this assault on an elderly man who could have easily died from it all. It's it's but but, Reverend Al, that's that's what's happening. And again, when you look at what Russian objectives are in spreading disinformation, It's called the fire hose of falsehoods. When you look at fascists and the idea of the big lie, it's to spread so many lies over and over again and as quickly as

possible that it gets to a point where you can't distinguish between the lies. And so people just give up and they say things like they say to me, people who are voting for Donald Trump. Oh, Joe, I don't I don't watch news anymore. I can't because you just don't know who's telling the truth. Well, actually, they do know who's telling the truth. They just choose the lies instead. Jesus said there are those who could have gone to the light, but they choose darkness instead. Well, this is the political equivalent of that that they know where they can get the truth they don't want the truth they can't handle the truth because it all leads to the same direction that Donald Trump is unfit to be president the United States but they want to vote for him they want to vote

for him and they want to really in many ways bring this country to a place that we really from our study of history, the country was formed to bring us away from. You have a man that is now tied for president that is openly planting the seeds of violence. He is openly saying that he will go after his opponents. He will go after their supporters. he'll go after their donors and lock them up for a long period of time. He mocks a man, an elderly man that was almost beat to death in his own home. And he's calling people that beat policemen, beat law enforcement on the Capitol steps. He's calling them hostages while we're dealing with real hostages in the Middle East, hostages of who? They went and made an act to stop an election.

And I hope all of this comes up on the debate on Tuesday night. I don't have hopes that the moderators will bring it up. But there must be some kind of way it is brought out that this is not about Kamala Harris against Donald Trump. It's about the idea of a democratic America, United States of America, that was founded for this to uphold laws and to be able to deal with peaceful ways of having elections and transfers of power against a guy that calls violent insurrectionists hostages and says that he's going to punish his enemies, not the courts, not to have them investigated. He's going to make sure they go to jail and go to jail for long periods of time. This weekend, you've had him

talking about political persecutions. Had him talking about bloodied, bloodying up immigrants as as he has massive deportations, blooding them up. You have him again spreading lies about January the 6th. You have him saying he's going to have pardons for the people who beat the hell out of cops. And in four cases, the aftermath led to the death of those police officers and their families certainly blame it on January the 6th. I'm sure some cable news host on a disinformation network would take umbrage at the families. But but yeah, but but you have all of this going on. And I just really do. I really am curious if we're going to have more debates where people pretend that you don't have a guy who's saying these things, saying all of these things. And by the way, didn't say these things a month ago, didn't say these things two months ago, didn't say these things six months ago.

He's saying them now on the eve of the debate. So why wouldn't your first, second, third, fourth, fifth question be about the fact he is still praising rioters on January the 6th who stormed the Capitol, who tried to overthrow an election, who tried to hang Mike Pence, who who who were searching for senators to to to kill. Why? Why? And four police officers dead. You really you really going to pretend that this guy is is is Bob Dole in 1996? The AP did a deep dive on January 6th. You can find a quote in court from any of the defendants who were convicted, who say who drove them and why they did it. And I ask this because there is such this and we're going to back up here and I'm so

sorry, but John Heilman, there is such an almost maniacal obsession by the mainstream media to go. We must be fair. We must have debates. We want debates. We're going to treat Donald Trump just like he was Bob Dole in 1996. But he's not Bob Dole. Or Gerald Ford in 1976. And they will ask him questions that ignore January. How long was it into the CNN debate before a question was asked about January the 6th? How long? Was he ever asked about pardoning these people that went in to try to overturn? We're talking about the overturning of American democracy. We're talking about violence. We're talking about a guy who continues to talk about violence this weekend. This would

be as if Italian radio interviewers asked Mussolini what he thought the best trade strategy was with Switzerland and Luxembourg. It makes no sense, John Heilman. I will now turn it over to you. Well, Joe, I remember sitting in Atlanta at that debate in June and texting with you in real time. I think it was about the 30 or maybe 40-minute mark before the question of gender and sex ever came up. And we were both astonished by that. You know, I have said a couple of times in the last week, you know, how how much I was troubled going into the CNN debate with all due respect to Jake and Dana, that that they announced before that debate that they were not going to fact check, make any effort to fact check Donald Trump in that debate. And as we all know, because of Joe Biden's performance

and all of the consequences of that, CNN didn't really have to live with the kind of criticism that they might have received on that front. I thought those two hosted a fair debate, but they also did not do something that I think in Donald Trump's case is an essential task on the part of moderators. David Muir and Lindsey Davis, who are going to be moderating this debate on Tuesday night,

we saw Rick Klein, the political director at ABC News, say over the weekend in a story that I read that they did not, he did not say what David Chalian at CNN had said before that debate, which is that they would not fact check. He said, we don't have an official policy on fact checking. We're not going to fact check everything. But we're not saying we're not going to fact check anything. So we'll see what happens. But I think that it's not just a matter of fact checking.

To your point, it's a matter of what are the kinds of questions that Donald Trump has asked. There are questions that go to a lot of these things we've been talking about this morning, both the laying out of these mass criminal policies, essentially, saying, I'm going to prosecute this set of people. I'm going to deport that set of people. I'm going to engage in these large-scale deployments of federal law enforcement authority. As soon as I get into office, no judges, no juries, no investigations. We're going to deport a bunch of people, and I'm going to throw a bunch of people in jail. As Rev just said, I'm the judge, jury, and executioner.

The judge, jury, and not executioner, I don't want to go too far, but jailer, right? He's laying out, and also in the context, as we said a few minutes ago, of the invalidation of the election, which in the context of January 6th is a threat. The notion of this, if I don't win, this is a crooked election. And now it's not like this is a thing without precedent. We saw what happened last time, so we know that there's an implied threat in that as we head toward this election. All of those things are autocratic strongman behaviors. They are things we've never seen in the history of American politics before from any serious, responsible journalist's head as you walk into that debate. It's not a question that can be asked to Kamala Harris. And I think it

must be asked to him along with the fact checking questions. There's a lot on the line for those ABC News moderators and for the country. Not just fact checking. You talk about a fair debate. You talk about a fair debate. Yeah, a fair debate. Not where there's, you know, false moral equivalence, but a fair debate. What have you been talking about over the past week, over the past two weeks? Donald Trump's been talking about violence. He's been talking about throwing his political opponents in jail. He's been talking about bloodying up immigrants. He's been talking about about pardoning the rioters that beat the hell

out of me. These are things he just talked about. So if you're a moderator, how do you how do you where's the moral equivocation between that and, oh, Kamala Harris, she's not letting a lot of mainstream media people interview her right now. Because if you turn to certain channels, there is that moral equivocation. And I just wonder, again, we've seen it time and again with Donald Trump, where moderators just, again, they pretend he's Bob Dole. Let things go by. And and and here they don't even you know, if if the moderators I don't know who the moderators are going to be. So I don't know who I'm talking. I don't know who I'm talking to here.

So but if if Donald Trump had said this during the primary, I could see him saying, OK, well, he said it during the primary to get through the primary. He's saying it now in the homestretch of a presidential election in the way of January about violence, praising January 6th, praising the rioters of January the 6th, telling cops to intimidate voters, telling immigrants they're going to be bloodied and beaten and dragged out of the country. I mean, that's what he's saying now. And and so I hope they will start with the first question, the key question. And that is about January the 6th. I'm sorry. I'm with John.

I just think that when disinformation starts to spew, he needs to be stopped. What Tim Russert said. I'm sorry. That's not true, Senator. That's not true, Mr. President. I agree. Mr. Former President. I agree.

That's what Russert would do. That's what Brokaw would do. If Kamala Harris said something equally as crazy as Donald Trump, any of the things that he is going to say in that debate stage, like let's say, and I'll keep it clean, this debate is not on ABC. It's on CBS. And you CBS people are not fair. Well, the moderator would say,

Madam Vice President, you are wrong. This is on ABC. Like, they would correct her. Right. Why would they correct her? Because it would be so shocking that she would say something

so rude and such a lie. But why won't they correct him? Are they ignored to him? Are they afraid? to help on things? Are they actually not? Can they not keep up? They haven't done it. I think maybe they might go. Maybe they can't keep up. Still out in the morning. The latest from Israel amid continued protests calling for a ceasefire and a hostage. Richard Haass is going to be there to weigh in on the negotiations and where they stand this morning. You watch the morning. Joe will be right back. And they said just the other day, the attorney general, we are looking at Russia.

And I said, oh, no, it's Russia, Russia, Russia all over again. But they don't look at China and they don't look at Iran. They look at Russia. I don't know what it is with poor Russia. This very, very, but you know what? Russia would have never happened if I were president. Attacking Ukraine would have never happened. Well, you promised to actually wipe out NATO. So, yeah, probably probably wouldn't have happened. Just another Saturday dismissing the Justice Department's recent warning about Russia trying to interfere in the 2024 election. And again, more lies because they are talking about Iran. They're talking about Iran trying to interfere in the election. They are talking about China, talking about all those

things. Mark, you have a new piece in The Atlantic. It's called Hypocrisy, Spinelessness and the Triumph of Donald Trump. Tell us about it. So this was a piece. It's for our October issue. And it just posted this morning. My piece did. Basically, it sort of charts. Obviously, I mean, we've talked a lot over the years about Donald Trump's ability to really turn a lot of weak Republican sort of putative leaders to his side, even though they all know better. I sort of look back on back to when Donald Trump was talking to people like us, right, when I spent a lot of time with him, as a lot of us did in 2015, 2016. And one thing I was struck by then and continue to be struck by now, especially given how things have played out, is how boastful he was,

not so much about his ability to win and his great skill and everything, but about how he was going to turn the Republican Party to his will. He was going to break the Republican Party, as he said to me, I'm going to roll them over. And, you know, they might say bad things about me now, but wait a few years.

They're going to be basically eating out of the palm of my hand, which, of course, is exactly 100 percent what has happened with the people who were supposedly going to have the conservative guardrails in place to stop a guy like Donald Trump back starting in 2016. And really what we've seen, obviously, since then has been a finer and finer kind of reduction of the Republican Party into the essence of Trumpism. So I sort of charted the journey of Trumpism in the Republican Party from 2015, 2016, all the way through this summer and the Republican convention right up to today. And hopefully it'll you know, it'll be a past prologue thing to give yet another clear view of what the Republican Party has done in service to Donald Trump and in dereliction to everything they've stood for before. Well, yeah, I mean, I was talking to I was talking to John McCain in February of 2017 in his office, and he just shook his head about Lindsey Graham.

He goes, you know, Lindsey, because the thing that John McCain's comments brought home to me was how small a price he had to pay to get people to sell their political soul. And John McCain said, Lindsey, what that guy will do for a round of golf with the president. Yeah. Mark Leibovich, thank you very much for being on this morning. And joining us now, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations,

Richard Haass. He's the author of the weekly newsletter, Home and Away, available on Substack. Richard, we have so much to talk about. You know where I'm going to start. The New York Giants. How are you feeling today? That was harsh. It's been a long season already.

It's the good news, Joe. 16 weeks or whatever it is to come. Three hours, three and a half hours. I've just freed up 50 hours this fall. I'm trying to think what I can get accomplished. How much did the Giants pay for Daniel Jones?

It was about $40 million a year, plus or minus. Yeah, well, I mean, you may get a couple first downs a week out of that. Congratulations. Great return on investment, yes. Donald Trump talking about Russia, Russia, Russia. Well, Vladimir Putin talks about Russia, Russia, Russia. They've influenced our elections. They did in 2016.

They tried to in 2020. They're trying to do it again. But Donald Trump, of course, lies. That's just what he does. Because he says that's all they're focused on is Russia. No, actually, we're worried, are we not, about Iran? We're worried about China. We're worried about North Korea. And we're worried

about a variety of countries who are trying to interfere with our elections. Well, the answer is we should be worried because they are trying. To some extent, they will succeed. But the lesson I take from this, Joe, is, you know, look, we're an open society. We're vulnerable. Our adversaries, our enemies are going to try to exploit that. We've made it clear in this country we're not going to police really what happens in the digital space. Congress and the courts have made that clear. The companies aren't doing much.

So it's really on us as consumers, as readers, whether we're going to be more critical. And I'm also worried what we do to ourselves. You know, let's put aside what the foreigners do, what we Americans do to ourselves. But it's, you know, this is the new political environment in which these, you know, politics take place. And we're vulnerable to misinformation on steroids. So, Richard, let's turn to the Middle East. A lot of developments over the weekend. Some more violence in the West Bank. We had some soldiers killed. We also had a woman who has

American Turkish citizenship killed during a protest, apparently by an Israeli soldier, reportedly. We had widespread protests again this weekend throughout Israel, including in Tel Aviv. And it's the sense that a ceasefire deal is further apart than it's been in a while. What's your read? A ceasefire deal, I think, is not going to happen. It's clear to me that neither the Israeli government nor Hamas really wants it. The United States has been pushing for it, Jonathan, for 11 months, 11 months. Look, in negotiations, what really doesn't matter is the mediator. We're the mediator here. What matters is whether the parties themselves want a deal. If they wanted a deal, they could get it tomorrow. The answer is they don't. It's not a priority for either side. And you know what? Even if we got a

deal, I don't think it would last. There's funny, the Israelis are not going to completely pull out of Gaza. If tomorrow they got intelligence that they could kill Sinwa, they're not going to not act on that. Of course they are. If Hamas tomorrow got an opportunity to kill some Israelis, they would do it. So I do not understand why we're pushing so hard. It violates Jim Baker's law that the United States can never want an agreement more than the parties. We are violating that every day. Plus what you're pointing to, what scares me as much as anything, it's not that Gaza will continue as a low level conflict for I don't know how long, but we're beginning to see the Gazafication, if you will, of the West Bank. We're seeing it with settler violence.

We're seeing really armed, radical Palestinian militias in the West Bank now who have eclipsed the Palestinian authority. So what we're seeing in Gaza, we could begin to see in the West Bank. This could become the changing normal. And that really worries me. Yeah, radicalism on both sides there in the West Bank, this could become the changing normal. And that really worries me. Yeah, radicalism on both sides there in the West Bank, to be sure. We heard from CIA Director Burns over the weekend, negotiations are going to resume. But U.S. officials telling me and others over the weekend that they just feel like both sides keep moving goalposts, Hamas and Israel. We're not going to, and it doesn't seem like a deal is in the offering anytime soon. My question to you is, we've been waiting for weeks now for Iran to decide whether or not they're going to retaliate

for Israel and the senses. They're going to wait and see if a deal would be struck. Well, it looks like now a deal is not going to get struck. Does that mean the Israel and the U.S. and its allies can be back on alert for Iran to retaliate to strike? Or do we think that ship has sailed? I do not think that ship has sailed. You know, the old line in the Middle East, revenge is a dish best served cold. So there's no time limit on Iranian retaliation. I think the bigger question is how. I think there'll be some form of retaliation.

Will it be some type of assassination, a tit for tat, for Haniyeh getting assassinated at the government guest house? But this could happen at any time in any way. And it's really up to the Iranians to decide when they feel the books have been balanced. And then the Israelis will have to decide whether they want to respond to that. Last April, the two managed a potential escalation crisis to avoid it.

I think the real question is whether the two can manage it again. We'll see. President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, thank you very much for being on this morning. And Richard, we're going to be talking about football next block if you'd like to stay around. No, he's good. Coming up, Nikki Haley was asked about Donald Trump's message to female voters. Oh, here's an opportunity for her. Oh, good. She'll step up. I'm sure she'll step through. And whether he's a good candidate for Republicans. Here we go. We're going to play for you her answers and we'll have a major update on sentencing in the former president's hush money case.

Morning Joe is coming right back. Fifty two past the hour time now for a look at some of the top stories. Other stories making headlines this morning. The opposition leader who challenged Venezuela's president has now fled to Europe. Edmundo Gonzalez is seeking political asylum in Spain. The United States says he won the election back in July, but the country's strongman leader, Nicolas Maggioreau, claimed victory without releasing the data and then cracked down on protesters. Republican Congressman Thomas Massey says he is voting, quote, hell no on a stopgap funding bill to keep the government from shutting down. That legislation was unveiled last week by his own party's leadership. The plan would keep the lights on through March 28th,

but Massey and other hardline Republicans are skeptical of any continuing resolution, even if it's loaded up with partisan wins. That wouldn't stand a chance in the Senate. And rapper Kendrick Lamar will headline next year's Super Bowl halftime show. The game is scheduled for February 9th in New Orleans. The 17-time Grammy winner previously performed during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2022, featuring some of the biggest names in rap and R&B. And still ahead on Morning Joe, more than 10 former senior military officials are now throwing their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris,

a former senior advisor to President George W. Bush and retired United States Navy Admiral Steve Abbott will join us on that and why he says Donald Trump is a danger to our democracy. Plus, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes will be a guest to discuss the key Senate race in his battleground state. Morning, Joe. We'll be right back.