Morning Joe - Republicans celebrate Graham Platner chaos in Maine

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

July 9, 2026 - 7am: What Maine voters are saying after Graham Platner dropped out of the race Republicans celebrate Graham Platner chaos in Maine Trump- thinks Israel will withdrawal from southern Lebanon Rahm Emanuel criticizes Netanyahu in speech Fmr. DHS Secy. Jeh Johnson joins to discuss his latest piece, "Presidential War Powers: Executive Expansion and Congressional Retreat" Trump says U.S. will let Ukraine make Patriot missiles Anger in Houston after fatal ICE shooting Kentucky Governor demands Republican Senator Mitch McConnell update the public on his health condition   To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Last month you said Iranian leaders were very rational people, nice people to deal with, strong people, smart people. Today you said they were scum, sick people and being led by sick people. What changed and do you think they're... I got to know. I've said that about a lot. Now, when you say rational, I think they're much more rational than level one, level two. Level one is gone.

Level two is gone. This is level three. I think they are more rational, but based on their actions over the last week or two, they're not doing a service to the people. And I think more than anything else is I got to know them. And I'm not sure I want to make a deal with them. We can play games, but I'm not sure I want to make a deal. Let's just finish the job.

Okay, let's bring in former Homeland Security Secretary under President Obama, Jay Johnson, staff writer at the Atlantic, Frank Ford, and contributing editor at the Financial Times, Kim Gattas. She's author of the book, Black Wave, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the 40-year rivalry that unraveled culture, religion, and collective memory in the Middle East published in 2020. Kim, I want to start with you and just I'd love to get your insights on a couple of things that we saw this week.

Yesterday, Rahm Emanuel, who spent his entire life being a fierce advocate of Israel, whose father, obviously, very personally involved. and Israel from the very beginning. Ram went to University in Tel Aviv yesterday and just completely obliterated Netanyahu's policies, said that Israel is a pariah, said that the United States has done it absolutely no favors by giving it a blank check that most Americans think

that genocide, or talked about genocide being committed, and guys, they can go on and on. You have that on one side. And then we have the associated press poll that says that Mom Donnie, long characterized as an anti-Semite among some right-wing Jews in America, that he's something like 25, 30 percentage points more popular among Jewish voters in America than Benjamin Netanyahu. So take off. Take off. Take all of that in, if you will, 32 points specifically. Take all of that in and explain from your vantage point just the radical shift not only across the Middle East in the past five years in Syria and other places, but also with America's view of Israel and the Palestinians.

Joe, I think the last few years have shown that Benjamin Netanyahu's belligerence is certainly doing no favors to Israel, no favors to the region, and no favors to the United States, which finds itself in a war now in the Middle East, still with Iran. We saw the strikes resume against Iran over the last few hours overnight. And what Rahm Emanuel was expressing is a changing sentiment in the United States about that relationship with Israel, within the Democratic Party, within the youth across America. The fact that he pulls lower than Mamdani, you know, that's a very low bar for Benjamin Netanyahu.

I think anybody could pull higher than Natanyahu at this point, including, of course, in his own country. We have elections coming up in hopefully by October or so. He's not doing well in the polls. He is not delivered for his own people. You know, the wars that he's launched against Lebanon against Syria, against Iran. As he says, as many of his supporters,

including in the United States, still say for Israel's security, have not delivered security. They have made Arab countries that are in an alliance with Israel, have a peace treaty with Israel, rethink some of that, even though some of them are also deepening

the security relationship with Israel because of what it can offer. But all of this is a major shift in how Israel is viewed. I think the warning from Ram Emmanuel that this strategic isolation is not a long-term policy that is sustainable for Iran, for Israel, is on point. He did also talk about the 23-state solution for the Middle East, saying we have to move away from the two-state solution.

And when he says 23 states, I assume he means the 22 Arab states, which includes Palestine for Arabs and Israel. And I just want to point out that it was seen as groundbreaking that he would put this on the table. But Arabs have put this on the table over 20 years ago in 2002 with the Arab Peace Initiative. So Benjamin Netanyahu keeps saying he has no peace partners. And, you know, there's a lot to criticize on the Palestinian side, on the Arab side, absolutely. But these offers have been put on the table before. And again, they have been put on the table during the last two years when we heard,

very strong words from the Jordanian foreign minister, Aiman Safadi, in response to Benjamin Netanyahu, saying Israel had no peace partner, saying we are 54 Arab and Muslim countries ready to guarantee Israel's security and peace if it makes concessions to the Palestinians. So the idea that there is no peace partner is something that Benjamin Netanyahu likes to say. I would just add two final points. Benjamin Ram Emanuel said that you know Benjamin Netanyahu

has a problem not just with the Democratic Party but with America but I would caution against thinking that the problem at the moment

is only about Benjamin Netanyahu the candidates in Israel are not running to his left there are some of them running to his right

so we just need to pay attention as well to the shifts within within Israel yeah and

Frank four, I wanted to talk to you about this because obviously the Holocaust touched your family very personally, and it's got to be disturbing to you to see what has happened and the lack of support among not only young Democrats, but young Republicans right now continuing to grow for Israel. I must say this is something that Rahm talked about. yesterday, but it's something we've been warning about now for years. And specifically warning that Netanyahu's absolutist views were a historical. I consistently warned, these people, do they think they can escape history? There is always blowback. I've said it, there's always

blowback to these absolutist positions. And we have seen the fiercest of blowbacks in this case. where Israel is now isolated, more isolated than it's ever been, and more unpopular in the United States than ever. And as Kim said, there are still some absolutist views there. I do want to also say, just as a side note, I can't let it go by. The Benjamin Netanyahu is saying, oh, we have no peace partners there? Yes, the Palestinian authority is corrupt. They've always been corrupt.

And yes, Hamas, they're terrorist thugs. Just one little caveat here. Benjamin Netanyahu funded Hamas for years through Qatar. And in fact, he told Qatar three weeks before the October attacks continue funding Hamas. So him saying, we have no peace. He very cynically had a partner with Hamas. And he was responsible in the large part for funding Hamas right up. to the day that were the worst attacks since the Holocaust.

Yeah. I was thinking the other day about the arc of Netanyahu's career, that he rose essentially because he claimed that he was the guy who could communicate about Israel to Americans, that when he began as the deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington, he became this ubiquitous figure on Nightline, on the Larry King Show.

and if his job and if his rise in Israeli politics was predicated on his ability to manage Israel's most essential alliance with the United States, then you'd have to say that his career has been a catastrophic failure because at this point in his premiership, he's left Israel in a way in which it is politically stranded in this country, that, of course, it's become this litmus test within the Democratic Party. But also you look at independence. The numbers aren't that different than Democrats. You look at Republicans under the age of 40 that the consensus within the Republican Party simply doesn't exist. And he's failed not only by staking out this partisan position within the United States

where he's bet everything on the Republican Party, which I think is a fairly catastrophic, strategic mistake that is injured his country's national security. But at every stage in this conflict, he's done the thing that is most likely. likely, not just from a moral perspective, but from a strategic political perspective to leave Israel in the worst possible condition where he's affirmed the kind of the most hyperbolic criticisms of Israel by partnering with a bunch of thugs, of Kahanist right wing. He's missed all of these opportunities, whether it is with what you said negotiate, bringing in the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after its, it's beat back.

Khamas, but also he had the chance to negotiate a normalization deal with the guardians of Mecca and Medina. He could have normalized relations with the government of Saudi Arabia, which would have been a game changer for Israel. And he couldn't do it because he couldn't swallow the world's set Palestinian state. And in fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu, as we know now from the book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, in the situation room making the case to go to war with Iran to President Trump. And Democrats are renewing calls to pass a war powers resolution after President Trump said this week, the ceasefire with Iran is over. And Jay Johnson, you co-authored a new piece on this topic. It reads in part that Constitution's intended balance between the legislative and executive branches

on matters of war powers is broken. You point out, we actually have not had in this country an authorization for the use of military force since 2002 before the war in Iraq. So can you just established first for people because it's been in almost 25 years. What's supposed to happen, what the role of Congress is supposed to be in matters of war? The founding fathers, the so-called founding fathers could not have anticipated many things that exist today. In 1789, there was no standing army. It would take weeks, if not months, to go to war. But one of the things that I think they did have right was that in a democracy where there are no kings, no one person should be able to take the nation into war. And so Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says that

Congress is prerogative to declare war. That provision is a near nullity. It has never worked the way it was intended. In the history of this nation, we've actually only formally declared war five times. Yet the president, the commander in chief, has deployed the military hundreds of times. And this avoidance of the constitutional provision is only escalated in recent years. The way it's supposed to work is when FDR went to Congress in 1941 after the attack on Pearl Harbor and asked Congress to declare war against Japan. 1990, when George Bush 41 went to Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Iraq after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Even 2001, 2002 after the 9-11 attacks, Bush 43 went to Congress and asked for an authorization for the use of military force.

As you point out, the last time that happened was 2002. Now, Congress has effectively gotten out of the business of authorizing military force. And meanwhile, legal interpretations within the executive branch of the president's ability to put the military into hostilities, has expanded. Basically now, the prevailing view across multiple administrations is that the president can deploy the military anytime it's an important national interest so long as it does not rise to the level of a war in nature, scope, and duration. I think that's almost a quote. Clearly, what we're doing in Iran is a war. It's now in its fifth month. And in the course of writing this article, we interviewed a bunch of former and present members of Congress, including Senator

Tim Cain, who's been a leader in reasserting Congress's role. And he says that the war powers authority of Congress is an atrophied muscle. So let's ask about that. It's no surprise, I suppose, that the executive branch would want to expand presidential power. So we get their motivations. But let's talk about the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. Why do you think Congress has abdicated their role in recent decades? Because a... A declaration to go to war to deploy the military is a politically dangerous thing without knowing how it's going to come out. The Democratic primary for president in 2008 hinged on how candidates voted for the 2002

authorization to use military force. So there's a dynamic, which I witnessed personally when I was at the Pentagon, where presidents considering deploying the troops someplace, Congress says, well, you have the authority to do this on your own. You don't need me. I'm going on vacation. And so Congress has gotten out of the business of declaring war and the executive branch has filled it. Kim, as the secretary said, this is a war clearly, whatever the president wants to call it. But it's spilling over as well to the country, you know very well, Lebanon. And you've been writing in the financial times that Lebanon could actually be the thing that thwarts the MOU. Is Benjamin Netanyahu using Lebanon as a way to

undermine President Trump's efforts to get out of this war in Iran? Well, what happened with the MOU, which was then followed by U.S., Israel, Lebanon negotiations, is that they contradict each other. There was a lot of dismay in Lebanon when the MOU was signed between the U.S. and Iran, and it appeared as though the U.S. had handed over Lebanon back to Iran. Lebanon feels stuck between Israel and Iran, both trading fire in Lebanon, Iran using Hezbollah and Israel striking southern Lebanon and Beirut. So there was a lot of dismay that after the Lebanese government with a new president and a new prime minister who are offering and have engaged in these talks with Israel, found themselves suddenly attached again to the Iranian orbit.

it. Then we had renewed direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon in Washington. There have been several rounds. We expect another round coming up. The Lebanese president might be coming to Washington. So these two are in contradiction, and I think that's where the weakness lies, and that's why Lebanon is such a key element of this. Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu is looking for ways to undermine the MOU. He's not happy with this deal. Very few people are. It's a bad interest. deal, but you could argue that it's better than war. However, I do think that the weaknesses in this MOU lead us to exactly where we were last night, renewed strikes, because I think that Iran is misreading this moment as well. It is overreaching. It feels victorious, and it is taunting and

gauding the United States. And we've seen the reaction yesterday with the strikes by America, which we must point out, targeted infrastructure in Iran's some crucial infrastructure on ports, but also rail tracks, which I believe was the one that allowed Iran to export goods through the north into, you know, its northern neighbors into China. So there is some thinking going on behind these strikes, try to limit Iran's capacity to disrupt oil flows. All of this, the contradictions, the different points of view from J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, who seemed to be starting their pretty, presidential campaigns with very different approaches to how do we deal with Iran.

Makes me think about a golden quote from the former, from Egyptian president, Gamad Abdin Nasir in the late 1950s, who said the genius about you Americans is that you don't make stupid, clear-cut stupid moves. You only make complicated stupid moves, which makes the rest of us wonder if we're missing something. And at the moment in the Arab world, and I think also here. People are wondering, is there a plan? Is it just, you know, confusion? What exactly is coming next? And I think, you know, what we need to look at are the Israeli elections. Frank Four is sort of a sidebar, a sad sidebar to the NATO meetings. There was the conversation, the brief conversation between the President of the United States and Zelensky and Ukraine. And the consensus

has always been, if you speak to people in the Pentagon who will still speak to you without getting caught, they will tell you that if they had been supplied, if Ukraine had been supplied properly over the past year or year and a half, Russia would have collapsed already within Ukraine. The military would have collapsed. What were you thinking when you saw the two of them together? I mean, on top of which he couldn't even correctly identify Zelensky and mistakenly called him Putin. I was thinking, what the hell? But But, you know, I do think that this is a moment where Ukraine has seized the initiative with their attacks that they've launched deep inside of Russian territory.

And it's the one thing that has the capacity to change the dynamic of this frozen conflict. And Ukraine needs one thing right now, which is it needs missile defense, that it's run out of its ability to protect Kyiv. And it feels like if the president genuinely wants this war to end. And this is a moment where it would be possible to correct for some of the past strategic mistakes that the United States has made and to kind of truly go all in on supporting Ukraine. Because otherwise, this conflict is just going to keep going on and on and on in this zombie-like fashion. The Atlantic Spring For, thank you very much. And contributing editor at the Financial Times, Kim Gattos, thank you.

as well. Appreciate it her compliment of American leadership that when we do things stupid, like we're extraordinarily complex in our ability to weave together stupid policy. Thank you, Kim, and we agree 100%. You can read Kim's Lodge Reporting online right now. And Jay Johnson, stay with us for our next story. Coming up, there are growing calls for transparency and accountability after a man was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Houston this week.

What ICE is saying here does not line up, at least from what reporters are saying, the physical evidence showed. He was a father, a hard worker, a guy who'd been in America for over three decades. The type of man Ronald Reagan was talking about in his farewell speech to America. We'll have more on what we're learning about that incident, which has sparked huge protests. That's straight ahead on Morning Joe. We'll be right back. This morning there are growing calls for an independent investigation into a deadly ice shooting that took place in Houston on Tuesday. The family of the man killed is demanding federal officials release all the evidence associated with the incident. MS now's Britt Miller has more.

My father was a private man, a man who dedicated his life to work. A son struggling to hold back his tears. He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of Mexican man shot and killed by ice. After an ICE agent opened fire on his father, Lorenzo Salgado, Arajo, killing him. It happened in Houston, Texas Tuesday, as family says Arajo and three others headed to work at a construction site. Department of Homeland Security says ICE agents were stopping Arajo's vehicle as part of a targeted enforcement operation. when they said the father of three weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer. They claimed the agent then shot Arajo in self-defense.

But federal agents have not provided any evidence to support that claim. Family says Arajo was from Mexico living in the U.S. for 35 years. They say Arajo was in the process of getting his work permit and knew what to do if stopped by ice. Had my father seen an emblem of ice or an emblem that says, about law enforcement agency. My father would have complied. He would have stopped. He would have not ran away because he feared for his life. Videos of the moments after the shooting now surfacing on social media. This one shows a man on the ground in a blood-stained shirt, surrounded by ICE agents. By Wednesday night, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of

Houston calling for justice. But local reporters tell us their fight is only matched by their fear, saying targeted ice operations have become common. They seem to be targeting people who are driving work vans. Some of them are not going outside. Some of them are avoiding going outside because of what happened to Mr. Adahu, and they're afraid that it could happen to them. Local leaders are skeptical, as the Associated Press reports, at least seven others have died after an encounter with federal immigration officers

since President Trump's immigration crackdown began. Remember Minneapolis? Remember Renee Good? As ICE learned nothing from that experience? We need to make sure that this does not happen with this incident. That is why no one should be asked to simply believe ISIS version of the story. We need to know why Lorenzo was targeted. And we've learned DHS is leading this investigation into the agent involved,

shooting while the FBI looks into the potential assault of a federal law enforcement officer. But the family and community, they want more demanding an independent investigation by another agency. Back to you. Yeah, you know, ICE. That might make sense. Ice has been caught. ICE has been caught lying time and time and time again. Lying time and time again. And the only thing that actually proved those lies, was video. And right now we don't know there doesn't appear to be video of the killing. But DHS takes the investigation every time out of the hands of the state, out of the hands of local authorities. They take the evidence. They take everything. If you kill somebody locally

in Minneapolis or if you killed somebody on the streets of, whether it's Minneapolis or the streets of Houston, wherever it is, then you need to have local law enforcement in investigating the killings that are happening on their hometown streets. And it just hasn't happened. Someone who might know something about the Department of Homeland Security and some analysis as to what's happening now is Jay Johnson. Jay, your thoughts on this? DHS these days is a department that I don't recognize anymore.

It's apparent to me that the current secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, is trying to get DHS out. of the news, less so. But there's a culture that seems to exist among law enforcement within DHS, ICE specifically, that leads to incidents like this. And I'll go back to what Joe just said. There's a vast difference in an investigation when there's a video versus when there is not a video. We saw tragically what happened to Renee Good and Alex Pretty because there was a video. too often the written report about an incident like this when there's no video is, you know, he resisted arrest or he had a cardiac incident or something along those lines.

And there doesn't need to be an investigation here. I regret to say that in circumstances like this, an agency cannot investigate itself. And there should be an independent investigation for credibility's sake involving both federal and local law enforcement and federal and local prosecutors. And Secretary Johnson, there's been some talk that though some tactics have changed since Minneapolis, that the Trump administration is preparing to ramp up the deportations. This is almost reflexive for this administration when political times are tough, which they are for them. They always go back to immigration.

And I wanted on that idea, there's some reporting in the air times and in the Atlantic other places that this incident here is reflective of what they're doing more and more. And we heard in the report, too. Officers trying to confront vehicles, at times moving vehicles. And we saw the Minneapolis, and again here, that could have dangerous results. That's not usual protocol, is it? It can be, depending upon the circumstances. Looking at the larger picture, there's an accelerated effort on steroids to enforce the immigration laws in the interior, as opposed to at the border.

Apparently, Stephen Miller has set this arbitrary quota for deportations for arrest. But finding undocumented people in the interior of the United States in places like Houston or Minneapolis is vastly different from securing the border. And you're going to have circumstances like this confrontation where an effort to arrest somebody or stop somebody goes awry, leads to a dangerous, lethal result. And there has to be an investigation of this kind of thing. So why did not this happen? The following happened.

It would happen, I think, in several other major American cities. A man is shot, gunshot wound, down on the sidewalk in Houston, Texas. Yeah. Houston police, homicide unit, responds to this call. You have ICE members doing whatever they do. they could be threatened with arrests by the Houston Police Department. Stay away from a crime scene. This is a crime scene.

Stay away from a crime scene. That never happens. No. In addition to what Jonathan just referenced, shooting at a moving vehicle, responsible municipal police departments are, they're under orders. Do not shoot at a moving vehicle unless it's moving towards the police officer. Rank and file law enforcement is taught not to shoot at a moving vehicle unless it presents a lethal threat to to themselves. You know, look at the video of the shooting of Renee Good, which I've looked at

a hundred times. It's clear to me that she was attempting to steer away from the confrontation, not one of these officers. It's a Houston police crime scene. What's ICE doing taking over? Under normal circumstances, when everything is functioning the way it should and you have a tragedy like this, if it involves federal law enforcement, local law enforcement is in a secondary role. But local law enforcement, for credibility's sake, for accountability's sake, should be involved in something like this because there's going to be intense community interest as well. But it's not a situation typically where local law enforcement takes over if federal law enforcement is involved in an incident like this.

but ICE now, unfortunately, has lost so much credibility on the streets that everyone rightly looks to law enforcement at the local level for the truth of what happened. Former Homeland Security Secretary and President Obama, Jay Johnson, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. And we'll be following that story. And still ahead on Morning Joe, Kentucky's governor is calling on Senator Mitch McConnell, to clear up the questions surrounding his health. Now nearly four weeks since he was hospitalized for reasons that have not been made public. Morning Joe is coming right back.

Welcome back. The governor of Kentucky is demanding that Senator Mitch McConnell update the public on his health condition more than three weeks after the Republican lawmaker was hospitalized. McConnell's staff has not revealed the cause of his hospitalization, nor any details of his treatment, fueling speculation about his condition.

Yesterday, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear sent a letter to McConnell, writing that residents of the state are, quote, increasingly concerned about McConnell's health, well-being, and ability to serve, arguing that public officials owe constituents transparency about their capacity to hold office. The letter comes after a handful of Republican senators said they spoke with McConnell for about 20 minutes each earlier this week. President Trump told reporters early this morning aboard Air Force One that he had not spoken to McConnell and had no idea about his condition. Jonathan Lemire, a couple things here. Local reports out of Kentucky have analyzed this situation

and are talking about a deadline if Mitch McConnell for some reason is unable to complete his term. And let me just say certainly our prayers are with Senator McConnell. Connell and we hope Mitch is doing well. But the deadline, because the Kentucky legislature in 2024 passed a law that stripped the governor of appointing a senator in 2034, now the deadline appears to be, according to Kentucky media and Kentucky statute on or about August 3rd. So the state would need to know on or about by August 3rd whether Mitch McConnell was able to complete his term. And if not, then there would be the setting of a special election, which would be held, of course, this November. So right now, Andy Bashir, of course, is wanting Mitch McConnell and others close to him to assure everybody that he's able to complete

his term. And certainly, again, we pray that he is. However, statutorily, the clock is ticking. Yeah, we certainly hope for his recovery. But you're exactly right. It's that deadline, that looming deadline, that fast approaching deadline, that has fueled all the conspiracy theories in recent days about his health. You know, the fact that there's succession of it, what are they, what are they hiding? Why won't they disclose anything about how he's doing? His office has remained tight-lipped. They're not saying anything about the senator's condition. and we had this wave of phone calls in last day or two from his aides, allies saying that they spoke to him.

And that's a good sign. But I think these questions will persist, Joe Amika, until we actually seen hear from the senator himself. And if that deadline approaches, as that deadline approaches, that pressure is really going to intensify. All right. Still ahead. President Trump was handed another loss in federal court yesterday. We'll tell you about that decision.

Plus, how the president plans to bring his fight against. against birthright citizenship back to the Supreme Court. And we'll get to our top story of the morning. Democrat Graham Platner dropping out of the U.S. Senate race in Maine. Morning Joe will be right back.