Morning Joe - ‘This is staggering’: Joe on stunning new midterm poll giving Dems wide advantage

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

‘This is staggering’: Joe on stunning new midterm poll giving Dems wide advantage 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.

The Epstein Files. I heard there's no files. I heard it's a hoax. And then all of a sudden he's going to release the files. Well, I thought there was no files. Man. He wants an investigation now. Listen.

Like, what is going on? Okay, Joe Rogan isn't buying the president's shifting positions on the Epstein files. We'll have the latest on the new investigation that could stall the release of those documents. We'll also bring you expert analysis on two. legal cases, starting with the stunning development in the indictment of James Comey. Meanwhile, a federal judge says he plans to restart criminal contempt proceedings against Trump administration officials. Says he wants it to move fast.

There's been a long enough delay. And we'll dig into more polls showing the president's approval rating slipping on key issues. But I'll tell you what, you look, I saw something yesterday, Willie, a generic ballot test. And we've been talking about how badly things have been going for Republicans over the past two, three, four weeks. I will say, in all my years in politics, and of course, that goes back, why, 75 years after we came back from the war? Just a couple of kids starting our own polling outfit. Now, I'm trying to get on with Gallup. No, in all the years, I've been in politics.

I think Gallup was around in 1947. I've never seen this big of a spread. I've never seen one party with this high of a number. And I think you would probably have to go back to maybe post-Watergate days. This is staggering. 14-point spread. That's the generic ballot. The question is, if the midterms were held today, there'll be a year from now, who would you vote for?

55% of Americans say Democrats, 41% say Republican, a massive split. Obviously, the alarm bells went off two weeks ago because of those elections, Virginia, New Jersey, and places across the country. And now you're seeing what Americans are saying is we're not happy with the way things are going in this country right now. We want to change. And we'll get into some of the other polling, including from Fox News, which shows the president deeply underwater on the economy, for example, even on immigration, which was his key issue. Right. Americans don't like what they're seeing right now. Not at all.

And John, you know, you had a great piece in the Atlantic last night saying Trump 2.0 is suddenly looking like Trump 1.0. Michael Schmidt and I had been saying for some time, I'd been saying, you know, when he said, man, they really seem to be clicking and hitting their stride on everything and there's so much. I said, wait till the 101st day. Because again, I go back to the contract with America.

Newton knew exactly what he was going to do 100 days. And we just rolled over Democrats. They just sat there. We're helpless. At one point, I remember walking over to what I think it was Patrick Kennedy. I go, are you guys going to at least put up a fight? And he started laughing. He said, eh, I asked to get part the same thing.

And basically were like, you know what? you guys go but it ended up being like napoleon's march to moscow we got to moscow they burned the city and then we were in a cold bloody retreat for the next three months well they've got to a hundred days in and now they don't have any plans Donald Trump's knocking down the white house he's he's making these wacky deals with Argentinian beef uh people uh he's got the Saudi prints coming in. There's just, again, the feeling is a huge disconnect.

What's the difference between now and back during his first term? Well, the economy was chugging along pretty well during the first term. Today, and we look at all these numbers, the president can say it's a hoax. People can't young people define, but people under 40 can't buy homes. Grocery prices are still going up. they're only going up two or three percent, but that's on top of everything that happened before. And I think the reason why Democrats from the shutdown, health care bills are going to be the hidden. And we talked about this yesterday. It's going to be the hidden issue that

when people are paying more and more for their policies, doctors are telling them they need procedures. And then health care companies that make billions and billions of dollars are saying, no, you can't get what your doctor says you need to have. And then after you get home, you have hidden costs that hit you weeks later. This is all adding up. Along with your car payments and rent and to have a president say, yeah, healthcare, worst item, 3464. So tariffs very low, foreign policy's okay. Immigration's okay. But anyway, on the economy, the Fox News poll has him down in the 30s. Yeah, and that's supposed to be his signature

issue. President Trump and his team had four years out of power. And with the help of Project 2025 and other matters, they came back with a game plan and experienced how to use the levers of government, the levers of power. And they did. They were a steamroller on nearly every issue for months. But that

has really changed. We saw the voters deliver their verdict at the election a couple of weeks ago. We just tick through the polls, getting worse for the president by the day. There's a real sense that He is distracted. He's lost focus. He is thinking about things like the East Wing rather than driving down prices.

Even there's a hallmark of Trump 1.0, the first term, a lot of chaos and infighting. That started up again. We've had a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. versus Susie Wiles feud in recent days. By the way, he did get, he's gotten his vaccine bullshit up on the CDC site now. Yeah. So at least in that case, the MAHA agenda has won, the anti-vax stuff. And we've also seen two, for a president who, really prides himself and never retreating.

We've seen two significant walkbacks in the last week because of a political vulnerability. Tariffs. He rolled back a few because it was an acknowledgement. Food prices, coffee, bananas, a handful of other things. It's just too high. So it's a signature. It's his plan. They rolled it back. And now we have the Supreme Court expressing skepticism, whether he can do it at all. And now the Epstein matter, something he fought fiercely. He could try to spin it in the last couple of days. But I've talked to people in and outside of the building.

This was, he had to go along with it because he was going to get rolled. This is a new vulnerability for the president. And we've seen Democrats for the first time this year be emboldened. And we've seen Republicans start to be willing to challenge him, which in his mind hastens that lame duck stash. And we heard that voice through Joe Rogan yesterday where he said, I speak for a lot of people who supported you, Donald Trump. This is not a hoax. This is a serious issue we care about. You can't wish it away.

And just quickly back to the economy in that Fox News poll, 60% of people said, this is Donald Trump's economy. You can't keep saying, I inherited a mess from Joe Biden. And I inherited a mess. 62% say it's Donald Trump's. And on the question of affordability, which Donald Trump also is called a hoax and a con job, 85% of people in this Fox News poll say, my grocery prices have gone up. So you can't tell me your driving prices down and that it's not a problem. And if it's a con job, I am paying more at the grocery store, say 85% of Americans.

Always blaming Biden or immigrants, it seems, and people are getting a little tired of it. And Republicans are now, we're talking about Democrats saying, okay, well, you know what, maybe, you know, we think we're doing okay. We're going to be all right. Now you have Republicans going on the House floor criticizing the House Speaker. Why did you keep us out so long? Right. It's like they see one of the most historic gaps between Republicans and Democrats, and they know they're in trouble. They all know. They're in trouble. So, and speaking of trouble, I mean, you look at what's happened down in Texas. I mean, again, DOJ mistakes. You can do a top five boneheaded moves by the DOJ.

exposed this week so far. And I mean, they all have massive consequences. I know we're going to talk about one in a second, but in the redistricting wars, Texas was the reason California moved forward. Texas got five, California got five. Now, because DOJ lawyers misread the law. A judge is saying, I think it was a Trump judge, is saying, we're going to.

to throw this out. And they said the drafting of it, it was like a hundred monkeys with a hundred crayons, like we're drafting letters that, I mean, they, even, even, even Republicans that were on the DOJ side, we're saying, this is incomprehensible. It's incompetent. And this could cost Republicans five seats. Yeah, I'll just read one line from the judge's opinion. It says it was, quote, challenging to unpack all of the factual legal and typographical errors in that. DOJ missive, just saying this is ridiculous. This is not based on anything that we can support that would stand up in court. And now the politics of this is if these seats go away, California, that seems enshrine. That's the voters did that. And then Democrats are eyeing things like

Virginia in Maryland. We've also seen Indiana tell the president no, that this is going to be Democrat. Kansas told the president no. Yeah, Democrats are going to come out break even and potentially start to look like come out ahead in the reducing wars. So on this Thursday, November 20th we have for this morning's big legal developments. MS now senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin and MS now Justice Intelligence reporter Ken Delanian. So let's get to our other top story in an extraordinary concession in court yesterday. Prosecutors in the federal case against former FBI director James Comey admitted the final indictment against him was never presented to the full grand jury. Interim U.S. attorney Lindsay Howell,

who has had no prior prosecutorial experience initially presented a three-count indictment. But the jury rejected one of those counts, Justice Department lawyers said yesterday. Then rather than drafting and presenting a new two-count indictment, Halligan printed a new version without presenting it and admitted only the four-person and another grand juror were present for the signing. The judge appeared skeptical of the government's arguments throughout the hearing and went on to question prosecutors on whether the indictment was retaliation by President Trump. The judge also questioned Halligan, calling her a possible puppet for the president. Comey's attorney went on to argue the judge should throw out the case entirely, saying Trump used the DOJ to, quote, punish a perceived political enemy.

Comey faces obstruction and false statement charges stemming from the testimony he gave to Congress in 2020 about leaks at the FBI. His trial is set for January. He has pleaded not guilty and is challenging the indictment on multiple grounds, including whether Halligan was lawfully appointed. And Lisa Rubin, I think, or Joe, I think that's a good question this morning. Well, it certainly is. But while we have wonderful, wonderful writer summing things up, that doesn't begin to scratch the surface of what sounded like from our reading of it. One of the most extraordinary things to ever unfold in a federal court between a judge and a federal prosecutor admitting just an egregious mistake and then getting her assistant to stand up. And the judge just eviscerating him, the guy, it sounded like the guy was shaking when he said,

was there a memo written that said, you shouldn't bring these charges? And he stumbled around. The judge went in again. I mean, he was like, make him stand up and sit down. And he was shocked. People in the courtroom were shocked. Again, begin to explain, because I've been trying to explain, D'Amika, how this never happens. I've never heard anything like this happening before at this level.

The story of the Comey indictment from start to finish is so riddled with irregularities, Joe, that we don't have the time in this segment for me to cover them all. The one that you just referred to was the exchange between a prosecutor that Lindsay Halligan brought in from North Carolina and the judge asking about the existence of something that Ken has reported on, a declination memo, which is, what it sounds like. It's the memo that somebody writes when they are trying to advise a U.S. attorney. This case is not in the interest of justice. It shouldn't be brought. And that assistant U.S. attorney yesterday did not want to acknowledge the existence of a declination memo and tried

to say. Did he really think the judge was going to stop? I mean, the judge kept plowing forward. And again, every recounting of this said it was cringeworthy. The whole 90-minute hearing made everybody deeply uncomfortable because a prosecution was so incompetent? It's not just that the lawyers were incompetent. I actually think that the lawyers who have been brought into this case from the Eastern District of North Carolina are probably decent prosecutors. It's what they were handed. It's the bag of, let's call it, bandini that they were handed to deal with and to have to defend. And so from start to finish, from dealing with the existence of the declination memo to the real shocking revelation of how the grand jury came up with

this two count indictment, the whole thing had people's mouths agape. And I just want to underscore why what happened yesterday is so procedurally and constitutionally defective. This grand jury was shown a three count indictment by Lindsay Halligan, who by all accounts, including her own, was the sole prosecutor in the room. When she left the room at 428 to leave the grand jury to deliberate, about two hours later, they returned it saying, we're okay with two of these counts, but we're not okay with the third.

That's when, according to lots of case law, you're supposed to start over and make sure that every member of the grand jury has an opportunity to see the charges before them and vote on what that charging instrument should look like. Instead, according to a footnote in a brief that they returned last night, they had a deputy criminal chief consult with a grand jury coordinator and basically do a cut and pace job where they produced a new charging document with just the two counts the grand jury liked.

And then instead of presenting it to the full grand jury, they just sort of rushed in to a magistrate judge, presented it with the foreperson and the deputy four person and Lindsay Halligan there. But Lindsay Halligan herself was so confused about what had happened that if you read the transcript of that exchange that night, the night that Jim Comey was indicted, the magistrate judge says to her, Ms. Helling, I have two charging documents before me. One has three counts, one has two counts, and your signatures on both. Can you explain to me what happened? And she can't even represent with a straight face that her signatures on both. Oh, did I sign them both? Yeah. Oh, my signatures on both? Unbelievable. So Ken Delaney and the assistant

lawyer that we're talking about here, Tyler Lemons, asked. under all this questioning by the judge eventually did concede, yes, there was a draft memo written by the previous prosecution team that said, there's no case here, we should not bring charges. So now that's on the record in the courtroom that that happened. But a lot of people are asking, to Lisa's point, if not Lindsay Halligan, who has no experience as a prosecutor, was there no one on that team? Was there no lawyer who said, actually, this is how you have to present these findings to the grand jury? This is how this works. Like, how could this even have happened?

No one in the Eastern District of Virginia, as far as we can tell, Willie, they all, every career prosecutor in that office to a man and a woman declined to participate in presenting that indictment to the grand jury, which is why Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance lawyer with no experience, had to go in there. And while these prosecutors from North Carolina may be competent and experience, she obviously is not. And when the judge heard yesterday that this had happened that the grand jury had not seen the actual indictment, there was, there was a long period of silence in the courtroom. People were stunned. No one has ever heard of anything like this happening before. But, you know, as Lisa explained it, to me, it's a bit, it's an important violation,

but it's a technical violation. The grand jury did vote to indict on those two counts. What I think is more consequential as a substantive matter is all the things the judge has been saying, suggesting that this very well could be a vindictive prosecution if ever there was one. And Michael Dreuben, the lawyer representing Comey, who is the deputy solicitor general, it's interesting that he was there, was essentially beseeching the judge yesterday. Put this to an end. Send a message to this Justice Department. Well, it wasn't that the purpose of this hearing? The overall purpose of this hearing was to see if it was, in fact, a vindictive prosecution because, of the president's truth social posts demanding that his political enemy be taken down.

That's right. And a lot of people who are looking at this believe that this judge may well toss this case on those grounds. But why is Dreuben there? Dreamen is there because he's the deputy solicitor general and he knows that this is going to be appealed, whatever happens. And so he's there for the long haul because there's important legal issues in this case that may have to be argued in higher courts. And he's an expert. expert in that. And so that was really interesting. So really quickly, so you had said something before about Lindsay Allegan, just briefly. You said in her field, she's a very competent attorney. I said she was considered to be a competent attorney. And, you know, if you read public

reporting about her career prior to coming to this position, there are people who will say that she was a very serious law student. She was very smart and accomplished. But in the same way, Joe, that I would stumble through a grand jury presentation, right? Nobody's calling me and asking me to run the MIT physics department. Or do brain surgery. Or to do brain surgery. They're lost. But I will say, yeah, they're loss, of course. But, yeah, no, you're exactly right. I mean, you can do what you can do.

And again, this is one more example, Meek, of something we were talking about yesterday. You know, if you value blind loyalty over competence, this is what happens in Virginia. This is what happens in the Texas case. This is what's going to happen when Judge, Bozberg gets his second bite at the apple. Oh, yeah. It's this, you know, Ann Applebaum wrote a book, Twilight of Democracy, talking about the key for people who want to be authoritarians is they value loyalty over competence. They get a lot of incompetent people around, and then they can run the government however they want.

That may work in Hungary. That may work in Venezuela. doesn't work in the United States of America. And most, it's important, most of the defeats Donald Trump has faced this week. He's faced at the hands of Trump appointed judges. Yeah, ineptitude, we'll get you that loyalty, but down the line, there are consequences. And, but wait, there's more. We'll dig into another one, a federal judge set to resume a criminal contempt inquiry into Trump officials

who may have ignored order. to stop deportation flights. We're going to bring in a reporter who was in court yesterday for that. And as we go to break, a look at the traveler's forecast this morning. Yes, ACUweathers, Bernie. Raino, how's it looking? Come on, Bernie.

Mika, it's a warm Thursday from Texas to Florida, your exclusive ACU of the forecast, calling for some low clouds in Atlanta. Watch out the thunderstorms. That'll cause delays in Dallas today. Acuweather says lingering chill in New England. some sun in Boston, mostly cloudy in New York City in Washington, D.C., travel forecast along the East Coast, quiet, although there could be some minor delays in Atlanta. Watch out for delays in San Francisco

in L.A. today. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, make sure to download the Accuwether app today. 25 past the hour. A federal judge says he plans to restart long-stalled criminal contempt proceedings against Trump administration officials who authorized deportation flights to land El Salvador last March, even after the judge ordered them to turn the planes around, U.S. District Judge James Bosberg's initial contempt proceedings. He doesn't look like a guy that I would be worried about if I was standing in front and committed contempt against him. His initial contempt proceedings were stalled for seven months by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, but now the judge says

he can move forward because the appellate court lifted the hold on the case. last week. Specifically, Bozberg will look into whether Trump administration officials deliberately defied his orders earlier this year when 137 Venezuelans were flown

from the U.S. to the notorious Seacot prison in El Salvador. And we're learning now that over half of them didn't even have a criminal record? President Trump had previously called for Bozberg's impeachment over his handling of

deportation cases. Let's bring in MS now reporter, David Noriega. David, you were at the hearing in D.C. yesterday. You've been following this all along. What does this mean? Where does it go from here? Well, when this was happening back in the spring, a lot of people were saying that it's the closest we've gotten to a full-blown constitutional crisis in the United States since arguably the Civil War, right? The stakes here could not be higher. You mean because they just openly defied what a federal judge said. Exactly, because they openly defied what a federal judge said. And then, since then, since Judge Boasberg's initial finding that he had probable cause to rule that there had been contempt, there has been explosive information that's come out, specifically a whistleblower report from a

top lawyer in the DOJ's immigration office, essentially, a guy named Arez Ruvaney, who said that. In fact, the DOJ's intention had been at the time to say, in the words that he attributed to Emil Bovi, F.U. to the courts, in the event that the courts tried to stop these planes from taking off to El Salvador. This is crucial, too, because in that hearing during which, there was an emergency hearing during which the planes were on the tarmac in Texas. Judge Boasberg said, not a single plane carrying alien enemies act deportees should either take off. And if there are any planes in the air, they should be turned around immediately and brought back to the United States. The lawyer, who was the DOJ lawyer who was in that hearing, a guy named Drew Ensign said,

consistently to Judge Boasberg, I don't know, I don't have any information. I don't know whether there are, in fact, alien enemies' act deportations happening this weekend, continue to plead ignorance consistently throughout the course of this hearing. Are there documents that show he was lying deliberately? This whistleblower report by Eras Ruvaney says explicitly that Drew Ensign was in that meeting with Emil Bovey, in which Emil Bovey said, be prepared, essentially, to say FU to the courts if they tried to get in the way. So, yesterday in the courtroom, Judge Boisberg's courtroom, I was there.

Bozberg is very clearly, very eager to move forward with this contempt hearing. So he's going to move rapidly? Yes. He wants to schedule hearings in the contempt proceedings as soon as the Monday after Thanksgiving. So this disappeared. So this disappeared. It got appealed. Did he get appealed to the D.C. circuit?

And was it the D.C. circuit that kicked it back down and let him move forward again? Correct. Why did it take them so long? It's a very good question. It's a question that Judge Bozberg didn't ask explicitly, but he has been displeased with how long it's been taking. I mean, this shouldn't take long. It shouldn't, and Bozberg does not want it to take long. Now, I will say, Bozberg wants it to move quickly.

Bosberg can't sneeze without the government appealing up to the circuit court in this case. It is possible, I was talking to some of the attorneys involved in the case, it is possible that this will get appealed again and will once again get stonewalled and will once again get sort of stuck in quicksand the way it has over the last few months. But because those planes weren't turned around, because those planes took off from the tarmac that they were told not to by this judge, right? What happened to these people? They were sent to a, what is essentially a torture camp in El Salvador, a maximum security prison in El Salvador, infamous maximum security prison in El Salvador. They spent four months there.

I've spoken to several of them. They describe really unimaginable treatment from physical beatings, sexual violence, torture, to just the bare conditions of that prison that the Salvadoran government is public about, violate every international norm of torture and imprisonment, including, you know, permanent lack of exposure to natural light. Again, and they're proud of this reporting coming out from the New York Times that their treatment amounted, would amount to torture under most international standards.

And again, we're reporting that half the people that were sent down there were not the worst of the worst. In fact, they'd never committed crimes inside the United States. It's Ken Delaney, and feel free to expand on this if you want to. But also talk about the Epstein files. What happens next? Sure. Well, first, I think it's interesting that Emil Bovi is now a federal judge.

So the extent that this criminal contempt proceeding reaches him and tries to hold him accountable, it will be fascinating to see what happens there. In terms of Epstein, look, I attended the Attorney General Pam Bondi's news conference yesterday on an unrelated matter. And of course, all of the questions from the DOJ Press Corps aimed at her were designed to get her to respond to the question of what will she do now? This law has passed. It requires the Justice Department to make these files public within 30 days. But she didn't really answer on the important loopholes in the law, one of which is they are not required to release files that could impact a pending investigation. Well, what happened a few days ago? Donald Trump ordered Pam Bondi to launch new investigations. into prominent Democrats and whether they committed any wrongdoing with regard to the Epstein matter. And of course, Pam Bondi obliged. And there now are, as we understand it, or at least

one pending investigation. So that would be a way that the Justice Department could slow walk or withhold files. Another issue that really she didn't talk about, and not many people are talking about, is this issue of grand jury secrecy. This legislation does not mention grand jury records. And when I talk to legal experts about this, they say that it, It does not overcome the presumption in law that grand jury records are secret. And as you know, two judges have already declined the DOJ's request to release the records in the Epstein matter. And so there's some question here about it's not really so much the testimony because

there were just some FBI agents or an NYPD official who testified before the grand jury. The issue is the records. Most records obtained in a federal investigation are obtained via grand jury subpoena. And the law is not really clear on whether those records are consistent. considered records of the grand jury subject to Rule 6E in all cases. But the DOJ could certainly interpret it that way, and that could be another way that they withhold records. So I think we're a long way from seeing the files, the records of the Epsine investigation within 30 days, made public on a website, guys. All right. MS Now reporters, Ken Delanian and Lisa Rubin and David

Norega, thank you very much for your reporting. Thank you all. Appreciate it. And coming up on Morning Joe, New York City mayor-elect Zora and Mamdani will meet with President Trump tomorrow in the Oval Office. We'll preview that highly anticipated face-to-face. Plus, White House reporter for Axias Mark Caputo joins us with his new reporting on CIA whistleblower who claims the agency bragged about misleading congressional investigators about Lee Harvey Oswald's activities before President Kennedy's assassination. And Morning Joe is back in a moment. Former Vice President Jick Cheney will be laid to rest today at Washington National Cathedral. Former President Joe Biden, former First Lady Jill Biden, expected to be there, along with former President George W. Bush, of course, and Cheney's daughter. Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, all expected to deliver remarks.

All four living vice presidents, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Gore and Dan Quayle also are expected to attend the service. Meanwhile, President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance will not be there. They reportedly did not receive invitations to the funeral. President has yet to make any formal statement following Cheney's death. White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt only said Trump was aware of Cheney's passing and that White House flags had been lowered in accordance with federal law. All right. This Saturday will mark the 62nd anniversary of of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, and today, more than six decades later,

new information continues to emerge about the circumstances surrounding that tragic day. A CIA whistleblower who is revealing his identity for the first time tells Axis that he saw a secret document in which an agency official bragged about misleading congressional investigators about Lee Harvey Oswald's activities in Mexico before. President Kennedy was killed. Joining us now is the journalist who broke the story, White House Reporter for Axis, Mark Caputo. Mark, what more can you tell us about this? It's really an interesting story. The man's name is Thomas Percy, and he was the CIA State Department historian. And his job was to research something called a foreign relations in the United

States. It's a series that the U.S. government puts out every year. And while in a CIA building and ordering up confidential and classified documents on Latin America, he was mistakenly given a document, he was given a box, and in the box was mistakenly included this document. It was a 40 or 50-page CIA Inspector General's report. And in there, these officers bragged that in 1978, they misled and sort of tricked a congressional investigator who was the head of the House committee probing the assassination of JFK. And he was sort of astonished. He kept it quiet for a while, and he just recently decided to go on record because he felt it was time. So, Mark, put this into some context then. Is this a suggestion here then that there's more

new evidence, new information about the Kennedy assassination, or at least about who Lee Harvey Oswald was, and that it may not have been as cut and dried as it meant to be? Yeah, we found that out over the years. There have been essentially sort of three major dates. There was the Warren Commission after the assassination. There was the House Select Committee on assassinations that I just referenced in 1978, 1979. And then there was the movie JFK, which led to the JFK Records Act in 1992. And that is really what sort of blew the lid off of just how much the CIA knew about Lee Harvey Oswald and was tracking Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination. And it showed once you put the documents together, and the documents

are still coming out, how the CIA misled investigators ever since the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy to this day. It doesn't show who might be another killer. It doesn't posit any of these theories we've seen so far. But it clearly shows that the CIA especially and these other intelligence agencies participated in a massive cover-up to hide what the government knew about Oswald prior to the assassination. I should add one thing because in conversation, with the CIA as well as these various outside investigators, Jefferson Morley is his name. He's a historian. They are actually giving CIA nowadays credit for coming forward and following through on Trump's order to declassify more records. But they're not all out yet, and we don't have

the full complete picture 62 years on. So does this suggest from your reading of the document and from what you've learned and reporting on this story that there may have been CIA involvement that Oswald may have had an active working relationship with the CIA, either before the assassination or in the time period during the assassination? The best way to answer that is that there are enough lies and enough cover-ups from agents and the agency over the years that a reasonable person would draw that inference. Now, it's still an inference, but it's pretty clear they knew a lot more about Oswald prior, to this. And if we could take an hour describing the various conspiracy theories and how some of

them actually might be true. Now, some of them obviously might be false. But what we definitely know is that the narrative that people were given immediately after JFK's assassination was incomplete and misleading. And nowadays, we're seeing just how much agents and agencies with intelligence agencies participated in misleading the American public and Congress in that endeavor. All right. White House reporter for Axis. Mark Caputo, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. His reporting, his new reporting, is online right now. And coming up on Morning Joe, a religious group, including several Roman Catholic clergy yesterday, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration claiming its members have been blocked from ministering at ICE detention centers

near Chicago, it marks one of the latest examples of how faith leaders, including the Pope, are now taking a stand against the administration's immigration crackdown. We'll dig into that straight ahead on Morning Joe. We have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that have. If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts. There's a system of justice. I think there are a lot of problems in the system. Pope Leo the 14th on Tuesday, again, speaking out about the treatment of immigrants in this country. From papal visits to social media videos, we've seen Catholics form a unified front against the violent deportation and detention of immigrants.

Last weekend, law enforcement officers slammed face leaders to the ground during a protest outside an ice facility near Chicago. It's the latest in a string of incidents forcing Catholic leaders to speak out from the U.S. to the Vatigan. MS now reporter Britt Miller explains. Inked in black and blue. I am afraid to go out to work. These handwritten letters are from immigrants across the country, pleading. for peace. I am an undocumented person living with a lot of uncertainty.

Families filled with pain, terror, and fear. I haven't gone out in two weeks, and when I do go out, I am afraid. All because of this. Immigration enforcement agents storming into American neighborhoods, tearing families apart in

minutes. They portrayed immigrants as criminals and that they were going to target just criminals. It's clear that that's just not true. ICE status shows, as of late September, more than 59,000 people are currently detained. More than 70% of them are not convicted criminals. Many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what's going on right now. Pope Leal the 14th, boldly criticizing the treatment

of immigrants in the United States, directly challenging President Trump and his immigration crackdown. And it's not the first time. In October, the American Pope addressed American bishops at the Vatican. Weeks later, faith leaders officially condemning the Trump administration's immigration policy, releasing this rare joint statement, saying in part, we oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. I think they did it because they were feeling two things. They were feeling the pain of their people across the country. They're seeing what's happening right now in Chicago.

Chicago, Pope Leo's hometown, just 13 miles from the Broadview detention facility where clergy who tried to deliver Holy Communion to detainees were reportedly turned away by ICE. DHS says the ICE facility couldn't accommodate visitors on. such short notice, a priest on site says multiple requests were then submitted in advance and still denied. Even those who are on death row are able to receive communion. So it's a particular level of cruelty for those who are detained in Broadview to be rejected this fundamental religious right.

I would certainly invite the authorities to allow pastoral workers to attend to the needs of those people. But are the Pope's resounding words resonating with White House officials? Vice President J.D. Vance and Borders Tsar Tom Holman are both Catholics. Even though we have to engage in immigration enforcement, I try to remind myself consistent with church teaching that, yes, doesn't mean we can let these people stay in our country, but I do have a responsibility to try to remember their humanity. The Catholic Church wrong. I'm saying it as not only at Borders, I'll say it as a Catholic. A White House spokesperson says President Trump is

quote, keeping his promise to the American people. Mass deportations compelling families to write those letters, the Pope reading many of them and watching videos of families in despair. He really was moved, you know, as we showed him the videos, he began to tear up. Immigration advocate Dylan Corbett had delivered those notes to the Vatican. And so I know that all of that weighs on him heavily. As an American, as someone from Chicago, but he also spent many years as a priest and as a bishop in Peru. And so he knows Latin America.

He knows immigration in our region. Roughly 60% of immigrants vulnerable to deportation are Catholic, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. So advocates and faith leaders say they'll continue fighting for migrants on the ground, guided by a calling from on high. Jesus says very clearly, at the end of the world, we're going to be asked, you know, how did you receive the foreigner? And priests I talk to say,

if their message continues to be ignored by the White House, we could start to see more radical actions. Think civil disobedience. Just a few days ago, U.S. bishops launched an initiative called, You Are Not Alone, meant to help migrants at risk of being deported. All right. You can see from Brits reporting there, the Pope is leaning in on this. He's engaged, but also, Willie, the archbishops are engaged, priests are engaged.

I mean, the administration official that said the Pope is wrong. you're kind of going against not only the Pope. You're going against Jesus's teachings throughout the entire New Testament. All I can say is, good luck with that, taking it up with Jesus and taking it up with the Pope. And all of the archbishops and so many priests, the New Testament, the gospel, is so painfully clear that the Pope feels free to say, please don't call yourself pro-life. if you're against abortion, but you support the inhumane treatment

of these souls. Yeah, and what, if you're Tom Homan, what specifically is the Pope wrong about here? When you say the Catholic Church is wrong, what is he wrong about? I think he just doesn't like that he's getting some blowback, and it's beyond blowback. It's a united front.

And I think for a lot of Catholics who've struggled over the last couple of decades with scandal and all that, this is a very proud moment. Because they are, they don't believe this is political. This is Jesus' teaching. This is from the Bible.

Right. And the fact that the Pope is showing leadership, this American Pope who obviously understands immigration in this country, the fact that he's taking the lead, it's a very significant moment. Well, and it is, it is unambiguous, the words of Jesus, the red letters. It's just unambiguous. And so the Pope is standing on solid spiritual ground. And the question is, how is this going to impact Catholics? And I think we've seen some Protestant churches also starting to go, well, we may have voted for the president, but we can't just throw out everything Jesus said about protecting those in need and welcoming the foreigner and, you know, the Good Samaritan story. Mike Barnacle told us about being in mass last week and a letter from the Pope being read from the pulpit.

and the priest, after the priest ended, the audience, giving a standing ovation. Yeah, Pope Francis spoke out about some of Trump's immigration policies in the first term, particularly the kids in the cages and the like. But there's something unique about an American Pope. Pope Leo was quieter than Francis, but very effective in what he's saying. The messages are being heard, and we're seeing in pulpits, but also in polling. Americans don't like how this administration is handling immigrants and deportations. All right.