it. it could slide, as jen said, to next week before he heads to europe and that trip. it is a remarkable morning here, and we should reiterate, the sentencing scheduled for july 11th. that is just a few days before donald trump becomes officially the republican nominee for president at the republican national convention. what a surreal moment that will be. msnbc political analyst jennifer palmieri, thank you for joining us this morning. thanks to all of you for getting up "way too early" with us on this important friday morning. thank you, katty kay. "morning joe" starts right now. >> while this defendant may be unlike any other in american history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes to the courtroom doors. by following the facts and the law and doing so without fear or favor.

many voices out there, the only voice that matters is the voice of the jury, and the jury has spoken. >> manhattan district attorney alvin bragg speaking yesterday following the historic conviction of former president donald trump on all 34 counts in the criminal hush money trail. trump becomes the first former u.s. president in american history to be convicted of a crime. the verdict was read just around 5:00 p.m. in a new york city courtroom after the 12 jurors deliberated for roughly 9 1/2 hours over two days. each of the 34 felony counts is associated with a falsified business record pertaining to trump's reimbursement of his former attorney and fixer, michael cohen, for a hush money payment to adult film actress stormy daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign, to keep her quiet about a sexual

encounter she says she had with trump back in 2006. trump has denied her claim. sentencing is set for july 11th, just four days before the republican national convention begins in milwaukee. the maximum sentence for falsification of business records is four years in prison, but incarceration is not a mandatory sentence. it will be judge juan merchan who ultimately decides the punishment. along with joe, willie, and me, we have the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at "politico," jonathan lemire. u.s. special correspondent for bbc news, katty kay. msnbc contributor mike barnicle. former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor chuck rosenberg. and msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos. good to have you all with us. >> chuck, i'm curious, your

first impressions of what happened yesterday, what americans should be looking at, what they should be focusing on as we move forward. >> yeah, it's going to be hard, i think, for our very divided country, joe, to look at this the way i do. i mean, i think it's relatively simple. the government presented a compelling case. they deducea i adduced the fact wanted, asked the questions, and juries understood it. juries often do. statistically speaking, most juries convict most of the time, and that's what happened here. you know, i was thinking about, believe it or not, a national science foundation poll, joe, that shows about a quarter of americans -- and this has been consistent over time -- believe that the sun revolves around the earth. you know, for those keeping score at home, it doesn't. so i think it is hard to convince people that what happened in new york happens routinely and regularly around

the country. juries hear the facts. they deliberate. they deliver their verdict. we need to accept that. plain and simple. >> lisa rubin, you've been covering this so closely down at the courthouse right from the beginning, giving us your analysis and reading some tea leaves in the last few days. i think the prosecution hoped for but probably didn't expect a clean 34 for 34 sweep on every count to get convictions on those. what's your reaction to the verdict? >> willie, i was in the courtroom yesterday for the verdict, and i can tell you that just the very existence of a verdict was a huge shock to everyone there. given the fact that judge merchan assembled the parties at 4:15. he came in, said he was prepared to release the jurors at 4:30, and he just needed to take care of a couple of things. then he stepped off the bench. 4:30 came and went. at 4:36, there was just this tension all throughout the courtroom as everyone was

waiting, thinking, what in the world is happening? could we possibly have a verdict? indeed, when he retook the bench and said, "i have a note from the jury. they have a verdict," both people on both sides of me gasped audibly. you could hear it reverberate throughout the crowd. just the existence of the verdict was shocking. but i think the reactions of the parties was also so telling. former president trump tried to put a good face on the verdict. when he walked out, you could see he set his jaw in that trump-like way, pursed his lips in the way we're used to. he set his face to look ahead. yet, he looked like a man defeated and resigned. he walked slowly and lumberingly. once they were out of the courtroom, we, the press core, about 100 of us, were left in there with the d.a.'s office. i don't know if i've shared this before, but when trump moves out into the hallway for security purposes, everyone is frozen.

that includes the staff of the manhattan district attorney's office. if you were counting on them to look as if they just scored the biggest score in that office's history, you wouldn't have seen it on their faces or on alvin bragg's face. he looked straight ahead, and the prosecutors on his team didn't crack a single smile among them. maybe there was a little twinge of relief in their shoulders and body language, but this was a group of people that knew that all eyes of the world would be on them in this moment if they were lucky enough to get a conviction, let alone 34 of them, and they met the moment with their seriousness of purpose. this is not a group of people, despite what donald trump and his republican allies are saying, that relished this victory, that are rejoicing in it. it was a somber and sad day for america that we have now seen a former president convicted on 34 felony counts, and you could see that in all of their faces. >> mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

gut punch to the country. danny cevallos, let's talk about what's next. sentencing is july 11th. what happens between now and then, and what are the options with sentencing? of course, i take it an appeal can't start until after that. >> probation will prepare what is called a presentence investigation report. now, that normally involves interviewing the offender to find out about the offender, but who honestly needs to find out about donald trump to find out his biographical details and the information that goes into a psr. then the sides will submit their sentencing memoranda. the trump side be unquestionably ask for a probation-only sentence. the real question for me, what i'm curious about, is what the d.a.'s office asks for. will they say, this is a political decision, ask for probation only, let's won, call it a victory, or will they ask for incarceration? i believe they will ask for an incarceration sentence in this case. the real question is what justice merchan will do. now, there are plenty of

arguments to be made for a probation-only sentence. number one, this is a 71-plus-year-old offender. you have a non-violent offense, a first-time offender. no guns. no drugs. no violence involved. i would make an additional argument, and i think reasonable minds could disagree here, that i would say loss, and the great chuck rosenberg will tell you, fraud cases, especially in the federal system, the single biggest driver of the sentence is the dollar amount of loss. loss is measured in many different ways. as a defense attorney, i'd argue the loss in this case is 0.0. it is not a traditional fraud case where you have traditional victims who handed over their money, let's say, and i'm thinking of an example. let's say i made up a fake university and charged people fake tuition for my fake university and kept all the money -- i'm giving a hypothetical example -- you could measure loss in the terms of the number of victims multiplied by how much they paid.

you don't have that here. you could make the argument the loss and the victims are the people of the state of new york. i get that. i think reasonable minds could disagree. but as a defense attorney, i would be arguing that loss in this case is zero. so i think that you will see a request for a non-incarceration, probation-only sentence, but i also think you'll see the prosecutors ask for jail time. >> let me open this up to our lawyers, to chuck, lisa, and danny, and just ask, what happened? i must say, and i've said it here before, in a nation where 77 million people voted for donald trump, i just, you know, maybe i was being cynical, but i just thought there would be one out of 12 jurors that would have said, "no, not going to go along with it. we're going to drag this thing out forever."

so i was surprised by the quickness of it. i was surprised by -- >> resounding 34 guilties. >> 34 of 34. what do you all think happened in there that moved the dynamic in such a dramatic way against donald trump? >> who is first? >> lisa, i'll start with you. >> well, joe, i think what happened is evidence happened, and the evidence in this case was overwhelming. you know, todd blanche can go on as many cable networks as he can find and say that his client was convicted solely on the word of michael cohen, and nothing could be further from the truth. his client was convicted largely on the words of two categories of people. his acolytes, starting with david pecker and ending with hope hicks and madeleine westerhout, and his own words heard by the jury in a recording that michael cohen made on september 6th, 2016. even including his tweets, which were consciousness of his guilt

in 2018, his legal filings where he admitted this was a reimbursement, and all of the books that he wrote proclaiming how you got to be donald trump. those laid out a framework for his m.o. his m.o. was reward the people who are loyal, loyalty above all else. don't trust anyone, even if you have the best people around you. micromanage, micromanage, micromanage. the end of the day, your checkbook belongs to you and you alone. donald trump was convicted because evidence happens. >> yeah, and i think one of the things that we may not know for some time until we talk to jurors, but i don't think the jurors spent a lot of time parsing out each and every count. they looked at them as a group. they could have done that because the facts involved with each transaction were so similar. yes, there were minor differences. i did wonder if they might seize on the fact that donald trump signed some checks but not all the checks.

or, for example, that the checks came from the trump organization, then they came from the trust. those were examples of differences between these transactions. but, of course, each count really could have -- all these counts could have been divisible by three. you had a voucher related to a check related to an invoice. so, in that sense, they could have grouped those together. unlike many financial crimes cases where the transactions are very distinct and involve very different facts, this could have been a case where they could have grouped all of these together and said that trump's intent applied to all of them broadly based on the evidence they heard of trump's involvement, and they could have arrived at this relatively quickly. maybe we'll find out they took a straw poll right away when they got into the jury room, and there was a minority. going to your question, joe, you know, you're right, we often speak of it only taking one juror. practically speaking, if you're the 1 of 12, and you get in the

room and find, oh, i'm the only one who doesn't agree with my fellow 11 jurors, those folks don't tend to hold out too long. mass psychology is, well, at least i'd better listen to what they have to say. i'm convincible. i'm somebody with an open mind. i said i was someone with an open mind. when you have one or two in the minority like that, i don't think it takes too long. maybe that's why they read back the testimony, to say, hey, steve, are you convinced now? maybe your memory is refreshed. are you with us? that's probably why this happened relatively speaking, in my view, this was a short deliberation. >> yeah, we've wondered for so long whether or not this trial was breaking through, but the one word, guilty, sure seems to be doing that. chuck rosenberg, let's get you in on this. to joe's question, as to what you think happened. why do you think this happened the way it did over the last few days? also to get you to focus in on the idea of sentencing. what would your thoughts be as to what donald trump will face? >> yeah. first question first, jonathan. my experience has been

overwhelmingly that when jurors assemble, and they tell a judge that they can be fair and listen with an open mind, they actually mean it. so, yeah, i understand that it only takes one juror to hang a jury and to create a mistrial, but that's not what tends to happen. i think danny is right about the psychology of it. but just listen to their own words during jury selection. people they don't said they couldn't be fair -- i'm sorry, people who couldn't be fair said they couldn't be fair and were removed from the jury. a number of people said they could be fair, and they were impaneled. by and large, that's true. that's my experience. that people really do listen to the facts and follow the instructions of the judge. if the facts are compelling, and they were in this case apparently, then you have a conviction. was it quick? it was relatively quick. quick verdicts tend to be government verdicts. quick verdicts tend to be prosecution verdicts, but i

don't think it was unduly quick. ten hours is plenty of time to sit down and talk to your brothers and sisters on the jury and to agree on the weight of the evidence and to, you know, fairly deliberate the case. not unduly quick. finally, jonathan, with regard to sentencing, look, it's always a bad idea before the first pitch to tell the umpire that he sucks. it's just not the way you want to sort of go into the first inning of a baseball game. doesn't make a lot of sense to me. nevertheless, as danny articulated earlier, this is a first-time, non-violent offender, and, typically, in new york state court, a first-time, non-violent offender does not get a jail sentence. that said, continuing to yell at the umpire, to denigrate the ump, the courts, the june rors, jurors, the system, the prosecutors, is a bad strategy. one thing prosecutors look for

at sentencing is what the defendant has to say. all defendants have a chance to speak at sentencing. we call it allocution. i sit there and listen as a prosecutor to whether or not the defendant is remorseful, whether he or she apologizes, whether he or she takes responsibility, and i think mr. trump is constitutionally incapable of doing that. so, you know, might that be determinative here? perhaps. the typical defendant in a case like this would get a sentence of probation. danny is exactly right. but mr. trump has been and always will be a wild card, and his fate now resides in the hands of one person. he's been spending a lot of time denigrating that one person, so we'll see. >> yeah. you know, mike -- >> that's so interesting. >> -- i learned early on the campaign trail that the rules of evidence and civil procedure and all the things that kept things sane inside of a courtroom do not apply when you get out in

politics. i was like, oh, my god, people can just say whatever they want to say. it was a bit of a shock. well, we've reversed that here and talked about it a good bit over the last year, gravity returning. the lies that people can say outside of a courtroom about stolen elections that they would never say in front of a judge. well, in this case, you have donald trump -- and i have no doubt the abusiveness that some people, for some strange reason, are drawn to on the campaign trail, it cost him inside that courtroom. they had a mild-mannered judge, a judge the jury seemed to like, and trump was constantly bein abuive toward the judge. he had a witness that the judge had to dress down. time and time again, you know, trump and his lawyers thought they could bully their way through these proceedings. it is a very small room. if the jury is -- they like the judge, they're looking at what's going on through the eyes of the

judge. that had to hurt donald trump from the very beginning. >> joe, i think you're probably talking about the most important point that happened during this trial. including the verdict. it overshadows the big headlines that say guilty on every front page in the country. it is the fact that 12 ordinary american citizens, perhaps of different religious beliefs, political beliefs. 12 jurors sat in the room, and guess what? they didn't get evidence from tiktok or instagram. they got evidence presented rationally by the prosecution in this case. they made a decision that donald j. trump was guilty. and donald j. trump's reaction to the guilty verdict was, once

again, he's already demeaned our election process by saying it is rigged and corrupt, and now he took on the rule of law. he took on the definition of justice itself by saying this verdict was corrupt and it was rigged, and it is a rigged system. well, if he was correct in both his assertions, that the electoral process is rigged and corrupt, and that the judicial process is rigged and corrupt, then there is no more america. there is no more america. lisa, i wonder if you, as an officer of the court, worry about the fact that trump and his followers who have seen ted cruz, who have seen marco rubio, are going to continue to do damage to the rule of law. >> absolutely. that's a huge concern of mine. i couldn't believe ted cruz's statement last night about the verdict, that this was an outrage and upset to the rule of law. i kept thinking, you were involved in this. he kept dragging your father into this. he had david pecker do mock-ups

of your father with lee harvey oswald, yet, you're defending this guy. the competitive sycophancy going on here is olympic level. what's going to suffer, our democracy and justice. it should be the twin pillars of our democracy, right? yet, they're falling all over themselves to say, this is not how the justice system should function. this is exactly how the justice system should function. chuck said the other day that, win or lose, whatever happened here, we should respect the verdict of this jury. everything i saw from this jury showed an engaged, invested, serious group of people coming together to make a deprave decision. they understood that what they were doing was particularly serious given who the defendant was. it wasn't like they took this flippantly. yet, we have donald trump and his republican allies continuing to call the process a sham, the judge corrupt, the district

attorney a sham with racial overtones that i find particularly grotesque. there is nothing wrong with happened here. >> they're not being called out here. >> yeah, speaking of grotesque, if a guy whose family escaped castro's cuba, communist cuba, a country that castro ran with an iron fist, there was no rule of law there. there were just -- there was just repression. there was tyranny. >> what an insult. >> marco, like these other people, all because they want to cozy up to donald trump and maybe be his vice president -- >> that's it. >> -- they degrade themselves, and they slander america. they hate on america, katty kay. talking about how, you know -- rubio said in the e. jean

carroll case, a jury of his peers was a joke because he didn't like the outcome. now, he is comparing america to castro's cuba, which i will say, yes, it's meant to kiss up to donald trump and shock everybody else. doesn't shock me. all it's going to do is hurt republicans. it's going to hurt them in wisconsin, in michigan, in pennsylvania. americans know that marco rubio is lying. americans know that we are a nation of laws. americans know that these jurors do a noble job. and so you have these people going out there saying these outrageous things, and at the end of the day, yes, it hurts to see people hate america. it hurts me as a patriot to hear people hating on america, but i do know at the end of the day, it's only going to end up

hurting marco rubio, donald trump, and the republican party anymore, because people don't buy their propaganda. >> yeah. i mean, marco rubio of all people knows that this is absurd. the american justice system is not remotely like cuba's justice system where there is no system of justice. he knows that, and he is only doing this to suck up to donald trump. it reminds me a little of when tucker carlson decided that russia was a little better than the united states. i mean, maybe there are just people in the republican party at the moment that are having a problem with law and order. it's not going their way, and so they're throwing a hissy fit about the system itself. i don't think many people will buy it. marco rubio doesn't stand up very well this morning compared to, say, stormy daniels, who went to the justice system, and e. jean carroll, two women who went to the system of justice and played out the system of justice, and both of whom have had victories in courtrooms against donald trump.

it's some kind of irony. i was thinking this this morning. as we look at all of the cases that face donald trump, it was, in the end, stormy daniels who got the guilty verdict. even if that tawdry sex never happened in that conference room, donald trump was worried about the perception being that it might have happened enough that he paid her off anyway. so stormy turned out to be the person that actually had perhaps the most legal and political impact on donald trump's career this time around. >> chuck rosenberg, it's interesting to watch last night, todd blanche, the defense attorney for donald trump, making the rounds on cable news, and some of the networks tried to lead him to attack the jury. he stopped well short of that. he went to other places. he said, no, they did their job. they came in on time, listened to the evidence. they did what they had to do. so when people like marco rubio or ted cruz, all the people you'd expect, go after the process, what they're going after is a jury of donald trump's peers. he is an icon of new york, right? he is mr. new york.

if you want to talk about facts, you look in when they were asked during jury selection, the 12 jurors and 6 alternates who were chosen, one of them gets their news from fox news. one said they got their news from truth social. many more of them say they got their news from "the wall street journal" than from msnbc. i think only one of them said they get it from msnbc. so this was a jury of donald trump's peers in new york city, despite what he came out of the courtroom and said, who looked at the evidence and were able to put their biases aside, which is how the process is supposed to work, and decided he was guilty on all 34 counts. so whether or not you believe the case should have been brought, it was brought. the prosecutors made their case. the defense made theirs. a jury of donald trump's peers from across the spectrum in new york city decided he was guilty. >> well, that's right, willie. and i was struck, too, by the fact that mr. blanche, for all of his criticisms of the process and the trial and the decision

making by the prosecutors to file charges really did not insult or denigrate the jury. if i may, willie, just a word about the rule of law. the rule of law did just fine here. the rule of law, however, is a construct. it relies on the good faith of the men and women in this system to keep it alive and breathing. the law of gravity is not a construct. the law of gravity applies all the time and everywhere. if you drop an apple in a place that doesn't have a strong rule of law system, that apple will still hit the ground. law of gravity always applies. rule of law is fragile. rule of law is a construct. we can lose the rule of law very quickly if we're not careful, if we don't tend to it. but it did fine here, willie, right? as you said, 12 men and women, ordinary citizens of manhattan, came in, listened to the evidence, and rendered their verdict. if you recall, after the

election, when the trump campaign challenged results in 60 different places, state and federal court, they lost every time. why? they didn't have the evidence to support their claims. the rule of law did just fine, so is the rule of law under threat? it is always under threat. it is always a construct. it always has been and always will be. but it did just fine yesterday. >> it did just fine. it did just fine after the 2020 election and all the challenges. 63 times in a row it did just fine. it did just fine at the supreme court. it did just fine here. i think, though, mike, again, if we want to look at the political impact of thi and even putting the verdict aside, i think, again, republicans continue to damage themselves and continue to say really -- >> crazy. >> -- anti-american statements

in such a way that explains why they lost the election in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. and why i believe they will lose again in 2024. think about this. you have, as katty eluded to, you have these republicans, these trumpers who are embracing countries that have no rule of law, that hate the rule of law. katty mentioned tucker carlson, russia's latest media star. you have marco rubio comparingc cuba, to our united states of america. he knows it is a total lie. you have conservatives, so-called conservatives at cpac going over to orban.

they have made oorban, this illiberal tyrant, a guy who has gone after the press and undermined judicial independence, you have them raising all of these authoritarian figures up. now, yeah, it's a threat to democracy if they end up winning, but my point here this morning is, if you're making an argument to a jury, it better pass what professoror persson, o was my professor of torts at law school said, it better pass the straight face test. if you can say it into a mirror without cracking a smile, maybe you can say it in front of a jury. well, none of these, you know, tucker carlson praising the greatness of russia doesn't pass the straight face test. nor does, you know, marco rubio yesterday comparing the united

states of america to castro's cuba. >> come on. >> they're losing it. they're losing the jury, which in this case, are american voters. >> both sides should take note of that. on the left, the progressive side or whatever, this is no reason for glee. this is no reason to be in the streets cheering and yelling. this is the reason for stop and think and maybe get depressed over the reaction on the other side. the anti-americanism that filled the air last night, from the people like marco rubio, from people like ted cruz. as we indicated earlier, if there is no rule of law in this country, if they really believe the rule of law is rigged and corrupt and there's evidence of the rigged and corruption is the guilty verdict, then there is no more america without a rule of law. >> and the reason why reasons are racing to back up donald trump and attack the legal system, because the threats have already started.

larry hogan, former governor of maryland, senate candidate, tweeted before the verdict was announced. regardless of the result, i urge all americans to respect the verdict and legal process. warning against how dangerously divided we already are. trump's campaign tweeted, @hogan, you just ended your campaign. the threats are coming from trump world to republicans who dare stand up to him. we don't know how this will play in november's election. the biden team is proceeding cautiously. we'll get into it later this morning. we did not hear from the president yesterday. we did hear from his campaign, warning that trump could still win. we expect to hear from the president himself later today or in the days ahead. but his first message will be, as we've reported, about how the legal system needs to be respected, the process worked, no matter what side you're on. understanding what a perilous moment this is right now, joe and mika, for our country. >> you know, it is going to be interesting to see that

allocution process if donald trump is at all capable of expressing remorse to the judge. >> yeah. >> to try to get a more lenient sentence. he's just not going to be able to do it. that'll be fascinating to watch. msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos, legal correspondent lisa rubin, great job following all of this, and it continues. former u.s. attorney chuck rosenberg, thank you, all, for your analysis this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll have much more on the guilty verdict for donald trump, now the first former president ever to be convicted of a crime. jon meacham will join us with some historical perspective. plus, we'll dig into the potential impact on trump's white house campaign, including a warning about how the conviction could cost him some key battleground states. you're watching "morning joe." we're back in just 90 seconds. c! ah, these guys are intense. with e*trade from morgan stanley,

we're ready for whatever gets served up. dude, you gotta work on your trash talk. i'd rather work on saving for retirement. or college, since you like to get schooled. that's a pretty good burn, right? voices of people with cidp: cidp disrupts. cidp derails. let's be honest...

all: cidp sucks! voices of people with cidp: but living with cidp doesn't have to. when you sign up at shiningthroughcidp.com, you'll find inspiration in real patient stories, helpful tips, reliable information, and more. cidp can be tough. but finding hope just got a little easier. sign up at shiningthroughcidp.com. all: be heard. be hopeful. be you. if he is bounds guilty, let's not underestimate that there is a problem. think about this, 11% less likely to vote for him. think about michigan, where they're in the real clear politics average, donald trump is up by one-half of 1%. pennsylvania, he's up by 2%. or wisconsin where he's up by three tenths of 1%. so in a close race like we're likely to have, having five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten

percent less of the electorate likely to vote for you is a problem. >> former adviser to former president george w. bush karl rove speaking before the verdict, warning a conviction could cost donald trump in key battleground states. right now, though, not much as changed in terms of trump's ability to run for president. the constitution has only three qualifications for someone to campaign for the presidency. none of them mention felony convictions. this is not the first time in american history someone found guilty and then ran for the white house. in 1920, eugene debs campaigned from a prison cell as the socialist party of america nominee after being found guilty of sedition. trump also likely will be allowed to vote in the upcoming election, so long as he is not sentenced to jail. the state of new york only restricts voting rights for people who are incarcerated at the time of the vote. joining us now, rogers chair and the american presidency at vanderbilt university, pulitzer

prize winning presidential historian jon meacham. also, pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of "the washington post," eugene robinson. and the host of the podcast "on brand with donny deutsch," donny deutsch. jon meacham, you perk up when you hear names like debs. what about this in terms of the long lens of history? >> the speech debs gave was very important. if you want to go into it, mika. >> no, we're good. >> are you sure? >> another day. >> okay. >> yeah. >> okay, absolutely. i think that at this point, trump is no longer on trial. the country is. this is a test of mature citizenship. are a majority of us going to react from our partisan gut, or

are we going to assess the realities we see and make a judicious choice? i think it is pretty straightforward. i don't know how many votes are going to be changed. i don't know how many opinions are going to be changed. but i do know that what matters for the future of democratic capitalism and the constitution and the things that so many of us value so much is going to be decided between president biden and former president trump. that's the choice. and so this is another data point for people who i think have to weigh, what do they want? do they want more of what we saw yesterday, or you know what president biden spent the week doing? dealing with ukraine. fighting aggression in europe,

the oldest form of tyranny. he worried about israel and gaza. he was doing the work of the american people while this drama unfolded. and i think it's worth remembering, historically, that what we remember, what matters to us, is the legacy that presidents leave that's for us. not the actions that are for them. >> yeah. eugene robinson, i'd love to hare your reaction to the verdict. i think we were all a little stunned that it came down 34 guilty, all 34 counts. >> yeah. >> maybe at this point, we just don't know what to expect when it comes to donald trump. i think at this point, it is very difficult to see how this will play out politically and probably not smart to guess. >> yeah.

so we just don't know. we don't know how this will play politically. you know, i'm struck by something that willie mentioned earlier. on this jury, there's one jury, juror, who said he or she gets all their news from truth social and x. there are other jurors who get their news from social media. there are other jurors who watch fox news. so what this verdict, 34, i mean, a clean sweep, 34 counts, is that when you're in an environment in which you can shut out all the noise, all the yelling and the shouting and the lying and the histrionics and just get people to focus on facts and actual events and search for truth, then you have a very different outcome.

so i think, you know, the challenge politically, i think, is to try to shut out that noise and to try to get people to, you know, to focus on what's real and what's not real. the other thing that's really striking to me is the republicans who, after the verdict, are coming out and trashing the american justice system. you know, i am not -- i believe deeply in this country, but i'm not a reflective rah-rah, america, we're always perfect, always do the right thing. however, as a foreign correspondent and former editor, i saw the justice system in cuba and how it works. i know how that works. in democracies in argentina, in peru, in brazil, in england, in

france, i will testify and believe until my dying day that there is no justice system in the world that is better than the u.s. justice system at finding truth and justice. it is an amazing thing. it is an amazing gift to all of us who live in this country. the spectacle of leaders who live in one of our two major political parties trashing this incredible institution is just appalling. and shame on them. shame on them. >> donny, the public, the public's attention span, there's two competing brands out there right now. one was registered yesterday when donald trump was declared to be guilty, and now he is a felon. the other is the other side saying, no, the rule of law applies here, and we have to stand behind the rule of law. which brand, which avenue, which

track can compete and survive? >> it is interesting you mention branding. what hit me yesterday when i heard those guilty -- the 34 guilty verdicts was that from here on in, donald trump, the ultimate brander, the guy that gave you little marco or lying ted is simply branded, convicted felon donald trump. in the most simplistic way, from here on in, the other side has the ability to take the great brander and brand him in the most simplistic term, convicted felon. that's powerful. yes, i went on a show the other day and said, i don't know if it'll matter that much. when i heard the guilty verdict, it hit me. he simplistically is in a box now. two things happened to his brand. number one, he is not invincible. the armor got pierced, and that is a big deal. if he had been acquitted, you can't get this guy. he's bigger than everybody. he is bigger than life. he's not. he is invincible. now, eight-year streak of losing

for republicans. donald trump lost. he is a loser. he is anything but invincible. he is branded permanently a convicted felon. that's a big deal. >> well, you can watch fox news and feast on how unfair this is, or you can look at the evidence that was presented and, i mean, there's a lot of different ways to look at this that can help you understand what happened. ultimately, a jury of donald trump's peers made this decision. >> they did. i just want to say, as mika was flipping over to other channels, willie, and they seem to be in an alternate universe. she was distressed that the facts just didn't seem to matter. i reminded her of what happened in 2012, which is, fox news kept telling everybody that mitt romney was going to beat barack

obama. up until election night. they were so sure of it. they kept pushing that information -- that disinformation so much, that even mitt romney and anne romney that night couldn't believe it. they were like, wait a sec. we're winning this. because they just watched this one channel. i don't mean to be pollyannish about it, but if people just want to watch fox news between now and the election, if they want to just feast on disinformation, if they want to be blind to what swing state voters want to hear about and what they care about, does not hurt joe biden. doesn't hurt the democrats. it ends up hurting republicans. because i will say again, they've lost. they lost in '17, '18, '19, '20, '21, '22, '23.

they have lived in this echo chamber. >> it's cost them, too. >> that they've chosen to stay in. they still are in the echo chamber right now. again, it's their decision. i keep trying to tell them, don't be boy in the plastic bubble. open up. go out there. get information from other sides. be more competitive. they just can't do it. >> yeah. i flipped over, too, to get a sense of the reaction, and i saw what mika said, too, which was anger, a sense that it shall i think one of the panelists said they have awakened a sleeping giant. with this conviction, they said the trial was a sham, all the things you'd expect to hear, that new york city was ungrateful to the man who built the new york skyline. side note, he did not build the skyline. he licensed his name to a few buildings. >> no. >> that's a whole other conversation. to your point, joe, the sleeping giant that may have been awakened yet was the giant that

was already on his side, that is with him, that listens and believes what marco rubio and ted cruz were saying yesterday. they were already with donald trump. the question for this election will be, it seems to me, the people who are sitting there considering these two options and probably don't love either of them going, gosh, when he becomes a convicted felon at his sentencing on july 11th, is that a guy i want to sendback to the white house? do i want to take everything that comes with him? i believe he did the things he's accused of, they might say, and the jury, after listening to the evidence, believed he paid off a porn star to keep her quiet ahead of the 2016 election. so i would just say, jon meacham, perhaps that, yes, this will enflame a lot of donald trump's supporters, fire them up, get them ready to go for the election, but there remains a persuadable middle. maybe not huge, but maybe just enough to win a couple of these swing states. >> yeah, look, american history is full of moments where we have

moved forward because just enough of us made a choice. this is not a 90/10 country, not an 80/20 country, 70/30 country. it is about a 52/48. in a polarized era, probably 51/49. that's just the way it works. i mean, we've come through -- 20% of the country didn't want to breakaway from britain. where joe and i are from, left the union over human enslavement. not all that long ago in terms of the sweep of history. 55 years ago, we lived in a segregated country. it took a lot to move forward. it's never everybody waking up and saying, oh, i'm going to do the right thing today, because it's the right thing. that's not really how human

nature works. to joe's point about the losing record, lincoln taught us, all men act on incentive. at a certain point, in politics, at least the professional political class, victory is the most important thing. it is very clear that on the right, victory has become the organizing principle over constitutional principles. it's funny you mention romney. can you imagine fox news rooting for romney today? i mean, that's how rapidly we've moved. but it's a choice that people have made. if just enough of us choose, you know what, i'd prefer the constitution and some sanity, we'll be all right. >> me too. author and presidential historian jon meacham, thank you very much. coming up on "morning joe," we're going to take a closer look at the international

reaction to donald trump's historic guilty verdict. and what this says about america's judicial and political system. "morning joe" will be right back.

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welcome back. 53 past the hour. donald trump's guilty verdict is garnering attention not just across the u.s. but around the world. newspapers such as "the new york times" and "the washington post" have full spread covers of the former president's conviction. internationally, trump's face is plastered on papers from brazil to spain, the uk and ireland. joining us now, former supreme allied commander of nato, retired four-star navy admiral james stavridis. he is chief international analyst for nbc news. so from a global perspective, and just also from your perspective, your reaction to this resounding set of verdicts? >> let me start internationally. certainly, yesterday, my phones lit up from literally all around the world. it's like the scene -- the way they look at it, it's like the scene in "the wizard of oz,"

when the house falls on the wicked witch and her little feet are sticking out. this is from africans in those s-hole countries. this is from mexico, where mexicans were rapists and killers. this is from nato, the free-loading europeans. this is from asia. pretty universal belief that, suddenly, this is all going to change everything. what i've tried to convey are the two things that i think we've talked about this morning quite effectively. one is, this is the system working as it is designed to work. what we need to to is kind of project that internationally. that is our brand. then, secondly, i try to convey, hey, internationally, there is a big day coming up, and that's in november. all of this is white noise if that daybre breaks in a differe

direction. that's the nature of the conversation. one final tactical thought about overseas that folks are, i think, underweighting, is what's going to happen in beijing and moscow as a result of this? clearly, they have favorability toward a trump presidency. but are they going to -- and i would argue they will -- use this moment to try and further divide us? at the end of the day, we can solve all of the international problems we constantly talk about on the show, from ukraine to gaza to u.s./china, as long as we can avoid immense division in the country. that, i think, is where jon meacham's point, this is a test for us, is coming. >> to those foreign powers, the ability to influence elections, we had senator warner on this show a few weeks ago, chair of the intelligence committee, saying we're more vulnerable now to outside influence than we've been in the last couple of

cycles. ton donny, to the admiral's point, this is why the system works, i have another point. republicans say this is two-tiers of justice, a witch hunt, that only republicans get prosecuted by the biden department of justice. counter, the president's own son, hunter biden, goes on trial monday, charges brought by the biden department of justice. that does seem like an example that the system is working as it should. >> i mean, you answered it right there. it's that simple. i think the biden trial, let's also remember, this is hunter biden. this is not joe biden. but as you said, it works on both ways. the other thing i want to talk about that i'm thinking about going forward is that how donald trump -- this almost puts him constantly on defensive. he won't be able to stay away from this. every rally of his, instead of opening up with something about inflation or opening up with what's wrong with the democrats, he is going to open up with his grievance talk. i think people are just -- it

just doesn't work. you know, i think about a parent getting up in pennsylvania or pirm birmingham, michigan, and looking at their kids and going, do i want to live in a country where i can say to my kid, "oh, you can grow up to be a convicted felon and be president of the united states?" i think on the margins, this is really going to make a difference. i was really blown away yesterday just by viscerally from this says and what this means. >> donny, it probably will inflame the base, as we said earlier, and they'll be motivated to support donald trump. what about the people in the middle, the normies that we talk about all the time? admiral, want to step away from the trial a second. important development that nbc is reporting this morning about the war in ukraine, which is that, according to nbc news and some other networks, president biden sort of quietly gave permission to ukraine to use american weapons at targets inside of russia, which is a change of the stance this

administration has taken. what's the significance there? >> it's enormous. on the graphic you're showing, the upper right-hand corner of ukraine, a city called kharkiv, that's their second largest city. it's the los angeles of ukraine. let's face it, it is under some stress from russia at this very moment. so what i think the biden team has done, i think it's smart military strategy. it's smart diplomacy. it's smart politics. unleash the ukrainians to use sis teystems we've given them, range missiles principally, to strike at the forces massing on the russian side of the border. i think it is a good move. it lines us up with other nato allies who are already permitting the use of their weapons against targets in russia. we should not ask the ukrainians to fight this war effectively with a hand tied behind their back. to do so just gives russia

sanctuary in their own country, something they ritually do not dispute. so without question, this is a smart move on the part of the administration. i think you'll see that. they're not going to trumpet it or talk about it in great, public ways, but it is going to have real impact in preserving that vital city in ukraine, kharkiv. >> retired admiral james stavridis, thank you so much for being on this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," we're following the historic guilty verdict in donald trump's criminal trial. joyce vance, neal katyal, ari melberg, and other top legal analysts are standing by with what happens next. "morning joe" will be right back. will be right back

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we did. there were things he was frustrated with. >> were you satisfied with jury selection? and was the former president involved in that in any way? >> i mean, very much involved. he was right there with the whole team talking about the potential jurors. look, was i satisfied? we put a motion in because we said we could not get a fair jury in manhattan. that's not -- i'm not being disparaging to the jurors, man. they were great. they showed up on time every day. they were committed. they paid attention. but we're in a situation where we had to -- we had a limited number of people we could strike. most of the folks, overwhelming number of folks, had a very strong opinion of president trump. it wasn't positive. >> they paid attention. >> he talked about, willie, how donald trump was so involved, so engaged in everything, and he wishes he could have been the litigator. yet -- >> they lost. >> -- he was afraid to take the

stand. >> yeah. >> he wouldn't even get up and talk in his own defense. so i don't know how much he really wanted to talk in there after all. >> yeah, i think that's right. there's -- we'll talk to our legal experts, but there was nothing particularly unusual about jury selection here. they had their chance to strike jurors, just like we do all the time. yeah, donald trump didn't want to take the stand. you do get the sense that donald trump, and he had, remember, all those republicans who showed up at court for him, including the speaker of the house of representatives, to tear down the process in preparation for what happened yesterday. which is to say, they knew the evidence was strong. it was overwhelming. perhaps didn't expect to go 34 for 34 on these could wants, but they knew there was a likelihood he'd be convicted of something here. therefore, they had to attack the judge, attack the witnesses, attack the jury in some cases, and attack the process, to say that it was rotten and, therefore, he couldn't get a fair trial. we've outlined all the reasons that's not true.

joe, we've talked about this, whether or not you believe this should have been brought, this case should have been brought at all, it was. evidence was produced, was given to the jury. the witnesses came and gave their testimony. a jury of donald trump's peers in new york city, 12 of them from across the spectrum, different views of trump and the world, agreed relatively quickly that he was guilty on all 34 counts. >> yeah. >> you know, willie, that's the thing. it's such an important point that you just brought up. you could make arguments that this case should not have been brought. "the wall street journal" editorial page, whoever came up with this line in the editorial this morning should get a bonus. they talked about it, the durkin legal theory, like everything shoved inside and fried. it was, again, and i've said it here time and again, i'm not so

sure that any conviction, given the legal theory underlying the case, is going to hold up on appeal. maybe it will. maybe it won't. >> it'll be a long time of court stuff. >> right. but that's something if marco rubio or ted cruz or anybody else wanted to go after the d.a. bringing the case and say, you know, talk about how they disagree, that the legal theory didn't make any sense. that's one thing. but to attack the jurors, to savage the judge, that's just, you know -- i think most people would consider that to be un-american. you saw, and i'm so glad that president trump's attorney showed respect to the jurors and said they did a great job. they did everything that was asked of them. they showed up early. you know, they were always there on time. they listened. they paid attention. you know, that costs him, that

would have cost any republican senator nothing, and actually would have maybe won a little bit of respect from people listening to the message. but, instead, they go straight to we're communist cuba. it's just a joke. >> it truly is. >> senator rubio actually said that yesterday. one of donald trump's adult children said this verdict officially makes us a third-world country. he used another descriptive term. when the legal system works against you, when a jury of your peers convicts you after hearing the evidence, suddenly, we are a third-world country. donald trump, either way, now is the first former u.s. president in american history cob con vk convicted of a crime. a jury of 12 new yorkers found trump guilty on all 34 felony cowan counts against him in the hush money criminal trial. the jury deliberated 9 1/2 hours over a couple days.

sentencing is set for july 11th, four days before the republican national convention begins in milwaukee. the maximum sentence for falsification of business records is four years in prison. but incarceration is not a mandatory sentence. it will be judge juan merchan who ultimately decides the punishment. jonathan lemire, eugene robinson are still with us for this hour. let's add to the panel former u.s. attorney and msnbc legal analyst joyce vance, former acting u.s. solicitor general and msnbc legal analyst neal katyal, and president and ceo of the national constitution center jeffrey rosen. good morning to you all. joyce, reaction to the verdict of 34 or 34 on the felony counts against the former president. >> yeah, i mean, it's something, willie. you know, i've talked to a lot of juries after they've reached a verdict. i live in one of those jurisdictions where the judge gives you permission to do that several days after a verdict is

returned. what i heard over 25 years was jurors who wanted to express to us how much they honored their oath. they had tried so hard to set aside any bias or preconception. that they deliberated on the evidence and reached the verdict, whatever it was. that's what this jury did here. they listened to the evidence. they reached a verdict based on the evidence. we saw signs of them working through it. so, look, donald trump is in the process of trying to spin this verdict now. americans need to reject that spin. they need to ignore that. they need to use the same common sense that the jury used here. the jurors are the ones who listened to every bit of the ed. that's something that we didn't have the opportunity to do. most of us had to read about it on the cold record or hear reports on the news. the jurors heard every piece of the evidence, and they made a decision here for all of us. i think it is important that we not let donald trump, who has done so much damage to our

institutions, shake our shake in the jury system. because the jury system did its job here. it listened to the evidence. it returned a verdict. we should accept that verdict. >> neal, i'm curious, sentencing is set for july 11th. chuck was talking last hour about the allocution part of that. that is where the defendant has a chance to express remorse, say something. if a defendant expresses remorse, could that impact the sentence that the judge decides? >> i mean, that is the most counterfactual hypothetical i think i've ever gotten. there's no chance that he is going to express remorse. he, himself, has just been going out and attacking the judge, attacking the jury, all of that. but, yes, if he expressed remorse, that would be relevant, along with his conduct during the trial. here, do remember, the

prosecutor, steinglass, said here, this is a really serious offense. this is something that may have put donald trump directly in the oval office. it is going to be very hard, i think, to get away without jail time. i want to pick up on something you asked joyce about, the jury verdict here. i think joyce is absolutely right. the jury verdict tells us a lot. i'd add to it two things. one is that it's not just the jury verdict in terms of a majority vote or something. in our country, it's got to be unanimous verdict. all 12 jurors had to agree. and they had to agree under the most difficult standard in the law, the highest burden of proof for the prosecutors, beyond a reasonable doubt. the jury did all of that, listened to the evidence, and so concluded. now you have trump's allies, including his own lawyer in the clip you played, saying this jury was unfair to donald trump. they didn't like him and the like. i mean, there's two problems with that. one is, like, it's just wrong.

like, there was juror number two who literally, the only media juror two consumes is truth social. that juror was 1 of 12 who voted to convict donald trump. the other is they're trying to set up an argument about a challenge to venue on appeal. that this was an unfair jurisdiction to try donald trump. every profile defendant tries this tack, and it fails. i dealt with it myself when i was special prosecutor in the george floyd murder. derek chauvin made the same argument. look at minneapolis. i'm demonized and the like. i can't get a fair trial. the judge and the supreme court denied it, because everywhere is pretrial publicity. that is true for trump just as much. the standard for a change of venue won't be met. he has no decent grounds for

appeal. >> this is a significant moment in american history. we don't know what impact, if any, it'll have on this year's election, but this is a day we'll always read about in the history books. get your sense of the system working. beyond that, what you feel the appropriate sentence would be. >> the most remarkable aspect of president trump's reaction to the verdict is that he attacked the entire system as rigged. he attacked the judge as crooked. he attacked the jury. he attacked the prosecution. and this represents a historic change in american constitutional law. the founders thought that only virtuous leaders would save the republic and we also needed the auxiliary protections to allegiance to the rule of law when you lost. lincoln, right before the civil war, says that once we abandon our attachment to the rule of law, we're going to succumb to the mob. it is a sign of third-world country. it is a sign of communist

dictatorships, that you attack the rule of law as rigged when you lose. that's what happened in brazil when the president loses office, he goes to jail, is pardoned, runs again. successor says the system is rigged, and people storm the capitol because they won't accept the result. even if you think the prosecution is unfair, if you think it should be overturned on appeal, you have to accept the result of the rule of law. in the polarized time, once citizens abandon a commitment to accepting verdicts they disagree with, we really will lose the foundations of the constitutional republic. for the appropriate sentence, that's a question for new york state law. it is true that if president trump were to be re-elected, then he's unlikely to serve jail time. even the supreme court might say that he has to be able to have his responsibilities and do his duties and, therefore, jail time

isn't appropriate. but the judge should apply whatever sentence new york law plausibly requires, not treating president trump differently than any other defendant, in order to reaffirm this really important point. it is very important that republicans also accept this and not go the way of attacking the system as rigged. once we do that, we really have the founders' nightmare. >> joyce, you mentioned that you have talked to a lot of jurors after the verdicts. i'm curious as to your reading here. some people said they were surprised that the jury came back as quickly as it did. it didn't strike me as particularly fast, but i wonder how the speed of the verdict struck you. also, if you think the fact they were unanimous on all the counts means that when they entered the jury room, there was a kind of general sense of agreement

there. how do you think, your instinct, what do you think the dynamic was in there? >> so i tend to agree with you that, while this was quicker than some of us expected, i thought it'd go into this afternoon or maybe even to monday morning, it was a reasonable amount of time for this jury to review the evidence. you'll recall, gene, that there was 20 minutes after we knew they had delivered a verdict, they actually needed to go back and sign off on each of the verdict forms, a separate form for each of the 34 counts that donald trump was convicted on. you know, some juries will walk into the room and take a straw poll. if everyone is pretty much in agreement, they'll move on from there relatively quickly. it's possible that that's what happened here. but we know from the jury's questions that they wanted to review both the evidence and the law, and that really gives the appearance of a jury that worked diligently to fulfill their

obligations. maybe we'll learn more about this verdict. you know, the judge has suggested that these jurors remain anonymous. i think that's certainly in their own self-interest. there's a part of me that hopes we won't learn more about this process. but whatever ultimately we're able to discern, what we do know is they believed unanimously, as neal pointed out, the government put on proof beyond a reasonable doubt. they went back and reviewed the legal standards carefully before they made that decision. i would join neal in saying, while there will be an appeal, while trump will raise arguments and probably get an appeal bond to remain out while that appeal is pending, it looks like the government tried a very clean case here, a case that will be confirmed on appeal. president biden was in delaware yesterday when the verdict came down. he was there to mark the ninth anniversary of the death of his son beau. in an official statement, the white house counsel's office wrote simply, we respect the

rule of law and have no additional comment. meanwhile, president biden issued a simple post on his x account writing, quote, there is only one way to keep donald trump out of the oval office, at the ballot box. donate to our campaign today. in a more thorough statement, the biden campaign itself wrote, "in new york today, we saw that no one is above the law. donald trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain, but today's verdict does not change the fact that the american people face a simple reality. there is still only one way to keep donald trump out of the oval office: at the ballot box. convicted felon or not, trump will be the republican nominee for president." that's the statement from the biden/harris campaign. a strategist familiar with the biden campaign's thinking tells nbc news, "the campaign is looking at the bigger picture. a guilty verdict would not be a central message." the same strategist added, "biden will focus on what happens to voters, democracy,

personal freedom, and prioritizing the middle class over wealthy corporations." it was interesting to watch the president himself and then the campaign walk this fine line of reminding voters that donald trump now has been convicted of felonies, but also exactly what donald trump himself said when he came out into the corridor after the verdict, that the most important day is not yesterday but november 5th, election day. >> yeah, muted response from president biden and his team which they had telegraphed. i reported a few days ago. of course, the president maintained a vow of silence throughout these proceedings. didn't want to be perceived as interfering with any of trump's legal matters. he'll still stay quiet on the three outstanding cases. we'll hear from him in the days ahead about this case, as mentioned earlier. his first remarks about needing to respect the legal system and the rule of law. likely in an informal setting, taking a reporter's question, that could happen today, as he is at the white house for an

event this afternoon. perhaps it is early next week before he heads overseas for an international trip to mark the anniversary of d-day. the most important thing is the campaign statement here. they indeed say, look, this is part of the argument we're going to make against donald trump. it shows he is choosing himself over the american people. it shows he is unfit for office. yes, the campaign twitter/x account will probably use the phrase, convicted felon donald trump. most importantly, they know he can still win. they read the poll and know how close this is. they tend to think the impact on the race won't be much of one. they don't want democrats to be complacent. their message throughout has been, the legal system will not save you. only thing that will save you from donald trump is if you beat him at the ballot box. expect that message to be heard over and over again, guys. but there is this thought.

they don't think this will be a major game-changer, but maybe it does enough at the margins. 50,000, 60,000 total, if that's enough, if people are turned off by a conviction and go joe biden, it's probably enough to keep biden in the white house. >> neal, back to the court proceedings. a lot still needs to happen as we lead up to the sentencing on july 11th and then what happens after that with any appeal, which appears probably will happen. there have been rumblings by trump followers and even analysts on different networks criticizing the jury, criticizing openly and vehemently the judge. i'm wondering what you're thinking about concerns for their security. what about the gag order, does that stay in place? finally, what's the possibility of jail time, or is it just impossible to guess what the sentence will be? >> yeah, so trump has been --

and his acolytes have been attacking the judge and the jury relentlessly. i don't expect those attacks to seize all of a sudden. it's not their style. that's one unfortunate thing about this felon, former president donald trump. he puts himself above the institution, as jeffrey rosen was talking about, and he is perfectly willing to call out the mob and have them attack all these people and threaten their safety. i do expect enhanced security for all the participants. i think the first thing that trump is going to do legally is, you know, file his statements for why he shouldn't deserve any jail time and the like. as i said, i don't think that it is going to be successful. i think the lack of remorse and the gravity of the crimes here, in conjunction with his courtroom behavior like you were just asking me about, his out of court statements, all together will push the judge to not just a felony conviction but a felony

conviction which has been decided by the jury, a felony conviction that does lead to imprisonment or at least home incarceration. i think then what trump is going to do is picking up on what joyce mentioned briefly, this appeal bond motion. he is going to file a piece of paper with the court saying, look, i've got credible arguments for my appeals. don't jail me or home confine me while my appeal is pending. i do expect that to be successful. there's a lower standard for that. i filed those motions myself. so i don't think we are talking about a circumstance in which trump is jailed or under home confinement in this run-up to the november election. he could be asked to serve a sentence, but it will be delayed almost certainly. i think that's how this plays out for now. then there's an appeal, and i think joyce and i both said we don't see very strong grounds for an appeal so far. >> that sentencing comes july

11th. jeffrey, you've written and said that, many times, america's founders insisted that we could make this constitution, make this system, but it relies on virtuous leaders operating within it. now, some have been more virtuous than others over the years, of course, but what is the test you see this country facing right now just in the next few months? >> it is extraordinary how the founders thought the whole system would collapse without virtue of the people and the leaders. the people need the virtue to choose leaders who put the public interest above their self-interest, their anger, ambition, greed, and then those leaders have to act that way in office, otherwise, people will succumb to demagogues and exchange liberty to people like caesar who install themselves as dictators for life. washington, madison, they disagree about politics, but they think about virtuous leaders, the system collapses. what is so striking, we have not

had corrupt presidents in our history. only two presidents have even been accused of criminal wrongdoing. warren harding and richard nixon. in both cases, the system worked. nixon resigned. he accepted a pardon from president ford. that, as ford noted, was an acceptance of criminal responsibility. what no one has done before is attack the entire system. by virtue, the founders meant accepting the system, accepting the rule of law as something that binds us, even when we disagree about the verdict. that's why it is so -- during the civil war, the entire republican and wig party, based on allegiance to the rule of law, opposed to populist passions. this is what distinguishes the american system from half the countries in the world. >> right. >> where leaders have been prosecuted or jailed in half the countries in the world. in all those countries, once that happens, the election system gets politicized, and you

attack the judges who attack you and people lose faith in the judges themselves. i just can't emphasize this enough. emerging constitutional democracies like ukraine always insisted faith in the rule of law and the non-partisan legal system is the one thing that holds a divided country together. as you've been discussing all morning, the american legal system works. judges during the last election ruled against the trump charges. this system is moving along, even if it is overturned on appeal, that's the way it is supposed to work. it is an existential threat to the system, regardless of whether you like this prosecution or not, to start attacking the legitimacy of the system itself. >> as you said, the trump people are not just disagreeing with the verdict, trump himself, they are openly on the air waes air waves threatening to go after the people who prosecuted donald trump. this is an existential threat

for the country. jeffrey's book, "the pursuit of happiness, how classical writers on virtue inspired the lives of the founders and defined america." it's out now. joyce vance and neal katyal, thank you, both, as well, very much for coming on this morning. we continue our coverage of this major moment in u.s. history. chris matthews and presidential historian michael beschloss both join the conversation coming up. we'll also play for you more reaction from republicans who rushed to trump's defense yesterday. plus, democratic congressman dan goldman of new york and jamie raskin of maryland will be our guests. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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this is a justice system that hunts republicans while protecting democrats. this was certainly a hoax, a sham. this was devastating for the average american watching. >> it is shameful to see this. i hope americans are paying attention because america, they think you are stupid. >> what we saw today was an absolute travesty of justice. this was not law. this was not criminal justice. this was politics. this was a political smear job. this was an attack job. this is what you see in banana republics. it is -- i am both furious and

heartbroken at the same time. >> this is a quintessential show trial, what you see in communist countries. people in this community told me things like this happened in the castro revolution. obviously, that led to executions. this is an effort to interfere in an election. >> do they know it was a jury of 12 peers and that people can see what the evidence was in this case? that was just a sampling of republican reactions to president trump's guilty verdict. nbc news also learned rnc political director james blare had a call with all 50 gop state chairs after the verdict to issue post-verdict talking points and messaging for the party. those talk points include, this is unjust. the conviction will be good for republicans. we will win the appeal. and we just elected the next president of the united states.

joining us now, author and nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss. and former msnbc host and contributor to "washington monthly," chris matthews. michael, these republicans just in history, is there any prediction of how history will look at the reaction to this moment? >> what i just heard makes me sick because the essence of america is to believe in our system of government and our rule of law. when george h.w. bush was president, he'd go over and take to gorbachev about how to reform his country. he'd say, no one is going to invest in russia unless you have a rule of law because people will wonder whether their money will be there the next day or whether it will be stolen. so to hear donald trump and all these people saying that the system is rigged, look at it this way, let's have a little reality check. so he wants to be president again. let's say he gets elected and

that he has to take an oath of office, preserve, protect, defend the constitution. that's the rule of law. how do you do that if you've said that, in your own case, it was a rigged system, bad jury, bad judge, disregard the outcome? it used to be the republicans were actually for law and order. the other thing, you were asking about something in history, mika. look at 1974. it's the only time on this program i will ever praise richard nixon in watergate. supreme court unanimously, 8-0, said, give up your tapes. nixon didn't say, system is rigged. i shouldn't give them up. he knew that was going to get him kicked out of office. he gave up the tapes. he had to resign. gerald ford, the new president, didn't say, system was rigged. nixon was railroaded. >> right. >> he said, our system works. this is a government of laws and not of men. here, the people rule.

>> well, what's interesting, chris matthews, and i'd love for you to take me to pennsylvania, to lancaster country, or to areas that more wholly voted for trump. what they're hearing on fox news or in the areas where they get their information, far-right networks and news sites, is that, not just that this is unjust and this was rigged, but they're also hearing that when donald trump -- if and when donald trump is he elected, they say when, that donald trump will go after everybody who prosecuted him. every single person, retribution. tell me, how do you feel the people, especially in areas in pennsylvania, are going to be digesting this information? >> well, including the 58th ward in northeast philadelphia, parts of northeast philadelphia voted for trump last time, and south philly, too. >> yeah.

>> i think this is a focus group, a political focus group. you know, in politics, joe knows this, you know this, you get a dozen people, set them aside from the rest of the country. you fill them with all the facts. you give them all the information relevant to the discussion, then they give a verdict, what they think of the candidate. this was a focus group. aside from the legal factors, it was people who got all the facts, unmitigated truth of what was going on in this matter, in this case. they came out with a judgment in a matter of nine or ten hours. it is important, in a country where three-fifths of the country don't get the news, don't get the "philadelphia enquirer," don't get "the post" or get the news. well, tiktok didn't really cover the trial. what? or i hear that joe biden couldn't recite the alphabet. what? this never happened. this stuff never happens to most people.

this time, we had a focus group. had all the facts, all the equal facts, by the way. they all got the same information. they rendered an actual verdict in a matter of nine hours. where we're at, if you get all the information to the people, which is almost impossible to do in the media today, you'll get a verdict. the bad news is, three-fifths of the country isn't getting the news. they're listening to tiktok or nothing or nonsense or social media or what trump has been putting out on fox. that's the problem. but this case is a good case. it's people that had all the facts for 21 days. by the way, the lawyers on your show have been fabulous. joyce, everybody has been fabulous. they understand this matter was a truthful response from a truthful group of people doing their job as jurors, and they learned the truth and they acted on it. that's really powerful information. apart from the legal system, it is about an american focus group. >> this is the way it works,

michael beschloss. we've been saying all morning that, yes, it is new york city, and donald trump came out and said i only got 5% in manhattan. how could i get a fair trial here? >> also as pointed out -- >> if you look at the makeup of the jury, which donald trump and his legal team had a say in selecting the jurors because that's how the system works. they struck jurors, chose jurors. as many of the jurors, those 12 you're seeing there, got their news from truth social as msnbc. one each. also a lot of them, you know, fox news, "wall street journal." >> wow. >> the point being, they consume news from a wide spectrum. they come from different backgrounds. some of them perhaps had some affection for donald trump. so they listened, as chris said, to the evidence and made a decision unanimously within our system that he was guilty on all 34 counts. i'm curious from your point of view of history of the way that our system sort of in the last five, six years has bent but not broken. we talked about all those trials

around the 2020 election, of january 6th. >> sure. >> yes, the system was pushed. the system was tested by donald trump, a man who is still here. i think it is safe to say that the test will continue for the next several months. >> yeah, totally agree. if he is elected, it could continue for the rest of our lifetimes, conceivably. that's what's at stake. i think this is the question we've all got to ask. you know, do we believe in the system of law we've got in this country, which to my mind is the essence of america, or do we not? how do you expect a president and whoever he appoints as attorney general, you know, let's say there are riots in the cities in october, which some republicans have said would be helpful to them. is donald trump going to say, you know, the police are just as bad as the capitol police were, he says, on january 6th? he's going to pardon the january

6th prisoners as he calls them. you know, these were people near to assassinating the vice president and capturing the speaker of the house. is this who you want providing law and order in this country? what i'm saying is that, you know, what cuts through that? you and chris are rightly talking about, if someone lives in a pro-trump news bubble that says all of this is silliness and trump is the only one who has been offended against, he is a victim here, what cuts through that? two words, convicted felon. someone who has been convicted of violating the law 34 times, and even more than that, does not give too much promise of fulfilling the oath that he has to take as president to protect our constitution and our system of law. if you're a conservative and you believe in our system, and you want the government to protect you and your family and your business and your community, how

is it helpful to have a president of the united states saying that the system that does that is rigged and should be disregarded? >> the phrase convicted felon will be predictably applicable once there is sentencing, we're reminded here, in terms of the new york system. chris matthews, let's talk about how the biden campaign and the president himself should handle yesterday's seismic developments. as we've been reporting all morning, the biden campaign has been pretty muted to this point. they said they'll talk about this some. they don't think it will be a major piece of their election campaign. but that's a pretty controversial stance. there are some democrats who really think they should lean all in. they should be using phrases like convicted felon. they should be going through the, at times, tawdry details of this case. they certainly should say donald trump is unfit for office because of this conconviction. what would your approach be for someone who studied politics as long as you have, how would you advise the biden campaign to handle this going forward.

>> we have a focus group of people who got all the information. here, we have a jury of, as everyone pointed out, from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of sources of information, including social media, and trump's media. you have to say, if you gif them all the facts, they'll react. i think this case could have measured not just the behavior of trump in regards to the stormy daniels thing and all that world, but also what happened on january 6th. the jury, it's not about the venue in new york city. it's been made a ridiculous discussion. it's the content of what they got, the information. for these jurors, it could have been about the insurrection of january 6th. it could have been what the president said outside the capitol, the white house that day. what happened on the two hours he sat there and let this go on. what he said with brad raffensperger. the fact of what he did with the alternative electoral college voters. all that information could have been fed to this jury, and you would have gotten the same reaction. when all the facts are

accumulated and presented without a lot of confusion and clarity in this case, it really matters. the trouble is that american people are not reading newspapers. they're not getting them. they're not watching. there's no walter cronkite out there anymore. there's no one they can look to and trust. they can agree politically with some people, but they have a problem with finding an objective standard. that's a fact. i watched fox last night and couldn't believe it. >> i know. >> the cronyism of people that i have some respect for, i do, some respect for these guys. they got elected. i don't understand ted cruz's whole reality. i mean, his father was accused of -- by trump, of killing kennedy. give me a break! is there no limit to what you let the other guy do to do, to whip you in terms of your reputation and your family's reputation? there's no limit to what this guy can do to you? make fun of your wife's appearance? are you kidding me? this guy took it all, and they

still come crawling back in their servitude to donald trump. it's this maga thing, it's overtaken the whole reality of the republican party. they used to believe in balanced budgets and free trade and law and order, and now they buckle to this guy. last night was awful. hannity, you know, i have mixed feelings about a lot of journalists, but i did not understand why they all buckled. i don't get it. it's not important enough. you'll keep your career. you didn't have to do it all like last night. they're hurting this country. there's going to be violence. there's going to be trouble. you know, i was just in -- >> yeah. >> i was on vacation in sicily. the airport was named after the two judges killed by the mafia. you start talking trouble about the system, when you start questioning the rights of judges to do their jobs and juries to do their jobs, you're in troubled area, troubling area. this is wrong. there's going to be some problems here, maybe some

violence. this president, former president, should not have done what they did. he should not talk about the system the way they've talked about it. >> well, i don't think he has a problem with the concept of violence. chris matthews, michael beschloss, thank you, both, very much for being on this morning. >> thank you. coming up, we have new reaction on the verdict from speaker mike johnson. we'll play that for you. plus, congressman dan goldman of the overnight committee joins the conversation. "morning joe" will be right back. it should be called wiffle tennis. pickle! yeah, aw! whoo! ♪♪ these guys are intense. we got nothing to worry about. with e*trade from morgan stanley, we're ready for whatever gets served up. dude, you gotta work on your trash talk. i'd rather work on saving for retirement. or college, since you like to get schooled. that's a pretty good burn, right? got him. good game.

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well, there's a lot of developments yet to come, but i do believe the supreme court should step in. it's totally unprecedented and it's dangerous to our system. we've discussed this before, and y'all talk about it all the time. this is diminishing the american people's faith in the system and in oust, and to maintain a republic, people have to believe that justice is fair, that there's equal justice under law. they don't see that right now, and i think that justices on the court, i know many of them personally, i think they're deeply concerned about that as we are. i think they'll set that straight, but it's going to take a while. >> that was house speaker mike johnson moments ago on fox news responding to a question on whether the supreme court should get involved in donald trump's appeals process before

november's election. joining us now, democratic member of the house oversight committee, congressman dan goldman of new york. thank you very much for being on the show this morning. your reaction to the verdict and also to what the speaker of the house was just saying? >> look. the verdict is a success for the rule of law. it is the exact opposite of what speaker mike johnson is saying. this was our tried and true justice system playing out, and what speaker johnson and donald trump and others don't like is his purely politicized attacks on the rule of law, attacks on our democracy, are not allowed in court. our court has -- courts have very specific rules of evidence. they have very specific laws that apply to all trials against any defendant including the former president of the united states, and so what you saw is for the first time that we can remember, donald trump does not

get to control the narrative in court, and a jury simply has to focus on the facts, the evidence, apply it to the law that they are given by the judge, and not consider anything else, and that's where donald trump runs into problems, is when the rule of law reigns supreme, and the speaker has it exactly wrong. this is why we should have faith in our system because it was an impartial jury of 12. they were vetted. they were asked questions. >> mm-hmm. >> you may have personal feelings, but the question is whether you can put those to the side and rule on the facts and evidence alone, and that is what we saw over the last several weeks, and donald trump and his accolites and his supporters may not like it, but that's what makes this country special. what is the we have depended on for 250 years, and that's what we must save on november 5th at the ballot box.

>> we have this as we sat down. there is a conventional wisdom in this case, and what in new york is the only one that's going to happen between now and the election, but there is the outside shot that the federal january 6th case might as well invoke the supreme court. they're currently mulling it over. give us your read. is it a chance we'll see that one too? >> there is a chance. first we have to deal with this absolutely absurd situation where two justices are completely conflicted from ruling on the case that's before the supreme court. justice thomas and justice alito both have spouses, if you believe them, who were involved in the underlying facts of that case. that is a conflict of interest that requires recusal, but the court is going to rule on this absolute immunity question. now if they were to rule on it according to the law, the clear, clear law of 250 years the constitution, there is obviously no absolute immunity for criminal conduct when you're the president, and so what they

should do is simply say, this is a bogus claim as the d.c. circuit did, and send it back to the trial judge who can set a trial right away and she can go to trial in august or whenever it is. if they don't do that, and the suspicion is they won't, because they changed the question they're answering as they accepted the case, and they se it back to the district court to determine what in the indictment should be included in the framework of the new law that they create, then it will not go to trial. >> so we'll know the answer to those questions in a couple of weeks here. congressman, donald trump will be sentenced in the verdict yesterday on july the 11th. it seems most of the legal analysts we have had on said this is a nonviolent, first-time offender. unlikely he serves jail time.

you were the district attorney in southern new york. is there any chance donald trump goes to jail? >> i think in an ordinary books and records case like this, that it would be unlikely that he would go to jail, but in this case, you have someone who has attacked the system, attacked the judge, attacked the witnesses, violated a gag order ten times, refuses to accept any kind of responsibility for his crimes. there are many, many exacerbating circumstances here that the judge will have to consider, and so it's an open question whether or not he will go to jail, be interested to see what the district attorney asks for. a lot of credit has to go to alvin bragg. he remained silent during this entire trial just as a prosecutor should do, and there's a lot of noise about how he ran on getting donald trump when he was -- when he was campaigning. that is false. he very specifically did not say

that he was going to go after donald trump, and so a lot of these arguments about the politicalization about this case are just bogus. ultimately donald trump was convicted for lying in order to conceal information from the public in 2016. that is election interference. that is what he's convicted for, and that's a pretty serious crime. it'll be interesting to see what the judge does at sentencing. >> democratic member of the oversight committee, congressman dan goldman of new york. thank you very much for being on this morning. >> thank you. and still ahead on "morning joe," the ranking member of the house oversight committee, jamie raskin of maryland will join us. and as we go to break, here's the headline people in philadelphia are waking up to this morning. convicted on all counts. "morning joe" will be right back. all counts. "morning joe" will be right back (music) have heart failure with unresolved symptoms?

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voice that matters is the voice

of the jury, and the jury has spoken. >> manhattan district attorney alvin bragg speaking yesterday following the historic conviction of former president donald trump on all 34 counts in the criminal hush money trial. trump becomes the first former u.s. president in american history to be convicted of a crime. the verdict was read just around 5:00 p.m. in a new york city courtroom after the 12 jurors deliberated for roughly 9 1/2 hours over two days. each of the 34 felony counts is associate with a falsified business record pertaining to trump's reimbursement of his former attorney and fixer, michael cohen, for a hush money payment to adult film actress stormy daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with trump back in 2006.

trump has denied her claim. sentencing is set for july 11th, just four days before the republican national convention begins in milwaukee. the maximum sentence for falsification of business records is four years in prison, but incarceration is not a mandatory sentence. it will be judge juan merchan who ultimately decides the punishment. along with joe, willie, and me, we have the host of "way too early," jonathan lemire, katty kay, msnbc contributor mike barnicle, msnbc legal correspondent, lisa rubin, former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor, chuck rosenberg, and msnbc legal analyst, danny cevallos. good to have you all with us. >> chuck, i'm curious. your first impressions of what happened yesterday, what

americans should be looking at, what they should be focusing on as we move forward? >> yeah. it's going to be hard, i think, for our very divided country, joe, to look at this the way i do. i mean, i think it's relatively simple. the government presented a compelling case. they adduced the facts they wanted to adduce. they called the witnesses they wanted to call. they asked the questions they wanted to ask him, and the jury understood it. juries often do. i mean, statistically speaking, most juries convict most of the time, and that's what happened here, but, you know, i was thinking about, believe it or not, a national science foundation poll, joe, that shows that about a quarter of americans, and this has been consistent over time, believe that the sun revolves around the earth, you know, for those of you keeping score at home. it doesn't, and i think it's hard to convince people that what happened in new york happens routinely and regularly around the country.

juries hear the facts. they deliberate. they deliver their verdict, and we need to accept that plain and simple. >> so lisa rubin, you have been covering this so closely down at the courthouse, right from the beginning giving us your analysis, and sort of reading some tea leaves in the last few days. i think the prosecution hoped for, but probably didn't expect a clean 34 for 34 sweep on every count to get convictions on those. what's your reaction to the verdict? >> willie, i was in the courtroom yesterday for the verdict, and i can tell you that just the very existence of a verdict was a huge shock to everyone there given the fact that judge merchan assembled the parties at 4:15. he came in. he said that he was prepared to release the jurors at 4:30, and that he just needed to take care of a couple of things, and then he stepped off the bench and 4:30 came and went, and at 4:36, there was just this tension all throughout the courtroom as everyone was waiting, thinking, what in the world is happening? could we possibly have a

verdict, and indeed, when he retook the bench and said, i have a note from the jury, they have a verdict. both people on both sides of me gasped audibly. you could hear it reverberate throughout the crowd. so just a very existence of the verdict was shocking, but i think the reactions of the parties was also so telling. former president trump tried to put a good face on the verdict. when he walked out, you could see he set his jaw in that trumplike way, and pursed his lips in the way we're all used to, and he set his face to look ahead, and yet he looked like a man defeated and resigned. he walked slowly and lumberingly. we, the press corps, about 100 of us were left in there with the d.a.'s office. i don't know if i shared this before, but when trump moves out into the hallway, for security purposes, everyone is frozen, and that includes the staff at the manhattan district

attorney's office. if you were counting on them to look as if they just scored the biggest score in that office's history, you wouldn't have seen it on their faces or on alvin bragg's face. he looked straight ahead and the prosecutors on his team didn't crack a single smile among them. maybe there was a little twinge of relief in their shoulders and body language, but this was a group of people that knew that all eyes of the world would be on them in this moment if they were lucky enough to get a conviction, let alone 34 of them, and they met the moment with their seriousness of purpose. this is not a group of people despite what donald trump and his republican allies are saying, that relished this victory, that are rejoicing in it. it was a somber and sad day for america that we have now seen a former president convicted on 34 felony counts. >> right. >> and you could see that in all of their faces. >> mm-hmm. mm-hmm. gut punch to the country. danny cevallos, let's talk about

what's next. sentencing is july 11th. what happens between now and then and what are the options with sentencing and of course, i take it an appeal can't start until after that. >> probation will prepare what's called a pre-sentence investigation report. that normally involves interviewing the offender to find out about the offender, but who honestly needs to interview donald trump to find out about his biographical details that normally goes into a psr. then the sides will submit their sentencing memoranda. the trump side will unquestionably ask for a probation-only sentence. the real question for me, what i'm really curious about is what the d.a.'s office asks for. will they say, this is kind of a political decision. let's ask for probation only. we've won. let's call it a victory, or will they ask for incarceration? i believe they will ask for an incarceration sentence in this case. the real question is what justice merchan will do. now there are plenty of arguments to be made for a probation-only sentence. number one, this is a

71-plus-year-old offender. you have a nonviolent offense, a first-time offender, no guns, no drugs, no violence involved, and i would make an additional argument, and i think reasonable minds could disagree here, that i would say that loss and the great chuck rosenberg will tell thaw in fraud cases, the single biggest driver of a sentence is the dollar amount of loss, and losses measured in many different ways, because a defense attorney, i would argue that the loss in this case is 0.0. it's not a traditional fraud case that victims handed over their money. let's say i made up a fake university and charged people fake tuition for my fake university, and i'm giving a hypothetical example. that might be a case where you could measure loss in terms of victims measured by the number they paid. they don't have that here.

you could make the argument that the loss and the victims are the people of the state of new york. i get that, and i think reasonable minds could disagree, but as a defense attorney, i would be arguing that loss in this case is zero. so i think that you will see a request for a nonincarceration, probation-only sentence, but i think you'll see the prosecutors ask for jail time. >> let me -- let me open this up to our lawyers, to chuck, lisa, and danny, and just ask what happened? i mean, i must say that -- i said it, and i've said it here before that in a nation where 77 million people voted for donald trump, i just, you know, maybe i was being cynical, but i just thought there would be 1 out of 12 jurors that would have said, no. not going to go along with it. we're going to, you know, we're going to drag this thing out forever. so i was surprised by the quickness of it. i was surprised by the --

>> the resounding 34 guilties. >> resounding 34 of 34. what do you all think happened in there that moved the dynamic in such a dramatic way against donald trump? >> who's first? >> lisa, i'll start with you. >> well, joe, i think what happened is evidence happened, and the evidence in this case was overwhelming. todd blanch can go on as many networks as he wants to, and say he was convicted on the word of michael cohen, and nothing could be further from the truth. he was convicted on the words of two categories of people, his acolites, starting with david pecker and hope hicks, and the recording that michael cohen made on september 6, 2016, and including his tweets which were consciousness of his guilt, his

legal filings where he admitted this was a legal reimbursement and his books he wrote, proclaiming how you got to be donald trump. those laid out a framework for his m.o. his m.o. was reward the people who are loyal, loyalty above all else. don't trust anyone, even if you have the best people around you. micromanage, micromanage, micromanage, because at the end of the day, your checkbook belongs to you and you alone. donald trump was convicted because evidence happens. >> yeah, and i think one of the things that we may not know for some time until we talk to jurors, but i don't think the jurors spent a lot of time parsing out each and every count. i think they looked at them as a group and they could have done that because the facts involved with each transaction were so similar. yes, there were minor differences. i did wonder if they might seize on the fact that donald trump signed some checks, but not all the checks or for example, that the checks came from the trump organization, then they came

from the tr transactions, but of course, each count really could -- all these counts could have been divisible by three because you had a voucher related to a check, related to an invoice. so in that sense, they could have grouped those together, but unlike many financial crimes cases where the transactions are very distinct and involved very different facts, this could have been a case where they really could have grouped all these together and said that trump's intent applied to all of them broadly based on the evidence they heard of trump's involvement, and they could have arrived at this relatively quickly. maybe we'll find out they took a straw poll, and there was a minority, and going to your question, joe, you know, you're right. we often speak of -- it only takes one juror, but practically speaking, if you're that 1 of 12, and you find that oh, i'm the only one who doesn't agree with my 11 fellow jurors, those folks, i don't think, tend to

hold out for too long. i think that just mass psychology is well, at least, i better listen to what they have to say. i'm convincible. i'm somebody with an open mind. i said i was someone with an open mind, and when you have one or two in the minority like that, i don't think it takes too long. maybe that's why they read back the testimony that said, hey, steve. are you convinced now? maybe your memory's refreshed. are you with us, and that's probably why this happened. relatively speaking in my view, this was a short deliberation. >> we've wondered for so long whether or not this trial was breaking through, but that one word, guilty, seems to be doing that. chuck rosenberg, let's get you in on this for why you think this happened the way it did over the last few days, but also to get you to focus on the idea of sentencing. what would your thoughts be as to what donald trump will face? >> yeah. so first question first, jonathan, my experience has been overwhelmingly that when jurors assemble and they tell a judge that they can be fair and listen

with an open mind, they actually mean it, and so yeah. i understand that it only takes one juror to hang a jury and to create a mistrial, but that's not what tends to happen, and i think danny's right about the psychology of it, but just listen to their own words during jury selection. people who said they couldn't be fair -- or i'm sorry. people who said they couldn't be fair said they couldn't be fair and were removed from the jury, and a number of people said they could be fair and they were empanelled and by and large, that's true. that's my experience, that people really do listen to the facts, and they follow the instructions of the judge, and if the facts are compelling and they were in this case, apparently, then you have a conviction. was it quick? it was relatively quick. quick verdicts tend to be government verdicts. quick verdicts tend to be prosecution verdicts, but i don't think it was unduly quick. i think ten hours is plenty of time to sit down and talk to your brothers and sisters on the

jury and to agree on the weight of the evidence, and to, you know, fairly deliberate the case. so not unduly quick, and then finally, jonathan, with regard to sentencing, look. it's always a bad idea before the first pitch to tell the umpire that he sucks. it's just not the way you want to sort of go into first inning of a baseball game. it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. nevertheless, as danny articulated earlier, this is a first-time, nonviolent offender, and typically in new york state courts, a first-time, nonviolent offender does not get a jail sentence. that said, continuing to yell at the umpire, to denigrate the ump, the courts, the jurors, the system, the prosecutors, is just a bad strategy, and one thing that judges look for at sentencing is what the defendant has to say because all defendants have a chance to speak at sentencing. we call it allocution, and, you

know, i sit there and listen as a prosecutor to whether or not the defendant is remorseful, whether he or she apologizes, whether he or she takes responsibility, and i think mr. trump is constitutionally incapable of doing that, and so, you know, might that be determinative here. perhaps the typical defendant in a case like this would get a sentence of probation. danny's exactly right, but mr. trump has been and always will be a wild card, and his fate now resides in the hands of one person, and us he's been spending a lot of time denigrating that one person. so we'll see. >> yeah. you know, mike barnicle, i learned early on the campaign trail that the rules of evidence and civil procedure and all the things that kept things sane inside of a courtroom did not apply when you get out in politics. it's, like, oh my god. people can just say whatever they want to say and it was a

bit of a shock. well, we reverse that here and we've talked about it a good bit over the past year. gravity returning. the lies that people could say outside of a courtroom about stolen elections that they would never say in front of a judge. well in this case, you have donald trump, and i have no doubt that the abusiveness that some people, for some strange reason are drawn to, it cost him inside that courtroom. they have a mild-mannered judge, a judge that the jury seemed to like, and trump was constantly being abusive toward the judge. he had a witness that the judge had to dress down, and time and time again, you know, trump and his lawyers thought they could bully their way through these proceedings. it's a very small room, and if the jury is -- they like the judge. they're looking at what's going on through the eyes of the judge. that had to hurt donald trump

from the very beginning. >> joe, i think you're probably talking about the most important point that happened during this trial including the verdict, and it overshadows the big headlines that say guilty on every front page in the country and it is the fact that 12 ordinary american citizens, perhaps of different political beliefs, different religious beliefs, different ethnic backgrounds -- we don't know that. 12 average americans sat in the room, and guess what? they didn't get information or evidence from tiktok or instagram. they got evidence presented rationally by the prosecution in this case, and they made a decision that donald j. trump was guilty, and donald j. trump's reaction to the guilty verdict was once again he's already demeaned and destroyed much of our electoral process by saying it's rigged and corrupt. >> yeah. >> and now he took on the rule

of law. he took on the definition of justice itself by saying, this verdict was corrupt, and it was rigged, and it's a rigged system. well, if he was correct in both his assertions that the electoral process is rigged and corrupt, and the judicial process is rigged and corrupt, then there is no more america. there is no more america, and lisa, i'm wondering if you as an officer of the court, worry about the fact that trump and his followers -- we've seen ted cruz. we've seen marco rubio, are going to continue to do damage to the rule of law. >> absolutely. that's a huge concern of mine. i couldn't believe ted cruz's statement last night about the verdict that this was, you know, an outrage and an upset to the rule of law, and i kept thinking, you were involved in this. he kept dragging your father in this. he had david pecker do mock-ups of your father with lee harvey oswald, and yet you're defending

this guy. the competitive sycophancy is coming on, and yet they are all falling all over themselves to say, this is not how the justice system should function. this is exactly how the justice system should function. chuck said the other day that win or lose, whatever happened here, we should respect the verdict of this jury. everything i saw from this jury showed an engaged, invested, serious group of people who were coming together to make a grave decision, and they understood that what they were doing was particularly serious given who the defendant was. it wasn't like they took this flippantly, and yet we have donald trump and his republican allies continuing to call the process a sham, the judge corrupt, the district attorney a sham with racial overtones that i find particularly grotesque.

there is nothing wrong with what happened here. >> and not being called out on it. >> yeah. i mean, speaking of grotesque, you have a guy whose family escaped castro's cuba, communist cuba, a country that castro ran with an iron fist. there was no rule of law there. there were just -- there was just repression. there was tyranny. >> what an insult. >> and marco, like these other people, all because they want to cozy up to donald trump and maybe be his vice president -- >> that's it. >> -- they degrade themselves, and they slander america. they hate on america, katty kay, talking about how, you know, rubio said in the e. jean carroll case, a jury of trump's peers were, quote, a joke because he didn't like the

outcome, and now he's comparing america to castro's cuba, which i will say, yes. it's meant to kiss up to donald trump and shock everybody else. it doesn't shock me. all it's going to do is hurt republicans. it's going to hurt them in wisconsin. it's going to hurt them in michigan. it's going to hurt them in pennsylvania. americans know that marco rubio's lying. americans know that we are a nation of laws. americans know that these jurors and jurors do a noble job, and so you have -- you have these people going out there saying these outrageous things, and at the end of the day, yes. it hurts to see people hate america. it hurts me as a patriot to hear people hating on america, but i do know at the end of the day, it's only going to end up hurting marco rubio, donald trump, and the republican party any more because people don't

buy their propaganda. >> yeah. i mean, marco rubio of all people, knows that this is absurd, that the american justice system is not remotely like cuba's justice system, whether there is no system of justice. he know that is, and he's only doing this to suck up to donald trump. it reminds me a little bit of when tucker carlson decided that russia was a little bit better than the united states. there are people in the republican party that are having a problem with law and order. it's not going their way, and so they're throwing a hissy fit about the system itself, but i don't think many people will buy it. i mean, marco rubio doesn't stand up very well this morning compared to say, somebody like stormy daniels who went to the justice system and e. jean carroll, two women who went to the system of justice and played out the system of justice, and both of whom have had victories in courtrooms against donald trump. i mean, it's some kind of irony. i was thinking this this morning, as we look at all the cases that faced donald trump,

in the end, it was stormy daniels who got the guilty verdict, and even if that tawdry sex never happened in that conference room, donald trump was worried about the perception being that it might have happened enough that he paid her off anyway. so stormy turned out to be the person that actually had perhaps the most legal and political impact on donald trump's career this time around. coming up, of all the trump allies attacking the jury, donald trump's own lawyer was not one of them. we'll look at how the ex-president's legal team is addressing its loss yesterday when "morning joe" comes right back. day when "morning joe" comes right back the future is not just going to happen. you have to make it. and if you want a successful business, all it takes is an idea, and now becomes the future. a future where you grew a dream into a reality. it's waiting for you. mere minutes away. the future is nothing but power and it's all yours.

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save up to $800 during our memorial day sale. visit purple.com or a store near you it's interesting to watch last night, todd blanch, the defense attorney for donald trump, making their rounds on cable news and some of the networks, places he was interviewed, tried to lead him to attack the jury and he stopped well short of that. he went to other places who said, they did their job. they came in on time and listened to the evidence. they did what they had to do, so when people like marco rubio or ted cruz or all of the people you would expect go after the process, what they're going after is a jury of donald trump's peers. he is an icon of new york, right? he's mr. new york, and if you want to talk about facts, you look in when they were asked during jury selection, the 12 jurors and 6 alternates who were chosen, one of them gets their news from fox news. one of them said they got their news from truth social.

many more of them say they got their news from "the wall street journal," and from msnbc. i think only one of them said they get it from msnbc. so this was a jury of donald trump's peers in new york city despite what he came out of the courtroom and said, who looked at the evidence and were able to put their biases aside, which is how the process is supposed to work, and he was able to do this on all counts. whether it was brought -- it was brought, and the prosecutors made their case. the defense made theirs, and a jury of donald trump's peers, across the spectrum decided he was guilty. >> i was struck that mr. branch for all his criticisms of the process and the trial and the decision-making by the prosecutors to file charges really did not insult or denigrate the jury. if i may, willie, just a word about the rule of law. the rule of law did just fine here. the rule of law, however, is a

construct, right? it relies on the good faith of the men and women and this system to keep it alive and breathing. the law of gravity is not a construct. the law of gravity applies all the time and everywhere. if you drop an apple in a place that doesn't have a strong rule of law system, that apple will still hit the ground. law of gravity always applies. rule of law is fragile. rule of law is a construct. we can lose the rule of law very quickly if we're not careful, if we don't tend to it, but it did fine here, willie, right? as you said, 12 men and women, ordinary citizens of manhattan came in, listened to the evidence and rendered their verdict. if you recall after the election, when the trump campaign challenged results in 60 different places, state and federal court, they lost every time. why? they didn't have the evidence to support their claims. the rule of law did just fine. so is the rule of law under

threat? it is always under threat. it is always a construct. it always has been, and it always will be, but it did just fine yesterday. coming up, a look at how the biden team is reacting to the trump verdict. we'll get jonathan lemire's new reporting on that. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." ght ahead on "morning joe." why choose a sleep number smart bed? can it keep me warm when i'm cold? wait, no, i'm always hot. sleep number does that. can i make my side softer? i like my side firmer. sleep number does that. can it help us sleep better and better? please? sleep number does that. 94 percent of smart sleepers report better sleep. save 50% on the sleep number limited edition smart bed. plus, 0% interest for 48 months when you add an adjustable base. shop now at sleepnumber.com

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i think though, mike, again, if we want to look at the political impact of this and even putting the verdict aside, i think again, republicans continue to damage themselves, and continue to say really anti-american statements in such

a way that explains why they lost the election in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, and why i believe they will lose again in 2024. think about this. you have as katty alluded to, you have these republicans, these trumpers who are embraing countries that have no rule of law, that hate the rule of law. katty mentioned tucker carlson, russia's latest media star. you have marco rubio comparing communist cuba, fidel castro's cuba to our united states of america. again, he knows that's a total lie. you have conservatives -- so-called conservatives at cpac

actually going over to orban. they have made him this liberal tyrant, a guy who has gone after the press and undermined judicial independence. you have them raising all of these authoritarian figures up. now yeah, it's a threat to democracy if they end up winning, but my point here this morning is that if you are making an argument to a jury, it better pass what professor pierson, who was my professor at university of florida law school said, it better pass a straight face test. say it into a mirror, and if you can say it without cracking a smile, maybe you can say it in front of a jury. well, you know, none of these tucker carlson, praising the greatness of russia, doesn't pass the straight face test. nor does, you know, marco rubio

yesterday comparing the united states of america to castro's cuba. >> come on. >> they're losing it. they're losing the jury which in this case, are american voters. >> yeah, and both sides should take notice of just exactly that, joe. i mean, on the left, on the progressive side, or whatever. this is no reason for glee. this is no reason to be in the streets cheering and yelling. this is the reason to stop and think and maybe even get depressed over the reaction on the other side. the anti-americanism that filled the air, from people like marco rubio, from people like ted cruz because as we indicated earlier, because if there is no rule of law in this country, and they really believe the rule of law is corrupt and there's evidence of the corruption is the guilty verdict, there is no more america without a rule of law. >> and the reason why republicans are racing to back up donald trump and attack the legal system, because the

threats have already started. larry hogan, former governor of maryland, now senate candidate had tweeted even before the verdict was announced. he wrote this. regardless of the result, i urge all americans to respect the verdict and the legal process, warning against how dangerous and divided we already are. trump's campaign manager tweeted at hogan, you just ended your campaign. so the threats are coming from trump world already to republicans who dare stands up to him and we don't know yet how this will play in november's election. the biden team is proceeding very cautiously and we'll get into it later this morning. we did not hear from the president yesterday. we heard from his campaign warning that trump could still win, and we expect to hear from the president himself later today or in the days ahead and his first message will be as we've reported about how the legal system needs to be respected. >> wow. >> the process worked no matter what side you're on. understanding what a perilous moment this is right now, joe, and mika, for our country. >> speaking of the presidential

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if he is found guilty, let's not underestimate that there is a problem -- think about this. those numbers like 11% less likely to vote for him. think about michigan where they're in the real clear politics average, donald trump is up by one-half of 1% or pennsylvania where he's up by 2%, or wisconsin where he's up by three-tenths of 1%. so in a close race like we're likely to have, having five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

11% of the electorate less likely to vote for you is a problem. >> that is republican strategist, former adviser to george w. bush, carl rose speaking before yesterday's verdict warning it could cost him the election in key battleground state. the constitution has only three qualifications for someone to campaign for the presidency. none of them mention felony convictions. this is not the first time in american history someone found guilty and then ran for the white house. in 1920, eugene debs came from a prison cell as a nominee after being found guilty of sedition. trump also likely will be allowed to vote in the upcoming election as long as he is not sentenced to jail. the state of new york only restricts voting rights for people who are incarcerated at the time of the vote. coming up, democratic

congressman, jamie raskin is standing by. we'll get his response to the conviction, and to republicans who are still standing by the former president. that's next on "morning joe." e former president that's next on "morning joe. i'm not a doctor. i'm not even in a doctor's office. i'm standing on the streets talking to real people about their heart. how's your heart? my heart's pretty good. you sure? i think so. how do you know? you're driving a car, you have the check engine light.

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this was a disgrace. this was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. this was a rigged trial, a disgrace. the real verdict will be november 5th by the people and they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here. you have the d.a. and whole thing. we didn't do a thing wrong. i'm a very innocent man. we have a country that's in big trouble, but this was a rigged decision right from day one with a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try

this case, never, and we will fight for our constitution. this is long from over. >> that was former president donald trump just moments after he was found guilty of all 34 counts in his new york hush money trial. the new-convicted former president is expected to hold a press conference on the verdict in just about two hours from now at trump tower here in new york city. joining us now for the biden campaign's first live interview since the announcement of the conviction is national cochair for president biden's re-election campaign, mitch landrieu. thank you so much for being with us this morning. we appreciate it. let's just start right there. >> morning. >> what is the reaction? what is your reaction to what we heard yesterday, a historic yesc moment, the first conviction ever of a former president of the united states? >> it's a very sober moment for the country and a very sad moment for the country for all

the people to have an ex-president become a convicted felon. that's not something to have a lot of joy about. yesterday you saw democracy work. one of the fundamental tenets of democracy. as a consequence of that trial, donald trump is now a convicted felon. that does not change the fact that the only thing that can stop him from getting to the white house is the american people. they will be the final jury as it relates to who is the president of the united states. the choice is really, really clear. you can have a convicted felon who thinks about himself, and of course, every word out of his mouth thinks about revenge of people who dare cross him.

or you can have joe biden, who makes life better for all americans. nothing that happened yesterday is going to change that fact that we have an election about who america is going to be for years to come. >> how will the biden campaign use this verdict? how will you incorporate it into your messaging? >> i don't want to get ahead of the president. he'll address it in time. but it is a fact now, an uncomfortable fact for all of us in america that donald trump is a convicted felon. the reason it's important for the campaign is this, to be the president of the united states, wisdom, character and judgment is really important.

everything donald trump touches turns to dirt. joe biden makes sure we're creating jobs and thinking about restoring democracy to people. democracy is on the ballot, make no mistake. the fact that donald trump and all of his acolytes are going to attack the rule of law, they're attacking the foundation of what makes america great. sign up at joebiden.com and work for democracy. >> a number of republicans, including a short time ago the speaker of the house, members of the senate, have compared what happened yesterday to what would happen in a communist nation, saying the american justice system failed here. let's get your reaction to that.

do you have concerns as to how the former president and these republicans may incite his supporters after what happened? >> joe biden has given a speech about how fragile democracy can be. you have to go to the polls and vote. that's how in a democracy you stop autocracies from happening. go to joe biden. that is the only way to keep him out of the oval office. nothing that happened yesterday is going to take that responsibility away from the american people. to be clear, speaker johnson always says he's a constitutional lawyer. the constitution of the united states says we are a nation of laws, not of men. it allows for trial by jury, which is one of the most

sacrosanct things in a democracy. we all know donald trump tried to stop the election from being held in a free and fair way and after it was held, he tried to stop the peaceful transition of power. democracy cannot have a greater defender than joe biden. the choice is clear. you can have somebody who cares about himself, his billionaire friends and seeks retribution and hate, or somebody who is going to save democracy. >> mitch landrieu, thank you so much for joining us this morning. up next, we'll have more expert legal analysis of the historic trump verdict. plus, we're going to dig into the economic impact as more billionaires are backing the

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doc? ♪♪ and welcome to the fourth hour of "morning joe." a live look at san francisco. it is one minute before the top of the hour, 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. in the east. our top story this hour, donald trump is waking up to a new reality today after being found guilty yesterday in the first of his four criminal cases to go to trial. nbc's laura jarrett and hallie jackson have more on the personal and political ramifications for the presumptive republican nominee for president. >> reporter: this morning donald trump securing a new place in history, the first american president convicted of a crime,

a manhattan jury finding mr. trump guilty of falsifying business records for covering up a conspiracy to affect the 2016 election. the seven men and five women entering a silent courtroom packed with reporters, but no cameras. mr. trump expressionless as the verdict was read swiftly, guilty 34 times, the former president craning his neck to see the jurors. the presumptive republican nominee, who did not testify in his own defense, vowing to fight. >> the real verdict is going to be november 5th by the people, and they know what happened here. >> reporter: overnight, those

backing mr. trump showing their support. the manhattan prosecutors, led by district attorney alvin bragg, who the former president has attacked as politically motivated. >> while this defendant may be unlike any other in american history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors, by following the facts and the law. >> reporter: the trial a byproduct of a sordid tale that began with an alleged one night stand with the reality tv star and a porn star, that mr. trump was vehemently denied, a story that bubbled up at an inopportune time in 2016, trump in damage control trying to bury

any stories that could hurt his election trials. michael cohen testifying he was directed to pay off stormy daniels, and then mr. trump approved a scheme to reimburse cohen, covering their tracks through a phony paper trail. >> the documents speak for themselves. >> reporter: the former president now set for sentencing on july 11th, facing the possibility of up to four years in prison to just probation, just four days before he's expected to officially accept the gop nomination. after that historic verdict, this morning political fallout falling along party lines, with republicans rallying behind the former president. >> this is the most outrageous travesty i've ever seen. >> reporter: while democrats argue donald trump's conviction show he's not fit to serve. >> today was the day justice caught up with donald trump. >> reporter: mr. trump aggressively fundraising off the

verdict, saying a surge of donations crashed his fundraising site. house speaker mike johnson now calling the conviction a shameful day in american history. from donald trump jr., disgust. >> guilty on all counts, give me a break. >> reporter: and mr. trump's daughter ivanka posting a throwback photo online, writing simply, i love you, dad. from hillary clinton at an event in washington, a not-so-subtle nod to the news. >> anything going on today? >> reporter: some recent polls show president biden pulling ahead slightly if mr. trump were to be found guilty of a felony, but other numbers show about

two-thirds of americans have made up their minds. a conviction now no longer a hypothetical, but an unprecedented reality. >> i don't see him as that much of a criminal. what he did might have been a crime, but i don't think it was that much of a crime. >> to me, it's justice. it's obvious. this is how our judicial system works. >> joining us now, nbc news legal analyst andrew weissmann, ari melber, katie benner and former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor barbara mcquade, jonathan lemire still with us as well. we were watching as the verdict came down yesterday, 34 for 34, a clean sweep for the

prosecution. as you've had some time now, anything about it that surprises you as you wake up this morning? >> i have to disagree with the characterization that i slept on it. >> fair enough. >> there's nobody better to be on with than ari melber and nicolle wallace for breaking news. it's very hard to live through yesterday and not have sort of very grandiose ideas about what it means for this country, thinking about the incredible range of presence we've had from both parties and seeing donald trump and the people supporting him veer off from the rule of law and the contrast between that and the sort of dignified way in which alvin bragg, the jurors, the judge, the prosecution witnesses all took

their oaths of office and their duty so seriously. i think that's encapsulated by alvin bragg's comments yesterday, which were so understated where he said, i did my job. you have that versus what you've been commenting on with respect to donald trump's reaction, but also the people who are enabling that. so we really have a test that this is setting down for this country about whether we will remain a rule of law country where the courts and the ballot box are a place where facts and law still matters to americans. >> ari, such an important point. for all the noise we've heard throughout this trial and amplified yesterday after the trial outside of the courtroom from donald trump, from all of his acolytes, from his supports

across cable news networks and social media sites about how this is a travesty of justice. inside that courtroom over the last several weeks, a group of 12 people and six alternates listened to evidence and witness testimony. yes, it's new york city, yes, it's manhattan. but if you look at who they are, it is a cross section of people who say they are sympathetic to donald trump, people who say they get their news from truth social, at least one of the jurors, the same number who say they get their news from msnbc, they listened to the facts and testimony and came back with a unanimous verdict of 34 counts and did so in a short time given the length of the trial. the prosecution probably hoped they could do something like this, but maybe didn't expect to in terms of going 34 for 34, but were you surprised by what you

heard yesterday? >> it did feel a little surprising, because it was a clean sweep and because we have become so accustomed to having things mixed. this was guilty on all 34 counts as we read it, and the whole nation took it in. this is not one of those split screen debatable moments where people are seeing different things or glomming onto different versions. there is one result in a very high criminal standard and a transparent process everyone could follow, going over the evidence and testimony, including of many people who worked for donald trump for years, the jury took that evidence and took it seriously and found it wasn't a close call, that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt on every felony count. he will now be afforded the process as it continues. the defendant has rights.

he can appeal. he can debate the possible sentencing. it may or may not include a request for jail and it may or may not result in jail. but he was convicted of these felonies because the state met its burden of proof. everything we've heard about this case and how it went suggests that not only did he get the full panoply of rights, but for reasons practical and unprecedented, the system bent over backwards for him. he was not ever held, for example, in jail before trial as so many poor defendants are. he was not ever held in jail for hours or a day in contempt even though he was held in contempt over ten times. many other people who wantonly attack the judge's family or orders would be held in jail at least overnight. if anything, it was extra fair. so he wakes today for the first

time in his life feeling that the rule of law held, that he didn't get away, that the statements and speeches and pricey lawyers didn't work. and i could tell you, willie, like other defendants aawaiting sentencing, he's going to spend every day between now and then thinking about whether that's going to possibly result in a jail sentence. >> katie benner, i'm wondering if we could pull out a little bit big picture. his sentencing is july 11th, then an appeal jumps into place. i think we can predict that they will appeal, which really prevents him from getting any type of consequence, whether it be jail time or anything else, until after the election. i'm just curious if you agree with that. correct me if i'm wrong, is this the only case that will come to a verdict before the election

against donald trump? >> yes. i think it's very likely you're correct, this would be the only case that would come to a verdict. because of the appeals process, we're not really sure where this will land. there are a couple of months until sentencing. the judge will take into account donald trump's behavior leading up to the sentencing. the judge wants to see if the convicted person feels remorse, if they understand what they've done. so it will be interesting to see if donald trump's behavior in these weeks will impact what happens to him. he could get up to four years in prison. however, he has no prior convictions, so it's unlikely for him to get that kind of jail time. but as mentioned by ari, he was held in contempt several times, and he continues to attack the case and say he's done nothing wrong. it will be interesting to see how that plays in to what

happens to him. >> barbara, i'm very curious about the gag order. is it still in place? how long can it stay in place? and what if he breaks the gag order between now and sentencing? >> it's not clear. certainly part of the reason for having the gag order was to protect the integrity of the trial. now that the trial is over, i suppose one could argue there's no longer a reason for the gag order. but i would suggest it is still in place and as long as the judge has jurisdiction over the cas until there's an appeal and final judgment, the judge has reason to keep that gag order in place. part of the reason, if you'll recall, was to keep donald trump for going after court staff and prosecutor staff. these jurors are out there now living their own lives. to the extent he attacks those

people, their lives could be in danger. i would suspect the gag order stays in place. one of the things the judge is going to be looking at is donald trump's behavior between now and sentencing july 11th. if he violates that gag order, that could be a basis for prison for donald trump. >> the sentencing date is july 11th, just a few days before the republican national convention. we'll have this surreal spectacle of donald trump receiving his sentence and then just a few days later officially becoming the gop nominee for the white house. we had a split verdict this morning from some legal experts who think prison time would be appropriate. others say no. what is your take? >> it is going to be quite interesting. yesterday alvin bragg at his press conference was asked that question, whether he was going

to recommend to the judge there be jail time. he demurred. of course, we know that donald trump's team, as is typical, will say he should get no jail time. but as katie and barb said, on the scale of reasons, which i'm confident will be articulated by the d.a.'s office, will be factors that go to recidivism and lack of remorse. that means that i suspect there will be a filing that talks about the nature of the crimes here, about the violation of the gag order, about the attacks on jurors, witnesses, judges, court personnel, about the pattern of criminal activity. the evidence that was played as the last defense witness, bob costello, in terms of obstruction of justice,

interfering with people cooperating, so all of that can be laid out. and, finally, his lack of remorse. this is somebody who is actually prideful of what happened without any contrition whatsoever. all of those are factors that the judge will consider. i am confident that is going to be something put forth by the d.a.'s office. how the judge will ultimately rule, no idea. this is an e felony, which is a relatively low felony. i think it's the lowest felony in the new york system. i'm sure you'll hear from the d.a. that if there's any e felony that would result in somebody going to jail, this is it. so it will be certainly a battle on both sides as to what happens. and the judge, who has been incredibly fair, in some ways bent over backwards for this defendant, will make the

ultimate call. >> ari, to that point about the judge bending over backwards and this process really sort of being catered to this unique defendant that is donald trump, can you speak to how this trial was executed, was carried out? all the noise we've been hearing last night is that this is a travesty of justice, it never should have been brought, attacking the judge and the witnesses. you had the speaker of the house mike johnson this morning saying this should be elevated to the supreme court, that they need to step in. all the political noise that we're hearing about that, can you speak to that about this process and how this trial was run and whether it was obviously unique for all the reasons we've

outlined? is there any credence to what they're saying about how this trial was run? >> no. we have mechanisms to test that. they're not done through the tweets of people who used to characterize donald trump as dangerous, as the speaker did, saying shame on the republican party if you let him in power, as lindsey graham did. we all know the memories here. i mind everyone this isn't even on the level for those people, because the very thing they warned about as they tried to stop him from becoming the nominee let alone president is happening. they're a party to the very thing they warned about and now feeling powerless to stop it and joining it. at a personal level, that might be difficult, especially if you took an oath to uphold the united states constitution. but we have a mechanism to deal with this. there are reversible issues on

appeal if you can prove one. this is not the last word in our system. there will be layers of review. just as the sentencing has a process to make it as fair as possible. we haven't seen anything in the trial to suggest there was a miscarriage of justice, that the defendant didn't have his rights and that the jury didn't ultimately reason through this and find on the facts, even members who watch fox news. in voir dire, one of the members of the jury said they like that donald trump speaks his mind. we don't have any evidence to go towards those sort of conspiracy theory attacks on the rule of law in the united states. >> barbara, we were talking earlier about the gag order and how the judge will be watching trump's behavior in light of what he decides to do with the sentence. i just want to understand more of what it means. up until the verdict, it's been

trump's behavior in the courtroom, trump's words as it pertains to certain people connected to the case, but not all. so how will trump's behavior be gauged as it pertains to sentence? will the judge be considering how he appears on tv, if he's lying, if he's maligning the court, if he's maligning the system, if he's drumming up others to do the same, is that going to matter in the sentencing? how is this framed? >> i think it's going to stay in place as it stands unless there is some motion to modify it or to end it. as it stands now, it does permit donald trump to attack the prosecution itself, to attack prosecutor alvin bragg himself and judge merchan himself. >> you're talking about the gag order, right? >> yes. >> okay. but i'm talking about trump's behavior in the sentencing.

will he be considering any crazy thing trump could say in the next couple of weeks pertaining to the case. does it matter how he behaves? >> yes. one of the things the judge will be looking at in addition to the offense itself are the characteristics of the defendanter. that includes any good acts trump may have done, any character letters, all of that gets considered on the plus side. on the negative side, the judge will consider anything he's done. that includes the e. jean carroll verdicts. that includes the case that the new york attorney general brought about fraud in business, because those are also findings that pertain to the characteristics of the defendant. i think all of those things will

be considered when judge merchan fashions a sentence in july. >> katie, i'll give you the final word here. just overall, does donald trump have to show up in court for any other cases between now and election day? >> it will be interesting. in terms of his criminal trials where he would want to show up in court, again, down in florida that case seems to be indefinitely stalled out given the rulings that judge has made. the criminal trial here in d.c. seems stalled out because of the orders from the supreme court we await soon.

the election fraud has become somewhat of a soap opera. these things are mired in a way that works in donald trump's favor in terms of the clock before the election. what the justice department are looking at are a very different set of concerns while we sit in court and wait for these things to resolve. they're looking at the scrutiny they're going to get from republicans. we've seen the head of the judiciary committee jim jordan saying he wants to understand if the justice department was colluding with the manhattan district attorney in order to get this conviction. the justice department, of course, would deny anything like that. but you're going to see a lot of political hay made out of that. when we see people, especially prominent figures, attacking the rule of law and saying that the justice department, the criminal system, our system of justice does not work, that it is somehow corrupt, what we see is a really dangerous spike in

anti-authoritarian activity and domestic extremism. that also concerns the justice department any time anything like this happens. i think you could say the criminal conviction of donald trump and his behavior and the behavior of his supporters to say you cannot trust the rule of law is also a big problem for doj. these are things that are on the horizon for him in addition to hoping we get some resolution in these two major federal cases. >> also could be a big problem for our country. katie benner, as a justice department reporter, you just went over the cases against donald trump in a very objective way, talking about one of them mired in delays. there's no argument being made here on this broadcast that judge aileen cannon is somehow

politically motivated in all her decisions, or that everything is corrupt in georgia, the system is corrupt. no, none of that. just reporting on the facts of the cases and accepting the legal process with its imperfections for what it is. in this case, you see on the right and the far right and on fox news and in far-right news organizations so much criticism for the rule of law, for a jury of donald trump's peers making a decision based on evidence that you can have access to and read about yourself. it's just very interesting to see how either side, whether it be in the middle, the right or the left is coming down on this. the right seems to really want to upend the rule of law in the united states of america in the name of donald trump. katie benner, andrew weissmann,

barbara mcquade and ari melber, thank you all very much. ari, we will be watching "the beat" tonight at 6:00 p.m. eastern. coming up, we'll break down the political implications the verdict will have on the 2024 campaign. first, let's go to willie geist. what do you have coming up on "sunday today"? >> i have a bit of a palate cleanser from all this criminal hush money and porn star talk. to the elegant, the delightful emily blunt is my guest this weekend, talking about "the fall guy," her oscar-nominated performance in "oppenheimer" and much more. we will be right back here on a historic friday morning on "morning joe." ."

♪♪ 6:30 in the morning in los angeles, 9:30 here in new york. a couple of magazine covers to show you this morning reacting to the news of donald trump's conviction on 34 felony counts. the new yorker's cover has an artist depiction of trump with his hands to be placed in cuffs. "time magazine" has an illustration of a gavebanging down on trump. joining us, the reverend al sharpton, john heilemann and

presidential historian doug brinkley. good morning to you all. john heilemann, we've been talking about the legal side of this. let's look at the politics. there's no way to know quite yet how this will play out. there's been some percentage of voters who have said if donald trump were convicted of a felony, that would change my impression of him and perhaps my willingness to vote for him. what do you make of these early hours how this may play out? >> i've been saying for weeks that people in the country up until now have not been paying attention, broadly speaking. this is a lot of the activity, the behavior of crimes in question that have been fully priced into the donald trump stock. my caveat is what will happen if donald trump is convicted and particularly if there's an

overwhelming conviction? what if he got convicted of all counts? that happened. the polling is unreliable and sketchy, but there is a consistent thread through it, which is that some small percentage of people have said if he was convicted of a felony, it wouldn't change their point of view. and a slightly larger number said if he was convicted and even sentenced to prison, it would change their point of view. those numbers are very small. the numbers in question are single digits. when i see those numbers, 6%, 8%, 11%, i say in this election those numbers are huge. those numbers could be dispositive in this election. it's going to be won or lost on those kinds of margins. so in places like wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania where

hundreds of thousands of voters are going to make the difference to who prevails, those numbers could be a very big deal if they hold, if they're real, especially as part of a larger picture, a larger strategy the biden campaign is now pursuing, that he must pursue through election day, which is to remind people in a vivid way of what donald trump was like as president, what those years were like. this is an important tool for the biden campaign in advancing that strategy. nbc news has learned that the guilty verdict will not impact plans to provide donald trump intelligence briefings from u.s. intelligence agencies once he's officially the republican nominee. that won't be until july, so that is happening. secondly, we have heard from trump. he has a news conference scheduled at 11:00 at trump tower. he has taken to truth social to try and explain away what happens. he makes no attacks on the jury

or the judge. it's actually, for him, relatively tame explanation to what went wrong, though he does end with maga 2024, witch hunt, if this can happen to me, this can happen to anyone. i know you were struck by the venue, the setting of whether donald trump did face this criminal conviction. >> i was struck by the setting, because it was the same setting that five young black and brown young men faced trial in 1990. donald trump had taken out ads calling for them to get the death penalty, the central park five. they were convicted and later exonerated when dna evidence came out late. last night i talked to two people. i talked to michael cohen, who i prayed with before he went to jail and throughout. and then i talked to usef salaam, one of the central park

five. we said, let us not make this political or payback or trying to in any way affect it, so we never went down, the central park five. none of them went. i didn't go, because we wanted to let it play out. we didn't want people to say the prosecutor was doing this for anything of that sort. it ended up being what it was, a jury decided he was guilty. it's right in the same building where these five young men had to deal with an injustice. now donald trump is in this situation, and i don't think we ought to gloat. i think that as trump who did what he did to the central park five and other cases, we can say it's karma. but as a former president, this

is not good for the country, it's not good for any of us. we have to say if he's not able to catch and kill stories, whether or not it would have been a different outcome in that election and a different supreme court that just knocked down affirmative action, voting rights and all. had those stories not come out, we may not be sitting a supreme court with judges with upside down flags. >> lemire, i think it was you that said he's saying again, if this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. i mean, i guess he's right. it can definitely happen to anyone who has sex with a porn star while his wife is pregnant and then has his fixer pay her off before an election starts. it's true. it could happen to anyone who did that. so donald trump is right about that. douglas brinkley, in this case

the evidence is available for people to look at. they can read about it. they can understand whether or not it makes sense that this jury of 12 of donald trump's peers came to the decision that they came to and they can do their own math. they don't have to listen to fox nice lying or donald trump lying. they can do their own research. it's there for them to see and perhaps they will be a little bit more understanding of this jury that had this incredible responsibility, took it seriously and did their job. it's called the justice process. it's called no man is above the law. it's called the system that we all respect. but what i'm trying to understand is speaker mike johnson, ted cruz, marco rubio, the little minions in congress who run around showing up at court no matter what this man

says or does. is there a figure in history that we can point to for understanding on this? >> not really, because we've never had a january 6th before. you had the insurrection and you had that moment when people like mitch mcconnell and lindsey graham and others distanced themselves from donald trump, said that was un-american. one would have assumed that would have been the end of donald trump in politics. but they all came back, one after the other bowing and kissing the ring of donald trump. it's about power. it's about money. it's about the social media organization. it's about a maga revolution going on. it's not just a political election. i think that's the most disheartening part. i and i think a lot of your viewers, whatever the verdict was, i believed in the jury. i looked at everything i could.

i thought he was guilty on all 34. i think they did the right thing. but if somebody didn't and it went the other way, i'd say, look, that's the way it goes in a courtroom. right now donald trump is going to be known for guilt, for being the only feloious president that gets put in this ugly place in history. >> we have a guilty verdict. both campaigns, trump and biden have said to this point they don't think this will in any significant way change the trajectory of the race. it doesn't have to be significant. if you were hired as a campaign consultant to the biden reelection team, what would be your advice to them? yesterday we did not hear from the president. he was in delaware with his family on the anniversary of his son beau's death.

we might hear from him in an informal setting later today or in the days ahead. what would you do? >> well, thank you for putting me in that position. i try not to pretend to be a political strategist. but to try to get the essence of your question without giving anybody advice, i know there is a debate inside biden world that there are those who have kind of leaned in the direction that joe biden is inclined to lean, which is not to politicize the justice system, to conduct this campaign the way you would conduct a normal campaign. there's another side that says we must be on offense more, we must be in this fight more.

if we are now running against a convicted felon, even if he's appealing, even if he doesn't go to jail, we have to make that part of the argument we make, because we are dealing with this trump amnesia factor. so many people have forgotten who this man is, what he has done, what it was like when he was president. they are finding it difficult, much more difficult than they imagined to remind people of all of that. we now have a current, present-tense reminder in this 34-count felony conviction. the idea that the campaign would not lean into this fact, whether it comes out of joe biden's mouth or just out of the company's media and advertising and digital assets, that is another big question. the campaign is one school of

thought that says you're losing and to not use this to the extent you can would be foolish. i think that argument will prevail in the campaign, but it might take a little while to get there. >> let's bring into the conversation democratic congressman jamie raskin of maryland. thanks for being with us this morning. you have some experience in holding donald trump accountable as the lead impeachment manager in the days after january 6th. what is your reaction to this sweeping verdict yesterday of 34 counts and 34 verdicts of guilty? >> my initial reaction was thank god for the jury system. when we went over to the senate having impeached donald trump for inciting an insurrection against the union, there was a 232-197 vote in the house. we were over in the senate for a week presenting our case. i think the evidence was

absolutely overwhelming. and the defense, as in the new york case, was pretty nonexistent. i mean, they did not have a coherent counter narrative to tell. and yet we were only able to get 57 out of 100 votes, which is a pretty commanding majority, but we needed two-thirds. i just feel like the jury system is an essential democratic practice and institution, because it's a microcosm of the people, and what you get is common sense people who are willing to take in all of the facts on all of the sides, people willing to participate in this justice system that includes the presumption of innocence, that includes the right of the defendant either to testify or not testify as donald trump chose to d and were willing to apply the law to the facts. to me, it was a beautiful thing

to watch. obviously the process has not completely played out. the convicted defendant in this case, donald trump, has the right to appeal and we should all respect the appeals process like we're respecting the trial process. but i think it was a great victory for the justice system within liberal democracy. >> that cross section of donald trump's peers in new york city sat and listened for several weeks to evidence and testimony and decided, yeah, he did it, all of it. congressman, i know you're not surprised by the response from your congressional colleagues on the republican side, but i'm curious to your response to how extreme it's been. we have senators now saying we are a banana republic. senator marco rubio saying this reminds him of stories about cuba, where there is no rule of law.

what's your response to all of that? >> well, donald trump has been like psychological and cognitive stress test for the republican party. so many of them have failed, not all of them, not liz cheney, not mitt romney. a lot of them have said no, they don't want to go down the road of becoming members of a cult of authoritarian personality. but at this point many of them are perfectly willing to surrender critical thinking skills and everything they know about the legal system and everything they know about political science and simply give themselves over to the cult of trump. i mean, imagine if trump woke up and decided, all right, the game is over, i'm going to admit all of these crimes, all of these offenses against the constitution. what would they do at that point? would they still be yelling, no,

no, let's stick with trump, let's keep going down the road to authoritarianism? it shows is they're acting like members of a religious cult sleeping on a basement floor listening to the tapes of a cult leader. >> we know chief justice roberts has decided to not meet with democrats about the behavior of justice alito and thomas. you have a piece you wrote for the "new york times" this week saying there's a way to force those two justices to recuse themselves from january 6th cases. can you explain that to us? >> it's called the writ of mandamus. that was the writ used in marbury versus madison. it's a writ where the supreme court can tell a federal official here i argue including a supreme court justice to perform a ministerial act. in this case, the act is

judicial recusal, which is compelled by the supreme court's own precedents in the field. so i canvas some of the different cases where the court decided there needed to be recusal because there was an objective reality of questions about the impartiality of the judge. and so what the supreme court has said in these cases is that what matters is not whether the justice or the judge thinks for himself that he or she can be impartial. the question is, what is the reasonable appearance to the rest of the world? i close out by talking about chief justice roberts' analogy he advanced during his confirmation hearings about a judge being like an umpire. imagine an umpire in the world series of baseball who was flying the flag or the pennant of one of the teams competing. would anybody think that umpire

could actually be a neutral, impartial, objective officiant in the game? i've been hearing from people in the baseball field and people who were umpires saying none of these people would ever be allowed to officiate in a game. these supreme court justices have been allowed essentially to be a judge in their own case and to proceed. >> ranking member of the house oversight committee, congressman jamie raskin, thank you very much. doug brinkley, i'll give the final question to you. no matter what the outcome was going to be, i'm really grateful to this jury for taking on this difficult job and doing it.

based on my own personal experiences, i'm very worried about the weeks and months to come. what are you worried about looking ahead to the next few weeks and months leading up to the election? >> well, one thing i think we all probably underplayed is that joe biden doesn't have to say a whole lot. i agree with what reverend sharpton said, it's not a moment to gloat. but his base, they're excited and feeling energized. it's really been 3 1/2 years of nonstop legal cases, and suddenly he's been busted for 34 felonies. i think the date to look at is june 27 debate right now because that's the moment when this will all come up. i know, you know, jake tapper and dana bash will obviously be pushing this issue of what does it mean, how do you feel being a felon, and biden will be asked

to answer. that's the date i'd look at. and then we roll into the july 7th and then the trump, how will he run on this? is he going to run as the al capone, jesse james figure, or is trump going to kind of tamper things down? he's had gag orders. he's threatened a judge, he's mocking the jury. it's i think a bad form and a losing form for him. i think it's showing a little bit of dignity would go a long way, but i doubt he'll be able to do that. >> presidential historian, doug brinkley, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. >> thanks. >> we appreciate it. and coming up, a big development in israel's war against hamas. we'll have that news for you. plus, we'll goat wall street's reaction to donald trump's historic guilty verdict in his criminal trial. and why republican mega donors remain unfazed. cnbc's andrew ross sorkin and

msnbc's stephanie ruhle join us next to explain. we're back in two minutes. we're back in two minutes. it's time. yes, the time has come for a fresh approach to dog food. everyday, more dog people are deciding it's time to quit the kibble and feed their dogs fresh food from the farmer's dog. made by vets and delivered right to your door precisely portioned for your dog's needs. it's an idea whose time has come. ♪♪ does your bladder leak when you laugh or cough? mine did until a bladder specialist had me try bulkamid. it's a safe and effective, non-drug treatment that can provide years of relief. take the next step at findrealrelief.com. get your bladder back!

53 past the hour. the israeli military has confirmed this morning that its forces have advanced into central rafah. commandos backed by tanks and artillery are now operating in the central part of the city. the military said in a statement that its troops had uncovered hamas rocket launchers and tunnels, and dismantled a weapons storage facility. the news comes despite growing international backlash to scale back the offensive. we of course will be following this new information very, very closely. willie. >> yeah, and we'll wait to see how the white house potentially responds to that today. meanwhile, hedge fund billionaire bill ackman had endorsed nikki haley during the primaries and previously has

donated to democrats. this news follows the recent announcement by steven schwarzman that he would support trump as a, quote, vote for change. let's bring in andrew ross sorkin. he also is a columnist for "the new york times" and nbc news senior business analyst and host of the 11th hour, stephanie ruhle. good morning to you both. i know you've been working the phones after this verdict came down talking to some of your sources on wall street so what is the calculus for somebody like bill ackman, is it as plain as it sounds, which is lower corporate taxes, less regulation and the like? >> i'm not going to speak to bill specifically but remember, it was a year and a half ago, all sorts of gop donors, wall street guys were like we're done with trump. it's time for a ron desantis or a nikki haley and they thought he had too much baggage. they weren't happy with january 6th, but lo and behold, nikki's not an option, ron's not an option, and they are remembering donald trump is a transactional guy, and so are they.

they know that if you side with trump when he's down, which he clearly is now it doesn't really cost you anything. and come six months from now when and if he's the next president, that's an extraordinary get out of jail free card for them. look what donald trump did two weeks ago. he had that meeting with oil execs, and he basically said you guys give me a billion dollars you can get whatever you want. we're not talking about your average wall street investors. we're talking about the biggest of the big guys and whether it's the ftc or the s.e.c., they know they've always got a regulator on their tail and to have somebody in the white house, yes, it's corporate taxes. yes, it's deregulation. but more than that it's to be able to control the rules. that's a huge win and trump will give that to them. >> we should point out that just a couple of hours after those 34 guilty verdicts in new york, donald trump went into a fundraiser to begin to raise money on this. from the sources you talked to, and you're so dialed in on wall street.

the dow is over 40,000. we've talked about this quite a bit, the strength of the economy save for inflation. what is it these billionaires think they can get out of him? >> some of this is about power, proximity to power. that's a huge part of this. some of this is about what's going to happen in 2025 when the trump tax cuts expire and what comes next, so there's the financial component, and then when you look at somebody like bill ackman, actually, and i think he's the most surprising switch so far because he was a long time, very vocal and very very vocal democrat who had backed democrats financially before, but he's somebody who i think on the whole has taken the position that he's unhappy with what's going on around dei issues in america, what's happening on university campus,

what's happening in israel and the way that the biden administration's reacted and with the age of biden. i've talked about on this broadcast before that he was -- he had a different view. i didn't know if he would go with trump. i actually thought that he was still holding out some kind of hope that there was a third unicorn that was going to emerge to take biden's spot, but it appears that he is, in fact, going towards trump. at one point, though, about the market today in terms of reacting. the market's not really reacting, but we should focus on what's called predicted. this is a website where people actually can bet. they can bet on who's going to win. and for a brief moment, trump who had been up because it follows the polls went down yesterday, but he's now winning again, and i just say that not because it's going to happen that way but because i think people need to recognize and focus on the fact that those numbers are suggestive, at least of something in this moment, as surprising and shocking as that may be. >> willie, i know we're out of

time. can i say two things? bill ackman was looking for a third unicorn. there was a moment when he was hot on vivek ramaswamy. he's hot on power, and when you go back to bill ackman and his take on the college protests, it was bill ackman who said all of those college students should have their names and faces and identities public because i do not want to hire any one of them at my company one day. the question to ask bill ackman today is would you hire somebody who was convicted of 34 felonys? >> yeah, would you hire someone who acts like trump? i don't know. cnbc's andrew ross sorkin, thank you, and stephanie ruhle who said she would not speak to bill ackman personally. >> no, no, i didn't speak to him personally. i didn't say wouldn't. i would speak to him personally. >> i would speak to him about the dei, he's the face of fighting dei. i wouldn't speak to him.

>> stephanie ruhle, we'll be watching the 11th hour tonight at 11:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. thank you both very much. that does it for us this morning. wow, what a day. ana cabrera and josé diaz-balart pick up the coverage right now. ♪♪ >> good morning, and thank you for joining us. i'm ana cabrera reporting alongside my colleagues josé diaz-balart and katy tur, who is with us from trump tower this morning where just an hour from now donald trump will hold his first news conference since that sweeping guilty verdict in his new york criminal hush money trial. >> making him the first american president to become a convicted felon. trump decrying the verdict as his legal team readies an appeal, sentencing set for the 11th of july. >> and joining jose, katy and myself to kick off this