themes of unity because she was one of his most ardent opponents during the primary. so i'm very closely watching what she says and how she conveys her point. >> haley initially not given a speaking slot, but then that changed in recent days. national politics reporter for bloomberg, stephanie lai, thank you so very much. thank you so all of you for getting up "way too early" on this tuesday morning. a jam-packed "morning joe" starts right now. look, i've never seen a circumstance where you ride through certain rulers of the country, and people have big trump signs with signs saying f biden, with a little kid putting up his middle finger. i mean, that's the kind of stuff that is just inflammatory and kind of viciousness. it is a very different thing than to say, look, i really disagree with trump, the way he takes care of taxes.

>> that was just partf president biden's wide-ranging inrview with nbc's lester holt. we'll have more of the big moments from that sit-down, including the phrase the president admits was a mistake to use. plus, from never trumper to running mate. we'll go through jd vance's evolution on donald trump that landed him on the2024 republican ticket. meanwhile, the former president picked up another legal victory with a judge he appointed while he was in the white house tossing out his classified documents case in florida. we'll have expert legal analysis on that ruling and what could be next for the case. good morning. is very good to be here. welcome to "rning joe." it is tuesday, july 16th. along with joe, willie, and me, we have the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at politico, jonathan lemire. the president of the national action network and host of

msnbc's "politics nation," reverend al sharpton is with us, as well. all right. two days after an assassination attempt during a rally in pennsylvania, former president trump made his first appearance at the republican national convention in milwaukee last night. trump's right ear was visibly bandaged as he entered the convention hall. the crowd was cheering as the former president walked out during a live rendition of lee greenwood's "god bless the usa." meanwhile, new details are beginning to emerge in the assassination attempt investigation. according to senior officials, forensic technicians are working 24 hours a day at the fbi lab in quantico, virginia, analyzing the cell phone, laptop computer of shooter thomas matthew crooks. they gained access to his phone earlier in the day, but the search of his electronics have yet to reveal a motive.

this as we're learning the fbi is now investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism. authorities found explosives in the car used by the gunman and more than a dozen guns were found in a search of his family home. three officials say the shooter's father called police following the shooting of trump to say tt he was worried that both his son and his ar-15 were missing. e fbi is probing whether some ammunition was bought in the days befe the shooting or whether it was delivered to the home. willie, i just -- showing this shot right here, i mean, the orhead view of all of this is sll -- it doesn't -- you know, the more times w see it, the more shocking it is that they actually had a building where there was a straight line between the shooter and the former president. many things about this so

shocking. you know -- >> kill shot. >> yeah, it was just directl ahead of it. then you look a what happened after the shooting, how long it took them to get him covered up and protected. you know, as we get further away from this, there are more and more questions about what the secret service was doing. not just, you know, pertaing to protecting the perimeter, but also proteing the former president after the first shots rang out. >> yeah. it's the question we've been asking since the immediate moments afterward. if y look at the layout in the map we had up ere, how just over a football field away from an elevated position could a 20-year-old man climb to the roof and just get a clean, open shot on the former president of the united states? it is atunning failure. we're going to talk in some detail here about that in just a moment. but this is only by the grace o turning his head, thank

goodness, is donald trump still alive. for his own sake, for his family, for the country that he is still here, because heurned his head. that was an open shot. by t way, we're getting some new information at nbc news four officials telling us rally-goers alerted local police to a suspicious person near a section of the rally prior to the shots ringing out. lines up with the videos we've been seeing. local police searched for the man on foot but were unable to find him until he was spottedn the roof of the nearby building a short time later. local police told the secret service they were looking for a suspicious person, however, it wasot clear what time the secret serviceas notified and if it was before trump tookhe stage. there are some videos out there, "the new york times" has one on their with website right now, of people, while donald trump was speaking, in the minutes before he was shot, pointing up to that rooftop and ying, "there's somebody up there with a gun." nbc news senior white house correspondent kelly o'donnell

has more now on the investigation. >> take a look at what happened. [ gunshots ] >> reporter: stunning and unexpected. authorities had already considered the gunman's rooftop perch a worry. witnesses say they spott a threat that day. >> we were like, hey, man, there's a guy on the roof with a rifle. >> reporter: but the secret service had actually identified the building near the trump rally as a potential vulnerability in the days before the event, according to two sources familiar with the agency's operations. officials say n officers had been posted there. a key question is why. at the white house, homeland security secretary mayorkas said he expects within days to choose the head of an independent review from outside the administration. >> i am committed to going externally of the department and externally of the government so that no question of its

independence can be raised. >> reporter: secret service officials say they had designated that local law enforcement would secure that building. >> any type of missteps that were made or miscommunication that was made has to be addressed. >> reporter: a major shift affecting independent candidate robert kennedy, w has been repeatedly denied government security. >> the president has directed me to work with the secret service to provide protection to robert kennedy jr. >> kelly o'donnell reporting there. let's bring in nbc news national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent tom winter, law enforcement analyst who experienced serving in the protecve division, and barbara mcquade. tom, you and ei were on the air in the early hours after this took place. a question that doesn't seem like it had more answers than it did 48 hours ago, which is, what

more do we know about the shooter and a motive? >> i was hopeful that between the cell phone they were able to recover, that they would be able to get into that. it is not telling a lie. search history with your search history. messages are your messages. i was hopeful that off that, they'd be able to determine not just the how -- i think that's becoming more of a focus -- the purchases of ammo. last night, we reported a home depot receipt was found on him, purchase of a ladder. we're trying to find out if that was the one he used to get on the roof. those details are coming through and are becoming more clear. but the why. i know and i get it because i get the vitriol online, somebody shot at donald trump. what other reason could it be than some sort of a political reason? that's what people are saying. i think it is important to remember, first off, the last presidential shooting we had, john hinckley jr. did it to

impress a hollywood actress. we have seen a number of incides happen over the years where people thought the motive was clr, and it tned out to be a comple 180 based on the evidence. that's where the fbi needs to go with it. then we found out yesterday that they had a preliminary review of the cl phone. investigation is still ongoing, obviously. it was really nothing on that that led them to the why. i think that's a real challenge. going forward here in this investigation, they're talking to the family. every indication so far is that the family has been cooperative. but they're kind of running out of leads at this point. i think they're either hoping somebody comes forward or that they find some other piece of evidence or a needle within needles of a haystack to try to figure out why this happened. i'll caution people it is poss l we may never know this individual got on the roof that day. people think, well, it's just anti-donald trump because this person doesn't like them cause their views are on the other de of the political spectrum. it is psible that donald trump, and there is a bit of a

theory in law enforcement, is it possible that tmp was not conservative enough for t this dividual? it runs the gamut. i think it is iortant in this siation, this is the way we approach our reporting, everythi is on the table. let's figure out what authorities have. let's do our own work, talk to our own people. you saw that in kells piece right there. from that point, we can start to piece together why this happen. >> joe, as we've been reporting the last couple days, the shooter here a registered republican but also someone who gave $15 when he was 17 years old to a progressive group that gets voter turnout for democrats. eryone is sort of able to ascribe their priors and their own theories to that, ung those two truths. >> iust -- yeah. i've seen the video. >> i keep getting shocked by it. >> it's shocking. we may not kw the why for some

time, but, tom, the question i have is how? how? how did the secret service allow someone to have a straight line of sight to a former president who may be the next president, that an ar-15 could reach, when the secret service and law enforcement obviously knows, an ar-15, as we've reported time and time again through the years, is the weapon of choice of disturbed, young men, and it's within range there? why weren't there sharpshooters on top of that building? why were people yelling for almost 90 seconds, "there's a shooter on top of the building"? what the hell was going on there? here's where they're yelling, "there's a shooter up there!"

90 seconds. tom, i want to show you another video. you know, i would love to hear from you, too, on this. look how long. look how long donald trump is exposed. what are these secret service people doing? look how long he is exposed to a second, third, fourth shooter. show that video again. a second, third, fourth shooter. i mean, the thing is, the secret service has always been trained, when you hear a shot, when you have a threat, get on top of the president. get on top of the person that you are protecting. stay there. here, look, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. >> completely exposed. >> nine. nine seconds i'm counting right there, tom, before the edit.

who trained these people? how could anybody in a leadership position in the secret service still have a job this morning? >> well, i think there's probably a reason why they still have a job, is that they ha a job to do with respect to the rnc. i completely understand your point. looking last night at the video we saw of trump moving through the crowd at the rnc, it appeared to me to be a very different approach. the amount of secret service agents that were between trump and the crowd at the rnc, there was no point where ther appeared to be any extended gap between human-to-human, as far as the agents, you know, essentially elbow t elbow of donald trump as he is moving to the positn he ultimately took. this is inside a building where there is no outside exposure, where everybody had to go through a magetometer that is a controlled space. that underscores, obvisly, a change. with expect to your questions, they're the questions we have, joe. we hear so often about the

ability of the secret service to jump in, to move somebody outf the scene, to get them in the car and get them on the way. i think there's a lot of questions as far as the timing of that. back to the original component of it -- >> well, and, tom, i'm so glad you talked about t car. not only did they give a second, third, fourth shooter that could very well have been there nine seconds while he was up on th stage, where his head was higher than all of theirs, but then he did somhing that the secret service -- that well-trained secret svice members never do. they let him stand up and wave to the cro from the car. now, of course every politician is going to want to do that to say, i'm okay. i'm all right. but i always remember, i always remember after 9/11, george w. bush ordering the secret seice to fly him back to washington, d.c. finally, secret service members saying, "i'm sorry, mr. president, this isn't your plane. this is our plane. our job is to protect you

first." we saw the same thing on january 6th when president trump wanted to go up to the capitol. the secret service said no. but here, we have people around him that are exposing him for nine seconds. then he gets to the car, and they let him stand up once again and expose his head, which, again, is what a politician would do. he snds up and waves back to the crowd there. >> you could see his head the whole way. >> i guess i should ask you this, have you ever seen that before? have you ever seen a group of secret service people so fail the person they were supposed to protect? >> well, i think one of the -- the natural answer to that is we've so rarely seen this. so the question might be, is the secret service being adequately trained? if you're a police officer, you're dealing with calls every single day. >> tom, isn't this what they train for their entire life? if you are going to protect the president of the united states. >> there's a difference between -- >> aren't they trained to do this their entire life? >> sure. i mean, look, there is a

difference between when you're doing it in a training exercise, and there is a difference when it is real life. i think there's going to be a lot of questions about whether or not the secret service is in position -- i know there are people inside the tactica community that believe, shouldn't people be rotated in and out of the secret service, people that deal with tactical situations more often? shou that be something where you're not just in the secret service but you're getting more real-wld type of experience? i think of new york city, if this happened in new york city, you would not only have -- i would say this wouldn't happen in new york city, but, of course, the resources available in butler county, pennsylvania, are given than the nypd's. but the people that would be doing this with the secret service from the nypd are kicking in doors every single da on crimes. they're in high-risk situations all the time. so is this a question where the secret service, the people that are doing this type of work, do they need to be cycled in and out of other different types of environments so they're more real-world training?

the last time -- real-world experience. the last time they really had to deal with this was the reagan shooting. now, i know that people in the secret service will say, look, you have no idea the type of training we . we go through all these type of scenarios. we drill on it all the time. i have n doubt about it. i think to go back to some of the original videos you were showing there, a little bit more of my expertise and a little bit more of my reporting, with respect to what happened on the roof, it is our reporting from four officials, and my colleagues jonathan dienst and julia ainsley, that, in fact, they were aware of this person. he was acting suspiciously around the magnetometers. he was acting suspiciously around the crowd. the crowd picked him out. there was a communication back to the command post. what happened there? the secret service has its own radio system, radio frequencies, encrypted. there's good reason for that. but what was the communication between local law enforcement and the secret service, and was the threat acted upon quickly

enough? were there also police assets that were there that they thought maybe this individual was part of the police, or should there have been a much stronger uniformed police presence, and was it upon the secret service to say, hey, thi area is a vulnerability. we don't have the agent to cover it. that's not necessarily our job. but we want a uniformed officer that can see another uniformed officert every single time, and nobody gets on that property. nobody gets on that roof. again, all questions that we' asking. all questions that need to be answered. >> hard to look at. >> when you do look at t map, as you pointed out at the beginning of the program, it does raise serious questions. think thashe reaso why secr servi is uer the crosco. okay evi, y served a a secre seice agent 12 years. you' been on the insi. u protected president obama, first lady michelle obama. you've worked for several presidents. let's take it in two parts, which is, before the shooting, how thi guy got on the roof. i know that was technically outside the perimeter, but as he

talked about, only three, four buildings there. you might want to clear all the buildings. that's number one. number two, the response to it. we've seen videos since then where balloon pops or someone says there might be a gun, and a president is rushed off the stage. you can take that first and then work backward from there, however you want to do it. there are two pieces being questioned seriously this morning. >> actually, there's three. i want to talk about the investigativelement an you know, t tactical traini. we'll touch on that. i think let's start first with the before he's seen, he's spotted. he appears suspicio, right? this is where communication comes in. to your point, as far as having manpower where you spread people around to verbally pass the message, tt you won't be able to do. that's going to take massive npower but, honestly, that's where you radio comes in. every secret rvice is notorious for speaking into your mic piece. every site that you do, you have a sret room, a command post.

you put the agent there, secret service, and you also have liaisons, all the other law enforcement entities, ty have their own representative in there. let' assume we're the security room he, the command post here. i'm secret service. you're state police. you're lal police department. i look to you, hey, tom, tell your guys blah, blah, blah. hey, rev, tell your guys this and this and this. you're passing the information. that's the whole point, so that each representative of every agency is there, so you can do this real quick. because i have my own radio frequency i'm using. you have your own comms. we're not on the same radio. that'll be a question. was there communication made? if local law enforcement spotted this person, civilians are saying, hey, police officer so and so, did you see this man, that law enforcement person should have gotten on his radio, team, i'm seeing this. we're reporting this. >> the indication from our reporting is that that communication did take place.

>> they pass that to the u.s. secret service. the secret service is passing it to their team. when you're at a site, you do consistently hear suspicious person. >> yes. >> i want to put that out there. what does that mean? what is suspicious? now, suspicious person with a big backpack that looks like it can carry an ar-15, very different conversation on th radio. so what was put out there? because you're not going to shut down a site because you hear suspicious person in a site of thousands of people. so we move next to the next part, which is he is spotted on the rooftop. what's going on there? we don't know at what point. it's speculation. did he get up there before, post op, hold? did he get up there after trump was on stage, and what happened there? now, you do have your cs element, counter sniper response. from my understanding, there were two teams. if it is two teams, it is two two-man teams. where were they posted? typically, they'll spread out.

what they're doing is they're always canvassing the area. now, did they st -- did the cs team spot the shooter on the roofp? they're speculation coming in that they did see him but maybe, it's possible, they did not engage immediately. to engage a threat on a rooftop like that you have to first make sure it is a threat. just because it's a man on a roof, doesn't mean you engage. could they see him, his weapon? i've done cs response, where you're tied to the snipers. the snipers are up on the roof or wherever they are, and they'll tell you, hey, we see, go to grid whatever, and we have maps we work off. we separate the area and the zones. go to zone two whatever, third floor,e see somebody at the window. we're not able to understand what it is. go. then that team or that element, i would physically go and find out what's goi on.

so you would do that if you could not see a weapon o anything like that because you can't engage someone who is not a threat. maybe it is a spectator who decided to go up on the rooftop and wants to watch. you can't shoot him. now, if they had seen the weapon, now the question comes in, again, all speculation, did cs response get confused, perhaps, with local law enforcement? often at these events, because of manpower issues, you will bring a local cs team. i will say, police officer, police department, dyou have your own counter snider teams? they may say, yes, we have. we'll give you ours. you can use ours in conjunction with yours. that, to my understanding, hasn't been verified yet, whether local cs response was present or not. if they were, you should know where they are positioned. everything is detailed. i mean, the amount of paperwork that you do in the u.s. secret service, maps, diagrams, layouts, i mean, is done to

the nth degree everybody knows, hey, local people, local police departments, state police, they're here, they're here, they're re. we are here, here, here. everybod knows where everybody is. now, could there have been a bit of a confusion where our cs team -- excuse me, u.s. secret service cs team says, hey, we see someone on the roof. could that be local? was there confusion there, where they maybe weren't sure? >> can i jump in one second? before we get to all that, i think the qstion a lot of people watching thi still have this morning , why wasn' that building cured? i kno technically, agn, it wa outside the perimeter, but it's 130 yards away. i mean, you would think -- >> kill shot. >> -- on a farm, where there's only a handful of bldings, we're not talking midtown manhattan, you'd lock down all the buildings, especlly with a clear shot to the stage. >> 100% right, that should be secured. i will tell you, because u.s. secret service resources are so finite, i mean, they fly agents -- i'm in new york.

i started as new york agent. i woulde flown to waco, all over the country to fill in spots. it's costly. if i were doing that site, common practice, i'd say, police department so and so, secure that building. it is on you. now, you speak to them and convey what secure means. being a localolice officer sometimes is vastly difrent from doing security. but i just telling you, you would designate it to them. now, they, understanding what they need to do, and there might be speculation, did they understand, not understand? i will tell you, secure a building means secure a building. did they put the manpower there? why didn't they put somebody on the rooftop? didomebody -- you kno it's a hot, sunny day. i would hate to presume, hey, they don't want to put somebody on the rooftop because it is a hot, sunny day, and they don't want to be overly exposed to the elements. >> they were on other rooftops. >> local pd, not cs. cs response is used to being on the rooftops. they know what to do.

if i designate a local department police to secure it, i should be able to trust, to some degree, they secure it. now, as a site agent, could you have gone -- again, i don't know what the team on the ground was. i've done outer perimeter. when you do these assignments, your feet hurt. i literally go from one point to another to another to check, to check, is this person where they need to be? is this person where they need to be? also, you're going to have that element. at the end of the day, it is on secret service. did you do your due diligence and make sure everybody was where they were supposed to be? >> we want to get you on the aftermath. we're looking at -- joe, go ahead. there's just no satisfactory answer for why that building wasn't secured. >> look at this. look, look, look! >> this, too. >> 9 seconds. 9 seconds he's exposed to the crowd. 9 seconds, still exposed. you're going to put your hand over his head? look at this.

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. get on top of him. again, like they have done -- look at that! >> that's not -- >> jonathan lemire, i -- i'm hearing about resources, finite resources. i'm hearing that rfk jr., his last name, kennedy, kennedy doesn't have secret service. we have been before this shooting a nation on edge. political rhetoric more violent than any time since the 1960s. this cannot be a question of manpower. this cannot be a question of -- look, look, look, look!

what are they doing? again, let me say, that is what a politician is going to do. that is the natural instinct, to say, i'm okay. i'm all right. i understand why the president did that. i do not understand why the secret service around him allowed him to do that. and with a nation on edge, with so much at stake, with the high level of threats out there against both candidates. the consequences of this for this nation existential. how are we depending on butler county police officers to protect a presidential candidate and protect america? because that's what you're doing. you're protecting america. there are so many things here, the further we get out from the

shooting, the questions become all the more disturbing. there is no nice way to put it. those guys right there, you see those guys right there? those guys stopped an untold amount of violence, right there. you're looking for heros? there aren't a lot there. those guys were the heros that stopped the killing of a president, that stopped political violence, the likes of which we haven't seen in a really long time. and there is just simply -- again, this, jonathan, there are no good answers. they need to come up with their best answer. it is still going to be inadequate. it is still going to be terrible. the fact that there weren't snipers all on top of that building. secret service people or other people protecting donald trump, it's just -- again, this is just beyond shocking. beyond irresponsible.

everybody involved in the planning of this should lose their job. >> i mean, to your point, we've had moments of political violence in recent years. january 6th, the assault on paul pelosi, the attempted kidnapping plot of governor whitmer. now, of course, this. the mind reels, what would happen if donald trump had not moved his head an inch or so in the moments before that shot was fired. there's certainly going to be, as we heard yesterday from the homeland security secretary and others, there will be a thorough investigation into the secret service response to this. certainly an investigation into what happened that day. we still don't know a lot about the shooter's motives. you're right, i mean, any politician, particularly one with a showman's instincts like donald trump, would want to reassure the crowd that he or she is okay, to pump his fist and yell "fight." that doesn't excuse, doesn't explain how he is allowed to do so. there was radio, you can hear it on the audio, someone saying, "shooter down!" okay. at that moment, there is no way to know there was only one

shooter. it is sort of impossible to explain why trump was allowed to gesture like that and have a clear shot. also, the speculation he was then put into the waiting vehicle, exposed to the crowd. he wasn't hidden as wel as he could have been. barbara mcquade, as a former u.s. attorney, of course, you've processed a l of crime scenes. there are a lot of questions that you still, i'm sure,ave about what transpired on saturday. talk to us about those and what yo think the status of the investigation i now. >> yeah. i think one of the things that the fbi needso look into, not only is the motive, but whether there are any other participants in the planning of this. did this shooter have anyone he was talking with? did anyone else provide him with access? did anyone else know what was happening? that's incredibly important pause they want to understand whether he acted alone. if there is a cold paper trail, so to speak, on his phone, that can be very challenging. this case reminds me a little bit, you may remember there was

a mass shooting in san bernardino. the fbi had trouble getting into the shooter's phone. they desperately wanted to get into that phone. i know there were a lot of people who said, the event is over. people have been killed. that's it. but what's so critically important is finding out whether there are others who are part of a network, you know, with the ability to communicate with people anywhere in the country and anywhere in the world. is this an ongoing threat because others are involved in the scene? i think that's something to look for. i also think, in terms of the response of the secret service, i'd share the outrage that the roof left unsecure, the response after the shooting. i think one serious question that needs to be asked is whether the secret service is adequately resourced. one of the challenges that all law enforcement executives have is the resources and how to spread them. secret service is spread incredibly thin during a presidential campaign. people are sent all over the country, and people who have not worked together before are suddenly thrust together in

various places in rural communities. relying on local police in butler county, who i'm sure are doing the best they can under the circumstances, but really could benefit from the professionally trained secret service who does this every day. i think congress needs to look at how they're funding secret service to ensure we d have adequate protection to protect america, as joe has said. >> before we go here, evi, let you explain what you think you're seeing in the aftermath. he's grazed by the bullet. agents rush in. he does stand for a period of time, exposing himself, pumping the fist. what's your trained eye see? >> all valid point. each protectee is different. you talked about, and joe said it, it was said, trump is a person, a showman, he is going to do that. could you be more aggressive with your protectee? yes. i think perhaps over time, agents are socon digsconditione allow their protectees to move and do things, and maybe that

aggressively needs to be amped up a bit. i agree with that. when you look at the stage and actually around the stage, you see this kind of type of flag draped around the stage, that typically, and i'm presuming, again, there's concrete or steel or something that's typically to stop a bullet. when trump hears the shot, he goes down. they go on top of him. they hold. when they get up, the movement of getting up, it should be get up and move. it shouldn't be let him move, let his head be exposed, because those are all valid concerns. yes, the threat is down, but you don't know how many other threats there are. you don't know if there is a network of people. could that have moved much more swiftly? yes. again, when he is going into the vehicle, here's the thing, any time you're moving outside from a stage to the white house, a vehicle, arrivals and departures, that's when your protectee is the most exposed. get him from the stage into the armored vehicle as quickly and swiftly as possible. the other concern is, does he

have other wounds? the wound that you saw is his ear. if we go back to reagan years ago when he had been shot, it appeared there were no wounds on him. but when his detail leader in the car got in, he was actually searching reagan. he was like, what are you doing? he's like, i'm checking you for gunshot holes. he found a gunshot inside reagan, the detail agent found it and said, forget the white house. we're going to the hospital. you go to a trauma one. you pick that hospital that c handle those trauma wounds. >> tom, lastord to you in thi convertion re. where does the investigation not only into the shooter but into the shooting itself, how this possibly happened, where does it go from here? >> understandable th outrage on all sides. that this could have happened. that this individual did this. the questions about the secret service and all of this. i think, unfortunately, it is going to take time. it is going to take time. the fbi is committed, they've said, to putting together a detailed timeline, hours, days, weeks, months, leading up to the

shooting with respect to the shooter, thomas crooks. that's the first thing. they also said they're going to look at what happened that day on the ground. it appears to me the fbi is going to do a little bit of a, hey, what was happening in the background? who saw what? who did what? that could be helpful for any independent review that the secret service and the dhs secretary says they are committed to. that review has to happen. because any time this does happen, i think to joe's point, it's donald trump today, another politician tomorrow, and given the threat environment we are in -- and the threat stream for donald trump as far as what people are saying about him, that are making threats that the secret service are looking into, that is strong. it's not all just joe biden, threats against joe biden. for sure, there are threats against president biden. so when you look at those two things together, this is not going to get better from a threat perspective. so the protection needs to be looked at for sure going forward. i think you're going to see a big change in that as far as the investigation into the shooting,

and we've been told there is no foreign component to that. certainly i think the fbi wants to get to the point where they rule out definitively that there was anybody else who had any sort of knowledge or involvement in it. that's something that's going to be important. a question i continually get, just so we're clear about this, on the voter registration republican and the donation, there's a lot of talk online. i've already gotten questions just being on today. well, there is another person named thomas crooks that lives in pittsburgh, and that must be who donated. to be clear to everybody, the fec document that has this donation, this $15 donation, a one-time donation, which could be for a hat. we don't know what the donation was about. but the one-time donation for $15, the address on the document matches the shooter's home address where the fbi has been searching and we've been doing live reports outside of for the past several days. it matches the zip code. that's why we are able to say what we are able to say.

what specifically is behind that and we obviously don't kw how he's voted. we'd neverave that information. we don't know what this person's ideology is. i think there needs to be obably an open mind on that front. with respect to the secret service, we'll continue to ask question i'm sure there's going to be some things that have been reported or people have said over the past couple days that may turn out not to be true, that the secret service was aware of or local l enforcement was aware of. keep an open mind as we mov forward in this. >> n news national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent tom winter. thank you very much. nbc news law enforcement analyst evipomporas, thank you very much. ahead on "morning joe," we'll talk to the reverend al sharpton about calls to tamp down the rhetoric on the heels of saturday's shooting. plus, trump's documents case has been dismissed. we'll talk about judge cannon's

decision and what's next for special counsel jack smith. you're watching "morning joe." we're back in 90 seconds. ds ...with a rfect name, a great logo, and a beautiful website. just start with a domain, a few clicks, and you're in business. make now the future at godaddy.com/airo ♪ music ♪ ♪ unnecessary action hero! ♪ and you're in business. ♪ unnecessary. ♪ was that necessary? no. neither is missing your daughter's competition to do payroll. with paycom, employees do their own payroll so you don't have to miss your daughter's big day. time to shine. get paycom and make the unnecessary unnecessary. (bell ringing) someone needs to customize and save hundreds with liberty mutual! (inaudible sounds) (elevator doors opening) wait, there's an elevator?

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president biden in the wake of the shooting, trump said their talk wasery ne and that the president, president biden, couldn't have been nicer. meanwhile, nbc's lester holt asked president biden about the political rhetoric in the wake of saturday's shooting, specifically a recent phone call to donors in which biden said he wanted to put trump in the, quote, bull's eye. >> look, the truth of the matter was, what i guess i was talking about at the time was, there was very little focus on trum's agenda. >> the term was bull's eye. >> it was a mistake to use the word. i didn't say crosshairs, bull's eye, i meant focus on him, focus on what he is doing. focus on his policies. focus on the number of lies he told in the debate. focus on -- i mean, there's a whole range of things that -- look, i'm not the guy that said i want to be a dictator on day one. i'm not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election. i'm not the guy who said he

wouldn't accept the outcome of this election automatically. you can't only love your country when you win. so the focus was on what he's saying. i mean, the idea -- >> have you taken a step back and done a little soul searching on things that you may have said that could incite people who are not balanced? >> well, i don't think -- look, how do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? do you just not say anything pause it may incite somebody? look, i -- i have not engaged in that rhetoric. now, my opponent has engaged in that rhetoric. he talks about there will be a blood bath if he loses. talking about how he's going to forgive all the -- actually, i guess, suspend the sentences of all those who were arrested and

sentenced to go to jail because of what happened at the capitol. i'm not out there making fun of women. remember the picture of donald trump when nancy pelosi's husband was hit with a hammer, talking about it, joking about it? >> this doesn't sound like you're turning down the heat, though. >> no, no. >> talked about -- >> no, no, look, what i'm turning down, we have to stop the whole notion that there are certain things that are contrary to our democracy, that we're for. the idea of saying that i didn't win the election, when every court in the land, every court inhe land, 120 appeal, including the conrvative supreme court said he won, the idea of having a loyalty pledge from all the folks who are in the republican maga -- not all republicans but the maga republicans saying that, no, we lost the election, inflaming the people to say -- >> so what can you and what will

you do, at least things you can control, to lower down the temperature, the rhetoric out there? >> continue to talk about the things that matter to the american public. it matters whether or not you accept the outcome of elections. it matters whether or not you, for example, talk about how you're going to deal with the border instead of talking about people as being vermin and -- i mean, those things matter. that's the kind of language that is inflammatory. >> you know, rev, i want to get to a couple of things. you had a conversation yesterday with joe biden that i think is newsworthy. you held a press conference on sunday talking about the need for america to come together and to be unified. you were praying for president trump, his health, his safety moving forward. i want to get to all of that in a second. but we just need to talk about

that line of questioning from nbc's lester holt. it was an important question to ask, about what president biden said in a private fundraiser to donors. it's a question i would have asked. i think any of us would have asked that question. but to ask that question without any context, about the politically violent rhetoric that republicans have been engaged in for close to a decade now. we could talk about nancy pelosi. we could talk about the assassinations of joint chiefs, the hangings of mike pence. we could go on and on and on. we could talk about it on both sides. again, a good question to ask about what he said in a private fundraiser. a good question to ask. i would have asked the same question. but to ask that question absent

of any context seems to me to be -- you talk about a phony. >> what's going on? >> of moral relativism. it was screaming throughout that part of the interview, and i must say, i was shocked. >> i totally agree. i think that the comparisons are not there. i think the rhetoric needs to be brought down. clearly, i don't think that president biden has engaged in that kind of rhetoric that would, in any way, incite people to do things like we saw january 6th or the attack on pelosi's husband. but, at the same time, i think we have the moral obligation to be consistent. you cannot stand up against what happened to pelosi's husband or what happened on january 6th and then act like it's all right

what happened to donald trump. i think that that is part of the challenge that we have. we must be against all violence. we must be against all kind of situations that would harm people. otherwise, we become like the people we're fighting. >> right. you speak out against politilly violent rhetoric on both sides. you speak out against violence, obviously, on all sides. again, that's why i say, it was an important question to ask, even though he said it in a private fundraiser, as opposed to standing before a crowd of republicans and mocking nancy pelosi's husband who was brutalized and almost killed. so let's move from there over to an important phone call that you got from president biden. president biden has been sing he's staying in the race. he's staying in the well, let's see if he stays in the race.

you got a phone call yesterday from president biden, and he was very blunt wh you. sent you a message, he wand you to send it along to us and everybody else. what was it? >> i got a call yesterday ternoon from the president. he said, i want you to know, clearly, al, i am running. i'm not going anywhere. the things that you and i have worked together on in terms of civil rights and voting right, i am not leaving the field until we protect them. he was very adequate, very strong, and wanted to reassure me, no matter what we were hearing, he was not even thinking about not doing the end of -- not finishing his term in rms of his re-election and finishing another term. he said, i'm on my way to nevada now. i'm going to continue campaigning. i just want to be firm with that. i think he was very sincere. those that are speculating, and

you hear rums every day, he'll be out by the end of the week or he'll be out next week, he was making it very clear, i'm not getting out. im in this for the long haul. >> right. >> i told him i appreciated hearinthat. i also told him that i had taken this position about all ofs being morally consistent. he said, which is the right thing to do. >> it certainly is. memo to democts who continue to thi they're going to get a brokered convention, the president of the united states says that's not the case it looks lik that is, in fact, the decision that he has made. finally, reverend al, i want to talk about what you did on sunday. now, you've known donald, we can say donald because we knew donald before he was president. we, of course, call him president trump. but you knew donald when donald was donald, as did i, before he was president of the united

states. obviously, when you held that press conference, talking about need for everybody to come gether, it had to do with politics. it had to do with healing this nd, as we read about in the scriptures. also, it was personal for you, wasn't it? >> very personal. i called mayor eric ada and reverend bernard and other leading clergymen to say, this is donald trump's hometown. he was attacked last night. we need to do something publicly to call on people to say that they want to pray for his full recovery a for the family of the man that was killed and those two that were wounded. many peoe said, why are you doing this? donald trump and you a opposite on every issue and we are. he mocked me three weeks ago, saying they're going to name ft.

bragg fort al sharpton. that has nothing to do with we must have boundaries in political discourse. we in no way will have any insinuation of violence, les celebrate violence. i said when i saw that tap -- >> rev, really quickly, you were also victim of an assassination attempt, weren't you? >> absolutely. was leading a peaceful march in brooklyn about a racial killing. a man came and stabbed me on the est. i remember looking down. i tught the guy brushed past me. i saw aknife. i pulled it out. i know when i looked at donald trump, i know what it is to taste your own blood. traumatized my kids. it traumatized me. beside all of this,e cannot see -- yes, i oppos everything donald trump politically stands for, but i'm not letti him turn me or anybody turn me into somethg insensitive for the human dignity and human rights that we fight for.

that's why sunday was important. we need to put boundaries on those of us in public saying, wait a minute, there's a point where we've got to stop inciting or even acting as if we're normalizing political violence. i've been a victim of that. mr. trump is now. i remember when i was a kid, joe, that i saw george wallace was shot, who was saying segregation now and forever. civil rights, reverend joe lowry prayed for him. there is a tradition of those of us that can say, we cannot stoop that low, no matter how political an opponent may be. that's what i'm urging everyone to do in ter of donald trump. i'm vehemeny opposed to his politics, but i would not want to celebrate what happened to him on saturday. >> no. reverend al sharpton, tha you very much for being on this morning. coming up, we're going to go over republican senator jd vance's history of criticizing

donald trump. and how they came to be running mates. also ahead, we'll be joined by the former assistant trekter of the fbi's counter intelligence division for insight on how the bureau is conducting its investigation on the assassination attemptn trump. plus, former homeland security secretary jeh johnson will join the conversation. "morng joe" is coming right back. kids love summer break, but parents? well... care.com makes it easy to find background checked childcare that fits your summer schedule. from long term to short notice. give yourself a break this summer. go to care.com now.

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i'm not surprised. it comes from the immunity decision the supreme court ruled on. clarence thomas in his dissent said that independent prosecutors appointed by the attorney general aren't legit. that's the basis on which this judge moved to dismiss. the basis upon which the case was thrown out, because i don't agree with clarence thomas' dissent and/or the supreme court decision on immimmunity. >> president biden reacting to judge cannon dismissing the classified documents case against donald trump. that was in the interview with lester holt last night. judge cannon, who was appointed by donald trump, released her 93-page decision yeerday, stating her ruling is based on the grods that the appointment of and funding for special

counsel jack smith are illegal, unnstitutional. joining us now, former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor chuck rosenberg, and former u.s. attorney barbara mcquade back with us, as well. chuck, i'll start with you. just your reaction to what you've read in those 93 pages yesterday from judge cannon. >> yeah, i think there are two questions. one is easy to answer. the other is a little bit harder, willie. you know, question one, is judge cannon's decision an outlier? easy, yes, it is. absolutely. every other court and every other judge who looked at this question has ruled that the appointment of a special counsel or independent counsel or special prosecutor, whatever the term was at the time, was constitutional, lawful, and appropriate. the second question, i think, is harder. is she right? in my opinion, no. i think she has it wrong. i think the appointment was constitutional and lawful. she is, as i mentioned earlier, on sort of an island by herself legally.

whether or not she turns out to be right is to be determined. we know that justice clarence thomas agrees wi her view. this is a case that might be heard by the supreme court. might, i say, because if mr. trump wins office again, he cod dismiss the case and moot out the entire question. but it seems to me she got it wrong. whether or not she is sustained ultimately by the supreme court, to be determined. chuck, obviously, there's precedent for a special counsel appointed by the justice department, from watergate, iran-contra, of course, robert mueller in the russia investigation. what grounds is judge cannon making ts argument? >> yeah, simply this, and if you boil the 93 page decision down to a couple sentences, i tnk this would be it. the appointment of jack smith was unconstitutional because he isot properly an officer in this case.

in other words, merrick garlan the attorney general, doesn't have the authority to appoint someone with the plenary authority jack smithhas. in order to execute the duties of this office, he has to be nominad by the president, confirmed by the senate, so the appointment was unconstitutial d improper. >> barbara mcquade, certainly a remarkable moment here for the former president. when the four cases were brought against him, this one was perceived by mostegal experts as one that was, frankly, a slam dunk. the documents, thelassified documents were found in his bathroom. yet, here we are, where that case, at this moment anyway, does not exist. give us your reaction to what happened yesterday and where we could go from here in terms of an appeal and its timing. >> i was actually very surprised to see this decision come the way it has. i know that there has been criticism of judge cannon because of some of her prior rulings, but i like to impute

good faith to judges. but in this case, it really flies in the face of precedent, including the supreme courtase where they looked at these very same statutes. you know, she says it was dicta, but the courtertainly reviewed it and said that the appointment during watergate was appropriate under these very same statutes. so i think it is a disturbing decision, and it ends the case. now, certnly, the justice department has the ability to appeal thiso the 11th circuit court of appea and says that doj has approvedhe appeal to do that. they also have another avenue to go here. which is to allow a u.s. attorney, the u.s. attorney in the southern district of florida or even in some other district, if they could eablish venue, to re-file the case immediately. that'd dispense with lengthy appears and be able to proceed with the case right away. i think it seems more hikely

likely they'll go the appellate route for a couple reasons. if they were to proceed with the u.s. attorney and the southern district of florida, it seems this case would land right back before judge cannon who may look for some other way to off the case. whether it's prosecutorial misconduct or presidential immunity or some other basis. so, perhaps, the 11th circuit court of appeals is an opportunity not only to appeal and reverse this decision but to get the case rssigned to a different judge who might be a litt friendlier for them than judge cannon has been. >> former u.s. attorneys chu rosenberg and barbara mcquade, thank you both very much for your insights this morning. all right. before we start this hour, willie, i just wanted to briefly talk to our friends and viewers that watch us every day. talk about what happened yesterday. we were told, in so uncertain terms, on sunday evening that there was going to be one news

feed across all nbc news channels yesterday. "today" show would be lester holt. other people that, well, you worked with on sunday. that was going to be one news feed across all nbc news channels. that we were going to stay as a network in breaking news mode throughout all day yesterday. that did not happen. we don't know why that didn't happen. our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn't happen, but it didn't happen. we were also told it was going to happen throughout the day. i guess after there was such a strong blowback about yesterday morning, i guess they changed their plans, and so those plans changed, as well. so it didn't. you know, we've talked about it off the air. we'll talk about it on the air because we talk about everything on the air. we were very surprised. we were very disappointed.

if we had known that there wasn't going to be the one news feed from nbc news across all nbc news channels, willie, we obviously would have been in yesterday morning. >> yeah, i was here up early on sunday morning with nbc's coverage. savannah and i led the coverage on sunday in the immediate aftermath, talking to eyewitnesss, talking to officials about what happened. obviously, suited up and ready to go for yesterday morning on a big morning, and we were told something else was going to be broadcast. we are here today. going through a lot. catching up a little bit. we want to be here for our audience, and we know you trust us. we have ultimate respect for you guys. we are here today and wish we had been here yesterday. >> yeah, we all wish we had been here yesterday. we still have -- we'd like to figure out exactly why there wasn't that one news feed. >> i think the reason was this show began and continues 17 years later on being the place you can go to have the hard

conversations. in a civil way. so it seemed like, now more than ever is a day, a time that we would le to be on. i think our viewers agree with that. so we continue. we are five minutes past the to of the hour. >> let me just say, next time we're tol there is going to be a news feed replang us, we wi be in our chairs. >> we'll beitting here. >> t news feed will be us or they can get somebody else. >> we'll still be sittinghere. o host the show. >> new detailsre beginning to emerge in the assassination attempt of donald trump. accordin to nbc news, rally-goers alerted local police to a suspicious person near a section of theal prior to thgunshots ringing out. local police searched forhe man on foot but were unable to findim until he was spotted on the roof of a nearby building a short time later. during the pursuit,ocal police told the secret service they were looking for a suspicious person.

however, it is not clear what time the secret service was notified and if it was before trump took the stage. video posted on social media shows a chaotic scene of buy bystanders trying to alert policeo the rooter on the roof. "the whingtopost" reports shots were firedearly a minute and a lf later. >> younow, willie, we went through everything last hour and talked abou of course, how there was a clear shot to the president, how long it took them to get him off the stage. about 90 seconds that police were getting warnings from rally attendees that there was someone climbing up onto the roof, that he was suspicious. th'd had their eyes on him for a very long time. again, it seems inexplicable that the secret service and other law enforcement officers weren't able to stop this before the shooting even began.

>> it's a question that now, all these hours later, has absolutely no satisfactory answer. we heard, well, it is outside the security perimeter. why is that building outside the security perimeter? he is 130 yards away from donald trump. now, we're hearing in the reporting we got from tom winter, our colleague at nbc, this morning, there were several people in the crowd who saw him on the roof. before that, reported to police that he was acting strangely around the magnetometers. that guy is a little off. something seems wrong with that guy. keep an eye on him. so the more we hear, the less sense it makes, jonathan lemire, about how he was able to get up on that roof and get a clean shot at former president trump, who, thank goodness, turned his head just enough to save his own life. >> yeah. trump himself has said that usually he is looking straight ahead at the audience, but we turned to the right to look at a chart he had up. that's what made the difference here. there's a lot of questions we don't know. how did the shooter become familiar with that area? how did he know the building would be outside the security

p perimeter? we don't know his background or what motivated the shooting, if there was anything political or not. president biden was asked if he had faith in the agents who protect his life. he said, yes, he does. he believes in the secret service. but he and others say there needs to be a thorough and sweeping investigation into what happened. those in congress did that, as well. there will be hearings in the days ahead as to what exactly went wrong yesterday. it's a moment where the secret service, of course, is going to be tested. as someone who covers the white house and travels with the president, this president and his predecessor a fair amamount we see up close and personal the secret service agents. they're dedicated to the job, an impressive group of people, but something went wrong on saturday in pennsylvania. as the rnc continues now, democrats will gather in a month's time in chicago, these are high-profile situations that require a lot of security, a lot of safeguarding, and there are a lot of questions to get to the answers. >> speaker mike johnson announced even in the hours immediately after the shooting,

there will be a congressional investigation starting very soon, witn the next few days. nbc news correspondent stephanie gosk has more now on the investigation. >> reporter: grainy video shows the shooter, thomas crooks, moments before he fired an ar-15 style rifle at donald trump. >> someone is on top of the roof, look. >> reporter: he does not go unnoticed. >> he's on the roof! >> reporter: according to two senior officials, officers saw crooks on the rooftop but couldn't stop him before he opened fire, injuring former president trump. 50-year-old corey comperatore, shielding his family from the gunfire, was killed. david dutch and james copenhaver were critically wounded before a sniper team shot and killed crooks. among the many unanswered questions, how did the 20-year-old get on that rooftop? why wasn't it better secured? he had a vantage point just 148 yards from the podium where trump was speaking. snipers took up prosigss nearby, but the secret service says the

rooftop was outside of their security perimeter. croo' father, whoccording to the fbi has been cooperating with the investigation, legally purchased the rifle h son used. nbc news learned crooks purchased ammunition at this store near his home just hours before the rally. nior officials say more than a dozen fireas wer found while searching the family's home. after the shooting, they say h father called police, worried his son and an ar style rifle were missing. crooks graduated from community college and served as an aide at a nursing home. he was also frequently at a shooting range. >> he was a normal kid to me, walking around the neighborhood. he was a bit odd. that's all. >> reporter: authorities haven't identified amotive, even after analyzing crooks' cell phone accordg to a senior law enrcement official. while butr struggles with what happened here. right now, i think it'more the feeling of numbness in the

city. >> all right. let's bring in former secretary of homeland security in the obama administration, jeh johnson, and former fbi assistant director f counterintelligence, frank, national security analyst. i'd like to ask the same question. we have a lot of questions about what happened. heard them in the first hour. secretory johnson, we'll start with you, and, frank, if you could follow up. what are the questions you have about the guy on the roof, the open kill shot toward the person at the podium, and also the way the president was taken off the stage? the former president. >> gd morning. as secretary of dhs, i was the cabinet level oversight for the seet service for three years. i was a protectee of the secret service for three years. in 2015, i made the decision to give donald trump, candidate

trump, his secret service protection after he requested it. we looked at the threat stream and decided he definitely needed secret serce when he was a candidate in 2015. mika, i have toay this. it's been 43 years since anyone took a shot at a prident, a candidate for president, or former president, and that's not just dumb luck. that is because of the hard work of the secret servic every day, to detect these threats, intradict them, prevent them. when you have over 100 world leaders on this island in manhattan, they do a great job. notwithstanding that, there are questions that need to be asked. i'd glad there will be an independent assessment. my questions are, even thoh this rooftop was beyond the securityperimeter, it's still within the range of a ar-15. >> right. >> i wouldave assumed that

anything withinhe line of fire of a protectee is something the secret service is going to be looking at very, very carefully. i want to kw about the obvious failure of communication between people on the ground, local law enforcement, and the secret service, and president trump's immediate detail after the indivial on the rooftop was detected. joe asked earlier abouthe decision, why move him off the stage when, apparently, there was still an active shoer situation? i won't second guess that. you saw his detail leaders surrounding him, ready to take a bullet for him, and the overriding priority in a situation like this is to get the protectee out of the scene, into his armored vehicle, and ha the armored vehicle lea immediately. that's t number one priority.

they hid behi the barricade for a few seconds and then made e decisiono do what they did. i'm not in positiono second guess that,ut i'm gd there will be an indepdent review of this. there needs to be lsons learned, obviously. onef the things that is probably true here is that when you're dealing with a campaign event, therere often hastily orgazed a arranged. that's notn excuse, however, but it is a reality. >> frank, your thoughts? >> so i'm not going to repeat the secretary's questns because they are the obvious ones. he's absolutely right. that should all beovered by the independent instigation. obviously, it falls into two buckets with regard to the site itself. ifdeemed a threat, it's within range, elevated stage for a bad actor, why was not not the secret service's responbility? inside their perimeter. obvisly, if, indeed, they

delegated this to theocal or state police, what was the cause of the horrible failure there? i have to tell you, i'm into a much larger question,hich i'm all about finding root causes and movg on in a bette way. i was chief inspector of the fbi for a brief time during my 25-yearcareer. that meant i investigated and oversaw investigations o any use of deadly force by an fbi agent and things like this. what are they going to look for for root causes? are we going to hear the service is stretched may too thinly? i fear is answer is yes, and i think it's been that way a very long time. i think it's become the norm to rely on local police officers for these open-air rallies, even for closed rallies. you know, rnc, right now, milwaukee, did you know there are over 100 out of state police departments represented right now? you'll see badges and patches from ohio and tennessee and florida.

that happens routinely. the ovreliance on local police needs to get looked at. we're forgetting the secret service has a host of other things to do. they are still investigating stuff they did when they were part of the treasury department years ago, before 9/11. they do bad checks and financial instruments and counterfeit currency around the world. they do cyber crimes. why? i heard someone say, hey, the service needs 500 more agents tomorrow. you know they have them. they're investigating mtgage fraud. that needs to be examined. >> that's interesting. >> mr. secretary? >> yea frank is right. the secret service is, for the most part, a law enforcent agency. they investigate financial crime. they have field offices. they're law enforcement agents and also protection. the virtue of that is that they have the ability to surge during an election ar, for example, pull agents off law enforcement

into protection. they picked up two new protectees yesterday, robert kennedy and, presumably, the vice predential nominee, jd vance. so they have to have flexibility. it's critical in a situation like this or the general assem assembly that you are able to rely on other lawnforcement agencies. state law enforcementnows the area best, for example. during a situation like the general assembly, we rely tensively on the nypd, and they do an excellent job. it is an indispensable partnership. >> understand stretched resources but the president and now the nominee have to be a priority, obviously. frank, let's talk about the investigation into the shooter. it has been striking to lien, not just to our reporters, but talking to other law enforcement officials, how little of a footprint this person left behind in terms of social media activity. obviously, they have his phone

which may yield answers, but here we are, three days after the shooting, and we don't know a whole lot about this guy. >> very unusual for this aged person in our society. he should have a larger footprint. part of it is his lifestyle seems to be isolated. you've heard the reports of him being bullied throughout high school, described as a loaner. that's part of the problem. if he's not on social media, a problem. even, you know, the latest reporting confirmed by fbi and nbc news, they did get into the phone finally, good news. bad news, it's not helping at all with regard to motive. i caution people, don't expect some kind of logical motive here. don't apply logic to lunacy. there's all kinds of social media craziness right now, that he is a republican, he is a democrat, he hates trump, he loves biden. i'm going to tell you from my experience, when you finally figure this out, you may not figure it out. i remind people of the las vegas

mass shooting years ago at the open-air country festival. we still don't have a motive for that. i'll tell you this, the investigation is exhaustive. you name it, they're doing it. it's like a movie. it's like an episode of "criminal minds." ert, the evidence response team is doing some cool stuff. they started doing it immediately with the deceased shooter's body, fingerprinting and dna. all of that is going to go on. at the end of the day, you'll have a recreation of trajectory of bullets. you'll know where each bullet came from. they're taking put fragments. if a bullet fragment still existed in the deceased spectator, they got that. they'll match it to rifling. we will know who shot who when. we'll overlay that with audio from police radios and media camera coverage. you will have a top-to-bottom audio and video graphic of what happened, even including what the shooter had for breakfast that day. >> that's all going on right now. national security analyst frank

figliuzzi, we appreciate it. the house committee plans to conduct an investigation into the security lapses at the event. the republican-led committee asked secret rvice director kimberly cheatle to testify at a hearing next week. joining us now, mike lawler and ritchie torres, both of new york, they announced a plan to put forward bipartisan legislation that would enhance secret service protection for president biden, former president trump, and third party candidate robert kennedy jr. gentlemen, good morning. good to have you with us this morning. congressman torres, i'll start with you here on the set. what exactly would your legislation do to change the way the president is protected, that donald trump is protected, and robert f. kennedy jr. is protected? >> so most americans are profoundly shaken by the mass shooting that not only endangered the life of a president, former president, but also wounded two people and killed a volunteer firefighter.

for us, the attempted assassination of a former president is not a democratic issue or republican issue. it is an american issue. it is an american crisis that requires a unified response from congress. in the spirit of bipartisanship, congressman lawler and i have introduced legislation that would enhance secret service protection for the president, the former president, and the presidential candidate, robert f. kennedy. because as far as we're concerned, there is no price tag too high when it comes to the protection of presidential candidates. the united states is no stranger to violent extremism. in the 1960s, we saw the assassination of a president, a presidential candidate, several civil rights leaders. we're so divided as a country, we cannot afford to return to a period of political assassinations in america. >> congressman lawler, you and congressman torres worked together on other bipartisan legislation, as well. i think the question we all have is same one you both are asking, how could this possibly have happened? you have an asset, a protectee

as important as the former president of the united states, the republican nominee now, we can say officially as of last night. how was that rooftop left unguarded? how would this legislation, in your eyes, change that? >> willie, but for the grace of god, we'd be havin a very different conversation today. i mean, we're talking about a millimeter difference between donald trump being dead and being here to receive the republican nomination. it's unconscionable that this occurred. obviously, a lot of questions are outstanding. we're going to have numerous house committ hearings on this. i know the independent investigation will produce a lot of information. but it is critical that our elections are determined by votes at a ballot box and not by violence at a rally. and that this was allowed to occur really brings that into

question. it undermines our democracy. because to have a presidential candidate, to have a former president potentially assassinated is so destructive. so what we're trying to do by getting this bill forward is make it clear that the united states government, the federal government, secret service, department of homeland security, have a responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of all of these candidates, including rfk jr., whose family has been subjected to assassination twice. we cannot allow this to happen in america. as ritchie pointed out, i mean, look, we're divided. we're going to air our differences. we should have robust debate on the issues. but violence should never, ever be the answer to our political difference not now and not previously. >> congressman torres, let's be clear, we don't know,

investigators don't know the motive of the shoor. as your colleague noted, we're in times of divisive political rhetoric. do you have any hopes the temperature can be lowered in the wake of the shooting? >> i can only hope. i join president biden in calling on all of us to lower the temperature. you know, i've long had concerns that the coarsening of american rhetoric and discourse could escalate to violence. but to your point, we do not know the motive of the shooter. we know he was a registered republican. we do not know whether the act of violence was idealogically or politically motivated, so we have to resist the temptation to politicize the events. i find it troubling that a number of pundits are interpreting the event through the prism of their own politics in order to fit a politically preferred narrative. the fact is, anything that is said about the mental state of the shooter is pure speculation.

>> congressman lawler, what about from your side? you're sitting at the republican national convention there in milwaukee. we heard calls even from former president trump himself, from speaker johnson. i spoke to him the morning after the shooting. he called for calm and toning down the rhetoric. obviously, there's opinion a lot -- been a lot of rhetoric coming from the former president over the years. it's happening all over the place. how do we get to a place where that actually happens and it's not just lip service? >> look, you see with congressman torres and i, number one, we can find areas of commonality and agreement. number two, when we do have disagreement on an issue, you can do so civilly and engage with each other and find area o commonality and agreement. i think all of us, republicans and democrats, have a responsibity to advance the dialogue in a way that is not destructive to our country, that doesn't undermine our democracy,

that doesn't put our presidential candidates' lives at stake. you know, look, donald trump took aullet the other day. like i said, but for a millimeter's difference, we'd be having a very different conversation. if that doesn't shock our conscience as a nation, i don't know what will. i think, you know, this election, obviously, is heated. it is divided. i think one thing i want to make sure, regardless of the outcome, our democracy will ensure, as it has for 248 years. it will continue to because of the american people. putting all personalities aside, at the end of the day, our differences are far smaller than what unites this country. we always have to keep that in mind. yes, politics can be coarse, rough and tumble, but i think all of us have a responsibility to speak to the better angels of our nature, to quote a former

president who was assassinated, and to really try to uplift this country, regardless of the outcome in november. >> amen to that. let's just hope all the people calling for turning down the temperature and cooling of the rhetoric continue to live up to that in the days, weeks, and years to come. congressman mike lawler, congressman ritchie torres, both of new york, thank you for your work and thank you for being here this morning. >> thank you for having us. >> secretary johnson, final word to this? >> yes, we need to turn down the political rhetoric. i know i'm going to lose se of the audience here, but we also have to deal with the prevalence of guns in this society. it is way, way too easy for a disturbed 20-year-old to get his hands on an ar-15, which in my judgment, is a weapon of war with no legitimate use in civilian ciety. >> yeah. i think that there's been certainl no movement, joe and mika, dly, on guns in the wake of this shooting. in fact, the weapon that was used, ar-15, yesterday outside

the rnc in milwaukee, conservative group was having a raffle. the prize? an ar-15. thers been no change in conversation. >> come on. >> certainly from republicans. >> there are a lot of conversations that need to be had and will be in due time about this. there are a lot of different aspects to moments like this. former secretary of homeland security jeh johnson, thank you so much for coming on this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," donald trumpas announced his running mate. we're going to dig into senator jd vance's past criticism of the former president and what he brings to the republican ticket. you're wating "morning joe." we'll beight back.

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longevity. if elected, vance would be one of the youngest vice presidents in history at 39. or as young people call it, old. jd vance wasn't always the obvious choice. for many years, he was a self-described never trumper. calling t former president cultural heroin and speculating trump might be america's hitler. how do you get the job after

that? >> trump got a vp and lawyer for the price of one, yeah. can we see jd vance? there he is. i didn't realize cabbage patch kids made bearded dolls. donald trump yesterday announced on social media that republican senator jd vance of ohio would be his running mate. less than two years in his first term in the senate, vance worked in venture capital before entering politics. he is the author of the memoir, "hillbilly elegy," detailing his mother's battle with addiction and other socio-economic challenges his family faced after they moved from eastern kentucky to southwestern ohio. senator vance was originally a vocal critic of former president trump before being elected to office. in messages to a friend in 2016, vance says he, quote, "goes back

and forth between thinks trump is a cynical a-hole like nixon, who wouldn't be that bad, and might even prove useful, or that he is america's hitler." in a piece for "the atlantic," that same year, vance wrote, "trump's promises are the needle in america's collective vein. trump is cultural heroin. he makes some feel better for a bit, but he cannot fix what ails them." in an op-ed for "the new york times" in 2016, "the hillbilly elegy" author called trump unfit for office. here's more of what he had to say back then. >> i'm a never trump guy. i never liked him. it makes you think that, at a fundamental level, this is a he said/she said, right? at the end of the day, do you believe donald trump, who always tells the truth, just kidding, or do you believe that woman an that tape? i cannot stand trump because i think he is a fraud. i think he is a total fraud that

is exploiting these people. >> i do, too. >> total fraud. i agree with you on trump because i don't think he is the person. i don't think he actually cares about folks. definitely, there is definitely an element of donald trump's support that has its basis in racism and xenophobia. i think there is a chance, if i feel like trump has a really good chance of winning, i might have to hold my nose and vote for hillary clinton. i think i'm going to vote third party because i can't stomach trump. i think that he is obnoxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place. >> last night, vance addressed those past criticisms and exained why his views have changed. >> i don't hide from that. i was certainly skeptical of donald trump in2016. but president trump was a great president, and he changed my mind. i think hehanged the minds of a lot of americans because, again, he delivered that peace and prosperity. if you go back to what i thought in 2016, another thing that was going on, sean, is i bought into

the media's liesnd distortions. i bought into this idea that, somehow, he was going to be so different, a terrible threat to democracy. it was a joke. >> um, i don't think it was a joke. >> i don't know what to say about that. i'm wondering whate said in '16, and did he see the kindler and gentler donald trump, jonathan lemire, in '17, '18, '19, '20? , he actually saw someone actually supersize everything he said in 2016. yeah, we are used to remarkable out-faces from republicans in the era of donald trump, but this one is about as startling as they come. you could not find a fiercer critic of trump than jd vance in 2016, and now he's completely madeis political career abt being subservient thim. few thoughts on ts pick. from the trump perspective, this

shows you how the party chang since 2016. in 2016, he pickedike pence. back then, he eded some help from evangelicals. he had to reassure some republicans that he could be t choice. that is no longer the case. this is not any sort ofven somewhat moderate republican, like rubio or bburgum. this is full-on maga, heir apparent. this is trump and his team feeling very confident about where they stand in this election, to allow them to go to vance. it's also a push here to play on the economic populism and nationalism that has worked with trump voters. white working class voters particularly in the rust belt states that we all believe will decide ts election. the vance pick is one they believe, ohio, of course, no longer a battle ground state, it's pretty deeply red at this point, but now pennsylvania, wisconsin, and michigan. particularly pennsylvania, western pennsylvania, they think, is now -- vance helps

solidify their case there. we suld note, willie, vance and trump, their relationship really blossomed ithe wake of the east palestine train crash. vance was an outspoken critic of the biden administration's response. that moment, according to trump camp, when trump went out there, they see it key to his political comeba. it was not long after the disastrous 2022 midterms. they saw the response trump got there a believed that could still be a winning coalition going forward. >> so how is the biden campaign, john, looking at this pick? yes, there was mystery around it. yes, it was sort of last minute. i think if you were betting, it was going to be jd vance. the campaign obviously prepared. he's extreme on abortion rights, without question. has called for no exception for rape or incest, only for the life of the mother. has no concern forukraine. he's said so explicitly, cut off the funding. what do ty see in him as a political adversary that they can get into as a campaign? >> they see an opportunity here. this is a pick that was pretty well received by the biden camp

in terms of how it could reset some of the narratives this election. we should note, trump himself was really sold on jd vance by his sons, particularly donald trump jr., who grew very close to vance, and says this is the guy we want. the biden team highlighted, look, vance has said he does not believe in any abortion exceptions for incest or rape. he is quoted by saying, two wrongs don't make a right, in condemning the idea of having an abortion there. he has, as you noted, wants to completely end american funding to ukraine. in fact, i received a couple texts yesterday that said yesterday was a very bad day for kyiv. vance will push into what trump already has preconceived notions about that conflict. the biden administration is going to paint him as a threat to democracy, as full-on maga. yes, as the president resumes his campaign, and he does so later today in nevada, we should expect some of his rhetoric perhaps to be toned down, but they're still going to make the case that trump, and now vance, are going to be real threats to democracy at home and abroad.

that's not going to change. they think the vance pick could repulse women voters, suburban voters concerned about abortion health care and the like. they think this will also turn off the idea -- there's going to be the slim, slim portion of undecideds who are still going back and forth between these two candidates, that they might not want a full-on maga ticket. the biden camp actually encouraged yesterday by this pick. they think it is an opportunity. >> jd vance was not in the senate in january of '21 but was asked what he would have done if he was vice president. he said the election of 2020 was problematic. he said there were problems with the voting. the courts, of course, said otherwise. we've detailed that. also said he would have allowed the alternate slate of electors, that those should have been considered. in other words, he would not have done what vice president pence did that day. >> right. again, to jonathan's point, it's hard to see how this helps

donald trump's ticket with a lot of undecided voters. it's the belief inside the trump campaign that he will help the people who are in rural america, who may have voted for donald trump in '16 but stayed home in '20. that is the bet that they are making. post dobbs, there is no doubt that if donald trump wanted to soften up his position on abortion, as he's talked about doing at times, this pick did not do that. it's, again, the biden -- as jonathan said, the biden team actually, they feel positive about this election because they believe he doesn't add much and believes that he actually helps makehe argument that this is

an all maga ticket and it will help with independent swing voters and those who are in wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania. just really briefly, jonathan lemire, so much has happened. of course, the tragedy on saturday eclipses everything that has happened before or since. the polls that were released on sunday morning before the attempted assassination actually, i think, was a stark reminder to democrats, especially some members of barack obama's former administration that have been pushing loudly, publicly, harshly for joe biden to quit, sends a strong message that this race is still within the margin of error. you know, we keep hearing, and i know you hear this, too, every

day, i hear from sources, "oh, if you look a the private polling and there is a ten-point gap here, eight-point gap there." >> what polling? >> it is not showing up in any polling. as one pollster told me, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy for these democrats who are going out and attacking joe biden. self-fulfilling prophesy because, yes, he is going to lose in some of these summer polls, he is going to lose some democrats who are listening to the david axelrods and the other democratic people that worked in the obama administration when they're critical of joe biden. but even, i think, cbs had the polls out of all the swing states. all within the margin of error. the national polls all within the margin of error. you know, we talk to people on the biden campaign who thought there was going to be, like, a

ten-point gap after the debate. that just hasn't surfaced. who knows? we have no idea what saturday's tragic events are going to bring in the polls. actually, it's just not relevant right now. what's relevant is the safety of not only president trump but also the safety of joe biden, robert kennedy jr., as you move through this. but, mika, you look through all of these numbers, this is "new york times"/siena poll, which also shows basically within the margin of error, just like the cbs polls, as well. >> you know, hearing you saying this and looking at these numbers, i don't think you throw this away. for sure. it's incredible, that a debate performance like that could yield these results. also shows a ceiling for trump to an extent. i fear that democrats are actually doing exactly what donald trump wants them to do.

they're being chaotic. they're being disloyal. they're being, in some way, some of them are being a little cruel. they're being disorganized. that's exactly how trump wins. and i just wish president obama, like no one else could, would step up and help unify the party behind president biden. >> it'd make a big difference. i said the morning after the debate, willie, obviously -- >> to fight trump. >> -- that the debate peormance was horrific. that joe biden needed to take a couple of weeks -- or he needed to take a couple of days. he needed to make a decision and come backith that decision. it has been a couple of weeks instead of a couple ofdays. he's made that decision the meltdown in the polls that we all expected, it just hasn't happened. this is a -- it's not a 50/50 country. it is a 46% to 46% country for the most part. i suspect that, by the end, w

may still be there as we go into election day. maybe joe biden is down one, two, three pointsoing into election day. who knows? but this race is certainly too tight rightnow. republicans are feeling very, very confident. they all tell me they think it's over. >> yeah. >> erybody in milwaukee celebrating. not even gloating about it, sily saying, well, we have got there. >> there is a celebratory mood in milwaukee, without question, joe. >> yes, there is. >> you heard last night, again from president biden talking to lester holt, you can ask me as many times as you want, i'm not getting out of the race. he's talked to people. we heard the reporting from rev who said he was othe phone with the president last night saying, please, tell all the people who listen to the sound of your voice, i'm not going anywhere. i'm not getting out of this race. the national polls, john, yes, are neck and neck. when you put up the poll like the one in virginia, where it's a margin of error race, that's where democrats start to worry. if you're going on offense again

in virginia and minnesota, new hampshire, those places, while trying to win michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania, that's a lot. but, yes, it is close enough where the president can say, i'm still the guy who can beat donald trump. >> yeah, some of the battleground state polling worrisome for democrats, to be sure. and we don't know, we do not know yet the impact of what saturday's shooting will have on the race. it'd be irresponsible to speculate. but nothing else has changed the race to this point. nothing has. debate did not change the race. a little erosion of the president's support, only a little. still largely a margin of error race, both in the battleground states and the national polls. that's the sense the biden camp has. yes, there are more -- they're worried more about fundraising. they're worried about, you know, the democratic infighting. those are things that weigh on them. at least, so far, they don't see this disaster -- even though the debate was a disaster, the fallout hasn't been. they do think some of the sniping among fellow democrats not helping them, of course, but they think this is still a very close race with a lot of twists and turns ahead between now and

november. >> all right. coming up, we're taking a look at how attacks on presidents and political candidates have helped shape u.s. history. presidential historian doris kearns goodwin joins us ahead with more on that. "morning joe" will be right back. (inaudible sounds) (elevator doors opening) wait, there's an elevator? only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, ♪ ♪ liberty. ♪ (tony hawk) skating for over 45 years has taken a toll on my body. i take qunol turmeric because it helps with healthy joints and inflammation support. why qunol? it has superior absorption compared to regular turmeric. qunol. the brand i trust.

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sick societies don't produce secret service agent tim

mccarthy who placed his body -- [ applause ] he placed his body between mine, a man with a gun, simply because he felt that's what his duty called for him to do. sick societies don't produce dedicated police officers like tom -- [ applause ] >> sick societies don't make people like us so proud to be americans and so very proud of our fellow citizens. >> then president ronald reagan less than a month after he was shot and nearly killed by a gunman in washington, d.c. gop nominee donald trump signaled he will call for unity ahead of his speech at the rnc

thursday after surviving his own assassination attempt over the weekend. then-former president teddy roosevelt shot while recampaigning to take the white house cooled down his rhetoric in a hard-fought campaign after the attempt on his life. so, too, did george wallace, who survived being shot five times in 1972 when he was running for president. and would go on to apologize for his long history of racism. >> let's bring in pulitzer prize-winning author and historian doris kearns goodwin. doris, there is so many things we need to talk about. i want to start though with t.r. because you look to what happened with donald trump, who got shot and then despite the fact the secret service should have held his head down and got him off stage, he still stood up and made the gestures to the

crowd, told them he was okay, raised his fist. it does remind you of t.r. getting shot and continuing his speech. >> yeah, absolutely right, joe. what happened to t.r., he was shot standing up in a car outside of the hotel on his way to deliver a speech right in the chest, point blank he was shot, and they insist, the doctors, he go to the hospital. he said, no, i am going to give the speech. he goes to give the speech, stands on the stage with the bullet in his chest. 64 minutes -- 84 minutes he speaks in that speech. they say you have to get off, your breath is going. he said have to finish the speech. he hadn't been killed because his speech was in his pocket and his spectacles were there and didn't deflect to his heart. he has to stay at the hospital for some time because of the infection. when he comes out, he changes.

he does got rid of -- he had been name-calling. he gave one of the best speeches. it looked likehe empathy of the country was going for him. one of the democrats said the bullet that rests in teddy roosevelt's chest killed wilson's chance for the election. the fundamentals remain the me. he was a former president running ainst taft, his former friend, in the republican party, the republican party was split, so the democrats won. but he won the largest ever third-party candidate becausee was able to deal with that election and that assassination attempt in the most perfect tonal way. >> ery biographer of republican ronald reagan seems to talk about how he changed after he got shot, and reagan, who was considered to be the coldest of cold warriors, believed that god had a hand in

his life being saved and didn't he talk about from that point forward his goal was to be -- to bring about an end of a nuclear escalation and to prevent argeddon? >> i think you're right, joe. when you come up against your mortality, as certainly reagan did, makes you reflect and think about how do i want to be remembered? what do i want to do with the rest of my term. that month he went to the joint session of congress from that speech, the perfect tone for him to believe in the optimis of america, talk about it's not a sick society. how it be when all these people have done such herc things. he introduce his legislative package, his tax bill, which had not been going very well before the assassination atmpt. now there was such an overwhelming approval, up to 68% after that assassination attack, higher than it would ever about go, and he got that bill through the address. he moved forward, which think

is what the coury want. later on move forward on his international beliefs. >> we have talked about positive outcomes from these tragic events. let's talk about also negative outcomes. i still have a strong belief, and you, obviously, lived this too close, too personally, but very strong belief that america never recovered from what happened on november 22nd 1963. you talk about two americas. that is a dividing line unlike hardly others. and i don't know that the democratic party ever really recovered from june 6, 1968, the assassination of bobby kennedy. what are your thoughts? >> well, what you realize in the 1960s where i have been living in my mind in terms of my new book, you are numbed almost. john kennedy's assassination.

you had martin luther king jr.'s assassination, bobby kennedy's assassination, malcolm x. so much was following upon each other. we recovered in one sense. lyndon johnson went to a joint session of congress four days after the funeral and he said, let us move forward. he armored himself in the admiration there for john kennedy, said nothing matters more than the passage of the civil rights bill. his legislative program, jfk's legislative program was stuck in the congress. people talked about a broken congress and he got the bills through and it made people feel we were moving forward. when you think about wallace, there was a change for the positive. he had been the arch segregationist. he got shot in 1972. he was paralyzed from the waist down. he came up against his mortality, had time to reflect and turned against his old self. he truly changed. we went before the black community, took responsibility for his segregation comments.

he ran for governor again and won 90% of the black vote and had a good presidency, governorship for the black people. he put more people into his administration. he doubled the number of black registration votes. somehow even john lewis at the end was able when he died to put for wallace's death, saying he was a changed man. i may never forget what he did when he talked about segregation, but the civil rights move is about love, justice and forgiveness. certainly positive things came out of these if the tone is right and the people move forward. that's what reagan, jfk, and george wallace did as well. we can take some solace and hope from that. maybe the president will be a changed man. he talked about the fact it changed him. we will have to see what happens in the days and months ahead. >> presidential historian doris kearns goodwin, thank you very much. her book an unfinished love

story, a personal history of the 1960s is out now. ahead, a live report from milwaukee as lawmakers arrive for day two of the republican national committee. the third hour of "morning joe" continues right now. i never seen a circumstance where you ride through certain areas of the country, people have signs, big trump signs with saying f biden and a kid standing there putting up his middle finger. that's the kind of stuff that is just inflammatory and kind of vicious. a very different thing to say, look, i'd really disagree with trump's, the way he takes ce of taxes. >> that was justart of president biden's wide ranging interview with nbc's lester holt. we will have more of the big moments from that sitdown, including the phrase the president admits was a mistake

to use. plus from never trumper to running mate, j.d. vance's evolution on donald trump that nded him on the 2024 republican ticket. meanwhile, the former president picked up another legal victory with a judge he appointed while he was in the white house tossing out his classified documents case in florida. we will have expert legal analysis on that ruling and what could be next for t case. good morning. it is very good to b here, welcomeo "morning joe." it's tuesday, july 16th. along with joe, willie and me, we have the host of way too early, jonathan lemire, the president of the national action network and host of msnbc's politic nation, reverend al sharpton with us as well. all right. two days after an assassination attempt during a rally in pennsylvania, former president trump made his first appearance

at the republican national committee in milwaukee last night. trump's right ear was bandaged as he entered. the crowd was cheering as the former president walked out during a live rendition of lee greenwood's god bless the usa. meanwhile, new details emerging in the assassination attempt investigation. according to senior officials, forensic technicians are working 24 hours a day at the fbi lab in quantico, virginia, analyzing the cell phone, laptop computer of thomas crooks. the search of his electronics have yet to reveal a motive. this as we are learning the fbi is now investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism. authorities found explosives in the car used by the gunman and a

dozen guns were found in a search of his family home. three officials say the shooter's father called poli following the shooting of trump to say he was worried his son and his ar-15 were missing. the fbi is prong whether some ammunition was bought in the days befor the shooting or whetr it was delivered to the home. >> willie, showing the shot right here, i mean, the overhead view of all of this is still, the more times we see it, the more shocking it is that they tually had a building where there was a straight line between the shooter and the former president. so many things about this is so shocking. and, you know -- >> kill shot. >> yeah. directly ahead of it. then you look at what happened after the shooting, how long it took them to get him covered up

and protected. as we gefurther away from this, there are more and more questions about what the secret service was doing not just pertaining to protect kt the perimeter, but also protecting the former president aer the first shots rang out. >>yeah, the question we have been asking since the immediate moments afterwards. ifou look at that layout how just over a football field away from an elevated position could a 20-year-old man climb to at roof and get a clean open shot on the former president of the united states. it is a stunning failure. we will talk in detail about that in a moment. this is only by the grace of turning his head thank goodness, is donald trump still alive for the sake of his own, for his family, the country that he is still here because he turned his head. that was an open shot. we are gting new information here at nbc news, four oicials

telling us rallygoers arted local police to a suspicious person near a section of the rally prior to the gunshots ringing out, les up with the videos we have been seeing. localolice searched for the man on foot butere unable to nd him until he was spotted on the roof of that nearby building a short time later. during the puuit, local pice told the secret service ey were looking for a suspicious rson. however, it was not clear what time the secret service was notified and if it was before trump took the stage. there are some videos out there, he new york times" has one on their website right now, people whe donald trump was speaking in the minutes before h was shot pointing up to that rooftop and saying, there is somebody up there with gun. nbc news senior white house correspondent kelly o'donnell has more now on the investigation. >> take a look what happened -- >> reporter: stunning and unexpected. authorities had already

considered the gunman's rooftop perch a worry. witnesses say they spotted a threat that day. >> we are like, hey man there is a guyn the roof with a rifle. >> reporter: the secret service had actually identified the building nr the trump rly as a potential vulnerability in the days befor the event, according to two sources familiar with the agency's operations. officials say no officers had been posted there. a key question is, why? the white house, homeland security secretary mayorkas said he expects within days to choose the head of an independent review from outside the administration. >> i am committed to going externally of the department and externally of the government so that no question of its independence be raised. >> reporter: secret service officials say they had designated that local law enforcement would secure that building. >> any type of missteps made or miscommunication made has to be

addressed. >> reporter: major shift affecting independent candidate robert kennedy, who has been repeatedly denied government security. >> the president has directed me to work with the secret service to provide protection to robert kennedy. >> kelly o'donnell reporting there. nbc news national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent tom winter, nbc ne law enforcement analyst, evy, serving in the secret service's presidential protective division, and forme u. attorney andsnbc contributor barbara mcquade. we were on the air together sunday morning in the hours after this took place. tom, starting with you. a question that doesn't feel like it has any more answers, what more do we know about the shooter and potential motive? >> last time i saw you i was hopeful between the cellphone they recovered they would get into tha it doesn't tell a lie. your web search history is your

history, your apps are your apps and your messages are your messages. was hopeful they would be able to doerm not just the how. i think that's becoming more focused. you laid out the reasons. the purchases of ammo. a home depot receipt was found on him, a purchase of a ladder, finding out if that was the one he used to get on the roof. these details are becoming more clear. but the why. and i know and i get it because i get the vitriol online, somebody shot at donald trump. what other reason could it be than some sort of a political reason? that's what people are saying. i think it's important to remember, first off, the last presidential shooting we had, johnson hinckley jr. did it to impress a hollywood actress. a number of incidents over the yearwhere people thought the motive was clear and it turned out to be a complete 180 bed on the etched.

yesterday they had a preliminary review of the cellphone and there was really nothing on that that led them to the why. and i think that's a real challenge. and gng forward her in ts investigion, ty are lking to the family. every indicion s far ihe family is being cooperative. but ty are running out of leads at that point. they are hopg somody comes rward or find some other piece of evidence or a needle thin needles in a haystack to figure out why this happened. i will caution people its possible that we might never know why ts individua got on the roof that da iould also caution people, people think it's anti-donald trump because this person doesn't ke them, their views are on the other side of the political sperum. it's possible that donald trump and there is a theory in law enforcement,ossible that donald trump was not conservative enough for this individual. it runs the gamut. and i tnk it's important in th situation, the way we approach our reporting, everything is on the table.

let's figure out what authorities have. let's do our work. talk to our own people. you sawhat in kelly's piece there. and then from that point we can start to piece together why this happened. >> joe, as we have been reportinghe last couple days, the shooter, registered republican but also someone who gave $15 when he was 17 years told a progressive group that gets voter turnout for democrats. everyone able to ascribe their theories to that using those two truths. >> yeah. i just seen the video -- >> it's hard -- i keep getting shocked by it. >> it's shocking. may not know the why for some time, but, tom, the question i have, is how? how? how did the secret service allow

someone to have a straight line of sight to a former president who may be the next president that an ar-15 could ach when the secret service and law enforcement, obviously, knows, an ar-15, as we've reported time and time again through the years, is the weapon of choice of disturbed young men, and it's within range there. why weren't were sharpshooters on top of that building? why were people yelling for almost 90 seconds, there is a shooter on top of the building? what the hell was going on there? here is where they are yelling. there is a shooter up there. and 90 seconds. and tom, i want to show you another video, and, you know, i would love to hear from you on had. look how long.

look how long donald trump is exposed. what are these secret service people doing? look how long he is exposed to a second, third, fourth shooter. show that video again. a second, third, fourth shooter. i mean, the thing is, the secret service has always been trained. when you hear a shot, when you have a threat, get on top of the president. get on the top of the person that y are protecting and stay there. here, look, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. nine seconds i'm counting right there, tom, before -- who trained these people? how could anybody in the leadership position in the secret service still have a job this morning? >> well, i think there is problem a reason because they

have a job to do with respect to the rnc. i understand your point. looking last night at the video that we saw ofrump moving through the crowd at the rnc, appeared to me to be a very different approach. the amount of secret service agents that were between trump and the crowd at the rnc, there was no point where there appeared to be any extended gap between human-to-human as far as the agents, you know, elbow to elbow a donald trump as he is moving to the position tt he ultimately took. this is inside a building where there is no outside exposure, everybody had to go through a magnetometer, a controlled space. that underscores, obviously, a change. with respect to your questions, all the exact questions we have, joe. we hear so often about the ability of the secret service to jump in, to me somebody out of the scene, get them in the car and on the way. there is a lot of questions as far as the timing of that. back to the original component -- >> and tom, tom, i'm so glad you

talked about the car because not only did they give a second, third, fourt shooter that could have been there nine seconds while he was up on the age, where his head was actually higher than all of theirs, but then he did sething that the secret service, that well trained secret service members never do. they let him stand up and wave to t crowd from the car. now, of course, ery politician wants to do that, say i'm okay, i'm all right. i always remember aer 9/11, gege w. bush ording the secr servi to fly hack to washingn, d.c., and finally cret svice members saying, i'm sorry, mr. president, this isn't your plane. this is our plane. our job is t protect you first. the same thing on january 6th when president trump wanted to go up it to the capitol. the secret servic said, no. but here we have people around him that are exposing him for

nine seconds, and then he gets to thear and they let him stand up once again and expose his head, which again is what politician would do. he stand up and waves back to the crowd there. >> you could see his head the whole way. >> guess i should ask you this. have you er seen that before? have you ever seen a group of secret service people so fail the person they were supposed to protect? >> i think one of the natural answers to that is we have so rarely seen this. the question might be, is the secret service being adequately trained? if you are a police officer you are dealing with calls every single u single day. >> but isn't this what they train for their entire life if you are going to protect the president of the donald trump? >> sure. there is a difference between when you are doing it in a training exercise and a difference in real life. there will be a lot of questions about whether or not the secret service is in a position -- i know there are people inside the

tactical community that believe people should be rotated in and out. secret service, people tha deal with tactical situatns more often. so that be something where you are not just in the sret service, but getting more real-world type of experience? i think of in new york city, if this happened in new york city, you would not only have -- i would posit this incident would not happen in new york. the resources available in butler county, pennsylvania, are different than the nypd's. but the people doing this with the secret service from the nypd shall kicking indoors every single day on crimes. they are in high-risk situations all the time. so is this a question where the secret service, the people doing this type of work, do they need to be cycled in and out of other different types of environments so there is real-world training? the last time -- real-world experience. the last time they dealt with this was the reagan shooting. i know that people in the secret service say you have no ia what type of training we do.

we drill all the time. i have no doubt about it. to go back to the original videos that you were showi there, a little bit more of my expertise and a little bit more of my reporting, with respect to what happened on the roof, it is our reporting from four officials, and my colleagues, that in fact they were aware of this person. he was acting suspiciously around the magnetometers, acting suspiciously around the crowd. the crowd picked him out. it was a communication back to the command post. what happened there? the secret service has its own radio system, own radio frequencies, it's encrypted. there are good reasons for that? what was the communication between law enforcement and the secret service? was the threat acted on quickly enough? were there police assets there that they thought this individual was part of the police or should there have been a stronger uniform police

presen. was it upon the secret service to say this is a vulnerability. we don't have the agents to cover. we want a uniformed officer to see another uniformed officer every single time and nobody gets on that property and that roof. all questions tt we are asking, all questions that need to be answered. when you look at that map, as you pointed out at the beginning of the program, it raises rious questions and i think th's the reason why the secret service is under the microscope. >> youerved as a secret service agent for 12 years, you protected president obama, michelle obama. let's take it in two parts. bere the shoong, h this guy got on the roof. i know that was technically outside the perimeter. as we talked about the other morning, three or four buildings there. you may want to clear all the buildings. number one. number two, the response to it. we have seen videos where a balloon pops, someone says there might be a gun and a president is rushed off the stage.

you can take that first and then work backward from there, however you want to do it. there are two pieces being questioned pretty seriously this morning. >> there is three the. i want to talk about the investigive element and then their tactical training. let's start with the before he is seen, spotted, appears suspicious, right? this is where communication comes in. to your point as r as having manpower where you spread people arnd to verbally pass the message, that takes msive manpower. that's where honestly your radio comes . secret service is notorious for speaking intoour mic pce. so every site you have a security room, command post and you put the agent there, secret service, and then you also have liaisons, other -- all the other law forcement entities have their own representative in there. let's assume the secury room here, the command post here, i

am secret service, you're state police, you're local police department. the point where i look to you, tom, tell your guys, blah, blah, blah. rev, tell your guys this, this, this. you are passing the information. that's the point so each representative of every agency is there so you can do this real quick because i have my own radio frequency that i'm using, you have your own coms. we are not on the same radio. that's a question. was there communication made? so if local law enforcement spotted this person, civilians are saying, hey, police officer, so and so, did you see this man? that lawmaker person should have gotten on the radio, we are reporting this. >> the indication from our reporting is that communication took place. >> they pass that to the u.s. secret service. then the u.s. secret service is passing it to their team. now, i will say this. when you are at a site, you do consistently hear suspicious person. i want to put that out there. what does that mean?

what is spicious? now, suspicious person with a big backpack that looks like it can carry an ar-15 very different conversation on the radio. what was put o there? because you are not going t sh down a wle sit because you hear suspicious person in a site of thousands of people. so we move next to the next part, which is he spotted on the rooftop, what's going on there? we don't know at what point, it's speculation, did he get up there, post up, hold? did he get up there afterwards, after trump was on stage and what happened there? you do have your cs element, counter sniper response. my understanding, there were two teams. if it's two teams, it's two two-man teams. where were they posted? typically, they spread out. they are always canvassing the area. now, did they spot -- did the cs team spot the shooter on the rooftop? there is speculation coming in that they did see him, but maybe

it's possible they didn't engage immediately. too engage a threat on a rooftop like that, you have to first make sure it's a threat. just because it's a man on a roof doesn't mean you engagement could they see him? could they see his weapon? i have done cs response, you are tied to the nine issers. the snipers are on the roof, wherever are and tell you, hey, we see go to grid, whatever they have these maps we work off and separate the area and the zones. go to zone two, whatever. third floor, here, there. we see somebody at the window. we don't understand what it is. go. that team or element, i would physically go and find out what's going on. you would do that if you could not see a weapon or anything like that because you can't engage someone who is not a threat. maybe it's a spectator who decided to go to the rooftop and

watch. you can't shoot him. if they had seen the weapon, now the question comes in, again, all speculation, did cs response get confused perhaps with local law enforcement? often at these events because of manpower issues, you will bring a local cs team. i will say, police officer, the police department, do you have your own counter sniper teams? they may say yes. we will give you ours, use our in conjunction with yours. that to my understanding hasn't been verified whether local cs response was present or not. if they were, you should know where they are positioned. everything is detailed. i mean, the amount of paperwork that you do in the u.s. secret service maps, diagrams, layouts, i mean, it's done to the nth degree. so everybody knows, hey, local people, local police departments, state police, they are here, they are here, they are here, we are here, here, here. so everybody knows where everybody is.

now, could there have been a bit of a confusion where our cs team team -- excuse me, u.s. secret service cs team says, hey, we see someone on the roof. could that be local? and was there a confusion there where they maybe weren't sure -- >> could i jump in? before we get to that, the question a lot of people watching this still have this morning is why wasn't that building secured? i know technically again it was outside the perimete but it's 130 yards away. i mean, you would think on a farm where there is a handful of buildings, we are not talking about midtown manhattan, you would lock down the buildings especially when there is a clear shot to the stage. >> 100%, that should be secured. because u.s. secret service resources so finite. they fly agents. i would be flown to waco to fill in a spot. it's costly. if i do that site, common practice, i say police department so and so, secure that building. it is on you.

now, you speak to them and you coey what secure means, being a local police officer sometimes is vastly different from doing security. but now they, understanding what they need to do, speculation, did they understand, not understand? secure building means secure building. did they put the manpower there? why didn't they put somebody on e rooftop? you know, it's a hot sunny day. i would hate to presume it's a hot sunny day and they don't want to be overly exposed to the elements. >> they had them on other rooftops. >> local pd. not cs. cs response is used to being on the rooftops. they know what to do. if i designate a local police department to secure it, i should be able to trust to some degree did they secure it. now, as an agent, could have

gone, and i don't know what the team was, becausedo assignments feet hurt. so also you have that element. at the end of the day, it is on secret service. did you do your due diligence and make sure everybody was where they were supposed to be? coming up, as a u.s. attorney, barbara mcquade process add lot of crime scenes. she weighs in next. plus, live to milwaukee for a look at day two of the republican national convention. garrett haake has his latest reporting straight ahead on "morning joe." ning joe." (reporters) over here. kev! kev! (reporter 1) any response to the trade rumors, we keep hearing about? (kev) we talkin' about moving? not the trade, not the trade, we talking about movin'. no thank you. (reporter 2) you could use opendoor. sell your house directly to them, it's easy.

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. barbara mcquade, you as a former u.s. attorney processed a lot of crime scenes. there are a lot of questions that you still i am sure have about what transpired on sarday. talk to us about those and what you think the status of the investigation is now. >> yeah, i think one of the things that the fbi needs to look into not only is the motive, but whether there are any other participants in the planning of this. did this shooter have anyone he was talking with? did anyone else provide him with access? did anyone else know what was happening? that's an incredibly important

thing because they want to understand whether he acted alone. if there is a cold paper trail so to speak on his phone, that could be very challenging. this case reminds me a little bit, you may remember a mass shooting in san bernardino and the fbi had trouble getting into the shoot are's phone and they desperately wanted to get into that phone. i know a lot of people said, well, the event is over. people have been killed. that's it. but what is critically important is finding out whether there are others part of of a network with the ability to communicate with people anywhere in the country and anywhere in the world, is this an ongoing threat because others are involved in it? that's something to look for. i think in terms of the response of the secret service, i share the outrage that the roof left insecure, the response after the shooting. and i think one serious question that needs to be asked is whether the secret service is adequately resourced. one of the challenges that all law enforcement executives have is the resources and how to spread them.

secret service is spread incredibly thin during a presidential campaign. people are sent all over the country and people who have not worked together before are suddenly thrust together in various places in rural communities. so relying on local police in butler county, who i am sure are doing the best under the circumstances, but could benefit from the professionally trained secret service who does this every day. i think congress needs to look at how they are funding secret service to ensure that we do have adequate protection to protect america as joe has said. coming up, a live report from the white house. the president's busy schedule, including an congress at the naacp annual convention in the state of nevada. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

coming up, our next guest is a former congresswoman and

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former president donald ump i weighing i on whether saturday's shooting has changed him. speaking to abs jonathan karl on phone yesterday, trump said i n't le to think about that, but yes. the incidentas an impact. as for his phone call wit president biden in the wake of the shooting, trump said, their talk was very nice a that the president, preside biden, couldn't have been nicer. meanwhile, nbc's leste holt asked president biden about the political rhetoric in the wake of saturday's shooting, specifically a recent phone call to to donors in which biden said he wanted to put trump in the, quote, bull's-eye. >> look, the truth of the matter

was, i guess i was talking about at the time was there is very little focus on trump's agenda. >> the term was bull's-eye. >> it was a mistake. i didn't say crosshairs. bull's-eye. focus on him. focus on what he is doing. focus on his policies. focus on the number of lies he told in the debate. i mean, there is a whole range of things. look, i am not the guy that said i want to be a particular tater day one. i didn't refuse to accept the outcome of the election. i didn't say don't accept the outcome of this election automatically. you can't only love your country when you win. and so the focus was on what he is saying and, i mean, the idea -- >> have you taken a step back and done a little soul searcng on things that you may have said that could incite people who are not balanced? >> well, i don't think -- look,

how do you talk about the threat to democracy? which is real. when a president says things like he says. do you just not saying anything because it may incite somebody? look, i have not engaged in that rhetoric. now, my opponents engage in that rhetoric. he talks about a bloodbath if he loses, talking about how he is going to forgive all the -- actually, i guess, suspend the sentences of all those who were arrested and sentenced to go to jail because of what happened at the capitol. i am not out there making fun of -- remember the picture of donald trump when nancy pelosi's husband was hit with a hammer, talking about -- joking about it. >> this doesn't sound like you are turning down the heat. >> no, no, no. what i'm turning down, we have to stop the whole notion that there are certain things that

are contrary to our democracy. the idea of saying that you didn't win the election when every court in the land, every court in the land, 120 appeals, said -- including the conservative supreme court, said we won. the ideaf having a loyalty pledge from all the folks who are in a republican maga -- not all republicans, maga republicans, saying we lost the election, inflaming the people -- >> what can you and what will you do at least things you can control to lower down the temperature, the rhetoric out there? >> continue to talk about the things that matter to the american public. it matters whether or not you accept the outcome of elections. it matters whether or not you, for example, talk about how you are going to deal with the border instead of talking about people being vermin and -- i

mean, those things matter. that's the kind of language that is inflammatory. >> you know, rev, i want to get to a couple of things. you had a conversation yesterday with joe biden that i think is newsworthy. you held a press conference on sunday talking about the need for america to come together and be unified. you were praying for president trump, his health his safety. we just need to talk about that line of questioning from nbc's lester holt. it was important, an important question to ask about what president biden said in a private fundraiser to donors. it's a question i would have asked. i think any of us would have asked that question. but to ask that question without any context about the politically violent rhetoric

that republicans have been engaged in for close to a decade now, and we could talk about nancy pelosi, we could talk about the assassinations of chairman -- joint chiefs, the hangings of miles per hour. we could go on and on and talk about it on both sides. again, a good question to ask about what he said in a private fundraiser. a good question to ask. i would have asked the same question. but to ask that question absent of any context seems to me to be -- you talk about a phony relativism. it was screaming throughout that part of the interview. i must say, i was shocked. >> no, i totally agree. i think that the comparisons are not there.

i think the rhetoric needs to be brought down. but clearly, i don't think that president biden has engaged in that kind of rhetoric that would in any way incite people to do things like we saw january 6th or the attack on pelosi's husband. but at the same time, i think we have the moral obligation to be consistent. you cannot stand up against what happened to pelosi's husband or what happened on january 6th and then act like it's all right what happened to donald trump. and i think that that is part of the challenge that we have, is we must be against all violence, we must be against all kinds of situations that would harm people. otherwise, we become like the people we're fightin >> right. you speak out against politically violent rhetoric on both sides. you speak out against violence, obviouy, on all sides.

again, that's why i say, it was important question to ask, even though he said itn a private fundraiser as posed to standing before a crowd of republicans and mocking nancy pelosi's husband, who was brutalized and almost killed. so let's move from there over to an important phone call that you got from president bid. you kn president biden has been saying he is staying in the ce, staying in the race, and democrats are saying, well, let's see if he stays in the race. you got a phone call yesterday from president biden and he was very blunt with you and sent you a message. he wanted you to send it along to us and everybody else. >> i got a call yesterday afternoon from the president and he said, i want you to know clearly, al, i am running. i'm not going anywhere. the things that you and i hav worked together on in terms of civil rights and voting rights, am not leaving the field until

we protect them. he was very adamant, very strong, and wanted to reassure me no matter what we were hearing, he was not even thinking about not doing the end of -- not finishing his term in terms of his re-election and finishing another term. he said, i'm on my w to nevada now. i am going to continue campaigning, and i just want to be firm on that. and i think he was very sincere. those that are speculating and you hear rumors every day, he will be out by the end of the week or out by next week, he was making it very clear, i am not getting out. i am in this for the long haul. and i told him i appreciated heg that. i also told him i had taken this position about all of us being morally consistent, which is the right thing to do. coming up, the latest in the fbi's investigation into the

assassination attempt of former president donald trump. ken dilanian is tracking the latest and joins us straight ahead on "morning joe." s straigt ahead on "morning joe. sure, i'm a paid actor, and this is not a real company, but there is no way to fake how upwork can help your business. search talent all over the world with over 10,000 skills you may not have in house. more than 30% of the fortune 500 use upwork because this is how we work now.

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it's not unusual. he's going to surround himself

with people who agree completely with him, who support him. even if you go back and listen to the things that jd vance said about trump. >> he said some things about you. >> he said some things about me, but see what he said about trump. what's with you guys? come on, .

>> moved me to tears. >> i actually haven't heard it yet, but i've read all about it online. jonathan lemire was -- i always feel bad for a person who becomes famous for this reason. a country singer last night at the home run derby, it was a tough anthem. >> i'll stop so we can all listen. >> not bad. >> it gets worse.

>> i just need to say someing. guys, at the very end, she pulls her ear piece off. i think there was a problem with the audio. >> there could have been. >> it messed her up completely. i feel so bad for her. >> tj is a skeptic. i feel bad for her. if you've heard her singing -- >> it's a stunning voice. >> she's got a beautiful voice. it doesn't translate yesterday. we've seen some of the most famous singers in the world who have gotten up on stage and their ear piece was right. >> like wrong key. >> it happens to the best of us. boy that's a terrible place for it to happen. >> that's a famously hard song

to sing. willie was warming up a second ago, doing the scales. it was hard to listen to. some of the players were having trouble keeping straight faces while watching. it was so cringe worthy, and i feel terrible for the singer involved. >> you know what happens? her name is out there and she gets a chance to redeem herself. supposedly she's great. can we focus on the greatest anthems of all time. to me, it comes down to whitney houston at the super bowl, and two years at the super bowl chris stapleton on guitar. those are my top two. keep it positive. >> those are a good top two. i'm kind of with you. >> marvin gaye. >> at the all star game. >> chills.

>> as far as the derby itself, what a contest lastnight. >> came down to the final swing. teoscar hernandez was one of the all stars. his final swing would have tied it. >> so close. >> off the bat you think he' got it. >> so close! foot of the fence. >> yeah. warning track power. >> the home run derby is still a fun night. the slam dunk contest in the nba has really fizzled. but home run derby still brings it. >> now to the news on the fourth hour of "morning joe." former predent trump made his first public appearance at the republican national convention in milwaukee last night. it came just two days after that

assassination attempt during a rally in pennsylvania. trump's right ear was visibly bandaged as he entered the convention hall. the crowd was cheering as the former president walked out during a live rendition of lee greenwood's "god bless the usa." donald trump revealed that senator van of ohio would be his running mate. the former president made the announcement in a long post on social media, highlighting vance's military service and education at yale law school. joing us from milwaukee is nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake. garrett, what does jd vance brg to this republican ticket? >> reporter: there's no question that jd vance has been an effective spokesperson for donald trump's maga makeover of the republican party. but now, as a relatively untested, first-term laaker, only about 18 months on the job

in the senate, he's going to have to cvincehe country he ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. ohio senator jd vance stepping into the brightest spotlight of his young political caer, appearing side by side with donald trump at the republican national convention. he's now trump's running mate. he told fox news how mr. trump offered him a spot on the gop. >> look, we're going to save the country. >> 39-year-old vance perhaps best known for his memoir "hillbilly elegy." he is also the first veteran of the war on terror serving as a marine in public affairs. he's married to a corporate litigator and the daughter of indian immigrants. in 2016, vance then repeatedly

condemned donald trump. >> i'm a never trump guy. i never liked him. >> i can't stomach trump. i think he's noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place. >> reporte he called trump dangerous and unfit for office, suggesting he could become, quote, america's hitler, according to multiple reports. >> i don't hide from that. >> reporter: now vance opposes abortion rights and aid to ukraine and backing donald trump's false claims of a stolen 2020 election. >> president trump was a great president, and he changed my minds. >> reporter: rnc cochair lara trump saying he's the future the gop. we're all right getting a look at how democrats plan to take on jd van as the number two person on this cket, focusing

on those past criticisms of donald trump, trying to elevate those in the conversation, also focusing on vance's position on abortion, which has been more conservative even than donald trump's. he has called for a federal ban in cases without exceptions, downplaying the need for exceptns on abortion-related laws. vance is also getting attacked from some of the more old school republicans out there like liz cheney who posted about him o x today, suggesting he is someone who would be an enabler of donald trump on stolen election su and highlighting his opposition on fundingo ukraine. >> garrett haake, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it. willie, on the surface, the pick doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense if you look at picks

that are supposed to diversify, either idealogically or geographically. you know, bill inton faced a lot of curious questions after he pked al gore. service clinton/gore, two younge guys from the south. that turned out well. here you have two maga types. doest idealogically do it? what the trump campaign lieves, though, and what trump pollsters believe is that it's going to help them, jd vance will help them with voters in rural america especlly across the midwest that may have voted for donald trump in 2016 but stayed home in 2020. they believe jd vance can help them pul out those same voters in michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania in 2024. >> the trump campaign has framed it also as a generational pick,

ich you heard from garrett haake there. this is a guy who could pick up theorch some day from dald trump. jd vance has been extraordinarily trum and pro-maga during his 18 mons or so in the united states senate he has talked about before he was a senator, talked about not doing what vice president mike pence would do, had done on january 6th he would not have certified the election. he's there on democracy. he's also been very strg against abortion rights for women. he says there should be exceptions onlyn the case of the health of the mother, not in rape or incest. he does tick lot of boxes, but he doesn't necessarily expand. if you're looking to win the suburbs, it's nikki haley or someone like that. but i think the loyalty jd vance has shown, his support from don junior, very close friend of his who's pushed this pick on his father as well, i think all

added upo his being there and perhaps being an heir apparent in this magamovement. meanwhile, we'reetting new details from the assassination attempt on former president trumpn saturday and the investigation into what exactly happened. stephanie gosk has the latest. >> reporter: this morning, n questions about whether opportunies were missed to stop thomas crooks before he took aim at former president trump. crooks was shot and killed by secret service snipers after he opened fire with an ar-15 rifle just 148 yards from the former president's podium. >> he's right here, right onhe roof! >> reporter: nbc news now learning crooks was spotted before he got on the roof. rally-goers noticed crooks pacing and behaving strangely near the metal detectors, according to four officials. they alerted local police, who

began pursuing crooks on foot. a u.s. official telling nbc news that during the pursuit, the officers tol secret service they were looking for a suspicious person in the area. it's not clear when secret service was notified. >> look, there is he is right there. >> reporter: but crooks did make it onto the rooftop. two senior officials tell nbc news he had a home depot receipt for a ladder when they searched his body. officials have not confirmed if that ladder was found on site. two local police officers approached crooks before he opened fire, but couldn't stop him. the head of the secret service telling abc news local police were actually stationed inside that same builng. aecret rvice sposman says the lation of the roofell tside o tir ctral security perimeter and was the primary responsibility o local law enforcement. the department of homeland security, which oversees the u.s. secret service now conducting a review. the dhs secretary acknowledging

mistakes were made. >>hen i say tha something like this cannot happen, we are speaking of a failure. >> sphanie gosk reporting for us there. joining us now ken dilanian and peter baker. good morning to you both. ken, you listened to that reporting, what nbc news has learned in the last day or so. it just boggles the mind all over again that the young man was able to get on the roof of a building about 130 yard away from the former president of the united states when he spoke, especially when you hear there were officers stationed inside the building and when you see all those eyewitnesss in that chilling video saying there's a guy on a roof with a gun 90 seconds or so before he opened fire. i understand the head of the secret service spoke just a few moments ago. what did he learn? >> this question of the roof and how it was not secured has loomed over this situation for

the past 48 hours. now the director of the secret service tells abc news that a decision was made to have local law enforcement security that site. as you said, she said that local law enforcement officers were in the building while he was on the roof. but then she also said this. she said, that building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point, so you know, there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we would want to put somebody up on the sloped roof. so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside. so that tells us two things. even though this building was outside the security perimeter, the secret service, of course, had it as part of the overall planning to secure the site. they assigned it to local law enforcement, and they knew that local law enforcement had made a decision, for whatever reason, not to go on the roof. but they were inside. so it just raises a host of new questions about was anybody from

the secret service making sure that the local officers were doing their jobs to secure that building? obviously something fell down in a major way there. she didn't say exactly which local agency was assigned, but nbc news has spoken to the butler county sheriff whose deputies were there and were among those who climbed up the ladder to confront the shooter. he has simply said, i'm not going to get involved in a blame game. my guys were assigned to do their job and they did their job. >> people look at the map and say, how was that building outside the surity perimeter guarded by the secret service? we underand they have to set a perimeter somewhere. they do it at all the events. in a sparsely populated rural area where there just aren't that many buildings, it would make sense to most people, to the layman even to say, well, that building that has a direct line into the stage where the

president isoing to be standing for about an hour or so just over a football field away, by this map 148 yards, how was that not secured by the secret service? that's still a question that doesn't have a satisfactory answer to aot of people looking at this. >> look, the former secret service agents and current law enforcement officials i've spoken to and our colleagues ve spoken to over the last 48 hours, they've all made that point. there s no explanation for it. it was just the wrong call. that should ha been within the perimeter. since the assassination of jfk, one o the top priorities of the secret services to command the high ground, particularly during an outdoor event, and make sure any placeomeone could situate with a rifle was covered. in this case, it just wa't. that's a fundamental failure that goes to the heart of the first job of the secret service. >> we talked aut it in rlier

hours about what happened after the shooting. obviously they should have cured the perimeter. it's almost an unspeakable lapse and an extraordinarily tragic lapse for all of america, but has been for a family now in pennsylvania, a fireman, father, husband who lost his life because of that failure and two others seriously injured. the's a second part of this, though. i'm curious what former secret service officials you've talked to thought about what happened up on stage. here's the shot from "wall street journal." donald trump is up, he's exposed seven, eight, nine seconds and on stage, was still exposed walking down the stage. they covered him up better. one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

for ten seconds he's exposed. >> at least. >> then they do their best to cover him up when they're walking to the car. when he gets to the car, they do something that, you know, in reading history books years past i heard how a president before getting into a car would stand up and wave to the crowd and the secret service people would freak out, because he exposed himself for a split second. here they had no idea there wasn't a second shooter, third shooter, fourth shooter. this doesn't look like -- this looks like such a horrible failure of training. if you look at past secret service incidents where if you hear even a balloon pop, they throw themselves on top of the subject and they cover him or her up all the way to a vehicle

or an ambulance. there you see him, again, exposed. you don't blame the politician for that. that's what politicians do and certainly that's what donald trump would do. this is, again, on the secret service. what are the thoughts about how exposed he was on stage even after the shots? >> i think you're right to hone in on that. from what i've heard from former secret service agents and experts in personal security, that was just not how it's supposed to work. you're right. we've all seen videos of balloons popping and secret service or other bodyguards rushing the person off the stage and out of harm's way. as you noted earlier in the show, his head was higher than their heads. they lingered and they appeared to be deferring to him. are these members of the secret

service detail who have been with trump a long time and have a habit of deferring him? that's a question that needs to be asked. because the tactical guys came out after the shots were fired and at some point somebody said, clear, shooter down. so were they relaxed at that moment. one shooter down. they had no idea if there were other shooters. their training is not to be satisfied that one shooter is down. it's to rush the protectee into a safe situation, which clearly did not happen there. >> peter baker, again, i've heard people say, well, donald trump will want to get up. every politician is going to want to get up, but that's not the politician's call. we saw that on january 6th when president trump wanted to go up to the capitol. they said, sorry, sir, we're taking you back to the white

house. on 9/11 george bush kept demanding he was going back to washington, d.c. at that point the secret service said to him, we're sorry, mr. president, this is not your plane. it's ours. and our job is to protect you, and you're not going back to washington, d.c. until it's secured. so with that as a backdrop, again, i raise the question, what in the world were they doing exposing donald trump for ten seconds on stage when they should have done what we've seen time and again, put him down, cover him up, take him to the car, guide him in the car safely and never ever let a second or a third shooter have an exposed shot to him. >> yeah. you're exactly right. that's a very good question.

it's hard to imagine what was going through their minds. it's worth remembering these are brave people who threw themselves at the former president in order to put themselves in harm's way to protect him. you're right that the ethos of the secret service in the '90s, i remember they walked me through their ethos in a detaed and granular way. it's cover and evacuate. remember ronald reagan. the secret service shoved reagan into the waiting limo literally in a secd or two and got him out of there. wanted to go back to the white house. as jerry par sees reagan's mouth begin to foam and searched through his armpitor the bullet hole and directs them to the hospital, which is what saved reagan's life.

the secret service is not just responsible for covering -- but not listening t him if he wanted to pump his fist at the crowd. the priority is get him out of there. he's a big guy. he must be hard to move, i imagine, if he's not willing to. but they had enough people around him that ty're supposed to lift him . in the wte house dick cheney was inis office on 9/11 and secret serce rushes into his office and one of his agents is behind him in a second and lifting him up by thepants, literally physically offis feet to get him out of that office down to the bunker, because they think another plane is heading toward the white house. that's the doctrine the secret service is supposed to follow. >> peter, let's be clear. these people came into the secr service because they wanted to protect presidents.

they wanted to protect candidates. we salute them all for their service. my question from the beginning has been about training. whorained these people? how did the secret service stray far from that ethos that you talked about? i suspect there a going to be radical changes insidehe secret service including a change of leadership soon, would you not guess? >> we'll see what happs, obviously. but you're right that there will be questions and second guessing. let's remember training is not the same thing as an actual situation where gunfire is happening. but you're right. it's supposed to be instinct, instantaneous, without thought. you saw one of the agents trying to put his hand up to get between any possible additional shots, but trump is a big guy and they allowed him to be

visible to the crowd for a remarkable long time ifou look at it in hindsight. i think people will look at the training and say what can we do to avoid this kind of situation again. >> it's striking three days later now how little we know about the shooter. we know his name, his age. we know he's a registered republican who at some point gave money to a progressive group as a teenager. is there any information from his phone, his devices, any laptop he had? >> as a matter of fact, willie, in fact, fbi officials are telling us that the laptop and the cell phone now exploited, they've come up dry. they've not really learned anything from going through his private messages. we know that he had very little in the way of public social media profile, which is

perplexing. two things, though, stand out to me in the accounts i'm seeing as reporters interview neighbors and friends. one, persistent accounts that he was bullied and ridiculed about his hygiene, about his appearance, that he was a loner throughout high school. that we've seen time and time again in these mass shootings with violent young man who become alienated and radicalized. also there were more than a dozen guns in that house, purchased legally apparently. his parents were licensed professional councillors. his dad was reportedly a libertarian. there were reports they had a trump sign in their yard. those are the things that stand out to me in sort of trying to understand. we may never understand. we may never know the motive. we still don't know what motivated the las vegas mass shooter. that was just a mystery.

if he was careful to not leave any trail and didn't talk to other people and acted solely alone, we may never know what motivated this individual. >> ken dilanian and peter baker, thank you both very much for being on this morning. coming up on "morning joe," cnbc's andrew ross sorkin will join us to discuss the reaction from the business community to donald trump's choice of jd vance as his running mate. plus, we'll go over the potential impact of the endorsement from tech billionaire elon musk, who now says he will commit millions every month to help trump's campaign. we'll also dig into the new comments from fed chair jerome powell about when the central bank might start cutting interest rates. cutting interest rates psoriasis or active psoriatic arthritis, symptoms can sometimes take you out of the moment. now there's skyrizi,

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31 past the hour, a live look athe white house. elon mus is reportedly ready to give millions of dolla to help donald trump win november's election. the "wall street urnal" reports that musk, who had previously said he would not donate to either candidate, now said he plans to give around $45 million a month to a pro-trump super pac, according to people familiar with the matter. joining us is andrew ross sorkin. so what changed his mind, andrew? >> i should say we're still trying to get some clarity around what's going on with the money. on twitter or x, i should say, he put out a meme attached to the "wall street journal" story claiming it was fake. what part of it is fake, we do not know. we're trying to understand a

little bit better about how much money he may or may not be donating. he previously had said he did not intend to donate to either party. having said that, it was unclear whether he would endorse a candidate. he is now clearly very vocally endorsing former president trump. he did that literally within moments after the shooting that took place on saturday. lots of folks in the business world trying to understand what the implications would be of having elon musk not just next to donald trump but whispering in his ear about all sorts of things, whether it be about how to regulate ai and technology companies, subsidies or lack of subsidies for automobile companies. he's been outspoken against labor unions. so there's a whole buffet of issues elon musk brings to the table, and the question is what kind of influence he would have

on former president trump if, in fact, he becomes the president. >> we see the numbers. over 40,000, of course, the stock market all-time highs. it's looking like it's going up this morning as well. i suspect that may have less to do with jd vance or elon musk or last night's national anthem than it does wh jay pell and expectations that a rate cut is coming very soon. >> no question. jay powell maybe the most powerful man as it relates the economy in the world right now. he made comments in washington, d.c. where he suggested for the first time in a longime -- th is a little bit of tea leaf reading - that maybe he would, in fact, cut rates this year. he was in conversation with david rubinstein

have seen just this past month inflation come down. in fact, consumer prices actually reversed. then the question is when, in fact, if he was going to cut rights when he would do that. he may have an opportunity to do that in september. does he wait until after the election in november? does this happen in december? those are really the big questions at this point. but he clearly said he's not going to be waiting for inflation to come down to 2% before he would cut rates. his view is i it got down to 2% before heut rates, he'd almost be too late that's what led to the move in equity markets as we've seen the stock market pick up both yesterday a today. >> the running mate of donald trump senator jd vance of ohio, how he'sooking to sort of reshap given his background and policy positions, the relationship between the republican par and big

business. what did you find? >> you can read it in the "wall street journal's" editorial page today. this is clearly a doubling down on trumpism. but trumpism and jd vance-ism may be two different things. jd vance has associated himself with some policies that even kahn. he's been more of an advocate in labor in a lot o ways. you saw the head of the teamsters union at the repuican national convention yesterday. it really sortf scrambles a lot of what was the association of the conventional view the republican party had with business and that jd vance is much me of apopulist. what makes that unique is after he wrote "hillbilly elegy" he spent time in the world of

venture capitalorking with steve case and peter thiel. it creates questions about how much influence he'll have on president trump on some of these issues. for example, president trump has been very critical about some of the regulatory state that he sees under president biden. it's unclear whether jd vance completely agrees with him. what does that mean for big tech companies for example? what does that mean for the elon musks of the world? and what does it mean for energy and everythingelse? i think we're going to have to see how ts plays out and really,ore importantly, see how much influence jd vance has on donald trump. of course, that would be the case only if he wi, so we'll see. >> this is what the "wall street journal" editorial page concludes about jd vance. mr. trump's choice suggests he's

so confident in his electoral prospects that he didn't need a running mate to lead swing voters. perhaps he's right, though the white house is relieved he didn't choose a more experience political figure. he has a very short political caer and his career has been definedy his migration from being anti-trump to pro-trump. coming up, president biden is set to unveil a plan aimed at lowering housing costs. marcia fudge joins us. plus who says a peaceful transfer of power can't happen in washington? we'll expin. "morning joe" will be right back. we'll explain. "morning joe" will be right ba

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your allies, james clyburn and nancy pelosi, have kind of put it out there that they're giving you time to make your decision. what i hear from you is that you made your decision. are you still comfortable in that decision? has anything changed in the last several days? >> no. >> do you feel like you've weathered the storm on this issue of whether or not you should be on the ticket or not? >> look, 14 million people voted for me to be the nominee in the democratic party, okay? i listen to them. >> who do you listen to on deeply personal issues like the decision whether to stay in the race or not? >> me. look, i've been doing this a long time. the idea that i'm the old guy, i

am, i'm old, but i'm only three years older than trump, number one. and, number two, my mental acuity has been pretty damn good. i've gotten more done than any president has in a long, long time in 3 1/2 years. so i'm willing to be judged on that. i understand, i understand why people say, god, he's 81 years old. what's he going to be when he's 83 or 84 years old? it's a legitimate question to ask. >> i think the mental acuity response is actually a very good response, especially for those democrats that are attacking him that worked in past administrations, because this is a guy whose mental acuity was questioned from the very beginning, and yet look what he's done. and he's done it while a lot of democrats were attacking him as well as republicans saying he's

too old, he doesn't understand that washington's changed. he can't work with republicans. he can't get bipartisan legislation done. i mean, we could get the quotes. they were all saying that. it's like poor old guy. he doesn't understand. joe biden has gotten more bipartisan legislation through than any president this century. >> increased the size of nato and strengthened it. >> he strengthened nato to the strongest point it's been since its creation in 1947, 1948. so, yeah, you look at his mental acuity, if you just test him by his results, if you test him by the bipartisan legislation that he's done, if you listen to what kevin mccarthy told his staff members, what democrats have talked about as far as when he got in the room, how he guided people through that. if you look at what's happened,

again, right now there's a peace deal that he's put together, that he's been working along with his extraordinary national security team that may just yet move us to a peaceful resolution in gaza. if you judge him by those results, if you judge him by the number of jobs, record number of jobs, if you judge him by the fact that the dollar is stronger than it's been in 30, 40, 50 years, he seems to pass pretty well as far as being a president and governing. >> what has happened since the debate? i think it was fair to have a lot of questions after that night. we all had them. >> we did. >> so he said, watch me. and what has happened since the debate? not only is he doing his job, is he campaigning, is he getting on stage and getting audiences going crazy saying we have your back, unlike others.

he's doing interviews. it also seems to me that at a time like this with everything that's going on, the last thing the democrats need is to be chaotic and disorganized. >> let's bring in nbc news senior white house correspondent kelly o'donnell and white house correspondent for politico eugene daniels. there's going to be a power shift between these two at some point. we're going to have them talk about that in a minute. kelly, i want to start with you. i talked to democratic pollsters over the past couple of days who have said that if you look at the polls and you see how the race is still close in the public polls that are out there, it's very easy to come to the conclusion that democratic infighting has hurt the president more than the debate did itself.

>> reporter: theres certainly an argument to be made questions about his ability to serve can be harmful. it is not unlike when jimmy carter was running and ted kennedy at the time staged a campaign against him and ultimately that weakened jim carter's chances to seek reelection. he obviously lost his bid to get a second term. that is the issu at the same time, while people do have concerns about age. the psident is clear-eyes about people being able to ask those questions. where it becomes challenging is some of the work that eugene and do. that ishat people get to see and assess the president. he'll be talking with reporters who cover him every day, who see the differences in policy, talk to him and interact on a daily

basis. having the public have that information is a way for them to assess if they are comfortable. when we talk about and have a chance to ask the president only the things he can answer for about his own experience, his decision making, his circle of influence, his conviction to stay in the race, only he can answer those questions, not staff, not the campaign, not ads produced by the biden/harris team. that's why access to the president is so important. and then voters, especially those in battleground states who have not made up their minds, who might be persuadable, that is useful information. it's part of what eugene and i in our work on behalf of the white house correspondents association have been trying to do, more opportunities to see, question and assess the president, not for reporters, but for the public that all of us serve and for them to then be able to say i think he can or cannot do it. that's for the voters to decide.

>> eugene, president biden resumes campaigning today. maybe some shifts in rhetoric, but largely he's going to continue to make the same arguments he's been making, framing this as a choice between himself and donald trump and suggesting that trump, yes, could take away people's rights and stands as a danger to democracy at home and abroad. give us this contrast in messaging we'll hear today. >> this is the needle he has to thread now, right? he said in that interview with lester holt talking about how he has to be able to call that out. they did a call about jd vance yesterday. they didn't really hold back about how they perceive him and comes to their policies, right? so that's the tonal shift you will hear. there will be talk about the policies. they want to continue to talk about how they feel like he wants to -- he has

antidemocratic motives, donald trump, but they have to figure out how to do it in a way that doesn't inflame anything, is the way they're viewing it. president biden obviously doesn't feel like he has done that, but you are going to see every single day, it almost doesn't matter what the president says, every single day, republicans are going to use anything that the president, the vice president, and really any democrat says against them because of what happened on saturday. so you're going to see the president, like kelly said, talking to b.e.t. he'll continue to do a bunch of rallies. the vice president will get back on the road. they're trying to figure out what it looks like and, more importantly, barrel ahead. they are also dealing with a lot of people in their party still questioning whether president biden should be at the top of the ticket, especially after saturday, right? the iconic image. >> right. >> kind of scaring democrats into thinking that is going to give president -- former president donald trump sympathy with voters whoaybe didn't have it then or fire a lotf the maga base here.

>> so as you might have surmised, kelly, yesterday, finished her term as president of the white house correspondence association, handing the reins over to eugene. i take it that this picture went peacully, kelly. >> peaceful transition. [ laughter ] >> we committed to that. we delivered on it. eugene and i are friends. now, i'm happy to tel him that when the white house calls at 5:00 a.m., they're dialing you, my friend, not me anymore. >> exactly. >> oh! >> it is a volunteer job where we represent the interests of 800 journalists, 250 news organizations, and the whca in part is one point of contact for the white house where we help to plan every iteration that the president has with journalists who cover him. it is a he task. it's one that has been a great privilege in my life. eugene was my vice president during my term, and now i will be cheering for him and watching what he does with our

organization going forward. i kno we are in really good hands. >> and, eugene,he's very comfortable, what will happen when you take the call at 5:00 a.m. >> yes. she and h husband, david, i'm sure are very excited that those calls will be coming to my home now. you know, kelly has done, i have to say this, an amazing job at expanding the access that we as white house correspondents and journalists enjoy. focusing on the importance and the gravity of the work that we often do. she really does keep us focused on the task at hand, right? not focusing on all the distractions that end up happening. those are the same things that will continue, right, no matter who is in charge in the white house. the house behind kelly. we do the same work. talking to the white house and tussing with the white house a bit about the rooms we should be allowed in. on behalf of not us, right? we're nosey and want to be in

there, but this is about being the eyes and ears of the american people, getting to the pele that lead and holding them accountable, and doing it over and over again, especially in this perilous time in the country. the work weo has never been more important. the ptographers on saturday who got the iconic pictures a members of our association, right? that is the kind of work and the tenacity of the organization that we serve. >> well, kelly, we thank you. >> very proud, yes. >> thank you for your service. >> thank you. it's been a real privilege. >> eugene, congralations. former president of the white house correspondence association, nbc's kelly o'donnell, and the organization's new president, "politico's" eugene daniels, thank you, both, very much, for being on this morning. president joe biden will be in las vegas today to announce new action to lower housing costs across the country. according to a fact sheet obtained by nbc news, the action will include calls for congress to pass a law requiring

landlords to cap rent increases at 5% or risk losing out on federal tax breaks. >> with us now, former secretary of housing and urban development under president biden, marcia fudge. today,he's officially joining the biden/harris 2024 campaign as a national co-chair. thank you so muchor being with us. obviouy, the affordability of housing is one of the greatest -- >> huge issue. >> -- challenges facing, i was going to say you americans, but young and old americans alike. >> it absolutely is. thank you for having me this morning. i'm happy to be a part of the team. housings a crisis in this country, and it has been for some time. i'm really excited about the fact that the president is announcing this in las vegas where the crisis is particularly acute. housing prices, especially rent are going up 10%, 20% annually, and it is making it such that we have more and more people who need assistance, more and more people being pushed to e streets.

i think thathe president is saying to this country, i hear you. i see the problem. i know the problem. i'm going to do everything i can to solve the problem. i'm really excited about what can happen when we try to make sure that every american has decent and safe housing and affordable housing. that's what today is about. >> secretary fudge, good morning. you obviously have rsthand experience in this. >> good morning. >> you've witneed it from the inside as secretary of hud. what are the big challenges from the inside thatou saw? you might have come in with an idea about how you were going to fix things. what are the challenges that face anyone looking for housing, exnsive, less expensive, orcoun? >> well, there are only two things we can do. one is build more housing. unl we put more housing in the market, the market is going to continue to drag the prices up. there has tbe more affordable housing. secondly, as we're talking about las vegas again, one in three hos in various parts of las vegas are purched by corporate buyers.

corporate buyers come in, they own almost one-third of the recently sold housing in places like florida, las vegas, and other places. so they drive the prices up becausehey hold on to them. they don't sell them. they rent them. they raise the rents on an annual basis. it's created a real problem because we have no control over how that is happening. that is why the president is saying it's time for congress to do someing, to act, to make sure that people are not being gouged and that people can continue to expect to find something that they can live in that is fordable. >> madam secretary, you, of course, used to represent the state of ohio in congss also from ohio,onald trump's running mate, jd vance, someone you know. give us your impressionsf trump's pick. >> i would just say this, i'm not sure any of us know who jd vance is. just in my time knowing anything about him, he has reinvented himself at least three different times. the only thing i'm clear on is that he wants a national

abortion ban with no exceptions, and that he believes women should continue to live in abusive households. that's the only thing he has been consistent on that i'm aware of. ohio, i think, would do well to continue to try to figure out who he is. >> all right. national co-chair for the biden/harris 2024 campaign, former housing and urban development secretary marcia fudge, thank you so much for being on this morning. >> thank you. >> take care. that does it for us this morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage in two minutes. if you have bladder leaks when you laugh or cough like we did, there's a treatment that can help: bulkamid and the relief can last for years. we're so glad we got bulkamid. call this number, today. get your bladder back.

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