part. if the president isn't there, this person close to the white house is positing people will be able to express the authentic appreciation, affection, they have for president biden and will be moving ahead with a new nominee that they can -- that they believe can beat former president trump, who as you said reminded some democrats last night, eminently beatable. >> the deadline is august 1st. virtual roll call for the dnc nominee. there's a sense if change is going to happen, it will happen in the coming days, likely sometime next week or early this weekend once the president recovers more from covid. cofounder of axios mike allen, thank you for joining us live in milwaukee. thanks to all of you for getting up way too early on this friday morning. a different-looking show power. >> there's an entry.

>> through the years, they bleed more. >> you learn something. >> donald trump took in. assassination attempt. that tone and message of unity lasted for about 30 minutes. the final hour of his address was much more meandering and he seemed to lose steam. it also included some of his usual lies about the 2020 election and on the issue of immigration and it also included threats of massive deportation. the president's campaign remains defiant. we will have the very latest reporting on all of that, but

first, willie, we need to let our viewers know about some technical issues we may be facing. go ahead. >> yeah. this is a major story impacting the world and impacting us here on our show. a major technology outage hitting businesses worldwide including some of our production. "the wall street journal" reports an update from crowdstrike appears to cause the outages for microsoft users. in response to the outage a microsoft spokesperson saying we are aware of the issue affecting a subset of customers. we acknowledge how impactful this is to our customers and we are work being to restore services for those still experiencing disruptions as quickly as possible. the tech issue forced american, delta, united to cause groundings. all flights in a statement american airlines says, quote, we're aware of a technical issue with crowdstrike that is impacting multiple carriers.

we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. crowdstrike said this is not a security incident or cyber attack. it's been identified, isolated and a fix they say is in the works, joe. this obviously, yes, it's hitting our show. you might see it in production. airlines grounding flights across the country this morning. >> oh, my gosh. >> i love the language. affected a subset of our customers. >> a subset? >> people just north of cooperstown, new york. no, no, no, it's impacting the entire world. not to get too far into it, willie. this is what happens when you have companies like microsoft that many people consider to be a monopoly. if something goes down with

microsoft software, it just -- just about everybody is impacted and just about everything as far as commerce goes seems to be shut down. >> yeah. i mean, we're all so tied in to technology. obviously every facet of our lives and one piece of that goes down, it takes down an awful lot with it. they are working through it. we hope those flights can get up and moving again, but really nothing concrete yet. just saying crowdstrike, we've identified it, we've isolated it, we're working on it. bear with us this morning as we put on four hours of television. >> you know. >> only four. >> here's the great thing. t.j. >> sort of normal for us. >> t.j. has an excuse now. >> my bad. >> three months from now he's going to go, microsoft. >> crowdstrike. >> microsoft outage. >> along with joe, willie and me, we have jonathan lamere and

ed pock, john heilman, eugene robinson joins us this morning. a lot to get to. >> two huge stories. i'll tell you, once again it's strange this week. the drama on the democratic party. >> a lot. >> has almost completely eclipsed what's going on at the republican national convention. >> donald trump has accepted the party's nomination. he delivered a record-setting 93 minute address at the rnc in milwaukee. it was his first speech since his shooting at the rally on saturday and he described what may have saved his life. >> in order to see the chart i started to like this turn to my right and was ready to begin a

little bit further turn, which i'm very lucky i didn't do, when i heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear. i said to myself, wow, what was that? it can only be a bullet. and moved my right hand to my ear, brought it down. my hand was covered with blood. there was blood pouring everywhere and yet in a certain way i felt very safe because i had god on my side. i felt that. if i had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin's bullet would have perfectly hit its mark and i would not be here tonight. we would not be together.

>> my god. trump made the remarks while standing next to the firefighter suit of the man who was killed in saturday's shooting. cory compratore. he said the discord and division in our society must be healed. i am running to be president for all of america, not half of america. he then called on democrats to drop the federal and state cases against him calling them a, quote, partisan witch hunt. when trump turned to his policy agenda, he focused on immigration promising to carry out the largest deportation operation in u.s. history in re-elected. >> it's a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction. we have to stop the invasion into our country that's killing hundreds of thousands of people

a year. >> no hope or dream we have for america can succeed unless we stop the illegal immigrant invasion. they're coming from prisons. they're coming from jails. they're coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. >> republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country. i will not let these killers and criminals into our country. i will keep our sons and daughters safe. the. >> just a couple things right here. we're going to continue going here. but i do have to say, jonathan lamere, it is worth reminding people that are watching here that illegal crossings from mexico into the united states reached a 50-year low under

barack obama and they were at that 50-year low at the same time donald trump was running in 2016 talking about an invasion, an illegal immigration invasion, and those numbers have gone up. they went up under donald trump and they exploded under joe biden. they have started to go down just like crime numbers have started to go down as well, but this remains a very potent issue and a very potent issue not just for republicans but also independent swing voters and a lot of democrats, which is why the democratic party got behind a republican's very tough bill on illegal immigration to actually have more border security than we've ever had. and it was killed by republicans. >> killed by republicans because donald trump wanted to preserve it as an election year issue. senator langford was in the room and would have liked to have seen a couple of thought bubbles

from him while he listened to donald trump complain about the border. i do think we need a moratorium here in the media about donald trump's -- praising donald trump's new tone. that doesn't ever happen on this show, mind you. certainly the first 20, 25 minutes of the speech, the lengthy recitation of what happened on saturday was new, different. the room was silent. people were listening. there were some in the crowd who had tears in their eyes streaming down their cheeks as trump talked about his brush with death, but once that moved on it was suddenly a donald trump rally again, maybe a little more subdued in this terms of tone, but full of false claims about things like immigration and a rambling, dark rhetoric that does seem out of place, joe and mika, with what so many americans do face, with reality in this country right now. i will say and we're going to spend so much time this morning talking about it, there are republicans who expressed it was a missed opportunity for trump to try to for the first time

ever as a political candidate to reach out beyond his base. a number of democrats say, look, this is a guy we can beat, what a flawed candidate he is, which is why there's so much scrutiny about president biden's upcoming decisions. >> well, there is so much scrutiny about that. i will say, willie, there is republicans at the rnc are supremely confident regardless of any misgiving there may have been from republican consultants last night, the people in that room by all accounts believe that donald trump is their man, he's going to win, he's going to restore america's greatness and that he has the hand of god on him. not anybody else that were watching but that's what republicans feel. >> they feel confident. >> oh, extremely confident. the most confident, i think, any republican party has ever felt going into an election in late

summer. also, you notice he had the elvis lights behind him. >> i noticed that. >> i did. >> the trump thing, had the elvis lights behind him. he's going full elvis here, but it was -- >> there you are. >> elvis '68, baby. the '68 special. i think i've seen you in front of things like that before, willie. >> just missing the black letter, joe. >> yeah. >> there will be people throughout the day picking through the speech, talking about what he said. the hannibal lechter stuff. standard fare. make no mistake of it, this is a republican party that goes into the general election more unified than they've been at any time, my gosh, in 20 years. >> yeah. and you go into an nbc poll going into this convention that showed nearly 3/4 of republicans

support their pick for president. donald trump now after all the debate and all the discussion after january 6th, you think about where the party was, it's time to turn the page, we have to move on, they are there. donald trump is their guy. you saw it in the room last night. the confidence comes not just from their candidate but from, of course, what they're watching on the other side. they believe in some ways they can stand back and let the democrats beat each other up. they show donald trump making up more ground. i will say and i'm sure you heard this, too, democrats have been depressed lately, let's just say it, about the state of play. as they watch that speech, it was an excellent convention, the way they put it on. they could watch the speech.

the man who died, trump talked about his own experience on saturday. as the page turned, democrats had a moment of, oh, right, this is donald trump. this is a guy we can beat when he talks this way. this is rally trump. so whether it's joe biden -- >> right. >> -- or someone else, democrats for a brief moment anyway last night, mika, thought we're still in this thing. this is the guy we can beat. >> yeah. and also just to cap off this conversation, trump went into foreign policy. he boasted about his meeting with the head of the taliban as well as north korean leader kim jung un and claimed that he could, quote, stop wars with just a telephone call. he falsely claimed democrats cheated during the 2020 election. the big lie still out there in a big way. he didn't, of course, touch on abortion or january 6th so

stayed away from that. we'll turn now to the continued and growing pressure on president biden to drop out of the race. several people close to the president tell "the new york times" they believe biden is beginning to accept the idea he might not win in november. this comes as grassroots fundraising is not keeping up with the demands of the campaign. one source tells nbc news that biden's team expects to only raise 25% of the big donor money it had originally projected to raise in july. meanwhile, former president barack obama reportedly has concerns about president biden's ability to stay at the top of the ticket. now this is what two sources told nbc news. the former president sees biden's victory as, quote, getting harder. one of the sources said. the washington post reports former president obama has said president biden needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy and with those

comments he, willie, finds himself in a situation that is getting more grave. >> yeah. the biden camp though pushed back. >> they did. the biden camp offered some of the most aggressive push back with one source telling nbc news, quote, can we all just remember for a minute that these are the same people who are trying to push joe biden out are the same people who literally gave us all donald trump. in 2015 obama, pelosi, schumer pushed biden aside in favor of hillary. they were wrong then and they are wrong now. the source also pouring water on concerns over biden's poll numbers pointing to polling back in 2016, the election that showed hillary clinton leading trump by as much as 9 points. that source adding, quote, how did this all work out for everyone back in 2016? perhaps we should learn a few lessons from 2016. one of them is polls are bs,

just ask secretary clinton and, two, maybe, just maybe, joe biden is more in touch with actual americans than obama, pelosi, schumer. >> john heilman, this is fascinating. there was a tale of two biden campaigns yesterday and a tale of two democratic parties. you would listen to most of the people that were talking yesterday were suggesting that the president is moving the direction of getting out of the race and very specific discussions taking place, but you also had campaign officials who aggressively pushed back on the fact but let's be clear here, you have had schumer, pelosi, jeffries, barack obama, just about every major democrat expressing their concern

directly to president biden. reverend sharpton i saw in "the new york times" in an article expressing their concerns that he could lose and he could damage his legacy. a spade of polls, public polls, cbs has him down five points. swing state polls are going in a bad direction in mexico, minnesota, virginia, new hampshire. a lot of states that were not in play leading up to the debate suddenly more than in play for donald trump. so what happens? >> joe, i think one thing -- i mean, one thing that happened yesterday was as this -- we were on this yesterday morning talking about the kind of extraordinary administrative series of things that happened the day before. yesterday the kind of -- there was a little bit of a feeding frenzy around this. i think especially with president biden having covid and being in rehoboth, the din, the

kind of clamor on cable news i think for some people around president biden starting to feel kind of disrespectful in that it was not a world where he in that isolated state where he was sick, not -- i'm not trying to over blow it, but there was a part on the biden cam pain trying to put on the breaks where people started to make very specific claims about timetables and that the decision had been made, there was a timetable, here was what he was going to do. i don't know about the quality of some of that reporting, but they pushed back hard on some of that. the it got over board to them in that regard. they wanted to throw a brushback pitch and sort of say president biden needs time, still needs some time especially given the fact that he's ill. it is the case that the factors that you, mika, i, everybody

else on the show talked about yesterday did not get better yesterday. by that i mean, you know, some very basic things. how do you run a presidential campaign without any money? that problem has -- got worse yesterday. donors, say what you want to say about them, have now gone to the democratic congressional campaign committee and the democratic senatorial committee said we're not just shutting off joe biden right now, we're going to shut off the congressional campaigns because your guy's job is, from our point of view, is to talk sense to joe biden and if -- and if you can't talk sense to joe biden -- if we're not going to give him money because we think he has no path, he's going to drag -- we believe on the basis of the metrics that we're looking at, i'm speaking as a fake donor here, he's going to drag you down, why should we throw good money after bad into a lost cause in the house and senate? we're not talking about donors

flexing their muscles in a way that threatens not just the reeven leks campaign of the president but all of those people running for re-election or seeking re-election in the house and senate. that has exacerbated the problem. how grave that problem is is rapidly becoming very clear. so that pressure is still very much on. and then as you said, some of the polling numbers as they become increasingly public. i would focus on one thing in particular. some of these numbers, forget what you think about battleground state -- horse race numbers. the attribute numbers, the number now about whether president biden is mentally -- is fit for office is -- those numbers are just -- are getting to the point where they're quite scary. you can't -- it's very difficult to be re-elected president if upwards of 80% of voters in the country don't think you're

equipped for office. that's -- there's polling around that. i know the biden team, schumer, pelosi, obama, all those people have seen in the past few days that say that. those numbers are -- not only are they bad but they're very hard to turn around. hard to imagine how you're going to turn that around going forward. >> so, mika, just underlined a couple of things that john said that nailed it. the biggest issue, immediate issue, is money. the donors have stopped giving money, and it's almost completely ground down to a halt. the story of jeffrey katzenberg telling president biden this got eclipsed from the covid diagnosis. so that is a problem. i will say also you got a lot of information yesterday, there was a lot of off the record

conversations, a lot of plans being made about president biden moving toward getting out of the race this weekend that stopped when there was some very specific reporting later in the afternoon. mark halpern being very specific on some reporting that other reporters at newspapers and networks had parts of that reporting, but not all of it together. i think at that point is when we started to see the campaign pushing back because what people close to joe biden have said all along is, he's a man of great pride. he can be stubborn and tough. don't back him into the corner. if he's going to do this, let him do it his way on his time frame, and when all of these reports started coming out, that's when the campaign started pushing back. i think part of that is giving

him the space to make this decision, to finish making this decision with his family this weekend. >> he's also a man of faith and a man of tremendous historic accomplishment and, look, it's impossible to ignore where this is going and exactly what started it. i'm not unaware of that. at the same time, i still believe that you don't know what you have until it's gone and that there will be that feeling at some point. >> you think there will be -- when he -- if he leaves the race you think democrats will regret it? >> i do. i do. >> yeah. >> because many reasons which i've already stated, i won't say it again, don't worry, but none of these are backed by a strong alternative, an alternative that has beat trump before, an alternative that is vetted, an alternative that is tested. so that's a lot to throw away. coming up, we'll ask these

questions to people who know a lot more than me about it, reporters on the story and the washington post's eugene robinson will join us. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe" in 90 seconds. i used to leak urine when i coughed, laughed or exercised. i couldn't even enjoy playing with my kids. i leaked too. i just assumed it was normal. then we learned about bulkamid - an fda-approved, non-drug solution for our condition. it really works, and it lasts for years. it's been the best thing we've done for our families. visit findrealrelief.com to find an expert physician near you. ask if bulkamid is right for you and discuss potential risks. results and experiences may vary. move beyond the leaks.

okay, kids. time for the pledge. i pledge allegiance to the flag and to the president of the united states of america, and to the biblical values for which our country stands, and the natural order of man and woman under god, loyal to the president at all times... with liberty and justice for all. welcome back. >> "morning joe," you're looking at ragan national airport. 6:25 in the morning. microsoft outages have impacted

businesses across the country, including airlines. american and delta have had flights interrupted this morning. american, i think, moving towards resolving some of those issues. so, gene, some issues that will not be resolved so quickly are the future of the democratic party and who will be running for president this fall. we all heard yesterday joe biden is considering getting out this weekend. we also -- i say i heard a good bit of reporting last thursday and friday and we talked about that, gene, about -- >> yeah. >> -- talk that he's getting out of the race last weekend. that didn't happen either. so it ain't over until it's over. that said, an awful lot of talk about president biden considering stepping aside, which the campaign quelled when the reporting got, let's say, a

little too specific. the. >> yeah. we did have those discussions last week, joe, and so here we are once again and, you know, one does think that maybe as those -- that reporting gets more and more specific it becomes less and less likely that president biden -- or it becomes more likely that he gets back up and says, hold on. wait a minute. and his team gets more defiant in that respect and that's kind of understandable. you know, who knows. that could certainly happen again this week. you know, i think those two stories that we've been talking about this morning, the former president's speech and president biden's fate as a candidate are linked. and i think in a way that speech last night will kind of

intensify this angst and debate in the democratic party. i think a lot of democrats will -- you know, who watched that speech. i watched all 93 minutes of it. i stayed up to watch the whole thing, and that thought that everybody has. this guy can be beaten. this is not a juggernaut candidate. this is not, you know, ali in his prime or anything. this guy can be beaten. when he got to hanibal lechter and all of that, this is not really even the same old donald trump. this is a donald trump that is more meandering, who is less focused, who is less able to stay on a theme of -- who had a lay-up to make last night and couldn't -- and flubbed the lay-up. he didn't make it. all he had to do was come and

say some kind of unifying things and accept the nomination and let the balloons drop. that's all he had to do and he couldn't do that. so i think, you know, a lot in the party are going to say, if only we have a younger, more vigorous candidate. i mean, then we can beat this guy. and i think, conversely, there could be the reaction in biden world, in president biden's inner circle, that, gee, we can beat this guy. we can still beat this guy because he's not, you know, this towering unbeatable figure that the republicans seem to portray him as. so we'll see how that happens. senator john tester came out yesterday, second senator to come out and say that president biden should withdraw just flat

out. we know that's significant to president biden because of his long tenure in the senate. so we will see how things develop hour to hour. >> and obviously senator tester has a very difficult race ahead in the next few months in montana, so he came out publicly yesterday. for more on the thinking inside the democratic party. let's go to carolyn lee and tyler paige. carol, i was reading all of your reporting yesterday, you had a lot of it, you and your team there in d.c. on the one hand you had biden senior aides saying we have a plan to get through this. we're hanging in. we're going to weather this storm. then at the same time we have another biden aide saying we are close to the end, talking about biden's campaign. how do you assess from your reporting this state of play as we wake up today? >> it's a great question. i would assess it this way. we've been covering the story for literally three weeks now, three weeks today. all of us have had conversations

with allies and aides to the president inside the white house campaign, close to the white house and campaign. yesterday those conversations were a little bit different in the sense that some of the people that i have talked to and some of my colleagues have talked to over the last three weeks who are really intent that the president was in this, there was a path ahead and they were plowing forward changed their tune a little bit. to that point to say we are close to the end. the writing is on the wall. those were the kind of things you're hearing from people who are close to the president and it's because of a number of things that we've been talking about. the erosion of support both from top, very public democrats and in the polling, the money that's drying up. that 25%, the projection that the campaign is going to raise 25% of what it had originally projected for the month of july, that's down from last week when they thought it would be 50% of that. it's not going up, it's going down. it's not getting better. it's getting worse.

we also know from our own reporting that's factored into this, the president is a little more open considering stepping aside. we have reported his conversations in the past week have become, quote, reality based. there is discussion about what his place in history may look like. things like that, just the tone and tenor of those kinds of conversations are changing. at the same time, this is his decision and everybody is clear about that. until he says otherwise, he is the nominee. that's why you saw people close to him and the campaign saying, hold up. we need to give him space. basically back off. the other thing that's happening here, willie, there's a lot of resentment backing up among the people closest to the president, resentment for the way he is being treated by some of the party's leadership, specifically former president obama, former speaker nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. their silence in all of this

feels like a bit of a betrayal but also the leaks they're seeing. one person described this to us as, in one word, sad. >> as mika reported at the top of the show, the push back much more forceful. anonymous quotes around joe biden saying these are the same people, talking about pelosi, obama, others who skipped over joe biden in 2016 and look what happened there. tyler, you're looking a the the angle of president obama who is a fascinating figure. you broke the story that president obama believes the path to victory has narrowed perhaps too far for president biden. what is the relationship like right now between not just president obama and president biden but some feel president obama could have stopped the george clooney op ed because they're so close. what is that dynamic right now? >> obama and biden camps have

always had a good deal of tension that have ebbed and flowed throughout the two men's presidencies. right now there is a lot of frustration and resentment from biden's inner circle towards former president barack obama. they have blamed him for the clooney op ed and feel he could have kept the party united behind joe biden. he put out a statement after joe biden's debate expressing support for the sitting president but since then has been largely silent. he's been taking calls from anxious democrats in the weeks since that debate. what he has conveyed to his allies is he feels his best role in this process is as a sounding board and counselor to joe biden. the two men have only spoken once since that debate in which obama said to the sitting president he's here to support and wants to, you know, be that sort of counselor to the president, but obama has told his allies he's concerned about the president's legacy and about the president himself. he thinks that biden has been a

great president and wants to preserve and protect his legacy. in those conversations he has conveyed to allies that he's concerned about biden's path saying it's -- believing it's been greatly diminished in recent weeks and thinks it's important to think about biden's viability as a candidate. all of these party leaders are greatly concerned about donald trump for years obama has been warning biden in private about trump's political strength and has met with the president over are the years to discuss that. i think this is all part of this great angst within the democratic party about ensuring they defeat donald trump in november. >> and, jonathan lamere, to carolyn's reporting, the way joe biden is being treated right now does feel like a deep betrayal of a presidency of a president who has performed at a top level

on multiple fronts, outwardly on the world stage. domestically with historic bipartisan legislation. no one knows more than joe biden that this is exactly what donald trump wants. he wants chaos. he wants dissension in the democratic party, he wants a lack of loyalty and he wants in fighting. that makes democrats extremely weak and that makes trump win. >> yeah. there's no question there. reporting yesterday as well about the deep resentment from the president's inner circle, both family and his closest advisers as to how he is being treated here. we are seeing top democrats, former speaker pelosi among them, making the calculation what is the best decision to win. the threat trump poses is so great. we need to figure out and set them aside how can they win? they don't think president biden is the person to beat trump anymore even as tonight of him

as they are personally, even though they think he's done a great job as president. it seems that the president is in isolation. that's going to slow the process down a bit in terms of when he makes the final decision, carol. there are deadlines approaching. democrats will have the virtual roll call in a week or so. tell us what sort of timetable you're hearing they're going to operate under. tell us the role vice president harris were to play. if he were to step aside would he anoint harris as a successor or would we have an open convention? >> it's very tricky. the vice president is in a very tricky situation because she's obviously very aware of all of the conversation that's going on.

you can't sort of plan, do anything, actively -- she will be seen from her publicly. a very loyal vice president having the president's back. that has had an impact on how the president feels about her, the values and so the president has several choices to make. one obviously whether or not he stays in the race. two, to your point, what he does in terms of who's next. in our conversations with people close to the president, there's not a clear answer there because it's a little bit tricky for him. does he come out and back somebody. does he have the juice to do that? does that make sense? at the same time you have people who have been some of the strongest backers of the president who have made clear if it's not biden, it's harris. there are a number of factors that are at play here. in terms of the timing, this is a decision that i think from all of our reporting and talking to people, i'm sure you, too, it's

sooner rather than later decision. nobody really wants to drag this out. and one of the questions is can you make that decision? when they do make the decision, if it is for the mr. ez to step aside, can there be a plan in place? what are the contingencies there? >> nbc's carol lee and the washington post tyler pager, thank you both for your reporting this morning. coming up on "morning joe," we'll have the latest on the investigation into the attempted assassination on former president donald trump and the calls for the head of the secret service to step down. "morning joe" will be right back. take on the day. with taltz, up to 90% of patients saw a significant improvement of their psoriasis plaques. some even saw 100% clear skin.

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get the fastest connection to paris with xfinity. beautiful live picture of the white house at 6:45 in the morning on this july friday. the director of the secret service says she has no plans to step down following the assassination attempt on former president trump. the agency released a statement yesterday saying kimberly cheatle is fiercely committed to transparency during the agency's internal investigation. the house oversight committee has subpoenaed cheatle seeking testimony on monday. the secret service says her schedule will not allow her to appear and they're working with the committee on an alternate date. let's bring in ken delaney. it's interesting in the speech.

earlier on former president trump went on to praise the secret service in the shooting. what more can you tell us about the investigation this morning? >> good morning, willie. yeah, well, president trump -- former president trump were praising the secret service. behind the scenes the campaign is growing annoyed by them. you saw calls for the resignation of the secret service director. we all saw that video of the republican senators chasing her down at the republican national convention yelling questions at her that she was refusing to answer. so that's never good when you're a federal official. in terms of the investigation, you know, we're almost a week later and the motives of this 20-year-old shooter remain an enigma. that's the most perfect flexing thing about this. the fbi has been through his phone and devices and they're no closer to figuring out why he did this. they found photos of him,

president biden and merrick garland. he has so little in the way of public and private postings. one of the theories going around is he was an alienated young man looking for notoriety, that there was no political motive here. in terms of the time line, it's very troubling. we learned from that congressional briefing that it was almost an hour before the shooting that place first flagged thomas crooks as a suspicious person near the magnatometers and a half hour before sent a picture and 20 minutes before we're told secret service snipers on the roof behind the trump rally detected crooks on the roof of that building. unclear at that time whether they viewed him as a threat and then of course we know at some point local police confronted him on the roof and flagged there was a man with a gun. what we don't know. the big question unanswered is

how many seconds elapsed between the report on the radio, guy on the roof with a gun and the time that he fired the shots at mr. trump? that's a crucial question. did the secret service have time to pull him off the stage? it's unclear. we knew he had a range finder. there was a suspicious person out there with a range finder and they allowed mr. trump to take the stage. questions about that and questions about how the secret service acted after the shots were fired, guys. >> right. and i wanted to talk to you about that, ken. but, still, failure to secure the roof is, as you were talking about as we've said all along, the failure to notify in an aggressive way the fears of suspicious person well before president trump took the stage, the range finder that they saw. again, how they didn't immediately get the secret service around there is beyond me, but then something you wrote about yesterday and we've talked

about on this show, the amount of time that it took to get president trump off the stage after he was shot. i mean, this is -- this remains to me just an enduring outrage that they didn't immediately grab him and pull him off the stage. that's what they're taught to do, isn't it? >> absolutely, joe. you were one of the first people to flag this because a lot of people said they acted heroically after the shots were fired and they did. they rushed into the line of gunfire to cover up donald trump. most experts i talk to praise those initial seconds but then after that they are appalled about what happened. mr. trump -- they allowed the protectee to dictate the pace. that is not what they are trained be to do. they are trained to man handle, to tackle, to pick up the principal and rush him to safety

regardless of what he wants. we talked about former secret service agents and people who have worked with the state department and british military, they were all flabbergasted that first of all you hear mr. trump saying, i need to get my shoes and they slow down and then they appear to try to be hustling him off the stage. by the way, at that point as you noted, his head was above their head. he was in danger. >> unbelievable. >> if there was a second shooter. then you hear him say, wait, wait, wait, and he pumps his fist at the crowd. that was a brilliant mow lit call move. remember, there was intelligence that the iranians are plotting to kill donald trump in retaliation. if there had been retaliation, been a second shooter mr. trump was exposed to that gunfire, and we are told that's not how it's supposed to happen. you see retired secret service

agents defending that conduct what my sources say is indefensible. >> nabs news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian, thank you very much. we'll be looking for more follow ups on that. and still ahead senator bernie sanders will join us live in studio. we'll ask him whether he thinks president biden should step aside, the republican party, and what would happen if donald trump is re-elected. that is much, much more. "morning joe" will be right back. , much more. "morning joe" will be right back

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comedy legend bob newhart died at the age of 94, a variety show, 14 feature films, three grammars, and two emmy awards. nbc's dana griffon looks back at newhart's life and legacy. >> hello. >> a pioneer in show business bob newhart would blaze a trail. his career began on stage. his trademark the one-sided phone conversation. >> something has come up, and it isn't covered in the manual. >> reporter: known for a scamming yet endearing delivery the deadpan comic got his big break with a comedy record, the first to win album of the year at the grammys. >> i didn't realize the significance of winning album of the year.

>> reporter: he made a movie in the 1970s playing a psychologist on the beloved bob newhart show. he struck comedy goal again. in its final episode revealing the entire run was nothing more than a dream, waking up on the set of his old show. >> you won't believe the dream i just had. >> the president of the united states. >> reporter: he also starred in more than a dozen films playing roles from the oval office to the north pole. >> i can't explain. >> reporter: and after seven nominations. >> what is this? >> reporter: in 2013 he finally won an emmy for his appearance on "the big bang theory." >> i think laughter is essential to life, i really do. >> reporter: and bob newhart kept us laughing for more than half a century. dana griffon, nbc news, los angeles. >> bob newhart was 94 years old. such an influence to see many of the comedians we grew up loving

and we heard from almost all of them yesterday talking about how bob newhart made it cool to be funny and smart at the same time. that 1960 comedy album the button-down of bob newhart won a grammy for album of the year. he beat signatra and nat king coal. he was also best new artist. his impact was felt over 70 years or so, one of the funniest guys to ever live, and he will be missed. >> such a funny, wonderful, beautiful guy and such a sweetness to him. it's a word that doesn't get attached to most comics, but don rickles, he was not -- he was a lovely guy, and i will tell you also newhart, when my family watched it in the '70s, you

know, it was such a turbulent time, and there was bob newhart in the middle of it all. and again, just a sweet, wonderful guy. and then, of course reprised at his role at the end of his newhart series a decade or so later, just perfect. >> he also made it cool to be sweet and adorable and befuddled. >> well, i'm also so glad, willie, that my kids and kids for as long as they're watching christmas shows and tv will get to see him play the role that he played in health. >> yeah, he said i worked for 50 years, but the biggest thing i ever did came when i was 70 something years old in 2003, and he played papa elf, but you're right that plays on a loop every christmas season, and kids of

all generations will always know who bob newhart was. >> so john heilemann, you and i have talked a great bit on the show about the bear. man, it set a new record ahead of the 2024 emmys. the netflix series dominated the comedy category despite the fact it's not a comied. a record previously held by another great show, 30 rock, with 22 nominations back in 2009. meanwhile another fx show shogun led this year's drama category with an impressive 25 nominations. "the bear," though, again anybody who thinks it's a comedy series just look at i think it was episode 7 when we -- there you go -- when we meet jamie lee curtis and the bear's mother. but one of the great series out there, and boy, it got the nominations it deserved.

>> it's incredible. >> yeah, i mean, look, i think it's -- there's a consensus that the second season of "the bear" is as great as the first season of "the bear." not the one that just came out. the emmys are always behind, so this is back to the season we talked a lot about on the show before. you think about the way "the bear" for season 1 dominated the last emmy awards. this year, i think, the smart money is going to be that they are not just going to get nominated for '23, but they're going to take home a lot of those awards when the emmys come around. >> it -- yeah. is it a comedy? it's not a comedy. it's not a comedy but it's a comedy. john heilemann, eugene robinson, thank you both very much for being on this morning. we are at the top of the hour now, and jonathan lemire is still with us. and joining the conversation we have msnbc contributor mike barnacle, president of the

national action network and host of msnbc's politics nation, reverend al sharpton, charlie sykes, and new york times investigative reporter michael schmidt joins us this morning. >> so, rev, we're going to be talking about the discussions around president biden and whether he's going to get out of the race or not this weekend or not. but "the new york times" reporting that you actually had a chance to speak with him yesterday. tell us about it. >> i spoke with him on monday, and what i said to him is that i really feel that people must deal with the record of what he did and his legacy and what he has done. and he must make the decision, and i think all of us should respect that of how to protect that legacy, and that could be by him deciding to go on or him deciding not to with the cold,

unemotional decision. there are those that said i'm saying he should step out. i'm not saying he should step out. i'm saying he should make that decision. and what he's done around voting rights, what he's done around protecting women's right to choose, what he's done in areas of police reform and others that i've worked with him, i think needs to be protected. he may decide the best way to protect it is for him to stay in and he believes he can win all for him to step aside. that's his choice. he should not be pushed off the stage. i think this democratic -- those that are in the democratic party that are trying to push or shove i think are doing a disservice to all of the work that has been done in the last 3 1/2 years by the -- by the biden/harris administration. so, again, i'm not saying he should move out. i'm not pushing for him to step aside. i'm pushing for us to have a very unemotional, clear perspective on how we salvage

the progress that has been made in the last 3 1/2 years and move forward because we have real danger, which was demonstrated last night by donald trump. we have real danger to all those achievements. >> yeah. so several people close to the president tell "the new york times" they believe biden is beginning to accept the idea he might not win in november. that comes as grassroots fund-raising is not keeping up with the demands of the campaign. one source tells nbc news that biden's team expects only to raise 25% of the big donor money it had originally projected to raise in july. meanwhile, former president barack obama reportedly has concerns about president biden's ability to stay at the top of the ticket. that's what two sources told nbc news. the former president sees biden's victory as, quote, getting harder, one of the sources said. "the washington post" reports former president obama has said president biden needs to

seriously consider the viability of his candidacy. and willie and joe -- before we go to willie, i mean just one of the concerns here, though, is that, yes, the viability is waning because of all these people who are constantly talking about the fact he needs to step down. so chicken or egg at this point. i understand this all started with the debate, but at this point what is causing the donations to wane and things like that? is it the talk about it, the constant churning about it? something needs to be done. >> it very well could be, willie, but the fact is that you now have barack obama having his concerns now, nancy pelosi, in the senate, the top democrat in the house, president biden's top fund-raiser telling him flat out we just can't raise money and the money of all these sources have dried up. and there is a -- there is push

back from the biden campaign, and mika read a statement last hour growing anger at especially the obama faction that have been pushing -- trying to push him out saying these are the same people that -- i'm actually quoting what they said. these are the same people who gave us donald trump in 2016 by pushing joe biden out the last time. do they really want to do it again? >> yeah, it's been very interesting, hasn't it, in the last day or so that there's almost for a moment there's this inevitability he's going to get out of the race. the pushback actually has become much stronger for joe biden's team. save for that one report that says he's open to the possibility of getting out of the race, and i'm sure that's true. he's open to a number of possibilities, but that pushback yesterday from the campaign and from the white house is incredibly strong saying maybe don't listen to the people who brought us donald trump, talking about barack obama, talking about nancy pelosi, talking about some of the leading voices, chuck schumer who has

called now apparently behind the scenes for joe biden to get out of the race. one of those voices now joining the chorus is democratic senator john tester of montana calling for president biden to leave the race. in a statement yesterday senator tester wrote montanans have put their trust in me to do what it is right and it is a responsibility i take seriously. i've worked with president biden when it's made montana stronger, and i've never been afraid to stand up to him when he's wrong. and while i appreciate his commitment to our country and service i believe president biden should not seek re-election to a another term merchandise the daily montana reports tester supports an open nominating process to select a new numny, which is an entirely different conversation to get into. if, in fact, joe biden does step aside then what? a lot of people has to say it has to be vice president kamala harris, people within the party. others say open up to the convention and see what happens. so mike barnacle, what is your sense this morning?

this changes it feels from hour-to-hour. senator tester is in a very difficult race to hold onto his seat in montana. these are not just vibes from a lot of people but people looking at internal polls that say if joe biden stays in the race i may lose my seat too, and if democrats lose the senate they may lose the house. from the white house and biden campaign side of it, what is your sense where they are this morning? >> you know, i think they are where a lot of people might be, looking at the level of cruelty that is involved in politics today. here's a man who has given 50 years of his life to the democratic party and the country. here's a man who in 2008 was quite substantial in terms of barack obama being elected, and i would hope president obama has shared his misgivings about joe biden's chances this fall with him personally over the phone rather than having this political death by 1,000 leaks

each and every day. i mean this is like a large family, the biden family of politics gathered together. that's all the democratic party. that's his family. that's what he's devoted his life to. that's who he's helped day to day over 50 years on the ballot or off the ballot. and now they're basically telling him, okay, old man, you can't sit at the head of the table on thanksgiving day. they basically want to throw him out. i mean you can withdraw, but trying to get someone to withdraw after stripping them of humility, of going after them, embarrassing him in public for all these leaks, i think they're angry about if. the reality i'm sure but still it's a product. >> that anger was evident last night with very forceful and specific push back from the biden team that the president had decided to step out -- away from the race.

again, his team is saying that is not the case, he is still in this. we know he is currently recovering at his beach home in rehoboth after covid as the pressure mounts. certainly the walls do seem like they're closing in and the lack -- the fund-raising drying up, these influential democrats that remains to be seen that pushes the president to stay in or the president and the circle himself bows to the reality he can't win. one of the things that will inform his decision is whether or not he's shown data thate pr kamala harris. and michael schmidt, you've been doing a lot of reporting on the vice president and this delicate dance that she and her team have to conduct right now, where they are publicly fully supportive of president biden. i know that's been well received in the west wing, but of course she and her allies recognize that if the president does step aside, there could be an opportunity here. but as willie just noted, we don't know what would happen

next if suddenly there's a vacancy at tatop of the ticket whether president biden would say, look, i want you to go to my running mate or whether there's some kind of open contest. >> yeah, awhat would that path look like? what's the precedent for it, and how much time is left on the clock? if you do do that, how would that be done at the convention? what we wrote about yesterday was about how this is behind the scenes been a bit messy. there have been different flare ups where the vice president's staff has been concerned that in the process of trying to prop up the president's chances of winning, that they've denigrated the vice president or that they were going to denigrate the vice president. in one instance learning that a staffer from the white house legislative affairs office had been talking to a member of congress and had -- may have, you know, basically said the

vice president doesn't have good enough chance of winning. that's why biden has to stay in the race, and this made its way all the way to the white house chief of staff who had to send out warnings to west wing officials that, look, you know, we need to be very careful in how we discuss the vice president here because of this unusual situation. we need to be able to advocate for the president without denigrating the vice president because i don't think the white house chief of staff said what i'm about to say because the vice president could be the person on the ticket. and that's really hard, you know, thing to nav dpat, and they've had to really confront that in the past three weeks as they've done this dance and as the vice president has probably had the best three weeks of her time in office, where she has really found her footing and been out there as sort of the tip of the spear for the campaign. >> so let's bring in nbc news

capitol hill correspondent ali vitali, who's been talking to a lot of different sources about the sense of betrayal that perhaps president joe biden and close members of his team are feeling right now. ali? >> you're right to point it that way, mika, because you've got an angry president who feels betrayed by key members of his party especially those on capitol hill, and then you've got lawmakers and other hill sources that i and the rest of our capitol hill team have been talking to who in the last 24 hours really have coalesced around this idea it's not a matter if joe biden drops out as their standard bearer but when. when i say that it's not as if they know something specific in many cases about joe biden's mind-set and his decision making process. lemere was right to point out there was a lot of push back internally within the white house and campaign ranks yesterday when reporting came out that biden had made some kind of decision in other various outlets. instead what i've heard from

hill lawmakers is that in the last 24 hours as they've really moved to this space of not if but when, it's them trying to continue pressuring the white house and the president to make a different decision. this has been the dance we've watched top democrats do over the course of the last two weeks. now what i'm hearing is that if there's not movement on this front over the weekend, that when lawmakers come back to town on monday there could be some kind of a big push. you're going to see more members coming out. and i think if we could zoom out for a second, i know the last 24 hours have been really significant, but the way that lawmakers have said it to me is that if you look at the end of last week and into last weekend, you have thursday a conversation with hakeem jeffries about the concerns that democrats on the house side were airing to jeffries. jeffries delivered those to the president. that was right after his nato press conference. on saturday he meet with schumer. they have a similarly blunt conversation, and over the course of friday and saturday,

biden is simultaneously doing all these different zoom and virtual meetings with members from different caucuses within the house. and what they heard was a defiant and defensive president. they didn't feel heard about their concerns. they felt like they were instead just meeting the same kind of resistance when instead what they wanted was reassurance. all of that has sort of bubbled to a point this week where even though lawmakers are scattered across the country, they are still coalescing around the idea it is going to be a very rough week when they get back to washington. and i think the finer point on all that as you see senator john tester in montana, one of those key battleground states coming out yesterday and saying i think the president should step aside, significant. >> it is. it's going to be a bumpy ride over the next few days for democrats, that's for sure. ali vitali, thank you very much for your reporting. so the backdrop of all this drama on the democratic side is former president donald trump made his big speech at the republican national convention

last night. it started out with a sort of recounting of the shooting, a call for unity. >> yeah, very somber first 15 minutes or so. very somber. >> and then it turned really dark. here's a look. >> a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction. we have to stop the invasion into our country that's killing hundreds of thousands of people a year. no hope or dream we have for america can succeed unless we stop the illegal immigrant invasion. they're coming from prisons. they're coming from jails. they're coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. the republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the "the list"ry of our country. i will not let these killers and

criminals into our country. i will keep our sons and daughters safe. >> so, charlie sykes, a tale of two speeches. the first 15 minutes or so very somber, and then the rest of it really attacked more towards what he does just about every political rally. >> what was it an hour and a half long speech. basically what you had that first 20 minutes then tacked onto a standard trump rally speech that made it very clear all this stuff about new tone and we're going to see a new trump. no, this was the old trump. and i'm glad you highlighted that particular element of it because in the past he's talked about building the wall that he was never going to build. this year, this party has coalesced around this mass deportation. i'm sure you saw them actually holding up signs mass deportation. and, you know, this is one of those moments where you kind of

take a deep breath and they're taking now about the forcible removal of maybe more than 10 million migrants. and i keep banging on this drum, but i think we've got to ask questions about it. who's going to do that? the police, military? going deploy the national guard, are they going to go house to house? are they going to demand people's papers. ? will they be put in mass detention camps? are we going to see hundreds of thousands of people put in boxcars and sent across the border? so far we haven't gotten the details or the logistics, but the mood music is this is the donald trump that came down the golden escalator and talked about mexican rapists, and he has not changed that tone. and this is going to be a central issue in this campaign. and i think that we need to litigate between now and november. >> and charlie, we heard from his son eric trump before he came on the stage somewhere between hulk hogan, kid rock,

and dana white from the usc. his son was there in the similar speech and a rally speech. the rhetoric was very trumpian. so an entire week built on unity and we saw these sort of grandfatherly images of donald trump sitting in the box and smiling and nodding along with his kids. it turns out the unity of the day was the unity of the maga base, which is not enough to win a general election. so despite a strong convention of donald trump and his campaign, how do you see this race? and for a moment obviously the democrats have their own problems, but how do you see him as a candidate now as he leaves milwaukee? >> well, i mean it was -- i think it was a missed opportunity that final speech, but this was a successful convention from their point of view. this is very, very united republican party. unity is unity behind donald trump, but the reality is that the republican party is not just

unified around donald trump. they made it clear that they're also not going to stand against his -- his agenda. so donald trump, i believe, is more dangerous than ever. i mean if we have a reality check here at the moment donald trump has never been stronger, and joe biden has never been weaker. and this is where, i think, we need to take this deep intake of breath in saying in this political moment what is at stake here. and i understand that, you know, the president and his folks are feeling angry and betrayed, but ultimately it's not about him. it's about the country, it's about the direction we are going in. and i have to say that, you know, i -- all the signals are blinking. all the alarm bells are ringing about what is the danger that we face. and i think that what we're seeing now on the democratic

side is a reality check, and it's not a betrayal to stage an intervention and say we need to take the keys away from grandpa because the stakes are simply too high here. and i think that this is what democrats are going through. and i understand, you know, the concern about how long it's gone on and the leaking and everything, but the problem here is not the people who are saying, oh, my god, there's an iceberg there, we need to avoid the iceberg, let's not hit the iceberg. the problem is the iceberg. and i think that we need to, you know, remember that at some point. and we're seeing this with the donors. we're seeing this with the polls. we're seeing this with the president's performance. and i think it's crucial that at some point that joe biden, you know, has -- unfortunately is in this sort of bubble and denial. he needs to get out of the bubble of denial but he also needs to understand how important it is for his legacy

to be gracious about this. if, in fact, they're going to make a change it can't be bitter sense of betrayal. it has to be, you know, i have given all for my country. the country will look at him and say you've been a successful one-term president. you know, you have the gratitude of a grateful nation, and then move onto the future. so i think that the way this plays out is very, very important. will it be embittered? will they be pointing fingers at one another going forward, or will they accept that it's time to move on because the threat of donald trump is just so great? so tone is very, very important going ahead. and they have to resolve this one way or another very, very quickly. >> very quickly. charlie sykes, thank you for being with us this morning. i will let you go before mika goes after you. >> i thought what he said was beautifully said. >> okay. >> my question is --

>> yeah. what's your question? >> nobody's talking about alternatives and a better one. >> they were talking about alternatives -- there are people who believe kamala harris is all of those things. >> i haven't heard tat. >> there are also other people who were talking about an open convention. so we'll see. jonathan lemire, it really is -- as charlie pointed out it is a tale of two political parties of unifying the democratic party and the historic split, which really needs to be resolved within the next three or four days. i said that last week it really needs to be resolved in the last year. this has got to come to an end. the jerry cloud story i will retell here for the benefit of people who did not grow up in

the redneck river era. but there's also not only the specter of the most united republican party in 20 years, and they really are. that's what republicans when they look at this convention, they're not looking at whether the speech was rambling or whether it said this or whether it said that, they're looking at the fact they're winning. the lead is getting bigger. they're more united than ever. i will say i was talking to a good republican friend at the convention yesterday i've known for years from florida, and we were just talking about bob dole in 1996. we went to the convention in 1996 and bob dole was going to lose. everybody knew bob dole was going to lose. we know it, but it was bob dole's time. and we -- the party got behind bob dole. nobody was going to push him out of the race even though we knew he was going to lose. here we are 2024 and things are

far different because democrats believe that the stakes are so much bigger, that the stakes are existential. so that's what we're looking at, a very united -- the most united republican party, again, in 20 years, and the most divided democratic party since 1968. >> no question it is a total split screen. and democrats have made clear they think thislit screen. and democrats have made clear they think this is perhaps the most important election in our nation's history, that they feel the stakes are that high. i've certainly heard from some democrats in recent days, some who want president biden to step aside who say, look, if the stakes are that high we can't take that chance. others, though, point to president biden as one the man who's beaten president trump before and si, look, he has a chance to make a comeback and do it again. but you're right of the confidence the last four days in milwaukee. this is republican party that not only thinks donald trump is going to win, they think they're

going to take back the senate and take back the house. they feel like they could reshape american politics here now. we should know wave heard that before from both parties in different cycles, and that doesn't end up happening or lasting. but that's just a snapshot right now where things are. and rev, we should also note the one only bit of worry we've heard from republicans in milwaukee the last couple of days would be if joe biden were replaceding the top of the ticket. they'll be anxious if it ends up being somebody else whether it's the vice president or another candidate. give us your thoughts what you heard from donald trump last night. >> i think it's very interesting that he advertised as his unity even the real way he had his photos -- he even had a photo of me and him up there last night even though he attacks me with every name that he could think

of. but then he didn't live up to the billing. it's almost like he advertised it's going to be someone singing a certain song and they never sing it because he went right back into his old donald trump kind of performance against immigration, against those things that we know are divisive and in many ways coded language. but the other thing was missing was the fire. i really think people are not talking enough about how flat looefs. the fiery donald trump was gone last night, and we all are asking whether or not there's been a diminished joe biden. i saw a diminished donald trump last night. i was expecting a donald trump that was full of vigor, full of fire, i'm back, fight, fight, fight. he used the words but the whole fire was not there. and for those on the democratic side that are saying, yes, this is consequential and it definitely is, this is a very

important election that it is, just remember it was in 2020 joe biden beat a sitting president. he didn't just win an election, he beat a sitting president. and to act like we're dismissing that for a alternative that is not spelled out because what i said to people is, all right, if you want me to join what are we going to do? we need to figure that out. well, that's not good enough for me. figure it out as we go. when we have this much at stake -- i mean we're going to figure out whether we're going to have an open convention or go with kamala harris. you want me to participate in that kind of chicanery? we need to be definitive, or we need to move forward, and i think that it is insulting to democratic voters to say that we're going to ad-lib our way into a consequential election.

>> yeah, a house divided. >> that was well put. a house divided against itself can't stand, and so democrats as we said last week here need to figure this out remarkably quick. you know, really looking at donald trump last night speaking, you know, it's -- it's hard for any of us to imagine escaping an assassination attempt and then moving forward and going at a breakneck pace. so that's what he did. it's going to be hard -- i think it's going to take a couple weeks to figure out exactly where donald trump is. we've heard a lot of people as far as -- as far as when all of the adrenaline crashes from surviving that assassination attempt, it's going to be

interesting to see what this campaign looks like because he has been operating at one speed. from the first time he went down that escalator. and i know that his campaign wants him to sort of soften the tone, wants him to reach out, wants him to turn that 46% ceiling into a 47%, 48 ceiling. this is what the people that are returning his campaign want him to do, and this is what he said he was going to do. we see last night, though, if he'd been given the same speech for about 8, 9 years it's hard to switch it like that. so we will see whether they're able to execute over the next couple offee weeks and do what the campaign says they want donald trump to do. >> yeah, we saw that solemn tone and understandably so at the beginning as he recounted in great detail in a moving moment

where he had the volunteer firefighter's jacket and a helmet there. so you understand the man less than a week ago survived an assassination attempt, so you understand the taupe there, of course. but after that it did feel like, and yeah saw this, by the way, rippling through the crowd which we see at rallies. when it hits an hour or so the crowd starts to get a little restless and wonder where we're going with this. for all the talk of unity after about 20, 25 minutes it felt like another donald trump rally in tone and rhetoric and the arguments and the lies that he was telling and all the things that we're accustomed to hearing. that was a scripted speech. so if the campaign is trying to get him to soften the tone and get him to the middle more on things we noticed he did not mention abortion last night. that is by design. that's obviously a bad issue for him if he's looking to win re-election. the unity and the stone was a

scripted speech on a teleprompter, obviously he deviates. beyond the first 20 minutes it wasn't a kindler, gentler trump. and miked schmidt, i wonder how the last speech, the last moment of the convention this week that was by most measures successful for republicans, i wonder how that impacts any thinking inside the biden campaign. that is to say the reminder of who donald trump is despite what we've seen in the past week that this is the guy who still feel like despite everything, despite the president's age, despite the debate, despite the poll numbers they're slipping in battleground states, they still believe in their hearts that they can beat donald trump. i wonder if that reminder last night impacts their thinking at all. >> my guess is that last night just reinforces to them the -- the crisis that they believe they have on their hands. that the democratic party is running against someone who, if

he comes in, will act like an authoritarian. has people around him that are essentially putting plans together to not just bring forward his agenda but bring it forward in a way that we had -- we certainly didn't see in the first term, whether that is using the justice department in different ways, whether that's on immigration. and i think that that's why we're in this situation, the standoff that we're in where you have the president and his party essentially in this standoff. and i think that if you're a democrat and you were watching that and you saw he picked j.d. vance, you see trump is someone who thinks he's really in a position of power. they did build this campaign to try and beat biden, and they have done a substantial amount of damage to biden over the past several months. biden did damage to himself obviously at the debate and now

faces -- biden faces an existential political crisis from his own party. and -- and i can only imagine that democrats will just continue to keep up the drum beat that they have over the past few days as they -- as they see this election as existential. and it's been very -- it's an unusual story to cover. we often don't get a chance to cover questions of acuity and questions of age. they don't come up in such a fashion like this, and there's an unusualness to that. but it has been, you know, fascinating and dramatic to watch. >> all right, "the new york times" investigative reporter michael schmidt, thank you very much. and still ahead on "morning joe," senator j.d. vance took center stage this week at the republican national convention accepting the party's nomination for vice president. we're going to be joined by his

then-opponent in what was a tight senate race two years ago. former democratic congressman tim ryan of ohio joins us straight ahead. and as we go to break, a picture sent to us moments ago from our senior managing producer, lauren. she's at newark airport whereas you can see the departure board is blank right now underlying the major issues hitting airlines after an update by the company crowdstrike caused a massive outage on microsoft windows systems around the world. we'll have more on that. we'll be right back. when was the last time you checked in on your heart? with kardiamobile, the personal ekg device, you can check it from home using your smartphone.

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fight for their home. and if this movement of ours is going to succeed and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that america is a nation and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first. >> that was vice presidential nominee j.d. vance speaking wednesday night at the republican national convention. vance has drawn criticism for his america first message and his opposition to funding ukraine. another major criticism of vance is his record on abortion. in 2021 during the republican primary race for u.s. senate in ohio vance explained his opposition to exceptions for abortion saying, quote, two wrongs don't make a right. vance also said he would, quote, certainly like abortion to be illegal nationally. vance has since shifted his stance stating this week on fox news you have to believe in reasonable exceptions because

that's where the american people are. the shift marks a stark contrast to his comments made less than three years ago that, quote, there's something comparable between abortion and slavery. joining us now former democratic congressman tim ryan of ohio who ran against vance in the u.s. senate in 2022. tim, good to see you again. what do you make of j.d. vance not just as running mate to former president trump but since you ran against him, what is it that americans need to know about him? >> well, there's a very high level of insincerity that comes from him. he's really willing and able to say whatever he needs to say to climb the political ladder. obviously he was calling donald trump hitler a few years ago and all the things you mentioned about abortion and is willing to do or say whatever he needs to

now. the reality is, mika, he believes this stuff. he's not a pro-freedom republican ala joe scarborough or ronald reagan. this guy wants to take freedom away not just on the abortion issue. he wants women who are in violent marriages to stay in those marriages. you look at freedom in ukraine not for that. and quite frankly as they tried to move into this kind of working class area, this is a venture capitalist who invested in companies to move jobs to china. trump did a tax cut for the top 1%. it's laughable to think they somehow are going to come into these great lake states and play this working class card. it's just not going to happen. and then trump's attack last night on the uaw, which is the union and private sector union that is really growing, moving into the south, organizing workers to try to lift up their wages. so i think the convention the last few nights was a bust, not

just bad speeches in droning on and on but actually positioning the republican party for defeat. and i'm more optimistic after this convention than i was before it even started. >> so, tim, you win fen rounds with j.d., you almost beat him. eight rounds and it was a draw, and if you had a bit more resources there's a lot of people who think you would have won that contest. what did you do to put j.d. on the offensive? how did you campaign against him? do you have any tips for the potential democratic vice presidential debate? >> yeah, i mean we highlighted all of these extreme views. we highlighted them. we hammered them home, and we were up 3 points going into labor day because we spent the entire summer defining the extremism of j.d. vance and the maga movement and then mitch mcconnell came in with $40 million to help him, and we didn't get anything from washington, d.c. from the senate

majority pac, and that's when they were able to take the lead and win. so we had him defined. i think we should run that exact same play book against trump and vance, we highlight the extremism. and then i think in a presidential election you've got to elevate this conversation. i think people are dying -- dying, mike, for an aspirational message coming from a politician, a leading politician. people want to talk about the future of the country and how bright it's going to be. we want to talk about opportunity. we want to talk about freedom, getting the government out of a woman's bedroom, getting the government out of our lives and our personal lives. if we can capture that energy in the country, we will blow these guys out. i'm telling you that we can beat these guys. no one wants to live in that dark kind of country that trump talked about last night. they're dying for aspiration. they're dying for a new message. they're dying to be challenged again not just talked down to and tell you how bad things are but how we need to challenge

people to be inclusive in how we make the country better, and that's the challenge for every generation. and if we come in with a candidate that can challenge them, i'm telling you we're going to blow these guys out. >> and congressman, good morning, you've been clear how that should happen. you wrote a couple days ago on news week and came in two weeks ago to talk about and said joe biden should step aside and it should be vice president kamala harris who gets the nomination and you believe could defeat donald trump. i'm wondering if your thinking has changed a at all in the last couple of weeks. obviously we've heard nancy pelosi shares the view in thinking joe biden should step aside, chuck schumer, president obama is concerned about president biden's path forward. so if you still believe that joe biden should step aside, what happens next? because i think that is really what worries a lot of democrats. what does the unknown look like? >> i think it's clear. i think you make kamala harris the nominee.

i think we be decisive about this. we ripoff the band-aid, make kamala harris the nominee. you've seen her the last two or three weeks. she is hitting her stride. she has her voice. she has matured and i don't say this in a condescending way but as a political observer she's matured. her confidence level is so high. she's mastered these issues both nationally and domestically and she's ready to rock and roll. let's get her in the game. she can prosecute everything we know needs to be prosecuted from all of those trump lies -- 22 lies last night, which comes in under the 30 from the debate. kamala harris is not going to let him get away with any of that b.s. at all. she's going to hammer him. she's going to be able to prosecute the choice issue for us. she's a former d.a. she's going to get a position well i think on law and order, on the border. we can hit the reset buttonose

those things and get her in the industrial midwest. these union guys are going to love her. she's got a great personality, fun to be with. she can tease and have fun. i think these working class folks are going to love her once they meet her in pennsylvania, michigan, or wisconsin. biden selected her to replace him if something should happen wrash and he thinks she's qualified. he's said nothing but great things about her. we've watched her evolution and confidence level soar. let's get in the game and win this thing and win the house and let's put the senate back in play, and i think she'll do that on all counts, motivate our base, bring in young people. let's go. >> former democratic congressman tim ryan, thank you very much. we appreciate your coming on this morning. and coming up, we're going to hear some of the reaction from voters in the battleground state of michigan to republican nominee donald trump's acceptance speech at the rnc last night. that is next on "morning joe."

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why do you think it's this? >> there's a lot of words and not much content. i felt like it was just a lot of -- honestly it felt like listening to a fourth grader's essay who had to, like, meet a thousand words and was kind of using fillers and got really

explaining anything or giving any real ideas. >> that was a democratic voter from grand rapids, michigan giving her reaction to donald trump's 93-minute speech last night. let's bring in yamiche alcindor. this is the first time speaking after the assassination attempt. it's great to see you. what else did you hear from the voters there? >> reporter: well, good morning. of course, grand rapids, michigan is in kent county, which is a swing county in a swing state, and that's why you see donald trump talking here in his first rally. you saw him with a cross section of voters, and republicans excited about trump, and voters who voted for nikki haley, and don't know what to do now. we heard from lisa this sounded

like a fourth grader, and she was very unimpressed and it did not change her mind, and that nikki haley voter also didn't change his mind, but we opened up the conversation with, did you think you saw a different donald trump last night? take a listen to what they told me. >> by a show of hands, who thought former president trump did a good job on his speech today? by a show of support, who detected a change in tone from former president trump? >> like, in the beginning, i thought, he started out okay, but then as the speech went on, it just sounded like the old trump. >> i was hoping though, for the good of the country, like, if he does win, that we would see that this message of unity would carry through more consistently through the speech, and it did not. >> chris, what resonated most with you? >> i go back to saturday where a 20-year-old kid tried to take his life and assassinate him,

and that's a miracle that he survived. that he's -- he kept saying, i shouldn't be here. i shouldn't be here. he's here, and that's a testimony to what he did in the past and what he plans on doing in the future. i think he's going to unite people. i think he's going to bring people together and do the right thing that's best for the country. >> so you think in watching this speech, you saw a different president trump? >> absolutely. >> and this conversation was really interesting because the trump supporters just -- it's almost like they were watching a different speech because they were so excited after the speech. they felt really good about it. barbara was a latina grandmother and said, maybe it went on a little too long, but for chris who said he saw a different donald trump at the end of that, he said the speech was long, but it needed to be long. it could have been as long as it needed to be, fit went on for three hours, because he just survived an assassination

attempt. they talked about a number of issues about whether or not they thought donald trump was telling the truth. the trump voters said yes, they did. the other voters said they didn't believe he was telling the truth. i was watching their reactions and for lisa, she was visibly and audibly reacting to the speech. at one point, she was shaking her head when she was talking about the planes, that the 2020 election was stolen. when he was talking about building the wall, talking about the biggest tax cuts. she was really, really bothered by this speech. i think we also bring up as you were talking about it this morning, the idea of abortion. that latina grandmother who's voting for donald trump, it's one of her number one issues. it's driving the way she sees this election. she says she wasn't bothered by the fact that donald trump didn't mention abortion because she says that was an issue she understands where he stands on, but lisa, who also feels passionate about the issue and wants to actually see access to abortion, she thought it was strategic because it was a

problematic problem for him, and he's not going to win by talking about it. a very interesting conversation and it really gets you to the idea of why grand rapids, michigan and this county, this state continues to swing back and forth, because people really are torn, but no minds were changed yesterday, guys. >> yeah. talk about a swing county, and kent county where you are in grand rapids went for mitt romney in 2012. he won by eight points and then in 2016, trump won by three points and in 2020, joe biden won by six points. we'll see which way it swings this time. nbc news washington correspondent, yamiche alcindor. thank you for bringing us that reporting. we appreciate it. still ahead, as more democratic lawmakers call for president biden to step aside, one senator is voicing strong support for the president's candidacy. independent senator bernie sanders joins us as he makes the case for why joe biden should stay in the race. "morning joe" is coming right back. n the race "morning joe" is coming right back

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there's an interesting statistic. the ears, they bleed more than any other part of the body. for some reason, i said, why is there so much blood? he said, it's the ears. they bleed more. so we learned something. >> donald trump has officially accepted the republican party's presidential nomination for the third time. the former president delivered a record-setting 93-minute address last night at the rnc in milwaukee. it was his first speech since the shooting at his rally on his -- on saturday, and he described what may have saved his life. >> in order to see the chart, i started to like this, turn to my right, and was ready to begin a

little bit further turn which i'm very lucky i didn't do, when i heard a loud, whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear. i said to myself, wow. what was that? it can only be a bullet. i moved my right hand to my ear, brought it down. my hand was covered with blood. there was blood pouring everywhere, and yet in a certain way i felt very safe because i had god on my side. i felt that. if i had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin's bullet would have perfectly hit its mark, and i would not be here tonight. we would not be together.

>> my god. trump made the remarks while standing next to the firefighter suit of the man who was killed in saturday's shooting, corey comperatore. the former president also said, quote, the discord and division in our society must be healed. i am running to be president for all of america, not half of america. he then called on democrats to drop the federal and state cases against him calling them, a, quote, partisan witch hunt. when trump turned to his policy agenda, he focused on immigration, promising to carry out the largest deportation operation in u.s. history if re-elected. >> it's a massive invasion on our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction. we have to stop the invasion into our country that's killing hundreds of thousands of people

a year. no hope or dream we have for america can succeed unless we stop the illegal immigrant invasion. they're coming from prisons. they're coming from jails. they're coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. the republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country. i will not let these killers and criminals into our country. [ applause ] i will keep our sons and daughters safe. >> just a couple of things right here. we're going to continue going here, but i do have to say, jonathan lemire, it is worth reminding people that are watching here that illegal crossings from mexico into the united states reached a 50-year

low under barack obama, and they were at that 50-year low at the same time donald trump was running in 2016 talking about an invasion, an illegal immigration invasion, and those number haves gone up. they went up under donald trump and they exploded under joe biden. they have started to go down just like crime numbers have started to go down as well, but this remains a very potent issue, and a very potent issue not just for republicans, but independents, swing voters, and a lot of democrats which is why the democratic party got behind a republican, very tough bill on illegal immigration that actually have more border security than we've ever had, and it was killed by republicans. >> killed by republicans because donald trump wanted to preserve it as an election year issue. senator langford, that conservative republican was in the room last night.

i would like to see a couple of thought bubbles from him as he listened to donald trump complain about the border. i do think we need a moratorium here in the media about praising donald trump's new tone. that doesn't ever happen on this show, mind you and certainly the first 20, 25 minutes of last night, this recitation of what happened, it was new, it was different. the room was silent. people were listening, and there were some in the crowd who had tears in their eyes and streaming down their cheeks as trump talked about his brush with death, but once that moved on, it was suddenly a donald trump rally again. maybe a little more subdued in terms of tone, but full of false claims about things like immigration. a rambling, dark rhetoric that does seem out of place, joe and mika, with what so many americans do face with reality in this country right now, and i will say, and we're going to spend so much time this morning talking about it, that there are other republicans who expressed it was a missed opportunity last night for trump to actually try to for the first time ever as a

candidate, reach out beyond his base and a number of democrats say, look. this is guy we can beat. what a flawed candidate he is, which is why there's so much scrutiny about president biden's upcoming decisions. >> there is so much scrutiny about that. i will say, willie, there is republicans at the rnc that are supremely confident regardless of any misgivings there may have been from republican consul talents last night. the people in that room by all accounts believe that donald trump is their man. he's going to win. he's going to restore america's greatness, and that he has the hand of god on him. not -- not meaning to upset people watching, but that's what republicans feel. >> they feel confident. >> extremely confident, the most confident, i think any republican party has ever felt going into an election in late

summer. also, you notice he had the elvis lights behind him. >> i did notice that. >> you know, the trump thing. he had the elvis lights behind him. so he's gone full elvis here, but it was -- there it is. elvis 68, baby. the 68 special. i think i've seen you in front of things like that before, willie, as well. >> just missing the leather jacket, joe. the black leather. >> yeah, but there will be people throughout the day picking through the speech, talking about what he said. the hannibal lecter stuff, didn't make a lot of sense, but it was standard fare, but make no mistake of it. this is the republican party that goes into the general election more unified than they have been at any time, my gosh, in 20 years. ? . >> yeah, and you look at the nbc poll going into this convention that showed nearly three-quarters of republican

support their pick for president, donald trump now, after all the debate and all the discussion after january 6th. you think about where the party was. it's time to turn the page. we have to move on. they are there. the confidence comes not just from their candidate, but what they're watching on the other side, and they believe in some ways they can stand back and let the democrats beat each other up and do the damage to themselves. they're looking at these battleground polls that show donald trump maing up more ground and joining leads. there is a reason for the confidence, but i will say, and i'm sure you guys heard this last night too. democrats have been depressed lately. let's just say it, about the state of play, and as they watch that speech and what really was an excellent convention, the way they put it on. not an endorsement of the rhetoric or the policies, but just the enthusiasm in the room, but democrats were getting more and more depressed except last night as they watched the

speech. obviously the beginning, the first 30 minutes were very moving as he talked about in very hushed tones, talked about the man who died, mr. comperatore, talked about his own experience on saturday, but when that page turned for the next hour, democrats had a moment of, oh, right. this is donald trump. this is a guy we can beat when he talks this way. this is rally trump. so whether it's joe biden -- >> right. >> -- or someone else, democrats for a brief moment anyway, last night, mika, thought, we're still in this thing. this is the guy we can beat. >> yeah, and also just to cap off this conversation, trump went into foreign policy. he boasted about his meeting with the head of the taliban as well as north korean leader kim jong-un and claimed that he could, quote, stop wars with just a telephone call. he also falsely claimed that democrats cheated during the 2020 election. so the big lie, still out there in a big way. he did of course, touch on abortion or january 6th.

stayed away from that. we'll turn now to the continued and growing pressure on president biden to drop out of the race. several people close to the president tell "the new york times" they believe biden is beginning to accept the idea he might not win in november. this comes as grassroots fund-raising is not keeping up with the demands of the campaign. one source tells nbc news that biden's team expects to only raise 25% of the big donor money it had originally projected to raise in july. meanwhile, former president barack obama reportedly has concerns about president biden's ability to stay at the top of the ticket. that is what two sources told nbc news. the former president sees biden's victory as, quote, getting harder, one of the sources said. "the washington post" reports former president obama has said president biden needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy and with those

comments, he, willie, finds himself in a situation that is getting more grave. >> and it biden camp pushed back. >> they did. they offered some of the most aggressive pushback with one source telling nbc news, quote, we all just remember for a minute that these are the same people who are trying to push joe biden out, are the same people who literally gave us all donald trump? in 2015, obama, pelosi, schumer pushed biden aside in favor of hillary. they were wrong then, and they are wrong now. the source also pouring water on concerns over biden's poll numbers pointing to polling back in 2016, the election that showed hillary clinton leading trump by as much as nine points. that source adding, quote, how did this all work out for everyone back in 2016? perhaps we should learn a few he sons from 2016.

one of them is polls are bs. just ask secretary clinton, and two, maybe just maybe, joe biden is more in touch with actual americans than obama, pelosi, schumer. >> john heilemann, this is fascinating because it was a tale of two biden campaigns yesterday, and a tale of two democratic parties. you had listened to most of the people that were talking yesterday who were suggesting that the president is moving in the direction of getting out of the race, and there are very specific discussions taking place, but you also had campaign officials who aggressively pushed back on the fact, but again, let's be clear here that you have had schumer, pelosi, jeffries, barack obama, just about every major democrat expressing their concern

directly to president biden. reverend sharpton, i saw in the "new york times" in an article, expressing their concerns that he could lose and he could damage his legacy and a spaight of polls and even cbs has him down five points. swing state polls seem to keep going in a bad direction. new mexico, minnesota, virginia, new hampshire, a lot of states that were in the in play leading up to the debate, suddenly more than in play for donald trump. so what happens? >> yeah, joe, and i think one thing -- i think one thing that happened yesterday was as we were on this yesterday morning talking about the kind of extraordinary, orchestrated series of things that happened the day before, yesterday the kind of -- there was a feeding frenzy around this, and i think that -- especially with president biden having covid and

being in rehoboth, the clamor on cable news, i think for some people around president biden started to feel kind of disrespectful, and that there was not a world where he in that isolated state, you know, where he was sick, not -- i'm not trying to overblow it, but i think there was a little bit of an effort on the part of some people around the biden campaign to kind of put the brakes, especially when some very specific reporting, people started making very specific claims about timetables, and that the decision had been made and there was, you know, the timetable and here was what he was going to do, and i don't know about the quality of some of that reporting, but i'll say, they pushed back hard on some of that, and i think it kind of got overboard to -- with them in that regard and they wanted to throw a brushback pitch in sort of saying, president biden needs time. he needs some time given the fact that he's ill. >> right. >> it is the case that the factors that you, mika, and i

serve and else on the show talked about yesterday, did not get better yesterday, and by that i mean, you know, some very basic things. how do you run a presidential campaign without any money? that problem has gotten worse yesterday because donors and again, say what you want to say about him, you know, have now gone to the democratic congressional committee and said, we're not just shutting off joe biden right now. we're going to shut off the congressional campaigns because your guy's job is -- from our point of view, it's to talk sense to joe biden, and if -- if you can't talk sense to joe biden, why are we -- if we're not going to give him money because we think he has no path, he's going to drag -- we believe on the basis of what the metrics we're looking at, i'm speaking as a fake donor here. he's going to drag you down. why should we throw good money into a lost cause in the house and senate? we're not talking about donors

flexing their muscles in a way that threatens just the re-election campaign of the president, but all those people who are running for re-election or seeking election in the democratic caucus in the house and senate, and that has exacerbated the problem, and some of the things that -- how grave that problem is, is rapidly becoming very clear. so that pressure is still very much on. >> right. >> and i think as you said, some of the polling numbers as they become increasingly public, and i would just focus on one thing in particular. some of these numbers -- forget about what you think about a battleground state, horse race numbers. >> right. >> the attribute numbers -- the number now about whether president biden is mentally -- is fit for office, is those numbers are just -- >> right. >> -- are getting to the point where they're quite scary, and you can't -- it's very difficult to be re-elected president if upwards of 80% of voters in the

country don't think you're equipped for office, and there's polling around that. i know the biden team, schumer, pelosi, obama, all those people have seen just in the past few days that say that, and those numbers are -- not only are they bad, but they're very hard to turn around. it's hard to imagine how you turn that around going forward. >> right. so mika, just to underline a couple of things that john said that nailed it, the biggest issue -- immediate issue is money. the donors have stopped giving money, and it's almost completely ground down to a halt. this story of jeffrey katzenberg telling president biden this got eclipsed from the covid diagnosis. so that is a problem. i will say also, you've got a lot of information yesterday. there was a lot of information.

a lot of off the record conversations, a lot of plans being made about president biden moving toward getting out of the race this weekend. >> mm-hmm. >> that stopped when there was some very specific reporting later in the afternoon. mark halperin being very specific on some reporting. >> yeah. >> reporting that other reporters at newspapers and networks had parts of that reporting, but not all of it together. i think at that point is when we started to see the campaign pushing back because what people close to joe biden have said all along is he's a man of great pride. he can be stubborn and tough. don't back him into the corner. if he's going to do this, let him do it his way, on his time frame, and when all of these reports started coming out, that's when the campaign started

pushing back, and i think part of that is giving him the space to make this decision, to finish making this decision with his family this weekend. >> he's also a man of faith and tremendous historic accomplishment, and look. it's impossible to ignore where this is going and exactly what started it. i'm not unware of that. at the same time, i still believe you don't know what you have until it's gone, and there will be that feeling at some point. >> do you think -- if he leaves the race, do you think democrats will regret it? >> i do. i do, because among many reasons, which i've already stated and i won't say it again. don't worry, but none of these notions are backed by a strong alternative. an alternative that has beat trump before, an alternative that is vetted, an alternative that is tested, and so that is a lot to throw away.

coming up, we'll ask these questions to people who know a lot more about me about it, reporters on the story and "the washington post"'s eugene robinson will join us. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe" in 90 seconds. right back with muc more "morning joe" in 90 seconds at bombas we make the most comfortable sock in the history of feet

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yesterday that joe biden was considering getting out this weekend. we also -- i will say i heard a good bit of reporting last thursday and friday, and we talked about that, gene. >> yeah. >> we talked about him getting out of the race last week, and that didn't happen either. it ain't over until it's over. that said, an awful lot of talk about president biden considering stepping aside which the campaign quelled when -- when the reporting got, let's say, a little too specific. >> yeah. we did have those discussions last week, joe, and so here we are once again, and, you know, one does think that maybe as those -- that reporting gets more and more specific, it becomes less and less likely that president biden or it becomes more likely that he gets it back up and says, you know, hold on. wait a minute, and his team gets

more defiant in that respect, and that's kind of understandable. so, you know, that can certainly happen again this week. you know, i think those two -- the two stories that we were talking about this morning, that -- former president trump's speech and president biden's fate as a candidate are in a way, and i think that speech last night will kind of intensify this -- this angst and debate if the democratic party because i think a lot of democrats will, you know, watch that speech. i watched all 93 minutes of it. i stayed up to watch the whole thing, and, you know, that thought that everybody had, this guy can be beaten. this is not a juggernaut candidate. this is not, you know, ali in

his prime or anything. this -- this guy can be beat. when he got to hannibal lecter and all of that, i was, like, this is -- this is not really even the same old donald trump. this is a donald trump who is more meandering, less focused, less able to stay on a theme, who had a layup to make last night and couldn't -- he flubbed the layup. he didn't make it. all he had to do was say unifying things and accept the nomination and let the balloons drop. that's all he had to do, and he couldn't do that. so i think, you know, a lot in the party are going to say, if only we have a younger, more vigorous candidate, i mean, then we can beat this guy, and i think conversely there could be the reaction in biden world, in

president biden's inner circle, that we can beat this guy. we can still beat this guy because he's -- he's not, you know, this towering, unbeatable figure that the republicans so many to portray him as. so we'll see how that happens. senator john tester came out yesterday and he was the second senator to come out and say that president biden should withdraw just flatout. we know that's significant to president biden because of his long tenure in the senate. so we will see how things develop hour to hour. >> and senator tester has a very difficult race ahead in montana. he came out publicly yesterday. for more on the thinking inside the democratic party, let's turn to carol lee and white house reporter for "the washington post," tyler pager. good morning to you both. carol, i was reading your reporting yesterday and you had a lot of it, you and your team

there in d.c. on the one hand, you had biden's senior aides saying we have a plan to get through this. we're hanging in. we're going to weather this storm, and then at the same time, you have another biden aide saying, we are close to the end, talking about biden's campaign. so how do you assess from your reporting, the state of lay? >> it's a great question, and i would assess it this way. we have been covering this story for literally three weeks now, three weeks today, and all of us have had conversations with allies and aides to the president inside the white house, the campaign, close to the white house, and the campaign, and yesterday those conversations were a little bit different in the sense that some of the people that i have talked to, and my colleagues have talked to over the last three weeks and are intent that the president was in this, that there was a path ahead and they were plowing forward, changed their tune a little bit, and to that point saying we are close

to the end. the writing is on the wall. those were the kind of things that you're hearing from people that are close to the president and that's because of a number of things. it's from the top, very public democrats and the polling and money that's drying up, that 25%, that projection that the campaign will raise 25% of what it originally projected. that's down from last week when they thought it would be 50% of that. it's not going up. it's going down. it's not getting better. it's getting worse, and so we also know from our own reporting that's factored into this, that the president privately is a little more open to considering stepping aside. we have reported that his conversations in the past week have become, quote, reality-based. there's discussion about what his place in history might look like, things like that. just the tone and the tenure of those conversations are kind of changing, and at the same time, this is his decision, and everybody is clear about that, and until he says otherwise, he is the nominee, and that's why

you saw people close to his campaign and close to him come out so forcefully yesterday saying, hold up. we need to give him the space. he's in this, you know, basically back off because the other thing that's happening here, willie, is there's a lot of resentment that's building up among the people close to the president. resentment for the way he's being treated for some of the leadership, specifically former president obama, former speaker nancy pelosi, and chuck schumer. saying their silence in all this feels like a bit of betrayal, and also the leaks they're saying. what one person described this to us as is, sad. coming up, an exclusive interview with biden campaign chair jen o'malley dillon who says the president is more determined than ever to defeat donald trump in november. plus, "the washington post" tyler pager on the role that former president obama is playing in all of this.

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so tyler, you're looking at the angle of president obama who is a fascinating figure in where this decision goes. you broke the story yesterday that president obama believes that the path to victory has narrowed, perhaps too far for president biden. what is the relationship like right now, not just between president obama and president biden, but between these two camps i mean, there's obviously the feeling among some in the biden world that president obama could have stopped the george clooney op-ed for example, because they are so close. what is that dynamic like right now? >> yeah, the obama and biden camps have had a good idea of tension that ebbed and flowed throughout the two men's presidencies, but right there is a lot of frustration and resentment from some of biden's inner circle toward former

president barack obama. they have blamed him for as you said, the clooney op-ed, and feel that he could have kept the party united behind joe biden. he put out a statement after joe biden's debate, you know, expressing support for the sitting president, but since then has been largely silent. he's been taking calls from anxious democrats in the weeks since that debate, and what he has conveyed to his allies is he fells his best role is a sounding board, counselor to joe biden. the two men have only spoken once since that debate in which obama said to the sitting president, he's here to support and wants to, you know, be that sort of counselor to the president, but obama has told his allies he's concerned about the president's legacy and about the president himself. he thinks that biden has been a great president and wants to preserve and protect his accomplishments and his legacy, and that is his primary concern, but in those conversations, he has conveyed to allies that he's

concerned about biden's path saying it's, you know, it's going to greatly diminish in recent weeks and thinks it's important to think about biden's viability as a candidate. look. all of these party leaders are greatly concerned about donald trump for years. obama has been warning biden in private about trump's political strength and, you know, has met with the president over the years to discuss that, and i think this is all part of this great angst within the democratic party about ensuring they defeat donald trump in november. >> and jonathan lemire, to carol lee's reporting to the point she was making, the way joe biden is being treated right now does feel like a deep betrayal of a presidency of a president, who has performed at a top level on multiple fronts, outwardly, on the world stage, domestically with historic bipartisan legislation, and no one knows more than joe biden that this is

exactly what donald trump wants. he wants chaos. he wants dissension in the democratic party, and that makes democrats extremely weak and that makes trump win. >> there's no question there. that reporting yesterday as well just about the deep resentment from the president's inner circle. both family and his closest advisers as to how he is being treated here, but we are seeing some top democrats, former pelosi among them, making the calculation. what is the best decision to win? the threat trump poses is so great. we need to just figure out sentiment aside, how can they win, and they've made the decision clearly they don't think president biden is that person to beat trump anymore, even as fond of him. they are personally -- even as they think he has done a great job as president, and it seems like the president is in isolation. that'll slow this process down a

little bit in terms of when he makes his final decision. there are deadlines approaching. deadlines will have their virtual roll call sometime next week or so. the decision is going to have to be made by then. tell us what sort of timetable you're hearing they're going to operate under, and the role that vice president harris plays in all of this because that's one of the open questions here, is that if biden were to step aside, and publicly they're not saying he is, but would he anoint harris as the successor or would we have a convention? >> it's tricky because the vice president is in a very tricky situation because she's obviously very aware of all the conversation that's going on and all of the chances that she may actually be in position to be the party's nominee, but can't sort of plan or do anything or actively, you know, what we've seen from her publicly is a very loyal vice president, really having the president's back. i think that that has had an

impact on how the president feels about her. i think he values that, and so the president has several choices to make. one, obviously whether or not he stays in the race and number two, to your point, what he does in terms of who's next, and in our conversations with people close to the president, there is not a clear answer there because it's -- it's a little bit tricky for him because does he come out and back somebody -- does he have the juice to do that? does it make sense? at the same time, you have people who have been the strongest backers of the president, like congressman clyburn who made clear if it's not biden, it's harris. there are factors at play, and in terms of the timing, this is a decision that i think from all of my reporting and talking to people, and i'm sure you too, it's a sooner rather than later decision, you know, nobody really wants to drag this out, and one of the questions is, can you make that decision, and hen

they do make that decision, can there be a plan in place? what are the contingenies there? >> all right. nbc's carol lee and the "washington post's" tyler pager, thank you both very much for your reporting this morning. coming up right here on "morning joe," we'll have the latest on the investigation into the attempted assassination on former president donald trump. and the calls for the head of the secret service to step down. "morning joe" will be right back. p down "morning joe" will be right back when i'm cold? wait, no, i'm always hot. sleep number does that. can i make my side softer? i like my side firmer. sleep number does that. can it help us sleep better and better? please? sleep number does that. 94 percent of smart sleepers report better sleep. and now, free home delivery on select smart beds when you add adjustable base. sleep number smart beds starting at $999. shop now at sleepnumber.com what does a robot know about love? it takes a human to translate

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the director of the secret service says she has no plans to step down following the assassination attempt on former president trump. the agency released a statement yesterday saying kimberly cheatle is fiercely committed to transparency of the investigation. the house oversight committee has subpoenaed her seeking testimony from her on monday. they were working with the committee on an alternate date.

let's bring in abc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian. ken, good morning. it was interesting in a speech early on. last night, former president trump went out of his way to praise the secret service and its response anyway to the shooting. we've talked about that a lot over the last week or so. what more can you tell us about the investigation this morning? >> good morning, willie. well, yeah. former president trump was praising the secret service there. reports that behind the scenes his campaign is growing increasingly annoyed with them, and you seen saw public calls by some of to his campaign officials for the resignation of the secret service director, and of course, we all saw that video of those republican senators chasing her down at the republican national convention, yelling questions at her that she was refusing to answer. so that's never good when you're a federal official. in terms of the investigation, you know, we're almost a week later, and the motives of this 20-year-old shooter remain an enigma, and that's the most

perplexing thing about this. they are no close tore finding out why he did. they found photos of president biden and former president trump, and merrick garland, and he has so little in the way of both public and private postings. one of the theories going around is he was simply an alienated young man looking for notoriety, that there was no political motive here whatsoever, and in terms of the timeline, we're learning a lot more and it's very troubling. what we learned from that congressional briefing that it was almost an hour before the shooting that police first flagged thomas cooks as suspicious, and more than a half hour, they sent a picture of him to the secret service and then 20 minutes before the shooting we're told, secret service snipers on the roof -- on that roof behind the trump rally, detected crooks on the roof of that building. unclear at that time whether they viewed him as a threat, and then of course, we know that at

some point, police confronted him on the roof and then flagged that there was a man with a gun. what we don't know -- the big question yet unanswered is how many seconds elapsed between that report over the radio, a guy on the roof with a gun, and the time he fired the shots at mr. trump? that's a crucial question. did they have time to pull him off the stage? it's unclear. there was a suspicious person out there with a range finder and they still allowed mr. trump to take the stage. there's a lot of questions about that, and questions about how the secret service acted after the shots were fired, guys. >> right. i wanted to talk to you about that, ken, but still. the failure to secure the roof as you were talking about as we've said all along, the failure to notify any, you know, in an aggressive way, the fears of a suspicious person well before president trump took the stage.

the range finder that they saw, again, how they didn't immediately get the secret service around there is beyond me, but then something that you wrote about yesterday, and we've talked about on this show, the amount of time that it took to get president trump off the stage after he was shot -- i mean, this is -- this remains to me, just an enduring outrage that they didn't immediately grab him and pull him off the stage. that's what they're taught to do, isn't it? >> absolutely, joe. you were one of the first people to flag this because a lot of people thought, well, they acted heroically after the shots were fired, and they did in the sense that they -- these secret service agents rushed into the line of gunfire to cover up president donald trump, and after that, they are appalled about what happened because mr. trump -- they allowed the protectee to dictate the pace

with which they got him off the stage. that is not what they're trained to do. they are trained to manhandle, to tackle, to pick up the principle and rush him to safety regardless of what he wants. we talked to both former secret service agents and these who worked with the british military, they were all flabbergasted that first of all, you hear mr. trump saying, i need to get my shoes, and they slow down, and then they appeared to try to be hustling him off the stage and by the way, at that point, as you noted earlier, joe, his head was above their heads so he was in danger. if there was a second shooter -- >> it's unbelievable. >> he was exposed to fire, and then you hear mr. trump say, wait, wait, wait, and he pumps his fist at the crowd in a gesture of showmanship that was a brilliant political move, but if there had been a second shooter, and brilliant politica. if there had been a second shooter, they had intelligence that iranians are plotting to kill donald trump in retaliation. if there had been a second shooter, mr. trump was exposed

to that gunfire, and we are just told that's not how it's supposed to happen. what's perplexing to me is you're seeing retired secret service agents defending that conduct, what my sources say is indefensible. >> nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent, ken dilanian. thank you very much. we'll be looking for more follow-ups on that. >> thank you, ken. and still ahead, senator bernie sanders will join us live in studio. we'll ask him whether he thinks president biden should step aside. the republican party and what would happen if donald trump is reelected, that and much, much more. "morning joe" will be right back. more "morning joe" will be right back even if you're not on summer vacation. join millions of families who've trusted us and find caregivers in your area for kids, seniors, pets, and homes. go to care.com now to find the care you need this summer. i used to leak urine when i coughed, laughed or exercised. i couldn't even enjoy playing with my kids. i leaked too. i just assumed it was normal. then we learned about bulkamid. an fda approved non-drug solution for our condition.

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coming up, our next guest serves as president biden's campaign chair, jen o'malley dillon will be our guest in the fourth hour of "morning joe," we'll talk about donald trump's address at the rnc, and how president biden is responding to calls from his own party to leave the race. that's straight ahead on

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israel has an iron dome. they have a missile defense system. 342 missiles were shot into israel, and only one got through a little bit, it was badly wounded. it fell to the ground, but most of them are -- and ronald reagan wanted this many years ago, but we really didn't have the technology many years ago. remember they called it starship, spaceship, anything to mock him. but he was a very good president, very, very good. [ applause ] but now we have unbelievable technology, and why should other countries have this and we don't? no, no, we're going to build an iron dome over our country, and we're going to be sure that nothing can come and harm our

people. and again, from an economic development standpoint, we're going to make it all right here. no more sending it out to other countries in order to help. it's america first, america first. >> former president donald trump last night at the republican national convention in a 93-minute acceptance speech for his party's nomination for president. in just a moment, we're going to be joined by the chair of the biden/harris campaign, jen o'malley dillon. we'll ask her about the state of the campaign amid growing calls for the president to withdraw from the race. we're also following a number of breaking news stories right now. a major technology outage is impacting businesses worldwide including some of our production. the problems stem from the cybersecurity company crowdstrike. the company says it is not a security incident or a cyberattack. crowdstrike's ceo posted online that the issue has been

identified and a fix is in the works. the company's tech problems have forced american, delta, and united airlines to ground flights this morning. the faa says it is closely monitoring the issue impacting i.t. systems, and in russia, we just learned that journalist evan gershkovich has been sentenced to 16 years in prison by a russian court for espionage. he and the u.s. state department have denied any wrongdoing. the conviction this morning comes around 15 months after he was arrested. we'll get a live report on this development in just a few moments. >> it really, willie, it is so shocking. this was a kidnapping. this is state directed, state-sponsored kidnapping of a ""wall street journal""

reporter, a journalist, a highly respected journalist for no reason other than they're going to want to trade him probably for some international fugitive and international arms dealer who's probably got blood on their hands, and so it's just shocking. i would just hope that for all the politicians out there and their allies in the media who love to talk about how great vladimir putin is and how much better russia is than america or what a great gifted leader he is, i would like to hear them condemn vladimir putin and help get evan home. >> yeah, this is a strategic kidnapping, as you say. it's the same way brittney griner was. they got something in return when they released brittney griner, and this morning in a complete sham trial whose outcome was baked not just many weeks ago but many months ago when evan gershkovich was taken prisoner while doing his reporting on russia for "the wall street journal," this outcome was never in doubt as

his own attorneys and his own family have said. now the question is after he's been sentenced to 16 years in prison, what can the united states government do about it? what is the deal that can be made to get him home? we are going to have a live report on this situation just developing with evan gershkovich sentenced to 16 years in prison. first, as donald trump did accept his nomination after a week of with widespread unity among republicans, president biden faces continued and growing pressure to get out of the race. several people close to the president telling "the new york times" they now believe joe biden is beginning to accept the idea he may not win in november. this comes as grass roots fund-raising, not keeping up with the demands of the campaign. one source telling nbc news the president's team expects to raise only a quarter of the big donor money it had originally projected for the month of july. former president barack obama reportedly expressing his concerns about joe biden's

ability to stay at the top of the ticket and win. in the house, "the washington post" reports former speaker nancy pelosi has told democratic colleagues she believes biden can be persuaded to drop out. in the upper chamber, jon tester of montana in a very tight race there is calling for the president to abandon his re-election bid. sources tell nbc news president biden is angry at the way the party is trying to push him out with one criticizing democratic leaders for, quote, giving us donald trump after pushing biden aside in favor of hillary clinton in 2015. we can add into this the "associated press" poll of a couple of days ago that showed 65% of democrats believe it's time for joe biden to step aside as well. >> that's rough sledding. joining us now, chair of the biden/harris campaign, jen o'malley dillon.

jen, thank you for being on. what is the plan? is joe biden still in the race? does he plan to stay in the race? and if so, what's the plan? >> thanks so much for having me, mika, and look, absolutely the president's in this race. you've heard him say that time and time again, and i think we saw on display last night exactly why because donald trump is not going to offer anything new to the american people. he's the same person he was in 2020. he's the same person he was on the debate stage. he's the same person that is about himself and not about the american people. joe biden is more committed than ever to beat donald trump. and we believe on this campaign we are built for the close election that we are in, and we see the path forward. the president is the leader of our campaign and of the country, and he is clearly in our impression and what we've built and in our engagement with voters, he's the best person to take on donald trump and prosecute that case and present his vision versus what we saw last night. >> so, jen, what do you say to

democrats who say he can't win and that there are better candidates that can go out there and beat donald trump? >> yeah, i mean, look of course -- i'm not here to say that this hasn't been a tough several weeks for the campaign. there's no doubt that it has been, and we've definitely seen some slippage in support but it has been a small movement, and you know this, the reason is because so much of this race is harden already. the american people know the president is older. they see that. they knew that before the debate. yes, of course we have a lot of work to do to make sure we are reassuring the american people that, yes, he's old, and he can do the job and he can win. i think that's really fundamentally what we're built for as a campaign. this entire campaign has been built for how close this race is going to be. it was close in 2020. it's going to be close in 2024. but what people know about the president is pretty hardened and so for us, we know that people are not moving from joe biden to

donald trump. what they're doing is they're saying to us can he do it? and the president's saying, yes, i can. and they're moving to unsure, uncertain because there's a lot of conversations as you've already mentioned that's happening right now. what's happening, what's not happening, he's absolutely in it. he's got to show that he is fighting for the american people. he's done that day in and day out since the debate, and he is also really holding the people that have been with him all along, and we see that, yes, obviously of course we're looking at analytics. we're looking at polling, we're seeing what a lot of people are seeing, of course, but we're also looking at a lot of numbers that matter too, which is what is happening on the ground, and those numbers of our engagement with voters matter. so just as a sample, we did about 100,000 door knocks this week, so over the last few days, all across the battleground states, and these are people which we would call reengagement targets so they're people that have been with us in 2020, maybe they're not engaged in the race. maybe they're, you know, not as

partisan and political as we are. so we have a little extra work to talk to them, and then expansion targets. these are new people that weren't with us in 2020, but because of what donald trump's done with roe v. wade, because of what's happened in this country, they are open to us. these are women, they're suburban vote e, they're independents. we go out and we're door knocking just this week. this isn't in the past, just this week. 100,000 door knocks. 76% of those people we knocked on doors and we talked to are with joe biden. we have about 16% or so that's undecided. they have questions, you know, is he in this race, what's going to happen, and then a small percentage that are not available to us. so of course we're looking at the full picture, but when you get to the bottom and the heart of what we are doing every day from the campaign and we are dealing with the voters that are in battleground states, they have questions, but they are staying with joe biden, and our numbers are showing that. >> so i'm curious then what you think about, for example, someone like nancy pelosi

equivocating on this? because that's someone who's political acumen is unmatched for sure, and i think it's safe to say, i think we both would agree, jen, that the chaos, the disorganization, the lack of unity that we are seeing right now in the track party is very damaging and is paving the way for a trump win. so my question to you is what is joe biden and the campaign say to those who continue to say he should step down including incredibly high profile names like chuck schumer and whispers from former president obama? and how does joe biden compare to the other names floating out there as replacements for him? >> first of all, if you just take a step back, i think every person believes that we have to defeat donald trump. we are united in that, and we know how high the stakes are. we saw that on the stage last night.

so 100% we are all in this for the same reason and we're unified behind that. at the same time, we also have to take seriously the concerns that people are expressing, but the way to get past them is to get back to the business of beating donald trump and setting up that clear choice about the president's vision versus donald trump's vision. you have seen the president out there, you know, i think of the event he just did in detroit where he was laying out his path for the first 100 days of his second term versus project 2025, and we saw that on full display last night. so at the end of the day, as i was talking about, the impression of the president is very hardened. that's really important because people know and are baked and that's why the movement has been pretty little since the debate because they know who joe biden is. when you think about the work we're doing of talking to voters, the people that are going to make the decision in michigan and pennsylvania, we know we have work to do, but we have work to do that is very

clear and a path forward. we have multiple pathways to victory, and we can do that by really reaching these voters. and so you know, we have the greatest respect for the leaders of our party. joe biden is in this for all of them, but he's also in it for people like hadley duval, who was out there this past week. people had a chance to hear from her and hear about her poignant story about what happened to her and what would happen to other young women like her. today we rolled out a new ad in georgia about a doctor who was talking about what's at stake for her community with the rollback of rights and reproductive health care for our country, so at the end of the day, it's going to take all of us unifying and moving forward. it's no doubt, but it is about the people we're talking about. joe biden is not in this alone. he is an amazing vice president, but the people that are standing up, 1,300 women, black women leaders across this country put out a letter yesterday saying they're with joe biden and the 14 million people that made him

the democratic nominee, and they want us to move forward and unify so we can go back to fighting donald trump. we're going to have an endorsement later today from a very significant national organization as well. so we continue to grow support. we have a lot of work to do. there's no doubt, but there is a path and the perception of the president is as clear as before. it is a hardened perspective on who he is and his leadership, and they know him as president biden, but they also know him as joe biden, and they know who he's fighting for, and the voters stay connected to that, and that's what matters most. >> jen, good morning. as you know well, part of the argument we heard from majority leader chuck schumer when he sat down and met with president biden, part of what we heard from senator jon tester who's running a difficult race in montana to keep his seat is that they have great respect for joe biden. they appreciate his legacy, his half century of service, but they're worried about the downstream effects of his candidacy, of his being at the top of the ticket. if you look in battleground

state polls nationally, head to head, those are ties effectively for the most part. as you know very well this is not a national referendum. donald trump leads in just about every swing state you can find. in fairness some of them still within the margin of error. what's also interesting is that democratic candidates are running so much higher and faster and above where joe biden is, so what do you say to candidates who are concerned about the drag he may have and that he could perhaps cost democrats the house and the senate? >> look, i think we have extraordinary democratic candidates on the ticket in battleground states and non-battleground states, and we had extraordinary elections in 2022 despite what the polling was saying at this point as well. so i know that the president knows better than anyone how to run and win locally. in 2020 this was more of a national race, i think, you know, in part because of covid. people were taking this in in a more national setting. we have believed from the beginning this is a state by

state race and that the battleground states that we need to focus on, we're building the organization. we're doing the work, the voters and the volunteers are doing that work. we have extraordinary candidates that are running with us, and i hear a lot that is embedded in this question that this isn't a race about issues. it is a race about issues, and when we are able to fight on the issues, we are able to win. and that's exactly why we have such strong leadership. we are very focused on continuing to reach voters. we're doing the work. this campaign is built for a very close race. we knew it was going to be close from the beginning. we know we have a clear path forward. we have a strong democratic party up and down the ballot who have led across the board through some of the toughest times with the president at the top of the ticket. he is tested. he has beat donald trump before. we have the path forward, and our pathway to get to 270, and we know that joe biden has to do the work to reassure the american people that he's in it

to win it and he can do that, and we've seen that time in and time out. we are seeing that on the ground in the states. that's not as big of a story, but the fact that despite having tough weeks coming out of the debate. we still get more support. we have of the 600,000 grass roots donors that came in in the days following the debate, 300,000 of them are brand new. so there is work to do no doubt. this has not been an easy period, but there is a lot of support for joe biden not just against trump, and they are with us. this san organization built for the biden/harris ticket, and it is doing the work to get us where we need to be in november. >> so jen, that's the capitol hill side of this. that's the jon tester, the chuck schumer argument this he's going to drag down democrats with him. what do you say, though, more importantly perhaps to regular people, regular democrats who, again, like joe biden, voted for him in 2020, appreciate him, but watch that debate, frankly a couple of days ago, watched him get on and off air force one and held their breath and go, that's a guy i love but a guy who i just think is too old to win

this election and to be president for four more years. i'm talking about regular people, the kind of people we all meet when we go out to restaurants and go to the gas station who go i'm a democrat, i want to beat donald trump, but i don't think he's the guy because he's too old. what do you say to them this morning? >> well, look, you're focusing on exactly what we're focused on, the voters, and there's no doubt. look, i'm not here to just say this is a media narrative. we have to understand exactly what we're seeing as we've talked about. we know that we've slipped a bit from the debate, and we know that the president has to prove to the american people exactly what he believes, that he's in this to win this. he can do this not only that we have a campaign to do it, but he can do it. and he is, you know, the only person that's done it before. and the way we do that is by showing the president out there doing the work, fighting for these voters. and you know, i go back to detroit because i think that's such a clear contrast.

that was just a week ago, and he was out there with bigger crowds than we've had at any other point during the campaign, energized, excited, and as he has been having discussions and hearing the concerns that have been talked about on your show and others, he's also hearing from voters and what they're saying is we've got you, joe. we are in this. stay with us. for every person that said they are concerned, we've had another person that's seen him and have said you are our guy, and we want to be with you. in detroit, we didn't organize some kind of rally chant for people to say don't you quit. that was organic, and those homemade signs and people standing in line to show up there. you've heard it, we've heard it. more and more people see donald trump. they dislike him, they remember why he is such a threat to this country. the more and more people who see joe biden out there post debate, they are reassured he is in it to win it, and he can do that. of course he's got covid right now, and so you know, he's got some mild symptoms.

he's going to be back on the campaign trail next week, and he's going to continue to do that. this is definitely a hard period for the campaign. when the president has been out there talking to voters and being with voters, when they have seen him, seen him lay out the contrast, shown that he is doing the job of leading this country and his candidate, they see in him the person that's going to win. >> it's been a very rough stretch for the campaign since the debate over the past two or three weeks, it seems like five years now. and it continues to go on, and the president has said time and time again, i'm in this race. i'm not getting out of this race, and leaks continue by the day whether it's from president obama or what he said to him or whether it's from chuck schumer or you just go down the list. democrats i talked to, whether they want him out of the race or want him in the race, they all seem to be saying the same

thing. democrats need to get their act together, and they need to do it now. so how does that happen? how does this open debate that it is so bad for the democratic party? how does this -- how does this come to an end? >> well, look, i think, first of all, we are at the period of this campaign where donald trump is at his peak with his numbers. there's no new voter he's bringing to the table, right? so that's an important kind of framing to remember, and we are about to head into our convention. we're about to head into, you know, the delegates of this party who are there for joe biden, those delegates are going to nominate the president as the candidate moving forward and as our nominee, and they are staying with the president, and at the end of the day we are not sitting back with our head in the sand without recognizing this has been a tough couple of weeks. of course it has. but at the same time, my biggest

message to you and to your viewers is while this has been such a hard week, the people, the votes, the volunteers are still doing the work. the people like hadly duval are traveling to milwaukee to make sure in all of this their story isn't lost. for every bad story and leak and someone that thinks they know about something that happened with the president and some conversation that he's not having there is a person, a senator, a governor, a real person that is out there in milwaukee making the case, that is in a battleground state holding an event. mayors from all across the country, labor that are standing with him that have members in every single state. so there is no doubt we need to move forward. there is no doubt we have to go back to focusing on taking on donald trump because there is too much at stake. there is no doubt that the people that have driven this conversation care about this country as much as the president does. but there is 1,300 people, staff in this building on this

campaign and they are doing the job every single day to reach the voters and make sure that that choice is clear to them and that work continues to happen. the president has the delegates. he has the support, he was elected in this process by 14 million voters in 2020 by 81 million, more than anyone before him. the broad coalition of people that stand with the president is bigger and wider than the people that don't want him to run, and those are the people that are doing the work in the states that really matter, and i am confident when we get back to being able to go take the case to donald trump, we have the time to do it, and we can bring home the people that have some concerns or a little undecided today. when they see those two ahead and the visions they have for this country, there's no doubt in my mind that the american people are going to be with joe biden. >> jen, despite the flurry of reporting over the last couple of days about what the president may or may not be thinking, that according to "the new york times" he's come to terms with the fact he may have to get out of the race, it sounds over the course of the last 20 minutes

like you're saying the exact opposite. he's not going anywhere. so was there any chance that the president gets out of this race at any point? >> you have heard from the president directly time and again, he is in this race to win, and he is our nominee, and he's going to be our president for a second term. >> all right, chair of the biden/harris 2024 campaign, jen o'malley dillon, thank you very much for coming on the show. we appreciate it. good to see you. >> thanks. >> thank you. >> thank you. all right. interesting, she was very, very clear that he is staying in the race, and i think the question is when you think about the whole thing that started this, the debate, donald trump lied the entire night of the debate, and last night the second half of his speech in normal times, someone would question the fitness of that candidate, and so the question is can joe biden sort of move this massive

boulder uphill, which includes resetting the conversation at the very least to be fair and to look at fitness in terms of both candidate. >> well, right now the attention is all on him. not so long ago it was all on donald trump and whether or not donald trump was fit to be president of the united states. it's now shifted to joe biden because of the debate and the events of the past several weeks, and that's something democrats are going to have to resolve quickly. ahead we do get the big takeaways from donald trump's convention speech last night. plus the breaking news. we've got breaking news out of russia where wrongfully detained american journalist evan gershkovich has been sentenced to 16 years in prison in a sham trial. it is disgraceful and, again, american politicians, republican politicians who have been trying to cozy up to vladimir putin and

their allies in the media need to condemn this show trial and demand that evan is released at once. >> they should be asked about it. >> "morning joe" will be right back. . >> "morning joe" will be right back yourself. with shopify, you have everything you need to sell online and in person. you can have your inventory, payments, and customers in sync across all the places you sell. it doesn't have to be lonely at the top. join the millions to finding success on their own terms. start your journey with a free trial today.

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to deliver the strongest numbing pain relief available. so, do your thing like a pro, pain-free. absorbine pro. "wall street journal" reporter evan gershkovich has been sentenced to 16 years in a russian high security penal colony for the crime of practicing journalism in russia. gershkovich was found guilty of allegedly spying for the u.s., a claim the united states and "the wall street journal" deny and vehemently decry as a sham. gershkovich has been in russian custody since march 29th, 2023. joining us live from london, nbc news international correspondent josh lederman with more. josh, what can you tell us? >> well, mika, a very harsh sentence but not an unexpected one, in a country where

acquittals on espionage charges are essentially nonexistent. you get accused of espionage, you essentially are going to get convicted, and that is what is leading gershkovich's employer, "the wall street journal" this morning to call this a disgraceful sham conviction. they are pointing out that now a single shred of evidence was released publicly by the russian government backing up their assertion that gershkovich had traveled to the area to obtain secret information about russian weapons manufacturing. but this 16-year sentence will be reduced by the 15 months or so he's already served since his arrest, and he will have an opportunity to appeal this verdict, but of course the question is will he actually want to do that. we have asked his legal team whether they plan to appeal because there's an opportunity now that there is a guilty verdict to really jump start the process of trying to negotiate some type of a prisoner swap. the russian government has made very clear that they are open to

such a talk, but it would not occur prior to the issuance of a verdict and we've heard from sergey lavrov at the united nations disclosing that there are ongoing contacts between american and russian spy services about a potential prisoner swap, and so we could potentially see that start to pick up pace now, and as far as what the u.s. might be looking for in a deal, the u.s. has made very clear in addition to evan gershkovich they would want to see paul whelan also come home under a deal, he's also accused of espionage. as far as the kremlin, her not commenting on the verdict today or any potential negotiations, but the clearest sense we have of what president putin might actually want in a prisoner swap for gershkovich comes from a comment he made several months ago where he strongly hinted that russia is seeking the release as part of some type of a prisoner deal.

an fsb hitman accused, he is not in u.s. custody. so any kind of a prisoner swap is going to be a very complicated type of proposition, but clearly the best chance evan gershkovich has now that he has been convicted of seeing freedom anytime soon. >> convicted, sentenced to 16 years in a russian prison. nbc news international correspondent josh lederman. thanks so much. jonathan lemire, let's talk about where this now goes from here. we remember in the case of brittney griner in december of 2022, she was released in exchange for an arms dealer and a terrorist who was released from an american prison and sent back home to get brittney griner home. perhaps now that they have this sham conviction, they snatched evan gershkovich, a reporter for the "wall street journal," they jailed him, a trial with no transparency, no evidence presented that any of us could

seen. they have now a convicted prisoner. what happens now from the point of view of the state department and the biden administration? >> from the first moments gershkovich was taken into russian custody, the biden administration denounced what happened. said he is not any sort of spy and said he did nothing wrong and has been working behind the scenes to try to get his release. these are very sensitive and difficult kind of negotiations, especially with russia at war with ukraine and so little contact between washington and moscow these days. aides have told me in previous weeks that once this trial, no doubt a sham, a moment of injustice, but once it's concluded and a conviction comes, which it now has, that actually would ease the potential -- and i stress potential -- for some sort of negotiation. as josh just said that putin has suggested who he might want in return, it's unclear whether that will happen. i do think we have heard from some u.s. officials who say they

will now try to reengage, mika, on some sort of swap, an some sort of negotiation. there's no guarantee, of course, that it will work. putin has shown a willingness to make these deals from time to time. we hope for evan and his family that something can be done soon. >> yes, we do. let's bring in conservative attorney george conway and national reporter for "the new york times," jeremy peters, and george, we'll stay on this. as it pertains to what we heard and didn't hear from former president donald trump in his acceptance speech last night, he had mentioned a few weeks back about his ability to obtain gershkovich's release. i don't know why he wouldn't do that now if he could do that, and then the question is raised you were talking with putin? there's so many questions that are raised. by the way donald trump talks about vladimir putin in light of this breaking news. >> yeah, the phrasing of what former president trump said a

number of weeks ago almost gave you the impression that he was encouraging the russians to hold on to evan so that he could take the credit for releasing him, he trump, and i just -- it just is unfathomable to me that anybody could put their own interests, anybody -- actually, it's not unfathomable because he's the largest narcissist on the planet, but it's just ugly to see donald trump, you know, basically putting his own personal interests above the nation's interests, as he always does but above this poor man's interests who is suffering. donald trump doesn't care about that because he only cares about himself. >> so george, you have just launched the antipsychopath political action committee. part of that launch included this mobile billboard, which circled the rnc ahead of trump's speech along with many other billboards across milwaukee.

tell us about the new back. >> well, this is something that i got into many, many years ago about trump's psychological health because, you know, i turned down a position in the administration because i thought it was such a s-show and a dumpster fire, and then, you know, there was time where i ran into the president with kellyanne at mnuchin's wedding during the reception, and he told me, oh, you're so great. that's so smart of you not to go work for jeff sessions because he's such a -- you know, and he started insulting jeff sessions and saying jeff sessions couldn't -- shouldn't have recused himself, and i remember thinking what's wrong with this guy and i kind of pushed back on him, and he just went on and on and it was just bizarre. we went to the bar to refill, and i started laughing. we both started laughing. we started laughing hysterically, and the next morning i was wondering, i was laughing at the president of the united states.

what is wrong with this guy. i wondered for a very long time, and finally i started reading the psychological literature, and once i started reading about personality disorders, in particular narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, everything became clear, and that's the reason why i concluded several years ago that he was an absolute danger to the republic, ultimately shown on january 6th. that's what we're trying to do is we want to level the playing peeled on the mental states of the two candidates. both of them are old. both of them misstate words, last night donald trump called his vice presidential nominee j.p. mandell. okay? imagine if joe biden had done that. so the whole point is, i mean, he's a narcissist. these are the dsm five criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. there's a jimmy kimmel monologue

on our website that goes through these, and it's pretty funny. you know, that's the reason why he spoke for several hours last night. it's because, you know, he's full of himself. but here's the real issue, he is also a sociopath. a pervasive pattern of disregard and violation of the rights of others, and you have to have three or more of the following. this isn't hard, you don't have to be a shrink. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors. he is a convicted felon. deceitfulness, how many lies did he tell? 30,000 lies on national in his administration. impulsivity. let's talk about hannibal lecter, let's buy greenland. irritability and aggressiveness, including assaults, he raped a

woman. he was found by a jury to rape a woman. he sexually assaulted many others. reckless disregard for the safety of others. let's say, you know, january 6th, let the guys through with the guns. i can go all the way through it. he's nine for nine. he's a sick man and that's what we're seeing and i think he's had an advantage over these last couple of years that people haven't been seeing him, and now that they're going to see him, they're going to see the guy's a nut job, and we got to get rid of this double standard and we have to start talking about this, and that's the point of psychopac.org. >> the last one was lack of remorse, which trump has said repeatedly that he just didn't have anything to be sorry for ever. >> doesn't have to ask god for forgiveness for anything. >> right. >> i think what's also interesting is there's a discomfort about talking about mental health as it pertains to fitness, and some would argue as

you do that it really pertains to this moment now, especially if we're looking at biden's physical health and fitness, the question is, willie geist, why not take a look at what we see right in front of us, which are endless hours of speeches and behavior during his presidency and after that would lead one to be very concerned about his fitness. >> well, it was on display last night, jeremy peters, you were watching along with the rest of us, and rnc, a convention that had gone to great pains to talk about unity and bringing the country together, especially in the aftermath of an attempted assassination of former president trump. we got to lay down our arms and just be together and figure out solutions for the country, jeremy. and so to hear this after the first 20, 30 minutes or so where he spoke about the attempted assassination, the attempt on his life in pennsylvania, it really did just feel like same old, same old. for all the organizers who did

their level best to create a reagan convention for, what, three and a half, three and three-quarter days, it ended just sort of as a trump rally by the end. >> right, and they did three their level best, willie. they even had some of the same convention planners who helped out john mccain and mitt romney. so this by all bets was supposed to be -- going to be a regular traditional republican convention. of course they don't have a regular traditional republican candidate. they don't have a regular traditional republican party as we knew it anymore. there were scripted moments, of course, of trump's kind of soaring appeals to the better angels of our nature and the need for unity, and at one point he even denounced this notion that we should treat our political pponents differently, but then that gave way to plenty of smaller moments of

self-indulgence. and you're reminded of what happened in 2016, and really, this is the only other time other than election night in november 2016 when you had this scripted magnanimous version of donald trump for any extended period of time, and that, of course, was a speech that was written by his daughter ivanka trump and chris christie who pulled the president-elect aside that night and said, look, you are president. you need to act like it, and he gave this speech where he said the same thing he said last night. i will be a president for all americans. there's no such thing as being a president for half of america, and once he went off script last night, that all went out the window. it was like the speech that he delivered was the one from the rally that was loaded into the prompter on saturday night where he went on these long digressions. he listed these pettygrievances

and grudges. this is really a reminder that it's only july, right? we have a long time to go before november, especially when you're dealing with donald trump who is often his own worst enemy. >> and jeremy, we saw a little bit of that last night, the second half of trump's speech became meandering and dark and even some in the room there seemed rather disinterested. but one of the hallmarks for one of these political conventions is usually one party's up. the other one prevents at least some sort of counterprogramming, know they can't compete totally for the spotlight, but they want to get their message across. the democrats weren't able to do that this week, though, because of the chaos engulfing the party and then president biden's covid diagnosis. what's the latest you've heard from the democrats you speak to as to how they think the next few days will play out? >> i think obviously what they're most worried about is biden going to see the writing on the wall, listening to the interview that you guys just did with his campaign chair, i don't have any -- i would not place

any bets on biden getting out at this moment. i think from everything i hear, he's still very much committed to staying in. it's going to take a lot to move him, but they do need some counter messaging that is more than just donald trump is a threat to democracy because biden can't make that argument for himself right now. he is uneven at best when he does prosecute his case for why trump, a second trump term would be a danger to this country. i think that what the democrats need to come to terms with is that their message right now is that they are essentially asking voters to see something that -- to unsee something that they are plainly seeing for themselves, and that's biden's cognitive decline. he is not the joe biden of 2020. >> okay. that also could be asked of republicans, they're definitely being asked to unsee a lot. >> oh, sure, yeah. >> but fair point. >> you expect more -- but voters

expect more from democrats, i think. >> that's right. i understand, i understand. i just couldn't help myself. national reporter for "the new york times", jeremy peters, and conservative attorney george conway. thank you both very much for being on this morning. and coming up, senator bernie sanders is live in studio to weigh in on donald trump's rnc speech and his reaction to the growing calls for joe biden to step aside. "morning joe" will be right back. aside. "morning joe" will be right back

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welcome back. senator bernie sanders remains one of president biden's biggest supporters as calls from democratic lawmakers continue to grow for biden to step aside. in a new interview with "the new yorker," the vermont independent doubled down on wanting biden to stay in the race, and senator sanders joins us now. so senator, given the growing

calls and whispers, loud whispers from very big names in democratic circles, isn't that causing a lot of destruction on the democratic side and opening the door for donald trump? i mean, is joe biden -- we know he's fit for the presidency. is he fit to run or should he step aside? are you thinking about it at all? >> if i may in all due respect to my friends in the media, you know, we might want to concentrate on what president biden has accomplished, which is probably the strongest record for working families in the modern history of this country, and then we might want to talk about why people should vote for him and why in my view if he runs, he is going to be reelected. he has an agenda -- we don't talk about it in the media much -- that speaks to the needs of working families who have been ignored for decades. so when i go out and i tell people that president biden wants to expand social security

by asking the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes so we can increase benefits by $2,400 a year, people say that's great. and when i say president biden wants to expand medicare so that we can cover dental, hearing and vision. i know the media, these guys make a lot of money, not much interest in that, but if you're a senior and can't afford to go to a dentist, that means a lot. if you have cancer or have had cancer treatment and you went bankrupt or lost your home because of the outrageous costs, president biden wants to end all medical debt in this country. he has a massive housing program, which will deal with the crisis that exist all over this country. he understands that in the midst of massive income and wealth inequality, maybe it's time for the billionaire class to start paying their fair share of taxes. and by the way, he is running against a guy who doesn't believe that climate change is real while every scientist in the world tells us the future of

the planet depends upon us acting aggressively to cut carbon emissions. i think maybe if we start focusing on his record, start focusing on what he is trying to do, not only is he going to win, i think he has a chance to win very, very -- in a big way because working class people in this country are hurting. they want specific ideas as to how their lives are going to be improved. >> senator, good morning. i want to ask you about the minimum wage specifically, which as it sits right now is just at the poverty line for an individual, not good enough, but it's not just the media. it's not just, you know, people who are billionaires and everybody else worried about their lives, it's your colleagues in the senate, jon tester came out yesterday. as you know well, chuck schumer has expressed his concern to the president as well. they're just worried with joe biden at the top of the ticket, they may lose their seats and you may lose the senate. what do you say to them? >> i am very familiar with that, believe me. i think maybe if the democrats in the senate spent less time criticizing biden and more time

bringing up -- raise the issue of the minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. i tried two years ago to try to raise it to 15 bucks an hour. it should be higher than that. bring that bill to the floor, see how many republicans vote for a $17 minimum wage which the american people want. president biden has reached out to the unions, but they need help in terms of countering corporate influence in union elections. so we need to pass the pro act so that workers can form unions. we need to make it clear which side congress is on in terms of climate change. we've done a good job with women's rights. we've made it clear that virtually every republican, not everyone, but most all republicans do not believe that women should be able to control their own rights. we've got to take that fight on economic grounds as well. we have to deal with income and wealth inequality in this country. we've got to address the reality that 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck.

we have to understand that housing is unaffordable throughout this country. biden has an aggressive agenda to deal with it, trump has nothing to say on those issues. let's get around biden's agenda. we're going to win this election. >> senator, as you know very well, $7 and a quarter if you work full-time, eight hours a day, 52 weeks a year, gets you just over $15,000 a year at the poverty line for an individual. whoever is president next, and i know you hope it will be joe biden, is there hope to get that number up to where it should be? >> of course it is, but lest be very clear. if you are watching this program, and you're a worker in america, one of millions, who are making 10, 12 bucks an hour, if the republicans win, if trump wins, there will be no effort to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, zero. so we are trying to bring that wage up. we have almost every democrat on board. i want more democrats on board, but we have no republicans on board to raise the minimum wage in this country to a living

wage. and there's one other issue out there. in this -- we have in my view a broken, dysfunctional health care system, which is designed to benefit the drug companies and the insurance companies. so by the way, president biden has done more to take on the pharmaceutical industry, which is an enormously powerful institution in america, and start lowering prescription drug costs than any president in american history. but we also have a situation right now if somebody has cancer, unbelievable, unbelievable, you have cancer, right now you've got to worry about getting well. you know what? one out of four people who have cancer treatment are dealing with bankruptcy. they're losing their homes because they're running up bills of hundreds of thousands of dollars. how insane, how cruel is that? the president wants to end all medical debt in america. that's a step forward, it's the right thing to do. >> senator sanders briefly, you support president biden, but you have been critical of his

handling of the war in gaza. prime minister netanyahu is expected to be washington soon. what do you hope to hear from him, and how do you judge the president's handling of the crisis now? >> i think the president is dead wrong on support for israel and this war. hamas is a terrorist organization. they invaded israel, killed innocent people, absolutely outrageous. the head of hamas, sinwar is a criminal in my mind. israel had a right to respond, but they do not have a right to kill 38,000 men, women, and children who are palestinians or to destroy the infrastructure, to destroy the housing, to destroy the medical system. what israel is doing right now in their military campaign under netanyahu's right wing extremist government is horrendous. i personally believe that netanyahu is also a war criminal. and i think we've got to do everything we can to end that war and provide immediate humanitarian relief to the women and children and the people in

gaza right now. it is a horrific humanitarian disaster. so i will not be going to listen to mr. netanyahu. i think he's a war criminal. i think he never should have been invited, and i think it's a real problem for the biden administration, but above and beyond that, trump will be worse even on that issue. >> so obviously showing himself to be a very independent senator, 81-year-old bernie sanders of vermont. >> 82. 82. >> are you 82? i just did the research. my gosh, isn't that something, senator bernie sanders of vermont, thank you very much for being on this morning. we really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> and that does it for us this morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage after a short break. a e coverage after a short break

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