talent and extremely competent, and i think that could be very good for them and he would love to debate j.d. vance, i'm sure. >> msnbc analyst brendan buck, appreciate it, and thank you for getting up "way too early" with us on this wednesday morning. "morning joe" starts right about now. >> we're effectively run in this country via the democrats, via our corporate ol jarks by a bunch of childless cat laid white house are miserable in their own lives and the choices that they made and they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. >> yeah, i mean, if you have friends who have chosen not to have kids you know how totally miserable they are. i've got too much disposable income. my life is so hard. i can fly business class. i still have a sex life. please, kill me. >> j.d. vance's childless cat lady comment continues to be a

major story line in the presidential race, and his cleanup attempts, well, don't seem to be working as there are now more examples of him using similar phrasing over the past few years. meanwhile, vice president cheyanne harris is building real momentum with her campaign holding a raucous rally last night in front of a huge and lively crowd in atlanta. it comes as the veepstakes is heating up and she will will appear with her new running mate next week. we'll be joined by one of the men on the short list for that job, senator mark kweli of arizona. he'll be our guest this morning, and also ahead we'll bring you the latest out of the meet following a strike that killed a key leader of hamas. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, july 31st. i'm jonathan lemire along with the bbc's katty kay in for joe, mika and willie and we have

political analyst former u.s. senator claire mcas skill, she and our friend jen palmieri are the co-host of the nbc podcast "how to win 2024." also with us managing editor at the bulwark sam stein and editor and editor-at-large for the nonprofit newsroom the 19th erin hayes. >> katty, got to see you this morning. we have children, love our children and to suggest that childless americans don't have high quality lives, too, not only inaccurate, but continues to be on a more serious note deeply offensive to people and in a news cycle that's so fast, in a news cycle that's relentless and things that we move on to the next story within a few hours at times. this one is really staying, and particularly for someone like j.d. advance really trying to introduce himself nationally, this is not a good first impression.

>> yeah. people with kids don't like it. people, of course, without kids don't like it, and then there's this weird policy proposal that people who have kids should get more votes in the united states, i don't know about you, but when i had kids and they were small i think i should have taken votes away from because i was soed aled for lack of street. it's sticking and, of course, the democrats are making hey out of it. meanwhile, vice president harris, it looks like, has closed the gap or taken the lead over donald trump in every swing state, according to the latest bloomberg morning consult poll. it shows the race in all battleground states. harris let's by two points after trump led president biden joe biden by three points in a survey taken earlier this month. in georgia the polls show the race is tied after trump led by

a previous survey and in michigan harris leads trump by 11 points, double digits, a six-point improvement and in nevada harris has erased a three-point lead for trump and turned that into a two-point lead of her own and traits by two points in north carolina. she's also cut trump's lead from seven points to four points in pennsylvania and in wisconsin the poll shows harris leading by two points after biden led by three points. with the exception of michigan, every state's result is within the margin of error. harris' lead in michigan also varies from other polls, by the way, that have been taken since biden exited the race, but they are kind of extraordinary numbers and show a big switch pretty fast. those numbers come as vice president harris herself held a rally last night in rally drawing a very energetic crowd of some 10,000 people. she laid out the contrast between her and donald trump, once again presenting this

election as a choice between a prosecutor and a felon. harris also attacked the former president on border security and called him out for flip-flopping on the next presidential debate. >> our administration worked on the most significant border security bill in decades. some of the most conservative republicans in washington, d.c. supported the bill, even the border patrol endorsed it. it was all set to pass. but at the last minute trump directed his allies in the senate to vote it down. ing. >> right. >> he tanked, tanked the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election which goes to show donald trump does not care about border security. he only cares about himself.

so here is my pledge to you. as president i will bring back the boarder security bill that donald trump killed, and i will sign it into law. and show donald trump what real leadership looks like. so last week you may have seen he pulled out of the debate in september had had previously agreed to. so here's the thing. here's the funny thing about that. here's the funny thing about that. so he won't debate but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me, and by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain

weird? well, donald, i do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage because as the saying goes if you've got something to say, say to my face. >> so claire mcas skill, a lot to get through here from what we saw from the vice president here. it was striking, the border and immigration seem to be one of her biggest weaknesses. addressed it at the top of the rally and flipped it on trump for his efforts to kill the bipartisan bill. as we showed later on this show she has ads, trump has one attacking her and she has one defending her on this issue. you know, the signature moment from that is going to be the say

it to my face, you know, about the debate, sort of goading tramp to meet her in september, but i'm also just struck by the feel of last night. that crowd was huge. it was raucous. the vice president is clearly having fun on the stage, and an unthinkable scene for democrats two weeks ago. >> yeah. it is a remarkable thing that we are witnessing. this is a woman who has been underestimated by the chattering class, by people who don't know her well, people who assumed she wasn't ready to take on this kind of campaign in this way, and i think if we watch that -- that speech last night, what struck me so much, i don't think people realize how hard it is what you're constantly interrupted with a lot of emotional outbursts of a crowd and how you pause and allow that

emotion to build and how you build off of that emotion for a crescendo. really, that was a very well done set of remarks last night, and people really don't realize how difficult that is to do it with confidence, with a smile on her face. that's the biggest contrast in this campaign now, jonathan, is that the democrats are having fun, and it's about joy and opportunity and freedom, and the other side is about, you know, cat ladies and electrocuting boats and stuff that most americans are just going, well, that doesn't really move me. >> yeah. and weird is the word democrats have fixated on the last den days, but it's a dark. dark image of america that donald trump and j.d. vance are putting forward. erin haines, were you there and covered that real last night in atlanta. tell us more about what it felt like, how the crowd responded to

her as this is the general election is in a new -- such a different place and vice president harris' rollout here continues to be really impressive. >> yeah. i mean, jonathan, what you saw on the screen was exactly what it felt like in that arena. the mood, the best way i could describe it was festive and even leading up to that 27-minute speech that the vice president had you had a parade of rock stars, political and entertainers, taking the stage and really firing up a crowd that didn't really need much firing up. you israel a deejay in the arena. they dancing for the three hours leading up to her being on stage and stacey abrams is certainly still a hero in georgia. she made her first appearance for the vice president who is now the presumptive democratic nominee on stage. you had senators jon ossoff and

raphael warnock make a rare appearance on stage together in this rally. they don't often do that, harkening back to that his tore 20ik 20 election for them as well. then you have megan thee stallion and the rapper from qeuvos who introduced the vice president who talked about their efforts to reduce gun violence. keeping this enthusiasm going into week two of harris' campaign as she's really the de facto democratic nominee, energy i saw in georgia in 2020. i don't know if they can keep the same energy up for the next 918 days. that's 14 weeks from now, but if they can georgia definitely seems to be back in play for democrats. >> yeah. the energy there last night, i mean, crazy. the money there also pouring in as well. sam, i don't know if you've got -- if you need a little bit more money, but i see that

amazon is not yet selling it say it to my face t-shirts. i'm sure they pay a lot of money to do "way too early" but if you need a little bit more say it to my face t-shirts need to be sold. more seriously, what do you see about the enormous shift that we've seen? i haven't seen a shift like this during a campaign, this rapid and distinctive, particularly that michigan number? what are you making of that bloomberg poll? is this an outlier or where things are headed for democrats? >> do you want me to start with the serious stuff or can i start with the amazon t-shirt business. >> go ahead. >> i hadn't shot about the t-shirt business idea but i'll look into it. >> it's a no-brainer. >> claire made a very valid point about constantly being interrupted. i know it. i've worked with jonathan lemire. it's a problem to speak when that happens? >> what? >> as for the polls, look, i don't put my stock in any one set of polls individually.

i think there are some numbers there that are frankly head-scratching. i mean, plus 11 in michigan, come on. that's not going to be that. and minus one in pennsylvania, and if you look at trends, that's where you put your money and the trends point to the same thing that harris has gained aub stangsly relative to what we expect in an election like this. we're talking about two, three, four, points across the board in the states and nationally, and i think it's manifested in the ways that we saw atlanta last night. democratic enthusiasm which had been so bad for so long suddenly gets, you know, erupted out of this bottleneck and you're seeing it with crowds, you're seeing it with poll results, and you're seeing it with fund-raising. i think she's made up a huge amount just on that alone. the question is can she sustain, it build on it and then also keeping that location, the sort of independents, the older

voters that biden did have in his back pocket, can she do that and create that winning coalition, and that's where the next three weeks i think are going to be critical. >> yeah, it's a really smart point by sam stein in what will be his last appearance on "morning joe." >> sam, we all love you. we love you, and we're grateful you're here. it is a good point. let's look at this poll for a minute. it's hard to reconcile a number that has harris up 11 in michigan and down four in pennsylvania. that doesn't quite wash, but i think the overall trend line. we talk about the trend and the trend the last ten days is clearly shifting towards harris here and democrats are being carried away by the surge in enthusiasm acknowledge it's going to be a really close race. this is still basically a 50/50 tossup race here at least in this minute, now shy of 100 days to the election, and republicans

know while they had momentum, republicans are playing defense amid growing backlash over a 2021 remark about childless cat ladies. donald trump's running mate is getting attention for another resurfaced comment. take a look at what he had to say in a podcast interview from 2020 about americans without children. >> jump. these basic cadences of life that i think are really powerful and really valuable when you have kids in your life and the fact that so many people, especially in america's leadership class, just don't have that in their lives, i worry that it makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our country a bit less mentally stable. you talk about going on twitter, final point i'll-makers you go on twitter and almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are people who don't have kids at home. >> oh, boy. a spokesperson for senator vance responded writing in part this. once again, the left wing media

have twisted senator vance's words and spun up a false narrative about his position on the issues. as he's clearly stayed, he was talking about police on the left who support policies that are explicitly anti-child and anti-family, so, claire, this is -- first of all, let's just say this and make this clear up front. this is not a one-time remark from j.d. vance. he has said versions of this a number of times. in fact, as we pointed out yesterday, his campaign even tried to fund raise off of similar comments, but this is something, you know, first of all, retook the what he said but just in terms of the politics of the moment, j.d. vance, all he's doing right now is trying to clarify comments that seem to only grow more damaging by the day. >> he's really made a mess of this, and -- and his spokes person, i mean, give me a break. we all heard him say it. he's now said -- we're now the sociopaths that people who don't have children are sociopaths.

the things that have happened since cheyanne harris took over the democratic party, this comment will move the independent engaged voters more than anything else because it's a personal insult that's personal in a. sometimes it is step parents who are painting stef children in exactly the same ways that they would if they had a biological child. even people who have adopted children. this hits home to them. it rests inside of them. it will move voters, and he cannot run from these comments. he's said it over. it's what he really believes, so the question is did they not vet this guy? did they not know that part of his ethos is if you don't have children, you're less than the rest of america?

it's really bizarre to me. >> no question that part ever this is a product of the way trump built out the vp process where he wanted to save it to the last minute and have the suspense, and, yes, the campaign says that there was vetting done of all the leading candidates, but clearly, clearly not enough, or they found these comments and agreed with them. >>ia. i mean, there is a kind of 1950s vibe to all of this, right? that you have to have kind of a nuclear family. you read project 2025 which i spent a lovely weekend reading so that you all didn't have to and i know that distancing themselves from that as far as they possibly can, but the whole ethos, that projects a lot is about familiar values, nuclear families, having kids. i mean, you hear that come out in japan. d. vance's comments. i mean, errin, it was interesting listening to the hour earlier, to mychael schnell

in a program we can no longer mention, the idea that members of congress are now saying -- republican members of congress are saying that j.d. vance was the worst possible pick for donald trump. do you think is there any chance, do you think, that the trump campaign or the former president would ever think of trying to switch out his vice president? i don't know if that's even possible for him at this point, but what are you hearing on that front? >> you know, what first of all, justice for sam stein. let me just say that. sam, we love you. this land should really not continue. >> he's so teaseable. we can't resist. it gives us all joy in the morning to tease sam. >> at least for now, republicans and former president trump seem to be tethered to j.d. vance as his running mate. this is the ticket that former

president trump choempts i was in milwaukee when j.d. vance was introduced. so much enthusiasm was around president trump especially coming out of the shooting that he survived so there was a lot of momentum around that. people that i spoke to there didn't seem to have a problem with j.d. vance at that time because these kinds of comments had not yet trickled out. but, look, we've been saying gender is on the ballot, and as women are continuing to hear the kind of comments that j.d. vance has made in the past, as jonathan has said that he's campaigned on and fund raised on, as people from the lbgtq plus community are hearing things he has said around the transgender community, these are not comments, you know, making them want to support the trump/vance ticket and in fact they could be galvanizing those kind of people to reject that ticket and stay home or vote for, you know, a harris and whoever her running mate is, so,

you know, with gender on the ballot and gender really being kind of a baggage issue it sounds like for j.d. vance, this is -- this is real re, you know, not the rollout that i thought that that campaign was hoping for >> the trump campaign did so when they were confident they were going to win and win big. they thought they were heading to a blowout victory over president joe biden, and the pick of varns was to firmly print paga on the republican party for years to come, to run up the score and make it trump's party forever. that race has changed and that pick looks very, very suspect now. editor-at-large for the nonprofit newsroom the 19th errin haynes, great to see you this morning. >> still to come, a top leader from home has has been killed in japan. a live report from the region and what it could mean for wider

issues. we'll have all that and more coming up on "morning joe" in just a few seconds. p on "mornin just a few seconds get 1.9% apr financing or a $2500 customer bonus on a new 2024 tiguan.

(♪♪) [shaking] itchy pet? (♪♪) with chewy, save 20% on your first pharmacy order so you can put an end to the itch. get flea and tick medication delivered right to your door. [panting] there's developing news this morning out of the middle east. the political leader of hamas was killed in a strike in iran. the group made the announcement late last night calling the death of us mail haniyeh an assassination. hamas is now blaming israel for that attack, but israel has yet to comment on it. u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin says he's aware of the reports but has no other information to provide.

according to iranian state media he was killed in iran shortly after attending the gnawing russian of iran's new president. he had been leading political operations for hamas frequents i'll in qatar and was a key figure in the cease-fire negotiations with israel. meanwhile, israel says it has killed a top hezbollah commander in lebanon. israeli forces launched an air strike in a densely populated suburb near beirut yesterday. according to the public health ministry a woman and two children were also killed in the attack. at least 74 others were wounded. israeli officials say the hezbollah commander who died was a close adviser to the iran-backed group's leader. israel believes the commander was responsible for the attack over the weekend in the israeli-controlled golan heights that killed 12 children and teenagers. hezbollah, however, has denied responsibility. let's bring in nbc news international correspondent matt bradley live in beirut. matt, what more are we learning about the death, first of all,

of the hamas leader? >> reporter: well, we're hearing that this is, you know, going to have a major impact on these ongoing negotiations, that we're already wondering about to begin with and the prime minister of qatar is saying how can we continue the negotiations if israel keeps assassinating the negotiators, this prime minister, of course, is one of the main intermediaries between hamas and the israelis working with the united states and with the egyptians trying to come up with some sort of negotiated truce or bringing some measure of peace to the gaza strip that would also free those remaining hostages held inside the gaza strip. that's the immediate impact we'll be seeing but from now on we're hearing the iranians saying that they will be retaliating for this. now, in the past we've seen that the iranian retaliation has been quite measured, almost more symbolic than practical, but at the same time this is a major escalation, and when you take the two twin as nations together, this looks like a very, very destabilizing factor,

and in just the past 24 hours really, this region has changed dramatically. now there's much more pessimism in an already pessimistic environment. you know this, situation here in beirut, this is very worrying because there were outstanding questions. are the israelis done retaliating for that attack in the golan heights on that soccer field that as you just mentioned killed a dozen children and teenagers? it looks as though they might be finished but hezbollah isn't finished. now the iranians aren't finished and hamas also has reasons to retaliate, and how we're seeing an increase in the anger, even as american diplomats are trying their best to negotiate some sort of peace. this sets everything back in the region by days or weeks. it is a very, very difficult situation and one, that you know, the israelis are going to have to acknowledge that they have instigated what looked like an interjected more and more instability into a situation that was already deeply unstable. it's going to be very, very

difficult to recover from this and i have no doubt that diplomats will be trying to tamp down the possibility of a regionwide war, and i've been saying that for months right now, but this situation right now is the closest that the entire region has come to a regionwide war in recent memory. guys? >> matt, talk about those israeli positions though because israel is stretched thin. their economy is stretched thin with so many young people now fighting already against hamas in gaza. can they really take on a northern front like this in lebanon? >> reporter: and this is a matter of much spec lake, a lot of inning spilled on this very topic. you know, it's a really important issue. is israel's military which was humiliated on october 7 capable of opening up in full another front on its northern board we are an enemy that would dwarf the power of hamas in the gaza strip. hezbollah, as we know, really behaves more like a state within a state and more like an army

than a militia uncertain rigid hierarchy group that has, you know, officers. it hants national connections. it is a political force here in lebanon. it has ministers and the governments, you know. its operatives were able to travel around the world unlike those who are confined. hamas officers who are confined to the gaza strip, so they are able to gather support. this means that israel is continuing to instigates more and more anger from hezbollah and now from iran, hamas. iran, by the way, is the named patron for hamas and herksz so these conflicts are very much intertwined and that's why it's so incredibly dangerous, and why it makes the israeli claims that they are trying to tamp down the situation, the repeated claims that they don't want war over the northern bothered. it makes it harder to believe, and it will certainly make it harder for a lot of their antagonists here in the middle east who are right up on the border with them. it looks as though iran is planning some sort of retaliation. that could very well happen through its major proxies, its

primary one right here in hezbollah in the last 24 hours has a very new grievance to add against israel. an inflammatory sense of double-barrelled actions that have set israel right on the brink of another war. >> a lot of developments in the region. nbc's matt bradley in the area for us. thanks very much. amid the global hot spots donald trump says if elected president foreign adversaries would walk all over vice president harris for reasons, quote, a lot of people understand. in part two of a sit-down interview that aired on fox news last night, trump was asked specifically about the possibility of harris dealing with russian president vladimir putin and chinese president xi jinping. here's what trump had to say. >> i think they will walk all over her. >> how so? >> i think they will walk all

over. i think they will walk all over her. they will be so easy, like a play toy. they will look at her and say i can't believe we got so lick, and i don't want to say as toss, why but a lot of people understand it. >> claire, it certainly seems to be an unsubtle suggestion from trump questioning again harris' intellect and her gender. >> yeah. i don't understand what he thinks he's accomplishing by basically saying because of the way she looks, people are going to walk all over her had. i mean, this is a really accomplished woman. i think people don't realize to rise through the ranks of warfare in the democratic party, you've got to be tough. the job of a d.a. is a difficult job, there's incoming every day. there are critical decisions

that you make every day that's about life and day. this is someone tempered by her experience and ready to be steely tough, and when he does this, he's calling into mind people like margaret thatcher and angela merkel and other women leaders across the world that have gone toe to toe with the worst this world has to offer and done very, very well. i think it is a huge mistake for him to continue to bang on gender like this in a way that is kind of echoing the childless cat ladies of his running mate. >> and shows the lack of other attacks that they seem to have. >> they have nothing. they got nothing. they got nothing. >> on the vice president, yes. >> as for russia and china, last week russian and chinese military planes flew together off the coast of alaska in an unprecedented show unity between the two u.s. rivals. according to u.s. secretary of defense lloyd austin, the strategic bombers came within 200 miles of u.s. airspace. facing a bevy of economic

sanctions from the west following his invasion of ukraine, russian president putin has grown increasingly close with his chinese counterpart causing concerns among nato alice. so let's bring in now former reporter for "the wall street journal" matthew brzezinski who was stationed in boast kyiv and moscow for "the journal." good morning, u.s. officials certainly have warned that they are not happy with the growing ties between moscow and beijing. china has not supplied lethal aid to russia's war effort in ukraine, but they have certainly propped it up in a number of ways this. country is seemingly growing closer, but you say that might actually backfire for china. tell us. >> well, i don't think this relationship is nearly as scary as some are making it out to be. china's acting very, very tunisticly and, in fact, this bomber patrol which got so many

headlines is an example of the games that the chinese are playing not with us, but with the russians. you know, you're picturing squadrons of bombers bristling with technology. in fact, it was a couple of ancient propellor-driven planes with no bombs on board and very likely the chinese gave us a heads up and gave us the flight plan. this was political theater not intended to frighten us so much but as intended to appease vladimir putin because the chinese relationship with russia is one that is borderline frankly predatory. the chinese are the big winners in the war on ukraine because russia's isolation has lost is absolutely desperate and vulnerable and the chinese are taking tremendous advantage of this. in fact, more telling of the relationship is not let's say this joint patrol but the fact that on that very day the chinese kicked the russians out

of a joint venture to build a passenger plane, a wide-bodied long range passenger plane that will compete with the due duopoly of boeing and airbus. for ten years the chinese helped the russians design the plane and unceremoniously booted them out once they had gotten what they needed for the russians, and, in fact, the russians are fleecing the russians in so many different ways that this is not a happy relationship. frankly not even a serious relationship, but it's -- it's something that, you know, we in the west should not worry about too much. there's not a lot of love between the two. >> matthew, i hate to make it all about u.s. elerksz, but one of the very few areas where there's not very much policy issue between democrats and republicans at the moment is around the issue of china, so

how are the chinese watching what's happening in the u.s. this summer? how are they seeing this in transition to joe biden? what do you think xi jinping is making of the race so far? >> i think they are very relieved. the last thing china wanted probably is a trump victory where he brings a rap end to the war on ukraine. china is making far, far, far too much money off of russia. russia after the invasion of ukraine had lost its european energy markets, and china is getting a 40% discount on what the germans and the french were paying for national gas. you know, this is -- this is tens and tens -- savings of tens and tens of billions of dollars. moreover. vladimir putin's, all his infrastructure was aimed at delivering energy towards the west. now he's desperate to build

joint pipelines to china. putin went to beijing last minute and there were great embraces and affirmations of love and a no-limits partnership but it was an abject failure. he left empty-handed. the chinese have refused to build this pipeline with the russians and will only do so if russia sells them natural gas at their own subsidized prices, the difference being the chinese are willing to pay $84 per thousand cubic meters of gas whereas the germans and french were paying almost-5-$500. for the chinese, this is a huge boon, but this is absolutely just exploitation, and this relationship is -- is absolutely paper thin, and many of the things are just for show really. >> former reporter for "the wall street journal," matthew brzezinski. thanks for analysis this morning. coming up here on "morning joe," yesterday featured just 12 medal events in the summer

olympic, the fewest of any day in pairies, but there were still plenty of tries. for team usa. we'll bring you those highlights next. am usa we'll bring you those highlights next ♪♪ imagine a future where plastic is not wasted... but instead remade over and over... into the things that keep our food fresher, our families safer, and our planet cleaner. to help us get there, america's plastic makers are investing billions of dollars to create innovative products and new recycling technologies for sustainable change. because when you push for smarter solutions, big things can happen. every day, more dog people are deciding it's time for a fresh approach to pet food. developed with vets. made from real meat and veggies. portioned for your dog. and delivered right to your door. it's smarter, healthier pet food.

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in paris, 6:40 a.m. here in new york. the fifth full day of olympic competition is under way at the paris games. the u.s. women's gymnastics team is back on top of the olympic podium after winning gold in the team final yesterday. the u.s. rolled to victory topping all four events to win by more than five points. simone biles, suni lee, jade carey and hazley rivera are now the fourth american team to win an olympic gold medal in the team final. this marks the eighth olympic medal for biles, including five gold which puts her past shannon miller as the most decorated u.s. gymnast in history, a remarkable moment yesterday, congrats to them. the u.s. earned more hardware in the peel with a silver and bronze won by american smimers smith and berkoff in the women's 100-meter backstroke. those marked the 509th and 6

upth medals in team history, nobody has won that many sounds. bobby finke kept the count going in the men's 600-meter freestyle and another silver in the men's 4xby 200 meter relay for its fifth medal in that event. meanwhile, the u.s. women's rugby sevens squad earned its first ever olympic medal converting on a last-second try to defeat australia 14-12 and win the bronze, and the u.s. men's national soccer team will play in an olympic quarterfinal match for the first time in 24 years clinching a spot in the knockout round after a 3-0 victory over ghana. after four full days of u.s. competition the u.s. continues to lead the overall medal count. however, japan continues to lead atop the number of most golds. coming up here on "morning

joe," kamala harris is set to announce her running mate within the week, and among the list of possible contenders, democratic senator mark kelly of arizona. he'll join us straight ahead on "morning joe." f arizona. he'll join us straight ahead on "morning joe." have a passion for online gaming? or want to explore the space economy? choose from over 40 themes, each with up to 25 stocks identified by our unique algorithm. buy it as-is or customize to align with your goals. all at your fingertips. schwab investing themes. 40 customizable themes. up to 25 stocks in just a few clicks. ♪♪ nexium 24hr prevents heartburn acid for twice as long as pepcid. get all-day and all-night heartburn acid prevention with just one pill a day. choose acid prevention. choose nexium. at care.com, it's easy to get a break, even if you're not on summer vacation. join millions of families who've trusted us and find caregivers in your area for kids,

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this is america's border czar, and she's failed us. under harris over 10 million illegal are here, a quarter of a million americans dead from

fentanyl, brutal migrant crimes, and isis now here. >> do you have any plans to visit the border? you haven't been to the border. >> and i haven't been to europe. i mean, i don't understand the point that you're making. >> kamala harris failed, weak, dangerously liberal. >> on the border, the choice is simple. kamala harris supports increasing the number of border patrol agents. donald trump blocked a bill to increase the number of border patrol agents. kamala harris supports investing in new technology to block fentanyl from entering the country. donald trump blocked funding for technology to block fentanyl from entering the country, kamala harris supports more money to stop human traffickers. donald trump blocked money to stop human traffickers. kamala harris prosecuted national gang members and got them sentenced to prison. trump is trying to avoid being sentenced to prison. there's two choices in this election, the one who will fix

our broken immigration system and the one who is trying to stop her. >> vice president kamala harris sharpening her attacks on donald trump in that new immigration ad released just hours after trump launched his own ad on that same issue. joining us now, democratic senator mark kelly of arizona. he is a retired combat pilot and nasa astronaut and serves on five different senate committees, including armed services and the joint economic committee. senator kelly, thank you so much for joining us this morning. let's start with the issue of img gracious, an issue that, of course, is very important in your state of arizona, perceived by some as perhaps the vice president's political weakness. she's tried to turn this issue on its head. she opened her rally talking about it. we just saw that ad. tell us though what is the experience of those in your state about immigration, and what's the best path forward? >> well, jonathan, let me start

by saying thank you for having me on, and let's talk about the two ads for a second. the first one is typical donald trump. it was a bunch of lies, and it was politics. the second ad was facts. donald trump and senate republicans -- i mean, what did they do several months ago? we had a bipartisan bill that we negotiated faithfully with the administration. both sides of the aisle, and donald trump said that senate republicans can't vote for it. he wanted to talk about this issue instead of actually fix it, and j.d. vance and other republicans, they ran away from it, so kamala harris and the administration wants to fix this problem. she's worked on this problem, you know, for three and a half years, and it's a challenging problem. i mean, i represent a border state, but we have made progress, especially with what was put in place over the last several months, but i can't stress more that this is an issue that donald trump and republicans just want to talk

about. i mean, j.d. vance is down here, i think he's in arizona today probably getting a photo op at the southern border. kamala harris is about solving problems. donald trump wants to take us, drag us back a decade. >> senator, sam stein here. you have been reported, i think you're aware of being on the vp short list of having received vetting materials. i have one quick question and then sort of a larger question. one, by any chance do you have any plans to be in philadelphia next tuesday just out of curiosity and then, two, as we talk about the issues that are going to be litigated during this campaign, obviously immigration is going to be one. cost of living is going to be another, but i'm just wondering can you put on your political hat and sort of diagnose where you think the battlefield will be on a policy front the next three months. >> this is going to be a debate over what donald trump stands for and kamala harris stands for fundamentally. i mean, donald trump when he was

president gave huge tax cuts to billionaires. he weakened our alliances across the globe, and he tried to take away and successfully took away fundamental rights for women, reproductive rights. now he's talking about voting rights. i mean, he said just this week if he's elected we won't have to vote again. i think people know what that means. kamala harris wants to take us into the future. she wants to reduce the cost of education, health care, and she wants to -- to have a country where kids can grow up and live their own american dream. i mean, we can't have four more years of donald trump, especially with j.d. vance, one heartbeat away from the presidency. i think we all know guys like this. i mean, what he stands for. he thinks people are worth more or less based on when they decide to start a family, and on reproductive rights, i mean, he wants to further restrict ivf. he would not vote for a bill to just try to help people start a

family, so i think it's going to be about these fundamental issues, and it's pretty clear that we need to work really hard. i'm going to work as hard as i can between now and election day. we've got 97 days. we have to make sure that chair sis elected the next president of the united states. >> and returning to that, sam was mentioning the vice president's campaign noted, outlined a travel schedule next week in which they say harris and whoever her running mate will be will appear at a number of stops kick off tuesday in philadelphia, so let's get an update there, where you stand with this process. you've been in contact with the harris campaign. have they said to you we would like you to be the choice? >> jonathan, i'm not going to get into any of that. i am going to be focused on making sure that kamala is the next president. i'll work as hard as i can. my wife gabby giffords is already working very hard on this. she has been. she was in pennsylvania most of last week. she was in michigan. she's going to be in other

battleground states tirelessly. next week i'll in arizona. arizona is important not only for who is going to be in the white house but also who is going to keep control of the united states senate. we've got some really important elections in arizona, and this election is going to come down to some really fundamental things. do we want to take this country into the future with kamala harris as our leader works has -- you know, has experience. she's an experienced prosecutor, or do we want to be dragged back into the past with somebody who is now a convicted felon and a guy standing at his side that only has this job because he would do what mike pence wouldn't and that's to overturn an election. >> mark, let's circle back immigration for a minute. i think, unfortunately, a lot of people hear about the bipartisan bill that was negotiated and don't really understand how far that bill went to change the status quote. i mean, this was a bill that

when i was in the senate i don't think that the democratic party ever would have embraced because it really did a lot of things in terms of asylum-seeking, in terms of being able to turn people away at the border, it really was -- i would call it an aggressively center bill. it was not left. it was center, maybe even center right, and i think you need to explain to people how bold it was for trump to say, no, we're not going to take the win because i would rather campaign on the issue. it's a little bit like i'm going to build a wall and mexico is going to pay for it. it is just bull, and -- and i know you can speak plainly to this because you live in arizona. you can't afford just to talk about it. >> i do, claire. i'm down at the border all the time meeting with mayors, sheriffs, ngos down there. it's a hard problem to solve, and by the way, this was -- like you said, this was not meeting the republicans on the 50-yard

line. this was meeting them on the ten-yard line on their side of the field. we realize we've got to get operational control over the border. i realize this. kamala harris realizes this, and this legislation was going to do that? and our -- our goal here was to get this legislation passed and then start working on comprehensive immigration reform, but this was stopped dead in its tracks by donald trump because he wanted to have this as an election issue. like a lot of other republicans they don't actually want to solve this problem, they just want to talk about it, and that's why his running mate j.d. vance is down at the border to take a picture. that's the only reason he's there. he should be back in washington trying to get this done, and i'll tell you this, when kamala harris is the next president we'll continue to work on this. it's the right thing to do. at the same time, we're a country of immigrants, and we need comprehensive immigration reform, dreamers, dreamers are as american as my own two kids

and deserve a pathway to set senship. where this is a complicated issue. one thing is pretty basics, and that's that we had an agreement. we had the votes, and donald trump wakes up one morning and sees that he does not want this problem solved, so he told senate republicans that they were not allowed to vote for it, and not every one of them, but most of them, including j.d. vance, they didn't walk away from this problem, they ran away from it, so i'm looking forward to seeing kamala harris in the white house. we can get back to doing the hard work. she's had a lot of success in the northern trainingle. i was just in mexico meeting with the president and the future president of mexico. we talked about that. the work she did in honduras, el safely dorr is paying dividends. you combine that with the actions that president biden and vice president harris have took

and donald trump has made it clear that he does not want the bipartisan legislation that they had. >> let me ask you a different way then. what do you think kamala harris given her weaknesses over the bothered or the attacks that she's going to take over the border from the republicans, what do you think she needs in a vice president? >> i think that's going to be something that the vice president is going to have to figure out. i think she's got a lot of great choices out there. my focus is not on this, and this is not about me. i mean, this is about the future of our country, having somebody in the white house, having kamala harris in the white house that's going to be focused on bringing down the cost of prescription drugs, making education more affordable, affordable child care, or donald trump which i expect what we would see is more collateral damage to our alliances, taking away fundamental freedoms and rights.

i mean, he's -- he's running with a guy, you know works says that in cases of rain and incest, you know, two wrongs don't make a right. i -- i have a hard time understanding what's wrong with a woman who has been raped to terminate a pregnancy. to call it an inconvenience, i mean, an inconvenience is when you get stuck in traffic. donald trump is bad by himself. you combine him with a guy who was not picked to win an election. he was picked to overturn an election, that's a problem, and that's why i think every american needs to realize that they have to get out there, knock on doors, make phone calls and more than anything they need to vote and get their friends to vote. >> senator, this is your first interview like this since president biden announced he would not be running for

reelection. we appreciate you doing it here. just want to get your thoughts about the president's decision and legacy in office and what this means now for the democratic party. >> well, i served 25 years in the united states navy, so i've served our country for a long time, and i would put president biden's service to this country up against anybody's record, and what he did was very patriotic, and he realized that we've got to be best positioned to make sure that we do not get four years of donald trump with j.d. vance. i mean, that is clear. we need to move this country forward. chair sis absolutely the right person to do this. she's an experienced prosecutor. you know, she fights crime. my parents were both costs. i look at chairs as -- you know, as a corporation as a prosecutor, attorney general. on the other hand, you have a guy who is a convicted felon, and i have a granddaughter now. she's 3 years old, and just the

example that donald trump sets for kids, you know, growing up with this divisive politics, with lies, with, you know, just criminal actions, it is very concerning for me and for the future of our country, and that's why, again, we've got 97 days. i'm going to work as hard as can i and my wife gabby giffords is as well to make sure that kamala is elected president. >> and as a final question on an issue close to home. we know the senate seat race will be reuben gallegos versus kari lake. give us your take on the primary. lake won the primary but a guy with no money got 40% of the vote. arizonans realize what kari lake stands for. she won by 14 percentage points. she ran against a guy with $100

in his bank account. kari lake stands for divisiveness, dividing us. she still will not agree that joe biden won the 2020 election. she thinks she's governor and is still litigating the 2022 election. now she wants to be a united states senator. kari lake is somebody that right before her last election she asked if there were any john mccain republicans in the room and then she kicked them out when they put their hands up. i mean, i looked up to john mccain my entire navy career. i still do, patriotic morrin who served his country at highest level, and a republican throwing john mccain republicans out of the room during an election season. i mean, that's what kari lake represents. on the other hand, we have reuben gallego, cares so much about our veterans and members of the military, a guy i work

with on practically a weekly basis to make sure that we have the military we need to stand up to our adversaries. he's absolutely going to win this election, and he's the right guy for the job. >> joining us for a wide-ranging interview this morning, democratic senator mark kelly of arizona. senator, thank you. >> thank you, jonathan. >> and we've crossed the top of the hour here. it's after 7:00 a.m. here in the east coast. as we mentioned, vice president harris held a rally last night in atlanta drawing an energized crowd of 10,000 people where she laid out the significant contrast between her and donald trump. >> donald trump has a different plan in mind, one that would raise prices on middle class families. just look at his project 2025 agenda. i take it you've seen it sns project 2025 is a plan to weaken the middle class, be clear.

and donald trump intends to cut social security and medicare. he intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations. he intends to cut our investments in clean energy jobs. he intends to end the affordable care act. to take back to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with pre-existing conditions. you guys remember that was? children with asthma, breast cancer survivors, grandparents with diabetes, georgia, america has tried these failed policies before, and we are not going back. >> let's bring into the conversation president of the national action network and host

of msnbc's "politics nation," the reverend al sharpton and msnbc political analyst and the publisher of a newsletter "the ink." thanks to you both for being here this morning. rev, i'll start with you. i heard from some democrats who watched that rally who said there were shades of obama '08 and '12 in terms of crowd side and in terms of enthusiasm, reflective of how much this race has changed. give us your impressions of energy and also what you heard from the vice president who at least to this point in her new campaign is proving very effective in drawing a contrast with trump and needling him too. >> well, in the last two days i've done -- been to three cities, and i can't tell you the energy level i'm hearing from crowds, just general crowds, last night in the rally around matsui for police reform in chicago and then before that with the president in texas, and

these are not political rallies, yet everybody is talking about kamala harris and talking about what she's doing, so the energy level is clearly way beyond what it was, and i can say it's similar if not equal to what is happening around then senator obama. i would not cast her as obama like. she has her own style and distinction but the energy level is there and the substance is there. what i've been impressed by is that vice president harris has been able to make her case, take him on in terms of the bullying but not lose the fact that she has something to say of substance and not just taking on tit for tat and back and forth with him. she's in many ways been able to dislodge his strategy of trying to suck you into his kind of fight. she's fighting her kind of

political fight without losing her dignity but at the same time taking him on, and i think so far she's been very effective. >> yeah. she's certainly a much better campaigner than she was back in 2019 when she first ran for the presidency. and your new piece is titled "donald who?" and you wrote that kamala took the fight to trump in the beginning, a prosecutor versus a felon, the fighter for justice versus a purveyor of injustice. but then she pivoted to the ability to fight for you, for your family. this is what the harvard scholar daniel sibblatt calls the bank shot to save democracy and to make sure you have the tools to make your life better. spellous a little more how chair

sis prosecuting that argument and the difference in that argument between the harris campaign and the biden campaign. >> yeah. you know, i mean, i was listening to the rev, and i've watched the rev preach in church, and you can -- you can call all you want but you've got to get a response, and some people get that response and some people don't, and as i'm sure the rev would agree. it's not only a function of the person. it's a function of the moment. the passage of scripture, but also what is happening in the hearts of those people at that time, right, and the same sermon may fall flat at one moment and still people to their feet in another, and so i think this moment, whether it's comparing the vice president to where she was in 2020 or comparing her to president biden, she has found this alignment of person, moment, message, what is happening in people's hearts, and you're seeing i think a couple of things that are really

significant. number one, i don't think donald trump in the war for attention that anybody in politics or media is competing in, i don't think donald trump has had a bad week since june of 2015, and over the last nine days, ten days, he lost the war for attention arguably for the first time in nine summers. that's pretty remarkable, but other thing you see is joy and, unirance, and i think there's been a little bit of this kind of feeling in some parts of the democratic coalition that because this is such important work to save democracy and fight fascism, it has to be serious and grave, and i think frankly what, again, you come out of a lot of the black political fight of fighting injustice and have room for spirit and energy and music in your movement and i think you can see that being

reflerkted this. can be a joyous movement to defeat these forces, and i would say with echos of 2008, i think the vice president understands, and this is where frankly being 20 years the junior of president biden makes a difference. she is a phenomenon in the culture. she is a player in the culture, right? i have -- i'm lucky to still have two grandparents alive. they are wonderful people. they are on their game. they are not players in the culture the way my parents are and my parents are not the way i am and i'm not a player in the culture the way my kids are so she is a member of the culture. she is -- she is able to figure out these phrases that land with people in this gutteral place. yesterday when she was saying to donald trump, if you want to say something, say it to my face. all she has to say is if you've got something to say, they are all saying say it to my face and a lot of these elements, attention, joy, being in the

culture, are things that have been lacking for democrats in general for some years now. >> going back to what you just said about playing in the culture and what you said about a ministerial call to response, it isn't always knowing and identifying with your audience because in order for something to land right, you have to have a landing field for it to land, and a lot of things that we're hearing from people in politics are they have a nice airplane, but they don't have an airport to land it in because that airport has moved over somewhere else, and isn't a lot of what we're seeing from the vice president, is she understanding the crowd she's talking to and in the case that you just referred, to she is part of that crowd, and i think donald trump is not -- not only of that crowd, he's health attention as long as you said to where he's not even trying to stay up to date because he just takes for

granted he's going to be front page news in cable news no matter what, and all of a sudden he wakes up one morning and he's no longer the story. >> i think you're exactly right, but i would say she hasn't only shown that ability in the last days with that crowd. she's shown it with all kinds of crowds, and you have all these organizing zooms that are breaking zoom, you know, 30,000, 60,000, 100,000 white women, white dudes, you know. you had black fraternity and sorority organizing calls, so i think a lot of different people are feeling it, but the larger point that you're making is around emotion, and emotion i will say after writing about politics for 20 years i've come to the very kind of basic conclusion which may sound facile. politics is 90% emotion and a lot of us people like us come on tv and talk about these really serious things about the border and gerrymandering and all

important worthy stuff, but what's really going on in the arena we all cover and -- and work in is emotion, it's how people feel about themselves, how people feel about who they are going to be in the world that's coming. how people feel about whether they, you know, have a kind of control over who their kids are becoming, how people feel respected or not respected, how people feel about, you know, a man, a woman, a white person, a black person, and so i think when democrats have taken a more wonky policy, you know, we should just do the work, build the bridge and things will speak for themselves. it comes from the right place, but i think it is based on a -- on kind of a conception of how people work that is false, right, which is why the rev doesn't email his sermons, you know, to the congregation. he stands up there and delivers them. you've got to make people feel things, and i think we are -- we are entering, you know, with

this moment that we're in, that again there's a special weird moment with a three-month campaign and total surprise. we're entering a moment where i think the vice president is playing to the emotion for the purpose of being able to stir people and do policy for them, but she's not engaging in this kind of democratic fallacy of just simply doing the work, building the bridges and hoping they will come. >> so we've been talking about the vice president's say it to my face moment from last night. let's watch it again. >> because as the saying goes, if you've got something to say. >> say it to my face. >> say it to my face! >> instantly iconic, msnbc political analyst annan thanks for being with us this morning. the acting director of the

secret service testified yesterday focusing on the agency response to the trump rally shooting earlier this month. nbc news justice and correspondent ken dilanian has a closer look at what was said during this interview. >> reporter: 17 days after former president trump survived an assassination attempt by a gunman on a rooftop a remarkable admission from the secret service direct-in acting director who went to the sight. >> i was laying in a prone position and what i saw made me ashamed. as a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran with the secret service, i cannot defend why that roof was not better secured. >> we pressed attorney general merrick garland in an exclusive interview. >> you heard the acting secret service director say today that she was anamed of the security failures that almost cost the former president his life.

as the nation's top law enforcement officer how do you feel about what happened? >> look this, attack on the former president was a heinous attack on the former president trump, but also a heinous attack on our democracy itself. this was a major security failure. >> how alarmed are you that a 20-year-old was able to get a clear shot 150 yards from a former president? >> this is extremely alarming. that's why we have to find out what happened here, why it happened and make sure it doesn't happen again. >> in a hearing acting secret service director ronald rowe grilled by lawmakers. >> stop interrupting me. >> go ahead, sir. >> you are refusing to answer clear and direct questions. >> demanding to know why no one has been fired yet? >> we are investigating this. >>ing what will you need to investigate to know that there were critical enough failures that some individuals you had a to be held accountable. i mean, what more do you need to know? >> what i need to know is exactly what happened. >> rowe acknowledging the assassination attempt could have been prevented if his agency had deployed technology that would

have revealed the gunman flew a drone overhead two hours before mr. trump spoke. >> i feel as though we could have perhaps found him. we could have maybe stopped him. >> the deputy fbi director revealing the discovery of a social media account linked to the gunman though not jet verified. >> some of these comments appear to reflect anti-semitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence. >> while garland telling us more about the iranian threat against mr. trump and other former u.s. officials. >> our intelligence community has made clear that we believe that the iranians are attempting to kill or injure former high government officials. this is an ongoing issue. we have ongoing investigations. >> you don't think we've seen the end? >> i don't think we've seen the end of iranian plotting, no. >> and ken joins us now. ken, good to see you. what else did we learn from that hearing yesterday? >> good morning, jonathan.

well, both merrick garland and the deputy fbi director at that hearing confirmed that they said there was no doubt that former president trump was hit by a bullet during that assassination attempt, and the secret service director also revealed that after the 30 seconds elapsed between the time between the local police encountered the gunman on the roof and issued a warning and the shots were fired, he said the secret service agents who were protecting donald trump were never told during that time that there was a man with a gun on the roof and the first time they learned about it was when the shots were fired, jonathan. >> ken, you also asked the attorney general about judge aileen cannon's decision to dismiss the former documents case against former president trump. you asked him about that case. >> let me ask you about the supreme court, well, some legal cases in. throwing out the classified documents case, judge aileen cannon ruled that the way the justice department has been

specking special counsels is illegal, unconstitutional? >> why do you disagree with that. >> i picked that in this law library. for more than 20 years do i look like somebody who would make that basic mistake about the law? i don't think so. our position is that it's constitutional and valid. that's why we appealed. i would say that this is the same process of appointing special counsels as was followed in the previous administration and a special counsel in durham and special counsel mueller and multiple special counsels going back to watergate. every court, including the supreme court, who has considered the legality of a special counsel appointment has upheld it. >> sen, some striking and real anger there from the attorney general. >> yeah, you're right. he masked it with a joke, so the spicy merrick garland there, but

that absolutely, that answer suggests and indicates that the massive anger across the justice department about what they view as just an unjust decision by judge aileen cannon, and there's a widespread view that had this case went to another judge, donald trump would have been already convicted in that classified documents case and that was not to be. i asked the fact that both special counsel cases are essentially in limbo and will not go to trial before the election, how much of a setback is for the justice department and for his legacy. he really didn't answer. it's clear that it's a big deal. he set who whole thing in motion, picked jack smith and not gone the way anybody expected and that's something he'll have to live with and the rest of the justice department is living with right now, jonathan. >> nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent den dilanian, thank you so much. just want to get your reaction to what we heard from the attorney general there. >> well, i guess i'm a little

heartened that i saw a little bit of emotion there. you know, i've been highly critical of how long merrick garland waited to appoint jack smith, and there's no question that aileen cannon decision is not based on law or precedent. the decision that she made about special counsel was a purely political decision made by a woman who is focused on helping donald trump not administering the law in this country, and i would have liked to have seen a little more anger from merrick garland. i think america needs the top official of the justice department and have more righteous indignation about how outrageous it is that this woman has hijacked the law in this way at a very important moment where the law must apply, so i -- i guess it's okay he got a little mafrmtd i wish he'd get madder. >> a lot of democrats feel that same way. >> still ahead here on "morning joe," fred trump iii, former

president trump's nephew, will join the conversation. he says he believes in policies over politics and that's why he is now supporting kamala harris this november. we'll talk to him about that and his new book next on "morning joe." we'll be right back. new book ne joe. we'll be right back.

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wednesday morning, and although most of the trump family usually puts out a united front behind donald trump, another member that have family is now publicly breaking ranks. fred trump iii, the son of trump's older brother fred trump jr. and brother of frequent critic mary trump has now come out in support of kamala harris. the endorsement comes as fred trump released a new memoir which has the title "all in the family, the trumps and how we got this way." in the book fred takes readers behind the scenes of the family dynamic that he says helped create the former president and fred joins us now here on set. good to see you. >> thank you, john. >> and congratulations on the book. >> thank you. >> why now? why speak out now? >> there are two reasons and we haven't started now. my wife and i have been advocating for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. our young son william has complex disabilities.

we've been doing so through the legislative and through the executive branch. we have met during donald's term with cabinet secretaries and in a meeting that culminated in may of 2020 with the oval office, so we haven't just started. we waited for the book. we wanted for william to become settled in a new home environment. he doesn't live with us now. he lives in a group home. we wanted him to be settled, but we've been thinking about this for a while. >> tell us more about what donald trump has said about your son. >> donald has never met william ever. in fact, no one in the trump family other than two of my cousins have met william, so when he said what he did to me when a fund that had been set up for william's health, for his

therapeutic needs, and i just want to clear something up, the reason a fund existed is because donald orchestrated a plan to take my sister and me out of my grandfather's inheritance which went back days after william was released after seven weeks in hospital. al, you'll remember that in the city. you have to understand that donald was my trustee. he was my trustee which meant he was supposed to protect me and my family. he did the exact opposite, so the fund was my money but i had to ask for it back which was troubling, so when the fund was running low, i called donald and i -- i mentioned that, and he said your son doesn't recognize you. let him die and move to florida. now i don't know how you can explain that away, the cruelty

of that comment, but as you'll read in "all in the family" he had said something very similar in our last oval office meeting with a group of advocates. he had scald me back into the office when everyone dispersed and said those people, all those expenses, they should just die so it's hard to wrap your head around that. >> donald trump disputes that account. he said i helped him so much. eric trump's the president's son took to twitter x last night saying he's disappointed after decades of unwavering support, love, golf member ships that you've decided to cash in less than 100 days. talk to me about this family dynamic now and respond what they are saying. >> you know, the dynamic started when i was very young, when i was able to -- to grasp it, and -- and understand that i am one of the only people that knew

donald in his formative years, through his business career and during his presidency and after, so i know donald as well as anybody. my father, his older brother freddy wanted nothing do with the family business but my grandfather, who was very tough wanted him to. my father wanted to be an airline pilot and wound up being an airline pilot in the early '60s, that was quite a feat, but donald who was given the path by my father to do what he wanted to do to run the family business just demeaned my father, for no reason, other than his need to feel superior to other people, and that led to issues with my dad, unfortunately. people will say this is like the succession tell vice show. no, it's not. in "succession" thereto were

three siblings that wanted to take over the family business. my dad wanted no part of it. my father became an airman pilot and donald crushed him. >> i want to go back to what he said about your son and donald trump's reaction because one of the things that strikes me because i've known donald trump for a while, pro an con relationship, is that the insensitivity that i might have marched on him about in terms of central park 5 or something else is one thing, but to be in indiana sensitive to his own nephews condition, and it shows how he feels about people who have situations like you and your wife are dealing with your son, that he has really no sensitivity towards people who are suffering or find themselves in a situation which is scary if

you make him president of the united states. talk about his lack of humanity and insensitivity. >> i was listening to this segment before with senator kelly. and the immigration policy and how donald and the new republicans, the republican party which is not the republican party that i remember, just everybody is a rapist, everybody is a contract. the way i answer that question is the caregivers that take care of my son williams are from many of those same countries. they care for him every single day of his life. so donald does not respect people that he dream lesser than him. >> you know, fred, it also is interesting that he doesn't want to be in the presence of people with disabilities. you know, i remember the comments that he made to general

kelly who has been his chief of staff and said nobody wants to see those people. we're talking about wounded veterans on stage being honored and revered. it's fascinating to me that he would have a nephew that would be severely disabled that he would never meet him. >> never met him. >> and when about eric, has eric met your son? >> eric and donny, we invited them many years ago and they saw william is wheelchair bound, needs assistance with everything. he's a wonderful young man. >> and i'm shower he's enriched your life. >> he's the most courageous and inspirational person i've ever met. >> and then you look at the evangelical community, and this circles back to you, rev. i'm pretty sure that jesus spent a lot of time talking about taking care of the least among us. can you reconcile in your mind this enthusiasm among

evangelical christians for a man who has advocated killing people, letting them die if they are disabled because he doesn't like the way they look? >> i think they have the same end goal in mind, just power and to push their goals. if you don't mind me going back again to senator keblg, and i hope this helps answer one of your questions. during the inauguration in 2017, my two older children were with us, and sitting right behind me was senator mccain, and when the ceremony was over, i brought my kids over, i said this is a word i don't use very often, kids. senator mccain is an american hero, and obviously this is after donald had said he wasn't a hero, which i think baffles many minds, and the fact that it doesn't disturb a lot of people that he said that goes to your

point and it's very sad. >> not only during the 2016 campaign did donald trump mock john mccain, but he also mocked a "new york times" reporter who had a disabled, did so publicly and made fun of him of him and drew cheers and laughs from the crowd. >> yeah, and as claire was saying there was the reporting that he didn't want wounded veterans or disabled veterans up on stage with him because he didn't think that it was a very good look for his own political campaign. fred, i wanted to ask you if you think you visited the white house several times and voted for hillary clinton in 2016 and stayed on good terms with your uncle and visited him several times. the book is titled "all in the family." do you think this is a sad breakdown of family relations, or is it something more than that to you? >> the family broke down early, early in my life when, again, my father was going through his issues. he was then deemed pretty much the loser. my father was supposed to be the golden boy. he really was.

my father was an incredibly caring and charismatic guy, but circumstances led to his drinking, and in turn my sister and i have always been deemed basically the second class citizens of the family. when -- when donald or the others, the trump family, it doesn't include us, and i -- i just don't get that. so, yeah, "all in the family" is -- well, it's an ode to one of my favorite television shows, al, you remember, but we're from queens, so, you know, we're tough and i'm -- i'm thrilled with my -- someone called my nuclear family, my three kids and my wife lisa. >> all right. the new book indeed titled "all in the family, the trumps and how we got this way." it's on sale now. author fred trump. thanks for joining us this morning. coming up here, we'll turn back to the 2024 election as

democrats ramp up their attacks against republicans using one key word, weird. house minority leader had a comb jeffries will weigh in on the race when he joins us next on "morning joe." e race when he joins us next on "morning joe." into something we can see and hold. the fingerprints we leave behind show how determined we are to give the world a piece of ourselves. etsy.

so last week you may have seen he pulled out of the debate in september he had previously agreed to.

so -- so here's the thing. here's the funny thing about that. here's the funny thing about that. so he won't debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me. and by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird? >> vice president kamala harris last night in atlanta continuing the new messaging from democrats branding donald trump and his running mate j.d. vance as, well, you heard, it weird. joining us now house minority leader democratic congressman hakim jeffries of new york. leader jeffries, thanks so much for being with us this morning. let's just start there, the sort of energy and enthusiasm around vice president harris, huge crowd in atlanta last night and also the response this last week or so to the word weird. >> first of all, president biden

is a heroic american, patriotic american, great american made a selfless decision to passion the torch to vice president harris who is ready, willing and able to lead us forward into the future and she's drawing a great contrast between our ideas. we want to move america forward and in an enlightened way and build an economy for everyday americans and contrasting that with donald trump and j.d. vance and extreme republicans whose ideas are dangerous, whose ideas are extreme and whose ideas are weird, and it captures the moment, the narrative as it relates to who they are, i think in a very accessible fashion. >> so you mentioned president biden. obviously they were after his debate in atlanta. there were weeks when democrats, including lots of members in the house, house democrats, called for him to step aside. can you tell us what the

conversations were like with the president when he was weighing what to do before opting to drop out. >> it's a private conversation that will remain president. we have great respect. he will go down in american history as one of the most consequential presidents ever, and we've had an incredibly close partnership and relaysship with house democrats and senate democrats and got a lot of big things done for the american people and for the world, and it's just been great to have the opportunity to serve of alongside him, and i'm just thankful for his 50-plus years of transformational public service. >> leader, i want to turn to the notion that we would like the word speaker to be in front of your name, and obviously november is very important in that regard. we're all very -- i think most democrats are very excited about kamala harris as our -- our presidential candidate. where can people go to learn about the races that will decide

the majority in the house? i think for most americans, they understand that the presidential is very important and they are very aware of the senate races. i think it's very hard for them to navigate where should i be helping if i have time or the ability to help, where can they go to learn the races that will really matter as to whether or not whether or not you can have that title in front of your name as speaker hakeem jeffries instead of leader hakeem jeffries? >> thanks for asking that question. it is incredibly important that we take back the house to make sure that the 47th president of the united states of america will work hard to make sure that's chairs has a partner and that we can continue to get big things done for the american people. the democratic congressional campaign committee website will provide for the american people all of the races that are going to make a difference in november in terms of both the front line races, those incumbent democratic members who we need

to re-elect and what we call the red-to-blue seats, seats that are currently held by, team maga republicans who we need to defeat, and you know what's interesting. here in new york, we have four or five seats that are in play. we can win the house back in new york state alone. another five in california, and then, of course, others spread out all across the country, in the midwest, in the heartland, two in the deep south, in alabama and louisiana, and the opportunity is in front of us. we're going to make the case that we will continue to put people over politics, fight for lower costs and price gouging, address housing affordability and in the united states of america and, of course, defend democracy and fight for reproductive free com. >> can they dccc.com or do they have to spell out democratic democratic campaign company. >> dcc.org. >> you got it the. >> you and i go back many years.

we've worked on many things so i'm not surprised to hear you highlight the legacy of president biden because that's just your way. he talked about it when i was traveling with him on tuesday, how you was always measured like that, but talk more about the substance of vice president harris because i think one of the contrasts that people are missing is that she is a real content policy-minded person running against people who have no kind of depth in terms of what they stand for. donald trump has his own cousin was just talking about is not only sensitive but i don't think he really understands policy. he goes with slogans and play for the crowd and his vp candidate, i don't even know that he knows what he's talking about half the time. kamala harris co-authored real legislation, including the voyage floyd justice in policing

act and other things. talk about as a legislator and one that everyone considers substantive and probably will be the speaker we get those four seats alone in new york, how important it is to have a president that understands legislation and policy. >> well, vice president harris is a very thoughtful individual, very values-based individual, power intellect, studies the issues and knows how to get things done. she's a common sense leader who has delivered real results in the past, whether that was as california's attorney general, certainly as a united states senator. we worked closely together on criminal justice reform. that was bipartisan in nature and transformational for bipartisan legislation, and she worked on a whole host of other issues. in my conversations with her as vice president, she's always probing in terms of ideas and opportunities and the policies that are designed to make life

better for the american people, and that's a clear contrast with the former president of the united states that never had a policy that he had any idea of studying or understanding but weaponizes issues, for instance, like the border. kamala harris is a problem solver that gets things done for hard-working american taxpayers. >> talking about your title, speaker or leader, and you have a new book, so you are an author. give us a preview. >> america is at a fork in the road, and i am hoping to lay out what is a blueprint of a

brighter future, and of course contrast that using the universal lens of the alphabet and illustration with those forces who want to turn back the clock and promote the ugly under belly of society. i believe america is incredibly resilient and we always rise to the occasioning and in some small way, this book, "the abc's of democracy," to be published on november 12. house minority leader, hakeem jeffries of new york. thank you for being here. >> thank you. and next how the death of

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of these world championships. i want to do a debate but i can also say this, everybody knows who i am, and now people know who she is. >> then why not debate her? >> well, wait.

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we're effectively running this country via the democrats and via our corporate oligarchs. >> you know how totally miserable they are. i got too much dispoesable income. my life is so hard. i still have a sex life, please kill me. >> j.d. vance's childless comment continues to be a story line in the presidential race. his cleanup attempts don't seem to be working as there are more examples of him using similar phrasing over the past few years. meanwhile, kamala harris is building real momentum for her

campaign. it comes as the veep stakes is heating up with the campaign saying the vice president will appear with her new running mate next week. we will be joined by one of the men on the short list for the job, mark kelly of arizona will be our guest this morning. also ahead, the latest out of the middle east following a strike that killed a key leader of hamas. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it's wednesday, july 31st. i am jonathan lemire along with katty kay in for joe, mika and willie. with us, we have claire mccaskill, and also with us, managing editor, sam stein, and editor at large, erin haynes.

yeah, we have children and love our children and wouldn't do anything in our lives, but to suggest those childless americans don't have quality lives, too, and not only inaccurate but deeply insensitive to people, and it's a news cycle that is relentless and we seem to move on to the next story in a few hours at times, and this is really staying, and particularly for somebody like j.d. vance trying to introduce himself nationally, this is not a good first impression. >> yeah, people with kids don't like it. people, of course, without kids don't have it. and there's a proposal that people with kids should get more votes, and i think i was the last person that should have had

extra votes when my kids were tiny, and the democrats are making hay out of it. meanwhile, looks like vice president harris has closed the lead or taken over the lead. competitive races are shown in all seven battleground states among registered voters. in arizona, harris leads by two points after trump led by three points. in georgia the polls show the race is tied after trump led by a single point in the previous survey. in michigan, harris now leads trump by 11 points, and that's double digits, a six-point improvement on biden's previous numbers. in nevada, harris has raised a three-point lead for trump and turned that into a lead of her own, and trails by two points in north carolina, and cut trump's lead from 7 points to 4 points

in pennsylvania. in wisconsin, the poll shows harris leading by two points after biden led by three points previously. we should note with the exception of michigan, every state's result is within the margin of error. harris' lead in michigan varies from other polls that has been taken since biden left the race. those numbers come as vice president herself held a rally in atlanta, and she laid out the contrast and laying out the election as a choice between -- >> our administration worked on the most border security bill in decades. some of the most conservative

republicans in washington, d.c. supported the bill, and even the border patrol endorsed it. it was all set to pass, but at the last minute trump directed his allies in the senate to vote it down. right. he tanked, tanked the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election. which goes to show, donald trump does not care about border security. he only cares about himself. so here is my pledge to you. as president i will bring back the border security bill that donald trump killed and i will sign it into law and show donald trump what real leadership looks

like. so last week you may have seen, he pulled out of the debate in september he had previously agreed to. so -- so here's the thing. here's the funny thing about that. here 8 funny thing about that. so he won't debate, but and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me. and by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird? well, donald, i do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage because as the

saying goes, if you got something to say, say it to my face. >> so claire mccaskill, a lot to get through here from what we saw from the vice president last night. it was striking. the border, she addressed it head on and tried to flip it on trump for his efforts to kill the bipartisan bill, and they have dueling ads on this issue. the signature moment from that is going to be say it to my face about the debate, and i am struck by the feel of last night. that crowd was huge. it was ruckus, and the vice president having fun on the stage. an unthinkable scene for

democrats two weeks ago. >> it's a remarkable thing that we are witnessing. this is a woman who has been underestimated by the chattering class, by people who don't know her well, people who assumed she was not ready to take on this kind of campaign in this way. i think if we watched that speech last night, and what struck me is i don't think people know how hard it is when you are constantly interrupted with the emotional outburst of a crowd and how you pause and allow that emotion to build and how you build off that emotion for a shaw kreupb dough. that was a remarkable set of remarks, and that's the biggest contrast in the campaign now, jonathan, is the democrats are

having fun, and it's about joy and opportunity and freedom. the other side is about, you know, cat ladies and electrocuting boats and the stuff that most americans are just going, well, that doesn't really move me. >> weird is the word the democrats have fixated on in the last ten days, and it's a dark image of america that trump and j.d. vance are putting forward. it was a contrast from last night. erin haines, you were there and covered that rally last night in atlanta. tell us more about what it felt like there and how the crowd responded to her, as this is -- the general election is in a new, such a different place, and vice president harris' roll out here continues to be really impressive. >> yeah, jonathan, what you saw on the screen was exactly what it felt like in that arena. the mood, the best way i could

describe it was festive, and even leading up to the electrifying 27-minute or so speech that the vice president gave, you had a parade of rock stars, political and entertainers, taking the stage and really firing up a crowd that didn't mean much. you had a deejay in the arena and dancing leading up to the three hours when she appeared onstage, and stacy abrams is still a hero in georgia. she made her first appearance for the vice president, and you had raphael warnock make a rare appearance at the rally. and harkening back to the historic 2020 election for them as well, and you had rapper who introduces the vice president, talking about their working relationship to address gun

violence. you have all of these people coming out and really keeping the energy and enthusiasm going into week two of harris' campaign as she's the de facto democratic nominee. this is the energy i saw in georgia in 2020. i don't know if they can keep the energy up for the next 98 days, and if they can, georgia is back in play for democrats. >> yeah, the energy there last night, crazy. the money there also pouring in as well. sam, i don't know if you have got -- if you need a little more money, but i see amazon is not yet selling say it to my civil t-shirts, and these polls, more seriously, what do you make of the bloomberg poll, this enormous shift we have seen? i have not seen a shift like

this during this campaign this rapid and distinctive, particularly the michigan number, and is this an outlier? >> i had not shot about the t-shirt business idea, but i will look into it. claire made a valid point about constantly being interrupted. i know it and i worked with jonathan lemire and it's hard to speak when that happens. as for the polls, as for the polls, look, i don't put my stock in anyone set of polls individually, and i think there are numbers there that are head scratching, and plus 11 in michigan. come on, that's not going to be the case. one plus in pennsylvania, and i don't think that will be the case either. harris has gained substantially relative to what we expect in

the last few weeks, and i think it's just manifested in the ways that we saw atlanta last night. democratic enthusiasts, and you are seeing it with crowds and you are seeing it with poll results and seeing it with fundraising. i think she's made up a huge amount just on that alone. the question is, can she sustain it, build on it, and then also keep in that coalition the sort of independence, the older voters that biden did have in his back pocket, can she do that and create that winning coalition? that's where the next three weeks, i think, will be critical. >> yeah, it's a smart point by sam stein in what will be his last appearance on "morning joe." no, sam, we love you and are grateful you are here.

it's hard to reconcile a number that has harris up 11 in michigan and down 4 in pennsylvania. that doesn't quite wash, but i think the overall trend line that we talk about at show a lot, trends, and the last ten days, it's a race clearly shifting towards harris here. a race that even the most optimistic democrats, it's going to be a really close race. this is going to be -- this is still basically a 50/50 toss up type of race at least at this moment now just shy of 100 days of the election. republicans, though, while they have momentum, they are still playing defense in a growing backlash over the comment about cat ladies, j.d. vance is getting ready for another resurfaced comment. look what he said in a podcast in 2020 about americans without children. >> just these basic cadences of

life that are powerful when you have kids in your life, and the fact that so many people in america's leader, don't have in their lives, and it makes our whole country less mentally stable. of course you talk about going on twitter, and final point i will make, you go on twitter and almost always the people who are most deranged and psychotic are people that don't have kids at home. >> oh, boy. a spokesperson for senator vance responded writing in part, this, once again the left wing media have twisted senator vance's words and spun up a false narrative about the issues, and she was talking about politicians on the left who support policies who are anti-child and family. this was not a one-time remark from j.d. vance.

he said versions of this a number of times. in fact, as we pointed out yesterday his campaign tried to fundraise off of similar comments. this is something that, you know, first of all, to react to what he said, and just in terms of the politics of the moment, j.d. vance, all he's do something trying to clarify comments that seem to grow more damaging by the day? >> yeah, he has really made a mess of this. his spokesperson, i mean, give me a break. we all heard him say it. we are sociopaths, and people that don't have children are sociopaths. i am, more so than anything else that has happened, since kamala harris took over the democratic party, this comment will move those disengaged independent voters more than anything else, because it is a personal insult that is hurtful in a way that people don't forget.

everyone knows somebody in their life they love is that childless, and sometimes by choice and sometimes not by choice. sometimes it's step parents parenting stepchildren in exactly the same ways they would have if they would have had a biological child. even people that adopted children, this hits home to them and rests inside of them. it will move voters. he cannot run from these comments. it's what he really believes. the question is, did they not vet this guy? did they not know part of his ethos is if you don't have children, you are less than america? it's bizarre to me. >> the way trump wanted to save this to the last minute and have this suspense, and the campaign said there was vetting done of all the leading candidates, but clearly not enough or they found these comments and agreed with

them? >> yeah, there's a 1950s vibe to all of this, right? you have to have a nuclear family. project 2025 that i spent a lovely weekend reading so you didn't have to, and they are distancing themselves as far as they can. ethos project 2025, it's about family values and nuclear families and having kids and you hear that come out in j.d. vance's comments. i was listening to that program to michael snell, and we no longer can mention that program, and republicans are saying j.d. vance was the worse choice. is there any chance the nominee would try and think to switch

out his vice president choice? >> first of all, justice for sam stein. let me say that. >> it's about time somebody recognizes the struggle. >> at least for now, you know, republicans, and former president trump seem to be tethered to j.d. vance as his running mate. this is the ticket that, you know, former president trump chose. i was in milwaukee when j.d. vance was announced, and obviously so much of the enthusiasm there was around donald trump coming out of the shooting he just survived, and there was a lot of momentum around that. people i spoke to there didn't seem to have a problem with j.d. vance at that time because these kinds of comments had not yet

trickled out. we are saying gender is on the pallet, and as women, we are continuing to hear the kind of comments j.d. vance has made in the past, and as jonathan said, he raised money on, and these are not comments that are, you know, making them want to support the trump/vance ticket. and it could be galvanizing, and it could cause some to stay home or vote for kamala harris. and with vendor being an issue for j.d. vance, this is not the roll out i know that that campaign was hoping for. >> it's important to recommend the context of the vance pick, and the trump campaign did so

when they thought they would win and win big, and the pick of vance was to firmly plant maga on the republican party for years to come, and run up the score and make it trump's party forever, and that race changed and that pick looks suspect for now. thank you for joining us this morning. still here on "morning joe," a top leader for hamas has been killed in iran. we will get a report from the region on the developing story and what it could mean for fears of a wider war. you're watching "morning joe," and we will be back in just 90 seconds. stanley with powerful, easy-to-use tools, power e*trade makes complex trading easier. react to fast-moving markets with dynamic charting and a futures ladder that lets you place, flatten, or reverse orders so you won't miss an opportunity. e*trade from morgan stanley

there's developing news this morning out of the middle east. the political leader of hamas was killed in a strike in iran, and they called the death an assassination. hamas is blaming israel for that attack, but israel has yet to comment on it. u.s. defense secretary, lloyd austin, says he's aware of the reports but has no other information to provide. according to iranian state media, he was killed in tehran shortly after attending the inauguration of the president, and he was a key figure in the cease-fire negotiations with israel. meanwhile, israel says it has killed a top hezbollah commander in lebanon. israeli forces launched an air

strike near beirut yesterday. a woman and two children were also killed in the attack, and at least 74 others were wounded. israeli officials says the commander was killed, and hezbollah has denied responsibility. matt bradley is in beirut. what are we learning about the death of the hamas leader? >> reporter: this is going to have an impact on the ongoing negotiations, and we heard from the prime minister of qatar asking how do we continue the negotiations if israel keeps assassinating the negotiators,

and they are working with the united states and egyptians trying to come up with a negotiation truce that would free the remaining hostages held inside the gaza strip, those israeli hostages. that's the immediate impact we will be seeing, and we are hearing the iranians saying they are going to be retaliating for this. in the past we have seen iranian retaliation has been more symbolic than practical, but at the same time this is a major escalation. when you take the two twin assassinations together, this looks like a destabilizing factor. in the past 24 hours, really, this region has changed dramatically. now there's much more pessimism in an already pessimistic environment, and in a situation in beirut, this is worrying, because there are questions like are they done with the attacks,

and it looks like it might be finished, but hamas and hezbollah is not finished, and now we are seeing an increase in the anger as american diplomats are trying their best to negotiate peace. this sets everything back in the region by days or weeks. it's a very, very difficult situation and one that, you know, the israelis are going to have to acknowledge they have instigated what looks like they injected more into a region is that unstable, and american diplomats will tamp down the talk about a war, and this is as close as this area has come to a region-wide war. >> talk about the israeli position, because israeli is stretched thin and their economy

stretched thin with so many young people now fighting against hamas in gaza. can they take on a northern front like in this lebanon? >> reporter: this is a matter of much speculation. a lot of ink has been spilled on this topic, and it's an important issue, is israeli's military ready for it, and hezbollah bea haeufz like a state within a state and behaves like an army more than a militia, and this is a group that has officers and international connections and is a political force in lebanon and has ministers in the government, and its officers are able to gather support. this means that israel is continuing to instigate more and

more anger from hezbollah and now from iran, hamas. iran, by the ways the main patron for hamas and hezbollah, and this is why this is so incredibly dangerous and why it makes the israeli claims that they are trying to tamp down the situation, and the repeated claims they don't want war over the northern border, and it makes it hard to believe for lot of their antagonist here in the middle east who are right up on the border with them. looks as though iran is planning some sort of retaliation, and that could happen through its major proxies. in the past 24 hours, hezbollah has a new grievance to add against israel, so again, a double barrel of assassinations that have brought this area up to the brink of war. >> nbc's matt bradley live for us in beirut.

matt, thank you so much. coming up, amid the tensions abroad, trump suggests kamala harris would struggle dealing with world leaders based on her appearance. we will play for you his undecidedly unsettling remarks when "morning joe" comes right back.

♪ ♪ donald trump says if elected president, foreign adversaries would walk all over vice president harris for reasons, quote, a lot of people understand. in part two of a sit-down interview that aired on fox news last night, trump was asked specifically about the possibility of harris dealing with russian president, vladimir

putin, and chinese president, xi jinping. here's what trump had to say. >> they will walk all over her. >> how so? >> she will be like a play toy. they will look at her and say, we can't believe we got so lucky. i don't want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it. >> claire, that certainly seems to be an unsubtle suggestion from trump questioning again, harris' intellect and her gender. >> yeah, i don't understand what he thinks he's accomplishing by basically saying because of the way she looks people are going to walk all over her. this is a really accomplished woman. i don't think people realize to rise through the ranks of warfare in the democratic party in the state of california, you have got to be tough.

the job of an elected d.a., and i have had that job and it's a tough job, and people are hyper critical on the decisions you make about life and death. this is somebody tempered by her experience and ready to be tough, and when he does this he's calling people into mind like thatcher and merckle. i think it's a huge mistake for him to continue to bang on gender like this that is echoing the childless cat ladies of his running mate. >> and shows the attacks -- >> they have got nothing. they have got nothing. >> on the vice president, yes. as for russia and china, russian

and chinese planes flew together off the coast, and the bombers came within 200 miles of u.s. airspace, facing a bevy of economic sections of the west, vladimir putin has grown increasingly close with his chinese counterpart. let's bring in matthew brzezinski. he was stationed in keys. china has not supplied lethal age to russia's war effort from ukraine but propped it up in a number of ways, and these countries seemingly going closer, but you say that could backfire for china. tell us. >> i don't think this relationship is nearly as scary as some are making it out to be.

china's acting very, very opportunistically. in fact, this bomber patrol, which got so many headlines is an example of the games that the chinese are playing, not with us but with the russians. you are picturing squadrons of bombers bristling with technology. in fact, it was a couple of ancient propeller driven claims that had no bombs onboard, and the chinese gave us a heads up and gave us the flight plan. this was political theater, not intended to frighten us so much but intended to appease vladimir putin, because the chinese relationship with russia is one that is borderline, frankly, predatory. the chinese are the big winners in the war on ukraine, because russia's isolation has left it absolutely desperate and vulnerable, and the chinese are

taking tremendous advantage of this. more telling of the relationship is not, let's say, this joint patrol, but on the fact that on the very day, the chinese kicked the russians out of a joint venture to build a wide-bodied passenger plane that would compete with the airbus. the chinese for ten years helped the russians to design the plane and the russians have more experience, and booted them out, once they got what they needed from the russians. the chinese are fleecing the russians in so many different ways that this is not a happy relationship, and it's frankly, not even a situational relationship but it's something that we in the west should not worry about too much. there's not a lot of love between the two. coming up, steve kornacki

explains why the road to the white house cuts straight through pennsylvania, where kamala harris will soon campaign to her to-be announced running mate. that's next on "morning joe." mae that's next on "morning joe. the point is, any sub any size. 20% off at subway ♪ “billathi askara” by björn jason lindh ♪ [metal creaking] [camera zooming] ♪ [window slamming] woman: [gasps] [dog barking] ♪ woman: [screams] ♪ [explosion] [explosion] ♪ [lock clicks shut] at care.com, it's easy to get a break, even if you're not on summer vacation.

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this is america's boarder czar, and she's failed us. under harris, over 10 million illegally here, and isis now here. >> do you have any plans to visit the border? you have not been to the border. >> and i have not been to europe. i don't understand the point you are making. >> kamala harris, failed, weak, and dangerously liberal. >> on the border, the choice is simple. kamala harris supports increasing the number of border patrol agents, and donald trump

blocked a bill to increase the number of border patrol agents. kamala harris supports investing in new technology to block fentanyl from entering the country, and trump blocked technology from blocking fentanyl from entering the company, and donald trump blocked money to stop human traffickers, and kamala harris, there's two choices to the election, one that will fix our broken immigration system, and the one that is trying to stop her. >> vice president kamala harris, sharpening her attacks on donald trump with the new immigration ad after donald trump released an ad on that same issue.

joining us, mark kelly from arizona, and he serves on the joint economic committee. thank you for joining us this morning. let's start with the issue of immigration, an issue, of course, very important in your state of arizona, perceived by some as perhaps the vice president's political weakness, and she opened her rally last night talking about it. we just saw that ad. tell us, what is the experience of those in your state about immigration. what is the best path forward? >> jonathan, let me start by saying thank you for having me on. let's talk about those two ads for a second. the first one is typical donald trump, a bunch of lies and politics. the second ad was facts. donald trump and senate republicans, i mean, what did they do several months ago? they had a bipartisan bill we negotiated faithfully with the administration and both sides of

the aisle, and donald trump said they can't vote for it. j.d. vance and other republicans, they ran away from this. kamala harris and the administration wants to fix this problem and she worked with this problem for 3 1/2 years, and it's a challenging problem and i represent a border state. we have made progress, especially with what was put in place over the last several months. i can't stress more that this is an issue that donald trump and republicans just want to talk about. j.d. vance is down here, and i think he's in arizona today probably getting a photo-op at the southern border. kamala harris is about solving problems. donald trump wants to take us -- drag us back a decade. >> senator, sam stein here. you have been reported, and i think you are aware of being on the vp short list and having received vetting materials. i have one quick question and

then a larger question. one, do you buy any chance, have plans to be in philadelphia next tuesday, just out of curiosity? then, two, as we talk about the issues that are going to be litigated during the campaign, obviously immigration will be one, and cost of living will be another. i am wondering, can you put on your political hat and diagnose where you think the battlefield will be on the policy front for the next three months? >> this is going to be a debate over what donald trump stands for and kamala harris stands for, fundamentally. i mean, donald trump, when he was president gave huge tax cuts to billionaires, and weakened our alliances across the globe and successfully took away rights. . he said just this week if he's elected we're not going to have to vote again. i think people know what that means. kamala harris wants to take us into the future. she wants to reduce the cost of education, health care. she wants to have a country

where kids can grow up and live their own american dream. we can't have four more years of donald trump especially with j.d. vance, one heartbeat away from the presidency. i think we all know guys like this and what he stands for. he thinks pem are worth more or less based on when they decide to start a family and on reproductive rights. he wants to further restrict ivf. he would not vote for a bill to just tray to help people start a family. so i think it's going to be about these fundamental issues. then it's pretty clear that we need to work really hard. i'm going to work as hard as i can between now and election day. we've got 97 days. we have to make sure that kamala harris is elected the next president of the united states. >> returning to that, senator, sam was mentioning the vice president's campaign noted, outlined a travel schedule next weekend where they say that harris and whoever her runningmate will be who appear

kicking off in philadelphia. let's get an update. you've been in contact with the harris campaign, have they said to you we'd like you to be the choice? >> jonathan, i'm not going to get into any of that. i am going to be focused on making sure that kamala is the next president. i'm going to work as hard as i can. my wife gabby giffords is already working hard. she was in pennsylvania most of last week. she was in michigan and she'll be in other battleground state, and i'll be traveling across the country tirelessly. next week my plan's to be in arizona. arizona is important not only for who will be in the white house, but also who will keep control of the united states senate. we have very important elections in arizona and this election will come down to some fundamental things. do we want to take this country into the future with kamala harris as our leader who has experience and is an experienced prosecutor and we want to get

dragged back into the past with someone who is now a convicted felon and a guy standing at his side that only has this job because he would do what mike pence wouldn't and that's to overturn an election. >> coming up, matthews, and which vp contender could best serve kamala harris. we'll get to that when "morning joe" comes right back.

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still ahead on "morning joe," our second senate democrat of the morning. we just heard from arizona's mark kelly and now coming up, senator michael bennett of colorado will join the conversation. "morning joe" is back in just a moment. " is back in just a moment copd hasn't been pretty. it's tough to breathe and tough to keep wondering if this is as good as it gets. but trelegy has shown me that there's still beauty

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donald trump, on the other hand, has been talking a big game about securing our border, but he does not walk the walk. so the momentum in this race is shifting, and there are signs that donald trump is feeling it. so, georgia, today i ask you, are you ready to get to work? >> that's vice president kamala harris speaking to a fired-up crowd in atlanta last night. welcome to the fourth hour of "morning joe." it is 6:00 amp m. out on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. in the east and we are in for joe, kelly and mika. it was enthusiast wick big, big numbers there and also the way the vice president is able to effectively communicate the way she's been able to sharpen her attacks and draw contrasts with so many democrats over the last

week or so has said where has this been. this is exactly where the race needs because the change is at the top of the ticket. what a huge difference from debate night to last night just in the power of the ability to prosecute the case against donald trump. we saw it there with vice president kamala harris. she was back in the campaign trail last night. she sharpened her attacks against the former president and as she gets closer to selecting a running mate, nbc news senior white house correspondent is going to take a look for us. here's gabe gutierrez. >> overnight, vice president kamala harris challenging donald trump directly. >> donald, i do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. because as the saying goes, if you've got something to say, say

it to my face! >> at a raucous rally in battleground georgia including rap mega star megan thee ♪♪ ♪♪ >> the harris campaign trying to ride an intense new wave of enthusiasm among young democrats. a new poll suggests she's gaining ground in critical swing state especially michigan. the vice president just days away from choosing a running mate. a source telling nbc news she plans to campaign with her. >> pick for the first time next tuesday in an event in philadelphia before hitting other battleground states. asked whether she'd already picked her vp. while in another interview by president trump. >> she'll be so easy for them. she'll be like a play toy. >> j.d. vance attacking harris in battleground, nevada. >> she is dangerously liberal. vance is also drawing new

scrutiny for referring to some democrats without children as childless cat ladies in 2021. a separate interview from 2020 is resurfacing. >> almost always the people most deranged are people who don't have kids. >> his comments are being misrepresented, adding he was criticizing a particular neurosis in american leadership that i think leads people to say crazy things like you shouldn't have children because climate change is a threat to the future. former president trump also slamming harris for what he says are her views on israel. >> number one, she doesn't like israel. number two, she doesn't like jewish people. >> those comments even though harris' husband is jewish. >> gabe gutierrez reporting there. i think there's not a democrat that i've spoken to, john, that says this is not going to be a tight race, but there is a lot of relief that the candidate we saw in kamala harris in 2019 and 2020 is not the candidate that they're seeing out on the

campaign trail at the moment. everyone had wondered whether she'd become more of a political athlete. i think what we saw in atlanta shows she's infinitely improved from when she first ran for president. >> during the 2019 she moved to the left on some issues and that's something she'll have to explain to people now and as you say an improved athlete, worlds, worlds improved and critics see how she grew into the job as vice president and we're seeing a different kamala harris on the trail right now. meanwhile, her campaign are telling wall street donors to donate as soon as possible because they may not be able to once she makes her vp pick. an intriguing new report from axios cites this, they have a financial pay for play rule featuring a sitting governor. that's according to several people familiar with the matter. the report further states that

some within the financial industry think they have until sunday to donate. should that be the case, it would indicate that two on the reported running mate short list, senator mark kelly of arizona and transportation secretary pete buttigieg will be out of the running because this applies to sitting governors and the reverend al sharpton, and joining the discussion is former msnbc host and contributor to "washington monthly" chris matthews. we will start with you with the vp speculation and the report from axios that suggests that she could be eyeing governors of a state you know well, pennsylvania among others and governor pritzker of illinois and governor bashir of kentucky. what's your read of the landscape right now. >> i was very impresseded by mark kelly and it's a good name

because of grace kelly, it's a good name. he's a good ticket. he can talk. biden got too old to talk. he wasn't very effective on the stage, on the debate stage. this guy can talk. you can tell it from his manner and you can tell from his military background and he's the one to do it. the important thing is he goes on the offense. he was very good this morninging on "morning joe," really good, and i think the fact that he can talk and he will take this fight. the governors are used to being bipartisan. they know how to sell it in a partisan way. this campaign has to be on the offense. if the democrats go to defense they can lose. they have to stay on offense. they have a hundred days to go, almost a hundred days and the first 50 days should be entirely attack, attack, attack and going after trump and his record. by the way, i always wondered how hillary, and i could never figure this out, when she was debating trump and that guy got behind her like this big bully

in the school yard stood behind her, and i've never been able to figure out what she could do, but here's what she could do. what vice president harris can do. she says tell it to my face. tell it to my face, turn around to the guy and tell that thing to my face because that street-level talk the people the way you would with a bully in the school yard is trump, talk to him like he is a bully. that's how you do it. you're goliath. he's goliath, you're david. you're the woman of color and the underdog historically, let's face it. historically as a woman and a woman of color besides make trump be the big gorilla. let him be the big guy and the goliath in this race. don't turn to defense, fracing, right move. immigration, she's getting in the right direction. i would take that proposal, senator langford's proposal with mark kelly and say, look, i'll

take it. i know it's mostly a republican bill, but i'll show action on the border and i'll do it even if trump is standing in the way and force him to do it again. stick it to him on his criminal record, on his abuse of women, the whole story "access hollywood" never stopped because democrats took the fight into the arena and they're not using the court with alvin bragg and the fight itself. if she goes out there and fights as david against goliath she'll win. >> chris, let's follow up with a geography question, if you will. so much talk is about how a running mate should try to balance the ticket, but also try to expand the map particularly in a battleground state. >> yeah. >> senator mccaskill and i were talking about this earlier, it's pretty few and far between where running mates are selected because that person can put a state in play and lbj helped win texas, but usually the running

mates come from republican or democratic states. this time around there are two, kelly who we interviewed earlier today on "morning joe," arizona, and shapiro and those are battleground states and pennsylvania arguably, the biggest of all. does that factor into the decision? >> let's talk pennsylvania. you have 67 counties in pennsylvania. for a democrat to win you can win 14 counties and the lehigh valley and that's the key place and willsboro and i think kelly can win because he's a fighter and a talker. he and shapiro will be great. they have to take it to trump. make it about trump and j.d. vance. if you talk about fracking and what about j.d. vance? he switched on trump, and he was the biggest knocker of trump and the sociology stuff to be his

biggest lover. he's a joke. he's a joke and not everybody knows it. the two trump kids who picked him, apparently must be embarrassed they told his dad to pick this guy. they should have picked burgum and they would have made trump the business guy and the energy guy and it would have made sense and you made a mistake by listening to your kids. pennsylvania is on fraccing and she'll deal with the border issue effectively and not just using language, oh, donald trump screwed this up. no, she said i'll be for the bipartisan bill. i dare trump to do it now. keep saying you're not going to do anything because you're not doing anything. >> chris, i agree with you that she must take him on in a david versus goliath way, and i think a fighter, and as we look at this list i, too, was impressed with kelly, but i also think tim walsh in minnesota is in line with some of what the vice president did as a senator.

>> how come we've never heard of him? if he's a big talker, we have never heard a word from this guy. >> well, i think when you look at his record with george floyd and other things he could be added. i think shapiro could be added. i think that any of the list has his assets, but i agree with you that i was impressed with mark kelly. how much of it do you think, though, going to your point is about having a vice presidential candidate that can bring in certain regions or have been one that could help with turnout because historically people vote for the president and not the vice president. >> you know, i've vote always my life ever since i could vote. i remember voting for humphrey and the war, and nixon will end the war because he doesn't care about this war, vietnam, but

humphrey had the civil rights record going back to '48 and i said that's good for me and he had musky, a good running mate. a running mate has to be tough and outspoken. you can't just let the candidate for president for him to do all of the talking. he has to land the punch in boxing. you have to land the punch so it shows for a couple of days. it can't just be a shot. it has to be a punch and sit for a while. talk to my face, tell that to my face and that's something that the african-american women in the picture were all loving it because they know what that meant. you have it take the bad guy on whoever it is, and i think he knows how to land the punch. so i'm looking at guys who can punch and leave a mark on the face. remember tricky dick, once that woman called him that he could never get over it ever and he's got to be as tough as the vice president. by the way, the vice president

is so improved as a candidate. i have never seen it, and maybe it's just a fact that she's taken over, just two weeks ago people on the right said you think biden's bad, you should see her. she's terrible. i don't think they're saying that anymore. my god, what are we up against? by the way, katty, it's a british-style election, this is classic. there are things you can do now really quick and you can put the focus on trump, not on her. on trump. make trump play defense all of the way and his crimes and his statements and it's all on record and i want there to be a punishment for women who have abortions and if you don't have kids, i want them to be punished, too. all of this stuff is on tape. if i was her, every shot i take at trump and i'll mach sure there's videotape to back this up and dare them not show the

tape including fox. just show the tape and show what he said himself if he wants to be convicted of a crime he admitted it himself. this is why i grew up in politics. i love it. if she goes up on defense she's making a big mistake. big mistake. >> a british style election except for the money. multiple, multiple, multiple millions raised. a lot of dollars. who can throw and take punches and we mean, of course, politically speaking and not physically speaking, we will know next tuesday. chris mathews, thank you very much. let's change directions and look at a story overseas. a political leader of hamas was killed in a strike in iran just after they had killed a hezbollah commander in beirut. both are blaming israel for the attacks, but israel has yet to comment on it. raf sanchez has all of the

latest. >> this morning the war in the middle east spreading as a top hamas leader assassinated inside iran. ismael haniyeh killed. both iran blaming israel. the israeli refusing to comment. ismael haniyeh were killed in tehran and they said it was a missile strike. the war started by hamas' attack on october 7th also spilling into lebanon where israel says it took out a senior commander in hezbollah, the iranian-backed militant group. [ screaming ] >> who was responsible for killing 12 children in a rocket attack on a soccer field over the weekend. lebanon's health ministry says two children were also killed in

the israeli strike. now after the attack in iran, hamas reeling from its leaders' death. the 61-year-old haniyeh was more a politician than a fighter. he left gaza five years ago and lived comfortably abroad while his people suffered, traveling the world rallying support for hamas. on october 7th, he celebrated the terror attack and while the idf says the real mastermind, yahya sinwar is still hiding in gaza, israel vowed it would one day take revenge on hamas' most public face. >> a lot of questions about what this will do to hostage negotiations. nbc's raf sanchez with that report. the increase in regional tensions are issues that vice president kamala harris would have to grapple with should she win in november. now nbc news is looking at the harris administration's approach

to what a foreign policy might look like and how closely it might mirror president biden's. nbc washington managing editor, carol lee. carol, what more can you tell us about the vice president's approach and how would it differ from joe biden's? >> the overarching takeaway from our reporting is that a lot of what the vice president's foreign policy would be, how she would operate as commander in chief if she were to win remains an open question. one of her aides told us that she doesn't have a foreign policy doctrine, and we talked to more than 30 people who have worked with the vice president and her team on foreign policy issues and what they've told us is she's not somebody who expresses her views in meetings. there's not a lot of dissent. she keeps her views closely held and she's not weighing in in meetings and things like that, and so the context around this is she's working alongside a president who has extensive

experience in foreign policy and very hardened views, and so her role has largely been to put -- push forward and advance the administration's policies and that are largely set by president biden, so she's traveled to the indo-pacific and meeting with foreign leaders on issues like ukraine and trying to advance the mission in terms of keeping the u.s. alliance together and things like that, but she hasn't stepped out on her own and one official said it's less debating in the situation and more helping execute the play. when you look at what she's said, one of the areas where people think she differs than president biden is on israel. a lot of that is just a difference in tone and emphasis and not necessarily on policy. if you look at both what she said on israel and the war in gaza it's pretty much the same as what president biden has said except she emphasizes things differently. she focuses on the humanitarian

crisis there and her tone is different and she's far more impassioned and that's led the impression that she's tough or israel. she said that the u.s. and agrees with the president that the u.s. would have an iron clad commitment to israel's security. it's a bit of a murky picture and a lot of unanswered questions and in terms of specific challenges that she could face, how she would handle them if china were to invade on taiwan or how she would handle likes like iran and there would be continuity there. >> the important report is online now at nbc news.com and the washingtonnews managing editor carol lee. thank you. democratic voters appear to justify the decisions of lawmakers who called on president joe biden to commit the 2024 race after his tough performance in last month's debate in atlanta. among them senator michael

bennett of colorado who is the first democratic member of the upper chamber who said biden should step aside over concerns that trump would win november's election in, as he put it, a landslide and senator bennett joins us. senator, thanks so much for being with us. >> thank you. >> let's get to your thoughts. i just noted you were out there at the forefront thanking president biden for his service, but it was time for him to step aside. that has now happened. we have seen how the race has changed and give us your thoughts in the last couple of weeks. >> i would say a couple of things, as i was having those conversations with representatives from the white house, i was saying to them we were asking president biden to make a decision to walk away from the white house with that sacrifice is very unusual and joe biden made the right decision for the united states of america and put his own

political interest first and the question now is what are we going to do over the next four months to honor that sacrifice, to make sure kamala harris is elected president of the united states and donald trump is put out to pasture and we have to do it because this country needs to begin to restore an economy that when it grows, it grows for everybody, not just the people at the very top. donald trump is the worst example of trickle down economics we could have and the next generation of americans are deeply worried that they'll be the first generation that has less opportunity, not more than their parents and grandparents. kamala harris supports the tax credit that's been good for working people. we have four months to win. we have to say to joe biden thank you for what you did for this country and now we have to go and we have to win this

election and grow an economy that when it grows, it grows for everyone. that's what we have to do. >> vees presidential nominee j.d. vance continues to defend himself surrounding comments he made in 2021 about the country about childless cat ladies who have no stake in america's future. he insisted he was referring to democratic lawmakers who support anti-child and anti-family policies, but tomorrow it's likely that republicans will be the ones who could be seen as stand in the way of helping families. that's when senate majority lead are chuck schumer is on a bill to expand the child tax credit for low-income families. that expansion was included in the 2021 american rescue plan and led to a decrease in the child poverty rate. when it expired a year later republicans prevented it from

being reauthorized. many of those republicans have signalled the opposition from advancing tomorrow's bill, meaning it is unlikely to get the 60 votes needed and senator bennett, we'll have a real act of hypocrisy. >> his statements are idiotic. any american can listen to what he said and know what he means and why he said it. with respect to the child tax credit, kamala harris was one of the very first people to endorse that credit and to work for that credit that cut it in half. cory booker and sherrod and i cut childhood poverty in half and allowed america to see for the first time that we don't have to accept our incredibly high level of childhood poverty as a permanent feature of our

democracy or the economy. j.d. vance, the only thing he's for is extending donald trump's tax cuts for rich people. he went home to mar-a-lago to say you're welcome to the people who were sitting there in tuxedos. 65% of the tax cut goes to the top 5% of americans whereas the tax credit that kamala harris has goes to 90% of america's children and cuts our child poverty almost in half. that's the perfect illustration of the stakes that are in this election and why it is so important for us to fight as hard as we can over the next four months to make sure she wins. >> talking about the next election and why the people need to come out and vote. when you talk about the child tax credit and the inflation bill and inflation reduction and

many of the things that were done over the last three and a half years by president biden and vice president harris. they are concrete things, the child tax credit also among them that really fundamentally changed the course of the country back on course the way it was and spending some time the day before yesterday with the president going to texas and on, i sense that he is more energetic about preserving his legacy about electing vice president harris and electing democrats. how important is it, senator bennett, for people to understand that there were some achievements and they can be eroded or reversed if we don't see a continuation of a democratic president, in this case, kamala harris, the vice president. we are going to see a roll back and all of the progress that was

made is going to be wiped away. >> reverend sharpton, first of all, it is great to hear your voice and cress mathews' voice this morning. i think it is so important. you know better than anybody else the war that we're reaping now because of the economics that unfortunately went through not just republican presidents and democratic presidents, as well and has created one of the worst inequality in the industrialized world here in the united states. some of the worst wealth inequality, as well. our kids and grandkids are the first kids in america who are going to see less opportunity than their parents and grandparents if we don't turn things around, and joe biden and kamala harris began that process with the infrastructure bill by bringing the first industry back to the united states of america

while ronald reagan extended everything to southeast, and ney gosch yaeting health care and everthe program farmal hab lobby. those things were a hugely stepped border and we have to recognize that in our economy today as opposed to when reagan was president, the americans have less today than when reagan was president and that's because of the trickledown economics. job has been trying to change that and going into the future we have to change it because you want to know what a threat to our democracy is? it's not donald trump. he's a symptom of our problems. he's a symptom of the lack of economic mobility that we have. we have to restore that economic mobility to the united states to

save our democracy, and it is clear to me that kamala harris understands that that is the task in front of us. so the stuff that they've accomplished as the biden administration, incredibly important shows the distinction between the two parties. now we have to show the american people in pennsylvania and the other stateses that you've been talking about this morning about what kamala harris' vision for the future is and how it differs from donald trump's trickledown that benefits the people at mar-a-lago, but doesn't benefit anybody else especially the school kids i used to work for in the denver public schools. >> all right. democratic senator michael bennett of will cokohl. thank you so much for joining us this morning. >> thanks for having me. >> coming up on "morning joe," donald trump is set to visit pennsylvania later today and hold his first rally in that state since the assassination attempt against him. we'll get a live report keystone

state and steve kornacki who is standing by at the big board. we'll be right back. oard we'll be right back.

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9:35 on a hot summer morning in philadelphia. beautiful city. former president trump is set to return to pennsylvania holding a campaign event in the so-called latino belt with more than 600,000 registered latino voters in the state, the voting bloc will be key to whichever campaign is going to win in november. nbc news correspondent george solis is live in redding, pennsylvania, with more. george, what are you hearing there? >> good morning, katty, voters telling me this is -- [ speaking in a global language ] which translates to a very important election and a very important vote. there are over a million latinos in pennsylvania. the number of registered latino voters in the six figures and

both campaigns well aware of this. the trump campaign opening an office just last month. across the commonwealth there are 24 campaign offices for the harris campaign. in this heated race for the state and the presidency, voters here know their vote could make the difference. >> the majority latino in reading, pennsylvania. david de la cruz say the talk of the town is politics. >> it's been exciting and such an unexpected change. >> do you care more about the election now? >> i do. i do. >> we first met the duo both of dominican descent before president trump picked j.d. vance and harris rose to the top of the ticket. both voters remain firmly undecided, but newly energized. >> she has direction, and i think it eaches the playing field for the two candidates. >> is she going to advance the country? is it possible that she takes it

maybe in reverse? we don't know yet. >> 18-year-old jamil garcia, a student at the barbershop says he'll vote for the first time. how do you feel about voting for either candidates? >> in my opinion, kind of nervous. one of every five hispanics will vote in their first presidential election. reading sits in the so-called latino belt. cities and small towns once democratic strongholds nestled in northeastern pennsylvania. in this region, latino communities make up 9% of the state's overall population. >> does it feel like both campaigns are trying to earn your vote? >> definitely. biden won pennsylvania by around 80,000 votes in 2020. that year more than 610,000 latinos were eligible to vote in the state and while mr. biden won reading in 2020, it shifted 15 points to the right since 2016. recent polls shows harris

performing better than biden among latino voters. >> in 2020 who did you vote for and why? >> biden. >> paralegal explained she's switching to trump in 2024, frustrated by the rising cost of living and running a business in reading. biden's endorsement of harris only pushing her further away. she now volunteers at the recently open campaign office. >> i don't trust her. >> why? >> because her background. i don't trust her. >> tania melendez thinks putting pennsylvania governor josh shapiro on the democratic ticket this year would make a difference. >> does she need shapiro to secure? >> think she does. people will tend to follow someone they trust. >> she'll vote harris in november. >> the fact that she came down to the middle of the city to talk to people in the community college for me was the most

positive thing. >> reading restaurant owner cesar lopez recalls harris' trip, but hasn't been swayed yet. >> think everybody is waiting for the next debate and let's see what happens. >> with less than a hundred days until the election, reading's residents feel the weight of the decision ahead. >> think about what you want for your country, what you want for the kids. >> i want them to be able to say, wow, things are different now than they were for mom and dad, and i'm so happy that we're in this country. >> and it goes without saying you can tell how energized these voters are. the spokesperson for the trump-vance ticket tell us there are no immediate plans or a time line for when the ticket may come back here to reading, but that they are working on it. the spokesperson for the harris campaign telling us vice president harris, campaign knows latinos' political power because we won't take their votes for granted. voters here obviously left with

a big choice ahead of them. jonathan? >> nbc's george solis live for us in pennsylvania. thank you so much. for more let's bring in nbc news national political correspondent steve kornacki who is over at the beg board with a look at the keystone state. let's take a building on what george was taking you through. big picture in pennsylvania. by the way, when you do the road to 270 scenarios. everyone does this at home at some point. it is hard for either candidate to find the path to 270 without pennsylvania and it is so big in the number of electoral votes in the battleground type of state there. it is such a crucial state even among the battlegrounds and the range here is so narrow. 2020 when biden carried the state the margin was 80,000 votes statewide. trump carried it in 2016 over hillary clinton. the margin then was about 44,000 votes and between 44,000 for trump and 80,000 for biden in a state this big, that's the kind

of area we're talking about in terms of the number of votes you need to swing and that's why what george was just talking about was so significant because we talk about the philly burbs and pittsburgh where reading is and lehigh county, and where hazleton is and those three cities have the highest share of hispanic population of any cities in pennsylvania, and something very interesting politically happening in those three cities because remember, we're showing you here. 2016 and 2020, pennsylvania moved toward the democrats. it went from trump to biden. it moved several points to the left, but in those heavily hispanic cities by concentration in the state, take a look. here's allentown and lehigh county and this has the highest concentration of hispanics in opinion pen and it's 54% hispanic and look at this, the trend has been toward

republicans and the state was moving toward the democrats between 16 and 20, but in allentown it fell down to 25 in 2020. this an area and we talked about trump maging more inroads with lat oip voters and this trend can knock it into the 20s this time. again you'll see it here and look at the translation and it is 5% hispanic and more than 60% hispanic. it was blue in 2020, hazleton was for obama and trump comes along and improves it by five and takes it to 11. this is where trump think they can do better. this is very much a hispanic city and this is where he was in berks county. it's overwhelmingly democratic from 2012 when obama won

reelection to 2020, that's a drop of 20 points in the democratic margin in a heavily hispanic city. so the trend in the most hispanic cities in pennsylvania as the state was getting more democratic in 2020 they were becoming more republican. so when you think of that very narrow margin there overall statewide, biden winning by 80,000 and trump winning by 44,000, these are the kinds of cities where the trump campaign thinks there could be continuous improvement and tens thousands of votes that can win just because of that. i do make one point here, though. the early polling we're seeing with harris getting in, and i suggest maybe, she is improving her performance among hispanic voters relative to where joe biden was and that's obviously very important to keep an eye on. >> so fascinating. you have to know the battlegrounds within the battlegrounds. nbc's steve kornacki, thank you

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a candidate for the democratic nomination for the presidency of the united states of america. [ applause ] i am not the candidate of black america, although i am black and proud. [ applause ] i am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although i am a woman, and i am equally proud of that. my presence before you now

symbolizes a new era in american political history. >> so not all new, 52 years ago congresswoman shirley chisholm made history announcing her candidacy for the president. fast forward where the party is nominating kamala harris as the party's first black female. joining me is correspondent claire bing ham, "the movement," how it transformed it from 1963. the book is full of amazing interviews and i want to focus on shirley chisholm for a moment because so many of us assume that kamala harris is the first. we don't necessarily know the story of shirley chisholm, who was it like for her as she faced the misogyny and racism that was so much more explicit 50 years ago? >> it's really hard to describe what shirley chisholm faced when she walked into the halls of

congress in january of 1965. she was the first black woman, member of congress. there were 11 women in congress and ten black members of congress out of 535, and she was faced down with the most extremely insulting and outrageous racism from mostly southern white men from -- from the georgia delegation and the south carolina delegation. one man would spit in his handkerchief every time she passed him. the georgia delegation refused to sit down with her when she sat for lunch at their table by mistake. someone would wipe down at comm time she left a committee hearing, it was unbelievable, and she was so brave and proud and never let it get to her. she was just a remarkable change agent, and no one wanted her to run for president either.

the national women's political caucus, which she helped found didn't endorse her nor did the congressional black caucus endorse her. she just ran for president because she felt that there was a need for americans to be inspired by someone who wasn't an old white pro-vietnam war man. >> as you know, i was part of shirley chisholm's presidential campaign, i was 17, going on 18 years old, and the pain she went through, the insults, the kind of just totally just casting her to the side by members of congress was painful, but i think also the fact that many black politicians were misogynist towards her. talk about how even people this their own silos have to deal with people in there that can say i am all for racial equality

but don't talk to me about women's movement or lgbtq movements, and shirley chisholm broke down all those doors, and i look at kamala harris today. it is almost unbelievable the kind of doors she broke down that we take for granted now. >> it's so true. she paved the way for kamala harris. she is the -- if we had to have one person who is the foremother of kamala harris's presidential campaign, it is certainly shirley chisholm, and she -- it's important to remember that in the late '60s and early '70s, the black power movement was such an important part of the new civil rights movement, it was very macho, male-oriented movement, and shirley chisholm wrote and said many times that she found of the two deficits in her life being black and being a woman, she found being a woman much harder in terms of being able to progress and achieve and

that was partly because many black men in the leadership were insulted that she would think that as a woman she should be the first black person to put herself forward as a presidential candidate. so she -- and she also was incredibly inclusive about lesbians and gay people in the community at a time when it was absolutely taboo, and she was pro-choice as it was called then. she was for reproductive freedom, and one of the founders of naral, which many people in the black community were anti-abortion and felt that a lot of women needed to be involved in nation building and having a lot of children, and so she just fought against every single stereotype. >> clara, i love the book because it kind of makes you feel like you're sitting with these women. oral histories are so powerful for that. you give us the privilege of being in the room with us. tell us about a couple of the

other interviews. maybe it's bobby gibb or billie jean king who are now in theirs 70s and 80s, as they reflect back on that time, how much do they think has changed and how much do they think hasn't? >> there were so many interviews. one of my favorites is bobby gibb who was the first woman to run the marathon in 1966, and i feel like now that here we are with the olympics, it's important to remember what it was like for women in the '60s. women really didn't participate in sports and it was considered unladylike and even dangerous. it wasn't legal for women to run in the marathon until 1974. in 1966, bobby gibb who was a young college student and loved to run lived in boston, had witnessed the boston marathon which at the time was the only one this the country, if not the world, just jumped in from a

bush at the beginning of the race wearing a hoodie and her brother's shoes and shorts and ran the entire marathon. by the time she got to wellsly, the world was out that a woman was in the race, and all the wellsley girls who traditionally held a bridge with their arms cheered her and started singing and bobby at this moment realize ed that what she was doing, to just show that women could physically run the marathon would have a huge impact on women's rights, and she was so right. >> yeah, if somebody says no, by the way, just jump in straight from the bush and get it done. the new book is titled "the movement: how women's liberation transformed in america in 1963 to 1973." it's on sale now. thank you, clara so much for joining us.

>> thank you. >> final thought this morning, what are we only in the middle of this week, i keep feeling it should be friday. i can't believe it's only wednesday. >> yeah, fact checkers sadly say it is only wednesday. >> it is. >> final thought would be picking up where we started, this enthusiasm around the vice president and her candidacy, the huge rally in atlanta last night and now an increased focus on her choice for running mate with reporting suggesting it's coming in the next few days with her running mate on the road early next week. we will see you again here tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. eastern. ana cabrera picks up the coverage after a short final break. er a short final break. hi, i'm sally. i'm from phoenix, arizona. i'm a flight nurse on a helicopter that specializes in trauma. i've been doing flight nursing for 24 years. i had a fear that i wouldn't be able to keep up. i wanted all the boost i could get!

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right now on "ana cabrera reports," breaking news, hamas's top political leader killed, targeted in an ovt