that's good. sometimes the democrats, democratic candidates maybe speak a little too much like the class valedictorian and like to speak in wonky policy terms. that's not tim walz. i think that's good. the main weakness is political and not policy. this is not a judgment on his policies in minnesota, but he had an extremely progressive policy agenda, successful policy agenda. it's why he was picked. i don't know. i think some democrats think he might be able to help appeal to those moderate voters i was just talking about, the people that maybe voted for brian kemp for governor in georgia but also for joe biden for president. i don't think he is going to really appeal much to them, and i think that if the republicans were disciplined about an idealogical attack, they could be vulnerable to that. >> the harris/walz team in the southwest next couple of days. contributor to the conservative website, the bulwark," tim miller, thank you for being with

us this morning. we'll talk soon. thank you to all of you for getting up "way too early" on this friday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. we just want fairness. we want dignity for all people. we want to recognize the right all people have to freedom and liberty, to make choices. >> in response to the trade rumors we keep hearing about? >> we talking about moving? not the trade, not the trade. we talking about moving. no, thank you. >> you could use opendoor, sell your house directly to them. >> many years, took decades to recover, and we're very close to that, a world war. in my opinion, we're very close to a world war. >> and we know we are a work in progress. we haven't yet quite reached all of those ideals, but we will die trying because we love our country and we believe. >> we have a very, very sick country right now. you saw the other day with the stock market crashing. that was just the beginning. that was just the beginning. it's going to get worse. it'll get a lot worse. >> that's a big part of this

campaign. you know, when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. we know what we stand for, and we stand for the people. and we stand for the dignity of work. and we stand for freedom. we stand for justice. we stand for equality. >> some of your allies have expressed concern in not taking this very seriously, particularly -- >> what? another question. >> -- with enthusiasm on the other side. why haven't you been campaigning? >> because i'm leading by a lot and i'm letting their convention go through, and i am campaigning a lot. >> welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, august the 9th. with us, we have the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at "politico," jonathan lemire. also, u.s. special correspondent for bbc news, katty kay. president of the national action network and host of msnbc's "politicians nation," reverend al sharpton. also, nbc news national affairs

analyst and a partner and chief political columnist at "puck," john heilemann. i was just going through these. can i? just going through some of these things, some of these quotes donald trump was talking about, john heilemann. >> yeah. >> i think peggy noonan's column in the "wall street journal" hits it on exactly where donald trump and kamala harris find themselves in this very topsy-turvy political season. first of all, peggy writes, "i continue to believe the woman isn't creating a movement but a movement is creating her. and they are showing up. and, man, are they showing up. mr. trump spent most of the week having what a gop strategist told "politico" is a public

nervous breakdown. donald trump. and finally, for the first time this week, i thought people were wondering about the impact of mr. trump's age. he is 78. he hasn't been able to focus, make his case. is he, in another irony of 2024, turning into joe biden?" and the split screens have not been good for him at all this week, john. you look at the polls, and you can read these polls that are coming in. it is only august, but there certainly is momentum. but there's also, again, something that we haven't seen from donald trump since 2016, and that is just the complete failings of his political instincts to rise to a moment.

>> well, i think you're seeing fear, joe. apart from everything else. playing off the last bit of sound there where he said, you know, he's letting the democratic convention go through, i wanted to announce right here on the show that i'm going to allow "morning joe" to continue for the rest of the morning in the same spirit as donald trump. you know, i have about as much control over that as donald trump does over the democratic convention. i think, you know, people predicted that this would happen, the thing related to trump becoming now the old man of the race, and that the focus -- you know, there was a lot of discussion about this when joe biden was still in the race. people would say, you know, correctly, donald trump is also an old man. donald trump is also slipping, losing miles an hour off his fastball, has difficulty processing as a cognitive matter. they would say, you know, there is a double standard here.

you would say, yeah, there's a double standard here. i'll tell you what the double standard was always. the press is terrible at focusing on two things at the same time. for a long time, the fact that joe biden's affect, that he seemed less energetic than trump, gave trump -- not saying it's a good thing or justifying it, it was just what happened -- people focused on biden. >> right. >> trump's failings in this area got ignored. even though we on many occasions on this show would point to various trump mental failures. >> right. >> now, though, you know, without joe biden in the race, the press is focused on that question. it's much more glaring to people, how many failures, cognitive failures donald trump has, especially when he stands in an unscripted way in front of the press. part of it is cognitive. part is psychological. part of it is emotional. the ticks, going back to the same grievances over and over again. the inability to process basic facts. the massive errors he makes all the time. the incoherence.

all those things are standing in much starker relief now, which gets to your point which is the key point and the point that peggy is making. it's just the case that the split screen now is a split screen that is much more punishing to donald trump than the split screen when it was joe biden on the other side of the screen. again, talk about how you want the world to be. >> yeah. >> i'll tell you about how the world is. that's the reality. >> it's funny you said that. last weekend, katty, my kids and i were watching the olympics. there was a local news break. they showed a -- it was one of these, you know, poll came out, and it showed the split screen and the two candidates on both sides. it was the first time that i had seen kamala harris, 59-year-old kamala harris, i think she's 59, next to 78-year-old donald trump. it was actually quite jarring. you know, politics is all about

contrast. that's what i learned in the first campaign school i went to 30 years ago. they said, the campaign is about contrast. visual contrast is striking. you look at the press conference yesterday, and it is exaggerations and the outright lies that were told in donald trump's press conferences. also talking about us being on the verge of a depression when the united states is more powerful economically relative to the rest of the world than it's been in 20, 30, 40 years. i could go down that list again, but there's no need. people know that that's the truth. but you have kamala harris saying we love our country, we believe in our country on one side, and then you have donald trump on the other side saying our country is lousy. that is -- again, going back to peggy noonan and her life's work, regardless of ideology,

americans want optimism. they want hope. they want someone looking to the future. boy, that is another stark contrast that you see. yesterday and in the previous few weeks. >> yeah, there's a lot more kind of sunny reagan about the democratic tickticket at the mo versus the republicans. donald trump is holed up in mar-a-lago. he's doing one rally today in montana, a state he is 15 points ahead. that's head-scratching. it was a point of grievance, what we're seeing from the campaign. case in point about donald trump's mental acuity. during yesterday's news conference, he told this weird story about, weird, nearly dying during a helicopter ride. but as "the new york times" points out, there was only one problem with the story, or maybe two or maybe three problems. here's the ex-president yesterday at mar-a-lago when asked about former france mayor

willie brown who briefly dated vice president kamala harris nearly three decades ago. take a listen. >> well, i know willie brown very well. in fact, i went down in a helicopter him. we thought, maybe this is the end. we were in a helicopter. going to a certain location together, there was an emergency landing. this was not a pleasant landing. willie was a little concerned, so i know him pretty well. i mean, i haven't seen him in years. but he told me terrible things about her. but this is what you're telling me anyway, i guess. but he had a big part in what happened with kamala. i don't know, maybe he's changed his tune, but he was not a fan of hers very much at that point. >> okay. it is an odd story. what's the real issue with that story? well, it appears it never actually happened. first, trump was never on a helicopter with willie brown. he's apparently confusing him with former california governor jerry brown. [ laughter ] take a look.

the two don't really look terribly similar. secondly, there was never any emergency landing, as trump claimed. and the helicopter's passengers were never in any danger. mayor brown, who as "the times" notes, loves regaing anybody who will listen with stories said, quote, you know me well enough to know if i almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it. according to gavin newsom, who was also on that ride, there was never any discussion at all about one kamala harris. for his part, willie brown isn't saying terrible things about harris at all. in fact, he remains an avid supporter of hers. you understand why they use the word weird. the group took a helicopter to survey wildfire damage in 2018, an event where trump would confuse the name of the town that was destroyed and also claim the solution to california's wildfire crisis was to, quote, rake the forest floor. do you remember that, faking the forest floors, joe? >> yes.

>> that was one of those particular moments. >> wasn't -- >> anyway, the story didn't make sense. it didn't really happen. the people were different from the people he said it was. otherwise, i guess all good. >> i mean, it's unbelievable. you know, rev, it reminds me when we got into that dust-up on the international space station. stayed up there longer than we expected. [ laughter ] it was tension city. you know, yesterday, "the wall street journal" editorial page wrote an op-ed talking about how donald trump now seems primed to lose yet another race that he should win. you look at this press conference. you look at the fact that his people just don't want him to go out and give speeches. you know, i'm sure they didn't want him to go out and give the press conference yesterday, but

donald trump, probably still driven by that belief, i alone can do it. again, there's just nothing comforting about that. again, i go back to peggy noonan asking the question. or saying for the first time this week, i thought people were wondering about the impact of mr. trump's age. he is 78. he hasn't been able to focus, to make his case. is he, in another irony of 2024, turning into joe biden? well, certainly nothing that's happened the past week would suggest otherwise, would it? >> nothing would suggest otherwise, but i would say to anyone that joe biden never just started remembering emergency landings of helicopters with people that didn't exist. i mean, even the story within itself. can you imagine in the middle of an emergency landing, you start

talking about somebody you dated years ago in bad terms? i mean, the whole story doesn't make sense, aside from the fact he had the people mixed up. then he said that his rally, january 6th, drew as many people as martin luther king's march on washington. i assume he's talking about 1963 because that's the only march on washington martin luther king had. he said, they said martin luther king had a million, and i had 25,000. first of all, the million-man march was 27 years after king was dead. king didn't call that march. and the fact that he would compare the million-man march or the king march of 250,000 to who he had january 6th and not remember that january 6th was an attempt to overthrow an election shows that i think we might have chose the wrong old man to walk off the stage. >> first of all, i was on that

trip, the presidential trip to california with those wildfires. there was no emergency landing. everything went smoothly, though he did, of course, say california should be raking the floors. i know we do this a lot, but could you imagine if president biden had told a story with that many inaccuracies, what the reaction would be from both the media and, frankly, his own party? we know what nancy pelosi would be doing. she'd be trying to get him out of the race. yet, republicans aren't doing that. they've never done that with trump. it continues to be he calls the shots, all of them. john heilemann, that's what yesterday was about. i'm told by trump insiders, joe's hunch is right, that there was a campaign briefing scheduled the day before for some reporters to come down there, and the trump aides would talk about the state of the race. trump said, well, if they're here, i'll have a news conference. they're trying to draw a contrast because vice president harris hasn't taken that many questions since being the nominee. she should. but that's not an issue that's going to move voters. i don't think that's something that really matters. really what this was about was trump trying to say, i am angry

at my staff. they're failing me. i'm going to go out there and try to fix things. yet, if the goal here is to win over some new voters, hard to see that happened. >> first of all, this is all just another blow to the new trump narrative. >> which was insane. >> we look back on that one moment right before the republican convention, when serious people were talking about how there might be a new trump after the failed assassination attempt on him. boy, as we sit here today, that narrative, the fact that anybody ever believed that, even for 24 hours, looks more and more embarrassing. you know, i think, to rev's point about the march on washington, martin luther king, i think there is a chance that trump is confusing that with the famous march on washington launched by larry king. maybe it was allen king or billie jean king. one of the kings. there was a king who once marched on washington. the march on washington that had that stephen king waged with 14

friends. he had more people there in the crowd. you get these things confused. jonathan, you know donald trump, have been on more trips like this, like the trip to california. is it possible that trump is just so nervous flying in a helicopter that every helicopter landing seems like an emergency landing to him? it lives in his memory as one where, you know, just bringing the bird down, we nearly died. you know, that thing is very difficult. every one of the landings is difficult. i don't know what's going on with him but, again, to the peggy noonan point, the presidential campaigns are split screens. that's what they are all day long, every day. this split screen, i mean, is, and who knows? tomorrow is another day, and the split screen can change. so far, since the moment kamala harris became or retook the split screen, it's not looking good for donald trump, i would say. there's not been a news cycle that trump has won since she became the presumptive nominee. until that changes, he's in trouble. >> on the helicopter ride,

governor newsom said crashing is something he does think about, joe. more than anything, the vibe from mar-a-lago yesterday was panic. >> yeah. >> it's now been three weeks since harris became the democratic, you know, presumptive nominee, and they haven't been able to land a finger on her. they haven't figured this out at all. and we know the one thing that gets under trump's skin more than anything is crowd size, and she is outdrawing him. he can't handle that. they're trying to change the dynamics of the race. one truism, joe, is the candidate who wants to have more and more debates is the candidate who is losing, and that's what we got from donald trump yesterday. >> yeah. really has been surprising how they've just not been able to lay a glove on her on walz. their failings have cost them at

the polls. we talked about this yesterday. you turn down the volume, and you can see the democrats smiling on stage. it looks like a joyous rally, a joyous occasion. they're happy to be there. they're excited. turn the volume down and look at the crowds, it does seem a lot like the 2008 hope and change election. if measured only by the reaction in the crowds. but they're smiling, people's faces, and there's just a lift in their step. they're excited. on the other side, you turn and you have jd vance scouring and saying, again, negative things. you have donald trump with this press conference, it's glum. it's distressing. and so, you know, i've been surprised, as have most political observers, been

surprised at what a lift has occurred in the democratic party over the past several weeks. as peggy noonan wrote again, and i'll say it again, there is a movement. in this case, it seems the movement is going to the candidate. the movement is creating the candidate instead of the candidate creating the movement. she has stepped in. she's doing extraordinarily well if you look at how she's handled the last three weeks. and they don't know what to do with it. katty, this is "the wall street journal" editorial page yesterday. it says, "mr. trump seems to think he's still leading in the polls against a feeble opponent. that overconfidence is what led him to choose from vance who hasn't reassured voters on the fence about mr. trump. the former president doesn't seem to realize he's now in a

close race that requires discipline and a consistent message to prevail. his struggles are hurting dpop gop candidates for the house and the senate. all this underscores the risk gop voters took in nominating mr. trump for a third time. they had younger alternatives who should have been fresher voices and could have served two terms. this is still mr. trump's election to lose, but as we learned in 2020, he's more than capable of doing it." katty, new polling out today -- or yesterday, again, could be an outlier, but, again, i always looked at trends in polls. i didn't look at the specific numbers. i saw where i was a week, two weeks, a month ago, and where i was at a given day. you know, there's a new marquette poll that shows kamala harris up by eight points. i'm sure that is probably an outlier, but perhaps not.

and this is all before the democratic national convention launches and celebrates her for a week. >> yeah. i read the headline of that op-ed, the editorial in the "wall street journal" yesterday, "will donald trump blow another election?" you're right, joe, the most brutal part of that whole article was that little bit you just read with "the wall street journal"'s suggestion that the republicans have chosen the wrong pick. they should have gone with somebody younger and stacked up against kamala harris as the split screen. he doesn't seem to know how to take her on. you've got joy on the democratic side, and donald trump walked out of mar-a-lago yesterday swinging cross. he looked grumpy. when jd vance was asked what made him happy, he dismissed the question as if, happy? why would anyone ask what makes me happy? rather than saying puppies, football games or something. anyway. >> katty, isn't that fascinating? talk about a softball question.

>> kids! >> what made him happy? right. i could go on for three hours right now. that's the easiest question in the world, and he snarled and took it as a negative. >> yeah. >> then said something about, on that question or another simple question, what doesn't make me happy is stupid questions from reporters. no, what makes me happy is a politician's softball right down the middle of the plate. he couldn't do it. >> no, he couldn't do it. i think, you know, they're in a funk, and they don't really know how to get out of it. i think the press conference at mar-a-lago wasn't about news, no news, but it was trying to get the attention back. within minutes, there were kamala harris and walz up in michigan speaking at a union event, and the cameras had left them again. it was a sort of metaphor for the campaign. they cannot stay in the limelight. up until now, the democratic playbook has been, let's keep the focus on donald trump.

that's how we win. now, the democratic playbook is, let's keep the focus on us. we have a great message to sell. let's keep the focus on us. i think, you know, there's been a flip there in strategy, and donald trump doesn't know how to handle it at the moment. >> definitely does not. well, we have a big show today, as ed sullivan would say. a really, really big show. this is the 50th anniversary of the resignation of richard nixon. we're going to have jon meacham on in a minute to talk about that, the impact and any parallels he draws with today. also still ahead, we're going to be talking about the democratic national convention. it's just over a week away. we're going to be talking to dnc chairman jaime harrison about the renewed optimism among the party. as vice president kamala harris prepares to formally accept the nomination. you're watching "morning joe." we're back in 90 seconds.

you've been criticized for being too serious, angry sometimes. what makes you smile? what makes you happy? >> well, i smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media, man. [ laughter ] i mean, look, if you watch a full speech that i give, i actually am having a good time out here, and i'm enjoying this. look, sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. right now, i am angry about what kamala harris has done to this country and done to the american southern border. and i think that most people in our country, they can be happy-go-lucky sometimes, they can enjoy things sometimes, and they can turn on the news and recognize that what's going on in this country is a disgrace. (reporters) over here. kev! kev! (reporter 1) any response to the trade rumors, we keep hearing about? (kev) we talkin' about moving? not the trade, not the trade, we talking about movin'. no thank you. (reporter 2) you could use opendoor. sell your house directly to them, it's easy. (kev) ... i guess we're movin'.

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kids love summer break, but parents? well... care.com makes it easy to find background checked childcare that fits your summer schedule. from long term to short notice. give yourself a break this summer. go to care.com now. to continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication, would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the president and the congress, in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. therefore, i shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. the vice president will be sworn in as president at that hour in

in office. >> 50 years ago today, richard nixon resigned from the presidency in the wake of watergate. you just heard part of the speech from the day before, announcing that decision. the scandal began two years earlier when the dnc headkwaerters in the watergate office building in d.c. were broken into. investigations that revealed subsequently that richard nixon's participation was in the cover-up, and he remains to this day the only american president to resign from his post. let's bring in our friend, rogers chair of the american presidency at vanderbilt university, historian jon meacham. jon, that, of course, was a shocking moment in american political history. the next day, extraordinarily revealing, richard nixon said good-bye to his staff, said good-bye to some of his close friends, and in an address where he talked about his father being poor, talked about his mother,

and he had this confessional, always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. then you destroy yourself. years later, his daughter said she was glad people really saw her father as he was, talking personally about his family. but an extraordinary day 50 years ago. what are your thoughts? >> yeah. you know, president nixon, i think it was tom wicker argued this, then bob dole picked it up at nixon's funeral in 1994, in many ways, that was the age of nixon. our politics, as we experience them now, in a way, are bracketed by both nixon's checker speech in 1952, which was a massive television event

at the dawn of the medium, and then the moment you just played, was this incredible inflection point in the life of the post war era. i think it was someone's wife who pointed out that jfk and richard nixon, their rise was the young officer, the junior officers of world war ii had finally come into command. so it's this generational, seismic moment where you have this cohort of people who were, as president kennedy said, tempered by war, and then guided us through the cold war for good and for ill. nixon, in many ways, represents the best of us and the worst of us. vivid political figures often do. >> yeah. you said the best of us, the worst of us. it reminds me of the title of tom wicker's book, a guy who studied nixon as closely as anybody. >> yeah. >> "one of us."

>> yeah. >> "one of us." again, for better and for worse. you talk about the age of nixon. if i'm not mistaken, more americans voted for richard nixon, i could be mistaken, but this was the case at least 30 years ago. i don't think anybody is eclipsing, but nixon got more national votes than any person in american history. he ran on the national ticket in '52, '56, '60, '72. then along with lbj and fdr. three of the greatest landslides in u.s. history. what was it about richard nixon that drew americans to him in '72, and how remarkable of a system we have, that a man that could be at the height of all powers in november of 1972 run out of office less than two years later because of his

crimes. >> one of the things about nixon, and this is an argument that wicker made, also our friend evan thomas. i highly recommend a book he published seven, eight years ago, "being nixon." >> "being nixon," yeah. >> it is an incredible portrait of this dichotomy. by the way, aren't we all a mix of good and bad? so i think, to some extent, the american people recognized in nixon, or enough of the american people, the people who voted for him, a representative figure. he was a striver. he had come out of yorba linda, california. he'd not gone to harvard. he'd gotten in but didn't have the scholarship money, didn't have the money, so he went to wittier. always had a chip on his shoulder about that.

was someone who was locked in this fundamental struggle for all those years with john kennedy, for whom life had given almost every break. nixon had gotten almost no breaks. nixon represented the hard line side of the cold war argument. >> yup. >> again, parenthetically, he was right about alger hiss. there is a grain of truth, and it's not as simple as many people want to make it. what he tells us about america today, and this is vital in an age where donald trump is the republican nominee, is that the constitutional system has withstood remarkable stresses and strains. one of the things about nixon is, yes, he broke the law, but

in the end, he had a sense of shame. and he did what he did on august 8th, leaving on august 9th, 1974. i think that for him, at the very end of the day, the constitution, the country did matter. >> yeah. he, of course, the most important moment in the rule of law, in the battle against richard nixon, was the supreme court ruled against nixon to turn over the tapes. immediately, he knew it was over. there was no part of him that thought he'd go on denying what the supreme court had told him he had to do and pushing back on it. that is one of the great fears of what a second donald trump term may look like.

you talked about alger hiss. for younger people who didn't grow up during the age of nixon or even at the end of the age of nixon, it's impossible to really understand why richard nixon would be so popular without understanding how the cold war framed so much. my family raised, my father, a cold warrior. there was nixon fighting against alger hiss, against the communists in the 1950s as vice president, pushing back, taking a hard line, and so that was the richard nixon that was framed in the age, as you said, the age of nixon. it was like cold warriors supported richard nixon. yet, nixon is a complicated figure, watergate aside. whether you talk about the

bombing of cambodia, undermining peace negotiations in 1968 to help get him elected in '68 against humphrey. there's that side of it. then you have nixon the cold warrior opening china, going to china, opening china. >> yeah. >> you have nixon the hard line conservative being the founder of the environmental protection agency, also nixon fighting against more moderates in his administration, pushing for detente with the soviets. again, very complicated policy wise. richard nixon would be, i think it was same 30, 40 years later that richard nixon would be seen as a left-wing radical by most current day republicans. >> oh, my lord, absolutely. one of the questions people ask is, how did we survive 1968?

when you think about the tumultuous year, president johnson gets out, mccarthy and rfk challenge him, dr. king is killed, senator kennedy is killed, the chicago democratic convention is chaotic, george wallace gets 13.5% of the vote in november. incredibly fraught time. i would argue that it's worthy to think about, nixon is part of the reason the republic endured. again, complicated, counterintuitive argument. 212 area code people wouldn't agree with this. but the epa, he proposed a health care plan to the left of president obama's. he proposed a guaranteed family income. remember, the influence of daniel patrick moynihan, a domestic policy adviser, on the one hand wanted to take nixon into this kind of progressive

tori-ism. again, the complications of life, the complexities of life, daniel patrick moynihan arguing that on this side, and then you have pat buchanan and the political operation working the other side of the street. what we learned this summer anew, anyone who thinks history works in a straight line or there's somehow these clinical forces that always shape who we are and what happens, you know, the greeks had it right. character is destiny. character is complicated. >> no doubt. by the way, if you are interested today at home in reading any books about richard nixon, i think jon and i would certainly recommend evan thomas' "being nixon." also, one of the best books written about richard nixon, and

none other than the aforementioned pat buchanan agreed, rick pearlstein, no right-winger by any stretch of the imagination, wrote an extraordinary book, "nixon land." you want to also take a look at that if you want to have a better understanding of the forces that drove richard nixon. jon, we need to move on. i am curious, though, just a quick, quick thought about where we are right now. we've been talking about contrasts between a campaign of hope and optimism on the left and a campaign of dowerness and just anger on the right. >> yeah. >> talk about where the different directions are going. >> i think the stakes of the 2024 election, as articulated by president biden, as many of us

share this belief, that in many ways, the rule of law, the constitutional order, politics as we have understood them, for all their imperfections, are, in fact, in the balance. a re-elected president trump would be an even more potent threat to the constitutional order as we have come to understand it. and which has kept us moving however herkily and jerkily to a more perfect union. that's at stake. as you've been talking about, the wave of excitement and novelty about vice president harris and governor walz, and you have a pretty potent combination at the moment. i would urge everybody to remember that donald trump hasn't changed.

those who believe in the constitution, those who believe in this unfolding story need to assess far beyond ordinary policy disputes with a democratic ticket and realize that we can argue about policy if we have a constitution. if we don't have a constitution, it doesn't matter what we think about policy. >> and if we have leaders, the left or right, who respect madisonian democracy, then america will move forward as it always has, with the sharp edges, the extremes being rounded off. frustrating, frustratingly fantastic legislative process. if you have someone who wants to be like orban, promises to be a dictator day one, then that's

obviously something that you may be throwing away. presidential historian jon meacham, as always, thanks so much. a little later on "morning joe," we'll be talking to the pulitzer prize winning photographer for gerald ford, david kennerly. this is going to be a treat. he'll bring incredible photos he took on the day of nixon's resignation. we'll have a recap on the day in paris from team usa, including a world record on the track. an incredible comeback in men's basketball. also, much more on kamala harris' rallies and the momentum that is at her back, that has her right now in the latest marquette poll up eight points over donald trump. (♪♪) [shaking] itchy pet? (♪♪) with chewy, save 20% on your first pharmacy order so you can put an end to the itch.

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on a connection worthy of gold: xfinity mobile. only xfinity gives you the most powerful mobile wifi network, with speeds up to a gig in millions of locations. and right now, xfinity internet customers can buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. get the fastest connection to paris with xfinity. jonathan, a look at paris. it's been an extraordinaily successful olympics in every way. you look yesterday at the high drama, whether talking about track and field or to, really, just a historic comeback on the court for the men's basketball team. what a day in paris yesterday. >> yeah, truly sad the olympics

are winding down. yesterday was a real highlight. team usa put nine more athletes on the olympic podium in paris. that includes american track star sydney mclaughlin levrone, who successfully defended her olympic title, as you see there, in the women's 400 meter hurdles. she set a world record for the sixth time with her gold medal finish, while her teammate, cockerel, took silver. noah lyles could not add another gold to his 100 meter win, finishing third in yesterday's 200 meter final behind u.s. teammate kenny bednarek. there's more to this story. lyles fell to the ground seconds after crossing the line and needed to be helped off the track. it was revealed minutes later he had been diagnosed with covid just two days before the competition but elected to compete anyway, which makes his bronze medal showing all that much more impressive. and perhaps the biggest moment of the day, steph curry lifted the u.s. men's basketball team

to a comeback victory over nikola jokic and serbia. curry scored 36 points, including nine threes, as team usa surged from down 17 points. kevin durant had just 9 off the bench, but his clutch jumper in the final seconds put team usa up for good. lebron james, the best player on the court, he had a triple-double. the u.s. beat serbia, 95-91. they will advance to face france on saturday in a rematch of the tokyo olympic final. joe, they were down big in this game. there were moments you felt like team usa, which go into the tournament thinking they're invincible, they might lose. some of our biggest stars, the stars who carried the sport for a long time came up huge at the big moment. now, they face france with france, of course, having home-court advantage. >> they were down against a really good serbia team. let's bring in bestselling author and veteran sports

columnist mike lupica. you've written about this for "the daily news." extraordinary comeback by team usa. talk about it historically. >> joe, i wrote and i believe this was the great moment for olympic men's basketball that i've ever seen. that fourth quarter yesterday. the thing i loved about it, because the original dream team were never challenged in barcelona. i was there in '92. it was like a scrimmage against the world. they got tested yesterday, and, joe, you know this, john know this is watching sports. when you're in a one-game season, this wasn't just a one-game season, it was a once every four-year season. the other team is playing, which steve kerr described afterwards as a perfect game. sometimes you're defenseless against that. then when it was all on the line in the last few minutes, who was it for america? lebron james, steph curry, kevin durant, three of the greatest players to ever play the game. embiid had a wonderful fourth quarter.

then those three guys became the latest dream team. steph had a game that we kept waiting for. lebron is 39 years old, joe, and he was playing like a kid who didn't want to leave the playground, didn't want to give up the court. kevin durant only had 9 points yesterday, but as john mentioned, with 36 seconds left, he said to everybody, give me the ball. i've got this. he reminded everybody why he's scored more points than any olympic man has ever scored for this country. joe, i have to tell you, i can't remember the last time i was as engaged and excited by a basketball game as i was watching those guys yesterday. >> yeah. mike, certainly since 1992 and the dream team, the world has caught up with us. we have not won every gold since. it seems at least one game per olympic tournament, team usa gets really tested. whether it's been spain or germany. this time around, serbia. let's just take a moment again to reflect on lebron james. this is a guy who has been doing it for 20 years.

he should have winding down his career,tired a few years ago, but he's like tom brady was in football. he's playing with his son next year. shows you how long he's been doing this. yes, the lakers have struggled in the last couple years. the biggest moment, a team full of the biggest stars, there's no question who the alpha dog is. it's still lebron james. >> john, he was everywhere in the fourth quarter. again, he had that triple-double. but you saw that he wasn't going to let them lose. at the age of 39. one more thing that made it dramatic, we don't know if we'll see him in the olympics again. we don't know if we'll see steph again, if durant will come back. this might have been their last stand. i'm not giving them the gold medal. we found out what could happen in one game. but when it was all on the line yesterday, and you're right, the dream team started this around the world. we wanted the world to start

catching up with us, but we still think this is our game. for ten minutes yesterday, it was in paris. >> yup, no doubt about it. mike lupica, thank you so much. mike's new book titled "hard to kill," co-written with james patterson. i think it debuted at number three. these guys just sell so many books. come back. we'd love to have you guys come back and talk about the book again sometime soon. >> thank you, joe. >> all right. still ahead, special counsel jack smith wants a delay in donald trump's election interference case. we're going to go over what this means and the potential impact out of the election. plus, democratic national chair jaime harrison is going to join the conversation to talk about the renewed enthusiasm among democrats and what voters are telling him about vp pick governor tim walz. we'll be talking about all that and much more when "morning joe" comes back.

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we were given joe biden, and now we're given somebody else. i think she's not as smart as he is. >> you said -- >> i don't think she's smart either. she couldn't pass her bar exam and lots of other things, and she doesn't know how to do a news conference. she's not smart enough to do a press conference. i'm sorry, but we need smart people to run this country. i've run against various other people.

in terms of intelligence, hillary was superior. i was protective of her. she's a radical left at a pace no one has seen. she picked a radical left man that is -- he's got things done. he has been positions that are just not -- it's not even possible to believe that they exist. he's going for things that nobody has ever even heard of. heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds. >> to what do you attribute her rising in the polls? it's become a more competitive race since she's taken over for biden. >> well, she's a woman. she represents certain groups of people. but i will say this, when people find out about her, i think she'll be much less. i see it right now. i see her going way down in the polls now. now that people are finding out that she destroyed san francisco, she destroyed the state of california, along with

governor gavin newscum. >> that's donald trump spending most of his news conference yesterday attacking kamala harris. call her stupid. here's a woman who was a prosecutor, was elected attorney general in the most populous state in america, united states senator, vice president of the united states. stupid is not really the word that most people would attach to her. in fact, nobody would attach that word to kamala harris that i know. and it's just, again, you look, and all of these attacks, jonathan lemire, all the attacks have just collapsed.

yes, tim walz governed as a moderate in congress, according to most bios, and you look at his positions, and as a progressive in many ways up in minnesota in the governor's mansion. but, again, radical positions, as he says, a lot of attacks come from breakfast program for hungry kids at school, lunch program for hungry kids at school. if they want to get at these two, this is just not the way to do it. i mean, this is -- again, calling them stupid and all the other things, it just isn't working for donald trump. we're going to talk to anthony scaramucci in a second who knows donald trump very well, has known him for a very long time. it was kind of like jd vance

running after air force two a couple of days ago. all of this smacks of desperation. >> yeah, desperation and panic. this is a -- it can't be said enough, this is not the race donald trump thought he was going to have. his team spent more than a year building a campaign to take on president biden with the central argument that biden was too old and too feeble and too weak to be president for another four years. and in the last three weeks, as biden stepped away and harris has had this incredible surge of momentum and money and crowds, trump and his team are simply flailing. they haven't been able to land any sort of punches on her at all. there are some vulnerable issues, perhaps like immigration, where, you know, he can't stay focused on. we know that when governor walz came to the ticket, there was thought they would try to use his response to the black lives matter protests in 2020 as an argument. well, it's since been revealed in audio tape that trump back

then praised his response. that's been defanged, as well. the questions of his military service haven't gained traction either. the attacks appear to be in bad faith. >> jonathan, if you look at "the wall street journal" this morning, "the wall street journal" editorial page is quoting the "new york sun" as saying that any attack on his military service is thin gruel. it's just an attack that is -- and they say this while defending the swift boating of john kerry, saying that was fair game. even "the wall street journal" editorial page said this is just not fair game. >> yeah. >> republicans, if they want to beat walz, you know, they said there are plenty of reasons to criticize vice presidential candidate tim walz, we've told you several, but the charges levelled so far about his military service looks like thin gruel. they go on to explain why. again, it's just a nonsensical argument. so the two things the trump

campaign led with, which was the military service and, you know, jd vance lying and talking about stolen valor for a guy that served as long as he did in the united states military, as "the wall street journal" editorial page says, is off base. that was their one argument, which is off base. of course, the other argument that you just mentioned. it's these approaches that are sort of out of the gate just not working for them. >> yeah. both vance and walz served and both deserve thanks for that. also, talk of military service, can't help but evoke donald trump, who repeatedly dodged doing so, claiming he had bone spurs. later when asked, couldn't remember what foot the spurs were in. that shows, again, an incoherence to this attack right now. certainly, even last week, there was, like, this joy, joy from republicans that the stock

market was tanking because they thought, oh, that means the economy can be rattled. well, the market has settled. there might be tumultuous times ahead, but it just shows, again, they're still searching for something to go after the democrats against. they haven't found it. contrast that with not just these huge crowds following harris and walz, but, like, a more coherent message and a joyful one. americans simply want to feel good about their politics again. it seems to be really connecting. >> a joyful one. john heilemann, going back to peggy noonan, and peggy's column this morning may answer the question i'm going to ask you, when she says, "mr. trump spent most of the week having what a gop strategist told "politico" was a, quote, public nervous breakdown. for the first time this week," peggy writes, "i thought we were wondering about the impact of mr. trump's age. he is 78. he hasn't been able to focus.

he hasn't been able to make his case. is he, in another irony of 2024, turning into joe biden?" i would only say on about the fourth reading of that, we should be so lucky if he were turning into joe biden. i guess the better way to put that in my terms would be, is he now going to be a guy who is going to be judged as too old for the campaign, for the presidency? and the question that you raised with me offline is this, why is it that donald trump has only done one swing state rally in the past six days, and how many has he done since the convention? >> we've been trying to count, yeah. >> why? yeah, you know, what are they -- are they afraid? is he afraid that the crowds are going to continue to decrease and kamala's crowds are going to continue to increase? why is he afraid to go out there? >> yeah, i mean, joe, we've been trying to count.

i right now, withoutrehensive c three. it is now three weeks, by the way, since the republican convention. he did an event in grand rapids, i believe. he did an event in harrisburg, pennsylvania. he did this event last week in atlanta. there may be -- i'm not going to say that that's the definitive, full count, but that's three in three weeks. now, normally, as you know, after a political candidate's, presidential candidate's convention, it's the customary thing is to barnstorm the country. i can't tell you the number of conventions i've been to where, you know, the day after, you ride the wave of your successfully orchestrated convention and head out on a barnstorming tour through the battleground states. you and your running mate or you and your running mate split up, depending on when your running mate was announced. that's one of the things, speaking of momentum, one of the things a candidate does. you expect that from a nominee.

instead, we saw a successful republican convention, with the exception of trump's terrible acceptance speech, but the republicans, as jonathan said, rode out of that convention with a state of joy. it'd been one of the most successful republican conventions in the state of recent memory from the stand of unity and people were feeling good about where things were. we know what happened shortly thereafter. joe biden decided to but out an. it doesn't explain why donald trump, who feeds off the crowds, cites his crowds over and over again, gets energy from appearing live -- we all think he is meandering, it's another grateful dead, people hearing him play "deep cuts" and all things he does -- but trump himself normally sucks the energy out of the events and loves to do them. why has donald trump been so infrequently on the campaign trail over the course of these past three weeks while so much has been changing? the demolition derby that his

running mate, jd vance, has been through. kamala harris getting tapped, rising, consolidaing support in the democratic party. all this stuff has been happening, and trump would normally, knowing what we know about trump over the course of matching him for the last eight years, this is not the play -- trump would be like, i have to get out there, see my people, flex. he hasn't done any of that, and i don't have an answer, but it's really weird. i'm not using it in the democratic partisan sense. i mean, it is an odd thing, totally unexpected. i think people should ask the question, is he out of gas? i don't know. >> well, it could be several things. i mean, it could be, of course, let's start with the attempted assassination attempt against him a month ago. i mean, that would obviously bring pause to everybody. i sure as hell would make sure the secret service had their stuff together better than they did during that event.

still, it's the most shocking -- >> sure. >> it is the most shocking failure of the secret service since john f. kennedy was assassinated in november of '63. i will say also, though, it's equally, or perhaps even more likely that he is noticing the comparisons that the harris/walz camp is doing online. it knows empty seats, empty risers at the same events that kamala harris is packing to the rafters. that's a possibility, too. there's also the possibility that his last campaign event was such a disaster in georgia that he went out and in a state that kamala harris makes a swing state again, according to the cook political report and amy walter, but it was just an absolute disaster. he went out and insulted a very popular governor, georgia governor, a republican who

overwhelmingly won re-election in his primary. republicans love the guy. >> right. >> also, he not only attacked governor kemp, he attacked governor s erick erickson said day, nine out of ten calls on my radio show, and erick has a conservative radio show, i will just say, the way conservatism is defined today, but he has a very conservative radio show, and he said nine of the ten callers were women angry that donald trump had attacked governor kemp's wife. let's talk about that and a lot more with staff writer for "the new yorker," susan glasser. national reporter for "the new york times," jeremy peters. and katty's co-host of the podcast, "the rest of us," anthony scaramucci. their podcast is number one in all podcasts in the uk.

i suspect sometime very soon they'll be coming to america, play the "ed sullivan show," and this whole thing is going to go very, very international. it is an extraordinary podcast. i love it. talk about a podcast that fits the time, this is it. anthony, you know donald trump very well. maybe you can help us out with what, you know -- again, peggy noonan talked this morning about a public nervous breakdown over the past week. citing other gop sources. what to you see, again, as somebody that knows donald trump very well and has for a very long time? what to you see happening there? >> joe, you're on the surface area of what's going wrong for him. he doesn't want to go out there because his crowd sizes may be smaller than hers, he doesn't want that media catastrophe. he doesn't want to go out there because he hasn't gotten the

messaging right. the demography changed. baby boomers have died since he won the last election in 2016. we've got 40 million generation xors who have risen in the polling. if he sounds like he has race overtones, it's not working. the last thing, he is super mad at staff members, so he's been sitting there at mar-a-lago calling around to old staff members, complaining about new staff members. this project 2025 is really hurting him, joe. he puts 75, 80 people into the project. it wasn't polling well, so he said, geez, i don't really know these people, and he pulled the rug out from under them. there's a little bit of a civil war going on inside the campaign. yesterday was him as the alpha male, let me show you how it's done. 93 blithering minutes. he's now in retreat again. it's going to be hard for him.

he's not the man for this moment. kamala harris is actually the woman for this moment. we have to just see if she can execute her campaign against him now. >> anthony, let's talk about age. not your age, of course. you're very, very young. but we look at this ticket, and we've got kamala harris, tim walz -- actually, you and me are all the same year, born the same year, 1964. >> you've already hurt my feelings, it's all right. >> yeah. we're not going for any chins, don't worry. look, then you've got donald trump. suddenly, he looks like the old guy on the ticket. you know him. how much of that changed dynamic is bothering him at the moment? >> really bothering him. he wanted to be positioned as the energetic person. he wanted to be positioned as i'm your savior coming back into this thing. he's got very good political instincts. whether you like or dislike him,

he's now looking at her and saying, okay, wait a minute, she looks like the beautifulsaic of. she could pull in apathetic voters, people that don't vote, just like barack obama did. she could overwhelm me. he knows he has a high floor but a low ceiling. he knows he's at 47.5% if everything goes well, and she has unlimited upside. yes, katty, it's the age, but it's also the moment and also the complexity of this election and the change in demography that he's not sure he can handle. an 812-year-old that's having a hard time putting sentences together, and god bless joe biden, he's an american patriot. we're all heading that way. that was an easier race than this one. and joe said something i just want to touch on because i know sometimes we see donald trump as

indestructible, but he did have a bullet, and god forbid, it was a tragic situation, whizzed by his head. it would be impossible to imagine that that has had no psychological impact on him. i believe that's also affecting him. >> jeremy, given that, and i certainly respect the fact that he could be reacting to the assassination. i understand you don't just walk away from an attempt on your life. i can relate to that. at the same time, he cannot seemingly come with his old playbook effectively on kamala harris. that is race. as someone that has fought with him, fought him for 35 years or more, he always knows to go to the race card. he just tried to do this in this race with kamala harris, trying to say she didn't act black. she was indian until she just turned black and all of that. she's not going back. she stayed on the issues.

she's not engaged him in his attempt to make race a factor here. she's just kind of poo-pooed it, answered, and move on. how do you think that has affected him in terms of his candidacy, in terms of his strategy? race is always something he's used when nothing else would work. >> well, when his opponents don't take his bait, that's when he always kind of flounders the most. i think jonathan was exactly right. this is a totally incoherent response to kamala harris. he has not been able to land a punch. his superpower has always been coming up with these belittling nicknames, little marco, crooked hillary, lying ted, pocahontas. they stick. we remember them all. he has cast about for an attack that could land like that, and it just hasn't worked. you know, race is a complicating

factor here because when he does use some of his old playbook, as we saw him do last week at the conference of black journalists, it sounds really tone deaf and offensive, much more so than it did -- >> and it backfired. >> it backfired, right? because voters, you know, we at "the times" did a story on this a few days ago, the role that racial identity, just identity politics in general, is playing in the 2024 election. the answer we found is not as much as it did in 2020, certainly. we interviewed voters across the country and asked them about kamala harris' barrier-breaking status as a candidate. they said, basically the same thing she said, which is, doesn't really -- it's a cherry on the top. it's a bonus, but what i'm interested in is what this candidate can do for me. kamala harris has been very careful. i think this isn't a strategic

thing with her. i think this actually comes from who she is. she's been very circumspect in talking about her identity. she's said, you might need to put me in a box, give me an identity, but i know who i am. that's on you if it bothers you i haven't talked more about my identity as a black woman, as an indian woman, as a woman, period. voters have told us that they're just not as interested in hearing about identity politics anymore. >> yeah. you know, you look at these images that we're putting up of kamala harris and tim walz, and then of donald trump and jd vance. you know, i've said time and again on this show, and because it's what i've learned across my life following politics, that americans are not overly idealogical. i said early on, i was surprised

that americans aren't as idealogical as i am, aren't as idealogical as most people that follow politics every day. so much of it does have to do with style. you look at jfk in 1960. you look at ronald reagan in 1980. jonathan lemire, i remember, you know, reagan was called a right-wing extremist time and time again. had a nickname that i remember, the fascist gun in the west. he was seen as taking the republican party off the deep end, the far right. yet, when he won, i believe it was a "newsweek" cover or "time" cover, they had reagan's smile. the headline wasn't about idealogical revolution or the dawn of a new era of governance, which actually i would say we

still are in an era defined by the parameters first set by ronald reagan in 1980, but the headline was, "that winning smile." it was reagan's smile. reagan's optimism. democrats that i knew at the time talking about reagan. he looks positive. it was such a marked contrast to what many people defined as the malaise of the final carter years. i think you're seeing the same thing here. this is, as peggy said, this is a movement that has been in search of somebody, and they've found that somebody with kamala harris. right now, we're only two weeks, three weeks in, but right now, the shift has been about as dramatic of a political shift as anybody could have imagined. >> yeah, it's a great point about reagan. there was all this fear in 1980 that he couldn't be trusted with the button. he was a fascist, a radical. he projected optimism and won

voters over. then we had the mourning in america campaign after that. we are seeing the split screen, so stark. kamala harris is not only 20 years younger than donald trump, she projects younger than that even, and she's smiling, happy. she's laughing. she's leaning into it. when earlier, people thought, well, her laugh could be a liability. that has proven to not be the case. another abandoned republican talking point. while trump is not only older but doom, boom, glowering, and painting a different vision of america. susan glasser, part of the unhappiness, part of the flailing about, trying to figure out how to go after kamala harris, is because, as we mentioned earlier, this is not the campaign donald trump thought he'd be having. i'll note, yesterday, he suggested it was unconstitutional that harris ascended to the top of the ticket. that, of course, clearly not the case. one wonders if that's the grounds he's going to use to try to object to a possible election loss come november.

your new piece hits on this exactly with the headline i'm just going to read because it is so perfect, "does anyone in america miss joe biden as much as donald trump?" [ laughter ] >> i'm glad i got a laugh there. look, first of all, donald trump, he's not laughing. he doesn't smile, to joe's point. in fact, you know, he actually has a policy against smiling. he believes that, somehow, it's his glower, it's the look that he's trying to cultivate. but, you know, we all watched that press conference yesterday. we've all seen a lot of donald trump press conferences over the years. he is diminished, even from what he was four years ago, nevermind eight years ago. i think that the reason that he is going through, very publicly, all the stages of anger, grief, and denial about joe biden's exit from the race is because the single thing that it does most clearly now is it casts our focus of attention directly on

trump's age and incapacity for office. you know, that was obscured by the, i think, legitimate questions around president biden and whether he should serve for another four years, but the result was that we were not focusing on trump's incapacity and his incoherence and his growing inability. that's what we've seen for the last 18, now 19 days from donald trump. i think he understands now, it's his age and his capacity that are the issues. that's number one. number two, he is a candidate singularly ill-equipped to run against someone for whom joy has become, you know, the kind of unofficial slogan. donald trump is the polar opposite of joy. you know, the campaign of darkness is a very hard one to sustain for even 90 days. i really think that.

but he was melting down yesterday in front of our eyes. if people actually watch it, they come away shocked. >> you know, donald trump was a pop culture figure, and he ran in 2016. like reagan before him and barack obama, he transcended politics. he was more of a pop culture figure. and the key to donald trump in 2016 was disruption. nobody ever had seen anybody like him. he was a disruptor. he spent his entire life disrupting. he didn't play by the rules of polite society in manhattan. he didn't play by the rules of polite society. even in the tabloid wars, he would apparently call up and, you know, leak information like he was a pr guy about the greatness of donald trump. even in his small battles with rosie o'donnell and "the view," he'd say things that would shock

everybody else. you know, the birther conspiracy, he would say things that were shocking, that nobody else would follow him down that rabbit hole at the time. 2016 disruption. he spent his entire life being a disruptor. i've got to say, anthony scaramucci, this is why all of this is so new to him, so shocking to him. the system has actually pushed back, and the disruption has come from the democratic party, which, as you and i know, usually spend, you know, most campaigns flat-footed and not agile, unless it's a barack obama campaign. but he ran for the past four years against joe biden. he ran a convention against joe biden. he spent hundreds of millions of dollars in ads against joe

biden. now, he wakes up and sees he's running against kamala harris. again, the disruptor has been disrupted, and it doesn't seem like he or his campaign staff have found their footing yet. again, it's early. it's early august. long way to go. a month ago, they were measuring for drapes in the white house around trump world. a lot can change. but right now, talk about that disruption, a disruptor being disrupted. >> well, there's a lot to unpack. the first thing i want to do is talk about what susan is saying. he really doesn't like people. just take a look at him, joe. the glower, he's not a baby hugger, there's no smile. there's no love for human frailty. he doesn't really like people, and it's showing up. he's also denigrating the country. he comes out there every single time and says, we're in shambles. the country is a wreck.

every time he does that, joe, it's almost like a divorced parent attacking the other parent. you're looking around saying, wait a minute, this is the country of my grandparents. you're going after the country of my grandparents. lincoln said it was the last best hope for earth. you're going after that country? is that the country you're referring to? this group of people that are paying attention now, this electorate, they don't like it. they don't like the message. if you're going up against somebody that's 81 and is a little frail, okay, we'll take you. you seem stronger than him. we'll take mean over weakness, joe. what we won't take is mean over collaborative niceness. i think that's where the thing is right now. he's flailing because he can't get out of the box he started in. that 2016 box that you're referencing, yes, those attacks, the country needs leadership that's not political, that was working.

it's a very tired act right now. if he doesn't recalibrate it, he'll fall behind in the polls way worse than he currently is. >> yeah, there was a reason kamala harris called it the same old show, and old was chosen carefully. getting back to age again. anthony, thank you. i will see you next week when we're taping our podcast together. thanks for joining us. >> have a great weekend, guys. >> jeremy peters, "new york times" national reporter, thank you for joining us, as well, this morning. and still ahead on "morning joe," the chairman of the democratic national committee, jaime harrison, is going to be our guest. we'll talk to him about the momentum of the new democratic ticket and, of course, much more. and we'll get legal analysis on special counsel jack smith's case against donald trump in the wake of the supreme court ruling on presidential immunity. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. awkward question... is there going to be anything left... —left over? —yeah. oh, absolutely.

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this summer in paris, we're seeing hard work, fortundedication,pwork and a whole lot of... [“joy (unspeakable)” by voices of fire ft. pharrell williams begins to play] anastasia pagonis still feeling the joy. grant holloway how about that! keep the flair, keep the emotion, keep the showman, the sport needs it. ♪ ♪

. she grew up in a middle class home. she was the daughter of a working mom. she worked at mcdonald's while she got her degree. kamala harris knows what it's like to be middle class. it's why she's determined to lower health care costs and make housing more affordable. donald trump has no plan to help the middle class, just more tax cuts for billionaires. being president is about who you fight for, and she's fighting for people like you. >> i'm kamala harris, and i approve this message.

>> that's a new ad from the harris/walz campaign, part of a $50 million buy that will run in battleground states on both local and national broadcasts, as well as streaming and social channels. joining us now to talk about that and the state of the race, the chairman of the democratic national committee, jaime harrison. great to see you again this morning. let's start with that ad. the economy is certainly a major issue in any election. this one, in particular. we saw some stock market concerns earlier this week, though they've largely stabilized. certainly, inflation and the idea of middle class americans thinking they maybe don't have quite enough to get to where they need to go, how is the vice president going to address that? >> well, we see that inflation is coming down. the markets have stabilized this week. when you look at the contrast between where we were four years ago, there is no contrast. other than we are on the

upsurge. the american economy is the envy of the entire world. every country wishes that their economy looked like ours and had the bright future that ours has. that's because of the policy of the biden/harris administration. those are the policies that kamala harris will continue and build upon in order to make sure that all americans have the availability to live the american dream, to be able to afford housing, to do good things for their kids moving forward in the future. so i'm really, really excited about it. i'm excited about this team. when you think about the contrast that we have right now, the split screen, it is a stark contrast. we have our mvp, that's what i call our madam vice president and coach, bringing hope and joy to this campaign. on the other side, you have fear and chaos coming from the wanna-be dictator who had a

mental breakdown yesterday, and his running mate, this weirdo stalker guy who tells a 7-year-old to shut the hell up so he can talk to donald trump. democrats are focused on the future of the american people, making sure everything is available for them to live the american dream. donald trump and jd vance are focused on power for power's sake. >> i talked to the vice president often, and the sustaining of this momentum is probably the challenge. i think that one of the things that has sustained it these almost three weeks is she has been able to elude her opponent, donald trump, from defining her. he likes to define people by their gender, their race, and get into the culture wars, the same with walz.

she has, so far, run clearly, and this commercial indicates it, for american people and, at the same time, yeah, i'm proud i'm black, proud i'm a woman, but this is what i can relate to with everyone. walz, who he tried to attack on how he handled george floyd, now we have documented evidence where he commended walz on how he handled the riots around george floyd. at the same time, it was walz that responded to people like me and gave us keith ellison as the prosecutor there, which won the case that we didn't think the local minneapolis d.a. would have done. so his ability not to pinpoint them and get them to play his game, i think, is important here. talk about how you maintain that momentum and not be defined by your opponent. >> well, thank you for that, rev. the first thing is to go out and campaign. go and talk to the american people. you know, rev, i've been doing this since i've been 16 years old in terms of the presidential campaigns. i have not seen the energy that

i have seen on the ground ever probably. you know, the only comparison would be 2008. you know, i had the fortune of opening the rallies in philadelphia and detroit these last few days, and i can tell you, people are happy. they're dancing. there's so much joy. you just say kamala harris' name, and the crowd will erupt. you talk about tim walz, and the crowd will erupt. that is because kamala harris and tim walz have given people hope. they're talking about the issues that are important to the american people. they're talking about securing and protecting the freedom of americans to be who they want to be. as coach walz says, you know, we're also basically saying to the republican party, maybe you need to mind your own damn business. let's just focus on the american people. let's not focus on all this other outside noise that donald trump wants to concentrate on because he wants to avoid having the conversation about project

2025. and the impact it'll have on the freedoms of the american people. kamala harris is focused like a laser on not getting distracted and focusing on the issues. >> so, susan, i'm wondering, what is going to slow the momentum down for the harris/walz ticket? again, you look at polls. they're snapshots of the last week, but they're all trending in her direction. and we do have, you know, a movement that seems to be going -- again, as peggy noonan said, a movement in search of a candidate. they found one. as peggy said, most importantly, they are showing up. i've got to say, in my years of following politics and just watching as an observer, what's happened over the past couple weeks, i mean, it reminds me of 2008. reminds me of 1980, the very end

of the reagan campaign, when you could really feel the groundswell picking up and the country coming together. with this one person. so the question is, what does the trump/vance ticket need to do to slow this momentum down when these usual political attacks don't seem to be blunting any of the enthusiasm? >> yeah, that is a great question. are we looking at a fundamental reset of the race here? or are we looking at a reversion to essentially this evenly divided country? we don't know the answer to that yet. the polls certainly suggest that kamala harris is not only capturing the enthusiasm and the momentum of her own party, but that she has sort of erased the modest leads that trump had started to put together, both nationally and in some of the battleground states. that's back. the question is, can she actually build up a bigger need?

because of the bias toward small states in the electoral college, democrats in recent elections have had to have not just a small lead in the national polls but up to a four or five-point lead in order to go ahead and win the election. that's been true in some battleground states, too. i'm watching to see, can she not only keep this going, but what does she come out of the democratic convention with? to the point of keeping the momentum going, the calendar is really in her favor here. she only has one more week to get to the democratic convention. it's a compressed timetable. i'll tell you, watching that incredible rally in philadelphia earlier this week, it was kind of like a mini convention with that amazing stemwinder of a speech by josh shapiro, followed by the introduction of harris and walz, the ticket. that suggests the democratic convention is going to have energizing speeches. you know, that's only a little bit more than a week away from now. donald trump doesn't get another chance to have a convention.

this time, focused on harris. you know, they have agreed to this debate on september 10th. i don't see where and when donald trump is going to have the ability, looking at this calendar, to capture the attention of the american people and to get another shot at making his case in a coherent way against harris and walz until he gets to the debate stage. based on his performance in the press conference yesterday, it's hard to see him offering a clear or coherent case about anything at this point. >> yeah. susan, i noted you earlier talking about the ways in which the switch from biden to harris has thrown in stark relief donald trump's incapacities and infirmities. yesterday, he confused willie brown with jerry brown. confusing nancy pelosi and nikki haley. the signs of slippage and

shrinkage in some ways on donald trump's part was vivid yesterday. jaime, i want to ask something susan just raised. the debate or debates is an open question now. the only -- apart from trump's incoherence yesterday, the one piece of news he made yesterday was that he has now accepted, gone back to accepting the notion that this abc debate previously scheduled with him and joe biden, he'll do the debate apparently, seems to be on for that. kamala harris said, great, glad to hear it. that's what i want to do. he continued to suggest there should be a debate that precedes that on fox news, then a debate he says is nearly negotiated completely with nbc later in september. i'm curious about what you think about what the harris campaign, in addition to doing what they've done already, which is say, yes, we're going to be there at the abc, the previously scheduled abc debate, what they should do about donald trump's proposal of two additional

debates. just to point out, you know, three debates is the conventional number in presidential campaigns in years past. that's normally what's been done under the commission of presidential debates. think the harris campaign should accept, counter propose, or what? >> we have to see. donald trump is changing his mind like the weather. i mean, what we have to see, and i think the vice president said this yesterday, let's see if he actually shows up to the debate, the abc debate in september. i'm not certain that he actually will. i believe that he is scared to debate our madam vice president. because he understands how strong she is, how focused she is, and she is going to prosecute the case against him. he has never been up against somebody like kamala harris. he doesn't understand and he doesn't know how to handle her, how to approach her. because, you know, she's just like dusting the shoulder off with all the things he's thrown at her at this point in time.

he lacks substance. he doesn't have, outside of the project 2025, he doesn't really have an agenda for what he wants to do for the american people. he's just focused on all these things that he's done in the past in terms of trying to disparage his opponents. you know, the vice president has shown that she's a different one. he can't approach her in that manner and hope to win this election. momentum is on her side. we're going to go into the democratic convention in chicago, and the momentum is only going to build from there. we're going to showcase the diversity and the depth of the democratic party and the strength of this party and how we look like america and we represent all of the greatness of america. >> all right. chairman of the democratic national committee, jaime harrison, as always, thank you for being on. and "the new yorker"'s susan glasser, thank you, as well. susan's new piece is online now. coming up, we're going to

show you newly released body cam video from the assassination attempt on donald trump, and what one local officer can be heard saying about the secret service's missteps. man, there were so many. we'll be right back.

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you know, we often talk about evangelical movements and the movement as it relates to supporting donald trump. now a new book is offering a revealing look inside a different type of evangelical religious community. it's titled "circle of hope: a reckoning with love, power, and justice in an american church" and it follows a progressive evangelical church called the circle of hope out of philadelphia. it tells the story of how the internal decisions and ideological infighting eventually tore the church apart. let's bring in the book's author, eliza griswold. what makes your book so fascinating to me is we often talk about david and i grew up in conservative evangelical churches, and we've talked about over the last 20 years, even predating donald trump, how politics has crowded out the gospel.

what we find here in this -- what you find in your deep dive in this progressive evangelical church is the same thing. politics getting in the way of the gospel of jesus christ. talk about that if you will. >> well, joe, first of all, you're exactly right. i mean, what we have seen over the past few decades is obviously the hijacking of evangelicalism by republican party operatives, and that has led to a lot of what we're seeing in terms of conservative evangelical monolith christianity, but there is another movement at the edge of evangelicalism that is much, much closer to what evangelicalism was centuries ago, which yes, was about personal belief, but it was also about bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth, right? social justice, whether that was abolishing slavery or ending child labor. so that strain of evangelicalism is alive and well in many pockets all over the united

states, and this is one of them, and what happened in the course of this is that really these guys had to reckon with what -- what it meant to be american at this point of time. >> you know, i'm so glad you talk about it and you underline it about evangelicalism. we think of it as a really conservative force now, and i can say as somebody who grew up in the church born in the '60s, throughout the '60s and '70s, so much of that was a reaction to the cultural revolution of the 1960s which has defined what christianity has been seen as in america, but you bring up a great point. it's also been a liberating force through the years in a way that many people would be shocked, whether you talk about william wilbur force in the 1800s as an evangelical, devoting his entire life to ending slavery there. you talk -- you look at most of the abolitionists were in the

northeast and evangelicals and puritans in the 19 -- you know, in the 17 -- from about what? 1780 to 1794 through the end of the civil war. so there is that strain, and also a rise of what i call matthew 25, christians. >> yep. >> so americans don't really understand the history of evangelicalism, do they? >> they don't understand, and at this political moment, it is so essential because what we see with these other evangelicals is their -- first of all, their desire. they have a wife devotion that i grew up as a pastor's kid in the episcopal church which does not have the energy and the ardent devotion and the giving of life and service to jesus that lots of these guys do, and what we're seeing in the lead up to november is a lot of these

progressive evangelicals, i'm thinking of people like bishop barber for example, are able to mobilize voters and to peel away those evangelicals that are uncomfortable with trump. in michigan, we've already seen this happen before. they don't really -- reclaiming the bible, reclaiming scripture to those who are showing images of trump as jesus, it's not a hard thing to do. it is much more accurate to read love your enemy in the bible than it is to read trump is jesus. so that -- it's powerful messaging. it's simple messaging, and it's really returning scripture to what it actually says on the page, and that is a literal reading. >> isn't that what is really the real dilemma, and what we're dealing with now? those that are dealing and come out of the civil rights movement when i was growing up, dr. king -- >> yep. >> the rabbi and others would use scripture to say, this is who we are at christians as

opposed to -- we have -- you come out of the episcopal church, and we have pastor, and there's no difference between i practice my faith and help the poor and the migrants and all, and those that are politicizing this like a donald trump with evangelicals, who are the opposite of what it bible teaches. >> exactly. >> you've got to flip the bible and replace the figures of the bible with these political figures when you don't have to do that on the other side. >> that is exactly right, and black church has not had this problem because social justice is an essential part of being a christian authentically, and so what we're seeing is it really -- i mean, trump has literally said that love your enemy -- he doesn't stand by that. he has rejected the teachings of the bible and i don't think people hear and say that. i think people are beginning to

listen. >> love thy enemy. forgive 70 times 7. you can just go down the list. it's the complete antithesis as one jd vance second-degree in 2016 of actually the gospel, that again, so many who claim to be christian nationalists just don't seem to understand. the book is "circle of hope" on sale now. eliza, i hope you come back. we talked generally about this book and the movement. i want you to go into the reporting because it is a fascinating lesson regardless of what political side you're on. i hope you come back and talk about it again. >> thank you so much for having me. >> all right. coming up, we're going to have much more from yesterday's campaign split screen highlighting the contrasting views of america from kamala harris and donald trump. plus, we're going to explain why a georgia election board is

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we want dignity for all people. we want to recognize the right all people have to freedom and liberty, to make choices especially those that are about heart and home. >> we have a lot of bad things coming up. you could end up in a depression

of the 1929 variety which would be a devastating thing. it took many years -- it took decades to recover from it, and we're very close to that, and we're very close to a world war in my opinion. we're very close to a world war. >> and we know we are a work in progress. we haven't yet quite reached all of those ideals, but we will die trying because we love our country and we believe. >> we have a very, very sick country right now. you saw the other day with the stock market crashing. that was just the beginning. that was just the beginning. it's going to get worse. it's going to get a lot worse. >> that's a big part of this campaign. you know when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. [ applause ] we know what we stand for, and we stand for the people, and we stand for the dignity of work, and we stand for freedom. we stand for justice. we stand for equality. >> some of your allies have expressed concern you're not taking this very seriously.

>> stupid question. >> there's enthusiasm on the other side. >> because i'm leading by a lot and because i'm letting their convention go through, and i am a lot. >> welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, august the 9th. with us we have the host for "way too early," jonathan lemire. also u.s. special correspondent from bbc news, katty kay, and host of "politics nation," reverend al sharpton, and also nbc news national affairs analyst and a partner and chief political columnist, john heilemann. i was just going through these. can i? just going through some of these things, some of these quotes donald trump was talking about, john heilemann. >> yeah. >> and i think peggy noonan's

column in "the wall street journal" hits it on exactly where donald trump and kamala harris find themselves in this very topsy-turvy political season. first of all, peggy writes, i continue to believe the woman isn't creating a movement, but a movement is creating her, and they are showing up. and man, are they showing up. mr. trump spent most of the week having what a gop strategist told politico is a "public nervous breakdown," was donald trump, and then finally another telling quote from peggy, and this is fascinating. "for the first time this week, i thought people were wondering about the impact of mr. trump's age. he is 78." he hasn't been able to focus, make his case. is he in another irony of 2024

turning into joe biden? and the split screens have not been good for him at all this week, john, and you look at the polls and you can read these polls that are coming in, and it is only august, but there certainly is momentum, but there's also, again, something that we haven't seen from donald trump since 2016, and that is just the complete failings of his political instincts to rise to a moment. >> well, i think you're seeing fear, joe. apart from everything else , and i just want to play off that last bit of sound though because he said he's letting the democratic convention go through. i wanted to announce right here on the show, i'm going to allow "morning joe" to continue for the rest of the morning in the same spirit as donald trump. i have about as much control over that as donald trump does

over the democratic convention. so i think, you know, there is -- people predicted that this would happen, the thing related to trump becoming now the old man of the race in that the focus -- you know, there was a lot of discussion about this when joe biden was still in the race. they would say, you know, correctly, donald trump is also an old man. donald trump is also slipping, losing miles an hour off his fastball, has difficulty processing -- as a cognitive matter, and they would say there's a double standard here, and you would say, yeah. there's a double standard here, and i'll tell you what the double standard was always. the press is terrible at focusing on two things taint, -- at the same time, and the fact that joe biden's affect seemed let energetic than trump gave trump -- not saying it's a good thing or justifying it. it was just what happened. people focused on biden. >> right. >> and trump got -- trump's failings in this area got

ignored even though we on many case occasions on this show would point to trump's mental failures. >> right. >> now though, you know, without joe biden in the race, the press is focused on that question, and it's much more glaring to people that -- how many failures -- cognitive failures donald trump has, especially when he stands in an unscripted way in front of the press, and part of it is cognitive. part of it is psychological. part of it is emotional. the tics, going back to the same grievances over and over again, processing the basic facts, all these things that stand in much starker leave now which gets to your point which is the key point and the point that peggy is making. it's the point that the split screen now is a split screen that is much more punishing to donald trump than the split screen when it was joe biden on the other side of that screen, and again, you can -- talk about how you want the world to be. i'll tell you about how the world is. that's the reality. >> so it's so funny you said

that. last weekend, you know, katty, last weekend, my kids and i were watching the olympics, and there was a local news break, and they showed a -- it was one of the, you know, poll came out and it showed the split screen of the two candidates of both sides, and it was the first time that i had seen kamala harris, 59-year-old kamala harris. i think she's 59 next to 78-year-old donald trump, and it was -- it was actually -- it was quite jarring. politics is all about contrast. that's what i learned in the first campaign school i went to 30 years ago. they said, the campaign is about contrast. the visual contrast is striking. you look at the press conference yesterday, and the exaggerations and the outright lies that were told in donald trump's press conference. he's also talking about us being

on the verge of a depression, with the united states is more powerful economically relative to the rested of world more than it's been in 20, 30 years. i don't need to go down that list again. people know that's the truth, but you have kamala harris saying, we love our country. we believe in our country on one side, and then you have donald trump on the other side saying, our country is lousy. that is -- and again, going back to peggy noonan's and her life's work, regardless of ideology, americans want optimism. they want hope. they want someone looking to the future, and boy, that is another stark contrast that you see and yesterday, and in the previous few weeks. >> yeah. there's a lot more kind of sunny reagan about the democratic ticket at the moment than there is about the republican ticket, and you see that in all the rallies. you see it in the fact that

donald trump is not really holding rallies. he's holed up in mar-a-lago. he's doing one rally in montana, a state where he's 15 points ahead. that's kind of head-scratching, but it was a case of grievance and that's what we're seeing from the campaign, and case in point about donald trump's mental acuity during yesterday's news conference, he told us sort of weird stories -- weird, about nearly dying during a helicopter ride, but as "the new york times" points out, there was only one problem with this story or maybe two or maybe three problems. here's the ex-president yesterday after mar-a-lago when asked about former san francisco mayor willie brown who briefly dated vice president kamala harris nearly three decades ago. take a listen. >> well, you know willie brown very well. in fact, i went down in a helicopter with him. we thought maybe this is the end. we were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. this was not a pleasant landing, and willie was -- he was a little concerned. so i know him -- i know him

pretty well. i haven't seen him in years, but he told me terrible things about her, but this is what you're telling me anyway, i guess, but he had a big part in what happened with kamala, but he -- i don't know. maybe he's changed his tune, but he -- he was not a fan of hers very much at that point. >> okay. so it's an old story, but what's the real issue with that story? well, it appears it never actually happened. first, trump was never on a helicopter with willie brown. he's apparently confusing him with former california governor jerry brown. take a look. two don't really look terribly similar. secondly, there was never any emergency landing as trump claimed, and the helicopter's passengers were never in any danger. mayor brown who as "the times" notes, loves regaling anybody who will listen with stories said, quote. you know me well enough to know if i almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it, and

according to gavin newsom who was also on that ride, there was never any discussion at all about one kamala harris. for his part, willie brown isn't saying terrible things about harris at all. in fact, he remains an avid supporter of hers. you understand why they use the word weird. the group took the helicopter to survey wildfire damage in 2018, an event where trump would confuse the name of the town that was destroyed and also claim the solution to california's wildfire crisis was to, quote, rake the forest. do you remember that? raking the forest. that was -- that was one of those particular moments. the story didn't make sense. it didn't really happen. the people were different than the people he said it was. otherwise, i guess all good. >> it's unbelievable. you know, rev, it reminds me when we got into that sort of dustup on the international space station. we stayed up there longer than we expected, and it was -- it

was tension city. you know yesterday "the wall street journal" editorial page wrote an op-ed talking about how donald trump now seems primed to lose yet another race that he should win, and you look at this press conference. you look at the fact that his people just don't want him to go out and give speeches. don't, you know, i'm sure they didn't want him to go out and give the press conference yesterday, but donald trump probably still driven by that belief, i alone, can do it, but again, it just -- there's nothing comforting about that, and again, i go back to peggy noonan asking the question, or saying for the first time this week, i thought people were wondering about the impact of mr. trump's age. he is 78. he hasn't been able to focus, to

make his case. is he in another irony of 2024, turning into joe biden? well, he certainly -- nothing that's happened the past week would suggest otherwise, would it? >> nothing would suggest otherwise, but i would -- i would say to anyone that joe biden never just started remembering emergency landings of helicopters with people that didn't exist -- i mean, even the story within itself. can you imagine in the middle of an emergency landing, you start talking about somebody you dated years ago on bad terms? i mean, the whole story doesn't make sense aside from the fact that he had the people mixed up, and then he said that, here's a rally. january 6th drew as many people as martin luther king's march on washington. i assume he's talking about 1963 because that's the only march on washington martin luther king had. he said they said martin luther

king had a million, and i had 25,000. that's what they said. well, first of all, the million-man march wasn't until '95, 25, 27 years after king was dead. king didn't call that march and the fact that he would compare the million-man march or the king march of 250,000 to who he had january 6th, and not remember that january 6th was an attempt to overthrow an election shows that, i think, we might have chose the wrong old man to walk off the stage. >> well, first of all, i was on that trip. the presidential trip to california with those wildfires. there was no emergency landing. everything went smoothly though he did, of course, say that california should be raking the forest and we did this a lot. can you imagine if president biden had told a story with that many inaccurinaccuracies? what the reaction would be from the media and his own party? we know what nancy pelosi would

be doing. she would be trying to get him out of the race, but republicans aren't doing that. they've never done that with trump. he calls the shots. john heilemann, that's what yesterday was about. i'm told by trump insiders, joe's hunch is right, that there was a campaign briefing scheduled the day before for some reporters to come down, and trump aides were going to talk about the state of the racehe got wind of this and said, i'm going to have a news conference. they're trying to draw contrast because vice president harris hasn't taken many questions since she's been the nominee. she should, but that's not an issue that's going to move voters. i don't think that's something that really matters, but what this is about is trump is trying to say, i'm angry with my staff. they're failing me, and i'm going to go out and try to fix things. if the goal is to win over new voters, hard to see that happen. >> first of all, this is all just another -- this is another blow to the new trump narrative. >> which was insane. >> we go back on that moment right before the republican convention when there were

serious people who thought there might be a new trump after the failed assassination attempt. the fact that anybody believed that for 24 hours looks more and more embarrassing. you know, i think to rev's point about the march on washington and martin luther king, there's a chance that he's confusing the march on washington by larry king or maybe it was alan king or billie jean king. it was one of the kings that stephen king forged with 14 friends. jonathan, you know donald trump had been on more trips like this. he went to a trip to california. is it possible that trump is just so nervous flying in a helicopter that every helicopter landing seems like an emergency landing for him? and it lives in his memory as one where, you know, just bringing that bird down, we nearly died? that thing that -- very difficult. i don't know what's going on with him, but again, you know,

to the peggy noonan point, the presidential campaigns are split screens. that's what they are. all day long, every day, and this split screen, i mean, it is -- who knows? tomorrow will be another day and the split screen can change, but so far since the moment that kamala harris became -- where he took the space on that split screen, it does not look good for donald trump. i would say, and since there's not been a news cycle donald trump has won since she became the presumptive nominee, and until that changes, he's in trouble. >> on that helicopter ride, governor newsom also said that on it, trump people talked about, there was concern about crashing. that is something he does think about, joe, but it's more than anything. the vibe from mar-a-lago yesterday was panic. >> yeah. >> it's now been three weeks since harris took -- became the democratic, you know, presumptive nominee, and they haven't been able to land a finger on it. they haven't figured this out at all. >> right. >> and we know the one thing that gets under trump's skin

more than anything is crowd size and she is outdrawing him and he can't handle that, and they're trying to change the dynamics of the race, and one truism, joe, is the candidate who wants to have more and more debates is the candidate who's losing, and that's what we got from donald trump yesterday. >> yeah. really has been surprising how they've just not been able to lay a glove on her or walz. their failings have cost them at the polls. you look, again, we talked about this a couple of days ago. you can turn down the volume and you see the democrats smiling on stage. it looks like a jouous rally. it looks like a joyous occasion. they're happy to be there. they're just -- they're excited, and it does -- if you turn the volume down and look at the crowds, it does -- it does seem a lot like the 2008 hope and change election if measured only

by the reaction in the crowds, but they're smiling. it's on people's faces and there's just a lift in their step. they are excited, and then you go to the other side, and you turn and you have jd vance scowling and saying, again, just negative things, and you have donald trump with his press conference. it's glum. it's distressing, and so, you know, i have been surprised, as have most political observers been surprised at what a -- what a lift has occurred in the democratic party over the past several weeks and as peggy noonan wrote again, and i'll say it again, there is a movement, and in this case, it seems the movement is going to the candidate. the movement is creating the candidate instead of the candidate creating the movement,

and she has stepped in. she's doing extraordinarily well. if you look at how she's handled the last three weeks, and they don't know what to do with it, and katty, this is "the wall street journal" editorial page yesterday. it says, mr. trump seems to think he's still leading in the polls against a feeble opponent. that overconfidence is what led him to choose mr. vance who hasn't reassured voters on the fence about mr. trump. the former president doesn't seem to realize he's now in a close race that requires discipline and a consistent message to prevail, and his struggles are hurting gop candidates for the house and the senate. all this underscores the risk gop voters took in nominating mr. trump for a third time. they had younger alternatives who would have been fresher voices and could have served two

terms. this is still mr. trump's election to lose, but as we learned in 2020, he's more than capable of doing it, and katty, new polling out today -- or yesterday. again, it could be an outlier, but again, i always looked at polls. i didn't look at the specific numbers. i saw a week, two weeks, a month ago, and where he was at a given day, and there's a new marquette poll that shows kamala harris up by eight points. i'm sure that is probably an outlier, but perhaps not, and this is all before the democratic national convention launches and celebrates her for a week. >> i read the type -- the headline of that op-ed -- that editorial in the "wall street journal," will donald trump blow another election? you're right, joe, but the most brutal part of the article was "the wall street journal's"

suggestion that the republicans have chosen the wrong pick, and they should have gone with somebody younger and stacked up against kamala harris as that split screen. he doesn't seem to know how to take her on. you've got joy on the democratic side and donald trump walked out of mar-a-lago yesterday seeming cross. he looked grumpy. when jd vance was asked what made him happy, he dismissed question. happy? why would anyone ask me what makes me happy rather than just saying puppies or football games or something. >> isn't that fascinating? he's asked -- you talk about a softball question. he was asked -- >> my kids. >> what made him happy. right. well, that's -- i mean, i could go on for three hours right now. that's the easiest question in the world, and he snarled and took it as a negative. >> yeah. >> he then said something about on either that question or another, a really simple question, what doesn't make him happy is stupid questions from reporters. no. what makes me happy is a

politician's softball right down the middle of the plate, and he couldn't do it. >> no. no, he couldn't do it, and i think that, you know, they are -- they're in a funk, and they don't really know how to get out of it, and the press conference wasn't about news in mar-a-lago, but it was about attention, and within minutes, they were with harris and walz speaking at a union event, and the cameras left them again. they can't stay in the limelight, and the democratic playbook is let's keep the focus on donald trump. that's how we win. now the focus is let's keep the focus on us. we have a great message to sell. let's keep the focus on us. so i think, you know, there's been a flip in strategy and donald trump doesn't know how to handle it at the moment. coming up, it was 50 years ago today that richard nixon left the white house after resigning the presidency. historian jon meacham joins the conversation to reflect on that

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to continue the fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication, that almost totally absorbed the time and attention of both the president and the congress, in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. therefore, i shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. the vice president will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office. >> 50 years ago today, nixon resigned in the wake of watergate. you heard part of the speech from the day before announcing that decision. the scandal began two years earlier when the dnc headquarters located in the watergate office building in d.c. were broken into. the investigations had revealed subsequently that richard

nixon's participation was in the coverup and he remains to this day the only american president to resign from his post. let's bring in our friend, historian jon meacham. that, of course, was a shocking moment in american political history. the next day, extraordinarily revealing. richard nixon said good-bye to his staff, said good-bye to some of his close friends in an address where he talked about his father being poor, and he talked about his mother, and he had this confessional. always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself. later it was said he was the first-time cheat, and people didn't actually get to see her

father as he really was, as he was sitting there talking personally about his family, but an extraordinary day 50 years ago. what are your thoughts? >> yeah. you know, president nixon -- i think it was tom wicker that argued this, and then bop dole picked it up at nixon's funeral in 1994. in many ways, that was the age of nixon. our politics as we experience them now in a way are bracketed by both nixon's checker speech in 1952 which was a massive television event at the dawn at the medium, and then the moment you just played was this incredible inflection point in the life of the post-war era. i think it was somebody -- someone's wife who pointed out that jfk and richard nixon, their rise was that the young officer -- the junior officers of world war ii had finally come into command, and so it's this

generational, seismic moment where you have this cohort of people who were as president kennedy said, tempered by war, and then guided us through the cold war for good and for ill, and nixon in many ways, represents the best of us and the worst of us, and vivid political figures often do. >> yeah, and you said the best of us, the worst of us. it reminds me of the title of tom wicker's book, a guy who studied nixon as closely as anybody, one of us. one of us, again, for better and for worse. you talk about the age of nixon. if i'm not mistaken, more americans voted for richard nixon -- i could be mistaken, but this was the case 20 years ago. i don't think anybody is eclipsing, but nixon, he got more national votes i believe than any person in american

history. he ran on the national ticket in '52, in '56, in '60, in '68 and '72, and along with fdr, and those are three of the greatest landslides in american history. what was it about richard nixon that drew so many americans to him in '72, and how remarkable of a system we have that a man that could be at the height of all powers in november of 1972 run out of office less than two years later because of his crimes. >> well, the rule of law worked. i mean, one of things about nixon, and this is an argument that both wicker had made and also our friend, evan thomas. i highly recommend a book he published seven, eight years ago. >> he, nixon? >> being nixon which is a terrific portrait of this

dichotomy which by the way, aren't we all? aren't we all a mix of good and bad? and so it's -- i think to some extent, the american people recognized in nixon, or enough american people, the people who voted for him, a representative figure. he was a striver. he had come out of california. he had not gone to harvard. he had gotten in, but didn't have the scholarship money. he didn't have enough money, so he went to whittier. always had a chip on his shoulder about that. he was someone who was locked in this fundamental struggle for all those years with john kennedy for whom life had given almost every break. nixon had gotten almost no breaks. nixon represented the hardline side of the cold war argument.

he, again, parenthetically, he was right about this. there is a grain of truth and it's not as simple as a lot of people want to make it, and i think that's -- i think what he tells us about america today, and this is vital in an age where donald trump is the republican nominee, is that the constitutional system has withstood remarkable stresses and strains, and one of the things about nixon is, yes, he broke the law, but in the end, he had a sense of shame, and he did what he did on august 8th leaving on august 9, 1974, and i think that for him at the very end of the day, the constitution -- the country did matter. >> yeah, and he, of course, the

most important moment in the rule of law and the battle against richard nixon was the supreme court ruled against nixon, and to turn over the tapes and immediately he knew it was over. there was no part of him that thought he would go on denying -- denying what the supreme court had told him he had to do, and pushing back on it. that is one of the great fears of what a second donald trump term may look at. you talked about hiss, and for younger people who didn't grow up during the age of nixon or even at the end of the age of nixon, it's impossible to really understand why richard nixon would be so popular without understanding how the cold war framed so much. my family raised my father -- cold warrior, and so there was

nixon fighting against him, fight against the communists in the 1950s as vice president, pushing back, taking a hard line, and so that was the richard nixon that was framed in the age of nixon. it was, like, cold warriors supported richard nixon, and yet, again, nixon is an extraordinarily complicated political figure. watergate aside. >> yeah. >> you look at the horrible things about nixon, whether you talk about watergate, whether you talk about the bombing of cambodia. whether you talk about undermining peace negotiations in 1968 to help get him elected in '68 against humphrey. there's that side of it, and then you have nixon the cold warrior opening china, going to china, opening china. you have nixon the hardline conservative being the founder of the environmental protection

agency, and nixon fighting against more moderates in his administration, pushing for detente with the soviets, and again, very complicated policy-wise. richard nixon would be, i think, even it was said about 30, 40 years later that richard nixon would be seen as a left-wing radical by most republicans, current-day republicans. >> oh, my lord. absolutely. so he -- one of the questions people ask is how did we survive 1968? when you think about that tumultuous year, president johnson gets out. mccarthy and rfk challenge him. dr. king is killed. senator kennedy is killed. the chicago democratic convention is chaotic. george wallace gets 13.5% of the vote in november. incredibly fraught time, and i

would argue that it's worth thinking about the fact that nixon is part of the reason the republic endured. again, complicated, counterintuitive argument. a lot of people in the 212 area code who wouldn't agree with this, but the epa, he proposed a health care plan to the left of president obama's. he proposed a guaranteed family income. remember, the influence of daniel patrick moynihan who was a domestic policy adviser on the one hand wanted to take nixon into this kind of progressive toryism, and again, the complications of life, the complexities of life, daniel patrick moynihan arguing that on this side, and then you have pat buchanan and the political operation or working the other side of the street, and so i think one of the things we've learned this summer anew is that

anybody who thinks that history works in a straight line or that there is somehow these clinical forces that always shape who we are and what happens, you know, the greeks had it right. character is destiny, and character is complicated. coming up, the fall of nixon led to the rise of gerald ford. we'll speak with pulitzer prize-winning chief photographer who covered the ford white house more closely than anyone. that part of the story just ahead on "morning joe." tory jus ahead on "morning joe. you didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. you're here to sell more today than yesterday. you're here to win. lucky for you, shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. like the just one-tapping, ridiculously fast-acting, sky-high sales stacking champion of checkouts. that's the good stuff right there. so if your business is in it to win it, win with shopify.

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jon, we need to move on. i am curious though, just a quick thought about where we are right now. we have been talking about contrasts between a campaign of hope and optimism on the left and a campaign of dourness and just anger on the right.

>> yeah. >> talk about where the different directions are going. >> i think that the stakes of the 2024 election as articulated by president biden, as many of us share this belief, that in many ways, the rule of law, the constitutional order, politician as we have understood them for all their imperfections are, in fact, in the balance, and that a re-elected president trump would be an even more potent threat to the constitutional order as we have come to understand it, and which has kept us moving however herkly and jerkily toward a more perfect union. i think that stake is constant. you then take as you have been talking about, the wave of

excitement and novelty about vice president harris and governor walz, and you have a pretty potent combination at the moment. i would urge everybody to remember that donald trump hasn't changed, and that those who believe in the constitution, those who believe in this unfolding story, need to assess far beyond ordinary policy disputes with a democratic ticket and realize that we can argue about policy if we have a constitution. if we don't have a constitution, it doesn't matter what we think about policy. coming up, an incredible comeback for team usa at the summer olympics. we'll talk about that impressive performance in men's basketball, and much more when "morning joe" comes right back. and much more when "morning joe" comes right back

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and i know that he can do it for the city of san francisco. jonathan, a look at paris. just again, it's been extraordinarily successful olympics, in just about every way. you looked yesterday at some of the high drama, whether you're talking about track and field, or to really just a historic comeback on the court for the men's basketball team. what a day in paris yesterday. >> yeah. truly sad the olympics are winding down, but yesterday was a real highlight. team usa put nine more athletes on the olympic podium there in paris and that includes american track star sydney mclaughlin-levrone who successfully defended her olympic title as you see there in the women's 400-meter hurdle.

she set a world record for the sixth time with her gold medal finish while her teammate, anna cockrell took silver. meanwhile, noah lyles couldn't add another gold to his 100-meter win finishing third in yesterday's final behind u.s. teammate kenny bednarek. lyles fell to the ground seconds after crossing the line and needed to be helped off the track. it was revealed minutes later he had been diagnosed with covid just two days before the competition, but elected to compete nee anyway which makes his bronze medal showing all that much more impressive, and perhaps the biggest moment of the day, steph curry lifted. over nikola jokic and serbia. curry scored 36 points including nine threes as team usa surged from down 17 points. kevin durant had just nine off the bench, but his clutch jumper in the final seconds put team

usa up for good. lebron james, the best player on the court p he had a triple-double. to face france on saturday in the tokyo olympic final. joe, they were down big in this game. there were moments when they felt like team usa would go in thinking they were invincible. they might lose, but they had some of the stars. they came up huge with a big moment, and now they face france with france having home court advantage. >> they were down against a really good serbia team. let's bring in best-selling author and veteran sports, you've written about this for the daily news. an extraordinary comeback by team usa. talk about it historically. >> joe, i wrote and i believe this was the great moment for olympic men's basketball that i've ever seen. that fourth quarter yesterday,

and the thing that i loved about it, because the original dream team, they never got challenged in barcelona. i was there in '92. it was like a scrimmage against the world. they got tested yesterday, and joe, you know this, and john knows. know this, and john knows. lebron james, steph curry, kevin durant, three of the greatest players to ever play the game. embiid had a wonderful fourth quarter but these three guys became the latest dream steam. steph had a game we were waiting lebron is 39 years old, joe, and was playing like a kid who didn't want to leave the play ground, didn't want to give up the ancourt. kevin durant only had nine points yesterday, but with 36

seconds left he said to 3 everybody, give me the ball, i've got this and reminded everybody why he scored more points than any olympic man has ever scored for this country. joe, i have to tell you i can't remember the last time i was as engaged and excited by a basketball game as i was watching those guys yesterday. >> coming up, a look at battleground arizona, a state that cook political report now considersli a tossup for the presidential election. we will get the very latest from phoenix when "morning joe" comes right back. en "morning joe" coms right back

coming up, a full recap of yesterday's split-screen moment between the two presidential candidates. plus, why donald trump was confused, lying or both when he told a made up story of nearly dying in a helicopter. that's next on "morning joe." g .

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crowds are and try not to be weird about it. >> i've spoken to the biggest crowds. nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me. if you look at martin luther king. >> whoa. whoa. whoa. hold on. let's be careful comparing yourself to martin luther king here. i know you were both investigated by the fbi, but that's about it. do not try to say that you were more popular. >> when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, you look at it and you look at the picture of his crowd, my crowd, we actually had more people. >> okay. just to sum up, trump was asked about kamala's crowd size and his answer ended up being i'm better than mlk. >> wow. he had more people. come on, man. welcome to the fourth hour of

"morning joe" it's 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. in the east. jonathan lemire, katty kate and the reverend al sharpton still with us. we begin with the race for the white house. what a crazy race it has been this year. yesterday vice president kamala harris spoke with union members in michigan while former president trump held a news conference at mar-a-lago. let's bring in nbc news senior capitol correspondent garrett haake who was in the room yesterday for the trump press event. garrett, some crazy -- i mean, just some crazy claims, and i'm reading,y and -- meandering press conference. i'm wondering what did you hear from the trump team that the purpose that have press conference was. >> joe, it turned into a choose your own adventure news conference from donald trump. the explicit goal was to have the news conference itself, not anything that was actually said

in it, but to try to put pressure on kamala harris to face reporters, and to make this announcement that a campaign -- two campaigns that have agreed on nothing up to this point have agreed on something and that's to hold this debate, one debate at least, next month in new york city. that was probably the key actual development to come out of what was a lengthy press conference yesterday which donald trump called out kamala harris for avoiding questions, while making plenty of news in how he answered and how he avoided the questions that he faced. >> this morning after weeks of uncertainty, the stage is now set for a presidential debate showdown between vice president harris and former president trump next month. the former president announcing at a news conference he has agreed to a debate against harris on september 10th, backing off online threats not to show, and saying he's also up for two additional september showdowns. >> you'd like to do three debates. >> reporter: harris noncommittal on additional debates. >> well, i'm glad that he has finally agreed to a debate on

september 10th, i'm looking forward to it and i hope he shows up. >> reporter: mr. trump's news conference packed with personal attacks and falsehoods, like this claim that his january 6th speech in washington drew a bigger crowd than martin luther king jr.'s i have a dream speech. >> nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me. if you look at martin luther king, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people if not we had more. >> reporter: this as polls show the rates tightening nationwide. >> to what do you attribute her rising in the polls. >> she is a woman. she represents certain groups of people, but i will say this, when people find out about her, i think she will be much less. >> reporter: harris shrugging off trump's criticisms. >> i was too busy talking to voters i didn't hear him. >> reporter: she did defend her running mate from gop attacks over his military record. >> listen, i praise anyone who has presented themselves to

serve our country and i think that we all should. >> reporter: the trump campaign has seized on path comments like this. >> we can make sure that those weapons of war that i carried in war is the only place where those weapons are out. >> well, i wonder, tim walz, when were you ever in war? >> reporter: walz served in the national guard for 24 years and was deployed to support the operation in afghanistan, stationed in italy. nothing in walz's service record indicates he fired a weapon in combat but the harris campaign noting he, quote, carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. >> looking ahead, we have no public events announced next week for donald trump but we have learned that vice president harris and president biden will be holding their first public event together since harris replaced the president at the top of the democratic ticket. the white house says the two will hold an event in maryland next thursday, focusing on lowering costs. joe, the other big threatening out this have press conference yesterday is donald trump's answers on abortion. he said that he doesn't think the issue will be a big factor

in november. he falsely claimed that the majority of people support the overturning of roe which he said several times and he also suggested in answer to another question i asked that he would be open to banning the use of mif prestone, that's obviously the key drug used in a medication abortion. that answer is already drawing ayton of attention from abortion rights groups and from the harris campaign. i'm curious to see how that develops going forward. >> i don't -- i don't think that one is going to develop well. nbc news garrett haake, thank you so much. as always, greatly appreciate it. with us now co-host of pod save america and former senior add shriver to president obama dan pfeiffer. dan, i am so glad you are here. over the past several weeks talking about the pod bros, the pod bros, and so i talked to alex before the segment. i go, dan is coming on? he goes, yeah. i was like i was talking about the pod bros.

just joking. i wanted to ask you because you were there and you saw -- you saw what happened with the obama campaign and i was just saying this morning three times in my life i've seen a presidential campaign that was really not about politics as much as it was about a pop culture phenomenon. first was ronald reagan in 1980 near the end of the campaign. you could just feel it, with everybody you talked to, wherever you went. then the other times were of course 2008 and 2012 with president obama. and we felt it over the past week. you know, i go out and meet with people that, you know, aren't involved in politics and they're talking about kamala harris in a way they just don't talk about politics. this is -- it is -- well -- oh, and i did leave out donald trump in '16. obviously donald trump in '16

was -- so -- so do you feel the same way? are you seeing the same thing? are you hearing the same thing? and, if so, how did this happen? how did we go from kamala harris person that most democrats were going, oh, geez, are we stuck with her? "snl" parodied her replacing joe biden. how do we go from that to where we are right now? >> sure. first, joe, i'm excited to be here. we obviously had a big debate in the democratic party and we are all unified. so happy to be back on "morning joe." >> great to have you. >> zach, same thing, people who i have not talked about politics with in four years have brought up kamala harris and tim walz to me in the last few weeks. they are interested, they are excited, they are watching things, they are consuming, and the way we got here i think is twofold. one, the debate happened, people paid real attention, the fact that democrats and the president were considering taking this truly unprecedented step of him

stepping aside at this point made -- raised the stakes of this election, reminded everyone how important it was, how dangerous it would be if donald trump won. and then kamala harris killed it when she started. like this has been one of the most flawless three weeks of campaigning i have ever seen. there is excitement that i have not seen since obama in '08, that rally in philly with tim walz, the selection of tim walz. people love tim walz. and it has just broken through on the internet in a way that is just really awesome and is engaging people who really checked out of politics after joe biden beat donald trump in 2020, and they're back, and that's why this race went from one where donald trump was basically measuring the drapes in the white house at his convention to an absolute toss up with, you know, less than 90 days to go. it's really awesome to see. >> after tim walz was selected republicans were lined up and they had two lines of attacks and you heard it not just from the trump campaign, but from

everybody. one was his military service, they were going to swift boat him like they did john kerry in 2004, and the second had to do with the national guard and him not calling it out and sitting back while -- while minneapolis burned. both of those attacks have gone up in smoke. let me -- let me first play for you a clip we played for everybody yesterday. this is donald trump actually praising the minnesota governor for his handling of the aftermath of the george floyd killing. >> i know governor walz is on the phone and we spoke. and i fully agree with the way he handled it the last couple of days. so the best example, i alluded to it a couple of seconds ago, is minneapolis. it was incredible what happened in the state of minnesota, two days, three days later, i spoke to the governor.

the govern is, i think, on the call, and he's an excellent guy. and all of a sudden -- and i said, you got to use the national guard in big numbers. they didn't at first, then they did. and i'll tell you that i don't know what it was. it was -- governor, it was the third night, fourth night. those guys walked through that stuff like it was butter. they walked right through. and you haven't had any problems since. >> all right. so that obviously totally undermines -- i mean, the best example, he talked about minneapolis here. and then this morning the "wall street journal" editorial page, i don't know if you've seen it yet, but they called the attacks on governor walz's military service thin grule. he rose to command sergeant major, retired in may 2005 and then they quote a fox news report where the pentagon said mr. walz put his retirement request in several months earlier and they conclude by saying he served his country.

less than 1% of americans serve their country. governor walz served his country. basically the "wall street journal" editorial page saying this line of attack is bogus as well. so where does the trump campaign go next with this campaign that is, you know -- saw a marquette poll yesterday that had him up 8 points, we know that's an outlier, but still they have momentum so where do they go next with their attacks? >> i mean, based on the absolutely incoherent bizarre press conference yesterday they don't know yet, right? attacking tim walz's service record, that's not going to fly and frankly you're focusing on the vice presidential nominee without any connection to the nominee itself. that's a waste of time. so keep doing that. this idea they're going to make tim walz a gun-owning veteran state champion football coach from rural minnesota to be a liberal, that's absurd. i was interested to hear garrett say they just went out to have a press conference for the sake of

a press conference. that's the sign of a campaign that's completely flailing. they don't know how to attack kamala harris in a constructive way that works for them. this is probably why they want to have debates after running scared from a debate a week ago. i think they're going to go right to the old republican, maga republican, tricks of it's going to be immigration, divisiveness and stuff like that, but the harris campaign is up with some really good ads preemptively pushing back on those today. we will see where the trump campaign goes but as of right now it seems clear they have no idea where they should go. >> dan, let's talk debates. donald trump yesterday threw out the idea of doing three with the vice president, he kind of got the dates and networks mixed up while he did so. the vice president said, look, i'm in for september 10th, that's the one that had been agreed upon previously when it was going to be trump versus biden and she sort of said we will see if we do more than that is correct let's make sure trump shows up to that first one. what would you do here if you were advising the vice president on the matter of debates? how many should she do and

should one of them be on fox? >> i think her approach right now is the right one which is trump has been so all over the map you can't trust any deal with trump. let's get this one debate done, see if he follows the rules and go from there. it's a great side-by-side for her. what got lost in all the conversation around president biden's debate performances, donald trump's was also terrible. he was miserable in that debate, he was miserable there that press conference, and if you can get what you think would be a fair debate on fox news and beat him on fox news, that would be huge, but let's just do this one debate first, let's see if he can act like a normal human being for 90 minutes and then go from there. but i think it's a good thing for her that they're debating and it says a lot about where trump now sees the race that he is so desperate to debate her as many times as possible now. >> it's been a giddy three weeks for the democrats, as you look forward, what is it that worries you? what are the kinds of things that might keep you up at night? and you were advising this campaign how would you tell them

to deal with those? >> first we should just be honest with ourselves that this is now a toss-up race, right? we have the momentum, there's a long way to go here, but we still live in a country where the electoral college is a few points more republican than the country itself, so if kamala harris is up 2 points in the national polls, she's either tied or down one in the battleground states. so trump still has a ton of advantages here. the economy is still a challenge for democrats. immigration is still a challenge for democrats. trump has advantages on those issues, not as big as he had against biden but still advantages. the real thing is kamala harris has high name id but all the polling in focus groups show that most voters and particularly the persuadable voters, the ones who can decide the election in the battleground states don't know about her. they don't know her story, what she stands for and what she will do as president. no one has ever had to fill in that gap on such a short time frame. that is the biggest challenge. it's now a race to define kamala harris. is she going to define herself

before trump and the republicans and fox news and the right wing tries to define her? i mean, that's the thing that i would worry about all the time is just are you winning that definitional race. >> dan, wouldn't you also say on the republican said that trump's team, the people around him, have to worry about him clearly diminishing in public? i mean, he's out there yesterday getting the wrong person between governor brown and willie brown, and an emergency landing that never happened, comparing his march with martin luther king's march, which brings january 6 back up again, which he shouldn't ever even want to bring up. i mean, wouldn't you be concerned if you were in the trump camp about him in the debates and rolling him out around rallies again when you really don't know what he's going to say and he has no

control of him? >> there is this sort of myth of a more focused trump earlier in the race and he probably was better than he was in '16 to '20, but since -- over the last three weeks it's been really bad. he has made -- said crazy things. he's been largely incoherent. like that was the real thing. when i saw that press conference yesterday he was incoherent, he was angry, he was low energy, he misspoke on several occasions, he got confused. he was confused by poll sir, he was confused by his own personal story. this is the exact contrast that the harris/walz campaign wants. younger, energetic, across from a sad, tired man. people should have real questions not whether or not that guy has what takes to be president for the next four years. trump is not an asset to their campaign. yes, if i worked on that trump campaign, and i would never do such a thing, that would worry me a lot. >> all right. co-host of pod save america

former senior advisor to president obama. dan pfeiffer. thank you so much. do you have any events coming up? any pod save america events coming up? >> we're going to be hitting the battleground states this fall and arizona and elsewhere, so we will see lots of people out there. but thanks for having me, joe. appreciate being back. >> all right. great to see you. hope you will come back soon. katty, also continuing her tour of the battleground states, vice president kamala harris. >> yeah, she's keeping busy. vice harris and her running mate tim walz they're taking their tour of battleground states and are going out west. later today they will hold a rally in the phoenix area before heading to las vegas tomorrow. joining us is maria obina, the managing director at indivisible. maria has been running the battleground arizona program and she will be attending that

harris/walz rally in phoenix later today. thanks for joining us. i wanted you to give us a sense kind of in concrete terms of what has changed on the ground in arizona since kamala harris took over the top of the ticket. >> it's so good to be with you again. and let me just say like i wore my green today, i am in all my brat gear because i am fired up. you know, i'm just here to share that the vibe shifts are real but they're not just vibes. as movement people, as organizers who have grassroots leaders, indivisible leaders across the country and in arizona, what we're seeing is people are translating this energy into action taking and i'm going to give you two examples. one, we have seen the formation across the country of 400 new groups that have raised their hands and said, we're going to take action and we're going to do it with a lot of joy and we're going to be excited and we are going to come up with creative names. so for us as organizers and

campaigners it's not just the scale, but it's also the enthusiasm that people are bringing to this moment. and the amount of new folks that we're seeing raise their hand in this moment. we're also seeing a 25% uptick in our neighborhood canvassing program called neighbor to neighbor and in arizona specifically we're seeing, you know, 42 cities across the state of folks signing up to say i want to talk to my neighbors about this fall, i want to talk to them about the harris/walz ticket. >> to pick up on what dan pfeiffer was saying about what concerns him about the next few weeks and one of those was the short time period that the vice president has to get the kind of name recognition that most candidates would get in a year or two. what do you find is the most effective way for her to do that? is it television advertising? is it rallies? is it organizers? what is the way that she can in this very short period of time make sure people know who she is and what she stands for? >> so, one, i would say it's excellent that she is out there, she is meeting with vote e, she's excited to define herself

and share her story. the thing that's important about story telling, especially when you are coming on to the scene for the first time, is the power of your story is not just about what it says about you, but the power of the vice president's story is that what it says about our country and what it says about all of us and how it excites us to take action, how it excited people to move on from the past and i think -- so, one, i think it's really smart that she is going to all of these battleground states, reintroducing herself and meeting with voters, number one. number two, you know, there is a lot of talk about which path and which states. i'm less focused on polls, i'm focused on people on the ground. what i would say is it's good that you don't put your eggs all in one basket. i think it's really exciting to see that the sun belt is back in play in a more meaningful way because we don't want to see anyone come out of an arizona or a nevada too early because that would be a mistake. it's great to see that the vice president is going to be here today. i love that she's going to nevada tomorrow and i think both

of those are great steps. >> a reminder that there is a lot of momentum but this is still very much a toss-up race. managing director for indivisible maria urbina, thank you for joining us. >> great to be with you. and coming up, what we are learning about governor tim walz's financial portfolio or perhaps i should say lack of financial portfolio. and donald trump said he should have a voice when the federal reserve makes its decisions on interest rates. we're going to dive into all of that with cnbc's dom chu. that's coming up next. h cnbc's u that's coming up next. perhaps i should say lack of perhaps i should say lack of

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lyles will need a good leg here. can he deliver? here comes the pass! look at this kid! coming in tight on the line. team usa, what a run! it's gold for team usa. noah lyles with another gold medal. in case there was any doubt, who was the breakout star of these world championships. the federal reserve is a very interesting thing and it's sort of gotten it wrong a lot and he's tending to be a little bit late on things. he gets a little bit too early and a little bit too late. you know, that's very largely a -- it's a gut feeling. i believe it's really a gut feeling. and i used to have it out with

him. i had it out with him a couple of times very strongly. i fought him very hard and, you know, we get along fine. we get along fine. but i feel that -- i feel the president should have at least say in there. yeah. i feel that strongly. i think that in my case i made a lot of money, i was very successful and i think i have a better instinct than in many cases people that would be on the federal reserve or the chairman. that's former president donald trump on his plans to exert more control over the fed if he wins in november. let's bring in right now cnbc's dom chu. i mean, this would cause concern in most financial markets not just donald trump but any president having control over the fed going up or down. i think so many people on wall street now one of the defining experiences of their young lives and i'm talking about leaders probably was the so-called volker shock where paul volker then the fed chair had to push interest rates up to 21.5% to

finally end inflation. it did start a recession, but it stopped inflation and in a way that really hasn't returned in a meaningful way until after covid. so what do the markets think when a president or a presidential candidate starts talking about controlling the fed? >> right now the markets, joe -- i mean, to your point, really are being more measured about it. nobody is taking a massive view because this is kind of so far out of the realm of reason right now that there isn't a whole bunch of reaction to it. nonetheless, when you put a statement like the former president did out there people are going to take notice, both in economic circles as well as washington policy making circles. fed officials, i mean, other economic experts have long argued at this point still maintain at this point that the independence of the federal reserve and its insulation, if you will, right, from political influences is paramount, is key to doing its job effectively to manage america's money supply,

to manage the economic growth that's out there, to effectively handle its duel mandate which is to provide as much price stability as it can, while at the same time trying to maximize the number of people who are actually working in america. now, the point here is america has largely avoided a massive economic downturn and that's due in part to fed policy, but there are critics of the central bank and rightfully so that blame it for playing a part in fueling some of the worst inflation that we saw since the volker days four decades ago that we saw over the last few years. it's also being blamed in some way for the widening income gap between wealthier americans versus lower to middle income americans. so when it comes to this idea of the fed, there's no doubt it's been in the hot seat, and arguably even so and has been there since the days of the great financial crisis when all of this alternative money policy and zero interest rate policy has really taken hold.

so it's going to be curious to see whether americans look at that kind of a policy and it resonates with them as opposed to having what we have seen since 2009-2010, joe. >> speaking of interest rates, good news for potential home buyers. yesterday with mortgage rates going down. >> yeah, this is a big deal and the reason why we're saying that is because the real estate market might actually see some more activity. at least in the near term. the activities being fueled by those mortgage rates which sank to the lowest levels we've seen in roughly 15 months, so the average rate on a 30 year fixed rate loan fell by around a quarter of a percentage point. it may not seem like a lot, but on a weekly basis that's a pretty big jump. it now stands at just about 6.47% and that's according to data from freddie mac which finances a ton of mortgages in america. it was also the biggest weekly decline in rates in roughly nine months. so that drop in rates could help

thaw what's been a locked real estate market. it's not had a lot of folks out there who want to put their houses up for sale so inventories have been kind of constrained. it would also help sellers kind of put their properties on the market at the same time as enticing buyers who could be lured into the market by lower borrowing costs, cheaper costs of ownership. so maybe those interest rates do play a big part as well, joe. >> so, dom, let's move from finance to politics and, well, really the finances of a politician that just emerged on to the national scene. that's minnesota governor tim walz. democrats are trying to make this guy look like he's middle class, coach, high school, high school teacher, you know, gun owning, middle class dude from the upper midwest. you look at his financial disclosure and it suggests that, in fact, he is. certainly when compared to the other candidates in the race.

>> yeah, i mean, no doubt. if you look at, i mean, the complete opposite end of the spectrum right now is a billionaire multiple times over in donald trump the former president. but the details that you're referring to on the personal finances of minnesota governor tim walz, of course, now the running mate for vice president kamala harris, is in essence the basics. he does not own any stocks. he does not own any bonds. and right now does not own any real estate. and that seems kind of odd, but that's according to his most recent financial disclosures. those discldisclosures, by the do not list the amount of cash held in bank accounts so there is the caveat there, but the reason why -- i mean, maybe no stocks, no bonds doesn't seem that out of the realm of reason, but not having any real estate, somebody should own a home, but of course there is a technical dynamic here because not long after he was elected governor of minnesota, walz and his wife sold their home and moved into the governor's mansion, hence, no real estate holdings. what's also interesting is just the level of salary that we're

talking about. we know that when it comes to public service at the federal, state and local levels they pale in salary comparisons to people on wall street or other high-profile industries. but his current salary as the top elected official in the state of minnesota is roughly $128,000. now, he would get a significant pay bump if he became, hypothetically, the vice president of the united states, but you're still not talking about, you know, the millions of dollars that a lot of people talk about with regard to the upper echelon. joe, a very curious context around just how much money tim walz has. >> all right. cnbc's dom chu, thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. you know, jonathan lemire, that puts him sort of in line with joe biden who is a guy that never accumulated a ton of money compared to the people who he ran against for office, but what is -- we've been talking so much about kamala harris.

you've got reporting on just sort of reading the tea leaves on what joe biden's plans are for the next six months in the white house. >> yeah, and just a few weeks after president biden was pushed from atop the ticket by members of his own party, but we have seen his poll numbers actually go up in the last week or so. he's up at his highest level since february 2023, as democrats and other americans are grateful for his decision not to run again and think more fondly of the president. with that as the backdrop, his team is scouting out his plans for the next six months. as mentioned earlier in the show, he will appear with vice president harris at an official event next week in maryland, but his schedule is going to slow down. he will focus largely on foreign policy, particularly the situation in the middle east and in ukraine. he is going to speak the first night at the chicago convention and he will have some -- the occasional set piece, white house set piece, to really talk about accomplishments of his term, things that are important to his legacy and issues that he

feels like will help shape this campaign, including that donald trump remains a threat to democracy. on the campaign side there are talks in the works for him to appear with his vice president at a campaign event. that will be a few weeks away. we anticipate the two of them will appear together now and then, not too often, but he will be used in a limited fashion strategically aides tell me in places where he still resonates with voters. we can expect a lot of pennsylvania, we will have some in wisconsin, some in michigan, probably less in the sun belt and he will talk to voters who still really like him including older white americans. so the harris team will still use president biden in a selective way going forward between now and the election. >> and obviously we saw what he was able to do with the hostage deal. obviously he's -- i mean, again, as you said, he's going to really keep his attention fixed on ukraine and gaza, right? >> yes, the middle east. for any president that is when they have their most leeway in

authority and this one in particular sees he wants to give harris space on the domestic campaign trail, he's going to focus on foreign policy and legacy burgeoning issues towards the end of his term. >> all right. coming up on "morning joe," today marks 50 years since a defining moment in american history, the resignation of president richard nixon. with us next the white house photographer that was there to capture it all. some stunning photos. we will show them to you when "morning joe" comes back. >> in all the decisions i have made in my public life, i have always tried to do what was best for the nation. throughout the long and difficult period of watergate, i have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me. in the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that i no longer have a strong enough

political base in the congress to justify continuing that effort. to justify ctionnuing that effort (reporters) over here. kev! kev! (reporter 1) any response to the trade rumors, we keep hearing about? (kev) we talkin' about moving? not the trade, not the trade, we talking about movin'. no thank you. (reporter 2) you could use opendoor. sell your house directly to them, it's easy. (kev) ... i guess we're movin'.

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i would like to add a personal word with regard to an issue that has been of great concern to all americans over the past year. i refer, of course, to the investigations of the so-called watergate affair. and i want you to know that i have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do for the people of the united states. >> i have never been a quitter. to leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body, but as president, i must put the

interests of america first, therefore, i shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. vice president ford will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office. we will look back at the tumultuous year of 1974 when 50 years ago today richard nixon became the first and the only president to resign from office and gerald ford took his oath from chief justice berger in the east room of the white house. there are several indelible images from that day and that period in american history and many of them were captured by one of our next guests. with us now pulitzer prize winner and chief white house photographer for gerald ford david kennerly, also with us author and nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss. david, you had a front row to

history on one of the most -- one of the most historic days in our lifetimes. tell us what you saw that day. >> well, i have been covering vice president ford for "time" magazine, and this -- i mean, it's hard to believe that in like three hours from now it would be exactly 50 years ago that ford was sworn in, but to be on the south lawn and watch richard nixon come out, it's definitely one of the top five historical things that i've photographed, one of the most dramatic, and produced some of the best pictures, more important for me. >> and you had a fascinating day when you went to gerald ford's very modest home in arlington, virginia. the new president had asked you to go out and you took some

pictures of his wife and him toasting each other. tell us what they said and then tell us why he invited you out. >> well, that was the evening that he became president, at this moment he has been president of the united states for like eight hours, and they had a very modest house in alexandria, virginia, and he wanted to talk to me -- i had asked to take photos of them that evening, obviously that's my job, but during the course of that evening he said can you stick around, i want to talk to you? and it was at that point i thought that he might offer me the job as the chief white house photographer. >> and you said that there was a toast, and in that toast was it the president who said "god help us"? obviously it happened so

quickly. to our new life, god help us. >> that was mrs. ford. i mean, she knew what was coming down the pike and it was just a quiet moment. they only had a few of their friends there and family. it wasn't like a big celebratory thing. that was a really difficult day for everybody involved, and the president and i sat on the couch in his living room and he was smoking his pipe and he asked me if i would like to work for him as his white house photographer, and i -- i had thought about this and the predecessor had very little access to nixon. in fact, you showed the tape of nixon saying he was leaving as of noon tomorrow. ollie atkins was in the room for that and basically nixon told him not to take any more pictures. then he said, well, you have had your picture -- okay, take one right now, and i have that all

on tape right before this performance. i didn't want to be treated like that, number one, and what good does it do to have a photographer like me in there if i can't take pictures? so i said to the president i would like to report to you and have full access to the white house. he stopped smoking his pipe and he said, you don't want air force one on the weekends? and we struck a deal essentially. >> yeah, and some remarkable, remarkable photos came out of that deal. michael beschloss, it's hard to overstate the impact of august 9th on our politics. >> sure. >> on the media, on our culture. try to -- try to sum up what -- what nixon's resignation 50 years ago today meant. >> well, joe, and i'm so glad to see my friend david, that was a

story that was almost like a parable that day, which is when a president tries to grab too much power or infringe on the constitution, our american political system strikes him down and says, you have to go. everyone said the system worked. here we are 50 years later, it's all very different, the supreme court that told nixon in 1974 he had to give up his tapes has said that presidents are almost entirely immune for anything they do in office. that's almost the opposite. you know, congress said to nixon you have to go -- even republicans. nowadays members of the president's own party tend to protect him. but maybe most important of all, nixon was impeached not only for the things we know about, obstruction of justice and so forth, but also abuse of power by trying to expand the powers of the presidency by using the

fbi, the irs, the justice department in general with something called the houston plan, and he was stopped. look at it 50 years later. >> yeah. >> if you don't like project 2025, nixon is in a certain way its grandfather. >> i was going to ask you, michael, the parallels between what we saw in 1974 and the parallels of what some of donald trump's supporters are saying he's going to do, as well as former president trump himself saying what he's going to do with the justice department, what he will do with the possibility of military tribunals for political foes. >> right. >> talking about being a dictator on day one, which is fascinating so many apologists for donald trump say, oh, he's just joking. he is just joking. and yet he repeats that so called joke even when hosts on fox news try to get him to back down. >> and it all goes back to

nixon. you both remember what nixon told david frost in 1977, i can recite it verbatim, well, if the president does it that means that it is not illegal. sounds just like the supreme court this year, let's all watch out. >> yeah. david, tell us about your first day in the white house working for then president ford and the thrill for you, but, yeah, you're thrilled, but also you are a professional and you have to do your job. talk about that day for you and what you saw with this incredibly decent, good man. >> well, this is a good example of it. you see the empty example of it. you see the empty shelves in the background, all of nixon's stuff has been taken away and the ford stuff hasn't been put in there. he's got his foot up on the desk, and he's very comfortable in his own skin to start with,

which is a pretty good head start. and as being president, he took over without a lot of fanfare, and this shows -- this also shows i'm right there in the oval office, and as a photographer this is where you want to be. i spent all those years kind of with my nose pressed up against the window wondering what was going on back there, and now i could see it for myself and photograph it so that everybody else could see it. >> how exciting. former chief white house photographer, david hume kin early and abc news presidential historian, michael beschloss. thank you both for being with us. we appreciate it. coming up next, special counsel jack smith is requesting a delay in donald trump's election interference case. we're going to go over what that means and its impact ahead of the election. "morning joe" will be right back. election "morning joe" will be right back

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we asked 100 normal people -- >> what makes you smile? what makes you happy? >> i smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media, man. >> family, wife, your three kids, hobbies. anything normal. >> interesting. >> that was the biggest -- >> it just wasn't a hard question. >> anything normal. good lord, the grievance thing, you have to know when to like turn it off for a second there and jus say, yeah, kids, maybe family puppies. >> ohio state football. >> whatever makes him -- >> ohio state football, yes, wearing the little techie vest that he likes to -- you know, he

loves san francisco, he could say anything. so many options. >> maybe he can't be the joyful warrior that we're seeing on the democratic ticket, but you could at least be a normal person and at least in that moment he very much did not. let's hit one more headline here, guys. special counsel jack smith is advising the judge overseeing donald trump's federal election interference case for more time to figure out their next steps after the supreme court upended the case with last month's immunity ruling. in a filing yesterday, smith asked judge tanya chutkan to give prosecutors until august 30th to finalize their position on how the case should proceed. and now let's bring in state attorney for palm beach county, florida, dave aronberg to help us sort through it. tell us why you think this delay was requested by smith's team. where does this case stand at this point? >> well, this is because chief justice roberts couldn't write a clear opinion. it confounded the people at the department of justice. and contrary to what judge

cannon says in south florida, jack smith is not so independent that he doesn't have to check with his superiors. he's going up and down the line there at doj to ask their thoughts of whether this case can move forward, and it definitely can. they just need to excise the issues about whether donald trump tried to remove the acting attorney general, tried to influence and work with jeffrey clark about sending out a bogus letter from the doj. that part is falling under official acts. it's completely imimmunized, bu other things it's game on. the big question for me is how long do they need for a delay? because the longer you wait, the less likely it is to have a mini trial, which is important. that would provide the evidence to the public of donald trump's involvement before, during, and after january 6th. it's an evidentiary hearing that was sanctioned by the supreme court, and judge chutkan's ready to go with it. >> we heard not surprisingly donald trump praised judge cannon yesterday during his unhinged mar-a-lago news conference. this mini trial, when do you

think that could occur? would that be something before the election or does trump's team have the ability to push it beyond that? >> trump's team wants to postpone it as far back as possible they want it to occur half past never, and when the special counsel's office offered the three-week delay to trump's legal team. they took it like my dog takes a piece of steak, grabbed it and asked for more. donald trump's legal team is all about delay. they do not want this evidence coming out before the election. it would hurt his chances in november to be talking about trump's involvement in january 6th. but i do think that it could and should happen before the election because you have a judge who wants it to happen. now you have to wait to see what jack smith and his team does. there's still time, even after the three-week delay for it to happen. we just don't know when. >> dave, in truth social posting on thursday night, was that last night, trump said that the supreme court immunity ruling basically meant that a whole series of cases against him should be dismissed. is that actually the position?

>> well, that's his position, but that's not the law because the stuff that is going on, like, for example, in new york, that occurred before he took office as president. the stuff at mar-a-lago, that took place after he was president. so they're not official presidential acts, and the stuff in d.c. which we've been talking about, i think most of that indictment can go and should go because although the supreme court's opinion was so confusing, to me it's clear that the only acts that are forbidden to be charged are those involving donald trump's communications with the executive branch, meaning his attempts to influence the department of justice. all the other stuff should be game on. >> donald trump not a legal scholar. we know that. state attorney for palm beach county, florida, dave aronberg. thank you for joining us this morning. another week down, and another week at the end of it which shows momentum officially behind vice president harris and donald trump flailing to respond.

>> it really, really is fascinating. this has been another remarkable political week and remarkable political year. it's sure to roll on again, next week. a lot of twists and turns. the big questions right now really are, first of all, does the momentum continue for democrats, and can republicans finally come up with a game plan to stop that momentum or at least slow it down? >> yeah, we assume it continues at least through the dnc, and from trump and vance's point of view, they have to come up with a clear single sustained line of attack. >> all right. thank you so much, katty kay, katty and anthony scaramucci as you know, number one in the uk, number one in our hearts. coming to america on the ed sullivan show very soon. that does it for us this morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage right now.