right about that. earlier this morning the president of the united states publicly hounded nato's secretary-general, repeatedly disparaged germany and wondered aloud why america should be responsible for protecting europe against russia. vladimir putin wants donald trump to break from american allies. a few hours ago, that is exactly what he got. wow. welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, july 11th. with us, msnbc contributor mike ba ba ba barniccal. >> and david ignatius, nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of kasie d.c. on msnbc, kasie hunt and former u.s. ambassador to nato and former state department spokesman nicholas burns, professor of diplomacy and international relations at the harvard kennedy school of government.

great group to start with this morning, and, wow, what a start to the trip. >> what a start to the trip. and -- let's just play the clip. here's donald trump actually doing exactly what vladimir putin would want him to do. good morning. >> in many countries, they owe us a tremendous amount of money from many years back where they're delinquent, as far as i'm concerned, because the united states has had to pay for them. if you go back 10 or 20 years add it all up. it's massive amounts of money that the united states has paid, and stepped up like nobody. this is gone on for decades, by the way. for many presidents. but no other president brought it up like i bring it up. >> the good news is that allies have started to give more to defense. after years, they've started to

add billions to this and defense spending, more in a generation. >> why was that, last year? >> also because of your leadership. because of your carried message. >> they won't write that. >> i think it's very -- sad when germany make as massive oil and gas deal with russia. where you're supposed to be guarding against russia and germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to russia. so we're protecting germany. we're protecting france. we're protecting all of these countries, and then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with russia, where they're paying billions of dollars in to the coffers of russia. so we're supposed to protect you against russia, but they're paying billions of dollars to russia, and i think that's very inappropriate, and the former chancellor of germany is the head of the pipeline company that's supplying the gas.

ultimately, germany will have almost 70% of their country controlled by russia with natural gas. so you tell me. is that i mean, i've been compl about this from the time i got in. it should have never been allowed to have happened, but germany is totally controlled by russia. >> i think it's something that nato has to look at. i think it's very inappropriate. you and i agreed that it's inappropriate. >> and the 29 nations, there are sometimes differences, and different views and also some disagreements, and the gas and pipeline from russia to germany is the issue where allies disagree, but the strength is that despite the differences we have always been able to unite around to protect and defend each other, because we understand we are stronger together than apart. the two world wars under cold war and we are stronger together than apart. >> how can you be together when

a country is getting its energy from the person you want protection against or from the group that you want protection against? >> because we understand that when we stand together, also, in dealing with russia, we are stronger. i think what we have seen -- >> no. you're just making russia richer. not dealing with russia. you're making russia richer. >> even during the cold war, nato allies were trading with russia. then there have been disagreements about what kind of trade arrangements we should -- >> i think trade is wonderful. energy is a whole different story. i think energy is a much different story than normal trade. and you have a country like poland that won't accept the gas. you look at some of the countries they won't accept it because they don't want to be captive to russia. germany, as far as i'm concerned, is captive to russia because it's getting so much of its energy from russia. so we're supposed to protect germany, but they're getting their energy from russia. explain that. and it can't be explained.

you know that. >> so this was supposed to be, just a photo op. the president wanted to make sure that he sent the message to vladimir putin while appearing to question energy shipments to russia, that he was actually doing everything he could to disrupt the nato summit from the start. and to also undermine america's alliance with nato. you could see, and mika pointed it out, mike pompeo looking down. as the president continued to badger and attack his hosts there. and in is so -- there is so many -- so many places to start. ronald reagan, during -- ronald reagan during a decade where he did more to bring down the soviet union than anybody would have ever expected continued to trade with the soviet union. donald trump is just, once

again, ignorant of history. ignorant of diplomacy and of the very things that have gotten us to a position where we have a $19 trillion economy and by far the most powerful military and economic engine in the world. on the planet. david ignatius, if you listen to donald trump ramble on and on about what a bad partner nato was, and what a bad partner the eu was, you would, might be fooled in middle america, if you had pictures of donald trump on your wall. you might be fooled into believing that europe does absolutely nothing when it comes to defense. and, of course, after us not wanting germany to re-arm for quite some time, we now have a situation where the european union spends more money on military defense than does

russia. they are an extraordinarily important, strategic ally of the united states of america against vladimir putin and his ambitions after he's invaded two countries in one decade. >> you would have no idea watching the president harang the nato secretary-general that today at this very minute there are nato forces fighting with the united states in afghanistan in a fight that we requested their help in, that they remain part of the coalition that's seeking to defeat isis. our terrorist ally. you would have no idea that that harang was directed at the people on whom we most depend for military support. that footage that you showed at the beginning of the show out to be nut a time capsule, because if people ask some day, how is it that the nato alliance, which

was the centerpiece of american defense strategy for 70 years, began to unravel. you just look at an american president who arrives and the first thing he does a pick a fight with the very secretary-general, which, as you said, joe, the american support team, secretary of state pompeo and our ambassador to nato, kay bailey hutchinson looking on with what seemed to me a kind of silent horror. >> yep. >> at what was happening. what an extraordinary way to begin a summit with your friends and allies. >> well -- hard to imagine. >> it's hard to imagine. it would be if churchill and fdr got together, jon meacham, during world war ii, and fdr was badgering churchill for not spending the exact amount of money on outlays in 1944 and

1945 as the united states. the fact is, that along with russia, great britain was our closest ally, and here, again, we -- europe, again, for those in my family and my friends who support donald trump, for those who have ears to hear, hear. europe spends more money on national defense, on the defense of the eu than does russia. europe spends as much money on the defense of that continent as does china. they are a strong bulwark against russian aggression, and with donald trump going in and hypocritically attacking them, germany, for trading with russia, when all he has done for the past two years is talk about the need to build closer relationships with russia is --

is just so, such a transparent -- i'm sure he thinks he's being clever, but it's a transparent way to carry out vladimir putin's deepest wish. which is, to undermine our alliance with nato. undercut a military strategic alliance that is like a dagger in the heart of putin's expansionist dreams. >> it's -- it's diabolical in that it almost manages to create as much chaos as possible. not really creative chaos, but create chaos, because, if you listen to that, you know, basically we have a president who sounds like the guy at the end of the bar who has a bee in his bonnet and on about his third or fourth beer. >> norm. >> yeah, norm is president. that's kind to norm. >> yeah. >> he's laying this out in a way that his base, many people in his base, will repeat, because he's saying it.

a., like the idea he was sitting there talking to this guy with a funny accent. they're going to love that. he was telling him what all, and yet when you pull back and think about what he was talking about, the entire point of the modern era, as david was saying, as opposed to, really, the 20s, which led to the '30s, was, we engage. >> right. >> and you engage by, with a free flow of people and ideas and goods as much as possible, and what this administration has done is pretty much, it's against the free flow of people and ideas, unless they have them, and it's against the free flow of -- >> so, not norm. more like newman. mike barnicle, go ahead. >> and sitting there watching this extraordinary clip we witnessed, the public

humiliation of the nato secretary-general by the president of the united states, it occurs to me and all of us on the set, how does it occur to you, this was the president of the united states speaking on a global stage intent only on talking about himself and what he felt rather than the common goals that nato has held for 70 years. >> well, mike, that's right, and frankly, it's just infuriating to watch this happen. you cannot imagine any american president all the way back 75 years deciding to become the critic and chief of nato. i mean, it's orwellian. he's making our friends out to be our enemies and treating our enemies like putin as our friends. and he's misrepresenting the facts. there have been four straight years of budget increases by every nato ally. the great majority of them will be at this magical 2% of gross domestic product level by 2024. all of our ability to project

power in the world, in the middle east and afghanistan comes out of the air bases, ramstein, insulak, aviano, the naval bases in italy and spain that the europeans pay us for. $2.5 billion a year to keep our forces there. it would cost us more money to bring the troops home than to keep them in europe. so what is the point of this? it's all about politics, and the president's base. the not about the power of the united states. this incredible alliance that we've built, every president from truman, it's infuriating to see this happen. it's diplomatic malpractice. >> exactly what it is. bring in nbc news white house correspondent kristen welker. live in brussels, belgium. kristen what can you tell us? >> reporter: well, mika, we're already starting to get reaction to that extraordinary exchange that you all are talking about. germans defense minister essentially dismissing president trump's claim that it is a captainistic to russia saying, i

think we can cope with it, meaning the criticism. also defending that deal that president trump was lashing out against saying, if we look at the gas pipeline, germany is an independent where energy supply is concerned we diversify, but the main over-arching topic is the summit. we want the summit that sends out the message of unity. of course, president trump sending out the exact opposite message. now, the secretary-general of nato also asked about the president's comments this morning, that extraordinary breakfast that he had with the president, and he said, look, there are going to be disagreements. that's a part of the deal at these international summits. mika, the extraordinary nature of what happened at that breakfast cannot be overstated. these summits are all about tone, all about the optics and on both of those fronts president trump was confrontational, really adding to the tensions here and the concerns that the united states won't be counted on as a part of this alliance, mika. >> and you've been covering these for a long time. how does this compare?

>> reporter: well, you think about the last summit, mika and president trump does not adhere to protocols. the moment he pushed the prime minister of montenegro, a group photo and he wanted to get a better position for the photo. so it's not unusual for him to break with the norms. this is something we deal with every day at the white house. but in the broader context of these summits. again, it's almost unprecedented you would have a public dispute spill out into the public view, and the timing of it is critical. it comes days before he's set to meet with russia's president vladimir putin. you already have nato allies very concerned that he's not going to be tough enough in that meeting with putin nap he. that he's not going to raise the issue of election meddling or invading crimea. a break with international law.

concerns the international community has here. >> kristen welker, hard to believe he wasn't performing for vladimir putin given how kind of overt that was. meanwhile the senate overwhelmingly pass add non-binding motion reaffirms the commitment to the nato alliance. 97-2 vote came hours after the president landed in belgium. the measure was authored by ranking member of the senate armed services committee jack reed. >> the united states participates in nato, because we believe the transatlantic partnership is in the u.s. national security interest and not because other countries are paying us for protection. >> the motion reaffirms the u.s. commitment to nato as a community of shares values including liberty, human rights, democracy and the rule of law. in addition, it calls for the u.s. to pursue and integrated approach to strengthen european defense as part of a long-term strategy that uses all elements of u.s. national power to deter and if necessary defeat russian

aggression. it also reiterates u.s. support for the rules-based international order and expending and enhancing alliances and partnerships. senators rand paul and mike lee were the only two to vote against the motion. >> ah, yeah. wow. okay. kasie hunt, that is the united states senate sending a strong message, as strong a message as possible to our nato allies as well as to vladimir putin. talking about russian aggression in that language, and also, you know, some of the republican senators that went over and were criticized for going over to russia actually, if you look at what was said in those meetings, there was confrontation about the russians interfering, meddling in our 2016 election. it seems the senate, at least, and some republicans in the senate, at least, is except for mike lee and rand paul, think it's a good idea to stand

shoulder-to-shoulder with our european allies and speak out against russian aggression. >> reporter: joe, this reads to me like an attempt by the u.s. senate, republicans and democrats alike, to send a message to our nato allies that says, please, try not to worry so much. we promise we're going to keep the lights on for you. and that when we are, we have moved past this era, this is still something important to us. i think -- there were so many republican whose didn't want trump to get elected in the first place. they thought there would be a lot of problems and issues. i don't think any of them ever dreamed that it would be a serious question to ask, mitch mcconnell got the question yesterday. do you think this president will pull us out of nato? the house that we built. this is the western world that the united states of america built after the cold war, and it's been the bedrock for, you know, all of our foreign policy, but particularly on the republican side. reagan and the end of the cord war.

the fact the vote happened at all, jack reed, a democrat. gave it to him, his counterpart obviously on the armed services committee, john mccain not here in washington, still battling brain cancer, but that is just an incredible signal and it comes from the top down. >> jon meacham, yes, it was the house that we built, nato. here's theresa may arriving. she has several things on her mind. one, of course, is the frail nature of her coalition in parliament with her shaggy haired foreign minister resigning a few days ago. also, of course, though, more importantly in our mind than meeting with donald trump is what every man, woman and child in england is thinking about today, and that is the 2:00 clash against croatia to get to the finals of the world cup, and if you think that i am being glib, you do not understand just what today's match means.

and also, of course, belgium in a state of warning today after their loss to france yesterday. but kasie hunt talked about nato being the house that we built. and, again, the ignorance of donald trump and the ignorance of those who believe that he's somehow showing those europeans. >> hmm. >> uh-huh. >> showing them what real leadership is about, again only reveals an ignorance that the house that america built in europe, we built for our own selfish interest. we built to protect our military troops, to stop a third european world war from occurring in 30 years. we did it to build strong trade partners, and what happened? we built strong trade partners.

we kept germany. we kept italy. we kept france. we kept a lot of countries out of stalin's grasp after world war ii. this along with the truman doctrine -- the marshall plan, one of america's greatest investments ever. forget about the niceties of democracy and freedom. >> yeah. >> we stand for that. just cold, hard cash. so when donald trump's playing businessman over there, he's being a fool and tearing down the foundation of america's $19 trillion economy. >> yeah. when fdr was dictating the for freedom speech, 1941. freedom from want, from fear -- he was listing, he said, we must fight to guarantee those freedoms everywhere in the world. everywhere in the world. everywhere in the world. he was dictating this, and harry

hopkins, his great adviser said, you know, mr. president i wouldn't say everywhere in the world, americans don't give a damn about java. he came back at him, the world is getting so small we're going to have to care about java. we're going to have to care about berlin. churchill said in harvard, 1943, the price of greats in is responsibility. america cannot rise to be the most significant force in global events and not have the long arm of history reach out across the oceans. and so it's entirely in our self-interest. the creation of nato, in part, was, has led to an era where we fought a terrible cold war and we have fought elective hot cwas as part of the cold war but not a global struggle. finally, it's been 30 years, george herbert walker bush thinks the most important he

did, bring stability to europe, to stand as a defense of the west, and created a remarkable trading partner. >> well, we, everyone stay with us. we have much more ahead this morning with this esteemed panel on the nato summit as we build up to the class photo next hour, which should be interesting, and david ignatius -- >> i wonder if these going to -- >> push anyone? >> be a buffoon and bush anyone this year? >> apparently that would be the least offensive thing that would happen there. david ignatius explains his take on why donald trump is so hostile to american allies. he resents them, and their success. interesting. we'll read from that new column just ahead. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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we've seen over the past 18, 19 months, to not look at donald trump as doing either subconsciously or maybe he's just bumbling around, like mr. magoo, but he is doing the very thing that vladimir putin would want a western leader to do more than anything else, and that is to undermine nato. he could not be doing putin's bidding more effectively if he were an active agent of vladimir putin and the kgb. >> joe, for now i'm going to leave that issue to robert mueller, the special counsel. >> so, well, let me ask you this -- what does vladimir putin fear? what has vladimir putin feared over the past 18, 19 years more

than anything else? >> so putin fears and resents a strong american-led alliance in nato that he feels has gone right up to russia's border, has tried to draw in these newly merging countries that were part of a society empire. countries that bitterly resented russia's tutelage and now have moved towards nato for security. he resents it to some extent he fears it. he fears that that same desire for something different will affect his own population. it is a dream come true for vladimir putin, to have an american president arrive on the ground in brussels and the first thing, go a breakfast and harang the nato secretary-general and talk about germany, our most important ally in europe, as a captive of russia. i mean, it's just insulting language. it's -- it seeks to humiliate the people that he's dealing

with. i can only think that putin sits back in moscow, well, i'll tell what you people said to me in russia last summer when i was there. they said, we watch the american led liberal international order collapsing and we think that's good, but we don't really understand what you're doing to yourselves. we don't understand why this is being taken apart, but we're happy. i think they are happy, but, you know, people will look back, historianless look back and wonder how on earth was this instrument of american power and wealth undermined so systematically by a president who really had so little knowledge about foreign policy. >> and, mike, historians will look back at this moment and also wonder why more people were not asking aggressively and not with guarded words, but aggressively asking what does

vladimir putin have on donald trump? >> yeah. >> because there is -- we were talking about it before. there is no other explanation. >> that was a performance for putin. >> -- for an american commander in chief. >> yeah. >> -- to actively work to undermine america's most important, most strategic, most vital alliance that it has in the entire face of the earth. the only country this helps is vladimir putin's russia. >> well, history will have a long list of questions that will have to be answered. that's going to be among them, and another question that's going to be among them is, why was there such silence from members of the united states senate? or the united states congress about what is occurring right now? and nick burns, you're a man of the world. form 0er ambassador to nato. state department employee. tell us your view, your

concerns, perhaps, about what has happened when you look at what has happened, a withdrawal from tpp by this president. virtually seedi ingcreeding the to the chinese, latin america, africa, the middle east, intent on becoming a bigger world power than they already are, virtually one foot out the door on nato, the collapse of nato after 70 years, perhaps could happen. give us your view, your concerns about what is happening right now to our position in the world, and the relative silence as we just spoke of from members of the united states senate about this. >> mike, i think it's clear now, 18 months in to this presidency, that the president is abdicating american leadership. in the following way -- he's dismantling our alliances and downgrading them. that's been the power base for the united states for 75 years.

he's dismantled the trading system that brought us this unprecedented prosperity, and is replacing it with nothing. he's just tearing down. and i just -- third, i've been in europe. four countries in the last couple of weeks. the existential battle right now in europe is between the small d. democratic governments and the right wing democratic populists that have taken over the governments of hungary and poland and are inside the government of italy and the europeans are convinced that trump's siding with the authoritarian figures because trump has been praising them privately and publicly, the authoritarian leaders. he's gone after angela merkel. there they is on the screen, big time a vicious twitter attack designed to bring her down. he's been extremely critical of the western european democracies. you can't imagine why an american president would act this way. i think it's a radical revolution, if you add in leaving the iran deal, leaving the paris climate change deal. we had a power base as the most

influential country in the world. he only sees trade imbalance and does credit our allies with anything else. we're at a critical moment. we do need political leaders to speak out about this, because i can't believe that members of the senate and house think this is all a good idea. >> david, do you have any sense that -- nick burns just mentioned, angela merkel and the president going after her constantly, continually, do you have any sense of the root of this, clearly, anger he has towards angela merkel? >> it's one of the biggest mysteries, mike. angela merkel is really the leader of europe today. does he resent her strength? does he resent her, because she had a close relationship with barack obama? his predecessor? >> ah. >> except i see him as anything obama touched trump wants to get rid of. does he -- i wrote this morning, we'll talk about this maybe, but trump has this odd scarred,

wounded attitude of somebody who went through terrible financial trouble, towards people who were successful and prosperous. the germans of one of the world's greatest economic success stories. does he resent that? but he has been going very directly at her with political attacks, saying that the german people are turning against her. he's doing a little bit of that this week with theresa may, the british prime minister, in effect siding with boris johnson who just walked out of her cabinet in an -- american presidents don't do this. i mean, does donald trump, he makes us forget how unusual this sort of thing is, but as to the resentment of germany, that's the thing that's really undoing nato, because germany's at the center of nato, and it seems very deliberate, because he does it over and over again. to call germany a captive of russia. >> yeah. >> it's the most inflammatory language i can imagine.

>> david, read from your latest op-ed from the "washington post," trump's neediness is at the core of his diplomacy. you write, trump is the neediest person that the tycoon that vaulted to the top of the world. sees himself as chief executive not of a thriving enterprise but of one that has nearly been run into the ground by his predecessors. rather than warmly embracing longtime partners in europe he resents them and their success. he picks needless fights and tries to humiliate people that he feels have slighted him. this scarred, prickly trump is looking for new friends and investors. it's almost as if he's ready to fold what he sees as a losing hand and draw a fresh set of cards, ones bearing the faces of north korea's kim jong-un, china's xi, jinping and russia's vladimir putin, and that is --

wow n wow. that just matching exactly everything we have seen in trump's personality since we first met him, actually. >> well, you two know him and the world he comes from. i just have been struck recently that this is not the abul yaian donald trump, the part of a comeback donald trump, went through bankruptcy. got the scars, he's prickly. as i said in the column, it's almost as if he doesn't like the hand of cards he's got so he's laying them down and going to draw these new ones. one has a big vladimir putin face on it, and it's just -- it's mighty weird to see him put the angela merkel card down and reach towards the stack for putin. i don't get that. >> it's pretty incredible stuff. jon meacham? >> says a lot of practiced psychiatry without a license, a

theory for you to treect it. what's the role of misogyny? does merkel remind him of hillary? does that help explain the theresa may issue? he does not have a particularly healthy relationship, it seems, with a lot of strong women. what do you think? >> you know, i -- i'm going to be careful about -- about venturing towards the couch, but i do think that we see in donald trump an affinity for the big guy. you know? the guy who's like donald trump. there's something about him and kim jong-un as they're walking past the furled north korea and american flags and you think -- there's something similar in these two. you see that when he's with xi jinping. i'm sure we'll see it with vladimir putin. he keeps saying over and over gn i respect vladimir putin. he said about boris johnson a rough, tough unpredictable

british politician. he's a friend of mine. sort of like, he's one of the guys. so, you know, theresa may, angela merkel are not one of the guys. they're not in this circle he regards as friendly. beyond that, i'm not -- i wouldn't be, dare to guess. >> all right. ambassador burns, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. we'll be very, very hopeful to talk to you again as this plays out. coming up, when it comes to the president's trade war, what's another $200 billion? turns out a lot. at least for the american workers bearing the brunt of it. we'll talk about the new tariffs the white house is eyeing against china. we'll be right back. metastatic breast cancer is relentless,

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all of this comes at a time of increased economic anxiety as the trump administration escalating the mounting trade war with china by publishing a list of $200 billion worth of chinese goods that it proposes to hit with an additional 10% tariff. china yesterday criticized the new threat as totally unacceptable and will take

necessary countermeasures. the latest round of proposed tariffs would deepen the trade war between the u.s. and china and include everything from fish to luggage. senate finance chairman orrin hatch called the new tariffs reckless and not a targeted approach in a statement, and senator jeff flake told reporters he has reached an agreement with gop leadership to get a non-binding vote to instruct negotiators on a spending bill to give congress more authority over the president's ability to implement tariffs for national security reasons. the arizona senator says he expects a vote today. kasie what do we expect on capitol hill? given everything. >> reporter: the -- the fundamentals of the republican party as many of these senators have known it for decades are being day in and day out challenged. it seems as though we are finally starting to see some concrete action on the floor of the senate, but you have to remember that this is basically

the least intense version of what they could do. a non-binding vote to instruct people to put an amendment in a spending bill, yes, it does send a symbolic signal and we shouldn't underestimate the previous lack of willingness to do even that, but this is not something that is actually going to make a material difference. it doesn't seem at this point to the president's power to do this, and free trade and tariffs on the one hand and nato and our global alliances on the other have been two bedrock principles of the republican party until president trump, and the restructuring that is going to have to go on here, i'm just not sure where these politicians go. do they have a home anymore? they feel the party is the party of trump, they have to go along with that because he's so popular with his voters, but such disagreement on what are such fundamental and important issues. >> the thing is, though, jon meacham, again, i've always been

shocked by politicians in washington who act like the reality they're living in today will forever be the reality. donald trump will leave office at some point, and when he does leave office, these republicans are going to have a hell of a lot to answer for. i remember during george bush's second term criticizing his foreign policy and criticizing his deficit spending, and the massive debts he was racking up, and conservatives were attacking me. suggesting i wasn't sufficiently conservative, two, three years later. suddenly bush leaves town, and they have to defend all the things -- so that's why barack obama got elected president and there were 59 democrats elected to the united states senate. history moves on. donald trump will move on. all of this will be mud on their face they will have to deal with for a very long time. >> yeah. and they're all looking at --

not all of them, particularly in the south, most, red states are looking at numbers that are boggling their minds. which is an extraordinarily high level of approval rating for the president in the republican party itself. and so they're trapped between this momentary fever that i think the country -- many parts of the country and certainly many parts of the -- i hate to say the republican party. because it's especially been captured by trump and has become, a wholly owned subsidiary at this point, but it take as certain amount of imagination. it takes a lot of courage, to do what you're talking about. which is to transcend the reality of that number and to think, how am i going to be judged in five years, ten years, 20 years? as opposed to this week? you have to do that, because the people we talk about are the one whose do that. >> but here's the thing. the thing that's frustrated me

with republicans for the past several years. it's not that hard. i've told this story before of -- of being attacked for cutting medicare. the rate of growth in medicare, and i was getting attacked by the democratic opponent, and it was a lose-lose issue in 1996. but i got so angry at the demagoguery, because the medicare trustee said we had do it. what it did? did made the entire campaign a referendum on why we had to cut the rate of increase on medicare to save medicare. >> uh-huh. >> guess what happened? glen bolger with public opinion strategies called me before the election and told me i had the highest approval rating among senior voters than he had ever seen across america. because i was great now. because i told them the truth.

1995, at the height of the gingrich revolution. >> yeah. >> i was in a town hall meeting where people were screaming and yelling about common law marriage between gay men in vermont. this is something where i could have thrown red meat out and we -- we would have been devoured. i said, wait a second. why do we care about what gay men are doing in vermont? we don't want to tell them what to do in vermont any more than we want them to tell us what to do in northwest florida. >> right. >> people started clapping. you can move voters. you don't have to run scared, but you've got to take it on. right? >> harry troop han the best line about this. which is -- demagogues kel -- >> an easy one.demagogues -- yo thinking about truman, weren't you? >> i was. >> truman said demagogues tell lies again and again and people

leave them, were ut if you tell the truth again and again people will go along with you. i've said this before. to go to your point. people need to think about the oil portrait test. what are we going to think when we look at their all like that because they can't imagine an idea where we're not gazing at their portrait. you don't want to be joe mccarthy. still ahead, we know the president's stance on nato. former secretary of homeland security michael chertoff disagrees with his take, among other people. plus, nbc's andrea mitchell. "morning joe" is coming right back. ♪

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blistering attack, not only against nato -- america's premier ally and alliance since 1947 -- he specifically began attacking germany in what could only be seen as david ignatius said as vladimir putin's greatest dream, donald trump in front of the world continued to try to undermine our alliance

with nato. and again jon meacham, an alliance that which begun in the rubble of the second world war in 20 years and an alliance that has held russia in check and kept them out of western europe since 1947. >> the great wise man able harryman said after the war all americans wanted to do was come home and drink coke, but harry truman and enough people around him realized that the road to global war had come through isolationism. and so there was a determined attempt to re-engage the world, to remain engaged in it so that we would not retreat behind fortress america, we would not, to coin a phrase, put america first, which had been the great phrase of the isolation

organization of the 1930s. we would remain engaged, and therefore isolationism would not return. this is -- and it was politically difficult, the marshall plan because truman knew it couldn't be called the truman plan because he wasn't popular. imagine the incumbent doing that. >> there's a lot of symbolism going on here, even the way the president entered this nato headquarters. he took a separate entrance. all the other world leaders taking the red carpet. really actually physically separating himself from our allies but also in the room at the meeting that we saw with the head of nato, secretary general, you could see really awkward body language with mike pompeo and john kelly at the end of the table. >> mike pompeo looking down. >> looking like they're enduring a horror show. anybody who has a sense of how difficult, important and valuable these strategic

alliances are, it is a pretty staggering, astonishing set of developments in the course of just a few minutes with this president in front of the cameras lord knows what happens when the cameraings were off, join the conversation, former undersecretary of state, host of andrea mitchell reports, andrea mitchell and new york times washington bureau chief elizabeth newmiller. good to have you all on board. david ignatius is still with us as well. >> rick, there are people who don't want us to draw historical parallels, but history does rhyme. the costs -- you have jon meacham talking about our need to be engaged after world war ii, the costs for an american first policy and by the way the raising of tariffs across the globe, in the 1920s, had such destructive effects in the 1930s that led to the greatest

depression in american history as well as the deadliest war other than our own civil war. >> yes. john said it well. it's a scary prospect. there was another wise man who once said the chief deliverable of the nato summit is cohesion. and what donald trump has in one fell swoop violated that this morning. it's a very, very scary prospect. to go back to what david was saying, vladimir putin's great goal is not only to disrupt nato but particularly to disrupt the relationship between germany and the united states. this is a dream come true for him. i mean, vladimir putin could have scripted donald trump's -- your father would be livid. >> this is exactly, mike barnacle, this is exactly what vladimir putin has sought since he's been in power over the past two decades. >> yeah. >> this is his dream. >> he has it. >> he has it. >> dream fulfilled.

he has it at many levels. one of the things that occurs to i think all of us here watching the initial tirade earlier today with the president and secretary general nato is the spew of facts coming from the president. we haven't obviously had time to ascertain whether they're valid or not, but one of the things we can do is nail down his constant tirade about nato nations not paying up. >> right. >> and they do. and the 2% goal, that's a goal, it's not supposed to be today. it's a goal set for 2026, but the facts coming from the president of the united states are seemingly always screwed. >> it is certainly true that american presidents and particularly american defense secretaries have gone to nato and complained that nato does not -- nato countries in europe do not contribute up to 2%. i can remember robert gates doing this and setting off

alarms in europe. he was the defense secretary, not the president. but for the president to do this in front of the nato secretary general who had gone around asking countries for more money and had been fairly successful is germany is now going to contribute up to 1.5% is just bewildering why he chose now to do it. i think perhaps he felt it was playing to a domestic audience in the united states. he sounded very egrieved talking about how the taxpayers, american taxpayers, have to do this and nato countries aren't paying their fair share. and i also think -- i do think there's a certain amount of politics in grievance here. trump knows certainly how unpopular he is in europe and how unpopular he is with the other world leaders and certainly does not have a good relationship with angela merkel. do not discount just this sort of impulsive nature of this and the anger he brings to this meeting. >> lots to play for you,

president trump, fulfilling putin's dream. take a look. >> i think it's very sad when germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with russia where you're supposed to be guarding against russia and germany and goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to russia. so we're protecting germany. we're protecting france. we're protecting all of these countries and then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with russia where they're paying billions of dollars into the coughers of russia. so we're supposed to protect you against russia but they're paying billions of dollars to russia. i think that's very inappropriate and the former chancellor of germany is the head of the pipeline company that's supplying the gas. it's ultimately germany will have almost 70% of their country controlled by russia with natural gas. so you tell me, is that

appropriate? i mean, i've been complaining about this from the time i got in there. should have never been allowed to happen, but germany is totally controlled by russia. >> i think it's something that nato has to look at. i think it's very inappropriate. you and i agreed that it's inappropriate. >> 29 nations and there are sometimes differences and different views and also some disagreements and gas pipeline from russia to germany is only issue allies disagree. but the strength despite these differences we have always been able to unit around our -- protect and defend each other. we are stronger together than apart. three world wars and cold war show we're stronger together than apart. >> how can you be together when you're getting your energy from the person you want protection against? >> because we understand when we stand together also dealing with

russia, we are stronger. i think what we have seen -- >> no, you're just making russia richer. you're not dealing with russia. you're making russia richer. >> during the cold war, nato allies were trading with russia and there had been disagreements about what kind of trade arrangements -- >> i think trade is wonderful. i think energy is a whole different story. i think energy is a much different story than normal trade. and you have a country like poland that won't accept the gas. you take a look at some of the countries, they won't accept it because they don't want to be captive to russia. germany, as far as i'm concerned is captive to russia because it's getting so much of its energy from russia. we're supposed to protect germany, but getting their energy from russia. explain that. you know that. >> oh. andrea mitchell, i'm going to let you choose where you want to begin with your analysis if you can put it into words.

>> it is so shocking. my first nato summit was to bond then the capital of germany with ronald reagan in 1982 and europe was aflame with attacks from the left wing against the deployment, the collective deployment of intermediate range missiles and they all stood together, reagan leading the way, and to see an american president there with his secretary of state speechless, the u.s. ambassador to nato, very strong and smart woman, former texas senator who is just speechless, obviously her commander in chief, her leader is sitting there and deriding germany. and john kelly, a retired general, watching this. it's just absolutely stoopfying that he would say germany is controlled as captive to russia and that would be his opening gam butt.

he is playing to this politic of grievance as he anticipates protests against him in london. he has to stay out of london because it's risky politically and perhaps for other reasons so he'll be going to windsor pal los a las and other places. his facts are wrong. as you all have been pointing out. and his politics are wrong. and it is just a disgrace for the united states to open the nato meeting like this. >> yeah. and david ignatius, again, it's important for those that are just joining, it's important for donald trump supporters, it's important for all americans to understand, it's important for people working in the trump white house to understand, actually ignorant of the facts that europe has a bigger defense budget than russia. europe as as big defense budget as china. europe has been a bastien against soviet aggression since

1947 and against putin's aggression since the turn of the century. and west germans always reminded us when ever we had problems from 1947 to 1989, they say we are your most loyal and faithful children. and of course we do what you tell us to do. we are standing at the gates of your berlin wall and we are your allies ready and waiting. donald trump, of course, doesn't remember that because he doesn't follow history. but that is the case. germany has been our most steadfast ally against russia since 1947. >> germany is the bedrock of this alliance that has been the centerpiece of american strategy for dealing with russia. we have to remember that germany

and other european countries have supported the sanctions that the u.s. proposed after russia invaded crimea, even though those sanctions cost the europeans, especially the germans a lot in terms of things they could sell, deals they could make, they stood by that policy partly because we asked them to and partly because they knew that russia potentially threatened them. when i watched these pictures of donald trump, the record arrive at that breakfast, i think back two weeks ago to all of the nato officials including the young stoltenberg and their prop rations, is there some way we can make it work out so we can have a good nato summit, so we can talk about all the good things we're doing? in fact, they are doing a lot of good things. they're put more troops east as trip wires to potentially challenge the russians if they were ever to move. they're continuing to support u.s. operations in afghanistan.

there's discussion of training troops in iraq to stabilize iraq. all these things that they had lined up as potential achievements president arrives, boom, it's like he knocked over a whole set of blocks. you can only imagine what stoltenberg, what our nato ambassador were thinking as they sat next to the president as he went through this. just one final point, we used this phrase before, but the world we grew up in was well described by one of the creators of nato and these great institutions. he said he was present at the creation. and watching this morning's footage, i think we all wondered whether we were present at the destruction, at the moment at which this began to come apart. >> you know, that's a critical question that david just raised. jon meacham, also two weeks ago, david was talking about two week ago, two weeks ago june 24th, it was the anniversary of the start of the berlin air lift.

and you look at what's happening today and you wonder, how much of your history has been lost because of our inadequacy here in teaching our own history to our children, how much of history is lost clearly among members of the united states senate who have no seemingly no frame of reference to what this country stands for, has stood for through generations and now here we are today and as david pointed out, perhaps with the president of the united states who has one foot out the door on leaving nato. >> yeah. if you don't know how we got here, it's very hard to understand what you value and what you don't value. we have a president of the united states who is entirely intuitive. he is like an open synaps. you could sort of hear in that

soliloquy this morning he at least opened a briefing book. so he had sort -- >> he didn't know who gar hard stroder was until he got into the briefing book. i promise. >> might be one of the world cup people. >> yeah. >> but so -- >> he thought -- >> he plays piano. >> he thought he was a little kid who played the piano. >> that's right. but i think that because he is a populist, open synaps, i'm sure against what he said will play extremely well for a lot of people. and because it kind of makes sense, right? yeah, they're getting gas from there. and that's the danger of this. so exactly to mike's point, if you don't put the frame on it, if you don't explain that this is how we prosper, we're in

trouble. >> but rick, we've talked about -- mr. undersecretary, we've talked about the trump side of this equation. we haven't talked about the democratic side of this equation. i'm so glad that we're a democracy and we're not a parliamentary system, but we need a leader of the opposition, be that leader a conservative or a moderate or a liberal to stand up and not defend europe's interests but defend america's interest and to say, it subpoena against america's interest, it is against your interest, it is against your family's interest, it is against your pocketbook's best interests to continue having a president that tears apart our most valuable military allies, our most important trading partners, the bull works against russian aggression.

this is an argument that would be so easy to make. and yet where are the democrats? i guarantee you this, if george w. bush had run against donald trump in 2016, he would have cut him to pieces in the first debate. but he is just laughing at him and mocking him. barack obama would have done the same. bill clinton would have wiped the floor with him. where is the democratic leader that can do that? where is the republican leader that can do that? >> it's a shame. there's a democratic leader who did it. he said he would pay any price, bear any burden to defend liberty around the world. that was john f. kennedy in his inaugural address. this is a core, core value that these leaders cannot embrace. it's very sad. i want to go back to one moment of history here. one of my last trips with the state department was to berlin. and it was during that time that mrs. merkel gave the speech

where she said the reason i've opened my arms to refugees, to these syrian refugees is because when i was a little girl during the berlin air lift in east berlin, i watched american planes come over and they had these tiny little parachutes of candy and food that came down to me. that taught me how nations can be generous. america does bear any burden historically. what trump doesn't understand is that we're not being taken. we're the generous nation that will actually give more to assure security, to assure peace. that's what a democrat has to say. that's what the republicans have to say. i just can't imagine there aren't people who are speaking out like we're speaking out now about trump disrupting what has been the greatest military alliance in the history of the world, that has kept the peace and keep prosperity for 75 years? >> and elizabeth, this post war world that so many brilliant people helped cobble together in 1945, '46, '47, it's not only

kept america safe and free and prosperous so we have the largest economy on the planet and it has been growing steadily since 1945, it's also put us in a position where we could have fed and freed more people across this planet than any other country. again, we have been a beacon to people like angela merkel, as a child, behind the berlin wall. we have been a beacon, we were beacon to dissidence in soviet russia. we have been a beacon to people across the world. and now it seems that we're about building walls and blowing up bridges. >> i just wanted to remind people that after 9/11, the nato countries invoked article 5, which was very big deal. article 5, as you know, attack against one nato countries is an attack against all. it's a very emotional moment at the white house when that

happened. that was not envisioned. article 5 was never envisioned to be invoked in that way. as we saw in afghanistan, nato countries joined in that defense with the united states. now, that was a long war. there was a lot of argument with nato countries about how much they were contributing over time, but that was an important moment for the nato alliance we shouldn't forget. and i think the worst case scenario for nato now is to see what happens with the meeting between trump and vladimir putin and helsinki. and if that goes well after what has happened in brussels, that will be something. >> wow. >> it is really -- i'm trying to think of what my father would say at this point. i think he would -- >> andrea, you covered dr. ber zin ski -- >> you know my parents and you know my father's strategic thinking. i'm scared to even try and put

into words what his analysis of this would be. there was -- you know what, a potential in this meeting and a lot of opportunity. my brother ian wrote a piece for the atlantic council on what positive could have come out of this. how do we describe the negatives here? >> it's really hard to describe. i was just thinking while you were talking before you mentioned it about what your father would be saying at this point and especially looking forward to the meeting with vladimir putin. i'm going to be covering that for you all in helsinki on monday morning. we'll all be together again. and it's all going to be happening right during these hours where he's going to be having a one-on-one meeting without note takers, without advisers. but actually given the role that john bolton and other advisers have played, i'm not sure there being there would make any difference. that role of national security

adviser which your father occupied in the white house is so critical. now we understand whi h.r. mcmaster was fired because he could not have remained silent while this was going on. there is no one around this president who is willing to speak up to him. and that is what's so shocking. i really worry about defense secretary mattis who is in brussels. >> i do, too. >> he must just be gagging on his breath. >> looking at angela merkel's transcription here, the translation to the comments that she made just moments ago, i've experienced myself a part of germany controlled by the soviet union and very happy today that we are united in freedom as the federal republic of germany and can thus say we can determine our own policies and make our own decisions and that's very good. >> you know, joe, let me ask you something, i am constantly and

continually bewildered by the president of the united states. we just saw a group of children being rescued from a cave in thailand. the world was thrilled to see it. and here in america, we are taking children from their parents. >> yep. let's not forget the separation policy. >> should we no longer recognize their mothers when put together with them. we have a country where the president of the united states is separating himself from the rest of the world seemingly. where are the people in public life who stand up and ask the question, whose country is this? is it donald trump's or is it our's? >> well, we talked about history and now historians will remember this moment. it's hard, mike, every time something like this happens, it's hard to not turn to members of donald trump's own party,

again, trump a lifelong democrat, became a republican when he figured out racerism, birtherism in 2011 would help him win the nomination. where are they? i know they had a vote in the senate. fantastic. but i'll tell you if i were there, i would be rounding up a group of people, we would go down to the white house or we would give a press conference as republicans in front of the capital defending nato and calling out the president for his comments. do you know how hard that is? it's not hard at all. and do you know what happens in your district, i found it helps you in your district. this is what i don't understand about these cowards. every time i spoke out against my own leadership or against democratic leadership, my poll

numbers went up because people want somebody who speaks their mind. they want somebody who is independent. they want somebody who is not scared. these people are cowards. >> so now we're at the point where they would rather lose the country than lose their own election. >> they are more concerned about what happens this fall than they are with what's happening with what's happening with an alliance, again, that has made america the strongest, the most powerful, the most free country on the planet. forget the fact that we have fed and freed more people than any country in the history of the world. let's just be selfish about this. we have a $19 trillion economy. the post war period has been defined as one. the american century.

not the luxembourg century or the french century. because of what we have done in setting up this system, this post war system, historians called this the american century. and you know what, despite our political problems, still is, we still are the most powerful country in the world militarily by tenfold, 20 fold. we're still the most powerful economy in the world. and by the way, we were the day barack obama left office. we were the day george w. bush left office. we were the day bill clinton left office. so why blow this apart unless you are trying to help vladimir putin? >> to go to something mike just said, donald trump is the most vivid manifestation of the least

attractive characteristics in the national character. we haven't been captured by donald trump. we have had our worst instincts affirmed, exacerbated and put in front of the world. i think to suggest that somehow or another he has hijacked the country, lets the rest of us off the hook because right now the kind of courage you're talking about is required not simply of people who are in elective office but all of us. it's why conversations like this matter. jefferson said men should be participatories in congress not only in congress or elections but everyday. the only way to get through this hour of crisis, it is a crisis in the classic sense we know at the end of it whether the patient lives or dice, crisis is supposed to be that important, life or death matter, health crisis, health moment, the

country has fully the capacity to do the wrong thing. the wondrous thing about the country is that at least 51% of the time when we have actually let those better angels win, we have opened the arms, we have dropped berlin, we used the berlin air lift, we have colin powell saying we have gone around the world protecting our power, the only thing we asked for is the ground to bury our dead. >> and elizabeth, donald trump is succeeding in undermining the international american order because there is nobody in his own party pushing back at him. there's nobody in his cabinet pushing back at him. i saw a video a couple days ago of a woman who put on a puerto rico shirt and was abused, followed around by a racist while a cop just sat there and did nothing.

that's what the republican party has done. it would be very easy to intercede and step in and stop this. the republicans just choose to do so. >> i saw bob corker said some things yesterday about nato and they did pass a resolutions yesterday, i believe, firming support for nato. i also want to address jon meacham when he talked about our better angels and talk about this is not the separation of families. but i would like to note that because of the courts who says that the judge out in west coast says that the trump administration can't hold families for more than 20 days and because of the pressure from the public and the president's executive order, what we have now with our immigration crisis is that families are being -- we're back to catch and release under the obama administration. so i think if the things work in the country, that there is a system of checks and balances, however imperfect, families are

not being separated, they're being kept together for 20 days and being given court dates and being released into the country. whether you want that or not, we're back to what the obama administration considered a somewhat more humane policy. the bottom line is some ways the things are working in the country the way their supposed to. >> we'll see. some families are dysfunctional. we'll see what happens with donald trump. >> that's very true. >> andrea mitchell, two of my favorite columns in the age of trump, he was no fan of donald trump, one ended with the words the system lives. and in that column, he talked about all the things that donald trump did, all the breaches of constitutional norms that he practiced daily. and then talked about the four or five institutions, the press

or congress or the bureaucracy that pushed back hard, and that has happened for the most part. donald trump has been held in check. but as you know better than anybody in your year's covering presidents and foreign policy, a commander in chief is given such wide latitude that the damage that he can cause on the international stage is obviously far greater. >> indeed. and we don't have those checks and ambulanbalances in a real s. over time in elections you do. that's why helsinki and putin will be so fraught with high risk, especially because of the way the president launched his opening salvo at nato. we could have predicted it because of the way he left when he was heading to air force base yesterday. his departure remarks were so

aggressive against nato. one thought perhaps on the plane he might have read the briefing and been briefed. perhaps somebody could have talked to him. but instead, i think he got ramped up. this opening was tactical. there's no question. that he was beating up on stoelten berg in a deliberate way. he was playing to the camera and he knew what he was doing. i can only think that he was setting on a trajectory that we're going to see throughout this meeting in brussels. and it's only going to further soil his like. he is determined to blow up an alliance as america created as you pointed out there at the creation. we are now witnessing what could be the destruction. i have to think that the alliance and that history is

stronger and more durable as our friend charles wrote. >> david, i don't say this dispairagingly. you've been around a long time. >> boy, a long time. by the way, mike, david has been around long enough to remember -- >> come on -- >> when washington had a baseball team that was a contender. >> yeah, that was a long time ago, too. >> boy, we love the senators. >> seriously, david, have you ever seen anything like this? >> i never have seen a moment like this in which president of the united states deliberately sets out to undermine the alliance the united states needs. i never have seen it. i never could have imagined it. donald trump is a human wrecking ball. and he likes doing this. he thinks this is success. and we have to say that he is now as president in 18 months

succeeded in many of his foreign policy goals of undoing the foreign policy achievements that were built up over so many years and decades. and he will move into the next phase now as he meets with russian leader vladimir putin and tries to come up with a new structure for the u.s./russia relationship. it's a dangerous time. i was reading yesterday trump's inaugural speech. and you go back to that speech. it's not as if this has been sneaking up on us. it's been coming right at us. he said in that speech, you know, american carnage, we're a mess, everything is going wrong in this country. and people have been taking advantage of us and stealing our money and making us pay for the defense. i'm going to change all that. he couldn't have been clearer when he came into office and he

is now accomplishing those things one by one. and as joe said earlier, we're a democracy. people get a chance to speak up and say, no, that's not the way i want our country to go. i don't want us to trade in alliance with germany for an alliance with authoritarian russia. people get to make that choice. and we need to keep talking about the way the choices appear. but it's not as if this is a surprise or something that snuck up from behind. he's been saying he's going to do this and now he's done it. >> you're watching the official handshakes at the nato summit in brussels, belgium. and these official moments precede the family photo that will happen in a short time. of course we saw the last one at the last summit and it was absolutely fascinating with i believe the president shoving the leader of montenegro to the side. today has already proved to be

incredibly packed with drama and astonishing developments. we're told president trump will be coming out to shake the hand of the u.n. secretary general any moment now. >> nato. >> nato secretary general, excuse me. and that is, of course, if he chooses to stay with the program. he did not stay with the program in terms of his entrance. he chose not to walk the red carpet and came in a different entrance, perhaps symbolically separating himself from the allies. >> so, rick, we saw angela merkel walk across the stage. we've seen theresa may. we saw her when she entered. and there is, of course, as a backdrop of donald trump's populism and his approach to sort of the recking of the international order that this country helped build since 1945.

there are other countries that when you talk about poland, whether you talk about bulgaria, whether you talk about austria, other countries in central europe and eastern europe, who are also going through some fairly turbulent times while angela merkel and theresa may right now are struggling to keep their coalitions in power. >> and by the way, trump is single handedly trying to unravel theresa may's government. the insane thing he said about boris johnson, he really, really likes me. i'm a good friend of his. i want to go back to what you were saying before, joe, about are we returning to this period of isolationism in the '20s and '30s that americans didn't realize we were tied to tres of the world. we were much more isolated in the '20s and 30s than we are

now. our entire economy is bound to the rest of the world. unfortunately donald trump voters don't quite understand that. the fact that donald trump was attacking -- speaking of germany, speaking of bmw. >> in south carolina. >> largest plant in the world is in spartanburg, south carolina. those american workers were not happy there. >> that shows a profound ignorance of what you know what's on the ground because any southerner knows that bmw has led to the renaissance of south carolina since carol campable. >> i drove by on sunday the volkswagen plant in chattanooga, tennessee, 5, 6,000 jobs brought there by a young mayor named bob corker, sort of a successor to lamar and he brought in nissan.

north american headquarters of nissan is about 10 miles from my house in nashville. it's a global economy. the fact that we have to say this is embarrassing. fdr said that every word that comes to the air, every ship that sails at sea does shape the american future. and it was true in 1940, '41. it's even more true now because of the pace of it and the integrated nature of our economic lives. but here we are watching this sound of music production. >> here we go with president trump now. >> walking across the blue carpet to shake the hand of the nato secretary general. >> president of the republic of lithuania, excellentsy. >> i certainly appreciated the

diplomacy that the head of nato tried to show president trump this morning after facing string of insults. he actually credited the president with having nato members increase their military spending when, in fact, the reality is that that's been happening for four years now. that began under barack obama. that began soon after bob gates began pressuring nato to do just that. and still, diplomats will be diplomats and they are doing their best to try to deal with american president who appears to be doing his best to do the bidding of vladimir putin. >> and stoltenberg has come here, met with the president in the oval office, has tried so hard to warm trump up and persuade him of nato's inherent advantage for the united states and of what they are doing. the irony is that the president

trump could have come here and took a victory lap and take credit for what started under bob gates and barack obama and some of their predecessors getting the nato members to stand up and meet these goals for 2024 as germany and others have. he could have come in and said that they are doing this because of my pressure. and instead, he came in his ha ranging form and tried to blow the whole thing up. and you have to admire stoltenberg for trying to put the best face on it, but he has the most difficult job right now. you can only imagine what angela merkel is thinking. you think back to the history of nato and how these summits used to be held in bahn. reagan standing at the gate and saying tear down this wall, mr. gorbachev. i was there. it was one of the most incredible impressions, moments i ever experienced as a

correspondent. and now to see this wreckage taking place with our commander in chief supposedly, it really is shocking. >> andrea mitchell, thank you. we'll be watching andrea mitchell reports at 12:00 p.m. right here on msnbc, wouldn't miss it, especially today. elizabeth, thank you for being on the show. >> elizabeth, can i ask you, do people come up to you on the streets because of this fast pace, this moving documentary, do kids come up screaming asking for autographs of you? >> actually it happened over the weekend in brooklyn. i will tell you one person came up to me. i was shocked. that was it. >> by the way -- >> you should not be surprised it was in brooklyn. >> you were very kind to give us a tour of the news room. >> thanks. >> and i must say, the pace was a little bit slower that day than it is editing of this documentary. >> as they say, they make it

very exciting. one of our news clerks says that he called and said i'm having a salad at union station. do you think the documentary crew could come and film it and make it very exciting. so, yeah, we take your point. >> got it. still ahead -- thanks so much. a group of -- still ahead on "morning joe" a group of former foreign ministers is urging the president to in an open letter to reverse what it calls the dangerous trend of america's deteriorating relationship with its western allies. that trend, of course, includes the president's increasingly blatant overtures to vladimir putin. we'll talk about the implications with the former secretary of homeland security, michael chertoff. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. - i love my grandma. - anncr: as you grow older, your brain naturally

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we need to absolutely stand firm with our nato allies and the transatlantic partnership in general. i think what would be really disastrous would be for us to have a negative nato meeting and

then do something with putin that further destabilizes the relationship. hopefully what will happen is, you know, that we'll have a good nato meeting and that the putin meeting will almost be a non-event as far as any commitment is made. >> that was the chairman of the foreign relations committee, senator bob corker speaking yesterday, not exactly sure how the senator would describe a negative nato meeting, but humiliating american allies right out of the gate might qualify. joining us now someone who might be able to add to this conversation, we're all a little stunned and speechless, former department of homeland security michael chertoff. he is out with a book. we will get to that in a moment because it's all related ultimately. >> it is. >> how do you put into words the damage that is unfolding at the

nato summit? and is there any other way to explain the president's i call it sort of carrying out putin's dream and his performance. any other way to read that an as directly as a favor to putn? >> well, first of all, for a number of administrations people have urged nato to step up more and do more spending. and actually they're moving in that direction. and of course as i think someone mention eed earlier in the show they stood should to shoulder with us after 9/11 in afghanistan. i think things are progresses what the alliance is doing in the right way. why the president is choosing to come in with guns blazing, i don't know whether that's a negotiating tactic to try to drive more behavior than he wants or whether it's simply expresses some kind of emotional reaction. i think what was very helpful was to have a virtually unanimous senate vote endorsing

nato. i do think the europeans understand that that relationship we have with them is an enduring relationship. it's not something that's going to come and go with a single president. >> mike? >> but you worked for a president of the united states who had his ups and downs, like all do. but this is the first time i think in at least my memory, maybe the country's history, where we have had a president of the united states who appears on the world stage next to other global leaders with a grievance, a public grievance on his shoulder. what's your reaction to that? >> well, you know, first of all, i agree with you. there were ups and downs with president bush, but he certainly never took a position that was antagonistic, although he stood his ground on certain issues. again, this is a stylish shoe. i can't explain why donald trump chooses to come out with a certain kind of persona. what i can say, though, again is that the organs of government themselves and the relationships between the europeans and the americans at the intelligence level and the defense level are

very, very strong. even in the worst periods of the relationship under president bush when there was some real hostility about iraq, we still worked very well together at the operational level, and i'm sure that's going to continue. >> jon meacham. >> i want to ask, as you served on the front line of collective security, particularly in the new asymmetrical era, do you think moments like this impact our intelligence services capacity to share information, our capacity to work together to keep us protected? >> actually the good news is i don't think it does. there was a lot of antagonism president bush after the iraq war started and yet operationally we had very close relationships with our counterparts all over europe. i don't expect that to change. so i'm not saying it's a good thing to have this level of public friction, but at the day to day working level, i think we continue to have a good relationship. >> i want to get to the book,

but i'm curious your thoughts on the president's separation policy, separating children from families. there are several thousands children, some say up to 3,000 that were separated and we've got certain numbers coming in from different news organizations about some very small children who they may not be able to reunite with their parents. it's all very complicated. but do you think the policy had a plan to track these children in a way that was effective? or do we have some questions here that this policy wasn't thought out and might have been purely political? >> the planning is there and i think that's why they're having difficulty reuniting people. i don't know what the genesis of this was but it looks like it was put in place very quickly and as a consequence, the issues about how do you track people, how do you verify what the family relationships are, those things do not appear to have been in place when they started this problem. i can tell you that in general

when you have any kind of initiative, it always takes people think it does. obviously what they're doing now is paying the price for the lack of a front end policy. and i hope they can figure out a way to get this reunification done as quickly as possible. >> well, it's to me so unbelievably not who we are that it's hard to fathom this is happening. >> so can i pivot to the book? i know you want to talk about it. >> please do. >> i'm going to ask in the weeds question and you can ask it in a quick way. one of the things that i encountered in governments part of the post snowden era, countries like russia passing data localization laws where they say any data you take from someone in our country has to pass through a server in our country so those people have access to that data. i know you're writing about privacy and people are thinking about privacy here, but what is the global implication of that kind of thing both for everyone on the planet and for u.s.

citizens? >> you put your finger on what is a real challenge because data is global. it does not respect physical boundaries. our laws are based on physical boundaries. that tension exists in a lot of areas now as we try to reconcile the idea if with an open and free internet with increasing intent by some countries to control information within their borders, particularly as it relates to their own citizens. we have to decide, do we want a real global internet or do we want a series of little national nets which would really undercut the economic and social value of what the internet is. >> david ignatius has a question. david? >> i want to ask secretary chertoff about one issue that may be on the agenda in helsinki when president trump and president putin meet, and that is the idea of global cyber regime, of global set of rules and standards administered

through the united nations or some international organization. the russians, as you know, secretary chertoff have been pushing this idea for the last few years. last few years. a lot of americans resist the idea that russians and chinese would write the rules for everybody. what do you think? >> first of of all, i do think we need to have some global rules, a kind of -- what microsoft has described as a geneva convention in cyberspace. we need to reinforce the idea that the fact we're operating in cyberspace does not mean you can attack civilians or undermine civil institutions. on the other hand, the question is who administers this? the russians and the chinese often want to have it be the u.n. because they believe they can dominate that process. i'm afraid that would take us down a road where there would be a lot of censorship. i know they view it as ideas they don't like to hear.

i think most western states want a multi-stake model where you get not just governments but civil society and even technical people involved in governing in kind of an incremental way. >> interesting waets going on there. you look at prime minister erdogan and trump walking together. just thought i would point that out because he seems to have done some things in the early hours of all of this happening in front of the cameras that appear to be for putin. and coming in from a separate entrance, possibly symbolic to separate himself. and now seemingly clustering a little bit with turkey's prime minister. it's fascinating. >> he's drawn to tough guys. mr. secretary, i realize you've been stepped away from an official capacity for quite a while, but i have a feeling that most americans would be stunned at the amount of money, billions, that american companies pay to prevent cyber

attacks against them. but we live in a world, we're in a threat of constant cyber attacks. i understand the removal in time from your office, but who are the top three, four, five practitioners, really good practitioners of cyber warfare in the world that we have to cope with? >> first of all, i think we certainly are as good as anybody. but we're dealing with the russians and the chinese. the chinese have been prolific in stealing sintellectual property over the years, though they've dialed it back a bit. the russians are responsible for a tax on the ukraine, a tax on us. there is disclosure that malicious tools have been found on our critical infrastructure. then you have north korea and iran who are not as capable, but they're more malicious and more unrestrained. the truth is you can buy a lot of bad stuff now on what they call the dark web. so these countries, although they're not at the level of a

russia or china, do have the ability to acquire some serious cyber weapons, and i think that's another concern. >> can we keep up with this? it's a constant daily battle, i would imagine. >> i think we are technically as good or better than anybody. but the problem is we're playing defense. it's an asymmetric game where the attacker just has to attack once. also not every enterprise sin vested as they should be in cyber security. it's a little like being a hockey goalie and you're getting a lot of free shots on goal, and that makes it very difficult to defend. >> we're watching, i believe, the setup for the family photo as they call it, and i see president trump having some pleasant conversation -- sort of pleasant -- she's kind of like, uh-huh, uh-huh. yep. yep, i'm really trying not to look at him and talk to him, but

he keeps coming back at me. i'm just going to look straight ahead here and hope the conversation stops. fascinating dynamics leading up to this photo being taken. president trump, of course, has certainly made waves in the first few hours of the nato summit, culminating in this picture, preceded by him entering and hanging out and walking with turkey's prime minister erdogan. and before that deciding to enter the nato headquarters from a different entrance than all the other world leaders were using. and before that, his performance before the cameras addressing nato's secretary general about germany. and it really -- by all estimates, everybody here on the set and andrea mitchell and all those who have been covering these summit for decades, astonished is a word to use to

describe the reaction that we are seeing among top foreign policy analysts. and also really no other explanation for what could have been behind what he was saying except that he was doing everything, seemingly, to please vladimir putin. which, really, i'm stretching my brain here, david ignatius, to think of what other intention would be other than what he said before the cameras about germany. >> i think this president likes to cause instability, who likes to create an uproar. he thinks that's advantageous before going to a key meeting with vladimir putin in helsinki. he thinks, strangely, that this will give him the appearance of strength that he's willing to diss his key allies and he'll come to the meeting with putin

in stronger shape. i have a feeling that the script for the putin meeting will be to write some new rules for places like syria, begin to write them for ukraine independent of our nato allies. it's going to be putin and trump who are getting the job done. he loves that role. up there with another big guy, whether it's xi jinping or kim jong-un and now putin writing the rules. i must say writing these pictures, you see him with clenched teeth, sort of scowling with everybody. he talks stiffly with other leaders, but there is a sense that this isn't a club he wants to be part of. i bet you anything we'll see a lot more presidential smiles when he's in helsinki with vladimir putin. fancy that. >> he doesn't like to share a stage, clearly. it's all about him.

mr. secretary, when you were there, ms-13 is quite a thing the president likes to talk about. it was on your screen, ms-13, as clearly as huge as it is on president trump's screen? >> it was on our screen and we were concerned about what was going on in the u.s., but a bigger problem was this. as we deported people back to their home countries after they served prison terms, they were received by places that didn't have the ability to manage the influx. or you had el salvador receiving ms-13 members, and all of a sudden they have the responsibility to police them and they don't have the capability. one of the things you have to look at when you see our refugee and our immigration policy is the solution begins not in the u.s. but in central america. you know, we need to have the ability of these countries to build a policing capability and deal with the gangs where

they're actually gestating because that's what's driving the refugees and creating our problem. this is a system problem, not a u.s. problem. >> can you look at this picture and all the dynamics we're covering between the key leaders we're looking at on this stage. >> once upon a time, and always until now, america was the anchor of nato, right? and now he's the outlyer. he's standing outside everybody and everybody is thinking he's this -- to use the phrase from this morning -- the kind of wrecking ball for nato. can i ask the secretary a question? go back to your book since they're standing still. one of the things we worried about were domestic attacks on the u.s.

the rise of isis messaging which is what i dealt with. what happens when people around the world who doesn't like muslims, wants to decrease muslims in america. does that increase the likelihood of an attack by an extremist islamic group? >> it does, because somehow it says the narrative is oppressed and they end up striking back. we're going to see rise extreme right wing and left wing violence. when you dial up the rhetoric and you use language that's aggressive and hateful, that empowers a certain segment of society to act out. just the way we did in the '60s where we show extreme right and left violence, i'm afraid we'll start to see an uptick of things we've seen, for example, in charlottesville. >> well, we're watching the

family picture, and some families, as joe pointed out, are quite dysfunctional. what a time it is. we're watching president trump now at the nato summit. we have an interesting dynamic where the president is insulting in a bold-faced way our allies, but 97 members of the u.s. senate passing a resolution to support nato with only two "no" votes, and of course senator mccain not able to vote. it is the top of the hour. with us we have msnbc contributor mike barnacle, columnist and associate editor of the "washington post," david ignatius, foreign public of state michael chertoff. david, the resolution patssed b

the senate, how symbolic is that to the world, or does it not have a lot of weight given the gravity of the situation? >> i think it is a reminder that donald trump is not the only voice in america, but he's certainly the strongest. it's symbolic. looking at the class picture of all those leaders standing together, i kept thinking if we were going to put a caption underneath donald trump, it would say, does not play well with others. that's really a problem. this is a president who, in a collective alliance that's all about interdependence, shared security doesn't play well with others. he gets angry at them. he's jealous. if one is making too much money in trade, he wants to beat them down. if they're not contributing enough to this or that, he insists on haranguing them. the spirit of nato collected action is still very much alive in our congress. so many senators and congressmen

have attended nato meetings in europe. the people who sign that resolution, i think, have a personal, intimate sense of what this alliance means. senator reid was one of the principal authors of senator mccain is a perfect example. john mccain goes to europe many times every year, and if there is a symbol for europeans of what the durable american commitment to their security is, it is senator john mccain, ailing now with his very serious brain cancer. but, boy, there is a person who kept this alliance going and symbolized personally what it meant for several generations of europeans. >> another word about john mccain, i was lucky enough to know him not only when i was in office to work with him, but also to travel with him to the munich security conference a few times, and he was really a beacon to the europeans and to

the world about what the u.s. meant. and he also tut ored and educatd a lot of members of congress and got them involved and engaged and that's a very strong part of the enduring relationship between our allies in europe and the united states. >> and when he was in munich or any other place in the world, i think other world leaders knew that what he said, his word was good. >> yep. >> what's confounding about this, i've been to nato meetings. what's great about a nato meeting, boy, people embrace you. you're the star of the party. it's a great feeling to be behind the flag at a nato meeting and think, yes, we've been the ballast of this, we've been the foundation of this. and people are grateful. the fact that the president is so ungrateful and so animated is a terrible thing for the united states. >> the picture is interesting. if you look at most members of

the nato countries, especially the european nato countries, each of the heads of those governments know that in their countries, there are american cemetaries with young men dead since 1945. and it's american territory, it's maintained by the government services administration, our government. there are beautiful plots of land in each and every country in europe. and guess what we did after world war ii, after we left our dead, after we buried our dead? we came home. we did not put a claim on their country, on their land. we came home. that's america. >> what's the colin powell quote, john? >> protected power around the world, sacrifice blood of our young men and all we've ever asked in return is the ground in which to bury our dead. >> and that's what this country has been about.

again, since 1945 we have stood side by side with britain. as i said before, rick, germany coming under withering attack today by the president, but the west germans from 1945 through 1989 with the collapse of the berlin wall, the west germans stood on the front line of that twilight struggle. they have been our closest allies militarily and strategically for years. >> and the unification of germany was one of the great post-war achievements that was led by american diplomacy. that changed the world for better in so many ways that it was just kind of incalculable. by the way, people didn't necessarily think it was going to happen. >> by the way, a lot of people didn't want it to happen. george h.w. bush had to use all

diplomatic skills that he had to unite germany. >> and the main person or entity that didn't want it was russia. russia always wanted a divided, split-up germany on its border, and the fact that this was their nightmare come true and the dream come true, as mika was saying, was to have an american president in germany criticizing germany is just -- i mean, david ignatius is too good a novelist to even put that in one of his columns. >> it would be crazy if he wrote it. it would be too crazy. >> nobody would believe it, would they? >> they would think it was pre p preposterous. come on. >> we have a great clip of president ronald reagan on the right way to talk about germany.

but first, our president, keep your eye wpinpointed on his chif of staff john kelly and secretary of state mike pompeo, because their body language is fascinating. >> also, kay bailey hutchinson also looks more than a bit uncomfortable. >> here is the president of the united states. >> i think it's very sad when germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with russia where you're supposed to be guarding against russia, and germany goes out to pay billions and billions of dollars a year to russia. we're protecting germany, we're protecting france, we're protecting all of these countries, then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with russia where they're paying billions of dollars into the coffers of russia. we're supposed to protect you against russia, but they're paying billions of dollars to russia, and i think that's very inappropriate. and the former chancellor of

germany is the head of the pipeline company that's supplying the gas. ultimately germany will have almost 70% of their country controlled by russia with natural gas. you tell me, is that appropriate? i mean, i've been complaining about this from the time i got here. it never should have been allowed to have happened. but germany is totally controlled by russia. i think it's something that nato has to look at. i think it's very inappropriate. you and i agreed that it's inappropriate. >> there are sometimes differences and different views and also some disagreements on the gas pipeline from russia to germany. it's a small issue in which allies disagree. but we've always been able to unite to protect and defend each other because we stand stronger together than apart. we have two world wars and a

cold war and we are stronger together than apart. >> how can you be together when a country is getting its energy from the person you want protection against or from the group that you want protection? >> because we understand that when we stand together also in dealing with russia, we are stronger. i think what we have seen -- >> you're just making russia richer. you're not dealing with russia, you're making russia richer. >> even during the cold war, nato allies were trading with russia and there have been disagreements on what kind of trade arrangements we should have. >> i think trade is wonderful. i think energy is a whole different story. ic i think energy is a much different story than trade. you have a country that won't accept the gas. you take a look at some of the countries, they won't accept it because they don't want to be captive to russia. but germany, as far as i'm concerned, is captive to russia because it's getting so much of its energy from russia. so we're supposed to protect

germany, but they're getting their energy from russia. explain that. and it can't be explained, you know that. >> so, mr. secretary, there has been controversy behind this pipeline. and as a head of nato told donald trump, we have disagreements all the time. that's why we come here to talk through the disagreements. >> putting aside how this was expressed, there has been a concern about the fact that the russians use their gas, natural gas, as a lever to kind of drive behavior that they want to drive. and one of the solutions would be for us to export more of our liquid natural gas to europe which would create a counterbalance to the russians. so if one could strip out some of the hostility, there is actually a point to be made here about the geopolitics of energy that would be helpful both to us and to the europeans. >> so how does the united states export more? >> well, i think what we do is

we allow the regulations to permit us to do more exporting. for a long time we've been very constrained in our ability to export. we work with the europeans, if they're willing to sign contracts with us. that would then create a counterbalance to the russian use of their pipeline as a way of kind of exerting pressure. >> how do we do that in the middle of a trade war where we've racked europe with tariffs? >> that's where you have to get strategic. the big picture is to move power away from putin and back to europe and ourselves, and that way we're not dealing with steel which doesn't have an impact on the trade balance. we should be talking about energy and technology which is really our value position globally. >> let's compare trump's posture on germany to this, ronald

reagan and his nato allies in 1982 as he departed western germany. >> in berlin this morning, i looked across that tragic wall and saw the grim consequences of freedom denied. but i was deeply inspired by the courage and dedication to liberty which i saw in so many faces on the western side of that city. the purpose of my trip to bonn was to consult both with leaders of the german government and our colleagues from other nations. both aspects of the visit have been a great success. we didn't seek to avoid the problems facing the west in the coming years, we met them head on and discovered that, as always, what unites us is much deeper and more meaningful than any differences which might exist. >> john meacham. >> a different era, i think is

safe to say. and interesting -- ronald reagan came into office in 1981, as he himself put it, with a lot of people believing he was a combination of the mad bomber and ebenezer scrooge. there is a kind of center left acceptance of reagan and reaganism now that is, a, historical in the sense that it was not true in realtime. in 1982, '83, there were extraordinary demonstrations both in the united states and around europe by the deployment of the hrhing 2. so the idea there was this colleague before trump is not true. what is true is reagan was someone who came out of cultural populism, and as president reached beyond his base. he governed for the whole

country. he came in as a cold warrior who said -- the first week he was at the white house and said the soviet union lies and cheats to seek world domination. and in 1998, he's literally standing in red square playing with babies. he was a union negotiator. he understood that hope was a better bet than fear. president trump comes from a populist tradition here. he has shown no interest, and in fact, quite the opposite, in ever reaching out beyond his base. >> and, you know, mr. secretary, one thing that mark anbinder talked about in his book about ronald reagan was reagan was obsessed with understanding the soviets. he didn't quite understand why the soviets feared us as much as they did. so he read every book on the soviet union he could. he was constantly asking

experts, why do they fear us? what do we need to do? after he got shot, of course, we all know he felt like it was -- god had given him this time on earth to rid the world of the nuclear menace. and that's what he got to work on by trying to understand those with whom he disagreed. >> that would seem to be a good model for the 45th president as well. >> reagan had a positive vision. it wasn't just negative, it was how to reach something positive. and he had a strategic vision. and i think maybe to a greater degree than was appreciated at the time, he was somebody who listened and learned and was a thinker. i think that was a real strength that he had. i will say that if you look at the russians now, they still harbor that sense of fear and paranoia that goes back to the '80s. and what's been striking to me in the little bit of interaction i've had with them is how

generally convinced they are that we're out to undermine them, and in many ways they haven't lost that chip on their shoulder that you see back in the reagan era. >> mr. secretary, thank you so much for being with us. >> thank you, michael chertoff. >> and talk about a timely book, an important book. the book is "exploding data: reclaiming our cyber security in the digital age." a must read. thank you. president trump may think nato is a waste of time, but as we mentioned, 97% of the u.s. senate disagrees with the president of the united states. how lawmakers sent their own message to american allies just hours after the president touched down in europe. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. we do whatever it takes to fight cancer.

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the senate yesterday overwhelmingly passed a non-binding motion reaffirming the united states' commitment to the nato alliance. the 97-2 vote came just hours after the president landed in

belgium. the measure was authored by ranking member of the senate armed services committee, jack reed. >> the united states participates in nato because we believe the trans-atlantic partnership is in the u.s. national interest and not because other countries are paying us for protection. >> the motion reaffirms the u.s. commitment to nato as a community of shared values including liberty, human rights, democracy and the rule of law. in addition it calls for the u.s. to pursue an integrated approach to strengthen u.s. defense as part of a long-term strategy that uses all elements of u.s. national power to deter, and if necessary, defeat russian aggression. it also reiterates u.s. support for the rules-based international order and for expanding and enhancing our alliances and partnerships. senators rand paul and mike lee were the only two to vote against the motion. >> yeah.

wow. okay. caskasie hunt, that is the unit states senate sending as strong a message as possible to our nato allies, as well as to vladimir putin, talking about russian aggression in that language and also, you know, some of the republican senators that went over and were criticized for going over to russia actually, if you look at what was said in those meetings, there was confrontation about the russians interfering, meddling in our 2016 election. it seems the senate, at least, and some republicans in the senate, at least, except for mark lee and rand paul, thicnk it's a good idea to stand shoulder to shoulder with our european allies and stand out against regression. >> this reads to me like an attempt by the u.s. senate, republicans ask dnd democrats a, to send a message to our nato

allies, please try not to worry too much, we promise to keep the light on for you. as we move past this era, this is still something important to us. there were so many republicans who didn't want trump to get elected in the first place. they thought there would be a lot of problems and issues. i don't think any of them ever dreamed that it would be a serious question to ask -- mitch mcconnell got the question yesterday, do you think this president is going to pull us out of nato, the house we built. this is the western world the united states of america has been built after the cold war and it's been bedrock for all of our foreign policy, but particularly on the republican side. you look at ronald reagan at the end of the cold war. so the fact this vote was so overwhelming, the fact that it happened at all, jack reed, a democrat, they gave it to him and his counterpart, obviously, not here in washington, still battling brain cancer. but that is just an incredible signal and it comes from the top down. >> john meacham.

yes, it was the house we built, nato. the ignorance of donald trump and the ignorance of those who believe he somehow is showing those europeans, showing them what real leadership is about, again, only reveals an ignorance that the house that america built in europe we built for our own selfish interest. we built to protect our military troops, to stop a third european world war from occurring in 30 years. we did it to build strong trade partners. and what happened? we built strong trade partners. we kept germany, we kept italy, we kept france, we kept a lot of countries out of stalin's grasp after world war ii.

this, along with the truman doctrine, the morso plan. one of america's greatest investments ever. forget about the niceties of democracy and freedom, just cold, hard cash. so when donald trump is playing businessman over there, he's being a fool and tearing down the foundation of america's $19 trillion economy. >> yeah. when fdr was dictating the for-freedom speech in 1941 which was freedom for one, freedom from fear, he said we must fight to guarantee these freedoms everywhere in the world, everywhere in the world, everywhere in the world. he was dictating this. and harry hopkins, his great adviser, said, mr. president, i wouldn't say everywhere in the world because america doesn't give a damn about java. and hear truman came back and

said, the world is getting so small we have to care about java. we have to care about berlin. churchill said at harvard in 1943 that the price of greatn s greatness, america cannot have the long arm of history reach out across the oceans. so it's entirely in our self-interest. coming up on "morning joe," two of the top democrats on capitol hill, the ranking member on oversight and government reform, congressman elijah cummings. and the party's leading voice on the senate committee, senator bob menendez. "morning joe" is back in a moment. - i love my grandma. - anncr: as you grow older, your brain naturally begins to change which may cause trouble with recall.

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you're watching live pictures of president donald trump live at the north atlantic council and talking to leaders there, and it's been -- if you're just tuning in, it's been quite an eventful day, the president making headlines with one of the first meetings this early morning. making some blistering remarks

aimed at undermining germany, and again, right now it's looking like other summits that our president has attended. and continues a trend of being most abusive diplomatically to liberal democracies who have been our closest allies since the end of world war ii. and being, of course, most obseqious towards dictators and autocrats. which really, rick stengel, makes the next summit donald trump will be having with vladimir putin all the more important with the world all the more focused on whether an american president is really

going to undermine the nato alliance before going and embracing vladimir putin, a man who we said a few days ago would cause him his least worries. >> yes. if you bought a new spy novel and it opened with an american president going to a nato summit and attacking germany, you would probably put it down because it was too i am applaumplausible, never happen. but if it was the same novel, he would go to see putin who seeks to unravel nato and has a summit where they're hugging and kissing. it's just inconceivable. we were looking at ronald reagan in berlin in 1982 who talked about americans that died to protect our european allies, and ronald reagan would be so appalled at what donald trump is doing. it's absolutely inconceivable, and as mika said earlier can,

it's p -- it's putin's dream to see an american president attacking nato. >> we've seen them as an imminent threat to russia for some time just as the soviet union did as well. mike, making that bad spy novel all the more unbelievable about an american president doing the bidding, whether consciously or subconsciously for vladimir putin by undermining nato, would be the fact that that bad spy novel would begin with the president being investigated for possible collusion with vladimir putin and russia because, well, of the 13 russians that have been indicted, his national security adviser who was close to russia who has been indicted and is now cooperating, his campaign chairman who has been indicted and is now in jail with close ties to russia and russian

oligarchs, his deputy campaign manager also caught lying to the fbi. i mean, you could go down the list. and so that's all the backdrop for what we're seeing here. a president accused of being too close to vladimir putin and with suspicions raised about vladimir putin having something on him going to putin's bidding. this isn't a spy novel's work. you don't do it in the light of day, but donald trump does. >> as we were spelling out the gist of this preposterous spy novel which is all playing out in reality in our newspapers and newspapers around the world as we speak, one of the principal characters in the back story of this preposterous spy novel is seated three rows directly behind the president of the united states, and it is general james mattis, the secretary of defense, who has to, i imagine,

carry on a separate dialogue with other ministers from the nato countries, basically telling them, listen, i understand what happened this morning. i understand where our president is coming from, i understand your fears, but we are here. we will be there if article 5 is invoked. america stands behind its word. that's general mattis' task. >> and secretary mattis famously said nato was so important that if it didn't exist, we would have to invent it. >> absolutely. general ismay said something and lady thatcher used it later, that the purpose of nato was to keep the russians out, the germans down and the americans in. and right now, i suspect the germans are up. they want to keep russia out, still. i'm not sure they want us around so much. >> it's part of the infrastructure of the most remarkable era of prosperity and

relative stability, certainly, what, since the 1400s, i would say. certainly in the last six or seven hundred years. what's the great achievement? irony upon irony here. the great achievement of the post-war era in many ways is the american middle class. the level of material prosperity, the ultimate, though, painstaking and it took too long, the ultimate expansion of the jeffersonian promise of equality. i don't think it's a coincidence that 1964 and '65 saw us actually undo jim crow. it was partly because people were prosperous and they were able to finally, on the white side of the color line, were able to listen to those better angels. >> that's what's puzzling here.

like 1964 and 1965, we have been living in prosperity for the better part of 40, 50 years, and certainly over the past seven years, starting in barack obama's second year, we started a recovery in this country that has continued in a straight line. we're almost at full employment. our wages are creeping upward. we don't have the excuse, well, you know, the white middle class or the white working class is frustrated and afraid that people of color are going to take their jobs. we're at full employment. that makes this time all the more vexing. why are we moving in this direction of a populist when the united states of america is enjoying unequaled, economic and military prosperity? >> that's what makes this all the all pernicious.

because what president trump has done over the last three years -- it's been almost exactly three years, right, wasn't it june 15? >> right. >> he has created an emotional crisis in the country that is not substantiated -- >> it's not attached to reality. make america great again? $19 trillion economy. make america great again? our military ten times as strong as the next. i mean, stop all the border crossings from mexico? there was a net negative rate of immigration as we sat through the entire campaign. these campaign promises that he has made to stir up the crowd and suggest that america is facing one crisis after another have been made up out of whole cloth. >> and sometimes -- social science shows that when people should be most content, they're on most dissatisfied. he is tapping into a

dissatisfaction that isn't earned. the economy is almost a full employment economy. it's disturbing. coming up next, the top democrat on the house oversight and government reform committee, elijah cummings will be with us. keep it right here on "morning joe." we're going to ask him, where are the children?

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get in line like everybody else. that said, i also think most americans agree with me that it should not be u.s. policy to rip babies, infants, toddlers from their mothers' arms and then scatter them across america in a way that actually has them lost and has our government trying to figure out how to unite parents and toddlers, infants, children. but that's what's happening. and with us now, we bring in the ranking member of the house oversight and government reform committee, democratic congressman elijah cummings of maryland. elijah, it is always great to see you. thanks for being here. >> it's good to be here, joe. >> elijah, mika has been asking for several weeks, where are the children? it's a simple, basic, straightforward question. there are some that suggest the government knows exactly where the children and the parents are and they know how to unite them. that doesn't seem to actually be

the case on the ground. what can you tell us? >> i can tell you that i think nobody really knows where all these children are and where their parents are. and i don't think -- and the reason for that, joe, is because it was never an intention from the very beginning to reunite these children with their parents. you know, something as simple as an arm band like they give you when you go in a hospital. put one on a parent, put one on a child and be able to match them up. this is not rocket science. but now we're in a situation where because they did not properly plan, because they executed the zero tolerance policy in a way that had no forethought, and as a matter of fact, it looks to me like a very mean thing that the trump administration has done, we've got children who may never,

sadly, be reunited with their parents. but one thing i am glad about, and that is the judge is taking a real hard line with the government and saying, you've got to get this done, and continuing to pressure them very, very hard. >> congressman, clearly you're speaking about a crisis that is of the moment today, but if you think about this, we've been talking about immigration reform legislation to figure out exactly how to do this since alan simpson and ted kennedy began talking about it in the mid-1980s. my question to you is, given the nature of politics today, given the polarization in both the house and the senate, do you think it's possible that in our lifetime, your lifetime and my lifetime, that there will be some legislation passed to deal with this constant issue in a common sense way? sdp >> i really hope so, and that's

why i was very pleased that congressman meadows, the head of the freedom party and certainly a republican and one of our most conservative republicans, joined with me in asking for chairman gowdy of the oversight committee to do a hearing where we began to explore, first of all, what's happening with these children, trying to make sure it doesn't happen again. but also looking at how do we put ourselves into a position we're not constantly revisiting this situation? but to go back to your question, the parties are so divided, and with president trump saying the kind of things he's been saying, it doesn't help. >> rick? >> congressman, good morning. >> good morning. >> following up on that question, putting together an immigration policy. that mighten even happen in our lifetime. is there something congress can

do right now that prevents immigration from separating young people, infants, toddlers from their family? that this zero tolerance policy needs to be amended. >> there are several pieces of legislation that i know of that will address that issue. the question is whether the speaker will allow that kind of legislation to come to the floor of the house. he has been very reluctant to allow various types of legislation to come where he thinks it might not -- you know, where he thinks that he may be embarrassed in any way. but that's going to be the key. i think we can get some of the legislation that's already out there that says you cannot do this, then we can get there. but at this point, i think it's very difficult. >> congressman, do you have any sense of when we might be looking for director mueller's report? and if your party were to take the house back in november, to

what extent do you think the likelihood of impeachment proceedings is? >> first of all, i do not have a clue as to when mueller will be issuing his report. and i think that everybody needs to just chill for a minute and allow him to do his work. i've never seen anything like this where a defense team goes so publicly attacking a prosecutor. i've never seen that and i practiced for over 20 years before i came to congress. they've done everything they can to take away his credibility. but i think we need to let him do his job. and as far as impeachment is concerned, i think we have to face that when we get to it. a lot of it is going to depend on what mueller comes back with.

>> all right. congressman elijah cummings, as always, it's great to have you on the show. it's great to see you. i'll see in you washington sometime soon. >> all right, sir. thank you. sir. thank you. the ranking member of the foreign senate relations committee, democrat bob menendez of new jersey. we've been talking about what our secretary of defense had said about nato a year or so ago. it was so important if nato didn't exist, we would have to create it. i take it from the vote in the united states senate that is the unanimous agreement of all the democrats and at least every republican except for two. >> it's the near unanimous agreement except two republicans. and today they will mark up legislation that speaks to nato alliance that's brought us peace and prosperity in 73 years.

it was there in the aftermath of world war ii. it was there to win the cold war and on september 11th when the only time nato has invoked mutual self-defense provision was on behalf of the united states when it was struck on that tragic day september 11th and for 17 years they've fought with us across the globe. at the same time it's created prosperity that we have been part of enjoying in a significant market for the united states products and services. this is critical. it's so upsetting to see that putin, whose number one goal is to divide the west, particularly in nato, has an american president doing his work for him in a way that all of his cyber attacks and twitter disinformation and trolls have been unable to achieve. putin made a great investment in the 2016 presidential election

and it's paying off for him in brussels today. >> so what does the united states senate do? what can it do in a bipartisan way to send a message to our nato allies as well as to russia, that despite the fact that we have a president who said vladimir putin would be the easiest part of his trip and that our democratic allies, who have stood by our side since 1945, were going to be the most difficult, what do we do to right side this relationship again that our commander in chief is turning upside down? >> yesterday from the beginning, as you pointed out, joe, the senate spoke in a strong bipartisan vote, national defense authorization act. today the senate will speak through the senate foreign relations committee in a near unanimous effort. one colleague, rand paul, may not be there, in solidifying the

nato relationship from a national security interest. thirdly, i have said on the senate floor and i will continue, as my colleagues will continue to echo, that sanctions against russia is not a question of discretion for the president. when we wrote casa it was the first time in all the sanctions i've helped author, whether it be gns iran or in this case against russia, that the congress did not provide the discretion to an american president and insisted on mandatory sanctions if certain actions by russia were taking. those actions can only -- those sanctions can only be undone by the senate. i think that those are three critical elements of sending a very clear message to our nato allies that congress, an expression of the will of the american people, believes in nato and the importance of it.

>> senator, we're listening to you and respect your views and they're very strong views in opposition to what the president is doing. what the president is actually doing, it seems, is undermining 75 years of peace, stability and progress in disrupting nato. it seems as if he is intent on basically detablizing nato to the point that the european union is weakened. why then do we not hear more voices come out more strongly, like yours, on the fluoro of the united states senate and elsewhere in unison about what this president is doing to our history and our country? >> i think the vote yesterday speaks loudly. i would hope that my republican colleagues -- nato has been the

bu bu bull bullwort in support of nato. they're muted voices today, other than through their vote, is a concern to me because we need to send a robust message to all of europe, particularly our nato allies and to russia, an adversary. it worries me that the president is going to a meeting with putin where he describes him as a competitor. he is not a competitor. he is an adversary, in my opinion, a foe. when you go into a meeting thinking someone is a competitor, that's a strategically different train of thought when someone is an adversary. i hope our colleagues will raise their voices as they have in the past. they just need to go back and look at those speeches and they're as relevant today as they were when they made them

before. >> appreciate it. rick stingel, there are quite a few diplomatic dumpster fires, i think kinnen called it, that we are seeing at the same time. one, of course, is what's happening in nato. and people are offering their warnings. the president ignores those warnings and another where the president ignored warnings was north korea, which cnn international reported earlier that a source with knowledge of discussions between pompeo and north korea said the trip went, quote, as badly as it could have gone. north koreans were just messing around. not serious about moving forward. pompeo was promised a meeting with kim jong-un and not getting one. and kim jong-un in his summer

whites, as willie said, picking potatoes instead of meeting with america's secretary of state sends a message. >> i harken back to what david ignatius said earlier, the forming of this great post war order that the u.s. was the foundation of. maybe we are witnessing and maybe we are present at the destruction of that order. and that is just very disturbing. >> final thoughts, john meachum, in 15 seconds? >> i think president trump thinks that dean masterson was the head of the elementary school he went to. and i think this, too, shall pass. >> long past time for bob menendez and other members of the senate on both sides of the aisle to remind donald trump that this country does not belong to him. it belongs to us. that does it for us on this very busy wednesday morning.

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brussels. the president kicks off the summit blasting more of america's allies saying germany, that's right, germany controlled by russia. >> it doesn't seem to make is sense that they pay billions of dollars to russia and now we have to defend them against rish -- russia. democrats have come out swinging. as a minority party, is it just a big old swing and a miss? >> if you are a young woman in america or you care about a young woman in america, pay attention to this. because it will forever change your life. and still separated despite a court order deadline, the government still has not reunited more than 60% of young migrant children with their parents. according to hhs secretary, we are doing them a favor. >> it is one of the great acts of american generosity and charity,