november, get ready. we've got to come back here in november -- [ chanting "two more years" ] >> i have earned your vote for a second time. >> can you believe how close this is? [ cheers ] we -- we are in a tie ball game! we went door to door, we went house to house, we made our case for change. we're going to make that case tomorrow. we're not stopping now. tomorrow we rest and then we keep fighting through to november! let's go out there. let's get done, let's change this country! the closely watched special election in ohio is this morning too close to call. that's according to nbc news. you heard at the top, republican troy balderson and democrat danny o'connor speaking last night with balderson currently leading o'connor by less than 1% of all votes cast.

that's 1,754 votes ahead in a sdlact h district that has been in gop hands for three decades. the official outcome way not be known until other ballots are tallied and the race could be headed to a recount if the k candidates end up within 1% of each other once the votes are certified. this morning, balderson is claiming victory. o'connor has not conceded. regardless, we'll see a rematch when they compete for full term in congress. welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, august 8th. with joe, willie and me, we have associate editor of commentary magazine noah raufman. former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst steve rattner and national political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc news, is he still away, steve kornacki.

joe, the guy's been up all night. look at him. >> up all night. these two poor candidates have been up not only all night but probably the last three weeks and think about what they're doing. they are fighting tooth and nail. they're giving everything that they have, all for the glory of winning a special election that will seat them in congress for about a month and a half, and then they have to do it again, and, of course, run for a full term in november, but mika, this is -- this race -- we don't know who's going to end up winning it. regardless of who ends up winning it, republicans certainly know as well as democrats that, i mean, this is another race where republicans have underperformed. they underperformed in the district that is deep, deep red. i mean, i'll talk to steve in a second. i think maybe democrats have won it once since the 1930s.

but you see this same thing happening. they're bleeding. republicans are bleeding so badly right now in suburbs, and then you go north of frank lynn county to the excerpts, they're basically splitting it, holding their own, but, again, losing a ton of votes. this is a party, the republican party, that's becoming more and more every day a rural party. also, the thing i've always loved and talked about it for years on this show. i love what madison and hamilton and our founders did when they put down a government that constantly has this system of checks and balances, elections every two years. that always have the electorate sort of tugging and pulling. you see a lot of voters out there thinking, a lot of republicans, a lot of moderates, a lot of independents, thinking that donald trump has gone too far so they're pulling back the other way.

yesterday something remarkable happening in missouri. a very conservative state, pro-trump state, pro-republican state. you actually had people coming out in a referendum, and dealing a blow to the right to work forces who were really buoyed by a supreme court decision seen as a death nail for unions. yesterday, i've got to say. that union in missouri, one of the biggest wins in a very long time and, again, you just have to believe. once again. that's the electorate sort of tugging and pulling back. oh, okay. supreme court's going to take us too far to the right, we're going to pull this country back to the center. pretty remarkable what we see in, you know -- every time americans go to the voting booth. >> amazing to watch overnight, and the people are having a chance to speak. willie geist, the president is certainly taking this one in ohio personally. >> he's declared victory. sent out a tweet last night.

we don't have an official call yet here at nbc news, but he's declared victory saying when i decided to go to ohio for troy balderson, he was down. not good. after my speech saturday night, a big turn for the better. now troy wins a great victory during a difficult time for voting. he will win big in november. steve car knacky, cautalk about what happened yesterday. big republican state and president trump won it two years ago by 11 points. first of all, numbers here. is there a chance with balderson up by about 1,700 votes now with provisional ballots, mail-in ballots that that result changes, that o'connor somehow comes out on top? >> the suspense is extra weird on this one, because you expect the provisional ballots to break towards the democrat. you don't expect them to actually erase 1,754 vote republican lead. however, if the margin were to cut that 1,754 in half, not

implausible, then the overall victory margin for balderson would be under .5 points. by state law if you're under .5, more generous than you'll see in other places but under .5, automatically there's a recount. we're in a situation now i think it's plausible that o'connor with the provisional votes can get it close enough that the state law is triggered, causing a recount, and even then if you're a democrat, i wouldn't get your hopes up necessarily. the recounts don't tend to change huge numbers of votes. o'connor in a position needs to change 700, 800 votes. nothing's impossible? politics. much rather in balderson position than o'connor, but it's not implausible we are going to go through a recount that could take this thing out into late august. >> talking late august, early september recount, as joe said, then another election between these same two guys two months later. however that comes out if there is a recount what did we learn

about the state of the republican party last night? >> yeah. three parts to this district. focus an the suburbs right in and immediately around columbus. northern franklin county. more than one-third of the district. put it in perspective. the franklin county part, span of six year, contribute to donald trump, obama winning by three points in 2012, clinton by 18 in 2016 to democrat danny o'connor winning by 31 points, in the span of basically half a decade. that the trump effect in places like franklin county, ohio. last night, margin was there for democrats. turnout -- if you told democrats this is what franklin would look like, they would have set that's it. we win. start the celebration. what didn't happen, turnout not great in rural parts, but boardson attracted trump-level

support among those who voted in the rural part of the district. talk that might recede back towards democrats. didn't happen. balderson up around 70% in some rural counties. that didn't happen. bottom line, came down to delaware county. wealthy, suburban. a little different i think in character than franklin county when we say suburbs. franklin is a little more -- closer to, a little more in some cases blended with the city. when you take a step, that next level of suburb out, kind of delaware. what happened there, by historical standards trump didn't -- boardson didn't do well for republicans but matched the trump number and didn't fall back further from the trump number. looks like just enough to hang on's in what was a trump district by 11 two years ago. >> ask quickly, steve, about delaware county. not dissing donald trump and we'd all say it here. i think that donald trump in most republican primaries is going to be the deciding factor.

what's interesting last night, and a bit ironic, a guy he can't stand, john kasich. if you look at delaware county and look at kasich's home county and see that actually, and franklin county, trump's candidate's getting wiped out. but in delaware county, a last-minute endorsement by john kasich had to have a significant impact for the republican candidate and help him hang on there. right? >> so funny. think of events in the final days of this campaign that got so much attention. overinterpret everything, can you do that, but you can see them having very different effects on very different groups of voters in the district. kasich coming out, endorsing the republican. absolutely. kasich coming out saying, publicly hey, i don't know if balderson even wanted trump to come out. you can see that argument made

for delaware. the fact donald trump was out there, the day before the election, you had balderson dissing and makebackfired right there. >> didn't last night. balderson came out, thanked a lot of people. he didn't thank john kasich which was not a class move. and maybe he's trying to please donald trump by not thanking john kasich. that's somebody that would help him out in november. so we'll see. politics is always very fascinating, but noah, you tweeted end of the night that for conservatives, for republicans, not a lot to be cheerful about. a very bad night for republicans underperforming, and you said, for conservatives and for the conservative movement, the worst bit of news actually came out of missouri. >> yeah. you mentioned it was the right to work vote. missouri, as you said, pretty red state at this point.

senator claire mccaskill notwithstanding and half the union is right to work. essentially means, you don't have to join a union if you join a union shop. don't have to be forced into a union shop. and if you do, you don't have to be forced to pay union dues. the supreme court you mentioned and we're seeing a rollback. on the state level democrats are expected to do very well particularly in governorships. spent a lot of time focusing on congress but governorships are far more important when it comes to reforms, advancing conservative reforms and they've done extraordinarily well advancing them over the obama years. it is disheartening from a conservative perspective. look at more of the national environment, got a taste of it in ohio but is a some, too, in washington. a top two primary system. functionally a democrat versus republican race, and candidates like incoumbent representative

cathy mcmorris rodgers got barely ahead of her democratic opponent, 4/10 point at this point and the fourth ranking republican in congress. very little, look at results of last night and say republicans had a very good night. they squeaked out something of a victory in ohio, you could call it a victory but it's a very pureic one. >> historic night for candidates and the numbers are only going to go higher. laura kelley, nomination for governor. in michigan, former democratic leader of the state senate gretchen witmer handedly won her party's gubernatorial nomination, women, now the major party nominees for governor in 11 states breaking the record of 10 set in 1994, and that number is almost certain to grow with the remaining primaries. and at least 20 more women nominated for the u.s. house last night, that total is now at 182. a record number of major party

nominations with still more to come and one more milestone last night as michigan's rasheda talib likely will become the first muslim woman in serve in congress. a former state rep, unopposed in the general election for the seat. long held by ex congressman john conyers. i think in a lot of ways this is a response to trump. joe, women are stepping up. >> yes. willie, so much, and, again, not a surprise. just like 1996 was a response to bill clinton. 2010, a response to barack obama. no doubt about it. 2018 seems to be such a response to donald trump, with the republicans underperforming everywhere. and women, democratic women particularly, doing well in these early contests. >> yeah. no question. what a preview, perhaps what we'll see in three months. last night across several

states, steve rattner, get to your charts in a few minutes and look at the historical perspective on all this, but just what can donald trump expect three months from now, when you put together that history of what a sitting president faces in his first term and all the energy we're seeing among democrats right now? >> without stealing my own thunder from my charts, i'm sure steve kornacki knows all this, combined with the president's approval rating, a mid-term election is incredibly bad news for president trump. saying something about the women a shout-out, went home to michigan to fight out michigan 11 against an incumbent republican, stetted down. she stepped down. they give her a good shot at winning. >> awesome. >> noah -- >> it's awesome. >> -- while it looks like

democrats, a lot of women, in the democratic party will do exceptionally well, you look on the republican side, and just like you said. you've got people like barbara comstock in northern virginia who is in danger, and actually as of last week was not getting a lot of support from the major party. you just talked about the fourth ranking republican. another woman. underperforming in ways we've never seen before, and i wonder if that has to do with her being a woman in the republican party? or if it's just that mainstream conservatives in the age of trump are going to underperform every time nap this is a party right now that is, at least in the primaries, at war with itself? >> i'm not sure if there's a gender-related aspect there to the extent i could say there might be one, women in general in the electorate, to say nothing of the republican party,

railroad all that hot on donald trump. the president has been -- >> that is the understatement of the morning! women -- >> a lot of republican women. >> literally. >> i guess that's a better way to put it nap really is, noah, as you look at the map last night, and you look at these races as we continue, this is sort of the home stretch before we go into the final push after labor day. that seems to be the overarching headline of all of these results that women have not just been offended by donald trump, but they have been activated to such a level that, that's probably, women are probably the greatest threat to the republican majority right now. >> yeah. i would say that's probably accurate. and we saw some of the backlash that a lot of us predicted would occur with the shifting republican coalition towards white working class voters, former democratic voters. a big broad base of voters without a degree that can get you states like michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania, but

at the expense of the former -- that core republican base status quo ante, marginally affluent upper middle class degree holders. and ohio 12 is a really well-educated district and that's where you're going to see the backlash. see it from women. see it from degree holders. people making more than the national average and the income scale, and that's where the traditional republican base was. so where that base exists and it's deflated and not turning out, republicans like barbara comstock, like kevin mcmorris rogers are going to suffer. >> women are going to be -- i think what we're seeing in realtime is women carrying out one of the key tenants, joe, of know your value, which is step up, because no one's going to do it for you. absolutely no one. in the age of trump we have to. and the second one is, women are learning in realtime to fail publicly. andrea accostio cortez, a rough run since she won in new york,

but we do it, just like men and have a bigger reaction to it, because for some reason, when women fail it's much more of a story than men, but we're pushing through it. much more at knowyourvalue.com. still ahead on "morning joe" we'll talk to the democrat locked in an election too close to call. danny o'connor joins us inalities while. plus susan page writes in "usa today" about whan what happene and when bob mueller issues a public report. examining why conservatives aren't freaking out about republicans budget-busting deficits. don't get that. and barbara mcquade is live outside the courthouse in virginia where paul manafort is on trial. but first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill? >> good morning to you, mika. big thunderstorms causing a lot of delays in new york city. more of those up and down the east coast. today it's so hot and still so humid out there.

going all right this morning. areas dealing with a little rain, southern ohio rain overnight. louisville, cincinnati and additional storms through kentucky. five p.m., coming home from work today. these area, showers and storms, watch out from nashville to knoxville to chattanooga. areas in the mountains of north carolina, west virginia, throughout new york state. areas of the catskill and possibly around the mass pike. later than 5:00 p.m. maybe 7:00 or 8:00 p.m., bet chance for boston, new york, into d.c. hit and miss. not everyone will get them. extremely hot. 38 million people in the heat advisories. last day of it. showers and storms cool us off and a slightly drier air mass moves in for tomorrow. out west, the story is still the heat. los angeles a little cooler for you and how about the pacific northwest? this will be the hottest two-day stretch of the summer from spokane into areas of interior

washington state, 105 today. boise, 102. seattle 93. friends in portland, oregon, 97 degrees today. the heat continues in the west along with all the extreme fire danger and the fires that are burning are still burning hot, and you have to feel for the firefighters. new york city, what a thunderstorm last night. a lot of clouds, lightning. could do it again later this afternoon. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. i thought i married an italian. my lineage was the vecchios and zuccolis. through ancestry, through dna i found out that i was only 16% italian. he was 34% eastern european. so i went onto ancestry, soon learned that one of our ancestors we thought was italian was eastern european. this is my ancestor who i didn't know about. he looks a little bit like me, yes. ancestry has many paths to discovering your story.

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lieutenant governor and elevated after president trump made governor sam brownback ambassador. trump's endorsement of kobach monday night put him over the edge according to the "new york times," a private tracking poll so he went from even in the race with collier to up seven points after trump weighed in. in michigan, republicans nominated another trump endorsed candidate. john james for u.s. senate. james faces an uphill battle against democratic senator debbie stabenow, and in washington's eighth district, republican dino rossi advances in the race for an open republican-held seat clinton won as democrat kim schreyer leads another democrat who who gets to head the general election. >> steve kornacki, professor pearson who would ask us a question that would always be a setup. you knew you were about to get run over and he said, you should see the next question coming at

you like a slow-motion low motive, coming out of a tunnel. right at you. well, you could, you could say the same about the republican party's fortune. in fact, we've all been talking about it for a year now. you have a donald trump endorsement that helped somebody like kris kobach, possibly win the republican nomination, but then sets him up, sets the republican party up for a, makes it more likely that they lose in the fall, because of just -- what we saw in the ohio race last night. the massive bleeding of republicans and in what was once a republican stronghold. the suburbs. since the late 1960s have been where republicans have gone to win elections, and now, you know, a donald trump endorsement of a candidate like kobach -- that repels so many people in

those once solidly republican areas. so, you know, a win in september or a win in august possibly leads to a big loss in the fall. >> that is certainly the -- it was so striking you had that trump endorsement of kobach in a couple of hours later on monday right before the election, mr. kansas republican politics, bob dole, 95 years old weighs in with endorsement of the opponent, the acting governor. establishment speaking in response to donald trump making that move. interesting thing, when you put those results up now where kobach is clinging to the lead just over 500 votes, it's one county, one giant county, one giant suburban upscale more affluent county, johnson county, overland park, right outside kansas city where outstanding votes have been for the last eight hours basically everything's from johnson county. when johnson county was completely outstanding at about

midnight, everybody's assumption, that's it. now collier's going to win the nomination because kobach won't win in the suburbs. now about two-thirds of johnson county has been counted overnight and kobach continues to lead those suburbs have not strangely enough come through for collier the way they expected them to overnight. i think it's true. kobach in november, a democrat, saying, goodness, a golden opportunity to win if kobach's the republican nominee. the suburbs supposed to be endangered, republicans voting there maybe now are not seeing it that way quite as much. >> yeah. willie, kobach winning. if he ends up winning. it's like claire mccaskill trying to draw todd akin back the last time she ran. you never know how it turns out. kobach may be different than todd akin when he gets out on the campaign trail, and may do much better, but just generally, you do have trump candidates, people embracing donald trump,

setting themselves up for a much bigger fall come november. >> there's a reason the republican governors association and other national republicans pleaded with president trump not to endorse kris kobach. in fact, many of his own advisers reporting in the "new york times" on monday pleaded with him not to endorse kris kobach for the korea reason you've laid out. polling shows he is not a good candidate for republicans and democrats could then not only win back the governor's mansion in kansas but also energize democrating to come out and vote in the house races in kansas down ballot to vote against kris coreback. get to the charts and look at the big picture. steve rattner what are you leading with? >> the house. not a good night for republicans. i'll show you data from other midterm elections that won't look better for the republicans than we saw last night. start looking at the last 13 or so mid-term elections. we plot the presidential approval on the vertical axis against the number of house seats won or lost on the

horizontal axis. drew a line called aggression analysis across them to basically find what is statistically most accurate. what you find, about a 70% correlation between a president's approval rating and the number of house seats won or lost in a midterm. at say 50%, that would lead you to expect something like a 30-seat loss in the midterms. however, we have a president, we know is at 41%. if you start at 41% and draw a line across, you would find it comes out around here in the, about 60 very vote loss category. note the two red dots above here represent our two most recent you'd call wave elections. 1994 and 2010, both with presidents who is not even as low popularity as donald trump but somewhat low popularity and you can see that there were masses losses from both of those folks in the midterm. >> reminder, democrats only need 23 seats to flip the house. >> exactly. if you look at another indicator where the republicans sit, which

is income dents deciding not to run. as you know, something like an 85% re-elect rate for incumbents. having an open seat, advantage for whichever party is contesting that seat. you can see again going back to 1976, the number of retirements both democratic and republican over that period of time, you can see for example, in the 1994 period, there were a huge number of democratic retirements. that presumably anticipated the wave election of that year, but you also see this year up to i think 41 at the moment. republican retirements, and that is a historically high number for republicans and historically high for both parties and much lower number of democratic retirements. that augers well for democrats trying to contest open seats in a house that tends to go with the incumbent. lastly, 1,000 prognosticators who tried to run simulation what's they think will happen this fall. one by the economist, ran 10,000

simulations of various outcomes using both national variables and local variables. they found that by their math there's about a 71% chance of the house flipping to democratic by at least one vote. they found that if you -- that there's a 50/50 proposition of about a 14-seat majority for democrats in the house which would be a swing of about 37 votes. and so by their math, there's almost a -- 70% probability of the house flipping. close to 100% chance of democrats getting more votes and a lot of this, of course, comes down to the built-in edge for republicans the way the gerrymandering has worked, the way the districts are set up. the economist thinks about a 3.5% edge for republicans. other numbers as high as 7% even see 10% but all does not auger well for the republicans. >> yeah. noah rothman, you never know exactly what's going to happen in these races. i remember 1998 while bill

clinton was in the middle of impeachment, many democrats and republicans were expecting a massive wave for the gop. they ended up i think picking up four seats. and that led effectively to the end of newt gingrich's speakership. 2002 leading up to the iraq war. many surprised that the republicans actually picked um some seats in that off year election. so sometimes there are surprises that -- and we could all be surprised this fall. maybe the republicans come out in massive numbers. you're smiling. i'm just saying, anything is possible. i'm not exactly sure what would do that, and i was looking at a frank lutz tweet last night. a one-point victory is nothing to celebrate -- talking about in ohio 12 -- saying the gop will have to do something raeally significant in september if they want to keep the house. what could that be? what could republicans do in

september for the three days back from their august recess before they leave for their september recess to actually hold on to the house? >> it's tough to envision, and nobody seems to have any interest in doing very much of anything in congress. it seems like the conservative movement, to say nothing of the republican party. it is pretty deflated. i don't remember the last time i heard a conservative talk about a conservative idea. they talk how awful the liberal ideas, the spoesdemocratic poli, you would think people would be defending, for example, the extent to which right to work legislation, we talked about in the last break harks spre, has across the union and liberating people from the confines of a union to which they do not belong. you would think you would hear people talking about the economy, the extent it demonstrated capacity for growth. 4% gdp growth, good number.

unemployment, 4%, pretty good number. record employment among minor y minoriti minorities, et cetera. but you don't really hear that. fear is a better motivator than enthusiasm, than, you know, thankfulness towards the republican party. but i just don't see it. i don't see any of it manifesting in some sort of a victory, and donald trump leaning in to these primary victories, demonstrating saying that "he is responsible" for the victories a tone deaf. it's silly. he'll have to run away from a loss in september if republicans suffer. he's setting himself up as the key architect of voters, whatever the voters want to do in november. whether they go to the polls for him or against him, he's supposed to be preserving his mandate and he's not doing that. running in front of that saying it's all about me and that's going to backfire in november. >> if there were any conserve

2i6sh conserve -- conservatives left in the republican party, they ask about putin and protectionism, but what conservatives left in the party would be energized to go out for the sort of things that got me and i'm sure you voting for candidates in the past? are they small government conservatives? i mean, here you have donald trump running up the largest federal debt ever. you've got donald trump promising the most tariff taxes on middle class and working-class americans than ever before. you have donald trump and the republicans in congress passing the largest spending bill ever. let me say that again. donald trump and republicans that dominate congress passed the largest spending bill ever, and the deficit's exploding to over $1 trillion a year, and, no. those aren't barack obama's deficits. you can look and see what donald trump's own government is

saying, and trump's actions over the past year, the past year and a half have added hundreds of billions of dollars to his deficits. what small government conservative will get excited and say, hey, i'm going to call all my friends at church and tell them to go with me to the voting booth? >> and entitlement reform as we understand it, it's necessity, is not on the table. nobody wants to talk about it. like putting nor pyour peas on table first saying, eat up. i know there's mixed feelings about the tax bill and i have as many mixed feelings about it as you do because the extent it balloons the deficit, but there is some value to it in the sense that it has put so much -- so much money into the economy. so much liquidity into the economy you can have the kind of bits activity without that kind of boost that comes from

anticipation that the corporate tax, for example will generate capital investment. make that case. say that -- be less afraid of this tax bill. there's only major reform the congress has passed. make that case. >> i understand that, but mika, the tax bill is deeply unpopular with the american people. most americans believe that the benefits went to -- well, actually, who donald trump said the benefits went to. >> his friends. >> denied it after had passed. went to march large oh sat around with millionaire friends and said, i just made you all a lot of money with the tax cuts that i passed. you've got that side of it. it hurts donald trump the populist, it hurts populist republicans. it looks like it's going to billionaires and to ceos and multi-national corporations for stock buybacks and then on the other side of it you have conservatives thinking, gee. it wasn't really targeted to stimulate the economy, and it's

just driven us deeper in debt. that's why, and we could go over the numbers later with steve rattner, but that's why even the one thing they did. cutting taxes. deeply unpopular with many americans. >> well, on taxes and on immigration, the president has done things that i think hurt his positive brand with the people who were blindly following him. i think those two issues have problems that will stick with him. still ahead, we're learning new details about last month's summit between president trump and vladimir putin, but it's coming from moscow. >> of course it is. >> of course. plus, trump has been tweeting a lot about the mueller probe lately. senator lindsey graham says he's talking about it a lot, too, on the golf course. we'll have that, coming up next. fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely.

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republican senator lindsey graham spent part of the weekend golfing with president trump, and at an event monday night he told an audience that the mueller probe came up in conversation several times. >> why don't the two of you step

up and stop the mueller investigation? >> well, did trump ask that question? he must have mentioned that about 20 times. i told the president i know you don't like it. i know you feel put upon. you've just got to ride it out. i want to win in november. if we stop the mueller probe tomorrow, you wouldn't be able to talk about anything else. >> you know -- >> wow. >> yeah. >> what do you think, mika? >> well, i just think that that's telling the truth, which i think people appreciate, but hard to understand unless you spend a lot of time in walk how hard that is to do for people in office in the senate and in congress. that is hard to do and lindsey graham stepped up. >> you look how lindsey graham spent his last week, saying no

to the president on the golf course about 20 times. and something that's even harder. when you're in a roomful of constituents, the overwhelming majority want you to do something on one of the most heated issues of the day. lindsey graham stepping up, saying you know what? >> sorry. >> we need to finish the mueller probe. >> yep. >> and -- you know, we talk about republicans not showing courage enough. certainly in that clip, that's lindsey graham doing -- he's right politically. it's best for the republican party it would lead to a meltdown that would really hurt republicans. lindsey has been straight, got to see it through the end. let the chips fall where they may and let's see how the russians interfered with american democracy. so that was -- i thought -- i thought certainly a lot more courage than most of his

republican colleagues have shown in town hall meetings and with the president. >> yeah. senator graham has done a service several occasions over the last couple of years speaking to president trump and telling him the truth, but it is instructive that the president, 20 times, probably an exaggeration. >> probably not, actually. >> well, whatever the number is, that the president is obsessed with this. he has it in his mind and is asking people around him why he can't just end the mueller investigation. we all know he's asking. the idea people put out there, he would never do this, political suicide, trigger a constitutional crisis, just ask lindsey graham if president trump would be willing to move the pieces around to get rid of bob mueller and end this investigation. i think the answer is, yes. joining us now, white house correspondent for reuters, jeff mason good to see you. >> good to be here. >> you cover the white house very closely. how much has the president trump been watching on cable news, paul manafort going through his trial ant sees his son don

junior might be in some trouble as well. how obsessed, concerned is the president with the mueller investigation? >> really obsesses with it and the fact he's sort of on vacation now, although the white house doesn't want to call it vacation in bedminster, even more time to watch television and weighing in on that. people have been asking me also, why is -- seems like the escalation. an escalation between the media and the president in the last few weeks and that's maybe why as well. he likes to choose a scapegoat. often the media or somebody else when really upset about something and this is likely one of the things really on his mind. >> what was discussed during his hour-long meeting in helsinki last month with putin, although, again, coming from moscow. a document obtained by politico, putin presented president trump with a series of requests including a proposal to hold new talks on nuclear arms controls and prohibiting weapons in space. the document purportedly a page

of proposed topics for negotiation also addresses rising tensions in eastern europe. the kremlin and president trump previously revealed syria was discussed in the meeting in addition to president putin's proposal to have u.s. officials will ed head to moscow to talk with those held in exchange for being able to ask about the 12 indicted here. asking exactly what was said between president trump and president putin. >> you're saying today the president direct ud to make the issue of election meddling a priority. how do you explain the disconnect between what you are saying, his advisers, and what the president has said about this issue? >> i'm not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened at helsinki. i'll turn it over to the national security director here. >> the issue was in fact

discussed and in fact president putin said the first issue president trump raised was election meddling. >> should americans believe he is listening to you, your advice? or that he is going his own way when he's having meetings like he did with the president of russia? >> i think the president has made is abundantly clear to everybody who has responsibility in this area that he cares deeply about it and that he expects them to do their jobs to their fullest ability and that he supports them fully. >> jeff, the president shortly thereafter answered your second question calling it a russian hoax at a rally after re reportedly sent his national security team out to talk to you all in the briefing room. so who do believe? >> that's the question. going on -- one reason i asked it that day. in the run-up to the moscow -- not the moscow, the helsinki summit. the meeting with putin. all of president trump's avoiders were talking about russia's maligned activity.

president trump said he would raise it. and given the opportunity by myself and john lamere from the a.p., he didn't raise it at all. the question, when you bring out advisers like that at the white house saying this is a big deal, something that president trump trump is really interested in, is really concerned about, do you believe them or do you believe him? >> you know, jeff, it's really jarring to see donald trump's national security adviser, john bolton, up there only because he has been vladimir putin's toughest critic. we talk a good bit about how putin loathed ambassador mcfaul, but i think if you lined mcfaul's words up next to john bolton's, bolton's would be just as tough or perhaps even tougher if we can even imagine that. and then you look at what john bolton said about north korea, basically came out and said, yeah, they're doing nothing on

nuclear weapons. they're continuing to move forward and not adhering to any promises they made. that's exactly what you expect from a john bolton outside of the government but we're hearing it from john bolton inside the government. what can you tell us about this relationship, this tough anti-communist hawk, anti-north korean hawk, anti-iranian hawk? how is that relationship working out with donald trump? is donald trump obsequiously says he'll talk to the iranians without preconditions and not from a position of strength. he's obsequious in front of kim jong-un and obsequious in front of kim jong-un? word of the morning, obsequious. >> it's one of the conundrums of president trump and his team of advisers. he seems to be happy with ambassador bolton.

you're right the policies that bolton talked about before coming into the administration are many cases completely at odds with the man he works for now. it's hard to get any information about the nsc that bolton needs about that. he had positions before he came into the administration. now his job is to serve the president. the president said as a candidate, i'm my best adviser and seems to be following that as a way of dealing and setting national security now that he's in office. >> all right, jeff mason, thank you for being on this morning. still ahead, we have more from mark leibovich's article with paul ryan for the new york times magazine. keep it right here on "morning joe." ♪

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we're going to let steve kornacki go to bed. the guy has been up all night, but before you go, steve kornacki, we're talking about the mueller probe, we're talking about helsinki. are voters voting in these

special elections and looking ahead to the midterms? are they voting on these issues? >> i think they're voting on one issue in the midterm and the issue is trump. the question of trump is what do you make of him? what do you think is most important, mueller, russia, do you think it's the tweeting, do you think it's the economy? do you think it's what he does to his opponents, how he gets them riled up? maybe you like that. it's however you look at trump and whatever you think of it, i think everything kind of filters through that. they say midterms are a referendum on the president, never been more true than now. >> yeah. in terms of the economy, this president is so unpredictable, i think there's going to be an effect on the economy that people are already feeling. it's the subtle instinctive thing. we'll talk about that. steve, thank you very much. coming up, we'll talk to danny o'connor, the democrat locked in in that ohio special election that is just too close to call. plus, the trump campaign comes up as a topic for the first time in the trial of paul manafort. we'll go live to the courthouse

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on august 7th, we're going to elect a new member of congress. troy balderson has my vote. he should have your vote, too. >> i have so many people to thank tonight, my son joshua, his fiance, my girlfriend melanie. i want to thank god. my mom and dad. the thousands and thousands of volunteers. i would like to thank president trump. i would also like to take the

time to thank vice president pence. congressman pat teaberry. chairman steve stivers. there's many others, i could go on and on. >> republican troy balderson he thanked a loft people last night for his narrow lead in ohio's special election. but he didn't thank the state's republican governor. he didn't thank john kasich, joe, who held the same congressional seat and who vouched for balderson with ohio voters. balderson holds a raiser thin edge over democrat danny o'connor, but the race is too close to call in a district that went republican by almost 37 points less than two years ago. welcome back to "morning joe." it's wednesday, august 8th. kind of a special day. >> it's a special day. katheri

katherine scarborough's birthday. >> we have noah rothman, former treasury official, steve ratner and joining the conversation washington bureau chief for usa today susan page, former chair of the republican national committee, michael steele, he hosts the aptly named podcast, man of steele. i like it, michael. >> thank you. >> that's good. because you are a man of steele. co-founder, publisher real, clear politics tom bevan joins us now. >> tom, i'm reading this guy, sean t. at rcp, you may know him, but sean wrote last night this tweet which i thought really sort of summarized everybody was freaking out on all the channels over who was going to win this race or who wasn't going to win this race and it was a nail biter. sean tweeted -- i know people don't want to hear this, but at this point it doesn't really

matter. ohio 12 shouldn't even be a nail biter for the gop. even with two solid candidates running. talk about the ohio race, whether you agree with your colleague that a nail biter in ohio 12 is a bad sign for republicans generally. >> yeah, look. i agree with sean. let's use the sports analogy since it's columbus, let's say this is like ohio state, okay, they're playing a team they play every year and win by four, five touchdowns. last night they won in overtime by one point. if you're an ohio state fan, you're happy they won but you're saying oh my god, what does this mean for my team for the season that's coming up. i think that's where the republicans are. they spent $3.5 million in this district. they brought in all the big guns to drag balderson across the line. they're not going to be able to do that in the 50 competitive tossup and lean republican districts that are in play in november. they're just not going to be able to cover that much ground.

it does oger poorly for republicans and democrats in november. >> michael steele, you ran the republican national committee, ran it through some very, very successful election cycles. you had to be looking at the map in a way that the democrats are looking at it right now. >> right. >> because my gosh, we've all been talking about the 24, 25 seats that hillary clinton -- that are republican seats where hillary clinton did better. >> right. >> this expands it out, though. there are like 68, 69 congressional seats where, you know, clinton did better than here, however it works. this expands the map to 67, 68, 69 seats, makes it a lot harder for republicans to figure out exactly where they need to defend this fall. >> it does, joe. the bottom line is that republicans got exposed last night.

this district is really one of the most conservative, reddest-leaning districts in the country, in the top seven of those districts, and to be in this position going into the fall is not a good sign. it does augger well for democrats looking at the map. they now see real wins in front of them. they have an opportunity that they had not really seen crystallize before. it came closer into clarity last night with the ability to go out and do that ground game district by district. they don't have to play the way the republicans have to play. in other words, dumping a whole lot of resources into this districts. they have a ground team they can learn from how to put together the kind of race that not takes a competitive race and make it more competitive but actually deliver the win. that's where the republicans got exposed last night. their resources will be

stretched thin. and their ability to actually buttress back against what the democrats will do becomes much more difficult. >> yeah. tom, let me go back to you for a second. i was mentioning to noah before that my entire adult life, republicans especially presidential candidates have gone to tsuburbs to run up big victories. that's how they wan, reagan and bush, you name it, they all won in the won in the suburbs. now you have republicans getting slaughtered in counties like franklin county, which we always saw as sort of our version of broward county for democrats. >> yeah, no. that's absolutely true. what we saw in 2016, that was one of the big shifts. the question is whether that shift is -- this is something that's a permanent feature now moving forward. republicans have to have those voters, right, as part of their coalition if they want to

continue to win at the state and national level. this is what you saw balderson try and do, right? you had trump come in and try motivate the base in the you recall parts of the district and then you had kasich vouching for balderson and trying to win back some of those votes and at least keep the democrats margins down in the well educated suburban areas where the republicans struggled in 2016. looks like they will struggle there in 2018. the question is whether that's a permanent shift or not. >> susan page, your reporting is on the front page of usa today this morning, revealing evidence that donald trump's base continues to support the president. of the most recent survey made of trump voters you write in part this -- the loyalty of trump's voters has been a political strength for the president through 18 tumultuous months in the white house. now two thirds of the supporters believe russia interfered in the 2016 election, they tend to

accept declarations by the president and his team that the allegations and investigations have been overblown or disdirected a conclusion with potentially enormous consequences down the road. if and when special counsel robert mueller releases a public report, those voters are poised to take any negative findings with a grain of salt. as the investigation has intensified, their predictions about history will judge trump's presidency have risen. susan, i think it's fascinating because as the media rightfully asks the questions and follows the mueller probe, there's definitely a different take across america especially among trump's base. >> you know what was interesting to us in talking to these voters that we've been checking in with since the 2016 election, is that they do believe that russia meddled in our election in 2016. but they see it through the same lens that the president is

offering them, that everybody does it or collusion isn't illegal or the real collusion was with the hillary clinton campaign. and this is, i think, the success of the president's political strategy when it comes to address the mueller accusations. there's no ways that the tweets that the president has been making on mueller serve his legal interest, but it's clear they served his political interests here. even among the voters who see russia as an adversary and are suspicious of russia, many are old enough to remember the days of the cold war. even though they don't like russia, they don't like putin, they do trust donald trump. >> michael steele, just as president trump loomed over last night's elections particularly in ohio, he will loom over the elections in three months. you point out last night in ohio is game one of a two-game doubleheader. we'll see these guys go at it again in three months at the end with a recount even. if you're the chair of the national republican committee,

what are you thinking? what has to change over the next three months? is it changeable in that short of time with president trump controlling the levers of what goes on? >> you start by asking yourself where is the weakest part of my line? my front line, defense to hold off that 23 seat opportunity for democrats, where is the weakest link there? and i begin to take a closer look at the type of candidates that are running. the resources that are available, the ground game that's in place and whether or not the state party organization in addition to county and local organizations are all prepared to do what needs to do to hold that line. how much re-enforcement do i need to put there? the senatorial committee. so that becomes an important assessment. but here is the other thing, willie, i think the party needs to do, we have this the history that when we win, we somehow

forget how and why we won. we don't really dig down and understand the real nature of the win. so if you take this as a win, which the party likely will do outright, you still have to step back and go, it was a win but was it really? and assess and analyze exactly what happened on the ground with messaging, with organization, and again the role the president played or didn't play since you have the white house available to you to make that win a possibility and does that translate in the fall. >> well, now more mark leibovich's remarkable interview with house speaker paul ryan "the new york times." ryan talks about his relationship with the president saying trump used to call ryan boy scott, quote, i thought it was a compliment, said ryan, but after the republican-controlled congress passed a few bills, trump announced to ryan that he would stop using the nickname, quote, so i guess he meant it as an insult all along the speaker said.

i didn't realize it. ryan shrugged. he put out a tweet last night that was really good, ryan told me after he and the president hung up. it was apparently an innocuous tweet about trade. leibovich writes that the speaker's words carried the vaguely patronizing tone of a parent affirming potty-training milestones. i don't spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff? shouldn't you, leibovich said. if you're not going to touch that, who is? i don't think he's going to do things like that, ryan said of trump. he already has leibovich said referring to trump's pardoning of law-breaking allies like joe arpaio and dinesh d'souzd'souza. triablism and identity politics are twin scourging that contributed to the environment that exists today. donald trump didn't give us all

this. donald trump is showing us what it looks like. what is he going to own anything? or take on anything or is he just going to leave as badly as he is there right now? i don't get it. >> i don't get it either. a lot of people who have known paul for a very long time. >> he's a good guy. >> i always believed personally, willie, paul is a great guy. i always liked paul. i don't think, though, i've ever been as surprised and i guess confused as the reaction of somebody who is seen a conservative warrior like paul ryan through his entire career, never been surprised at somebody that in the time when he has the ability to stand up and right

the ship of state as the third ranking constitutional officer in america that time and again he has backed up he's hidden. oh, i haven't seen this. or this story. or i haven't heard about that story. i haven't looked into this outrage or that outrage. we're not talking about policy issues. we're talking about racist statements, unconstitutional statements. >> third in line, you're going to close your ears? >> again, i actually as you can tell i don't have words to adequately express myself about how a guy has behaved when america needed him to stand up and speak out, not start a civil war but just adhere to the basic tenants of democracy. he has not done it. he has not defended

constitutional norms. >> at the times when he has, it's almost reluctantly, when he's pushed into a corner and finally says, okay, okay, yeah, he shouldn't have said that. he shouldn't have tweeted that. tariffs are bad. he has, noah rothman, you know, he has built a career on being a conservative serious, fiscal conservative, tax reform. i'm not sure as speaker of the house he was ready for the challenge that donald trump on a personal level would present because clearly he hasn't stepped up and confronted him in ways that most people would have hoped he would. >> yeah. i sympathize with the speaker. as joe said, his obligation is to not start a civil war and attack the president or even criticize him forcefully would be to invite the president ignite is civil war himself. the speaker's position is not that solid. anybody in a leadership in congress is not on solid footing. i sympathize with him for this

point, he spent six of eight years in his -- in the obama era 2010 through 2016 building a conservative coalition, the most conservative coalition in congress, i think. at least my life time and possibly ever. then donald trump runs for the presidency and explicitly anti-conservative message. he says i like the individual mandate obamacare. we're not touching social security. and he wins. and he wins a mandate. so we have a conservative coalition in congress and pretty anti-conservative president. there's very little you can do there that won't risk stepping on a land mine, won't risk blowing up this coalition. as a leader, his responsibility is to keep the troops in line, not to necessarily be an ideologic fire brand. >> all that is well and good, but now he's retiring. so do you expect that either post-retirement or before he retires, at some point do you think he'll stand up and be a profile in courage? >> i don't know about that. but donald trump's utility as a vehicle to animate republican voters is going to be tested in november.

and if he shows that his utility is limited, the calculation might change. >> michael, still though, paul ryan is more than just a republican. he's more than just a guy that's trying to herd cats. as john roberts saw himself, he is the speaker of the house. he's the protector of the institution. he's the protector of the legislative branch of article, one -- the republican legacy. are we the party of abraham lincoln? or are we the party of david duke? there is no doubt publicly that donald trump's voice has clearly stated in 2018 that he wants the republican party to be closer to

david duke than abraham lincoln. it seems that paul ryan has more of a responsibility than just staying in power as speaker of the house. he has the responsibility to the constitution he represents, to the party he represents. >> yeah. >> and to the country he serves. that's not me being poly anish. he should be polished enough, skillful enough as a politician to do two things at the same time. >> yeah. i agree with that and i think that going back to the point that was just made about the coalition that he spent so much time building what i find fascinating about that process, the end part of that process is that he never used the coalition to fight for the very things you just describe. you have you are number three in line to the presidency. it's not like you're sitting in a corner. you are a player on the field. and as a player, who has pieces that can be moved on that field, he never really figured out how

to use that leverage effectively. he didn't have to create a civil war with the president. yeah, we know the president will go off in a tweet. but you have this coalition of like-minded soldiers who have been out there fighting for this moment where those big policy issues could be put into practice and capitulated. they gave into a tweet. they didn't stand up for the constitution. they gave in to a sly word by the president or fear of a very narrow base and didn't push back. i find that fascinating that with all that building of coalitions and policy, you didn't use it as a soft hammer to push back and redefine the relationship with the white house. >> i do find it amazing that members of congress that have voting cards walk around in fear perpetually of a negative tweet. tom, let's end with you. we've all talked about the

house. the house is much easier to game out. democrats need 23, 24, 25 however many seats it is. it looks like they're probably going to get that if last night is any indication. the senate, though, much, much tougher to sort of game out. what's that looking like as we move towards labor day? >> that's a great question, joe. not enough attention has been paid to the senate. we -- look, the democrats right now are looking decent in the senate. they've got a small lead in nevada. missouri is doing okay. highcamp doing okay in north dakota. we have joe donley in indiana. if that race -- if joe donley is doing well in indiana, you're looking at a situation where democrats could be gaining a seat or two in the senate and potentially -- it's going to be creeping closer to a point where

they might be able to take the senate as well. that's a huge story that currently really hasn't been covered. the one bright spot for republicans right now is in your home state where rick scott is leading bill nelson. hard to see if democrats will do as well as they seem to be doing in some of these other states that rick scott is going to pull one out in florida, but that's where -- that's right now what republicans are hanging their hat on. >> boy, tom, isn't florida a remarkable state. it's a state that most thought hillary clinton would be winning because it was diverse, getting more diverse by the day. yet it's actually a state that sort of become little -- from a totally purple swing state tim russert sayi ining florida flor florida fl. a state moved from red to purple back to red. >> it went from looking at early precinct returns we got this is a lock. it's a no brainer.

it's done. to wait a minute. hold on a second. let me see what's going on. oh my god, what just happened? it was a state that democrats thought they had in the bag. it is surprising. you have this influx of folks from puerto rico democrats are trying to register and in the orlando i-4 corridor area. it's a fascinating place to watch. and i think that race is going to be close and it's going to be expensive. it's going to be high profile. and it's going to be part of the mix certainly in terms of whether democrats are able to take control of the senate or not in november. >> all right, tom bevan, thank you very much. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll speak live with one of those two ohio candidates we've been talking about. democrat danny o'connor joins us in just a few minutes. but first, paul manafort is staring down a potential prison sentence if convicted on a litany of charges. the government's star witness rick gates returned to the stand as manafort's legal team tries

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it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. this morning marks day seven of the trial of former trump campaign kmarm paul manafort. evidence and testimony from rick gates yesterday appears to confirm exclusive reporting from nbc news earlier this year that the special counsel's team was investigating whether manafort promised the ceo's of federal savings bank a job in the white house in return for $16 million in home loans. yesterday the jury was shown e-mails manafort gates of favors. caulk did not get a job in the administration. manafort launched calk part of a

quid pro quo agreement for the loans. when manafort's attorney questioned gates about any other members of the special counsel's team had asked about his time on the trump campaign, prosecutors objected. lawyers were called to the bench. the court then went into recess and the topic never came up again. gates also testified that he had embezzled from manafort part of an extramarital affair nearly ten years ago, kept an apartment in london, flew first class and stayed in luxury hotels. joinsing us now barbara mcquad. good morning. what was your headline walking out of the courtroom yesterday? >> i think my headline was that gates got beat up a little bit on cross-examination and may have been damaged but i don't think so much so that it's going to lose the case for the prosecution. >> and what about this relationship with calk? who exactly is he? how does he figure into this big picture for paul manafort?

>> yeah, he's an interesting name. he is this person who is a lender from a chicago bank, lent paul manafort during a time when he lost his job, lost his money, was really broke. lent him something like $16 million. and his name then shows up on the counsel of economic advisers for president trump. paul manafort, as you said, wants him to be considered for secretary of the army. he shows up at the inauguration. he's an interesting figure. we have not heard a lot of evidence about this particular loan yet. i imagine that gates was put into the middle of the trial by prosecutors, so that if he were to stumble, they started strong, they'll finish strong with a lot of evidence on paper that is much harder to cross-examine. >> obviously as we said many times, this trial is not about paul manafort's role as president trump's campaign chairman during the campaign, but it is obviously why so many people are interested in it to see if there is any crossover in there. what did you make of the judge yesterday sort of snapping on

and calling the attorneys to the bench and shutting down conversation about that part of paul manafort's career? >> well, i thought it was interesting because the prosecution did raise for the first time yesterday the name trump was uttered outloud in court. it's sort of been like vold mort, never to be spoken aloud. yesterday it came up in a very narrow context of this particular bank fraud and that was all we heard about it. on cross-examination, the defense really wanted to delve deeply into this. they asked a very open ended question did there come a time when you met with the special prosecutor's office and were asked questions about president trump. and so that was when the prosecution jumped up and said, objection. lengthy side bar and never heard more about it. they moved on to another topic and i think that's because there's a whole world there that the prosecution does not want exposed to the world, including on going investigation about what's going on with connections. to the detriment of prosecution,

i think the jury is left with a misleading impression because they now know that rick gates has been promised a lot of things, leniency, including the possibility that his lawyer can ask for a sentence of probation and the government will not oppose that. now, that doesn't mean he'll get probation. the judge gets to decide. but sounds like a real sweetheart deal when you think of all the many years in prison he was looking at. my guess is the reason he got so much benefit is not just for his testimony in this case, which is really a tiny sliver of his cooperation, but for all of the other cooperation he has given about all the other things about what he learned on the campaign in exchange for trump. this jury will never know about that. so i worry that it looks like he's getting a real sweetheart deal when manafort is exposed to likely many, many years in prison. >> right. barbara, steve ratner, just to broaden out the question about the judge a bit because i think back in the spring during some pretrial stuff he said some things that the trump administration liked. since this trial began, there have been a number of occasions where he's snapped at the prosecutors, told them not to talk about things, cut them off,

whatever. a, what should we make of that, if anything, about the judge's attitude toward this trial and this case? b, will it matter when it ultimately goes to the jury? >> well, i am told that this is kind of the way this judge operates. he is very much a part of the trial. he is very noticed. he injects himself into the case very much. i'm told that's the way he rolls in many cases. i worry about the impact he could have. he has been very hard on the prosecution in the interest of move things along. he's constantly after them to stop asking questions. with a witness like gates bs it's really important they get an opportunity to corroborate his testimony to show documents that he's allowed a lot of lee way there. to me, yesterday when gates was testifying that manafort was very involved in knowing all of the financial matters, the judge said well obviously he wasn't watching that closely because

you were able to steal from him. a gratuitous comment. this is a person who the jury sees as the authority figure and independent judge and expert on the law to say that has to have some influence on them. i'm really worried about that statement. >> yeah. barbara, noah rothman from commentary. briefly on that point, i think yesterday we learned that con stan tin, a ukrainian businessman, active ties to russian intelligence up to and including 2016 that gates testified that manafort directed him to report overseas income as loans in order to lower taxable income and some of that income came from this gentleman. what do we make of that? do you have any idea whether that registered with the judge or the jury? >> i don't think it registered to the judge and jury that's a connection to russia or russian intelligence. they've been focussed very much on the significance of padding the income or lowering the

income as the case may be here to try to reduce paul manafort's tax bill. but in the bigger picture as observers, there are bigger themes coming out. keep in mind, that is money coming from russian intelligence. what was the purpose of that? other themes, these are incredibly reckless fraudsteres in paul manafort and rick gates. donald trump put these people on his campaign in high level positions. did he know about their backgrounds? did he know or not care? >> everybody else knew. surprise if donald trump didn't. barbara mcquad translating what she sees in the courtroom for us. good to talk to you. thanks so much. >> great. thanks, will li. still ahead, the results for ohio's special election are razor thin. we'll talk to danny o'connor about his continued bid to turn the reliably red district blue. "morning joe" will be right back.

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can you believe how close this is? we, we are in a tight ball game. we went door to door. we went house to house. we made our case for change. we're going to make that case tomorrow. we're not stopping now.

tomorrow we rest and then we keep fighting through to november. let's go out there! let's get it done! let's change this country! >> joining us now the democratic candidate in ohio's 12th district, which nbc news says is too close to call, danny o'connor. and danny, the president, the republican party in ohio and your opponents are calling you the loser this morning. to that you say what? >> i say that, you know, we're excited to continue to have this conversation with voters each day about why we need folks who are going to go to washington and fight for working people. this race is too close to call. the margin is 1,700 votes. w we have 8,000 votes left to be counted. the fight continues. we'll be out there campaigning today. we're not resting because people are counting on us to get it done for them. >> danny, how strange is it that you have to run a marathon all

for the glory of running a sprint for a full term? it's got to be kind of unsettling for you but also kind of confusing for voters. >> you know what, it's awesome, i think. it gives me opportunities to have more conversations with folks about the direction that they want to see our country go in. and when people sit around the kitchen table at night, they're worried about how they're going to pay their mortgage, how they're going to afford to retire, how they're going to afford these rising costs of health insurance. these are things worth fighting for. to have this conversation like we have been and will continue to do is really just an honor and a privilege. >> so you did better than any democrats has done in ohio 12 in, my gosh, i guess in your life time. but the question is let's say you come up short 500 to 1,000 votes. the question is where do you find those votes? what's your message to some of those rural counties that like

so many rural counties across america feel like donald trump is a lot more interested in their best interests than nancy pelosi and the democratic party that you represent? >> yeah. the good thing, joe, is that we have three months to talk to those folks still. the way i campaigned and the way we work, we sprint hard across all seven counties of this district. i want to represent all seven counties in congress. we're just going to take everyday and try to win every single day, talking to people about the issues that matter to them because that's how we're going to win this thing in november and that's why we feel so good right now. >> so danny, there's a question about nancy pelosi and whether you would support her as speaker. some people say you bungled the question the second time it was asked. seems like you clarified it. but just so we have it on the record, if you become ohio 12's

congressman when they go around at the beginning of the next session, will you vote for nancy pelosi to be your speaker of the house? >> no, i won't. and we really need new leadership because what we've seen in washington -- and i think this was demonstrated last night, the same old politics aren't working. the desire to fight things out in the partisan nature instead of being pragmatic isn't getting the job done for working families. that's why we're having so much success here and convincing so many people to support our new version of leadership is because people recognize that we need to have change in washington. they recognize that i'm someone who wants to get the job done for their family. >> danny, i've known nancy for a long time and like her personally, but there aren't a lot of people in middle america, there aren't a lot of people from youngtown, ohio, to columbus, ohio, that believe that democrats have leaders that represent their interests.

there's a massive cultural disconnect. who is the type of speaker for the democratic party that you would like to see and therefore the democrats that would better represent rural counties across your district? >> you know, honest to god joe, i don't have anyone in mind. i would have to see who is running. i want to be a part of the conversation. i know when i'm out talking to families, whether in their coffee shops, doorstep, in their homes, they're worried where we're headed as a county. they're worried about folks like my opponent who wants to raise the retirement age, serious issues that families are facing. people don't ask me about the inside game in washington because it's not what keeps people up at night. it's kitchen table issues. >> danny, willie giest in new york. he said he pushed balderson over the top here. if this result does, in fact,

hold. republicans as you know sent in the big guns. president trump showed up there, the vice president among many others. are you disappointed that more national democrats didn't come in and support you that maybe would have given you that advantage to win here? >> no, not at all. you know, we've had grass roots support from the beginning. what's more important to me is having folks in licking county and delaware county and marion county, everywhere in between who are fighting for me and who have my back because they know i'll fight for them in washington. i think that all these people coming in, they fly in for a couple hours, give a speech at some fancy dinner, then they leave our community. they're not walking on our streets. they're not dealing with the public health crisis that we have with addiction. their kids don't go to our schools. i think having a true grass roots campaign is what's important. that's what we're focussed on is making sure that we have conversations. that's what we're going to do for the next 90 days. we're going to be sprinting. >> do you think, danny, the president pushed balderson over the top here?

>> no, i don't think he knows what he's talking about in that regard because when i am out talking to folks, i ask them what they're worried about. they say we're worried about health care. we're worried about social security. we're worried about having economic opportunity. folks aren't worried about people showing up for a couple hours and leaving. i think that we're in a race that's too close to call. the gap is 1,700 votes with 8,000 to be counted. and we're sprinting today. we'll be out talking to voters throughout the day. we'll be doing that tomorrow. and we'll be continuing through november. and we might take a break on some saturdays to watch some football, but we'll be talking to people. >> all right, danny o'connor, candidate for congress in ohio's 12th district. a race that is too close to call this morning. thanks for being on. susan page, looking at these numbers, this could go either way. what do you think will put one or the other candidate over the edge in this district?

>> well, of course what's remarkable it's so close in a district that donald trump won by 11 points. one thing i noticed was that there was a green party candidate in this race that got more than 1,000 votes, not quite the margin between the two major party candidates but close. and i wonder if that could end up making a difference and whether that is a little bit of a red flag for democrats that there's -- that all this energy among the most liberal voters in their party and that you need to keep them in the fold if you're going to win competitive districts like this one. >> and michael steele, your thoughts before you go? >> it's interesting listening to danny. the question becomes, so you wont have the big guns coming in on the republican side this fall because they can't be there in all the other races. and the democrats are interested but not that interested because they're going to be trying to get other seats. how he puts together his ground game to go to joe's point about capturing those suburban voters, those center right republicans

and democrats who may still be on the fence about his campaign will be very interesting to watch. >> all right. michael steele and susan page, thank you both for being on "morning joe" this morning. coming up, conservative columnist john pa doer its has a theory when it comes to the president's media bashing. we'll ask him about that ahead on "morning joe."

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provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. steve ratner, the critical reason for donald trump to get re-elected in 2020 is the same region that we are talking about all this morning an yesterday. that is of course the midwest, the upper midwest. where trump's populism, the usa "today" today is crumbling. a lot of that has to do with tax cuts. only 37% of americans in a recent poll said they supported the tax cuts. should republican candidates run on those tax cuts going in to the fall? >> well, i think the facts are

around the tax cuts are not good for republicans. 84% of the benefits from the tax cuts went to either business or individuals making over $75,000 a year. the average middle class american got something like a $900 tax cut. half of which has already been eaten away by higher gasoline prices. real wages after adjusted for inflation are flat in the last several months and they've gone up less under trump than they did under obama. so i do think that the tax cut economic message is a really tough message for a republican to run on. >> noah, it is one thing to be running on tax cuts in a primary. if i were a republican this year, i would be running on the tax cuts in the primary. quite different in the general election. let's say in more blue-collar districts, even places like ohio 12. should republicans run on those tax cuts in the general election? >> i think they should for two reasons. one, it's pretty much the only thing that this congress has accomplished. it is their major piece of legislation. if you're going to run on an

accomplishment, you got one. you might as well run on it. second, you don't get to a place where you are 37% without losing a lot of partisan republicans. we're all partisanship would kick in if republicans would make the case for tax cuts. they are afraid and are running away from it. i think that's a mistake. you could make the kay the amount of economic activity we saw in the last quarter is partially due to the fact that we've injected all this money into the economy -- >> why are republicans afraid of the tax cuts, noah? >> because they're at 37% approval rating. it is self-generating this approval rating when you aren't making the case, the predicate for these tax cuts. >> it may be somewhat self-generating but it is also the facts. the facts are 84% of the benefits go to wealthy americans and the american public has figured that out. in addition to that, they have busted the budget, which is an issue near and dear to joe's heart, my heart and probably a lot of other people. in addition to that, this 4.1% gdp number which noah correctly points out does result a bit

from the tax cuts is a one-quarter phenomenon. any projection by anybody shows growth going back down toward 2% over the next four quarters. >> so noah, way back in the ice age in 1993, i saw john kasich and tim penny talking about deficit reduction on the floor of the house. it was during my spring break and i was watching that on c-span which tells you what a loser i had been for a very long time. but kasich inspired me to run for congress and inspired me to run for congress because i believed in balanced budgets. i believe that we needed to be fiscally responsible, that we needed to save this country, the american dream, for the next generation. is that just a thing of the past? nobody talks about that. does nobody in this my former party -- does no conservative care about these issues anymore? because we're melting down at a

$21 trillion national debt. >> "the new york times" made a good point -- republicans don't talk about the debt anymore so why would democrats even pretend to care. in 2020 we had the simpson-bowles commission because republicans were making a big deal about the debt. you can move the ball ahead if you talk about the deficit but nobody's talking about it. we just heard from o e owe congressional candidate danny o'connor who hopes to help his party take back the house this fall. we'll break down the balance of power on capitol hill and just how much momentum the democrats really have 89 days out. plus, twitter says it is up to journalists to counter the conspiracy theories being pushed by the likes of alex jones on social media. reporters say they have, with facts, and it only encourages the info wars crowd even further. will twitter ever have to take responsibility, any responsibility, for part of this?

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it's time to get to work. over the next three months, i'm going to do everything i can to keep america great again so that when we come back here in november -- get ready -- we got to come back here in november -- i have earned your vote for a

second time. >> can you believe how close this is? we are in a tight ball game! we went door to door. we went house to house. we made our case for change. we're going to make that case tomorrow. we're not stopping now. tomorrow we rest, and then we keep fighting through to november. let's go out there, let's get it done! let's change this country! >> the closely watched special election in ohio is this morning too close to call, according to nbc news. you heard at the top, republican troy balderson and democrat danny o'connor speaking last night with balderson currently leading o'connor by less than 1% of all votes cast. that's 1,754 votes ahead in a district that has been in gop hands for three decades. the official outcome may not be known until over 3,400 provisional ballots are tallied

in the coming weeks. and the race could be headed to a recount if the candidates end up within half a percent of each other after the final results are a certified. this morning troy balderson is claiming victory but danny o'connor has not conceded, and regardless of the outcome, we're going to see a rematch between these two come november when they compete for full term in congress. welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, august 8th. with joe, willie and me, we have associate editor of commentary magazine, noah rothman. former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst, steve ratner. and national political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc -- is he still awake? is he still awake? steve kornacki. joe, the guy's been up all night. >> he's been up all night. >> look at him. >> these two poor candidates have been up not only all night but been up probably the last three weeks. think about -- think of what they're doing.

they are fighting tooth and nail. they're giving everything that they have all for the glory of winning a special election that will seat them in congress for about a month and a half. and then they have to do it again. of course, run for full term in november. but mika, this is -- this race -- we don't know who is going to end up winning it. regardless of who ends up winning it, republicans certainly know, as well as democrats, that -- i mean this is another race where republicans have underperformed. they underperformed in a district that is deep, deep red. i mean i'll talk to steve in a second. i think maybe democrats have won it once since the 1930s. but you see the same thing happening. they're bleeding. republicans are bleeding so badly right now in suburbs. then you go north of franklin county to the exurbs.

basically splitting it, holding their own. but again, losing a ton of votes. this is party, the republican party, that's becoming more and more every day a rural party. also, the thing i've always loved -- i've talked about it for years on this show. i love what madison and hamilton and our founders did when they put down the government that constantly has this system of checks and balances, elections every two years, that always have the electorate sort of tugging and pulling. you see a lot of voters out there thinking a lot of republicans -- a lot of moderates, a lot of independents thinking that donald trump has gone too far. so they're pulling back the other way. yesterday something remarkable happened in missouri. a very conservative state. a very pro-trump state. a very pro-republican state. you actually had people coming out in a referendum and dealing

a blow to the "right to work" forces who were really buoyed by a supreme court decision that actually was seen as a death nail for unions. well, yesterday -- i got to say -- that union win in missouri, one of the biggest wins they've had in a very long time. and again, you just have to believe, once again, that's the electorate sort of tugging and pulling back. oh, okay, the supreme court's going to take us 2-4 to the right? we're going to pull this country back to the center. pretty remarkable what we see in -- every time americans go to the voting booth. >> it's been amazing to watch overnight and the people are having a chance to speem. but willie geist, the president certainly is taking this one in ohio personally. >> old, he's declared victory. he sent out a tweet last night. of course we don't have an official call here at nbc news but he's declared victory. he said when i decided to go to ohio for troy balderson, he was down in early voting 64%-36%. that was not good. after my speech on saturday night there was a big turn for

the better. now troy wins a great victory during a very tough time of the year for voting. he will win big in november. so steve kornacki, let's talk about what happened last night. as mika referenced, this has been a republican seat since 1982 consecutively since john kasich won it. president trump less than two years ago won it by 11 points. first of all, the numbers here. is there a chance, with balderson up by 1,700 votes right now, with provisional ballots, with mail-in ballots, that that result changes, that o'connor somehow comes out on top. >> the suspense here is extra weird on this one because you expect those provisional ballots there to break toward the democrat. you don't expect them to actually erase 1,754-vote republican lead. however, if the margin there were to cut that 1,754 in half -- which is not implausible -- then the overall victory margin for balderson would be under .5 points. by state law, if you're under .5 -- that's more generous than you'll see in some other

places. but if you're under .5, there is automatically a recount. so we are in a situation right now where i think it is plausible that o'connor with the provisional votes can get it close enough that the state law is triggered causing a recount. even then, fur peaif you're a d, i wouldn't get your hopes up because these recounts don't tend to change huge numbers of votes. o'connor probably would need to change 700, 800 votes. but you'd much, much rather be in balderson's position than o'connor. but it is not implausible we'll have a recount that could take this thing out in late august, early september. >> another election between these same two guys then two months later, as joe said. however that comes out, if there is a recount, what did we learn about the state of the republican party last night? >> i mean there were -- there were three parts to this district but focus first on the question of the suburbs right in and immediately around columbus, northern franklin county. it was more than one-third of

the district. put this in some perspective. the franklin county part of this district has gone in the span of six years -- you can attribute this entirely to donald trump -- from obama winning it by three points in 2012, to clinton winning it by 18 in 2016, to the democrat danny o'connor winning it by 31 points last night, from 3 to 31 in the span of basically half a decade. that's the trump effect in places like franklin county, ohio. and last night the margin was there for democrats, the turnout seemed to be -- if you had told democrats the start of the night this is what franklin's going to look like, they'd say that's it, they won, let's start the celebration. those were more than the numbers they thought they needed. what didn't happen for them last night, turnout was not great in the rural parts of the district but balderson attracted trump-level support among the people who did vote in the rural part of the district. there was some talk that that might recede back towards the democrats a little. didn't happen. balderson was up around 70% in some of these rural counties so that didn't happen. bottom line, it all came down to

delaware county which is wealthy, which is suburban. it is a little different i think in character than franklin county when we say suburbs. franklin county is a little bit more -- it is closer to -- it is little bit more in some cases blended with the city. when you take a step at next level of suburb out, that kind of delaware. what happened there was by historical standards trump didn't do -- balderson didn't do well for a republican but he matched the trump number, he didn't fall back further from the trump number. it was just -- looks like just enough there to hang on. in what was a trump by 11% two years ago. >> i want to ask quickly about delaware county, steve. certainly n lly not dissing don trump. i think we would all say it here, donald trump in most republican primaries is going to be the deciding factor. what's interesting last night and a bit ironic, a guy that he can't stand, john kasich. if you look at delaware county and look at kasich's home county and see that actual lly -- and

frankly county trump's candidates getting wiped out. but in delaware county a last-minute endorsement by john kasich had to have a significant impact for the republican candidate and help him hang on there. right? >> yeah. it is so funny. you think about some of the events in the final days of this campaign that got so much attention. you can overinterpret everything but i can see them having very different effects on very different groups of voters. kasich coming out and endorsing a republican in the district giving that more moderate republican stamp of approval, absolutely. you look at delaware county, kasich coming out, for that matter, and saying publicly, hey, i don't know if balderson even wanted trump -- i don't know how this guy ended up out here. you can see that tailor made for delaware county. the fact that donald trump was out there, the fact that the day before the election you had balderson is dissing franklin. my god, you look at the turnout in franklin, maybe it backfired right there. >> i tell you what, he didn't --

last night, balderson came out and thanked a lot of people. he didn't thank john kasich, which was not a class move, and maybe he's trying to please donald trump by not thanking john kasich? that's somebody that would help him out in november. so we'll see. politics is always very fascinating. but no withah, you tweeted for conservatives, republicans, last night a very bad night, not much to be cheerful about. a very bad night for republicans underperforming. for the conservative movement, the worst bit of news actually came out of missouri. >> you mentioned it. it was the "right to work" vote. missouri is pretty red state at this point. senator claire mccaskill notwithstanding. half the union at this point is "right to work" which essentially means you don't have to join a union if you join a june onshop. you don't have to be forced into a union.

if you don't join a union you don't have to be forced to pay union dues. it was the supreme court decision you mentioned and we are beginning to see a big rollback here. on the state level democrats are expected to do very well, particularly in governorships. we spent a lot of time focusing on congress but governorships are far more important when it comes to advancing conservative reforms like this. they've done extraordinarily well in advancing them over the course of the obama years. if we see this roll back right now it is extraordinarily disheartening from a conservative perspective. if you look at more than the national environment -- we got a taste of it in ohio. but we saw some, too, in washington where they have a top two primary system. functionally democrat versus republican race. candidates like incumbent representative kathy mcmorris-rogers got just barely ahead of her democratic opponent .4 point at this point and she's the fourth-ranking republican in congress. there's very little you can look at the results last night and say republicans had a very good night.

they squeaked out something of a victory in ohio. you could call it a victory. coming up on "morning joe," women are now major party nominees for governor in 11 states. and some more glass ceilings are about to break. that's straight ahead. but first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. >> morning to you, mika. definitely the dog days of summer. not a lot has changed in the west and east coast, we're still stuck in oppressive humidity on the gulf coast, eastern seaboard. heat indices 90 to 100 from boston down through the southeast. few people are under heat advisories. 39 million people. about the same people yesterday from philadelphia, new york, hartford, boston. richmond and norfolk, wilmington, myrtle beach and almost down to georgetown. west coast still under excessive heat warnings in las vegas but they've been dropped in los angeles and phoenix just a couple of degrees cooler today. now we are seeing the peak of the summer heat in the pacific northwest. portland under an excessive heat warning, along with spokane and

a good section of northern half of montana. these will be the hottest two days of the summer for this region. he are right under the heat dome here and that's not good news for all the firefighters out there trying to fight these blazes. portland today, 97. redding, 103. these are temperatures in the shade, remember, this afternoon. vegas, 108. it will be a little bit cooler by the time we get to the weekend but still very hot on thursday. medford and seattle at 102. no such cooling for california. you'll probably have to wait another couple weeks or months until you get a little cooldown as we head toward the fall season. new york city got hit, nailed by some thunderstorms that had some significant airport delays yesterday evening. we can easily do that again today. much of the eastern seaboard, carry that umbrella. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ a hotel can make or break a trip. and at expedia, we don't think you should be rushed into booking one.

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tuesday was a historic night for female candidates and the numbers are only going to go higher. in kansas, state senator laura kelly won the democratic nomination for governor. and in michigan, the former democratic leader of the state senate, gretchen whitmer, handlely won her party's gubernatorial nomination, which means women are now the major party nominees for governor in 11 states, breaking the record of ten set in 1994. and that number is almost certain to grow with the remaining primaries. with at least 20 more women nominated for the u.s. house last night, that total is now at 182. a record number of major party nominations with still more to come and one more milestone last night as michigan's tlaib will likely become the first muslim woman to serve in congress. a former state rep, she's unopposed in the general election for the seat.

long held by ex-congressman john conyers. i think in a lot of ways, this is a response to trump. joe, women are stepping up. >> yeah. willie, so much. again, it is not a surprise. just like 1996 was a response to bill clinton. 2010 was a response to barack obama. no doubt about it. 2018 seems to be such a response to donald trump with the republicans underperforming everywhere. and women -- democratic women particularly, doing well in these early contests. >> no question what a preview perhaps of what we'll see in three months. steve ratner, we'll get to your charts in a few minutes and look at the historical perspective on this. but just what can donald trump expect three months from now when you put together that history of what a sitting president faces in his first term and all the energy we are seeing among democrats right

now? >> without stealing my own thunder from my charts, i think the summary -- and i think steve kornacki knows all of this -- a swing of this magnitude combined with the president's approval rating, combined with the fact that it is a mid-term election is all incredibly bad news for donald trump. but can i just say one thing about the women? on a personal note, shout out to my own colleague, haley stevens, who was chief of staff on the auto rescue task force. went home to michigan to fight out michigan 11 against what appeared to be a incumbent republican. he stepped down. she just won the primary. she'll face another woman in a republican-leaning district but where i think most people give her a pretty good shot of winning. >> that's awesome. >> noah, while it looks like democrats -- lot of women in the democratic party are going to do exceptionally well, you look at the republican side, and just like you said, you've got people like barbara comstock in northern virginia who is in danger and actually, as of last

week, was not getting a lot of support from the major party. you just talked about the fourth-ranking republican, another woman. underperforming in ways we've never seen before. i wonder if that has to do with her being a woman in the republican party or if it is just that mainstream conservatives in the age of trump are going to underperform every time, that this is a party right now that is, at least in the primaries, at war with itself? >> i'm not sure if there is a gender related aspect there. to the extent i could say there might be one, it is that women in general in the electorate, to say nothing of the republican party, aren't all that hot on donald trump. the president has been -- >> that is -- that is the understatement of the morning! >> as you look at the map last night, and you look at these

races as we continue, this is sort of the homestretch before we go into the final push after labor day. that seems to be the overarching headline of all of these results, that women have not just been offended by donald trump, but they have been activated to such a level that that's probably -- women are probably the greatest threat to the republican majority right now. >> yeah, i would say that's probably accurate. also we saw some of the backlash that a lot of us predicted would occur with the shifting republican coalition towards white working class voters, former democratic voters. big broad base of voters without a degree that can get you states like michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania. but at the expense of the former republican -- really core republican base status quo ante which was marginally affluent, upper middle class, degree holders. ohio 12 is a really well educated district. that's where you are going to see the backlash.

you'll see it from women, you'll see it from degree holders, people making more than the national average in the income scale. that's where the traditional republican base was. where that base exists, and it's deflated, and it is not turning out, republicans like barbara comstock, like kathy mcmorris-rogers are going to sufficient. coming up on "morning joe," we'll talk about the future of the house and senate next on "morning joe." ♪ this is a story about mail and packages. and it's also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they're handing us more than mail

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let's look at the big picture here, steve ratner. >> let's go back to the house. it was obviously not a good night last night for the republicans and i'm going to show you some data from other mid-term elections that won't look any better for the republicans than what we saw last night. let's start by looking at the last 13 or so mid-term elections. what we did was plot the presidential approval on the vertical axis here against the number of house seats won or lost. then use a regression analysis line finding what's

statistically most accurate. you find about a 70% correlation between a president's approval rating and the number of house seats won or lost in a mid-term. if he were at 50%, that would lead you to expect something like a 30-seat loss in the mid-terms. however, we have a president who we know is at 41%. if you were to start at 41% and draw a line across, you would find it comes out around here in about the 60-vote loss category. note that two red dots above here represent our two most recent i guess what you would call wave elections. 1994 and 2010. both with presidents who had not even as low popularity as donald trump but somewhat low popularity and you can see that there were massive losses for both of those folks in the mid-term. >> reminder, democrats only need 23 seats to flip the house. >> exactly. exactly. if you look at another indicator of where the republicans sit, which is incumbents deciding not to run, as you know, there's something like an 85% re-elect rate for incumbents so having an

open seat certainly is an advantage for whichever party is contesting that seat. you can see again going back to 1976, the number of retirements, both democratic and republican, over that period of time, you can see, for example, in the 1994 period, there were a huge number of democratic retirements and that presumably anticipated the wave election of that year. but you can also see this year, you're up to i think 41 at the moment republican retirements. and that a historically high number for the republicans, historically high number for both parties and a much lower number of democratic retirements. so that all augers well for democrats trying to contest open seats in a house that tends to go with the incumbent. and then lastly, there have been 1,000 prognosticators who have tried to run simulations of what they think is going to happen this fall. here's one by "the economist" which ran 10,000 simulations of various outcomes using both national variables and local variables. what they found was that by their math, there's about a 71%

chance of the house flipping to democratic by at least one vote. they found that if you -- there is a 50%-50% proposition of about a 14-seat majority for democrats in the house, which would be a swing of about 37 votes. and so by their math, there's almost -- there's a 70% probability of the house flipping. there's close to 100% chance of democrats getting more votes. a lot of this, of course, comes down to the built-in edge for republicans, the way the gerrymandering has worked, the way the districts are set up. "the economist" thinks there's about a 3.5% edge for republicans. other numbers are as high as 7%. i've even seen 10%. all of this does not auger well for the republicans. coming up on "morning joe" -- paul ryan talked about the debt crisis all the time when barack obama was president. >> it was very important. >> it was important to him. >> it's what conservatives care about. >> that's part he who he was. >> i ran for congress. that's why we all went to

washington, to take care of big spending. we're small government conservatives. >> weird, we're not hearing much about it now that republicans are running billion dollar deficit. where did that go? we'll talk about that straight ahead.

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joining us now, editor of accou "commentary" magazine and the "new york post," john podhoretz. and karen tumulty. several top tech companies have recently limited alex jones from spreading his conspiracy theories online. but not twitter. jack dorsey, twitter's co-founder and chief executive, says it is up to reporters to police jones' claims, posting,

quote, accounts like jones' can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors, so it is critical journalists document, validate and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions. this is what serves the public conversation best. several journalists then posted screen grabs of them doing just that offering hard factual reporting to contradict jones' false claims, only to face more skepticism and attacks from jones' supporters. this, joe, is -- it is a long-running controversy about what a platform is. is it a publisher or not. and can they completely separate themselves from any responsibility. >> well, no, they can't. they're the ones that are publishing the lies and jack dorsey's defense is pretty

remarkable. when you have info wars founder spreading lies that actually endanger of lives of sandy hook parents, he's sitting there going, well, it's not really up to us to determine whether these are actors who are pretending that they're 6 and 7-year-old children's bodies were riddled with bullets on the friday before christmas vacation. that's really up to journalists to figure that out. right? i don't understand. as david french said, if it's slander, if it's a lie, then isn't that the best measure of whether you publish it or not? >> okay. so this goes directly to the heart of corporate strategy of social media companies. right? so there is a provision in the law, and has been governing this for two decades, that basically treats information that travels over the internet as though it

is a letter inside an envelope. and twitter and facebook and your e-mail companies and all of that are held harmless by the law because they're like the postal service. they're not responsible for what's inside the envelope. right? that's the legal theory. it's not a legal theory. it is how the law works now. that is unsustainable because it is not the case that twitter and facebook are simply delivering mail from one person to another. these are public, free-access sites, and i think there is going to be an enormous amount of pressure over the next couple of years to compel these companies to -- i mean a change in the law that says that they are not harmless for the information that's purveyed on their site. i think there -- >> well, you know, john, they actually profit from spreading

lies, from spreading slander. and if any public figure tries to speak out against it, then that generates more hate, which of course generates more traffic, which benefits twitter even more. jeff greenfield wrote this. if someone tweets that jack dorsey presitsdz over satanic chi child rape slauters at twitter hq, you don't know how to be be an arbiter of that truth? calling sandy hook a fake is not a viewpoint, for god's sake. you have the same person, karen, talking about how robert mueller is at the middle of a child kidnapping ring. again, there's absolutely no defense for any of this speech.

it's slander, and it -- i don't understand why twitter a eter dragging their feet here. >> i think corporations are struggling to sort of figure out what's the line between speech that is offensive and speech that is actually harmful. and it is a difficult thing. free speech -- now corporations are not bound the way the government is to respect freedom of speech. >> well, karen, just to step in here though, how difficult is it to figure out whether it's slanderous and whether it is acceptable or not, to spread rumors that led to pizza gate, that led to the shooting at pizza gate. or that sandy hook parents are actors who are actually having to move from one place to another to another because the hatred spread on twitter and other sites are actually leading them to fear for their lives? >> my own opinion is that alex

jones has definitely crossed that line and the issue for twitter is going to be potentially this may be something that ends up getting settled in court and costing them a lot of money. but it's a business decision and the fact that so many other social media platforms see it so clearly, i don't know what is going on in twitter's business model where they think that this is like a good idea. >> can i just -- >> yeah. jump in. >> if -- if -- it's a bad idea. if twitter is supposed to mediate the comments, twitter's an unsustainable business. god knows, 5 million, 10 million tweets a day? every one of them under an editorial policy would have to have an eye cast on it by a twitter employee to approve it before it goes up. that is not any way that that company can manage. >> so noah, part of the

counterargument to this is that if you take hate speech -- talking about libel, slander and even harassment. if you take this as hate speech, social media companies should not be in the position of determining what is hateful in speech and thereby putting people out of the public square whose world view they disagree with. alex jones may be a unique case, but the precedent of their deciding that could be problematic. >> yeah. then you have to define what is hate speech. in the uk they don't have a first amendment. you can be prosecuted for things that you post on social media that run afoul of certain guidelines. the extent to which you could punish people. i do not understand the impulse among journalists to say -- why doesn't twitter police this speech? we don't want to have to do this. this is ridiculous. i don't want to have to address this. why not? my impulse is always to say that the cure for the ills of free expression, is always more free expression. to extent to which we are shutting this down creating a

taboo around it isn't healthy, it is not going to make it go away. jones isn't a new phenomenon. there was a 9/11 conspiracy. everybody likes doing this. i don't understand why there is a reticence to engage this guy. he's a target. >> there is a line. john, to your column in the "new york post" that there may be something behind president's "blame the media" blitz. >> my view is when last week as the heat -- trump turned up the heat on the media, "horrible people," "enemy of the people," all of that, that it seemed weird because he had so much good news to bandy about. right? 4.1% growth. reporting 9% unemployment. this is what you want to talk about on the campaign trail -- or a normal politician would normally want to talk about. is trump putting successes and saying vote for my people so we can keep this going. that was not where all the energy was.

i'm wondering whether somewhere in the back of his mind -- or even as a possible deliberate white house strategy -- the idea now is that he is establishing the predicate for the reason that republicans lose the house in november, which is to say the fake news did it, the fake news made me lose. >> yep. >> and that if you think about it, when in 2016 when he kept refusing to say that he would abide by the results of the election because the election was rigged, this is a new way of saying the election -- he can't say the election was rigged because republicans run most of the electoral processes in the united states. states and he's the president and they have the house and the senate. so he has to have another reason why he lost, that he can blame, and it is the media. >> this is vintage trump. karen, we'll get to your piece in just a moment. but from our knowledge of his personality and the way he thinks, i don't think this is white house strategy. this is just what trump does.

this is his sweet spot. >> he also was just a master of distraction and the media is one of his favorite ways of doing that. in part, i fault the media here because we essentially swing at every pitch he throws over the plate here. it is also a way of turning the conversation from places that he doesn't want it to be. >> that's actually a great baseball metaphor. it is like watching your favorite team and watching a batted batter swing at one low and outside pitch after another. that is what the media's been doing for the first 18 months of the administration. every tweet is breaking news. every insult is a screaming headline. that's exactly what he wants. what he doesn't want, karen, he doesn't want americans reading stories about what you say a trump republican should be worried about, which is, again,

the reason i got in to congress in 1994 was about the rising deficit, the rising debt. it was at $4 trillion then. it's at $21 trillion now. and trump is spending -- biggest spending bill ever passed by this republican congress because of donald trump. >> and it's really -- trump also, by the way, ran on the promise that he would not only reduce, but that he would pay off the national debt. he's going exactly the opposite direction. it's really surprising how few conservatives are even willing to talk about the fact that the receipts to the government have gone down drastically thanks to tax cuts, that spend something growing, that trump has taken entitlements completely off the table. and now republicans are talking about a second round of tax cuts. all of this is ballooning the

deficit to levels that we have never seen in a time of prosperity. deficits usually go down when the economy is doing well. >> john, we have to talk about mission impossible in just a second. but first, since we've exhausted our analyst this morning over almost three hours of ohio 12, what's yours? what happened last night? >> what happened last night is the republicans lost the house. i mean, there are 23 seats. democrats needed 23 seats. there are 24 seats that have republican congressman that hillary clinton won the cd in 2016. if any of them has an even remotely credible candidate, the democrats wins. under these -- the thing that we saw last night is democrats up 10%, republicans down 10%. so no one survives that. >> and with republicans and the president with their foot on the gas in that district trying to push him over the top. okay. "mission impossible." your review, you write one of the most astounding action

adventure pictures ever. the most entertaining picture of the year. based almost solely on your review i took my kids to see it. i agree, it was incredible. >> trust content from john podhoretz. i wasn't expecting to feel this way about the movie. i find i've been very "meh" on both of the six "mission impossibles." fourth was kind of fun, fifth was okay. this just knocked me out of the back of the theater. forget the plot. we were discussing this. you can't understand the plot! >> i just don't get it. >> don't try to follow the plot. >> tom cruise still has it, and then some. so good. don't you agree, mika? >> i don't get it. no, i just -- no. >> i'm going today. >> i'm not into all this stuff. karen tumulty, thank you very much. thank you, both. coming up, president trump has recently praised saudi arabia's leadership and hammered

canada's. now those two countries are locked in a growing diplomatic dispute. will the u.s. take sides? the president might but will the u.s.? there are two separate things there. that's all next on "morning joe." how'd that go? he kept spelling my name with an 'i' but it's bryan with a 'y.' yeah, since birth. that drives me crazy. yes. it's on all your email. yes. they should know this? yeah. the guy was my brother-in-law. that's ridiculous. well, i happen to know some people. do they listen? what? they're amazing listeners. nice. guidance from professionals who take their time to get to know you. hi! how was your day? it was good. it was long. let's fix it. play "connection" by onerepublic. (beep) ♪these days, my waves get lost in the ocean♪ ♪seven billion swimmers man ♪i'm going through the motions ♪sent up a flare need love and devotion♪ ♪trade it for some faces that i'll never know notion♪ ♪can i get a connection? ♪can i get can i get a connection?♪

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and a new culture. and you're going to see improvements to our service. like enhanced background checks, 24/7 customer support, better pickups, and ride quality, for both riders, and drivers. you've got my word, that we're charting an even better road for uber, and for those that rely on us every day. ♪ i do. check out the new united explorer card. saving on this! saving on this! saving in here. rewarded! learn more at theexplorercard.com saudi arabia and canada are currently locked in a diplomatic row over human rights with both countries refusing to back down despite a threat to future trade deals and a flurry of other sanctions.

it began last week over canada's foreign minister tweeted concerns over a recent arrest of a woman's rights activist in saudi arabia who had relatives living in canada. the saudis responded with fury calling it a string of diplomatic sanctions against canada while expelling the canadian ambassador. on monday, the saudi government froze all new trade with ottawa. and ordered around 16,000 students studying in canada to leave. for its part, canada doubled down on its stance but their foreign minister stating canada will always stand up for human rights in canada and around the world and women's rights are human rights. the arab league, bahrain and the palestinian authority have all stood by saudi arabia, while the u.s., traditionally, one of canada's closest allies has remained on the sideline. reuters reports that canada now plans to seek help from the

united arab emirates and britain to defuse the dispute. meanwhile secretary of state mike pompeo recently lifted restrictions in $195 million in military aid to egypt, frozen last year in part to protest that country's desire human rights record. pompeo is scheduled to meet later today with egyptian foreign minister shukri. we recently statistic down with the frorm and asked him the status of human rights in the country and the u.s./egyptian relationship. >> mr. foreign minister, 40 years ago, mika's father, dr. brzezinski, as you well know, was part of the camp david accords where egypt and israel came together and brokered a very difficult piece. but one that's ensured 40 years of peace in that region, at least. the lack of major ground wars. where are we now in the peace process, and what is the

possibility of reconciliation between the palestinians and the israelis in 9 months and years to come? >> we are at a difficult stage in terms of pursuing the peace process. current developments in the situation in the region has complicated the process, but we're still confident that the united states and its efforts to communicate and to encourage both sides to reach a negotiated settlement, with the assistance of countries in the region, primarily egypt, and we're confident that the united states has the resources, has the ability, these negotiations have been under way for 25 years. and many of the issues have been discussed between the two sides and the parameters are well defined by the international community through the security council and other direct negotiations between the two parties. >> mr. foreign minister, this is willie geist.

as you know, the sanctions that were part of the iran deal, the iran deal that was ripped up a couple months ago, the sanctions back in place. with the elimination of the iran deal with president trump is the world now safer? >> well, the marines have been fraught with difficulties and dangers over the last seven, eight years. and we have to, i think, resolve all of these issue, including the potential threat of nuclear proliferation from iran. and there is room for the efforts being undertaken by the europeans. and we would hope that more favorable agreement can be reached in the foreseeable future. >> and mr. foreign minister, yas yasmin vossoughian has a question for you, mr. foreign minister. >> good morning, sir. i want to the go off of what willie was just asking about, do you think that president trump said he would meet with president rouhani with no preconditions involved should be meeting with him? >> well, the president in making that declaration, i'm sure, has the best interests of the region

at heart. and is continuing to work towards the stability, security and maintaining the peace in the region. whether that meet will go materialize or not remains to be seen. the initial reactions of the iranians was not forthcoming. we believe that discussions, negotiations, communication can always lead to a greater understanding. and agreements related how best to deal with the challenges and the threats of the region. >> i just want to talk to you about your human rights record in your country, mr. foreign minister. the u.s. real lease $195 million in military aid making that decision to the end of july. we know that money has been withheld because of your human rights record. human rights watch says your ghost continues to preside over the worst human rights crisis in decades, what is your response to that, where are you with regards to the human rights? >> unfortunately, that seems like a gross exaggeration, i

believe if you monitor the conditions in egypt, the freedom of the press, the freedom of the political association and the general conditions and egyptians in general, being satisfied and confident with the current leadership and the current policies. we have every determination to continue on the road to reform. and not to say that everything is perfect. but we are dedicated to creating political, economic and social reform. this is a process of evolution for any society, and we will continue to address it in most transparent and impactful manner. >> what is the greatest challenge, right now, to the u.s./egyptian relationship? >> i believe that, to work together, to regain the stability, to regain the status of the nation's states of the region so they can undertake the responsibilities in protecting their citizens against terrorism and to provide the necessary

services to continue on the road of political and economic and social reform. to bet the lives of the people of the region. they have suffered immensely over the last eight years, because of the turbulence and instability. and we do need the assistance of the united states in all of these fields so as to meet those challenges. >> egypt's minister of foreign affairs, thank you very much. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhl picks up the coverage. >> thanks, mika. hi there, i'm stephanie ruhle. starting with too close to call. the election in the buckeye state separated by 1700 votes. >> can you believe how close this is? we are in a tie ball game. >> but that didn't stop president trump from declaring victory and claiming credit. all this,