out of their day sitting aside for the watching there. see you in a bit on "morning joe." >> that does it for us on this thursday morning. "morning joe" starts right you now. >> always like to finish with a good one. elton john said when you hit that last tune and it's good, don't go back. >> george, when you hit that high note, you say good-bye and walk off. >> why don't we smooth ahead down to nothing, smooth a pumpkin under his arm and change the name to ichabod crane. all right. that's it for me. good day, everybody. >> my god. well, what do you say after that? >> well, i -- you know, so -- >> that was a long press conference. >> i owe the president an

apology. >> dow? >> yeah. >> usually you do. i said he just keeps repeating the same thing over and over again. it's like going to a nostalgia show from the 1970s where the fans know what the next song is going to be. you know, willie, yesterday, that wasn't a -- that was new. that was like khan yeanye dropp new album. he dropped a new mixed tape and your like, what? >> and he was not angry yesterday. he was a man in his element. he was enjoying himself for 81 minutes, didn't want to leave. looked at his advisers and saying, should we do a couple more? he was all over the place. clearly all over the place about china, iran, about what he said about women. i know we'll get all into it. it was even by his standards, a stunning performance. >> mr. kurd, a new cheese treat from hasbro.

>> he called a kurdish reporter mr. kurd? >> yeah. mr. kurd, you're next. mr. kurd apparently liked it. so i don't know. john, you know what was interesting was he usually brings this sort of level of whatever you want to call it to his supporters. and this is the first time he actually did it to the press core. he loves the back and forth. it was crazy. >> i don't understand why he doesn't do this every week.

he was like -- i don't know, he was like one of those -- i'm not saying he was like springsteen, but how springsteen's concerts would go on for 3 1/2, 4 hours, because he didn't like to get off stage. >> it's springsteen saying one disturbing song after another. yeah. >> the whole thing at the end where he wanted to compare it to a concert, you could tell he was in his element. he thought he had killed it, that everyone great with what with he was saying. >> also with us, john heilman. show times, the circus. also with us, political analyst and former chairman of the republican national committee

michael steele is with us. proud to be a republican this morning. >> yeah, baby. >> oh, my lord. so in less than four hours, senate republicans will gavel in a hearing that will decide the future of the united states supreme court. there is a flurry of new allegations being leveled against brett kavanaugh. we're going to try to unmuddy the waters this morning with key vice presiden vice preside viewpoints from all sides. to review the claims against judge kavanaugh, dr. christine blasey-ford alleges that dr. kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when she was 15 years old at a party. deborah ramirez says in college when she and kavanaugh were freshman, he exposed himself to her during a drinking game in a

dorm suite. julie swetnik accused kavanaugh of exposing himself at parties and in a letter to the the senate judiciary committee, a woman says her daughter witnessed kavanaugh drunkenly push her friend, a woman he was dating, up against a wall very aggressively and sexually after they left a bar one night in 1998. however, the people who dr. ford says attended the party where she alleges the assault took place have no recollection of the event. neither "the new yorker" nor the "new york times" were able to find witnesses acknowledging the episode. none of miss swetnik's claims could be independently corroborated by the "new york times" and no witnesses or even a name has emerged about the fourth allegation. so here we are. >> so here we are, joyce.

joy, through the years, one phrase i've heard time and time again and whether it was as a lawyer or as a member of congress or as a high school football coach, the phrase where there's smoke, there's fire is such a b.s. phrase. it is such garbage. because what i found -- and i know you found it a lot more as an attorney because i only practiced for a couple of years. i kept hearing that phrase in congress when we were trying to chase bill clinton. where there's smoke, there's fire. so mika has just walked through all four of these for a good reason. because that seems to be the prevailing argument now. if you watch cable news. well, there's four now. so he has to be guilty. this has got to end. don't we still have to look at each one of them individually

and reserve judgment on each one of them individually and let the facts take us where the facts take us. >> or how should we be looking at this? >> here is the thing about smoke. where there's smoke, there's smoke. and what mika does is she runs through all of these allegations is she creates the best case possible for why the fbi should have been directed by the white house to reopen the investigation. >> exactly. since we're both from alabama and all the people said amen. i don't think you do that in synagogue, but go ahead, joyce. >> but this is exactly why we're here. we're here because we haven't had professionals investigating. with all due respect to the news and to reporters who have done an amazing job trying to get at the facts, they don't have subpoena power, they don't have the investigative techniques available to them. we need a fulsome investigation and this process needs to stop so that that investigation can take place and senators can then come back with the information that they need to fulfill their

constitutional duty. >> willie, yesterday, it came at us so fast, it was completely crazy town. you even have two guys now. >> yep. >> two separate guys that have reached out you to judiciary committee saying no, no, no, it wasn't kavanaugh. i was the one who tried to rape dr. ford. >> i was the -- and not just one, two now. and, you know, again, we've said from the beginning, we're not going to prejudge anybody. but i'm just going to circle number three and number four when you get to a point where you have anonymous sources coming forward and saying that he shoved somebody against a wall in 1998, they're still too trauma advertised to talk about it, this is when he's

actually -- i believe he's working or about to work for ken starr and then somebody saying that she went to multiple high school parties where -- more than ten. >> which are basically gang rape vactories. who would continually go to high school parties where women were being gang raped and first of all keep going to those parties and secondly not report that to some authorities and third, not have somebody at all of those parties saying mom, dad, girls are getting gang raped at these parties? >> we don't know. >> that's what i just said. i don't know how we move forward with all of these allegations and all of this smoke without the fbi investigations.

we're getting closer and closer to drop dead deadlines. >> the strongest case is the one we have before us today which is dr. christine blasey ford. no eyewitness account. the people that she put at the party have said they don't recall the party. but what do you do, for example, with an anonymous letter sent to senator corey gardner that allegations anon mussily that he saw her push her into a wall 20 years ago. how do you work through that? >> so there is nothing unusual about being in that position for investigators. many tips come through in an investigative action. there are ways they have of ferreting out who is involved,

seeing if they want to talk about the allegations and confirm them. women who come forward with these allegations and who take them into the light of the public typically do that because they believe that their allegations are true and very often their allegations are born out. women typically won't expose themselves to making these claims in public. unless there's a very sound basis for them. but investigators still won't take those claims at face value. they will test the credibility of those claims. because it's very important that if we're treating this as a quasi criminal situation, even though it's just a job interview for june kavanaugh, but -- >> but they've only had 24 hours and they're not investigators. what you do you do with julie swetnik and the anonymous claims yesterday? >> they're not in a position to

give these sort of claims the treatment they need. this is a matter of being fair both to the women who have come forward and also to judge kavanaugh because we don't want to unfairly tarnish someone. everyone deserves a fair process here. >> so i've worked in news rooms and around news rooms for 36 years. and one thing you know about any high profile case in a news room -- and i think this is true of high profile cases with police departments and prosecutors -- is that there's a lot of garbage that people call in, tips, reports, they send you e-mails. every day i get e-mails from people alleging that politicians -- this is no joke -- raped them, threw them into jail unnaturally, did terrible things to them and many, a vast majority of them or 95% of them are either the work of crazy people or the work of slanderers or something like

that. this is my objection to the idea that one must believe someone who comes forward on a high profile case. my experience is that you can't believe someone coming forth in a high profile matter is telling the truth. i'm not saying that women don't put themselves at risk when they come forward. but you're talking about a lifetime appointment to the supreme court, people might be seeking to influence the course of the future of american history. >> but i think what you're talking about is what happens at

different stages of investigations. a lot of tips come in. as an investigation continues, the agency investigators working it will filter sort of those early suggestions. and what emerges, what ends up becoming the focus of the investigation, those are those early calls that do have some credibility that can be backed up, that can be proven, right? >> right. >> not everything is good and not everything is bad. that's why you need investigators who can tell the difference. >> but let me issue an objection to this as follows which is maybe that's what happened. >> she sent this letter and they tabled it. dianne feinstein tabled the letter. >> because of the request for anonymity. >> or not. or people didn't -- well, everybody is on record saying that. >> but that doesn't mean you

don't go into it. they forwarded to the fbi, it didn't go anywhere. the presumption, if she is telling the truth, is that it didn't go somewhere because people were were negligent in dealing with her allegations in the letter. but we don't know that that is true. >> but i'm not sure that that is the case because the fbi can't investigate unless they're asked to reopen the background investigation. and there's been some indication that although the letter was forwarded to them, they no longer had a background investigation in progress so the letter was placed with her file. that may be a good question. >> and, again, just the facts of the case, diane feinstein waited a couple of months before forwarding it to the fbi and did so even though she was concerned about her anonymity. filter, i think as we look back on this week, a lot of people are going to not be looking at

prosecutors or reporters or -- i think a lot of people are going to be looking at editors. and say, should you run that story without filtering it a little bit more? should you -- at that moment in history, should you have ran that story without getting a few more facts? because the "new york times" basically just continually say we were not able to independently verify one, two, three, four. >> so we're looking at facts on both sides again. president trump weighed in in his extremely long news conference. take a look. >> you have daughters. can understand why a victim of sexual assault could not report

it at that time? >> by the way, i only say this. 36 years, no charge, no nothing -- >> but that happens often. >> people are going to have of to make a decision. 36 years, there's no charge. all of a sudden, the hearings are over and the rumors start coming out. then you have this other conartist come out with another beauty today. as far as the other women are concerned, i'm going to see what happens tomorrow. i'm going to be watching. believe it or not. i'm going to see what is said. it's possible that they will be convincing. >> about the benefit of the doubt that you have given to people like roy moore, to roger ales, to brett kavanaugh. they're all men. why is that? has there ever been an instance when you've given the benefit of the doubt to -- >> i've known them for a long time and a lot of them people. a lot of people.

some i've been disappointed with. i have been disapointed with some. others, there are charges that are pretty weak. but i've known people for a long time. i he never saw them do anything wrong. and there are some that probably i agree. i can tell you there are some that i've been watching for a long time and in a couple of cases, they weren't republicans and in a lot of cases they were not. they were exactly the opposite. but i've been watching them for a long time and i knew for a long time they were not good people and they were never brought up. >> we're not exactly sure what he was talking about there. apologies for playing that. it's nonsensical. >> so donald trump talked about 36 years. why does it take so long for these people to come forward? >> here is what one of the judiciary committee members senator lindsey graham wrote in his 2016 campaign book about his experience as a military

prosecutor. quote, i tried rape cases that still bother me, including the prosecution of several gis who had gang raped a young german girl. she was just destroyed by it. i learned how much unexpected courage from a deep and hidden place it takes for a rape victim or sexually abused child to testify against their assailants. graham continues, trying to get a scared, confused, little kid or a young woman who feels the best part of her life is over to recall a memory that their every psychological impulse is trying to suppress is not something you forget. it has stayed with me ever since. >> and he's got a different opinion now. >> now he says full steam ahead. >> we're voting. this is nonsense. >> this is it. it's like rudy giuliani. there is then when it serves you

and then there is now. >> well, i think women are going to make that very clear and they have been for a while now. that is one of the reasons why -- that's one of the reasons why you see this scurrying about right now trying to get this whole matter settled to the points that had been made earlier. another allegation comes forward. and there are republicans who do feel that an fbi investigation was warranted, but that's not where the political pressure point was any longer. so they're now stuck in this space to watch this episode unfold today, mika, that at its core is going to be ridiculous on its face. because you're going to have a panel of democratic senators who are going to be asking both the accused and the accuser

questions and then you're going to have one single female representative for the majority of those republican senators answering, asking all of the questions and they're going to sit there like potted plants with expressions on their face we can't wait to see. and the country is going to look at this totally embarrassing moment and say, you are feckless in your leadership, you are afraid to engage in a situation that you yourself have created. >> and the joke of it all is that americans are going to look at this spectacle and know moved of the people on both sides have made up their mind. we've talked about democratic senators who already convicted judge kavanaugh despite hearing dr. ford and there are republicans who said -- including mitch mcconnell who said full steam ahead. >> and women are liars. that is wrong. >> no due process on either side. no due process for the accusers, no due process for the accused.

just a rush to judgment. willie, again, the lindsey graham statement where a very powerful passage in this book just from 2016, my how things have changed in two years, but just from 2016 saying that somebody that goes through what dr. ford said she went through, every psychological impulse that is inside a woman who has been raped or there have been an attempted rape or a sexual assault, every impulse is to hide it, is to shield it, is to forget it. again, more of a reason why we need the fbi -- not a super cop, but the fbi to just get the facts, report them back to the senate, and say this is what we found out. >> that's exactly what joyce was saying a minute ago. they're putting the worst moment

of their life out in public and in this case magnify that times a million. your name is in the history book, your kids are getting death threats. so the idea that she took this lightly and threw it out to torpedo the nomination is tough to believe and that's why they have to consider what she says today. all these people whose minds are made up beforehand, listen to her story, look for evidence and keep an open mind. senator john kennedy said of course my mind is open. if she says something that clearly indicates judge kavanaugh, i would be a no. trump said that yesterday. but there's a logical fallacy in what you just said. kavanaugh is saying basically everybody who has levied these accusations is lying about them. if he's telling the truth, then the pain of coming forward with. an allegation, that doesn't hold in this case because what we're talking about is a -- in his reckoning are

false allegations and the motivations for coming out with a false allegation are entirely different. >> that's why we have the hearing. >> that's why we don't prejudge. >> julie swetnik gave her first and only tv interview to you since leveling those allegations against brett kavanaugh. kavanaugh in a statement released by the white house denies the allegations. swetnik is the first kavanaugh accuser to speak on camera. >> it's been a long time since the things that you detail in the affidavit. what is it that caused you to decide to come forward at this very moment one day before the hearings to make yourself public.? >> well, it wasn't that i wanted to come out one day before the hearings. that just -- circumstances brought it out that way. this is something that occurred

a long time ago and it's not that i just thought about it. it's been on my mind ever since the occurrence. as far as it goes, brett kavanaugh is going for a seat where he's going to have that seat on the supreme court for the rest of his life. if he's going to have that seat legitimately, all of these things should be investigated because, from what i experienced firsthand, i don't think he belongs on the supreme court. i just want the facts to come out and i want it to be judge and i want the american people of to have those facts and to judge for themselves. >> in the things in your statement, are there certain things that disqualify you from being a supreme court nominee? >> i think all of the above. i don't think any human being should treat people that way. >> so miss swetnik's allegation

says judge kavanaugh was present at parties where she was g a ang raped. >> she was the not in a position yesterday -- she was not really ready to do a full formal sit-down interview. we got a chance to talk to her a little bit at the end of a pretty long day when michael avanati and she released her sworn affidavit. their position right now is they have potential corroborating witnesses, but they want to bring those forward and go into further detail in the context of what is now becoming a pretty common demands with a lot of people accusing judge kavanaugh. they want to have a full fbi investigation. and one of the things that she and her attorneys think, that is the proper course can here. she has made a sworn statement. because she has active security clearance, if she is proven to have percentagered herself, she

would lose her livelihood. but they saying we want to have the fbi investigate and we think, like a lot of people, that there is a rush now to vote on judge kavanaugh before the truth can be sought in a reasonable way. >> we're talking about a lifetime appointment here. and i know a lot of republicans are talking about nowing through and voting for judge cavanaugh. how do you do that without an fbi investigation? which makes days a week. but how do you do that because you're risking the types of possibility that an investigation does occur after he's on the bench and maybe some of those stories pan out as being truthful. and then at that point suddenly you're going to have somebody on the supreme court where everybody is going to be calling for impeachment hearings. so i don't understand the

politics for republicans to say we're going to jam this through right now. i understand there's a time frame that they have to get it by. but, again, if they had requested an fbi investigation a week, week and a half ago when everybody was asking them to, they would have their answer back at least on dr. ford by now. >> and truly, joe, there is really no time frame. there is no real hurry here, right? this is a republican party that kept merrick garland off the court. the notion there might be nine is contradicted by the behavior of the majority in the senate when just last year -- for the sake of judge kavanaugh, if he wants to have a lifetime appointment on the supreme court, i would think what he would want is a thorough investigation even if it took a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. if he could then have his name

fully cleared and take his seat on the court without any shred of doubt, would that not be the better outcome for him and for the republican party? and i think you were exactly right that if they jam this vote through and if these accusations which are mounting, the accusations we must take seriously are women who put their name to the accusation. i think they have to be taken seriously. and the idea that there's somehow that jamming through this is going to work to their benefit, if these accusations continue to be investigated and democrats take the house of representatives, it's not implausible to me that democrats will try and impeach judge cavanaugh while he's on the supreme court next year if continued investigations of these things prove that they are legitimate complaints. and who can want that on either side of the aisle?

>> the jamming through of this does not help the republicans. it's not good for the republican party. it's not good for the court. and it's not good for judge kavanaugh. if i'm judge kavanaugh, i want the fbi to dig in and let me get on the supreme court without a cloud over my head. >> so you can see more of john's interview with julie swe the tnik on this sunday's episode of "the circus." still ahead, we showed you something lindsey graham previously said. there's a decades old clip of joe biden making the rounds about the role of the fbi in these situations. we'll put that into the needed perspective. >> joe biden 1991, that's full biden. that is full biden. plus, former republican strategist steve schmidt is here with his take on all of this and yamish who asked a tough

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>> it's not for the fbi. if you look at what joe biden said, he said they don't do this and they do it clearly. >> president trump trying to pin his decision not to order an fbi investigation on joe biden. >> the last thing i'll point out, the next person that reference to an fbi report being worth anything obviously doesn't understand anything. fbi explicitly does not in this or any other case reach a

conclusion. period. period. so, judge, there's no reason why you should know this. the reason why we cannot rely on the fbi report, you wouldn't like it if we did because it is inconclusive. they say he said, she said, and they said. period. so when people wave an fbi report before you, understand they do not make more conclusions. they do not make recommendations. >> ted kennedy next to him going, the runway is clear, sir. you can land your plane. >> it sounds like biden is saying an fbi report is not worth it. but biden was admonishing senator orrin hatch for reading

directly from a report with the hope of keeping more wild claims from going public. in fact, the republicans, including orrin hatch, who now opposes an fbi investigation of kavanaugh embraced the fbi's work. >> i have to say, chairman biden, and the ranking member thurman, when they heard about this the first time, they immediately ordered this fbi investigation which was the very right thing to do. it's the appropriate thing to do. >> john. >> so the reason that republicans are -- have been opposing the fbi's involvement has to do with -- you said this is bad for republicans and the republican party and it may be bad for them in the long-term. but in the short-term, right now, the republican base has increasingly come to the view, from what one can tell, that kavanaugh is being railroaded

and the reason to have a vote is this will never end. you keep this going, there are more allegations, unsubstantiated, untrue, and the purpose, in the view of many republicans, is to extend this past the november election date and the possibility that democrats -- the marginal possibility that democrats will take the senate and, therefore, kill the nomination. so republicans believe politics is being played had here. and i think it is. i don't think that that is why these allegations have caught fire. i believe people belie believe seriously that these allegations node to be investigated, but is there a political context in which democrats are sticking it to republicans? yes, absolutely. >> well, there is at the same time, the republicans if they had started the fbi investigation, requested it a week, a week and a half ago, if you look at the time frame by

thomas and hill, it would have been completed by now. and we may be looking back a week from now saying, they should have ordered it up today. >> okay. but here is what i would say. if that had happened and we were sitting on this panel the morning after-republicans assented and trump would have said he should just withdraw. the optics of this is about to -- >> wait, if there had been an fbi investigation? >> yes. i think the idea would have been trump is pulling back. trump is trying to put this on the fbi. this is implicit pressure on kavanaugh to withdraw. >> we'll never know. >> we'll never know. but i'm saying you're saying it would be better for them if they had done it a week ago and i don't know that that would have been the case necessarily. >> but now we're in a position where the hearing today, other than hearing from dr. ford, is meaningless. there is no way that republicans and democrats, willie, can absorb all the incoming over the past 24 hours and make a

decision on four accusations. there's just no way. the fbi can -- if the fbi went out on all four accusations and had said we looked at this and they come to the same conclusions as the "new york times," we find absolutely no corroborating witnesses for, you know, like number three where there was basically homes turned into gang rape factories according to the latest accusations, then that actually would be compelling and republicans actually could hold up that fbi report and says the fbi says there is no evidence this ever occurred. >> remember, chuck grassley wants a vote tomorrow morning at 9:30. so there's literally no way to process all the claims and any that may come down today during the hearing or after the hearing. they koorchbt possibility absorb it. and john is right, republicans are worried that this is a delay tactic, that democrats want to get past the midterm elections and the dynamic may change. they also say that the fbi could go and do a long investigation

and in a he said/she said, not come back with anything conclusive and that would be a waste of time. but they don't know that. >> i think they may be worried about something else, actually. >> if the fbi looked into it, they would open the door to something else. >> yeah. >> let's bring in jim vandehyne. let's talk about the stakes here today. this is the swing vote on the supreme court of the united states. what do you think this situation looks like 24 hours from now? >> i'll tell you what the mood inside the white house is. they're pretty nervous about this. a lot of white house officials watched his performance on fox and they thought it was pretty robotic, unnerving to them. so there's some nervousness that he goes into this hearing and looks stiff, awkward, defensive. if that is the case, he is toast. i think the president is standing behind him because he

feels a kindred spirit with him, but he'll cut him loose if he thinks he needs to cut him loose. the other side is, you've got a lot of republicans, maybe three or four, in that camp in addition to susan collins and murkowski and jeff flake that are taking a wait and see approach. if she comes off as super compelling and he doesn't, it could be quite a development. think about if you're brett kavanaugh today. you could either by tomorrow morning be on the court or you could be a punch line in an asterisk, a guy who is a bright, rising star, a conservative judge who went down under accusations of being a predator. >> this is very difficult to cover. >> joyce, i'm curious as we talk to jim here if you think any new information will come to light.

will we learn anything now? >> it's likely we will hear new things. but we won't hear today is from a key witness. we won't hear from mr. judge who dr. blasey-ford puts in the room. she puts the defendant -- i shouldn't say the defendant. she puts judge kavanaugh's best friend in the room, a built in witness and this witness hasn't been heard from under oath. and that i think is something republicans and democrats alike have to weigh in the balance. they can't evaluate this until they hear from the one guy who is in a position to shed some light. >> there is absolutely no defense for not putting judge in the room, for not getting him -- >> what's the reasoning? >> to get him to come and

testify. there is no reason other than they want less facts and not more in front of the american people. is there? >> no. >> am i missing snl something? >> i don't think you're missing anything at all. now you have two people who have put mark judge in the room. she accuses him of inappropriate behavior, that's two women on the record who are naming this person and the fact that he has written a letter to the judiciary committee saying i don't want to be interviewed. i have nothing further to say is sufficient for republicans. it's absurd that he not be testifying in this hearing. and then there's literally no justification for it that i can imagine or that anybody who is fair minded can imagine as to

why he shouldn't have to come forward and speak. >> jim. >> there's a reason republicans don't want him there is because if you look at what he's written over the years, he would be the worst possible witness in the terms of trying to make their case. he was a wild guy, a drunk by his own admission in high school and in college and they don't want him anywhere near there. it would be bad to have kavanaugh associated with him. they want this the done and they want it done quick. they believe there's enough holes in every accusation that they can get this thing through tomorrow morning as long as he has a fine performance. but, again, if he doesn't, the president -- you even saw it in the press conference yesterday, that wild press conference which is what we would be talking about if it weren't for the hearing, he made it all about himself. maybe i'll change my mind and throw him overboard. he might throw him overboard if he thinks he's going to lose

this one. >> they want this thing done. they want it quick and they want it on their terms and i don't think that's going to work for female voters. jim, thank you very much. still ahead, the president hit on a lot of other topics, a lot, besides brett kavanaugh in his 81-minute news conference yesterday, including leveling a major accusation against china. we'll have that next on "morning joe." how can you spot ambition? is it written on our faces? or something woven into the dna of the doers, the determined, the driven? and while the bar keeps getting higher, ambition gives us the power to tackle any obstacle. opening the doors to bigger leaps,

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yes, please, mr. kerd. go ahead. >> thank you very much for your time, mr. president. >> homer simpson has become president of the united states. mr. kerd. >> joining us now the president of the council on foreign relations and author of the book "a world in disarray" richard haas. >> when the president of the united states, the commander-in-chief of not calling on mr. kerd or attacking george washington, never saw that one coming, he was, as has

been saying this morning, he looked like he's come to the realization that peace between israelis and arab neighbors would be a good thing. >> would be a good thing for the israelis. i would confirm that approximately it would be a good thing. what's interesting even if you have peace between israelis and palestinians, it wouldn't be the key to the region. you still have problems in syria, a yemen civil war, imperial iran. idea israeli-palestinian peace as wonderful it would be would somehow bring peace to the middle east, alas not so. >> where are we right now? u.n. week, obviously the president, big headlines had to do with people laughing at the president when he was speaking before the general assembly. but where are we a year later from the speech where he attacked north korea, where people inside the administration were saying there's 50%, 60%,

70% chance of a ground war on the korean peninsula. aren't we in a much better place now and does the president of the united states deserve credit for that? >> north korea is in the better place. war is much less likely. seems to have been done at the cost of overlooking what the north koreans are continuing to do. president keeps declaring victory on decnuclearization. i don't see the evidence that it's happening. the good news is we backed away from the precipice. unless the administration gets tougher that we'll actually deal with the north korea missile threat. >> the north koreans have gotten what they want from another united states president. >> to hear president trump again yesterday saying i've gotten to know chairman kim, i've gotten to know him, i like him, he's a good guy. i think he believes, the president does, this kind of flattery will work on kim the way it's worked on trump with other leaders. >> it's the personalization of foreign policy. kim good. he has a good relationship with

the head of china. really he's going after china on every front. this is getting close to a u.s.-chinese cold war. this is not like justin trudeau. >> why doesn't he like justin trudeau? i'm curious. >> the canadians will not sign on to sort of the one sided deal that the mexicans did. >> i thought it was something else. >> he's having real trouble with the democratic leaders of europe, with angela merkel, doesn't do well it seems to me with the democratic leaders. he's doing more with the authoritarian leaders. he had good things to say about turkey. he didn't have anything bad to say about mr. putin. again, has a carve out for north korea and for china. but i think the most interesting things he's claiming too much credit for north korea, very tough on iran, obviously. probably the biggest story, might be china. that the united states seems to

be looking for ways to get in a confrontation with china. >> doesn't look like we're heading in the same direction with iran that we did with north korea, he's now sending signals that he would like to get-together with the iranians and move towards the same sort of -- warming of relations he has with north korea? >> there's a chance. harder given the iranian makeup. might be on to something. if a year from now there was some talks between the united states and iran it wouldn't be a stunner. >> richard, what do you make -- you say that, you know, he may be launching sort of a cold war against china. so there are three front. there's trade. there's the politics of the south china sea. then this allegation that china is interfering with our elections which, of course, has its own ironies --

>> not the guy -- yeah. >> is this all about trade? it's all really when it comes down to it about trade, right? >> it is. what's interesting about it across the political spectrum most people would agree with the president in his critique of china on trade. they came into the w. t.o. in 2004. they gamed the system. stolen technology. they used subsidies to advantage their country. china has game the system. where people depart is the tariffs. >> michael steele. >> how much do you think all of this playing out the way it is, we see our allies, european, canadian, just walking away from trump. is he sliding to the point where he knows he can keep these guys tethered in to a certain degree or is there a breaking point for

our european allies in dealing with the administration given this erratic approach to domestic policy for them in terms of trade and global foreign policy? >> well, i think we've reached that point to some extent. europeans have come to the conclusion this is not the united states they thought they knew. they are charting a more independent course. the biggest question for them is whether this is a temporary b a aberration or this lasts. so this now have incorporate this. the south koreans are basically following their own foreign policy towards north korea. what we're seeing is a real element of post-america world where other countries are not deferring to the luns as much. if we do america first and as the president said the other day you should do what i'm doing. what other people are saying okay you do america first, we're going to do china first, we're

going to do south korea first, israel first or saudi arabia first. this is the world we're setting in motion. a much more national narrow world where alliances count for yes, sir, multilateral institutions count for less. we think we'll prosper in such a world. my concern is it will be just the opposite. we'll have less influence, less peace and prosperity. >> richard haas thank you. >> congratulations on the yankees. >> michael steele, thank you as well. coming up the president admits that the sexual misconduct allegations against him affect his ability to believe brett kavanaugh's accusers. we'll have that and other key moments from trump's fourth presidential news conference and it was a doozy. plus a bit of perspective from john meacham as accusations against kavanaugh pile up ahead of today's hearings and the pbs news hour, not the "new york

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where we're changing withs? contemporary make-overs. then, use the ultimate power handshake, the upper hander with a double palm grab. who has the upper hand now? start winning today. book now at lq.com. if we brought george washington here, and we said we have george washington, the democrats would vote against him just so you understand. he may have had a bad past, who knows. he may have had some, i think, accusations made. didn't he have a couple of things in his past? george washington would be voted against 100% by schumer and the kcon artists. >> president trump yesterday with a reference to george washington not too long comparing his poll numbers with abe lincoln's. it was a long news conference with a guy who really knows his history. welcome back to "morning joe". it's thursday, september 27th,

2018. with us we have editor of commentator magazine, former u.s. attorney for northern district of alabama and msnbc contributor joyce vance. nbc political analyst, steve schmidt. and john heilemann. and also with us, white house correspondent for pbs news hour. good to have you all on board. >> john heilemann, the president's press conference. go. >> all right, john heilemann, thank you. >> what did we see yesterday? >> you know, his classic case where there's not i think anybody on the republican side or democratic side who didn't look at that as a slightly unhinged kind of wild eyed performance artist of a certain

kind. you saw my social media lit up saying the president lost his mind. look, it's nothing like we've ever seen any president ever do before. every time he does a preconference, he does them infrequently he performs in this way that's antic and wild eyed, and improvisational. from his own point of view he seems to think that he's accomplishing whatever it is he's setting out the accomplish. he seems to enjoy the forum and it would be good -- i don't know if it's good for political standing but good for america to be in positions where he can be questioned intensely in the way he was yesterday. >> did he answer a single question yesterday? >> no. i mean it was -- felt like hours

of rambling nonsense. this is the commander-in-chief. it was an unhinged performance. if you were the captain of an aircraft carrier in the united states navy and you did that, you would be pulled off the bridge in a straight jacket. >> gone. you would be gone. >> that's it. so that anybody -- >> if you were a ceo in any fortune 500 company and you held that press conference, you would be gone. if you were a high school football coach, or a jv football coach in any high school in america and you held that press conference. you would be gone. >> but, i had a former senior white house official text me during the press conference saying, and mark this like i don't see anybody beating this guy by which he meant this is something new, it's crazy, it's

beyond anything, and yet he's this giant figure now, sort of treading his way through the united states and the democrats who were going to line up against him in 2020. the question is who they're he going to -- he's not just larger-than-life now. he's transcended -- he's a cartoon, he's a giant, he's a this, he's a this and that. he's so big, everything is so big. the press conference is big. his lies are big. his nonsense is big. the question is everyone going to look smaller next to this? i think that's an interesting question. >> i really think that the number one reason why he wanted to stay out there was to make this point and it was the point about being laughed at by the world. everyone knows the world was laughing at him. and he wants to take the narrative over and try and explain to people that they were

laughing with him. this is what this man thinks is important to clarify. take a look. >> let's take news. it was covered that way. and i said this, and i was in front of a large group of highly professional people, most of whom are from either other countries or the united nations. people that aren't big into clapping, applauding, smiling. and i heard a little rustle, as i said, our country is now stronger than ever before. it's true. it is true. i heard a little rustle in a said it's true. i heard smiles. i said oh, i didn't know. they western laughing at me. they were laughing with me. we had fun. that was not laughing at me. so, the fake news said people laughed at president trump. they didn't laugh at me. people had a good time with me. we were doing it together. we had a good time. they respect what i've done.

the united states is respected again. >> right. >> so, mika, you know, we've said it before. i think maggie said it this week as well, people that have known donald trump for a while, covered donald trump for a while, will tell you that the one thing he cannot take -- >> he can't take it. >> -- is people laughing at him. >> i know. >> if you want to see the not where donald trump said i am running for president, it was when barack obama mocked and ridiculo ridiculed him at the washington correspondent dinner. that's the moment he said i'll get even. >> you think of the back story that we know, leading up to the a alfafa dinner where there were some incredible jokes and what was great about them they were sechl deprecate i-- self-deprec.

>> they put them in front of him. what did he say? >> i don't get it. >> does it mean he'll run for secretary-general of the united nations. isn't that the logic. he runs for president because obama mocks him. he gets laughed by the u.n. and he takes over the u.n. and show them. >> i still think, and i think i remain alone in western civilization, i don't think he's going to run in 2020. he's done it. he's done the gig. everybody that's close to him says what he fears, he fears losing a hell of a lot more than he likes winning and it's just not going to be worth the risk. >> you were at the news conference. i saw him focusing on you and i think -- he's a fan. big fan of your work. what did you ask him? what did he say >> the thing i asked him about was what you were just

discussing, the fact i said well what was that experience like to be laughed at and why you think they were laughing. and i was a bit taken aback by him saying they were laughing with him. then i asked him about his own sexual allegations. a number of women accused president trump of inappropriate sexual behavior. does that impact your view of brett kavanaugh. what he said is it's fake news. that he actually didn't think it was going impact him when in reality what he was saying yes as a man who has been falsely accused i'm absolutely looking at these women and thinking there are whom falsely accused me and i'm wary of anybody who is accusing a man of sexually harassing them because i don't think anything that was said about me is true. i will say i think he did answer a lot of questions even though it was somewhat windy press conference he said i'm going keep my -- i'm basically going to figure out whether or not i

want to keep brett kavanaugh after this hearing. if you're brett kavanaugh you should have listened very closely to that. this president goes with his gut. defy aides even they tell him to keep brett kavanaugh. the president will be watching very closely. if brett kavanaugh doesn't look like a winner. if the president says you're a loser, i don't want my legacy tied to you, he could be gone by the end of the day. >> president trump yesterday said women are more angry over the kavanaugh accusations than men. >> i'll tell you this. the people that have complained to me about it the most about what's happening are women. women are very angry. you know, i got 52% with women. everyone said this couldn't happen. 52%. women are so angry and i frankly think that -- i think they like what the republicans are doing,

but i think they would have liked to see it go a lot faster. but give them their day in court. let her have her day in court. let somebody else have a day in court. but the ones that i find -- i mean i have men that don't like it. but i have women that are incensed on what's going on. i've always said women are smarter than men. >> and just a fact check, the president's claim that he got 52% of women's vote, he got 52% of white women's votes, he received 41% of women's votes in total. >> so, steve, what your looking at today in the kavanaugh hearing? >> absolute utter chaos. the denigration of our most important institution. >> that's correct. >> what we'll see today is a nonfunctioning disgraceful

congress. what we'll see is an assault and a vandalizing of the supreme court as an institution. and one of the things i think is remarkable about the whole thing is, if you think -- take the politics, take the ideology out of it, you look at grassley and dianne feinstein, both of them pushing 90 years old, they've been up there together for 26 years in a body of 100 people, and this is the outcome of their work product? it is unspeakable. >> do you agree it's disgraceful on both sides that we have democrats that have already convicted kavanaugh as a serial rapist. we have republicans that said we're going plow through this, we're not even going listen to dr. ford, we'll just get it over with. >> zero sum partisan politics. all of it washes sewage on the

mo marble edifice of the supreme court. it's being trashed. no matter what, let's say have doe get through. he can sit up there to the year 2058, 40 years from now. there will always be a cloud over this. this has been handled atrociously. the reality is that we have a governing class in the country that is utterly faithless to the idea and the notion that what they should be doing up there is strengthening our institutions and looking ahead ten years, 20 years. how do we strengthen the republic. that they are stewards of a great inheritance and that that. >> you've run supreme court nominations. what would you have done with this?

you have a woman coming forward in christine blasey ford making an allegation from 36 years ago and then three and four that follow after that. how would you have handled it better than it's been handled. >> first off, it was an enormous mistake not to re-open the fbi background investigation. there's precedent for this. it's not anita hill so much as it is john tower particularly on the instances of drinking. late in the confirmation process allegations were made about senator tower. it was immediately referred back to fbi. the fbi re-opened the investigation and came back a couple of days later. joe biden was absolutely correct that the fbi report doesn't reach a conclusion but it does provide information that is able to be determinative with regard to the candor and veracity of the claims. >> the tower case, the nominee for secretary of defense at the beginning of the first bush

administration and the president, he did not want to appoint tower. he was bullied into appointing tower who was the ranking member of the armed services committee. and so when the allegations of drinking came out, there was some interest in the white house in letting this go forward in case they could get the nominee they wanted who turned out the be dick cheney, right? so in this case, the white house clearly thought, you know, this is unfair. it's not true. we're going to push forward to get this nomination through because something is going on here. this is a late hit. >> as it shows in politics sometimes you win you lose. democrats by throwing tower overboard got dick cheney. and dick cheney would never have been vice president if tower had not been pushed to the side. so, john heilemann, you look at what's going on at capitol hill.

obviously politics all over the place with this kavanaugh hearing on both sides. decisions being made as it pertains to november. at the same time it seems that every time you see favorability ratings of the president or other individual candidates, like for instance in florida, there seems to be a pretty strong wind behind democratic candidates backs. >> right. the generic ballots including the most nbc/wall street journal poll the ballots widen. republicans look on that metric are gaining ground rather than them tightening. generic ballots will tighten. right now they widen across a lot of survey research. we look at races around the country. i'm sick of the notion of wave versus tsunami whatever. there's just a lot of democratic momentum.

again, to go to the questions that we've been talking about around this supreme court hearing it's not just that this is bad for the supreme court and ultimately if judge kavanaugh is innocent, it's bad for judge kavanaugh it's being handled this way, it's bad for the process. this hearing is ridiculous on a million levels. putting that all aside, how is this hearing with these old white men on the republican side of the committee outsourcing their questioning, they will be sitting there silently while a female prosecutor questions dr. ford. how is this going to help the politics of the republican party which is bleeding support of suburban, well educated female voters across the country. they already had a problem after donald trump got elected. they a problem in off year election, had a problem in special athletics. now today in this widely watched hearing they will do nothing to remedy that problem they will only make it worse. might have been even worse if

senators conducted the hearing themselves. this will not help their problem. it's going to further the political dynamics i think that are favoring democrats as we head towards election day. >> john, can i ask you this, though. do you think that there's a body of opinion among female voters in the united states that will shift from republican to democrat because of the behavior of this hearing? my sense is that there's incredible democratic enthusiasm among women who have already decided to vote and it's possible that republican women will be depressed by the hearing or the republican turnout with itting depressed, but is there a lot of room to be made up or gained to be gotten from women who haven't already been kind of consciousness raised by the results of the election in the last two years? >> as you know, john, one of the things that's happened in the last years in our politics, the center, the swing has gone away. there's some swing that's still there and a lot of those people

have already moved into the camp that they are in as you suggest. the energy question is hugely important. the biggest problem democrats have had in off year elections is their base doesn't turn out. these hearings are going to do nothing but add further energy and further sense of passion to democratic voters, a lot of female women voters in the base in addition to the ones in the middle who need an incentive, need motivation to turn out. they don't generally turn out. this is another thing that will further again rise them in addition it will depress the republican female turn out. does it change the course of the election? no. it just furthers trend lines that are already pretty firmly baked in. >> joyce vance, what are the positives that could come out of today if any. what are you looking for? >> hopefully the country will get some closure. we'll be further forward towards understanding these allegations.

but really that's a pretty slim hope. i don't think we'll see closure at the end of the day. maybe we'll be a little bit further down that road. we'll end today with more questions than we start today with, almost certainly. we'll have a sense of additional witnesses. we'll have a sense that there needs revitalized fbi background process. we'll have a sense we're not ready to have a vote tomorrow. this is so heavily reminiscent and john heilemann's comments made me think about what happened in alabama during the special senate election where allegations came forward to that roy moore one of the candidates for that senate seat had engaged in sexual misconduct with young women and that energized voters and women in ways that we had never seen before in alabama. if, in fact, the senate and house go democratic after this election, we'll see that clip that you played at the start of the segment of the president saying women are angry, we'll see that played the morning after the election because it will be women and their anger at

the process that goes on today that will drive vote toers trs poll. >> what is the white house hoping will happen. a lot of people say if judge kavanaugh can hold serve, no new bomb shell they will go ahead with the vote and he'll be confirmed. >> the best case scenario for the white house is that brett kavanaugh come out sounding a bit like president trump and that he's aggressive in his defers, he's saying over and over again that he did not do this, and that he is -- while he's pushing back against his accusers he doesn't really go too far because obviously these are still women that say that they've been sexually assaulted or raped and he doesn't want to be seen as attacking the victim. the problem is that after all of this there are more accusers out there that have not been able to testify. four other women won't be testifying at this hearing. the best case scenario for brett kavanaugh the president sees his

performance and says you know what i'll still stick behind this guy. i'm willing to stake my legacy and appoint him to a lifetime appointment. >> still ahead "morning joe" plenty of personal repercussions for both dr. christine blasey ford and judge kavanaugh today but what about the cost to the court itself? "time" magazine tackles that question and so do we next on "morning joe". ♪ not long ago, ronda started here. and then, more jobs began to appear. these techs in a lab. this builder in a hardhat... ...the welders and electricians who do all of that. the diner staffed up 'cause they all needed lunch. teachers... doctors... jobs grew a bunch. what started with one job spread all around. because each job in energy

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are you concerned at the message that's being sent to the whom are watching this when you use language like conjole. >> i've used much worst

language. it's con job. confidence job. it's a con job by the democrats. they know it. >> confidence but they know it. >> president trump also yesterday continued his defense of supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh with a swipe at former president barack obama. take a look. >> 145 judges i'll be picking by the end of a fairly short period of time because barack obama wasn't big on picking judges. when i got there i said how is this possible? i have 145, including court of appeals judges. and they just didn't do it. you know why? they got tired. they got complacent. something happened. >> what do you mean something happened? >> that something was senator mitch mcconnell. >> mitch mcconnell wouldn't even talk to them. what's he talking about. >> according to politico, mcconnell effectively expanded a

little known rule that prohibits the confirmation of lifetime judicial appointments during an election by two years. it blocked dozens of obama's lower court picks, leaving hundreds of vacancies throughout federal court system. and supreme court nominee merritt garland was denied a hearing, a move that mcconnell called a career-high light in 2016. >> one of my proudest moments when i looked at barack obama in the eye and i said mr. president, you will not fill the supreme court vacancy. >> so proud of himself. >> that's something that anybody that's been in washington more than 15 minutes knows, that will come back, of course, to haunt republicans. steve, one of the things since first going to that town in 1994 that has shocked me, and so few things shock me any more is just how stupid people in that town

are. they believe that the last election that put them in power will be the final election ever held. there's always another avengers movie, another "star wars" movie, always an election every two years. and republicans will pay dearly at some point for mitch mcconnell's move on merritt garland. >> the cycle of retribution and revenge and tribal impulse will worsen as we go forward. and imagine, and you hope if you believe in the country, you believe, i think, in its history, you understand that the right leaders have emerged at the right moments almost providentially. imagine where you have a majority leader and minority leader and sit down together and say our job here is to strengthen these broken institutions and this constitution, the united states senate, the world's former

greatest deliberative body is broken. and more than any other person over the last generation, the person whose broken it is mitch mcconnell. harry reid played a big role in it too. it goes on both sides. but the reality is here, is we better find our way to a better grouch leaders in this country or we're going to put ourselves on a path to inevitable decline. these institutions are broken. and the people who broke them are leading them, they celebrate it, they have no higher goal than their tribal win in the moment. >> it has been a long march to where we are, and at least the latest version of this started with ted kennedy's speech on robert bork. >> i think so. george mitchell who was the senate majority leader in 1991

blocked george bush's judicial appointment from the middle of earl '92 through the election, and when harry reid used the nuclear option meaning that ended the filibuster for lower court judges in 2013, mitch mcconnell went on the floor of the senate and said you will rue this day because if you do it we'll do it and he proved it. and what mcconnell did with garland, if democrats win the senate in november, again it's a long shot but if they win the senate in november, and kavanaugh is not confirmed this month, they will keep that seat open until after the 20 election saying well 400 days was find for merritt garland, 800 days is fine for whoever will follow. >> it continues. joining us now historian, author, souffle america and

rogers professor of the presidency of vanderbilt university john meacham. he's an nbc news news and msnbc contributor. also with us deputy washington bureau chief at "time" magazine, the new issue of "time" features a piece called "the cost of the court, the battle over kavanaugh's nomination is another blow to america's third branch of government." >> john meacham, mika and i always go back and forth on whether the institutions will hold, how they go through challenges like this. i remember, you know, as i'm sure a lot of people remember after the 2000 recount going to the supreme court, people said the supreme court would not be respected again in our lifetime, a year two later there was a poll that showed it was one of the most respected institutions in america again. we were talking about the back and forth, these judicial fights we've had. miguel estrada, democrats said they are not putting him through because he was a conservative

and a hispanic. and they didn't want a conservative hispanic, i think it was the d.c. circuit. it seems that we've been going back and forth, and the ante has increased every time. the cycle continues. where does it stop? and give us, as we always ask you, give us reason to hope that this is -- we've been through this before, and we got through it. >> well, we have. the court has been political and a force of oppositional gravity since at least john marshal held the federalist interest. >> that's going back a little bit, yeah. >> i know mika wanted me to mention john marshal. >> first supreme court justice. >> one thing to be s-and this is the message we've not been here before, relax. let's do remember the first time when he a revolution in american politics to restore the principles of an earlier, better

era of 1800 when thomas jefferson literally called his election the revolution of 1800 because he thought in the previous eight years we lost our way. so let's not fall prey to the narcissism of the present. the key thing is what steve just said, the worrisome thing is that all the institutions feel as though they are in kind of a tribal dust bowl right now, right? just everything is happening. just was seeing, you know, you had the fox news interview with kavanaugh, their ads as if kavanaugh was running for president. it feels as though the court, which was supposed to be, like the senate, a saucer that cooled the milk, it feels as if it's now another element in this tribal war. so, seems to me that one of the

dramas today and going forward with the vote is there are 35% or so of the people that are always going to think one thing and 35% are going to think the other, and we're really talking about a middle 20%. and what american history tells us is that there is a common sense, there's a reservoir of people who will allow reason to have a stand in passion against political decisions and we have focus on that. >> in some ways you can say the senate is being run like the gambino crime family. you take out one of our, we'll take out one of yours. alex, you guys are writing in "time" magazine, the cost to the court. what as we go through this process even of just the last couple of weeks is the long term cost to the supreme court? >> well, i think the stakes for the court are quite high today

and throughout this process and that's largely because of the way it functions as a above average of government. when you look at the way congress or executive branch functions they are accountable to the people. their workings are on display, they write laws, make policy. the court by contrast is pretty much sealed off. you don't see cameras in the courtroom. you don't see justices. as a result it gets a lot of its power and authority from the public trust that we place in it and in the integrity of its members. when the process becomes so politicalized and so steeped in pure partisan warfare that's a very dangerous moment for this institution. >> steve, to this point, if judge kavanaugh is confirmed there's a large percentage of this country and especially members of the senate who vote against him who say he has a dark cloud over his head. any time he's the swing vote in a major decision it will come with asterisk.

>> for decades. this rule of law which is under assault and the other news is his meeting with rod rosenstein, the constancy of the attacks on the justice department on career prosecutors, the assault on objective truth, all of it works together to profoundly weaken necessary institutions in a moment in time where the american people, i think, have lost connection to the story of the country, the specialness of the country, and the fact that our constitutional republic has endured for two plus centuries on the backs of much sacrifice. and we're in a moment in time where we ought to stop and pause

and celebrate the good in the country, what's right about our system of government, and understand that if our politics continues on its current path, that the country will be on a path of decline. >> so -- >> a process that's not being respected. it will go on forever if we don't get people in there. >> so from the narcisssm to the present and the past, do you have a question >> professor meacham, in terms of the narcissism versus the past what did you make of the president's statement about george washington in the press conference yesterday. i'm thinking he really wasn't thinking of washington, he was meaning to say jefferson, but he got them confused because

usually now people talk about thomas jefferson and his, you know, slave family and all that. but trying to bring in george washington to say that he couldn't get confirmed today that was kind of a startling use of the past, no? >> well, yes. i mean that's redundant in trump's case. what i think -- he actually stumbled into something. bismarck said god loves drunks, little children and united states of america. in this case he pulled donald trump in. because i don't think trump knows about this. but, in fact, a young george washington was in love with his neighbor's wife, sally fairfax. and there were some letters that would not have played well in front of a senate committee. i would bet a good bit of money donald trump never heard name of sally fairfax and if so think

it's just the county. it does find of show the elemental appeal of that press conference. i watched every minute of it like a lot of people did thinking my lord we've never seen anything like this. but realizing knows what doing for his 35%, 40% and that's one of the things that i think people like me got wrong for a long time. there are a lot of folks who don't seem to care very much about the conventions and the norms and think that having him up there at a period of at least a targeted economic growth and he's poking his eye in traditional kind of left of center interests, is a good thing. and so i think that the key word of the yeara is that we are now a tribal nation.

we don't as st. augustine said a nation should be united by the common objects of their love. we don't have enough common objects now and he's the perfect figure for a period of fragmentation as opposed to onity. >> john meacham thank you. alex, thank you. the new issue of "time" is on sale tomorrow. >> willie we were just quoting. >> how great is john we champs-elysees. he comes to the show with the research on george washington that donald trump didn't have. meacham has deep personal flaws but a great historian. >> that's true. we'll have much more ahead on this morning's high stakes hearing with judge kavanaugh and professor ford now just over two hours away. we'll have a legal panel break down what to expect this morning. it's all coming up on "morning joe". - [announcer] the typical vacuum head can struggle

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[ laughter ] >> yes, but specifically what would you do? >> we're going to plot freedom. usher in democratic values and ideals and fight terror loving terrorists. [ laughter ] >> but, again, and not to belabor the point, one specific thing. [ laughter ] >> i would like to use one of my life lines. >> oh, my gosh. up next katie couric joins us ten years after her unforgettable interview with sarah palin. how that moment changed the election and in many ways all future campaigns as well. we'll be right back.

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when it comes to establishing your world view i was cures what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for

this -- >> i read most of them, again with great appreciation for the press and for the media. >> what comes specifically. i'm curious. >> all of them that have been front of me over all these years. >> what do you read? what do you watch? >> well, you know, i love to read. actually, i'm looking at a book. i'm reading a book. i'm trying to get started. every time i do, i get about half a page before i get a call. i don't get to read very much because i'm working very hard on lots of different things. >> that was then republican vice presidential candidate sarah palin in 2008 and then president donald trump last year discussing their respective choices in reading material. joining us now, host of the katie couric podcast katie couric. a two-part series from the podcast looks back ten years ago at katie's campaign interviews

with sarah palin and their impact on the 2008 election. and how seoposenwe migpalin mig. i will never forget your interview with palin. it's hard to believe it was ten years ago. it was a pifal mome apivotal mo campaign because at that time she was the most captivating candidate we had seen. she even eclipsed a similarly captivating candidate in barack obama. but i think she was still -- people didn't understand who she was, how she felt about policy. and this was an opportunity to really dig into discover if she had accumulated knowledge, if she was intellectually curious, interested in public policy, and how she would govern. especially that john mccain at the time -- he had mel know ma four times.

he would have been the oldest president elected. it was really an important moment for us to discover who sarah palin really was. and i think through asking sort of some simple and some more complicated questions, very well thought out in terms of how we'd approach it, we were able to reveal her for the candidate she was. >> we have a cool setup here because we have one of the men behind the scenes of the campaign. >> steve figures prominently in the podcast. i feel like i have your voice in the sleep every night now. i can't get away from it. >> the first one is charlie gibson, a lot of people viewed that as him being condescending to sarah palin. what about then her sitting down with katie couric? >> back in that moment of time, there were four networks. kat katie's coverage is the campaign in our view was scrupulously

fair over the course of both senator obama and hillary clinton's campaign. and we knew we were going to get a fair shot there. now, for ten years, all the conspiracy theories that have been out there that this was a setup, and for the life of me, you can hold a gun to my head. i can't figure out what the unfair question that katie ever asked her was. so the reality was at this moment in time and that interview and we were talking about this off hair, is that week was the week that lehman brothers went down and began the financial crisis. in that moment in time, what was happening, the global economy was imploding. we wake up the next day. we do from five points up to a trajectory of seven points down. the right track number in the country collapses to 6%. in that economic crisis which i never would have guessed at the time didn't just determine the outcome of the 2008 election. i think it was the determinetive

event in 2012 and 2016. it has been the most significant event of this generation where the american people saw the bankers all get bailed out with a trillion dollars of their tax money while 13 million families had their houses foreclosed. nobody was held accountable. nobody went to jail. and it sparked this rise of anger, of populism, of nationalism that we see playing out over the remaining decade. not just in this country but globally. >> and i think obviously sarah palin was brilliant in tapping into that anger in terms of how she conducted herself in rallies, how she didn't tamp down some of the things that were said where people were yelling treason. and i think her way of campaigning was very different than john mccain's. i think that created a lot of problems internally, obviously. >> i'm curious if you went into the interview thinking she may

not have the answers to these questions or -- >> i suspected that she would have some trouble probably just from what i had seen and what i had read and her performance in previous interviews. i didn't feel that anyone really kind of dug into some of these issues. so i did think that she might struggle. that wasn't the intent of the interview. it was to ask her important, fair questions that would reveal her ability to be a critical thinker and to govern. >> what were you thinking when all this began to happen in the middle of the interview and what was the dynamic after? >> well, on a human level i felt bad for her because she was clearly struggling. someone said it was like watching a seventh grader try to recite an unprepared seventh grader to recite his or her exams but that was an insult to the seventh grader and oral exams. the human side of me felt bad for her. on the other hand, i couldn't understand why john mccain

hadn't done more -- or the mccain campaign had thoroughly vetted her in a much more serious way. she was at of her depth. it was tapping into women would like another woman no matter what her background or ability. you know, i sort of went through various stages. first feeling sorry for her then wondering what was going on in the mccain campaign. >> but politically, i'm sure that the social science after the election showed that she was not a drag on the ticket and that she might modestly have helped mccain. obviously he lost by seven points. >> well, i think she -- >> modest help wasn't much help. >> yes. but i think she revitalized the base as what meghan trainor says, it's all about the bass. it was back then. she talked about how joe lieberman was going to be the pick. mccain was saying i'll do

something unconventional. but they realized they had to do something, a hail mary. she did revitalize the base, but is that necessarily a good reason? >> in that moment of time, remember, she's the most popular governor in the country. she was -- >> i got it when she was picked. yeah. >> something of a moderate. it wasn't a base pick as much as it was we got to revitalize the center of the electorate. we got to change the gender gap. we got to show this was not going to be a bush third term. you know, look. three days after she's picked, you know, nicole wallace and i have the first inkling that she doesn't know anything. the vetting process was flawed, was broken. there's a lot of lessons here. now, i will say this about sarah palin as we look ahead. i've always maintained and

believed john edwards was just as crazy as she was and had no place to be in a place of authority. >> you think he was as ignorant on the issues as sarah palin? >> i don't think he was as ignorant. i think that he was as -- >> reckless. >> -- reckless, erratic, unfit as she was to kb in that space. there's a lot of lessons about how you approach, i think, from this for all time a vice presidential selection. and on the mccain campaign, you know, every mistake that you could have made in vetting was made. >> part one of the katie couric podcast series is available now. you need to download that immediately. >> maybe after tomorrow, people aren't going to be focused on this today. >> it'll be fascinating. and we'll see you at 7:00 this evening. >> yes. we're starting the day and

ending our day together. >> yes. it will be great. we'll be sitting down together for a conversation about my new book "know your value: women, money, and getting what you're worth." thank you. for that and that. you're the best. still ahead, we're just hours away from that historic supreme court hearing with nominee brett kavanaugh and his first accuser christine blasey ford. we'll set the stage for that and of course more from president trump's wide ranging news conference where he defended e kavanau kavanaugh, threw george washington under the bus. we're back in a moment. is it? or something woven into the dna of the doers, the determined, the driven? and while the bar keeps getting higher, ambition gives us the power to tackle any obstacle. opening the doors to bigger leaps, larger goals and financial freedom.

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always like to finish with a good one. elton john said when you hit that last tune and it's good, don't go back. >> when you hit that high note, say good night and walk off. >> all right. well, why don't we smooth ahead, stick a pumpkin under its arm and change the name is ichabod crane. all right. that's it for me. >> what do you say after that? >> well, you know -- >> that was a long press conference. >> i owe the president an apology. >> you do? usually you do, yeah. >> i said he keeps repeating the same thing over and over again. it's like going to a nostalgia

show from the 1970s where the fans know what the next song is going to be. you know, willie, yesterday that wasn't nostalgic. that was new. that's like kanye just dropped a new album. >> he dropped a new mix tape yesterday. >> kanye dropped a new mix tape going, what? what? >> you know, he was not angry yesterday. he was in a man in his element. he was enjoying himself for 81 minutes. didn't want to leave. looked at his adviser saying should we do a couple more? >> they're thinking no. >> he was all over the place. clearly all over the place about china, iran -- it was even by his standards a different performance. >> mr. kurd. a new cheese treat from hasbro. they're going into food. mr. kurd you're next.

mr. kurd apparently liked it. so i don't know. john, you know, what was interesting about yesterday was he usually brings this sort of level of maniacal whatever you want to call it. to his supporters. and this was the first time he did it to the press corps. and admitted what he would never tell the reporters. he loves talking to the press. he loves the back and forth. it was crazy. >> i don't understand why he doesn't do this every week. i don't mean because it would be good for the republic. i mean, i have never anyone enjoy a press conference the way he enjoyed that press conference yesterday. usually presidents feel about those things as though their teeth are being pulled one by one without novocain in front of the world.

and he was like, i don't know, he was like one of those -- i'm not saying he was like springsteen but it's like how springste springsteen's concerts would go on for three and a half, four hours. >> it's springsteen singing one disturbing song after another. i mean, yeah. >> the whole thing at the end where he, you know, wanted to compare it to a concert, you could tell he thought he had killed it. everyone agreed with everything he was saying. >> oh, my lord. i think that's why he thought the laughter was with him and not at him at the unga. with us, john heilemann. >> he's going to engage in some performance arts this morning as well. >> also with us former chairman of the republican national committee michael steele with us. proud to be a republican this morning. oh, my lord. so senate republicans will

gather in a hearing that will decide the future of the united states supreme court. there is a flurry of new allegations being leveled against brett kavanaugh. some anonymous and some not. all adding to a very complicated and consequential day in american history. we're going to try to unmuddy the waters this morning with key viewpoints from all sides. to review the claims against judge cavanaugh which he emphatically denies, dr. christine blasey ford alleges that kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at a party in suburban maryland in the early 1980s. debra ramirez says during the 1983-84 school year at yale university college when she and kavanaugh were freshmen, he exposed himself to her in a dorm suite. julie swetnick accused him of sexual misconduct at parties while he was a student in the 1980s.

and in a letter to the senate judiciary committee, a woman says her daughter had witnessed kavanaugh drunkenly push her friend, a woman he was dating, up against a wall very aggressively and sexually after they left a bar one night in 1998. however, the people who dr. ford says attended the party where she alleges the assault have took place have to recollection of the event. neither the new yorker or "new york times" who attempted to verify ramirez's story last week were able to find witnesses acknowledging the episode. none of miss swetnick's claims could be corroborated by "the new york times." and no witnesses or even a name has emerged about the fourth allegation. so here we are. >> so here we are, joyce. joyce, one of -- through the years, one phrase i've heard time and time again and whether it was as a lawyer or as a member of congress or as a high

school football coach, the phrase where there's smoke there's fire. it's such a b.s. phrase. it is such garbage. because what i found -- and i know you found it a lot more as an attorney. because i only practiced for a couple of years. that phrase leads you nowhere. i kept hearing that phrase in congress when we were trying to chase bill clinton. where there's smoke, there's fire. mika's just walked through all four of these for a good reason. that seems to be the prevailing argument now if you watch cable news. well, there's four now because he's got to be guilty. this has got to end. don't we still have to look at each one of them individually and reserve judgment on each one of them individual ly and let te facts take us where the facts

take us. >> here's the thing about smoke. where there's smoke, there's smoke. and what mika does is she runs through all of these allegations, she creates the best case possible for why the fbi should have been directed by the white house to reopen the investigation. >> since we're both from alabama and all the people said, amen. i don't think you do that in synagogue. but go ahead, joyce. >> this is exactly why we're here. we're here because we haven't had professionals investigating. with all due respect to news and to reporters who've done an amazing job trying to get the facts, they don't have subpoena power. they don't have the investigative techniques available to them. we need a full investigation and this process needs to stop so that that investigation can take place and senators can then come back with the information they need to fulfill their constitutional duty. >> willie, yesterday it came at us so fast. it was completely crazy town.

you even have two guys now. two separate guys that reached out to the judiciary committee saying no, no, no. it wasn't kavanaugh. i was the one who tried to rape dr. ford. >> stepping forward saying i was the attempted rapist. >> and not just one. two now. and, you know, again, we've said from the beginning we're not going to pre-judge anybody. but i'm just going to circle number three. when you get to a point -- and number four -- where you have anonymous sources coming forward and saying that he shoved somebody against a wall in 1998. they're still too traumatized to talk about it. this is when i believe he's working or about to work for ken starr. and then somebody saying she

went to multiple high school parties where -- >> more than ten. >> -- they were basically gang rape factories. begs the question. who would continually go to high school parties where women were being gang raped. first of all keep going to those parties and second not report that to authorities and third not have somebody at all of those parties going, hey, mom, dad, girls are getting gang raped at this party. i mean, i don't know -- >> we don't know. >> that's what i just said. i don't know how we move forward with all of these allegations. and all of this smoke without the fbi coming in and sorting this out. it's what we've been saying for a week. the republicans have now put themselves in a position by being stupid and obstinate. we're getting closer and closer drop dead deadlines but the fbi has to investigate. >> the strongest case is the one

before us today which is christine blasey ford in terms of having told a therapist, told other people along the way. the people she put at the party said they were not at the party or they don't recall the party. so joyce, as a prosecutor, obviously this is not a courtroom that we're going to see today. it's a senate judiciary committee. but what do you do with, for example, an anonymous letter sent to senator corey gardner that alleged anonymously that someone heard anonymously that their daughter saw anonymously he push her into a wall 20 years ago? how do you work through that beyond just asking him whether or not it happened and having him say no, it did not? >> so there is nothing unusual about being in that position for investigators. many tips come in in an anonymous faction. and investigators move forward. there are ways they have of ferreting out who's involved approaching them, seeing if they want to talk about the allegations and confirm them. one thing that i will say is women who come forward with these kind of allegations and who take them into the light of

public typically do that because they belief that their allegations are true and very often their allegations are born out. women typically won't expose themselves to making these claims in public. unless there's a very sound basis for them. but investigators still won't take those claims at face value. they will go back and look for corroboration. they will test the credibility of those claims because it's very important that if we're treating this as a quasi criminal situation which is what it seems to be evolving into even though this really just a job interview for judge kavanaugh, but because of the nature of these allegations, it'll be treated like a full blown -- >> but they've only had 24 hours and it's not an investigation. what do you do with julie swetnick and the anonymous claim yesterday? >> they're just not in a position to give these sort of claims the treatment that they need. and look, this is a matter of being fair both to these victims, to the women who've come forward which takes a lot of courage and also to judge kavanaugh.

we don't want to unfairly tarnish someone. everyone deserves a fair process. still ahead on "morning joe," speaking to julie swetnick, the third accuser. we'll bring you the first look at the new circus episode straight ahead. we'll be right back. - [announcer] the typical vacuum head can struggle with large debris and stuck-on dust, so shark invented duoclean, replacing the front wall with a rotating soft brush. while deep cleaning carpets, two brush rolls pick up large particles with ease, make quick work of stuck-on dust, giving hard floors a polished look, and fearlessly devour piles. shark duoclean technology, designed to do more on carpets and floors, available in corded and cord-free vacuums, and only available from shark. we distributeus, i'm the owner environmentally-friendly on carpets and floors, available in corded packaging for restaurants. and we've grown substantially.

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welcome back to "morning joe." we've been talking about the allegations surrounding supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh. john heilemann, julie swetnick gave her first and only tv interview to you since the accusation. and kavanaugh denies the allegations. >> it's been a long time since the things that you detail in the affidavit. what is it that caused you to decide to come forward at this very moment one day before the hearings to make yourself public? >> well, it wasn't that i wanted to come out one day before the

hearings. circumstances brought it out that way. this is something that occurred a long time ago and it's not that i just thought about it. it's been on my mind ever since the occurrence. as far as it goes, brett kavanaugh is going for a seat where he's going to have that seat on the supreme court for the rest of his life and if he's going to have that seat legitimately, all of these things should be investigated because from what i experienced first hand, i don't think he belongs on the supreme court. and i just want the facts to come out and i want it to be just. i want the american people to have those facts and judge for themselves. >> of the things in your sworn statement, are there particular things to regard for a supreme court nominee. >> i think all of the above. there's not anything anybody at any age should try to do. i don't think women should be treating that way. and i don't think any human being should be treated that way. >> her allegation is that judge

kavanaugh was present at parties where she said she was gang raped. not that she participated in those. did you get any more specificity? she was not in a position yesterday. she was not ready to do a formal sit-down interview. we got a chance to talk to her. beyond the details in the affidavit, their position right now is they have potential for corroborating witnesses. but they only want to bring those forward. to go into further detail in the context of what is now becoming a pretty common demand on the part of a lot of people accusing judge kavanaugh. they want to have a full fbi investigation. one of the things she and her attorney both think, that is the proper course here. what they're asking is not to be believed on the basis of assembling. though she has made a sworn statement if she was proved to

have perjured herself. they're saying we want to have this case adjudicated fairly. we want the fbi to investigate. we feel like there is a lot of people that there is a rush now to vote too quickly on judge kavanaugh before -- for his sake and the accusers' sake the truth can be found in a reasonable way. >> we're talking about a lifetime appointment here. i know a lot of republicans are talking about plowing through and voting for judge kavanaugh for a lifetime appointment. but how do you do that? without an fbi investigation which maybe takes a week? but how do you do that because you're risking the possibility that an investigation does occur after he's on the bench. so maybe some of these stories actually pan out as being truthful and then at that point suddenly you're going to have somebody on the supreme court where everybody is going to be

calling for impeachment hearings. so i don't understand the politics for republicans to say we're going to just jam this through right now. i understand there's a time frame that they have to get it by, but again, if they had requested the fbi investigation a week, week and a half ago when everybody was asking them to, they'd have their answer back at least on dr. ford by now. >> right. well, and truly joe, there's really no time frame. there's no real hurry here, right? this is a republican party that kept merrick garland off this court. keep an open seat on the court for 400-some-some days. telenotion there must be nine on the court is contradictory from just last year. there's no reason why for the sake of judge kavanaugh, if he wants to have a lifetime appointment on the supreme court, i would think what he would want is a thorough investigation if he's fully incident of all these charges, have a thorough investigation

even if it took a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. if he could have his name fully cleared and take his name on the court without any shred of doubt. would that not be the better outcome for him and the republican party? i think you're exactly right that if they jam this vote through and if these accusations which are mounting, not that -- and there's the anonymous ones i agree with you. the accusations i think we must take seriously are women who have put their name to the accusations. the others at this point are anonymous noise. but the women who've come forward, put their name to the accusations have to be taken seriously. and the idea that somehow the jamming through this is going to work to their benefit. if these accusations continue to be investigated and democrats take the house of representatives, i don't think it's not implausible to me that democrats will try to impeach judge kavanaugh while he's on the supreme court next year if continued investigations of these things prove that they are legitimate complaints. and who can want that on either

side of the aisle? >> coming up on "morning joe," the last time the senate considered such highly charged issues surrounding a supreme court nominee, joe biden was center screen. what he said about the role of the fbi next on "morning joe." cancer. it's very personal. at cancer treatment centers of america, we use diagnostic tools that help us better understand what drives each person's cancer. like christine bray. after battling ovarian cancer for several years, her test results revealed a drug therapy that targeted her tumor. today, christine's metastatic cancer is in remission.

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it's not for the fbi. if you look at what joe biden said, they said they don't do this. and he said it very clearly. >> president trump yesterday trying to pin his decision not to order an fbi investigation on joe biden. here's what biden said at the thomas clarence hearings which republicans like mitch mcconnell have been promoting. >> the last thing i'll point out, the last person referring to a fbi report being worth anything obviously doesn't understand anything. fbi explicitly does not in this or any other case reach a conclusion. period. period.

so judge, there's no reason that you should know this. the reason we cannot rely on the fbi report, you wouldn't like it if we did. because it is inconclusive. they say he said, she said, and they said. period. so when people wave an fbi report before you, understand they do not, they do not, they do not reach conclusions. they do not make as my friend points they do not make recommendations. >> ted kennedy next to him saying the runway is clear, sir. >> sounds like joe biden is saying an fbi is not worth it. but in reality he was admonishing orrin hash from reading directly from the report after the senators had agreed to

use it only as evidence to direct their questioning with the hope of keeping more wild claims from going public. in fact, the republicaning including orrin hatch who now opposes an fbi investigation of kavanaugh embraced the fbi's work. >> i have to say chairman biden and the ranking member thurmon, when they heard about this the first time, they immediately ordered this fbi investigation which was a very right thing to do. it's the appropriate thing to do. >> john? >> okay, so the reason that republicans are -- have been opposing the fbi's involvement has to do with you said this is bad for republicans and the republican party. and it may be bad for them in the long-term. but in the short-term right now, the republican base has increasingly come to the view from what one can tell that kavanaugh is being railroaded.

and that the reason to have a vote is that this will never end. you keep this going, there are more allegations unsubstantiated, untrue, and the purpose in the view of many republicans is to expand this past the november date. so republicans believe that politics is being played here. and i think it is. i don't think that that's why these allegations have caught fire. i believe the democrats believe seriously and liberals, people believe seriously that these allegations need to be investigated. but is there a political context in which democrats are sticking it to republicans and trying to get them? yes, absolutely. >> at the same time, the republican ifs they had started the fbi investigation, requested it a week, a week and a half ago, if you look at the time

frame by thomas and hill, it would have been completed by now. and we may be looking back a week from now saying they should have ordered it up today. >> okay. but here's what i would say. if that had happened and we were sitting on this panel the morning after republican s had ascented, dibenedetto would have said he should just withdraw. the optics are bad -- >> if there had been an fbi investigation? >> yes. i think trump is pulling back, trump is trying to put this on the fbi. this is implicit pressure on kavanaugh to withdraw. >> we'll never know. >> we'll never know, but the counterpositive, you're saying it would be better if they'd done it a week ago. i don't know that would have been the case. >> now we're in a position where the hearing today other than hearing from dr. ford is meaningless. there is no way that republicans and democrats, willie, can absorb all the incoming over the past 24 hours and make a

decision on four accusations. there's just no way. if the fbi went out on all accusations and said we looked at this and they come to the same conclusions as "the new york times." we find absolutely no corroborating witnesses for, you know, like number three where there was basically homes turned into gang rape factories according to the latest accusations. then that actually would be compelling. and republicans actually could hold up that fbi report and the fbi says there is no evidence this occurred. >> chuck grassley wants a vote tomorrow at 9:30. there's no way to process all the claims and any that may come down today during or after the hearing. and john's right. republicans with worried that this is a delay tactic. that democrats want to get past the midterm elections. they also say the fbi can do a

long investigation and in a he said/she said not come back with anything conclusive. >> i think they may be worried, actually, about something else. i think they may be worried -- >> if the fbi looked into it, of finding something else. still ahead on "morning joe," we already have a sense of what professor blasey ford and what judge kavanaugh will say this morning. the big question, will we learn anything new? our legal panel tackles that and much, much more next on "morning joe." oh, and there's the closing bell.

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why don't they say you know what? we want to exonerate brett kavanaugh. let's get to the bottom of this and not try to rush it through. >> i think that's what we're doing. today is a big part of that process. we've been pushing to hear from these individuals as soon as the accusation was made. they create a platform. i find it interesting, i don't question the stories, but i certainly question the tactics

that these individuals were more than willing to give to "the washington post", the new yorker but refused to sit down with the committee. >> there is a central witness here. somebody who alleged to be in this very room. his name is mark judge. why wouldn't the rchepublicans the committee subpoena him? >> maybe that happens at some point, but i think you've got a number of people who are very good at going through this process -- >> but the special vote is tomorrow. doesn't seem like they're going to call him. >> and they've moved votes before. >> there is a person who has power to say pause, let's look into it. it's president trump. he is the person that could say i would like the fbi to look into all of these matters. why doesn't he do that? >> the fbi has investigated kavanaugh six different times. >> but not on these allegations. >> the way the fbi background investigation works, they talk to everybody that knows you, knew you, and nothing ever came

up. not one time. but six separate times he's gone through that process. >> that is white house press secretary sarah sanders in the last hour. right now we have akila maher. and in washington a contributor to nbcnews.com, sophia nelson. professor, i want to start with you. after president trump nominated kavanaugh to the supreme court in july, you published an op-ed endorsing the pick. and testifying in support of kavanaugh on the final day of his confirmation hearings earlier this month. but in light of accusations of sexual misconduct, you wrote in a new column for the yale daily news that you're now having second thoughts on kavanaugh. agreeing the fbi should investigate the allegations. so are you in a wait and see period? because it doesn't look like there's going to be an fbi investigation if the vote goes

through tomorrow morning. there won't be one. will you watch today and make your final determination whether or not you support judge kavanaugh? >> of course i'm going to watch today. i think we all should. one of the things i admire about judge kavanaugh's written record is i think he's tried to keep an open mind as a judge. he seems very much open to hearing arguments from both sides, evidence from both sides. he's surrounding himself with liberal and moderate law clerks. and in that same spirit of being open minded, a good judge, i think all of us as americans have an obligation to try and keep an open mind to hear both sides. i have been advocating we want to hear from them sooner rather than later. he has the opportunity to say i didn't do this. but that doesn't mean that the investigation has to end at that point. and as someone who thinks a lot about the supreme court and judge kavanaugh, if he's going to be confirmed, i want him to

be confirmed in the sunshine and not under a cloud. and i think it's in his long-term best interest as well as the court's as well as the country's and frankly the senate, too. and on both sides, to have an investigation if it's warranted after you hear from both sides. if there's not clarity. and then let the chips fall where they may. >> at the end of the day today, you'll be in a position most americans will be. it will be you have watched testimony from two peeks. one person is saying this incident happened to me. and then someone with judge kavanaugh will say this isn't did not happen. what do you do with that at the end of the day? >> i don't think of my views are better on that than anyone else's. >> how will you decide how to support him after hearing those stories? >> it may very well be we need more investigation and clarification. one thing we also may need is a

date certain, an end date to the investigation so that there could be a vote. i don't think there should be a rush, but there should be a date at which the investigation ends. and if you're worried, that's not really fair because what happened -- the republicans have a chance then if this were to go down to have a plan be a backup. nothing prevents -- this is the edgiest thing i said in the yale daily news op-ed. from announcing from now who the backup would be. that person can be pre-vetted. it's also a reminder to us all if you don't get this person, you're going to get someone else. >> sophia, you're former republican counsel. and you have already written even before the hearing that judge kavanaugh should withdraw. why is that? >> well, i think that a week ago when we talked about this, joe, and i was on, things looked very different then than they do now. i thought then that the fact

that this accusation had been leveled wasn't going to be enough by itself. but now what we have is four now accusations against. some of them not corroborated, some of them we don't have people that can say yes or no i was there or not. so i want this to be fair, but the optics for the gop are horrific. and going into the midterms as you know, the democratic base is highly energized right now. the me too movement is game changer and people like chuck grassley and orrin hatch are apparently clueless as is lindsey graham to the shift that's occurred in this country since 1991 when clarence thomas was up with anita hill. and to me the reason he needed to withdraw is now this has gotten a lot worse for kavanaugh and his family. i feel badly for his two young daughters. i have two nieces that are close to that age, and i can't imagine what those girls think about what they're hearing about their dad. and secondly, i feel that going into the election where more

women candidates, joe, are running now than ever, this is going to be a historic year. 1992 was the so-called year of the woman. i think 2018 is going to be the real year of the woman. and i think the republicans are going to get hammered on this if they shove this through, particularly if dr. ford is credible today. and i suspect she will be. i think the republicans are going to be in a difficult place come november at the ballot box. >> so obviously there is a cloud over judge kavanaugh right now, but does he not deserve a fair hearing? does he not deserve due process? three of these claims came out, they haven't been able to be verified by "the new york times" and other news agencies. as the professor said, shouldn't the fbi take a look at all of the charges against kavanaugh before he has to withdraw his name? >> absolutely. i mean, i have no problem with an investigation and i called for that before i said that he ought to resign. listen, joe. one of the proddist days of my

life is when i was sworn into the bar of the united states supreme court. it's like looking up at mt. olympus. you're this young lawyer raising your hand. it's awesome. and steve schmidt alluded to this. we're losing respect to our institutio institutions and my concern is the damage this is doing once again to the supreme court and the credibility of maybe someone who's going to be a justice that sits on that court. there are other good people the president can nominate that are more conservative even and that i think would be better choices than kavanaugh. i think he's going to get his due process today, but i think the gop loses no matter what they do on this process going forward. >> so this is an interesting point that we haven't talked about too explicitly. but the question is not just judge kavanaugh and the damage that this may do to him. what sort of damage does this do to the institution of the supreme court? and is it strong enough to withstand this sort of a process and still maintain its integrity? >> well, we are in a new place.

i apologize in advance for what i'm going to say -- >> you don't have to do that on this show. >> well, i read the transcript of judge kavanaugh's discussion with a senate investigators, the word threesome was used on national television. he's had to actually tell people at what point he lost his virginity. this is a new point of intrusion into privacy on both sides. on the part of the accusers as well as the justice. so this is a little -- we're there with the presidency, with bill clinton. now we're there with the supreme court. >> all right. thank you so much for being with us. we appreciate it. >> thanks, professor. >> sophia nelson, thank you as well. we're going to go live to

capitol hill in a few moments before those times will get under way. casey hundredkasie hunt will joe the latest. keep it here on "morning joe." "have you lost weight?" of course i have- ever since i started renting from national. because national lets me lose the wait at the counter... ...and choose any car in the aisle. and i don't wait when i return, thanks to drop & go. at national, i can lose the wait...and keep it off. looking good, patrick. i know. (vo) go national. go like a pro. if you're waiting patiently for a liver transplant, it could cost you your life.

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were you -- did you ever get in trouble? did you -- were you more of a john boy walton-type or a ferris bueller-type? >> i love sports first and foremost. i think that -- i worked hard at school. i had a lot of friends. i talked a lot about my friends. >> yeah. >> they've been here. it was very formative. and when i think back on it -- >> you left out the trouble part. i was waiting for that. >> right. so that's encompassed under the friends i think, yeah. >> now, see, i was going to ask the judge if not him but any of his underaged buddies tried to sneak a few beers past jesus or something like that in high school but i'm not going to go there. >> that was three weeks ago.

brett kavanaugh being questioned by louisiana senator john kennedy who along with other republicans will leave the questioning today to an outside lawyer. >> seems like he was kind of trying to get at something that they had heard about and -- >> he could have asked it more directly perhaps. >> he certainly could have. >> now in hindsight it looks like something else. grassley and the democrat's ranking member will give opening statements. dr. ford will be sworn in, seated next to her legal team and give an opening statement. outside prosecutor rachel mitchell will ask questions for the republicans. though any committee member is permitted to ask questions. each democratic senator will be allotted five minutes for their questions. following that, judge kavanaugh will be sworn in and questioned in the same manner. joining us now, the host of "the beat" on msnbc, ari melber.

and msnbc's kacie hunt. all right, ari, pregame, what are you looking at when this thing opens? >> a lot has changed since that rather painful clip you just played. >> yes. >> and we're looking at three named accusers, an additional accuser that is basically based on witness statements. kacie reported that story out last night. the chance to talk through the details of the case, the context of what critics fear is a pattern. and i think the cross examination, if you want to call it that, is going to go into her memory, what she knows, is she sure she remembers what she saw. i would be surprised if the cross examination gets as tough or as rude to be blunt as it was in anita hill hearings. to use dr. ford's moment today as a chance to not only put heat on kavanaugh but to say this, according to the evidence, is no

longer isolated and that means we have to think whether this person deserves a lifetime promotion. >> if you look at the time line put out from chuck grassley's office, they introduced these two new men who apparently approached them and think i was the man dr. ford's talking about in this alleged attempted rape. do you think mitchell on behalf of republicans will ask her? >> i'm certain that's going to come up in the lines of questions. there are ways to ask that that are more responsible. and there are ways that are more irresponsible. that become a bit more of trying to make someone out to be crazy if they don't seem crazy. i do think though that the republicans are going to have to be very, very careful. even donald trump, who said his own experience with what he calls false accusers, even he claimed, at least wanted the appearance that he has an open mind to learning things today that could affect whether or not this person still belongings in the court. >> so kacie, what are you

expecting this morning? what's your latest reporting from the hill? >> well, joe, i think you cannot overstate simply how much this matters and how much the credibility dr. ford brings to the table decides whether or not he will be the swing vote on the supreme court for a generation. we've seen new accusations, two annonymous accusations, one perhaps of more interest to the committee. they put out that kind of time line. some democrats are saying privately this is all just to muddy the waters and make it seem like this is a coordinated smear campaign as opposed to being a pattern of legitimate women coming forward with things to say about this. but i do think that there is consensus in both parties that it's dr. ford's story that seems to carry the most weight. and that how she comes across is really what is going to define this. and i have to say, joe, we've

been focused very closely on jeff flake, susan collins and lisa murkowski. that focus is correct. but i've also been hearing from sources that it's possible that the universe of republicans who are ready to be swayed against kavanaugh by this hearing is perhaps bigger than we initially thought. and i do think that if, in fact, this goes badly for kavanaugh today, you can see something of a wide swing inside the republican conference that could put some pressure on mitch mcconnell to perhaps call the white house and say, hey, you know, i really can't get this done. but, you know, that said it could still go the other way. it could go in kavanaugh's favor. but that public push forward at all costs strategy, that's coming from mitch mcconnell and that's him trying to hold it together. he doesn't have the votes right now. >> any talk at all about delaying the vote, any talk at all from republicans about investigating these other claims before taking a final vote? >> as of right now, there's no

explicit talk i'm picking up of a delay. but i think that would be a first indication that this kind of pushback would take. especially because there are these additional anonymous claims that have come in. there is this third allegation. this woman who perhaps has the most serious claims of misconduct. there are questions because she's tied to a lawyer of political interests, people aren't as ready to make that story the center of what is going on here. i think that is the right question to be asking. that really could indication that thing could be on the wrong track as far as kavanaugh and the white house are concerned. >> we're about an hour away from the opening of this hearing. using your great prosecutor's brain, what will you be looking for as it opens and over the course of the day? >> one of the most interesting

things that happens in every trial, every sitting where testimony is taken, is there's a tipping point with the witness and you find out how they respond to prosecution. do they double down and under the pressure of cross examination pull out more detail and become stronger and more clear? so we'll look for that today. is interesting question is how this plays with the republicans on this committee relying on an outside prosecutor, a woman, do their work for them. >> i think it looks very odd and it looks like it was done to protect them as men. in watergate you had, you know, an outside counsel do some work on the subject matter expertise but you don't usually have it like this. i think it's a huge risk.

in dealing with are you trying to get to the facts or trying to muddy somebody up. muddying up one stand-alone accuser is different, in real y reality, then when you're in a serious situation with multiple accusers. >> would it be a bigger risk to look like you're subbing out your work to a woman so you didn't look bad to voters? or would it be a greater risk and serious having ted cruz and orrin hatch and others on that committee cross examining a woman? >> it's a no win situation. they were criticized for being men prosecuted without a woman. now they have a woman in there and it's a dereliction of duty. i'll be trod see if new information is introduced which could change this conversation by the end of the day. >> i'll be interested to see if anybody actually changes their mind. or if this is just a political spectacle. that further separates american

voters from their representative government in washington, d.c. makes people walk away from today's hearings, thinking that it was nothing but a political show. let's hope there are a few people who actually have their mind made up and will listen to both kavanaugh and dr. ford with the respect that they deserve. that does it for us this morning. we turn it over now to stephanie ruhle. she picks up the coverage on an incredibly busy news day. stephanie. >> thanks so much, joe. an incredibly important one. hi there, everyone. i'm stephanie ruhle with two big stories today. starting with the landmark hearing. in less than an hour from now, christine blasey ford and brett kavanaugh will testify. overnight, a deluge of new details. new accusations against kavanaugh. >> this is getting into the twilight zone. >> republicans need to immediately