regulations, something that donald trump's legislation may be rolling back, democrats are putting a plant in the frowned to say they will take that on in the new year. >> especially with the big elections in brazil, whether that relationship changes as well. great to have you with us. we will be reading axios a.m. in just a bit. you, too, can sign up for the newsletter, signup.axios.com. that does it for me on this monday morning, i'm ayman mohyeldin. "morning joe" starts right now. as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of god. >> you have lost too much, but you have not lost everything. and you have certainly not lost america. >> and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. ♪ amazing grace

>> somebody just said your hair looks different today. i said, well, i was standing under the wing of air force one doing a news conference early this morning, a very unfortunate news conference, and the wind was blowing -- >> american presidents reacting to a space disaster, domestic and international terrorism, a massacre in a church and another at a synagogue. 11 people were murdered on saturday and hours later the commander in chief was cracking jokes about his hair. joe, before we go to the news, we have to ask where are we as a nation right now? what's going on? >> well, what's going on, it's a national reckoning. for two and a half, three years you have had a president and a candidate running for president who after charlottesville preached moral relativism and equated neo nazis with those that were protesting against neo nazis. you have had somebody who has

been calling hispanics breeders. somebody who has been calling himself a nationalist and neo nazis have come out praising him for that, praising him for other actions. he has refused steadfastly to attack white nationalists. he has refused to call back his attacks against all the people who, of course, had bombs sent to their homes, their residences and businesses. this is a national reckoning. so, mika, you know, in a week people get to make a decision. is this the america they want to live in? because right now the only constitutional check against this sort of abhorrent behavior -- again, a guy really -- a guy who was sending a message by time and time again tweeting about baseball or talking about his bad hair day there, that was done intentionally to send a message to white nationalists. this doesn't bug me that much.

i'm going to watch a baseball game, i'm going to tweet about baseball. i'm just -- i'm just not -- i'm not going to let it occupy my day. i mean, mika, you tell me, where do you think we are? >> well, the optimist in me said we would survive trump's behavior, the system will hold. the system will hold. we just need to laugh at him, you said, and wait for him to leave the stage, but donald trump's behavior over the last week represents perhaps the lowest point in a presidency filled with so many low points we can't count them. in the face of terrorism and deadly violence, trump has committed act after act after act that shocks the conscience, and he has completely abdicated the role that we expect, that we need our presidents to play at

such moments of national crisis. his refusal to call his predecessors after bombs were sent to them, his rallies, his twitter attacks, blaming the media and amazingly continuing to provoke and churn up hatred against those who are targets of his bombs. >> it's unbelievable. it really is. >> his engaging in petulant punditry instead of unifying the country. complaining that the latest horrible news interrupted republican momentum in the midterms. really? he's tweeting about baseball, bullpen strategy the very same day of the synagogue slaughter, as if to send a message, as you said, joe, to his adoring white nationalist fans that the murdering of these worshippers was not even a concern. that's the message it sends, to be clear. but then again, this president had already joked earlier about canceling his rally not because of the mass shooting of jews, but because he had had a bad hair day, like a flip joke that

women make. we will survive donald trump, i guess, but once again, he has shown his true self, this time in the face of violence and death, and i am confident that history will judge his performance over the last week harshly. voters need to be a part of history and they should do the same. you've got your chance. so with this on this important morning we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc john heilemann, he is the co-host and executive producer of show time's "the circus." professor at princeton university eddie glaude jr. editor at large of the weekly standard bill kristol. former justice department spokesman, now an nbc justice and security analyst matt miller and correspondent for gq magazine julia yaffe. thank you all for being with us this morning. >> julia, let's start with you. you've been the target of

anti-semitic attacks, some of the most vile during the campaign that any of us have seen, and it's the same -- the same things that we were reading on this mass murderer's websites were being sent your way week in and week out during the campaign. talk about your reaction and also about the piece you wrote about the difficulty of pinning the blame on this on anybody specifically, but stepping back and talking about a bigger look at the culture that this president has created. >> yeah. so, you know, when i first heard about the synagogue shooting my first response was -- i mean, other than shock -- was anger because back in 2016 when i was starting to get this stuff, by the way, on the anniversary of my family's emigration here from the soviet union fleeing anti-semitism and i remember thinking back then when donald trump refused to denounce these people or send them a message

that this was -- that he didn't want his fans or his supporters behaving this way, i thought this is what happens when his wife didn't like something written about her failed skin care line. what happens when things get a little bit more serious, when these people become more emboldened, more heartened, in a country where they can easily go to walmart and buy an ar-15, you know. i kind of -- my response when i saw the -- what had happened in pittsburgh was anger because you could have seen this coming a mile down the road. >> julia, in pittsburgh it's specifically personal to you because your family actually emigrated from the old soviet union to the united states, and you all were those refugees that this mass murderer actually was spewing hatred about. that this was, yes, an act

against jews but also he specifically mentioned his hatred for refugees. sounds sort of familiar these days, doesn't it? >> absolutely. i'm so glad you pointed it out. this isn't just an attack on jews, this is an attack on immigrants. this man, the flames of his hatred were fanned by a president who kept talking about this caravan of refugees, as if they were terrorists or as if they were coming to commit atrocious crimes in our country, which they're not. you know, as if -- and as if this was being paid for by some shadowy jewish lobby led by george soros. i think -- i think that's really important to point out, that this isn't just about -- and i think the jewish community needs to understand that, too, that this isn't just about us, this is also about immigrants, which we all were at some point. >> exactly. >> which we all were. by the way, mika, when julia

talked about george soros and sort of that anti-semitic trope that has been trotted out by trump, also trotted out by members of congress talking about how a rich jew was actually funding these immigrants coming to the states. >> or buying an election. you had kevin mccarthy tweeting later deleting this tweet that he didn't want tom steyer and george soros buying the election. you had chuck grassley the republican head of the senate judiciary committee saying that he thinks it's likely that he believes that george soros is doing this, this sounds like something he would do. again, that was not his standard of proof with christine blasey ford, but that's another story. >> and, again, mika, as the news

of this cooked up phoney caravan story that's promoted by donald trump and fox news, members of congress attaching that to george soros and making it sounds like, again, an anti-semitic trope that a jew, mika, was somehow responsible for buying these people and having them march up to the united states, anti-immigrant rhetoric, anti-refugee rhetoric. the same sort of rhetoric used, again, by the mass murderer. >> exactly. and julia's latest column in the "washington post" asks this, how much responsibility does trump bear for the synagogue shooting in pittsburgh? she writes in parts, culpability is a tricky thing and politicians, especially of the dem goj i can variety know this very well, unless they go as far as organized documented state implemented slaughter. they don't give specific directions, they don't have to. they simply set the tone.

in the end someone else does the dirty work and they never have to lift a finger let alone stain it with blood. the pipe bomb makers and synagogue shooters and racists who mode a woman down in charlottesville were never even looking for trump's explicit blessing because they knew the president had allowed bigots like them to go about their business, secure in the knowledge that they don't really bother the president. his role is just to set the tone and their role is to do the rest. >> but, bill kristol, of course it doesn't bother the president. and we've seen evidence time and time again. you can look at charlottesville, you can look at when he called himself a nationalist. his staff will give him pretty words to go out and read. he will half-heartedly read them and immediately go back on that because you can see time and time again he always has to send the message to white

nationalists, i'm not going to criticize you. i may not be on your side, i won't say that, but i want you to stay on my side. >> yeah, and just the whipping up of the flames, especially on the caravan, on the refugees, you know, that directly was cited by the murderer in pittsburgh and that was done by him, by members of congress, as julia said, by fox news who is obsessed with it for two, three weeks and obviously, you know, the killer is responsible for the killing, but others are responsible for creating a climate and in this case particularly triggering -- i agree with what mika said also earlier, one really wonders about what damage is being done to the country. i've been fairly optimistic about the institution, us surviving trump, the institutions hemming him in, the culture responding to him, but i've got to say that the degree of hatred, i mean, he's -- things that were previously there, i suppose, but suppressed, repressed, you know,

discredited and discouraged, obviously they did flare up at times, there have been many mass murders of minority groups in u.s. history and in the last decades, too, but still the degree to which he has done real -- he and his supporters now are doing real damage and some of that can be undone by people saying, do you know what, we got caught up in the heat of the moment, with he got caught up on our beliefs of immigration as an issue, with he thought the border wasn't secure but we're going to dial it down. people and fox news hosts, senators, the president of the united states could say i'm sorry if i inadvertently encouraged a climate that's unhealthy. we need to all step back. we have all americans. do you know who said it? nikki haley who is in the trump administration has been more critical of donald trump, has said the truth about we need to call our political rivals opponents to the enemies, we can't say people are evil, we

know what evil is in the world, but that's not what other americans who disagree with us are, that's not what george soros is. nikki haley has said that. >> again, you talked about fox news. unfortunately you look at lou dobbs who were spreading conspiracy theories himself. you wonder why rupert murdoch and his family, immigrants, why they allow lou dobbs to continue working on that channel spewing the hatred and the conspiracy theories that he's spreading. >> i'm a free speech person and i'm not for being super fastidious about calling people to account about things that are said in the heat of the moment and so forth. at the end of the day i think fox with its evening lineup, fox business with lou dobbs, the routine stuff that is said there, people who work at fox, the management of fox, the shareholders of fox, the corporate board of fox really need to look in the mirror and

say, are we comfortable with this? we're making money, obviously no one wants a board of directors to be micromanaging, you can't say this on the 8:00 p.m. show, but are they comfortable with the overall effect that fox news and news business, and i said this as someone who was on fox news for ten years, are they -- can they defend what -- their effect on the culture? >> it's fascinating you and i bringing this up because i remember at the height of glenn beck you and i talking about roger ailes and i know -- a lot of people are thinking it's the same as it was then. no, it wasn't. when glenn beck got into conspiracy theories, he was calling me saying he has gone over the line. he said the same thing to you. i mean, there is -- you can't tell -- a lot of people can't tell, john heilemann, there is a huge difference between what's going on at fox news today and what was going on at fox news five years ago. when you look at lou dobbs and

some other people it is completely off the rails. you could say the same about donald trump's rallies and the people who are there. i'm shocked, really i am shocked, that americans after bombs were sent to all of these targets were chanting lock her up of hillary and were chanting cnn sucks when there are a lot of working class people at cnn, a lot of middle class people at cnn who never get close to being on air there that could have been victims and were most definitely targets of those bombs. >> right. >> and yet the hatred continues uninterrupted and this guy -- i just -- i can't even call him president -- this demagogue, this nationalist, he refused to even try to temper his crowds. refused to even call the former

presidents and secretaries of states and cia directors to offer condolences and assurances that he was going to do his job as president to protect all americans. >> joe, what he said was -- and they are, i believe, the two most kind of landmark signal repulsive words of last week, which were i'll pass when the president was asked on friday after the bomber had been -- or the alleged bomber had been arrested, whether he was planning to call barack obama, michelle obama, bill clinton, hillary clinton and the other people who had bombs sent to them, the president stood on white house grounds and said i'll pass. that's what he said about that. that sends a signal that is as profound as anything that the president could say. the president is obviously a racist, obviously a demagogue, condones anti-semitism, stokes up nationalist hatred. you asked what's happened at fox ne news. what's happened is the same thing that's happened to the republican party. what's happened to it is they were both corrupt, bankrupt institutions that were hollowed out and waiting to be taken over

by donald trump. they have now been taken over by donald trump and they are in a much worse, much uglier place than they were five years ago, ten years ago. they were in pretty ugly places back then but they are in a much uglier place back then and it's because of this guy that you're pointing to on friday, that was his reaction when he was asked if he was going to be the minimally presidential, minimally human thing to reach out to people who had bombs mailed to them, leaders of the opposition party, former presidents and public servants, whether he was going to call them, he said i'll pass. not only that, he is on twitter attacking tom steyer over the weekend after the bomb had been sent to tom steyer, after the bomber had been -- the alleged bomber, the suspected bomber had been apprehended, president trump is on twitter attacking tom steyer. i don't care what you think about tom steyer, it's ridiculous. it's not only that he didn't call him -- not ridiculous --

appalling, despicable, depraved. he goes out to a rally on friday night and participates happiliy, smiling in a lock her up chant about hillary clinton who just had a bomb sent to her in the mail. he got on twitter the next day and was tweeting about tom steyer who just had a bomb sent to him in the mail. it's not a question of whether it's presidential behavior or not, it's not minimally human behavior in these circumstances and the effect that it has on his followers, on his devotees, on his base is of course corrosive and dangerous. of course. >> yeah. >> and, by the way, mika, it's dangerous. you look at the person that sent the bombs last week with all the trump stickers on his van. this had always been a troubled person, donald trump didn't make him troubled, but it was a troubled person that used to -- used to go on social media talking about food and other topics. when donald trump came on the scene suddenly his obsessions, his hatred it turned to donald

trump's opponents and of course, that is what demagogues do, they set off and they trigger people just like that. >> and if you don't like this you have a choice to put a check on this. you just need to vote. you can vote early or you can vote on tuesday, november 6th. the suspect accused of opening fire in a pittsburgh synagogue over the weekend leaving 11 people dead is due to appear in court later today to be formally charged as the community comes together to begin the healing process. the department of justice has announced it will charge the suspected gunman with 29 federal counts including 11 counts of obstructing the exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death. attorney general jeff sessions has said the charges could lead to the death penalty. the gunman had a history of online postings, focusing on conspiracy theories and

anti-semitic hate speech. in the hours before he allegedly carried out the shooting he claimed that the hebrew immigrant aid society, a humanitarian nonprofit group that assists refugees brought immigrants to the united states to carry out violence. he also frequently posted about the migrant caravan, a major talking point among right wing commentators and president trump and his stupid followers running for republican seats who tend to just repeat it because they think it will work, even that they don't care about the results. >> they also know it's a lie. >> they know it's a lie. >> they know they're lying. >> martha mcsally. >> people on fox news talk about the caravan as if this is a big election issue. no, it's a lie. know they are thousands of miles away. know that the last caravan that they whipped up frenzy about only brought 14 arrests by the end of the caravan. they know it's a lie and they

are spreading hatred across america and at the end of the day, mika, again, inspiring people like this pittsburgh mass murderer. >> and the suspect, the gunman, did appear to be disappointed with president trump for not sharing his anti-semitic and extremist views days after the president declared himself a nationalist at a campaign event, the gunman claimed that trump was a globalist and not a nationalist. not nationalist enough. where have we heard that support of nationalism before? last week just before president trump was putting bomb in quotes, david duke tweeted, when jewish center threats occurred last year i said they may be false flags from israel to demonize those who morally oppose tribalist zionist global power. i and trump were right. now bomb threats on trump

haters, are we right again? divert focus from invasion and demo violence. after president trump declared himself a nationalist at a rally duke tweeted gleefully, quote, trump embraces nationalism in a massive jam packed 99.9% white venue in houston! zio journalists which is probably shorthand for zionist asked him if this is white nationalism. of course fundamentally it is as there is no ethnic or racial group in america more nationalist than white americans so what's the problem? other white nationalists feel comforted by trump's words after the president said that we're fine people on both sides of the deadly unite the right rally in charlottesville. organizer richard spencer told the journalist really proud of him and that trump made a statement that is fair and down to earth. the president followed that up a few months later by retweeting a

far right group's inflammatory anti-muslim videos drawing a rebuke from the british prime minister and forcing a rare apology. >> eddie, no dog whistles here with donald trump. these are fog horns. he's blaring it out. he wants the white nationalists to know that he's on their side and every time he has an opportunity to criticize, he always backs away. like i said, his staff members will write him pretty words to read because they will be freaking out because it's obvious that he is, of course, uniting with white nationalists in his words and his mindset, and then he will always pull back and he will always go back and said, do you know what, they're not so bad. there are bad people on both sides. this is clear what donald trump has been trying to do and this past weekend we saw the result of it. >> right.

so we saw 11 dead, murdered, in a place of worship. we saw two black people murdered in kentucky. more carnage could have happened if he could have gotten into the church. we saw pipe bombs mailed, you know, i had to call my wife to tell her if you don't recognize the return address, don't open it because we get threats all the time. they've been investigated. i get calls all the time. there's something happening in the country that is a reflection of what's in some ways bill just mentioned has always been there, joe. donald trump has provided an ideological context to radicalize certain kinds of understandings of views about whiteness, about white people. there's the radical fringe white nationalists and then there are those who are complicit with them in their silence. something is happening that goes beyond institutions, that goes beyond politics. there's something happening to the national soul, something corrosive at the heart.

it seems to me that, you know, come tuesday we've got to vote, it's true, but we have to engage in a kind of deep national introspection. you asked at the top of the hour, joe, is this the kind of america we want to live in? people having asking that question for a long time and we have to answer it now. i mean, we have to answer it fundamentally now. >> everybody has a choice, too. >> yeah, otherwise i think -- and i've said this on this show before -- we are standing at the twilight of civilization. selfishne selfishness, greed, mean spiritedness and just plain old evil is overrunning our democracy. we have to do something desperately right now. >> well, and that, mika, can be done, again, in a week. people can vote. regardless of what side they are on, if they want to send a message, they have a chance. you know, all these people that have been saying that donald trump is somehow too big for the constitution and he's subverting constitutional norms.

no. the most powerful constitutional norm is handed to the american people every two years and that's next tuesday. >> yes. >> the question is are they going to do -- because if you don't vote next tuesday, just keep your mouth shut for the next two years about the constitution being insufficient, madisonian democracy being insufficient to check this guy because, mika, the check is in the hands of not you and me, but in the hands of over 300 million people who can go out and vote next tuesday. >> so there's one other check, matt miller, and that would be robert mueller. i wonder as we look at the russia probe and the investigation by mueller, is that a parallel track or are there parts of what we've seen over the past few days that mueller might be looking at, depending on the direction that he's taking? >> i don't think so. i think what he's doing is just looking at his very narrow charge which is what happened,

you know, in the 2016 election and in the follow-up if there was anyone who tried to shut down the investigation. i do think there is a role for the federal government, for the justice department in combating what we saw in the last week. i'm glad eddie brought up what happened in kentucky because, you know, we saw three very serious incidents, in none of the cases were the individuals, the killers or attempted killers, connected to each other by anything other than hate. it's clear now there is a serious right wing domestic terrorism problem in this country and it's something the justice department and the department of homeland security have to address. but there is a problem for them. they can't address it when the president of the united states, the head of the federal government, is the chief propagandist for these right wing movements. when the president is the one who is sending these messages not only sowing division and hatred, no the only echoing their message but when he's condoning and endorsing violence. i keep thinking when i watch what happened in the last week of how islamic terrorism has moved over the years and how we

no longer worry about, you know, someone getting on a plane and coming from a foreign country. we worry about it, but much less we do someone who has been radicalized online, who grew up in america and is radicalized by what they see and how we try to combat the ideology. we can't combat this ideology when the ideology is being shared by the president of the united states. its a serious problem for the country and i don't see how we get out of it as long as donald trump is the president. >> bill kristol, give us your final thoughts. we are a week away from an election that could shape the direction we go for some time. >> i mean, voting is important, but i think, look, matt is right, that donald trump as long as he is president is a problem, but we can't combat it. i think we have to combat it in our local communities in northern virginia where i live, christians, muslims came together, they showed up at the synagogues yesterday where their sunday school was happening to show support and solidarity. so local officials, state officials, private sector,

people in the private sector, i mean, people who are on the board of fox news if they could do something, i think people can do a lot more than they're doing to address what eddie correctly says i think is a real genuine national problem. >> all right. bill kristol, thank you so much. still ahead on "morning joe," ivanka trump looks to credit the white house for lowering the flag to half-staff. >> good lord. >> as if that should be in question. if your biggest accomplishment of the day is to get the white house to do something it should have done and does do for history at times, you really need to rethink your role here. >> instead of -- instead of canceling rallies, instead of having your father -- >> maybe don't go to kentucky and hopscotch around the country instagramming pretty pictures of yourself. >> maybe your father doesn't make jokes about a bad hair day, saying that's why he is going to cancel a rally. >> i think thinking this is bad for your brand, bad for your reputation. history is going to look at your brand terribly.

i know you don't care about the country and i know you don't care about us and our lives, i know you don't because i reached out to you and you didn't write back. >> all right. >> but if you care about your brand, bad for your brand. >> plus we have an update on the critical midterm races that are eight days away. that countdown may have a direct parallel with how long jeff sessions has his job. new signs that the attorney general may be soon out the door. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. - meet the ninja foodi, the pressure cooker that crisps, with the best of pressure cooking and air frying all in one. with our tendercrisp technology, you can quickly cook food, juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside. go from fresh to deliciously done in half the time. which means it may become the only thing you use in your kitchen. (tapping) for cooking, at least. (upbeat music) the ninja foodi, with tendercrisp, the cooking while parenting technology. discover.o. i like your card, but i'm absolutely not paying

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unstopand it's strengthenedting place, the by xfi pods,gateway. which plug in to extend the wifi even farther, past anything that stands in its way. ...well almost anything. leave no room behind with xfi pods. simple. easy. awesome. click or visit a retail store today. this is a case where they had an armed guard inside they might have been able to stop him immediately. so this would be a case for if there was an armed guard inside the temple, they would have been able to stop him, maybe there would have been nobody killed except for him, frankly. so it's a very, very -- very difficult situation and when you look at it, we can look at it two ways. >> but, again, if they had

somebody to protect people, but certainly the results might have been far better. >> do you think that all churches and synagogues should have armed guards? >> i hate to think of it that way, i will say that. i hate to think of it that way. so we will see you -- >> is that what you're suggesting? >> it's certainly an option. i mean, in this world, this is a world with a lot of problems and it has been a world with a lot of problems for many years, many, many years, and you could say, frankly, for many centuries. yeah, it has been a world with many, many problems for many, many years. i guess the difference is that when somebody is motivated to commit acts of mass murder because of demagoguery they can walk into a store, buy an ar-15 and go shoot people up and kill as many people as quickly as possible. matt miller, i will not call the president stupid.

that is such a stupid argument when you consider that donald trump has already said that about schools because of the mass murders that are happening because of ar-15s and other guns that people can get their hands on too easily, if you look at recent mass shootings using the assault-style weapon, the numbers just keep stacking up and donald trump knows this. this is why he spent most of his life being against assault-style weapons, military-style weapons, but even forget about that. police officers -- there is a reason why police officers are against military-style weapons, that's because, well, gee, we saw it in pittsburgh. we had officers that were shot -- >> to you are -- four. >> four. four shot there. the idea that one guy inside of a synagogue is going to stop this sort of attack is just preposterous, but it's donald trump, once again, trying to distract from the fact that he stirs up the hatred and people

go out and buy the guns. >> it's a stupid argument to make with respect to synagogues and churches, just like it was a stupid argument to make with respect to schools because it's not really an argument, it's a an excuse. it's an excuse for not doing anything to take guns off the streets, to prevent people from getting their hands on assault rifles, it's an excuse for not doing anything to take on this hateful ideology that's been allowed to spread and that donald trump has in some ways fostered. we know -- it's not that complicated what the problem is here. the problem is we have people in this country who are united by hate, who are angry at immigrants, who are angry at jews, who are angry at minorities and we have people in this same bucket who can get their hands on high-powered assault rifles and use them to carry out great violence. you know, we will continue to see excuses like this from the president, we will probably see these same excuses from members of the republican party. we saw it with respect to the school shooting in florida. after donald trump came out and

endorsed this absurd idea that you needed to arm teachers, you saw people in the republican party falling in line and endorse that argument, i'm sure we will see the same thing here. >> julia, again, so much of this is -- it's not about armed guards, it's about somebody arming, you know -- somebody being able to stop the president and his family from saying offensive things that inspire hateful followers. this weekend, once again, it was brought up that you wrote a piece about melania trump and when you were the victim of anti-semitic slurs and hate speech, what was her response? >> and death threats. >> and death threats. you got death threats. what was melania trump's response. >> that i provoked them. this is, by the way, the woman who has made her issue cyber bullying, but, you know -- i also, by the way, i thought you were talking about not armed guards, but armed rabbis. i can't wait for that. you know, i have to say it's -- what's crazy to me is that the

republicans talk about all of this as if it's this spontaneous meet logical phenomenon that we just can't explain. all this people suddenly hating all these other people. and all these people getting assault-style weapons and shooting up all these other people. that's so weird. why does that happen? who could do anything about it? can you move clouds? can you change the blood pressure for the sun? you know, it's as if these don't have concrete explanations and concrete solutions that they could do something about but they refuse to for very obvious and pretty venal reasons. >> john heilemann also, the argument the what aboutism is just absolutely pathetic. about bernie sanders and this guy that shot up the baseball field and almost killed steve scalise who, by the way, was condemned by everybody. >> both sides. >> nancy pelosi that night didn't start attacking steve

scalise. >> correct. >> or start attacking other people the way donald trump went and attacked his targets. the what-aboutism here is so sad and pathetic. everybody condemned him. donald trump cannot bring himself to condemning the bombings and reaching out as nancy pelosi and the democrats and liberals did to steve scalise and others after those attacks. >> yes. i mean, there are obvious problems with the what-aboutism in that case and one can note correctly, but in passing, that of course there are lunatics on -- across the ideological spectrum. there are people who are fully unhinged, have no ideological connections, unhinged lunatics on the left and right. the difference is right now that the preponderance of the evidence -- pre pond trans is coming from the right. and the culture that donald trump has stirred up and profited from.

in the case of bernie sanders, bernie sanders was among those people who condemned the person directly who shot up that baseball field and as you said, joe, it was a moment immediately for bipartisan unity. the democratic leaders were right beside their republican colleagues extending their condolences, extending their best wishes, their sympathies to steve scalise an condemning the bomber. there was no daylight between republicans and democrats at the highest levels, they rank and file level on that question. what we are seeing now is a totally different circumstance in which the thing that served as the predicate to this behavior can be more clearly pinned on donald trump and the party and culture and movement that he has created and the way in which he has handled it on the backside and his party have handled it frankly, although there have been some republican voices that are spoken up appropriately, but many in his party, including we he thinks am td kevin mccarthy early today who in the gak of george soros still had a pinned tweet on his twitter feed with obvious anti-semitic overtones attacking

mike bloomberg, george soros and tom steyer. you have kevin mccarthy who could be next speaker of the house. that party led by donald trump have done nothing like democrats did in the wake of steve scalise's shooting. what-aboutism, not-aboutism in this circumstance and others in which it is evoked. >> mika, michael bloomberg, tom steyer and george soros, why in the world would kevin mccarthy pin a tweet with all the people out there that you could be tweeting about, why would they do that, mika? i don't understand. why would other back benchers talk about the george soros caravan? i don't get it. what are they -- >> there it is. >> i don't understand what they're getting at, mika. >> it's pretty clear. >> there is the shooting this weekend at a synagogue, the two are not attached, but the environment is hostile. let's just stop pretending,

mika, that for the past two years the alt-right has not been glorified in this administration. they have. >> they've been glorified and fired up. >> people can figure out what dots are to be attached and what dots are not to be attached. the one thing we do know, as john heilemann said, democrats roundly condemned the shootings, donald trump still is not only condemning these bombings, the pipe bombs that are being sent to people, he's actually still attacking the targets of the bombs. >> matt miller and julia ioffe, thank you both very much. still ahead with the midterms next week, there has been talk of a blue wave or a red wave, but what about a youth wave? we've got new polling that says young americans could play a larger role than usual in this election. that's next on "morning joe."

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with us now the director of

polling at the institute of politics at harvard university, john dell a voe and we also have the editor and publisher of the cook political reporter, columnist at the national journal and nbc news political analyst charlie cook. john, let me begin with you, i've always said going back to 2004 when people said young voters were going to elect john kerry that any politician waiting for young voters to elect them will be like a bride or groom waiting at the alter, except, of course, the other person never shows up. am i going to be proven wrong this year by young voters? >> i think you will, joe. i think -- i remember lucy -- >> by the way, that would be great. if that's the case, that would be great. but tell us about it. >> every cycle we think about charlie brown and lucy with the football where right before election day she pulls that football back and we are all left disappointed. over the last 32 years young voters have been consistent in the fact that they have chosen not to show up, about one in five have shown up between 16 and 20% over that cycle.

however, leading into this election we are tracking the most significant increase of enthusiasm that we've seen in the history of this poll. the good news is i think they will show up, the bad news is ty are likely to show up is because of the trauma and the pain that they've endured over the short history of their adult lives. >> charlie cook, that could apply to all demographic groups as far as a lot of people showing up. i've seen early voting numbers. actually even going beyond what we saw in the presidential election in 2016. >> yeah. i think we're going to see a modern mid-term election high in terms of turn out across the board. with younger voters we'll see a mid-term election record. if 100 of them show up, that's a record. this is a low bar. i hope like you do that turn out goes up across the boarder and that young people turn out in

big numbers. but i'm still skeptical about their share of the electorate significantly improving. i'm skeptical. >> so, charlie, we look at the macro, and it seems every week there's a reason for democrats to be happy, republicans to be happy. yesterday a new set of polls out that showed republicans up by three in indiana but democrats by three again in arizona. florida is split right down the middle. you get these big 30,000-foot looks at the senate races looks like the senate will be dead locked, republicans are going to maintain control. if things stay the same. they never stay the same. what about the house? dig down and tell those of us that haven't been studying every race, how does the house look right now >> we're looking at two different elections next tuesday. we're looking for an election for the u.s. senate that's almost entirely in red america.

14 out of the 17 races where there's any doubt whatsoever in the outcome, 14 out of 17 are in trump states. then you have this other election for everything else. in the house it's purple, suburban congressional districts is overwhelmingly where these competitive races are and that's the one republicans have real problems in. but back on the senate, be careful because the quality of state level polling, i'm going to use a technical term here, it sucks. 32 out of 32 polls in wisconsin between august and election day had hillary clinton ahead and she lost be careful on these statewide polls. a lot of them are not good. >> let me ask about the polling around young folt. we saw concrete evidence in doug jones. we saw polling around

tuscaloosa, alabama state. we saw what young people did in the democratic party, so what is actually -- what actually needs to be done to make sure this happens so we don't have lucy taking the football out from charlie brown. >> well, i think one thing that's happening, one of the reasons i'm confident about this year and by the way when joe mentioned john kerry didn't live up to what he expected, youth vote went from 40% to 49% between 2000 to 2004. one of the connections to that is attitudal shift that politics matter. young people are open to politics matter. it's incumbents on candidates to drive that issue home. it's a tangible difference in alabama last year. young people, people under 45

voted for the democrat. the share of the youth vote will increase. there's more opportunity for young people to participate at a higher level than a ceiling where older folks are. i think it can make a significant difference. >> i can spend all day talking with you about this stuff but i want to get up high and ask this question. there's a lot of republican intensity. democrats still have an advantage. generic ballot has democrats ahead. so most of these forecasting models say basically like five out of six chances democrats take the house. basically like five out of six chances republicans maintain control of the senate or gain seats. that sound right to you? >> we're looking at democrats picking up between at that and 40 house seats. 30, 35 is probably a really good

guess. and in the senate somewhere between no net change and republicans picking up two seats. and that last part, that's all post-kavanaugh and the senate has moved over a couple of notches since kavanaugh, so that's where i get to the split decision. >> we now know donald trump's travel schedule. he's doing a lot out there. he's in ft. myers, florida, going to indiana, montana. pensacola, ft. wayne, indiana. >> every one of those are a key senate race. he's competing in the senate. >> he's going to the reddest part of trump states where he won in some cases by 50 points. but this travel skrchedule sayso me he's written off the house. this is a save the senate strategy, has nothing to do with

competitive house races. >> i agree 100%. but he can do damage if he went into these house races. he can be an asset in the senate states. he can be a liability if he goes into purple suburbs which is where the house races are. >> thank you both for being on this morning. coming up, hate attacks america. trump supporter arrested for mailing bombs to top democrats. a gunman shoots two black victims in a kentucky grocery store and tells a bystander that whites don't kill whites. an anti-semite kills 11 worshippers in a synagogue telling police i just want to kill jews. and a president incapable of helping a nation unite and heal. we'll discuss where we go from here. john meacham and peggy noonan

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. i think i've been toned down. i could tone it up because as you know the media has been extremely unfair to me and to the republican party. wow. just before a mass murder in a synagogue, and just after a terror campaign of mail bombs, president trump suggested he had no interest in toning down his rhetoric. >> he actually was saying he was being the victim. that he was the victim of really bad news coverage. >> welcome back to "morning joe". it is monday, october 29th, 2018. with us we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc and co-host of the executive producer of showtime's "the circus," john heilemann. professor at princeton university. pulitzer prize winning columnist for the "wall street journal," peggy noonan is with us. politics editor for the "daily

beast," sam stein. professor at the u.s. naval war college and author of the book "the death of expertise," tom nichols. and historian and author of the soul of america and rogers professor of the presidency at vanderbilt university, john meacham. he's an nbc news and msnbc contributor. thank you all for being with us this hour. >> so, peggy, let's jump right into it. i want to know what your thoughts are, somebody who helped president reagan to find the words after the challenger tragedy. so many other critical moments in american history. what was your reaction to what happened this weekend, the president's reaction to it specifically. >> well, what happened was quite dreadful, i think. gave a pretty strong feeling of national dread. there was -- joe, you may have seen it. mika, perhaps you did.

all over the internet in the past 36 hours or so was a longish clip of president reagan talking in the 1980s, i believe, about bigotry, and giving a statement about how he felt about it. and saying very clearly and thoughtfully and in a very sincere way but a textured way, that he felt bigotry was out of step with the american way, but more pointedly bigots themselves who thought they were the country were apart from the country and out of step with this nation. and it was moving. i sent it out as hundreds of people did. but the seriousness of it, and in a way the modesty of it, there was no hi, i'm reagan, and i'm in your face. it was sort of laid back and

thoughtful. it was nice. it was from a less prideful era. >> peggy, why is it that not only do we now have a president who cannot condemn bigotry, we have a president that cannot even pick up the phone and offer condolences to a father who served this country for eight years, who has two daughters, who has a wife and say president obama i'm so sorry of what happened and i want you to know we're going to investigate and do everything we can to bring this man to justice. not only do it with him, but do it with other former presidents, former secretaries of states, former cia directors, people that have given their lives to public service in this country. >> because it's not in his tool

box. it's not what he can do. there is a kind of a grace that's always good to see in a president, in a leader, in any of our political leaders and i think necessary to see in them. it's disappointing when we don't see it. but a grace and a seriousness about moments like this. i also think with the past few presidents in america, i do think america has been undergoing for some time a mental health crisis. and when leaders understand that there's a lot of delicacy out there and a lot of people who are not fully stable and when they understand, look, we have to say things that are clear, sometimes uncompromising, sometimes strong but never the kind of things that send people over the edge. that get them too revved up.

that overexcite unstable people who are always watching cable news and looking for a reason to become enraged. i wish i saw more of that, not only in the president, but in more of our political leaders. >> john meacham, this weekend after the slaughter at the synagogue, you had donald trump tweeting about baseball strategy that same day. and saying after he had been begged to cancel his political rally the night of that slaughter, saying that he was considering cancelling it because his hair got wet while he was talking to the press about the slaughter at the synagogue and he was afghanistan quote a bad hair day. there's no precedent for that. forget about presidents, but

just decent human beings, that's so abhorrent. it's hard for us to fathom that's the leader of the united states of america. what are your thoughts after this weekend? >> well, yet another exhibit that he simply is not commensurate with the task of the job that he holds. woodrow wilson said the president bylaw and custom has the power to be as big of a man as key. what we learned in this era they can be as small as they possibly can be. one of the things about the terrible tragedy in pittsburgh is one of the first moments of the kind of tradition of grace that peggy was talking about, came with george washington writing a letter to the hebrew congregation at newport in 1790, in the first years of the republic itself where he said

that the united states government would give bigotry no sanction to persecution, no assistance, it quoted mika at the end every man should sit in safety and none should make him afraid. that was a president that was making it up as he went along. he was inventing the office. but he did set a certain standard. i think the only precedent i can think of here is we're in a kind of gilded age, trough in terms of procedural leadership and procedural magnetism, presidential moral leadership, an era that began with andrew johnson at the very low end, but it was an era that ended with theodore roosevelt. that's 30 years. that's a long time. my hope here is that we can, the people themselves can find the grace in ourselves in our daily

lives to actually fill this vacuum to some extent because it's not going to be filled from the top. we're not going to hear the words of reassurance and he'll tone it up as he put it, it's up to us to tone it down and marginalize him as much as possible. >> we've been used to having presidents that actually did that job. republicans and democrats alike. we talked about reagan. michael shared on twitter yesterday what he called jfk's last words, a speech to fellow democrats in austerity jirngs tex -- austin, texas. jfk never gave that speech but this is what he planned to say. quote, neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. and our die ti as a party is not to our party alone, but to the nation, and, indeed, to all mankind. our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace

and freedom. so let us not be petty when our cause is so great. let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our nation's future is at stake. let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause -- united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future-and determine that this land we love shall lead all mankind into near frontiers of peace and abundance. you know tom nichols, i would just settle today for the president picking up the phone and calling the bombers targets. but this president and those who apologize for him seem incapable of even doing that. >> you know i drive past the synagogue that john meacham just mentioned here in newport almost every day and it strikes me that

for years i took george washington's words for granted, that we would realize that promise. now i feel like maybe i took those words for granted too easily. i want to go back to a word peggy noonan used and, of course, my views are that of my own and not the navy or government and that word is seriousness. one thing that struck me over the past few days is how unserious we've become as a country. people are dead. bombs are set. this is a massive assassination attempt in u.s. history. instead, not just the president. the president will never change. but for thousands of americans to show up at a rally, pump their fists in the air, talk about locking her up, chanting about cnn sucks when we've just been through a mass murder and mass assassination attempt, it shows how unserious as a people we've become particularly in the

last few years. >> you know, all throughout this we've been hearing the reports about this gunman, and the subtle parallels to the presidency and violent rhetoric that's come out of it than gunman was saying that this president, president trump isn't enough of a nationalist. that's not actually an escape from a parallel. here's president trump talking about globalism on many different levels. take a listen to his attitude towards it. >> we will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism. the nation state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. i am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring america down. it's a global power structure that's responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its

wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. we will never surrender's america's sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable global bureaucracy. america is governed by americans. we reject the ideology of globalism and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism. they are called globalists. they like the globe. i like the globe too. i like the globe too but we have to take care of our people, we have to. globalists. >> you hear that, sam stein. i was going to explain to everybody that in politics you go out on the campaign trail, ant

ant anti-se anti-semites will talk about it. i don't have to explain it. the second that donald trump said globalists the pavlofian p in the audience started chanting soros, soros. so it is a dog whistle, ant anti-semitic dog whistle. >> three of those clips involved teleprompter reading or advertisements which means those were scripted remarks. it's clearly a strategy. second i would just point out it's not just trump, obviously. you noted in the last hour that kevin mccarthy, congressman from california and somewhat establishment figure, reasonable person was advertising this stuff on twitter. the campaign committee that's designed to elect house

republicans ran a soros-themed ad two days after a bomb was scents to soros' house. this isn't dog whistle at this point, they are bull horns. i know that we can't jump to conclusions necessarily about who is responsible for any of this stuff, but i will say this. i think it's fair to say a climate has been produced vis-a-vis these type of attacks that are either inspiring people or creating the context for them to operate. this man, this lunatic who shot up a synagogue, he referenced the fact that he was fearful that george soros was funding a caravan of migrants in honduras to come to the united states. this was his inspiration. this is what the republicans have run the election on in the closing weeks. they are not stopping. this morning reference was made to the stuff on "fox & friends". so, i agree with tom.

there's a lack of seriousness in some respects here. but i'll say it's also deadly serious and sad too. >> it's deadly serious and you have the shooter parroting what the president says. he's parroting from what he hears from members of congress, what he sees on fox news. again, lift the words. this concocted caravan of guatemalans thousands of miles away we should be afraid of them. but right now here in america is where the real danger is where you can't even go to a house of worship without being shot up by ar-15s. >> remember when trump came into office he declared he would cut funding for domestic terrorism, right? try to shift budgetary allocation in terms of how we police what's going on in this

country. i was thinking as you read jfk's last words before the austin, texas tragedy. i was thinking about what happened in 1963, peggy. there's the assassination met gerchmetger edwards. there's all sorts of violence and hatred. i come up in a community that isn't, that will we say, blinded or hasn't bought into the story that america is somehow this angelic place. and now we see this again. how do we speak to this moment? you said grace. from where i come from, reagan is always viewed with suspicion. he was the governor of california. he came in after -- you know he spoke -- >> he was conservative. >> but what he did, deep suspicion coming out of certain communities with regard to

reagan. how do we speak to the underlying current that's driving all of this? that seems to be a part of who we are, who we had been. how do we finally turn the page, peggy? >> it's a great question, and it often seems that we are continually turning the page or attempting to turn the page, if you know what i mean. let me make a point that's allied with what you're talking about but not exactly. after dreadful stories like this weekend, this singular story and yet we feel like we've been here before, it feels important to me that we can't let the whack jobs give us an unhealthy vision of ourselves as a people. america is more defined, i focused very strongly this weekend, america is more defined by the people who ran to the shooting to help than it is by the man who did the shooting.

america is the community of squirrel hill, that fabulous place which immediately came together in stunning acts of immediate solidarity. this is a town that, to my mind like most of america actually knows the tolerance is not enough. love of your neighbor and loyalty are really what you're aiming at and so often americans are achieving it day-by-day. i think tolerance is just a beginning point, squirrel hill did not have tolerance, it had love and it was very moving to see. i thought it was really beautiful. so part of what we ought to be doing is keep a sense of balance about what is real every day in america and then what comes along and disturbs and horrifies us and also shows us some truth. sorry, i didn't mean to make a speech but i felt that point had to be made.

>> hey, tom nichols, it's john heilemann here. to put some precision around this discussion. you were a republican or at least a information republican. i'm not sure what your status is right now. you've been critical of your power as of late, in the age of donald trump. peggy is also a republican. >> a conservative. >> a conservative. you both are conservatives. i heard peggy talking before about lack of grace on the part of the president. i heard you talk about a lack of seriousness. both are true. but not really as severe or as pointed as the moment requires. i would like you to just talk about whether -- what are we actually talking about here on the part of a party you've been proud of for a long time and now obviously have misgivings about. it's not that donald trump lacks grace or a general lack ever seriousness in our political culture. of course that's true. there's a spefr thing that's

happening that's much more pernicious within the republican party. let's talk about the political party and with its leader. >> i'm a conservative independent now. and one of the reasons that i was attracted to conservatism as a younger person, that i still think of myself as conservative, one of the virtues that i always thought conservatives exhibited well was stoicism and gravity and rejecting the primacy of emotion over logic. and that's gone. one of the things i think you see happening and what's left of the conservative movement and now in the republican party is a culture of drama queen victimhood that cannot be possibly endure any story taking

precedence over the grievances and complaints of the people in that party. this was a time, this past week was a time to, for everybody to say, this is not about me. this is about the country. this is about something larger than myself. and it seems to me that the current republican party, the currents conservative movement insofar as there's one left is simply incapable of doing that. it is now the party of just raw emotion, tears, rage, shouting. and to go back to a question that was asked earlier what do we do about this? i think one thing is we stop making excuses for it. we starts holding our fellow citizens to a standard that we once all -- to which we all aspired of maturity, of dignity, of helping each other in an adult and self-sacrificing way

instead of constantly making it about ourselves and our petty complaints over and over and over again. >> and i think, also, we ask the question and i'll be asking john meacham this question what does it say that who%, had a% of america is contents on being run by a president who actually loves, feels closer to, feels more kinship with vladimir putin than he does the 42nd and 44th presidents of the united states. we'll get to that after the break. but first we want to show you that moment from 1981 that peggy referenced. here's ronald reagan speaking out against bigotry. >> recently in some places in the nation there's been a disturbing recurrence ever bigotry and violence. if i may, from the platform of this organization, known for its tolerance, i would like to address a few remarks to those

groups who still adhere to senseless racism and religious prejudice. to those individuals who persist in such hateful behavior, if i were speaking to them instead of to you, i would say to them, you are the ones who are out of step with our society. you are the ones who willfully violate the dream of america. and this country because it is what it stands for, will not stand for your conduct. the new capital one savor card. earn 4% cash back on dining and 4% on entertainment. now when you go out, you cash in. what's in your wallet?

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you know, mika, we were just showing that wonderful clip of ronald reagan speaking out against bigotry, and, you know, it made me understand that this republican argument, this pro trump argument that the president's words don't matter, not to take him literally, that's been shattered by the targeting of u.s. presidents,

secretaries of state, cia directors, jewish business leaders. reagan knew that words mattered and that's why his words from 1981, that's why the text of what would be jfk's final speech or what was supposed to be jfk's final speech mattered so much. john meacham when ronald reagan gave that speech and when other presidents give the type of speeches that they give in troubled times, i mean is it not to remind americans of what are better angels are, what we should be and to fight to make that a reality every day in america? >> it's been a critical part of the presidential office. we talked about george washington in newport. the presidency has ebbed and flowed in terms of its capacity to project moral authority but

the best of them have always understood what fdr understood in september of 1932 he was asked by the "new york times" to define the presidency he was trying to take away if herbert hoover. he said the presidency is not a management job, it is preeminently a place of moral leadership. and he understood that in the cataclysm of the depression peddling fear was madness. that was the anti-semitic way. he needed to project hope. the drama of the 1930s which enabled us in 19 whos to project across the world to defeat tyranny was not at least attributable to his capacity to save capitalism, to save the marketplace in 1933 forward.

and he understood both aspects of that. now i remember a man saying a year or two ago when i was talking, talking characteristically in warm tones about george herbert walker bush, look you want this guy to be george bush. he's not going to be george bush. there's wisdom in that. but i think we do have to decide this is note a reclamation project we can undertake with this particular person. with this particular president. what we can do, he said how do we turn the page? my argument and i say this and, joe, you get this as a southerner and eddie gets it as a southerner. you don't turn the page. the soul of the country has the klan and has dr. king. the question is how do we get

the better angels to win out for a given period of time. history just isn't a bedtime story. there's not a perfect moment. there's not a paradise that if we do these two things we're going to be there. nor were we ever there. but the problem right now is we're just not wins those skirmishes anywhere nearly as often as we should. >> sam stein, we have a president who, of course, is leading the charge against, against americans, seeking to become a better country, listening to those better angels. when you have a president after a shooting in a synagogue, after people are slaughtered in the synagogue, again after talking about being a nationalist, saying that he may cancel a speech that night because of a bad hair day instead of twisting

out condolences that night or just being quiet that night, tweeting out baseball strategy, this is a president who sends a message every day, a negative message every day by what he does and by what he does not do and i'm sorry for the first time in my lifetime i see the election next week not really as a test of a president or of a party, but of a country. >> yeah. i mean it's been very difficult to watch, obviously and particularly for me to see anti-semitism which i thought was a relic after bigoted past become the future of the american fabric. i recognize it. i've been extremely privileged up to about a year ago at charlottesville not to be confronted with this stuff. now it's here. now you ask how do you get rid of it. i would say with respect to

trump, you know, when i've done reporting on the white house and on him specifically it's become very evident to me that he doesn't see unity or the pursuit of unity as a politically advantageous thing, which s-i believe, what past presidents have seen in addition to being morally compelled to pursue it. trump sees things in black and white. he wants to divide the country for his own personal political gain. for the past week he's been fixated on this idea that the conversation, the national political conversation should be centered around drumming up fears over 6,000 to 7,000 poor migrants on the honduran-mexican border. in his speech and tweets in the past couple of days he's agitated that he can't talk about the caravan.

he's annoyed by the fact that he has to be president in these moments. he puts bomb in square quotes because he's suggesting that the media has moved the conversation away from the caravan for the purpose of hurting republicans in the election. i find that so cynical and sad that he can't be bothered to do the job of the presidency because he solely wants to focus on this one issue for the purposes of ginning up his support for the mid-terms. it's interesting you bring that up. i saw a poll this weekend, martha mcsally in arizona the republican candidate who said let's stop talking about health care. arizonans don't care about health care. they care about the caravan. she took a drop in the polls and now down by three points. it may be possible that americans are not as stupid as donald trump and martha mcsally and the republican party thinks

they are. >> i would say we've gotten three or four indications from president trump he's planning some dramatic border security announcement tomorrow in the coming week. god knows what exactly it is. it's some sort of troop presence on the southern border. this is a test for the media. at some points the media has to step back and say will he be our general assignment editor. does he tell us what we cover. i don't know if the media has the capacity to say we'll ignore the shiny object over there. because the president is tweeting about it doesn't mean we have to talk about it. >> any serious network that talks about the caravan is not a serious network. the last time fox news and the president ginned this up. 14 people were arrested on the border. that was it. there was no great invasion then. there will be no great invasion

now. for any press outlets to follow that, shame on them. so, tom, i just -- you talked about how when he to hold people to account. i think we do. i think it's not enough any more to just make this about donald trump. it's not about donald trump. it's about our relatives. it's about our friends. it's about our former republican party members who say that they support donald trump regardless. well i don't listen to him doing this, that or the other. you know, that's a bunch of garbage. we can say that at this point. we have the president of the united states who trusts a former kgb chief more than he trusts his own fbi director, his own cia director, his own intelligence directors and we have a republican party on the whole that has more positive feelings for vladimir putin than they do for barack obama or bill

clinton, and that's the same with donald trump. half the country very supporting a president who is more trusting of vladimir putin and more positive of vladimir putin than barack obama or bill clinton. >> we've become so self-absorbed one thing we forget at moments of national crisis like this where we really look to the president and to the administration to see how they are going react, how they are going speak to the american people, how the american people are going to react, other countries and their leaders are watching this. they are taking our measure. they are taking the measure of our leadership. and that is really dangerous. you know, the people who say, well, i just enjoy -- there can be no more excuses. this isn't 2016.

this isn't -- i didn't know who to vote for, i had a bad choice. it's been two years. we know now. nobody can pretend they don't know what the administration is about. one of the conversations we need to have among ourselves is to remind ourselves we are not alone in the world. there are people who mean us harm, who take the measure of our character and of our bravery and strength by watching how we react at moments like this and particularly how the president of the united states reacts and when we react this way it's really dangerous. we put ourselves in jeopardy. >> i totally agree. i think there's a concern that people are not seeing the totality of this. thank you all. still ahead, according to the anti-defamation league the pittsburgh synagogue shooting is believed to deadliest attack on jews in u.s. history. but the rise of anti-semitism

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the synagogue rampage is

putting a spotlight on the uptick of anti-semitic incidents in america. according to the anti-semitism league there were 2,000 incidents which marks a 57% increase compared to 2016. that year the organization recorded fewer than 1300 anti-semitick incidents which include harassments, vandalism and assault. the number of cases recorded in 2017 were the highest since 1994, according to the adl. the organization's research found u.s. schools and colleges were particularly affected. between 2016 and 2017 there was an 89% increase in the number of anti-semiti anti-semitic incidents on college campuses. there are seeing anti-semitic posts on twitter. last year department of homeland security changed a $10 million

grants program narrowing its focus around efforts combat islamic extremism shifting money away from groups that combat u.s. based extremism. joining us now, the author of "the chosen wars." steve weisman and jonathan weisman, no relation to steve he's the author of the book "semitism being jewish in the age of trump." jonathan, first of all, what do you make of the data that i just laid out there? is there anything you can attribute it to? what parallels would you draw to the climate of today? >> one thing i want to note is that jump, that big jump in 2017 actually came after another jump in 2016 and the jump in 2016 was directly attributable to the heated campaign for the

presidency. i don't think really it's subject to debate. the fact is there's been a rise in hate crimes, bigotry, not just against jews but against immigrants, muslims, latinos and african-americans since donald trump's rise to the presidency. >> steve, do you agree? >> i do. but anti-semitism has been a virulent strain since jews arrived on the shores. but there's been this uptick and it's focused on a number of things. but i want to point something out about the significance of pittsburgh, if i may. >> please. >> pittsburgh is one of the hearts of the jewish community in america. and it's very important historically because in 1880s there was a major conclave of

rabbis in pittsburgh who proclaimed more exclusively than ever before that american jews stood for social justice, not just for jews but for all people, all people. and jews today believe in social justice, according to every poll, not just for jews, but for all people. and i think this is one of the reasons that jews are singled out as globalist, internationalists. their loyalty, they are grieving today not just for themselves but for the kind of america that we've become. >> john heilemann, i guess in another day or another time with another president wouldn't the next stop for the president of the united states be pittsburgh? >> well, i think it was an interesting thing you saw over the weekend, mika, the mayor of pittsburgh was on "meet the press," i believe, and he was asked by chuck whether the

president should come to pittsburgh and the mayor, i thoughts, rather pointedly said it was up to the families whether they wanted to have donald trump in pittsburgh. he didn't say yes we'll welcome the president's presence here but maybe knows something about how those families feel about donald trump coming to pittsburgh. i want to ask jonathan weisman, you have a lot of personal experience that motivated you to write this book related to not just being jewish in donald trump's america but being the object of anti-semitism in donald trump's america and one of the things you focused on in the book and talked about is the role of social media in creating something new. it's true, of course, anti-semitism is as old as the jewish religion and been the part of the founding of america. but there's this new media echo system that enabled a different kind, the spread of anti-semitism, a different manifestation of it. i would like you to talk about

that. >> you know, the alt-right, the alternative right emerged in the later george w. bush years it was the alternative to his adventuresome abroad but we didn't hear about the alt-right until the 2016 campaign. really what was happening is that the bigots on the right, the people like the neo-nazis at the daily storm or the klan at stormfront, have been talking to each other in their own little worlds and publication and websites. then they learned,000 weaponize the internet. through guys living in the basements doing what's called gamergate attacking women video designers. they can use the internet to publicize their attacks, push e publicize their victims and in

2016 they came out against jewish journalists like myself and we were pummelled online not only just through social media but also in our inboxes, on pbo our e-mails. they learned how to go after and target jews. we are learning about that now. 2017 was not the beginning of this. it was really building up in the last eight years and really burst out into the open in 2016 when the far right learned how to organize and weaponize the internet. >> good morning, guys. what was just said is kind of alarming because i agree with it, but the internet is not going to go away. and so these little haollows ful

of people who are enraged, aggrieved and feeding on each other is not going to go away. i'm wondering where we go from here knowing that. also steve, i've seen your book. i think it's marvelous. i know you are very interesting on the subject of what america has been the past 200 years to american jews, how they have viewed america, which i think is some poignant touching, rather painful part of the pittsburgh story. >> thank you, peggy. it's a pleasure to see you this morning. that's right. i think jews actually changed their orientation in america, because they really felt that upon arriving in america they had arrived at the promised land. they had arrived at zion. what you see evolved in the 19th

century and into today is that jews stopped praying and believing that a messiah would one day deliver them back to palestine, to zion, because they felt that they had arrived in the promised land. this was the greatest fulfillment of jewish aspirations. and of course there was anti-semitism from the colonial era through the civil war, through the late 19th century, through the great depression. but jews have clung to their identity as part of the fabric of american society and integrated into american society. that's a source of great pride and it's this ugly recrhatred ts

a different kind of hatred for voou jews. it's reading them out of the fabric of american society which is scary and horrific. >> i remember the attack in pittsburgh was the largest slaughter of american jews in american history. the moment right now, this is the moment where we can say we have seen the largest slaughter of american jews. more american jews who fled the gas chambers of auschwitz, which is a startling moment and one that a lot of us have feared. >> thank you both for being on the show this morning. let's pull back and look at the politics of this. i'm a suburban mom, a privileged one for sure. but i think i have a pretty good feel for why a lot of these

competitive suburban house districts seem to be trending toward the democrats. most days it seems like the entire trump presidency has been purposefully geared toward alienating suburban women, whom soft whom chose trump over hillary clinton but are now looking to put a check on this out of control presidency. his policies, his scandals, his red rick deeply disturbing to many americans. if you're a mom, how can you look at donald trump's reaction to those bombs sent to his most prominent critics and his graceless behavior in the wake of the pittsburgh synagogue shooting and not be, to put it bhu bluntly, absolutely disgusted. this week trump will continue to campaign hard for his republican candidates, not shying away from making this i lelection a

referendum all about him. there are a hot lot of segments the electorate that will predict how things turn out next week. but i beg, i plead to all mothers, not just those who live in suburbs, but everywhere, think about what message voting for republicans will send to donald trump. think about your children. i think it's pretty simple. i think we can't afford as a country to reward this kind of bad behavior in our president, and it's up to us. coming up, quote, if trump is not deliberately flirting with anti-semitism and anti-semites, he is regrettably oh blblivious to their presence. never mind the fact that the nation is reeling from back to back hate attacks, the president has an election to win.

>> i think that we're running a great campaign. people love what we're doing. they love what we're saying. the republicans had tremendous momentum and then of course this happened where all that people talked about was that. and rightfully so. it was a big thing. rightfully so, but now we have to start the momentum again.

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as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of god. >> you have lost too much, but you have not lost everything and you have certainly not lost america. >> and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon! ♪ amazing grace >> somebody just said your hair

looks different today. i said, well, i was standing under the wing of air force one doing a news conference earlier this morning, a very unfortunate news conference. and the wind was blowing and the rain and i was soaking wet. that's what i ended up with today. >> american presidents reacting to a space disaster, domestic and international terrorism, a massacre in a church and another at a synagogue. 11 people were murdered on saturday and hours later the commander in chief was cracking jokes about his hair. joe, before we go to the news, we have to ask where are we as a nation right now? what's going on? >> well, what's going on, it's a national reckoning. for two and a half, three years you have had a president and a candidate running for president who after charlottesville preached moral relativism and equated neo nazis with those that were protesting against neo nazis. you have had somebody who has been calling hispanics breeders.

somebody who has been calling himself a nationalist and neo nazis have come out praising him for that, praising him for other actions. he has refused steadfastly to attack white nationalists. he has refused to call back his attacks against all the people who, of course, had bombs sent to their homes, their residences and businesses. this is a national reckoning. so, mika, you know, in a week people get to make a decision. is this the america they want to live in? because right now the only constitutional check against this sort of abhorrent behavior -- again, a guy really -- a guy who was sending a message by time and time again tweeting about baseball or talking about his bad hair day there, that was done intentionally to send a message to white nationalists. this doesn't bug me that much.

i'm going to watch a baseball game, i'm going to tweet about baseball. i'm just -- i'm just not -- i'm not going to let it occupy my day. i mean, mika, you tell me, where do you think we are? >> well, the optimist in me said we would survive trump's behavior, the system will hold. the system will hold. we just need to laugh at him, you said, and wait for him to leave the stage, but donald trump's behavior over the last week represents perhaps the lowest point in a presidency filled with so many low points we can't count them. in the face of terrorism and deadly violence, trump has committed act after act after act that shocks the conscience, and he has completely abdicated the role that we expect, that we need our presidents to play at such moments of national crisis.

his refusal to call his predecessors after bombs were sent to them, his rallies, his twitter attacks, blaming the media and amazingly continuing to provoke and churn up hatred against those who are targets of his bombs. >> it's unbelievable. it really is. >> his engaging in petulant punditry instead of unifying the country. complaining that the latest horrible news interrupted republican momentum in the midterms. really? he's tweeting about baseball, bullpen strategy the very same day of the synagogue slaughter, as if to send a message, as you said, joe, to his adoring white nationalist fans that the murdering of these worshippers was not even a concern. that's the message it sends, to be clear. but then again, this president had already joked earlier about canceling his rally not because of the mass shooting of jews, but because he had had a bad hair day, like a flip joke that women make.

we will survive donald trump, i guess, but once again, he has shown his true self, this time in the face of violence and death, and i am confident that history will judge his performance over the last week harshly. voters need to be a part of history and they should do the same. you've got your chance. so with this on this important morning we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc john heilemann, he's the co-host and executive producer of show time's "the circus." professor at princeton university eddie glaude jr. editor at large of the weekly standard bill kristol. former justice department spokesman, now an nbc justice and security analyst matt miller and correspondent for gq magazine julia ioffe. thank you all for being with us this morning. >> julia, let's start with you. you've been the target of anti-semitic attacks, some of the most vile during the

campaign that any of us have seen, and it's the same -- the same things that we were reading on this mass murderer's websites were being sent your way week in and week out during the campaign. talk about your reaction and also about the piece you wrote about the difficulty of pinning the blame on this on anybody specifically, but stepping back and talking about a bigger look at the culture that this president has created. >> yeah. so, you know, when i first heard about the synagogue shooting my first response was -- i mean, other than shock -- was anger because back in 2016 when i was starting to get this stuff, by the way, on the anniversary of my family's emigration here from the soviet union fleeing anti-semitism and i remember thinking back then when donald trump refused to denounce these people or send them a message

that this was -- that he didn't want his fans or his supporters behaving this way, i thought this is what happens when his wife didn't like something written about her failed skin care line. what happens when things get a little bit more serious, when these people become more emboldened, more heartened, in a country where they can easily go to walmart and buy an ar-15, you know. i kind of -- my response when i saw the -- what had happened in pittsburgh was anger because you could have seen this coming a mile down the road. >> julia, in pittsburgh it's specifically personal to you because your family actually emigrated from the old soviet union to the united states, and you all were those refugees that this mass murderer actually was spewing hatred about. that this was, yes, an act against jews but also he specifically mentioned his hatred for refugees.

sounds sort of familiar these days, doesn't it? >> absolutely. i'm so glad you pointed it out. this isn't just an attack on jews, this is an attack on immigrants. this man, the flames of his hatred were fanned by a president who kept talking about this caravan of refugees, as if they were terrorists or as if they were coming to commit atrocious crimes in our country, which they're not. you know, as if -- and as if this was being paid for by some shadowy jewish lobby led by george soros. i think -- i think that's really important to point out, that this isn't just about -- and i think the jewish community needs to understand that, too, that this isn't just about us, this is also about immigrants, which we all were at some point. >> exactly. >> which we all were.

by the way, mika, when julia talked about george soros and sort of that anti-semitic trope that has been trotted out by trump, also trotted out by members of congress talking about how a rich jew was actually funding these immigrants coming to the states. >> or buying an election. you had kevin mccarthy tweeting later deleting this tweet that he didn't want tom steyer and george soros buying the election. you had chuck grassley the republican head of the senate judiciary committee saying that he thinks it's likely that he believes that george soros is doing this, this sounds like something he would do. again, that was not his standard of proof with christine blasey ford, but that's another story. >> and, again, mika, as the news of this cooked up phoney caravan

story that's promoted by donald trump and fox news, members of congress attaching that to george soros and making it sounds like, again, an anti-semitic trope that a jew, mika, was somehow responsible for buying these people and having them march up to the united states, anti-immigrant rhetoric, anti-refugee rhetoric. the same sort of rhetoric used, again, by the mass murderer. >> exactly. and julia's latest column in the "washington post" asks this, how much responsibility does trump bear for the synagogue shooting in pittsburgh? she writes in parts, culpability is a tricky thing and politicians, especially of the demagogic variety know this very well, unless they go as far as organized documented state implemented slaughter. they don't give specific directions, they don't have to. they simply set the tone. in the end someone else does the

dirty work and they never have to lift a finger let alone stain it with blood. the pipe bomb makers and synagogue shooters and racists who mode a woman down in charlottesville were never even looking for trump's explicit blessing because they knew the president had allowed bigots like them to go about their business, secure in the knowledge that they don't really bother the president. his role is just to set the tone and their role is to do the rest. >> but, bill kristol, of course it doesn't bother the president. and we've seen evidence time and time again. you can look at charlottesville, you can look at when he called himself a nationalist. his staff will give him pretty words to go out and read. he will half-heartedly read them and immediately go back on that because you can see time and time again he always has to send

the message to white nationalists, i'm not going to criticize you. i may not be on your side, i won't say that, but i want you to stay on my side. >> yeah, and just the whipping up of the flames, especially on the caravan, on the refugees, you know, that directly was cited by the murderer in pittsburgh and that was done by him, by members of congress, as julia said, by fox news who is obsessed with it for two, three weeks and obviously, you know, the killer is responsible for the killing, but others are responsible for creating a climate and in this case particularly triggering -- i agree with what mika said also earlier, one really wonders about what damage is being done to the country. i've been fairly optimistic about the institution, us surviving trump, the institutions hemming him in, the culture responding to him, but i've got to say that the degree of hatred, i mean, he's -- things that were previously there, i suppose, but suppressed, repressed, you know,

discredited and discouraged, obviously they did flare up at times, there have been many mass murders of minority groups in u.s. history and in the last decades, too, but still the degree to which he has done real -- he and his supporters now are doing real damage. still ahead, donald trump said convincingly that he didn't know anything about david duke. david duke sure knows trump and has been loving the president's statements over the last few weeks. >> trump is lying. >> we pointed that out during the election.

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opening fire in a pittsburgh synagogue over the weekend, leaving 11 people dead is due to appear in court later today to be formally charged as the community comes together to begin the healing process. the department of justice has announced it will charge the suspected gunman with 29 federal counts including 11 counts of obstructing the exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death. attorney general jeff sessions has said the charges could lead to the death penalty. the gunman had a history of online postings, focusing on conspiracy theories and anti-semitic hate speech. in the hours before he allegedly carried out the shooting he claimed that the hebrew immigrant aid society, a humanitarian nonprofit group that assists refugees brought immigrants to the united states to carry out violence. he also frequently posted about the migrant caravan, a major talking point among right wing commentators and president trump

and his stupid followers running for republican seats who tend to just repeat it because they think it will work, even that they don't care about the results. >> they also know it's a lie. >> they know it's a lie. >> they know they're lying. >> martha mcsally. >> people on fox news talk about the caravan as if this is a big election issue. no, it's a lie. know they are thousands of miles away. know that the last caravan that they whipped up frenzy about only brought 14 arrests by the end of the caravan. they know it's a lie and they are spreading hatred across america and at the end of the day, mika, again, inspiring people like this pittsburgh mass murderer. >> and the suspect, the gunman, did appear to be disappointed with president trump for not sharing his anti-semitic and extremist views days after the president declared himself a nationalist at a campaign event, the gunman claimed that trump was a globalist and not a nationalist. not nationalist enough. where have we heard that support of nationalism before? last week just before president trump was putting bomb in quotes, david duke tweeted, when jewish center threats occurred

last year i said they may be false flags from israel to demonize those who morally oppose tribalist zionist global power. i and trump were right. now bomb threats on trump haters, are we right again? divert focus from invasion and demo violence. after president trump declared himself a nationalist at a rally duke tweeted gleefully, quote, trump embraces nationalism in a massive jam packed 99.9% white venue in houston! zio journalists which is probably shorthand for zionist asked him if this is white nationalism. of course fundamentally it is as there is no ethnic or racial group in america more nationalist than white americans so what's the problem? other white nationalists feel comforted by trump's words after the president said that we're

fine people on both sides of the deadly unite the right rally in charlottesville. organizer richard spencer told the journalist really proud of him and that trump made a statement that is fair and down to earth. the president followed that up a few months later by retweeting a far right group's inflammatory anti-muslim videos drawing a rebuke from the british prime minister and forcing a rare apology. >> eddie, no dog whistles here with donald trump. these are fog horns. he's blaring it out. he wants the white nationalists to know that he's on their side and every time he has an opportunity to criticize, he always backs away. like i said, his staff members will write him pretty words to read because they will be freaking out because it's obvious that he is, of course, uniting with white nationalists in his words and his mindset, and then he will always pull back and he will always go back and said, do you know what, they're not so bad. there are bad people on both sides. this is clear what donald trump has been trying to do and this past weekend we saw the result of it. >> right. so we saw 11 dead, murdered, in

a place of worship. we saw two black people murdered in kentucky. more carnage could have happened if he could have gotten into the church. we saw pipe bombs mailed, you know, i had to call my wife to tell her if you don't recognize the return address, don't open it because we get threats all the time. they've been investigated. i get calls all the time. there's something happening in the country that is a reflection of what's in some ways bill just mentioned has always been there, joe. donald trump has provided an ideological context to radicalize certain kinds of understandings of views about whiteness, about white people. there's the radical fringe white nationalists and then there are those who are complicit with them in their silence. something is happening that goes beyond institutions, that goes beyond politics. there's something happening to the national soul, something corrosive at the heart. it seems to me that, you know, come tuesday we've got to vote, it's true, but we have to engage in a kind of deep national introspection.

you asked at the top of the hour, joe, is this the kind of america we want to live in? people having asking that question for a long time and we have to answer it now. i mean, we have to answer it fundamentally now. >> everybody has a choice, too. >> yeah, otherwise i think -- and i've said this on this show before -- we are standing at the twilight of civilization. coming up on "morning joe," hate is dangerous, especially when coupled with assault rifles. president trump is asked about both those things and we'll show you his answer. let's begin. yes or no? do you want the same tools and seamless experience across web and tablet? do you want $4.95 commissions for stocks, $0.50 options contracts? $1.50 futures contracts? what about a dedicated service team of trading specialists? did you say yes? good, then it's time

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calling 811 can get your lines marked. it's free, it's easy, we come out and mark your lines. we provide you the information so you will dig safely. again, if they had somebody to protect people -- but certainly the results might have been far better. >> do you think that all churches and synagogues should have armed guards? >> i hate to think of it that way, i will say that. i hate to think of it that way. so we'll see you with -- >> is that what you're suggesting? >> no. it's certainly an option. this is a world with a lot of problems, and it has been a world with a lot of problems for many years, many, many years and you could say frankly for many centuries. >> yeah, it has been a world with many, many problems for

many, many years. i guess the difference is when somebody is motivated to commit acts of mass murder because of demagog demagogue ery they can kill as many people as possible. that is such a stupid argument when you consider that donald trump's already said that about schools because of the mass murders happening because of ar-15s and other guns people can get their hands on too easily. if you look at recent mass shootings using the assault-style weapon, the numbers just keep stacking up. donald trump knows this. this is why he spent most of his life being against assault-style weapons, military-style weapons. even forget about that. there's a reason why police officers are against military-style weapons. that's because, well, gee, we saw it in pittsburgh.

we had four officers shot there. so the idea that one guy inside of a synagogue is going to stop this sort of an attack is just preposterous, but it's donald trump once again trying to distract from the fact that he stirs up the hatred and people go out and buy the guns. >> it's a stupid argument to make with respect to synagogues and churches, just like it was a stupid argument to make with respect to schools. it's an excuse for not doing anything to take guns off the streets to prevent people from getting their hands on assault rifles. it's an excuse for not doing anything to take on this hateful ideology that's been allowed to spread and that donald trump has fostered. the problem is we have people in this country who are united by hate, who are angry at immigrants, who are angry at vo jews, who angry at minorities. and we have people in the same

bucket who can get their hands on high powered assault rifles and use them to create great violence. we'll probably see these same excuses from members of the republican party. we saw it with respect to the school shooting in florida after donald trump came out and endorsed this absurd idea that you needed to arm teachers. you saw people in the republican party kind of fall in line as they always do and endorse that argument. i'm sure we'll see the same thing here. >> julia, again, so much of this is -- it's not about armed guards, it's about somebody arming, you know -- somebody being able to stop the president and his family from saying offensive things that inspire hateful followers. this weekend, once again, it was brought up that you wrote a piece about melania trump and when you were the victim of anti-semitic slurs and hate speech, what was her response? >> and death threats. >> and death threats. you got death threats. what was melania trump's response.

>> that i provoked them. this is, by the way, the woman who has made her issue cyber bullying, but, you know -- i also, by the way, i thought you were talking about not armed guards, but armed rabbis. i can't wait for that. you know, i have to say it's -- what's crazy to me is that the republicans talk about all of this as if it's this spontaneous meteorological phenomenon that we just can't explain. all this people suddenly hating all these other people. and all these people getting assault-style weapons and shooting up all these other people. that's so weird. why does that happen? who could do anything about it? can you move clouds? can you change the moon for the sun? you know, it's as if these don't have concrete explanations and concrete solutions that they could do something about but they refuse to for very obvious and pretty venal reasons. coming up on "morning joe,"

charlie sykes managed to say a lot in a short tweet over the weekend. quote, so america perhaps the greatest danger we face is not a caravan a thousand miles away, maybe it's already here. charlie joins the panel next on "morning joe." ♪ let's fly, let's fly away ♪ ♪ just say the words ♪ and we'll beat the birds down to acapulco bay ♪ ♪ it's perfect for a flying honeymoon they say ♪

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there is new reaction from the president this morning after the recent spate of hate attacks. he tweeted moments ago, there is great anger in our country caused in part by inaccurate and even fraudulent reporting of the news. the fake news media, the truth enemy of the people, must stop the open and obvious hostility and report the news accurately and fairly. that will do much to put out the flame of anger and outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in peace and harmony. fake news must end.

>> here you have again donald trump resorting to what he's resorted to before. stalinist -- and yes, it is stalinist language. enemy of the people was used by joseph stalin, used by mother dictator dictators. here we have cnn being targets of bombings and he's talking about enemies of the people. a stalinist term, a dictator's term, while all this hatred is being stirred up by him.

let's bring in charlie sykes. we also have republican political strategist rick wilson. his new book is titled "everything trump touches dies." he writes for the daily beast that of course donald trump inspired the alleged terrorism. we also have columnist and deputy editorial page editor for the "washington post" ruth marcus. we also have john heilemann, eddie glaud jr. charlie psycsykes let's go to y. trump is attacking the media as the enemy of the american people. what is so striking is, if you just look at our show this morning, mika's a journalist, ruth is a journalist, but we

ain't the media. it's a bunch of republicans who have spent their entire life fighting for conservative causes for republican presidents, for conservative movements. we got you, we got rick wilson, we had peggy noonan. one republican after another who is shocked and dumbfounded by what this man is not only doing to the republican party and the conservative movement, but to the united states of america. talk about the derangement of the american mind. i must say i'm kind of tired of talking about donald trump. i want to talk about the 45% of americans who actually like what he's doing by stirring up hatred. >> you know, that's exactly right. it's like we can't be shocked by donald trump because we know who he is. we know what's in his dna.

but the way people react, turn the lens to those crowd after this horrific shooting, this tragedy. they're talking cnn sucks, chanting lock eher up. the moral test to the republican party that they have failed over and over again, the president has been a man who has stoked our divisions, has stoked the fear and the hostility, the has created this toxic stew. and we're being reminded the number of people out there who take him both literally and seriously. at one level you have people who are willing to rationalize and defend his behavior, but also you have the folks out there, the haters who draw oxygen from what this president has done from the whistles that he has sent. that's what makes this such a dangerous time.

the fact is the president of the united states is the arsonist in chief. >> rick wilson, i'm naive. i never believed what liberals said about us all along. i never believed there was this und undercurrent in the republican party of racism, nativism, anti-semitism. we spent our entire lives telling people it wasn't true. i'll be damned, i'm 55 years old. bingo, they had us exactly right. they had the party exactly right. what are we to do now? >> joe, this is emblematic of the entire problem of the republican party being bought out by trumpism. it revealed a segment of our demographic, a part of our party we wanted to pretend was in the closet, and unfortunately we now have to face the fact that that element feels empowered and

emboldened. they read tweets like today and they're not taking it as some sort of joking trumpism. they take it as marching orders. maybe it's only a tiny fraction, but it only takes a tiny fraction to march into a synagogue and kill 11 people. it's not a dog whistle, it's an air raid siren. >> but the problem is 90% of republicans support him. >> sure. >> you have people chanting in the crowd. i would have never ever ever over five decades predicted this would happen. after people were targets of bombs, that you actually still have the president of the united states still attacking those people and people in the crowd

more disturbingly chanting attacks at cnn and hillary clinton. where were they raised? >> they were raised in the post 2010 era. they repeated over and over again conspiracy theories and stoked the sense of inferiority. >> the victim complex, i'm a victim, hollywood doesn't like me, the media doesn't like me, but hold on, i own the supreme court, i own the united states house of representatives, i own the united states senate, i open the united states presidency, i own the justice department, i own the dhs, i own everything but i'm still a little snowflake who gets their feelings hurt when hollywood does a movie i don't like. please explain that to me.

they own the world and they're still victims? >> joe, that's the classic trope of all these authorauthoritaria. there's always the conspiracy. this is a sign of how fundamentally weak donald trump is. he's a kwiquivering baby of goo. he knows his base loves that sense of alienation. they love being reminded that certain people can read and they don't read so good. and they love that sense of somebody who's going to be their champion and stoke their anger and tell them all their resentments are justified. that's part of what you and i fought against and charlie fought against and peggy fought against for so long, is the acknowledgment of people who want to have their fears stoked. donald trump is an arsonist, as

charlie said, on race, on the media and a whole spectrum of areas that we have to acknowledge that his unique social media power makes that arson incredibly dangerous for this country and this republic. >> not just for this country, but democracy across the globe. breaking news from the "wall street journal," angela merkel is not going to run for election. most likely germany is going to the dark far right like we saw in brazil over the weekend. this is a crisis of democracy across the globe. >> it's a moment where we had all hoped for is given the crisis of western democracies throughout europe, the rise of nationalism, populism and racism throughout all those societies that we would like to see an american president who would stand to thwart all of that.

he's and ga ruth marcus, you've written powerfully now about the events of the weekend and donald trump's complicity and cull culpability there in. i am curious as to your thoughts about not just whether the blame to some extent for sure for what is happening now in the country, not just in the synagogue but elsewhere lies with the culture of donald trump and the politics he's created but what we can do about it. >> the question i'd like to ask the president today is, my daughter called from college this weekend, she was in tears, she was expressing worry about

her grandmother, my mother, going to synagogue. i would like to know from the president what it is i as apparently a true enemy of the people and my colleagues did to put my daughter into tears. because i don't think it's what we wrote that incited this gunman to go into a synagogue and kill 11 jewish americans not just because of who they are but because of what they believe, which is that we should welcome the stranger among us. i think what we should do with the president is just to ask him to explain himself. because the more he explain himself, i think the more empty and hollow his rhetoric is going to be exposed for. and i just hope that at some point for americans, including as someone said the 45% of americans who support him, that the consequences of this will become clear and that it will become clear that we can't

tolerate this kind of rhetoric, because if it doesn't produce action, it helps to produce action. and we are better than this. >> well, ruth, to answer to your daughter, i don't know if she's over the age of 18. >> she already voted early. >> there's your answer. >> she should spread the word. anyone who is upset, who is frightened, who's thinking about whether or not it's safe to go into a synagogue has an opportunity to voice their concern on tuesday november 6th or early. and charlie, just looking at the motorcycles politics of this, i don't know where this goes. i personally think the brett kavanagh hearings were very bad for democrats and that democrats really hurt themselves in that entire process and that there was an ultimate win-win for both sides on this. i'm not sure where this goes.

i'm not sure either side should be focused on whether it matters to them. they should be thinking about right and wrong. but what is the politics of this pulling out to 20 feet t,000 fe violence and the hatred we have seen play out over the past week? >> i don't want to say this, but it's going to get worse. whatever happens next tuesday, i think the divisions and ugliness are going to get worse. in part it's because when you have a president of the united states who is comfortable in dividing us, when we have these tribes who have separated themselves into these silos who are marinating in conspiracy theories, when you have these dark impulses that have been called forth by the president of the united states, they're not going to go away. we are living in a time that is not only dangerous, but without leadership, moral leadership from the one person -- the president of the united states

is distinctive. in terms of the what aboutism, the president is uniquely capable of uniting us, but the president is uniquely capable of dividing us. one of the things we are learning history. this country is not immune to the hatreds that have torn apart other countries. i think that's the one lesson, is going forward, is to understand that we may be special, but we are not -- we are not going to be exempt from what happens when a country summons the darkness as the president has done. >> so what do we do? >> we're going to have to have a short sharp shock at some point in this country and make a decision as a people, as a republic, whether or not we're going to continue as a western democracy or slip into authoritarian statism. i've given up hoping the republican party has leadership that will check donald trump.

i hope that the tidal forces of american politics are going to bring some accountability to him in a few days and i hope that at some point conservatives of good faith are going to say to themselves, we can't stick with this guy. the intangible outcomes of this are so horrifying that it's not worth the short-term executive orders and judges as the republican burns around this arsonist. >> no, it is not. still ahead, as we learn new details about the pittsburgh synagogue shooting, mourners and faith leaders alike are trying to make sense of it all. we'll ask one religious leader what his message will be to his congregation. e most details about your family history.s my pie chart showed that i'm from all over europe, but then it got super specific. i learned my people came from a small region in poland, and even a little bit of the history about why they might have migrated during that time. those migration patterns are more than just lines on a map,

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strangers, people i've never met, because who are not from the united states. but from all around the world. jewish, christian, muslim, all with the same message. we are here for you. my cup overflows with love. that's how you defeat hate. >> that was the tree of life synagogue's rabbi jeffrey myers yesterday. as thousanders gathered for an interfaith ceremony to remember the 11 lives lost and 6 others who were injured in what is believed to be the deadliest attack on jews in u.s. history. joining us now, rabbi matthew, senior rabbi a congregation in new jersey. thank you very much for being on this morning. i'm going to start with a pointed question this morning and ask you if you think that

the president's reaction to the slaughter in the synagogue has sufficed. >> good to be with you, mika and joe, and back here for this incredibly sad day. i think back to the rallies that were held in it's really when prime minister rabin was leading israel. slowly and surely the fringe right started to come in and rabin was being hung in effigy. his life was put into a nazi stormtrooper uniform. and no one ever believed that would normalize the killing of one jew to another. so i think more than ever our leader, the president, our senators, our congressman, our governors, everyone needs to stand up and bring the tone down a little bit right now. if they don't, we don't know how

far this is going to go. >> is it just tone when you see the level of hate over this past week? does this reveal something even more fundamentally problematic about who we take ourselves to be in this moment and that trump is just a symptom of something deeper? >> i don't exaggerate when i say the american soul's up for grabs right now and we're on trial, all of us. the president was elected because of its citizens, this country's citizens. it's not all about the president. it's about who we become. we've become polarized in a way that has made even simple conversations not simple in the synagogue context. safe places where it used to be a place you could have a normal discourse. no longer that. we've normalized what we ever thought possible. my grandparents escaped prenazi europe. came here, worked 18 hours a day to provide a life for my parents

and for me. i'm almost thankful that they're not around to see what they never imagined possible after bringing us to these shores. >> ruth. >> rabbi. >> ruth marcus. >> good morning. i actually grew up in the hometown of bene so i brought many there so it's such a hard day for us. one is what you tell your congregants how to process this. also what kind of security measures -- don't reveal too much but what do will you do in response to this tragedy? >> like many people across the country, we had a vigil, which hundreds of people spontaneously showed up for yesterday. we are diminished and we're not defeated. that's always been the jewish

message. i'm also encouraging people to do what we jews do first, which is that today burials will start and we have to hold our brothers and sisters and get them through these unfathomable times. we have to sit shiva with them, we have to bring them comfort, and sometimes that's in the sense of food and love and embrace. we have to figure out who we are. who our nation is, who our community is and how we're going to react. and know that hate speech and swat sti swatstika with spray paint is much deeper and really causes problems. security we've taken seriously for years. we're not quite the way a synagogue might be protected but we have two armed guards full time and we have cameras all

over the place and thank god we're able to have the resources to do it. we've had so assess a security charge in every single one of our congregants to make that happen. we have no choice. >> rabbi, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. it's time now for final thoughts. >> what a day, what a week last week. i just, you know, i think it's clearly the case that we have these midterm elections right now coming up in just about a week. it's clearly the case as we've said now there's never been a more vital midterm election and it's not just a test of the parties but a test of what the american people are going to do. no matter what the outcome of those elections are on tuesday, we have a much larger project at hand here. the ultimate vote tallies will not get to what is now a very sick state of our body politic and our culture that's allowed a lot of this to happen. >> joe. >> we've got to rise above this.

we really have to. we'll see what happens next tuesday. but even more importantly than that, what happens the wednesday after the election. whether we actually can have democrats and republicans coming together and whether this president, regardless of who wins, will finally stop being a petulant politician who turns up hatred for his own political gain. we'll see. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks, mika, thanks, joe. good morning, everyone, i'm stephanie ruhle. starting unfortunately with the deadliest anti-sell maanti-semin united states history. 11 people dead after a man walked into a synagogue. >> several congregants wiere sht dead in my sanctuary. >> president trump insists his tone is not responsible