be policy, but it's a big and provocative idea. >> jonathan swan, great insight, as ulalways, my friend. thanks for your time. we'll be reading axios a.m. in a little while. you can sign up at signup.axios.com. that does it for us on this wednesday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian alongside geoff bennett. "morning joe" starts right now. the decision the senate announced weeks ago remains about a principle and not a person. the senate will appropriately revisit the matter when it considers the qualifications of the nominee the next president nominates, whoever that might be. >> if a supreme court justice was to die next year, what would you do? >> we'd fill it. >> good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, may 29th.

along with joe, willie, and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle. former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst steve ratner. former chief of staff to the d. dccc and part of hillary clinton's campaign, msnbc contributor. >> what do you think of mcconnell? >> i just -- don't ask me. >> willie? >> oh, you know. >> the death of shame. he thinks it's cute. >> it's not cute. >> there are consequences to all of this. there are actually young people who make it into politics that actually thinks being that cynical and, well, just inconsistent, some would say corrupt is the way you do things. >> if he didn't already, he'd given away the game with the

smug look on his face. for people who couldn't hear the question, the question at a luncheon in kentucky was, should a supreme court justice die next year, what will your position tbe on filling that spot? mcconnell said, we would fill it. >> explain why that's not necessarily the right answer. >> well, obviously, in 2016, when justice scalia died, merrick garland was nominated by the president of the united states, president obama, and republicans in the senate wouldn't even hold a hearing for him because it was an election year. >> correct. >> well, next year is an election year. mcconnell is saying, in this case, we'd fill it. >> mike, if you want to figure out why there's such cynicism in washington from people who aren't rigidly republican or rigidly democratic, look at what's happened over the past decade when it comes to court appointees. first, harry reid blowing up the filibuster for federal judges. republicans say, you will rue the day. certainly, they did. mcconnell moves it to blowing up

the filibuster for supreme court justices. then they take it a step further with merrick garland, which just basically says it doesn't -- if you're president of the united states, it just doesn't matter. >> yeah. well, you've had -- >> there is no point. there is no more advise and consent. >> we've now had at least 12 years of rolling payback. both parties going at one another. we will have payback when the democrats, if they ever gain control of the senate, will have payback, the democrats to the republicans. it's been going on now for at least 12 years, as i said. steve, i don't know about you, i remember a functioning united states senate. that no longer exists. >> i remember a functioning united states senate. before we go in the time capsule, they did another thing, repealing the 30-hour debate rule. it at least gave the democrats a chance to slow this down and

have this done in an orderly way. now, mcconnell in three hours can jam through any nominee he wants. the pace is accelerating. >> three hours, mika, for a lifetime appointment. >> how to explain this disprek -- discrepancy, is the gop controls the white house and the senate, according to the spokesperson. okay. vice president biden was on the campaign trail yesterday, speaking at an event in houston, texas, organized by the american federation of teachers. there, he did not mention president trump's recent attacks at that town hall event, but his campaign is hitting back after trump criticized the former vp during a trip to tokyo over the weekend. here's some of what the president said. >> kim jong-un made a statement that joe biden is a low iq individual. he probably is, based on his record. i think i agree with him on that.

>> yikes. biden's deputy campaign manager released a statement in response, saying the president's comments are beneath the dignity of the office. to be on foreign soil on memorial day, and side repeatedly with a murderous deck tater against a fellow american and former vice president speaks for itself. it is part of the pattern of embracing autocrats at the expense of our institutions. whether taking putin's word at face value in helsinki, or exchanging love letters with kim jong-un. president trump tried to defend the comments on twitter, saying, i was sticking up for sleepy joe biden while on foreign jong-un q id lot. i said it was more like a low iq individual. who can be upset with that? just sick. >> democrats and republicans for the most part respected the idea

you don't attack the american president when you're on foreign soil. you certainly don't side with one of the most tyrannical dictators on the globe, who murdered an american college student a couple of years ago. but that's what donald trump did. of course, the most wonderful part of it all was that he attacked joe biden's iq while misspelling his five-letter last name. welcome to the wonderful world of donald trump. >> the es a and the a, you know. >> yeah. >> the way the president responded to this shows he doesn't take it seriously. it is all a game, name calling, nicknames. i don't have to ask this question to those at the table, but to the audience, is there any way trump said, hey, t-- ki

said, hey, that joe biden, he is a low iq idiot. it's a game. he's showing affinity for a murderous dictator who killed who years ago an american college student. >> again, mike, i've got to -- we have to keep talk about it because i know a lot of americans right now don't care. >> right. >> about so much of this. >> nor should they. >> they need to care about the constitutional norms that are breached. >> sure. >> they care more -- like our high schools need to teach civic classes, american history. we have to, once again, explain what has made this country the greatest country over the past 240 years. we have fed more and freed more people than any other country in the history of this world. we need to explain why we did and how we did and what we did

do and what we did not do. we did not do that. this has never happened before. it is corrosive for the country. >> everything that you just said was true. it was accurate. and it is necessary, to teach one individual above all everything that was encompassed in what you just said. that individual, sadly, happens to be the president of the united states. he does not understand any of that. because his whole frame of reference, his presidency, is a screen. it's the tv screen that people look at. it's the screen of the phones they look at. his only interest is occupying that screen. >> right. >> that attention 24/7. sadly, he has succeeded in that. >> well, you know, he's ignorant of history. he's ignorant of constitution. he's ignorant of how governments

run. we're not going to talk about the red sox this morning, but we'll talk about the trip to the white house. the history lessons that the players said he tried to give them. the history lessons he was wrong on all parts. >> he was making it up. >> john adams, sixth president of the united states, the first person to sleep here. abraham lincoln losing wars. it was a bizarre -- but again, it exposed the fact that he just -- he just has absolutely no idea what he's doing. our history, that's why this keeps happening. >> right. well, there's one way to solve that, and that's in the next election. i guess others think there might be other ways. i'm not sure why he hasn't been declared unfit for the presidency every step of the way here by his administration. >> well, that's what nancy pelosi thinks. >> i don't get it. how many norms, how many things

do you have to do to sort of prove that perhaps there's something dangerous afoot here? >> well, let me just say, on that point, because i had a conversation on friday with somebody very close to the president. >> mm-hmm. >> who just said that while there have always been problems with donald trump and the administration, some of the people he had around him, that with the mattis gone, tillersons gone, he has nothing but sycophants around him. nothing but yes men around him that tell him all the time whatever he wants to hear. this comes from somebody that everybody knows, somebody extraordinarily close to the president, who says it is just a mad house inside the white house. >> all right. this next new poll may help explain trump's continued focus on joe biden. >> with an "e." >> a new poll has the former vice president far ahead, but a sizable group remains undecided.

the open-ended survey, meaning they did not provide names when asking likely voters who they support, found 37% said biden, 10% chose bernie sanders, 8% for elizabeth warren. kamala harris gets 7%, followed by pete buttigieg at 3%. cory booker at 2%. another 30% say they're not sure. again, that's the response when voters are not given names to choose from. i don't want to overfocus on one poll, but biden's resounding lead certainly has trump's attention. i wonder if that helps or hurts him. >> well, i think to an extent, right now, it actually helps him. number one, he is able to demonstrate the fact that he is a leader, that he has -- we all know joe biden has strong foreign policy.

it shows trump's attacks, siding with a foreign adversarial dictator over an american citizen. that helped, i think, joe biden yesterday. i think he raised money all of it. pertaining to this south carolina poll, a couple observations, besides the fact that joe biden is commanding the four early states. he is obviously doing very well among all demographics, including, of course, in south carolina, the african-american vote. cory booker has a lot of work to do. south carolina is a state he has to win or finish in the top two in order to feasibly go on to super tuesday. of course, mayor pete, this poll demonstrates he has a lot of work to do to shore up support between african-americans. national polls show him at 0% among this community. if i was mayor pete, and if i was cory booker's campaign, i'd be looking very long and hard at polls like this and trying to figure out what i can do to shore up support in this community. it's early but not that early. >> yeah, people love to say that it's early. if you have a guy sitting at 37%

and you're at 2%, it's not early. if you're at 8% and somebody is at 37%, it's not that early. it's just not. the reason it's not, steve, is we go into the summer. this is when -- and i ask you this, because you know this far better than anybody else around here -- this is when people have to start getting serious. who am i going to support? am i going to support beto? am i going to support mayor pete? who am i going to support? you see joe biden, who is actually not only sitting at 37% in most of these polls, but you also see a far more disciplined joe biden. you're not worried about him running into an indian-american and talking about convenient stores in 2020, like he did in 2008. or stealing a speech, as he did in 1987. this is a buttoned up, disciplined joe biden, and that's got to really help

bundlers say, wait a second, this actually is a guy who is older and wiser. >> first, as we've talked about before, this is a very unusual democratic primary. 23, 24, you tell me how many people are actually running. >> mike is announcing later today. >> might as well. might as well. >> noontime. >> mike barnicle. >> for some people, the people who they most would like to see win are near the bottom of the polls. the people they'd most not like to see win are people closer to the top. bundlers have, by and large, been a little holding back, in terms of if they're going to commit, as per your comment. as this starts to unfold and you start to see the wheat getting separated from the chaff, i think you'll see people commit over the summer, then we'll see what happens. so far, a lot of the big bundlers are mostly on the sidelines. i would say that biden has not yet caught fire in new york. hopefully he will. we'll see about that. people like mayor pete have

gotten a lot of the energy in new york at the moment. some to beto. some to kamala harris. people like that. certainly not bernie sanders, elizabeth warren. >> you could say, looking at the poll, because of the way it was conducted, who is the most famous. who do you support? and it is joe biden, up 27 points. except, conventional polling shows him with bigger leads in south carolina. a poll a couple weeks ago gave him a 31-point lead, including a massive lead of 40 points among african-american voters. also on the question of who is most electable, this poll of a couple weeks ago in south carolina, 90% said joe biden had the best chance at defeating donald trump. >> okay. >> if that is the fundamental question of the election, how to get trump out of office, there's your answer in south carolina. >> a lot of that, as you pointed out, is name recognition. this is a sponsored segment called turn it to the pros. i'm going to ask the pro at the desk. >> oh, yes. >> do you think that the most interesting dynamic in that poll and other polls that have been

taken is the contest between elizabeth warren and bernie sanders? it seems elizabeth warren has a chance to knock bernie sanders out of this race early. >> so what i was saying about beto a few days ago, how he's retooled his campaign and is keeping his head down, knocking on doors, holding town hall meetings, that has applied to elizabeth warren the past month or two. everybody has been distracted by early polls. she doesn't care. she keeps campaigning. >> yeah. >> she keeps putting out policies. you know, people will say, hillary put out policies, too. hillary's was more, for most americans, most democrats, a mismash. >> she couldn't explain it. >> elizabeth has been saying the same thing for 30 years. that usually translates well on the trail. i think -- and adrienne, i'll ask you, as the real

professional here, i think there are two stories out of the polls the last month since biden has gotten into the race. one has been joe biden. the expectations he's exceeded. certainly my expectations and most people's expectations. the other has been the chipping away, the slow chipping away of bernie sanders' support, who has gone from the low 20s to the mid 20s, the teens. he's at 10 now. even in new hampshire he is trailing. you can see the support going, as mike was saying, to elizabeth warren, to kamala harris, to joe biden, to others. >> yeah. joe, i'm glad you raised that. i don't think it is just elizabeth warren chipping away at sanders' support. it is other candidates, as well. a lot of people who supported sanders in 2016 supported him because he was the anti-establishment candidate. they liked his message. but when you really looked at his record, he hasn't actually

accomplished a lot legislatively. he's been an elected leader for a long time, but when you look at the actual legislation he's passed, it is pretty anemic. he's got, i think, maybe two bills he's actually passed. when you're looking at somebody who is going to get results, who is going to accomplish legislatively what they seek out to do and sign it into law, you're looking at people like elizabeth warren, like kamala harris, some of the other senators and elected leaders who have results they have actually implemented into law. i think that is haumaking a big difference among voters. we'll see it play out in the debates. >> steve? >> what you also see happening here, and we've talked about this before, is a small but perceptible shift in the attitude of the democrats, from who can pass my litmus test the issues i care about, medicare for all, green deal, to who can win? it doesn't work in bernie sanders' favor. >> changes the stake.

>> we have seen also the economy and the short-term at least, the economy has picked up even more. it's been in the headlines. when we were four years closer to 2008, to september 15th, 2008, the message of bernie sanders, elizabeth warren, appealed much more than it did today. >> that's it right there. >> of course, stay tuned because, steve, you're going to talk about how some things happened in the markets yesterday that suggest that the smartest investors, the smartest money believed an economic downturn is coming which, of course, could dramatically shake up this race in the months to come. now to some other headlines making news. for a second time in less than a week, the house failed to pass a bipartisan disaster aid bill. the senate approved bill, which would provide $19 billion in funding to parts of the u.s. hit by hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, and wildfires, failed in the house after a single republican lawmaker

opposed it yesterday. gop congressman thomas massey of kentucky demanded the vote be held after the house returns from recess last week. last thursday, the senate passed the disaster aid bill after it was stalled for nearly six months. massey's objection followed one by congressman chip roy of texas, the lone representative to object on friday. months after a chinese woman was accused of lying to get into mar-a-la mar-a-lago. a college student has pleaded guilty to doing the same thing. 18-year-old said he had no bad intentions when he decided to enter the club the day after thanksgiving while president trump and his family were visiting. telling the court that he just wanted to see if he could do it and how far he could get. according to his attorney and a federal prosecutor, his ability to get on the property was fairly easy. he simply walked down the beach from a nearby separate club,

then went through the metal detecters manned by the secret service, alongside mar-a-lago members. he walked around about 20 minutes before he was stopped and arrested. the university of wisconsin freshman was sentenced to one year of probation. >> so just, again, just for comparison sake, willie, an american student. a kid from ohio went to north korea and just grabbed a poster. >> a poster. >> was beaten to death, left brain dead, scooped up, shipped on a plane, sent home. that's who donald trump is sending love letters to. as he says. >> yeah, he said, we fell in love. that's the guy that you just described, who the president is taking sides with. all right. let's turn now to bill karins, who is following parts of the country that could be facing yet another day of severe weather, marking two weeks straight of

powerful and devastating storms. bill? >> yeah, we're going to do it again today. we have 84 million people at risk, including the northeast and middle of the country. last night, it was scary. we had an hour's worth of this huge tornado in kansas on the ground. you could see it was inside the range. a helicopter pilot said it was a mile wide, barely missing the university of kentucky. town s destroyed. houses off their foundation. you can see, nothing to rebuild there. you have to start from scratch. amazingly, only injuries, no fatalities. pennsylvania was hit hard, too. look at this. we're looking straight up into the air at a tornado. that's debris that had actually been picked up near morgantown. we had hail reports, too, in pennsylvania. at one point last night, new york city, staten island was under a tornado warning. large hail reported there. let's get into what we're going to deal with today. we still have a chance of flash flooding.

pittsburgh to philadelphia included. poor people here by the arkansas river, tulsa to fort smith, they'll have torrential rain later today. dallas is getting into it. severe weather risk, 84 million people from pittsburgh, d.c., baltimore to st. louis, dallas. maybe a few strong tornadoes in oklahoma and arkansas. i want to give the timing in the northeast of the storms. we're fine throughout the morning. this afternoon, 2:00 p.m., they form near pittsburgh. they make a run for i-95. 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. for washington d.c. philadelphia and new york city, timing is going to be about 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. gusty winds, torrential rain, hail, and maybe isolated tornadoes. i-95 corridor, despite the threat of the damage, the travel for the evening commute at the airports will be significantly delayed. the good news out of this, guys, is today is the last huge, big day of the severe weather outbreak. we get a little break into tomorrow.

>> wow. bill karins, thank you very much. keep us posted. still ahead on "morning joe," president trump is tweeting wildly, and more and more people are simply scrolling right by. how his online outbursts are seeing diminishing returns. plus, a republican congressman defends his call for impeaching the president. justin amash got a standing ovation after telling his constituents that congress must hold trump accountable. we'll go live to michigan. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. when i was diagnosed with breast cancer, there was no hesitation, i went straight to ctca. after my mastectomy, it was maddening because i felt part of my identity was being taken away. when you're able to restore what cancer's taken away, you see that transformation firsthand knowing that she had options that she could choose, helped restore hope. my team made me feel like a whole person again.

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congressman justin amash, the lone republican to call for president trump's impeachment, received standing ovations, multiple, at a town hall in his michigan district last night. with constituents saluting his courage.

hours after amash repeated his statement, that attorney general barr misrepresented special counsel mueller's findings, amash defended his statements and his conservative record against attacks from president trump and republican party leadership. >> to me, it was impeachable. the question is, do you then move forward with impeachment proceedings? my biggest concern, i thought about this for a long time. like i said, i spent a month reviewing, analyzing, thinking about it. i am concerned that we've gotten to the point where impeachment may never be used in any circumstance. i think that is a greater risk than the risk that it will be used too often. i do think that it is more dangerous for our country to allow a president to mislead people, make things up. as an example, in the mueller report, he asked the white house

counsel to create a false record. things like that to basically mislead people about a statement he had made. things like that, to me, reflect incredible dishonesty and really harm the office of the presidency. i don't think that -- i don't think that you can just let that stuff go and say, hey, it's no big deal. we're going to have an election in two years, and just let it go. i think you have to have proceedings to deter this kind of conduct, even if, ultimately, the person is not convicted. you know, there are a lot of protections here for a president. we should expect the president to uphold the law, to have the highest standard, more than anyone else. now, i believe the people are smart enough to figure out what's going on. i really believe that. in this district, i heard

someone mention like, you know, running as a republican on trump's coat tails or something. the president did much worse than i did in this district, okay? in fact, we've looked up the numbers. president trump had the worst showing in kent county of any republican in the history of our county. and the worst showing -- the worst showing in the city of grand rapids of any republican. >> congressman amash also said he would not rule out a run for president on the libertarian party ticket, but added he is not ruling out a future run for governor or the senate either. joe, i just wonder, because a lot of republicans fear doing something like this, because of rhett buletribution from the pr or their constituents. >> right. well, identi've been saying thi two years now, that if you stand up to the president of the

united states, you know, i stood up to the speaker of the house, and in a very conservative district, they ask, why did you do it? you hold town hall meetings and explain to them. when you explain it to them, a remarkable thing happens. they listen. those that were undecided support you, and those who were hostile to you either become undecided or they will say afterwards, hey, you know, i disagreed with what you just said, but i really want to thank you for coming out and talking to me. that's what's been missing. what we just saw there is what's been missing throughout the entire trump era. it's what we asked paul ryan to do before he gave his endorsement to donald trump. >> yeah. >> to push him, to force him to be better, to force him to respect constitutional norms, to show him that when he didn't, there would be political

consequences. so here we have, willie, a district actually that's solidly republican. donald trump won that district by, i think you said, ten points? >> yeah. >> i don't think a democrat has won that district -- >> in a long time. >> in a very, very long time. he went to the constituents. he explained why. the response was great. he could win a race for re-election there, probably win as governor. >> there was another moment in there that i think -- it actually sounded a lot, to me, like you talking about this. he was asked by a trump supporter who stood up, and they had a civil conversation about it. i thought you were a conservative. how can you not support donald trump? >> that is, by the way, the most insane question. >> so he calmly said, okay, keep the mic because i want to have a conversation with you. >> very smart. >> maybe we can find the moment and play it. he said, debts and deficits, farm bailouts, military adventurism, going on and on and on about what it means to be a

conservative. he says, i have a great conservative ranking. i haven't changed at all. >> here's my record. >> it looks to me like a lot of people in the conservative movement have changed with president trump. being a conservative, he said, doesn't mean siding with donald trump all the time. in most cases, it means doing the opposite of what donald trump is doing. >> lindsey graham, who i served with in '94, ironically enough, lindsey actually helped us move newt gingrich out of town, the 11 of us, when he started spending too much money. when we believed that he was not being sufficiently conservative. so lindsey attacked me and said, he doesn't care about -- i'm just a little cable news host on msnbc. he's a united states -- i'm a united states senator, sir. he's not worried about me. i said, lindsey doesn't need to worry about me. he should worry about the $22

trillion debt, the biggest deficits ever, a $16 billion farm scam because of donald trump's protectionism. bloated pentagon budget, where they are actually -- they're actually funding programs the pentagon is not even asking for. it is not about defending the country, it's about helping military contractors. i could go on and on and on. >> tariffs. >> tariffs. >> yeah. >> you look at what lindsey graham claimed to believe in 1994, what ted cruz claimed to believe in 2010, 2012, 2016. what every one of these republicans claimed to believe in. count after count after count after count. they have become big spending radicals. stalin didn't have $16 billion

for his five-year foreign plans. >> whoa. >> this is beyond anything the democrats have ever done. $22 trillion debt. it keeps going up. listen, let me just warn you, when you're on the airplane and you want to say, i used to like you, joe, you used to be conservative. don't say that. that never ends well for you because i will give you a litany of 50 things that i believe in. >> he will. >> here's the problem, through the same 50 things i believed in in 1994, when everybody was saying i was a right-wing radical. i haven't changed. this has become nothing more than a personality cult. there's no conservatism here. even the tax cut, the tax cut was radical. i love tax cuts. this tax cut was radical. there was a study out that said it went to the richest of americans, left working class americans behind. the gop bill did nothing for

growth. it didn't pay for itself. it paid for 5% of itself. it threw us another trillion dollars into debt. it's really -- there's nothing conservative about this. this is radical, big spending liberals. >> i'll give you two examples that you did not mention, in terms of being a conservative. would you, as a former conservative, still a conservative. >> i'm conservative. they aren't. >> would you agree -- >> justin amash is a conservati conservative. i haven't seen one in a long time. >> justin amash is also a lonely truth teller in terms of the party he belongs to and adhering to his principles. but would lindsey graham, you think, agree with the president of the united states, shipping billions of dollars worth of arms to saudi arabia and the united arab emirates without congressional approval? do you think lindsey graham would agree, apparently he has, with giving bill barr something

that has not been talked about enough, control basically over the intelligence apparatus of the united states? >> that depends on one thing, whether donald trump tells him to. >> exactly. cultive personality. >> it will be a sad day for lindsey, and a sad day for a lot of republicans, when you have conservatives like justin amash who were saying the same thing that we were saying in 1994 when we balanced the budget four years in a row. passed welfare reform. passed some good tax cuts. passed regulatory relief. actually, ran a budget service. $155 million budget surplus. that's what we fougt fht for ev day. conservative principles, small government, a restrained foreign policy. this is -- i just thank god. i have to say, willie, thank god that justin amash is talking

like republicans used to talk. >> maybe he will inspire some others to stick to reality. >> maybe. because there will be -- i know it doesn't seem like it now, there will be a rise of small government conservatism again. a turn away from trump's bloated, centralized, power hungry, big government republicanism. that day is going to come, and people will look back on mitch mcconnell and donald trump and go, oh, my god. >> congressman amash said that yesterday. he said, look at the record. look at my votes. my conservative record has not changed. i'm the same person i've always been. republicans have changed around me. let's go to nbc news correspondent leanne caldwell, who was in the room at the town hall. good morning. what was it like inside the room last night? >> reporter: good morning. so it was a big, packed crowd.

of course, he got the standing ovation, as you all mentioned, when he walked in. of course, there were a lot of amash supporters there. some of them were democrats who had said they'd never voted for him before but said they came out just to offer their support. there were also people there though who were long-time amash supporters who were confused about his position. they said that they came to hear him out. there was a couple women i want to highlight. one walked in saying that she was very confused about what he said about impeachment and the mueller report. she's always voted for amash. leaving the town hall, she said that perhaps impeachment inquiries need to open. she said that she had enjoyed hearing him out and that what he said really resonated with her. but she also said that she plans on supporting the president in 2020, but she wants to see where this impeachment goes. there was another voter, again long-time amash supporter,

long-time republican, who said that she had never heard that the mueller report did not completely exonerate the president. she admitted to only watching conservative media, saying she'd never heard that the mueller report said anything negative about the president. it was very eye-opening for her. that was a really telling moment in speaking to these supporters. another thing that really stuck out to me is a woman stood up, very impassioned, said she volunteered for amash's first congressional campaign, and she said, your job is to represent the district and you're not representing the district. he said, my job is not to represent my constituents. my job is to uphold the constitution. there was some really fiery, intense moments last night. he spoke for two hours, taking at least 30 seconds from people in the room. >> wow. >> nbc's leigh ann caldwell, who was in the room last night,

thank you. >> i'm not here to represent my constituents. i'm here to uphold and defend the constitution of the united states. if we were in northwest florida, i'd say, and all the people said, amen. >> amen. >> that's why they are there. >> yeah. >> to uphold and defend the constitution of the united states. >> chills. >> regardless of what power hungry president is sitting in the oval office. >> i agree with that. well, three things. first, just going back to your discussion about the loss of the lack of conservativconservative spendispen -- another spending bill is working through congress. probably adding $2 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years, when they finally approve it. there's not a lot of courage, frankly, on either side to do anything about spending or the deficit. deficit doubled under donald trump. heading for $2 trillion in just a few years. the second thing, joe, is that i would say, on this impeachment thing, i think we have to be careful. i don't think you and i disagree about this, about not impeaching

people for the wrong reasons. >> right. >> i don't think you impeach people because you don't agree with their policies. you impeach them because they violated the norms of the office, don't have moral character, violate -- >> can i stop you there? >> check, check, and check. >> that's why i've been careful to say, i support the impeachment of the attorney general. we have seen the attorney general commit perjury. >> before our eyes. >> if you or i lied before congress the way he did, we would have been indicted by now. as far as donald trump goes, i support, i think like amash and a lot of people, i sup or the t -- support the inquiry on impeachment so we can get answers. if not, fantastic. i remember during the impeachment of bill clinton, fete on the floor all the time and say, this is a constitutional blight on -- no,

it is written into the constitution. the founders foresaw this and said, if there is a president who abuses his power, this is the step congress has to take. so let that process play itself out. >> there were reasons congress looked into the conduct of bill clinton. i think we can all debate whether it was good, bad, or different. there were reasons they did. here's the question, do you belief at t believe at the end of the day, if it is democrats versus republicans, which is what happened with bill clinton, republicans for it and democrats against it, that you should impeach a president on a partisan basis, as opposed to nixon, where in the house judiciary committee, half of the republicans on the judiciary committee voted for the articles of impeachment against nixon. i worry about a partisan impeachment. >> i worry about that, as well, and also the lawyer in me worries about precedent. i worry about what happens when the next president sees what donald trump did in office and

before in office, how he abused his power, how he tried to run rough shot over the rule of law, and how he's now telling the attorney general, you can go in and declassify information that would get agents killed across the country, about how he sat on an air force one and deliberately was the man who drafted -- the president of the united states himself personally drafted a story, an alibi, a lie, as to why there was a meeting of russians in his office tower, talking about actually doing a quid pro quo with an enemy. i mean, that is not a precedent that i want future presidents to look back on and say, he did it, so we're good. >> i also don't want donald trump to be re-elected. bill clinton probably would have been no matter what. the impeachment helped. the historian who predicted donald trump would win the white house in 2016 is now predicting a way for democrats to defeat

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what are some of the most important points that you think show that trump is going to win? >> first of all, an win sorks, isn't running. you have a third party. third parties are bad news for the party in power. you don't have the obama administration matching anything like the affordable care act in the second term. you don't have a big foreign policy triumph that the democrats can campaign on, like getting rid of bin laden. in hillary clinton, you don't have a john f. kennedy. so that's six factors. >> wow. that was american university so-called prediction professor,

alan lichtman, on "morning joe" in september 2016, adding to his streak of correctly predicting the winner of every presidential election since 1984. >> let's stop right here and say when he said that, like several of us around this table, he was mocked and derided for saying donald trump could win. >> right. >> stuck his neck out there. >> what's he say now about president trump's chances for a second term in 2020? professor lichtman joins us now. his 2017 book, "the case for impeachment," is currently out in paperback. you say the democrats have a chance to win, professor, in 2020. how? >> only if they show boldness, not timidity, and move toward impeachment. the democratic leadership is wrong, as you pointed out, morally and constitutionally, by

avoiding impeachment. they have a constitutional crisis. the constitutional remedy is impeachment. they are also wrong politically. the democrats seem to be going down the same rat hole as 2016, when they believe the polls and think they're going to cruise to victory. my prediction system, the keys looks at the real dynamics that drive electionins, and that is e performance of the party holding the white house. right now, there are only three keys against the incumbent republicans. takes six to lose. the scandal key is the critical element of this election, which can be nailed down only by an impeachment process, public hearings, and everyone forgets, then a trial in the senate, in which house prosecutors can call witnesses, bring up documents, bring up opening and closing statements, cross-examine the president's witnesses. that would be a fourth key down,

bringing trump closer to defeat. it could likely trigger other keys, as well. like a serious challenge to his renomination or a third party. so without that critical scandal key, it looks like donald trump, despite the polls, is likely to be a winner. democrats need to get on the right page politically, as well as morally and constitutionally. >> my goodness. >> let me go to democrat and residence in speck tkeptic of y theory, i'd guess, steve rattner. >> looks like the democrats have gone down as far down the hole as they can about unearthing more about the president. what would come up at an impeachment hearing? two, you'll recall the history of the bill clinton impeachment, following the outline you're giving. he couldn't run for a third term but left office with a 70% approval rating.

probably would have won, had he run. people think bill clinton wasn't included in the next campaign, which is why he lost. trump is going to be a martyr. not sure how that helps your case, for why an impeachment would prevent his re-election. >> i'll respond, first of all, like nancy pelosi, you're fundamentally misreading the clinton impeachment. yes, it cost the republicans a couple of seats in the house, but it gave them the presidency. remember, bush won the presidency by 537 votes in florida. one quarter of the electorate said the clinton scandal and impeachment was very important in their decision making. in other words, it blunted the vote for al gore. as you say, it put clinton on the shelf, their best campaigner. that's completely misguided in that analysis.

in addition, it's not true at all that you become a martyr if the republicans don't vote to remove you. you forget, it's the public resolutions that matter. richard nixon started out at the beginning of the watergate inquiry at 67% approval. the public revelations brought him down to 25%. even before the house judiciary committee voted articles of impeachment. in the beginning, the republicans were not for impeachment. it was only all of the evidence that was brought out. you can't do it in these scattered investigations. >> precisely the opposite happened with bill clinton. >> wrong. >> his popularity went up during the impeachment. the republicans did not sign on for his program. you misunderstood, with all due respect, my point about clinton and gore in 2000. i think the preponderance of the

wisdom is if gore used clinton at the end of the campaign in 2000, even in arkansas, some of his own states, that gore would have won the election. >> you're talking hypotheticals, and you're reading the polls. as we know, that is a way of misreading and making mistakes about elections, as we saw in 2016. the whole reason why clinton was not on the campaign trail was the impeachment, the cloud of scandal that hung over the clinton administration. that is why there is no substitute for all the revelations in a focused way through an impeachment inquiry and through the trial. donald trump is the master, as we have seen, of deflection and distraction. you're not going to get at him with scattered investigations, that he's going to blunt in six or seven different committees. >> you know, mika, there is nothing sadder to me, personally, than watching two democrats fight.

>> i know. i want to bring in adrienne elrod. if you listen to professor licht m m dlichtman, he hasn't been wrong so it is worth listening. >> the question for democrats is do we want impeachment proceedings to drive the news cycle or do we want to actually let the priorities of the american people drive the news cycle? i think that's where you have leader pelosi trying to walk a fine line here, by making sure the investigative process goes forward. also, at the same time, making sure this does not overrun everything. i think to the point that professor lichtman is making, it certainly helped clinton in 1998 to have this public sympathy for him on his side. we're dealing with two situations now when it comes to cause for impeachment. it's comparing basically apples and oranges. i do want to ask the professor that question. how do you think this can help

democrats if, in fact, impeachment, should it go forward, would drive the entire news cycle? >> again, you are misunderstanding and misreading the dynamics. >> professor -- >> no, this is like my dad. >> the conventional wisdom cannot guide you. that is a huge mistake the democrats are making, just like they did in 2016. >> yes, yes. i remember we had a pulitzer prize winner on, saying something about american values. dr. brzezinski laughed and said, that is such a funny little theory you have there. >> rather stupid. >> did your daughter or son help you with that? >> we're like, dr. brzezinski, he is a pulitzer prize winner. >> he's rough. >> the professor was answering. continue. >> we throw to you.

>> the conventional wisdom cannot guide you into elections because it misses the real dynamic, which is, elections are not about issues. in fact, if you predicted elections by issues, you would have predicted water mondale would have beaten reagan in 1984, because most of the issues favored the democrats. elections are referendum on the party in power and, of course, the president when he is running. the only way you are going to change the dynamic is through an impeachment inquiry, at which, by the way, is also right constitutionally and morally. >> right. >> now, i'm telling you, it's right politically. if you take the conventional wisdom and you read the polls, you're going to be -- you're going to have the same problem you had in 2016. i'm pleading with you not to do that. >> all right. >> we're hearing you.

>> the book is "the case for impeachment." professor allan lichtman, thank you very much. >> thank you so much. it is the top of the hour. welcome back to "morning joe." steve rattner has charts for us. >> do we want to hear, steve, after that takedown? my goodness. you were wrong again. >> i was wrong again. >> that's what he said. >> the professor made incredible points. you have to ask though, what would it take to move toward an impeachment proceeding, when we've seen so many different things that has happened in this president se compare ecy comparr presidency in our time. they're not impeaching. >> the only thing i'd say is this, steve, look at justin amash's town hall meeting last night, when a woman came in confused, said she didn't understand why he was supporting impeachment, and admitted at the end to our reporter she had not heard any of this. she just watches conservative and listens to conservative news

outlets. all of this was news to her, and she wanted, now, to hear more. that could be an argument for getting the facts in front of the american people in a dramatic way. >> absolutely. i'm totally in favor of getting the facts, and i'm totally in favor of what the democrats are trying to do, in unearthing the redacted parts of the mueller report, calling witnesses, having their own hearings. all i'm saying is that in the absence of some amount of republican support, and justin amash, god bless him, is not, frankly, enough, and having a bipartisan effort, i think we run the risk of what happened to the republicans when they impeached bill clinton in the late 1990s. which is a backlash and a sense that it was a partisan impeachment, make him into a little pit of a hero, and maybe help him get re-elected. he's not going to be impeached or removed from office. >> yeah. >> i will say, the 1998 midterms were disastrous for republicans. >> yeah. >> one of the reasons newt gingrich was run out of town.

disastrous. >> bill clinton's approval rating when he left office was -- >> over 60%. >> i think it was close to 70%. >> by the way, this is the tension that nancy pelosi is managing right now. >> yeah. >> which is, the politics of it versus the job of congress to perform its oversight duty and look into all these questions that were left wide over by bob mueller in volume 2 of the mueller report. >> which we're waiting to see. >> nancy pelosi is managing the political side of it. >> you have three critical elements that have gone un-talked about here. number one is going to be bob mueller's testimony. at some point, he is going to testify. >> by the way, he has to testify publicly. he wants to testify privately. no good. not enough. >> there is going to be a transcript that the public will be given. we'll understand what he said in testimony. that's one thing. the second thing is the incredible pressure that mounts each and every day on speaker

pelosi to hold an impeachment inquiry. the third thing, i think, is out there and unspoken, and i think it is rapidly becoming the most common phrase among potential vo voters. when you talk about the president, who they might vote for, who they did vote for, you hear the phrase over and over again, i don't know who to believe. that's what he's done. >> that's what he's done. >> well -- >> that is a dangerous, dangerous thing. >> people inside the white house have not done service to the american public by proving him unfit. >> if you flood the zone with facts, that an impeachment inquiry would do, i think -- >> flood the zone with facts. >> -- you can actually move a lot of americans. i will say, nancy pelosi has to be calculating. abraham lincoln was calculating in saving the union. early in the war, he said if the country has to be half slave, half free, if it saves the union, then i'm for that. if saving the union is required

by letting all do free, then i am for that. he was very calculating, and he moved to the position when he felt the american people were ready. >> were ready. >> ready to move toward the emancipation of slaves. i'm not being critical of nancy pelosi here. i will say though, there are times though to not calculate. i would say when you have a president who has abused power more than any other president, not only in our lifetime, i just can't think of any historical preceden precedence, of any president who abused his position -- >> you can think of one. >> who? >> richard nixon. >> more. >> using the fbi and cia to try to stop investigations and -- >> you're describing donald trump. trying to use the fbi. i've said this before, we raised so much hell, we republicans, when george stephanopoulos went over to the fbi just to talk

about a press release. that was considered unthinkable at the time. donald trump has run those red lights a thousand times. do you think what richard nixon did using the fbi is different than donald trump now using his attorney general -- >> to lie for him, commit perju perjury? >> to lie for him, commit perjury, to reveal sources and methods of the cia? i don't think so. i think, in many ways, donald trump actually attacking the fbi, attacking the cia, attacking the ndi, attacking our law enforcement officers, attacking -- >> the media. >> -- the media, athtacking the military, intelligence officers, saying i agree with the ex-kgb agent over all of these people i appointed, i think that -- bu because that goes to the heart of preserving our democracy. even when kirstjen nielsen, who was saying whatever he wanted to say, admitted that american

democracy was under attack and under threat, yes, i think what donald trump has done is far more serious in the long run than what richard nixon did. >> first of all, you have to decide whether there are impeachable offenses under the high crimes and misdemeanor definition. secondly, can it actually get done, given the politics we're in now, with donald trump having affected a hostile takeover of the republican party? third, you have to ask yourself if, by some chance, you got this done, we'd have mike pence. for some of us, having mike pence running in 2020 is a less appealing idea than having donald trump running in 2020. >> this is what nancy pelosi is dealing with every day, in terms of the tension. >> hold on, let's go through the three very quickly. first of all, we don't know the answers to one or two. that's why we have an impeachment inquiry. re we don't have the answer to the second because we don't know how

the public would react. nixon's approval was in the 60s before the impeachment began. we don't know where the road ends. we shall see. >> according to new reporting, president trump's tweets aren't packing the same punch anymore, with interaction falling dramatically in recent months, despite a significant uptick in use. >> i wish somebody had charts on this. >> steve rattner does. >> what a coincidence. >> trump can pretend he has a lot of people listening to him. i don't think he cares about reality. what is the reality as it pertains to his tweets? >> the reality is two-fold. first of all, we know he has been our tweeter-in-chief. what maybe not everyone spees appreciates is the extent which tweeting his increased. he's gone from six tweets a day during his first six months in office to 13 tweets a day in the

most recent six months in office. just in this last month here, he hit an all-time high of 642 tweets and re-tweets. >> frantic. >> super at it. >> 20 tweets per day for donald trump. he is on a roll when it comes to -- >> 20 per day? >> 20 per day in the past month. >> he's a tweeter. >> manic tweeting. >> tweets and re-tweeting. >> tweet monster. >> what mika was eluded to was the question of whether people are still paying as much attention to his tweets. the evidence shows that the interactions with his tweets, in other words, the number of times someone re-tweets a tweet or likes a tweet, has been dropping. back here at the beginning of his administration, it was about 55 times out of 1,000, people would do this. doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a lot. you can see the trend all the way down here. he's gone from 55 times a thousand down to 16 times a thousand most recently. his tweets are having a bit less impact. the other fun fact that we should take a look at is what

happened since the mueller report. that accounts for a lot of what's going on. if you look before the mueller report, you can see that he tweeted 61 times, no collusion. then he went to -- 56 times. then he went to 61 times, no collusion, in the two months before. for 12 months, 56 times, no collusion. for two months, 61 times, no collusion. on obstruction, it is even more dramatic. he'd only tweeted no obstruction 11 times during the previous year. since the mueller report, he went to 34 times. once every other day, no obstruction. every day for 60 days, no collusion. every other day for 60 days, no obstruction. >> wow. >> i'll give you a fun fact to end with. this is not his main tweeting subject. his biggest tweeting subject has been -- >> the wall? >> -- fake news. his single biggest tweet was the

video of the sumo wrestler taking down the guy with the cnn head on. >> oh, my gosh. >> it was re-tweeted 930,000 times. >> this is our president. steve rattner, thank you. >> on the engagement question, whenever possible, i like to quote professor donny deutsch, upper east side of politics. he said when donald trump started, came out in 2015 and 2016, there was a novelty to the tweets. you can't say these things. can you do those things? donny says now we're in season 7 of "celebrity apprentice." we get it. we've seen the show. we're not interested anymore. on the tweets and the engagement, that sort of speaks to that, where people are tuning it out at this point. not everyone but a lot of people are. >> didn't "apprentice" get crazier as he was attracting attention? >> busse years. >> ask yourself this question, the woman at the justin amash town hall last night who said, when she heard justin amash explain obstruction, what had

occurred in the mueller report, she said, i'd never heard of that before. >> right. >> never heard of anything in the mueller report. that's out there thick. >> steve rattner, thank you. adrienne, what are you looking at today? >> well, mika, the dnc this morning announced they have new thresholds for the third debate. the thresholds have doubled in termings of qualifying for the first two debates. between june 28th, the day after the first debate starts, between june 28th and august 28th, two week bfs before the third debat have to essentially receive 2% in four national polls and/or authorize state polls in the first four early states. also, not and/or, which is currently the situation, and raise 130,000 unique donations in at least 20 states. these are new thresholds. >> interesting. >> they will probably end up windowing the -- winnowing the field a bit.

at some point, there's got to be some sort of winnowing of the field. this is a very fair process the dnc is putting in place, which allows for transparency, encourages grassroots donations, and at the same time, ensures we don't have a debate stage with 20 people going into the mid-fall to early 2020. >> there you go, makes sense. the first debates are on msnbc. adrienne elrod, thank you very much. >> thank you, mika. coming up, the supreme court rules on one abortion case but sidesteps the wider issue. what it means for the future of roe v. wade. tlhere's big news out of missouri which may lose its last remaining abortion clinic and become the first state without a legal provider since roe v. wade. we'll tell you about that just ahead and bring in former missouri senator clair mccaskill for her take. we'll be right back.

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how come you became a democrat when we voted for you as a reason? you just drank the same kool-aid as all the democrats. >> first, i have one of the most constitutionally conservative and fiscally conservative voting records in the whole congress. in fact, i have -- i have voted to spend less than any member of congress in either chamber since i've been in congress. i voted for less spending. when i got elected, as part of the tea party movement, people cared about limited government. they cared about fiscal conservatism, making sure our government wasn't spending too much. under the current administration, spending is skyrocketing. spending has gone way up, and republicans, unfortunately, haven't said that much about it. so i haven't changed. i'm who i said i was. i'm a principled, constitutional

conservative who has stayed consistent regardless of whether we have president obama in office or president trump. >> that's a test. >> that's the answer. >> that is the test. it's what a conservative is. a true conservative is a conservative whether a democrat is in office or whether a republican is in office. we now have 25 years of examples of republicans being conservative when bill clinton is president. like i said, we balanced a budget four years in a row. everybody was for balancing the budget. george w. bush became the president of the united states. we ran up the biggest deficits and debt in history. i would call some of my friends who were still in congress and say, well, you know, things have changed. but they really haven't, have they? it is just a republican president that's changed. then they said, and forgive me for rambling here, but then republicans said in 2009, you were there -- >> senator claire mccaskill.

>> is here. >> if you just give us one more chance, if you just let republicans control washington one more time, we've learned our lesson, and we will be conservative. donald trump comes in, republicans congress washington, d.c., deficits higher than they've ever been in an expanding economy. the national debt over $22 trillion. they pass a tax cut that only helps the richest people, the multi-national corporations. they have a bloated pentagon budget, where they are actually paying for weapons systems that the pentagon doesn't even want. we always talked about being constitutional conservatives and being article i conservatives. >> there you go. >> they're turning all the power over to donald trump, and they're spending more than liberal democrats have ever spent. you tell me, who is the conservative and who is the big spending liberal? >> we'll talk more about amash being close to his conservative

values. claire mccaskill is here, meaning everyone is healthy at home. >> we're good. everybody was so nice. >> yay. >> thank you. "morning joe" family and nbc family was kind during the time my husband was really, really sick. things are better, and i'm here with a smile on my face. >> happy to see you. daughter graduated from law school yesterday. hello. >> yes. >> busy month. >> she was the speaker. >> oh, my gosh. >> isn't that nighce? >> they gave an award to sir paul mccartney, and i got a hug from paul. >> you did not. >> that's too much. >> he said, your speech was great. his wife was kind. >> you shouldn't have said that to me. >> little much. >> he hugged me. >> it is a -- everybody i really want to meet and spend time with. i'll have my next door neighbor say, i went to the 7-eleven and

paul mccarthy was there, and we sang "abby road." >> i'll take the cheap shot and say, i got a hug from paul mccartney. >> that is a cheap shot. >> go to the gut, right? >> by the way, i have this conversation with mika all the time. seriously, like jack will come in. oh, hi, dad. i played piano with elton john. we play ed across the water. it's not fair. you don't understand. >> sorry. >> speaking of the beatles, i want to do a quick pitch. yes, i think this is -- what company do we work for? >> comcast. >> this feels inappropriate. >> nbc universal. people watch the show because they want to know what movies to watch. >> okay. >> i saw a trailer a couple of months ago for a movie called "yesterday." blew my mind. it is about a guy who -- >> oh.

>> -- hits his head on a rock. he always wanted to be a musician. >> yes, yes. >> he wakes up, and the beatles never existed. he was playing "yesterday" to his girlfriend. she goes, that is the most beautiful song you've ever written. he goes, i didn't write it. this goes on and on. >> yes. >> it looks like the most wonderful mowonde wonderful movie. >> i've seen it. >> is it as great as it looks? >> it is tremendous. i'll tell you why. this might be me personally, but i don't think so. we have become accustomed to the beatles music over the course of 50 years. >> take it for granted. >> exactly. we take it for granted. you sit in the theater, you have the beatles channel on sirius radio and hear the songs all the time. fine, you turn the station. you sit there, and you're watching this movie in a small theater with the big sound. the resonance of those songs -- >> i guess you hear them for the first time actually. >> it is as if you hear them for the first time. you say, oh, my god, what

incredible music. what incredible songs. the movie is spectacular. the star of the movie is spectacular in it. the theme of the movie is wonderful. rolling stones and beatles never existed. >> great premise. >> it is, yeah. >> claire got a hug from paul mccartney. >> you know, because i know you want another paul mccarthy story -- >> no. >> -- but talking about the songs, it is funny. i did get to meet him one time. carole king took me backstage. i was nervous and didn't know what to say. i sat there, like, eh. it was awesoful. you can't say anything to this guy. i can't tell him he changed my life. he was one of the most important people in my life. people have been telling him that for 50 years, so i froze. i was going to shake his hand, and somebody goes, he is a republican. everybody froze and stared at me. i was like, oh. i walk out. i'm a moron. dumbest guy. nightma

nightmare. i went and slumped in my chair. he came out and opened up, and he played. it was right across, and he played "jet." i jumped to my feet and started cheering. two minutes in, i said, wait a second, it's about the songs. what you were saying, it's about the songs. i don't need to bug this guy. it's about the incredible songs he wrote. that's what is joyful. >> yeah, claire. >> what he did yesterday that impress mesed me, when you go t graduation, there's too many speeches and usually most aren't that good, then they have the long process where everybody comes across the stage and gets the diploma. his step-son was one of the graduates yesterday. >> where did he go? >> cardozo here in new york. >> okay. >> then there were so many people going through. he was on the aisle, in the audience. he stayed for the entire graduation ceremony. >> wow. >> how many people that are paul mccartney would sit there?

how many would go, get me out of here. i don't want the mass of people afterwards. >> we don't have to say how many people are paul mccartney? we can say, how many are claire mccaskiccaskill, mika, and joe. >> he sat there applauding. it is a moment where you realize, this is a good guy. >> that's what you hear repeatedly. >> he didn't have impatience. >> if he was a woman, i'd say he is not a diva. maybe he is not a divo, if that is a word. he watched every graduate get their diploma. >> congratulations on your daughter, first of all. >> thanks. >> congratulations on your speech, second of all. thirdly, never tell me again that paul mccartney hugged you. >> i will. whenever i need to pull it out. >> senior adviser at move on.org and msnbc contributor, kareen is with us. >> who did you meet yesterday? >> certainly not paul mccartney. the person i want to meet though

is stevie wonder. >> my god, yes. >> that's your dream. >> i've seen him perform, never gotten to meet him. >> that is a great bucket list. >> also, catty kay is with us, as well. >> actually was the fifth beatle. >> don't engage. please don't engage. the supreme court agreed to a compromise on indiana's contested abortion law yesterday, revealing an openness to state restrictions on the procedure. with two liberal justices dissenting, the court upheld the law requiring abortion providers to bury or cremate fetal remains, reversing a ruling by a lower appeals court that had blocked it. at the same time, the justices declined to revive another aspect of the law which would have prohibited abortions based on gender, race, or disability of a fetus. the indiana law was signed by

vice president mike pence while he was governor. the court's action avoids an election year review of the case amid a flurry of new state laws that are aimed at stifling abortion rights. >> claire, i think this is predictable. when the indiana law came out, both of us said, this is -- you know what, this is going to get overturned by a lower court. the supreme court is not going to accept it. it's just going to remain. it is like assault weapon bans. when states ban what they define as assault weapons. the supreme court never takes those up. they allow them to stand, without ruling explicitly that such bans are constitutional. >> well, i don't know what's going to happen on roe v. wade. it is clear to me that around the country, there are a whole lot of people that are trying to set up cases to overturn roe v. wade. even in my state, which certainly the majority of people

would say they are pro life opposed to pro choice, the majority of the people, 47% to 40% polled over the weekend say they don't want to overturn roe v. wade. a bigger number opposed what the missouri ledgislature did, outlaw them in rapes and incest. this is a moment we need to make sure people understand how extreme these measures are, and how they are really violating the rights of any woman, which we hope is rare, but a safe and legal abortion. >> so i think what's been revealed over the past several months, if you look at what's followed these laws in alabama and georgia and missouri, is there's been a discussion about polls. there's been a discussion about where americans are.

across america, you ask, are you pro life or pro choice, it's split, 50/50. it's been that way for some time. sometimes it goes in this direction. sometimes it -- but if you ask americans, do you want roe v. wade to be overturned, only one in five americans. let me say that again. only one in five americans want that almost 50-year precedent to be overturned. the supreme court watches that. they know that. >> yeah, they're paying attention to that. i totally agree with you. i mean, etch more than 70% of americans believe that we should have safe and legal abortion, abortion should continue to be legal, and also safe, as i mentioned. here's -- i think what we're seeing right now is the end game for the anti-choice movement. they've been working on this for decades. that is to make sure that there is no abortion access. we are -- this is a grave threat, i think, we're in for roe versus wade. you have republicans who have stacked the court to make sure,

the supreme court, to make sure the folks who are on that court will strike down roe versus wade. there has been that argument. we saw that in 2016. that is one of the big reasons, number one issue, i would argue, that donald trump won, was because of his scotus pick. we're seeing that play out right now. you even had supreme court justice breyer say a couple weeks ago that roe versus wade is in threat, is a threat in his court, in the supreme court, the justice said this. so i think this is a scary moment. we have to stand up and we have to speak out. we saw protests all across the country last week. women are, you know, getting out there and protesting and saying, no, this is not happening. you see this with the 2020 candidates also taking this all on. >> right. >> speaking out, making this an issue. we'll see where this goes. >> claire, it seemed to me for some time, i've long believed that what's happening in

missouri right now would happen across the country. that is this, that the roberts court will never explicitly overturn roe v. wade. but they will allow the regulation of abortion to such a degree that in states like missouri, you have one abortion provider today, but you may have no abortion provider. they can say, we didn't overturn roe v. wade, but they allowed individual states to regulate to such a degree that it is a de facto ban. >> yeah. in what they're doing in missouri is really interesting because it is not the law that's causing this to happen. it is state regulators that have come in and asked -- done an audit and asked for changes. planned parenthood has done the changes they requested that were reasonable. the one thing they asked for is to interview all of the doctors. only two of the doctors work for planned parenthood. they were happy to sit down and do this interview with the regulators. the others are residents that

don't work for the planned parenthood. so the question was asked, are you going to make criminal referrals? they just passed a law making -- putting doctors in prison. they refused to say they would not make any criminal referrals. so, of course, the residents said, we're not going to talk to you. that is why they're shutting it down, because they have not made these doctors sit down for the intrusive interviews that could potentially bring criminal charges against these docs. so it is -- they're going to go to court today in missouri, st. louis city circuit court, and we'll see what happens. this is the other way they're getting at this. not just through passing laws through legislature, but governors who are extreme on this issue, trying to use the weapons of regulation. you know, the conservatives that don't like government regulation, yeah, well, it depends. >> well, the consequences, willie, again, we've said it before after alabama, the consequences for republicans in suburban areas, going to be remarkable. their support will evaporate.

they're retain support of those they already have. >> we are hearing from pro-life people who said, wait, we always had a carve out for rape and incest, but it allows democrats to put the brand on the party, they are the party of rape and incest when it comes to abortion. when you look at what the supreme court did yesterday with the indiana law, it left alone the more controversial part of it. does that tell you this supreme court does not have an appetite to look at roe v. wade? >> that was the debate in alabama, whether the group that managed to bring the case in alabama would get it through the appeals court and it'd end up in the supreme court. it was the first push to get a case before the supreme court. justice roberts has made it fairly clear that he would like this court, as much as possible, to be one that is built on consensus. therefore, does he want the legacy of the roberts court to be the court that overturned roe

v. wade? that's what it would be. if they overturn roe v. wade, this court would be known for that one singular thing. it seems unlikely that justice roberts wants that and, therefore, you carry on allowing states to chip away through regulation at abortion providers, which effectively is a tax on poor and predominantly poor and non-white women. they will be the ones who are most affected by these chipping away of regulations and chipping away of abortion providers in some of these states. they'll have to travel -- richer people can travel to other states, and they won't be able to. >> let's get the legal impact on this and bring in state attorney for palm beach county, dave aronberg. what's your take away from yesterday's supreme court ruling? >> hi, joe. it looks like the roberts court wants nothing to do with roe v. wade as 2020 approaches. if there's one thing we've learned from the roberts court, as has been said, it is a go slow approach. they are trying to go after roe

v. wade in a piecemeal fashion. they're playing the long game, opposed to vis eoring the 46-year-old precedent. when roberts preserved obamacare in the deciding vote, he is looking at the long game. he wants to keep the faith people have in our institutions, such as the supreme court. he knows it'd be undermined if he eliminated a popular precedent or a popular law, such as obamacare. so the alabama law, laws like it, sort of break the code. it takes a different strategy, which is why people like pat robertson even opposed the alabama law. not because they believe it is bad law necessarily, but bad strategy. >> mike? >> claire, are you concerned, as dave was talking about, the appetite for the courts, to go slow and everything, but are you concerned with the current composition of this court, that it is not just abortion that's in danger, it's gay marriage, perhaps the ability to increase executive authority,

presidential authority? the composition of this court seems not to have that much of an appetite to slow down in social areas and overturn things. >> that goes back to the point dave was making. what does robert want his legacy to be? does he want the roberts court to be the court that turns back the clock on gay rights, turns back the clock in the united states of america on the right of a woman to get a safe and legal abortion? does he want that? he has the opportunity. i think he's got the votes to do a lot of those things. >> yeah. >> so the question is, will he side with the four less conservative justices to stop the review of some of these cases, or will he open the gates and decide that his court will be the court that will be talked about for decades? i frankly think it would politically probably benefit my party if he did that. it is not something i wish for. i think it'd be terrible for this country. think about all the married gay

couples out there that are nervous again. i mean, the only thing they've done is marry the person they love. so i do think that that's an issue. i mean, i'm interested, dave, you know, one of the things i don't think people realize is we talk about the phrase rape and incest. you're a state's attorney. you get the cases. i remember the cases i dealt with where there was an incest victim. the sad thing about incest victims is that many times, they're young. i remember one young lady was, you know, not even a lady. she was 12 years old. she was being raped continually by her step-father. she was impregnated. her mother took the side of the step-father. she was all alone. now, i think about her in the context of if that was today, and there's no place in missouri she could go, and her mother wasn't supportive, what, we find somebody to travel with her to another state? you know, that's the realcatio s

-- real cases out there. people think it is a phrase, rape and incest. i'm sure in your office you've seen the cases where there are victims of rape and incest that should have the right in this country to not be forced to carry that child to term. >> it is often forgotten that if roe v. wade is overturned, decisions like that will be made by local prosecutors. it'll be made by local legislators. that is a whole different dynamic. it won't outlaw abortion across the country. it'll delegate it to the states and the local governments. that's so scary for people. instead of being a constitutional right, it is going to be an issue at the ballot box. that's why, by the way, it was mentioned that i don't think republicans really want this fight. they've already lost suburban women in 2016. they're at risk of losing them in mass in 2020. this puts every state legislative race, governor's race, attorney's race in play at the ballot box. i don't think republicans want that. >> willie? >> claire, i want to ask you, because it fits into this

conversation, quickly about what mitch mcconnell said yesterday. he was asked in paducah, kentucky, if a supreme court justice dies next year in an election year, what'd you do with the seat? he said, i'd fill it, with a smile on his way. in context of what they did to merrick garland -- >> he's a jerk. how dare he, you think it is funny that he denies the constitution? you know, spits on the constitution. there's nothing in the constitution that says you don't fill a seat because it is the year the president is getti int elected. he knew that when he did it. he is so brazen. if the people of kentucky think this hypocrisy is acceptable, i feel for them. >> claire, all right. well said. state attorney for palm beach county, dave aronberg, thank you very much. coming up, the co-founder of black lives matter joins us with her "new york times" column entitled "dear candidates, here

is what black people want." plus, a serious conversation about this. >> e.t. phone home. >> oh, my god. he's talking now. >> home. >> e.t. phone home? >> e.t. phone home. >> you don't need proof of little green men to take the idea of ufos seriously. that's according to dan drezner, joining us with his new column straight ahead. "morning joe" is back in a moment. ♪ we can work it out ♪ life is very short and there's no time ♪ alright, alright. what's going on? my owner got a new puppy. my name is tiny. nobody cares.

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we like drip coffee, layovers- -and waiting on hold. what we don't like is relying on fancy technology for help. snail mail! we were invited to a y2k party... uh, didn't that happen, like, 20 years ago? oh, look, karolyn, we've got a mathematician on our hands! check it out! now you can schedule a callback or reschedule an appointment, even on nights and weekends. today's xfinity service. simple. easy. awesome. i'd rather not. joining us now, co-founder of black lives matter and the head of black futures lab, alicia garza, whose organization released its 2019 black census project, which is the largest survey of the black community in the united states since

reconstruction. "new york times" column entitled "dear candidates, here is what black people want," in which she argues this, we long for the same things as everyone else, yet few campaigns treat us as if our experiences matter. reading from the piece, quote, candidates and their campaigns are comfortable talking at black people but few talk with us. it limits their ability to influence policies. it is a bad strategy at a time when black people, black women in particular, form the base of the democratic party. are its most loyal voters and mobilize others to go to the polls. campaigns that fail to under how structural racism affects lives are boomed. they'll always miss the mark when it comes to black voters. if candidates address the needs and concerns of black communities, it'll return in dividends for all americans. great to have you here. >> thanks for having me. >> let's be specific. say you're in the room with the

top five democratic candidates. joe biden is there. kamala harris is in the room. maybe mayor pete, bernie sanders, elizabeth warren. what are you saying to them? what are the top two or three issues you want them to focus on more than they are right now? >> the first thing i'm saying to them is that we need to make sure we leave the fried chicken and the hot sauce alone. it is actually really important for black voters to be hearing what their plans for to address the impacts of structural racism on the issues that impact our lives. for example, when you look at what's happening in the south with black communities, we can talk about health care, but we also have to talk about the fact that there are republican legislators that are blocking federal funds to expand programs like medicare -- or medicaid, which essentially would allow more people to access quality and affordable health care. if you're not speaking about that specifically in places like the south, you're saying, i want to expand health care, but black communities are saying, well, that's fine. you're talking about a different

system than what i have access to. we could go down the road. i think it's important for candidates to also understand that substance matters more than style for black folks. what i have seen over the last three election cycles at least is that what candidates will do to appeal to black voters is go to places where black voters might feel comfortable, but they don't actually address the issues we care about. what are you doing about the cost of college, when we know that the average black family makes something like $49,000 a year. the cost of college is something like $10,000 more than that per year. black families cannot make that work. a successful candidate will be able to say, here's how i'm going to close the gap. here's how i understand how structural racism impacts your life. is when you get specific with black communities, then you will have the support of black communities. >> fewer platitudes and more

specific policy prescriptions. >> 100%. please, leave the hot sauce alone. >> thank you so much for putting this census together. it is incredibly important and critical, especially for the moment we're in. it resonates with us, right? what it does is quantifies a lot of the things we already knew. so my question to you is, you critique the democratic party on their focus on the white working voter. you say that it is a losing strategy. can you just lean in on that a little bit more? i know that becomes a huge kind of argument right now, and i would love to hear your thoughts on that more. >> absolutely. demographics are changing in this country, as we all know. the united states is becoming a majority people of color nation. what that also means, however, is that older white -- the older white population in this country is dying. what the democrats have done, in some ways, is they've said, well, the reason that we lost in 2016 is because we left behind

this voter that was, you know, a white swing voter who could have potentially voted for hillary clinton but was swayed in certain ways by donald trump. we just really need to double down on those voters. but i think what we find in the analysis is that those voters are extremely fearful of demographic change. it is why they voted for trump in the first place. they are resistant, right, to policies like the ones that i was just naming, that specifically look at the impacts of structural racism on communities of color and, particularly, black communities. they're obtuse in some ways to the fact that addressing issues that are impacting the most marginalized in this country will actually lift all votes. a strategy that really invests in voters that are resistant to demographic change, fearful of demographic change, and resistant to the notion that structural racism even shapes our society or our economy is not a winning bet for a party that's trying to win an election

against somebody like who is in the white house right now. >> didn't barack obama prove, regardless of his own race, that it is not an either/or proposition? it's so funny when i talk to pr? first of all, when i talk to politicians, every republican politician will say to me, i'm different. i'm going to get 40% -- no, you're not. you're getting 4% but if you prove yourself, you'll get more but you're not. and then democratic candidates seem to overgeneralize radically about black voters. not understanding that you talked about black women voters. the most important demographic in the democratic party, conservative with a small c. they want a good economy. they want stability in their neighborhoods. they want their sons and daughters to be able to go out and be safe when they're walking. there's just this -- again, there's just this

overgeneralization that actually is self-defeating for i think a lot of democratic candidates. >> i think what's real is for black women in the party, there's no regardless of race. and plaque women are very clear that our lives are being shaped by the reality of structural racism. that doesn't negate the fact they may be conservative with a small c, but i think what we've seen in terms of voting patterns over the last three election cycles is black women are putting into office progressive candidates. i think we saw that with barack obama. i think we saw that with the turnout for stacey abrams. i think we saw that with the turnout for andrew gillum and we can go on down the line. i think the issue here is that we have to make sure black voters are not being left behind. black voters are the strongest base of the democratic party. black voters have shown we change what happens in election cycles when we turn out, and black voters have also shown we don't turn out when there are candidates who are not speaking to the issues of black voters.

>> let me quickly follow up here though. like those white working class voters that we're talking about, you can hold a bible in one hand and a gun in another, but if they're falling behind on health care, doesn't matter. they're going to vote according to their own interests. a black woman, we always talk about what an extraordinary occurrence it was in alabama when a lot of black women got out and helped elect doug jones. willie's right, they can go and talk about platitudes. they can say all of the right things. but if they have one candidate who's fighting for medicaid expansion and one who's not, that's a pretty easy choice, isn't it? >> i think we saw something different in this last election cycle. i think what we expected was that white women would vote for hillary clinton on the basis of the fact she would better understand what women were experiencing in the economy, in

our society and in our democracy, and i think what we saw was race trumped gender, no pun intended. i think what's important for us to understand again is that we cannot leave black voters behind, and that is really what the black census project is arguing. when we're doing this analysis of the most highly politically engamed voters, we're also showing the highly politically engaged respondents are bringing along with them the people who are less politically engaged. it takes a candidate who will speak to the issues impacting us, not in broad platitudes but in specifics. the way our economy is racialized, the way our democracy is racialized which we saw in the last election cycle in georgia and florida, is impacting black voters' lives and we need to deal with that immediately. >> i couldn't agree with you more. there's nothing worse than the white candidate who shows up in black churches for four sundays before the election and doesn't

even say past their introduction. this has been the play. you wait until the end and go to black churches. what we found -- and i'm very proud of the percentage of the vote i got in the black community, the amount of turnout we had, it was amazing in missouri. but i believe black voters were so intune to the fact that one candidate was for expanding medicaid and making sure federally qualified health care centers were in their neighborhoods and the other one was totally against it. one of the reasons black women voters have been loyal to the democratic party is no kind of republicans say it's just because they're not paying attention. they're paying close attention. they know which party is fighting for medicaid expansion and the cost of college down. i'm very proud of that for my party but they can't take it for granted like you say. they can't just assume i can show up in black church and everything is going to be fine. >> exactly. at this point we need to make sure we're engaging as many

voters as we possibly can and we need to be engaging the voters who are turning out consistently for democratic candidates. if we want to win in 2020, we've got to be invested in the communities that vaualways had young black voters. >> i'm interested in what you said talking to young black voters, not at young black voters. a lot of candidates are talking about expanding medicaid, the cost of college education and what to do about that. i'm wondering which of the candidates at the presidential level you feel are fulfilling that mention of talking to you rather than at you, and engaging with you these issues that take into account structural racism as opposed to just talking about health care and talking about college costs. >> sure, absolutely. and, of course, this is not an endorsement. this is way too early to endorse the candidates on the primaries though we will be doing that

with our blacks to the future action fund. i can really say elizabeth warren is killing the game right now. she came out swinging from the second she announced her candidacy and she talked about the impact of structural racism on the economy, on democracy, and our communities. and frankly, it went over well with black women. it's gone over well even weapon young black people. there's a lot of folks who are saying, you know, elizabeth warren's looking really good to me right now. not only that but she's coming out with policies that are addressing the ways in which the economy is racialized and gendered. and she's not doing it in a weird academic way. she's doing it in a way that's really relatable and really resonates with our communities. i would say kamala harris is also coming out and talking about the ways in which race is shaping the criminal justice system. she's talking about the ways in which race is shaping the economy. but in general paul candidates can do better, and we've had an opportunity to talk with some of

the campaigns and to try to, you know, give them some advice about not dancing around what is obvious to so many voters, you know, the analysis that we shouldn't even talk about identity politics is a little bit silly because at the end of the day, the way people live their lives when they walk out of their house every morning, they can't ignore how they're being treated, whether it's being followed around in a store or being turned down for a loan or being rejected for health care. these are things that people are living every day. they're not ideological platitudes. these are lived experiences that i think a successful candidate will have to really dig into what are communities dealing with? and how do i make sure my policies and my proposals are the ones really resonating with their hearts and also their pockets. >> alicia, thank you for being here. katty kay, thank you as well. still ahead on "morning joe," when the white house was

in 2016 senate leader mcconnell said they would not even consider confirming a supreme court justice. now that mcconnell is president, he said with a wry smile, we would fill it. plus, justin rammage is facing criticism after calling for president trump's impeachment. but among that he got a standing ovation and a lot of positive feedback. more from the town hall straight ahead with a packed 8:00 a.m. hour. ♪ make fitness routine with pure protein.

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[ inaudible question ] we'd fill it. >> good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, may 29th. along with joe, willie and me we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, former treasury official and economic analyst steve bratter in and former chief of staff to the dnc and director of communications for hillary clinton's presidential campaign, adrienne elrod, msnbc contributor. good to have you on board this morning. >> what do you think about mcconnell? >> don't ask me. >> doesn't change. it's a shame. the thing is, he thinks it's cute. >> not cute. >> there are consequences to all of this and there are actually young people who may get into politics who actually thinks

being that cynical or just inconsistent, some would say corrupt intellectually is the way you do things. >> if he hadn't already, he gave away the game completely yesterday with the smug look on the seat. the people who couldn't hear the question, driving in the car, should the supreme court justice die next year, what would be position be on filling that spot? mcconnell said, we would fill it. >> explain why that is not necessarily the right answer. >> obviously in 2016 when justice scalia died, merit garland was nominated by president obama and they wouldn't even hold a hear for him because it's an election year. and this year is a election year and mcconnell said he would fill it. >> if you want to figure out why there's such cynicism in washington for people who are not originally republican, originally democratic, look at

what's happened over past decade when it comes to court appointees. first, harry reid blowing up the filibuster for federal judges. republican judges say you will rue the day. certainly they did. mcconnell moves it 0 to rolling up the filibuster for supreme court justices. and then taking a step further with merit garland, which basically says the president of the united states just doesn't matter. there's no more advise and consent. >> no, we've now had literally at least 12 years of rolling payback, both parties going at one another. we will have payback when the democrats, if they ever gain control of the senate, we will have payback from the democrats towards republicans, and it's been going on now at least 12 years as i said. steve, i don't know about you, i remember a functioning united states senate. that no longer exists.

>> yeah. >> i remember a functioning united states senate. before we go into the time capsule, they did one other thing, which was they repealed the 30-hour rule, which required 30 hours of debate on all of these nominees and at least gave the democrats a chance to slow this down and have it happen in a more orderly way and now mccanal can in three hours jam through anybody he wants. >> by the way, three hours for a life time appointment. >> explain this discrepancy. a spokesperson for the republican leader said the gop controls both the white house and the senate. so okay. moving on vice president biden was back on the campaign trail yesterday speaking at a town hall event in houston, texas, organized by the american federation of teachers. there he did not mention president trump's attacks but

they are hitting back after the president criticized the form vp over the weekend. here's some of what he said. >> kim jong-un made a statement that joe biden has a low-iq individual. he probably is based on his record. i think i agree with him on that. >> biden's campaign record released a statement saying, the president's comments are beneath the dignity of the office. to be on foreign oil son memorial day and decide repeatedly with a murderous dictator against a fellow american and former vice president speaks for itself. and it's part of a pattern of embracing autocrats at the expense of our institutions, whether taking putin's word at face value in helsinki or exchanging love letters with kim jong-un. president trump tried to defend his comments on twitter saying i was actually sticking up for sleepy joe biden while on foreign soil. kim jong-un called him a low iq idiot and many other things

where as i related to, quote, terming him as a possible low iq individual. who could possibly be upset with that? >> the democrats have long respected the idea you don't attack the american president when you're on foreign soil. you certainly don't side with one of the most tyrannical dictators on the globe who murdered an american college student a couple of years ago. but that's what donald trump did. and, of course, the most wonderful part of it all was that he attacked joe biden's iq while misspelling his five-letter last name. welcome to the wonderful world of donald trump. >> the gray area. >> depends what part of the country they're from. that tweet, the way the president responded to all of this, just shows he doesn't take any of it seriously. it's all a game for him.

it's all name-calling. it's all nicknames. does anyone -- i don't have the question to anyone at the table but broadly at the audience, does anyone think kim jong-un said to the president of the united states, hey, that joe biden who's leading in the polls and may run against you, he sure is a, quote, low-iq idiot? the same term you used for him. of course he didn't say that. but this is a game for the president and a game in which he's taking the side of a murderous dictator and showing affinity for a murderous dictator who just killed two years ago an american college student. >> and we have to get talking about it because i know a lot of americans right now don't care about so much of this. >> nor should they. >> well, they need to care about the constitutional norms that are broken repeatedly. they need to care more -- our high schools need to teach civic classes. our colleges need to teach american history. we have to once again explain

what has made this country the greatest country over the past 240 years. we have fed more and freed more people than any other country, the history of this world, and we need to explain why we did and how we did and what we did do and what we did not do. we did not do this. this has never happened before. and it's corrosive for the country. >> everything that you just said was true, it was accurate, and it is necessary to teach one individual above all everything that was encompassed in what you just said. that individual sadly happens to be the president of the united states, because he doesn't understand any of that. his whole frame of reference, his presidency, is a screen. it's a tv screen that people look at, it's the screen of their phones that they look at, and his own interest is occupying that screen, that

attention 24/7. sadly, he has succeeded in that. but you know. >> he's ignorant of history, he's ignorant of constitution. he's ignorant how governments are run. we will not talk about the red sox this morning except we will talk about the trip to the white house, history lessons the players said he tried to give them. history lessons he was wrong on all parts. >> he was making it up. >> john adams, sixth president of the united states. first person to sleep here. abraham lincoln losing wars. it was bizarre. again, it exposed the fact he just -- he just has absolutely no idea what he's doing, and our history. that's why this keeps happening. >> right. well, there's one way to solve that and that's in the next election. i think others might think there

might be other ways. i'm not sure why he hasn't been declared unfit for the presidency every step of the way here by his administration. but -- >> that's what nancy pelosi said. >> i don't get it. how many norms, how many things do you have to do to sort of prove that perhaps there's something dangerous afoot here? >> let me say on that point, i had a conversation on friday with somebody very close to the president, who just said that while there have always been problems with donald trump and the administration and some of the people he had around him, that with the mattises gone and tillersons gone, he has nothing but sycophants around him. >> frightening. >> he has nothing but yes men around him that tell him all the time whatever he wants to hear. and this comes from somebody everybody knows, someone extraordinarily close to the president, who says it's just a mad house inside the white house. still ahead on "morning

joe," new polling from south carolina tells us a lot more than simply who's in front. we will break down the power of name recognition and the fight for progressives between bernie sanders and elizabeth warren. but first, bill karan has a check on the severe weather ripping the country. >> it's been day after day, mika. the last two weeks we had a scare in areas of kansas. we did not crush and take out complete communities but we have a lot of devastated homes, rural farm homes got destroyed. what you're looking at there is the lowering of the cloud, huge area of rain and inside of that is the tornado. at one point it was considered a wedged tornado, quarter mile to half-mile wide. we will find out officially today. let me show you what that exact tornado did. look at these pictures coming in from linwood, kansas. hard to know what we're looking at. house to the right -- it's difficult to tell.

this is a powerful tornado. probably an ef-3, ef-4 on the enhanced fujita scale and the scale goes 0 to 5, 5 being where you see ground and nothing. some of what you see here was found at the kansas city international airport 45 miles away. wow, those pictures are incredible. so 19 tornadoes yesterday. so here we're setting up for today. we have two concerns. one will be flash flooding from dallas to portsmouth. we showed you pictures of the horrible river flooding there. and as far as the river, 84 people at risk. once again from pennsylvania through the i-95 quarter from st. louis to the dallas. we have to watch in dallas, we could get a strong tornado from the dallas-ft. worth area too. that's not bad enough the timing of the storms were fine until about 2:00 p.m. but formed in central pennsylvania and by 7:00 p.m., already through d.c.

so the evening rush hour, airport closures, severe storms rolling through highly populated areas. today will be the end of our outbreak. i think tomorrow will be a little better and it's about time. washington, d.c., worse for you appears to be around 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. right now it looks like a beautiful day. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. we humans are strange creatures. other species avoid pain and struggle. we actually... seek it out. other species do difficult things because they have to. we do difficult things. because we like to. we think it's... fun. introducing the all-new 2019 ford ranger built for the strangest of all creatures. wearing powerful sunscreen? yes! neutrogena® ultra sheer. unbeatable protection helps prevent early skin aging and skin cancer

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ball. ball. ball. awww, who's a good boy? it's me. me, me, me. yuck, that's gross. you got to get that under control. [ dogs howling ] seriously? embrace the mischief. say "get pets tickets" into your x1 voice remote to see it in theaters. this next new poll may help explain trump's continued focus on joe biden. a new poll of south carolina's democratic primary has the former vice president far ahead, but a sizable group remains undecided. teleopinion's research open-ended survey, open-ended meaning they did not provide names when asking likely voters who they support, 30% said

biden, 10% bernie sanders, 8% for elizabeth warren, while kamala harris gets 7%, followed by pete buttigieg at 3% and cory booker 2%. another 2% say they're not sure. again, that's the response when voters are not given names to choose from. so adrienne. i don't want to overfocus on one poll, but biden's resounding lead certainly has got trump's attention and i wonder if that hurts or helps him. >> i think to an extent, mika, right now it actually helps him. number one he is able to demonstrate the fact he's a leader. we all know joe biden has strong foreign policy bona fides. and secondly it just shows how petty donald trump's attacks are. he's actually siding with a foreign adversarial dictator over an american citizen. i think that helped joe biden yesterday. i think he raised money off of

it. and other facts besides joe biden is commanding the four early states, he's obviously doing very well among all demographics, including a portion of south carolina, the african-american vote, coory booker has a lot of work to do. south carolina is a state he's absolutely got to win or finish in the top two to feasibly go on to super tuesday. of course, mayor pete, this poll to me demonstrates he's got a lot to do to shore up support among african-americans. you see it shows 0% among this community. if i was mayor pete and cory booker's campaign, i would be looking long and hard at polls like this and try to figure out what i can do to shore up support. it's early but it's not that early. >> people love to say that it's early. if you have a guy sitting at 37% and you're at 2%, it's not early. if you're at 8% and somebody's at 37%, it's not that early. it's just not. the reason it's not, steve, as we go into the summer, this is

when -- and i ask you this, because you know this part better than anybody else around here, this is when people have to start getting serious. who am i going to support? am i going to support beto? am i going to support mayor pete? who am i going to support? you see joe biden not only sitting at 37% in most of these polls, but you also see a far more disciplined joe biden, and you're not worried about him running into an indian american and talking about convenience stores in 2020 like he did in 2008, or stealing the old kennic speech as he did in 1987. this is a buttoned-up, disciplined joe biden and that's got to really help bundlers say wait a second, this is a guy who's older and wiser. >> as we talked about before, this is an unusual democratic

primary, 23, 24, ul tell me how many peopare running. >> mike's announcing later today. >> for some people, the people they would like to most see win are at the bottom of the polls. the people they would not like to see win are closer to the top. so by and large they've been holding back in terms if they're going to commit to apropos your comment, as it starts to unfold, you will see people commit around the time of the summer but so far a lot of big bundlers are mostly on the sidelines. i would say biden has not yet caught fire in new york. hopefully he will. we will see about that. people like mayor pete have a lot of the energy in new york at the moment. some to beto and harris, people like that. certainly not bernie sanders or elizabeth warren. >> you can say looking at the poll because fs way it's

conducted, who is the most famous. you ask who do you support and they say joe biden, he's up 27 points, except conventional polling shows him with even big leaders in south carolina. the poll a couple weeks ago gave him 31-point lead, including massive lead of 40 points on african-american voters and also on the question who is most electable, the post and courier poll in south carolina, 90% said joe biden had the best chance of defeating donald trump. if that's the fundamental question of the election, how do you get trump out of office, here's your answer in south carolina. >> a lot of that as you pointed out is name recognition. this is a sponsored segment called turning to the pros, so i will ask the pro at the desk, do you think the most interesting dynamic in that poll and other polls that have been taken is the contest between elizabeth warren and bernie sanders? because it seems elizabeth warren has a chance to knock bernie sanders out of this race early. >> so what i was saying about that, a few days ago, how he's

retooled his campaign and keeping his head down, knocking on doors, holding town hall meetings, i think that is applied to elizabeth warren for the past month or two, where everybody's distracted by early polls. she doesn't care. she keeps campaigning. she keeps putting out policies. people will say hillary put out policies too, but hillary's was more for most americans, most democrats sort of a mismafrp. she was sort of a centrist. she couldn't complain the move to the left when bernie caught fire. elizabeth's been saying the same thing for 30 years and that usually translates well on the trail. adrienne,ly ask you adrienne, i will ask you as the real professional here, i think there are two stories i see out of the spate of polls over the last month since biden has gotten into the race, one has been joe biden and how the expectations that he's exceeded

certainly my expectations and most people's expectations, but the other has been the chipping away, the slow chipping away of bernie sanders' support who has gone from the mid-20s to the low 20s to the mid-teens. this one he's at ten now, even in new hampshire he's trailing. can you see that support going as mike awwas saying to elizabe warren, to kamala harris, to others. >> i'm glad you raised that. i don't think it's just elizabeth warren chipping away at bernie sanders' support. a lot of people other as well. in 2016 a lot of people supported him because he was the anti-establishment advantage. but if you looked at his record, he's been an elected leader a long time but the actual legislation he passed, it's pretty anemic.

he's got like two bills he passed. when you're looking at somebody who will get results and accomplish legislatively and seek out what they are going to do and sign it into law, you're looking at people like elizabeth warren and kamala harris and other leaders who have results they actually implemented into law. i think that is making a big difference among voters. we will really see this play out in the debate. >> steve? >> i agree with all of that but i will add one other thing. what you also see happening here and we talked about this before, is a small but perceptible shift in the attitude of the democrats from who can pass my litmus test on the various issues i care about, medicare for all, this and that, to who's going to win? how can we win? i think that does not work in bernie sanders' favor. >> coming up on "morning joe," you would have never guessed it, but apparently voters like it when politicians tell the truth. that's the big takeaway from a town hall yesterday featuring congressman justin amash. we will run through it.

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the lone republican calling for president trump's impeachment, received standing ovation, multiple, at a town hall in his district last night with constituents saluting his courage, hours after amash repeated his statement, defending his statement and his conservative record against attacks from president trump and the republican party in leadership. >> to me the conduct was obviously impeachable. so the question is do you then move forward with impeachment proceedings? and my biggest concern, i thought about this for a long time. like i said, i spent a month reviewing, analyzing, thinking about it, and i am concerned that we've gotten to the point where impeachment may never be

used in any circumstance, and i think that is a greater risk than the risk that it will be used too often. i do think that it is more dangerous for our country to allow the president to mislead people, make things up. as an example in the mueller report, he asked the white house counsel to create a false record. things like that to basically mislead people about a statement he had made, things like that to me reflect incredible dishonesty and really harm the office of the presidency. and i don't think that -- i don't think that you can just let that stuff go and say hey, it's no big deal, we're going to have an election in two years and let it go. i think you have to have proceedings to deter this kind of conduct, even if ultimately the person is not convicted.

there are a lot of protections here for a president, but we should expect the president to uphold the law, to have the highest standard, more than anyone else. i believe the people are smart enough to figure out what's going on. i really believe that. in this district, i heard someone mention like, you know, running as a republican on trump's coattails or something. the president did much worse than i did in this district, okay. in fact, we looked up the numbers, president trump had the worst showing in kent county than any republican in the history of our county, and -- and the worst showing in the city of grand rapids of any republican. >> congressman amash also said he would not rule out a run for president on the libertarian party ticket but added that he's not ruling out a future run for

governor or the senate either, and, joe, i just wonder because a lot of republicans fear doing something like this because of retribution from the president or retribution from their constituents. >> right. well, i have been saying this for two years now that if you stand up to the president of the united states, you know, stood up to the speaker of the house in a very conservative district, they ask why you do it, the whole town hall meeting, you explain it to them. when you explain it to them, a remarkable thing happens. they listen and those that were undecided support you and those who are hostile to you either become undecided or they will say afterwards, hey, i disagree with what you just said but i really want to thank you for coming out and talking to me. and that's what's been missing. what we just saw there is what's

been missing throughout the entire trump era. it's what we asked paul ryan to do before he gave his endorsement to donald trump, to push him, to force him to be better, to force him to respect constitutional norms. do show him when he didn't, there would be political consequences. coming up on "morning joe," new research and first-person accounts make a persuasive case that ufos exist. >> did you hear this "new york times" article? >> yes. >> this is the second article in the past couple of years. it's amazing. it is amazing watching these objects picked up on radar. >> you might think it's amazing but the collective reaction from the public is nah. daniel dresdner writes about it for "the washington post" and joins the conversation straight ahead. ♪

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that was just a snippet of an unexplained phenomenon aboth caught u.s. navy pilots off guard thousands of feet in the air. joining us professor of international politics of law and diplomacy at tufts university, daniel drezner. he's out with a new piece in "the washington post" titled "ufos exist and everyone needs to just adjust to that fact." okay. we will talk about that in just a moment along with the foreign policy news of the day. also with us, the dean of john hopkins school of advanced international studies, bally

nassar. good to have you both with us. let's talk about foreign policy. the president is just backed from his asia trip. i want to get claire's take as well. what is the fallout given the unbelievable difference in opinion between this president on the world stage and his own team? >> look, first of all, he said the stage for a new approach with north korea and iran and for the first time it's following the same policy for both countries, no regime change, no nuclear weapons and i will help rebuild your economy if you work with me and i want to talk to you. but on the other hand he showed everybody his foreign policy team is not on the same page with him and he undermines his national security adviser in the process. now the countdown has started when john bolton will leave. >> the countdown has started, that's the pattern we've gotten. >> i assume short time or now for bolton. it just depends how much humiliation he's willing to

withstand. >> a lot. >> they all think they have the ability to move this guy. this guy thinks he's king. when you're a king, you don't have to listen to anybody. here's something i would like you to address, the way this impacts our standing in the world, i don't think we talk about it enough in that all of our allies, he thinks keeping everybody off-balance, he looks at it like a real estate negotiation, keeping everybody off-balance is one thing in the private sector. keeping everybody off-balance in a world that is as dangerous and complicated as our world, it has to be impacted in the way our allies view us and the willingness of our allies to be part of a collisialition if the comes and we have to take world action. >> the allies do not like john bolton but the message is he don't have add veversaries.

they saying if you're serious, you need to get rid of john bolton. the demand is there if you want to talk to us, you need to get rid of him. you need to go in a room with donald trump and make an agreement but when he comes out, his team has to follow through. and nobody believes john bolton has any interest to follow through on an agreement the president makes with anybody else. >> dan drezner, it appears as valley nassar just pointed out, there's a book the president is selling without the concept of the united states senate, we had european elections over the weekend which there are troubling signs this would undermine the existing order of 70 years. your review, please. >> i would say a couple of things. first of all, if you want to understand what donald trump is doing in terms of foreign policy for the next 18 months, it's

entirely about re-election. there is no constant theology here or set of believes. all trump cares about is what can he do in foreign policy that he can actually count as an achievement of what kind or another? but what this also means is that he's trapped from some ways. we're starting to see reports that trump is fed up with john bolton but imagine if trump fires john bolton and would have to find a new national security adviser. that would mean he has gone through four national security advisers in a single term, which is a lot. it sort of highlights the staff turnover and the fact this is not a terribly smoothing running administration. beyond that, the other issue that trump is going to have is whether or not any of the sort of confrontations that he has escalated on iran, on north korea, on trade with china, on trade with the european union, whether any of these will actually deliver any kind of results before 2020.

and here he is in real trouble. the only thing he can point to to an actual accomplishment is the renegotiation of the south korea free trade agreement and potentially nafta 2. but even there he needs congress to approve it and it's not clear that's actually going to happen, though it very well might. >> we talk a lot about lines crossed by president trump, and as we watched him in japan over the weekend, we saw him stand on the stage next to shinzo abe and praise kim jong-un and take the side of the murderous dictator and indult the former vice president of the united states joe biden in that setting. but also standing next to the very man whose country is threatened by a rising north korean dictator. i think it's time to stop and acknowledge how unusual, extraordinary and unacceptable that is. >> japan has been a very close ally of the united states for decades and the japanese thing president trump is an

existential threat to japan. he has not only bolstered kim jong-un in front of the japanese prime minister but created a wedge between south korea and japan. he put tariffs on and threatens he will withdraw american troops from japan unless the japanese pay him. every single aspect he has undermined japanese interest and abe is trying to find a way in which to shore up japan's national interest. so i think it was all symbolic. the only thing abe has come out of that summit with is he will need to go between the trump and iranis. he's scheduled to go in the middle of june. so it's something at least he's trying to be useful to trump but they're all trying to survive trump. that's essentially the strategy, how do we survive. >> aren't we all? >> so, dan, vali came on not to

talk about foreign policy but ufos. but i will start with you. we saw this incredible footage two years ago with navy pilots picking up things on radar they just couldn't explain. and it was remarkable, what was remarkable yesterday was that you actually had these navy pilots speaking on the record, and your headline is ufos exist and everyone needs to adjust to that fact. of course, ufo may not mean exactly what it means in popular culture. but you bring up a great point, the navy pilots and others have been talking about this for some time. >> right. so in some ways the trick of the headline is, when i say ufos exist, everyone, typically people our age, when you say ufo people immediately goes to ex a

extraterrestrial or alien. but that's not what it means. it means unidentified flying object. but there's new evidence that ufos exist and the fact navy pilots are willing to go on record to say that is encouraging. for the longest time if you said the word ufo or believed in ufo it meant you were rel grating to conspiracy theorizing or a crackpot and it was easy for the administration to not take you seriously anymore. i think what the defense department has done with the advanced space threat case and others, we acknowledge ufos as we understand them exist and we need to get more data on this. pilots saw one and reported an almost near-collision with one of them. you want to be able to come forward and say these things without the stigma that's historically associated with the acronym ufo and so i think

that's all to the good. >> dan, a lot comes out in the extraordinary "new york times" piece that say pilots said for the last nine months they saw ufos almost every day along the florida coast. the question is, do they know what they were, the unidentified flying objects, or suspicion of the navy what they were? >> again, the u stands for unidentified so it's not clear what it is and there's a fair amount of debate what they are. one obvious possibility that comes to mind is they are some form of drone. but from what i read it doesn't sound like countries from russia or china would necessarily have the capacity to produce drones that generated those kinds of flight maneuvers. that said, it's worth bearing in mind, i don't know whether the first time you saw a drone flying around at night particularly where you only see

the lights, it looks weird. it looks different from what you would normally see with a plane overhead. it's not surprising you will see reaction along the lines we don't know what this is. >> if you listen to what the navy pilots say, they say there are not jets or there are not drones that can move this quickly that can stop on dime, as one of the navy pilots said, it's not the acceleration that kills you, it's the stopping suddenly that kills you. >> right. >> and that's what these objects are able to do and turn up sideways. it's all on the video. pretty remarkable. >> right. and so the fact is that it's one of these things where you need to try at least to rule out all of the plausible things. the other thing i've heard suggested is that it's actually u.s. government research program, that simply these pilots don't necessarily know about it. although that seems somewhat far fetched but probably less far fetched than the alternatives that everyone's mind is going to

go to. so i think the important point is we need to recognize, we don't know at this point. and therefore we need to investigate further. >> daniel drezner, thank you. the truth is out there somewhere. vali, thank you as well. remember the drone you got for jack. >> yes. i didn't have a lot of luck with drones. >> 20 seconds. >> the scenes from a north korean missile test gone terribly wrong, explodes on the launchpad. >> you didn't read the directions. >> exactly. fascinating. up next, we will be joined by a woman. >> i think putting a live hand grenade on the bottom of it and flying it through the neighborhood, that was a little aggressive. but i thought it would balance it out. >> good thing we moved. ut. >> good thing we moved everything was too loose. but depend® fit-flex feels tailored to me. with a range of sizes for all body types. depend® fit-flex underwear is guaranteed to be your best fit.

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class does not teach you how to write obituaries when you're in high school yet that is exactly what these student journalists did. the eagle eyes filter application stated the student reporters and editors had to, quote, put aside their dpreef and recognize our roles as survivors, journalists and loved ones with the deceased. as the founders well know, there can be no democracy without a free press. that is something rebecca smith, wendy winters, gerald fishman and john mcnamara understood too. they understood when they went to work in annapolis, maryland and gunned down by a madman who opened fire in their newsroom. >> that was pulitzer administrator dana candie yesterday at the pulitzer prize ceremony in new york. this year many of the honorees were not just journalists but victims of gun violence. she recognized the young

journalists of marjory stoneman douglas high school's equalized student newspaper in parkland, florida, the site of the tragic mass shooting that claimed the lives of 17 students, teachers and coaches one year ago. also honored was the newsroom of the capital gazette, which received a special citation after their reporting and a gunman killed five in their newsroom. joining us now is the founder of moms demand action for gun sense in america, shannon watts. after the horrific events of sandy hook elementary school in new town, connecticut, she felt overwhelmed by a need to act and discovered there was no gun violence prevention equivalent to mothers against drunk driving. so she started her own. she's the author of the new book "fight like a mother: how a grassroots movement took on the gun lobby and why women will change the world." it's so good to have you on.

>> thank you so much for being with us. it seems to me sandy hook changed your life, changed so many americans' life. certainly changed my attitude and approach towards guns. there was cynicism for a couple of years saying that will not make a difference. i think that cynicism has been proven wrong. it seems that you're doing very well and others who are pushing gun safety laws are actually making progress. >> that's right. everyone thought after sandy hook surely something would happen. but what was missing was a grassroots movement. we were missing political power. we had to build that, and that doesn't happen overnight. so we've spent the last six years building this grassroots army mainly of women and moms and we are going toe to toe with the gun lobby. just to show you how successful we've been, last year we passed stronger gun laws in 20 states. nine of those were signed by republican governors.

in the midterm elections, we outspent and outmaneuvered the nra. >> by the way, it wasn't even close. >> it was not even close. >> they got swamped in 2018, contributions and every way. >> just wait until 2020. because we have the ability to go toe to toe with the gun lobby now. we are seeing change on the american politics. >> what's the specific policies you found the most success? we talked sandy hook about universal background checks which are favored overwhelmingly by members of the nra, just not necessarily by the lobbyists who run the nra in washington. what are areas you found there is movement and seeing success? >> everything we do is based on research and data that show what's will save the most lives. we know closing the background check loophole which we have done in 20 states across the country will save lives.

we know keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers will save lives. we passed something called the red flag law in 15 states. we passed one in new york and colorado where i live. these are all laws that will keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and supported by republicans and democrats alike. this is about loosening the stranglehold that a few lobbyists have on some of our lawmakers happening finger by finger. >> by the way, i'm so glad you said that because i will have people come up and say you were -- and start talking about the nra. i said you do understand the nra you're talking about are three lobbyists from washington, d.c. that are making themselves rich off nra member dues. claire, most members agree with you and me, yes, you have a right to bear arms but there's also a right to have sensible laws around that. only three lobbyists in washington, d.c. who feed off of

fear, and, of course, make millions off their dues, they're the ones playing nra movers for suckers. >> i don't know many organizations having $200,000 wardrobe slush fund. >> barnacle does! >> clearly barnical does not. >> seriously -- >> i'm teasing you. it's a boston thing. let's go blues! >> seriously, $200,000 for an l.a. boutique for men. >> and the travel stuff. this is an organization that has literally and figuratively gotten away with murder. because what they have done is they have taken the donations of their members and they have created a ruling class that's out of touch with america. >> three, four people. >> ollie was there until he turned on lapierre and now

olli's out and they had a agency worth $4 million. so no wonder buying fancy stuff for the boss. >> these are dupayie paying mem. >> so you used the focus out there that believe gust safety is important along with the ability to own a gun in this country, that you can have both. that is the smart argue. i think you can speak to the suburban strategy because that is where you're seeing change in voters. >> shannon, 40 seconds, save the world. go! >> like a mother. >> "fight like a mother" i'm a full-time volunteer and up here i do not have a clothing allowance and proceeds from "fight like a mother" will go to nonprofit gun violence prevention organizations. and we have finally -- this was this a david versus goliath fight and we're winning it. we are taking down the

leadership of the nra. this is going to take several election cycles but i think we will see in 2020 common sense will prevail. the cathartic moment we are waiting for in congress will finally happen. >> we're a thousand percent with you. the new book is "fight like a mother" and you don't want to mess with a mother -- "how the grassroots movement took on the gun lobby and a woman will change the world." shannon watts, please come back. that will do it for us. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage now. thank you. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's 9:00 a.m. on the east coast and we have a lot to get to. our extraordinary team of reporters are here with the details on the stories impacting your life today. starting with the lone republican advocating for president trump's impeachment. congressman justin amash getting a standing ovation at a town hall in his own district. >> it is more dangerous for our country to allow a president to make things up. you know, the