they have built that into the algorithms, no. >> okay. well, that's good to know. do you think this is the last we have heard of this from the president? i mean, realistically. >> no. >> i guess that was a laugh with that one -- >> is that a joke, are we ending on a joke? no, of course. this is like -- this is like an issue now that has -- that is animating the republican base especially the online republican base. this is one of the hottest issues and you have his eldest son, don jr., probably more than any other issue is animated by this. so no, this is the start of what i think is going to be a pretty aggressive -- i think it will be a campaign issue. i think president trump will incorporate it into his campaign for sure. >> it plays right into the trump brand of grievance politics, you're right. >> 100%. yeah. >> jonathan swan, thanks. >> thanks for having me. >> stick around. i know you're joining joe in a bit.

>> we'll be reading axios a.m. in a while. go to sign-up.axios.com. >> that does it for us. i'm geoff bennett. good hanging out with you, alex witt. our country is really powerful, really strong. never been like this, oops. how did a fly get into the white house? i don't like that. i don't like flies. i don't like flies. the democrats -- oh, there was a mosquito. i don't want mosquitos around me. i don't like mosquitos. i don't like those mosquitos, i never did. >> squashed like a bug. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, july 12th. along with joe, willie and me, we have nbc news correspondent heidi przybyla. host of saturday night politics on msnbc, donny deutsch. he's too tan, but okay. host of msnbc's

"politicsnation," president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton and former director of strategic communications for hillary clinton's presidential campaign, adrienne elrod. she is an msnbc contributor. national security expert columnist at "usa today" and author of the book "the death of expertise" tom nichols. you -- he does not need the tanning beds like donny deutsch. >> it's tanning spray. >> i'm having a mental image all over again. >> let's talk about the mosquito thing. like mosquitos and flies and donald trump. >> they're drawn to him. >> he's a real germophobe. but man, it's -- the mosquito -- >> the mosquito clip of 2016 is

the most entertaining to me because of the voice he drops into when he encounters a bug of any kind. i don't like mosquitos. what is that thing he does when there's a fly or mosquito in the room. low on the list of problems but interesting nonetheless. >> very low. let's get right to the news of the morning. the first nbc news/"wall street journal" poll shows the front-runners shows the two people who were at center statement of the debates. joe biden leads with 26% while senator elizabeth warren trails by seven points at 19%. senators kamala harris and bernie sanders tied for third place with 13% each. mayor pete buttigieg is at 7%. and andrew yankee and beto o'rourke 2%. no other candidate cracks 1% leaving them currently below one

of the threshold requirements to qualify for the third round of debates in september. >> so let's stop right there really quick. we can go to people sharing the views, who is best to defeat trump, but let's go back to the overall list of the candidates. and willie, boy, i'll tell you what. as we get to the early states we'll show south carolina in a minute. it becomes so clear that this race -- there may be 21 people who say they're in the race. but it's down to five if you believe any of these polls and for people that have been saying that the polls make no difference, well, they're wrong because good money doesn't chase bad polls and the top five candidates also happen to be the top five candidates with the most money and biden is doing pretty well. >> you'll start to wither if

you're not in the top five. if you're amy klobuchar or cory booker and you're sitting behind andrew yang you have to be discouraged and your donors have to be discouraged. if you're beto o'rourke and you're tied with with yang you have to be disscourged but if you're elizabeth warren at 19% and nipping at the heels of joe biden you have to be encouraged with where you are. and joe biden has to be happy about some of the cross tabs. if you look here among african-american voters he has almost -- african-american voters, a 30 point lead over kamala harris. rev, if you look at what he has been through over the last couple of weeks with the comments about segregationist senators and kamala harris looking at him in the debate in miami, african-american voters

for the most part have stayed with him for now. >> first of all, it will take more than one incident to flip voters but there's been an increase in kamala harris, but clearly joe biden according to the polls has a significant lead. that's the read on the ground. i think though he ought to look at the fact that she is rising there and that can cause problems in south carolina. and i think the fact that none of the other candidates are penetrating in any significant numbers to the african-american vote might be a large part of why they're not doing better in terms of the general polls. so if i were part of the other three of the five that seem to be locked in at the top, my concern would be why i'm not getting through at all. while joe biden is still relatively comfortable there and we see kamala harris on the rise there. >> well, let's follow-up on that, rev. go back if you will the

breakdown by race, guys. alex, i want to show that again. because there have been two candidates that have done well in the national polls. who continue to lag behind for support among black voters who obviously, rev, as you and i say once you get out of iowa and new hampshire that's the ball game. you're going to see -- if a candidate can't get support among black voters, then they're going to lose south carolina pretty badly and there are two candidates that stand out right now who still have a lot of work to do, mayor pete who actually put out a program yesterday and talked about how to improve the lives of african-americans. and elizabeth warren sitting at 8%. not surprisingly in the south carolina poll we'll show you in a minute those two lag far behind the rest of the field. >> you know, it's something you and i talk about all the time,

joe. that is that is a lot of the so called progressive candidates don't penetrate on the ground because they have an ivory tower view and you have people who are conservative, you have been republican, i have been a democrat, but we understand the church and the church culture. >> right. >> which a lot of blacks like me were raised in. and they don't understand that because they're removed from that. so people don't really relate to them. they may agree on one or two issues but they don't connect with them. >> yeah. you know, it's so important. we have said this time and again because of course rev al has talked about it time and again that you talk about ideology among democrats and republicans what it seems sometimes both parties elites don't understand is that hispanic voters and black voters a lot of voters are conservative with a small "c." >> that's right. >> and do not relate as reverend

al, mika, to latte liberals. >> no. and by age groups biden trails both sanders and warren by double digits. sanders at 25%, warren at 23%. and biden at 11%. but biden is the run away favorite among voters who are 50 and older. warren's 15%. sanders gets 3% with these older voters. biden is also far behind warren with the liberal voters. 29% prefer warren. 27% choose biden. but among moderate and conservative democrats, biden at 35% and harris at 15%. >> every time i look at the numbers, this is -- i mean, i think we have picked out alex and the team have picked out the two most important cross tabs for the democratic primary.

the vote down racial lines but also the vote down age lines. every time i look at the young voters swarming up, i'm excited like everybody else. getting involved but whenever -- i have said this, i said it on the night of the 2004 election that if your campaign strategy depends on young -- historic number of young voters sweeping you over the top, you will be left standing at the altar. it does not -- you want those old voters, the old voters get out and vote. if you can excite young voters as well, that's fantastic. but just young voters will likely disappoint you like they disappointed howard dean in 2004. right now, biden has got the older voters. head a like to lure the young -- he'd like to lure the younger voters but what do you think about bernie sanders not doing so well with voters over age 50? >> it's fascinating. first of all, you're exactly

right. the two most reliable constituencies when it comes to voters turning out are older americans over the age of 50 and african-american voters. so the fact that joe biden is polling very well among those two groups is a very good news for him. and to the point that you just mentioned, i mean his debate performance was not fantastic a couple weeks ago. he's got a debate coming up but he didn't really lose a lot of support among his key core constituency as a result of that debate. so that's good news. also like you said, joe, when it comes to the younger voters every election cycle lots of money, millions of dollars is spent on mobilizing numbers and we have seen a greater turnout over the last two election cycles but at the same time, you still cannot rely on that constituency as much as you can among african-americans and older voters. you also cannot become the democratic nominee if you don't have support among african-americans. so, you know, again the field is 25 people but i think what we're seeing from a result of this poll and other polls that have come out since the first debate is the field is set. the field is really starting to

gel. and it's going to be so much harder for somebody like cory booker, amy klobuchar to really break into that 4 to 5% where you need to be. and we have to keep in mind that the way the democratic process is sent -- is set up in the democratic primary, you have to get 15% of the vote in the congressional district even to qualify for delegates. so we're still six months away from iowa but you have to think -- i guess seven months away, but you have to start thinking if you're a voter, you know, starting to make up your mind if you're a campaign, mapping out your strategy over the next seven months or so you have to make sure you're doing what you can to make sure you hit 15% in the congressional districts. >> so i'll sprinkle in one more from the poll which is that only 12% of the people responded said they made up their mind about the candidates. as adrienne said it's seven months away from a vote. only 12% of democratic primary voters say they know who they're

going to vote for. >> along those lines just kind of the cautionary tale or a cheerleading message to the democrats' next debate, leave race out of it. the big discussion coming out of the debate obviously was kamala and biden and busing and the irony is we have a president who unfortunately a lot of candidates won't even address him, who got in office on race. by dividing us on race. we all know his history as a racist starting with birther, all the way to charlottesville. that do the democrats do? to very good decent progressive candidates, biden, harris, who you know in their core are all about decency and bringing people together. what do they do? they shoot each other that way and i hope and if i was advising either one of them, because at the end of the day, you'll turn off certain african-american voters and white voters and you need them both so step away from

race. >> you know, it's interesting, obviously if you go on twitter a lot of life long democrats don't want to hear from the likes of you and me. talking about the party darting too far left and, i mean, why should they hear from us, they did so well in 2016 against trump. but you look at the first debate and it doesn't look like biden was damaged too much. it looks like as the polls keep rolling out the clear winner seems to be elizabeth warren as far as making a break. what -- to the front of the pack. what does that mean? what do you see in the poll results? not only who's at the top, but also the 15 or so who are buried below 2%? >> one of the things i think is really interesting is to think about how these polls would have shaken out if there had been only seven or eight candidates instead of this, you know,

complete hot mess of 22 candidates including a lot of vanity candidates. you know, you kind of wonder if there had been only seven or eight choices where would the other 10 or 12% that's down there in the ones and twos, where would that vote have gone. would it given a shot to cory booker or amy klobuchar so of course you'll get two or three at the top. and then everybody else in what onesies and two's at the point. nobody wanted to hear from us, former republicans, well, this is the thing we're warning about early on. we had 17 candidates and look what happened to us. even though trump won, i mean, it was the worst candidate coming out of it. i think the other thing that comes out of this is how much biden wasn't dented. i was surprised by that. >> yeah. that's big news, isn't it?

>> yeah. >> i think donny is right. for the democrats to push this primary on to the turf of race, it's insane. it's exactly what the republicans had hoped they would do because that plays right into donald trump's natural home turf. >> so fox news poll of south carolina democrats shows the former vice president with a big lead in the first in the south primary. 35% say they would vote for biden, a 21 point lead over senator bernie sanders who gets 14%. senator kamala harris is in third with 12%. with senator elizabeth warren back at 5%. senator cory booker with 3% and mayor pete buttigieg at 2%. like the nbc national poll, biden's advantage here is build on a strong show of support from the state's african-american voters. among whom he attracts 41% of

the vote compared to receiving just 25% among white democrats. >> so let's stop there and we can show you another chart. the other chart shows the same thing, biden does well with older voters so rev, let's look at two charts. i'll keep this one up first. here we have elizabeth warren sitting at 2% among black voters in south carolina. mayor pete only sitting at 1% in south carolina. now, if you will, switch over, alex, to the overall south carolina number. when you switch over to the overall south carolina number, you see actually that there's a good reason that mayor pete is only sitting at 2%. and it's in large part because of the vote. elizabeth warren drops from 19% in the national polls to 5% in south carolina. and rev, this is what we have been saying for some time. everybody focus on iowa and new hampshire and they're such

important early contests, but really the look of the democratic primary, the character of the democratic primary, rev, let's go to rev, doesn't start until we get those results in from south carolina and we see what's going to do well on super tuesday. who's going to do well in the northeast and what's going to do well where the states are more diverse and represent the overall population. >> no doubt about it. if you're discounted in south carolina, do very poorly, you will not probably survive to see the rest because you won't have the money and you won't have the kind of momentum. i think what's interesting about this is again, many people that talk about the progressive wing of the party do not understand they're not talking about the most of the african-american community who have different views that could be conservative

maul "c" like you say in real-life things and who relate to people. the other thing that i think that people forget when they talk about joe biden agree with donny, one, donald trump played the race card and he played that he was going to undo everything that president obama did. well, undoing obama is undoing obama/biden. so a lot of african-americans are saying this is my vote to say i am with obama/biden and the things that donald trump is trying to undo. and biden gets a lot of support because of that. he was the co-pilot of the years that mr. trump is now trying to displace. so it's going to take more than one or two bad nights at a debate for people to look at joe biden as separate from the last ten years. they weren't around 50 years ago for busing. it's a big issue and an important issue, but they remember in real life their own

experiences over the last ten years that's trying to be displaced by this president and joe biden was part of that. and really fought hard in that. i was in the rooms. i disagreed with joe biden in the '90s but joe biden was an ardent fighter in the rooms for what barack obama did with the affordable care act and criminal justice reform. there's no question about it. >> heidi, there's obviously a ton of road ahead of us still, but joe biden has take an few hits now right when his campaign rolled out with the question of women who said they made him feel uncomfortable. the hits on busing. the hit during the debate where it wasn't just kamala harris going after him, it was his general performance that was perceived as not good and he's still sitting at pretty solid numbers if you go state by state and then in the national poll as well. i guess the question is joe biden is such a known commodity, what changes the dynamic of the race? of course it will change a million times between now and iowa, but what changes the way

that people feel about joe biden? >> he does look pretty tough right now, but this is so early. that's another paradigm here which was hillary clinton in 2007 when she had the majority of the black vote behind her and later in the race when it looked like obama could actually get other voters to vote for him and he could be quote/unquote electable that bloc moved en masse. i'm not saying that's going to happen here because every election is difficult and the rev like you say he's very tightly aligned with the obama legacy. but at the same time, i bring you back to that number that you mentioned, willie, which is that only 12% have made up their minds. so he's taken some punches, he's got some more punches. they're coming in the next debate. he got hit on busing. he got hit on abortion and look to the next debate for the issue to be if he's paired with elizabeth warren for instance, his vote on bankruptcy reform. look for him taking punches on his iraq war vote and i do think despite the fact that he's

remained pretty resilient how he responds in the second debate is going to be critical because one debate performance that had him look like he was a little bit off his game a little bit off his ground is okay. two i think would be more problematic. >> yeah. >> well, i completely agree with that. joe biden has to stand and deliver in the next debate. of all the numbers i have seen, everything is fluid. you can compare polls this time in the 2007 cycle, the 2011. this time in 2011. this time obviously in 2015. >> yeah. >> and there are a lot of numbers that move but i'll tell you there are two numbers right now that are the most likely to remain constant and will have a dramatic impact on this race unless the two candidates figure out how they're going to get more black democratic voters on their side and those are mayor pete's numbers among black voters and elizabeth warren's numbers among black voters. we have talked about what a

great race she has run so far. that even when she was down in the polls she was doing everything right. she was doing the blocking and tackling right and unless she figures out how to make a more personal connection, a more emotional connection to black voters not only in south carolina, but also across america, her road to the white house becomes much more difficult so those are the two numbers out of all of these polls to look at. and we have seen what mayor pete tried to do yesterday. we'll see if that closes -- if that helps him out. elizabeth warren needs to do the same thing. >> yeah. the two candidates, joe biden needs to worry about are elizabeth warren and kamala harris both women. but they're steady and strong and constantly gaining. still ahead on "morning joe," president trump backs away from his plan to include a controversial citizenship question on the 2020 census. but he says the government will get the information another way. plus, former house speaker

paul ryan left office back in january. but that hasn't stopped the president from criticizing him. we'll show you his new comments. but first, let's go to bill karins with a check on tropical storm barry. bill? >> well, good morning to you, mika. in the last 20 minutes we are hearing reports of an earthquake in washington state around everett. it was pretty shallow, only three miles down and a lot of people woke up in the middle of the night to the rolling and the gentle rocking is what they're calling it. not hearing any reports of damage, but we'll wait and see if that was the big one or if there's going to be -- if it was a foreshock like we saw with the last one in ridgecrest, california. with barry, happy to report it's not strengthened. it's going to be a rainfall not a wind problem. and it's bringing it up and we'll making -- it will be called a land fall. but the center will cross over land during the middle of the night into saturday morning and then it will be a big, huge rain maker as it heads up towards

arkansas. here is the rainfall. this is the biggest issue that we'll see. life threatening flash flooding is possible. we'll see up to ten inches widespread central louisiana and up to two feet of rain. so louisiana and mississippi are the areas of greatest concern. and the weather service is saying that we have a high risk of flash flooding including the new orleans area and as of right now the forecast for the mississippi river is supposed to be a foot below the levee heights but we'll wait and see saturday is the day we'll find out that information. areas in the east, i mentioned yesterday you'll get some thunderstorms. it poured. we had significant airport delays, a lot of problems on the roads. all clear this morning from new york city all the way down to baltimore, d.c. and philadelphia. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. johnson & johnson is a baby company. but we're also a company that controls hiv, fights cancer,

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welcome back. president trump is ending his

efforts to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census. trump announced the decision yesterday, two weeks after the supreme court rebuked the administration over its efforts to include that question. last week, the president told reporters he may issue an executive order to include the question. instead, donald trump ordered the federal government to compile citizenship data from existing federal records. as "the new york times" points out, quote, even that order appears to merely reiterate plans the commerce department announced last year. making it not a new policy but rather a way for trump to cover that he retreated from his census battle that he caved. here's the president speaking yesterday in the rose garden. >> i'm proud to be a citizen. you're proud to be a citizen. the only people who are not proud to be citizens are the ones who are fighting us all the way about the word citizen.

far left democrats in our country are determined to conceal the number of illegal aliens in our midst. they probably know the number is far greater, much higher than anyone would have ever believed before. maybe that's why they fight so hard. this is part of a broader left wing effort to erode the rights of the american citizen. we're not backing down on our effort to determine the citizenship status of the united states population. >> thank you, mr. president. and congratulations on today's executive order which will ensure that we finally have an accurate understanding of how many citizens and noncitizens live in our country. >> joe, i guess maybe yet another example of how far barr

will go to just destroy his reputation. he does not care. >> well, he's shameful. it's just -- he and pompeo and a few others, i mean, they're acting like seb gorka. if that's how they want their children and grandchildren to remember them, then there's not much of a line between gorka and donald trump's latest attorney general. no, that's not a compliment. >> no. not even a joke. >> well, what's so fascinating is that it's -- they already -- they have already collected this information. and they collected it and the commerce department wanted it to be collected too. the federal government has been doing this for several times. the commerce department ordered they do it again, so again, the president is just covering himself. i want to say though that i'm

very glad and very relieved that the president did back down on this issue. because if he did not back down on the issue, it would have been a constitutional crisis. if he had tried to defy a supreme court ruling which would have put us into entirely new territory. but, you know, tom, boy, i don't know where to start with you on this one. i guess let's take the easiest target and that is attorney general barr going up there and degrading himself once again. and i just want to say also, a lot of my friends, conservative friends, who will not get out and defend donald trump have seen barr as a safe harbor. someone they can defend and still, you know, play to the conservative cheap seats, but is there anything to defend with this guy?

i mean, he beclowned himself yesterday. >> yikes. >> you know, that's the thing i wondered at the end of this. i mean, it was bad enough. right, you have several things happening during this press conference. one is that the president of the united states has no understanding of the separation of powers after 2 1/2 years it's clear he still doesn't understand his own job or the nature of his own office. the second is that he's clearly trying to make the census toxic to minorities. he wants people -- he wants a lot of people in this country country to seize up the very notion of the sen sis as -- census as being wedded somehow to the anti-immigration position of the administration. but that last moment where barr turns and says congratulations, mr. president, you're awesome for folding. i mean, it wasn't necessary. i mean, this is the thing. this is where barr goes off the ledge. joe, you said he was shameful. i would say it's shameless. because he didn't have to say it. he could have said, i'm here. i'm representing the justice department. we're going to execute what the

president wants which the president's order was that the executive branch has to talk to itself, okay. he can order that. and, you know, we'll move out smart he and get this done. but then to turn and clearly be stroking the president's ego by saying, congratulations, sir. you are awesome. it was cringe worthy. you wonder why they feel the need to do this and they know it's the only way to survive in this white house. the only way to make sure they stay there. >> well, we can put the william barr bobblehead right next to the mike pence bobblehead because that's what they are right now. so willie, yesterday we were talking about the noise and the ground noise and that donald trump gets the press to play into his hands time and time again. we were talking about his

ridiculous fourth of july celebration and the overwrought reactions to a couple of tanks on the mall. which yes, it goes against tradition and yes -- but we heard about it for weeks, that this was -- that the next move to a dictatorship. and went crazy. trump played the critics perfectly and another great example as we were getting off the air. the trump white house leaks that he's going to defy the supreme court and he's going to put -- yeah, right. so everybody goes crazy for a couple of hours and then he announces no i'm not going to defy the supreme court. once again, the press shocked, deeply saddened and playing right into donald trump's hands. >> what he did effectively yesterday was just restate what already happens in the united states government. which is that federal agencies report to the commerce department the data that they have. there was nothing new there other than him doing the opposite of what he signalled which is he stepped back from this idea that he was going to put it on the census.

and donny, if you listen to the attorney general yesterday, he did something extraordinary. there was a supreme court ruling that effectively blocked putting this question on and the attorney general said yesterday the impediment here was not a legal one. in other words, it wasn't a supreme court, it was merely logistical. we didn't have time to get it on to the census. we'll revisit this again. so you have the attorney general congratulating the president of the united states on what i don't know and then saying we'll be back for more because this is not a legal question. >> as far as barr, he was drifting not into pence territory, but giuliani territory. joe, what you were just talking about, to your point there's this weird irony. barr congratulated him we're going ha-ha, but trump does win because he plays the game. he has a two or three day infomercial where it's tanks or this and the press jumps. maybe there's a tactic for the press.

obviously the press has to cover it. what if trump says something so outrageous like i'm going to defy the supreme court and if the press said, well, no, that's not going to happen because that never happens in this country and if by some chance he does we'll revisit that, next. instead of us getting our hair on fire, bringing on constitutional legal experts when he throws out the ridiculous flame throwing, absurd things, instead of falling for it, why don't the democrats or the press cover it and almost swat it at that point. if you said, of course he's not going to go against the supreme court. that's 250 years, even donald trump knows that. or if by some chance he'll run a suicide mission we'll be back to you, let's talk about the border. there's an interesting way to handle him dismissive -- we have to cover it and stop playing the eat the red meat game. we give him the infomercials. >> what we see, rev, we see a pattern. you have known donald like i have known donald for decades.

you can see that pattern and what he does. he'll make an outrageous statement and more often than not, when it -- when time comes, like for instance, on the fourth of july everybody was expecting a bombastic militaristic speech. yeah, there were a couple of faux pas's, but he kept it for the most part in the center of the road. and in the situation -- and by the way, got all of his critics screaming and yelling and then people turn on the tv set and there's a lot of veterans and blue angels and people are saluting and waving the flag and everyone is like why is everyone mad at donald trump, i love the flag. that's what he did yesterday as well. saying i'm going to defy the supreme court. and then he comes out and it's like oh wait, he's not defying the supreme court at all. he's doing a meaningful executive order, the press

freaks out, score one donald trump. >> and this has been the pattern throughout his career. let's not forget he made his money selling real estate by hyping things and then letting you come in at a price that you felt you beat him and in fact that was the price he always wanted. this is a day trader. he knows how to hype and then get you to come in where he wants. so he oversells something, you come in and he looks like he gave you a bargain and that's where he was all along. that's what he's doing with some very serious national and global policies and it's very dangerous. but the media keeps playing into it. i have to agree with donny there. >> but there's a failed transaction here, because we can cover the census issue and can cover the shiny pennies but we can continue to cover the jeffrey epstein story, the alex acosta story and the questions

surrounding his labor secretary, someone he chose to be labor secretary who somehow ended up giving a sweetheart deal to a sex offender. somebody who preyed problem who he partied with. we'll talk about that more, there's the russian probe, there's bob mueller, the children at the border, we can cover all those stories. that's the one part of this transaction that he can't -- new york city he can dominate the headlines. >> well, see, mika -- >> but across america we'll cover the stories. >> that's what i have been saying for weeks now. that admiral fetterman told me when i was a very young guy, very young congressman, he said, joe, you need to learn to separate the ground noise and the signal. >> that was a good piece. >> and son, most of it is ground noise. so ground noise, fourth of july parades. ground noise, phony leaks to the press. the signal? children being abused and

neglected at the border. the signal like you said, an abuse of justice with jeffrey epstein because he knew some very, very powerful people. you're right. we can do two things at once. >> yeah. >> i just don't think the media needs to be giving donald trump any more free press wins. we have seen this cycle enough. we have seen his spin cycle enough. >> and we know him. which gives us insight. >> i think everybody in the press needs to go into 2020 needs to learn how to play it a little bit smarter and i put myself at the top of that list. coming up president trump's love/hate relationship with twitter was on full display during his social media summit at the white house yesterday. we'll find the signal through the noise of that event ahead. ♪

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we hardly do press releases anymore. people don't pick it up. it's me -- if i put it out on social media, it's like an explosion. i call twitter a typewriter that's what i call twitter because it goes on to facebook automatically and it goes on to

instagram. and it goes on to television. more so fox than it does cnn. if it's something bad they'll put it on. if i have a spelling deal, they will put it on. donald trump spelled the word the wrong, you know? he doesn't know how to spell the. he spelled it t-h-i, you know, i couldn't get any kind of a punctuation careful. i'm actually a good speller, but the thing -- but the fingers aren't as good as the brain. >> president trump defending the use of the use of twitter and his spelling at an event to which representatives from tech giants like facebook, twitter and google were not invited. we'll have some of the characters who were though. the president criticized social media companies for what he called terrible bias. >> we had a terrible bias. we have censorship like nobody has any understanding or nobody can believe. there's no doubt in my mind that

i should have millions and millions -- i have millions of people, so many people i wouldn't believe it, but i know that we have been blocked. big tech must not censor the voices of the american people. to all of the social media influencers here today, a lot f of -- you have a lot of power and you have a lot of strength and, you know, you have to use it wisely. >> president trump opened the floor for questions and called on his former deputy assistant turned radio host sebastian gorka, and he was asking the question about censorship, the audio cut out. >> how is the new show going? >> very good. thank you. >> i heard very well. >> american first, salem first, sebastian gorka. >> moments later the video feed went to black and the press was escorted from the room. joining us now national political reporter for axios, jonathan swan. good morning.

first of all, what happened there with seb gorka? >> well, they cut the live stream and kicked everyone out. and of course that's when the interesting and newsworthy parts of the conversation happened. i spoke to three people who were in the room and they told me that the most interesting in terms of newsworthy exchange happened after that when one of the people in the audience said to the president, you know, as conservatives we -- this is a paraphrase -- we worry sometimes about regulation of these companies. you seem to be hinting at that. do you think if we just pile lots of pressure on facebook and google and twitter they'll self-correct and the president said i don't trust them to self-correct. and he also continually praised josh, who was understood to be josh halle for the bill he's working on. this is a bill that would strip social media companies like google and facebook of their legal immunity for user generated content. this is really important because this is -- this is the shield

that they have for user generated content and josh halle wants to strip them of that if they can't prove that they're politically impartial. >> so let's talk about some of the people who were in the room and given an audience with the president of the united states. among them, people who push conspiracy theory like the seth rich conspiracy theory. one woman who pushed the theory that kamala harris was quote not an american black. you'll forgive my use of the term there. who else was in the room and who else did president trump invite to the white house? >> it was -- yeah. it was a pretty motley cast of characters to put it mildly. it was a mixture of people who used to be in conservative media who went over like benny johnson, works at turning point usa with charlie kirk which is sort of a young conservative movement. and there are other people that sort of -- you would call them

keyboard warriors. they make up memes and all sorts of things. they had one person who had drawn -- at the last minute after pressure from the mainstream media who were asking questions about this person, they kicked out a cartoonist who drew a cartoon of i believe george soros and other jewish figures with puppet strings over hr mcmaster. that was someone who was excluded at the last minute, but yeah, it was the people who create all sorts of the videos and one thing that's important to note is that it's not just that the president, you know, pays attention and looks at their material. his social media director has a direct relationship with a number of these people in the room i'm told. he actually texts with them and encourages them. it's actually sort of almost formalized that relationship with white house and of course this was an official audience. >> so twitter wasn't there, google wasn't there and facebook wasn't there. this was a meeting of guardians of the president online. >> it was a meeting to air their

grievances. it was not meant to make any kind of advancement or an honest attempt to reach across to these tech companies. maybe it was meant to hammer them because we know that's the president's style to kind of lower the boom on people. but i think this was just an attempt again once again, to kind of set the stage and put on a show for his supporters about how they're so oppressed. leaving aside the fact that -- and adrienne you know this better than anyone, during the last election cycle it was the president and team republicans who benefited the most from exposure on social media. 28 million impressions from russian bots who were there to help the president that seems to be a history that's just overlooked. >> you're right, heidi. not only was it the russian bots who were moving memes and moving -- so in discord using

social media but it was trump. every time he'd tweet something that sounded so erratic and crazy, the media would focus on the tweets. i remember time and time again we had policy rollouts on hillary clinton's campaign. that got thwarted because of something that trump, you know, tweeted erratically. something that he said that, you know, people which just aghast that they couldn't believe he tweeted this. and they talked about that for a couple hours in the media. that would take -- that would detract coverage from us and from our campaign. if we're not careful, the same thing is going to happen again. because he knows how to manipulate the media. so you have that and then of course the assumption that russia, china, whatever adversary is going to be in sowing the social media again you have to see how they'll impact the election. >> that's the thing, tom nichols. there's a real conversation to be had around social media, there should be a social media summit talking about protecting

the elections, talking about censorship as well. it wasn't the conversation that took place yesterday. >> and the thing that links what happened yesterday to the fourth of july and the census issue is that every time the president does something like this he's affecting the culture. when he has the secretary of defense has to stand there and singing patriot songs that affects our military culture. when he says he's going to defy the supreme court it gets people used to the idea that the natural order is to threaten the highest court in the land and when he talks about social media like this conglomeration of what that was, he normalizes the approach to social media and says conspiracy theories and memes and offensive accusations and smearing people, that's the

new normal. that's really what he's trying to achieve. i mean, as heidi points out it's all about grievances. every day at this white house is festivus because the president is constantly airing the grievances and he must have loved people who agree with him about that. but this changes the political culture in america and it makes it less democratic, less liberal, less american in my view. >> tom nichols, thank you very much as always. jonathan swan of axios, thank you as well. coming up next lawyers for jeffrey epstein want the wealthy sex offender released on bail ahead of his trial. we'll talk about epstein's new $77 million legal strategy next on "morning joe." $77 million legal strategy next on "morning joe. my insurance rates are probably gonna double.

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all right. top of the hour. a live look at capitol hill. washington, d.c. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, july 12th. still with joe, willie and me, we have nbc news correspondent heidi przybyla.

host of "saturday night politics" on msnbc, donny. host of msnbc's "politicsnation" and president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton. and former chief of staff to dccc and strategic communications for hillary clinton's presidential campaign, adrienne elrod. and joining the conversation, national correspondent for pbs news hour amna nawaz and president and ceo of the messina group, a campaign manager for president barack obama's 2012 re-election campaign, jim messina joining us. joe, should we look at the polls? >> yeah, let's hit up the numbers and see what jim thinks. >> the first nbc news/"wall street journal" of the 2020 presidential race shows the front-runners are the two people who were at center stage in each night of last month's debates.

former vice president joe biden leads the pack with 26%, while senator elizabeth warren trails by seven points at 19%. senators kamala harris and bernie sanders tied for third place, while 13% -- with 13% each. mayor pete buttigieg is at 7% and andrew yang and beto o'rourke each pull in 2%. no other candidate cracks 1% leaving them currently below one of the threshold requirements to qualify for the third round of debates that are coming up in september. >> so jim, there are the numbers and what do you see? >> a couple of things are interesting. first, consolidation in the field and that's what democrats want. we have approximately 2,000 candidates out there and people are looking and saying, who are the front-runners and you see real consolidation. the second thing is the rise of elizabeth warren. right now she's in second place and you see her moving in new hampshire.

moving in some of the early states in a way that wasn't true a couple months ago. she and bernie sanders are kind of killing each other right now. the two of them could consolidate, you know, they could be a real threat to the vice president. and the last thing is kamala harris. kamala harris was the winner of the last debate. and came out of this debate looking very, very strong. and is really solidified her position, you know, in the top three. she needs to solidify her position in money. she didn't have as good of a fund-raising quarter as the others did, but she's on the map, you look at texas and california she continues to sit in a position where she could be the nominee of this party. >> well, you know, jim people say how early it is with the polls. and of course you go back and look historically about how polls in the past have meant very little. this time in 2007 of course rudy giuliani and hillary were

looking pretty good. at the same time, with two candidates in the field, with the top five solidified you're starting to see a real correlation between how people are doing in the polls and how they're doing raising money. if you're sitting at 2% or below you won't go to the big bund her or go online and say, i really need you to help me continue into the third quarter. i mean, do you see candidates that are at 2% or below and stay there surviving into the third quarter? >> i don't. joe, i don't think if you -- if you can't get in the third debate i think you're in real trouble. your money is going to dry up really quickly. i think we'll see a mass exodus of this -- out of this race in the fall. i think a bunch of people are going to look at this and say, look, i just can't raise the money and the interest to stay in this race. some people that, you know, look really good on paper are going to start to flame out because they can't raise the money. this is first primary that money really matters.

moving california and texas up into the early states make money one of the most important things here. and for the candidates who don't qualify for the third debate i think you really got to look and say, can i stay in this race? >> looking inside the numbers, biden is tied with warren among white voters. 22% to 22% with sanders and harris at 12% each. but biden's lead is driven by his large margin with black voters taking nearly 46% of the vote. harris ranks second with 17%. sanders with 11% and warren with 8%, joe. by age groups biden trails warren and harris by double digits. biden is the run away favorite among voters who are 50 and older with 39% to harris' 17% and warren's 15% and sanders gets 3% with older voters.

biden is also far behind warren with liberal voters. 29% prefer warren and 35% choose biden. biden garners 35% followed by harris at 15% and joe, african-american voters and voters over 50, that's where biden has strong leaders. i think that's hard to beat compared to the other candidates. >> certainly that's the case right now. this is a snapshot. >> for sure. >> but if you were talking to jim messina or any democratic political expert who's going to be running a campaign and you said, hey, would you rather h e have, you know, older voters or younger voters flock to you, chances are good they would say that if you have that big of a lead among black voters and among older voters, rev, we talked about this last hour, those are the democratic party's most loyal faithful voters. they go out to the polls.

they make a difference starting in south carolina and we'll show that fox news poll showing biden doing so well there. but again, i think the most important numbers we have shown this morning that could impact the race the most are the numbers of mayor pete and elizabeth warren and how poorly they're doing among black voters. and how that reflects itself in south carolina and how they have to be able to crack that code or else they won't win the nomination. it's that simple. >> it's critical that they break in to some real numbers in the black community or they can really be crippled coming out of south carolina as you head in to now a different calendar. you're going to go into super tuesday, you're going into california and nevada. you can't survive in these

diverse states if you don't come out with a real vote in south carolina. i also think the think you have to watch and i know jim messina will remember this well that there were a few of us that came out for barack obama in '07 pre iowa. once he won iowa it flipped a lot of voters in south carolina because they said this guy can win and they went from hillary to barack obama because he won iowa. if kamala harris surprises people in iowa in the top two or three, you could see a shift in black voters in south carolina with biden. but biden right now enjoys a large amount of support because he identifies with barack obama and donald trump has committed himself to undoing obama which is undoing obama/biden and biden gets a good ride there, which he deserves because he was very loyal to president obama. >> jim, on that biden point,

you're always cool headed. you take the long view. there was a lot of hand wringing among democrats after the debate in miami a couple of weeks ago that maybe joe biden had lost a step, that kamala harris got the better of him. she did move up in the polls. he did tick down a little bit in the immediate aftermath but if you look at this you take the conversation around his comments about segregation, the comments about busing and the numbers especially among african-americans he still leads by almost 30%. so what's your long view of where joe biden is right now? >> boy, he's exactly where he wants to be. people forget that you need 20% of the vote in every congressional district in the early states to get any delegates and biden is currently looking like he's going to get a bunch of early delegates and start out in the lead here. to the rev's point, there's a couple of interesting points about the african-american vote. number one, buttigieg cannot be the nominee if he's getting a

historically small amount of african-american votes. he's got to figure out a way to move. the second thing is that people forget that about this time in 2007, hillary clinton led barack obama with african-american voters in all of these states because of historic ties to bill clinton. but the moment we moved to iowa, those african-american voters came to the african-american candidate and that's kamala's hope here and that's why joe biden is a strong candidate because he's consolidated the older voters and he's got the african-american voters because of his time with barack obama. if he can hold that -- those two bases, he'll be the democratic nominee for president. >> so adrienne elrod, one of the candidates we have been watching every step of the way is elizabeth warren. who i think defys gravity, defies what you know the basic thinking is about whether or not

she can win. she is slow and steady, she keeps hitting the road, holding the town halls and it seems like she's slowly working her way toward the top. except for that connection with the african-american voters how does she overcome that? because that seems to be the barrier between her and beating joe biden or making her way to the presidency and you saw that pete buttigieg presented a plan to the african-american community. i don't -- i think it's the connection that i think is missing and how does a candidate surmount that? >> well, mika, you raise a really good point and also to reiterate what we have been saying all morning on the show which is a democrat simply cannot be the nominee without the african-american vote. you have to have that support. >> that's right. >> elizabeth warren i think one of the reasons why she's surging so much she's got a plan for everything. she's outworking every other

candidates. she is staying for selfies. all those things matter. we call it pressing the flesh on the campaign trail. all of those things matter. i think elizabeth warren's got to do -- or make some inroads with the african-american community by making specific plans putting out specific plans out there that address their needs. she's talked about income inequality. she's got a plan for the housing crisis. she's got all kinds of plans but i think she's get to tailor some specific plans to this community, go into south carolina. have the small conversations with folks and tell them exactly what she's going to do for the african-american community. she has to tailor her message more there. because she won't be the nominee. she won't grow in this field if she does not have support among this constituency. >> i want to talk about the top three obviously, senator warren, kamala and biden. heidi mentioned the word teflon with joe before. i believe he's going to be teflon joe. this is a gut election. not an issue election. who can slay the beast, the

beast being donald trump. i think people intuitively feel right now, biden is the best bet for that. so they're willing to let a lot slide off him like republicans are letting a lot slide off of trump. kamala has that. when you saw her prosecutorial chops against kavanaugh and saw her on stage, i thought the best moments were not the race moments. i think she took control. she speaks like a prosecutor and talks like a prosecutor. i think those to me are the two best candidates with -- let me finish, beating trump. this is going to upset my friend lawrence o'donnell again, where elizabeth warren and bernie are not electable if donald trump can call a candidate a socialist, for 140 million americans we want to take your private health insurance away, it's a loser. and i think we -- this is not an issues campaign. this is a gut who can beat the beast. and i think because donald trump can paint her or bernie or any

hard left candidate with those strokes, with that word socialist, where 60% of americans say that's -- not that they don't like the word but it's un-american. so the advantage joe and kamala have they have the best bet to beat the candidate. >> nobody would have guessed that donald trump was the best bet to become president four years ago at this point. he said some outrageous things about mexicans and outrageous things about john mccain the war hero and outrageous things about megyn kelly. you never know who is going to end up winning these things and it's a fool's errand to even try. that said, it does seem donald trump really would like to face bernie sanders or elizabeth warren or somebody that he can tag as a quote socialist. >> yeah. i think that is sort of a fight that the president would like to see. we have seen him hint already at some of the lines of attack that he would launch across those

specific candidates doling out insults to those he'd like to face down the road. but some of the things we saw early in the trump campaign that's what drew people to him. those were reasons to vote for him. not necessarily things to overlook for a lot of his base and some of his supporters. look, i'll say this about what we have seen among the democratic candidates so far to underscore the bigger points. i was in iowa earlier this year talking to a lot of the voters. i watched some of the candidates on the trail there, pressing the flesh, doing the same kind of events over and over again trying to get people to know who they are and what they stand for. the number one thing people said they were look for in a candidate who can beat donald trump. when you have the debates and other events where you start to see some of the fissures and the unique differentiators among the candidates some of the issues really do matter in terms of how people will step up and come forward and start to support a

democratic candidate over another. those are things we have seen before. like race. and immigration. some of the key things that president trump runs on and messages to his base that democratic candidates have to have a solid coherent message to counter what the president is saying. now, obviously when that interaction between biden and harris and the previous debate, it helped harris. we saw there was an issue there on busing, on the stance that biden has taken been that resonated with voters. that showed how harris will set herself apart. didn't hurt biden as much as it helped harris. but at the same time, this isn't necessarily an issue that we're talking about from 30, 40 years ago and it resonates today because these are still things that matter in people's lives. right? the majority of schoolchildren in america still attend schools that are racially concentrated meaning 75% of the population is white or nonwhite. so a lot of the things we're looking back on, maybe lines of attack against biden of other

people, they're coming up because they still matter and resonate with the voters today. >> yeah, if you look inside the nbc poll you will see that we're starting to see a slight shift as well about voters caring more about issues than ago electability. it's a slight shift but it's. there at the same time, it's important to point out -- donny and i were discussing this in the break. we look at the national polls that show -- oh, look at all the democrats who can beat donald trump. you cannot look at those polls like that. you have to remember the mistake that we all made in the last election which was not looking at the state by state polls. and there was just a battery of polls that came out showing that there's only one candidate who can beat donald trump in the most critical states of michigan, pennsylvania and wisconsin and that is joe biden. however, this is a question really to the rev. let's say biden did get the nomination. what is different about today than 2016 where you saw that hillary clinton had the majority of black support, she had

historic high numbers in terms of percentages but when it came to voting time you saw even in states like michigan where there were not extra kind of voter restrictions imposed there like there were in wisconsin. you saw a dramatic drop-off in participation so who is the candidate or what is the ticket that is going to get african-american voters and young voters just as excited about this ticket as they were about obama in 2008 and 2012? >> well, i think that you have to have the ticket. you have -- who's going to be vice presidential candidate and you have to really play the game until the final bell. i think part of the mistake that some of those that were in those states made with ms. clinton is they were getting ready for the inaugural ball before the election was over. and really not working on the ground in michigan and in wisconsin and in pennsylvania. they could have won those votes in philadelphia, detroit and milwaukee had they engaged in

it. i think this is where a lot of what we said earlier in terms of retail politics or early working debates there's a difference between sitting on your laptop and walking the stoops up and down the block and getting your older voters out. that may not be on your laptop. you need both. you need your young voters. you need your laptop crowd that was in the brooklyn headquarters of clinton but you need that guy that can walk down the block and talk to ms. may on the stoop and say, we have to get everybody in the building out to vote. that's the difference in those states. i feel that's what happened to mrs. clinton. >> boy tell you what, you're so right, rev. they were already looking for their homes to buy in washington. they're already planning their victory lap. i know the last three weeks of the campaign we on this show were saying and i know you have said it too, don't go to sleep on donald trump. he can still win the race. you seriously you would have

thought that we had committed the unpardonable sin and the impact of that was a lot of people are staying at home, i don't need to get out. we have this thing won. what a difference it would have made if democratic voters across america hadn't gone to sleep and if they actually believed that donald trump could have won. that sort of arrogance was -- i think you're right. i think it was their undoing. >> it was. and once you told already we already run -- they relax, if you had told people that had watched the behavior, the bizarre conduct of donald trump that he could win if you don't go vote, people would have been running to the polls in their undergarments. but they were told it was done and they relaxed. >> joe, along those lines, americans -- democrats should understand donald trump is a prohibitive favorite at this point. if you look at what vegas is saying, if you look at what goldman sachs all the money, so

i don't believe any of those polls so if there's any lesson in the past you should be infinitely more skeptical right now. i believe trump is the prohibitive favorite. in case anybody wants to go to sleep. >> well, which of course jim messina, leads neatly into what i wanted to ask you as a final question. you know, i always run scared in everything. even in polls when i was up by 20 points i made everybody in my campaign headquarters think that we were down by 20. so it's -- i'm trying to sort through where we are right now. we had dave wasserman on a couple of days ago. he was so great at what he does. i asked the question i want to ask you now which is what is -- what is your current take on donald trump's chances for re-election? i know generals always fight the last battle so i think sometimes people give the 42% president a little too much credit. at the same time, we can't fall

asleep on him. where do you put him in the states that matter, wisconsin, pennsylvania, florida, arizona? >> look, he won the big three states in the midwest by a total of 78,000 votes so on that you look at it and we're going to be in for a very long night on election night and very close. but i'm kind of with donny here. i think he's an incumbent president who if he did anything to reach out to swing voters sitting with a 70% approval rating of the economy currently should be an okay shape. he's got a better economy and such a better situation than barack obama did in 2012, than george bush did in 2004. his problem is every day he sets himself on fire with swing voters. and when he get down to the states and we look at the smallest map in recent memory i think we'll only talk about four or five states that are going to

decide this thing. president trump has big problems in those states currently. but the question for democrats is who are we going to nominate? because if we dominate someone who cannot reach out to the swing voters and isn't seen as an electable candidate then we'll lose this election. but if we nominate someone who is seen as someone who can fight donald trump on the economy because joe, you and i have talked about this a million times, the swing voters care about one issue and one issue alone and that's the economy. and their economic future and democrats have got to stay focused on those voters and if we do that donald trump will lose this election. if we don't, if we nominate someone who can't talk about that, then the worst president in the history of the republic will get re-elected. >> all right. jim messina, thank you very much on that note. and still ahead on "morning joe," in 2012, trump warned that when someone attacks him he always attacks back. except 100 times more.

so it should be no surprise he's hitting back at paul ryan in response to comments the former house speaker made in a new book. we'll show you exactly what he said finally. but only in a book. plus, nationwide immigration raids are scheduled to begin on sunday and target 2,000 families. we'll talk to a member of the house homeland security committee about the trump administration's tactics for illegal immigration. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. johnson & johnson is a baby company. but we're also a cancer fighting, hiv controlling, joint replacing, and depression relieving company. from the day you're born we never stop taking care of you.

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from the day you're born we never stop taking care of you. welcome back. president trump lashed out at former house speaker paul ryan in a series of tweets late last night after a new book revealed ryan's negative views of trump's 2016 campaign and the first two years of his presidency. trump tweeted, paul ryan the failed vp candidate and the former speaker of the house whose record of achievement was atrocious. ultimately became a long running lame duck failure leaving his party in the lurch both as a fund-raiser and a leader. adding quote, he had the majority and blew it away with his poor leadership and bad timing. couldn't get him out of congress

fast enough. the tweets were presumably sparked by the new book "american carnage" which details ryan's criticism of trump. ryan told author tim alberta, quote, i told myself i got to have a relationship with this guy to help him get his mind right because i'm telling you, he didn't know anything about government. i wanted to scold him all the time. we have gotten so numbed by it. not in government, but where we live our lives. we have a responsibility to try and rebuild. don't call a woman a horse face. don't cheat on your wife. don't cheat on anything. be a good person. set a good example. and tim alberta will be our guest on "morning joe" on monday. joining us now an msnbc contributor, noah rothman. joe, we have a lot to talk about with paul ryan. it just seems to me that this book -- i wonder what noah and

donny think, but this book seems too little, too late. we need leaders to step up in realtime. they should be able to do things at once. they should be able to make critiques when they are quite frankly the obvious response to someone's actions and they should be able to try and work together as well. >> donny, you talked about this an awful lot. paul ryan was the third highest ranking leader in america. what are your thoughts about his comments? >> he was the hope. he was the biggest disappointment because he was in a position -- even if short term it had cost him, you said this many times, donald trump's history will show that people are tarnished by the toxicity of him and anybody who would have stood up to him and i think ryan was the one guy who could have done. even at that time it took him down, it would have set him up to be one of the great leaders of our country to go forward. he would have been the guy to say i told you so. he had the gravitas, he had the position and the credibility. he had the true conservative

nature and credentials and yes, he's saying all these things now. but to mika's point, they should have been said in 2016. that's what brave people do. that's what leaders do. >> so noah, these quotes from paul ryan in the book, which i have to tell you i got an advance copy and it's relentless and he tells of the trump presidency. this is what they wanted to hear from paul ryan, i understand he had a tricky job as speaker, he had to manage a caucus, a lot of which like donald trump, a lot of people in his own district liked donald trump. but he didn't say something when he had a chance to do something about it and to say it after the fact is frustrating. >> there's the imperative of governing. in the first year of the trump presidency i recall seeing a lot of on background quote from sources, people close to republicans even lakers expressing their deep

frustrations with the president and his lack of understanding of how government works and also his comportment, his personal behavior was frustrating for their agenda and paul ryan he inherited this caucus. he was the only person who could wrangle it. nobody could unite it when boehner retired and he ran against his signature policy issues. he ran on support for example the -- the mandate, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. he ran against cuts in social security and medicare and balancing the budget. that is paul ryan's course and mission in government and when he was elected paul ryan was deflated. he had to manage and guide the president in a party he had lost control of even though he was the speaker of the house. >> you read tim's book, it's not just paul ryan by the way in the campaign during the access weekend, there's a report about how disgusted republicans were. you take the snapshot of the way

that republicans felt that way and people walked away from him publicly and privately from donald trump and how he conducted himself when he became president of the united states, it's night and day. >> it's night and day. i have to say that paul ryan did have a choice. he had a choice every day. he was speaker of the house. a third only behind the vice president and the president. article i gives the speaker and the house of representatives extraordinary powers. paul had the power of the checkbook. and, you know, rev, when we were just little back benchers in congress we had a choice and we stood up to newt gingrich when we thought that newt was moving away from the things that we had campaigned on. and the powers of the speaker are extraordinary. so i don't really -- i don't buy that paul ryan didn't have a choice. that's what paul told everybody.

that he didn't have a choice. he had a choice. he just chose to be quiet and allowed donald trump to have his way. >> i think you raised a critical point. the real reason that the back benchers as you called yourselves at that time would challenge a speaker or others would challenge people that were in positions is you went there for a reason and you believed in something. i when i hear all this from paul ryan where you'll compromise on serious government policy, and even on what you would deal with as appropriate personal behavior i have to question how much you really believe in what you say you believe in if you would compromise all of that for the moment of making some transaction. you -- if you really believe something, this is where the evangelicals are going to face. if you believe in something, there comes a point where you don't compromise it or you really don't really believe in

it. i think that's where the choices come in. i think what happened with the back benchers that took on newt gingrich or some even on the left that take on people is that's a real division between those of us who really believe what we say or those who say it but we really don't believe it because we -- when we get tested we're not willing to go all the way. >> well, you know, you can go back to the day that paul ryan endorsed donald trump. a couple of days after calling him a racist. and mika and i said in realtime that he was handling that relationship wrong. you never give donald trump something for nothing. and that's exactly what paul ryan did. he folded. he caved. at the beginning of the relationship, donald trump does not respect weakness. donald trump a bully politically only understands strength, and paul didn't show him that early

on. and heidi, that set up a relationship where donald trump would never -- >> destined for failure. >> would respect paul ryan. if you're paul ryan you fight your entire life for free trade and you're caving to a guy who's a herbert hoover protectionist. you fight your entire life to stand up to russia and you're caving to a guy who kowtows to an ex-kgb agent, who is running an autocracy in turkey. in russia. you have the same thing in turkey with erdogan where at times donald trump caves to him. he caves to out autocrats in north korea and in the philippines. i mean, we could talk about entitlement reform. paul and i always talked about the importance of entitlement reform to save social security and save medicare.

donald trump said from the very beginning i'm not touching either of those things so how did paul ryan justify everything that he overlooked? >> you know, i remember so many points, joe, during his tenure reaching out to people close to paul ryan and asking, you know, what is he thinking, is he going to say something and every time the answer was always the same that while paul ryan had strong personal feelings for instance about the comments around charlottesville that he was quote/unquote a boy scout. and that he had this code, which i guess was essentially a code of silence because we never did hear him come out forcefully while he was there. to me, someone who's followed paul ryan's career in the house and followed the things that he's most important -- found most important in his career, the most poignant epitaph is probably his position on the deficit because even though his party is also a party that very much supports tax cuts the

champion of the latest round of tax cuts and having that kind of be the note on which he went out as speaker and out of congress is really poignant because what -- because of what it did do to the deficit and because all of the things that paul ryan stood for with his budget. he was kind of the person who championed this budget that would save social security for the long haul. all of those things were washed out the window with those tax cuts. >> well, you wonder what other republicans still serving in office are thinking as they continue to suck up to this president and give him something for nothing and agree with even the most egregious things that might come out of his mouth or that he might have done during his presidency, during his campaign. they know this ends badly. and yet, they don't stand up to him even on the most basic things. i haven't heard anybody speaking

out even about the labor secretary on the republican side. >> you know, one of the things that's been very true and very clear in this presidency is that the silence of many people does speak volumes. you know, looking back at what paul ryan sort of evolution on donald trump first as a candidate and then as president, paul ryan was sort of presenting himself as a pragmatist. i mean, this is not someone who i personally agree with, i may disagree with a lot of things that he says but i can work with this president to get things done and we saw that in his work up to the historic tax cuts they were able to push through. not necessarily on health care, which was important to paul ryan as well. but certainly on the tax cuts. but remember, paul ryan went from not saying very much publicly to tepidly supporting the president. and we saw that with a lot of people. we have seen that over the last 2 1/2, 3 years i can't see he's unique in any way.

now he's free to speak his mind, he is out there giving interviews and showing what he really believed to be true at the time. you can't imagine we won't see it with other people as well when they feel they're free to say what they really feel. >> well, mika, you -- >> aren't they free -- >> yeah, they're free to speak. >> they're free right now. >> they're choosing not to. >> you have a voice, and this is america. >> but, you know, mika, you look at the before and the after's. the quotes about donald trump. >> yeah. >> whether it's mick mulvaney or lindsey graham and he said that he would destroy the republican party and the republican party would deserve to be destroyed if he got in power and now lindsey is a sycophant of him. and look at what kevin mccarthy said, caught on tape, that donald trump he believed had taken payoffs from vladimir

putin. >> yep. >> and now kevin mccarthy is sucking up to donald trump every day. and you can go down the list every single one of them talking about how horrible donald trump was, and the second he got into power suddenly he's their best friend. >> pitiful. >> i don't know what's worth that. >> amna nawaz, thank you for being on the show this morning. now to the latest charges against jeffrey epstein. lawyers for the wealthy financier are seeking bail and they're fearing that the federal prosecutors might pursue the sexual abuse orders against him but he never attempted to three the country. he was arrested as he arrived from paris and on monday pleaded not guilty alleging he abused dozens of little girls, children, in florida and new york.

epstein's lawyers recommended house arrest in a bail package offering up his $77 million manhattan mansion. and private jet as collateral. his lawyers have argued that a nonprosecution agreement made with federal prosecutors in 2007 covers the same ground as the new charges. singer r. kelly has been arrested in chicago on federal sex crime charges. a spokesman for the u.s. attorney's office said the r&b singer whose real name is robert kelly was taken into custody last night. and that the 13 count indictment charges enticement of a minor and obstruction of justice. and a senior law enforcement official tells nbc news that separate federal indictments were filed against kelly in chicago and brooklyn. kelly already faces separate state sex related charges in

illinois involving four women, three of whom were minors when the alleged abuse occurred. he pleaded not guilty to those charges and was released on bail. and disgraced movie mogul harvey weinstein has hired a new legal team two months before his sex crimes trial is set to begin. this marks the third legal team for weinstein who has pleaded not fillty. defense attorney jose bay yes, sir left over fundamental agreements and the new lawyer says she thinks she'll do better with female witnesses on the stand. >> i think it's a little bit more effective to have a woman asking a woman questions. i think i can come across in a way that might not seem bullying or offensive in any way. up next, after powerful testimony from advocates and first responders over the last month, lawmakers are set to take

the next the step in renewing the 9/11 victim compensation fund. veteran and new york congressman max rose is standing by. he joins the conversation next on "morning joe." but we're also a cancer fighting, hiv controlling, joint replacing, and depression relieving company. from the day you're born we never stop taking care of you. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, from thehmm. exactly.orn so you only pay for what you need. nice. but, uh... what's up with your... partner? not again. limu that's your reflection. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪

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welcome back to "morning joe." beautiful live picture, 7:46 in the morning at the united states capitol. the house there is expected to vote today on a bill to renew the 9/11 victim compensation fund after emotional testimony from first responders drew attention to the 2020 expiration date. the funds provide necessary financial support for the thousands who suffered serious medical issues after the 2001 attacks and the work they did cleaning up. the congressional budget office estimates a price tag of more than $10 billion that will cover costs for the next decade. joining us is a member of the

house homeland committee and veterans affairs committee, democratic congressman max rose of new york, he's a veteran of the war in afghanistan and the recipient of the bronze star and the purple heart. with us is the president of the international association of firefighters, harold schaitberger. congressman, let me start with you. are we sure this is going to pass today? >> hey, willie, how are you doing? we're sure this is going to pass today. this was a difficult slog but because of the incredible advocacy from our first responders we are at the finish line. the senate has to pass this as well we're confident they will. and then the president of the united states will remember he's a new yorker and he will sign this legislation. but what's critical here is that this is a permanent re-authorization. we are not going to put these men and women who are there for us through another shameless period of advocacy to come down here and defend their own lives.

we're not going to do that that them. >> people like the late detective alvarez had to come down before his 69th chemotherapy treatment to bang the doors to get the congress people to sit up and take notice, so why is your read why it took that effort? why is this not an obvious vote? >> any member in the senate or the house who has tweeted out on 9/11 we'll never forget, who has come down to new york city and taken selfies with cops and firemen and then tried to pound their chest and show how strong they are they have no right to vote against this bill. they will reveal themselves as hypocri hippo confederates to the american people. let's take a step back here.

we're going to show when we pass the legislation we're going to show the american people that congress can get something done. we can serve people in large substantive ways and i think that's this time when we are continually torn apart by hyper partisanship and divisiveness. >> so, harold, as you know much better than i, this problem plagues your community of firefighters, 343 of whom died in the attacks themselves, many more of whom have now died since from what they breathed in on that toxic pile. can you lay out for our viewers just the extent and the scope of the problem? >> well, first of all, it's important to note that with the thousands of firefighters, law enforcement, other first responders, in addition to all the other building trades and other workers, but within our profession, we had firefighters throughout this country that came to work on ground zero in that pile. we have thousands of firefighters who are now

afflicted with cancers, respiratory and other 9/11 related diseases. just in new york city alone, we lost 195 fdny members since 9/11 and those numbers unfortunately are going to continue to grow. this is a extremely enormous problem and it's a shame, quite frankly, that it took five years to pass the original legislation in 2010 and then they force firefighters, first responders to come back five years later to reauthorization it. now here we are again expected to come before congress to ask for additional reauthorizations. so i want to applaud the house of representatives, certainly the leadership, certainly squarery nadler, carol maloney, peter king, so many that have

now put this legislation in a place at noon today there would be an overwhelming vote to pass it in the house of representatives. but willie, here is the point. now we have to go to the united states senate. that's a totally different body. this comes down to their rules. this comes down to the uniqueness of the senate body. and leader mcconnell. will it begin to get tied up in their unique process? >> and the majority leader mcconnell says he will take this up. >> this seems to be all but assured, especially given the lens put on this by jon stewart and others. congressman, i have a question for you about another important issue that you've been working on is veteran suicide. >> yes.

>> i know oofr a week in which we saw three veterans in one week's period try to commit suicide, you rolled out a bill to try and require more reporting out of the va. but that just touches the tip of the issue. >> absolutely. >> how substantial is this problem right now and what does our government need to be doing about it? this seems like another issue where potentially you could see some bipartisan cooperation. >> well, i definitely think we can see bipartisan cooperation here. i'd like to note that the nypd has recently suffered a series of suicides. so this is something, as well, that we're seeing in the law enforcement community as well as throughout the country. what is critical, though, is that we have to push the va to start looking beyond its own four walls. extending out care management programs, mental health programs, expanding the degree of wholistic treatment that we're offering. but the elephant in the room, as well, is the fact that we are losing so many people each and

every day who never started their va care in the first place. we have got to eliminate the stigma about going to the va as well as receiving mental health and experiencing personal trauma. i have friends myself who i deployed with down range who are going through hard times. and i know that we are trying to be there for each other. but my hope is that we can continue to build on the infrastructure that the va presents to make sure that we are not losing so many veterans each and every day to suicide. >> noah. >> congressman, i'm going to pivot a little bit to politics. i've got to ask you about the apparent tensions within the caucus, the speaker nancy pelosi. >> i can always rely on you, buddy. >> yeah, you know, that's what -- this is what really moves the needle. >> absolutely. >> saying some tough things about progressive members on of your caucus. alexandria ocasio-cortez recently said that she is frustrated by the, quote, persistent singling out. it got to a point where it's

outright disrespectful, the singling out of newly elected women of color. nancy pelosi is pretty clear that. what do you make of those comments? >> first of all, i'm not going to allow you to fuel a political tv drama. >> i'm only quoting the speaker. >> no, no, i know what you are. what this does, in all seriousness, it only leads to hard working men and women, cops, firemen, people living in public housing and god knows who else to be continued to be ignored by washington, d.c. think about this for a second, okay? donald trump runs on a series of platforms making our roads and bridges great again, draining the swamp. he proceeds to ignore all those proposals. mitch mcconnell continues to show an unbelievable sociopathic intransigence whenever it comes to legislation that we pass in the house and present to him in the senate. then you have the democratic caucus that is always teetering, always teetering on the edge of

this type of back and forth twitter drama. we have got to refocus our energies in a bipartisan and bycameraal way on the bread and butter issues that the american people actually care about. and i assure you that this type of twitter back and forth, the american people couldn't get a damn and neither do i. >> i give an amen to congressman max on that one. thank you, reverend. >> i see a show in your future. rose and rothman on new york 1. we'll hash out some issues about the bridge in staten island. >> harold, before i let you go, let me ask you about what else? we're going to hope and assume and we'll be holding people accountable as we watch this vote today in the house and later in the senate, the people who had the #never forget on all their tweets, we'll see if they forgot or not when this vote comes up. what else do your firefighters need? big picture, what are you looking at beyond this vote? >> well, you know, i was just listening to the conversation concerning behavioral health and

that within our profession, posttraumatic stress are a critical issue. we need to depend on the support, the resources to address that. the sigma that the congressman mentioned is unfortunately part of what we established within our profession many decades ago. and it's something we're trying to address. bring the issues out of the shadows, into the light. unfortunately, right now we have more iff members that are dieing, self-imposed from suicide than we are in the line of duty deaths. so it's a critical health issue and it's an issue that needs the attention from all levels of government and certainly the congress can look at providing funding and support for us to provide the peer support that's needed and the infrastructure that is needed and the treatment and recovery that is needed. >> we appreciate your being here to speak for those heros. the president of the

international association of firefighters, harold shaper. thank you very much. congressman max rose, always good to see you and hear you, as well. >> thanks, brother. coming up next, new polling of the 2020 democratic race has joe biden and elizabeth warren leading the pack. we'll dig into the numbers and where south carolina voters stand on those candidates, as well. plus, former homeland security secretary jay johnson will be our guest. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. johnson & johnson is a baby company.

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me. i don't like mosquitoes. i don't like those mosquitoes. i never did. >> squashed like a bug. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, july 12th. along with joe, willie and me, we have nbc news correspondent highly pris ybella, host of friy night politics on msnbc donny deutsch. donny is a little bit too tan, but okay. reverend al sharpton and former chief of staff to the dccc and former director of strategic communications for hillary clinton's presidential campaign, adrian elrod. she's an msnbc contributor and national security expert columnist at usa today and author of the book "the death of expertise" tom nichols who does not use tanning beds like donny deutsch. >> no, no. mika, it's tanning spray, it's not tanning beds.

there's a difference. tanny bedding are very unhealthy. tanning spray is very organic. >> i'm right now having a mental image of you doing tanning spray. >> no, no. >> willie, let's talk about the mosquito thing. what is it with mosquitoes and flies and donald trump? i know he's a real germophobe, but man. >> the mosquito clip from 2016 has always been the most entertain to go me because of the voice that he drops whenever he encounters anything. what is that thing he does when there's a fly or mosquito in the room? low on the list of problems, but interesting, nonetheless. >> very low. very low. let's get right to the news of the morning. the first nbc news "wall street journal" poll of the 2020 democratic presidential race shows the fronts runners are the two people who were at center stage in each night of last month's debates. former vice president joe biden leads the pack with 26%.

while senator elizabeth warren trails by 7 points at 19%. senators kamala harris and bernie sanders tied for third place with 13% each. mayor pete buttigieg is at 7% and andrew yang and beto o'rourke each pulling 2%. no other candidate cracks 1%, leaving them currently below one of the threshold requirements to qualify for the third round of debates in september. >> so let's stop real quick. we can go to people sharing it views and who they think defeat trump. let's go back to the overall list of the candidates and, willie, boy, i'll tell you what, as we get to the early states, we're going to show south carolina in a minute. it becomes so clear that this race, there may be 21 people who say they're in the race, but it's down to five if you believe anything of these polls.

and for people that have been saying that the polls make no difference, well, they're wrong because good money doesn't chase bad polls. and those top five candidates happen to be the top five candidates with the most money. right now, biden is doing well. >> if you're amy klobuchar, if you're cory booker, you're a well known united states senator and you're sitting below andrew yang, you have to be discouraged and your donors have to be discouraged. if you're beto o'rourke and you were on the cover of "vanity fair" and you're tied with andrew yang, you have to be discurbaged. but if you're elizabeth warren and you're at 19% nipping at the heels now of joe biden, you have to be incredibly edge curved wi -- encouraged with where you are. if you look right here among african-american voters, he has

a 30-point lead almost over kamala harris. if you look at all he's been through over the last couple of weeks with the comments about segregation of senators, busing with kamala harris turning and looking at joe biden and confronting him during the debate in miami, it appears for the most part, african-american voters have stayed with him for now. yes, it does. i think that there has been an increase with kamala harris with clearly the joe biden according to the polls has a significant lead and that's the read on the ground. i think, though, he ought to look at the fact that she is rising there and that can cause problems with south carolina. might be a large part of why they're not doing better in terms of the general polls.

so if i were part of the other three of the five that seem to be locked in at the top, my concern would be why i'm not getting through at all while joe biden is still relatively comfort there and we see kamala harris on the rise there. >> go back if you will. the break down by race. i want to show that again because there had been two candidates that had done well in the national polls who continue to lag behind for a support among black voters as you and i say, once you get out of iowa and new hampshire, that's the ball game. you're going to see -- if a candidate can't get support among black voters, they're going to lose south carolina pretty badly. there are two candidates who stand out right now who still have a lot of work to do. mayor pete who put out a program yesterday and talked about how

to improve the lives of african-americans and elizabeth warren, not surprisingly we'll see in a minute those two lag far behind the rest of the field. and you know, it's something you and i talk about all the time, joe, and that is that a lot of the so-called progressive candidates don't penetrate on the ground in the black community because they have an ivory tower view of what blacks are about and don't relate. they don't understand that because they are removed from that. so people don't really relate to them. they may agree on one or two issues, but they don't connect to them. >> it's so important and we've said this time and again, because, of course, alex talked about it time and again, that

you talk about ideology among democrats and republicans. what it seems sometimes both party's elises don't understand is hispanic voters and black voters, a lot of voters are conservative with a small city and do not relate to latte liberals. >> no. and by age groups, biden trails both sanders and warren by double digits. but biden is the run away favorite among voters who are 50 and older with 39% to harris' 17% and warren's 15%. sanders gets just 3% with these older voters. biden is also far behind warren with liberal voters. 29% prefer warren. 17% choose biden. but among moderate and

conservative democrats, biden garters 35% followed by harris at 15% to your point, joe. >> yeah. and i'll tell you what, adrian, every time i look at these numbers, i think we've picked out alex and the team have picked out the two most important cross tabs for the democratic primary. the vote down racial lines. but also the vote down age lines. every time i look at young voters swarming up, i'm excited like everybody else. the getting involved. but whenever i've said this, i said it on the night of the 2004 election. that if your campaign strategy depends on a historic number of young voters sweeping you over the top, you will be left standing at the alter. it does not -- you want those old voters, the old voters get out and vote. if you can excite young voters, as well, that's fantastic. but just young voters will

likely disappoint you like they disappointed howard dean in 2004. right now, biden has the older voters. he would like more of the younger voters. but i'm curious what you think about bernie sanders not doing so well with voters over age 50. >> yeah. joe, it's fascinating. first on ever all, you're exactly right. the two most reliable issues when it comes to voters turning out is older americans over the age of 50 and avenue cane american voters. joe biden is polling well with those groups. he has a debate coming up. he didn't lose a lot of support among his key core constituency as a result of that debate. so that's good news. also, hike you said, joe, when it comes to the younger voters, every election cycle, you know, lots of money. millions and millions of dollars is spent on mobilizing young voters and we have seen a greater turnout over the last

two election cycles. but at the same time, you still cannot rehigh that constituency as much as you can among african-american voters. you also cannot become the democratic nominee if you don't have the support among african-americans. again, the field is 25 people, but i think what we're seeing as a result of this poll and other polls that have come out since the debate is the field is set. the field is start to go gel and it's going to be so much harder for somebody like cory booker, amy klobuchar to break into that 4% to 5% where you would need to be. we also have to keep in mind the way the democratic process is set up in the democratic primary, you have to get 15% of the vote in a congressional district to even qualify for delegates. so we're still six months away from iowa, but you have to start thinking -- i guess seven months away. but you have to start thinking if you are a voter, you know, start to go make up your mind, if you're a campaign mapping out your strategy over the next seven months or so, you have to

make sure that 15% of some of these congressional districts, otherwise you're going to get the delegates out of this. a demanding lead, over twice the support of any other candidate. plus, homeland security secretary jeh johnson will be our guest. heading towards the gulf coast. bill. >> good morning to you, mika. the headline is tropical storm barry could produce over two feet of rain over the weekend and that could cause life threatening flooding along the property damage. that's the big headline. this is going to be an epic rainfall producer. new update from the hurricane center, winds are up to 50 miles per hour. that's not going to cause any damage. we are watching some tropical storm gusts start to go arrive on the coastline of louisiana so the breeze would be picking up. as far as the path goes from the hurricane center, the next one will be updated at 11:00 a.m. east coast time. it will take it on shore late tonight into early saturday

morning and drift it to the north of louisiana. remember to the right side of the storms is where you get the rainfall. this map shows you the bright red is 7 inches. a huge area of 10 inches of rain and this is the region that could see someone getting 20, 25 inches of rainfall. that's why new orleans and southern portions of mississippi is in a high risk on of flash flooding. the other areas of concern we've been talking about the mississippi river and the storm surge. we're still expecting the river to go up to about 19 feet in downtown new orleans. the levees protect up to 20 feet. so we're only one foot away from that. but as of now, the army core psf engineers is saying we should be okay and safe in new orleans. we'll see how that mays out as we go into the day saturday. the rest of the country as we go through the upcoming weekend, not a lot of weather headlines. a lot of areas like new york city will be hot and dry with temperatures near 90 this weekend. we'll be right back. this weekend. we'll be right back. johnson & johnson is a baby company.

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fox news poll of south carolina democrats shows the former vice president with a big lead in the first in the south primary. 35% say they would vote for biden, a 21-point lead over senator bernie sanders who gets 14%. senator bernie sanders is second with 14% and senator kamala harris has 12%. like the nbc national poll, biden's advantage here is built on a strong show of support from the state's african-american voters, among whom he attracts 41% of the vote compared to receiving just 25% among white democrats. >> so let's stop here.

other charts show you the same thing, biden does well with older voters. so i'm going to keep this one up first. here you have, we were talking about it before, elizabeth warren sitting at 2% among black voters in south carolina. mayor pete only sitting at 1% in south carolina. now, if you will, switch over to the overall south carolina number. and when with you switch over to the overall south carolina number, you see actually that there is a good reason mayor pete is only sitting at 2% and in large part because of the vote. elizabeth warren drops from 19% in the national polls to 5% in south carolina. this is what we've been saying for some time. everybody focuses on iowa and new hampshire and my gosh, they are such important early contests. but, really, the look of the democratic primary, the character of the democratic

primary, rev, doesn't start until we get those results in from south carolina and we see who is going to do well on super tuesday, who is going to do well in the northeast, who is going to do well where the states are more diverse and more represent the overall population. >> no doubt about it. and if you are discounted in south carolina or do very poorly, you will not probably survive to see the rest because you won't have the money and you really won't have the kind of momentum. i think what is interesting about this is, again, many people that talk about the progressive win of the party do not understand the they are not talking about the most of the african-american community who have different views that could be conservatives like you say in real life things and who relate to people. the other thing that i think that people fred when they talk about joe biden is i agree with

donny that donald trump won playing the race card, but he also played that he was going to undo everything president trump did. we must undo what obama did. well, undoing obama is undoing obama biden. so a lot of african-americans are saying this is my vote to say i am with obama/biden and the things that donald trump is trying to undo. and biden gets a lot of support because of that. he was the copilot of the years that mr. trump is now trying to dis-mays. so it's going to take more than one or two bad nights at a debate for people to look at joe biden as separate from the last ten years. they weren't around 50 years with ago busing. it's a big issue, an important issue, but they remember in real life their own experiences over the last ten years that is trying to be displaced by this president. and joe biden was part of that and really fought ohard in that.

i was in the rooms. i disagreed with joe biden in the 90s. but joe biden was an ardent fighter in the rooms with what barack obama tried to do and in farn affairs, no question about it. coming up, the fight to add a citizenship question to the census has failed. why is attorney general bill barr congratulating him inspect? "morning joe" is back in a moment. t? "morning joe" is back in a moment nspect? "morning joe" is back in a moment. spect? "morning joe" is back in a moment. pect? "morning joe" is back in a moment. ect? "morning joe" is back in a moment. ct? "morning joe" is back in a moment. t? "morning joe" is back in a moment. ? "morning joe" is back in a moment. ? "morning joe" is back in a moment. johnson & johnson is a baby company. but we're also a cancer fighting, hiv controlling, joint replacing, and depression relieving company. from the day you're born we never stop taking care of you.

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xfinity mobile has the best network. best devices. best value. simple. easy. awesome. click, call or visit a store today. welcome back. president trump is ending his efforts to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census. trump announced the decision yesterday, two weeks after the supreme court rebuked the administration over its efforts to include that question. last week, the president told reporters he may issue an executive order to include the question. instead, trump ordered the federal government to compile citizenship data from existing federal records. as the "new york times" points out, even that order appears to reiterate plans the commerce

department announced last year, making it not a new policy, but rather a way for trump to cover that he retreated from his census battle, that he caved. here is the president speaking yesterday in the rose garden. >> i'd proud to be a citizen. you're proud to be a citizen. the only people who are not proud to be citizens are the ones who are fighting us all the way about the word citizen far left democrats in our country are determined to conceal the number of illegal aliens in our midst. they probably know the number is far greater, much higher than anyone would have ever believed before. maybe that's why they fight so hard. this is part of a broader left wing effort to erode the rights of the american citizen. we are not backing down on our effort to determine the citizenship status of the united

states population. >> thank you, mr. president, and congratulations on today's executive order which will ensure that we finally have an accurate understanding of how much citizens and noncitizens live in our country. >> joe, i guess maybe yet another example of how far barr will go to just destroy his reputation. he does not care. >> well, he's shameful. it's just -- he and pompeo and a few others, i mean, they're acting like seth gorka. if that's how they want their children and grandchildren to remember them, that's how they will be remembered. there is not much of a line right now between the behavior of seb grka aorka and donald tr latest attorney general. no, that's not a compliment. >> not even a joke. >> what's so fascinating is that

it's -- they already -- they've already collected this information. and they collected it and the commerce department wanted it to be collected, too. the federal government has been doing this for some time. the commerce department ordered that they do it again. so, again, the president is just covering himself. i do want to say, though, that i am very glad and very relieved that the president did back down on this issue, because if he did not back down on the issue, it would have been a constitutional crisis. if he had tried to defy a supreme court ruling which would have put us into entirely new territory. but, you know, tom, boy, i don't know where to start with you on this one. i guess, let's take the easiest target and that is attorney general barr going up there and degrading himself once again. and, i just want to say, also, a

lot of my friends, conservative friends who will not get out and defend donald trump have seen barr as a safe harbor, someone they can defend and still, you know, play to the conservative cheap seats. but is there anything to defend with this guy? i mean, he beclowned himself again yesterday. >> you know, that's the thing i've wondered. at the evend of this. it was bad enough, right, you have several things happening during this press conference. one is that the president of the united states has no understanding of the separation of powers. after 2 1/2 years, it's clear he still doesn't understand his own job or the nature of his own office. the second is that he's clearly trying to make the census toxic to minorities. he wants a lot of people in this country to just kind of seize up at the very notion of the census as being wedded somehow to the anti-immigration position of the

administration. but that last moment where barr turns and says, congratulations, mr. president, you're awesome for folding, it really -- it wasn't necessary. this is the thing. this is where barr goes off the ledge. joe, you said he's shameful. i would say it's shameless because he didn't have to say it. he could have said, i'm here, i'm representing the justice department. we're going to execute what the president wants. the president's order was that the executive branch has to talk to itself. okay. he can order that. and we're going to move out smartly and get this done. but then to turn and clearly be stroking the president's ego by saying, congratulations, sir, you, you are awesome. >> oh, my gosh. >> it really was -- it was just cringe worthy. and you wonder why, you know, why these people feel the need to do this. and i think part of it is they know it's the only way to survive in this white house. it is the only way to make sure that they stay there. still ahead, is america

falling behind in the tech wars? nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engle traveled all across china and witnessed firsthand a country positioning itself to become a 21st century super power. he joins us with a look at what he found, next on "morning joe." " guess what? we took everything you love about the bloomin' onion and created a menu you've never seen before. ♪ bloom, there it is!

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products from our great farmers that they said they would. hopefully they will start soon. joining us now, u.s. business editor for the economist, vijay warren. also with us is chief foreign correspondent for nbc news and host of "on assignment i "on msnbc, richard engle. this investigates china's use of the advanced technology. take a look. >> first trip in a self-flying taxi, no meter, no taxi driver. here we go. this is amazing. we're just sort of hovering here. it's still a prototype, but eventually this flying robot taxi will have a range of 25 miles and they're already being

tested for use in china. from speed records to robot hotels, everywhere you look, you get a sense of china's rise. sean rain grew up in new hampshire, but now runs a successful company in china advising businesses on how to access the country's growing consumer class. >> when i first moved to china in the 90s, it was very difficult for chinese to get a job. they were desperate, wanted to work in factories making nike airs, working 12 or 14 hours a day for literally a dollar or two. now chinese consumers don't want to make nike products any more, they actually want to buy them. >> so richard engle, in so many ways, this is amazing and it's also concerning. tell us what else you found out. >> we traveled across china for several weeks and got, for china, really good access.

we spoke with party officials. we went to ports. we spoke to industrialists. we spoke to people on the street and we weren't monitored -- well, we weren't followed. we didn't have a minder with us. and throughout the course of our reporting, we came back to one theme and that is that china sees an opportunity right now to make itself the dominant power for the 21st century. they see the u.s. as floundering right now. they think we're consumed with domestic politics, that we've been long consumed with the middle east and they think this is an opportunity for them to spread their wings under the leadership of xi jinping. one big way that they're man planning to do this is investing big in artificial intelligence. and you get this sense of this national spirit all across the country. not just when you're talking to senior officials, but it is trickling down even to the

ground level. we rode on the country's high speed railroad -- railways and i just spoke to a fellow passengers. and she said, yes, you guys did great. you americans were at the top of the pile for a long time. but we're taking it from here. >> china is on the rise. i'm head to go one of its dynamic new cities and i got to ride on china's new high speed rail network. one of my fellow travelers happened to be a lawyer named sandy shang. >> we want our country to be the number one. >> number one country in the world? >> of course. >> leader of the world. >> of course. why not? >> and what happens to the u.s.? >> number two. >> number two? >> why not? >> no one champions that message more than president xi jinping. president xi mixes chinese nationalism with state

controlled capitalism. the combination allows them to roll out huge projects very quickly. and none is bigger than the so-called belton road initiative. it's a massive infrastructure project that spans multiple continents. you might call it a silk road for the 21st century. >> the united states clearly needs to keep an eye on belton road. i think there are geopolitical motivations, there are economic motivations, there may be military motivations. that's entirely legitimate concern out there. >> so vijay, you're writing about this in "the economist." you spent a lot of time in china itself. and you're writing specifically about global supply chains. how does it fit into the push forward nationally for china? >> i thought it was a great package. you captured the dine mimp of the chinese innovation economy. when he returned from china after six years back to the u.s. landing at kennedy airport, sometimes you feel like you're stepping back in time when it

comes to infrastructure. china is very good at big infrastructure. if we look at what china is really good at on innovation, they're very good at business models, companies like ali baba. they're good at you frugal engineering, doing things cheaply but coming up with great products that are affordable. lenovo with laptops, the drone industry is made by them. they're great at that. the challenge for them is alluded to in the report. that is state capitalism. the role of xi jinping of a bigger state of more pervasive sort of state capitalism. that's actually challenging and undercutting some of the amaze g dynamism of great entrepreneurs. the danger is that it is getting crowded out by a strong state that's getting even further into people's lives. >> so you get the sense that clean's economic rise is now with political liberalism.

we were talking in the break about the social credit scores, this is accompanied with the rise of these camps in the east with millions of people in re-education centers. these hong kong protests over this last week seemed to people who we spoke with to be very frustrating and disturbing to beijing. but you seem to get the sense that the national mission, this mission of making china number one trumps any desire for economic liberalism among the people who could deliver it. >> it's connected to their economic agenda throughout the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, china was focused on growing its economy, bringing people out of poverty. but it didn't have a very active foreign policy. i think now it wants its political cloud to match its economic crowd. and it feels the moment has come with the u.s. having this moment of self-doubt. >> but i would just underline, if you don't mean, the techo authoritarian model in china is

serious, quite distinctive. it will give them some advantages in innovation. for example, artificial intelligence, they're the world leaders in facial recognition technology. here in the west, we have concerns about facial recognition being applied to everything in our lives and they have a different way of applying big data and privacy issues. that will give them some advantages, but those may not be advantages that we want to have in the west .that might give them an edge in some areas. >> did you get a sense when you were there, richard, of how the china eesz view the president's tariff threats and the tariff policy? because the reporting back home has been that there could be some effectiveness through those tariffs of moving some of those supply chains away from china, perhaps other parts of the southeast or, you know, just other parts of the globe generally. so what was your sense of the chinese view of how anxious they are over these tariffs? >> they were a problem. the tariffs are causing pain to the chinese economy and causing pain to sectors of the u.s. economy, as well.

but i think china sees them as a short-term problem, that this is something that they have to get through while they are focused on a long-term vision. so yes, the tariffs are painful. they will go up and there will be moments of struggle for them. but they see in terms of their longer term trajectory, that it doesn't really factor in. they don't think they're going to be derailed by some demands by the u.s. by china buy more agricultural products. >> the trade war has a big impact on the u.s., as well. there are no winners in a trade war. chinese economy is slowing, but the u.s. companies, american multi nationals have a lot of liabilities on their books that are often hidden, which is their exposure to supply chains. very few companies know who supplies the supplier to the supplier to the supplier. but in an all-out trade war, we will find out really quickly who has toxic assets on their books.

and the potential of a big trade war implication on the u.s. and global economy is one of those risks that could derail our economic expansion. >> richard engle, thank you very much. you can catch richard's full report on china's use of advanced technology this sunday at 10:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. vijay, thank you so much, as well, for being on the show. "the economist's" new special report is out now. still ahead, with mass i.c.e. raids set to begin this weekend, our next guest says it is time for straight talk on immigration. former homeland security secretary jeh johnson is standing by and jones the conversation next. and as we go to break, a lot going on at know your value.com. we've got a lot of new articles, editor in chief of kos ma toll t ten magazine joins us now.

wilbur ramos, my makeup artist, talks about coming out and talk bes doing makeup for fox and friends. they talk about that and raising their son, dorian. it's an amazing interview. what is it like working with a family member? we have a big article on that. joe and i talk about that, about what it's like to work together. and alex, it's so smooth. when we're in a fight, you don't even know, right? that's good, right? you can tell? >> right. we'll be back. right back. >> we'll be right back. t back >> we'll be right back hat way..♪ i can't believe it. that karl brought his karaoke machine? ♪ ain't nothing but a heartache... ♪ no, i can't believe how easy it was to save hundreds of dollars on my car insurance with geico. ♪ i never wanna hear you say... ♪ no, kevin... no, kevin! believe it! geico could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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collateral means kids being left. it means moms, dads, families being torn apart. it is absolutely disgusting. >> shame, shame, shame on this awful administration. >> i'm going to appeal to the people of faith, faith based organizations, to appeal to the president. >> this is fundamentally unfair. it has nothing to do with the security and safety of the

united states. >> democratic lawmakers reacting to the trump administration's planned nationwide immigration raids scheduled to begin on sunday. those raids, which were postponed three weeks ago, are set to target around 2,000 families in major cities across the u.s. including chicago, houston, and san francisco. joining us now former senior adviser for the house oversight and government reform committee, kurt barredella and former secretary of homeland security under president obama, out with an article entitled "trump era politics are drowning out consensus on immigration. it is time for some straight talk. he writes in part this. it's time for straight talk on immigration. there's almost none left in the highly emotional and politicized environment of the trump era. to win support from a vocal and committed segment of a major party's base, and simply for the sake of a good applause line

candidates for office now espouse extreme policy proposals that are unworkable and have no hope of winning the broad support of congress and the people they represent. as someone who has held public office and took that responsibility seriously, i also know it to be realistic. those who aspire to public office should not espouse campaign promises that have no prospect for success. this is a disservice to our democracy and assumes voters are fools. here is a radical proposal. a presidential candidate who is willing to educate, enlighten, and tell voters the hard truths. this trait has all but evaporated in u.s. politics, but it is the single best job qualification for those who aspire to lead. jay, let's go on with the straight talk. you heard those democrats, veronica escobar especially emotional. shame on this terrible administration. i think many agree what is happening at the border

especially with children but with all human beings being held in cages and in unsanitary conditions, i mean, this is something i think we can all agree on, is it not? >> absolutely. members of congress who visited the border and have been to these facilities who come away emotional and upset i believe are entitled to be emotional and upset. i've been there a number of times myself when i was in office. the conditions are horrible. our department of homeland security, our border patrol, i.c.e., and our president should commit to doing a better job. americans should demand that. mika, the reason i wrote the op-ed is i feel as though in this debate right now what is being lost is the overwhelming consensus that i know exists among the american public that, yes. we should be fair and humane to those who are here particularly the dreamers, particularly those who came here as children. those who are here for years,

who are defacto americans but americans also want a secure border. you go to laredo, texas, for example, which is 85% hispanic, hispanic american the people will tell you yes we need to take care of the people who are here, be fair, fix our system but also secure the border. i am afraid that is being lost in the current presidential debate. that's why i wrote the op-ed. >> kurt, there is another hearing today in the house oversight committee over the separated children at the border. with our politics so divided and with the two parties and the two chambers so far apart on this issue, what do you think another hearing is going to do? how is it really going to change the dynamic right now given where we are in our politics? >> i'm not sure it is going to change anything but i do think it is important that congress use the tools that they have to show case what is actually happening in this country, what the consequences are.

hearing from professionals in these type of hearings about what the actual real world impact is of the policies we're seeing put in place, how they affect human beings, you know, congress can only do so much as we know, we've seen the limitations of congress and of having that majority, but holding hearings and putting on that show every day is really the only thing they can do to stop the administration that continues to just govern and act by executive fiat. at the end of the day the reason we're in this situation in the first place, the lack of progress on immigration from a policy standpoint is 100% because of the republican party. every time there has been a potential consensus, collaborative position on immigration, it has been tank rolled by the right. back in the 2000s we had john mccain and ed kennedy working on all of this, having a bill. the right tank rolled it. in 2010, 2014, we had the gang of eight bill that was supposed to go somewhere. here comes the right and they annihliated it. i think the secretary is right.

there needs to be a coming together but every time we have that moment, the democrats are there. it's the right, on the republican side, that ends up destroying it. >> mr. secretary, joe biden is under attack from some progressive advocates for immigration saying that he served under a president whom they called the deporter-in-chief because he executed removal orders. we have these outstanding i.c.e. raids announced in advance, which is bizarre, but there are some 1 million existing removal orders. this is the execution of those orders. how is this different from what the obama administration did? >> first, even the most aggressive immigration enforcement person will tell you, you don't telegraph enforcement actions in advance. that is not an optimal situation from the enforcement perspective. deportations occur all the time. of those who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge, hopefully after they have exhausted their appeal rights and had an opportunity to have their asylum case heard, we simply have to enforce the law,

particularly if someone has been ordered deported. now, these high profile focused enforcement actions, it is important for people to remember that they do have rights if they are arrested from i.c.e., if they're ordered deported in absentia very often they have a right to a rehearing in person, and they cannot be deported until the process has run its course. in other words, they've exhausted all their appeal rights. so it is important for migrants to know they have rights. enforcement actions, themselves, are not extraordinary. >> mr. secretary, you mentioned the issue of rights and knowing your rights and we're seeing right now in the runnup to this announcement that there is going to be these raids, kind of grandstanding from the administration, that there is this widespread concern that they're preying on people who don't know their rights, who don't know if you don't have a warrant signed by a judge you

don't have to open that door when they come knocking. i'm curious. being from the position that you're in, as dhs secretary, how do you balance law enforcement actions with knowing and protecting the rights of the people that you're pursuing? >> well, it's not easy. you're right. very often the population, the people that are focused on here, are people who are least sophisticated when it comes to knowing their rights, understanding their rights in this country, which is why the immigration bar, immigration lawyers are so important in this debate. i've been pleased over the last two or three years to see the immigration bar in this country really step up and expand at the border, in the interior, and so immigration lawyers are in a position to do a lot of good here. i want to go back to something that was said before. as recently at five, six years ago, there was a bipartisan understanding that if you wanted to have immigration reform, if you wanted to take care of the dreamers, you wanted to have a

path to citizenship, we all understood we also have to do more to secure our border. that is the basis for bringing republicans and democrats together. that dynamic simply does not exist anymore in washington which is why i'm pessimistic anything can really get done. >> all right. former secretary of homeland security, jeh johnson, thank you very much. kurt bardella, thank you as well. before we go today, here's a quick look at some of the headlines this morning from the early voting states around the country. in south carolina, "the herald" leads with "i.c.e. poised for nationwide roundup for deportation." in new hampshire, "the valley news" goes with, "trump ends bid for citizenship question." and affecting how voters nationwide get their news, "the new york post" reports starbucks will stop selling newspapers at its more than 8600 shops nationwide as of september 1st. wow. that does it for us this

morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks much, mika. good morning. i'm stephanie ruhle. it is 9:00 a.m. right here in new york and we have a lot to get to this morning including a brand new nbc news poll showing there is a new 2020 democratic contender closing in on joe biden. elizabeth warren now within striking distance of the front-runner. our steve kornacki will join us to dig into that poll and explain what is behind warren's big bounce. but first, as the 2020 democratic field continues to take shape, we are starting to get a glimpse of president trump's 2020 strategy. this hour he'll be departing the white house for milwaukee, where he is set to push for a new trade deal. this is just one of the many ways the president is claiming he will fight for his base at any cost even when those very policies don't pan out. yesterday in a rare retreat the president announced he is now backing down from