thank you very much. of course going to be reading axios a.m. in a little bit. to all of our viewers out there, you can sign up for the newsletter by going to sign-up.axios.com. >> that does it for us have. "morning joe" starts right now. someone tried to order a cake for a 2-year-old that said happy birthday lizard, but they misheard them and sent them a cake that said happy birthday loser. meanwhile at the white house, trump was like, why does the cake i ordered for don jr. say lizard? >> good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, july 26th, along with joe, willie and me, we have the host of saturday night politics, donny deutsch. "new york times" reporter jeremy peters. republican strategist and msnbc political analyst susan del percio. politics editor sam stein and

associated editor of "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst, eugene robinson is with us this morning. so take your pick, joe, of the top stories. >> i want to hear about moscow mitch. >> can congressional democrats get on the same page? nancy pelosi meets with aoc this morning. >> good news there. >> this as one of the house speakers top lieutenants comes out in support of impeaching the president. plus, congress takes action on one front and definitely does not on another. the house passes a sweeping spending bill while senate republicans block election security legislation just hours after bob mueller testified. in case there's any doubt about russia, which there should not be, a new report from the intel committee shows just how aggressive moscow was and how unprepared the u.s. was to deal with it. >> you know, we'll talk about that in a second, but willie, the most shocking thing about this is that robert mueller testified that not only did

russia try to interfere with our 2016 election and not only did donald trump's -- all of his intend community and nielsen said that russia undermined the election. moscow mitch, that being mitch mcconnell, of moscow, kentucky, actually blocked that and said he threatened the people that were going to try to get that information out to warn americans. now we have almost four years later this same warning is coming, coming not only from the independent counsel, which 60% of republicans believe ran a fair investigation -- republicans. we now have the intel committee and the senate run by north carolina republican richard burr saying what? that the russians tried to infiltrate all 50 states in 2016

to undermine american democracy. and to undermine a free and fair election. on the same day, willie, moscow mitch blocks two bills that would actually protect us from a russian invasion in this area. >> well, first of all, thank you for burying the lead by is the red sox dismantling of the yankees last night at fenway park. >> well we predicted that you'd sweep us so you win three out of four. >> so we push that that to the side. the senate report that came out yesterday from the intel committee led by republican richard burr of north carolina was damning but merely reit rated what we have heard over the last two years. we have heard from the intelligence agencies. we heard from the mueller report. we heard from robert mueller testimony who said memorably two days ago, russia is interfering right now as we sit here. and will interfere again in our 2020 election. it is happening in realtime. now the senate intel committee coming out and detailing in its

own way after its investigation what exactly russia and other countries have been doing. so to have mitch mcconnell step in between election security and this country and our future elections is what is coming up in 2020 is outrageous. when he talks about it, mitch mcconnell talks about it in terms of this conspiracy. he calls it the russia hoax, you know? he said, well, this just another bill from the democrats who have been pushing a hoax. well, the hoax is not a hoax. it's what robert mueller spent six hours the other day detailing. it's what the senate intel committee details in a long report with more to come. i don't know how you can in good faith sit in denial about what is happening and what's going to happen in the next election. >> well, you know we're about to get to some blockbuster polls, donny, are going to show how much donald trump is still suffering in the polls. he can fire all the pollsters he wants but the americans are on

to him. let's talk about moscow mitch. so you have robert mueller, a life long republican, the most respected fbi director in the history of this country. a vietnam war hero. a guy that made the ranger -- the army rangers hall of fame. a guy who said russia is trying to invade america right now. they're -- moscow mitch says it's a hoax. you have his own intelligence committee in the senate led by republican richard burr saying that russia tried to infiltrate all 50 states. back in 2016 and are going to try it again. moscow mitch calls it a hoax. you have the republican trump appointed fbi director saying that the russians infiltrated america's democracy and are going to try again. moscow mitch calls it a hoax. you have the head -- the director of national intelligence saying that the russians tried to infiltrate our

election system. tried to subvert american democracy. they're going to try it again. moscow mitch said it's a hoax. you have trump's appointed director of the cia saying that the russians are trying to undermine american democracy. that the russians tried in '16, will try again. moscow mitch calls it a hoax. you have military intel people, the military intel community, knowing because they were fighting the russians in 2015-2016 and are still fighting them every day. to stop them from continuing to infiltrate american democracy. moscow mitch says it's a hoax. tell me, i understand that there's an oligarch that i have read is going to be setting up a big aluminum plant in moscow

mitch's home state. i don't know if that's it. but how can moscow mitch so willingly turn a blind eye not only this year to what his republican chairman of the intel committee is saying, to what robert mueller is saying what the fbi director is saying what the dni is saying, to what the cia is saying, to what the united states military intel community is saying. how can they moscow mitch keep denying that vladimir putin continues to try to subvert american democracy? >> i love you're calling him moscow mitch -- >> what am i supposed to call him? cocaine mitch. you know, people call him cocaine mitch. maybe -- i don't know. maybe he's -- i mean, he's only cocaine mitch if he's running cocaine to moscow because he's moscow mitch. >> because, joe -- >> seriously, he is -- he is aiding and abetting vladimir

putin's ongoing attempts to subvert american democracy according to the republican fbi, cia, dni, intel committee, all republicans are all saying russia is sub verting american democracy and moscow mitch won't let the senate take a vote on it. that is un-american. >> joe, you're doing this because it's something you started yesterday. i want to wind back yesterday because to me, i have been on if show ten years frankly and i have listened to a lot, i have listened to you a lot. we have brawled on the air a lot and what you said in a couple of minutes yesterday to me is the most important thing that's ever been said on this show. on any show on this air and that we are at war. it is time for the democrats to wake up. we are playing against cheaters and liars or stealers and with all due respect to michelle obama when they go low, we've

got to do whatever we have to do. we actually have a government led by moscow mitch and criminal trump -- by the way, we're going to call him unindicted criminal trump because in two instances he has been an unindicted criminal. so i know in regular -- when you're playing fair you're supposed to call him president trump. just moscow mitch, we'll call him criminal trump, another message for the democrats is it is time to move forward. there are two takeaways from mueller that we're going to use as we go to war. number one, the president broke the law and when he's out of office he can go and will go to jail and number two, we are vulnerable with our election systems. that's our two things. we may not have won the battle of impeachment, but we're going to win the war of putting him in jail. whatever we have to do. and we're not going to necessarily play fair and for all of the intellectuals out there, saying we're going to become like them, we can't lose

the next election. we will go back 50 years. we have to start -- one other thing, joe, let me finish. the one tool we have to use that the democrats never use is fear. start to stop talking about donald trump today and yesterday. and start to paint a picture of what the next four years would look like. maybe even the next eight, 12 years because he doesn't think he's going anywhere of the possible path to a dystopian society. there is no more -- we cannot bring a knife fight to a bazooka gunfight. >> here's the thing though, gene robinson, we don't have to look four years into the future. we can look right now. and yes, we are at war. we are at war and russia declared that war in 2016. and they decided they were going to subvert american democracy and every one of donald trump's appointed intel chiefs said russia is trying to subvert american democracy.

robert mueller said it a few days ago and yesterday the intel chief, the republican intel chief, a guy i came into congress with in 1984 he's a conservative guy. the entire intel committee said the russians tried to subvert american democracy in 50 states and they're still trying it. and yet, moscow mitch keeps killing any bill that would protect american democracy from vladimir putin's spies. what do we do about that, gene? >> well, you know, what do we do about it? we unelect this -- as donny deutsch called him criminal president. and we call it out. i mean, look, i'm in total agreement with the -- when they go low, we get busy argument. i mean, it is -- this is an

emergency. this is a situation i have never seen in american politics. and we are in danger. we really are in danger by this president. and this administration. and this senate majority leader who will not allow -- will not allow a vote on this -- on this crucial legislation. >> protecting america. he will not, gene, allow a vote on protecting america. >> yeah. >> the dhs secretary, the fbi director, the cia director, dni head, they all are military community, everybody has said that american democracy is at risk. and mitch mcconnell, moscow mitch, continues to cover up for vladimir putin and won't allow the vote. >> he does, and, you know, richard burr is not a flaming liberal, he runs the senate intel committee, but that report is chilling. and one of the chilling parts is

that they -- the russians were trying to infiltrate and snoop around the election systems in all 50 states. in all 50 states. so i mean, it's not -- if you think we are somehow protected by the fact that we have 50 different election -- electoral systems and we're less vulnerable, well, that seemed like a good rationale but that neat the case. they were in all 50. and the other chilling thing is a lot of the incursions looked like recon missions. at you know, so they would sort of map the terrain so that they could come back. and guess what? we have an election next year and they'll be back. it's just stunning that -- this is what we fall into in this country. >> speaking of that election, now to a just released fox news poll that finds joe biden

defeating trump by ten points nationally. 49% -- >> wow, that's not even close. >> yeah, but democrats don't get ahead of yourselves. >> that's not -- but that's not even close. >> but not even close. >> wait. he's making fun of joe biden? and he's losing by over -- >> well, sanders beats trump by six points. >> he loses to a socialist by six points, man. i'll tell you what if i'm a republican and i have been president for three years and i lose to a socialist by six points i think i'd just go home. >> the president does have an edge against senators warren and harris and a poll -- >> there's within the margin of error so they're really tied. >> and a poll in the swing state of ohio -- >> he's big in ohio. we keep hearing he's going to win ohio by a ton. >> which trump won by eight points, shows a tough race for most democrats, but not for joe biden. the quinnipiac university poll has biden currently leading trump by eight points. 50-42. >> wait wait wait.

mika, you're telling me that joe biden is crushing donald trump in ohio too? >> yeah. >> this is supposed to be his strongest midwest state. >> all other democrats are effectively tied with trump in the low to mid 40s. >> so willie, obviously, long, long way to go. but i will say we keep hearing from the white house how great donald trump is doing. we have people that have been sucking up to donald trump for three years. it's really sad. i feel sorry for him. writing op-eds, everything is breaking donald trump's direction, he's down by ten points to a guy he calls sleepy joe biden and a socialist is beating him by six points. >> well, look inside the state of ohio. donald trump won that in 2016 by eight points and if you look at that ohio poll and there's another south carolina poll we can talk about in a second, but the ohio poll makes the case for joe biden and shows you why the lead is so wide. he's up 18 points overall on

bernie sanders but that's the argument for joe biden. he can get back those states that the trump swept through the midwest. you know, whether it's wisconsin or pennsylvania or ohio or michigan. the states that were lost that sliver of 77, 78,000 votes that handed donald trump the election, joe biden can make the case he can walk in and take them back. >> he can. and that's actually the biggest strength to his candidacy, especially as we see a shift in polls saying that democrats want to see someone who can beat donald trump more than they want someone more aligned with their own values. there's something else in the fox poll that came up and it was how americans feel about the attacks -- the twitter attacks that the president made against the squad, if you will. 63% of americans thought that those polls went too -- that those tweets went too far. but what's interesting is when asked among republicans as if it was an okay political attack, 59% of men said yes. only 40% of women said it was

okay. trump is on the verge of really starting to lose republican women. and that will also lead to the numbers that we see in ohio. i just want to switch back to something, joe. you asked gene what can people do to fight donald trump or mitch mcconnell? i propose creating americans for a secure elections. go out and attack every republican senator for not getting behind it while they're at home this august. i will tell you that a cable buy doesn't take much. they will feel the pressure and that is the way you move these republicans. you scare them. and that's the kind of thing you do. >> yeah. and mika, it seems like a great idea because again, what american -- i mean, what american would not hear the warnings from republicans on capitol hill, from the intel committee or from robert mueller or from the fbi director, the

cia director, or the united states military and not say, oh, they're saying that the russians are invading us now? that they're trying to undermine american democracy? that's their words, not mine. that they're trying to undermine american democracy and moscow mitch is killing every single attempt to protect american democracy. i don't think that's a positive issue in kentucky. my parents both went to the university of kentucky. i know kentucky pretty well. they don't -- i don't think they speak russian like where my parents went to school in lexington. it's ridiculous, mika. so why isn't every republican in the united states senate demanding that we protect ourselves against the russians? >> well, susan mentioned the women number in that fox news poll, take a look at the breakdown on whether voters feel

donald trump respects racial minorities. only 34% said yes when asked the question. down seven points from august of 2017. 34%. just after trump praised people in a neo-nazi march in charlottesville, virginia. 57% say he does not respect minorities. looking inside the poll, only 20% of minorities feel the president respects them. 73% say he does not. most whites, 52% also feel the president does not respect minorities. though a six-point plurality of white men without a college degree believe trump respects minorities. 48 to 42%. that margin shrinks to one point for white men with a college degree. 48 to 47%. meanwhile, white women regardless of education, overwhelmingly feel that trump does not respect -- >> let's keep the numbers up. sam stein, there's an

overgeneralization, always an overgeneralization among the liberals about black voters. well, an overgeneralization about working class white voters. and there's never a separation between working class white men without a college degree and white women with a college degree and that's a mistake. 38% said that hes racial minorities but 51% a majority says he does not. and that's quite a fissure and suggests much more, that donald trump's demagoguery and his bigotry and racism is going to even drive away some of the -- in the base of his vote. >> yeah. i think when i was last on the show you were talking about how little and practical terms trump's done to expand the coalition. and that -- those numbers just drive that home. if you're a president and you're sitting at low 40s approval

rating, if you see the numbers from ohio when you're running against joe biden in the hypothetical match-up normally i think that the logical thing to do would be to try to do anything in your power to expand your appeal beyond the base that you have. what donald trump has done is precisely the opposite. he's run a red meat campaign, he's agitated a bunch of women voters. he's launched racist attacks against members of congress all in the hopes of juicing that turnout among white working class male voters. and the play is a dangerous one, both rhetorically and politically. and those numbers suggest it might not be as successful either. >> i mentioned that south carolina poll showing four in ten south carolina democrats support former vice president joe biden. he takes 39% of the vote with senator kamala harris at 12%.

27 points behind. senator bernie sanders gets 10%. elizabeth warren at 9%. mayor buttigieg at 5. and more interesting if you look at the cross tabs though, biden's lead powered by african-american voters he has 51% support. harris is next at 12% while sanders holds on to 10%, the rest of the contenders top out at 2% or lower. so keep that number up right there, jeremy. tell me what you read into it. joe biden has weathered the attacks, beginning in the debate when kamala harris wanted to talk to him about busing over the years. cory booker right now is going after biden's record on criminal justice. but my gosh, if you look in the state of south carolina almost a 40-point lead among african-american voters for joe biden. >> right. i think that's obviously the result of a lot of goodwill that joe biden still has from being vice president to barack obama for eight years. i think it's also because he has

always really had a strong relationship -- even going back as a senator he's always presented very well with the african-american community. i do wonder though what that looks like if he has another debate performance like he did the last time. these are obviously predebate numbers. we saw how his numbers really kind of collapsed the last time. regarding kamala harris, this is strictly anecdotal but something i have noticed in talking to voters. talking to african-americans, especially african-american women, there's a reluctance there. for whatever reason, i can't explain it. but i have heard it a few times in interviewing people and it's almost like they think that she's not tested. she's not ready yet. and i think that probably explains a lot of biden's strengths because what is biden? a former senator, a former vice president, head of the foreign relations committee and he's a veteran. i think that's going on there. >> gene robinson, let's talk about your home state of south carolina. i have always said reverend al and i have always said, yes,

iowa and new hampshire are so important but they're predominantly white. if you want to see what the democratic electorate is going to look like after the first two early contests you get a much better indication of how this race is going to shake out by looking at south carolina because racially the mix is more in line with across the deep south, california, across the rest of the country. boy there, joe biden sure does look strong in your home state. >> yeah, he sure does. you basically have to do well in south carolina. i mean, i think you look at those numbers and you see, you know, an important weakness in the campaign of somebody like elizabeth warren, for example. who is doing very well nationally. who is basically in many polls -- national polls sort of eased in to second place behind joe biden. yet, she's performing not well in south carolina and especially not well with african-american voters and you need to do well with african-americans if you're

going to win the democratic nomination. there is a sort of domino effect in the primaries as you know. a lot of african-american voters in south carolina were not entirely sold on the idea, for example, that barack obama could win the presidency until he won iowa. and then you saw almost a cascade of people sort of going toward obama. it's not that they didn't like him. it's that they didn't think he could win, basically, and then they saw him win votes in this all white state. if kamala harris were able to pull off something like that and you saw -- if -- if you saw her numbers wise in iowa dramatically, i think people would pay attention in a slightly different way. i also think she cease not barack obama. there's not a barack obama in this race.

there's not a sort of, you know, guaranteed first vote hall of fame politician in this race. >> right. >> like barack obama or like bill clinton or like, you know, somebody who's just masterful at this. so i don't know if she's able to pull something like that off. right now joe biden remains the guy to beat in this race and one bad debate performance, you know, his numbers swooned a bit but they have sort of -- they have come back. harris' numbers spiked. they have sort of regressed a bit. so he's the guy to beat. >> yeah, they really reset from where they were before that first debate. you know, mika gene brings up a great point about iowa. i'm usually skeptical that iowa is going to swing an entire election, but this race lines up so much like 2008 where barack obama's team knew if we win iowa we're going all the way.

they knew that because that would give them the boost they needed in south carolina. i feel the same way, i mean, a kamala harris victory in iowa is huge. if she could do that. but i'll tell you what is even bigger, a joe biden victory in iowa, boy, that makes it almost impossible to stop the guy barring some unforeseen possibility because you'll have an iowa victory and then he's got south carolina after new hampshire. he can absorb whatever comes there. and it's just like trump when he won south carolina, you knew he was off to the races. because he was going to win in the deep south and pick up that momentum. so much this year -- i think more than most years other than 2008 so much is riding on the state of iowa because of what gene said. still ahead on "morning joe" the race for president runs straight through indiana today. the national urban league is hosting a full contingent of top

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i was probably overly polite in the way i didn't respond. >> you going to be less polite? >> i'm going to smile a lot. >> what did you mean when you said you won't be as polite in the next debate? >> we'll see. >> joe biden says he won't be polite in next week's debate, rolling out a new aggressive approach to the democratic rivals. biden has responded to attacks from fellow candidates on his record. he called out senator cory booker for advocating stop and brisk searches when he was mayor of newark after booker took biden on over criminal justice and biden said the health care proposal of kamala harris not

legitimate and would wipe out private insurance. joe biden is among a number of presidential candidates who are at the 2019 national urban league conference in indianapolis. joining is the president and ceo of the national urban league, marc morial. mr. morial, thank you for taking some time on a busy week for you. you saw a lot of candidates, you shared the stage with many of them at the conference yesterday. who's popping down there, who is getting the most attention and reaction? >> oh, i don't -- do we have marc's mic? okay. all right. we lost his mic. so let's talk about that back and forth. we saw a -- we'll get to marc morial in a second when we fix his mic. joe biden and cory booker, cory booker is going at joe biden on criminal justice reform, we saw kamala harris on busing. what are they getting at here? >> i don't think anywhere, frankly, for a few reasons. voters aren't stupid. they understand the nuances of

things that happened 20, 30, 40 years ago. and i believe and i have said this before that joe has a lot of what trump had. the teflon thing. trump's -- the republicans wanted trump so bad at one point. they saw him as a winner. they were willing to let a lot slide and you're seeing that even after the horrific debate performance the first time around. it has slid off him, because what matters to people is perception. can you beat trump? i think in a strange way, biden is going to bounce back. like obama after the first really bad debate. and all he's got to do is not trip over himself. he just needs a b-minus and he wins. >> but -- i'm sorry. >> jeremy, i was going to say that biden was surprised by what happened on the stage. he in fact said out loud this week i was surprised by what kamala harris said, i thought we were friends he said. i think he'll be more ready the second time. >> he didn't have an answer for her you can tell at the end there, my time is up. when has joe biden said, hey, i'm done talking, i don't have

more to say. i think what's really interesting there is whether or not biden, donny, is the jeb bush of this cycle or the mitt romney of this cycle. does he never recover, does he keep stumbling or fall? is he romney who kind of goes through the slog and is wounded by the time he ends up becoming the nominee because he's had such a brawl. >> but the interesting thing is the whole race thing. to me after what we saw eight days ago in north carolina our president basically saying go back to where you came from, people of color. if there are nuanced race arguments between the democrats i think people will say there's a bigger beast to slay out there and we'll taught about bills of 20 or 30 years ago. so i think any of the candidates start getting into a race fight on stage, you are missing the big picture. >> i actually think biden may have been -- being a little strategic here.

talking about stop question and frisk. because bill de blasio will be on the stage. he came in as mayor saying i will end the policy and he did. and crime has not taken the big increase that everyone thought. so i think he set that up as a perfect foil for bill de blasio to go after booker and let them have at it and kind of keeps him out of that whole issue all together. >> so you know there's been some talk, gene robinson, this morning even of joe biden stumbling. he's up 27 points in south carolina and leading president trump by eight points in the state of ohio. >> yeah. allow me to stumble my way through the answer. i mean, no, look, he is -- he's more than old familiar joe biden with name recognition at this point because everybody recognizes everybody's name now. biden does have a history and as donny said a lot of it is

ancient history. i think what he needs to do and what he will do is -- in this debate is go back to the theme that got him that lead. remember when he announced his campaign and he went right after donald trump. he went after the national emergency. he went after the idea that this is -- this is an exceptional moment in the nation's history. when we have to get back on track. we have to get back on the course we had been sailing. we have to stop this awful destructive deviation that this president is trying to take us on. as he drives wedges between americans and between us and our allies and everything else. and that i think should be his focus and he should parry attacks as they come. but that's a -- to me, in the

democratic primary, that should be a winning argument. and i think, you know, i would advise all of the candidates to focus more of their fire on president trump than on each other. >> well, i would double down on that argument for sure because at this point the enemy is within to an extent. but it's the platform, the megaphone and the ability to communicate to people who are wavering on this, and i wonder, gene, we have joe biden polling well among african-american voters and another area where he does well is what he was talking to us about in "morning joe" during the last election it was about hillary clinton and he said she's not talking to us. middle aged white guys from ohio, delaware, anywhere across america. you know, who's going to appeal to the disenfranchised trump

voter and if you're too far left, you're for all of these, you know, democratic platform issues that are way over on the left, you're not going to get those voters and who's going to do it? i think it's joe biden. >> well, you know, mika, i'm more -- i have been wondering for a while if our traditional concepts of what's left and what's right aren't outdated at this point. i mean, look at the policy positions that donald trump took in winning in 2016 and a lot of them you would think, you know, belong more on the left than on the right. so he's -- it's a weird time when we're undergoing the sort of realignment. i worry less about what seems too left or too right as to what seems relevant to me. what issues seem relevant to me and biden -- as we see in the poll numbers we just ran over from -- we just looked at from

ohio, for example, ohio is a state that a lot of democrats think is basically lost. and all of a sudden, you see him beating trump in ohio in the polls and that tells me that there are a lot of those voters you're talking about there and not just in ohio, but throughout the midwest and the rust belt who see biden as somebody on their side, shouldn't have to be exclusively biden but he's ahead of the others right now. >> absolutely. all right. we'll get more with marc morial after a quick break. we'll be back with more from "morning joe." k. we'll beac bk with more from "morning joe."

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welcome back to "morning joe." we have effectively connected now, mr. mayor, the soup cans with the string. we are connected. our apologies to you. thank you for your patience, mayor marc morial. you have a big collection of democratic presidential contenders down with you. at your conference.

who impressed your group there, the conference, the most? >> well, i thought they all did really well and i thought they all did things that were prescient. here's what i saw, cory booker was passionate. extremely forceful in his message. amy klobuchar exhibited a great sense of humor. someone that the crowd really did know. and joe biden exhibited folksiness and seemed to have -- he was the person that people are most interested in meeting. taking selfies with and connecting with on a personal level. but all of them i think talked about the things that people wanted to hear. voting rights, economic growth and development. how are you going to stop russian interference? how are you going to improve schools? what are you going to do about the criminal justice system? so our format gave the candidates eight to ten minutes to really develop their thoughts and then they took a series of

q&a that i presented to them. so in that format i think we heard a more thorough discussion than you get in the multicandidate debates or in these clips or in these sort of truncated spins that comes across sometimes on cable television. but biden seemed to have what joe biden -- one of his great assets seems to be his personal style, his ability to connect with people on a personal level. i saw that in display. cory booker did well, the crowd knows cory booker well. amy klobuchar to some extent was new to this sort of stage at the national urban league. and others talked about i think economics. manufacturing, small business growth and development. so it was a good discussion. today we have got five more

candidates including kamala harris and i think great interest in her. kirsten gillibrand and mayor pete from south bend, who is right here in the state of indiana. >> they're all like minitown halls but they do get to explain themselves and answer your questions. i want to ask you about a poll and get your read on it where joe biden leads by 27 points, but when you look inside the numbers among african-american voters in south carolina, he has 51% support and you have to go down to 12% to find support for kamala harris so almost a 40 point lead among african-american voters for joe biden. how do you explain that? >> african-american voters from what i hear are very interested in electability. the ability of whomever the nominee is to defeat donald trump, but also to take on donald trump.

i think it's early, willie. it is early. we are just in late july. and so there's much time. i think kamala harris or cory booker or elizabeth warren or the other candidates have time to try to make up this difference but what this reflects is joe biden is a well known commodity. someone with whom people have worked with, a part of the obama administration. and that long history and that sense that on day one he's ready to be president is what i think is helping him in the polls. as well as his personal style. i have said this and i have worked with many of the candidates. joe biden has this unique quality, i have seen it at play where he is as comfortable talking to a group of truck drivers or firefighters as he is in an african-american church or at someone's kitchen table. it's not with joe biden simply about issues but it's also about leadership style. i think voters are assessing not

just hard issues. they're evaluating that, but they're also evaluating leadership style. i think a kamala harris or elizabeth warren have not had the visibility as of yet or cory booker or kirsten gillibrand, for people to really assess their leadership style. how they would function in an office like president. how they would handle pressure. so those things, you know, i think are in play. and this is what i hear from the people who are here in indianapolis. >> sam stein has a question for you, mr. mayor. >> yeah, this is not necessarily a policy issue but a political issue that's dividing democrats, and i'm wondering what the appetite is for the party to begin impeachment proceedings. you talked about how electability is an asset for joe biden. the flip side of that -- of getting rid of trump would be through an impeachment

proceeding, so i'm curious because the crowd seem anxious for us and if so what are they saying to you? >> i hear people say while there's sort of this response that there would be support for impeachment that it's more important to think about the end game. and the fact that the election is just a little bit over a year away. and that the important thing is to change the presidency. and not to get, if you will, distracted. that being said, of course you what are people -- some people saying yes, we need to impeach, but i think there's also not -- people don't well understand the fact that the impeachment is a two-step process. and would require not only a vote in the house, but a trial in the senate and i think what people are educated about the difficulty of the impeachment process i think then they focus on we want to get change and let's do it through the ballot box. one thing i will say, african-american voters are energized. they're fired up.

they're ready to vote. they're paying attention to this election. they're watching the issues. and the other side of it is, and as you know, i have been around this for many, many election cycles, there's a competition for the african-american vote that i have not seen. every one of these candidates in one way, shape or form is competing and recognizing the influence of african-american voters, particularly in the democratic primaries. >> all right, marc morial, thank you so much. the national urban league conference. it's always good to have you in indianapolis. and it ends tomorrow. register for tickets at conference.i am empowered.com. still to come, president trump spoke to a group of young republicans and the presidential seal featured behind him was anything but presidential. we'll explain what happened. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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all right. 55 past the hour. the white house says it didn't know that an altered presidential seal featuring a two-headed eagle clutching golf clubs would be displayed at a speech by president trump this week. now, that's an advanced team. "the washington post" which was first to report on the doctored image noted a website that sells merchandise advocating that trump serve a single presidential term and it features what appears to be the same fake seal. in an interview with "the new york times," the site's creator said he came up with the image based on the russian double headed eagle a little over a year ago out of frustration with trump and the policies. the eagle which has two heads instead of one closely resembles the bird on the russian coat of

arms and the flag contains hammer and sickles in the crest. the tallinns are clutching a set of golf club and the words features a spanish phrase that translates to 45 is a puppet. a white house spokesman says officials never saw the seal before it was projected on a screen behind trump as he was introduced at turning point usa's teen summit on tuesday. a spokesman for the organization told "the post" that a video team member has been fired for mistakenly displaying this seal. there's just so much there about incompetence, the spelling errors, the press releases and now an advanced team that makes a complete fool of the president as he's trying to -- i mean,

it's -- it's where we are, gene. >> well, you know, so what i should feel is i should be appalled that the dignity of the president of the united states was assaulted in such a way, but this president has done so much to degrade the presidency that -- it is really very clever the way that this was put together. so it's -- i think it was a well deserved tribute to this president. >> eugene robinson, thank you very much. as always, we'll be reading your latest piece in "the washington post" entitled trump's wrecking ball keeps swinging. still ahead after warnings from robert mueller about russian meddling democrats are putting forward new legislation to bolster election security. makes sense. but they're hitting a roadblock as joe calls it, moscow mitch. plus, our msnbc colleagues jacob soboroff and katy tur will be here with a new look at their

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if not, talk to schwab. a modern approach to wealth management. welcome back to "morning joe." it's friday, july 16th. we have the host of saturday night politics on msnbc, donny deutsch. "new york times" reporter jeremy peters. republican strategist and msnbc political analyst susan del percio. politics editor for the daily beast, sam stein and host of msnbc's "politicsnation" and president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton. senior writer at politico and co-author of the playbook, jake sherman. he is an msnbc political

contributor and washington bureau chief for "usa today" and author of the matriarch, susan page is joinings us as well. a lot going on. >> reverend al, we were talk about the new polls last hour. it was something to see. joe biden still comfortably ahead in the national polls but comfortably ahead in the national polls for a reason that really becomes clear in south carolina and that's because black voters still support him overwhelmingly whereas you have elizabeth warren and bernie sanders, mayor pete only getting 1% of the african-american vote in this monmouth university poll. so biden still, this is a guy who still seems -- well, he's got the majority of african-american votes in this poll at least in south carolina. despite the fact they're like 48 people in the field. >> no, i'm not surprised. i think as i travel a lot, the

enthusiasm and support for biden african-american voters is sticking more than i would have thought. i spoke at the urban league convention yesterday and the day before a and the naacp convention in detroit and both conventions seemed enthused for biden. biden had not announced when we had the national action network, but biden spoke at the breakfast in january. people were there. i think a lot of it, joe, ask -- is his association and loyalty to barack obama. he wasn't just there, he fought for the affordable care and fought for same-sex marriage and i think a lot of what's driving it is that people really want to see donald trump defeated and he seems to be the one to get it. so i think the thing that people are discounting is how much people want to see trump out. because he represents everything that we fought against and they're willing to take some of the things that he may have done including things that i

disagreed with 20 years ago and he's the best way to get trump out and he stood by barack obama. >> so rev, there's something that i'm hearing among democrats now as we go into the second debate and that is let's not see democrats fighting each other. let's not have what we had last time. yeah, there's going to be some policy differences and yes, please, respectfully disagree with each other so voters can see who they best want. but we can't have the sort of fireworks, the sort of personal attacks that we had the last debate. i don't think -- again, i'm not even a member of the party, so i have no say in this. i'm just wondering though what you think. isn't this one of the moments in american history that all hands have to be on deck and we don't need to see 22 democrats scrapping and fighting and punching each other, they should

focus their fire on donald trump. >> absolutely. what's at stake is so important that our differences we should define them but we should not end up wasting a lot of energy and fire when it ought to be all directed at who is trying to turn back the clock in this country. i'm very concerned that as we clarify our differences that we don't go into political cannibalism and eat each other alive before we get to the main bout. if you spend more energy in the locker room fighting your teammates, you're going to lose on the field. the objective is trump. so yes, when senator harris clarified some things with joe biden in the first debate, fine. the other day cory booker took his shots and now joe biden came back shooting at him, all right. but let's stop here now because all of us in public life have done things you could capitalize on. none of us are diametrically an posed to the gender rights and

the lgbtq rights and civil rights of people like donald trump is. don't shoot all your bullets now, and come in to the main event with an empty gun. >> well, exactly. mika, don't do donald trump's work for us. >> absolutely. come on. a new fox news poll finds joe biden defeating trump, by the way, by ten points nationally. 49% to 39%. bernie sanders leads trump by six points while the president has an edge against senators warren and harris. a poll in the swing state of ohio which president trump won by eight points in 2016 shows a tough race for most democrats, but not for joe biden. the quinnipiac university poll has biden currently leading trump by eight points, 50-42%, all other democrats are effectively tied with trump in the mid to low 40s. >> willie, that -- this poll -- i mean, a lot of surprises in

these polls this morning. joe biden's continued strength in the democratic primaries, i mean, he's backed a predebate number, but here, ohio of all the states in the midwest really caught people's attention in 2016. ohio has gone the reddest on the state level and the national level on every level. it's the state that donald trump's people feel the most comfortable with. they're even -- they don't even they're going have to strongly campaign there. and here, you have biden up by eight points. >> yeah. donald trump won that state by eight points and as you say, some democrats even privately saying ohio is starting to drift away from us and becoming a red state. and trump is tied with bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, two people he calls socialists whenever he gets the chance. we have got this raft of polls here, susan page, including one from south carolina that shows joe biden with a big lead overall. but even bigger lead among african-american voters. there's a really interesting

number in the cross tabs of the poll in south carolina that says 65% of the voters say they will vote for the president who could beat trump even if they disagree with that person, him or her on policy questions. it's just win, baby, whoever that is in south carolina and perhaps more broadly across the country among democrats. >> you know that's a sentiment we hear from democrats across the country that their first priority is defeating president trump. one of the most interesting things from both the national poll and the ohio and south carolina polls is the consistency of trump support. no matter who trump is running against in that fox poll, his support is at 40%, 39 to 41%, which shows he has a floor but he may have a ceiling. and the question for these democratic hopefuls, biden and others, is how they can get those voters beyond the 40% or so that are voting for any democrat. biden -- these polls certainly reinforce biden's argument he's

the most electable democrat. but it's too early not to expect the others to take him on in the next debate, to make the case he's a weaker candidate than he may seem in the polls and they have the same kind of shot at defeating donald trump. >> well, president trump has relied heavily on framing himself as a leader for working class americans but a recent "new york times" report examines how his rhetoric has not matched up with his legislative accomplishments aimed at their economic interests. as an example, "the times" cites while he was lashing out at the four democratic congresswomen, house democrats were passing a minimum wage bill with little republican support and even less hope of clearing the summit. the paper says on the same day trump fired up a hasty announcement naming eugene scalia as his new secretary of labor. scalia has a long record of

representing companies that have pushed back against unions and tougher labor laws. "the times" says the two events offered a reminder not only of what the president was interested in, racially driven grabs of media attention, but also of what he was not governing the way he campaigned in 2016 and co-oping elements of the democrat's populist agenda to drive a wedge through their coalition. trump has largely operated as a conventional republican, by cutting taxes that benefit high end earners and companies and rolling back regulations on corporations. the piece poses the question it says many democrats worry about. what trump's re-election chances would look like if he pressured senate majority mitch mcconnell into passing bipartisan measures to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure, lower the cost of prescription drugs and increased the minimum wage.

>> so you know, it's very interesting, jake sherman -- listen, i understand what "the times" is saying about eugene scalia. ain't nobody in youngstown, ohio, going to care about scalia. what they'll care about -- i know democrats are going to be doing this because it would be political malpractice if they didn't, president trump promised better health care coverage. he hasn't delivered it. he's promised lower premiums. he hasn't delivered it. he promised lower deductibles. he hasn't delivered it. he promised better health care for everybody and the protection of pre-existing conditions. he's still doing that despite the fact that he has -- his lawyers from all america are suing every day to try to stop that and then of course i think the most damning thing is his tax cut which was made just hundreds of billions of dollars for multinational corporations and the richest 0.1% in america,

after he signed it he went down to mar-a-lago and talked to a bunch of billionaires down there at dinner that night, and said, hey, i just made you guys a lot of money. i don't think that's going to play well in youngstown in 2020. >> i think you're right and i think it goes to the larger truth about trump which is that he won a lot of midwest states let's leave aside ohio and say, you know, the upper midwest, wisconsin, michigan, states like that, on a promise that he was uniquely qualified to solve these problems. this was not an undertone of his campaign, this was a main message of his campaign that he was somewhat suited to break these -- the logjam on the complicated issues like health care because he understood how to break complex negotiating situations like washington. do people still believe that? i don't know. i mean, that's going to be i think a central question in 2020 and on that "new york times" story i cannot tell you many

people in the white house and in trump's orbit, on capitol hill, who have said to me or agreed with the point that, man, it's really a blown opportunity because this is somebody, this is a political figure that has two incredibly dynamics going on for him. number one he's bereft of any intellectual and ideological core. it's not a criticism, that's just a fact. he does not have any real firmly held beliefs like other presidents do. and number two, he has a unique ability that his entire party marches lock step behind him r for -- on anything he says. so those two things put together -- he said this to me when i interviewed him for my book that came out a couple of months ago, he said i have 90% approval rating in the republican party so i can work with democrats to what's right. i don't know why he thinks working with democrats is right and not working with his own party, but it's a unique mindset he has such high approval ratings with his party he can work with the other party and

have his party follow him like yesterday, something that the democrats have campaigned against and going back to when you were in congress, 25 years. >> i said last week if newt gingrich had passed this bill with bill clinton, we literally would have run him out of town that day. >> no doubt. >> jake brings up a great point. here's a guy who doesn't believe in anything ideologically. before he ran for president, he was pro choice. aggressively pro choice. he was pro gun control. even in 2009, he called for nationalizing -- talk about a socialist. he talked about nationalizing america's banks, having the federal government take over america's banking system. that was -- i mean, that was a decade ago. just a decade ago. so he doesn't believe in anything. and he also has people that have

literally followed him off a cliff. they're even making chants and cheers that would have -- you might have been able to hear in nuremberg, telling people to go back home that are actually citizens so they'll follow him wherever he goes. so the question is why doesn't he push them to better health care coverage? why is he trying to take away pre-existing conditions? why is he trying to take away health care coverage for working class americans? >> or passing a giant tax cut that doesn't help working class americans. boy, we have learned over the last two years that's probably literally true his core is that strong of support that they would follow him in any direction. i guess the question for him, jeremy, how do you expand that? so you're talking to your 39, 40%, but to win a presidential election he's going to need to

do more than that. does he know how to do that or go to the rally and tell the people what they want to hear? >> he's incapable of doing that. susan talked earlier about his ceiling, it's at 46%. he's never received higher than that in the gallup approval poll and in order to win, republicans anticipate losing the popular vote again. in order to overcome that, what they have to do -- what the trump campaign's plan and is what the rnc is spending tens of millions of dollars of doing is identifying people who are not regular voters, nonvoters in rural areas, in michigan, wisconsin, the industrial midwest. so that blue wall again has some cracks in it. now, this is not a sure bet by any means because trump has lost so much support in the suburbs. he's lost support in those swing counties that really helped to deliver him the electoral college victory in 2016. so this is tough and it's really expensive. so that's why the rnc -- it's

such a big deal that they have raised as much money as they have. >> you know, donny, we're talking about again some of the mysteries around donald trump and why he chooses to just stay at 40%, 41%, 42%. and it's something that i have asked time and again, why -- you know, he spent his life contributing to nancy pelosi. he spent his life contributing to chuck schumer, to rahm emanuel, to the national democratic party. i mean, he was far more comfortable with these people than he was with republicans. in fact, he had contempt for conservative republicans and what he called quote right wing christians. just had complete contempt for those people. and yet, here he's had this opportunity. he hasn't taken it. you have known donald for 10, 11, 12 years and judge andrew

napolitano at fox news, put something up on fox news, talking about how he says that he had known donald trump personally since 1986, the private trump i knew was funny, charming and embracing. that is not the public trump of today. it's the same thing that i have said to people who asked, you know, who donald trump was. well, i'll tell you what i saw and what mika saw for 12 years privately, but andrew napolitano goes on to say that donald trump has raised the terrifying specter of unleashing hatred and judge, to be fair, judge napolitano has been critical of donald trump consistently when he deserved that criticism so that remains a mystery. why does trump only want to stay at 40%? he won't get to 50% being a bigot or saying things that fascists applaud him for saying. and yet, he stays in that -- in

that narrow casting role. i will never understand why. >> you know, this is the one thing about criminal trump that i still don't have an answer for. i came on the show the day after the election. as i often am, i was wrong because what i said was don't worry as much as you think, because his desire to be accepted and liked and his megalomania is going to force him to pivot -- not force him. he's got the 40%. it's obvious what he'll do now. he doesn't want to be shunned by the big cities, doesn't want to be shunned by the celebrities. doesn't want to be shunned by the media folks but i couldn't have been more wrong. having said that, i want to give a dire fear warning because he is such -- >> hold on a second, donny. because you made a great point. i want to double back to that for a second and then you can talk about your fears. that's exactly what i thought. i thought his need to be accepted and desired when he went over to "the new york times," when he was trying after he got elected trying to put out

a peace offering i said that's the trump -- he's got his 40% no matter what he does. so now he's going to try to expand to 50%. but you see what he did in charlottesville. he boiled it down. you see what he did this past week. he's boiling it down. he's constantly boiling it down and making it a game of subtraction and not addition. we can talk to reverend al about this, who has known him for a long time. rev, you were -- i'll get back to you in a second, donny, because donny is going to talk about locusts descending from the heavens an eating flesh from the bones and we'll get back to that but rev, after one debate one of the republicans looked like michael spinks with their hands to their side and the tyson character was donald trump. and i said do you remember that fight, you said, yeah, i was there with donald trump. >> that's right. >> but donald trump was a

personable guy. he hung out with a lot of people in manhattan and as far as race goes, my gosh, you go back there's -- as you know very well, there are a lot of hip-hop stars that were pretty darn close to donald trump. it's what's so bizarre about where we find ourselves today. >> i think all of us felt that donald trump wanted to be popular and lionized by a broader base than he himself settled for just being the hero and the sole focus of a small silo. you and i, joe, in our lifetimes have worked around show business and you still are doing a good job there. there's a difference between a rock 'n' roll artist who says i'd like to be mainstream but i'm going to stay and be the king of rock 'n' roll or soul artists saying i want to be mainstream, but i want to be the king of soul. he wants to be the king of that

40% because they accept him, warts and all. he doesn't have to correct his behavior. he can stay within his own comfort zone and he has to give up a little of his real raw personality to go to that broader base because that might mean he has to act in a way that is uncomfortable and disciplined for him. i think he has decided to embrace that small silo and say i'm going to be elvis to the rock 'n' rollers. i don't care what the sinatra crowd says. i'm going to be james brown to the soul artist. i don't care what the johnny mathis crowd says. i think it's not a winning strategy politically but it's a comfort zone for donald trump. >> joe, let me just go to my fears. >> quickly. >> here's my fear, because he's such a slimy transactionalist, we're talking about 16, 18 months before the election, because he's tied to nothing -- i know it sounds crazy after

north carolina, there could be the pivot as we get close to the election and he's basically right now keeping his foot on home base, solidify, solidify and the scary thing -- all he has to do is start to make a few moves and people go, oh, that's what we have been waiting for. having said that, let us always remind -- and joe, where you started this, about criminal trump. that he wants to take pre-existing health care away from 300 million americans and did give a tax break to the rich and kept prescription drugs high and he'll screw you again. so we're not going to let him do criminal -- criminal trump do that. in 2018 we won. and you talked just -- you talked about the kitchen table issues. we are not going to let criminal trump off the hook and remind people what is at stake here. >> well, it is -- what is so interesting is you said he wants to take away this, he wants to take away that. he's just transactional. you look at race. when he thought he could get buzz by attacking the central --

so-called central park five that's what he did to grab headlines. when he opened a casino and started to have boxing matches, suddenly he was friends with hip-hop stars and others. >> right. >> he dated a few african-american women. even into this century. then when he decided he could be a bigot publicly again like he had been in the past, to get a foot hold in the republican party, you know, that's what he did. suddenly he became a bigot. and he's continued to narrow cast and susan page, for all of us who think that this narrow casting is going to defeat him, i know you don't think that, i just remind everybody of one number and that is 37%. 37% is a number that everybody in the white house will repeat when you talk to them about donald trump's re-election chances because 37% was donald

trump's approval rating the last time americans went out to the polls to vote for him in 2016. and at the end of the day, he was the next president of the united states. >> you know, early on in his presidency, there was concern among some democrats that he could deliver on things like a big infrastructure bill which democrats would be inclined to also support. but he hasn't done that. i think we may be overestimating his confidence in his ability to expand his base. i mean, the fact is donald trump has been pretty sensitive to criticism on fox news when he's tried to do something that might broaden his support and then retreated back to his base politics. that says to me he does not feel in some ways despite his rhetoric completely empowered to do things that might upset those core supporters who have been with him. >> and then, within all this, jake sherman, where does the issue of impeachment stand? >> i mean, congress is now gone,

they're gone for the next 45 or so days. the house of representatives is. the senate is in is for another week. this is a true test we'll see and this goes to what joe was saying before. democrats have said up until now they were elected and given the house majority on kitchen table issues. on economic issues and issues that were not socially or partisan driven but the issues that were core issues to a lot of voters and people are going home every weekend to their districts and beginning to understand that those issues are now slipping into second place compared to impeachment. so the real fear for a lot of democratic leaders which, by the way, democratic leaders do not want to impeach donald trump. nancy pelosi does not want to impeach donald trump so their fear is a lot of people go home over the august recess and just get hammered on impeachment and asked why they're not impeaching the president and a lot of members might or might not be

told that the impeachment is the number one issue for them. they'll come back in september and is the real question is there enough -- about 95 to 100 democrats right now that have called for an impeachment inquiry and another 50 or so and nancy pelosi's in trouble in the sense she might have to move towards impeachment. politico reported yesterday that jerry nadler, i think "the new york times" reported today, that nadler in a closed meeting with democrats right after the mueller hearing brought up the idea of beginning an impeachment inquiry. so we are moving closer to that, i don't know how nancy pelosi will avoid this. i'm not saying she won't -- she won't be able to. i don't know what that path is, susan page is watching her very closely. because she's writing a book about her. maybe she has a more large thought about how she can avoid this. it's very difficult for her and she's able to look straight ahead and plow forward on all these issues and she's incredibly talented at that. but this i would guess is unlike

anything she's ever dealt with in her career. >> i think she thinks that time is on her side. so the house is out for 46 days. you know, people who represent true blue districts i think will hear a lot about impeachment. but the point about the members from swing districts who actually put democrats in the majority, what do they hear from their constituents? that's a more important thing to look at. you get to the point in time where there isn't time on the clock to effectively pursue an impeachment inquiry. you really move into an election mode with the campaign. i think that is one of the things that speaker pelosi is counting on. >> susan page, jake sherman, thank you both so much. we appreciate it. sam, as we close out this segment, i want to go to you because nancy pelosi -- not only nancy pelosi but the entire democratic party really have a tough balancing act here because you have the progressive base which obviously is the energy of the party.

they're the people that are going to be knocking on doors. they're the people doing the phone banks, they're the people that are going to be pushing this democratic majority forward on election day. they're going to be igniting them. at the same time, you look at the members that put nancy pelosi in as speaker of the house, they're moderates from california, from virginia, moderates from georgia. from across the united states. people that won their races and the worst -- in the worst year ever for republicans by 1,000 votes. how many -- you know, districts in california were decided by 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 votes? so it is a heck of a -- a difficult balancing act wanting to show respect to your progressive base that is the energy of the party. but protecting those moderate members that actually took republicans out of power and out of the majority in the house of representatives. >> and it's made more difficult by the fact that there are a few

other avenues for her to point to as -- points of progression in investing trump. you could theoretically a month ago say, we have the mueller hearing coming up. we can wait for that. at this point, what her team is doing is they're saying well, we have the core proceedings coming up looking into the trump's finances, looking to get don mcgahn to testify, but those aren't satisfying end points for the progressive wing to say we can wade off of that. trump stemming oversight efforts have complicated the task also. there's a threat of argument in democratic circles that simply punting this to the judiciary committee saying, listen, go ahead. initiate impeachment proceedings does allow pelosi to alleviate some of the burden on the numbers by letting them say, okay, you can point to that. you can point to that and do your own thing in your district and maybe just separate the two. i don't know if i'd buy that logic but that's the new

argument from the pro impeachment crowd. i'm with jake, i think it's a difficult task and becomes more difficult in fact after the races because people will go home from the district and hear from the constituents who are thirsting for her to start impeachment proceedings. >> all right, sam, thank you very much. and still ahead on "morning joe," our next guest is a writer who was fired from his last job over a controversial opinion. why he says social media is dividing society into an angry mindless mob. we'll be right back. fidelity is redefining value for investors.

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online over a controversial stance on abortion that he shared an exchange on twitter. at the center was the debate over free speech and what views deserved to be amplified among prominent media outlets. kevin williamson joins us now. he's a reporter and columnist for national review and "the new york post." author of the new book "the smallest minority, independent thinking in the age of mob politics." good to have you on. >> great to have you on, kevin. one of the best writers in america. kevin, so mika and i talk about this all the time about how the social media warriors and the justice handed out by them is not entirely consistent. and even bill maher talks about this all the time and i agree with him completely. political correctness is harming

this country and it helped lead to the election of donald trump. >> yeah, i think if anything what this episode taught me what the media loves the most is a media story and what happens to me isn't all that important. but the kind of twitter mob rage politics matters a lot when you're a manager of a starbucks in philadelphia or when you're an employee of google or something like that. so i'm in the controversy business. everyone got interested in the story because the media likes to write about the media. >> yeah. yet, i mean, let's just say it right here, some people on the left who have said some pretty outrageous things. some who now work at "the new york times" who get a free pass. they have grown and everything is a okay, we need to be a more forgiving nation when some people on the left get in trouble. >> the problem is that people are turning to politics for things other than what politics is there for.

you see the decline in church attendance, family life, people getting married later and people are looking for sources of meaning and status in their life and because people are stupid and irredeemable they have turned to the base politics as a substitute in their lives and you look at the discussion on social media it's not very much about policy or meaningful political differences but about black and white hats. we're the good people, you're the wrong people. people get up and they go to social media to make sure that they're told by someone that they're hating the right people. and hatred really is essentially the fundamental motorcycivating motion of this. >> so talk about your book. i would love to have you tell us actually what your original opening line was. we can't do that. >> no, we can't do. >> this is a family television show. but please tell willie after this segment is over. he'll love the line. but talk about the smallest minority, why did you write it,

what's it about can. >> i started to write it before the atlantic thing happened and it's one of the better firings i had. so literally before i got to the airport in washington, i had a publisher on the phone. so it's about, you know, when you go home for the holidays you have the one angry family member who is enraged about politics and can't get over it and is unreasoning and clearly captive to emotions that don't really have much to do with politics that sort of thing is spreading. i'm curious about why. i'm curious about why it is that the sort of behavior that we associate with social media has started to leak over in real life and people started to behave socially the way they do on twitter. and it's a meaning in context and the structure of social media i think contributes to this. because people go to social media looking for attention. and attention doesn't come from making a really good argument about why the top corporate tax

rate should be instead of this. this guy is a nazi, and that sort of thing, or this guy a communist or whatever it is. in the emotional and psychological economy of social media it rewards that sort of hysteria and performative outrage. you can take this with the hearings earlier this week. that's not politics. that's theater. >> and you write in the book it's not representative of much. let's take twitter for example. you know it alone isn't a big number compared to the population of the united states and then the number of people who are outraged or want to project outrage probably number in the couple of hundred. but because you're in that world it gets amplified and oftentimes the magazine or a corporation responds to that around reverse -- and reverses a decision. why do you think people respond to such a small number of people expressing outrage? >> well, i think often these --

you know, the social media mobs provide pretext for things that were internal. it had to do with the staff at the atlantic. take the case of roseanne barr and her firing, i very much doubt there's a major american television network making multimillion dollar decisions based on what cailtyn has to say on twitter, but you have companies like nike that are very, very sensitive to their public image and very sensitive to certain kinds of particularly left wing criticism. and one of the weird ironic things is the corporations a a lot more responsive to criticism from the left than to the right because they think of the right as being pro business so we're a cheap date. >> this expands outside social media. take what's happening on the campuses and the small group of kids are outraged and they capitulate. >> yeah. we see charles murray trying to speak on the campus, ann coulter

or -- >> even christine lagarde. condi rice, they had to race commencement speeches because of a small group of students. >> yeah. that points to the larger truth here i think which is in order to deal with this it's up to institutions and up to magazines and newspapers and television networks to stand up for themselves. and it's where you hear conservatives say this, but i have a good word to say about "the new york times" on this front. there are several campaigns to get rid of people like bret stephens and "the times" said we hire whoever we want and we stand by our decisions and god bless for them. >> i agree with you, we may not agree that today is friday, but i think the loudest some time get to misinterpret and miscast things on either side. i couldn't tell you -- we're coming upon the fifth anniversary of the shooting in -- of michael brown in

ferguson. i couldn't tell you how many people have become activist leaders out of ferguson and who weren't even there. i think you're the victim of the loudest or sometimes miscast as the leaders. in many ways i think we have got to deal with how do we make institutions understand that what is deafening in terms of noise really doesn't represent a real body of people or a thought out policy. >> yeah, i don't think of myself as being a victim as anything. this is the professional hazard in the opinion thing, you're pretty well positioned to know, i think. what does matter is you have millions of people who are not in the business who don't have the option of well, i got fired by the atlantic, i'll write an essay in "the wall street journal" the next week. when it's the examples made of tech people and food service who

are drummed out of their jobs of being in the vicinity of something they didn't like. like in the covington business, they were pressuring someone to fire because her kid was standing 40 feet away from another kid, there was a people -- people thought he was doing something they didn't like. this is not normal human behavior. that's where the -- this culture of aggressive homogeneity and conformism comes in. if you don't have the sort of options that someone like me has, then you just learn not to speak up in the first place. >> which is dangerous. >> right. if you learn you have any unpopular opinions you keep them to yourself. >> or have trump say them for you. >> to go to that point, the loudest voices, you know, you can go to the town hall and you hear the people yelling and screaming and somehow the elected officials will respond to those people because they are the loudest. they may not do a poll and then find out the majority of the people feel differently. but we have the loud voices on twitter too, so how do you think social media is affecting our

democracy? is it hurting it? >> yeah. democracies are like markets in the sense that they require a free exchange so that information can be used in an effective way. so in democratic institutions what we have is discourse. we have people who can talk to each other and exchange priorities and information, points of view and that sort of thing. if you're not having a real conversation you can't do that. so you made the case for individualism, we can have that conversation. but if we're all mascots and warring and social tribal groups you can't have a meaningful conversation about those things. you can't apply intelligence to genuine social problems. >> all right. the book is "the smallest minority, independent thinking in the age of mob politics." it's available now. kevin williamson, thank you very much. >> congratulations. make sure you past along the first line to willie. coming up, drain the swamp was a catch phrase that

dominated donald trump's 2016 campaign. after two years in office, it might as well maintain the swamp. we'll get a new look at the new nbc series from katie kur and jacob soboroff. stay with us. e kur and jacob soboroff stay with us don't miss your golden opportunity to experience our most advanced safety technology on a full line of vehicles. now, at the lexus golden opportunity sales event. lease the 2019 es 350 for $379 a month, for 36 months, and we'll make your first month's payment. experience amazing. hi. maria ramirez! mom! maria!

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decades of failure in washington and decades of special interest dealing must and will come to an end. >> we are going to washington, d.c. and we are going to drain the swamp. >> it was one of the 2016 rallying cries from then candidate donald trump. a new msnbc docu series takes a look at the swamp now. >> during the 2018 midterms, katie and i saw firsthand how campaign spending records were shattered with a total of $5.7 billion spent. but it's not just the jaw dropping sums that got our attention. it's where that money came from. >> i recognize americans for prosperity. next gen climate, that's tom syer. >> the nra. >> planned parenthood. >> the more you look, the

swampier it gets. a murky mix of powerful corporations, special interest groups, and a handful of staggeringly wealthy individuals are buying our elections. and it's all perfectly legal. >> you can go through all of this and name every single person who works in that building and show how much money is spent on them by outside groups and it makes you wonder whose interest do they have in mind, the money that is spent on them, the people who spent the money, the corporations or the voters who put them into that office. >> joining us now, the co-host of american swamp msnbc anchor katie terr and jakon soberov. guys, welcome. first of all, welcome home, katie. >> it's lovely to be back from a day and a half. >> a lovely beak from maternity leave and back to the baby. >> that's right. thanks. >> so you guys have been working on this four-part docu series for almost a year. >> throughout the entire pregnancy and some of the

maternity leave. >> so what was the idea, the impetus behind this? obviously it was because donald trump talked so much about draining the swamp. so what is the state of the swamp today? >> it's extraordinarily swampy. donald trump campaigned on draining the swamp. he weaponized this idea of the swamp. but the swamp existed long before donald trump got there and americans have been frustrated with it for long before donald trump got there. the majority of americans don't trust the government to do what is right and we wanted to find out why it is so dysfunctional and whether there's a way to actually drain the swamp. >> we talked about that a million times. when i come on the show and talk to the voters, you almost never meet somebody who says washington, d.c. understands what my life is really like. there's this gap no matter where you are or who you talk to with people, the issues they care about most do not matter to the politicians in washington, d.c. >> well they don't feel like they matter. >> so we tried to figure out why

that is. we've never done anything like this before. we've been friends for like 20 years. and we approached this not just as journalists and colleagues, but as friends, too. >> two curious people who want to figure out why the system is as messed up as it is. i like to say this. to fix the watch, you have to know how to build a watch. to fix our government system, you have to know how it is working in the fis place. and the first episode takes us into the swamp of corrupting money and politics and we try to unravel what dark money is, how you expose dark money and how it's corrupting our politicians and our policies. >> you guys know this because when we covered the 2016 race, one of the most effective things president trump had going for him was this notion that he couldn't be bought. you heard people say it all the time who support him, well, i like him because he knows how the game is played, but he

doesn't need -- he's not one of those people who is on the inside. >> he's rich. he doesn't need their money. but i think what you guys have found is that is not the case. he's taken an awful lot of this money. so i wonder what your thoughts are on some of the players and institutions and corporations he's taken money from that makes that argument kind of undercuts that argument. >> i almost think that's the easiest thing to say. it's the fox guarding the hen house in almost every agency in the donald trump administration. >> lobbyists and cabinet members. >> i think what makes this show different is it's not just trump and it's not just his appointees. it's policy throughout the country. we go to arizona and it's almost a no-brainer. in arizona, there should be solar panels on every single house. and because of all of the dark money that's in the local government entities there and been put there by the utilities and the regulators and the code brothers, they use natural gas.

>> you have to pay a tax to put solar panels on your house in arizona. you get punished for it. >> it will blow your minds to see what is influenced beyond the trump administration. every day he every one of us -- >> spoiler alert, there is a way out. >> is it the root of this with the public that not only do they not understand the intricacies of government, they feel they have no one there representing the family, that there's no one there that understands their light. as you delve into this -- i mean, i've known katie before she had bangs. >> i used to have bangs. >> before you started this project. but i think the core thing is, i don't need to know the intricacies to know nobody is up there representing me. isn't that a lot of the underlying problem here? >> that is a lot of the underlying problem. but there is a way to get out of

it. we show how montana has managed to oust dark money from their political system. they have something called a disclose act. it sounds wonky, but it's exactly what it sounds like. you have to disclose who you are if you want to spend money in our elections. and the governor told jacob that he had a number of interests, including the coke brothers, spending a ton of money to oust him from office. 930 days before the election started, all of that stopped because they didn't want to put their name on it. people didn't want to expose who they were behind this dark money. the supreme court just upheld a lower court ruling saying that is constitutional. other states could adopt that. and just to the point, it builds trust with the people of montana to feel like they can have confidence in the system because the money has been taken out of the process. that's just one state. but as katie said, the supreme court said, look, this could happen other places. >> a little tease. jacob, katie, thank you. "american swamp" premiers this sunday july 28th at 9:00 eastern

and in case you can't get enough of jacob, and who can, let's a double header hosting a headliner special on mayor put buttigieg on sunday. you are busy, my friend. >> i just need a nap. still ahead on "morning joe," several new polls showing joe biden with a commanding lead in the race for the democratic nomination. we will dig through those numbers. plus, the house oversight committee votes to subpoena ivanka trump and jared kushner's white house communications sent through private email and messaging services. we will talk to a member on of that committee. congressman ro khanna about that new effort. it's all ahead on "morning joe." t it's all ahead on "morning joe." when i was diagnosed with breast cancer,

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someone tried to order a cake for a 2-year-old that said happy birthday lizard but the

bakery misheard them and sent them a cake that said happy birthday loser. look at this. meanwhile, at the white house, trump is like why does the cake i ordered for donald trump jr. said why does the cake i ordered say happy birthday lizard. >> good morning. it is friday, july 26th. we have the host of saturday night politics on msnbc donny deutsch. jeremy peters is with us along with susan delpercio, sam stein and eugene robinson. take your pick, joe, at the top stories this morning. >> i want to hear about moscow mitch. >> can congressional democrats get on the same page? nancy pelosi meets with aoc this morning. this as one of the house speakers top lieutenants comes out in support of impeaching the

president. plus, congress takes action on one front and definitely does not on another. the house passes a sweeping spending bill while senate republicans block election security legislation just hours after bob mueller testified. in case there's any doubt about russia, which there should not be, a new report from the intel committee shows just how aggressive moscow was and how unprepared the u.s. was to deal with it. >> well, you know, we're going to talk about that in a second, but willie, the most shocking thing about this is robert mueller testified that not only did russia try to interfere with the 2016 election, and not only did donald trump's all of his intel community and kirsten nielson said russia undermined american democracy in 2016. we remember back then the warnings came, but moscow mitch, that being mitch mcconnell of moscow, kentucky, actually

blocked that and said he threatened the people that were going to try to get that information out to more americans. now we have almost four years later the same warnings coming, coming not only from the independent counsel, with 60% of republicans believe. we now have the intel committee in the senate run by republican richard burr saying the russians tried to infiltrate all 50 states in 2016 to undermine american democracy and undermine a free and fair election. and on this same day, willie, moscow mitch blocks two bills that would actually protect us from a russian invasion in this area. >> well, first of all, i want to thank you for burying the lead, which is the red sox historic dismantling of the yankees last night at fenway park in 1983.

>> lamere and i predicted that you guys were going to sweep us. so you win three out of four. go ahead. >> absolutely right. okay. the senate report came out led by republican richard burr of north carolina reiterated what we've heard over the last two years. we heard from robert mueller's testimony who said memorably two days ago russia is interfering with our elections right now, as we sit here, and will interfere again in our 2020 election. it's happening in realtime. now you have the senate intel committee coming out and detailing in its own way what exactly russia and other countries have been doing. so to have mitch mcconnell step in between election security and this country and our future elections coming up in to 20 is outrageous. mitch mcconnell talks about it in terms of this conspiracy. he calls it the russia hoax.

he said well, this is just another partisan bill from democrats who have been pushing a hoax. well, the hoax is not a hoax. it's what robert mueller spent six hours the other day detailing. it's what the senate intel committee now details in a long report with more to come. i don't know how you can, in good faith, sit in denial about what is happening and what's going to happen in the next election. >> we're about to get into some blockbuster polls that are going to show just how much donald trump still is suffering out there in the polls. he can fire all the pollsters he wants. but they're on to him. a lot of americans are on to him now. but i want to talk about moscow mitch. let's line this up for a second. so you have robert mueller, a lifelong republican, the most respected fbi director in the history of this country you, a vietnam war hero, a guy that made the ranger -- the army rangers hall of fame, a guy who said russia is trying to invade

america right now. moscow mitch says it's a hoax. you have his own intelligence committee in the senate led by republican richard burr saying russia tried to infiltrate all 50 states back in 2016 and are going to try it again. moscow mitch calls it a hoax. you have the republican trump appointed fbi director saying the russians infiltrated america's democracy and are going to try again. moscow mitch calls it a hoax. you have the head, the director of national intelligence saying that the russians tried to infiltrate our election system, tried to subvert american democracy. mitch said it's a hoax. the russians tried in '16, will

try again. moscow mitch calls it a hoax. you have military intel people, the military intel community, knowing, because they were fighting the russians in 2015, 2016 and are still fighting them every day. to stop them from continuing to infiltrate american democracy. i understand there's an oligarch that will be setting up a big aluminum plant in moscow mitch's home state. i don't know if that's it, but how could moscow mitch, so willingingly turn a blind eye not only this year to what robert mueller is saying, to what the fbi director is saying, to what the dna is saying, on to

what the united states military integ community is saying, how can moscow mitch keep denying that vladimir putin continues to try to subveteran american democracy. >> i love that you're calling him moscow mitch. >> what am i supposed to call him? cocaine mitch? maybe he's -- i mean, there's only cocaine if he's running cocaine to moscow. he is aiding and abetting shad mere putin's ongoing attempts to subvert american democracy according to the republican, fbi, cia, dni, intel committee, directs all republicans are all saying russia is subverting american democracy and moscow mitch won't even let the senate take a vote on it. that is un-american.

>>. >> joe, you're doing this because it's something you started yesterday. going back to yesterday, to me, i've been on the show for ten years, frankly, and i've listened to a lot. we have brawled on the air a lot. we are at war. it is time for the democrats to wake up. we are playing against cheaters and liars and with all due respect to michelle obama, when they go low, we've got to do whatever we have to do. we actually have a government led by moscow mitch and criminal trump. by the way, we're going to call him unindicted criminal trump now because in two instances, he has been an unindicted criminal. so i know in regular when you're playing fair, you're supposed to call him criminal trump.

and another message for the democracy is it is time to move forward. there are two takeaways from mueller that we're going to use as we go to war. number one, the president broke the law and when he's out of office, he can go and will go to jail. number two, we are vulnerable with our election systems. we're going to win the war of putting him in jail, whatever we have to do. and for all the intellectuals out there whose hair is going to go on fire, we cannot lose the next election. we will go back 50 years. let me just finish. the one tool that we have to use that the democrats never use is fear. start to paint a picture of what the next four years will look

like. of the possible path to a dystopian society. there is no more -- we cannot bring a knife fight to a bazooka gun fight. >> we can look right now and, yes, we are at war. and russia declared that war in 2016. and they decided they were going to subvert american democracy. every one of donald trump's appointed intel chiefs said russia is trying to subvert american democracy. robert mueller said it a few days ago and yesterday the intel chief, that i came into congress with in 1994, he's a conservative guy. the entire intel committee said the russians tried to subvert american democracy in 50 states and they're still trying it .yet

moscow mitch keeps killing any bill that would protect american democracy from vladimir putin's spies. what do we do about that, gene? >> what do we do about it? we unelect this -- as donny deutsch called him, criminal president, and we call it out. look, i'm in total agreement with the -- when they go low, we get busy argument. it is -- this is an emergency. this is a situation i've never seen in american politics. and we are in danger. we really are endangered by the president and this administration and the senate majority leader who will now allow on vote on this crucial legislation. still ahead on "morning

joe," joe biden is way up in a new poll. he has an 18-point lead on bernie nationwide. but what about head to head against the president? we'll check in on battleground ohio, next on "morning joe." ♪ limu emu & doug look limu. a civilian buying a new car. let's go.

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now to a just released fox news poll that finds joe biden beating trump 49% nationally. but democrats, don't get ahead of yourself. >> but na is not even chose. that is -- wait, he's making fun of joe biden and he's losing by over -- >> well, sanders beat trump by 6 points. >> he loses to a socialist by six points? man. i'll tell you what, if i lost to a socialist, if i'm republican

and i've been president for thee years and can i lose to a socialist by six points, i think i'd go home. >> the president does have an edge against senators warren and harris. >> he's big in ohio. >> which president trump won by 8 points in 2016. shows a tough race for most democrats, but not for joe biden. the quinn pea act university poll has biden currently leading trump by 8 points, 50-42. all other -- >> wait, mika, you're telling me joe biden is crushing donald trump in ohio, too? >> yeah. >> this is supposed to be his strongest midwest state. >> all of the democrats are effectively died with trump in the mid to low 40s. >> so let's pass this around a bit. willie, obviously, long, long way to go. but i would say we keep hearing from the white house how great donald trump is doing. we have people that have been suck up to donald trump for thee

years. it's really sad. i feel sorry for him writing op-eds saying oh, everything is breaking donald trump, stretching down by 10 points to a guy he calls sleepily joe biden and a socialist is beating him by six points. >> look inside the state of ohio. donald trump won that in 2016 by eight points. the ohio poll makes the case for joe biden and shows you why his lead is so wide nationally. in the fox poll, he's up 18 points overall on bernie sanders. but that is the argument to me for joe biden, that he can get back those states that the trump swept through the midwest. whether it's wisconsin or pennsylvania or ohio or michigan. the states that were lost, that sliver of 77, 78,000 votes, joe biden can make the case that he can walk in and take them back. >> he can and that is the biggest strength to his

candidacy. democrats want someone who can beat donald trump more than they want a specific candidate in their own lives. 63% of americans thought that those tweets went too far, but what's interesting is when asked among republicans as if it was an okay political attack, 59% of men said yes. only 48% of women said it was okay. trump is on the verge of really start to go lose republican women. and that will lead to the numbers that we saw in ohio. and i just want to switch back to something, joe. you asked gene what can people do to fight donald trump on mitch mcconnell. i propose creating americans for secure elections. go out and attack every new republican senator for not getting behind it while they're

at home this august. i will tell thaw a cable buy doesn't take much. they will feel the pressure and that is the way you move these republicans. you scare them. and that's the kind of thing you do. coming up, we'll dig deeper into these new poll numbers, including where women and minority voters stand right now. plus, the breakdown in the key state of south carolina. next on "morning joe." arolina. next on "morning joe." idle equipment costs you time and money.

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susan mentioned the women number in that fox news poll. take a look at the breakdown on whether voters feel donald trump respects racial minorities. only 34% said yes. that's down 7 points from august of 2017. just after trump praised people in a neo-nazi march in charlottesville, virginia. 57% say he does not respect minorities. looking inside the poll, only 20% of minorities feel the president respects them. 73% say he does not. most whites, 52%, also feel the

president does not respect minorities. although a six-point plurality of white men without a college degree believes trump respects priorities. that margin shrink toes one point for white men with a college degree. 48% to 47%. meanwhile, white women, regardless of education, overwhelmingly feel -- >> there's always a generalization among liberals about black voters. there's an overgeneralization among the media about working class white voters. and there's never a separation between working class white men without a college degree and working class white women without a college degree. that's a mistake, especially if you look at these numbers. 38% said he -- trump respects racial minorities, but 51%, a

majority, says he does not. and that is quite a fissure and suggests much more that donald trump's bigotry and his racism is going to easily drive away some in the base of his vote. >> yeah. i think when i was last on the show, we were talking about how little, in practical terms, trump has done to expand his coalition. those numbers drive that home. if you're a president and you're sitting at low 40s approval rating, if you're seeing those numbers that we put up earlier from ohio, normally, i think that the logical thing to do would be to try to do anything in your power to expand your appeal beyond the base that you have. what trump has done is precisely the opposite. he's run a, you know, red meat campaign. he's agitated a bunch of women voters. he's launched a highly racial and racist attacks against

members of congress, all in the hopes of juicing that turn out among white working class male voters. and the play is a dangerous one. both rhetorically and politically. and those numbers suggest that it might not be a successful one, either. >> so i mentioned the south carolina polls. a monmouth university poll showing 4 in 10 south carolina democrats support former vice president joe biden. he takes 39% of the vote with senator kamala harris at 12%. 27 points behind. senator bernie sanders gets 10%. elizabeth warren at 9. more interesting, if you look in the cross steps of biden's lead, powered by african-american voters, he has 51% support. paris is next at 12% while sanders holds on to 10%, the rest of the contend hers top out at 2% or lower. so keep that number up right there, jeremy.

tell me what you read into it. joe biden has weathered these attacks beginning in the debate when kamala harris turned to him. we want to talk about busing over the years. cory booker is going after biden's record on criminal justice. but my gosh, if you look in the state of south carolina, almost a 40-point lead among african-american voters for joe biden. >> i think that's obviously the erupt of a lot of good will that joe biden still has some being vice president to barack obama for eight years. i think it's also because he has always, really, had a strong relationship, even going back as a senator, he's always presented very well with the african-american community. i do wonder, though, what that looks like if he has another debate performance like he did the last time. these are obviously predebate numbers. we saw how his numbers really kind of collapsed the last time. regardless kamala harris, this is strictly anecdotal, but it's something i have noticed talking to voters. especially african-american

women. there's a reluctant there. for whatever reason, i can't explain it, but i've heard it now a few times in interviewing people. and it's almost like they think that she's not tested, she's not ready yet. and i think that explains a lot of biden's strength because what is biden, right, the former vice president, former senator, he's nothing if not a veteran. i think there's a lot of that going on there. coming up on "morning joe" in the next few minutes, nancy pelosi sits down with al alexandria ocasio-cortez. what do democrats hope to gain from the meeting? we'll talk to congressman ro khanna next on "morning joe." every day, visionaries are creating the future.

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private email accounts and messaging applications. the decision comes after administration members refused to voluntarily refuse to turn over the requested material earlier this month. which includes jared kushner's whatsapp messages with foreign officials, ivanka trump's use of a private email account to conduct official business, and steve bannon's use for official use of white house matters. have we heard this before? joining us now, ro khanna. i guess the first question i would have for you is what is going to happen if they did not come forward with the emails and all the information that you're asking for? what is the next step? i think people really want to understand how does the rubber meet the road with overside. >> mika, they could be held in contempt and kellyanne conway,

when we threaten contempt is now possibly complying. we can go to court to get these records. but what is important for people to understand is why this matters. the american people have a right to know whether there's communication going on with saudi arabia, about whether we should get into war in iran. the american people have a right to know about the situation in yemen. and these are communications taking place and they aren't under the federal law preserving these documents and, of course, the president's hypocrisy, as you pointed out, running an entire presidential campaign on this issue again, secretary clinton, it's stunning that they are not willing to comply. >> but this feels like it's been going on for weeks, maybe even months. when does it matter that they're not handing over documentation and when does it go to the courts? when does the next lever of oversights start happening? >> mika, chairman cummings is one of the fairest people that i

know. and what he is doing is giving the white house every possible opportunity. first, we tried it voluntarily. it didn't happen. now he's saying we're going to escalate or we're going to go to a subpoena. if that doesn't happen, then it will go to a court and if they start to violate court orders, then it will go to contempt. the chairman doesn't want it to go that way. he is trying, bending over backward toes give them every opportunity to come my. >> congressman, it's willie geist. the president this week vetoed two measures coming out of the senate that would have blocked arms sales to saudi arabia. you put this all against the back drop of the trump administration and its credit siemping, off what the intelligence agencies say was a ordered killing, why are these whatsapp conversations so significant to you with all that as perspective in context around

it? >> what we need to know exactly what is being said. was there communication on mbs saying the administration isn't going to take any action about khashoggi. was there communication saying that the administration can continue to bomb yemen? the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. it's comparable to rwanda. almost 14 million people facing famin. what is the administration talking about there? when you have people in charge of middle east policy, there are a lot of unanswered questions. what is saudi arabia saying about whether we should be getting into war in iran? so these are deep questions and it's not just that they aren't being transparent. it's that they may not even be preserving these records. >> jeremy. >> representatives jeremy peters from the "new york times," you are from california. you have a lot of democratic colleagues who came from districts that are pretty republican, have been traditionally republican leaning. a lot of them are concerned about moving forward with impeachment.

you yourself have not come forward with impeachment. i wonder if you could tell us about what you're hearing from them, what their reservations are and what they may be hearing from their constituents and how that may be affecting your position on whether or not to move forward with impeachment proceedings. >> well, i think the caucus is unifying. i think mueller was much more effective than some in the media are giving him credit for. he outlined in real detail how significant the russian interference was. and here is my sense of what's going to happen. chairman nadler was very cheer that you actually don't need a house vote to proceed with hearings. he actually has the ability to start these hearings, even without a judiciary vote. i expect we're going to have two court cases try to get mcgahn to testify, try to have the subpoenas of the underlying evidence under the mueller report. i expect we will win but then i expect mueller is going to begin and begin with having those newly elected members cast a

vote. >> congressman, just to switch the topic to political talk, you are the -- one of the cochairs of bernie sanders' campaign. what do you expect him to do next week to separate himself especially being on the stage with elizabeth warren for the first time? >> i think he has to make the argument about how he's going to win against donald trump. my view is the person who is going to be the nominee is the person who is going to convince all democrats in this country that they can beat donald trump. bernie sanders has two arguments to make. one, he has a proven track record of winning votes in wisconsin, of michigan of attracting rural voters and independent voters. two, he has an economic populist message that appealed to working class voters, the same voters joe was discussing earlier. his message can resinate. and i thinking he has to make that case, clearly. >> all right. congressman, thank you so much for being on the show this morning. >> thanks for always having me on. >> and speaking pelosi is set to meet with one of her highest

profile critics within the democratic caucus. right now, alexandria ocasio-cortez is slated to be sitting down with the speaker. now, according to a pelosi spokesperson, that is the case. aoc tells nbc news, quote, i don't think i have a strong message for pelosi, just to connect and make sure we're communicating. the meeting comes after the two seemed to clash over a compromised measure to provide border funding and then the "new york times" -- the new york congresswoman accused pelosi of singling out newly elected women of color. so we'll see what comes out of that. it's good they're getting together. up next, we all know attorney general william barr left a big mark over the mueller probe. now he's weighing in on another contentious issue. keep it rye here on "morning joe." keep it rye here on "morning joe. when i was diagnosed with breast cancer,

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where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. be there for you, and them. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. attorney general william barr has ordered the reinstatement of the federal death penalty. the last federal execution was 16 years ago in 2003, but since then, there have been an informal moratorium as justice department officials reviewed its lethal injection procedures after legal challenges. brar has ordered the bureau of prisons to adopt a new policy for its lethal injections, replacing the three drug system with one drug. joining us now, executive director of the justice action network, holly harris. always good to see you. >> good morning. >> what's your reaction to this

announcement yesterday? >> it's like one step forward, two steps back. working in the criminal justice base is a little bipolar lately. it's the latest in a series of actions that over-shadow what is broad bipartisan support for criminal justice reform across this country. not only is that not good policy, but it makes for poor politics. i was looking back at a gallop poll in 2017. and, you know, support for the death penalty was at an all-time low. so i don't really understand the politics of this. and i think it's going to undermine president trump's big win on the first step act. >> one of the first things the trump administration did is bring back provered jails or -- >> for private prisons. >> and now they're going to deal with bringing back the death penalty on a federal level. at a time that he tried to bring

out the program of we are trying to help bring and commute certain sentences and even trying to grand stand on that. it's like this bipolar kind of message that they're sending in the criminal justice world. and i think you're right, this is a real suspicious and potentially devastating blow to the whole movement against the death penalty. >> look, when are we going to start talking about the doj acting a fourth branch of government? we don't have adequate oversight from the administration. we don't have adequate oversight from congress. meanwhile, these issues are sort of moving forward without a lot of discussion. and it's going to be problematic for this country. >> so given joe biden's role in the crime bill, what do you

think somebody like him needs to do to convince someone that he's come around on this, that he is, indeed, the person who is better suited to take this issue on as president than, say, a younger reformer type candidate? >> well, i read his 20-page criminal justice plan that he puts out. the question is can he go on stage and sell it? and, you know, we've been hearing that he's going to be attacking cory booker. and i think that is a terrible strategy. you know, senator booker has been a stalwart for criminal justice reform, has worked closely with our organization on bipartisan criminal justice reforms in congress. and i think a better strategy for joe biden is to disarm cory booker of that argument. and, in fact, say senator booker, i thank you for what you've done in congress and being willing to work across the aisle to change laws and change lives. in fact, as president, i'm going to support you and, in fact, i'm going to go further and pivot to

your plan, talk about eliminating mandatory minimums, talk about incentivizing states to do the same. that is what will turn back that '94 crime bill. >> one of the things joe biden did not touch on in detail in hs plan, that he is trying to play on the vulnerability with the senator booker is he didn't really deal with policing. when we are here dealing with the decision by this administration a week ago, hitting the anniversary of ferguson, policing is a big issue. the obama administration dealt with it by having its commission on policing. biden didn't really go into that. and accusing booker, which some truth there with stop and frisk in newark, the policing issue could really hurt booker and it is something biden has to deal with because it is the policing issue that keeps bringing people back to social justice. if booker is going to attack he is going to expect an attack

back and the same for senator harris. rabbit hunting isn't fun when the rabbit has the gun. you can fire back, you know. >> oddly enough, senator booker has a lot in common with joe biden in that both have been able to work across the aisle on bipartisan solutions. certainly senator booker on, you know, criminal justice reform, joe biden on a host of other issues. in that way, you know, i have a lot of respect for a leader who is willing to work with anybody, just like you, willing to work with me. >> absolutely. >> to move criminal justice policy forward in this country. i think attacking booker on criminal justice reform is going to fall way flat. not just with the democratic base but certainly with the huge coalition of folks who work on criminal justice reform across this country. >> let's hope this is in the debate next week. mika? >> thank you very much, holly. now to a new biographic film

perfectly timed. it is called "skin" and tackles the story of a real life neo nazi that tries to escape the white supremacy movement to start a new life. take a look. >> i want to help. the feds need your full cooperation on this thing, brian, okay? there ain't no deal without it. >> i just want to know where we're going to go, where we're going to live, what about the girls? >> all of that is classified. okay? i won't know unless you want me to. >> what about school for the girls? >> they will be taken care of. i promise you that. >> it's been a hard time. >> especially for the little one. >> yeah. >> well, look, man. you have an out.

i can help you. >> i spoke yesterday with the film's star actor jamie bell and asked him about the film's narrative and what it was like to portray brian widener the former neo nazi. >> brian widener was a career neo nazi, drafted into this group, and he believed in this ideology and was covered head to toe with racist symbols and hateful tatoos and meets this woman who has three children. she is desperate to get out of the movement as well. they help each other come to an awakening, an understanding that the lives they've chosen are bad choices basically and he goes through two years of very painful surgery to have all these tatoos removed and, hopefully, be able to reform himself. >> so what did you learn about

the basis of the hatred, what drives it? what did you learn about yourself in exploring this character? >> so many of these people when they come into this are young and they feel disenfranchised and certainly this character didn't have any kind of strong male role model in his life. you know, he was told to go out and beat somebody up, come back. he was given a beer and told, good job. and for him, that was what he equated to what a family was, his own sense of community. the film is really exploring a lot of themes. it's exploring how far can we extend our own sense of compassion, how far should we reach a hand of kindness to people. can people really change? even though the hateful tatoos are removed from your face what process needs to go on on the inside? and also racism and bigotry and hatred are all learned things. no one is born this way. it is inherited. at the end of the film the character meets his son for the very first time and the question is asking, you know, is this

where it stops? or does the cycle continue? which i think are all very relevant things to be asking currently. >> often you choose roles because you're drawn to them. >> sure. >> was there any of that there? >> there are a number of different things. as an actor you get to transform yourself. this was very transformative for me. the character is very much the opposite of what i am a is a person. exploring the darker side of humanity is always interesting. i will say this. our filmmaker who won an oscar for the short film of this at last year's oscars, he tried to shop the script around for five or six years and the response that he was getting back from producers was, this doesn't exist in this country. these kinds of people are in the shadows. this is a small, sub culture of this country, and he kept getting nos. about two years ago, that all changed quite significantly. there was very much an urgency to tell the story. i don't know how you feel, but my personal opinion is that

these types of people are being kind of radically normalized and i think that is a very dangerous thing. hopefully this film is shining a light on these people and bringing something out of the darkness. >> well, there are parallels to -- the timing is incredible for this film. is it not obvious that the parallels -- what are they to you to what we're seeing today? >> it's frightening, frankly. i don't know how else to put it. the first time i talked to the subject bryon widner the guy i play in the film was the same day as charlottesville, which is really -- really struck me and made me feel as if, should we be making this film? morally i was on a seesaw. is this the right time to be telling this, the right thing to be saying, the right perspective to tell this film? but, again, i feel that the more we don't call it what it is, the more dangerous it becomes, so i

really saw this film as a very -- as like a fire alarm, a very urgent wakeup call and a call to more conversation about this stuff. >> what's the hope that people are left with in the film, in the message with the character? how about with you? are you left with hope after spending so much time really looking into such an ugly problem that is so frightening as you pointed out? >> some people are worth saving. i think right now certainly across the world compassion and kindness are very important things. the character that i played, bryon widner, would not have been able to change his life and start anew without the kindness and compassion of strangers. people like the founder of the one peoples project, part of the people on the front lines opposing these people when they organ in rallies and it is because of people like him doing

the good fight, that for me is the hope and in the movie that there are still people out there with kindness and compassion in their hearts. >> and our thanks to jamie bell. the new film is "skin" in theaters today and available on demand. time now for final thoughts. willie, we're girding up for a big week next week in politics. you got the democratic debate, obviously that's a big deal. president trump holds a rally in cincinnati, ohio. this will be the first rally he's held since the send her back chants created so much controversy. what will happen there? happening of course this rally in a state where joe biden the polls are showing has a lead over donald trump, a state trump won back in 2016. and then, finally, the question of impeachment and what the house oversight committee and others will do next in terms of trying to get answers about russian interference in our democracy. >> big debate week next week.

a lot of people will be watching to see if joe biden performs better than in the last debate. also this will be the end i think of what history will know as mueller week and another day yesterday where the senate intelligence committee, chaired by republican richard burr, told us, again, as we've heard for the last two years, how russia interfered in our 2016 election and how it plans to continue to interfere in our elections on the same day that the majority leader blocked the advancement of legislation that would do something about it. >> my question is how does the republican party respond? here you have a party that is led by a president of the united states who insists there is voter fraud that doesn't actually exist and he impaneled this blue ribbon commission he then had to dissolve on this nonexistent voter fraud. you have a leader of the republican party in the senate who has not only blocked this election interference law but also has blocked efforts to reform gerrymandering and campaign finance disclosures. >> and i think that's the critical issue. where they claim voter fraud

that wasn't there. you have russia interference that is clearly there. they did nothing about it. the democrats need to focus on that as they deliberate about impeachment and as they go into the debates. they need to focus back on who the real enemy is. >> the russians no longer have to hack into our systems. the president and mitch mcconnell have opened the front door and rolled out the red carpet. >> what a week. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks so much. hi there. here's what's happening now. the alarms have been sounded. there are new signs our elections are at even greater risk than they were in 2016. here's what makes no sense. congress doesn't seem to be doing anything about it. the senate intelligence committee releasing a bipartisan report yesterday that found systems in all 50 states were targeted by russia in the 2016 election and t