used this excuse sometimes in the past. the problem with this is that the president himself owns it and keeps repeating it and says that it's his actual view. >> do you think the marco rubio 2015 if he was told he would be here now defending the president would believe it back then? >> no. we saw marco rubio tweeting this weekend saying that he wants -- we watch these senators' statements because what we're seeing there is them laying the predicate to either -- to probab probably vote to acquit the president if it comes to that. >> to all of our viewers out there, you can sign up to that are newsletter at sign-up point axios.com. >> "morning joe" starts right now. for over a month, isis has been variety fighting to take this southeastern town near turkey's border. of the nearly 300 american air strikes against isis in syria so far, half been in cobanny.

on the ground, those defending cobanny. there are funerals for the fallen every day. >> they're burying the defenders here on the turkish side of the border. it's too dangerous to hold any funerals now. but as soon as it's free, they're going to dig them up and send them home. >> a look at the front lines in the height of the isis onslaught. turkish leaders considers those cu kurds an enemy. >> we're going to be covering that throughout the morning. many people across the world see it as a terrible move. very allies that remained steadfast with us and played such a big role in pushing isis back and supporting the united states now being betrayed by

donald trump, now being betrayed by his administration. david ignatius said, and david's been over in syria and knows so much about the battle against isis. president trump is about to make pay major consequential mistake. he's informing that syrian/kurdish allies that u.s. is withdrawing from positions on the border abandoning security mechanism to allow an invasion by turkish forces. of course this is after the united states had them move some of their heavy equipment off the border in an act of good will. well, they were just being set up for this slaughter. that's what you get for being an ally with donald trump and playing a major role in crushing the caliphate, which, of course, the kurds did. >> and it's just monday, october 7th. with us we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle.

white house reporter for "the associated press"on that lemire. political brighter and name analyst nicholas consorry. and eddy jr. over the weekend we learned that a second whistleblower has come forward with information about president trump's july 25th phone call with the president of the ukraine. an attorney representing the original whistleblower says that their legal team is now representing the second whistleblower who has first-hand new jersey knowledge of the events that supports the first whistleblower. this inspector general spoke with michael atkinson but legal sources tell nbc that he is not filing a separate formal complaint. right now, only three republican senators have spoken out against

the president's call for china in addition to ukraine to investigate joe biden. senator susan collins and ben sasse both released statements to their hometown newspapers. colonel lips said the president made a, quote, big mistake and called it, quote, completely inappropriate. sasse said they don't look to commies for the truth. but no reaction got under the president's skin has much as senator mitt romney who tweeted when the only american citizen president trump singles out for china's investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the democratic nomination process, it strains contract jewelly thety to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated. by all appearances, the

president's brazen and unprecedented appeal to china and to ukraine to investigate joe biden is wrong and appalling. compare that to what we've been hearing from the president's defenders, starting with republican senator marco rubio. >> do you think it's okay for president trump to ask china to launch an investigation of joe biden and hunter biden? >> i don't know if that's a real interest or him just need eling the press knowing you were going to get outraged by it. he plays it like a violin and everybody falls flight if the that's not a real request. >> george, you really think he was serious about thinking that china's going to investigate the biden family? >> why can't you answer yes or no that you think it's appropriate? >> because i don't think that's what he did. >> well, i doubt if the china comment was serious, to tell you the truth. >> you don't take the president at his word. >> no. the president loves to go out on the white house driveway.

i haven't talked to him about this. i don't know what the president was thinking but i know he loves to bait the press. >> but, it apparently wasn't only a flip comment on the white house lawn. trump held a phone call with china's president back in june and cnn reports that on that call president trump raised biden's political prospects as well as those of senator elizabeth warren. cnn reports that the record of that call was stored on the same top secret server that has his call with the president of ukraine. >> jonathan lemire, sad and pathetic or only ways to describe -- >> very dangerous. >> -- dangerous also, marco rubio and the others and their reaction to this call claiming it was a joke. i guesser lickman and holloman had it wrong all along, they should have just said nixon was joke about watergate as somehow

that would waste await fact of what we saw with ukraine and that people were making behind the scenes to make that quid pro quo work. we actually saw that another phone call was made, not just on the white house lawn to the chinese to talk about the 2020 election. and, you know, it's so interesting roy blunt suggesting that he wouldn't say something publicly about getting help from the chinese, that actually i saw that was a threat as much as anything. not only to china but to other countries. it was, as you said, his russia, if you are listening comment, of the 2020 election cycle. this is what's so disturbing. roy blunt knows, marco rubio knows, jim jordan, i don't know if he knows, it he's paying attention or not.

but at least those two senators know that when donald trump spoke in that press conference and said russia, if you're listening, please get the 30,000 emails, they were that night they began going after those 30,000 emails. so pleading ignorance or suggesting it as a joke is laugh able and wi laughable and will come back to haunt them in their campaigns. >> the russian hackers moved that night in 2016 and we saw it friday night when he talked about china that can could be determined as an open invitation. at that same press conference on friday he was asked if he ever talked to any foreign leader to investigate someone who was not a political rival and he couldn't answer. he said i'll have to get back to you on that. i think that's a clear indication of what he's been talk about. we know the president likes to talk politics with foreign leaders largely to relive his

2016 election. we know that foreign leaders have been asked to sit through his re-election night as wisconsin and other states go to him and one can imagine them from time to time rolling their eyes. but he could be talking about 2020 going forward and maybe that's the way his prospects, maybe that is to have for help. what you saw over the weekend are republicans just simply refusing to break with him, with a few exceptions, of course, that you just mentioned. but they're seeing his approval rating in his party, 80%, 85% dpinding on which poll you look pat there are senators who know that even if the president weren't to be -- if he were to be impeached but not removed, but a senator cast about to remove are going to be replaced with a trump friendly candidate the next day. i think it was clear that he was laying down markers for mitt romney. he was using that as an example. there's complications between romney and him for a long time and i think he was sending a signal to other republicans. if you come after me, if you

criticize me, i'm coming after you time and time again. mitt romney is inoculated. he can withstand these trump attacks, but other senators may not be so lucky. he's saying if you come at me like romney did, i'm coming at you and even harder. >> romney did much better in utah than donald trump by just a long shot. >> well then there's senator ron johnson who we expect thought he was helping the president when he told "the wall street journal" that the u.s. ambassador to the european union, gordon sondland, told him in august about an arrangement involving military aid to ukraine that, at the time, the president was withholding. according to journal, johnson says sondland told him that ukraine under its newly elected president would appoint a strong prosecutor general and move to, quote, get to the bottom of what happened in 2016. and if president trump has that confidence, then he'll release the military spending.

johnson said, quote, at that suggestion i winced. my reaction was, oh, god, i don't want to see helps to two things combined. johnson says he asked the president about it in a phone call the very next day and claims the president denied such an arrangement. >> of course, ron johnson may have said that, but we know for a fact susan del percio, that if you actually look at all of the emails and all the texts exchanges that were released between volker and the rest of the crew, time and again they kept going back to the deliverables. they kept going back to zelensky having to tie this -- his meeting with the president and support for the united states with an investigation into the bidens, with an investigation into 2016, into that company. and at one point they put it in

a proposed statement which zelensky's advisers took out, and then they came back and said, no, no, you've got to put it back in there. they were insistent, it was obvious. every republican in the senate and the house knows that and yet they're running around lying. ron johnson, he committed, of course, what's called a gaff in washington, d.c., when somebody accidently tells the truth. and he did and he got caught telling the truth. >> he did. and it's surprising to see this come from ron johnson, only because he's not up for election until 2022. so he's not worried about an immediate primary. i'm not sure what his concerns are or what he wants from the president or what the president's holding over him. but his interview yesterday on meet the press was despicable. i'm willing to bet when they booked him he was still wincing at the comment. but when he got there and he tried to deflect and go to

ridiculous claims, chuck todd held him accountable. thank goodness. that's one of the good parts that we're seeing during this whole spectacle of the trump administration is that journalists are doing a fantastic job trying to hold people accountable and johnson looked pathetic out there yesterday. >> it's painful, but let's take a look. here is chuck todd asking the senator about it on meet the press yesterday. >> why did you wince and what did you mean by those two things combined? >> let me first, before i start answer willing all the detailed questions, let me talk about why i'm presympathetic with what president trump's gone through. you've got john brennan on, you ought to ask director brennan what did appreciate strzok mean when he texted -- >> consider, can we -- >> no, chuck, let me finish. >> senator. what does this have to do. >> leaking like mad, scorned and. >> what did this have to do with ukraine? >> it has everything to do with ukraine. i have my third letter into the

inspector general. he tells this committee. >> senator. >> -- asking to just confirm are you investigating those leaks that peter strzok talked about in the -- >> senator, i have no idea why -- >> no, that's a setup? >> why a fox --. >> it's relevant to this point. >> -- why the fox news propaganda stuff is popping up on here. i have no idea why we're going here. >> it's an underlike why president trump is upset and his reporters are upset at the news media. >> this snolt about the media. senator johnson. senator johnson, please, we can please answer the question that i asked you instead of trying to make donald trump feel better here that you're not criticizing him. >> i'm not. i'm just -- >> i'm just trying to ask you a simple question of what -- >> -- biased -- >> what made you wince? i'm asking a simple question about you clearly were upset that somehow there was an implication that military aid was being frozen. >> yes. >> because the president wanted

an investigation. why did you wince? >> because i didn't want those connected. and i wanted -- i was supporting the aid, as is senator murphy as is everybody that went to that initial inauguration. but here's the salient point of why i came forward. when i asked the president about that, he complete will he denied it. he adamantly, angrily denied. at the said i'd never do that. so that is the piece of the puzzle i'm here to report today. >> uh-huh. of course the president always tells the truth, mike barnicle. >> wow. >> what is sniveling like performance on meet the press. it's a senator, united states senator representing the good people of wisconsin bringing up conspiracy theories from years past, trying to somehow say that explains donald trump holding up $400 million worth of military

aid to protect a democratic ally from further invasion from vladimir putin. a man that donald trump has, of course, capitulated to time and time again in every meeting that they had. and it's just all of these displays, you can look at marco rubio's display. he said a few good things during this investigation. but ron johnson, i saw jody ernst and i thought, my god, you entered public service for this? to cower in front your own people and to lie in front of your own people and just not tell them the truth? it's astounding and it gets worse by the day. and, of course, we know this will end badly for donald trump and everybody else that apologizes for him. but it is so painful to watch right now. >> joe, a few moments ago you made the observation as we

opened the show with the clip of marco rubio and roy blunt speaking and you made the observation that they know. they go out and say these things, but they know. behind the scenes they know. well, joe, they all know. and they have all chosen, they've had a choice, to protect the country or protect their status in office. they've chose their own re-election hopes and dreams over the united states of america. last night the president of the united states betrayed an ally in the field, the kurds in turkey. that's just the latest thing he's done. you mentioned mitt romney. nearly 70 years ago there was one individual, margaret chase smith who spoke out against joe mccarthy during the height of the red scare in the early 1950s. history still remembers her, remembers the name, remembers the deed. history is a constant

stenographer. ron johnson who appears very limited intellectually, the other senators who say the president was joking when he said china should investigate joe biden, these things are going live forever in the is history. we are living through a particularly turbulent, depressing and dangerous period in american history unlike we've ever encountered before. and these people are going to be held accountable by history at some point starting now. >> and what i don't understand, ed eddy, jonathan lemire had a great piece talking about how a lot of the things that helped donald trump get elected in 2016 are some of the same character traits that are now moving him towards impeachment and perhaps will have him removed from office. eddy, what i don't understand is, what these senators are

looking at. they think they're making the safe play. they're actually making the short-sided stupid political play. look at the impeachment numbers, they're racing forward in a way in which they never raised forward. a poll tend of the week showed 44% of americans wanted donald trump removed from office. that's a plurality. every poll it seems to be either split down the middle or aplurality aplurality a plurality. you look at jody ernst embarrassing herself at a town hall meeting playing dumb when they knew exactly what was happening. she, someone who has served her country, she could not tell the truth to her own voters. and so you sit there thinking, okay, well, she's just covering herself politically it's sad and pennsylvania threatic a

pathetic and we hope our children don't look at her as an example because that's so depressing to watch. but then you look at iowa polls that show donald trump's upside down by over -- he's double digits upside down in iowa. even these plays where they're being cowardly, where they're running away from the truth, those are not calculated, smart, political plays. those are plays that will come back and haunt them and yet they just don't seem to have the good common sense to understand that in this moment. >> you would think, joe, that they would be acting in self-interest. it seems as if they are, but it also reveals a quality of mind and character that they're so easily duped into following donald trump down this -- down this disaster pathway. but it seems to me, as i've been thinking about this, and listened to mike this morning, there's this interesting kind of interplay here. there are the nakts facts that w are on the table and then there's the bad faith of the

republican actors and then there's the effectiveness of the bad feigning, right? one hand we can say as we listen to jim jordan and blunt and marco rubio and ernst, we can say that they know what they know, that the facts are what they are. but then they're engaging in bad faith. but they engage in bad faith because they know it will work. then you ask yourself the question -- >> let me cut you off there, though. it is not working. donald trump's numbers continue to go down. >> among republicans, joe? >> those supporting -- does it matter? it doesn't matter among republicans. what matters is, the majority of americans. you are starting to see in some polls as many as one in five republicans starting to support the impeachment inquiry. you're seeing independents moving towards supporting inquiry. and i guess that's a message i'm sending again because donald trump shocked the world in 2016.

people think that he has magic pixie dust and that it's chaos that this idiocy, that this confederacy of dunces that he keeps around him to defend him, they think that's going to save this man. no. he is beyond saving politically. it is over. it's just a matter of time, eddie. and that's what i'm trying to say this morning is, eddie, it's not helping. >> you know, i can see that, joe. i find that convincing. but the thing that i'm trying to wrap my mind around, though, is that when you look at the folks who are watching fox news, when you think about what i heard -- what i'm hearing across the country. i was just in texas and i was with some really exciting folks who were trying to flip the state house in texas down there in auston. but i hear them running up against people who are saying the same things that we're hearing from the mouths of marco rubio, from the mouth of jim

jordan. so i think you're right at a certain level of generality. but as we move into these particular places across the country, this stuff is effective. and then i don't know how we engage at the level of trying to hold people accountable when our interlocktors are engaging us in bad faith. i don't know what to do. >> do you know what you do? i said it leading up to 2018, what you do is you register, you get your friends to register to vote, you drive them to the polling brooth, yooth, you have election and you win so convincingly like the democrats did in 2018 that it's an indictment on all of the hate, all of the bigotry, all of the lies that donald trump promoted about caravans, all of the lies that right wing media promoted about caravans bringing leprosy

to the united states of america? you remember that? we're sending trips down to the border because there are ex-grants coming up that are bringing leprosy and small pox. we have more of a danger of freaks not immaterial mu nizing the immunizing their children than immigrants from guatemala. this is the real problem right now. but serious -- >> point taken. >> but seriously, mika, this is not working. it's not working for donald trump. it's not working for these republicans. and you just wonder why they are so slow. >> they can read the numbers. >> to get it. >> we're going to get nick in here in a moment. we want to get to the major u.s. policy change at the middle east. late last night the white house announced that u.s. troops are beginning to withdraw from northern syria near the turkish

border. the decision followed a phone call president trump had with turkey's president erdogan yesterday in a statement from the press secretary, the trump administration says that, quote, turkey will soon be moving forward with its long plan to operation into northern syria. the united states armed forces will not support or be involved in the operation and united states forces having defeated the isis territorial caliphate will no longer be in the immediate area. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel joins us now by phone. richard, what do you have? >> reporter: well, this is a major development. joe might be right that the american people will eventually remove president trump. but is he president right now and that has very immediate questions for and concerns for the people who live in northern syria. i'm talking about the kurds. this is a population of u.s.

allies, the people who joined with american special operations forces and defeated the isis caliphate. there are probably about 50 to 60,000 of the fighters, they live in an area, they control an area of approximately 2 million people. they have been protected by american forces on the ground, those americans there have been making sure that the turks across the border do not come in and invade their enclave and they fear that if the turks do that, there will be massive ethnic cleansing. the americans have now been ordered to stand aside. the turkish president has said numerous times that he is going to invade. so our allies who lost 10,000 people fighting against isis who did, in fact, defeat the isis caliphate now worry because of that this decision, overnight surprise decision, that are there will be genocide.

i just spoke to a british official. he said the americans have betrayed us. they have opened the door for a turkish massacre. we are no longer able to fight against isis. isis might return to the region and the only one responsible if that happens will be the americans. they are the ones responsible for this. so there is a state of absolute concern, panic even, among our very close kurdish allies after this overnight surprise decision. so, yes, he is still president, yes, there are consequences, and they say they are being betrayed and, frankly, it is very hard to argue that they are not being betrayed. >> sir richard, nick here in new york. that the early hour, what can we say about the president's own kind of rational for this zmition what's driving it? what we see in some of the early reports say mix in a phone call of erdogan and his own desire to

see americans out of that fight. is there any reporting that you have about his reasons here? >> yeah, i know the story very well. i've worked with the american special forces who are there, i've followed this story closely. president trump has wanted to do this for a long time. the kurds who are in this bubble in northern syria, again, they control an area of roughly 2 million people. there are about 50 to 60,000 of them armed. they've had a decent amount of success controlling this area. it's been let's say a stable area. but across the border in turkey erdogan seized this bubble of kurdish control just across the bubble from him as an eminent threat. he sees them as terrorists even though they fought isis. he says they're going to create instability for the region and he worries that if they have more success that it will cause kurds inside turkey will to rise up against him. he has long wanted to take action, to take military action

against the kurds in syria. the only thing preventing that has been the u.s. military presence. president trump has wanted to wash his hands of the situation from the very beginning. he has said repeatedly he's going to leave, he's going to pull the troops out. the americans and the kurds there have fought against isis, they defeated isis. he's wanted to do this time and time again but it was only when people like defense secretary mattis resisted that he had pause and didn't do it. this is the issue that defense secretary mattis resigned over. he could not accept a betrayal of our allies. the special envoy for the counterisis mission resigned publicly because he could not accept this betrayal. the american special operators themselves don't accept this betrayal and have been trying to interact. president trump has wanted this, there has been resistance to it, but the people who are resisting him are no longer around him so now we have this conversation

and he did what he always wanted to do, wash his hands of the situation and let the chips fall where they may and those chips are about to fall on top of the heads of our very close allies. they lost over 10,000 people fighting against isis. >> wow. richard richard engel, thank you very much. his reporting is online at nbcnews.com. >> well, you know, mika, the people who will be happy about this that donald trump has betrayed our allies, america's allies that helped us crush isis over the past four years or so, we saw them in the picture. vladimir putin loves it. and the iranians love it. and, of course, erdogan loves it. all the autocrats love it. who doesn't love it? well, pentagon leaders who were warning that isis may rise again.

so, it's very troubling. let me just say, it's early in the morning and i said something i shouldn't have said earlier. i was going -- i was talking about donald trump and i used -- i used a word regarding small pox vaccination. i used the word freaks. i want to apologize. again, it's early in the morning, i was thinking about yankees fans when i said that. so i -- it happens. you understand it happens. >> you ju should get vaccinations. >> you should get vaccinations i have a lot of friends who have concerns about this and have concerns but i do believe it's misguide and it's antiscience and i hope that they will look at all the science behind it. but, yes, again, jonathan lemire, i know it's happened to you before. you've gone on a rant and you say a word when you're thinking about yankees fans because i'm so worried about them actually winning the alcs that a word blurts out especially early in

the morning. so i apologize to my friends especially, but others who may for religious reasons or just because they don't believe science, don't follow science are not getting their children immunize. jonathan, you've been there, i know. >> oh my gosh. >> there is an entire show that had to be had. not a 7 second delay but a 25% delay because i was talking about the yankees and there was a tedsteady beat playing throughout. go astros, the nation is depending on you. >> and mike barnicle, order restored a little bit in the national league. i really thought early on that as fans in washington, they are the best. thought that -- they started out pretty strong but they are just playing against the force in that dodgers stadium that's going to be hard to beat. >> it all came home last night. patrick corbin, one of the

nationals aces, boom, got lit up. dodgers are going to win that series. yankees are going end their series in twin cities. >> today. >> maybe today. >> what about the braves coming back? the cardinals? you've got to hand it to -- >> sinclair. >> pitches eight great innings. what a great kid. a kid. they give up three in the nine. >> i want to stay away are from that bays don't waecause i don't claire mccaskill mad at me. we're looking forward to astros/yankees. we're looking forward to that. >> go astros. >> i couldn't count the cardinals out yet, claire. >> still ahead on "morning joe," collin powell tells the republican party to get a grip. we'll show you what the retired general has to say about the gop under donald trump. plus, bernie sanders talks often about healthcare and now

it's hitting pretty close to home had the how his heart attack last week is impacting his presidential bid. but first, let's go to bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill. good morning. fall has arrived for many fine, no more of that historic heat wave. we have a lot of rain this morning, northern minnesota, northern portions of mississippi and alabama. also watching the rain moving through tennessee and kentucky. as we go through the afternoon some of that will make it into areas of new england and central new england. i think d.c., philly will be okay. most of the rain will be later on tonight if it makes at that time all. dallas, you've waited so long for this. 78 and sunny. low humidity. oklahoma, same for you. here comes the next weathermaker through the rockies. this will be a snowstorm in the northern plains, first one of the season for the dakotas and also by minnesota. by the time we get to friday should be a nice end to the week. it's going for to be a cloudy, dreary week. by the time we get to thursday

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some things are too important to do yourself. ♪ get customized security with 24/7 monitoring from xfinity home. awarded the best professionally installed system by cnet. simple. easy. awesome. call, click or visit a store today. in a torrent of tweets, president trump is escalating his attacks on joe biden and his son's dealings in ukraine. and calling on the former vice president to end his 2020 bid. >> i can just say, why's he so scared of joe biden? i mean, alex, do we have any polls out? have any polls come out recently in any swing states on joe biden? i don't understand -- >> he seems freaked out. >> he's petrified and freaked out about joe biden. this guy, i mean, this is --

he's a -- >> he's obsessed. >> he's as scared of joe biden as he is to release his tax returns. so i -- >> wisconsin right there. >> wow. >> eesh. >> joe biden smokes him by nine points. >> whew. >> i'm not good in math, but that's outside the mar begin of error and those are voters? >> okay. >> the wow, that's really bad. >> so biden has -- >> so that explains why donald trump is so freaked out. >> obsessed. >> and acting like a little baby, he's likes to say, about joe biden. joe, mika makes you look like a little baby. she's so tough on me. that's what donald said. joe, mika makes you look like little baby. so mika's so tough on me. well, he's looking like the little baby right now. >> well no need to be tough. >> because he's getting pounded by joe biden be in wisconsin. that's a state he has to win and biden's just tearing him to

shreds. >> well, the story speaks for itself. biden has been responding on the campaign trail. and in an op-ed published friday -- >> hold on a spekdecond. i can see that wisconsin poll again? i don't believe it. >> those numbers are staggering. >> so mike barnicle. let's keep these up if the you look at biden. >> fox news poll. >> this is a fox news poll. >> joe biden is crushing donald trump. this is like -- hthis is worse than nixon beat mcgovern. this is worse probably than fdr beating alf landon. and even bernie sanders losing to a self-professed socialist. oh my god. he's losing to him by five points. and, by the way, bernie's not

hiding it. he's going i'm a socialist and he's still losing to bernie sanders. can you -- i don't know, i know that most plurality of americans want to see donald trump impeached. i understand that. it's getting worse by the day. but could you just look at those numbers? aren't those shocking numbers that donald trump is getting beaten this badly in a fox news poll in wisconsin? it kind of takes your breath away, doesn't it? >> well, yes, joe. and it's also a partial explanation for why president trump reacts like a whiney baby every time joe biden's name is mentioned the you can explain it in a few words. >> hold on a second. could we put that poll back up zbhen because i just can't believe -- >> are you talking about the fox poll. >> yeah, the fox news poll. this is wisconsin. the swing state. where the state that he's supposed to be stronger than any other midwest state, fox news.

fox newspapers h has a pole out sho poll out that shows hezbollah he he's getting clobbered by biden. >> mccomb and wayne county in michigans, and wisconsin, just those few words, and poof, donald trump is a private citizen. poof. gone. >> i know. >> yeah. >> well, you look at that time -- susan del percio, i don't know if you were on set when we put the poll up, but let's put this fox news poll up. it's of wisconsin which is supposed to be this swing state. if tim were alive he'd say it's been wisconsin, wisconsin, wisconsin. donald trump, despite is the fact -- my god prosecutor he, h ten he tens of millions of dollars and

his numbers keep going down. does this -- even bernie is beating him in wisconsin. >> he's hurting people, the farmers, in wisconsin and all across this country. they're not happy with him. what's interesting about that follow, if you could keep it up a little bit lopping tlanger, t poll, biden in the high 40s, which theens theremeans there's that donald trump is not breaking above. and that as an incumbent should be really scary to the president. >> nick, you actually look at what's happening not only in wisconsin, but also in michigan. we've seen headlines in the plants being shutdown, general motors, the union is still on a

vike, donald tru strike, donald trump refuses to get involved. he claims to be the working man's president. he continues to let those workers rot on the protest line, will not get involved on the side of working americans. you look at pennsylvania and these states -- ohio, that are supposed to be donald trump's ace in the hole. they are, of course, along with the rest of america suffering through the worst manufacturing recession, some would say depression in over a decade. >> well listen, joe, it's important to show our viewers that wisconsin poll again. i think a few people -- >> it's a fox news poll. >> i look at that and see three democrats who can't get over 50% against the most unpopular president in modern history. warren and sanders are tied with him and biden is the one person who cuts above. but that does not look, to me, like a slam dunk for anybody. it looks to me like a fluid

election where a lot can happen. agree with you that the president's poll virs his traic they've hurt manufacturing and farmers, gm plant is one thing, it's not a great predicate for him and the question is whether people are going vote in 2020 on these pocketbook issues or kind of vote on this, you know, cultural blood feud about, you know, kind of america and how white it is and how, you know, different it is, how it's changing. i'm not sure what the frame for the election is going to be yet. so i see those numbers in wisconsin, that great fox news poll, and i see, you know, a race where a lot can happen. a lot. >> certainly a lot can happen. you've said in the 39%, mika, about a year before the election as a president after you're tend spending tens of millions of dollars online. he's raising money and his burn rate is pretty extraordinary, it's not moving anything. >> it would explain his focus on

joe biden. mike memoli is responding how biden is struggling to respond to the president's attacks and mike joins us now. what are the challenges, mike? >> well, mika, first think we have to acknowledge at the outset that especially given the incredible pace of development in this impeachment controversy, i don't think we know exactly yet how this is playing politically from the was a monmouth poll last week that showed that, yes, a plurality of americans tend to be giving some credence to what the president has been saying about joe biden and whether he was using his position to help protect his son, something that every independent fact checker has debunked. but on the other hand, joe, i don't know if you know this there's there was a wisconsin poll yesterday by fox knows that showed that joe biden still continues to be any strong position. there was also a fox news poll in south carolina in the primaries showing that bind has a commanding lead in the primary as well. >> i can stop you right there? i can stop you right there, mike, because it's very

interesting. i'm serious. i think for viewers just walking in we're showing you the wisconsin poll next hour. but you bring up another significant poll, and that is south carolina. we've been saying this all along. the democratic electorate that is going to elect the next democratic nominee does not look anywhere near iowa, it doesn't look like them, it doesn't look like new hampshire voters, it looks like south carolina voters. so, i found it fascinating that as all of this was being stirred up, i wanted to know what south carolina said. because you look at south carolina voters, they accurately reflect what super tuesday voters are going to look like and what the majority of voters look like. and they're, of course, as you were about to allude to, joe biden running away with it at 41%. he's up six percentage points, mike, since july. >> the fact of the matter is that as long as joe biden remains in commanding position as he is, especially with african-american voters, he is going to be in the commanding position in this race.

this race was won or lost for hillary clinton on super tuesday in those south korean states where t southern states where it's the -- that's the argument you're hearing from the biden campaign. there are a lot of democrats who lived through 2016 and who worry that the president and his allies are trying to turn joe biden and ukraine into hillary clinton and her emails and they're wondering why the vice president until just recently, the last two days really, has not been as forceful publicly in responding as his campaign has been behind the scenes to this daily assault from the president. when i talked to biden advisers you hear whotwo things. one of is these conversations parly with his son hunter has been difficult for him to talk about. there's been a wall around his family especially given all that they've been through. but when you have a president who is self-emulating almost on a daily basis, now is the time

when the democrats want to see a president and they think the vice president is responding in that serious and presidential way and that's, i think, something that we're going to continue to see her going forward from him. >> nbc's mike memoli, thank you very much. we'll be reading your new reporting at nbcnews.com. >> thank you so much for bringing those fox news story. we . >> so presidential candidate bernie sanders heart attack last week has forced his campaign to reset at a pivotal time where rival elizabeth warren has passed him in several polls. >> hello, everybody. we are in las vegas. i just got out of the hospital a few hours ago. and i'm feeling so much better. i just want to thank all of you for the love and warm wishes that you sent to me. see you soon on the campaign trail. >> all right. sanders was discharged from the hospital in las vegas on friday while his rivals were attending

a forum for service employees. joining us now, former chief of staff to the -- former director of senior communications for hillary clinton's campaign, adrienne elrod. she's an msnbc contributor. also with us, "morning joe" medical contributor dr. dave campbell. >> so dr. dave, let's talk first about the medical condition of a 78-year-old candidate who had a heart attack. walk us through exactly what happened to bernie sanders, i say exactly, not exactly. give us a quick 30,000-foot look at that and some of the challenges that he'll be facing. >> absolutely, joe. thank you. last week about six days ago senator sanders had a blockage of one of the arteries in his heart that led to chest pain. took him to the emergency room and he had a stent placed to open up the artery to allow

oxygenated blood to go to the heart muscle. we learned at the end of the week that some of the heart muscle was injured. that's called the heart attack. now we have moving forward the reality that we have a 78-year-old male who now has proven risk of recurrent additional cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and strokes. >> so talk about that. like, you know, i was 40 years old, a car could fall on me and i keep walking. i'm 56 now if i get a splinter i'm down for a couple months. it really does make a difference how old you are and how you respond quickly to this. we've all had parents, my dad had heart attacks and it really slows you down. so is it a fair question to ask, is this 78-year-old man going to be able to move forward and what are some of the challenges and some of the dangers he's going to be facing? >> he has an increased risk of

having a stroke or another heart attack in the next year. all though the risk is a minority risk. he has a risk of the stents clotting over time. but the reality is that senator sanders can get through this, he can move forward and be vibrant and be as energetic as he always has been, but this is one notch against him at 78. and if we look at a bigger picture and realize that we have four people in this race from the president to biden and sanders who have had either risks for heart disease or cardiovascular disease, the president is obese, and biden has had an knew risms in the an brain, the only one that doesn't have a cardiovascular visk warren. >> there are challenges that face the top through candidates.

we were just talking about joe biden, his fundraising was definitely lower than some of the other candidates and lower than they'd like it to be. bernie sanders had a heart attack. and elizabeth warren, i think there's the big question of w winnability, can she beat trump? >> that's what's so interesting. democratic viewers tend to skew young and diverse but the top threw candidates in the democratic primary at this moment are all white individuals over the age of 70 years old. sure sure, of course, there's going to be health risk with that. this is exactly why think we've got to keep in mind that the race, it's early. it doesn't always feel early, but it is early october. there's an opening, mika, i truly believe for somebody else to come into this top three and maybe make tit a top 4 or five.

may it is cory booker, maybe kamala harris or somebody else. but i have to think there's an opening for somebody else to come in. but something about bernie sanders we have to keep in mind. his hard core base of supporters, i don't think that this health issue that he has right now is going to affect that hard core base. he raised $25 million in q3 which is a difficult quarter, notoriously the most difficult quarter to raise money because it's summertime, the off year. he also ragised the average donation of $18. which means can he go back and say i need nmore resources. i don't see his hard core base changing because of this. >> jonathan lemire, first you look at those numbers, let's put them up again, the fundraising numbers for the third quarter, it's nothing short of stunning to me that joe biden finished in fourth place in those numbers behind a mayor from south bend,

indiana. former advi former vice president, the front runner by a long shot in a lot of early polls only raises $15 million in the third quarter. and a lot of that money from maxed out donors. >> joe, you're right. those are donors who won't be able to give money to the campaign again. that's certainly a concern. my question for you, adrienne, we're only about a week's time from the next democratic debate which feels like a real inflection point here. bernie sanders will be up there and face questions about his health. joe biden is going to be up there and have to face questions about ukraine and his son. right now as the candidates are starting to prepare for that debate next week in ohio, what are you looking to see from them? >> well, i'm looking to see if there's somebody else that's going break out again and have a moment? we're going to have 12 candidates on the stage. it's going to be a big night for somebody like tom steyer, obviously he's been, you know, harkening on impeachment for a very long time, well before he

was a candidate. now that that process is going forward, is that going to be something that will help him? is amy klobuchar going to be able to break out of the pack? is kamala harris going to have a moment that will propel her forward or keep her where she is? she needs some big moment i think right now to really sustain her in this race going forward, even though she did have a good quarter. but her numbers are sort of lagging. so i'm looking to see if there's another big breakout moment. but i do think, i mean, we talk on television all the time, is joe biden, how's his debate performance going to be, is he going to improve upon the last one? it doesn't really matter to joe biden because to the point that you've been talking about on this show, he is so durable in this election, the electorate is with him. african americans voters are with him. i don't see the debates really mat thae mattering that much for him. i think they matter for for tier

2 candidates. >> and to button up the story, i know sanders campaign is dealing with questions from the media what happened, he was having a stent put in and then it was a heart attack. could you talk about, because family members have had heart attacks and ten, 20 years they're fine. certainly technology and the ability to treat these heart events, as you call them, as improved and they are survivable, are they not? >> mika, they're absolutely survivable. the majority of people who have a heart attack that requires a stent do well for a long, long time. they take medications for a year or two, they go through cardiac lae billtati rehabilitation, strength they're heart and they're go goode to go. that's the majority. we could be optimist take this he'll get through this and go on and be vibrant and do whatever he wants to do in the coming years.

>> thank you so much. adrienne elrod, thank you as well. coming up in 2017, conspiracy theorists push the idea that the dnc framed russia for election interference. we'll talk about how that unsubstantiated narrative started on the far right message board and made tall the way to the white house. "morning joe" is back in two minutes. white house. "morning joe" is back in two minutes. you should be mad your neighbor always wants to hang out. and you should be mad your smart fridge is unnecessarily complicated. but you're not mad, because you have e*trade which isn't complicated. their tools make trading quicker and simpler. so you can take on the markets with confidence. don't get mad. get e*trade and start trading today. don't get mad. the business of hard work... ...hustle... ...and high fives. modernized comfort inn's and suites have been refreshed

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the fact is, the president of the united states has ever right to ask countries to help us in a criminal investigation that should be undertaken. >> that happens to involve a political opponent? >> well, i can't help that. i mean, suppose the pole opponent committed murder, what are we going to do? he's a political opponent so you don't investigate him? the reality is, this bind stuff i've known if for six months. i started this investigation long before he was a candidate. i started it in november the

2018 solely for one single purpose, because i'm his defense lawyer and it exonerates him. it shows that there was a lot more collusion in ukraine nan russia. >> there's no claim in a lawsuit that joe biden knew about this. >> how can you be that naive? if they were talking about my brother when i was mayor selling my office, i call my brother into my office and i say, brother, cut it ought, dat, dams opposed to i didn't know about it, i didn't hear it, and you all buy that. bull. and you should be ashamed of yourself. obama puts him in charge of ukraine. >> rudy, i got a hard break coming up. there's a 6% -- >> i can't hear you. >> have we lost contact? >> you have to reconnect the microphone. i'm not connected. >> someone -- >> i can't hear him. >> forget the whistleblower, we have the transcript of the call and the presidents remarks on the lawn. >> before you interrupt me,

howard, i know you want to defend it so bad. >> i don't want to defend anything. i'm asking questions. >> you do. it's pathetic. >> rudy also held up papers from -- here he's claiming that these are actually affidavits. it's. >> oh my kbogosh. >> it's from the pro-trump website conspiracies. he actually -- >> very hard to watch. >> is taking out and he's claiming that that is -- now he's reading from it. >> oh my god. >> claiming that this website hack job is an affidavit. somebody -- you -- oh my god. so during rudy's unhinged interview with fox's howard kerts today, affidavit from ukrainian officials, it was a printout of a white wing blog post.

two words, not well. and he is actually using considering theories suggesting that ukraine was more involved in the russian hacking of america's elections and the dnc than russia itself. very -- >> is there an aide? is there someone taking care of him? >> i don't think there is. this is a guy who is going to get paid a ton of money to go to an event with vladimir putin. >> all right. it's monday, october 7th. still with us we have msnbc contributor mike barn nick zblel that barnicle. >> that is bizarre. people close to the president -- no one's actually close to the president, say some of his problems come from rudy giuliani, he's been hanging these conspiracy theories through the month. now that donald trump needs any encouragement on conspiracy theories, but the complaint is rudy is really stirring things

up with this affidavihis affida >> political writer for "the new york times," nick, and republican strategist and msnbc political analyst susan del percio. eddie glaude jr. and benjamin wi witness tis with us. and associate editor for "the washington post," david ignatius is with us. >> david, why don't we start with the grim news out of syria that we got earlier this morning. >> joe, it is grim. this morning at 6:30 a.m. syria time it's reported that turkish troops were preparing for invasion but more important the

u.s. troops began withdrawing as part of a deal that was made last night between president trump and the turkish president erdogan for this american retreat. for me, i've been watching the situation in northeast syria now for several years. this is a potential tragedy in which there could be great loss of life. we had a stable situation in which there was a degree of security and stability in northeast syria thanks to u.s. advisers working with our syrian/kurdish allies. our syrian/kurdish allies, the figures given to me several months ago have lost 11,000 killed, 24,000 wounded in their fight against isis. these are the people who fought and died on the battlefields to destroy this terrorist menace. what did they get as thanks for it? they get pressure from turkey to

dismantle the u.s. advisory mission and then this morning it appears the turkish invasion. the kurds will go to fight at those front lines. the potential for blood shed and instability is enormous. just one more thing, joe and mika. there are papproximately 2,500 foreign fighters who have been held in camps protected by syrian/kurdish fighters, these are the hardest of the hard core isis. of them there are perhaps a thousand europeans ready to stream back into europe and begin new terrorist operation there's. who's going to guard these camps? the white house announcement last night, incredibly said they would be guarded by the arriving turkish invading forces. we should all recall that turkey was the country that allowed these fighters to get into syria in the first place. it's a series of catastrophic events. >> mika, if you tie everything

together, you look at the president who actually several weeks ago threatened release of all of those hard end isis fighters and then them back to europe. all of those isis fighters got into syria or majority of them got into syria through turkey and for too long turkey was not doing anything to help in the fight for -- against isis. so here, it started with barack obama. it continued through the trump administration. we defeated most of isis. there's still remnants there. and the pentagon warned last mon month that isis could very well rise again. and donald trump seems to be doing whatever can he do to help that happen. we don't understand why. of course, we don't know what phone calls donald trump had with turkey's leader erdogan. and if you judge -- if you judge

his phone calls that we do know about ukraine with china, there's no reason to believe that anything donald trump is doing in this case is in the united states' best geopolitical interests. and mike barnicle, certainly on the face of it this is only good news for isis, good news for iran, good news for vladimir putin, good news for erdogan. >> yeah, absolutely, joe. and to david's point and, david, maybe you can ask or add some more information to this, we realized it's very early in this ongoing story. but do we have any sense? we had a new chairman of the joint chiefs, mark milley. do we have any sense of whether the joint chiefs were involved? whether the intelligence community was there prior to the caulk ma call caulk made call being made

to erdogan? >> i don't know the answers to those. i know general millie had a conversation with his counterpart, the same kind of conversations in principle had his predecessor dunford had regularly. i think, mike, the point to underline is that president trump has wanted to get these american troops out of syria going back to december of last year. that's why secretary mattis quit. he just couldn't stomach the decision. he said, i'm not going to lose the first war, mr. president, you'll have to find somebody else and he sent in his letter of recommendation. how we get from there to here is something that we'll all be reporting. but i just would say to your viewers, i began last night around 10:00, 9:30 to hear reports from people who were in touch with the kurds that were

just frantic. they were being informed, our kurdish allies who fought and died with us were being informed that american troops would be pulling out the next morning on orders of the white house. imagine now that felt if you're an american commander working with these folks to help destroy isis, save lives, and you have to go tell them, sorry, we're outta here. >> yeah. >>. >> all right. we started the hour with the conspiracy theories that rudy giuliani is pedaling. but it peddling. ben's new piece is a forensic analysis about a conspiracy theory that ended up being the center of an impeachment investigation. tell us about the insurance policy and how it made its way to the oval office. >> the insurance policy is this theory that's been pushed by sean hannity mostly but places like the hill, breitbart, red

state, and the goal of it is to say that the dnc, just bear with me here, the dnc hacked itself so just in case in 2019 if donald trump got elected in 2019, they could impeach him. that's the premise of this conspiracy theory. and that's why you see these sort of globetrotting missions from ag barr, from secretary pompeo and things like that. they're trying to retroactively fit evidence to fit this conspiracy theory, because if russia didn't hack the dnc, who did it? and in its said it is this ill lum natty and they said they were all up to it and they put this up company called crowd strike which was a 3 billion company. they said they put them up to it to frame the russians. this has been debunked at every step. but the point is to absolve the russians and make it look like this deep state things goes much deaner than you'd ever imagine.

>> so, ben there is fascinating as always from you. we're looking at how thin the barrier is between the swamp and the white house when it comes to these matters. tell us what you know about how these details traveled from for chan to the president's lawyer to tv. >> sure. these started on niche blogs, basically. there were forged documents that made it look like russia couldn't have hacked the dnc. these have been debunked. the metadata showed it happened right around when this happened. but it's tied to basically far right extremism and its sister sites. that started there. it perk lates up, goes to things like reddit and then to blogs that people like rudy giuliani read. you saw him on fox news reading this blog that no one's ever heard of. that sort of thing winds up on

the desk the president at the end of the day. why? because it's something that can serve him. it's something that can provide him an alternate narrative that makes it look like he won the election super cleanly, that he actually won with a popular vote. so that's the innocent explanation of this. but that's how it goes. that's how it travels. this stuff starts in place where's they know they're making it up but it gets validated over time by places that have terrible editorial oversbliet thank y oversight. thank you very much. >> trump seize dollad on a cons theory. >> and stwrouft say agajust sat all know their line. benjamin, what a week it was last week. >> never got to rick perry made

me do it. >> well, we saw this weekend, speaking of conspiracy theories, the rick perry made me do it conspiracy theory. i mean, maybe sean spicer can suggest that because of his run on dancing with the stars. but fdonald trump to blame rick perry for his ukraine call, not backed up by facts, he's just throwing anybody under the bus that he can. where are we as the week starts? >> it's an interesting question. the layers of defense here from it's a beautiful call, it's a perfect call to, you know, rick perry made me do it and i didn't even want to have it. and, you know, also to it's all made up by the democrats. it's a witch-hunt. one of the interesting things that we start the week with is a kind of confusion about where

the white house is in its efforts to defend this. is the basic argument that it didn't happen? well, that can't be the argument because we have the white house call memo. is the basic argument that this is what u.s. foreign policy should be like? or is the basic argument that there's sort of something, you know, kind of, you know, it was somebody else's fault, whatever it was? and i think, you know, the white house actually is having trouble settling on a defense. >> yeah, and that is interesting, jay caruso. so, you know, benjamin's right, it started with, oh, it's hearsay, it didn't happen. i mean, lindsey who's supposed to know the law, who's running the judiciary committee, you can't -- it's hearsay, i mean, that was their first stupid argument. >> and something was -- and there's no quid pro quo. >> well, i'm getting to that.

and then the second was it's a perfect call. then the third was there was no quid pro quo, which, jay, you undercut pretty quickly. then the fourth was, well, yes, there was a quid pro quo but that's just how you do foreign diplomacy. and 2011 wthen there was a fift sixth, and seventh iteration and now we've fallen on the last one, rick perry made me do it. >> yeah. that's this kind of thing that's this narrative that starts with the denial, then the okay, we did it, but it was no big deal. well, it wasn't as bad as what you said it was. then it was like well what's wrong with me rooting out corruption? his defenders will do that as well. and then it goes to, you know, blaming rick perry. and then you have mike pompeo out there saying this is how foreign policy is done. it's transactional. you do this kind of thing. it's like, i don't recall all the other times when presidential candidates were asking foreign governments to

open investigations into their political opponents. i don't remember that being a tenant of foreign policy. and, you know, you always go back to the what if obama did it. could you imagine in 2011 if we found out that barack obama had asked a foreign government to investigate mitt romney, republicans would have went berserk. and rightly so. this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy, not only will some republicans not say it's wrong, they won't even say it's inappropriate. they get to the point where they're defending it and then saying, this is perfectly fine. and it's just absurd. >> it is. it's completely absurd, jay. and everything that the republicans are throwing at the wall are absurd. donald trump's numbers wekeep going down. we even heard about the insurance policy. tell us about this insurance policy conspiracy theory where

donald trump, once again, desperately doing the bidding of vladimir putin. >> i'm so glad you asked that question because there are certain very far reaches the conspiracy webs where i actually show up in the conspiracy, the insurance policy conspiracy theory. and the reason is, that shortly before the 2016 election, i wrote a blog post on law fair and in which i referred to an insurance policy against trump's election or in favor of the protection of democracy. it turned out unbeknownst to me that a man that i'd never heard of at the time, pete strzok, also had used the phrase insurance policy in a text message. and when those text messages were released, a whole lot of people noticed, i don't know why, that the rather common term insurance policy showed up both

in a piece by me and in a text message by pete strzok. and this has been -- has driven a whole lot of suggestion that i am somehow involved in the insurance policy conspiracy. and what -- what actually that consider consists of, i've never really known. and what the nature of my involvement in it i've never really known either. >> and, of course, now you have poor ron johnson making a fool of himself on meet the press talking about pete strzokken. >> just bringing it up. >> look at the bird. look at the bird. don't look at the facts about ukraine. he starts reading notes -- >> anything to not answer the question. >> why aren't we talking about peter strzok? i mean, come on, dude. seriously? you're a united states senator, you're acting that way? >> that was hard.

>> you know what happened was he got in trouble probably, most likely because he accidentally told the truth to the "wall street journal." >> right. >> a lot of people accidentally telling the truth. >> got to cover that up. >> yeah. >> also he's probably afraid of the tweet. let's bring in white house bureau chief at the "washington post" and political analyst for msnbc and nbc news, philip rucker. his latest reporter is called out on a limb, with what republicans going out on a limb, philip? >> well, the issue here is that they're all sort of out on a limb insofar as they're forced to defend the president. and what we've seen over the last couple of weeks from republican senators is that they prefer to stay silent because they've made a calculation that even if they have moral or ethical or even fundamental legal, private qualms about what the president has done here in terms of his conduct with foreign leaders, they're trying to keep that to themselves

because frankly they're terrified of crossing this president because of the intensity of his support with republican voters. my colleague bob costa and i talked to, you know, more than 20 republican operatives, lawmakers, strategists who are in all corners of the party around the country who presented this simple fact which is that there's a reckoning right now for the party and they're basically all trying to stay quiet to buy some time to figure out what new facts are going to come out before they really decide what they're going to ultimately do here. >> phil, we know that they're able to keep quite because they're out of washington right now. they're all on break. when they come back next week, is -- are there any plans that we know that they're going to try to get together? are there any cracks? i think that potential cracks could be people who are not looking to serve re-election, whether it be lamar alexander. >> yeah. >> or burr from north carolina, maybe herd in the congress. i'm just trying to figure out from your reporting is there any

way to gain any type of group, even if it's a small minority, to start speaking to at least the importance of recognizing what the president is doing? >> you know, there doesn't seem to be any organized effort as of right now. but that could change very quickly. we've seen with this story that just in a few days new facts come out that look so much worse for the president. and part of the problem these republican senators are facing is they're getting talking points from the white house that don't hold up and 24 layers are later are proven to be nothing, basically. so they're afraid to step forward and edit them and parrot them other than a few. house, mark meadows and jim jordan and those types. but you should look at the senate and when you look there they're take their cues from mitch mcconnell who has not been terribly clear with his fellow senators about how he wants the senate to go. and they're seeing, for example, mitt romney speaking out calling this behavior, this conduct wrong and getting dinged for it

big time on twitter from the president. there may be other senators that come forward and say this behavior's wrong, but might still stop short of saying it should be impeachable. there's a theory among the strategy gif strategists to is to say that the conduct was inappropriate but leave it to the voters in 2020 to decide whether he should stay in office. >> joe mentioned earlier he doesn't quite understand how this is in the self-interest of these gop leaders. when you look at the date around equipment, when you see what's happening with regards to the american public, what's informing the silence? what's informing the reticence? i don't understand the political calculus here. could you help us understand it? >> it's a calculation based solely on where the republican base is. even as these polls nationally are showing an uptick in support for the impeachment inquiry and

removing trump from office through impeachment, when you boil down the numbers and look strictly at republican voters, trump still enjoys enormous support among republicans. the opposition to impeachment among republican voters is something like in the eighties. 80th percentile. and to any republican officeholder that's a huge warning sign because they're afraid of primary challenges, he they're afraid of getting crossed with the president and having somebody that's further to the right and more of a trump loyalist come in and take them now the a primary next year. that's the calculation that these figures are making. >> to phil's point, the president has made clear behind the scenes that he will back anyone who would be a primary challenger to a senator who would dare cross him. jake, let me ask you a question here. switching gears to the democrat response from this. joe biden, first words in his campaign, charlottesville. he built himself as the one who would take it to the president one on one. we talked about it a little bit last hour.

what is your read on his sort of stumbling here, why he hasn't been able to challenge the president on this issue which involves not only matters of national security, which of course is something that biden has made his campaign about, but also his own family? >> well, yeah, that's -- i wrote about that. it's a problem for him. and we saw that in his third quarter fundraising numbers. only 15 million for the guy who has got a big strong lead, not very good. and what his campaign has been slow do is get now the front of some of this news. the ukraine situation you knew was coming up and issues with hunter bide pent they were aware of this and they didn't get now the front of it. they didn't present enough of an offense. not so much a defense. they should have been out there saying this is not about my son, it's not about me, this is about the conduct of the president. and they've been muted on that only when kind of like pinned down do they come and does joe biden get a little bit stronger. but for the most part the campaign has been behind the eight ball on this and they're

not reacting and they're not being out in front of it the way they should be, particularly considering how weak president trump is now in the polls and the polls that are -- we've seen so far for the 2020 election. >> ben, back to the root will aof all of this, the 2016 election costed a lot of money, employed a lot of skilled investigators. look ta looking at it now in the wake of what we know now, what's your reaction to what they either miss order ignored? >> the mueller investigation wasn't about this particular ukraine situation. so i think you can't fault them for not focusing on that. i do think it is amazing, however, that, you know, a couple of -- i guess it's a couple weeks ago now, maybe a week ago "the washington post" reported, you know, that the president in this conversation with lavrov and kislyak in the

oval office said among the things that had been reported about that conversation that he actually didn't care about russian interference in the 2016 election because the united states does that sort of thing as well. and i see no evidence that mueller knew about that or at least if he did know about it he certainly didn't include any reference to it in his report. to which is it is certainly relevant. and it is very clear to me that the fbi, when they opened the investigation on the president that became the mueller investigation, did not know about that conversation or at least that aspect of that conversation. and that, i think, is an amazing omission, you know, for mueller to have done the entire investigation without analyzing or maybe even learning about

that is a really astonishing thing to have missed. >> benjamin, jay, philip, thank you all for being on the show this morning. and coming up, we'll talk to a member of the committees investigating possible impeachment. congressman jim himes of connecticut. "morning joe" is back in a moment. connecticut. "morning joe" is back in a moment. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. i wish i could shake your hand. granted. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ wwithout it, i cannot write myl tremors wouldname.xtreme. i was diagnosed with parkinson's. i had to retire from law enforcement. it was devastating. one of my medications is three thousand dollars per month. prescription drugs do not work if you cannot afford them.

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republican party has got to get a grip on itself right now. republican leaders and members of the congress, both senate and the house, are holding back because they're terrified of what will happen to any one of them if they speak out. will they lose a primary? i don't know why that's such a disaster but will they lose a primary some and so they not -- they need to get a grip and when she see things that are not right they need to say something about it.

because our foreign policy is say shambles right now, in my humble judgment, and i see things happening that are hard to understand. >> that was former secretary of state collin powell speaking at a lecture last week. and joining us now, democratic congressman jim himes of connecticut. he's a member of the intelligence and financial services committees. both are gathering evidence for possible impeachment. >> congressman, thanks so much for being with us. you know what's fascinating, think you made this point before, that zrufdonald trump i concerned about democrats. he's always going after nancy pelosi, going off chuck schumer or dad adam schiff, it seems to me his greatest challenge doesn't come from democrats, it comes from white house insiders who have simply had enough. >> yeah, that's exactly right. i continue to scratch my head. i mean, look, i'm in the room on the intelligence committee and, you know, i kind of feel like we're the outfielders just watching a constant stream of

pop flies that come out of the white house. you know, even before the whistleblower stuff or concurrent with the whistleblower stuff happening, you had senior officials who were talking to the media about things that they saw. you still are getting leaks and i'm not saying this is a good thing, you know, there is a whistleblower process which is the right way to do this. but you're still hearing leaks about the nature of the president's conversations with russia. i mean, there aren't a whole lot of people who are listening in on those conversations. and those people have finally said, this is crazy, this is enough. i need to talk to the press or i need to go through the whistleblower process. so, believe me, nancy pelosi and adam schiff are simply recipients of the information ha is pouring out of this white house. >> david ignatius is with us ands have has a question. david. >> i think we'd all be interested in knowing exactly where you in this process. specifically when do you begin drawing up specific articles of

impeachment that enum haight rate wh enumerate high crimes and misdemeanors are are you at that point yet? >> i think we have two or three more things to do. number one, we need to learn more about what exactly was done within the state department to visit receipt contributi visit recei visit retro bution on people who weren't on the train. the former ambassadors relieved her duties because she didn't do along with this masquerade that giuliani was running. if a professional ambassador was fired because that ambassador didn't do the political bidding of the president, that in and of itself is a very, very serious scandal. i'm just back from pakistan where i spent an awful lot of time with our diplomats.

these folks put themselves in harm's way, they're away from their families, they deserve better treatment. we've got to get to the bottom of that. the other thing i'm interested in, to what links did the white house go to cover this behavior schnupp there up? there's a story about the transcript being moved to this particular server. it's against the law to classify something because it's embarrassing. in those two areas we have a little bit more work to do. but think we're talking weeks not months for to us get to the bottom of that and then look at the big picture and say where do we go from here. >> jonathan lemire. >> in the latter half of the mueller probe and certainly since democrats took control of the house of representatives, the trump white house's response to the investigations has basically been to say no, that they have stonewalled at every turn. what recourse do you have now as the impeachment inquiry ramps up to prevent that? to prevent them if they invoke

executive privilege again? if they continue to fight you at every turn like secretary pompeo indicated last week that he would cheered on from the white house. what do you guys do to combat that? >> that's a really good question. look, one of the lessons learned and one of the things we will need to repair in our government is the realization that when a president decides that he's simply not going to cooperate with congress, you don't have a rapid remedy. now, every american who's been through fourth grade civics knows that we have coequal branches of government that are checks and balances on each other. presidents have always resisted congressional oversight, there's been a little bit of a dance there. but simply saying no, or doing what this president does which is saying executive privilege covers people who never even worked for me who never talked to me or gave me advice in the white house to have this notion of executive privilege this is bond anything we've ever seen before, those things are going to need to be addressed. it may be that you have some process in the courts where, you

know, judges are required to move overnight on attempts by the white house to keep stuff secret from the congress. but right now our recourse is litigation. litigation, of course, is slow. and when you are in the face of a possible constitutional crisis, slow litigation is a pretty unsatisfying remedy. >> all right. congressman jim himes, we'll be following this as slow as it takes. thank you very, very much. and still ahead, russia may have pioneered election sbees , interference, but as we head closer to 2020 they are no longer alone. the fbi says china and iran are also getting in on the game. up next, why disinformation is a threat to democracy and what we can do about it. "morning joe" will be right back. can do about it. "morning joe" will be right back.

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2020. is russia, as robert mueller alleged, attempting to influence the 2020 elections in the united states. >> translator: i'll tell you in a secret, yes, we'll definitely intervene. it's a secret so that everybody can laugh and so we'll go big. but don't tell anyone, please. please don't tell anyone. >> russian president vladimir putin with that joke to nbc's keir simmons last week. joining us now, former under secretary of state for public diplomacy, rick stengel. how we lost the global battle against disinformation and what we can do about it. >> so, i mean, my gosh, things

have changed so quickly. i know that some of your predecessors would try to get u.s. information by putting biographies of henry kissinger in the middle east or sub-sahara of africa. my gosh, it seems like a losing battle right now as we move towards 2020. >> yeah, joe. one of the things that i found in government is that government itself is not great about countering negative comments and bad information. i mean, we were so kind of outgunned by the russians. i mean, the irony that the ukraine is back in the news is -- my story starts in ukraine. it starts with putin's annexation of ukraine in 2014 and the tsunami of disinformation that came out around it. i was shocked by it.

i had been in media my whole life and i'd never seen this kind of russian dis disinformation engine. the sad irony is that what they did in 2014 around cry mia is wh crimea what they did here in 2016. the insurance research agency which we heard so much about from robert mueller's report was invented then. but one of the things that i have in my book that mueller didn't have was that it was for the russians the whole of government effort. it wasn't the ira, it was sputnik, it was tas, it was russia today. it was even the foreign minister who would echo the disinformation that the information research agency was putting out there. it was really a troubling thing, something we hadn't seen before. to go back to your comment, yes, we did this during the cold war, they did this during the cold war, but there's no barrier to entry. social media takes it around the

world indistantly and itstantly rebutted. and we have the disinformation chief in the white house and he was helped put there by putin and he makes all of this kind of accessible for everybody. >> that's a perfect segue to my question. in some ways you start with bad actors out there engaging in disinformation. but what do we do and how do we respond to the, you know, the president of the united states basically trading in disinformation, right? in fact, making the argument by way of lying and deflection. and what do we do with the fact that those who support him, support him and in fact engage in bad faith. so we talk about outside actors, but what are the effects on our democracy when we have the chief, the president and chief, right, doing the very same thing? >> well, eddie, one of the things and i'm sad to say this, the press has to stop echoing what he says all the time. one of these -- i write a little

bit about cognitive biases, confirmation bias that we seek out information we agree with. but there's something called believe echoes. where some when someone makes a misstatement and you correct it, it still has an economy know echo in your mind. when we retweet what president trump says, that gets embedded in people's minds. we have to ignore the information he puts out there and put out the truth and reality ourselves without even resorting to donald trump. >> when you say that we don't have a fake news problem, we have a media literacy problem, can you explain that and maybe how to fix it? >> again, i've been in journalism my whole life and i feel like we've not done a great job of explaining to people what journalism does, why we fact check everything, why lawyers look at it the 't. the mainstream media has so many layers to make sure it's true.

people don't understand that. people hear trump saying the president is the fake news and they don't know that's not way it works. everything you do is underlined in yellow to make sure that it's right. so i think we have to actually teach people about the prom nads of information. from elementary school people have to learn how to disattorney a fact from what's not a fact. people don't know how do that. how many times have we heard over the years i read that on the internet. well, no, you read in that in the "washington post" or some crazy site called info wars. people don't know how to figure out fact and fiction and to look where information comes from and we need to teach that. >> so, rick, this is david ignatius in washington. rick, i want to ask as we face this enormous political challenge of the impeachment investigation heading into a very contentious 2020 election, do you think the american public has the tools yet to sort fact

from fiction? are we far enough along that curve of media literacy that folks are going to do a good job handling the information? >> well, i don't think we are, david. i thinkare, david. i mean, i still think we're just at the beginning of it. and one of the recommendations that i make in the book is that we reform the law, the communications feesancy act that basically gives companies no liability for publishing false information. by the way, over the first amendment protects false information but they all have terms of service which are their constitutions. and basically, we have to say you're liable for the negative content that you publish. you're liable for verifiably false information that you publish, and you have to take it down. i just don't think, david, that people are quite ready to burrow down and figure out what is truth and what is falsehood. and one of the things i recommend in the book, as you know, is kind of a more transparency by media where

we're actually online, here's the text of the interview, here are the pictures that weren't published. so people can see how the story is put together. not everybody is going to do it, of course, but actually it will support the feeling that this is right and this is true. >> so, rick, it's been nearly four years since donald trump, candidate trump said, russia, if you're listening, you know, crash into us. nearly four years later, there are more sophisticated tools available. and there are many more nations in action now. like, for instance, iran, along with russia, in terms of disinformation. where are we? >> well, they saw that there were not really any consequences, right? the iranians come in, the chinese have always been involved but usually more about stealing intellectual property. and the thing that worries me most about 2020 is the phenomenon of deep faith. the use of artificial intelligence to imitate reality. again, where people are not

really equipmented to distinguish between something that's false and what's true. actually we don't have remedies for things like deepfakes other than what i was talking about the confront companies taking it down as if it was false. look at the nancy pelosi video facebook wouldn't take down, that's what they call a cheap fake. well that has to be taken down. part of the reason they don't take it down they want want to have the liability of being ena editor. >> acrick, as over the past few months, facebook and twitter have change third policies to make it easier for politics and leaders like trump to lie on facebook. so is it actual time to assign them legal liability on the platforms? is it worth taking such a big and risky a step as getting that

immunity they currently have in law? >> i do think so. i think that's absolutely necessary. and i think why should politicians have the kind of exemption that other people don't have. by the same token, i want to say, part of my book is about fighting prop gand aganda and e isis. facebook did a great job, twitter did a great job, google did a great job. they were very energized and exercised to do that. >> so it's possible? >> it is possible. and, of course, they've done a pretty good job on things like child pornography where the pictures itself, the crime. this is harder, because remember, the russians masquerades as americans. ten gop was meant to be people in tennessee. so people didn't see that coming. far enough, we didn't see it coming. part of the book is how we missed it and how we should have done more and we need to do more in 2020. >> the new book is "information

wars how we lost the global battle against disinformation and what we can do about it." richard stengel, thank you. >> thank you. >> joe, thank you so much. >> what an important read. president trump is out with a five-tweet threat on his decision to leave the kurds to fend for themselves. not only against the remnants of isis but also against turkey. he writes in part, turkey, europe, syria, iraq, iran, russia and the kurds will now have to figure the situation out. and what they want to do with the captured isis fighters if their neighborhood. they all hate isis. have been enemies for years. we are 7,000 miles away, and we will crush isis again if they come anywhere near us. >> this is like having bin laden cornered. in the early stages of our war in afghanistan. and letting him go.

donald trump is actually saying we have isis cornered, but the pentagon is warning us that they're coming back. and we are now going to let the most battle-hardened isis fighters go. not our problem. hey, marco rubio, what do you think about that? liz cheney, what do you think about that? i wonder, what do these republicans think about the fact that donald trump is surrendering yet again, against isis in syria, his own pentagon is saying it's trouble. his own generals are saying it's trouble. and yet, he's trusting vladimir putin to take care of it. >> nbc's richard engel will be joining us ahead. we'll be right back. ♪ with fidelity wealth management you get straightforward advice,

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american air strikes against isis in syria so far, half about in kobani. on the ground, those defending kobani are secular kurdish national efforts, women fight shoulder to shoulder with men. there are now funerals for kobani's fallen every day. their burying the kobani here on the turkish side. it's too dangerous to hold funerals now. but as soon as it's safe, they're going to dig them up and send them home. a look during the isis onslaught. turkey's leaders consider those kurds enemy. and president trump has given them the green light for incursion against them. >> we're going to be covering that throughout the morning. obviously, there's many people in washington and across the world see it as a terrible move. the very allies that remain steadfast with us and played such a big role in pushing isis back and supporting the united

states now being betrayed by donald trump. now being betrayed by his administration. david ignatius said, and david's been over in syria and knows so much about the battle against isis. president trump is about to make a major consequential mistake in syria. sources say that the u.s. and kurdish allies withdrawing from the turkish border abandoning so-called security mechanic achl to allow an invasion by turkish forces. of course, this is while the united states had them move heavy equipment often the border in an act of goodwill. well, they were just being set up for the slaughter. that's what you get for being an ally with donald trump and playing a major role in crushing the caliphate, which, of course, the kurds did. >> and it's just one day. october 7th. with us, we have msnbc

contributor mike barnicle. white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire. political writer for "the new york times" and msnbc political analyst nicholas confessore. republican onanalyst susan del percio and eddie glaude jr. over the weekend, we learned that a second whistle-blower has come forward with information about president trump's july 25th phone call with the president of the ukraine. an attorney representing the original whistle-blower says that their legal team is now representing the second whistle-blower who has firsthand knowledge of the events that supports the first whistle-blower. this second whistle-blower has spoken to the inspector general of the intelligence community michael atkinson. but legal sources tell nbc news that he or she is not filing a separate formal complaint. right now, only three republican

senators have spoken out against the president's call for china, in addition to ukraine, to investigate joe biden. senator susan collins and ben sasse both released statements to their hometown newspapers collins said the president made a, quote, big mistake. and called it, complete, completely inappropriate. sasse said americans don't look to chinese commys for the truth if the biden kid breathe laws by sell i selling his name to beijing, that's a matter for american courts. but no one got under his skin much as much as romney who tweeted, when the only american citizen president trump singles out china's investigation into

his political opponent in the midst of the democratic nomination process, it strains credulity. and by all appearances the president's brazen unprecedented appeal to china and to ukraine to investigate joe biden is wrong and appalling. starting with republican senator marco rubio. >> do you think it's okay for president trump to launch an investigation of joe biden or hunter biden? >> i don't know if that's a real request or just needling press knowing you'll get outraged by it. he plays it like a violin. that's not a real request. >> george, do you really think he was serious about thinking that china is going to investigate the biden family? >> why can't you answer yes or no, do you think it's appropriate? >> because i don't think that's what he did. >> well, i doubt if the china comment was serious to tell you the truth. >> you don't think the president --

>> no, the president loves to go out on the white house lawn to talk about this. i don't know what the president is thinking but i know he loves to bait the press. >> but it apparently wasn't only a flip comment on the white house lawn. trump held a phone call with china's president back in june. and cnn reports that on that call, president trump raised biden's political prospect its, well as those of senator elizabeth warren. cnn reports that the record of that call was stored on the stop secret server that houses the calm with the president of ukraine. >> jonathan lemire, sound emphatic or -- >> very dangerous. >> -- or dangerous and marco rubio and others claiming it's a joke. i guess alderman had all all along saying nixon was joking

about watergate. if that somehow erases away the fact what we saw with ukraine, the text messages that showed that people were furiously working behind the scenes to make that quid pro quo work. we actually saw that another phone call was made, not just on the white house lawn to the chinese, to talk about the 2020 election. and, you know, it's so interesting, roy blount suggesting that he wouldn't say something publicly about getting help in the chinese? that actually -- i saw that as a threat as much as anything. and to not only to china, but to other countries. >> it was. as you said, his russia, if you were listening comment of the 2020 election cycle. this is what's so disturbing. roy blount knows is marco rubio knows, jim jordan, i don't know if he knows if he's really

paying attention or not. but at least those two senators know that when donald trump spoke in that press conference and said russia, if you are listening, please get the 33,000 emails, they were that night. they began going after those 33,000 emails. so pleading ignorance or suggesting it as a joke is laughable. and will come back to haunt them in their own political campaigns. >> you're right. the russian intelligence hangers moved that night when the president made that request in the summer of 2016. we saw that on the white house lawn on friday when he asked about china. that certainly can be interpreted as an open invitation at that same press gaggle on the lawn on friday he was asked if he ever talked to any foreign leader to investigate someone who is not a political rival. and he couldn't answer. he said, we'll have to get back to you on that. i think that's a pretty clear estimation of the types of conversations he's been having about joe biden and others. we don't know the outcome of that call.

we know the president loves to talk politician with foreign leaders largely to relive his 2016. we know that foreign leaders have had to sit through his recounting of election night. one mentioning perhaps rolling their eyes with that. certainly, he could be talking about 2020 going forward. maybe that's to ask for help. what you saw over the weekend, republicans just simply refusing to break with him. with a few exceptions with, of course, with what you just mentioned. we're seeing his approval rating in his party. it's 80%, 85%, depending on which poll you look at. they're afraid to challenge him. they know even if the president were to be impeached but not removed but a senator cast about to be removed ed are going to cast about the next day. and he's using him as an example. there's been bad blood between him and romney for a long time. i think he was sending a signal

to other republicans if you come after me, you criticize me, i'm going to come after you time and time again. mitt romney is very popular in utah. we can withstand these trump attacks but other senators may not be so lucky. he's basically saying if you come at me like romney did i'm going to come at you but much harder. >> romney did much better in utah than donald trump. >> and then will was ron johnson thought he was helping the president when he told the ambassador to the european union gordon sondland, told them in august about an arrangement involving military aid to ukraine, that at the time the president was withholding. according to "wall street journal," sondland told them that ukraine under the new ago ago would have wants a new move to get to the bottom of what

happened in 2016 and if president trump has that confidence then he'll release the military spending. johnson said, quote, at that suggestion, i winced, my reaction was, oh, god, i don't want to see those two things combined. johnson says he asked the president about it in a phone call, the very next day. and claims the president denied such an arrangement. >> well, you know, of course, ron johnson may have said that. but we know, for a fact, susan del percio, that if you actually look at all of the emails, all of the text exchanges that were released between volker and the rest of the crew, time and again, they kept going back to the deliverables. they kept going back to zelensky having to tie his meeting with the president and support for the united states, with an investigation into the bidens, and with an investigation into 2016, into that company.

and at one point, they put it in a proposed statement, which zelensky's advisers took out. and then they came back and said, no, no, no, you've got to put it back in there. they were insistent. it was obvious. every republican in the senate and house knows that. and yet, they're running around lying. ron johnson, he committed, of course, what's called a ed a gan washington, d.c. when somebody accidentally tells the truth. and he did, he got caught telling the truth. >> he did. and it's surprising to see this come from ron johnson, only because he's not up for election until 2022. he's not worried about an immediate primary. i'm not sure what his concerns are or what he wants from the president or what the president is holding over him. but his interview yesterday on "meet the press" was despicable. >> oh. >> i'm willing to bet when they

book eed him, he was still wincg at the comment. but he tried to go to ridiculous claims. jeff held him accountable. journalists are doing a fantastic job trying to hold people accountable. and johnson, frankly, just looked pathetic out there yesterday. >> and we're going to play that ron johnson sound bite on the other side of the krabreak. what it says about the republican party. but first, bill karins with the weather. >> good monday morning. we're going to end with a snowstorm, too. let's get into the forecast for today. things have changed. remember last week, 100 degree temperatures in the southeast? that's gone. they've finally cooled off. the rain is very welcome in mississippi and alabama. that rain goes all the way to northern portions of new england. they're at peak leaves. and here's how your 5:00 p.m. forecast looks for everyone heading home.

we'll still have heavier rain in west virginia. notice i-95 still looks pretty dry. some of that rain will move on later on tonight. at least the airports and highways will be good for the big cities. the rain will be heavy from scranton all the way down through pennsylvania. let's look at the weekend forecast. i mentioned yesterday, beautiful weather in the middle of the country. this is what they're waiting for, 78 degrees in dallas. oklahoma looks perfect. even wednesday, still great in the middle of the country. here comes the change, though. snow, another snowstorm. the second of the year already. there it is in montana and north rockies. i'll also point out there's going to be an ocean storm and this could kick back raw, breezy light steady rain throughout much of wednesday with airport delays possible in new york city and up through boston. then thursday, friday, that snowstorm continues through the dakotas and into minnesota. rain throughout the middle of the country. looks like a nice end to the week for areas of the east coast. santa ana win the event should

kick up thursday and friday. that's dangerous especially heading towards the peak of what is typically the wildfire season. again, looks like a typical october pattern with a lot of changeable weather across the country. new york city, umbrellas handy, but not until this evening. you're watching "morning joe," we'll be right back. saturdays happen. pain happens. aleve it. aleve is proven better on pain than tylenol. when pain happens, aleve it. all day strong. wwithout it, i cannot write myl tremors wouldname.xtreme. i was diagnosed with parkinson's. i had to retire from law enforcement. it was devastating. one of my medications is three thousand dollars per month. prescription drugs do not work if you cannot afford them. for sixty years, aarp has been fighting for people like larry.

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ukraine. i have my third letter into the inspector general asking to just confirm, just confirm, are you investigating those leaks that peter strzok talked about with lisa page. >> senator, i have no idea why a fox news conspiracy propaganda stuff is popping up on here. i have no idea. >> that is exact -- >> senator, i'm asking -- >> that is exactly why president trump is upset and why his supporters are upset at the news media. >> this is not about the media. senator johnson -- senator johnson, please, can you please answer the question that i asked you, instead of trying to make donald trump feel better here that you're not criticizing him. >> i'm not -- >> i'm trying to ask you -- i'm just trying to lay the groundwork -- >> i'm asking you what made you wince. i'm asking a simple question about you clearly were upset that somehow there was an implication that military aid was being frozen because the president wanted an

investigation. why did you wince? >> because i didn't want those connected. and i was supported the aid. as was senator murphy as everybody who went to that initial inauguration. but here's the salient point of why i came forward, when i asked the president about that, he vehemently, angrily denied it. he said i'll never support that. >> uh-huh, of course, the president always telling the truth, mike barnicle. what a sniveling, quibbling-like performance on "meet the press," mike. it's a senator, united states senator, representing the good people of wisconsin, bringing up conspiracy theories from years past, trying to somehow say that explains donald trump holding up $400 million worth of military

aid, to protect a democratic ally from further invasion from vladimir putin, a man that donald trump has, of course, capitulated to time and time again. and at every meeting that they've had. and what -- it's just -- all of these displays, even marco rubio's display. marco said a few good things during this investigation. but ron johnson there and so many others, and so did joni ernst the other day. >> oh, my gosh. >> and i thought, you entered public service for this, to cowl in front of your own people, to lie in front of your own people and to just not tell them the truth? it's astounding and it gets worse by the day. and, of course, we know this will end badly for donald trump and everybody else that apologizes for him. but it is so painful to watch right now. >> joe, a few moments ago, you made the observation, as we opened the show at the clip of

marco rubio and roy blount speaking, and you made the observation that they know. they go out and say these things, but they know, behind the scenes they know. well, joe, they all know. and they have all chosen -- they've had a choice, to protect the country or protect their status in office. they've chosen their own re-election hoax and dreams over the united states of america. last night, the president of the united states, to trade an ally in the field, the kurds in turkey. that's just the latest thing he's done. you mentioned mitt romney. nearly 70 years ago, there was one individual, margaret chase smith who spoke out against joe mccarthy during the height of the red scare in the early 1950s. history still remembers her.

remembers the name, remembers the deed. history is a constant stenographer. ron johnson, all. other senators who said the president was joking when he said china should investigate joe biden, these things are going to live forever. this is history. we are living through a particularly turbulent and dangerous period in american history unlike we've ever encountered before. and these people are going to be held accountable by history at some point starting now. coming up on "morning joe," we topped the show with the news of president trump turning his back on the kurds in syria. we're going to bring in nbc's richard engel who's been reporting from the front lines there for years. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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late last night, the white house announced that u.s. troops are beginning a withdrawal from northern syria, near the turkish border. the decision followed a phone call president trump had with turkey's president erdogan yesterday. in a statement from the press secretary, the trump a administration says that, quote, turkey will soon be moving

forward with its long planned operation into northern syria. the united states armed forces will not support or be involved in the operation. and united states forces having defeated the isis territorial caliphate will no longer be in the immediate area. nbc news chief enforce correspondent richard engel joins us now by phone. richard, what do you have? >> reporter: well, this is a major development. and joe may be right that the american people will may eventually remove president trump. but he is president right now, and that has very immediate questions or concerns for people who live in northern syria. i'm talking about the kurds. this is a population of u.s. allies, people who joined by american special operations forces and defeated the isis caliphate. there are probably about 50 to 60,000 of the fighters, they

live in an area, they control an area of approximately 2 million people. they have been protected by american forces on the ground, those americans will have been making sure that the turks across the border do not come in and invade their enclave. and they fear that if the kurds do that, there will be massive ethnic cleansing. the americans have now been ordered to stand aside. the turkish president has said numerous times that he is going to invade. so, our allies who lost 10,000 people fighting against isis, who did in fact defeat the isisl a caliphate, the surprise decision that they will be will be genocide. i just spoke to a turkish official, he said that americans have betrayed us. they have opened the door for a turkish massacre. we are no longer able to fight

against isis. isis may return to the region and the only one responsible if that happens will be the americans. they are the ones responsible for this. so there is a state of absolute concern, panic even, among our very close kurdish allies after this overnight surprise position. so, yes, he is still president. yes, there are consequences. and they say they are being betrayed. and frankly, it is very hard to argue that they are not being betrayed. >> so, richard, to nick this morning in new york, what's driving it, what we've seen in the early reports i believe, the mix of a phone call to erdogan, and his own desire to simply see americans out of that fight. but is there any reporting you've had about his reasons here? >> reporter: yeah, i know the story very well. i've worked with the special forces who are there. i've followed this story

closely. president trump has wanted to do this for a long time. the kurds who are in this bubble in northern syria, again, they control an area of roughly 2 million people. there are have been 50,000, 60,000 of them armed. they control this area. they've had a decent amount of success controlling this area. it has been, let's say, a very stable area. but of course the border in turkey, erdogan sees this, this bubble, of kurdish control, just across the border from him as imminent threat. he sees them as terrorists even though they fought isis, he says that they are going to crete at instability for the region. and he worries even if they have more success, it will cause forces inside turkey to rise up against them. the only thing preseventing tha has been the u.s. military

presence. president trump has wanted to wash his hands of it from the beginning. he has said repeatedly, he's going to pull out. they've defeated isis, he's wanted to do this time and time again. it's only when people like defense secretary mattis resisted that he had pause and didn't do it. this is the issue that defense secretary mattis resigned over. he could not accept a betrayal of our allies. the special envoy for the countermission resigned publicly because he could not accept this betrayal. the american operators themselves don't accept this betrayal. president trump has wanted it. there's been resistance to it. but the people resisting him are no longer around him. now, he had this conversation and he did what he always wanted to do, wash his hands of the situation and let the chips fall where they may. and those chips are about to fall on tops of the heads our very close allies, just over

10,000 people fighting against isis. >> wow. richard engel, thank you very much. and richard's reporting on the rise and fall of isis is online at nbcnews.com. coming up on "morning joe," border wars. we'll talk to the co-author of a new book about the trump administration's attempts to upend the nation's immigration system. and alligator-filled mo eed is only the beginning. "morning joe" is back in a moment. she wanted a roommate to help with the cooking.

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can you just imagine being the trump aide that has to call around to figure out how much it would cost to fill a water mote with snakes and alligators? luckily, you don't have to imagine here's at "the daily show" we have the exclusive audience on that call.

>> thanks for calling petco, how can i help you? >> yeah, can i get a quote for how much it would cost for 2,000 miles of snakes. >> we don't really sell snakes by the mile? >> okay. how about alligators. i need a southern border amount of alligators. >> make sure the alligators hate mexicans. >> what do your alligators think about mexicans? >> we definitely don't sell alligators, we have birds, fish, gerbils, things like that. >> okay, fine, give us 2,000 miles of gerbils who hate mexicans. a recent "the new york times" book based on new details on president trump's obsession with immigration, including the desire for an alligator-filled mote to deter migrants. while the president pushed back on that detail, trump did not mention the reporting that he suggested shoulders shoot

migrants in the legs to slow them down. joining us now, congressional editor at the "the new york times" julie hirschfeld-davis, she's co-author of the book entitled "border wars: inside trump's assault on border issues." "the daly show" was funny but i guess not. the president denies motes filled with snakes. how far do you think he wanted to go? >> i think he wanted to make a point, whether it was legal or practical or not to try to figure out a way to stop people from coming over the southern border. he did it with policy. he tried to do it in some cases by asking his aides if they could shut the border

completely. we all heard him publicly say last summer that he wanted shoulders to shoot at migrants who might be throwing rocks. these are ways he thought of, oftentimes, spitballing in meetings when he was very angry, trying to figure out what he was unable to do, ironically, even though he focused so much on this issue, he never found the magic or silver bullet to stop the flows in the south. nor often than not, he tried to do it through measures like that, instead of through policy. >> i want to open it up to the table. but just one more question, it's interesting to hear about the relationship with kirstjen nielsen, and also children separated from their families. where does that story stand now? >> well, i mean, there are still families deeply affected by this. there were a lot of families that took a long time to reunite. his relationship with kirstjen nielsen was fraught -- she

really wanted to kind of deliver on trump, what his vision was. she thought there could be legal ways and practical ways of doing that. but she got into a situation where she was under a ton of pressure to approve this policy. she actually did approve the family separation policy anddis. we're seeing the comments on that. >> hey, julie, congrats on the book. talk to us about how steven miller could have created this own west wing. but jared kushner in playbook realizing how complicated this is. talk to us about jared kushner on immigration? >> this is a fascinating view in the book, they have two different camps in the white house on a lot of issues, and immigration, obviously, where steven miller is very much in line with president trump's views on this. he's a hard-liner, he wanted to deal with punitive ways to deal with it, option say, he sort of

stood up in his own think tank in the west wing to come up with every single thing they could think of through regulation and policy changes that they could both sort of cut down on legal and illegal immigration. we saw last week the proclamation of people having to have to pay for their own health careful they were going to get visas to stay here. that's the sort of idea he was coming up with. jared kushner, though, unlike steven miller, never really knew very much about immigration. he fancied himself as sort of a conduit to the business world. he was womore likely to be talk to the technology folks and other folks who say we need more immigration, more orderly system of immigration. and he was sort of thrown into the middle of this because he had developed relationships with the mexicans talking about trade issues during the government shutdown when trump basically deputyized him to find a way out of what turned into an untenable situation. so he sort of had a series of

meetings with top advisers both with the white house and agencies trying to get up to speed as quickly as he could, knowing he didn't really know the details or nuances of this. and discovered very quickly the way this had been managed in inside the white house was not working. and it wasn't accomplished what president trump had said he wanted which is fewer people coming. >> so, julie, in an issue of this importance and of this scope, it would be normal when you're covering it, when you're reporting on it, when you're writing about it to figure out that some task force of people around the president helping to pull a situation like this and develop a policy that could be implemented in going forward. but would it be fair for the reader of your book and the follower of this issue to indicate that this is just a chaotic situation driven by basically two people, donald trump and steven miller? >> i think that's a pretty fair conclusion. i mean, again, miller did have

this group of people inside the white house that was coming up with some of these ideas. but it came a chaotic process because oftentimes, he didn't really like to stay within the lines of the policymaking process. he would stand up his sort of own policy committees and go around the company decisionmakers. because he conclude and president trump decided that there are career people and political people who he had put in himself who were refusing to do what he wanted. and in many cases, it was because they knew that there were legal sand moral ramifications that they just couldn't sustain. >> hey, julia, it's nick confessore, your colleague at the "times." very excited to read your book. for the average person at home who has kept up with this saga from the day that protesters were flooding the airports in new york in a protest over the visa policies, through the family separation, through the migration issues at the border. try and tell us how successful

has the president been overall in reshaping american policy to his liking? what lasting victories has he won or not won on these topics? >> well, the irony is for the first couple of years of his administration, he really wasn't able to do very much that he wanted to do. people kept on coming through the southern border. you have record numbers of asylum seekers arriving. and the wall is not built. he's not been able to pass the kind of legislation that he said he wanted to pass. he eliminated daca, the program that helped young people who had been brought up here undocumented here -- brought here as children by heir pareth parents but he never figured out anything in place to replace that, which he had said he wanted to do. i think if you look at the broad water front, since this spring when he started to carry out this purge inside the department of homeland security, he has had probably lasting impact on the

ways in which the government sort of approaches immigrants and immigration. you now have a lot of regulations that make it much more difficult and costly to be an immigrant in this country. and i also think he's had a pretty lasting impact on the tone of the debate around this issue. that it used to be that it was a pretty broad bipartisan consensus that immigrants and immigration were a good thing. a positive thing for this nation. you had to manage it correctly. and you had to make sure it was working for the country and for the might rants. now, i think it's. a partisan divide. it's very polarized with the party who sides with the president saying immigrants are bad and dangerous. >> julie, susan del percio, as a follow-up on that steven miller may be a true believer, and we've seen issue s across the border from left to right, but does donald trump really care about the issue, besides being a

political issue for him to run on? >> that's a great question. i think what we found his instincts are what you would understand him to be. he viscerally has a sense that people who are other, people who are foreign are less worthy than him, and it sort of comes through in a lot of these internal conversations that we document in the book. but i think you're right, he's not passionate on the policy. he sees it as a political winner for him, but also he sees it as a point of personal pride because he invested so much during the campaign and identifying himself on the issue. he wants to look tough and he wants to look like he's winning. to the degree he doesn't ever want to be seen as losing or weak where he has said he's strong. >> well, the book is "board wars inside trump's assault on

immigration." congressional editor at the "the new york times" julie hinchfersd davis. thank you. we'll be looking at the criminal underworld and the new project by academy award winner forest whitaker who joins us going into break. it's always hard balancing work and family and sometimes maternal leave is actually the part. yasmin and i, we talk about the big ask. how to get that big ask. what you need beyond maternal leave to make it all work. also i've got a piece on exercise and why your workout may not be working for you. and a great conversation with sheryl crow on self-care. keep it right here on "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ as a struggling actor,

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>> it has been a long time. welcome back. >> i heard you got out, brother. >> what do you want from me? >> there is something i want you to see. more heroin comes out of these towers than any other place in harlem. >> it wasn't like this when i went away. >> i got guns. >> i got soldiers. >> johnson is playing all of us. it's all a tinderbox. it is about to explode. >> you're going to have a serious problem on your hands. >> is that a threat? >> i'm in, that was a look at the new epic series. godfather of harlem. the next guest say it's is like the american dream by any means necessary. we are joined by forest

whittaker. so great to have you, thank you for being here, congratulations on the serious. >> thank you, i'm really proud of it. >> bumpy johnson is a real guy, he gets out of alcatraz, comes home and finds an entirely different neighborhood. who is he and what was he looking at when he got back? >> he was looking at a redistribution of all of his works. a mob boss ran harlem in that time and now he is trying to reclaim his power back in the community as the godfather of the community. >> we see malcolm x, a lot of real life context. what did you love about this script when it was pitched to you. >> it was an idea brought to me first and i was able to develop it which is exciting to do. i think, it dealt with the intersection of crime, the civil rights movement, and we talked about it earlier, the pursuit of

that american dream inside of all of that. so it was interesting to get a chance to explore it especially with malcolm x, adam clayton powell, and honing in on his family after that. >> the thing that always struck me in terms of covering drug wars, the floog d of drugs into specific cities, in this case, bumpy johnson, the genius of people like bumpy that in another world, in another time, in another aspect of our culture, our oat, they would be running huge businesses. they would be ceos. they were innate genius. >> i think that is the thing. we talk about about the american

dream by any means necessary. these are figures operating in the limitations of what society allows them to have, and the issuing able to pursue your own life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is an important one and it is explored. and you have to question when is your own pursuits -- when do they when do they not match with what is beneficial to society and what kind of conscious do you have about that. you look at everything as commodities. my character, and he is operating on that level, there is a question about what happens with his daughter, she has a heroin addiction. so there is an interesting education of these figures. >> so in researching your character, you become bumpy to

portray him. >> one of the things i thought was really fascinating was his relationship between him and malcolm x. i don't think that people have really explored that. they have em poured their own life, the community itself. and i think if we get a chance in this project to explore the hours -- like this didn't offer a place at the head of a crime family. there is five crime families that he is dealing with, and we get to wash the criminal politics that occur between them and watch adam clayton powell, and it is a really unique ta pet try. and at the center is a guy with the family who is trying to have all that he can have. >> what are you hoping that

viewer wills take awavie viewers will take away. >> to me the tv show echos communities that are going on in the society. what kind of issues matter and stuff like that. there are a lot of thing that's are questioned in the show that are still a question right now. and a lot of things could be suited around those things. >> i imagine as an actor it is a cool time, but places like epix where i'm going to do do ten episodes, ten little movies almost, and you get to be in it and have a great staff. >> yeah, they're writing full

stories, and fleshing out the things, the emotions, i this it is really exciting to be in. i love the show. >> it is god father of harlem on epix. that does it for us this morning, stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage now. >> hello there, it is monday october 7th and we're following two major stories. first the impeachment investigation intensifying and breaking news of a major foreign policy move overnight. let's start with impeachment and a second whistle-blower that has now come forward. this person could put a whole new spin on the impeachment proceedings. their lawyer says they have firsthand knowledge of that july 25th phone call between president trump and the

president of ukraine. why is it so important in it matters because president trump and his allies have repeated the whistle-blower complain arguing it was based on hearsay. if the second whistle-blower corroborates the first, his case could be harder to make. and we could get more details on where the call fits into the bigger picture. two diplomats are expected to speak with u.s. lawmakers this week. plus with subpoenas in place we are waiting to see if anyone is actually going to hand anything over. i have to get to the nbc team covering this first, they were working all weekend long. garrett, to you first, we're less than two weeks