stretch run of the midterms? >> there's always nerves about the gas prices given the external prices that factor into whether or not it goes up and down. ron klain has been eager to talk gas prices going down. it'll be interesting whether he can do it every morning as he has been so far. >> that's the single greatest issue for the white house. they hope prices trend downward. "washington post"'s tyler pager, thank you for joining us. thanks to allgetting up "way too early" on this tuesday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. bye-bye. she's smiling, having a good time. i love the old days, you know? you know what i hate? there's a guy totally disruptive, throwing punches. we're not allowed to punch back anymore. i love the old days. you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this?

they'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. guards are gentle, walking out, high fives, smiling, laughing. i'd like to punch him in the face. i'll tell ya. >> we're in a serious moment in our country, and i mean it from the bottom of my heart. as i said last week, we remain in the battle for the soul of america. by the way -- all right. god love ya. let 'em go. let 'em go. no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, let him go. look, everybody is entitled to be an idiot. no, no, everybody is entitled. >> president biden's response to a protester while campaigning in wisconsin yesterday, as compared to how donald trump handled hecklers during the 2016 campaign. remember that? >> yeah, willie, it kind of feels like he was speaking to me

there. everybody is entitled to be an idiot. >> i had the same thought. >> a different approach than donald trump, obviously. >> that was for us. >> exactly. >> also looking back on 2016, too, the idea that donald trump has ever been in a fistfight in his life, the rich kid who had everything handed to him by his dad. he is a tough guy, but he was projecting something out that continues to this day, right, to spur on violence, just on a bigger scale now. talking about the fbi and the justice department, the irs and everything else. >> yeah. >> boy, yeah, really. it's escalated to say the least. as we approach the midterm election season, the investigation into donald trump's mishandling of classified documents might be slowing down after a judge, appointed by trump, granted his request for a special master to review the documents seized from mar-a-lago. we'll discuss what this means for the case and the timeline for how things could play out. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, september 6th.

it's over. summer is over. >> yeah. >> it's just over. this is it. >> yeah. >> moving forward now. >> it is. it is. we now go toward, of course, football, willie. the fall classic. the yankees won last night. that's a good thing, right? >> they've won a couple in a row. aaron judge is on this tear, up to 54 home runs. the american league record, the non-steroid record, if you'll forgive me is 61 set by roger maris in 1961. eight home runs in the next 27 or so games, he will have done something historic in baseball. man, we have slumped since the all-star break, but aaron judge has made every game worth watching for sure. >> that's exciting. along with joe, willie, and me, we have the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at "politico," jonathan lemire. >> red sox slumped since the break. >> of course. >> reading jonathan's book, it makes it worthwhile. >> also with us, u.s. special

correspondent for bbc news, katty kay. >> katty kay, i saw britain's new prime minister speak yesterday, liz truss. i may say, you can judge her by -- you know, you can stack her and her speech and her delivery yesterday, command of the stage, up against any middle school candidate for student council vice president or sergeant of arms. i think she fairs equally there. >> i'd like to hear katty's point of view on this. >> i don't think anyone would ever accuse liz truss of having got her job purely on the basis of charisma, joe. >> yeah. >> that's probably not how she got it. but, look, expectations are incredibly low for her. that never hurts a politician, right? >> that's good. >> she works very hard. she is, as she says herself, relentless. she styles herself after the iron lady. you will like that, joe. the french have taken to calling her the iron weather cock

because she can change her position on things. might be called pragmatism. she's perhaps not the most smooth of positions. she's known for being a little awkward, odd perhaps. she can make curious diplomatic statements. interesting to see what the administration makes of her. most of all, she inherits a country that is in a mess. i mean, there is no -- i don't know what the opposite of a honeymoon period is. a nightmare period. she has a massive energy crisis. much of europe as it, too, but brits are really feeling it. it'll get cold soon. they'll have to heat their prices, and energy prices are through the roof. food prices are up. inflation is rampant. everybody seems to be on the strike. not the prime minister, luckily yet, nor the queen, who will be handing her the prime ministership in the next hour or so in scotland. this is a country that's in very dark days. the same dark days that maggie thatcher took over in.

transformational prime minister. liz truss styles here's on maggie thatcher, would like to be that transformational prime minister. let's see how she does. expectations are low. about her charisma, perhaps a little lower, but expectations are low. >> you know who was charismatic? boris johnson. >> always. >> here is him finally leaving 10 downing. take a look. >> i'm like one of the booster rockets who fulfilled its function, and i'll be gently reentering the atmosphere and splashing down invisibly in some remote and obscure corner of the pacific. >> we don't think that'll happen, katty. >> one thing we saw today, you talk about thatcher taking over the '79 when britain was an economic basket case. i was struck a bit by just how negative most of the reporting was, at least "the new york times," "washington post," "wall

street journal," "financial times," about how bad the british economy is. especially compared to the united states. i had not -- i had not considered it to be in such dire straits. it reminded me of when we were over there a couple years ago, did a week out of london. we were bemoaning the fact we were going through some problems with donald trump. everybody said to us, "yeah, you have a problem with one guy. he'll be gone soon. we have a problem with an entire system. we're in deep trouble." there was that feeling several years ago, and it seems to still permeate sort of the british character and the economy right now. >> brexit has not been easy. on top of that, we've had the coronavirus, years of austerity programs. we've also had ukraine and the impact that ukrainian crisis has had on our own energy prices back in the uk. it's kind of been this confluence of things that have made a lot of challenges. we don't know, liz truss says

she is going to deal -- she has to deal day one with the energy crisis. you've heard of food poverty. in the uk, energy poverty heading into the winter. she has to deal with that today. she says she's going to deal with it aggressively. we don't know what her plan is. she is a small government conservative. she used to be on the left of the political spectrum, but she's become a small government conservative. one promise she has made, a proposal, is cut taxes on the wealthiest. economists will say there isn't evidence that trickle down economics worked in america or other countries. it seems a curious thing to be doing in a bid, she says, to promote growth. it's a thing that will be divisive. she got elected by a small rump of the conservative party, but she has to appeal, as well, to working class people up in the north of england who boris johnson won over with that karz charisma we just saw and promising an end to austerity.

promiing more government programs for them. she's promising the opposite. cutting the taxes on the wealthiest in britain may not be the best way for her to hold on to boris johnson's big majority. >> liz truss will be speaking with the queen in scotland. we'll go live as she accepts the position today. developments following the fbi search of donald trump's mar-a-lago home and golf club. a request by trump's attorneys was approved for a special master to review materials seize bid last month's search, temporarily blocking parts of the investigation. u.s. district judge stated in her ruining yesterday, the special master should be able to review the seized documents to address questions of attorney/client privilege and litigate claims of executive privilege. the justice department argued a special master was unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security is interests.

the judge rejected the argument that trump's special master request was filed too late, that it was susuperfluous. at the same time, a review of the records was allowed to continue but temporarily blocked the government from reviewing and using it for their, quote, investigative purposes. the order puts a pause on the doj investigation until the special master's review has been completed. no word yet on who the special master will be, but judge will make the appointment. she ordered the doj and trump's attorneys to send a list by friday for the position candidates. we'll talk to andrew weissmann in a moment about this, but it may ultimately signal a pause in the justice department's

investigation into these documents. >> it's just a pause. again, i don't know, maybe it's the lawyer in me, when the government says, "trust me," i don't care who it is. if it is a prosecution and there is a way to bring some -- a special master in, if that will at least make the process seem more down the middle for -- forget about the extreme. let's just talk about the handful of independents who can still be persuaded. i think maybe that could be a good thing. but let's bring in somebody who actually knows what they're talking about. nbc news legal analyst andrew weissmann, former general council in the fbi and served as lead prosecutor in the mueller special counsel's office. you know, i have been bellowing for years now about how donald trump is above the law and he should be accountable for his

crimes. but i'm not catastrophizing over this. if it delays things a few weeks t justice department can work around that. also, let them litigate the executive privilege. i don't think he has it, and the supreme court may have to rule on that. other than those two issues, why does -- what is the tragedy in this special master being appointed? >> okay, let me see if i can convince you. let's first talk about something that you mentioned, which is, equal justice. donald trump should not be treated better or worse than anybody else under investigation. what the judge did here is so out of the norm. her discussion of the facts and her tethering of this to the

law, it bears no resemblance to what happens in federal and state investigations. no one else would be treated this way. what's the harm? other than it is opening the door to every defendant is going to now ask for this, which is, nobody wants to have a fast investigation. everyone is going to want to delay an investigation. every defense lawyer is going to say, you know what, i want a special master appointed to review any document at all that i have an interest in. it doesn't work that way. you do have an opportunity to do that if you get indicted. it really isn't going to be a question of a couple weeks. it is unheard of for an article iii judge to enjoin a criminal investigation. unheard of to do that. now, knowing it can delay

things, it's not a question of appointing somebody and the special master will do thank own independent review, the defense is going to keep raising issues and wanting to litigate and take them to the special master, then take them to the district court judge, then the 11th circuit. this could open the door to months of litigation. the president, as i said, is horrendous. no other defendant or punitive defendant is given this kind of right. >> if someone is engaged in white collar stock trading or other crime, and their office is broken into or there is a search of their office or there is a search of their home, is it different from a former president whose premises is legally searched by a warrant? these are fairly extraordinary

times. this is a fairly extraordinary case. again, i -- my concern is that, at the end of the day, donald trump is brought to justice. if it is delayed, if steps are taken to make it look like our democracy is bending over backwards to be fair, what is the ultimate damage in this case? does it make it less likely that the doj can actually prosecute a case against donald trump? >> i think the answer to that depends on how long this goes on. i think that is the answer. i do think there is damage to the principle that nobody is above the law and everyone should be treated the same. let me give an example of how easy this issue is. in the special counsel investigation, when we did a search of paul manafort's home,

all of the documents were put in a room. we called up his defense counsel. very reputable firm, william cutler. we invited them to look at the documents, to flag anything they thought was attorney/client privilege. we had the taint team review those things. we worked it all out in a matter of days. if there were any disputes to be brought to the judge, there is no need to enjoin us, no need for a special master. it comes and goes, and there is a normal process for this. that's why what the judge did here just seems so out of the ordinary. i don't think it really helps with people's confidence if you have special rules for somebody. it isn't the case that because you're the former president, you get more justice. you should get equal justice. you shouldn't be treated worse, but he shouldn't be treated better. >> andrew, obviously, the president, you've made clear the

danger there, but what's the potential this could be held up and for how long? given what we know about the types of documents this special master will be dealing with. >> that is the big question that i think the department of justice is going to be wrestling with now. do they take an appeal because this is so legally wrong and sets this terrible precedent for other cases, or do they think they can get through the special master process quickly enough that it won't have any lasting damage, as joe said. you know, so what? there will be a special master. let's get through it. the real issue is, you know, you really can't read what the judge did here and have any confidence she's going to be reasonable in the way the special master process is going to work. because the decision is, frankly, just so off the wall, both in its legal analysis and

even its recitation of the facts. it's not even-handed. i can see people of the department probably being skeptical that this won't open the door to an inordinate delay. >> judge cannon will make the appointment of the special master. this is not an area we have covered or our viewers have been familiar with over the years. what kind of person is a special master? is it an attorney? is it a credible person? is it somebody with experience? can they work with the trump team and put the my pillow in or rudy giuliani or someone like that? >> that's another great question. so this now has to be somebody who both sides, according to the court, both sides agree on. i'm not sure that's going to happen. it should be somebody who has got top secret clearance because the judge has allowed review of executive privilege documents, which is, again, unheard of and makes no sense. because if they're executive privilege documents, it means the documents belong to the

archives, not to donald trump. and it is presumably somebody who has done this in the past. look, the ideal person would be a former judge who doesn't really show strong partisan leanings one way or the other. it's possible, but i think there's going to be a dispute over that issue, of who is actually going to be the special master, which itself can cause delay. if the person doesn't have clearance, that also is something that take at least some time, though it can be expedited. that also is not something that happens overnight. >> nbc news legal analyst andrew weissmann, thank you so much. sounds actually like it might be somebody who may have been a former fisa court judge. they handle, obviously, secret documents. >> both sides have to agree. that's a bit of an issue. >> we'll see. it could be difficult. we can only see.

jonathan lemire, obviously, one of the damages is going to be, there is a new wrinkle regarding executive privilege. the biden administration stated outright and believe they have precedent on their side, that former presidents don't have executive privilege. it's something donald trump is claiming. it's something the judge is suggesting can be argued in court. what -- how big of a challenge is that going to be? will we end up seeing that at the supreme court as well? >> it's possible. the biden administration has said throughout this process that say do not believe executive privilege applies to donald trump or any ex-president, a president not in office. certainly, the fact this judge took that into account raised eyebrows in the community. there were howls of protests from legal experts from both sides of the aisle. from andrew weissmann, we heard a little of that now. the doj can try to appeal this

ruling. that, of course, would slow things further. there is no guarantee of success, as noted, having to agree on the identity of the special master would slow things down potentially even further. of course, the clock is ticking because we do have an election day coming up. the doj has its informal 60-day guideline, where they're not supposed to do an act, investigative act that would seem as being overtly political within 60 days of an election. of course, we remember james comey and the fbi defying that in 2016. we don't need to remind democrats of that. that was just ten days out from that election, when they reopened the investigation into hillary clinton's emails. while trump is not on the ballot, there is a sense, the people i talked to, that he is going to be perceived as such because he is the dominant figure in the republican party, and that a prosecution of trump would be seen as being inflammatory, one way or the other, to the upcoming midterms. that is another complication, as well. this decision yesterday may almost ensure this delay will

push anything, any decision from the doj about a prosecution, to well after the november midterms. >> i will say, mika, i've been hearing quietly over the past couple of weeks the belief that -- and you've heard it, too, that if this -- if charges aren't brought before donald trump, before labor day, it was never going to happen until after the election. he is the dominant figure in the republican party. a prosecution against him after labor day of an election year is going to be seen as being highly politicized. people can be angry for that if they want to, but that's always been the general feeling. even before the special master decision was made, people were saying, they're going to wait, most likely, until after the election if they bring charges. >> we'll be following this. more questions ahood. ahead on "morning joe," more from president biden's campaign stops in a pair of states that will be critical this november. a live report from london as

liz truss prepares to take over as britain's new prime minister today. nbc's keir simmons is standing by for us. and the latest from ukraine amid new reporting this morning that russia is buying millions of rockets and artillery shells from north korea. >> which is actually what you want to do. if you are in trouble, if your back is against the wall, doesn't matter what you're talking about, buy north korean. also this morning, what we're learning about a mass stabbing attack in canada. police are still searching for one of the suspects. we'll have the latest. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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27 past the hour. mississippi's capital is closer to restoring water service. water pressure returned to normal for most of the city's customers, one week after the city's main water plant failed. officials warn it is still too early to say when reliable drinking water will be restored. the capital's boil water notice will continue until the city reports two rounds of clear water samples. meanwhile, the holiday weekend brought more flash flooding and severe weather to the midwest and south, leading to at least one death and widespread damage. in jefferson county, indiana, 9 inches of rain fell in 3 hours saturday, causing deadly and destructive flash flooding. the family of a 64-year-old woman, linda wood, says she was trapped in her house and swept away by the fast-moving

floodwaters. later finding her body about 5 miles downstream on sunday. and in georgia, the governor declared a state of emergency sunday in chattanooga and floud floyd counties, as two days of thunderstorms and heavy rain pounded. some areas' creeks and streams flooded, damaging homes, businesses, and cars. willie? turning back to politics, republican senator marco rubio is downplaying the fbi search of donald trump's mar-a-lago home. here's what rubio said in an interview with nbc's affiliate in miami on sunday. >> this is really at its core a storage argument that they're making, right? they're arguing there are documents there. they don't deny he should have access to the documents. what they deny is they were not properly stored. i don't think a fight over storage of documents is worthy of what they've done. >> marco rubio speaking on sunday, calling it a storage issue. compare that to what senator

rubio said about hillary clinton's handling of classified information in july of 2016. rubio released a statement saying, in part, there is simply no excuse for hillary clinton's decision to set up a home-cooked email system which left sensitive and classified national security information vulnerable to theft and exploitation by the u.s.'s enemy. hillary clinton sent the message to the millions of hard-working federal employees who hold security clearances and are expected to go to great lengths to secure sensitive government information and abide by the rules. they don't take their oats lightly, and we shouldn't expect less of our leaders, said rubio in 2016. jared kushner calling this a paperwork issue. marco rubio saying it is a question of storage. they'll sort this out. what is the line? is there anything donald trump could do -- >> nope. >> -- that would make not not defend something they never would defend in any other circumstance. >> i mean, there is no line. marco rubio was running the

senate intel committee. >> yup. >> so you have marco rubio saying, top secret documents are only at risk if they're mishandled by democrats. top secret documents mishandled and actually taken, removed from a government office, removed from the white house and illegally, improperly hidden at mar-a-lago. even after the fbi negotiates and tries to get them all back, it just doesn't matter. so, again, is there any line? no, there's no line. because we've seen, actually, that the republicans are the fiercest defenders of cops, until it serves their purposes to defend people that brutalize cops with an american flag,

beating them almost to death. to participate in riots that ends up being the death of four cops. it doesn't matter to republicans, no. it just doesn't matter. top secret documents don't matter to republicans, if defending donald trump comes in front of that. defending men and women in blue, doesn't matter. defending law enforcement doesn't matter. the fbi doesn't matter. it just doesn't matter if that stands in the way of defending a failed reality tv show host. that's exactly where marco rubio is. that extends to threats to fbi agents and their families, calling them the gestapo, calling them wolves. in past days, if a former president said something as horrific about the fbi as donald

trump said this past weekend, you'd have the entire republican party coming out and condemning him. instead, these people are all along for the ride. here's and thing, they'll say horrible things about the fbi publicly, and privately, they'll say horrible things about donald trump. which tells you, again, every institution is under attack. they'll actually say, they'll lie about government employees, saying they're coming to iowa with ar- 15s and are going to knock down doors and kill iowans. no backing down from chuck grassley. no backing down from the cable news hosts that said that government officials were coming to kill middle class americans, when they know it's a lie. it's radical. how do you deal? i don't even know. i don't even know how you'd deal

with somebody like marco rubio, who, again, is so outraged with hillary clinton, when there is a possibility of mishandling classified documents. >> joe biden is talk about the democracy being at stake. >> now it's a storage issue? no, it's not a storage issue. nobody ever believed it was a storage issue. marco rubio never believed it was a storage issue. if you take top secret documents out of a government building, marco rubio would be the first person to say, like me in the past, you go to jail. you go to jail. how do you deal with a party that actually reminds me -- kevin williamson was right. this is the republican party's hippie moment. the hell with the institutions, according to people like marco rubio. the hell with top secret documents, the hell with the fbi, the hell with the cia, the

hell with the justice department, with the rule of law. if anything gets in the way of actually institutions that actually make this country great -- >> and the rule of law. >> -- which makes this country great, and constitutional norms that make this country great, marco rubio and, unfortunately, too many republicans i once knew, are willing to throw it away. you know what? i don't have to worry. i don't have to worry about how i'm going to look in five years. because in five years, these people are going to be saying the same thing i'm saying. you don't believe it? they are. they're all going to write books, as i predicted, about how i won the war. how i made things a little less worse for america. by sucking up anti-constitutionalists. i was in the game and somehow made things a little bit worse

for america. it doesn't sell. it didn't sell five years ago. it doesn't sell today. it won't sell five years from now when everybody will be saying what i am saying right now, what we have been saying on this show for five years. presidential historian, rogers chairs at vanderbilt university, jon meacham. former adviser to joe biden on historical matters and major speeches. what is bizarre to me, it's not first time i've said it, the modern conservative movement grew exponentially in response to left-wing radicals in the 1960s who were trying to destroy american institutions, who really didn't give a damn whether american institutions thrived or collapsed. said that most american institutions were corrupt. now, we have people like marco rubio who basically are doing the same thing. donald trump attacking the fbi viciously this past weekend, and no republican will say a thing.

how do democrats, how do major news networks, how exactly are you down the middle when you have one party that's actually defending the rule of law and constitutional norms and another party who says, well, if donald trump does it, doesn't matter, there is no such thing as top secret classified documents. if donald trump lies about an election, we have to play that down the middle. how do you play that down the middle? >> i don't think you can. one of the problems we have in political life is there is an endless demand to have something to say and, by nature, there is a limited supply of things worth saying. i think that that shapes and warps a lot of what unfolds. you know, you and i have talked in the past about the -- and you mentioned it -- the portrait test, right. if you're thinking, all right,

someday, particularly p politicians love this because they can't imagine a world where people aren't looking at their portrait, what are people going to say when they look at my portrait? that's one way to organize what you should do. there is another way, too, which is the alarm clock test. when the alarm clock goes off and you're getting up to start your day, what's the goal of that day? don't worry, this is not a lifestyle segment. what's the goal of that day? is it to, as parker said, bend the arc of a moral universe toward justice, or is it just to score points, create heat, attack your rivals and your foes who you see as enemies, no matter what? no matter what reason says, no matter what the facts say, no matter what your own conscience says. if that's your goal, then you get what we have now.

particularly on the center over to the right. and, you know, bill clinton had a favorite historian at georgetown, carol quigley, who was a historian who had a theory about future preference. the argument was that, in particular, democracies run not on getting -- if your alarm clock test is getting everything you want right now, it's actually about deferring your own interests for a given time so that you invest in the future. we build bridges we'll never cross because somebody else will. it seems to me that if we don't have that sense, if we don't have a sense that maybe our own ambition ambitions, our own immediate gratification, our own need for

reaction and political land, if that's the only thing that drives us, then that way madness lies. if we don't find some way to honor the american experiment, which was however flawed, it gave reason a chance to stand against ambition. right now, passion is winning. ambition is winning. >> yeah. you know, katty, i saw this weekend a lot of republicans now want to change the constitution. think about it. republicans have dominated the supreme court, appointed 6 of the 9 supreme court justices, despite losing 7 of the last 8, 7 of the last 8 presidential election popular votes. republicans have a disproportionate impact in the united states senate and have for some time, per vote, because of the way senate seats are set up. they've gerrymandered the house to a point where it is almost

unrecognizable. these people are freaking out because they lose one presidential election, justify a riot at the capitol, they justify the stealing of top secret documents, all because they lost one election. this is a party that is getting more extreme by the moment. >> and a party that is laser focused on how to cling on to power in a country where it is increasingly hard for them to win that popular vote, and cling onto power by putting people in positions that have the potential to influence how the vote is held and counted in 2024, and basically change the system. jon, you know, we are witnessing today in the uk, that country you like to deride for losing it empire, of peaceful transfer of power. things are happening in a democracy as they should be happening. liz truss will go and will not kiss the hand of the queen, but she'll brush her lips against the back of the hand of the queen, and the transfer of power

will have taken place. i wonder, when i look at the states at the moment, whether, actually, the system is just not strong enough at this moment to get us to a place that joe is talking about, where in five years' time, people will look back at this as annomoly, and say, we were mad. you have a supreme court that was making major rulings that do not represent the will of the people. you have the gerrymandered system that doesn't represent the will of the people. you have people getting into positions of power that can change the system in their own state in order to affect the way the vote is counting. the american public is not where the systems are, where the organs of government are. the organs of government are in a way that's much more extreme than where the majority of the american public is. how do we get out of this moment so, in five years' time, we can

say, that was a moment of conflict and tension, but we got out of it? >> i totally believe that this is a political and also a moral crisis. i'm not preaching. it's not a homily, moral point. the root of the word moral is about custom. it is about how we are with each other. democracies, like the one that's working today across the atlantic, democracies depend on not just adherence to the substance of law and tradition but, as was said in a book that was hugely important to our framers, the spirit of the laws. the thing about this, we have to decide, is my basic point. americans have to decide that we are willing to defer getting exactly what we want, whenever we want it, and say that the

constitution is imperfect but, right now, it's what we have. you abide by it. here's the thing that you know well, katty, democracy is counterintuitive, right? it is much more natural for human beings to slide into autocratic, perpetual warfare. the human instinct is, find a strongman with whom you are in sympathy or enthralled, by necessity. stick with that strongman because he's going to fight your battles and defend your tribe. >> yeah. >> that's the state of nature, the war of all against all. what great britain, the united states, the anglo-american tradition, again, all the imperfections, the notion was that, in fact, we were able to give as well as take. without deciding we can give as well as take and obey rules we

don't like, then we don't get out of the moment. >> you know, the church, evangelicals once believed that, actually, it was jesus christ that moved us beyond that. now, one tv preacher after another, a religious leader after another, will do whatever it takes to win the culture wars and go back again to the horrific state. jon meacham, thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. willie, i think the challenge for the media during this time is what i was saying before. you have donald trump who is calling the fbi vicious monsters. you have republicans that are calling the fbi, our crowd men and women who protect us every day, wolves that want to eat and devour you. republicans calling them the gestapo. trumpists say the media is left-winged and bias. no, they just love the

constitution of the united states. cnn is trying to be more fair, more down the middle. i think that's a good thing. i think it is going to be hard for not only them but for all of us to do our best. again, when you have a former president calling the fbi vicious monsters, when you have republicans calling them the gestapo, when you have republicans talking about defunding the fbi. >> trump-appointed head of the fbi. >> exactly how do we play that down the middle? >> yeah. >> trumpists don't call us bias? there is no playing that down the middle. even for conservatives like me. if you believe in the fbi, if you believe in the rule of law, if you believe in constitutional safeguards, there is no sort of, hey, let's figure out what the middle is between constitutional norms and trying to de-fund the fbi. >> yeah. we saw that again with president

biden's speech last thursday in philadelphia, which his critics said was too divisive and drew an equivalence to what donald trump has been doing the last seven years. the difference is biden was talking about donald trump and his supporters and what they've done. with joe biden, they're saying, yes, this is the same. what he said about maga republicans, he was talking about a specific group of trump republicans, he was saying what they're doing is undermining the democracy. donald trump is objectively doing that. you can call that equivalent or not, but this is obviously something that the media grapples with, but it is something we're happy to grapple with. the truth of the matter is, you have mainstream republicans, not conspiracy theorists in the dark corners of the internet, mainstream republicans now talking about things like the irs coming to kick down doors, like the fbi being corrupt, call calling this a raid of donald trump's home. these are different things, without question, and it is on us to treat it fairly and treat

it the way it is going down. let's bring in the president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. the author of the forthcoming book, "bill of obligations." richard is going for either sean connery. >> oh, my goodness. >> the most interesting man in the world is another candidate. he said he prefers, i think, jeff bridges. what do you think? >> more of a sean connery thing. >> oh, richard. >> it worns. >> he is preparing a look. the book comes out. >> exactly. >> he is a saucier on the side. he is going to have -- he is going to have more recipes. for cooking, he wants the look. willie, it's working. >> up close, john, would you say it is working? >> it was stunning when he sat down. i will admit, but i think it works. i think it looks good. i think he should keep it.

>> are you on your way to a letterman, or should we stop it here? >> no letterman. >> looking good, richard. "foreign" magazine turns 100, and richard has a piece, "the dangerous decade, foreign policy for a world in crisis." you write this, on the one hand, the world is witnessing the revival of some of the worst aspects of traditional geopolitics. great-power competition, imperial ambitions, fights over resources. today, russia is headed by a tyrant, president vladimir putin, who longs to recreate a russian sphere of influence, perhaps an empire. he is willing to do anything to achieve that goal, and he is able to act as he pleases because internal constraints in his circle have disappeared. meanwhile, under president xi jinping, china has embarked on a quest for regional and potentially global primacy, putting itself on a trajectory

against the united states. further complicating the picture is the reality that american democracy and political co cohesian is a matter -- this matters because the united states is not just one country among many. u.s. leadership remains no less central today. the united states richb internally, however, will become ever less willing and able to lead on the international stage. richard, let's start with the last point about what everything we've been talking about this morning, the attempted undermining of democracy on so many levels, what that means globally for our place in the world. >> nothing good, willie. first of all, no one around the world is going to wake up anymore trying to emulate us. that's a change. for long-term, the vibrancy of our democracy, the strength of our economy was the envy of the world. not so much. foes see our divisions as a sign of weakness, something to exploit.

i actually think it is one of the reasons vladimir putin thought he could get away with what he did in ukraine. our friends are nervous. there's no longer a presumption that we're there for them. i don't know who is going to be elected in a couple years, none of us can, but in the old days, no matter who was elected, there was a presumption of continuity. to use a sport's metaphor, the game took place in the 40 yard lines. now, we're playing in the end zones. if you are dependent on us for your security, that is not a comfortable situation. so i think we're setting in motion a much more unstable world. we cannot insulate ourselves from it. this summer is the hottest summer on record. things like climate change, 9/11, what happens in classes like afghanistan matters. we can't isolate ourself from the world, but what is happening is making the world less stable. >> president biden speaks about this a lot, democracies to prove they can still work, or other

countries may choose to follow another example. that'd be, in particular, china. there are reports in recent days that there had been an expectation that china would surpass the u.s. as the world's number one economy. that now has been delayed. there was thought it could have been by the end of the decade. now it may never happen. china has been struggling itself on many fronts in recent days. talk to us about how, in the age of uncertainty, the competition between the superpowers, how is that going to shape the future? >> china is 1 1.3 billion will fall under 1 billion by the end of the century. what worries me, in the slowdown, in the signs of weakness, their health and environmental and demographic problems, xi jinping or one of his successors may return to nationalism, the rejuvenation of china. ie, bringing taiwan into the fold. that's what worries me. a china that is stronger than it

was but not as strong as it wants to be and is worried about the future, might see nationalism, might see a more aggressive foreign policy as the way to legitimize a political leadership that can no longer turn to a successful economy to justify its existence. i think we're in for a very difficult phase of u.s.-chinese competition. at the same time, we still have to deal with vladimir putin. same time, we need to deal with iran and its nuclear ambitions. at the same time, things like climate change, problems with cyber. this combination, johnson, i've never seen anything like it. it is a toxic mix of geopolitics, global challenges, and the united states that's at war with itself. if you're not worried, your not paying attention. >> richard, i remember having a conversation with former defense secretary bob gates in 2009/2010. he laid out the security challenges with the rise of the u.s. and declining russia and

america itself, the divided politics. he was prefacing a lot of what you've said. what tipped america into this position that you think is untenable in terms of its role, leading the rest of the world, if somebody 14 years ago was already saying it was a problem. why is it so much worse? >> to begin with, the russian and chinese challengs reached a new stage, much more acute than they were. it's not just a possibility, it's reality. second o f all, the gap between challenges and responses is growing. we see it every day on climate and cyber. increasingly, on nuclear proliferation. that worries me. we saw it on health. the inadequate response on covid. the situation here deteriorated. we can't deny it. everything this show has been about, not just this morning but for the last several years, we're not yet -- none of us can

sit here confidently and say the worst is behind us. it's quite possible that it's not. we're not debating foreign policy much in this country, but everything that goes on here, the distraction, the division, has implications for foreign policy. whatever it is we do or don't do has implications on the world which, in turn, has implications for us. yeah, i think this is actually the most dangerous moment, even if, again, using from jon meacham said, when people get up and hear the alarm clock, they're not thinking of foreign policy. we may not be focusing on the world, but the world won't forget us. this is all going to have, i think, profound consequences for the united states. >> richard haass, thank you very much. the new piece is in the 100th anniversary issue of "foreign affairs." >> you can also see him -- >> yeah? >> -- on "celebrity jeopardy," with burt reynolds.

>> very erudite. katty, thank you, as well. students in uvalde, texas, are waking up for their first day of school since the massacre at robb elementary. we'll look into the changes in place for the new school year, and why some parents say the state and district have not done enough. also ahead, the latest on the kidnapping of a teacher in memphis, tennessee, and the discovery minutes away from where she was abducted. a little later in the conversation, the impact of social media. one of our next guests says the platforms that are meant to connect us with tearing us apart. who's surprised? you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. back. gh. even ice cream is like whooping cough, it's not just for kids. whooping cough is highly contagious for people of any age.

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the united states has to regain its footing and remember who we are. democracy is at stake. you can't be a democracy when you support violence when you don't like the outcome of an election. trump and the maga republicans made their choice. we can choose to build a better america or continue down this sliding path. >> president biden during one of his two swing state campaign pitches on labor day. we'll play more of his remarks from wisconsin and pennsylvania as we approach the -- 60-day countdown to the miss terms. >> people melting down over a self-explanatory speech joe biden gave, where he is talking about -- talking about -- not all republicans, of course. there's -- obviously, some people have hearing problems. he quite clearly said he wasn't talking about all republicans. he was talking about a subset of the republican party that caused a serious danger. people taking offense over him calling out extremists that are talking about irs agents gunning down americans, people who call

the fbi the gestapo, calling them wolves, wanting to de-fund the fbi. there is a radicalism. january 6th, defending january 6th, saying that it is just a bunch of tourists. i could go on and on and on and on and on and on. the radicalism is overwhelming. people that are coming out attacking joe biden, they understand it. because they say it themselves off camera. that's what is so maddening about this. they're willing to let the democracy go up in flames because they're afraid to speak the truth on camera. they'll tell you off camera, oh, i'm with you 100%. you're exactly right. this is a danger to the republic, and i'm against him. i'm going to speak out at some point. we've been hearing that now for five years. i mean, the only exception -- >> not how it is supposed to work. >> -- i have with the speech si is i didn't get the blood red background. whoever is doing his set design,

don't need the gates of hell. that was a weird vibe. the white house might want to get a new lighting director. that was weird. >> yeah, that part of it was weird. you know, many of the same people who said the speech was divisive, some people did think it was that, also defend seven years of donald trump. they're clutching their pearls over that speech right there, when they've defended donald trump from the american carnage speech forward, as president and before that, of course, during the campaign. jonathan lemire, joe biden is certainly leaning into this maga republican attack. he takes pains to point out it's maga republicans, a part of the republican party, that supports this. it is not like he is backing away because of the reviews on thursday. he's leaned into it in wisconsin and pennsylvania on the campaign trail. >> we are two months from the midterms. democrats, the party is getting things done, and they point to the legislative success over the

summer. republicans are extremism and out of touch with americans on issues like abortion, guns, and, in this case, democracy itself. the president does take pains to say, look, it's not every republican, but a lot of them have been hijacked by donald trump and his maga loyalists. white house aides rolled their eyes to the criticism of the speech, noting that the color scheme was, yes, red, white, and blue, and it was just a close shot of the president. >> jonathan, we can use a little more red, white, and blue, instead of blood red. >> if this is all i couldn't got -- >> joe, it was reminiscent of the "last jedi," the snoke throne room, when it was red and dark. >> yes! >> some criticized there were two marines who flanked him for the speech, inappropriate use of the military. every president who held that office has given a speech with marines next to them.

>> this from critics. >> you're seeing it here. >> whose president wanted to have a military parade for himself. >> yes. and a president who used military personnel and federal law enforcement to clear lafayette park to have a photo-op with a bible in front of a church. >> jonathan, not to just continue, but also from a president who had a campaign event at the white house, on the lawn of the white house. >> yeah, it's exhausting. >> convention at the white house. >> yeah. >> he gave his convention speech at the white house. >> exactly. >> like, what are we doing? >> also with us for the conversation, pulitzer prize winning columnist at "the washington post," eugene robinson. former aid to the bush administration, elise jordan. >> should joe biden apologize for calling out the extreme

parts of the republican party? is an apology in order? >> no, absolutely not, full stop. i mean, no. you know, you get up, you tell the truth. no, certainly no apology is necessary. as you said, he was clear to draw the distinction between the maga republicans and what he called, like, regular conservative republicans. but, no, no apology needed. he obviously doesn't think there is because he is leaning into it. >> you know, i checked my text messages this weekend, elise. for all these people who placed fainting couches down at their side when joe biden went out and then fell over and were so shocked and stunned and deeply saddened while the speech was given. and because he talked about the risk a small portion of the republican party poses. you know, i didn't find any, and

mika didn't find anybody that had written us or texted us and said, we're so -- from this subset, this group that was so shocked, stunned, and saddened, the saying, it's, it is terrible donald trump called you a murderer 12 times because he didn't like your coverage of covid, or face-shamed mika and called her psycho, called her a wacko, called her mentally unbalanced because he didn't like her political commentary on how he was running the white house. >> i will say, a lot of people didn't like the face shaming. they were really upset by that. >> what i'm saying is, the people who were so shocked, stunned, and deeply saddened that joe biden gave this speech this weekend, kind of mute. for those who said, oh, this is worse than anything that donald trump ever did, just take any single day of his presidency and

look at his tweets. what he said about his opponents in the republican and democratic party far exceeded anything joe biden said friday night. again, the clutching of the pearls, the fainting of the coaches, all a bit touch for me. >> hard to find something to be offended by at times. if you're not forced to apologize, don't apologize. where joe biden is going, both because he has the conviction that he is right, but also go back and re-tread that ground over literally nothing? i would be curious, what were the ratings for the speech? does anyone know? the timing made it into more a media story than something that is going to trickle down to voters and something they might have an opinion on.

especially if they're watching right-wing media. >> the network didn't take is speech. broadcast didn't take it. i think it was mainly for, i think, the base. the left loved it. the base on the right, the trump right loved it because it gave them something to be shocked, stunned, and deeply saddened about, fall on the fainting couches, it's the worst thing ever. >> all right. president biden campaigned in two battleground states on labor day. pennsylvania and wisconsin. it was his third trip to pennsylvania in less than a week, where alongside the state's democratic nominee for senator, john fetterman, joe biden touted his accomplishments to a group of union workers outside pittsburgh. here is more of what he said at the campaign stop. also, earlier in the day in milwaukee. >> democracy is really at stake.

you can't be a democracy when you support violence, when you don't lake the outcome of an election. you can't call yourself a democracy when you don't, in fact, count the votes people legitimately cast and count that as who you are. you can't be a democracy and call yourself one if you continue to do what they're doing. folks, look, we have a choice. trust and the maga republicans made their choice. we can choose to build a better america, or we can continue down this sliding path of oblivion, where we don't want to go. to this day, maga republicans in congress defend the mob that stormed the capitol and people died later. senator johnson said it was a, by a large, a peaceful protest. have you seen the videos, what happened that day? listen to the stories and members of both parties of congress, the jeopardy they were put in? cops attacked and assaulted,

speared with flagpoles, sprayed with mace, stomped down, dragged, brutalized. police lost their lives as a result of that day. the maga republicans in your senior centers said it was a peaceful protest. i want to be very clear up front, not every republican is a maga republican. not every republican embraces that extreme ideology. but the extreme maga republicans in congress have chosen to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate and division. but, together, we can and we must choose a different path, forward. >> that's president biden in milwaukee yesterday stumping for mandela barnes, running against the incumbent senator republican ron johnson. eugene robinson, curious what you make of the presence of joe biden as we turn the corner into the fall on election season. he's out there a lot in pennsylvania, wisconsin. the candidate, mandela barnes, didn't appear at the event with

joe biden, saying he had other events to attend that day, which tells you something. but this message about democracy and about the stakes of the midterm elections, even looking ahead to the 2024 election, also leaning into the abortion issue. as we've been talking about the last couple weeks, suburban women are fleeing republicans and polling in record numbers, moving toward democrat. joe biden is going to be out there even if some of the democratic candidates he is campaigning for don't join him on stage. >> right. i'm sure that will vary from state to state depending on the situation. but this is his closing argument, and he is trying to -- he's got a message for the base. he's got accomplishments to talk to the base about. also, the threat of the maga republicans and the kind of country that they want this to be. i think he is trying to fire up the base. he is also trying to split off

independents and right-leaning, you know, independents and non-maga republicans, the few that may be left, who still identify as republican but are not maga. he's trying to split them off, as well. and i think, you know, he's feeling a lot better about the midterm than he would have, say, three months ago. we're going to see more of this. i think we'll see more of joe biden out on the campaign trail. especially in states where he thinks he can have an impact. in pennsylvania, you know, he was the senator for eons from neighboring delaware. he was often referred to as the third senator from pennsylvania, born in scranton. that's natural. he'll be back there again and again. wisconsin, you know, ron johnson has managed to get himself into

real difficulty out there. as hard as it is for an incumbent senator to lose, he may way lose. i think that would make joe biden very happy. >> all right. we're going to turn now to russia. russia is buying millions of artillery shells and rockets from north korea for its ongoing invasion of ukraine. that's according to a newly declassified u.s. intelligence report, first published by "the new york times" yesterday. the u.s. government officials tell the paper that russia's decision to turn to north korea was a sign that sanctions and export controls imposed, the u.s. was -- it was hurting russia's ability to get military weapons. the drones, which u.s. officials say had mechanical problems, u.s. intelligence officials believe russia could look to purchase additional military

equipment from north korea in the future. nbc news hasn't independently confirmed the "times" reporting. intense shelling resumed near europe's largest nuclear plant. a fire forced the staff to sever the plant's last connection to a reserve line that was providing its only source of outside power. according to the reports, fire fighting crews struggled to reach the site because of fighting around the plant. nearby shelling and explosions are raising fears about a possible nuclear disaster looming. this comes as u.n. inspectors are expected to give a more formal report, as soon as today, on their efforts to avert a potential disaster. the new issue of the atlantic is dedicated to the war in ukraine. a special package devoted to life in the country and the state of the war. joining us now, staff writer for "the atlantic," george packer.

he is one of the cover stories for the issue, "ukrainians are defending the values americans claim to hold." here's part of what george writes. quote, a whole society mobilized: this was my first and most lasting impression. the mayor of lviv described ukraine in crisis as a beehive. nearly everyone i met had looked for something to do as soon as russia attacked, some way to be useful without waiting for instructions from a higher authority. on the day the invasion started, a sculptor and lighting designer went to volunteer at a local territorial defense post in kyiv and were given instant training in the use of ak-47s. neither had ever fired a gun in their lives. but within 24 hours, they were standing on a rooftop in the north of the capital, scouting the streets below for the first russian tanks. yet, almost every ukrainian i met shared it.

we will win. and also, no compromise. i do not know what the men thought of the american politics, and i didn't want to know. back home, we might have argued, might have detested each other. here? we were joined by a common belief in what the ukrainians were trying to do, and admiration for how they were doing it. >> george, of course, as you note, this has united many americans along bipartisan -- along partisan divides. there was a line that i thought was very striking. when we ask what is going to happen here, you spoke, actually, to a former green beret from texas on a train ride. let me get the quote right. he said to you, he said, in basic terms, slaves can never defeat free people. once a man tastes freedom, he

won't let anyone take it from him. sounds like that nicely encapsulates your experience in ukraine. >> yeah, i mean, i don't know what this man's politics were. we didn't talk about american politics, thank god. we talked about ukraine and found that we had a similar experience of the ukrainians and a similar admiration for them. that kind of line might be something i would be skeptical about if i heard it, you know, at an american bar, like what do you mean, free men, slaves? you talking about guns? what are you talking about? but in ukraine, it meant something real. because it's this sort of place where -- most wars, the closer you get to them, i've found, the more complicated they get. ukraine was the opposite. the closer you got, the simpler it became. it really is a clear case. it is a simple matter of good and evil, as one woman said to me. or, to be a little more sophisticated about it, of a democratic society trying to

save itself and become a better democracy, against a tyranny trying to destroy it. it is a war for survival as well as democratic values. once you see it that way, and it is impossible not to, you have to really be blind not to see that when you go there. once you see that, there is no question which side you're on. there is no questioning why ukrainians keep talking about the need to keep fighting and not compromise with putin. >> george, we've watched in awe for the last six, seven months now as the ukrainian people rallied, as you write about, in this beehive way to defend their country. i think one of the first moments was the snake island moment, when they gave the finger and told the military of russia to blank off and then was fired upon. where do these ukraiian people, where do they summon this? is it out of desperation, out of survival? as you write, to a man, it's not just members of the enlisted military. it is everybody in the society

who seemed to rally to do his or her part here. >> i think it's been coming for years. most ukrainians i talked to pointed to 2014 as the key moment. some of us think this war started in february. the war started eight years ago. even if it was at a lower he feel level of intensity, it affected all of ukraine. it told ukrainians they really faced a choice, between their own russian-influenced politics, autocracy, corruption, and a democratic transformation that they were in the process of making when putin began to subvert the country because it was democratizing. i think ukrainians have been seeing this coming for a long time. seeing sacrifice for a long time. the staggering destruction in every town. you see fresh graves that have been dug for troops and some

civilians. it's heartbreaking to see the loss of life at that scale, where every ukrainian knows someone who has been killed. i think the more that goes on, and it is a strange thing, the more determined they become. partly because they know they face an existential fight. they will be destroyed as a country, as a people, if they lose. partly, i think, because they'd already made a commitment, many ukrainians at least, to a set of values that they are now fighting for. so when it came under direct and massive attack in february, they were already prepared to defend it. >> george, elise jordan here. you spent a long time reporting on the ground in iraq and wrote a well-regarded book about the debacles of that war. how has your reporting in iraq influenced the way you approach reporting in ukraine, and what can policymakers learn about intervention, given our experience in iraq? >> it's a great question.

iraq is the war that got more complicated the more time i spent there. classic case of that. i think the biggest difference is -- are the people that we are supporting, whether it's in a misdegotten effort to democratize a deeply divided country, iraq, or i think an important and crucial effort to arm a country fighting for its life, ukraine. the key difference is, what do the people there want? what is our relation to them? are we supporting something that they're fighting for, or are we trying to impose something that they divided amongst themselves about? it cannot come from us. it comes from them. i began to feel that in ukraine. if ukrainians say, we're willing to fight until the end, that's our obligation. it doesn't sound like very sophisticated foreign policy speak, but if ukraine is willing to keep fighting, we have to keep supporting them.

because the stakes of their losing are so high, both in ukraine and around europe and the world. >> we'll all be reading the new cover story for the special issue of "the atlantic." george packer, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning and writing that piece. still ahead on "morning joe," the latest in the criminal investigation into donald trump's handling of classified documents after a judge grants the former president's request for a special master. former acting solicitor general katyal says the decision was so bad, his first year law students could have crafted a better one. he'll join us ahead. plus, disturbing look at how social media has rewired our brains to make you more aggressive, more intolerant, more polarized, and more likely to believe disinformation. and how social media companies knew this and fostered it for

profits. overseas, any moment now, liz truss will officially be sworn in by the queen as the new prime minister of the uk. we'll go live to london with the latest on that. also ahead, a big upset at the u.s. open, as 22-time grand slam champion rafael nadal loses his first grand slam match of the year. >> wow. >> you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. your brain is an amazing thing. but as you get older, it naturally begins to change, causing a lack of sharpness, or even trouble with recall. thankfully, the breakthrough in prevagen helps your brain and actually improves memory. the secret is an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. my dad was a hard worker.

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okay season 6! aw... this'll take forev—or not. do i just focus on when things don't work, and not appreciate when they do? i love it when work actually works! i just booked this parking spot... this desk... and this conference room! i am filing status reports on an app that i made! i'm not even a coder! and it works!... i like your bag! when your digital solutions work, the world works. that's why the world works with servicenow. [ applause ] all right. tiafoe stuns rafael nadal in the fourth round of the u.s. open. the number 22 seeded american

earned his first trip to the quarterfinals at flushing meadows with a four-set victory over the 22-time grand slam champ. meanwhile, third seeded 19-year-old carlos survived the longest match, 4 hours, beating 2014 champion cilic in five sets. the exit means there is not a single former u.s. open champion left in the men's and women's draw. >> tiafoe exciting, though. could be a fun run to the finals. little baseball, where else, joe, but the american league east? baltimore. bo bichette powered the bluejays to a sweep of the orioles. in the bronx, aaron judge did it again. look at that. >> what is that?

>> wow. >> continuing his race to the american league home run record. major league leading 54th, second deck shot in the sixth inning of the yankees' 5-2 win. >> sign that pitcher. >> over the twins. yankees hanging on, five games ahead of the rays in the division. tampa bay beat the red sox, 4-3. the win puts tampa in a tie with the mariners for the top league spot. to anaheim, shohei ohtani got a pair of runs in the romp of the tigers last night. after the two home runs, ohtani did go down looking against tiger's infielder, cody clemens. the son of clemens. he is an infielder. came in to pitch a bit and struck out the great ohtani. joining us is the author of "robert b. parker's fallout" by

like lupica. the latest in the jesse stone book series. let's talk about judge first and what he is doing. "the new york post" summarizes it well, un-bleeping-believable. >> henry aaron is the all-time home run king. maris is the single-season leader. 61 for maris in 1961, 61 years ago. maybe we are due to have somebody break it. i just love the fact that 60 is, again, a magic number in baseball. the way it was when i was a kid. by the way, he hit his 54th yesterday, which is what mickey mantle hit in '61 when he and maris were in the great home run chase. >> he is on that pace, a little ahead by a game or two, of where maris was. it's still -- he has to hit eight home runs in 27 or so games. no easy feat. the way he is swinging the bat, and he is still seeing pitches.

they're throwing to the guy. >> looked like i was pitching yesterday. the twins, you have to say, willie, as a yankee fan, the twins showing up at yankee stadium, in this time of need for your team, is like the red cross showing up, don't you think? >> just the right time. i don't know how they always help us, but the twins can't get past us. lemire, this debate now about the a.l. mvp against judge and ohtani, who is doing something other worldly. he is having a great season at the plate, but also he's become untouchable as a pitcher, as well. >> certainties in life are death, taxes, yankees beating the twins. >> yes. >> but the issue here for ohtani is, and i saw the stat on twitter this morning, this year, a year after his mvp season, mike, is having a pitching season equivalent to the winner and equivalent to mookie betts, a favorite to win the national league mvp. he is doing it again.

he is doing it on a team that is going to miss the playoffs again. doesn't it set up the debate, best player versus most valuable. judge has the narrative, he has the story line, if he hits more than 61 home runs, hard to see him not win mvp. shohei ohtani, it's one of the most remarkable feats in history. >> generational player. what he is going hasn't happened in 100 years, since babe ruth. i don't know what happened to him after he left boston. things went well for him. this is a once every 100 years feat that he has. but i think they'll give it to judge, then it speaks to, is it mvp, is it most outstanding player? there's different definitions. >> it'll be hard not to give it to judge if he crosses the 61, leads the league in rbis, hitting .300. incredible season. man, ohtani is doing something special. the latest book, where do we find stone these days? >> you know what? it is a great small town

mystery. jesse stone, people remember tom selleck playing jesse stone in the tv movmovies. i've been blessed to continue this character. this is a story about a shortstop he is mentoring who dies tragically early, and an old police chief who mentored him. are they connected? i don't know. well, i do know because i wrote the book. >> yeah. >> i'll tell ya, there is a great subplot that will appeal to everyone. this is my revenge against spam callers. spam callers are a big part of this book, and i can't fight back on my cell phone, but i can fight back in this novel. spam calls are -- my parents got these, grandma, i'm in trouble, send me money. they were smart enough to never give. it is a huge part of the story. >> long way to go for revenge. you have to write a whole book to get back at them. >> no, no, it was well worth it. >> his fight storm, "curve your

enthusiasm." >> mike, it is sweet you are continuing this series. it was your friend. can you talk a bit about the back story? >> elise, robert was a friend of mine, a wriing hero of mine. allison gailen is going to pick up sonny now. as soon as i stop selling this book, i'm going to write my first spencer novel, the granddaddy of them all. i think he'd be pleased at the reception we've gotten from readers and critics. they say it sounds like him, it's the spirit of him, and he was a master of the game. >> ultimate compliment. robber b. parker's fallout is available today and mike lupica wrote it, so it'll be a good one. great to see you. >> great to be here. thank you. the inside story of how social media rewired our minds and our world. "new york times" reporter and columnist max fisher joins us

next with his new book on the chaos machine. we'll be right back. it■s hard eating healthy. unless you happen to be a dog.

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we will help get you the best result possible. ♪ call one eight hundred, eight million ♪ a lot of people think google is search box and facebook is a place to see what friends are doing. there are engineers whose job is to use your psychology against you. there were meaningful changes happening around the world because of these platform. i think we were naive about the flip side of that coin. >> that was a look at the recent netflix documentary entitled "the social dilemma." everybody should watch it. it took a look at how social media algorithms manipulate the users. now, a new book argues the digital world that was meant to bring people together is actually the reason we're more divided than ever. the book is entitled "the chaos

machine, the inside story of how social media rewired our minds and our world." its author, international reporter and columnist at "the new york times," max fisher joins us now. thank you for writing this book. just to point out, one of the key sort of revelations in the "social dilemma" was the very people interviewed, the people who create social media, do not allow their children on social media. that's all you need to know. because it is officially, we can argue, with all the different data out there, destroying our children's minds. >> yes, that was one of the, i think, real revelations for me reporting this book, was how much evidence we now have that we didn't have a few years ago when i think a lot of us were operating on a suspicion that social media had some effect, that we now have an enormous amount of rigorous, scientific,

empirical research that shows not just the scale that social media is changing us, changing how we thing, our internal natures, but the evidence that this is something the platforms are doing deliberately. >> max, why don't you answer the $64,000 question, how could the -- you know, the concept of social media when we first heard about it seemed to be something that would unite us. i remember me hearing about how text messages had helped organize the orange revolution in ukraine. it was heady stuff. we thought the same would happen with social media. the exact opposite occurred. why is that? >> so there are two ideas behind social media that are completely intentioned. one is this original idea that it will be this forum that will bring us together. that is something that is at least a potential that exists in a neutral social media. but the other factor that has become the overwhelmingly

dominant force is that it is designed to deliberately manipulate your emotions to get you to spend more time online. i can give you an example of this. when you go onto any social media platform, whichever one you use, you think what you are seeing are the thoughts, the ideas, the sentiments of people in your community, you know, your friends, people who you follow, and that is false. that's actually not what you are seeing at all. what you are, in fact, seeing are the sentiments and the ideas that have been pre-selected for you by these incredibly powerful algorithms and automated systems, that have identified these types of content and these types of interactions that will get you to spend as much time on the platform as possible and will get you to actually post yourself to contribute to this. this has been incredibly successful, not just at driving up people's time on the platform, so the platforms can

sell more ads and make more money, but actually, we now know, can change your underlying nature as a person. there's this one experiment that i write about in the book that i found really fascinating and telling. these researchers sat down a bunch of research subjects. before the experiment, they kind of gauged them on their internal emotional nature, basic temperament. how prone were they to outrage as people. they would have each of them send a fake -- because it was a controlled experiment -- a fake tweet with some outrage in it. we know that outrage is a sentiment that the platforms really reward. if you have any post on any platform with outrge in it, the system picks that out and shoves it in front of a huge amustn't of people. it'll get others to engage with you, you engage in turn, and everyone spends more time on the platform. what the experimenters found, if they showed some of the users their fake tweets after the fact with the big engagement numbers

on them, the retweet and like number went way up, what they found is that subjects who had even expressed a real aversion to outrage before the experiment, didn't like outrage, didn't like to express it, would become, once they did this a few times, much more prone, not just to sending more outraged tweets because they had internalized that accepts of reward and the sense that that is what their community wanted, though it was faked by the platform, but they actually became more prone to feeling outraged internally and in their off-line life, away from the computers. this is one of a dozen different ways i write about in the book that the platforms can, by manipulating effectively online, change your behavior, change the way your mind works and change your politics which, of course, at the scale of billions of users, turns out to be enormously consequential. >> every couple years, we see executives from facebook, twitter, youtube grabbed by congress. they're asked relatively for

them easy questions to answer, but they say, no, this is not our design. we're here to bring people together. but you're describing something that, i mean, evil is a strong word, but if you know -- >> yeah. >> if you know this is what it is doing to people, you know this is what it is doing to young girls, and this is your business model and you're pushing harder on that and amplifying it, is there any hope for reform internally, or is it going to have to come from the government? if so, what does that even look like? >> one of the fascinating things to me on this exact point, where the people who run the platforms will say, oh, it's a neutral platform, we don't do this, is if you go back ten years and look at old business conferences, if you look at the internal discussions of the platforms, they used to be quite open before they knew not to be about the fact they were designing these systems to be deliberately addictive and deliberately manipulative and to become the intermediaries that govern all information

consumption, the way we relate to one another. so, to your point, that is something that is baked in, not just to the technology of how these platforms work, but is their fundamental business model. that's how they make their money, is by getting you to spend more time online, so that they can sell more ads to you. so, you know, there's a lot of discussion about what's the regulation? how do we set new rules for what is allowed on the platform, not allowed on the platforms? it is a little like regulating the kinds of packaging you can put on cigarettes or the kinds of filters you can put on cigarettes. it might have an effect at the margins, but the basic core of the companies is to get you to buy more cigarettes, to spend more time with their products. >> here we go again with cigarettes. it's the new cigarettes. the new book is "the chaos machine, the inside story of how social media rewired our minds and our world." incredibly important book by max fisher. thank you very much for coming on the who this morning.

>> thanks, max. >> appreciate it. >> we'll be talking about this again soon. up next, liz truss is officially the new prime minister of the uk, as she meets with the queen right now. keir simmons joins us live from london when "morning joe" returns. turns. every month? clumping litter? salmon pate? love that for me. just choose the frequency and ship it! i feel so accomplished. now you can pet me. great prices on everything pets want. chewy. it's time for the biggest sale of the year, on the sleep number 360 smart bed. snoring? it can gently raise your partner's head to help. everything pets want. our smart sleepers get 28 minutes more restful sleep per night. all smart beds are on sale. save 50% on the sleep number 360 limited edition smart bed. ends monday. some days, it felt like asthma was holding me back. but asthma has taken enough. so i go triple... with trelegy. with 3 medicines in 1 inhaler,... it's the only once-daily treatment for adults that takes triple action against asthma symptoms.

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52 past the hour. liz truss is now officially the new prime minister of the uk. joining us from london, nbc news senior international correspondent keir simmons. keir, what is her first order of business? >> well, mika, we just got that picture of liz truss meeting with the queen, a ceremony called kissing of the handing. you'll be glad to know she doesn't lean in to kiss the queen, it's just a shaking of thet' hands. when sheng gets back here to downing street some time this afternoon, british time, you're right, she faces an enormous

challenge. let me show you some of the front pages of the newspapers. the labor supporting "daily mirror" merging the faces of david cameron, boris johnson, theresa may and liz truss. same old toris. conservatives "the sun" liz puts her foot on the gas, referencing the huge cost of living crisis that she's going to have to deal with, businesses, including pubs, across britain warning they may grow broke because they cannot afford to heat their homes because of the price of gas dueof to the war in ukraine. she is going to have to borrow money for that and she's promising tax cuts and at the same time trycu to avoid a debt crisis and you have to think that she's not going to want to get into a trade war with europe and we think she will want to try to improve relations with the biden administration which have been pretty challenging under the prime minister's leadership of boris johnson. we had an opportunity to speak

to the man who will very likely today to be appointed foreign secretary james cleverly and asked him about the relationship with the u.s. take a listen. >> liz is an internationalist, she's been foreign secretary, she knows how important our internationals relationships a and she knows how important our relationships with freedom lovingre countries like the unid states of america is. >> if there is work to be done to improve relations with the biden administration? >> it's always in our mutual interests for the uk and the u.s. to have a strong relationship. liz understand that and she'll beo working toward that. >> mika, she is now britain's third female prime minister, already comparison to mar ga gret thatcher. one of the questions whether she will be a margaret thatcher or have political fate to theresa may? >> keir simmons, thank you very much for that live report.

gene robinson, we've been covering the move to have a special master in the investigation, criminal investigation into trump having documents h at mar-a-lago. there haveat been concerns this establishes a terriblen precedt forrr future similar situations and also will just drag out the process. what's your take? >> well, i think the one impact that we can see is -- and be sure of -- is it drags out the process, utright. because there will either takee time for the special master to do what the special master does or the justice department will have to appeal to thest 11th circuit. my question, though, is whether, say the judge had ruled the other way and said the special master is not a thing, executive privilegea for you is not a thing, go on with the investigation and -- like the justice department wanted, wouldn't trump have appealed that to the 11th circuit?

wouldn't we still be facing the kinds w of potential delays tha we're facing now because donald trump, as you know, having known him for a long time, his strategy is to delay, delay, delay. it seems to me that it was almost inevitable there would be some delay because i think he would have gone the appeal route, you know, as far as they would let him up to the supreme court. >> that's true. eugene robinson, thank you very much. and we're going to have more just ahead on the decision to appoint a special master and if it could have any impact on november's midterm elections. it comes as an energized president biden hits the campaign trail in wisconsin and pennsylvania, continuing his message that maga republicans are aat threat to the country. also ahead, labor secretary marty walsh joins us on the state of the workforce after what's being called a goldilocks

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republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. >> vilifying 75 million citizens as threats to democracy and as enemies of the state, you're all enemies of the state. he's an enemy of the state. you want to know the truth. >> that's a lie. you know i know he's not stupid, i -- i'm sure the commentators aren't stupid that are all saying -- using that 75 million number, but willie, it's just a flat-out lie. of course donald trump's very

existence in politics has been defined by one lie after another lie after another lie. >> yeah. i mean, the people who are going to be offended by joe biden's speech were going to be offended by it either way. there's some argument that it was divisive, but he was also telling the truth about not, again, what all republicans think, but what people who have gone over the cliff with donald trump have been willing to tolerate. these latest attacks on the fbi, the irs, an attempted coup. we could go through a list of seven years of things he said going back to a muslim ban in the first speech when he came down the escalator. it's been insults and lies and that's just a fact. it might be an uncomfortable fact when you have to go out and defend it every day. >> yeah. they are, make no mistake, right now they're defending a president in that same speech called our law enforcement officers, premier law enforcement officers in america, from domestic terrorists, from

drug rings, from drug kingpins, from human trafficking, those heros at the fbi who work day in and day out to make this country safer, donald trump, their leader, called them vicious monsters. vicious monsters. so much for defending law enforcement officers. of course other top republicans have called them wolfs who want to devour the american people. they've called them the gestapo and called for defunding the fbi, other government employees, accusing to want to come to kansas, iowa, kick down doors and kill people with ar-15s. marco rubio doesn't give a dam about classified documents if it's donald trump who has stolen the classified documents and put them in his home, in his club, and then lied to the fbi about it, lied to the justice department about it. he's fine. it's just a storage issue.

far different when it was hillary clinton. institutions don't matter, constitutional norms don't matter, the rule of law doesn't matter. protecting our men and women in blue doesn't matter. protecting law enforcement officers don't matter to so many people if it gets in the way of donald trump. it's pure authoritarianism and there is a subset of the republican party that's that way. he didn't aall republicans, 75 million republicans that voted him, that's a lie, donald trump know it and all the trumpists out there defending him. >> if you want to get really upset and shock and faint because the president of the united states is saying you have to stop defending the big lie and promulgating the big lie that the election was stolen from donald trump, there are people in jail right now because of the january 6th riots that donald trump instigated and it

was all based on the election being stolen from him. joe biden is just asking for america to be america again. and for americans to participate in this democracy. to be kind, to not be cruel, and to not want to break the law to get your way. these are basics. this is not right and left. when you cover this, you're covering the facts, the truth, and the problems that this country is facing right now. >> it comes down to supporting a peaceful transition whether your party wins or loses elections. i know, joe biden and donald trump, may not be on the november ballot but they're both campaigning like they are. >> they are. both campaigned in pennsylvania in recent days. president biden has been to the state three times in the last seven days, and he continues to warn the nation about the threat of far right extremism. we're going to have much more from the campaign trail in just a moment. but first, more on the search of

former president donald trump's florida home. a federal judge giving him a partial legal win, allowing the appointment of a special master to go through scores of documents recovered. nbc news chief white house correspondent kristen welker has the new developments. >> reporter: this morning, a victory for former president trump after a florida federal judge he appointed while in office signed off on his legal team's request for an independent observer to conduct a review of the documents seized last month from mar-a-lago. federal agents recovered more than 11,000 government documents, including hundreds with classified markings and the judge's ruling means the justice department will have to pause its criminal review of those pages. judge aileen cannon writing the appointment of a special master is warranted to ensure the appearance of fairness and integrity under the extraordinary circumstances. there has not been callous

disregard for trump's rights. the former president writing, remember it takes courage and guts to fight a totally corrupt deputy of justice and the finn. a common theme for him in the wake of the search. >> the fbi and the justice department have become vicious monsters controlled by radical left scoundrels. >> reporter: the judge writing the former president may assert claims of privilege, the justice department disagreed with and one so far mr. trump has not utilized. the judge expressed some concern that mr. trump might suffer reputational harm from a search that was not conducted properly. the justice department, which has completed its initial review, said it's coming the opinion and will consider appropriate next steps. all of it comes with the midterms now just over two months away. president biden hitting the trail to boost support for democrats in key battleground states. on monday near pittsburgh, he

blasted the former president trying to cast him as danger to the country. >> democracy is at stake. you can't be a democracy when you support violence, when you don't like the outcome of an election. >> jonathan lemire and elise jordan are still with us. let's bring in chris matthews, and white house reporter for politico and "morning joe" senior contributor eugene daniels. he traveled yesterday with president biden as he campaigned in pittsburgh and milwaukee. >> so, chris, i'm just curious, the fallout from joe biden going to your home state and saying some pretty basic things on the trump right has been quite something to behold, the fainting couch is quite remarkable. you had a president this weekend calling the fbi vicious monsters, other lead republicans, figures calling them wolf, the fbi, men and

women who serve in the fbi who want to devour americans. they are the enemy according to these people. they called for defunding the fbi. lindsey graham said if you actually try to make donald trump have to, you know, if he has to -- if he's held to the same legal standards as the rest of us, republicans will riot in the streets and there will be violence. you've been at this for a very long time. you know pennsylvania politics. that sort of extremism, how is that going to play in bucks county? >> well, bucks county is a tricky business. they're likely to re-elect the republican fitzpatrick. this whole problem, we're all talking about it, all the issues you raised there, all intelligently stated about what's going on in all these months is donald trump's fault. we've always had a republican or

a democrat who loses a presidential election going back to stevenson in my memory, even vaguely, and certainly richard nixon, they've all accepted the fact that they lost. they told their people they lost. they made sure they all understood it. nixon met with kennedy in key biscayne, florida, drank cokes with him, i lost, you have the helicopter, i don't, you're president, i'm not. hubert humphrey, first time i got to vote, he said, you know, i did my best. i've lost. richard nixon has won. that's how the process works. hillary clinton, i watched it last night, she said trump's now president for four years, but we have to obey the law. obey the law. and now he's out there doing his same old trick he's done to make all the millions he's dprepts people, he owes people, he's saying, i'm going to delay this process. that's what he's doing with the special master. it's a classic trump delay. we haven't seen his tax returns. he's a genius at using the law,

even though he thinks he's above the law, and i think we're going to remember now that jerry ford was wrong allowing richard nixon to be above the law. that has become sort of the -- in people's heads, i guess he deserves a special break. to think he deserves a special master. oh, yeah? i think this is going to be an issue and it's going to delay this process, but i don't think he's going to get away with it. he said the other day, i had 75 million votes, joe biden had 81 million. i think every once in a while he tells the truth >> we've never been here before with the threat that donald trump poses to this dem spin that's the central argument we're hearing from president biden. that's the closing argument the white house is offering here as we head now into the final two months of the midterm elections. you were with him on the road yesterday to key battleground states, pennsylvania and wisconsin, not just for the senate this time around but for potential presidential campaign in 2024. give us a sense of president

biden, we know his message, but how did he deliver it? >> how was it received? >> this is the centerpiece of the biden campaign for everyone else to run in the midterms, that democracy is under attack, and that democrats have been delivering, and i will say in wisconsin, it was a huge crowd, really big crowd of folks, and they were ruckus and excited to see him and biden kind of had a little bit of his swagger back. he's had a good couple months. his approval ratings have started to get better and better as we've seen things change in the senate and house landscape, and so he felt really good. that was very clear as we saw him bounce on and off air force one, get on marine one, et cetera. in the crowd, when he started talking about donald trump, when he started talking about maga republicans, the crowd was doing a response to him, which i

thought was interesting. people saying get him, get them, and i went to one and asked what did he mean, because what they were saying, and he said, you know, no one is above the law. exactly what chris was saying. more importantly, they have been wanting to see a president, a leader of their party push, to be more forceful talking about the threat to democracy that they have all been seeing. you and i and our colleague sam stein wrote that this was something that has been in the works for a long time, that president biden has been worried. and on that stage you did not see mandela barns who is running there. they said that this, you know, he had other things to do. i will say this is something that has happened a couple times as president biden has hit the campaign trail. it's awkward because the white house and campaigns say it's a scheduling conflict but as we know when the president comes into town it's usually you want

to be seen with that person and you can move some things around, but whether or not people are hugging joe biden when they go on the campaign trail and running for themselves, he is still presenting this message that seems to be resonating in wisconsin and pennsylvania. >> chris, what do you make of the stakes that joe biden has laid out here, that these are fundamental questions of democracy? he got a bunch of legislation through. abortion will be a motivating factor as we've seen among suburban women towards democrats in these primary races as well. but his argument is bigger than that, it's that we have to win these races to save the country effectively. sounds like a pretty -- it's a pretty lofty argument, but in many ways it's true, isn't it? >> well, it's not too lofty because i'll again say this, it's not in the constitution that candidate who runs for president and loses shouldn't say so. but they've always said so. republican and democrat.

i mean, mitt romney, everybody, hubert humphrey, john mccain, when you lose a presidential election you tell the people right up front, the other person won. and that's how they see truth. unfortunately with trump and his cult following, a lot of people out there believe anything he says. when he said that barack obama was from kenya or wherever, indonesia, born there a lot of them bought that. but this time they're buying it wholesale. now, what i think is going on is, kevin mccarthy has given his people the prayer book. the same prayer book in both parties. how the districts are leaning. so they're not going to talk about anything but crime in bucks county. they're going to talk about crime in the city. in philadelphia, 500 murders, 560 murders last year and more this year. they're not going to talk abortion rights which is going to hurt them in the suburbs. all the counties in philadelphia around the city are probably pro

choice. you could make that rule of thumb. and so they don't want to talk about that. he goes into one city, the suburbs of philadelphia he's going to talk about crime in philadelphia and play against philadelphia. they're both playing off the same rule book. trump is popular in some areas, very popular in other areas. he's only going to go where he's going to be liked. so they know what they're doing. it's so ironic when they get in the back room not supposed to be listening or watching them, they have the same rule books. trump is not popular here, don't use him. he's not used in ohio yet. he's used in wisconsin. so it's very interesting to see where he's very popular and not popular. >> chris, elise, good to see you. you're a long-time student of politics. what do you make of this era and the political rhetoric and how it's been ratcheted up when it comes to violence, when it comes

to trump responded to biden by calling biden an enemy of the state? what do you think about the tenor? is it just politics as usual and there's always going to be a tinge of violence? or do you think there has been a marked shift over the last few years? >> when i watched trump this weekend and i watched him talking about violent protesters, noisy protesters, he was saying, beat them up. that's what we used to do. beat them up. that's how we handle these people. right there in front of us he's talking in violent language. that's how he is. he loves this stuff. the more violent the better. the demonstration against the capitol, he watched it for two hours and enjoyed it. we saw what he did. i don't know how he controls people's minds. that's the part that amazes me he didn't tell rudy giuliani to show up drunk at the white house and told him he won but he did. america's mayor showed up drunk at the white house and said you won the election. he said great, come on in, i want to hear more about it. how do people like mark meadows

behave like that, kevin mccarthy become so quickly won over by this guy's brain. i mean, it is astounding to watch this man manipulate his party. there are a lot of maga republicans out there, so many that the people in power are afraid to challenge them, to go against them. violence seems to come with trump, no doubt about it. >> talking about marco rubio a minute ago, talk about fear his base of support, that marco rubio, the ranking member on the senate intel committee, is waiving off, taking challenge -- classified document and storing them at mar-a-lago that's just a storage issue. why are they doing this? >> let me give you names. dr. oz the republican nominee for senator in pennsylvania. not mccormick. mccormick would be a challenge. i think he would be a challenge. we could all agree to fetterman, he's more like pat toomey.

he seems like a moderate republican in a sense of fiscal issues and things traditional republican issues. he seems like one of those people. dr. oz is from new jersey. shooes far off the -- he's not even in the right place. j.d. vance, who wrote a book against trump and now he decided he was for trump because it was to his advantage, trump picked him. wherever he goes he's picking candidates and unpicking other ones. they're afraid of being unpicked. that's what it is. rubio, what is it, you know, little marco, he's probably afraid of being nabbed with that one again, made fun of with a nickname. they're afraid of this guy. >> no question about it. it continues now. eugene, with all that in mind, we just saw that based on that speech in philadelphia from president biden on thursday, he took some criticism from trump supporters and media, by leaning in to that argument as you saw

directly on the campaign trail, are we going to see a lot more of president biden as we head toward election day? >> if the white house has its say you will. he is heading on the campaign trail multiple times a week and this same message is going to happen. both donald trump and joe biden are making the kind of similar message, stay with me here, that if you elect people like us, we will save america. but there is a lot more evidence that joe biden is on the right track when you think about the way that things are gone on, and more importantly joe biden feels he now has a story to tell. you have the democracy threats and then you have all of the things that this white house has done and seen pop up legislatively over the last few months. democrats have passed all types of things that have -- that will satiate their base of support, get people excited like student loan relief, these are things

people are going to see very soon. it's not something that's going to happen in a few years. not an infrastructure project we will have to watch for a while. republicans have issues with their own senate candidates and you have joe biden, knowing that as he's getting more popular he might be more helpful than they thought he was going to be before, and now he has an easily digestible story to tell. we are going to defend democracy. donald trump and maga republicans are not. and also, the underlying is that other republicans are also at times being complicit in this, especially folks that are in washington, d.c. >> eugene daniels, thank you very much. chris matthew, great to see you. come back soon. we'll talk to you. thanks, guys. it will be a difficult day today in uvalde, texas. public schools will reopen there for the first time since the may massacre where 19 students and two teachers were killed. the students and staff who were at robb elementary have been reassigned to three other

campuses after the district decided to demolish the school. several parents have pulled their children from the district enrolling them in a private school. dozens of others have opted for virtual learning to start the school year >> it was a no-brainer. when he told me that he was scared and that he felt like he was not going to be protected by these police officers, he said that they weren't going to be brave enough, i couldn't argue with him. >> the state says there will be nearly three dozen troopers assigned to uvalde campuses. however, parents told the ap the extra security does not give them comfort, as you heard there, since there were more than 90 state troopers on the scene during the attack. the ap also reports parts of the new fencing around campus has not yet been finished. we will go live to uvalde at the top of our next hour for a live report. also ahead this morning, a new push to have credit card companies track suspect gun sales and now some congressional

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back now to the fallout from the search of mar-a-lago. a new ruling that allows a special master review the documents seized from donald trump's country club. let's bring in legal analyst andrew weissmann. >> andrew, you certainly know, i have been bellowing for years now about how donald trump is above the law and he should be held accountable for his crimes, but i'm not ka tas stro fizing

over this appointment because if it delays prosecution by a few weeks, i think the justice department will figure out a way to work itself around that. also let them litigate the executive privilege. the supreme court may have to rule on that. other than those two issues what is the tragedy of the special master being appointed? >> let me see if i can convince you. you mentioned equal justice. u m. donald trump should not be treated better or worse than anybody else under investigation. what judge did here is so out of the norm, her discussion of the facts and her tettering of this to the law, were no resemblance

to what happens every single day in federal and state investigations. no one else would be treated this way. and what's the harm other than there's opening the door to every defendant is now going to ask for this, which is nobody wants to have a fast investigation. everyone is going to want to delay an investigation. any good defense lawyer is going to glob on to this decision and say i want a special master appointed to review any document at all that i have an interest in. it doesn't work that way. you do have an opportunity to do that if you get indicted. it really isn't going to be a question of a couple weeks. it is unheard of for an article iii judge to enjoin a criminal investigation, unheard of to do that. here, with the defense, donald trump's defense now knowing it can delay things, it's not just a question of appointing somebody and that special master

will do their own independent review, the defense is going to keep raising issues and wanting to litigate and take them to the special master and then take them to to the district court judge and the 11th circuit. this really could open the door to months of litigation and the precedent, as i said, is horrendous because no other defendant is given this kind of right. >> well, if somebody is engaged in insider stock trading or some other white collar crime and their office is broken into or there's a search of their office or home, isn't it a bit different than a former president whose premises is searched, illegally searched, by a warrant? these are, you know, these are fairly extraordinary times. this is a fairly extraordinary

case. again, you know, i -- my concern is that at the end of the day donald trump is brought to justice. if it is delayed, if there are procedural steps that are taken that makes it look like our democracy is bending over backwards to be fair, what is the ultimate damage in this case? does it make it less likely that the doj can actually prosecute a case against donald trump? >> i think the answer to that depends on how long this goes on. i think that is the answer. i do think there's damage to the principle that nobody is above the law and everybody should be treated the same. let me give you an example of how easy this issue is in the special counsel investigation. when we did a search of paul

manafort's home, all the documents were put in a room, we called up his defense counsel, very reputable firm at the time, we invited them to look at the documents to flag anything that they thought was attorney-client privilege. we had the team review those things. we worked it all out in a matter of days. if there were any disputes they could be brought to the judge. there was no need to enjoin us or a special master. it comes and goes. there's a normal process for this. what the judge did here just seems so out of the ordinary. i don't think it really helps with people's confidence if you have special rules for somebody. it isn't the case that because you're the former president you get more justice. you should get equal justice. you shouldn't be treated worse, but he shouldn't be treated better. >> obviously the president, you've made clear, the danger there, but what's the potential

this could be held up and for how long given what we know about the types of documents this special master will be dealing with? >> so that is the big question that i think the department of justice is going to be wrestling with now is, do they take an appeal because this is so legally wrong and sets a terrible precedent for other cases, or do they think they can get through the special master process quickly enough it won't have any lasting damages. joe said, so what, there will be a special master. it shouldn't be done in other cases. let's just get through it. but the real issue is, you know, you really can't read what the judge did here and have any confidence she's going to be reasonable in the way that the special master process is going to work because the decision is, i mean, frankly off the wall both in its legal analysis and

recitation of the facts it's not even handed. i can see people at the department being skeptical that this won't open the door to really inordinate delay. >> judge cannon will make the appointment of a special master. this is not an area that any of us have covered or our viewers have been familiar with over the years. what kind of person is a special master? is it an attorney? is it a credible person? is it somebody with experience? can they work with the trump team and put the my pillow guy or rudy giuliani or someone like that in? >> that's another great question. this has to be somebody both sides, according to the court, both sides agree on. i'm not sure that's going to happen. it should be somebody who's got top secret clearance because the judge has allowed review of executive privilege documents, which is unheard and makes no sense because if they're executive privilege documents it means the documents belong to the archives, not to donald

trump, and it's presumably somebody who has done this in the past. look, the ideal person would be a former judge who doesn't really show strong partisan leanings one way or the other. that's -- it's possible. but i think there's going to be a dispute over that issue of who is actually going to be the special master which itself can cause delay. if the person doesn't have clearance that also is something that takes some time, although it can be expedited and not something that happens overnight. >> nbc news legal analyst andrew weissmann, thank you very much. coming up, we'll go live to uvalde, texas, where students and teachers head back to school just months after the mass shooting there. how that community is pushing forward in the wake of so much tragedy. "morning joe" is back in a moment. moment time. it's life's most precious commodity,

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step closer to restoring water service. jackson officials on sunday announced water pressure has returned to normal for most of the city's customers one week after the city's main water plant failed. officials warn it is still too early to say when reliable drinking water will be restored. the capital's boil water notice will continue until the city reports two rounds of clear water samples. the holiday weekend brought more flash flooding and severe weather to the midwest and south, leading to at least one death and widespread damage. in jefferson county, indiana, 9 inches of rain fell in just three hours on saturday, causing deadly and destructive flash flooding. the family of a 64-year-old woman, linda wood, said she was trapped in her house and swept

away by the fast-moving floodwaters. hours later finding her body about 5 miles downstream on sunday. in georgia, the governor declared a state of emergency sunday in chattanooga and floyd counties as two days of thunderstorms and heavy rain pounded the state's north. up to 12 inches of rain fell in some areas cause something creeks and streams to flood, damaging homes, businesses, and cars. willie? >> turning back to politics, republican senator marco rubio is downplaying the fbi search of donald trump's mar-a-lago home. here he's rubio said in an interview with nbc news's affiliate in miami on sunday. >> this is really at its core a storage argument that they're making, right. they're arguing there are documents there, they don't deny he should have access to those documents but deny they were not properly stored. i don't think a fight over a storage of documents is worthy of what they've done. >> marco rubio speaking on sunday calling it a storage issue, compare that to what

senator rubio said about hillary clinton's handling of classified information, released a statement saying there's no excuse for hillary clinton's decision to set up a home cooked e-mail system which left sensitive and classified national security information vulnerable by america's enemies. the action sent the worst message to those who hold security clearances and expected to go to great lengths to secure government information and abide by the rules. they don't tlak their oaths lightly and we should not expect any less of their leaders, said marco rubio, back in 2016. so you had jared kushner the other day calling this a paperwork issue. marco rubio saying it's a question of storage. they'll sort this out. you do wonder what is the line, is there anything donald trump would do that would make them not defend something they would never defend in any other circumstance? >> there is no line. marco rubio was running the

senate intel committee and so you have -- you actually have marco rubio saying top secret documents are only at risk if they're mishandled by democrats. top secret documents mishandled and actually taken, removed from a government office, removed from the white house, and illegally hidden at mar-a-lago. even after the fbi negotiates and tries to get them all back, it just doesn't matter. so again, there is any line? no, there's no line. we've seen that republicans are the fiercest defenders of cops until it serves their purposes to defend people that brutalize cops and beat them, almost beat them to death, with american flags, to cause riots, to start

riots, to participate in riots, that end up ultimately, at least the families believe, being the result of the death of four cops. it doesn't matter to republicans no. it just doesn't matter. top secret documents don't matter to republicans if defending donald trump comes in front of that, defending men and women in blue doesn't matter. defending law enforcement doesn't matter. the fbi doesn't matter. it just doesn't matter if that stands in the way of defending a failed reality tv show host and that's exactly where marco rubio is. coming up, one of president biden's top advisors on the economy, labor secretary marty walsh is stand big and joins the conversation straight ahead on "morning joe." conversation straight ahead on "morning joe."

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let's bring in the president of the council on foreign relations richard haas, the author of the forthcoming book "the bill of obligations the ten habits of good citizens." it has to be pointed out, that richard is going for either sean connery -- >> oh, my. >> oh, my goodness. >> most interesting man in the world is another candidate. he prefers i think you said jeff bridges. what do you think? >> fascinating. >> i think it's more of a sean connery thing. >> richard. >> i think also, he's just preparing a look. his book comes out. >> exactly. >> he's got, of course -- >> it's still -- >> he's going to have -- he's going to have more recipes for cooking. he wants that look, willie. he wants that look >> it's working.

wouldn't you say up close it's working for him. >> it was stunning when he sat down. i will freely admit, it was stunning. i think it works. i think it looks good. i think he should keep it. >> are you on your way to a letterman or are we going to stop it right here? >> no letterman. >> your piece, foreign affairs 100 years old and richard has a new piece for the special issue titled "the danger decade, a foreign policy for a world in crisis." on the one hand the world is witnessing the revival of some of the worst aspects of geopolitics, great power and competition and fights over resources. today russia is headed by a tie rant, president vladimir putin and who wants to create a russian empire. he's willing to do almost anything to achieve that goal. he is unable to act as he pleased because internal constraints on his regime have disappeared. on xi jinping, china is looking

for global primacy on a trajectory will that lead to confrontation with the united states. further complicating the picture is the risk to a degree not seen since the middle of the 19th century. this matters, richard writes, because the united states is not just one country among many. u.s. leadership has underpinned what order there has been in the past 75 years and remains no less central today. the united states internally will become less willing and able to lead on the international stage. so let's start with the last point about what everything we've been talking about this morning, the attempted undermining of democracy on so many different levels, what that means globally for our place in the world. >> nothing good. willie, first of all, no one around the world is going to wake up trying to emulate us and that is a change. for a long time the vibrancy of

our democracy, the strong of our economy was the envy of the world. not so much. divisions is a sign of weakness, something to exploit. i think it is one of the reasons that vladimir putin thought he would get away with what he did in ukraine. our friends are nervous. there is no longer a presumption that we're there for them. i don't know who will be elected in a couple of years. none of us can. but in the old days, he with used to know that no matter who was elected there was presumption of continuity. the game took place within the 40 yard line and now we're playing within the end zone. and into your dependent on us for your security, that is not a comfortable situation. so i think we're setting in motion a much nor unstable world and we cannot insolate from it. this is the hottest summer. and things like climate change. and what happens in places like afghanistan matters. we can't insolate ourselves from

the world but what going on here will make the world less stable. >> they need to prove democracy could still work or other countries may choose to follow another example, that would be china. there are reports that there is a expectation that china would surpass the u.s. as the number one economy. that now is been delayed. there is thought it could have been by the end of the decade. china is struggling in many fronts. but talk about in the stage of uncertainty, that competition between the two superpowers, how will that change the future. >> china's democracy is shrinking. it is 1.3 billion, and it is going to fall under a billion. the economy is now making growing 2% at most. what worries me, is in this slowdown, in the signs of weakness, all of the health and environmental and demographic problems, xi jinping or his

successor would be the rejuvenation of china, ie, bringing taiwan into the fold. that is what worries me. a china that is stronger than it was and not as strong as it wants to be and worried about the future, might see nationalism, a more aggressive foreign policy as the way to legitimate a leadership that could turn to a successful economy to justify its existence. so i think we're in a difficult phase of u.s. and china competition and we still have to deal with vladimir putin and things like climate change, like problems with cyber. so this combination, jonathan, i've never seen anything like that. it is a toxic mix of geopolitics, global challenges and the united states at war with itself. if you're not worried, you're not paying attention. >> coming up, new york city

officials want credit card companies to help track gun and ammos. it is an idea that might be gaining some traction. cnbc's andrew ross sorkin joins us with that straight ahead on "morning joe." "morning joe." lily! welcome to our third bark-ery. oh, i can tell business is going through the “woof”. but seriously we need a reliable way to help keep everyone connected from wherever we go. well at at&t we'll help you find the right wireless plan for you. so, you can stay connected to all your drivers and stores on america's most reliable 5g network. that sounds just paw-fect. terrier-iffic i labra-dore you round of a-paws at&t 5g is fast, reliable and secure for your business.

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it is a beautiful shot of los angeles for you. welcome back to the fourth hour of "morning joe." it is 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. on the east coast. along with joe and willie and me and jonathan lemire and with us still for the hour and we have a lot to get to, including a federal judge granting donald trump's request for a special paster to review documents seized by the fbi from his florida home. temporarily halting the justice department's use of the records

in its investigation. >> neal katyal is right in front of us. going to be here very soon. he doesn't think much of this decision. >> talk about what it means and if it does impede the doj. president biden touts his administration accomplishments to union workers yesterday. labor secretary marty walsh was with him at those stops and he'll be our guest this morning. and, tracking gun purchases. via your credit card. cnbc's andrew ross sorkin has new reporting on an idea whose time may have come. willie. >> but we begin this hour in uvalde, texas, where today is an emotional day. public schools have reopened for the first time since 19 students and two teachers were killed there in a mass shooting. nbc news correspondent morgan chesky joins us live from uvalde. good morning.