as joe and mika make their way back home. the former president's legal team bumping heads with the special master. the first hearing isn't even until this afternoon. what trump's lawyers say they do not want to disclose to the judge overseeing the justice department's review of those documents seized from mar-a-lago. plus, a texas sheriff launches a criminal investigation into the move by florida governor ron desantis to fly 48 migrants from san antonio to martha's vineyard. the sheriff saying it appears the migrants were quote lured under false pretenses. we'll have the latest on that. and later this hour, u.s. surgeon general dr. vivek murthy will be our guest after president biden's claim on "60 minutes" that the pandemic is over. with us this morning, the host of "way too early" and white house bureau chief at politico, jonathan lemire. pulitzer prize winning columnist at "the washington post," eugene

robinson, and u.s. special correspondent for bbc news, katty kay. since we went off the air together outside buckingham palace yesterday, some extraordinary scenes at that committal service at windsor castle west of the city here for the queen as she was lowered into that vault and then the private ceremony last night for the family. some of the headlines in london, a look at the morning papers, "until we meet again" a shot of the corgis saying good-bye to the queen. >> it's always tough on the dogs to say good-bye. i thought the ceremony was the most moving of the day. just before the committal of the coffin that somehow as they were singing the anthem "god save the king" and the camera panned to king charles iii, it felt like in that moment, it hit him. his mother is gone, he is the

monarch, and the country turns its eyes to him. it was an extraordinary day, wasn't it, the pomp and pageantry, and also moments of emotion for a family that is just a family in some ways, grieving the loss of their grandmother and matriarch. >> it was. that was an extraordinary scene at st. george's yesterday, and this morning. back to normal here in the city of london with king charles iii now. the monarch of this united kingdom. back home in the united states, attorneys for the justice department and former president donald trump are set to appear this afternoon at a hearing before the court appointed special master in the mar-a-lago documents case. the hearing will take place at a federal courthouse in brooklyn before judge raymond dearie where he currently serves as is district judge for the district of new york. this establishes filing and practices and timetables for the review of documents in the case, but just prior to today's hearing trump's attorney stated in a filing last night, they do

not want to disclose to judge which they may or may not have declassified, pushing back against the apparent proposal they submit specific information regarding declassification to him in the course of the review. "the new york times" reports one-time white house lawyer eric herschmann warned trump he could get in legal trouble if he did not return the documents. that is according to three people familiar with the matter. the precise date of the meeting is not clear, and he was not working for tru report from maggie haberman, trump thanked hirschmann for the discussion but was noncommittal if he would return the documents. he has testified before the january 6th committee and has been subpoenaed for the investigation into efforts to overturn the election. let's bring in kyle cheney, and

former u.s. attorney barbara mcquade, good morning to you both. what is the significance of, he did warn donald trump that he should not take documents from the white house, that he might be violating the law. >> if that's the case, that's the origin of almost everything here which is that donald trump knew, had in his head the knowledge that what he was doing was potentially wrong and a foul of the law. and so the questions about his state of mind, what did he know about what was in the documents, whether he had the right to take them, and lawyers, almost like the january 6th investigation, don't do x, y, and z, and he goes and does it anyway, that tells you a lot about what prosecutors, what criminal investigators may be looking at in terms of state of mind. >> barbara mcquade, tell us about the legal ramifications of this, this is yet another example the former president was

told, hey, you can't do this. this is trouble. we know he and his team, lawyers, seemingly did not cooperate and misrepresented and frankly flat out lied to the fbi and the national archives about whether or not they had those documents. so talk to us about how this could impact the doj's ongoing probe. >> it's excellent evidence of one of the essential elements of the offense when it comes to the espionage act and the retention of government records, which is willfulness. did you do this knowing that it was against the law, and this could be strong evidence of that. one tricky aspect of this, i imagine he would assert attorney/client privilege as to the statements and say that the privilege belongs to him, and cannot be waived by a lawyer like eric herschmann. i imagine there would be litigation. the client is not donald trump the man, it is the president of the united states and actually in the best interest of the

office and the nation for the government to retain these documents. i think the government would win the battle but donald trump will assert that. i think it could be relevant to the obstruction of justice charges, which i think is going to come down to was it the lawyers who made the misrepresentations about whether they had the documents or were they directed to do so by donald trump. all of those are going to require some inquiry within the privilege. but again, to the extent that privilege belongs to the government, to the presidency, and not to donald trump the no longer president, the government prevails on that issue. >> later today, donald trump's lawyers will appear in federal district court in brooklyn before judge raymond dearie, a long time federal district court judge, a reputation of being a no nonsense jurist. they're in line with trump legal action to delay every action filed against him for 40 years. what do you think the reaction

will be from the federal court today about this appeal to delay, delay, delay? >> yeah, this filing that the trump team made last night is like the prototype, what's the first item on the checklist, make sure you ask for delay, and sure enough, there it is. the government proposes one schedule, even the judge's own draft plan proposes another and the first thing they say out of the gate is, whoa, whoa, whoa, the schedule you proposed is way too fast. the only person bound by the schedule is the judge himself. you don't need to have this wrapped up by october. let's take our time, be realistic. let's extend into november. that's the first part of it. i don't think the judge is going to entertain that because he's the one that has to do the work, and if he says i think i can do it in the time period, he'll make the decision there. he'll hear them. i doubt he'll accept the time line. they also say, we don't want to have to assert which documents

we are claiming we have declassified, and i think this is a real tell that this is a lie, there's no declassification and that the lawyers want to delay that answer because they don't have an answer. if they make that misrepresentation in court that donald trump has been making on social media, they stand to be disbarred, they are never going to make that claim. ultimately they're not going to be able to make it. >> kyle, you're writing about the special master, quote donald trump put the justice department on its heels courtesy of a single federal judge who gave him the benefit of almost every doubt as he fought against the fbi's probe of documents seized from his mar-a-lago estate x now if they can replicate in front of a skeptical audience, and the first indication offered in a file monday night suggests a tougher road ahead. it's interesting as you write in the piece, this is a special

master and judge dearie agreed to by the trump team but so far no indications nor does his history would that have given indication that he's going to be lenient on this former president. >> this is the situation donald trump drew up. he got the dream rulings from judge cannon, that shocked the legal right, left, right, whatever side you were on. i don't think anyone expected it to go as far as it did. he drew exactly the hand he wanted here, and now you see in the filing where he's complaining not just about the schedule, whether he has to reveal information about what he declassified about other issues as well. he's already quibbling. even though he drew this great hand from judge cannon, it may not fly in front of both the special master and as well as the 11th circuit court of appeals set to take up the justice department's push against cannon's order, so while he had a, you know, a good run there with judge cannon, it's moved out of her courtroom, and that's going to be a very

different story. >> so kyle, for people who have been trying to follow this and put it into some context, the significance in the larger justice department investigation, what happens at 2:00 today at this hearing and then what happens from there, what happens afterward? >> so dearie the special master will lay out ground rules, discuss what they want, how the probe is going to work. i think they'll talk about how to handle these documents that are marked classified. the justice department doesn't want the special master to see at all and certainly doesn't want trump's lawyers to see. that's the most important part of what comes out of the 2:00 hearings, how they will immediately handle the 100 documents that the government thinks have national security secrets in them. >> senior legal affairs reporter for politico, kyle cheney, former u.s. attorney barbara mcquade, and we'll go live to the courthouse later. liz cheney shared details

yesterday about what she experienced on january 6th. speaking at a conference in washington, cheney recounted a conversation she had with an unnamed republican colleague shortly before the violence broke out who she says was going along reluctantly with donald trump's plan to block the certification of election results. >> i, you know, in the cloak room on january 6th before the attack happened, there were so many who wanted to show they were objecting that they had set up these sign up sheets in the cloak room, and as i was sitting there, a member came in, and he signed his name on each one of the state's sheets and then he said under his breath the things we do for the orange jesus. and i thought, you know, you're taking an act that is unconstitutional. >> it would be funny if it weren't so awful what happened after he signed those papers and talked about orange jesus, be it is so telling about the state of

the republican party that they know, they know how dangerous and how bad it is, and they still signed those papers and signed along with whatever donald trump tells them to do. >> exactly. they all know. all except the most extreme wing nuts know perfectly well what they're doing, and they know it's wrong. but they do it for orange jesus. they do it because donald trump is -- they see donald trump as the master of the republican base, and if he gets mad at them, their career is potentially probably over, and so they do it out of that fear. it is stunning how craven republicans have been in the face of donald trump and look where it's gotten us, you know. if the people who knew what they were doing on january 6th was wrong had done the right thing, we wouldn't be in this mess, but

they went along with trump and that's where the republican party is, and likely will stay until it gets wiped out in an election. >> certainly hard to find a moment that better encapsulates trump's hold over the party than that one. liz cheney talking about efforts to reform the electoral count act to prevent something like january 6th happen again, making sure the vice president's role just ceremonial. house and senate working on bills, not coming up until after the midterms. i want to ask you one other thing about liz cheney. she was defeated soundly in her primary this summer, and yet here she is, still trying to pass legislation to safeguard the american electoral process and next week, once again, will preside over a january 6th hearing doing her duty to the end, putting patriotism over party. >> do you suppose that liz cheney is the only member of the republican party who watched a portion or anything at all of

former president trump's rally in ohio saturday? the qanon rally. do you suppose she's the only republican who watched that, that litany of danger that preceded in an ohio summer night. i mean, it was unbelievable just to watch the clips of it. and katty, i don't know whether you got the opportunity or you were overseas, obviously, but the rally that occurred, that i'm talking about was frightening to put it frankly. frightening to watch a group of people, clearly devoted acolytes to something that very few understand, following a man who knows exactly what he's doing, but stands at the precipice of preventing an either further threat to our democracy, and thus far from what i've read, heard, seen, not a single important member of the republican party in either the house or the senate has said

anything about what occurred. >> donald trump's tactics when it comes to things like this are always so interesting. he goes right up to the line of something he could be accused of but stops just short of it. you have his campaign team saying that song that was played, that was not actually the qanon anthem, it happens to be a song that sounds rather similar and the sign with the one finger, followed the one, they disavowed that as a cultish like salute. qanon is a seriously dangerous conspiracy that has people committing acts of violence around the country, and president trump in the past has refused to disavow the organization even though he was pressed on it when he was in the white house. he is in ohio, flirting with it more, aligning even more closely. in this way that he has of being able to deny that that's what he's doing. i don't know if liz cheney was the only one to watch that. there's a debate about whether donald trump was actually

invited to j.d. vance's rally at all or whether he just showed up of his own accord. whatever the case is, you know, republicans are going to have to deal with donald trump as liz cheney suggested on january 6th. they are struggling to know how to deal with him, but they don't know how to stand up to him. and they still don't know how to stand up to him, and they still, i guess, feel that he is more of an electoral asset than liability. >> then they fear his voters of course, the man they call orange jesus. we'll have much more on donald trump's rally and that special master hearing coming up in just a bit. also ahead, most of puerto rico this morning still without power after hurricane fiona dumped more than 2 feet of rain on the island. we'll have the latest on the recovery efforts there. could florida governor ron desantis face legal trouble after dozens of migrants were flown by him to virginia last week. a new investigation opened by a sheriff in texas.

also ahead in the race for maryland governor, new polling shows wes moore with a double digit lead over his republican opponent. wes will be our guest later this morning. plus, we'll be joined by nato secretary general as the war in ukraine is set to dominate the u.n. general assembly this week with president biden scheduled to speak there tomorrow. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. watching "" we'll be right back. there's a different way to treat hiv. it's every-other-month, injectable cabenuva. for adults who are undetectable, cabenuva is the only complete hiv treatment you can get every other month. cabenuva helps keep me undetectable. it's two injections, given by a healthcare provider every other month. it's one less thing to think about while traveling.

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dropping up to 30 inches of rain in some parts. at least three people have died as 90% of the territory remains without power. an update from the national hurricane center warned of ongoing threats to life due to catastrophic flooding there. fiona's strength triggering island wide blackout which energy providers say could take days to complete fix. we know it could be longer from experience. puerto rico's electricity grid has been fragile since 2017 as hurricane maria destroyed the power grid completely and killed nearly 3,000 people. forecasters believe fiona will strengthen to at least a category 3 storm as it nears bermuda later this week. today the storm expected to pass over eastern parts of the island's of turks and caicos. we'll go live to puerto rico in just a bit. new data from the government shows a record number of migrants already have traveled

to the southern border this fiscal year. more than 2 million people have had encounters with border officials since october of last year. government's fiscal year ends this month, meaning thousands more will be added to that total. last month, more than 158,000 people tried to cross the southern border. a third from venezuela, cuba and nicaragua, a 175% increase for that group compared to august. the number of migrants from mexico, and central america is down 43% this that same time frame but the headline crossing 2 million border arrests this fiscal year. a texas sheriff is launches a criminal investigation into florida governor ron desantis's decision to send migrants to martha's vineyard last week. javier salazar says his office is investigating whether the migrants were victims of crimes. he believes a venezuela migrant was paid a bird dog fee to recruit 50 migrants from a

resource center in san antonio. he said the migrants were lured under false pretenses with promises of work and a better life. the sheriff says it's clear the migrants were exploited and hoodwinked for making the trip for what he called political posturing. in an interview with fox news last night, desantis again defended his decision to ship the migrants to martha's vineyard saying they signed consent forms to go. eugene robinson we heard from the governor and his office, there were consent forms signed. some decided not to go. you have a sheriff telling a different story about the information the migrants had and what the people of martha's vineyard knew what was coming or did not know what was coming. >> i don't think this has worked out the way ron desantis intended it to. if you're explaining, you're losing and he's doing a lot of explaining trying to convince people that he was somehow

justified in doing what he did, which was outrageous, and, you know, back home in florida, especially in south florida, this is not playing the way he had hoped it would because a lot of these migrants were venezuelan migrants who were fleeing repression and economic devastation that was brought on venezuela by the brutal maduro regime. they are seeking asylum legally in this country. and there are a lot of venezuelans who have moved into south florida who think this is wrong, the way these people were treated by desantis is wrong, and there are a lot of cuban immigrants in south florida who also are not wild about the precedent he seems to be setting. so not working out politically quite the way he had hoped.

meanwhile, your heart has to go out to the people and, you know, who were the victims of this scam. and fortunately, they did get help, and the sort of aid they needed in martha's vineyard and then in massachusetts, and hopefully they will be okay. >> yeah, certainly the numbers at the southern border speak for themselves. the biden administration knows that's a real problem, willie, but it does seem like this political stunt is, indeed, back firing. first of all, any effort to suggest that the blue staters wouldn't lend a helping hand to the migrants have been proven wrong. they have all stepped up to help the migrants in need. it seems like a competition between two republican governors, desantis and abbott of texas who might be eyeing the white house in 2024 to come up with a more exploitive and down right cruel stunt, and there's been a lot of backlash from both sides of the aisle, republicans and independents as well

seemingly repulsed by treating people as political pawns, and now we have a sheriff in texas, deep red state of texas opening an investigation, certainly doesn't think this is a political stunt worth making, willie. >> and competing in one sense, but in this case, it appears working together. governors abbott, and desantis, these migrants were from texas, but flown by florida's governor to martha's vineyard. coming up, we'll have a look at stories making headlines in papers across the country. also ahead, u.s. surgeon general dr. vivek murthy, we'll ask him about president biden's comments on "60 minutes" that the pandemic is over. what does that mean for all of you? "morning joe" is coming right back. of you? "morning joe" is coming right back pool floaties are like whooping cough. amusement parks are like whooping cough. even ice cream is like whooping cough,

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. hey, so this isn't matching up with this, and i'm not sure

which one is right. can you just hunt down the original for me? >> yes, me do. >> all right. >> hey, what were you saying before about the paperwork? >> me do now. go. stop worry. >> kevin, do you feel okay? >> me feel good. body strong. sleep big last night. >> yeah, i think we should get him to the hospital. >> kevin, why don't you come with us. >> he's fine. he's always been like that. >> no, he hasn't. >> i mean, he's gotten worse over the years, but. >> he's making a statement. it's an ironic comment on our expectations of him, a fun house image of our model of kevin. >> you keep think that. me mechanic not speak english but he know what me mean when me say car no go, and we best friends, so me think why waste time say lot word when few word do trick. >> and that is brevity, i guess. kevin underrated character on

"the office," joining us, jim vandehei and mike allen out with a new book called "smart brevity" the power of saying more with less. great to see you both. congratulations. you can comment on your favorite scenes and characters on "the office," but i would like to hear about your book. brevity is in short supply, forgive the pun. bombarded with information, texts, e-mails, social media all the time, people like to talk a long time on tv sometimes, i don't know. tell me about the book, and why you think it's an important moment. >> your producers are genius, and that's an awesome scene from "the office," this was made for people in the office, in the classroom, and what we have learned from creating politico and axios is how to get people to pay attention to what matters. a couple of years ago, we have companies, the nba and others come to us and ask us if we can help them learn how to get their customers to pay attention to

what they cared about. we created a side company called axios aq, how do you get people to pay attention to what matters, how the world is deluged, inundated with information, and no one has taught someone, if people have shorter attention spans and less time, how do you get people to pay attention to what matters, that's what the book does. it allows us to share what we have benefitted from seeing in the data and science so if you are a teacher, you are a student, a manager, aspiring leader, you could become a much more effective and efficient communicator. >> and mike, when your news letter pops into the box a couple of times a day, always click, you get the headline, dig in a little bit. smart brevity, it's your mantra there at axios, but how do you then get into the depth so it's not that passing cocktail knowledge. >> the key point is short, not shallow. so what we have discovered is

that a lot of times the words are because we're insecure. people are faking it on everything, and one of the ways we fake it is too many words, and the -- when you try and disguise the fact that we don't have a good strategy, a sharp idea, maybe a new idea, the magic of smart brevity is in the book, which a lot of great businesses at smartbrevity.com can get you the book instantly. it shows you step by step, how to isolate your idea and just say it. that's the magic. i came up as a political reporter in newspapers, we were paid to write words, the more words we wrote, the better play we got for our stories. the more words you wrote, maybe you were going to get a prize. it was all about the reporter or the publisher, and what we're saying with "smart brevity," whether you are an intern, trying to talk to your boss, whether you're someone who leads

a team, whether you're a teacher, think about the audience. think about the person who's receiving it. what is the one thing that you want them to remember? because willie, you think about any show, any podcast, any sermon, any article, any piece of content, if we come away from that with one good idea, one thing to remember, that's a win: and "smart brevity" leans into that. people are going to remember one thing we're going to say. here's how to say it sharply, clearly, muscularly, memorably. >> hey, jim, let's make this quick, you list five things to make people more effective communicators, what are they? what are the five things. >> i think there's a bunch of things you can do, one is just sit down and distill your thought into what is the one thing you hope to get people to stick. that one thing will clarify how you write, then write it in as few words as possible. write it in your own voice. that is the biggest mistake

communicators make. for some reason, whenever we get behind a keyboard or typewriter, we get starch in our shirts, we throw out acronyms. speak like a human and be respectful of people's time. you're not the audience. the average person spends at best 18 to 20 seconds on a piece of content, so you have to grab them by the lapel, say this is what's important, this is why it matters, make sure you have the hierarchy of the most important information at the top, and then they'll want to listen to you, to hear from you. it's so interesting, stewart butterfield, i was watching him on stage not long ago, the ceo of slack and he was saying any business leader, manager, probably spends 70% of their time communicating and yet nobody teach you how to communicate better. and that's what we hope to do with this book, give you simple, executable steps to be a much better communicator so you can

be a better person at work, school, a better teacher a better leader of your community. >> so, mike, i'll go to you, you guys are preaching to the choir when you talk to me and barnacle, you're talking to old newspaper columnists, i write the 750 words. i know how long it's going to be. got to get to the point. but i'm curious, so what is, then, the role of longer, more in-depth communication in the modern age. you write people are so distracted, so many words, at the same time, sometimes there are very complicated things that need a lot of words to tell. long in-depth stories in a newspaper, for example, and some corporate memos probably have to be like that too because they're talking about really really big stuff. how do you approach that? >> yeah, gene, the key of "smart

brevity" the magic there is that nine times out of ten, the best experience for a reader is an efficient experience. we spend our time on the wrong words. if i'm communicating to you in an update, a memo, a news letter, a new story, if i'm communicating to you sharply and efficiently, i'm giving you back time to read that one piece of content in ten that's worthy of your time. we give you time to listen to a podcast or read that new yorker article or read the "atlantic" article that is worth your time, but most of our time we spend on things that could be said very quickly and as the communicator, we have to think that. we lean into gravity, recognize that we've got that 20 seconds. in that 20 seconds, i'm going to

grab you and what we tell our journalists and good advice for anybody, whether you're a day one employee, whether you're a student, whether you're a leader, whether you're an aspiring leader, think before you type. sharpen your idea. know what it is, like lots and lots of those long pieces that you're talking about are disguising foggy thinking, a foggy strategy. jim, and our coauthor roy schwartz, cofounder of "axios," we have discovered this in business, very often when someone is saying a lot, they don't know exactly what they think that we should do or exactly what the strategy is. so think, then type, and that's the way to have power. it's very rarely the person who talks the most who has the most power. say less, be heard. >> good advice. clear and concise. jim vandehei, let's get into one of your smart brief scoops this morning, that is mitch mcconnell behind closed doors, speaking to the u.s. chamber of commerce on

monday, and according to you all, expressing some more confidence now in his hopes for the senate. he had been, of course, publicly lamenting the quality of some of the candidates running in those important races. what did he say yesterday? >> yeah, basically telling business leaders that he is a little more optimistic than he would have been two months ago. make no mistake about it, in private, he dogs a lot of the candidates that they ended up getting in the states he thinks, they believe undoubtedly should be able to win. when you look at pennsylvania or georgia or ohio, or arizona, he felt like give me an electable candidate, i'm going to be the majority leader. what they are seeing, he's getting behind some of these candidates in arizona and other places that he was skeptical of before. there's a new poll out by the "atlanta journal constitution" that makes the georgia race, which they were really worried about, look at least tight and potentially very winnable. they feel like they'll have enough money in the states to be competitive, but, you know, he's been frustrated for a decade.

there were so many times he felt like he could have had the majority or a bigger majority if they would stop electing people that really appeal to the base and not to the broader electorate. he's trying to do the best he can with the team he has, and when you're talking to business leaders at the chamber, they have cash, you want to make sure you want to get them optimistic, giving them money for the final run. this is a close race, probably in his mind, shouldn't be close. should have been able to win the majority, and if you look at the map, he has reason to be pessimistic and a little bit more reason to be optimistic today than a month ago. not much. >> he's going to hold his nose and fund raise for candidates. he has been criticizing because he wants to win back the senate. the new book is titled "smart brevity," the power of saying more with less. mike allen, jim vandehei, congratulations on the book. the "atlanta journal

constitution," a new poll shows the state senate race is deadlocked with herschel walker leading raphael warnock by 2%, in the margin of error, and shows brian kemp with an 8 point lead over democrat stacey abrams. in wisconsin, the green bay press gazette reports governor ron desantis is predicting wisconsin will pass florida style laws on elections if tim mikes is elected governor in november. he made the comments at an event in green bay, during the republican primary race, mikes focused on the 2020 presidential election but recently has been campaigning on the issues instead of crime and schools. in rhode island, "the westerly sun" reports federal authorities have seized more than 600,000 counterfeit adderall pills containing methamphetamine. one man has agreed to plead guilty with intent to distribute the pills valued at more than

4 1/2 million dollars. this is believed to be the largest seizure of methamphetamine laced fake adderall pills in the united states. to connecticut now, where the middletown press leads with a story about a food insecurity crisis in the state. new figures show 17% of adults in connecticut have been unable to afford food at some point in the past year. that is the highest total for the state in the last five years, and comes amid a rise in inflation and the expiration of federal benefits. in mississippi, "the clarion ledger" reports the capital city of jackson finally now is seeing water clear of contaminants, thank goodness, a series of independent tests by the paper mirror the state's results and show no bacteria. the results reinforce the announcement from governor tate reeves last thursday that jackson's boil water notice could in fact be lifted. coming up on "morning joe," a check in with the nation's doctor after president biden said on "60 minutes" quote the

pandemic is over. u.s. surgeon general vivek murthy joins us straight ahead. >> and democratic nominee for maryland governor and rising star in the party, wes moore joins us to talk about his campaign. and later, we will go live to the brooklyn courthouse where attorneys for the department of justice and donald trump are set to appear before the special master in the mar-a-lago documents case. "morning joe" is coming right back. "morning joe" is coming right back your mission: stand up to moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis or active psoriatic arthritis and... take. it. on. with rinvoq. rinvoq is a once-daily pill that tackles pain, stiffness, swelling. for some, rinvoq significantly reduces ra and psa fatigue. it can stop irreversible joint damage. and rinvoq can leave skin clear or almost clear in psa. that's rinvoq relief. rinvoq can lower your ability to fight infections, including tb. serious infections and blood clots, some fatal;

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it is 6:49 in the morning at the white house, 11:49 here in london. president biden is facing pushback, including from some of his own top health officials, including dr. anthony fauci after saying the covid-19 pandemic is over. the president made that comment during an interview on "60 minutes." here's what president biden said followed by new remarks from dr. fauci.

>> the pandemic is over. we still have a problem with covid. we're still doing a lot of work on it. but the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one's wearing masks. everybody seems to be in pretty good shape, and so i think it's changing. >> we are not where we need to be if we're going to be able to quote live with the virus because we know we're not going to eradicate it. we only did that with one virus, which is smallpox, and that was very different. because smallpox doesn't change from year to year or decade to decade or even from century to century. >> joining us now u.s. surgeon general dr. vivek murthy. two very different views there of the state of the pandemic. is the pandemic over? >> it's good to see you as well. i don't think they're all that different. what the president is reflecting is the fact that we have made

tremendous progress against covid-19. we're in a very different place now than we were at the beginning of this pandemic, with significantly lower death rates. we have all of our children back in school, people able to go back to work, family and friends able to see each other. he said we have more work to do on covid, and that's what dr. fauci and others have expressed as well. we're losing 400 people a day on average to this virus. we have people who are struggling with long covid. we need to understand more about long covid and how to prevent it, and we also thankfully have a new updated vaccine that's available that can extend people's protection, strengthen their protection against the worst outcomes of covid. we need people to take that vaccine. there's more work to do, no doubt. we are in a much better place than we were at the beginning of this pandemic. >> well, of course, that goes without saying, and i mean, people effectively are treating it like it's over. here in london, where i am, i could count on one hand the number of masks i have seen in the last couple of days.

new york is closer to that as well. but when the president of the united states says the pandemic is over, what should people watching this morning take from that? >> they should feel encouraged about the progress we have made. i have optimistic about how far we have come. we may forget just what it was like two years ago when schools were shut down, when people were not going to work, when we were worried about our own health and safety and the safety of those around us. but right now, if you are updated on your vaccines and if you are a high risk individual that uses a medication like paxlovid when you get covid-19, your chances of dying from covid are remarkably low. and that is hard fought progress. here's one thing i am worried about, willie, in order to sustain this progress and to continue to advance. in order to develop the next generation of vaccines, especially vaccines that will help to block transmission even more effectively, we need to sustain our investment in covid,

so what we can do is look at this like an on and off switch. covid has disappeared, we made tremendous progress but we have work to do that's going to require ongoing investment from congress, ongoing investment in our country so we can continue to make sure everybody in our country has the protection that they need from covid-19. >> i appreciate you're trying to thread the needle between slightly different points of view. one of the things doctors have said is clarity of messaging is absolutely essential and whether you listen to the president or whether you listen to dr. fauci, the message is not clear coming out of the white house at the moment, and the risks are still high. you still have the potential for variants around the world. you have countries where people are not vaccinated and are traveling now, and the potential to bring new variants. why take the risk from the presidents point of view of even saying at all, this is over. people will hear that and say i

don't need to get boosted if it comes around. i don't need to get vaccinated. >> my job is to tell people where we are, and to talk to them about what they need to do. the message here is clear, which is that why we should be encouraged about the progress we have made, we still have to be vigilant, and make sure we're taking steps to remain protected and that means staying up to date on your vaccines, knowing where to go, if you do get sick, to get paxlovid, and we have sites now available, people can go to their own doctor and get treatments for covid-19, like paxlovid. we want people to know what they can do, but it's also so important, this is something i learned when i was surgeon general working on the ebola and zika crises, when things get better, we can't as a country turn our attention away entirely. we have to recognize to stay in a good place and to continue making progress, we've got to keep our foot on the accelerator. we've got to not only continue to invest in better treatments and vaccines, but we also have to look at the broader spectrum of issues made worse by covid.

one of those, in fact, is mental health. this is an issue that i have been focused on as surgeon general because i look at what's happened in our country during covid, and prior to covid, and i see a mental health crisis particularly among our kids that has exploded. each of the surgeon general's advisory in youth mental health, in 2021, i wrote recently there's more we need to do at a policy, programmatic and individual level to make sure our kids are okay. >> dr. murthy, you started to lead us there, the idea of not letting your guard down when things are looking better. we are in a little bit of a lull right now. part of the reason the president's comments raised a stir is for months, health officials, including those employed by the u.s. government have warned us about an impending fall or winter surge of the virus. are you seeing any early signs of that, how should americans be prepared, and should we be bracing ourselves for cases to take offer again. >> i'm glad you asked, jonathan.

thankfully right now we are seeing cases continue to decline. hospitalizations are coming down as well. that's good news. if anything we have learned, we have to be vigilant and prepared. this is a time for preparation, not panic. the last two winters, we have seen a surge that's gun around late november or early december. the best way to protect that is to make sure you are up to date with your vaccines. if you are 12 and up, and you're two months out from your last shot, you are eligible to get the updated vaccine, and that's what we want people to do. the other thing you can do is pair this with your flu shot. flu season is also around the corner, and so we want people to get their flu shot. flu shots should be available very very soon, and you can -- good news is you can go and get both shots at the same time, get it out of the way, and know you have stronger protection against both covid and the flu. u.s. surgeon general vivek murthy thank you so much for your time this morning. we'll be talking to you much more as we move through this. thank you. coming up on "morning joe,"

we'll have the latest developments in the special master case, trump's legal team made last minute filings ahead of what is supposed to be just a procedural hearing this afternoon. we'll have expert analysis from the lead prosecutor in the mueller investigation. plus, new reporting on a warning the former president received from former white house lawyer eric herschmann about taking those documents. "morning joe" is back in a moment. ocuments "morning joe" is back in a moment ♪♪ subway's drafting 12 new subs for the all-new subway series menu the new monster has juicy steak and crispy bacon. but what about the new boss? it looks so good it makes me hangry! settle down there, big guy the new subway series. what's your pick?

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in observance for the funeral, flights in and out of london's heathrow airport were cancelled or delayed. laguardia heard that, that's also why our flights are, out of respect, of course. we're going to be respecting until around new year's. we'll continue our respect. >> beard's working for jimmy, most importantly there.

welcome back to "morning joe," i'm willie geist here in london. joe and mika will be back with us tomorrow. the battle over the government documents seized from donald trump's beach club comes to new york city with a special master set to hold his first hearing today in brooklyn. he already is tangling with the former president's legal team. we will go live to the courthouse. plus, we will speak with the authors of the much discussed new book, the divider, which reveals the inside story of donald trump going to war with washington. journalist peter baker and susan glasser will join us to talk about that book. katty kay, jonathan lemire, mike barnicle, eugene robinson all still with us this hour as attorneys for the justice department, former president donald trump are set to appear before the court appointed special master in the mar-a-lago documents case. the hearing will take place at a federal courthouse in brooklyn before judge raymond dearie, where he currently serves as a senior u.s. district judge for the eastern district of new york. typically this kind of hearing is only procedural and

establishes filing practices and timetables for the review of documents in the case, but just prior to today's hearing, attorneys for the former president stated in a filing last night they do not want to disclose to judge dearie which mar-a-lago documents they assert the former president may or may not have declassified. "the new york times" reports one time white house lawyer eric herschmann warned trump late last year he could be in legal trouble if he did not return those government documents, the ones he took with him when he left office. that's according to three people familiar with the matter. the precise date of the meeting is not clear, and herschmann was not working for trump at the time. according to the report from the maggie haberman, trump thanked herschmann for the discussion but was noncommittal about whether he would return the documents. let's bring in nbc news legal analyst, weissman, and served as legal prosecutor in the mueller special prosecutors office.

thanks for being with us this morning. let's take these one at a time, starting with the hearing before the special master in brooklyn. what can people expect to see, and what do you make of the back and forth before the hearing about which documents were declassified, allegedly, by the former president. >> as you said, normally this would be a scheduling matter where judge dearie was going to make sure the parties have marching orders and different deadlines to meet in terms of what are they saying as attorney/client privilege. is there a dispute about that, which documents are alleged to be executive privilege. is there a dispute about that, and then judge dearie makes a decision. what's very unusual here is two things, one, judge dearie clearly jumped on this case because it's clear that on monday, he wrote to the parties and the parties only saying i want your position on a variety of things, and one of the questions was the trump team saying are you alleging that any

of these documents are declassified. that is a completely logical question for the special master to need to know because if they were declassified, it changes the various legal arguments that the judge has to consider, and what's maybe even more surprising is that the trump team, to the special master who they picked, remember, judge dearie was their choice. they say we're not going to tell you, and the reason they give is patently false because they gave the arguments that they're not going to give an answer because it's a potential trial defense if donald trump is indicted but of course whether the documents are declassified or not is not a defense to any of the charges that were listed in the search warrant, so i imagine that judge dearie today is going to press them on that. look, if you're not going to tell me, i'm assuming these are classified and there's no way you're getting these back if

they're classified. you have to choose now to tell me or you're going to lose your argument that these should somehow be returned to you. >> andrew, you have appeared before judge dearie before. he's been on the federal bench for a couple of decades. he's been met today with the trump lawyers and there's an age-old tradition of a trump lawyer to delay delay delay as often as they can possibly do in federal court, but this is kind of different, i would think, given judge dearie's position and his long tenure. what's your instinct about what judge dearie's reaction might be to these delaying tactics? >> you have to remember that he's been on the bench for a very long time, and it is not unusual for defense counsel to want to delay things. very famously people have said an adjournment is an acquittal if you're a defense lawyer. delaying things is not something that's going to be unknown to

judge dearie and he's clearly having none of it from either party. his proposal we know from reading the submissions, his proposal on monday to the parties was to have this all done by the beginning of october. he clearly thinks this is not a very hard task. there aren't that many documents at issue. he clearly disagreed with the government submission which proposed that this could take several weeks just to start getting the ball rolling. that just isn't going to be judge dearie's reaction, i predict. i think he's going to want to get this moving along and isn't going to put up with unnecessary delay from either side. >> let's get your reaction to the other headline that willie read there about eric herschmann, the trump attorney no longer an employee at the moment, who warned the former president, you could be in legal peril if you don't give back those documents. what does that mean to you.

>> jonathan, of the two stories, that's the key one. the issue of the special master is something we'll get through. that's just a question of when is the government going to be able to use these documents, and that's going to happen. it's just a question of, you know, days or weeks and potentially months, but it will definitely happen. the issue of eric herschmann is critical to the government being able to bring a case against donald trump. the key issue for prosecution is the state of knowledge and intent of any defendant. you want to be able to show they knew there were these documents there, and they knew that it was illegal to not return them. so having an attorney of all people who is reputable who used to work for donald trump in the white house, telling the defendant that these are not his documents, they need to be returned and that their legal

consequences is basically a perfect government witness. the department of justice has to be salivating thinking this is exactly the piece that we need, and it's quite likely that he is not the only attorney because there are other attorneys who donald trump had appointed to be his representative to the archives, and it's hard to imagine they wouldn't have given the same advice. >> nbc news legal analyst, andrew weissman, thank you so much as always for putting this all in perspective for us. we appreciate it. our next guests with one of the most detailed accounts of the trump presidency. chief white house correspondent for the "new york times," peter baker and susan glasser join us now with "the divider," they break down the chaotic moments of the previous administration from the former president's

meeting with vladimir putin, and how close he came to pulling the u.s. out of nato. peter and susan, good morning, congratulations on the book. there is so much in here. i have a stack of questions, i hope you can stay until noon. let me stay on the theme of the election, and susan, jared and ivanka effectively two days after the election day turning their backs and walking out. jared leans over to ivanka and says we're moving to florida. that's an important moment because they abandoned donald trump and all the election conspiracies and opened the door to all the nut jobs who came in after them. >> yeah, it's a pretty amazing moment, right. so for four years, the president's daughter and son-in-law basically used argument to all those who were criticizing their presence in the white house, it's important that he have family around, we are the ones who can talk with him. you know, we're here for critical moments and, then this moment critical moment comes,

they're not believers, they tell others, in the election conspiracy. they're not election deniers. what do they do, they buy a $34 million lot on a private island in miami. they closed on the deal, by the way, weeks after the election in december, even while trump was continuing his attacks on the election. and, you know, essentially they just abdicated. jared kushner told others that he was not going to fight for it if rudy giuliani was going to be in charge of this election attack. it's really this key mment, i think, and it really shows the hollow arguments of the jared and ivanka promotors, what was the purpose of them being there if they're going to walk out on the biggest crisis of the trump presidency? >> and that, peter, was my next question to you. they know the election wasn't stolen and instead of standing in there as the few people that have donald trump's ear, they turn and walk away and move to

florida and open the door to rudy giuliani and sidney powell and the my pillow guy. was there an attempt for either of them to step in and tell their father, father-in-law this has gone too far. >> they knew because they weren't part of this. at one point, he goes, look, if you're going to go with rudy, i'm not going to be part of this. and he heads off to the middle east to work on the remainder of his peace interests and whatever business interests he wants to pursue after leaving office, and it's really, you know, it's not just them, obviously. a number of people, people who were called by bill stepien, team normal, withdrew when they realized they were not going to be influential, they stepped back, and it was that void that rudy giuliani, sidney powell, mike lindell, mike flynn, all of these martial law, seize the voting machine guys filled. there were fewer and fewer

people left to, you know, fight against them, when mike pence was under pressure by the president to try to stop the electoral college count or to take away the states joe biden has won. mike short, his chief of staff goes to jared kushner, asks him to intervene, and kushner says i'm out of here. i'm not working on this right now, and that's a key moment. >> they washed their hands of it. susan, that's the end o. of the administration. you say the most important day was the first one, january 20th, 2017 because it set the stage so much and the tone so much for everything that followed. >> that's right. that was the key reason we wanted to do this book. we watched the events of january 6th and, you know, there was actually this observation by michael beschloss on the afternoon of january 6th, he says, you know, this day has been foreshadowed by every day of this presidency, and i think

if you go back to january 20th, 2017, you really begin to see the through lines. there's a lot of after the fact rationalizations, people like bill barr who say, well, you know, he really went too far after the election. but anybody who i think closely observed trump from the beginning, it's hard to see january 6th as anything other than the violent culmination of what he was doing for four years. >> so, peter, first of all, congrats to you and susan on the book. donald trump was shall we say an unconventional foreign policy president, and there is so much about his meetings with putin in helsinki, his efforts to walk out of nato. this headline, which took my breath away, when i read it over the weekend, that he nearly gave away the west bank. tell us how that could have happened. >> yeah, no, that's right. one thing about doing this book is we built on the work of all of our incredible colleagues,

including your great book, john, and a number of others, and i want to make sure we pay credit to people who have come before us, working the same territory. what struck us is even with all of the great reporting that has been done over the years, there was still so much to learn. we decided to do this book after he left office because there was more to learn. one was the great anecdote, president trump calls up steve mnuchin at the davos conference, and put him on the phone, i've got a great deal for you, i'm going to give you the west bank. and anybody who understands jordan where the palestinian population is a restive force in police understands that was not anything king abdul wanted. he told an american friend, i nearly this a heart attack, i doubled over, i couldn't breathe. it went to where donald trump's view of the world is, very superficial and transactional, he is going to give the king something the king has no

interest in having. it explains his foreign policy, built on the basis of someone who didn't spend a single day in office prior to becoming president. he didn't know the difference between the baltics and balkans, one aide was saying he knew nothing about so many things, it was startling to them even after they spent time in his presence. >> susan, half of that an anecdote, beginning to read the book, i'm not a naive person about politics or the world around us, but i found myself subjected to some sense of depression over the fact that this president, who presented such a daily danger, perhaps an hourly danger to the country, to the institution of the presidency, seems to have been surrounded by people who knew

how dangerous he was, and said nothing. how do you explain this? >> yeah, i think that's one of the enduring mysteries of this trial, and i think it is a trial that the country has gone through with the trump presidency. you know, in many ways, donald trump was so close to damaging so many institutions and it really was about the people. what peter and i were struck by is, you know, without these advisers, many of whom, you know, had really alarming views of donald trump, he would have just been, you know, another old dude shouting at the television in between golf games, right, so it really mattered, and one of the paradoxes is that often some of the worst enablers were often also the resisters at key moments. someone who served in trump's white house said to us, look, there are no heroes in the trump white house, and again, this is

someone who actually srved there, and that's the complicated story. figures like john kelly, bill barr, again, and again, and again, they facilitate trump. in some ways they give him the successes to the extent he had them, and yet, at key moments, they're also the ones sounding the alarm. it's just amazing to me so many people were willing to go into the wood chopper of the trump white house knowing inevitably but deluded themselves that they would not also be chopped up. >> peter congratulations, i don't know how you sleep because every year you come out with an extremely important well researched book. i take my hat off to both of you. on this one, one of the intriguing things about the trump presidency, was it sort of random chaos, which is one theory of his presidency, that he never really had a theory of the case, that there wasn't a particular strategy, but you seem to be implying he came into office with a strategy, even if

that was just broadly empowering the u.s. presidency or empowering himself. talk about that a little bit more, how he had a sort of plan, that there was a theory of his case? >> i think the theory was to bend the institution to his desires and needs. every president, wants to achieve policies. he was turning them into instruments of political power, apolitical institutions or institutions we expect to have more political goals like the justice department, the military, institutions that are not meant to be, you know, tools of a president's political needs, and we saw this again and again, and we saw people as susan mentioned fight back like general mark millie, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who was so outraged by the efforts to turn the military into a political instrument, he writes a letter of resignation saying you're destroying the

international order, you don't believe in the things we fought world war ii for. you don't believe in the ideals of america, doesn't end up submitting the resignation letter. the campaign that the president has, the war on institutions is in fact, a four-year war that leads up to january 6th. you can't understand january 6th, 2021st, until you understand january 20, 2017, and every day in between. >> congratulations on the book, it's really a history of the trump years, and produced, it's amazing that you were able to produce something this quickly. i want to go back to foreign policy for a minute just because, you know, we're still in the middle of this awful war in ukraine. putin's invasion and the way nato has responded and pulled closer together. but trump never got nato -- how close did trump come to actually pulling us out of nato?

>> you know, gene, that was one of the really alarming things that when we went back and did more reporting, we knew at the time, of course, that trump had called nato obsolete. he had railed against it. but again and again, very senior officials told us while we were working on this book, that was not fully understood how very close donald trump came to pulling the united states out of nato at the beginning of his term. this was, i think, a direct challenge to, you know, the infrastructure that u.s. allies had in place in europe. and, you know, imagine putin moving into ukraine had trump succeeded in more fully sundering the nato alliance. one of the moments that really struck me at end of the trump presidency in 2020 is he insists on pulling thousands of troops out of germany. these are, you know, a key part of nato strategy in europe. he insists on pulling 10,000

troops out of germany because he's personally mad at angela merkel, the chancellor of germany, because she won't break the quarantine and come to washington in the middle of the covid pandemic for an in-person summit, and trump, the very next day after lafayette square, a couple of days after his conversation with merkel that makes him furious, he sends an order to the pentagon, and says pull them out of germany. it's one of the first things the biden administration had to undue. trump was trying to undue the headquarters of u.s. forces in europe, it's an extraordinary moment. it shows you the personalization of power that trump had and that he thought institutions could simply be even national security could be subject to his anger at the german chancellor, is a remarkable moment, i think. >> peter, you and susan paint a

portrait of the former president, desperately trying to win the affections of vladimir putin. tell us about the reactions of some members of the intelligence community, senior officials about the meeting on the sideline, between trump and putin, and helsinki, and an extraordinary meeting on the sidelines of a summit in japan. >> you're right about that. we all remember that meeting in helsinki, jonathan lemire's great question that provoked the answer that everyone was stunned by. the president of the united states said he believed in effect in the president of russia more than he believed his own intelligence agencies. that had a huge impact back here. a lot of people said, oh, my gosh. privately we learned intelligence officials were quite stunned and disturbed by this. dan coats, the director of national intelligence picked by trump, a loyal republican for many many years, was so stunned by what he saw there that he say, you know, he told people afterwards, he told colleagues,

i was wondering, does putin really have something on president trump. maybe there is something there in all of this. he, the head of the intelligence agency who had access to all the information out there didn't know whether the american president had been compromised in some way because his behavior was so out of sync with traditional american views. and you're right, it's interesting, the view didn't seem to be reciprocated by president putin, a meeting in osaka, japan a g20 meeting where the president has a side meeting with president putin, and bragging about ways people were honoring him, the polls were going to norm a poll after him, trump heights and putin sort of says maybe they should name all of israel after you, and it's this moment that captures putin's view of this. he gets trump's number. he understands the narcissism and flattery that's required to deal with him, and he's sort of

mocking him to his face in a private meeting. it makes you wonder, of course, you know, you want to know more about that relationship, and probably more will be learned in years to come. i thought it was a telling moment. >> unrequited love of vladimir putin, the new book is entitled "the divider trump in the white house 2017 to 2021" peter baker and susan glasser, as i said, i could keep you here all day. there's so much in here. we want people to buy the book and read it for themselves. congratulations, great to see you both. >> thanks, guys, appreciate it. still ahead on "morning joe," the new concern about a potential radiation disaster after a shelling near the country's second largest nuclear plant. we'll go live to puerto rico where millions are without power again this morning on the heels of hurricane fiona. we'll have the latest there. up next, we'll speak live with wes moore, a rising star in the democratic party with polls showing he's got a good chance of flipping maryland's governorship this november. we'll talk to wes when "morning

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latuda is right for you. pay as little as zero dollars for your first prescription. primary win, it's been amazing how many people have come up and said, isn't it great that dan cox won and you're running against dan cox in the general? my answer is clear and it is consistent. do not underestimate what we're against. do not underestimate what we are up against. it is not great that come november we are running against

an election denier. you know, for me, patriotism meant leaving my family and putting on our nation's uniform and serving with the 82nd airborne division in afghanistan. but let's be clear for our opponent, patriotism for him means organizing buses to join him on january 6th. [ boos ] >> that is the democratic nominee for maryland governor wes moore speaking ahead of president biden at a rally mast month in rockville, maryland. his opponent dan cox is an election denier endorsed by former president trump. the big lie is not resonating with voters in maryland. the survey finds moore has a 22 point lead over cox. and wes moore joins us now. wes, it's good to see you. 22 point spread there, you're out raising ten to one against cox. the sitting republican governor, larry hogan has called cox a

quote qanon whack job and has suggested he might support you but won't make an endorsement. >> first, it's great to see you, but the state of the race is i think the numbers confirm something that we have been seeing all over the state is that, you know, my opponent's message is not resonating. we are running against someone who voted against a bill that would have banned spousal rape, that we're running against someone who believes that all abortions should be criminalized for both the patient and the provider even in the case of incest and rape, someone who like you mentioned, the current governor said that not only is he not going to support him, but he wouldn't even give him a tour of the governor's office. the thing we're seeing around the state of maryland and why we feel good about where we are, is we're not asking people to support our campaign because they should be afraid of something, we're asking them to

support our campaign because they should believe in someone: a leave no one behind, our north star is creating pathways for work, wages and wealth for all families, that we want their support not because they're scared of the alternative, but hopeful for what we can get done together. >> give us a sense as to what the biggest challenges maryland residents face today, and certainly you noted that the republicans, particularly your opponent seem to be out of step. rising prices inflation, how do you combat that? >> and it's important because that's how we started the foundation of our campaign. this is about economics, this is about the fact that when people say things feel more expensive, that they are. and so for working families, we have to find ways of creating better supports, and that means getting people back to work, focusing on job retraining, and job reskilling. fixing a broken child care system. one of the biggest challenges we have of getting people employed, if you don't have a strong child

care system, you're not going to have a chance to get back in the work force, and women. it means being able to raise wages and getting maryland to a $15 minimum wage by next year, and we have too many people in our state who are working and in some cases, working multiple jobs, and still below a poverty line. i saw that with my own family. my mother didn't get her first job that gave her benefits until i was 14 years old. she went on to earn a master's degree. this is real, something that's been a generational challenge. if we can focus on work, wages and wealth for all maryland families and pathways and leaving no one behind, this is a generational opportunity to address the generational challenges. >> i want to ask you about one of the most important aspects of your stays and any state, and that's kids who have gone through remote learning for a couple of years. now in grades five through eight or first year of high school, what's the plan in terms of

evening out the discrepancy between going to grammar school or high school in baltimore, as opposed to chevy chase or bethesda, what's their future? >> this discrepancy is heartbreaking, and i know it is to you too mike and this has also been my life's work. i know there's two things that saved me, a mother that wouldn't quit. and an education system that told me the world was bigger than what was directly in front of me. when you watch what's happened to children over these past years, it's not just heartbreaking, it's unfair, and the reality is we do have real resources now, even federal resources that are specifically earmarked towards things like learning loss, towards things like advanced tutoring and after school programming, but there also needs to be real structural changes we have to make within our education system, and that includes things like making sure we can have free pre-k for every child in need in the sate of maryland. the research is also very clear,

80% of brain development happens in a child by the by the time the child is 5 years old. why we have children starting at 5 makes no sense. we have to do a better job of getting people prepared for the work force. in the state of maryland, we have two available jobs for every single person filing for unemployment. that basically means we have a dynamic economy but we're not preparing our children to participate. investing in apprenticeship programs and trade programs, creating economic pathways and also maryland is going to be the first state in the country to have a service year option for every single high school graduate. for every high school graduate to have a chance for a paid year of service to the state of maryland, and they can choose how they want to do it, the environment, education, housing, their choice, and we're going to do it because i believe deeply in experience learning, and we're going to do it because service is sticky, and those who serve together stay together. in this time of political divisiveness and vitriol, i

believe that service will help to save us. >> wes, what is your vision o. economic future of maryland? 40 years ago baltimore was a manufacturing city. those factories are gone now. what sector do you see coming in or being developed that's going to lead the way into the future for maryland? >> yeah, i am so excited about our economic future because, you know, the thing about the state of maryland, if you look at our assets that we have right now, maryland is literally the home of the nih and the cdc, and apl, and the nsa and nasa, and i say i think every acronym in the world exists in the state of maryland, but the challenge we have in maryland is we are asset rich and we are strategy poor. we're not investing the way they need to be invested in. biotech to cyber tech to agri

health, how we think about our manufacturing base, we've got the core foundational assets right there. and to include the fact that this is the home of the port of the baltimore, the shared home of the chesapeake bay, so we have a growing and dynamic economy where we need to be able to invest in our institutions of higher education, create more liquidity for our small businesses, create more incentives for people to grow their businesses and stay here, and then frankly for people who are in other states, and particularly other states where we're watching, you know, governors who are using state resources and state assets to make political statements. my answer to you is this, come to maryland. because every time we go to one of their states, i'm bringing three businesses with me, and bringing them back to maryland. >> democratic nominee for governor of maryland, polling well right now, but as he will tell you, a lot of time between now and election day, wes moore, great to see you, thank you so much. >> it's great to see you. coming up next, legendary documentary film maker ken burns joins us with a look at his

powerful new project. also ahead, nato secretary general joins us at the top of the hour. he's in new york city this morning for the u.n. general assembly where president biden will speak tomorrow. "morning joe" is coming right back. speak tomorrow. "morning joe" is coming right back moderate to severe eczema still disrupts my skin. despite treatment it disrupts my skin with itch. it disrupts my skin with rash. but now, i can disrupt eczema with rinvoq. rinvoq is not a steroid, topical, or injection. it's one pill, once a day, that's effective without topical steroids. many taking rinvoq saw clear or almost-clear skin while some saw up to 100% clear skin. plus, they felt fast itch relief some as early as 2 days. that's rinvoq relief. rinvoq can lower your ability to fight infections, including tb. serious infections and blood clots, some fatal, cancers including lymphoma and skin cancer, death, heart attack, stroke, and tears in the stomach or intestines occurred. people 50 and older with at least one heart disease risk factor have higher risks.

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source. it's much harder to dismiss it. >> that is a clip from the latest project from ken burns titled "the u.s. and the holocaust" the three-part six-hour documentary series examines the response by the united states to the atrocities committed by the nazis, and ken burns joins us now along with the documentary codirector, lynn novak. it's good to see you. there's a lot in here that people didn't realize or maybe had forgotten. before we sent a generation of young men to europe to liberate the continent and defeat the nazis, there was a lot going on at home. where do you pick up the story? >> we start decades before the story gets bad and our own culpability or the things that contributed to our culpability to act in the face of what's going on in the holocaust. the clip you showed, it's way too late. 3/4 of the people who are going

to be murdered by the nazis, have been murdered. we don't have a boot on the ground, and if we have a plane that can get there, what are you going to do, bomb the rail lines that they'll replace a day later. we've got a history of taking care of our native populations, dispossessing them of their land, murdering them, moving them on to reservations, which hitler loved. we have a history of racism. we've got a history of anti-semitism, which is worldwide. we've got an anti-immigration law that has gone into effect that's shut the golden door that the statue of liberty had been from 1870 to 1920, and we've got a depression, and we've got eugenics, a pseudo science, suggesting a hierarchy of races. there's not. there's one race, the human race. in this mix, you have politicians, governmental officials, congress, and more importantly, the american people who have zero interest in letting in any refugees, so we let in 225,000 people, more than

any other sovereign nation, but we could have let in five or ten times this many and done something a little more than what the indifference is that we showed across the board, and we look to blame one person, but it's the culpability is across the board. >> lynn, years in the process of making this film, and i'm wondering given all the surprises that are in the film, all the shocks that are in the film, and yet, watching it before it began to be televised sunday night, i had seen the film. >> right. >> and then sunday morning i had seen on the news clips pictures of the rally that president trump had in ohio. former president trump had in ohio saturday night. and i'm wondering now that you've made this film, people are going to see this film. has it gone through your minds, both of you, that we have

something maybe in the making right in front of us? >> well, you know, we started working on this film with codirector sarah botstein, in 2015, it was a very different world. as it's coming to fruition now, the events happening around us began to reverberate with the story we were telling louder and louder and loud, we're seeing some of the same trends towards authoritarianism and white supremacy, and hate speech and bigotry, and marginalization of people, and lack of faith in the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, free and fair elections. these are the warning signs of creeping authoritarianism that we saw back in the 1930s in germany for sure, and there are dangers of that happening here as well. it was a very scary time and we're seeing these echoes today, and it's very concerning. there's no getting around that. >> you know, mike, we were

planning to bring this out in 2023, but we accelerated the production just because we felt these rhymes as mark twain might say with what was going on. every film rhymes in the present, but nothing like this. we moved it up so we could join a conversation, and look, we have to be really clear. the united states is not responsible for the holocaust. the holocaust is not going on right now, but as lynn is saying, we have this authoritarian impulses in the human, even jefferson in the declaration says we're disposed to suffer tyranny, human beings, an experiment in democracy is an extra effort of humanity, and so i borrow from deborah lipstadt, the time to stop a genocide is before it happens. the time to save a democracy is before it's lost. that requires all good people to come to the aid of their country. i don't mean to sound cliche,

there's lots of smoke, and it may be time to pull the fire alarm and say let's work at free and fair elections, let's work at peaceful transfer of power. let's work at an independent judiciary. let's work at, because all of these signals here are really clear and distinct, and you can watch it bit by bit by bit, and that's what authoritarians do, what can i get away with, i got away with that, i took austria, i can take all of czechoslovakia, let's move into poland, and let's move into the east, and he wanted, he being hitler, wanted to conquer the wild east, which he didn't consider his people, jews, and slavs and orthodox christians, he admired the way we took over the wild west, and marginalized people and murdered them, and put them into cages.

it was necessary murder but it showed the united states. we have a republic that benjamin franklin said, if you can keep it. we have gone 246 years. let's make sure we keep it. >> ken and lynn, how did you come to understand this tension that seems to be there through our history between the stirring words on the statue of liberty, and the history of immigration, and immigrant success in this country. on the one hand. and on the other hand, the sort of cold and frankly inhumane way we rejected, refused to accept refugees from the holocaust, and also our attitudes now towards immigration of people who are

fleeing desperate circumstances. >> thank you for asking that. that is the question at the core of this project, frankly, and why we wanted to really take this topic on is because this is a central tension in our national identity, our national mythology, and then the realities, and we have these great ideals beautiful embodied by great ideals on the statue of liberty. yet at the same time as peter hayes says in our film, keeping people out is as american as apple pie. both of those things are try, so we're trying to negotiate this tension of are we a nation of immigrants? what does that mean? when did we stop becoming a nation of immigrants? we have not sorted this out exactly. this question of who is a real american. who deserves to be here? we're still arguing about this to this day. i'm sure we'll be arguing about this in my grandchildren's time. we hope this story is a good reminder of what's at stake when we are arguing over that question while peoples lives are at risk around the world.

>> let's talk about uncomfortable truths. this film talks about how the u.s. did not do all that it could during the holocaust. right now, that idea of teaching american failures is under fire throughout the school systems throughout this country. why -- how worried are you about that? why does this film need to be told? >> you have to tell the story. this is what we do. stories help people understand their history. so, yes, there are places, and it makes a lot of news where people are saying let's teach the holocaust from a german point of view. no kidding. let's not teach this thing. that's the sad and worrisome thing. we've always been about a true, honest, complicated past that's unafraid of controversy and tragedy. equally drawn to those stories and moments that suggest a faith in the united states and human nature and particularly the unique role that's remarkable but also sometimes dysfunctional republic plays in the positive progress of mankind.

so we're working with the holocaust museum which knows how to teach it and working with our beloved network, pbs, that reaches every classroom in the country. we'll go ahead. it's ridiculous. if you don't know where you've been, you can't possibly know where you are or where you're going. we're umpires calling balls and strikes. sports is a religion in this country. you say we want to protect our kids from hearing this. the coach is saying you're terrible at this. you need to get better here. we want that honesty. if we're as exceptional as we say we are, exceptional people, the g.o.a.t. in sports, they're hardest on themselves. if we want to be a second-rate nation or third-rate nation, then you don't examine anything. your news media becomes pravda, and you don't examine what's going on. if you wish to be a democracy, which is the best form of

government as messy and difficult as it is, authoritarian governments have murdered by exponential magnitudes their citizens and other citizens as opposed to crimes that democracies do. so we're stuck with this sort of thing. but it requires that extra effort, i'm suggesting, of protecting it and education is where that begins. >> the final part of the u.s. and the holocaust is on tonight on pbs. ken burns, lynn novick, thank you so much for bringing this story. good to see you booth. >> good to see you. it's actually part two tonight and part three tomorrow night. the queen bumped us. empire strikes back. >> she does that. >> and streaming on pbs. >> we'll watch all the way through. thanks. still ahead on "morning joe," a live report from the courthouse ahead of today's hearing in the mar-a-lago documents case. the latest on a bipartisan effort to prevent another january 6th from happening.

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coming up at the top of the hour, how the war in ukraine is weighing on the minds of world leaders. we'll be joined by the nato secretary-general in new york city for the general assembly. and much of puerto rico is in the dark this morning-hurricane fiona. we'll have a live report when "morning joe" comes back in two minutes. minutes. the women and men i served with in combat, we earned our benefits. just like people earned their social security and medicare benefits. but republicans in congress have a plan to end so-called "entitlements" in just five years. social security, medicare, even veterans benefits.

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through project up, comcast is committing $1b to open doors for the next generation so they can build a future of unlimited possibilities. donald trump had something to say about the biden seats. he wrote this is what's happened to america in just two short years. no respect. however a good time for our president to get to know the leaders of certain third-world

countries. if i were president, they wouldn't have sat me back there and our country would be much different than it is right now. i'm just glad he's finally admitting he's not president, you know? [ applause ] can you imagine him? can you imagine him at the queen's funeral complaining about his seats? i think we can, really. >> jimmy kimmel last night. welcome back to "morning joe." it's tuesday, september 20th. i'm willie geist in london. joe and mika will be back with us tomorrow. katty kay, jonathan lemire and mike barnicle are with us this morning. katty, you're in front of buckingham palace where we sat yesterday, especially the moment when the queen's coffin passed directly behind us. the newspapers in london of course are focused on yesterday's funeral, specifically this shot, which is so moving to so many here in great britain of king charles

placing that cloth at the committal ceremony at st. george's chapel in windsor on the coffin of his late mother before it was lowered down into the vault below. >> yeah. it was an incredible display of pomp and pageantry, something the brits and royal family do well. it was also a tribute from the british public which turned out in the hundreds of thousands to queue in that long queue to pay their last respects. i'm sitting outside of buckingham palace, there are still queues of people just coming to look at buckingham palace, to pay their respects one last time to the queen. even after the funeral people are still coming. >> truly a new day in the united kingdom under king george. we want to turn back to the events in the united states. there's a lot going on. we're following the latest in the trump documents case. his legal team clashing with the special master ahead of today's first hearing with that independent mediator.

we'll go live to brooklyn as the battle of the government material seized from mar-a-lago, much of it classified, heads to new york city today. and the latest from puerto rico. the island once again attempting to recover from another devastating hurricane. the governor calling the damage there catastrophic. we'll get a live report from the island, largely still without power. first, threats of a radiation emergency in ukraine re-emerged following an attack near the second largest nuclear plant. yesterday's assault passed the nuclear plant's three reactors but damaged windows, power lines and industrial equipment. ukrainian authorities are calling it an act of nuclear terrorism by russia. the strike followed warnings from president putin on attacks on key ukrainian infrastructure. world leaders are converging on new york this week for the

united nations general assembly which kicked off yesterday with a focus on ukraine. they are meeting in person after three years of virtual meetings. the war in ukraine and the impact of rising food and energy prices are some of the key issues that will dominate the gathering. president joe biden, who was in london here for queen elizabeth's funeral will address the assembly tomorrow as opposed to today. ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy also will address the assembly with a pre-recorded video message. and joining us now from new york, nato secretary-general, jens stoltenberg. great to have you with us. ukraine is front and center and on the minds of all the leaders around the world. what will you be saying, what will you be doing at this general assembly to address the situation? what do you have to say to vladimir putin as he's promised to escalate now in the face of

this effective lightning counteroffensive that's been so successful for the ukrainians? >> my main message will be that we have to stay the course to support ukraine. what we see now is the most dangerous times we have seen since the end of the second world war with the biggest war in europe since the second world war with ramifications for all of us with energy and the food crisis. we need to support ukraine and they have made progress, but we need to ensure that putin doesn't win in ukraine but that ukraine prevails as an independent, sovereign state. >> a major topic of discussion will be keeping europe together, rallied behind the cause as it faces a potentially cold and difficult winter. but what message needs to be sent to those nations sitting on the sidelines, india, china, those that continue to purchase russian energy and therefore keeping aloft putin's war machine?

>> the message is that we should all stand up for the international order, because this is not only about supporting ukraine, this is about supporting order, which has ensured peace and prosperity for decades. we need to ensure to protect that world order. part of that is also to strengthen the united nations, to strengthen international institutions because in uncertain times, in dangerous times, we need international institutions like the u.n. but also like nato even more. >> so, we certainly expect to hear from the president tomorrow, who has done, as you have, kept a remarkable job of keeping allies together in lockstep. we were both in madrid in the last nato summit when he said he would be there as long as it takes. as europe is about to enter potentially a difficult period, what are you telling the heads of states? how are you keeping even focused here as the potential not just energy prices going up but there may be a lack of gas and heat

plunging homes into darkness and cold. >> winter is coming, winter will be hard, especially for ukrainians but also for the rest of europe. therefore, we are conveying a clear message that our support of ukraine needs to be sustained because this is not only about protecting ukrainians, but also about protecting us. if president putin wins in ukraine, the message to him but also to other powers, for instance, china, will be that they can use military force to achieve their goals. and that will endanger not only ukraine but the rest of the world. >> mr. secretary-general, what do you say to nations like india, the aforementioned india, who are sort of on the sidelines with regard to the war in ukraine? what do you say to nations like that this week? what will you say, especially given the supposed stronger alliance between china and russia? >> so, i say to india and to all

nations that we should support ukraine's right for self-defense. and we should impose sanctions on russia, who is responsible for war against the independent, sovereign nation. ukraine is defending themselves. that's a right which is enshrined in the u.n. charters. everyone who believes in the u.n. charter should support ukraine. when it comes to china, we regret that china has not been able to clearly condemn the russian aggression against ukraine. and i will meet the chinese foreign minister later on this week and for nato, it's important to engage with china. we don't regard china as an adversary but we need to raise our concerns when it comes to ukraine. >> mr. secretary general, mr. recep tayyip erdogan gave an

interview where he said he believes president putin wants to end the war in ukraine as soon as possible. have you had any indication that vladimir putin has had some kind of change of heart, is preparing to do something that would end the war in ukraine as soon as possible? a second quick question, is turkey being helpful or unhelpful to nato over the question of ukraine? >> turkey is an important ally, not least by being so important for our southern flank, but also helping to facilitate, for instance, the agreements on -- that allowed and opened up for the export of grain out of ukraine, which is important for reducing the pressure on the global food crisis. so far we've not seen any indication that russia changed its overall strategic goal of taking control of ukraine. at the same time, we know that president putin has made several

big strategic mistakes. he thought he would be able to take control over kyiv within days. he had to withdraw his forces from around kyiv after some few weeks. then he launched a big offensive in donbas, that has been stalled by the brave, courageous ukrainian forces. and now the ukrainian forces have been able to retake territory. he also called for nato to close its doors, to not allow new members. we now see that finland and sweden have been invited to become full members of nato showing that nato's doors are open. he wanted less nato, now he's getting more nato with new members finland and sweden. >> jens stoltenberg, thank you. president biden will address the u.n. assembly tomorrow. mr. secretary-general, thank you. >> thank you very much for having me. hurricane fiona is expected to strengthen as it heads today

to turks and caicos. that storm has devastated the dominican republic and puerto rico leaving millions without power or water there. joining us from salinas puerto rico, gabe gutierrez. good morning. what does it look like there? >> willie, good morning. this is what many neighborhoods in southern puerto rico are waking up to. downed trees, downed power lines and no drinking water. a few hours ago we saw some rain here, but thankfully the floodwaters in this neighborhood have actually begun to recede overnight. still, the toll in puerto rico has been devastating. at least three people are dead here and also in the dominican republic. >> reporter: this morning, fiona has strengthened into a category 3 hurricane as it barrels across the caribbean, leaving a widespread trail of destruction. twisted metal and mudslides in the dominican republic, which is now under a state of emergency.

and catastrophic flooding in puerto rico where millions of american citizens are in the dark. overnight, just 11% of the island had power. only 35% had running water. some areas drenched with more than 30 inches of rain since fiona first made landfall on sunday. from the air, staggering images of entire towns under water. people on rooftops desperately waiting for help. more than 1,000 people across the island have been rescued. >> no power no water. >> reporter: fabian and his family were among them as the water kept rising. had you seen something like this before? >> never. >> reporter: mudslides, sinkholes, bridges washed away. the scope of the disaster still not fully known since rescuers are still trying to reach remote areas cut off. on his way home from london, president biden called puerto rico's governor pledging more federal support. >> was the government on the island prepared for this kind of storm? >> definitely. much better prepared than when maria happened.

>> reporter: exactly five years ago today, hurricane maria sliced through puerto rico killing an estimated 3,000 people and decimating the island's electric grid. >> is it fair to describe the power grid in puerto rico as a complete disaster? >> that's too much. it's fragile. it is fragile. >> how long do you expect the power to be out for? >> most customers i hope will get their power back within days. how many days, that remains to be seen. but definitely not months. >> reporter: here in puerto rico, there is widespread frustration that the power grid was not more effectively rebuilt after hurricane maria. meanwhile, as the cleanup effort after fiona begins here, turks and caicos is now bracing for hurricane fiona as it continues to intensify into a major hurricane. willie? >> sending the very best for our friends in puerto rico, still struggling five years after

maria. gabe gutierrez in salinas, puerto rico. a sheriff in texas announced an investigation into ron desantis to send nearly 50 migrants to martha's vineyard last week. >> here we have 48 people already on hard times. i believe they were preyed upon. somebody came from out of state, preyed upon these people, lured them with promises for a better life which is what they were looking for, and with the knowledge that they would cling to whatever hope they could be offered for a better life, to just be exploited and hoodwinked into making this trip to florida and then onward to martha's vineyard for what i believe to be nothing more than political posturing. >> governor desantis again defended the move saying in an interview last night, the

migrants signed consent forms to go. the texas tribune is reporting on how one migrant family allegedly was lured from san antonio. it writes while the beachside, massachusetts community of martha's vineyard was buzzing with tourists this summer, 22-year-old eduardo, his wife and 7-year-old daughter weathered abductions and beatings by a mexican cartel as they made the journey from peru towards the u.s./mexico border. after reaching the united states, they applied for asylum, spent a few days in federal detention and ended up in san antonio's migrant resource center. the large one-story building set amid strip malls on the city's north side allows people to stay there for only three nights. so eduardo and his family soon found themselves on the streets without shelter. that's when he was approached by a tall, blond woman going by the name of carla. she said she offered his family a free trip to boston and a job and shelter awaited them.

when she told us they would offer us rent for a job, that was the only option left for us. so the three boarded at least -- one of at least two private planes with about 50 other migrants who were also promised jobs and months of free rent. just before their arrival, they were told they were going to martha's vineyard, an island south of cape cod, hours away from massachusetts' largest city. jonathan lemire, on the one hand we have the office of governor desantis saying these people knew what they were in for. some of them heard about the deal and decided not to go. then we have first-hand accounts of people telling a different story. >> there's no question it's a political stunt by governor desantis, one that perhaps opened himself up for legal jeopardy. this investigation in texas and some other parts of code may have been violated. some debate on whether he gets what he wants or not. there's been some backlash here

of people being treated as pawns. but as others noted, you know, if governor desantis' audience is fox news viewers and those to the right of fox news, maybe he got what he wanted. and he got some headlines there and he's someone who is staking out positions to the right of where donald trump was on a lot of things. and this is another measure here where he's clearly trying to put himself center stage as the leading republican candidate for 2024 if trump were not to run. and maybe if trump did run. a final note, donald trump reportedly said he was jealous of desantis' idea, he himself said he thought of it and that the governor stole it from him. >> of course it was his idea first. as you say, it's important to know there are many, many people in this country who are cheering that move by governor desantis, that's why he's proudly defending it. still ahead, former president trump reportedly was warned about the legal risk of keeping documents at his mar-a-lago home. the ones taken from the white

house. we'll talk about the significance of that showing some intent perhaps as lawyers for the former president prepare to go to court this morning. and congresswoman liz cheney describes what exactly was happening in the republican cloak room on january 6th. we'll play those new remarks for you. a look behind the scenes when "morning joe" comes back. bipolar depression. it made me feel trapped in a fog. this is art inspired by real stories of bipolar depression. i just couldn't find my way out of it. the lows of bipolar depression can take you to a dark place. latuda could make a real difference in your symptoms. latuda was proven to significantly reduce bipolar depression symptoms. and in clinical studies, had no substantial impact on weight. this is where i want to be. call your doctor about sudden behavior changes or suicidal thoughts. antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults. elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. report fever, confusion, stiff or uncontrollable muscle movements,

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attorneys for the justice department and former president trump are set to appear this afternoon at a hearing before the court appointed special master in the mar-a-lago documents case. the hearing will take place at a federal courthouse in brooklyn before judge raymond dearie, where he currently serves as a senior u.s. district judge for the eastern district of new york.

typically this kind of procedural hearing establishes filing and practices and timetables for the review of documents in the case, but just prior to today's hearing, trump's attorneys stated in a filing last night they do not want to disclose to judge dearie which mar-a-lago documents they assert the former president may or may not have declassified, pushing back against judge dearie's apparent proposal they submit specific information regarding declassification to him in the course of his review. meanwhile, the "new york times" reports one-time white house lawyer, eric hirschman warned trump he could get into legal trouble if he did not return the documents he took with him when he left office. the precise date of the meeting is not clear and hirschman was not working for trump at the time. according to the report from maggie haberman, trump thanked hirschman for the discussion but was noncommittal on whether he would return those documents.

hirschman testified before the january 6th committee and has been subpoenaed in the justice department investigation to overturn the 2020 election. let's bring in kyle cheney and former u.s. attorney barbara mcquade. kyle, i'll start with you. what is the significance of, he did warn donald trump that he should not take documents from the white house, that he might be violating the law. >> if that's the case, that's the origin of almost everything here which is that donald trump knew, had in his head the knowledge that what he was doing was potentially wrong and afoul of the law. and so the questions about his state of mind, what did he know about what was in the documents, whether he had the right to take them, and lawyers, almost like the january 6th investigation, lawyers telling him don't do x, y, and z, and he goes and does it any way. that tells you a lot about what

prosecutors, what criminal investigators may be looking at in terms of state of mind. >> barbara mcquade, tell us about the legal ramifications of this, this is yet another example the former president was told, hey, you can't do this. this is trouble. we know he and his team, his lawyers, seemingly did not cooperate and misrepresented and frankly sometimes flat-out lied to the fbi and the national archives about whether or not they had those documents. so talk to us about how this could impact the doj's ongoing probe. >> well, it's excellent evidence of one of the essential elements of the offense when it comes to the espionage act and the retention of government records, which is willfulness. did you do this knowing that it was against the law? and this could be strong evidence of that. one tricky aspect of this, i imagine he would assert attorney/client privilege as to the statements and say that the privilege belongs to him, and cannot be waived by a lawyer like eric herschmann.

i imagine there would be litigation. the client is not donald trump the man, it is the president of the united states and actually in the best interest of the office and the nation for the government to retain these documents. i think the government would win that battle there, but you can bet donald trump will assert that. i think it could be relevant to the obstruction of justice charges, which i think is going to come down to was it the lawyers who made the misrepresentations about whether they had the documents or were they directed to do so by donald trump. all of those are going to require some inquiry within the privilege. but again, to the extent that privilege belongs to the government, to the presidency, and not to donald trump, the no-longer president, i think the government prevails on that issue. >> later today, donald trump's lawyers will appear in federal district court in brooklyn before judge raymond dearie, a long-time federal district court judge, a reputation of being a no nonsense jurist.

they are there in line with long-time trump legal philosophy to delay every action filed against him for 40 years. what do you think the reaction will be from the federal court today about this appeal to delay, delay, delay? >> yeah, this filing that the trump team made last night is like the prototype? what's the first item on the checklist? make sure you ask for delay. and, sure enough, there it is. the government proposes one schedule, even the judge's own draft plan proposes another and the first thing they say out of the gate is, whoa, whoa, whoa, the schedule you proposed is way too fast. the only person bound by the schedule is the judge himself. so what they're suggesting is you don't need to have all wrapped up by october. let's take our time, be realistic. let's extend into november. that's the first part of it. i don't think the judge is going to entertain that because he's the one that has to do the work, and if he says i think i can do

it within this time period, i think he'll be able to make the decision there. he'll hear them. i doubt he'll accept the timeline. they also say, we don't want to have to assert which documents we are claiming we have declassified. i think this is a real tell that this is a lie, that there's no declassification and that the lawyers want to delay that answer because they don't have an answer to that question. if they make that misrepresentation in court that donald trump has been making on social media, they stand to be disbarred, they are never going to make that claim. they want to delay it as long as possible because ultimately they're not going to be able to make it. >> kyle, you're writing about the special master in your latest piece for "politico" in which you write, quote, donald trump put the justice department on its heels courtesy of a single federal judge who gave him the benefit of almost every doubt as he fought against the fbi's probe of documents seized from his mar-a-lago estate. now his team of lawyers is preparing to test whether they can replicate their fortune in front of a more september cal audience, and the

first indication offered in a file monday night suggests a tougher road ahead. kyle, it's so interesting, as you write in the piece, that this is a special master in judge dearie proposed by the trump team, agreed to by the trump team, so far no indications nor does his history would that have given indication that he's going to be lenient on this former president. >> this is the situation donald trump drew up. he got the dream rulings from judge cannon, that shocked the legal world left, right, whatever side you were on. i don't think anyone expected it to go as far as it did. he drew exactly the hand he wanted here, and now you see in the filing where he's complaining not just about the schedule, whether he has to reveal information about what he declassified about other issues as well. he's already quibbling. even though he drew this great hand from judge cannon, it may not fly in front of both the special master and as well as the 11th circuit court of

appeals which is set to take up the justice department's push against cannon's order, so while he had a, you know, a good run there with judge cannon, it's moved out of her courtroom, and that's going to be a very different story. >> so kyle, for people who have been trying to follow this and put it into some context, the significance in the larger justice department investigation, what happens at 2:00 today at this hearing and then what happens from there, what happens afterward? >> so dearie the special master will lay out ground rules, discuss what they want, how the probe is going to work. i think they'll talk about how to handle these documents that are marked classified. the justice department doesn't want the special master to see at all and certainly doesn't want trump's lawyers to see. that's the most important part of what comes out of the 2:00 hearings, how they will immediately handle the 100 documents that the government thinks have national security secrets in them. >> senior legal affairs reporter for politico, kyle cheney, former u.s. attorney barbara

mcquaid, thank you both. we'll have much more on this when we go live to the courthouse in brooklyn where the former president's attorneys will meet with the federal government. vauhn hillyard is there and he joins us straight ahead on "morning joe." it's the all-new subway series menu! 12 irresistible new subs... like #4 supreme meats. smoky capicola, genoa salami and pepperoni! it's the dream team of meats. i've still got my uniform. it's subway's biggest refresh yet. ♪ it wasn't me by shaggy ♪ i've still got my uniform. you're never responsible for unauthorized purchases on your discover card.

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. republican congresswoman liz cheney of wyoming shard new details yesterday about what she experienced on january 6th. she spoke about a conversation she had with an unnamed colleague shortly before the violence broke out who she said was going along reluctantly with donald trump's plan to block the certification of election results. >> i, you know, in the cloak

room on january 6th before the attack happened, there were so many who wanted to show they were objecting that they had set up these sign up sheets in the cloak room, and as i was sitting there, a member came in, and he signed his name on each one of the state's sheets and then he said under his breath the things we do for the orange jesus. and i thought, you know, you're taking an act that is unconstitutional. >> it would be funny if it weren't so awful what happened after he signed those papers and talked about orange jesus. but it's so telling about the state of the republican party that they know -- they know how dangerous and how bad it is, and they still signed those papers and went along with whatever donald trump tells them to do. >> exactly. they all know. all except the most extreme wing nuts know perfectly well what they're doing, and they know it's wrong. but they do it for orange jesus.

they do it because donald trump is -- they see donald trump as the master of the republican base. and they -- if he gets mad at them, their career is potentially probably over, and so they do it out of that fear. it is stunning how craven republicans have been in the face of donald trump and look where it's gotten us, you know? if the people who knew what they were doing on january 6th was wrong had done the right thing, we wouldn't be in this mess, but they went along with trump and that's where the republican party is, and likely will stay until it gets wiped out in an election. >> certainly hard to find a moment that better encapsulates trump's hold over the party than that one. liz cheney talking about efforts to reform the electoral count act to prevent something like

january 6th from happening again, making it clear that the vice president's role was just ceremonial. house and senate working on bills, not coming up until after the midterms. i want to ask you one other thing about liz cheney. she was defeated soundly in her primary this summer. yet, here she is still trying to pass legislation to safeguard the american electoral process and next week, once again, will preside over a january 6th hearing doing her duty to the end, putting patriotism over party. >> do you suppose that liz cheney is the only member of the republican party who watched a portion or anything at all of former president trump's rally in ohio saturday? the qanon rally. do you suppose she's the only republican who watched that, that litany of danger that preceded in an ohio summer night. i mean, it was unbelievable just to watch the clips of it. and katty, i don't know whether

you got the opportunity or you were overseas, obviously, but the rally that occurred, that i'm talking about, was frightening to put it frankly. frightening to watch a group of people, clearly devoted acolytes to something that very few understand, following a man who knows exactly what he's doing, but stands at the precipice of presenting an even further threat to our democracy. and thus far, from what i've read, from what i've seen, not a single important member of the republican party in either the house or the senate has said anything about what occurred. >> donald trump's tactics when it comes to things like this are always so interesting. he goes right up to the line of something he could be accused of but stops just short of it. you have his campaign team saying that song that was played, that was not actually the qanon anthem, it happens to be a song that sounds rather similar to it. and the sign that they were

putting up with the one finger, you know, follow the one, they disavowed that as a cultish like salute. qanon is a seriously dangerous conspiracy that has people committing acts of violence around the country, and president trump in the past has refused to disavow the organization even though he was pressed on it when he was in the white house. here he seems to be in ohio, flirting with it even more, aligning himself with it even more closely. but in this way that he has of being able to deny that that's what he's doing. i don't know if liz cheney was the only one to watch that. there's a debate about whether donald trump was actually invited to j.d. vance's rally at all or whether he just showed up of his own accord. whatever the case is, you know, republicans are going to have to deal with donald trump as liz cheney suggested on january 6th. they are struggling to know how to deal with him, but they don't know how to stand up to him. and they still don't know how to stand up to him, and they still,

i guess, feel that he is more of an electoral asset than he is an electoral liability. >> well, then they fear his voters, of course, the man they call orange jesus. we'll have much more on donald trump's rally and that special master hearing coming up in just a bit. also ahead, most of puerto rico this morning still without power after hurricane fiona dumped more than two feet of rain on the island. we'll have the latest on the recovery efforts there. "morning joe" is back in a moment. tony, the new outlaw's got double pepper jack and juicy steak. let's get some more analysis on that, chuck. mmm. pepper jack. tender steak. very insightful, guys. the new subway series. what's your pick?

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him to the hospital. >> kevin, why don't you come with us. >> he's fine. he's always been like that. >> no, he hasn't. >> i mean, he's gotten worse over the years. >> he's making a statement. it's an ironic comment on our expectations of him, a funhouse image of our model of kevin. >> you keep think that. me mechanic not speak english but he know what me mean when me say car no go, and we best friends, so me think why waste time say lot word when few word do trick. >> and that is brevity, i guess. kevin, underrated character on "the office," joining us, jim vandehei and mike allen out with a new book today titled "smart brevity: the power of saying more with less." great to see you both. congratulations. you can comment on your favorite scenes and characters on "the office," but i would like to hear about your book. brevity is in short supply, forgive the pun.

we're bombarded with texts, information, emails, social media all the time. people like to talk a lot on tv sometimes, i don't know. tell me about the book, and why you think it's an important moment. >> your producers are genius and also very funny. that's an awesome scene from "the office," this was made for people in the office, in the classroom, and what we have learned from creating "politico" and "axios" is how to get people to pay attention to what matters. a couple of years ago, we have companies, the nba and others come to us and ask us if we can help them learn how to get their customers to pay attention to what they cared about. we created a side company called "axios "hq, it's about how do you get people to pay attention to what matters. how the world is deluged, inundated with information, and no one has taught someone, if people have shorter attention spans and less time, how do you get people to pay attention to what matters, that's what the book does.

it allows us to share what we have benefitted from seeing in the data and science so if you are a teacher, you are a student, you are a manager, an aspiring leader, you can become a much more effective and efficient communicator. >> and, mike, when your newsletter pops into the box a couple of times a day, always click, you get the headline, dig in a little bit. smart brevity, it's your mantra there at "axios", but how do you then get into the depth so it's not that passing cocktail party knowledge? >> thank you, willie. key point is short, not shallow. so what we have discovered is that a lot of times the words are because we're insecure. people are faking it on everything, and one of the ways we fake it is too many words, and the -- when you try and disguise the fact that we don't have a good strategy, a sharp idea, maybe a new idea.

the magic of "smart brevity" is in the book, which a lot of great businesses have at smartbrevity.com and we can get you the book instantly. it shows you step by step, how to isolate your idea and just say it. that's the magic. i came up as a political reporter in newspapers, we were paid to write words, the more words we wrote, the better play we got for our stories. the more words you wrote, maybe you were going to get a prize. it was all about the reporter or the publisher. and what we're saying with "smart brevity," whether you're an intern trying to talk to your boss, whether you're someone who leads a team, whether you're a teacher -- think about the audience. think about the person who's receiving it. what is the one thing that you want them to remember? because willie, you think about any show, any podcast, any sermon, any article, any piece of content, if we come away from that with one good idea, one thing to remember, that's a win.

and "smart brevity" leans into that. people are going to remember one thing we're going to say. here's how to say it sharply, clearly, muscularly, memorably. >> hey, jim, let's make this quick, you list five things to ? >> i think there's a bunch of things you can do, but one is just sit down and distill your thought into what is the one thing you hope to get people to stick, that one thing that will clarify how you write. write it in as few words as possible. write it in your own voice. that is the biggest mistake communicators make. for some reason, whenever we get behind a computer, we get starch in our shirt and throw out s.a.t. words or acronyms. speak like a human and be respectful of people's time. understand that you're not the audience, they're the audience. the average person spends at best 18 to 20 seconds on a piece of content. so you have to grab them by the

lapel, say this is what's important, this is why it matters, make sure you put the most important information at the top. they'll want to listen to you and hear from you. stuart butterfield, i was watching him on stage and he's the ceo of slack. he was saying any business leader, manager probably spends 70% of their time communicating and yet nobody teaches you how to communicate better. that's what we hope to do with this book. very simple, executable steps to be a much better communicator so you can be a better person at work, a better person at school, a better teacher, a better leader of your community. >> "smart brevity: the power of saying more with less." axios co-founders, great to see you. congratulationses on the book. coming up, can legislation on capitol hill prevent another january 6th? members of congress are eyeing a bipartisan bill aimed at preventing future attempts to

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a beautiful live picture of seattle just before 6:00 in the morning, just before 9:00 on the east coast, and just before 2:00 in the afternoon here in london. i'm willie geist. joe and mika are back with us tomorrow. katty kay, mike barnicle still with us. a few hours for attorneys from the justice department and former president donald trump will appear at a hearing before the court-appointed special master in the mar-a-lago documents case. the hear willing take place at a federal courthouse before judge raymond dearie where he serves as a u.s. district judge for the

eastern district of new york. joining us now from outside that courthouse in brooklyn, nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard. what should we expect today? >> reporter: we're waiting for that meeting to take place at about 2:00 p.m. eastern time. this is going to be the first time in which the two sides have met up with the appointed special master here. of course judge dearie is the longtime senior federal judge here at the court in brooklyn, and this is going to be an opportunity for the two sides with him to work through what the schedule looks like ahead. now, it's important to note that he provided a draft plan to both sides, and yet each of the sides, the prosecutors as well as trump's attorneys, put forward their own proposals about what this process should look like. it's worth noting that judge dearie suggested that the time line is looking at is having this process done and completed by october 7th. that would be 2 1/2 weeks from

now. that's an expedited process but it's also worth noting that he asked the trump attorneys what documents they intended to provide evidence for the declassification of. this is important to note because trump's attorneys have pushed back. in their response yesterday evening they said they did not wish to provide any evidence that donald trump ever declassified any of this material, suggesting that it would be key to his defense if he were to be indicted on criminal charges. again, that is where there's much to be discussed and much to be put forward by the two sides ult my determined by judge dearie this afternoon, and this as well the 11th circuit court of appeals could potentially take up the stay request which could allow this process to move forward when it comes to these documents. it was on friday that the department of justice appealed to the 11th circuit court of appeals in atlanta to have a stay go forward so the doj could

continue it investigation of these 100 classified documents at this time. at this time, the 11th circuit court of appeals has not issued that stay, which has allowed this meeting with the special master to go forward this afternoon. willie? >> vaughn, stay with us. we want to continue this conversation with nbc news investigations correspondent tom winter. good morning. so, donald trump's attorneys said in a filing last night they do not want to disclose to judge dearie which mar-a-lago documents they assert the former president may or may not have classified. donald trump at one point when this came to light about the documents in mar-a-lago said he'd effectively waved his hand and declassified his documents. that's a claim sort of laugh aid way by people like bill barr and john bolton and other vids to -- advisers to the president. what does this sound like to you? >> exactly what they said, they don't want to give away two arguments they potentially have,

one, a rule 41 motion to challenge the search warrant's existence period, in other words, to go after the reason why this search occurred and to have all those documents and materials returned to him, which would effectively end that avenue of the investigation for federal prosecutors. they still have a lot of documents, but it would stop the mar-a-lago search component if they were to succeed in court. the chances of that, legal experts say, are probably not very high, but it's at least an argument they could make by klis closing this to the special master, and, this is important, federal prosecutors in the view of the special master, they would have to assert which documents the president declassified, they would be giving away that argument. also, if they say this case went to indictment, they would be giving away a potential defense and kind of disclosing the types of things they would assert the former president declassified on his way out of office. that's kind of the two-pronged conundrum, if you will,