the tube but being in person watching sports. if all you have is the tv, go for it. it'll make you happier, according to the survey. >> pollsters clearly didn't talk to too many red sox fans when putting together those optimistic numbers. margaret talev, thank you very much. we appreciate it. >> thanks. >> thanks to all of you for getting up "way too early" on this tuesday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. three precious little kids lost their lives, and i believe three adults. and the shooter, of course, lost their life, too. it's a horrible, horrible situation. we're not going to fix it. criminals are going to be criminals. my daddy fought in the second world war, fought in the pacific, fought the japanese. he said, "buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn't mind losing your life, there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it." >> that is republican congressman tim burchett of tennessee reacting to the deadly school shooting in his state,

saying no laws existing or proposed could have ) what happened yesterday in nashville. >> such a deeply offensive thing to say. it really is. if this had been a muslim shooter, we would have seen a thousand bills proposed for more things for homeland security to do. willie, the idea that every time a horrific tragedy like this happens, if you even talk about trying to do something to make our school safer for our children, people say, "oh, there's nothing you can do." they say you can do something for everything else but this. that's why you find ourselves in a position where our children are afraid to go to school. >> this is the leading cause of death. >> it is the leading cause of death among children. you know, it wasn't always that way. i was explaining to some people a bit younger than me yesterday,

that when colubine happened, it was a shock to the system. that was really something that massive had happened, and we thought it was a one off. then a movie theater in aurora, colorado, and then it just started rolling, virginia tech. for people who say it's always got to be this way, no, it doesn't. it didn't used to be this way. until, i have to say, the extreme glorification of guns and hyper individualism that suggests all the rules that used to apply no longer apply anymore. >> what we heard from the congressman was the throw up your hands argument against doing anything about gun safety. what are you going to do? there are a lot of crazy people in the world. sometimes they're going to walk into a little presbyterian

school in green hills, in nashville, and kill three 9-year-olds and three teachers. before we get to the awful details of the story, most of america disagrees with him. we've talked about this so many times. the wide spread support of universal background checks, for safe storage. are you against safe storage of a weapon? no gun owner i know is. are you against red flag laws so people who might commit harm cannot purchase a ar-15? most of america says, no, we're for those things. it is a small minority but a loud and powerful one that is controlling the conversation right now. >> that's the thing, mika. the overwhelming majority of americans want more gun safety laws. the overwhelming majority of republicans want more gun safety laws. the overwhelming number of members of the nra want more gun safety laws. they want universal background checks. they want these red flag laws. they would love -- every gun

owner i know would love tougher gun laws, forcing safe storage at home. because every gun owner like myself, they're locked up. they're safe. they're accessible, but they're locked up and they're safe from children or from somebody else who may be troubled, who would get that gun and cause harm to others. >> yeah. you know what kids want? they want to feel safe at school. we've had a mental health crisis in this country. we also have a generation of children who have grown up thinking that somebody may burst into their classroom and kill them. that's not a blanket statement that's exaggerated at all. this is what our children face. this is what our children talk about. and our children don't want to go to school and get killed. yet, today, we're going to talk about three 9-year-olds that went to school and were gunned down, were shot to death. that is where we are again, to talk about a mental health

crisis and an epidemic across our country. >> right. >> with mental health and guns, the leading cause of death in children. >> yeah. and you look at tennessee specifically, the gun laws there. they're just so permissive. it's just extraordinary. just so permissive. you can look at data. people can say, oh, you're blaming -- where there's more guns, there's more gun death. it's that simple. in one study after another study after another study after another study. willie, you have little kids that are shot up and killed in a christian school in nashville. you have people going to a grocery store in buffalo that are gunned down. we could just keep going down the list. we can just keep going all the way back to sandy hook ten years

ago. even before that, like i said, virginia tech and these other tragedies. the tragedies keep coming. you're just a -- and i have to say, and i'd say this about anything -- you're just a loser if you say, "oh, our little children keep getting gunned down in school. this didn't used to happen, but it is happening now. my daddy fought in world war ii, and there is nothing we can do about it." doesn't make sense. are you that scared of an extreme element in your base? are you that scared of the nra? i have to tell you, the majority -- one of these days, people in congress are going to give a damn about what the majority of americans think. one of these days, they're actually going to have rules in the united states senate where you don't need, like, 89, you know, people to do what 90% of

americans want. 90% of americans want increased -- they wantchecks. they want all these things you're talking about. we're letting yahoos run around, thinking there is nothing they can do about it. members of congress put their little children on christmas cards that have ar-15s there. like, is that what jesus wants? these people, it's just another example, and we see it all the time -- and this is also in the data -- people identify themselves as christians who actually don't believe in the faith. like, christian nationalism, which, weirdly enough, bizarrely enough, ignores everything that jesus said in the gospels. instead, focuses on this hyper individualistic, hyper violent, a set of facts. we even have one member of

congress whose name doesn't deserve repeating this morning, one member of congress telling constituents that if jesus had an ar-15, he would not have been crucified. where do you even begin with someone saying if jesus had an ar-15, we wouldn't have been crucified, and god's perfect plan for humanity, as over a billion christians believ, god's perfect plan for humanity never would have happened. she celebrates that. it's really sick, willie. it's really twisted. and we're getting tired of doing this, but it just keeps happening. i talked to a young mother yesterday who talked about taking her daughter to school for the first day. she broke down in tear. she said, "i didn't break down in tears for the reason that my mom broke down in tears, because she missed me.

i broke down in tears because i've seen too many stories where" -- her daughter was going to a jewish school, and there were threats there. she's seen too many stories where parents drop children off at school, and then they're walking with police trying to identify them because they've been so shot up with ar-15s. this is a sickness. it's not an american sickness. let's be very clear about this. because 90% of americans want to do something about this. this is a sickness among a small subset of americans who have twisted and perverted the meaning of the second amendment in a way that is unrecognizable and is leading to the deaths of our children, leading to parishioners in christian churches, leading to the death of jewish worshippers in synagogues, leading to people going out shopping for

groceries, leading to people being gunned down at sporting events, leading to people -- i could just go on and on and on. willie, it just keeps happening. countries -- you know, we had so many people gunned down at a country music festival in las vegas. that was, like, a one or two-day story. we never really figured out what the hell happened there. because these mass murders just keep coming every day, and we have losers in washington, d.c., losers, who would be fired from any other job if they said, "yeah, boss, we've got something that's killing people, and we can't do anything about it." three kids. i read yesterday somewhere, three kids were killed by lawn darts back in the 1970s. they were banned.

like, when kids start dying from faulty products or kids start dying for other reasons, the government steps in. the people step in. the people's representatives step in. but with guns, willie, let's just read the news but let's end it where mika started it, the number one killer of children in america, guns. it's unbelievable. >> yeah. used to be motor vehicle accidents and now it's guns. it's a public health crisis on top of everything else you just talked about. we're not even talking, joe, about an assault weapons ban that president biden proposed. we're talking about things that, perhaps, on the margins, might stop somebody, like the person yesterday who killed three 9-year-olds in a little school in nashville. here's the details. six people,t:@■ including the t children, are dead following a school shooting that's left a

community shattered and, of course, heartbroken. evelyn dishhouse, william kinney, and hallie shruggs were gunned down inside the covenant school, a small school in nashville. mike hill, 61. 61-year-old cynthia peak, substitute teacher. and katherine koonce, the head of the school, was killed. a 28-year-old transgender person, the shooter, was armed with two assault style weapons and a handgun. surveillance video shows the shooter blasting into the school yesterday morning, shooting in. the rest of the video shows the shooter stalking the hallways with the rifle. police say all of the victims were shot in a common area on the second floor of the school and the suspect was firing at police cars through a window when the officers arrived. two officers did return fire, killing the shooter just about 15 minutes after the suspect

first made entry into the school. investigators say the shooting had been carefully planned. the attack had detailed maps and surveillance, but the students likely were shot at random. police also believe the suspect planned shootings at several other locations if not stopped there. there's one photo, in particular, that illustrates the terror and trauma experienced by students, families and staff. this picture captured by photographer nicole hester, showing children on a bus being taken to a reunification center at a nearby church. that is where parents were anxiously waiting for an update on their children, to find out if they were alive or dead. look at that face. tennessean reports state senator campbell spent hours at the site, which was just 2 miles from the school. she described it as the, quote, worst waiting room she's ever been in. one mother was in the room when she found out her child had been killed. campbell telling the paper, she

heard the woman's primal scream and that it took several hours to reunify other parents with their children. she went on to say, quote, it did not have to happen. we have a horrible gun control in our country. joining us from nashville, democratic state representative of tennessee, bob freeman. mr. representative, i'm so sorry, what's happened in your community. it's a special place to me. i went to college in nashville. i know that area well. i know that church well. tell us how your community is doing this morning on this shocking, shocking day. >> yeah. thanks for having me on. sorry it is under these conditions. yesterday was absolutely horrible. i started receiving phone calls from friends and friends of friends around 10:30, asking for any help i could get to get any information they had on their children. they didn't know, as senator campbell said earlier, they were at the unification site and just didn't know where their kids were. as a parent myself, and a parent

of a 10-year-old, right in the same age range, i can't even begin to imagine what that felt like. i was just watching the videos before this came on of the shooter breaking into the school. it's just terrifying, heartbreaking, angering. here in tennessee, we've -- we actually, instead of restricting guns, we actually continue to expand them. we've got a serious problem, and we know it. we're just afraid to do anything about it. >> so, representative freeman, can you talk a little bit about the gun laws in the state of tennessee? most of the country isn't familiar with the particulars of it. what do you think might be done in your legislature to prevent something like this from happening again? >> i think red flag laws would be a great first start, to identify somebody in crisis. flag them, allow law enforcement to step in, to try to do something about it. to extend the waiting period, to

expand the age in which you can conceal and carry. we have bills right now running through the legislature that cold allow people as young as 18 to carry long guns in public without a license anywhere within our state. we're going the wrong way. there are solutions out there. we just need to be brave enough to take them. mr. representative, tennessee has permit list carry, is that correct? you don't have to have a permit, don't have to have training to be able to carry around guns? >> that's absolutely correct. they're trying to expand it to people as young as 18. so anybody 18 and up can carr , at any time with no training, no license, no certification that they are qualified to do so. >> and you're an open carry state, as well? >> we are.

>> yeah, so -- >> it's -- >> the only reason i -- >> it's a -- >> the only reason i -- yeah, it's a broken culture. i will tell you, i had somebody close to me who actually owns guns. grew up in a gun culture. i know this might be hard for some people to believe, but they have children. they said that they got tired of walking around nashville having people carrying around guns outside. going into grocery stores, going into -- you know, people carrying it. just said that it was -- you know, they didn't want to live there. they actually left the state because the gun laws in tennessee have become so radicalized. so when this happened yesterday, you know, i'm sure everybody is saying, thoughts and prayers and everything, yet, the radical gun culture -- listen, i'm not -- i'm not afraid to have guns. i've got several guns. but, you know, in the state of

florida, at least the way it used to be, i had to take a course. i had to do training. i had to apply. it actually took me a year to get -- i thought it was too long, but i actually had to wait to get a carry permit here. and, in tennessee, it's just -- the laws are crazy. >> well, listen, when this bill passed a couple years ago, the tbi, law enforcement, sheriffs, they spoke out about how this would be dangerous for not only the citizens but the law enforcement. it passed anyway. you know, yesterday, i was speaking to another group about exactly this, what could we do? i spoke a little bit about red flag laws and, you know, maybe extending the age that you can legally conceal carry. instead of getting phone calls from people across the state saying this is great -- i did get some of those -- but i

rezee received hundreds of phone calls threatening me, calling me a coward, saying they were going to come after me. the culture, special interest and lobby is such a stranglehold. i wish those people could have been with me last night when i was sitting in my church, where one of the children deceased went to. to see the little girls and little boys that were in her sunday school class walk in, one after another, see each other, give each other hugs, you know, it's unbelievable. we lost six lives, seven lives yesterday, that could have absolutely been averted had we, you know, done something about it. you know, we're going to continue to pray. we're going to continue to, you know, thoughts and prayers. somebody else in my position is going to have this same conversation in another city

because, quite frankly, until we change our leadership and get some people with some real backbone in there, it's not going to change. there's going to be no meaningful law change in tennessee from this that i can see. it's heartbreaking. >> yeah, it is heartbreaking. everything about this, representative freeman, is heartbreaking. what's also heartbreaking is those people that you were talking about, they could have been with you. they could have seen everything. they just wouldn't have cared. they really wouldn't have cared. i talk to these people. i know these people. they just don't care. they have this twisted view of hyper individualism, where america is all about their hyper individualistic rights and no responsibilities. no responsibilities are linked to that. some people pushing back on doing what i do, and what i'm sure you and other responsible gun owners do, and make sure that our guns are locked up even in our own house. we make sure that everybody

around is protected. again, it's just so disheartening. what is next, though? i mean, again, for the state of tennessee, it seems that all of these laws are becoming even more extreme. even when cops, even when sheriffs are begging representatives not to do these things that put our children at risk. >> yeah. you know, the sad thing is, behind closed doors, i've had several members come up to me and kind of tell me, golly, they don't like this bill or don't think it is needed, but they have to run a gun bill this year, or else somebody is going to beat them from the right. we've got to have, again, people stand up and be courageous, grow a backbone, and do what they know is right. because the people passing the laws know, in some cases, know that what they're doing is not

right. it's going to take the people of tennessee to speak up and, you know, really make their voices be heard. you know, as you said earlier, the majority of people want some type of gun control. they want licenses. if we're going to have this good guy with a gun theory, we need to ensure that only good people are getting guns. >> yeah. >> right now, we have nothing. we are allowing anybody at any point, anywhere, to get a gun, carry a gun. joe, you said, i'm an gun owner, outdoorsman. my guns are locked away. i have regular conversations with my kids. when we have friends over, we have conversations with their parents. we're open and honestg5é about . quite frankly, this is making me rethink that. do we need as many guns as we've got in our culture today? i don't think we do. >> yeah. you're a gun owner. i'm a gun owner.

you know, i talk to, you know, everybody i grew up with with, whether it was first baptist church in meridian or in pensacola, florida. so many of them were gun owners. they went out hunting from an early age. not one of them, not one of them thinks that open carry is a good idea. every one of them supports red flag laws. every one of them supports universal background checks. every one of them is against open carry. they don't think they need ar-15s to go around at -- well, i'll just stop there. i mean, the numbers are devastating. you know, twice as many people have already been killed by guns in america in the first three months of 2023 than died in over a decade of war in iraq and afghanistan. twice as many. that's where we are.

representative, listen, our thoughts and prayers are with you, the people of your district, all the people who are in so much pain this morning. our thoughts and prayers are also with the representatives that you work with, that maybe they will put -- they'll put the fears of parents, the concerns and fears of parents about their kids in school above their own political fears and speak out like you do. thank you for being with us. >> thanks for coming on. >> thank you. it's time for action. thank you. >> yes, it is. as we noted, the number one cause of death for children isn't car accidents, cancer or any other form of disease. it is guns. according to the gun violence archive, nearly 1,700 young people under the age of 17 lost their lives in the over 44,000 acts of gun violence in 2022. this epidemic of gun violence, which has already resulted in 131 mass shootings this year,

2023 alone, appears to be uniquely american. compared to other countries, other western countries, the united states is losing more children to guns by a massive margin. since 2000, the number of children dying by firearms has skyrocketed. we'll have much more on yesterday's school shooting in nashville. we'll talk to the city's mayor ahead. plus, white house press secretary karine jean-pierre will join us to weigh in on the president's renewed push for an assault weapons ban. also ahead this morning, the former publisher of the "national inquirer" testifies again in the manhattan d.a.'s investigation into donald trump. and the latest from israel, as prime minister benjamin netanyahu pauses a plan to overhaul the country's judiciary. we'll get a live report from tel-aviv. and as we go to break, we want to welcome those of you watching us, streaming live on peacock for the first time.

thanks to the morning news live offering on peacock, we now have our very own "morning joe" channel. you can stream our show live every weekday from 6:00 to 10:00 a.m. eastern. for more information, head over to peacocktv.com/morningjoe. we'll be right back. kyle? and while romeo over here is trying to look cool, things are about to heat up. uh-oh. darn it, kyle! and if you don't have the right home insurance coverage, you could end up paying for this yourself. sorry mr. sanchez! get allstate, and be better protected from mayhem, like me. that's a hard no. first, there's an idea and you do something about it for the first time with godaddy. then before you know it, (it is a life changer...) you make your first sale. small business first. never stopped coming. (we did it!) and you have a partner that always puts you first way.

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okay everyone, our mission is complete balanced nutrition. together we provide nutrients to support immune, muscle, bone, and heart health. yaaay! woo hoo! ensure with 25 vitamins and minerals and ensure complete with 30 grams of protein. ♪ aren't you guys tired of being here and having to cover these mass shootings? i'm from illinois. my son and i survived a mass shooting over the summer. i am in tennessee on a family vacation with my son, visiting my sister-in-law. i have been lobbying in d.c. since we survived a mass shooting in july. i have met with over 130 lawmakers. how is this still happening? how are our children still dying, and why are we failing them? >> that was an extraordinary

moment yesterday. a survivor of the mass shooting at the fourth of july parade in highland park, illinois, happened to be in nashville when shots rang out at the covenant school. ashley beasley and her son hid when gunfire broke out during that fourth of july parade in highland park last summer. seven people were killed in that shooting. now, beasley is an advocate for gun safely legislation. she stepped in front of the microphone after a press briefing to talk about that shooting there in nashville. let's bring in the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at "politico," jonathan lemire. bbc's katty kay. and columnist at "the washington post," eugene robinson. good morning to you all. john, i'll start with you. for the president having to step in front of microphone yet again, saying this is a dark day for the country. he called on congress to pass his assault weapons ban. that's a non-starter for republicans. what more can the president do? does he have anything else here? >> sadly familiar ritual for president biden, to stand before

the microphones, go in front of the cameras in the wake of another mass shooting. there's not much that'll get done. after the uvalde shooting, the massacre of young children last year, there was a bipartisan effort for some gun safety regulations. some stuff got done. but everyone involved, even in the moment, said, this is modest at best. it's a step in the right direction, but it's a small step. there doesn't appear to be any appetite for that now, particularly with a divided congress. republicans have control of the house of representatives. president biden renewed his call for an assaults weapon ban. he'll surely do so today when he travels to north carolina. there is no suggestion that will go anywhere. white house aides tell me they're looking at the margins, if there's more executive orders, executive actions that can be done. it's unclear what those will be and if they'll make any meaningful difference. they're ramp up the rhetoric, keep the pressure on republicans to try to get something more meaningful done. they're not sure where that will

go. they're left with, as one aide put it to me, just another moment where, you know, we have failed the children of this country. they've failed the children of this country who are terrified to go to school because of moments like this. >> well, this happens time and time and time again. you can go back to sandy hook. you can see where barack obama, even after sandy hook, the horrors of sandy hook, congress wouldn't move. congress wouldn't do anything. they finally did something after ten years of pressure after sandy hook and uvalde. that combined together actually got some modest gun safety reform. it's a step in the right >> it's a step. we need to make another step toward safety, protecting the second amendment and protecting our kids. you know what? those two things can be done at the same time. right now, though, it is so twisted, the imbalance is so twisted. our kids keep getting gunned down. they keep getting killed. christians, they go to church,

keep getting gunned down. jewish worshippers that go to synagogues keep getting gunned down. people that go to country music festivals keep getting gunned down. grocery shoppers gunned down. movie-goers gunned down. >> nightclubs. >> it just continues. it continues. so far, in 2023, 131 mass shootings. katty kay, i won't even waste my breath asking you if europe understands, if britain understands what's going on here. we've seen examples of mass shootings in australia. the country moves. they moved to make a difference. new zealand, a mass shooting, the country moves. look at these statistics in the united states. what our lawmakers allow to happen every single day. guns, the number one killer of

kids in america. if you look at that number, we're not that far out there because we just have a lot more people than other countries. that's per 100,000. that is per capita. the united states, katty, still with this screwed up, sick culture that a subset of americans worship, that's the impact. this only happens in the united states. >> yeah, i mean, you answered your own question, joe, when you asked whether you're not going to waste your breath asking what the rest of the world makes of this. you're right, this is america's exceptional problem. it don't happen. i'm in london. i watched school kids going along the street to school. those children are not going to be gunned down.

those parents will not be worried. united kingdom, they had a school shooting decades changed. you are more likely to die by a gun in the united states than the united kingdom because they changed the laws. why is guns the leading cause of death for children in america? the laws around safety in cars was changed. america is capable of changing laws, implementing safety laws to regulate things like seat belts, so that children do not die in car accidents in the way they used to. but they're not capable of doing it around guns. that's -- you know, it is american democracy not working to reflect the will of the people on an issue that is, as you pointed out many times, we've spoken about it on the program, you said it again this morning, the majority of american people, we saw it there with the politico poll, 63% of americans want more gun safety in the country. america's democracy, the institutions of democracy, don't

work to reflect the majority will, and that is a uniquely american president bush. >> -- problem. >> eugene robinson, we heard from a congressman on capitol hill, and we hear it after every shooting, what are you going to do? there are bad people who want to do bad things. you can't stop all the shootings. that can't be an acceptable answer. we can't say, sometimes a 9-year-old is going to go to their school in nashville and not come home because somebody charges into the school with an ar-15 and kills them inside their school. how do we break this conversation? how do we get through, that this can't be the way it is in america? >> willie, it is sickening. when you hear remarks like that, it makes me want to throw up. we're going in the wrong direction on guns in this country. and that's -- that's absolutely

incredible. with the carnage that we're seeing every single year, with the children who are dying every single year, and we're going in the wrong direction. loosening the gun laws further in tennessee, which already has these incredibly loose gun laws. you know, when he wrote the famous or infamous heller decision, justice antonin scalia made clear that there can be gun control. there can be reasonable gun control under the second amendment. so our elected officials are complicit in this slaughter because they have the tools to stop it. they have the tools to vastly reduce it. they refuse to do it. it is the most outrageous thing. once again, you have families

who are devastated. you have children who are traumatized. you have a city that will never be the same after a shooting like this. nc after sandy hook. that's when 90% of americans started supporting universal background checks. that's when a majority of americans started supporting a ban on ar-15 military style

weapons. that's when the majority of americans started supporting red flag laws. you can go down the list. i don't know the exact specifics of all of them, but we saw a break there. we also -- we read stories, and maybe you can help out here, during the 2020 óu

>> what the impacts of the bullets did to those kids. one a young child. the other a teenager in high school. it is devastating. it is devastating to see what happened there. that is what will continue to happen until something is done.

>> we'll have the reporter behind that investigation later on in the show. we're going to be showing that graphic, as well. we'll talk about, also, whether lawmakers can get anything done on gun safety when senator dick durbin, the chamber's number two democrat, joins the conversation. plus, a look at where things stand in israel this morning after weeks of protests across that country. "morning joe" is back in a moment. because it could be peyronie's disease, or pd. it's a medical condition where there is a curve in the erection, caused by a formation of scar tissue. and an estimated 1 in 10 men may have it. but pd can be treated even without surgery. say goodbye to searching online. find a specialized urologist who can diagnose pd and build a treatment plan with you. visit makeapdplan.com today. - this is our premium platinum coverage map and this is consumer cellular's map. - i don't see the difference, do you? - well, that one's purple.

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47 past the hour. protest leaders in israel are calling for continued demonstrations despite prime minister benjamin netanyahu's move to delay his judicial overhaul plan. protesters want the prime minister to completely abandon it. mass protests erupted across the country on sunday and continued yesterday after the israeli defense minister was fired for speaking out against the plan.

the country's main trade union also went on strike but ended it after netanyahu's announcement. his overhaul plan would allow the government to select judges and overturn supreme court decisions. joining us live from tel-aviv is nbc news foreign correspondent raf sanchez. raf, what's the latest at this point? >> reporter: well, mika, good morning. there is a sense of weary calm here in tel-aviv today. i will tell you, it felt for a lot of israelis sunday into monday like their country was going off a cliff after netanyahu abruptly fired his defense minister. you saw these enormous protests blocking main roads like this one in tel-aviv. then this unprecedented general strike yesterday which paralyzed the economy. it shut the country's airport. it closed banks and businesses all over israel. today, following netanyahu's announcement that he is at least putting on pause his plan to weaken the supreme court, that

strike has been called off. businesses are open again. in terms of the protesters, they have no major demonstrations planned today, but they say they do not assume netanyahu is acting in good faith here. i spoke to one of the protest leaders a few minutes ago. she fears the prime minister is trying to lull them into a false sense of security before bringing this legislation up again, possibly in a couple of weeks. now, in terms of the politics, the opposition parties here in israel have agreed that they will sit down with netanyahu. they will try to see if there is some kind of compromise that can be thrashed out. they, too, are very weary that this may be a smoke screen, that netanyahu may be going into talks to give himself time to regroup. in terms of the biden administration, they have been expressing their concerns from the president on down, really, for weeks now, about the deep divisions netanyahu's plan has

been eroding into israeli society. listen to what the white house press secretary had to say yesterday following the prime minister's announcement. >> we welcome this announcement as an opportunity to create additional time and space for compromise. compromise is precisely what we have been calling for. we continue to strongly urge israeli leaders to find a compromise as soon as possible. >> reporter: mika, there were some warm words from the white house yesterday, but there's a lot of concern, both in washington and here in tel-aviv, about the concessions that netanyahu has had to make to the far right of his coalition in order to get them to agree to this delay. one of these is he is allowing for the creation of a national guard, something that israel has not had before, under the national security ministry. in charge of that national guard will be bengavere, one of the most far right members of netanyahu's cabinet, a man with criminal conditions for inciting racism and supporting a

terrorist group. protesters in israel are extremely concerned about what it'll mean for them, if this national guard is formed. the feeling here, this is not over yet. very possible these protesters may be back on the streets sometime soon. guys? >> nbc's raf sanchez, thank you very much for your reporting. joining us now, the president on the council of foreign relations, richard haass. what do you make of the fact that netanyahu has just put off his plans? it appears the people of israel, those protesters, are not buying it. >> well, he had to make a choice between keeping his government together, mika, or keeping his country together. he punted. he'll try to buy a few weeks through the passover holiday. we'll see. there may be some compromise, maybe, on this judicial reform issue. there's a couple components on it. as you just heard from your correspondent, there's other things he can do to satisfy his far right government. let me make a larger point.

i think this is about a much more than the specific reforms. i think what you're seeing in israel are people coming out in the streets because they're worried about the future of the country. they're worried about the divide between religious israelis and secular israelis. how does israel deal with the palestinian issue? this is a struggle for israel's future as much as it is something more specific about how the supreme court in israel is going to operate. >> well, this was remarkable, richard. what we've seen over the past several days, have you seen anything like this, such civil unrest in israel? have you even read about it since its founding in 1948? >> no, joe, this is unprecedented. again, i think it is because -- and i lived in israel for a year. i spent a lot of time there as a diplomat. i think what happened here is the cumulative changes in israel for demographic reasons, for political reasons, finally reached a point, and this

judicial reform proposal was the tipping point. people came out in the streets because they said, wow, if this happens, this is no longer a liberal democracy. essentially, it becomes an illiberal democracy. no, i've never seen this kind of broad pushback in that society. >> obviously, netanyahu wanted to go the way of orban, wanted to go the way that trump has been wanting to go for quite some time. wanted to move away from western democracy, liberal democracy, and become an illiberal state just like hungary. very, very bad direction for the israeli people. they stood up against the plan. gene robinson, i know you have a question for richard haass, but i wanted to talk to you first about this. it really is remarkable, what happened over the weekend. we sort of saw in israel what we saw in the united states leading up to january 6th. you had all of the secretaries

of defense sign a letter saying, army, navy, air force, marines, stay out of politics. you, of course, had the chairman of the joint chiefs, milley, stepping up and pushing back hard. in israel, you have the same thing. netanyahu was cornered. it was the military establishment and the security establishment that was pushing back the hardest. >> exactly. netanyahu was really in an impossible position. he had gone too far, even for members of his very right-wing government. this was just unacceptable. clearly, so clearly being rejected by huge percentage of the israeli population. they saw the country being torn apart, and that, to the security

establishment, was not acceptable. i guess my question to richard haass is, you know, is this all netanyahu, in his eternal quest for power, to have power, accumulate more power, to stay in power, and is there anal tern -- alternative to more years of netanyahu and israel going in, what many people see, as a calamitous direction? >> he makes whatever deal is necessary to keep himself in power, but i also think it is something else. i think it'll transcend netanyahu. this is a somewhat different country. if you look at the satistics about the society, the years of immigration from russia, a much more conservative group. more israelis are devout

religiously. people in the streets are probably more secular and liberal. as a result, the tensions in israeli society now transcend netanyahu and his own, immediate, short-term efforts to keep himself out of jail, to keep himself in power. i think there is something underneath, almost tectonic plates are colliding in that society. to me, it's more worrying. it is not as simple as the machinations of one politician. >> richard, let's shift and talk about africa, a continent that many people in the united states ceded to china in recent years. china's investments vast across africa. the vice president, kamala harris, is there now, beginning her multi-day trip to africa. one of many visits by administration fush officials t year to africa, including president biden probably this fall. she pledged the u.s. stands with the continent. are you seeing that happen beyond rhetoric? is that something where this administration is taking

concrete steps to enact? >> i think it is great she's there. people forget, africa is the part of the world where you will have, by far, the largest demographic increases the next couple decades. africa is going to go up by over a billion people. at the same time, europe, asia, much of the rest of the world is going to be shrinking and aging. demographically, africa is on a totally different trajectory. no, we don't have enough there. we don't have enough aid. we don't have enough trade. no diplomatic endangerment. a lot of africa was disappointed we didn't make vaccines available cheaply, readily, during the pandemic. we went to africa and said, hey, support us in ukraine, impose russia. a lot said, no, thank you. the last, big, africa initiative that was successful, probably saved 20, 30 million lives in africa because we had vaccines available against hiv and aids. the united states needs to think larger about africa. we're talking about over 50 countries south of the sahara. some are modelled with

democracy. some are anything but. nigeria and south africa are in terrible condition politically. it's not easy to fashion a policy. we need to put more focus on it. >> all right. coming you on "morning joe," we're going to have a look at the stories making front page headlines across the country. plus, a live report from nashville for the latest on the deadly shooting at an elementary school. "morning joe" is coming right back. and helps prevent asthma attacks. fasenra is not for sudden breathing problems or other eosinophilic conditions. allergic reactions may occur. don't stop your asthma treatments without talking with your doctor. tell your doctor if your asthma worsens. headache and sore throat may occur. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. get back to better breathing. ask your doctor about fasenra.

that wants to take someone's handgun or shotgun or hunting rifle away from 'em. we don't need an assault rifle with 30-shot capacity on our street. it's not safe for our police. it's not safe for anybody. so please don't say you're pro life and then vote to put more weapons on the street.

>> representative mitchell, you are -- >> i was speaking. >> you need to -- i'm -- representative -- no. representative mitchell, you're out of order. you can continue, but you have to stay under welcoming and honoring. you know that, sir. >> i'll tell you one thing,cn there's six people today i can't welcome and honor anymore into this -- into this hollowed house. so y'all just think about those six people we never welcome in here anymore. just think if your guns are worth it. >> wow. tennessee state lawmaker bo mitchell who represents nashville made those comments yesterday after spending time at the reunification center for families and students of the covenant school. he told "the tennessean," quote, you need to hear the sound of the mother when she was told she'd never see her child again. i have never heard a sound like that. he added, quote, i didn't have

one person ask me for thoughts and prayers today. they asked me for courage to come down here and do something. jonathan lemire, richard haass, katty kay and eugene robinson still with us. former aid to the george w. bush white house and state departments, elise jordan. msnbc political analyst and former senator, claire mccaskill. joe, among the millions of questions that surround the topic of what is it going to take, i understand that some gun-toting tennesseans may not want to hear from us or from the man we just heard from. what about their own children? i'm wondering, if their own children say they're scared to go to school, they're scared that when they go to school, that they might be shot to death with an adult weapon that blows up their body, are they really beginning to say to that child, "well, there's just nothing you can do. we can just pray it doesn't

happen." >> that's what they're saying. that's the thing. >> is that what you're going to say to your child? >> that's what they always say. when people go to a country music concert and get gunned down from a tall building, from a hotel, and are literally just sitting ducks, shot and gunned down and slaughtered for going to a country music concert. that's what they say. when people go to church in texas -- >> so you don't even want to try. >> -- and parishioners are gunned down, that's what they say. when people go to synagogues in pittsburgh and are gunned down, that's what they say. when they go to grocery stores in buffalo, that's what they say. when our children, since sandy hook, have lived in a world of absolute horror, where these horrid, horrid stories change their lives, impact their lives

emotionally, invade their dreams, they don't want to hear anything. despite the fact that those of us who were gun owners, those of us who have always been supporters and defenders of the second amendment, understand that something has gone radically wrong over the past quarter century. columbine, that was supposed to be the exception to the rule. but then we had the theater in aurora. then we had the shooting at virginia tech. then we had sandy hook. then we had one mass shooting after another. it continues to pile up, claire mccaskill. what's happened is that supporting the second amendment went from supporting people being able to have a shotgun or

a handgun, which, by the way, is the only thing that is protected, actually, under the constitution of the united states. if you read the second amendment and heller. but it's this hyper individualism over the past 20 years, this extremism that says, "i want all my rights, even rights that i haven't had before. give me more rights. i take no responsibility. and i'm going to take pictures of my children holding ar-15s," because of this sick, sick gun culture. that's how they celebrate christmas on their christmas cards. claire, there is nothing, there is nothing normal about this. you have most americans who are repulsed by this activity, by this behavior, by the continued

killing. yet, they just go on. >> well, you know, democracies fail for two reasons. one, there is an effort to undermine the process of electing our leaders. the other way is for the democracy to not be responsive to the will of the people. that's really what we're facing today. i'd love every mother, every grandmother, every father, every grandfather, as they click their child into a car seat today, to think about the situation we're facing in this country. we are clicking children into car seats to save their lives. and this is something that was required by the government because the data was clear, that car seats would save children's lives. americans accepted that. the data is clear.

weapons of war result in mass shootings in america. the only country on the planet where this happens. it is time for the democratic party to start a culture war of their own around this subject. democrats running in swing districts, democrats running in purple states and even red states need to run on guns, on weapons of war being given to kids. in my state, the republicans just voted in block to allow children of any age to openly carry an ar-15. this is so out of step with where most of america is. it is now a stain on our democracy. democrats need to quit hiding from this issue and make it centerpiece in 2024. because it will work. people are tired of this.

it is painful to watch this. i'm sick of it, and i think most americans are, too. >> when you,mika, talk to lifelong republicans who, tears in front of me, just talking about dropping her child off at school. there is a change that's happened. again, this is so important for all of us to remember, because it is easy to think about what happened a week ago or what's going to happen next week. this isn't how america used to be. i'm not talking about going back to the 1950s. i'm talking about even at the turn of the century, this century. you go back 25 years ago, this just wasn't happening. you had columbine, again, which shocked the national

consciousness. we were shocked by columbine. we thought it was a one off. then one mass shooting after another after another started happening. it became an epidemic. and it's just been speeding up. the killing, the slaughtering, the death just speeding up day by day, weekly week, month by month, year by year, to a point now where more people have been killed with guns in the first three months of this year than died in a decade of war for the united states in iraq. think about that. in three months, more americans have been killed by violent acts of guns in the first three months of this year than died in iraq over a decade. over a decade.

mika, 131, i think, mass shootings already this year in the first three months of the year. and. >> we'll go to the scene of yesterday's deadly shooting in nashville, tennessee. msnbc host and reporter yasmin vossoughian is there. what's the latest? >> reporter: so, claire was talking about car seats, mika and joe. i thought a lot about putting your kid to bed at night and how, last night, those parents weren't able to put their three 9-year-olds to bed. when you put your kid to bed, that's when you know they're safe and sound back at your house. they weren't able to do that. we're learning more about the victims. hallie scruggs, the daughter of the pastor at the covenant church behind me attached to the school. evelyn dieckhaus along with william kinney, all just 9 years old. an entire life ahead of them. the custodian, mike hill.

cynthia peak, a substitute teacher, along with katherine koonce, who was the head of the school. all of their lives cut short. those little babies, the 9-year-olds, not going home last night after school. then the release this morning, joe and mika, of the security footage, of the shooter inside that school. we can bring that up now. you see the shooter driving onto campus and then shooting through the side doors of that school. you see it right there, those glass doors which are now under question. should glass doors even be a part of the school, considering how easily this shooter was able to get in. crawling through those doors. the shooter then makes their way up to the second floor, in which you see them kind of peeking around the hallways. we know the shooter attended the school when they were younger. they had detailed maps of the entire school. this was a planned and targeted

shooting. there was a manifesto left behind, as well. it was on the second floor in which the shooter targeted police vehicles as they entered the campus, in which the shooter was ultimately neutralized in 14 minutes from when the call came in, saying there was an active shooter on campus. the police were able to neutralize that shooter. we know the shooter is 28 years old, living as a transgender person. we're learning more and more about this shooter and the possible motive behind it, as well. police telling us they have theories behind the motive. hoping to learn more about that today. here we are again, right? we're coming up on a year, possibly, of uvalde, in may. all those babies lost their lives. as joe said and put it so eloquently, this is happening over and over and over again. covenant is now yet a part of this awful list of school shootings in this country. yet another memorial of building

up behind me with people paying respect to those that lost their lives here yesterday. >> msnbc host and reporter yasmin vossoughian, thank you very much. that video is chipping. >> it is. >> imagine what those children, the entire school, that is a traumatized community, again. again and again and again. >> it is again and again and again. it's just -- richard haass, i just want to keep going back to this. because we have lost something in this country. >> yeah. >> with every one of these tragedies, we lose something in this country. you've written a book about it. in the united states, we've always cherished our rights. it's something that we've talked about. even when, as a country, we didn't give rights to others.

but you had martin luther king talking, you know, using thomas jefferson's own words to talk about the rights, that all men and all women should be given them. it's something where the rights, we've held sacred. our founders said they were from god almighty that we have those rights. but for 220 years, we've had leaders that have talked about the responsibilities that go along with those rights. john kennedy saying, ask not what your country can do for you. ask what you can do for your country. at that time, that was actually seen as a positive political statement. about how we should come together as a people and make

everybody stronger as a nation. but, now, again, i'll just keep saying it, over the past quarter century, this hyper individualism that has just perverted the rights that our founders gave us and twisted it to people asking for more and more and more extreme positions to be taken by their legislators. if you try to do anything reasonable and rationalsuddenly you're an enemy of the state. you're a traitor. you're a communist. we as a nation have got to put our arms around this, and we have to realize that responsibilities go along with rights. without that balance that you wrote about in your book, we are going to face a tough future in this nation. >> absolutely, joe. citizenship is a coin with two

sides. yes, one side is rights, and a lot of american history is all about rights. lincoln's unfinished work in closing the gap between the declaration of independence and our day-to-day reality. obviously, that is central. but there is a big, big but, and you're on it. there's got to be obligations. obligations of everybody on this set and everybody watching this show to one another, and everybody watching this show and on this set to this country of ours. it just can't be a one directional thing of what we're owed. it's also got to be, again, our commitment to one another. yeah, there's gun rights, but what about the obligation to the common good? it's basic to religious scripture, about being one's brother and one's sister's keeper. what happened to that? what we have to do, and claire was getting at this, we have to change the conversation in this country. politicians may not be responsible, but they are

respon responsive. if more americans demand we have obligations as well as rights in the case of guns, yeah, there's a place for responsible gun ownership but it has to be conditioned, the kinds of guns and who have access to them. we began half an hour ago talking about people in the streets in israel, essentially saying that democracy there has gone off the rails. that's what we need to see in this country. people need say, democracy here is going off the rails. there is something fundamentally wrong. we have got to address it. we have got to fix it. we have got to get more involved. it is clearly not fixing itself the way things are going. >> if all you're doing is just sitting around talking about your rights to this, your rights to that, without talking about the responsibilities you have as an american citizen, you've got it twisted. that's not the way our founders saw it. that's not the way we as americans saw it for two centuries. you know, jonathan lemire, we have to balance our rights with

our responsibilities to our kids. right now, we're not doing that. right now, republicans are not doing it. let's just call it out. i'd love to say, generally, this is a problem with all politicians. this is the republican party in 2023. who continue to see children slaughtered and gunned down and say they can't do anything. they see people at church slaughtered and continue to do nothing. people going to synagogues are slaughtered, gunned down, and they do nothing. see people going out to a fourth of july parade in illinois, getting gunned down and slaughtered. they do nothing. forgive me, that wasn't actually -- was that a shooting? >> highland park. >> that's right. i remember, he drove his car, but i forgot if there was a shooting in that. but they continue to see all those mass deaths, these mass shootings.

you go through grocery stores. >> you look at uvalde, where they were outmatched. >> you look at uvalde. here's a perfect example. look at uvalde. >> children. >> don't give me this whole, oh, well, hitler took away the guns. if you take away ar-15s, it'll be like hitler, stalin, whatever. no. look at uvalde where you had a disturbed 18-year-old inside, outgunning everybody that was outside. they were afraid because, because of this hyper individualism. an 18-year-old kid could go in, get ar-15s, and go into a school. look what happened in parkland. you look at what happened in sandy hook. we could keep going on and on. we have to balance the rights that we are given through our constitution, through our bill of rights, and, yes, many of us believe natural rights given to

us from god, and we have to balance those rights with responsibilities that we have to protect our children. in a nation where guns are the number one killer of children, the number one cause of death for children, we're not striking the right balance here, jonathan. >> no, there's no balance whatsoever. the republicans not only are refusing to do anything about guns, they're bending over backwards to try any other thing orr than guns. talking about hardening schools, talking about escape rooms, arming teachers. they come up with these convoluted, impractical ideas, to do anything other than actually restrict the access, not to all guns, just to the weapons of war. just to weapons of war. they won't even do that. elise jordan, we've been being frustrated this morning about this, about how, by the numbers, the nra is not what it used to be. but guns are a culture war

issue, that hyper individualism that joe talks about. there are a loud minority of americans, lawmakers, who simply won't budge. how can the conversation change about this at all? >> i actually don't think the country is that divided on this. i've spoken to plenty of gun owners in focus groups, in places like mississippi and tennessee and georgia, who they don't support these weapons of war being easily accessible. it's not that complicated. the american people don't want to see their children mowed down at school and have to worry about that. but, again, much like abortion and extremists on one side, abortion, the majority of the country is in agreement about first trimester abortions should be legal. what weeks it goes up to. pretty much the same is true with guns. people do not want these guns. they do not want these high capacity magazines, which is the

first step towards ending this slaughter. you don't need these gunmen to be able to go into schools with 30 rounds, with 100 rounds, something they bought over the internet for less than $20. no, i don't think the country is that divided. i think mitch mcconnell managed to get 15 reasonrepublicans, ing himself, to vote for biden's bill last summer. it's an important start. a lot of the republicans who voted for the bill, they were easily re-elected. there needs to be political courage here. >> gene, when you look at the structural issues behind this, i mean, lay them out for us. we've been saying it all morning, the american public, 63% of americans support more gun control, gun safety laws. 90% support background checks. we know the nra is kind of on its back heels because of scandals and financial issues at the moment. but talk a little about the

makeup of, you know, the structure of the votes behind the senate, which give republicans such an overwhelming advantage in american politics. in '94, they only got 52 votes for the assault weapons ban. i don't see a way that anything major can happen with the makeup of the structure of the senate as it is at the moment. >> exactly. when and how are you ever going to get 60 votes in the senate for meaningful, effective gun legislation? certainly, in my mind, it would include a new assault weapons ban. the difference between what -- these high-velocity assault weapons does to a person, what it does to a body, versus what a 9 millimeter handgun does to a body is night and day. it is completely different.

there are wounds that are survivable from a 9 millimeter that just are not survivable from an assault weapon because of the high velocity of the projectile. you know, this is a partisan problem. this is the republican party that is blocking any action. you see it. you look at it on the state level. in tennessee, where this tragedy happened, the state legislatures are moving in the opposite direction, to make guns, powerful guns, more accessible to more people. then you look at a state like michigan, where democratic governor whitmer won re-election, took both house of the state legislature, and democrats are moving with some incremental but important gun safety measures.

like safe storage, for example, which is not controversial at all. it is absurd that that has to be the subject of a crusade, but here we are. this is a republican party problem right now, and so until the republican party changes, the solution is going to be to elect democrats who will actually get something done. >> well, there needs to be more steps. there was a bipartisan bill, as elise said. there was a bipartisan bill that passed, but there need to be more steps. just, again, we talk about the velocity. we're going to be talking about the ar-15, but this is a gun that was actually designed -- james fallis wrote a story for the "atlantic" in 1981, before it was part of america's culture wars.

there was testimony in congress that the ar-15 was created to be a more efficient killing machine in the jungles of vietnam. a more efficient, lower caliber, higher velocity, cause more damage upon impact, would tear human beings to shreds. he wrote this, again, in 1981. before ar-15 was being pinned on people's lapels. how grotesque as a sign of where they are in the culture wars? claire mccaskill, i just want to say, again, the lack of political courage. you know, i've known republicans who stood up to the gun lobby in connecticut. passed sweeping gun safety reform after sandy hook. i know republicans in congress after parkland, republicans who were so-called conservative republicans, who voted against

assault weapons, these weapons of war. voted for assault weapon bans. they all get re-elected, every one of them got re-elected. that's the insanity of this. most americans support gun safety reform. most people in most districts in america are not going to vote you out of office despite all of the threats that the representative told us about, that you get if you vote to ban weapons of war from the streets of america. you won't lose that many votes regardless of where you are in america. >> yeah, it would be a special day if a group of republicans on the hill came together today and said, enough is enough. they love to say, joe, that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. how is that working out for you?

how is that working out for the parents of those children who were slaughtered yesterday in their classrooms? it is absolutely unrealistic that we are going to arm our country to the point that every teacher has an ar-15 slung over their shoulder. is that where we want our children to go to school? is that what we want them to grow up with this in america? that's the only alternative i see. for everyone, and in my state, the republicans want even the children to strap a weapon of war around their shoulders. by the way, the interesting thing to remember here from a law enforcement perspective, is that, let's assume this woman was walking down the street on her way to that school. do people understand that police officers could not stop her?

that it would have been okay in many states for someone to walk down the street with an ar-15 towards the school? what are the police supposed to do? if the people in government say it is okay to carry weapons of war on our streets, they are giving people license to carry weapons of war into schools and slaughter our kids. so it is -- it's time, it's past time, for the republican party to wake up and realize that we can have guns in america, but there's got to be some rules that stop killing our children. >> do it for our children. do it for your children. richard haass, thank you very much for being on this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," much more on yesterday's mass shooting in nashville. we'll be joined by the president of every town for gun safety. plus, white house press secretary karine jean-pierre is

standing by to join us on the heels of president biden's renewed call on an assault weapons ban. the president will kick off the summit for democracy tomorrow. we'll be joined by the president of zambia, one of the co-hosting countries for the event. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ liberty mutual. ♪ ♪ only pay for what you need. ♪ ♪ only pay for what you need. ♪ ♪ custom home insurance created for you all. ♪ ♪ now the song is done ♪ ♪ back to living in your wall. ♪ they're just gonna live in there? ♪ yes. ♪ only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ (man) what if my type 2 diabetes takes over? (woman)ay for what you need. what if all i do isn't enough? or what if i can do diabetes differently? (avo) now you can with once-weekly mounjaro. mounjaro helps your body regulate blood sugar, and mounjaro can help decrease how much food you eat.

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you know, there's a thousand billionaires in america, it■s up from about 600 at the beginning of my term. but no billionaire should be paying a lower tax rate

than a schoolteacher or a firefighter. i mean it! think about it. it's just sick, you know? we're still gathering the facts of what happened and why. we do know that, as of now, there are a number of people who are not going to -- did not make it. including children. it's heartbreaking. a family's worst nightmare. i want to commend the police who responded incredibly swiftly, within minutes, to end the danger. we have to do more to stop gun violence. it's ripping our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation, ripping at the very soul of the nation. we have to do more to protect our schools so they aren't

turned into prisons. so i call on congress, again, to pass my assault weapons ban. it's about time that we begin to make some more progress. this is more to learn. >> joining us now, white house press secretary karine jean-pierre. on the heels of hearing from president biden, karine, just wondering, is there any renewed support for an assault weapons ban? is there anything the whougs can do through executive order to try and stem the tide of what is an epidemic of gun violence across the country? >> mika, thank you so much for having me on another sad and devastating day, after what we saw in nashville, tennessee, yesterday. look, our hearts go out to the families who lost loved ones. again, a family's worst nightmare, which is what we heard from the president. mika, last night, this is personal for so many of us, last night, when i got home, i hugged my 8-year-old just a little bit

tighter. the sad thing about that, mika, i was one of the lucky ones. like many of americans, i was one of the lucky ones last night. you know why? my daughter came home from school. so this is what we're living with as a country. i heard someone else say this, many of your guests say this today, no other country is dealing with this. no other country is dealing with our kids going to school and being slaughtered, being murdered. teachers being slaughtered, being murdered. we're seeing this in grocery stores. we're seeing this in churches, a place of worship. and it is unbelievable that this is still occurring. our message here, mika, is very clear. it's enough, enough, enough. we have had a president who has acted on this. i know you were asking me about executive actions, what else can we do. this president has taken more executive actions on gun violence safety than any

president before him. he has done that in two years. earlier this month, we took another executive action. we signed the safer -- he signed the safer community act, which was bipartisan, something he pushed for, which we hadn't seen in 30 years. guess what? as we're seeing, we need to do more. i've heard the theme throughout the show this morning, which is courage. we need republicans in congress to show some courage. this is what they owe these parents. this is what they owe these family members who are losing their loved ones. they need to show courage. we need gun safety laws, comprehensive gun safety laws. we need to ban assault rifles. those weapons of war do not belong on our streets. they do not belong in schools. again, this is unacceptable. you're going to continue to hear from the president call this out. >> karine, good morning. it's jonathan. on that theme of political courage, we know the president's

stance on this. what can his message be to, particularly, those republicans who stand in the way of these legislations? what can he do? he often speaks of his relationships on the other side of the aisle. he touted bipartisan accomplishments as both senator and now as president. how can he lean into those relationships and/or use the bully pulpit and run directly against those who stand in the way of gun safety reform? >> well, jonathan, as you know, and you eluded to that in the question you posed to me, is this is a president that believes in bipartisanship. he calls for bipartisanship over and over again. we have done things in the first two years in a bipartisan way. i mentioned the safer communities act, which was, again, done in a bipartisan way. so we can do this. here's the thing, what we will say, what i will say to republicans in congress, is what are you going to say to these parents? what are you going to say to these family members? 63% of americans, and i heard

this poll laid out hear on the show earlier today, it's a political poll, said that they wan to see safer gun safety measures. they want to see that. that is the will of the people. so republicans need to listen to majority of americans in this country, the will of the people, and act. they can't -- we cannot sit around to allow this anymore. you know, kids should be able to go to school and be safe. teachers should be able to go to school and be able to teach. again, we do not see this anywhere else around the world except here. they have to show some courage. the time is now. they need to act. and they have to answer questions to those very majority of americans who are asking for this. they have to answer to them. the president is going to continue to do what he has done. he just recently did it yesterday, but, also, at the state of the union, in front of congress, in front of the

american people, millions who were watching, and laid out why it is important to put an assault weapons ban. weapons of war. these are weapons of war we are denouncing in our schools and the streets of this country. >> karine, can i change subjects and ask about africa with the vice president's trip there at the moment? the white house, of course, convened a summit earlier of african leaders. what, specifically, is america planning to do to counter china's reach in the continent? it's long been a perception in many african nations that american trade comes with strings attached to it, that america only sees africa as a security issue and is not interested in the failing state states in africa. what can the president do to change that perception of america, and what is america offering to counter what china has done successfully throughout

the continent in terms of reach, trade and influence? >> the president had african leaders here and held an african summit. during that summit, the president said that we are all in with africa. all in for africa. what you are seeing here with the vice president's trip this week, this historic trip she is taking, is part of that. look, we are not going to define the issues and priorities that we have with africa by -- define that by our competition with china. that is not how we're going to define our relationship here. there are many things we need to discuss and we need to deal with, which is increasing our investment as it relates to the economy. making sure we empower young women and girls. that's incredibly important. young entrepreneurship. those from issues that we want to also see, that we want to discuss, and that's what you're going to see the vice president deal with this week as she goes through her trip.

we understand the geopolitical realities as it relates to china, and we have been very vocal on that as it relates to what they are doing in africa and globally. this is an administration that will continue to be vocal, but there are priorities with the continent of africa. it goes beyond our competition with china. there are real issues that we want to talk about and discuss. that's what you're going to see throughout the week from the vice president. >> all right. white house press secretary karine jean-pierre, thank you very much for coming on this morning. thanks. >> thank you, mika. coming up, some republicans are actually criticizing donald trump for a video that played during his rally saturday in waco. we'll show you what they're saying about it. it comes as a long-time ally of the former president gave testimony to the manhattan grand jury investigating alleged hush money payments. we'll have the latest in that case straight ahead on "morning joe."

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♪ proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming ♪ i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america. >> i mean -- i mean, this is just sick. this is just deranged. former president trump's rally in waco, texas, over the weekend, where he and the crowd held hands -- no, this isn't a cult -- to their hearts for a song called "justice for all." it's a version of "the star spangled banner" sung by the january 6th choir, who are a group of men that are in prison

for their role in the attack on the capitol. and it's okay to say that is freaking deranged. that is cult. that is the like of a cult. that is a cult. now, some top republicans are thinking, hmm, maybe that wasn't a good idea. like, maybe that's creepy. they're breaking with the former president over his decision to play that video. i still can't -- they had their hands to their hearts, all of these people, and donald trump? a number of gop lawmakers are rejecting the narrative in pro-trump circles that the rioters were, quote, peaceful, while other republicans are calling it an unwise political strategy for trump to focus on the insurrection as he runs for president again. senator lindsey graham with south carolina broke with the ex-president, telling nbc news, quote, if you're trying to

suggest that those who were involved in the january 6th are some kind of hero? no. there will be no effort on my part to whitewash january 6th. thank you, lindsey. senate minority whip john thune referred to his past comments condemning the january 6th violence and questioned trump's decision to keep focusing on that day. the south dakota republican told nbc news, quote, it's living in the past. i think more people want to hear about things you're going to do in the future better and brighter for them. how to make it better and bright r for them. texas senator john cornyn who previously held the number two spot in the senate republican leadership, told nbc news, quote, people who violated the law should be prosecuted, and they have been. here's more reaction from republicans nbc news caught up with on capitol hill. >> i have not seen this. i don't -- i don't know exactly what you're talking about.

but the edge of the cliff is pushed up here in politics quite often. really, we have a huge division up here. we have to watch what we're doing. we really do. >> that is an interesting approach. i would approach. i would encourage to be forward looking. i think people are ready to have a forward looking campaign and talk about issues looking forward. >> the last week it was divisive and destructive for our country. i'm not for paying off porn stars and the drama and the bs because i want to win in 2024. >> all right. that was the best one. the last one. moderate republican numbers in congress within representative bacon of nebraska said that trump's actions demonstrated a

lack of judgment and a way to lose in 2024. republican brian fitzpatrick said i don't approve. i don't approve. this doesn't scale. like this man getting on stage and poisoning minds of people who have come to see him. it is -- i'm just -- i know. i know. it is a shock opera. and i'm falling for it but that was sick. >> i'm not sure i'm ready to pin a medal on any of the lapels of those republicans at this point. i like to quote from graham said in the 2016 campaign. he said that if we elect donald trump it will destroy the republican party and we will deserve it. something to that effect.

i think that they still haven't realized the damage that this guy is doing on a daily basis. give me a break. the republicans in the house that are saying this is not the right thing to do, this guy kevin mccarthy getting the band of trump crazies center stage. they're paying for expeditions to jail to look at the poor criminals' living conditions. when they went to jail in washington, d.c. they found out they were being treated much better than others held at that particular prison. this is a dog and pony show that kevin mccarthy is embracing. go, marjorie taylor greene. so i am not going to celebrate those mealy mouthed words of a

few republicans. they need to condemn this craziness. they will not do it. graham is going to be right. they will get what they deserve. >> that january 6 choir hit number one a couple weeks back reflective in a way of just the hold that donald trump still has on the republican party. we heard this from republicans condemning what they saw in waco. trump is not only the favorite for the republican nomination in 2024 but his lead is growing. so there seems to be no way out of this right now. >> and that's just nuts. the whole singing and holding hands and -- very bizarre. you look at how far, though,

donald trump has gotten some supporters to go in the devotion and rewritten the narrative of violent insurrection where people storm the capitol. he's managed to completely rewrite history for his most core supporters and you see if donald trump doesn't win in the primary are the core supporters -- i'm talking 10% maybe of the 30 to 40% of base going to vote for another candidate? donald trump would win the primary. you look how he is pummelling desantis going down at the polls. he is the shock opera. it doesn't matter if it is negative attention. the coverage is beneficial for him. >> we have seen this movie

before. we have seen what happens when you just sort of allow donald trump to solidify his hold on this base. he's got them now and unless somebody tries really hard to take them away from him he's going to have them and the rest of the world is going to fragment and get the nomination. it looks to me like once again we'll have a general election that seems like an existential crisis for the country. donald trump against joe biden or whoever. that's where we will be and in that case we can only hope that lindsey graham's prediction is that donald trump will have destroyed the republican party and maybe a new republican party can arise from the ashes, one that is a responsible, conservative party which would

be a good thing to have in this country. we don't have it now. >> we can only hope. ahead, an update on the recovery effort across the southern states and we'll be joined by the mayor of nashville. a note that "morning joe" is now streaming live on peacock for the first time. we have a "morning joe" channel where you can stream the show live every weekday 6:00 to 10:00 a.m. eastern. we'll be right back. i'm your overly competitive brother. check. psych! and i'm about to steal this game from you just like i stole kelly carter in high school. you got no game dude, that's a foul!

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we'll have the latest in the investigation for you, plus we'll be joined by the mayor of nashville in a moment. >> how can you look at the images that americans are forced to see? it seems look on a weekly basis. and not understand that the poll tirps are failing the kids. the children are being failed. their families. young moms and dads. taking the kids to school. now have this hanging over them every day. not because there's not a solution to this.

there is. we played at the top of the show a republican lawmaker saying there's nothing we can do. my daddy fought in world war ii. they're bad people. this is a new phenomenon in american life. the mass shootings with weapons of war. pre-columbine this didn't happen on a daily, weekly occurrence, a monthly occurrence in america now. damn it, we have to balance the constitutional god-given rights with the responsibility to protect our children. >> we have a generation of children who are adults who have grown up living with the fact that there could be a school shooter at their doorstep. this impacted the mental health. to the lawmaker and many others

who take pictures of their family with say all the weapons -- >> weapons of war. >> if you think something wouldn't work, wouldn't you try anything for our children? isn't that a question you want to keep in mind? wouldn't you do anything? >> right. >> to try to keep our children safe. >> what would we do if after 9/11 politicians said there's nothing we can do? there's nothing we can do? >> it won't work. >> nothing works. >> just pray. >> islamic terrorists hit us any way. they had 1% solution. if there's a chance that islamic terrorists will hit america we'll do everything we can. we'll do everything we can to

stop terrorists from killing americans. and yet, this just keeps going on and on. because they are owned by the gun lobby and the most intense vote everies in their district who believe in hyper individual rights, don't believe in any responsibility to fellow citizens, we have 131 mass shootings so far this year. we have more people killed this year by guns in the first three months than were killed over a decade of war in afghanistan. >> joining us now we have the mayor of nashville, jon cooper. thank you very much for joining us. we are looking at three 9-year-olds murdered yesterday and the head of the school and two other adults.

let us know how the community first is faring right now and what people are doing and saying in light of this massacre. >> thank you. it is our worst day. we have had crises in a city but when your children are at risk and killed it's your worst day. the community is good at coming together here and supporting each other. there's a marvelous fund effort going on with the community foundation. i hope everybody helps to raise money for the familys. the unthinkable things that have acted with this act of mass violence. >> tell me. are there concerns among lawmaker officers, have there been concerns for sometime about

how loose and how extreme gun laws have become in tennessee? for open carry. as i said on the show earlier, i got a lot of guns. i got three, four, five guns and permits to carry and training. tennessee it seems have thrown training out the window and permits out the window and now you have open carry there. >> yeah. well, we have been reversing the common sense restrictions that used to exist. the police officers in tennessee that have been leading the charge of awareness for how much more dangerous their work is and how many more gun crimes are being related to the you bickty of guns in tennessee.

hopefully we'll get back to a more common sense idea of protections especially with the assault style weapons. but when your own police officers are warning the jeopardy that's being created by too lax a gun laws. there's a bill before the legislature to per mitt guns in courtrooms in tennessee. the court officers are alarmed at that. maybe this is a moment to roll it back to common sense. >> mr. mayor, i'm curious if you have more information on the incident. the shooter, the police response and the school security plans in place and how that was carried out. >> i think today there will be a lot of reveal with the police. we all know as the chief

mentioned the manifesto that the shooter had. a very well planned operation. 14 minutes from a call to a resolution of the solution against somebody who shot their way into the building and armed and prepared and had lots of weapons. the police response here, boy, is heroic, but i think this is unusually able. you cannot count on this good a response elsewhere. guns are quick and the fact that by great training and effort it was only 14 minutes here i think we are all shocked at how much worse it could have been without the heroes rushing into the building. >> pretty bad. >> mr. mayor, some people

suggest there's nothing that could make a difference. no point to try because however many laws in place the shooting would have happened. run through what you think would make a difference. you mentioned a conversation about assault weapons. what changes could happen in the united states that would prevent what happened in this school again from happening in your state. >> i think connecticut has gone down a path of -- making more difficult. the assault military style changes. these -- worth discussing. the problem of the guns and having kind of a cult of guns in a mental health charged country

is something to regulate and look after. nobody got to the motive of the shooter but it is a cultural event. it is first of mind in the response and what used to have been a lower key but awful event can be a mass shooting and the shooting itself is quick and deadly. again, not everybody will have such a great police department. so professionally. again i think the videos will come out showing how heroic their actions were. >> thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. >> we are thinking about you all. thank you so much for being here. in this tragic day i think it is very important for us to give a tip of the hat to the law

enforcement officers of nashville. 14 minutes. from the call to them, to the conclusion. 14 minutes. they were there. and they -- there is no doubt this horrific traffic could have been much worse. >> i know. in that statement, though, worth saying, our appreciation to our cops is boundless but 14 minutes. in five seconds an assault weapon can destroy a classroom. that's the issue here. >> why? why? >> five seconds the whole room. >> why do people that support weapons of war think that cops, sheriffs, law enforcement officers in tennessee against

open carry, permitless carry, against any training before >#z?pq carry? claire mccaskill talking about the extreme, radical laws in missouri. that are in tennessee. this is nothing to do with the second amendment. nothing. this had nothing to do with the second amendment. you look at the constitution. you look at the second amendme. you look at scalia's own opinion there. has nothing to do with what we're seeing on tv every day. >> joining us now, senate majority whip dick dur ben of illinois, chairman of the judiciary committee. >> thank you for being with us. there was a step in the right direction last year after

uvalde. didn't go far enough. is there any hope as the body count of our children pile higher that republicans will again, enough will would recollect -- will work with democrats to balance the safety of children? >> i have a question back at you. to america. had enough? had enough of this? 131 mass shootings in 93 days. as a father and a grandfather i cannot imagine the horror the day after shooting. three 9-year-olds. we saw it at sandy hook and it continues. the police have been heroic. the congress is cowardly. they seem to think they can rationalize what's happening in the streets and the schools.

we have to reach a point to ask candidates to congress a basic question. are you willing to work to eliminate assault weapons? if the answer is no my vote is no. unless the american people are going to make this a critical swing issue in the next election it won't change the capitol hill. >> good morning. jonathan lemire. the home state has been touched by mass shootings, as well. the republicans that are opposed legislation, what are the hall ways and conversations like there? what do they say back about the issue? >> everybody has a script and not changing from it. even if the home state or hometown is touched by it. it doesn't move them an inch.

this approach is basically mindless. to think that the founding fathers believed what we have today is part of the right of a person to purchase a gun. highland park, illinois. with assault weapons involved. sounded by armed policemen there for the parade. by the time they located the shooter in 60 seconds the shooter killed 7 people. tell me that has something to do with a well regulated militia and the right to bear arms. i don't believe it. the fact that we reached that rationale is disgusting to me. >> beyond discussions on guns the senate today will hold a judiciary committee hearing about the border crisis. you will chair that. secretary mayorkas will be

there. republicans criticized the efforts there at the border. can you explain what american people should expect to hear in the hearing today? >> the system is broken in america, badly. i joined in a bipartisan gang of eight effort to put together a reform. passed the senate. stopped cold in the republican leadership in the house. much like the gun issue, for 30 years congress is unable to reform the system. what we see at the border, across the united states is the product of that refusal of congress to face that issue. this is an issue to step up. put aside the cliches and find a practical solution. they should do it in an orderly fashion so no one that's dangerous will come into the country knowingly. >> senator durbin, thank you.

>> one final question. >> very quickly. >> we have been talking about how for 200 years in this country we balanced the god-given rights with the responsibilities as citizens to other citizens, john kennedy said ask not what your country can do for you. ask what you can do for your country. how is this broken? how's this surge of hyper individualism causing a crisis? shootings and a mental health crisis, people isolating more. when did we lose the balance between right and responsibility? >> i couldn't agree with you more. i can't pinpoint the moment when that occurred but unless we become a nation to care for one

another we are going to continue to go downhill. i believe in the future of this country but the people in the strong moderate center have to step up and resume control of the future of our country. >> all right. >> senator, thank you very much. turning to the war in ukraine where 18 of germany's leopard 2 tanks arrived in the country. ukraine received 40 fighting vehicles from germany in the latest round of weapons. ukraine's ministry of defense confirmed yesterday an unspecified number of the challenger 2 tanks have already arrived in the country. we have the minister in estonia,

a border nation to russia and working on moving russian embassy staffers out of the territory. >> thank you so much for being with us. how important are the shipment of the tanks into ukraine to the outcome of this war? >> good morning. it's hugely important. ukraine needs assistance right now, needs more than what we have been providing and needs the assistance faster. ukraine is defending the right to exist and the international order. russia is attacking every core principle. this war is big enough to establish new norms of international behavior. if it is the norm that a bigger nation can change the borders through military force or worse, becoming the norm that a bigger

nation can at will with immunity annihilate not just a nation that it's bordering with but a people then we have in for a very rough century. we need to make sure that ukraine can defend itself. russia needs to stop fighting. unfortunately putin wakes up thinking that he can win this. we need to make sure that's not the case. >> you talked about this century. estonia a victim of what happened last century. the prime minister has of course let the world know about her family. i believe heifer mother being shipped off when she was 6 years old. you feel the presence more heavily, the weight of russian imperialism than any other

countries save perhaps latvia anof curse ukraine. what warning do you have to germany, to france, those in western europe who feel that maybe the best thing to do is to settle, get a peace agreement as quickly as possible? >> first of all, the international community and the countries you mentioned have demonstrated unprecedented unity and resolve in the face of this aggression. we have done well but the only metric that matters at the end of the day is how this ends. not the quality of the decisions made and the quality of speeches given but the outcome at the conclusion of this war. that's the point. number two, there's a major difference between nominal peace and a just peace for freedom and helps us maintain the order we

have built. second world war ended in may 1945. the innocent individuals took place in 1949. so when war ends without there being justice and freedom that means -- that's a catastrophe for the people left behind. we can't let that happen for the sake of the international order that we build. that's the key message that we have been delivering. we have been doing well. sometimes frustratingly slow but the end result is what matters. if there's one key word to underline to make sure that ukraine survives and the international order and that world is accountability. crimes have been committed. are being committed.

if we allow this to happen without impunity well'll restore the mistakes. >> you were the ambassador to the u.s. no stranger to the importance of diplomacy. recently estonia expelled i believe 21 russian diplomats. how does that affect estonia's relations with russia and does that sever an important diplomatic tool? >> no, it does not. our relations with russia are dependent upon russia's behavior. we wanted equal number of diplomats. that's a decision we made. russia's is going to be and has always been a neighbor. it is an important country in

the world. we will have a relationship with russia. the kind depends on the decisions that the russian people and moscow makes. it is clear once this war is over and hopefully the integrity is resolved and then we'll have to move step by step. the first thing is to rebuild -- regain actually trust. russia is violating every war agreement it signed on to. this cannot stand. we need to make sure that when the countries sign treaties that they mean to uphold the promises they make. >> estonia's deputy foreign minister, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. we appreciate it. >> thank you. >> thank you. coming up on "morning joe,"

another life report from nashville on the heels of yesterday's mass shooting at an elementary school there. we'll talk with the president of every town for gun safety. the latest from israel as prime minister benjamin netanyahu pauses a controversial plan to overhaul the country's judiary. you are watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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aren't you tired from being here and covering the shootings? i'm on tennessee on a family vacation with my son visiting a sister-in-law. i have been lobbying in d.c. since we survived in july. i have met with over 130 lawmakers. how is this still happening? how are the children still dying and we are failing them? >> a survivor of the mass shooti at the fourth of july

parade happened to be in nashville when shots rang out. ashley beasley and her son hid when gun fire broke out in that parade last summer. seven people killed in that shooting. she stepped in front of the microphone after a press briefing to talk about the shooting in nashville. for the president to step in front of microphones yet again and say this is a dark day for the country calling on congress to pass the assault weapons ban. a nonstarter for republicans. the president do? >> sadly familiar ritual for president biden. and the answer is, there's not going to be much that gets done here. we know after the uvalde, texas, school shooting that there was a

bipartisan effort for gun safety regulations. but people said this is modest at best. a step in the right direction but asmall step and doesn't seem to be appetite for that. republicans have control of the house of representatives. president biden renewed the call for an assault weapons ban. white house aides tell me that they are looking at if there's on the margins more executive actions to be done but no clue if it makes a meaningful difference. they keep the pressure on republicans the try to get something more meaningful done. and it's said they every left with another moment that we have failed the children of this country terrified to go to school. >> this is happening time and time and time again. you can go back to sandy hook

and you can see where barack obama even after sandy hook, the horrors there, congress wouldn't move and do anything. they did something after ten years of pressure of sandy hook and uvalde for modest gun safety reform. it is a step in the right direction. we need to make another step towards safety. protecting the second amendment and 0 our kids. they can be done at the same time. right now though it is so twisted that imbalance is so twisted. our kids keep getting gunned down and killed. christians. jewish worshippers. people that go to music festivals gunned down. grocery shoppers gunned down.

>> nightclubs. >> it continues. so far in 2023, 131 mass shootings. katty kay, i won't waste my breath asking you if europe understands, if britain understands what's going on here. we have seen examples of mass shootings in australia. the country moved to make a difference. look at the statistics in the united states. how what our lawmakers allow to happen every single day. guns, the number one killer of kids in america. if you look at this number, we are not that far out there because we have a lot more people than other countries. that's per 100,000.

so that's per capita. the united states still with this screwed up, sick culture that a subset of americans worship. that's the impact. this only happens in the united states. >> yeah. you answered your own question. you are quite right. i woke up in london watching school kids along the street to school and they won't get gunned down. the parents don't risk losing the children in a school shooting. united kingdom had a shooting and changed the laws. they changed the laws. why are guns the leading cause

of death for children in america now? the laws around safety in cars changed. america is capable to implement safety laws to regulate seat belts so that children do not die in car accidents but not around guns. it's american democracy not working to reflect the will of the people on an issue that the majority of american people, we saw it there with the poll. 63% of americans want more gun safety in the country. the democracies don't work to reflect the majority will. coming un, the gun that divides the nation. "the washington post" has an expansive look at how the ar-15

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yesterday after the israeli defense minister was fired for speaking out against the plan. the trade association went on strike. the overhaul plan to allow the government to select judges and overturn supreme court decisions. joining us live is foreign correspondent raf sanchez. what's the a littlest? >> reporter: good morning. there is a sense of calm here in

tel aviv today. it felt sunday into monday like the country going off a cliff after netanyahu fired the minister. the protests blocked main roads and then this unprecedented general strike yesterday which paralyzed the economy. it shut the country's armt, closed banks and businesses. following the announcement of netanyahu the strike is called off. businesses are open again. they have no major demonstrations planned today but they don't assume that netanyahu is acting in good faith. a protest leader said she fears the prime minister is trying to lull them into a false sense of security before bringing the legislation up again in a couple weeks. the opposition parties in israel

agreed to sit down with netanyahu to try to see if there's a compromise that can be thrashed out but they too are very weary that this is a smoke screen and netanyahu going into talks to give himself trial to regroup. with the biden administration they have been expressing the concerns about the deep divisions netanyahu's plan has been eroding into israeli society. take a listen to a little bit of what the white house press secretary had to say yesterday. >> we welcome this announcement as an opportunity to create time and space for compromise. compromise is what we have been calling for and urge lead ores to find a compromise as soon as possible. >> reporter: now, there were some warm words from the white house yesterday but concern both

in washington and tel aviv about the concessions that netanyahu had to make to the far right of the coalition to get them to agree to the delay. one is allowing for the creation of a national guard. under the national security ministry and in charge is one of the far right members of netanyahu's cabinet. he has convictions. protesters in israel are extremely concerned about what it means for them if the national guard is formed. the feeling is this is not over yet and very possible they may be back on the street sometime soon. >> thank you very much for the reporting. joining us is president on foreign relations richard haass.

netanyahu put off the plans. appears that people of israel are not buying it. >> yeah. he had to make a choice between keeping the government or the country together so he punted. he basically will try to buy a few weeks through the passover holiday. maybe there's compromise on the judicial reform issues. there's other things to satisfy the far right government. a larger point. i think this is about much more. people are coming out in israel worried about the future of the country. they are worried about the question of how israel deals with the palestinian issue. this is a struggle for israel's

future. >> this was remarkable. have you seen anything like this? any such of civil unrest in israel? have you d abut it since the founding in 1948? >> no. this is unprecedented. again, i think it is because -- i lived in israel for a year. i think what happened is the cumulative changes in israel for demographic and political reasons reached the tipping point. people said this is not a liberal democracy but an ill liberal democracy. no. i have never seen this broad push back in that society. >> and obvious lynette -- obviously netanyahu wanted to move away from western, liberal democracy. become like hungary.

a very, very bad direction for the israeli people and stood up against the plan. gene robinson, it really is remarkable what happened over the weekend but we sort of saw in israel what we saw in the united states leading up to january the 6th where you had all of the secretaries of defense sign a letter saying army, air force, stay out of politics. you had the chairman of the joints chiefs milley stepping back hard. in israel the same thing where netanyahu wasornered when it was the military establishment and the security tablishment pushing back the hardest. >> exactly.

and netanyahu was really in an impossible position going too far for members of the very right wing government. this was jt unacceptable. clearly, so clear he being rejected by huge percentage of the israeli population. they saw the country being torn apart and that to the security establishment was not acceptable. i guess my question to richard is, you know, is this all netanyahu in his eternal quest for poweroave power, to accumulate more power, to say in is there an alternative to more years of netanyahu and israel going in what many people see as a calamitous direction?

>> i think on one level it is netanyahu who is the longest serving prime minister in israel's history and willingness to make a deal to keep himself in power and something else. i think it will transcend netanyahu. the years of immigration from russia. much more conservative. israelis are devout. the people in the streets are probably better educated, more secular and liberal but as a result i think the tensions in israeli society now transcend netanyahu's and his own immediate short term efforts to keep himself out of jail and in power. i think there's something underneath and more worrying. it is not so simple.

>> let's talk about africa. china's influence there gigantic with the investments across africa. the vice president kamala harris is there now beginning the multi-day trip to africa, one of many visit of administration officials and president biden probably this fall. she pledged that the u.s. stands with the continent. are you seeing that happening? is that something where the administration is taking steps to enact? >> not enough. people forget. africa will go up by over a billion people at the same time europe, asia, the rest of the rld is shrinking and aging. africa is on a totally different trajecory. we don't have enough aid and trade going on. diplomatic engagement. africa was disappointed that we

didn't make vaccines available readily in the pandemic and we then said support us in ukraine. a lot of them said no, thank you. the last of them said no thanky. probably saved 30 million lives in africa because we made vaccines available against hiv/aids. we're talking about over 50 countries south of the sahara. some are democracies. some are anything but. nigeria and south africa are in terrible condition politically. it's not easy to fashion a policy, no, but we need to put more focus on it. coming up, one of our next guests says trump 2024 is far more dangerous than trump 2016.

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there ain't is person in here that wants to take someone's handgun or shotgun or hunting rifle away from them. we don't need an assault rifle with 30-shot capacity on our streets. it's not safe for our police. it's not safe for anybody. so please don't say you're pro life and then vote to put more weapons on the street. >> representative mitchell, you are -- >> now, i will speak! >> representative, no -- [indiscernible] >> representative mitchell, you're out of order. you can continue, but you have to stay under welcoming and honoring, and you know that, sir. >> i'll tell you one thing. there's six people today i can't

welcome and honor anymore into this hallowed house. y'all just think about those six people we never welcome in here anymore and just think if your guns are worth it. >> wow. tennessee state lawmaker beau mitchell, who represents nashville, made those?éx commen yesterday after spending time at the reunification center for families and students of the covenant school. he told the tennesseean, quote, you need to hear the sound of the mother when she was told she'd never see her child again. i have never heard a sound like that. he added, quote, i didn't have one person ask me for thoughts and prayers today. they asked me for courage to come down here and do something. coming up, we'll go live to nashville. the latest american city rocked by a school shooting. new details this morning on a mass murder that claimed the lives of three students,

9-year-olds, and three educators. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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where six people were killed in yesterday's shooting, including three children who were all 9 years old. overnight police released new video of the shooter showing how the shooter got inside the school. joining us live from nashville is nbc news correspondent katie beck. what's the latest this morning? >> reporter: good morning, mika. police are saying that shooter was 28 years old and was living as a transgender person, a former student of this school. they say that without the swift actions of police, this tragedy could have been far worse. overnight police in nashville releasing this chilling surveillance video showing the terrifying moments the shooter blasted their way into the small private presbyterian school shooting through locked glass doors. the video also showed the armed person entering a church office and later stalking the halls

with an ar-style weapon drawn, one of three firearms investigators say the shooter had. >> we believe two of those may have been obtained legally locally here. >> reporter: police calling the attack on the covenant school targeted, adding the shooter left behind detailed plans of the deadly assault. >> we have a manifesto. we have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place. >> reporter: police identifying the shooter as 28-year-old audrey hale, who they say is transgender and was once a student at the school. >> there was some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school. >> reporter: authorities say within 14 minutes they were able to confront and kill the shooter but not before hale fatally shot three children and three adults. >> there's multiple victims inside the school. shooter is down now as well. >> reporter: authorities later searching hale's home, finding two shotguns and other evidence

as they investigate potential motives. among the victims dr. catherine koonce, cynthia peak and mike hill. the children identified as evelyn dieckhaus, william kinney and hallie scruggs. avery's mother was teaching in her classroom when the shooter opened fire. >> she said she was hiding in the closet and they were shooting all over and that she loved us. >> reporter: many parents unsure their children would come home. >> the there were so many police cars and then the ambulances started pulling away from the school. >> reporter: president biden ordering flags to fly at half staff nationwide and urging congress to pass a new assault weapons ban. >> we have to do more to stop gun violence. >> reporter: while a group of

new parents are now echoing a similar heartbreaking question. >> how are our children still dying and why are we failing them? >> reporter: now, because this is a private school that is operated by a church, the nashville police department says they do not have school resource officers here on this campus. they say their investigation continues and they will hopefully address more questions about motive later on today. mika. >> katie beck, thank you very much. joining us now the president of every town for gun safety, john fineblatt. thank you for coming on the show this morning. we've been talking all morning long about where most of the country is on simple gun safety measures. what is it going to take? i'm sure you've been asked that question before. >> i think there's no question about it, that tragedies like this actually mobilize people to insist with their lawmakers that

we pass common sense gun safety laws. there is no question about it, where the public stands. the public does not want to send their kids to school in the morning and wonder whether they're going to be meeting them at the morgue or at soccer practice at the end of the day. there's no question about it, politicians need to follow the will of the people. we saw that happen in congress this past summer with a bipartisan bill, but sadly if you look at what's going on in tennessee, we're going in the exact wrong direction. >> we are. >> two years ago the governor signed a bill allowing people to carry loaded guns in public without a permit. >> and you say these events are mobilizing. yet, in the middle of an epidemic of shootings across our country, an epidemic of school shootings, a generation of children growing up knowing they

might be slaughtered while they are at school. we have politicians who say what we're about to show you, that it's not worth trying anything. here is republican congressman tim burrchet of tennessee reacting to this deadly shooting at this elementary school in his state. >> saying there's absolutely nothing he can do. he's helpless. he's impotent. he's weak when it comes to saving children's lives. >> do you think there's any role for congress to play in reaction to this tragedy? obviously this is your state now but it's happened in every state. >> it doesn't matter what state it's happened in. it's all americans. doesn't matter the color of their skin, they all bleed red. i don't see any real role we could do other than mess things up, honestly, because of the situation. like i said, i don't think criminals condition stopped from guns. you can print them out on the

computer now. i don't think you're going to stop the gun violence. you've got to change people's hearts. as a christian, i've said this many times we need -- >> oh be quiet. i can't even. >> he talks about his father fighting in world war ii. jesus said if he's going to talk about being a christian, that if anybody allows harm to be done to any little child, it's better they have a millstone hung around their neck and be thrown to the bottom of the ocean. we have a responsibility to protect our children. if you're going talk about christianity, jesus talks about it time and time again, let the little children come. and yet there's so many people in congress saying, well, yeah, they keep getting slaughtered in school, there's nothing we can do about it. how ridiculous is that argument? >> it's patently untrue. laws matter. if you look at tennessee, it's

got the 12th highest gun murder rate of any state in the country and it's got some of the weakest laws. if you look at states with strong laws, they're also the states with the best record on gun safety. so laws matter. again, progress is incremental but we saw congress come together, 15 republicans including mitch mcconnell and lindsey graham and john cornyn passed a bipartisan bill, first gun safety bill in 26 years, breaking a log jam over the strenuous objections of the nra. we've got to do more. we can't live in a country where three 9-year-olds go to school in the morning and are shot and killed along with three other staff persons. we've got to decide what kind of country we want to live in.

we have 25 times the gun murder rate of any developed country in the world. laws do matter, there's no question about it. if tennessee had stronger laws, they would have a much safer gun safety record. >> john, we discussed how the nra's influence has faded some, but yet guns have become such an important cultural identity issue for so many on the right. laws do matter, as you say. we've seen some progress in states like michigan. obviously tennessee has gone the other way. is there any workaround perhaps on the federal level that can be done where maybe more progress can be made? >> there's no question about it. just last week the president called for executive actions that could make a meaningful difference. perhaps the most important one was to clearly define who has to conduct a background check when they sell a gun and who doesn't.

that has been murky and allowed the proliferation of legal guns to be sold without a background check online and at gun shows. we need to stop that to make sure people don't have easy access to guns. the president has called for a ban on assault weapons. there's no question about it. when you see the footage from tennessee yesterday, it's hard to believe that weapons of war don't belong in civilians' hands. we have to have universal red flag laws so we have the ability to temporarily remove guns from people based on a court order. that's happened in 19 states and the district of columbia and it's making a difference. there's no question there's more that we have to do. we have to take politics out of this. i mean, when you hear people give political speeches on the same day that three 9-year-olds were killed, you wonder just how

far politicians will go to throw guns as red meat to their base. >> thank you very much for being on this morning. joining us now, enterprise reporter at the "washington post" todd frankel. his most recent reporting highlights the history of the ar-15 and how it became win of the most popular firearms in the country. series also shows just how devastating bullets fired from the weapon are to the human body. elise jordan has the first question for you, todd. >> this reporting is incredible, just giving context about the ar-15 and how developed in the late 1950s and one statistic in your story jumps out at me. 1 in 20 americans own an ar-15.

how then if these weapons are so prevalent, what can be done? >> i'm not sure what can be done. it is true, they are incredibly prevalent. the 1 in 20 people own them. it's a recent phenomena. this isn't an old weapon. it was developed in the late '50s, but two-thirds of the entire ar-15s produced were only made since 2012. this is a recent phenomena. now 1 in 4 guns made in the u.s. are ar-15s. it didn't always used to be that way. it's a recent phenomena. >> i want to go over your reporting that describes exactly what happens when bullets from an ar-15 hit a body. warning our viewers right now that the animations we're going to show you are graphic and can be and will be extremely

disturbing to some viewers. what you show, todd, in these graphics is the process of the destruction that happens to a human body when one of these bullets from an assault weapon goes into a victim and how it actually leaves the gun and ultimately hits, in the case of yesterday, children. >> the hospital reported three pediatric patients came in, all deceased. in these cases, tiny bodies are pulverized by ar-15 bullets, which is different than being shot by a handgun. this is the result of work by a team of journalists. we talked to trauma surgeons and medical examiners and looked at

autopsy reports to show how the ar-15's bullet, which is a 223 bullet, which is a small bullet but it goes incredibly fast. when it strikes a body, it creates a shock wave within the body and creates a huge hole. it creates a much bigger wound. that's why in these cases, especially when there's children being shot, there are unlikely to be survivors. these hospitals get prepped for mass casualty incidents, but there's nothing they can do with injuries like these. >> i've told our audience that for some time i remember the ar-15 and the story of the 1950s and the atlantic article that was written in 1981, again,

before these weapons of war became part of our culture wars here in america. he tells a story how the guns in vietnam didn't work effectively. they jammed often, they were too heavy. eugene stoner created the ar-15 with one thing in mind. that was to create a more efficient killing machine as a weapon of war. talk about the creation of this weapon and how the inventor would have been horrified to find out that children are being chased by people carrying a weapon that he created for the jungles of vietnam. >> eugene stoner developed this entirely for the military. i spoke to folks who worked with

him. they said he never envisioned this as anything but a military weapon. the pentagon was impressed. they praised its phenomenal lethality. the only difference between an m-16 and ar-15, broadly speaking, is the rate at which it fires. you have the automatic burst auto fire for the military and you have one squeeze of the trigger, one shot for civilians. the bullet that comes out, the speed that it comes out, all that is very similar. eugene stoner, when he died in 1997, he actually believed the ar-15 was passe, that another weapon system was going to surpass it very soon. he thought it only has a future as a military weapon. he expected the military would soon find a new weapon system to go with. he never foresaw the ar-15 today

would be the best selling rifle in america. >> the majority of these mass shootings have been done by ar-15s. the series talks about the culture that surrounded this particular weapon, the manufacturing plant in north carolina where it's made, but also the nra efforts to blunt any attempts to ban it when there had been some momentum some years ago. walk us through that devotion to this gun. >> another interesting thing we found was the nra and other guns rights groups were actually very suspicious and not that supportive of the weapon when it came out. they didn't welcome it at their trade shows. they didn't see a market for it in the consumer end of things. once the big gun makers started to make these weapons and saw there was a market and money to be made, they welcomed these weapons.

they saw there was a market and also a way to sell them. it's an interesting product. the division that it sows helps drive those sales. every time there's a mass shooting, especially after new town, where the prospect of a new assault weapons ban actually drives sales. we never saw gun background checks more than after 2012. it hardens gun rights groups' opposition to any sort of new laws. it's a very difficult political situation. >> todd frankel, thank you. some of the other stories we're following this morning, at least 39 people were killed after a fire broke out at a

migrant detention facility close to the u.s./mexico border. many were injured with 29 people taken to local hospitals. the blaze began in the center operated by the national immigration institute in juarez across the border from el paso, texas. the building sits close to the rio grande river and the santa fe international bridge. it will be a long road to recovery in the deep south after deadly tornados left a trail of destruction, killing at least 22 people and injuring dozens more. maggie vespa has the latest. >> reporter: this morning, a daunting cleanup is under way in a region ravaged by days of storms and tornados. >> when i came upon it, i was hoping for the best.

when i made it here, it was the worst. >> reporter: joe robinson's mississippi home one of 2000 damaged by friday's deadly tornado. the overall death count in alabama and mississippi is 22, dozens more injured. deangelo white's family took cover in his daughter's bedroom as the tornado ripped through, their home collapsing, his family miraculously surviving. white's gratitude soon overshadowed after learning his mother, stepfather and brother died in the storm. his mother's trailer decimated. >> all i know is i lost everything and we really need help, man. >> we need help. >> reporter: experts now say between friday and sunday, at least 20 tornados ripped through

the south, destroying homes and businesses from mississippi to georgia. first responders forever scarred. fire captain larry brown jumped into action friday night finding a 2-year-old girl unresponsive beneath the rubble. >> i started cpr and she started breathing, thank god. >> but the child did not make it. a devastated captain brown telling us he can't stop crying. fema agents on the ground reminding people to sign up for federal aid, though in this part of the south many banding together refusing to wait. >> family just came here to start putting hands on. coming up, we'll show you what donald trump had to say about his social media posts attacking the manhattan district attorney, including the one that had a split screen of him holding a bat next to the

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welcome back to "morning joe." an update on the grand jury in new york city investigating the hush money case against former president trump. the jury members reconvened yesterday, hearing new testimony from the former publisher of the national enquirer, who helped arrange the deal. joining us live outside the district attorney's office in manhattan is nbc news correspondent garrett haake. what's the latest? >> reporter: mika, tuesday is an off day for this grand jury, which leaves us to wait and see if they'll reconvene tomorrow or thursday and chew on the developments for monday. david pecker, the witness appearing before this grand jury

yesterday, his second appearance before this grand jury in the two-month stretch they've been reviewing this matter. pecker is important in part because of his role as former publisher of the national enquirer. he helped coordinate this initial payment, essentially set up this project with michael cohen to make payments to stormy daniels. he's also a long time friend of then-candidate donald trump and could connect the dots on the money and timing piece of this, about when donald trump knew what along the way. this is the second time he's appeared. after monday we heard from a defense witness or a would be defense witness, someone put forward by donald trump's team. now having pecker come back does suggest he's here to plug some holes, answer some questions that might have arisen from robert costello's testimony last week. we're left to wait to see if this grand jury returns tomorrow. donald trump continues to attack

alvin bragg, this investigation and the other investigations going on into him as election interference. he argues repeatedly, including on fox news last night, that these investigations are meant to do what his political opponents cannot, which is to try to knock him off track in the presidential race. he sort of defended some of his rt otherwise, he has been locked in on alvin bragg while we wait to hear alvin bragg speak for himself on whether or no this grand jury will bring an indcent or be disbanded without charges. >> did david pecker strike a deal with prosecutors, either federal or state or local prosecutors? >> reporter: yeah. pecker and ami have an immunity deal that came out of the original set of prosecutions that ultimately led to michael cohen going to jail. they have their own deal here, which puts them in an interesting position in terms of

the testimony about their own involvement. >> nbc's garrett haake, thank you very much for that repot. >> you know how donald trump always defends himself and says he made the perfect call, he did the perfect this or that? >> many times. >> a new poll out, really bad news for donald trump. >> doesn't seem so perfect. >> americans don't think what he's done is perfect. these numbers are devastating for him. >> the polling this morning is from npr and maris. it shows a majority of americans, 56% believe the investigations into former president trump are fair including the probe into a hush money coverup, election interference, his handling of classified documents and his handling of the january 6th

insurrection. >> you're talking about 4 in 10 americans agreeing with donald trump. >> most americans perceive trump has engaged in improper behavior, a plurality. 46% say the former president has done something illegal. an additional 29% consider trump to have done something unethical but not illegal. only 23% of americans say donald trump has done nothing wrong. >> next time donald trump talks about a perfect phone call or a perfect this or a perfect payoff to a porn star, only 23% of americans, less than 1 in 4 actually agree with him. the majority of americans think these investigations are fair and think that donald trump did

something wrong. almost 50% of americans think he committed a crime. >> is it baked in by now, joe, though, that americans just assume that donald trump is kind of shad and is going to do this kind of stuff and it's part of the package of donald trump? you look at how his numbers are still strong among republican primary voters and that's going to propel him to a general with joe biden if he continues on this track. i just wonder if it's something that republican voters assume now and so they aren't that bothered. >> jonathan lemire, the question is what are we seeing people breaking away from and why do you only have 23% of americans saying that donald trump did

nothing wrong? i say only 23%. i'm sure that number would have been in the 30s or 40s before. but now republicans are seeing there's an alternative to donald trump. the alternative, of course, is the governor of florida. you look at the other poll and these investigations, what has he been saying nonstop? they're witch hunts, witch hunts. republicans on the ill saying they're only going after donald trump because he's running for president, when they know full well that he calculated he needed to run for president so he could say they're witch hunts. 56% of americans say all of these investigations are fair. that number is going to just keep going up. again, it's my 1% rule here. doesn't matter if donald trump doesn't lose 10% in these numbers. if he loses 1%, that means he

loses by one more percentage point to joe biden. this is a guy that has to gain votes. he's not gaining votes anywhere. >> that's right. the margins were small. every point he loses is going to make his path that much harder going forward. this certainly may not impact him in the republican primary. we don't know yet. there certainly seems to be a wish for some republicans to look for an alternative, but right now trump still has the largest piece of that pie. even if this gets a boost here in 2023 where he plays the witch hunt card and republicans or his base rallies and him. that base is hardened, yes, but it's also shrunk. you translate that to a potential general election. it's hard to see anyway these numbers are good for him. the headlines are going to

continue. it's not just the manhattan d.a. now, it's not just his strange effort to relitigate january 6th now, but there's more investigations coming, georgia, the special counsel, the mar-a-lago documents. the list goes on and on. that's just going to damage him going further. that slim sliver of independents and swing voters that he won in 2016, they broke away in 2020 and these polls suggest even more of them will go away from him in 2024. >> that56% becomes 57%, becomes 58%. the 41% becomes 40% as more of the investigations roll forward. again, donald trump can call it a witch hunt all he wants. >> it's not working anymore. >> only 41% of americans believe that. >> he used to work in a way he could whip up attention. it's all come down to what chris

christie said when donald trump announced he was getting arrested to the world and everyone was talking about what an indictment would mean. chris christie just said an indictment is not good. it's never good. it's not something that can ever be good for someone. bad news is coming. you can see in this polling that americans are not buying into this whole witch hunt thing. >> no. when you have only 23% of americans think that donald trump's done nothing wrong, that means every time he says it was a perfect call to the georgia republican secretary of state. now an overwhelming majority of americans don't believe you. only 23% believe you. that means more than 1 in 4 americans think you're lying. again, we're playing on the margins here. we're playing with the numbers here where it's just very small

changes making very big differences to donald trump's future. republicans looking at this have just got to be looking whether it's ron desantis, mike pence, nikki haley, they've got to be looking and going you really don't want to go there. >> the guy who makes everyone put their hands on their hearts and sing along with the choir, that's just crazy. >> i'm so glad you brought that up, because it was so deeply offensive to those of us on set that trump would have a choir of convicts, a choir of convicts, and he would elevate them, these rioters who beat the hell out of police officers, who beat the hell out of cops with american

flags. >> hand to his heart, that's a patriotic gesture. >> praising convicts. praising people who violently tried to overthrow anning election. we heard republicans speaking out against this gross act of his, and trying to wrap it up in patriotism. they're convicts for a reason, because they beat up cops, because they were part of a riot. now donald trump praising rioters, elevating rioters. >> a choir of convicts, that is what he's given a platform here at that rally in waco over the weekend. we did hear some republicans,

largely in the senate, who said look, this is a bridge too far. we can't support this. lindsey graham among them. good for them. it is indeed the bare minimum, but still good for them. >> good for them. >> good for them. you'd think we could denounce the choir of insurrectionists coopting patriot songs. that's where we are today in 2023. >> we praise republicans for actually being against the glorification of riots, rioters and convicts. >> you know that they all are against this. being in the senate means you are republican elite. they can't stand it, but they're so scared of getting attacked by donald trump the way ron desantis is right now and

numbers going down and with every hit numbers getting worse. >> joining us now editor of the new republic michael tamaski. >> two things can be true at once, as we say here all the time. i can believe that the likelihood of donald trump winning a general election is less than it was three years ago. i can also believe at the same time he poses a graver risk to american democracy and the stakes are so much higher. >> i agree with you completely. it is very unlikely that he's going to be the president, i think. but unlikely is not the same thing as impossible. we need to keep an eye on it. i wrote this piece to say after watching his waco speech and

watching that bone chilling video that he released on march 16th, to say to people, look, this is a different guy than 2016. this is a more dangerous person than 2016. now, i don't want to play too much historical revisionism here, joe. he was dangerous in 2016. i'm not trying to change history. he went onto prove as president how dangerous he was. >> michael, let me interrupt for one second. now it's unlikely that he's going to get elected. i will tell you that's what 99% of the people who came on our show were saying. mika and i said he had a shot at 270. mark halperin said he had a shot at 270. harold ford said he had a shot at 270. i cannot tell you how shocked and stunned and outraged everybody was that we would even

suggest that he could possibly win. so we're saying now i don't think he can get to 270 now. but guess what? a lot of people were wrong in 2016. there is a chance that we could be wrong in 2023. if we are wrong, michael, then our republic, in my opinion, is not at risk, our republic is lost. >> lost, yeah. he has signalled that already by embracing two motivations that really weren't there in 2016. one is this revenge theme,which he keeps hammering at. i am your retribution, i am your revenge. he, of course, is drawing his audience into it, so he's making it their fight as well as his. in reality it's only his and legal walls are closing in on him. that is a real theme. he's signaling what he's going to do.

he's going to get rid of the marxists and deep staters,which now includes mitch mcconnell, interestingly, and he's going to clean out the slaughterhouse of the permanent government. he's just acknowledging what he's going to do. the other thing that caught my ear in that waco speech was that sentence about this is the final battle, 2024 is the final battle. this apocalyptic rhetoric is out of a science fiction movie or the book of revelations, but it bodes terribly for what might happen to this country if he does get back in the white house. it's terrifying. >> you write, quote, a reasonably sentient joe biden could probably beat donald trump handily. what is that standard? >> it's a gesture toward the concerns about his age,

obviously. that's not going to go away. that's going to be something he's going to have to address and republicans are going to have to pound away at. i do think if he's showing that he's got it basically together, people are going to vote for him over donald trump, especially swing voters in the states that matter. those swing voters rolled the dice on him in 2016 for a host of reasons. i don't think they're going to be willing to roll those dice one more time. >> trump just keeps lying. he's borrowing from his friend putin with a firehose of falsehoods. last night he was saying he didn't even know that he had a bat, that he reposted a tweet with a bad next to the head of the d.a. of course he did. he's always lying. it's just like when he said he wanted to terminate the constitution. the former president of the united states said he wanted to

terminate the constitution of the united states. the blowback was so bad he came back and said oh, i never said that. of course he said it. when people tell you who they are, believe them the first time. >> it's like you said a minute ago. it's not that the republic is at risk if he wins. the republic is lost if he wins. the lackeys he's going to put in place, he's going to shred nato and hand ukraine to putin. what do you think the federal gun policy is going to be in this country if he gets back in the white house and appoints the kind of judges he's going to appoint? we're going to be in a dark, dark place. he's got plans and intentions and he knows certain things about where the levers of power are now that he did not know in 2016.

he's a long shot to win, but take seriously the prospect that he might and be scared, because it's going to be dark and ugly. >> thank you very much for coming on this morning. still ahead, we have the latest testimony in gwyneth paltrow's ski crash trial as jurors yesterday heard from the retired opt tom tryst i have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. now, there's skyrizi. ♪♪ with skyrizi, most people who achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months... had lasting clearance through 1 year. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections, or a lower ability to fight them, may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, etristine or plan to. or a lower ability to fight them, may occur. ♪nothing is everything♪ talk to your dermatologist about skyrizi. d help you save.

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you know, there's a thousand billionaires in america, it■s up from about 600 at the beginning of my term. but no billionaire should be paying a lower tax rate than a schoolteacher or a firefighter. i mean it! think about it. . welcome back. in utah this morning, gwyneth paltrow's attorneys are expected to call more defense witnesses, this after the jury heard dramatic testimony from the man who claims paltrow crashed into him on a ski slope, leaving him with serious, permanent injuries. miguel almaguer has the latest. >> everything was great. and then i heard something i've never heard at a ski resort. that was a blood curdling scream. >> reporter: making his case on the witness stand, terry

sanderson says oscar winner gwyneth paltrow plowed into him on a ski run. >> it was like somebody was out of control and was going to hit a tree and was going to die. that's what i had.

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this reset button. this is very modern. am i doing it right or be trying something different. >> tell us about your character.

>> is this it? it turns into a bit of a mid-life crisis of a show which i can totally appreciate. >> what twists and turns do you think viewers are going to expect as the season develops.

>> lindsey reiser and yasmin vossoughian pick up our coverage right now. >> it's 10:00 a.m. in new york. i'm lindsey reiser. i'll be joined throughout the hour by yasmin vossoughian live in nashville, tennessee. in disturbing details starting to emerge this morning share much in common with shootings we've seen time and time again. terrified children holding hands fleeing classrooms. parents frantically searching for their children. a lone shooter who was armed with multiple weapons, including ar-style rifles, who had written a manifesto and had a connection

t