known, but i want to pronounce it correctly by looking at this, north dakota governor doug burgan will be jumping in. he's been strong on anti-abortion. the republican nominee field is getting crowded. >> thank you, nicholas johnston. thank you for getting up "way too early" on this thursday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. that's a sacred element of our country. the debt ceiling to negotiate. republicans out there, senators, if they don't give you massive cuts, you have to do a default. we'll fix it in two years. i'll get it done permanently and properly. but it is passed, and i guess i knew it was going to pass.

we'll get it fixed and get it fixed properly in two years. but we're going to get it fixed and fixed properly. we'll get it fixed in two years. >> all right. >> he's going to get it fixed in two years. >> two years. >> wait, but he had a chance to fix it in 2017. what did he do? >> well, he called the debt ceiling sacred. >> and '18, '19. >> then he urged a default. now, donald trump is back in the mushy middle, promising a big fix down the road. you know, like infrastructure, health care, and a border wall. >> yeah. >> meanwhile, ron desantis continues -- >> de-santis. >> i think you should. >> really. >> if i say it, you should do it, okay? >> willie, mika wants me to change the pronunciation of my

name to joe subaru. >> or brzezinski. >> joe subaru. it's been scarborough, like, my whole life. >> yeah. >> subaru, joe subaru. iramping up for a campaign, maybe it's time for a rebrand. people love a good subaru, reliable automobile. >> great family car. >> it is odd, i have to say, that the desantis campaign won't confirm one way or another, how to say his name. we're happy to say it however it's meant to be said, but we've heard so many versions. >> just tell us. >> it's fine. >> goes back and forth from one event to another. genuinely not sure how to say the governor's name. >> you know, willie, he called himself ron desantis his entire life. ron desantis when he was running for governor. called himself ron desantis after he was governor. >> right. >> suddenly, "politico" reports

his wife wanted him to change his name. the pronunciation to desantis. mika is like, i need to be joe subaru, so i understand that. still, de-santis or da-santis. >> it reminds me of joe azouzou. i'm dating myself. let's workshop it today and see how it feels. >> okay. >> i have to say, great commercial. joe azusa. i had, willie, actually, i had one of those troopers that went straight up. >> oh, my god. >> i didn't know. if you coughed, it rolled that

way. it was standard. >> manual. >> i wanted a subaru. >> i'd get dirt, shovel it in the back, resod the lawn. >> way too much. >> it was great. anyway, i don't want to be you azouzou, but joe subaru, i get what mika is saying here. >> brzezinski. >> i think i'll keep my name. >> meanwhile -- >> you said when you were marrying me -- >> don't talk about that. >> -- you'd be scarborough. >> we're being professional space. >> but you went with brzezinski. >> willie, help me. >> we're doing a little therapy out of the gate. >> exactly. how does that make you feel? >> i don't like -- this is not

where we talk about those things, and this is obvious. i told you this for years. >> about what? >> just stop, okay? >> stop what? [ laughter ] i'm going to now continue the headlines. ron desantis continues to criticize donald trump while campaigning in iowa after he hardly said anything about the former president for months. we're also following two former trump allies, ready to jump into the 2024 race. we'll look at the impact, if any, chris christie and mike pence could have on the growing field. and we'll have the takeaways from nasa's ufo research team which is trying to explain hundreds of sightings since the mid '90s. along with joe, willie and me, joe subaru, we -- >> why don't we do desantis, joe scarborough, maybe that. >> fine, whatever. we have the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at "politico," jonathan

lee-mire, and u.s. special correspondent for bbc news, katie kai. >> all right. >> we're following the investigation into former president donald trump and classified documents that he took with him when he left the white house. multiple sources tell cnn, federal prosecutors obtained the 2021 audio recording of trump, acknowledging that he kept classified pentagon documents about a possible attack on iran after leaving the white house. the existence of the recording undercuts trump's primary defense, that he declassified all the documents that he brought with him from the white house to mar-a-lago. cnn reports the july 2021 meeting was held at trump's golf club in bedminster, new jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of trump's former chief of staff, mark meadows, as well as trump aides, including

communications specialist margot martin, who, as "the guardian" reports, taped trump's conversations with authors to make sure they were accurately recounting his remarks. willie, this is interesting. >> yeah. >> this is all about people writing books about themselves and recordings of all that stuff that people want to put into history about their time in the white house. >> yeah. it also shows us where the special counsel may be in this investigation. that recording that mika is talking about reportedly indicates trump understood he had maintained classified material after leaving the white house. it was still classified in his possession, and he no longer had the ability to declassify it. trump's comments reportedly suggest he'd like to share the information contained within the documents, but he could not because he is aware that he no longer has the ability to declassify materials after having left the white house. cnn didn't listen to the

recording but described sources saying what was on the tape. nbc hasn't confirmed, and trump denied any wrongdoing. joining us is "the guardian's" hugo lowell, who matched cnn's reporting. not having listened to the tape, but hearing accounts from people who have, what did the former president say, and what does it tell us about what he knew about the documents in his possession? >> our reporting suggests he went a little further. on the tape, he made a suggestion that he should have declassified military document relating to iran when he was in the white house and he still had presidential power to declassify, but he had not done so. i think it does come back to this point about how he seems to be acknowledging, really on tape for the first time, that the entire theory about how he

could -- or how he had declassified everything that ended up at mar-a-lago and elsewhere was totally declassified because, you know, he thought about declassifying it or because he took it up with him to the residence. the document was classified at the secret level, also significant. that is the kind of document that the justice department typically charges in espionage cases. you don't want someone that is too sensitive, something that's top secret, because it's difficult to get intelligence community to sign off declassifying that for use at trial. something at the confidential level, on the other end of the sp spectrum, is probably too low of a threshold for it to be compelling to a jury. because this was at the secret level, it makes it even worse for trump. >> donald trump knew what he had was classified. he knew he'd probably something

he shouldn't have back to mar-a-lago, which raises the question, if this is coming out of jack smith's investigation now, who is leading, of course, the doj investigation into the classified materials at mar-a-lago, what does it tell you, according to your reporting, hugo, about where the special counsel is in the investigation, and whether he may be bringing charges soon? >> two words, espionage investigation. i mean, if you're looking at the sort of documents that crump had in his possession, might have been showing other people, and we should say, on the audio tape, it is not clear trump showed this document to anyone, and it's not clear if he had it in his possession at the time. the fact the special counsel zeroed in on this conduct, and we have reporting from kind of other witnesses who have gone before the grand jury, that a lot of the questions have been, you know, what did trump show people? did trump have classified documents out in the open at his office in mar-a-lago? that suggests that this is primarily and increasingly an espionage investigation.

yes, there's the obstruction element here because that's been such a big part, you know, with the movement of boxes in and out of the storage room. we have discussed it so often. but the fact that we are talking about the classified documents and what trump might have shown people, that is textbook espionage investigation under section 793 of title 18. >> again, this also shows that when donald trump has been talking about this, he's been lying time and time and time again. now, of course, as we saw on the cnn town hall meeting, republicans actually cheer when he brags about being a liar, but special counsels aren't quite so excited about that. when i say republicans, i mean the republicans in the cnn town hall audience cheered at him, saying he lied about the debt ceiling and that he was being a h

hypocrite. they thought he was being the funniest guy in the world. when sean hannity's show had trump and he said, i can declassify things by thinking about it, suckers are born every they, and republicans repeat the talking points. he lies and says at the cnn town hall, i can do whatever i wanted to do with it. i declassify it if i want to. we find out with this audio recording, just like the audio recording in georgia, that donald trump is in legal hot water. even trump knows in these recordings, and it goes straight to intent, doesn't it, that he can't declassify just by thinking about it. he didn't declassify just by thinking about it. in fact, he knew he was in possession of a classified document that he improperly, illegally took from the white house. >> yeah, now, it turns out that there are tapes.

there were also problems around the "i've declassified these documents just by thinking about them" argument. presumably, there would have had to have been a paper trail of him doing this. what happened to the declassified documents after he took them back to the white house in office, would they suddenly get reclassified again? not to mention the fact you have allies in an uproar if it was possible to declassify documents in this casual way. his argument never held water. it is interesting, hugo's reporting, that now it is looking like there could be more than just obstruction if this is some kind of espionage case, as well. i mean, i don't know what that means in terms of the president, or as you're suggesting, joe, in terms of his supporters. i guess his supporters will pie buy his argument he's the victim of the greatest witch hunt ever, and this was in his power to do this. die hard supporters, cumulatively, the legal problems he is facing from an independent special counsel, not a political

appointee, does that start chipping away at those voters we're always talking about in the suburbs, places like atlanta and milwaukee and philadelphia? >> right. yeah, and the thing is, jonathan lemire, that's the point. i mean, there's some hard core supporters who will say it doesn't matter that donald trump is a liar. it doesn't matter that he stole classified documents. it doesn't matter that he obstructed justice. it doesn't matter that he broke the law. it doesn't matter that he kept lying and that he moved documents the day before they were coming down to get the documents. it doesn't matter that he got caught on tape lying. they'll say that. but when you go a little below the surface with 'em, they go, i'm so exhausted by this guy, right? when they -- when they aren't having to admit that they voted for him twice and that they keep defending him, you scratch below the surface. i hear it time and time again,

we both do, they're so exhausted by him. katty brings up a great point. i have to keep bringing it up because, as we talk about the republican nomination, republicans have a choice here, do they want to win or do they want to lose? nay want to lose, i can let them know, keep backing donald trump. this news, and i think the indictment that's sure to come now from the justice department, is really going to hurt donald trump in the suburbs of atlanta, philly, detroit, milwaukee. you name it, maricopa county. where all of these swing voters are that decide elections. again, trump people say, it's fine. it's fine. they won't come out and say it but they like that he's a liar. they like that he lies to the fbi. they like that he lies to the doj. they like that he lies to everybody because they think,

somehow, in some perverse, twisted logic, they think, somehow, that's sticking it to the libs, by being a liar constantly. living your entire life being a lie in public service. that's what they think. the problem is, and we're going to get to the debt ceiling in a minute, i don't think that's where most of america is. i think most of america actually, you know, i think there are a lot of voters who decide elections, jonathan, who are going to hear this and it is going to push them even further away from donald trump, make them even more exhausted by the constant lies, the constant legal problems, the constant violations of laws, and just basic, standard governing ethics. >> yeah, the most basic way to look at the 2024 race is exactly that. the swing voters who broke, some of them, for trump in '16, who broke hard away in '20, what

possible reason has he given them to come back in 2024? this adds to that. the hardest core trump supporters are with him forever. nothing changes their minds. we've seen that the last couple years. there's another slice of republicans who did go for trump, maybe in '20, as well, voted for him twice, who want something different here. who recognize that even as these indictments, at least the first one, helped trump in the gop primary polls, and maybe the next will, too, it's not going to help him in a general election next year. it's almost impossible to see a way it does. hugo, i want to return to the investigation for a moment and let's talk about some of the cast of characters involved. we should note, margot martin was a junior white house staffer, but one of the very few from the west wing who followed trump into his post presidency. she plays a larger role in his life now. of course, mark meadows, former chief of staff, had this book where the audio is connected to. who else is jack smith talking to? has he interviewed these two?

also, other employees at bedminster and mar-a-lago who could be shedding light on this piece of it as the investigation seems to be heading into its final stretch. >> yeah, from what we understand, actually, the trump legal team learned about the tape not through their own client but because margot martin had her laptop and devices imaged by prosecutors working for the special counsel and was asked about the tape when she testified to the grand jury, hearing evidence in this case in mid march, toward the end of march. then the trump legal team itself got a subpoena for the tape, and it kind of all went downhill from there. you know, she's not the only person. there have been multiple witnesses, apparently, to whom this tape has been played. we should remember that the special counsel basically subpoenaed almost every employee that works at mar-a-lago, not just the political staff. not just at least two or three lawyers who for were trump, but

also the cooks, maids, assistants to the valets. they were interviewing groundsmen. they were interviewing people connected to the i.t. system and security system. they recently had the two calamaris, who oversee security at the trump properties, go in to testify. the special counsel has basically spoken to everyone. the last time the grand jury met, we believe, is around may 5th. we understand the grand jury may have expired may 18th. we have to assume that, at this point, the investigation is coming to a close, and charging decisions are being considered right now. >> wow. political investigations reporter for "the guardian," hugo lowell, thank you very much for your reporting this morning. we'll be following that and have more conversations about it later with legal experts. politics now. florida governor ron desantis

has stepped up his criticism of former president donald trump. desantis made -- >> is that how you say it? >> i'm trying. >> that's not what you used to say. not how his parents say it. >> that's how he said it in his campaign video. i'm trying to say his name the way he says it. >> not how his parents said it. desantis makes sense, right? >> desantis made appearances in four towns in iowa yesterday, touting his efforts to push florida farther to the right. while he never mentioned trump by name during his speeches, desantis criticized the former president's policies, saying he would have gotten rid of anthony fauci during the pandemic. and would have closed the border. >> leadership the end of the day, it's not about entertainment. it's not about building a brand. it's not about virtue signaling. it's about producing results. you really need a very disciplined, energetic president willing to spit nails and fight

the needed battles every single day for eight years. you can't get caught by the left. you can't worry about what the legacy media says. you need to be willing to clean house on day one, and so that means, you know, if you have a problematic bureaucrat like a fauci, you don't elevate fauci, you bring him in, tell him to pack his bags, "you are fired." you have to be willing to do that. >> it's so funny, he talks about -- >> horrific. >> he says, you actually do things, you don't virtue signal. >> then he virtue signals. >> everything he does publicly is virtue signaling. >> true. >> he goes after a phony issue after another, virtue signals about it, brings up anthony fauci, virtue signals about that. he virtue signals about disney. he virtue signals about books. he virtue signals about all of these other things. it's all about virtue signaling.

he doesn't talk about inflation. now, i haven't heard him talking. you know, the thing is, what about focusing on jobs? >> how about guns? >> what about inflation? >> abortion. >> other issues, you know? with that, i have to say, abortion, that is very real. he is completely impacting the lives of women in florida. >> he has. >> and will, over time, stop businesses from coming to the state of florida if they have a choice to go somewhere elsewhere you don't have an almost absolute ban on abortion. now, desantis did mention the former president while talking to reporters later, questioning the former president's commitment to conservatism. he called out trump for siding with disney in his feud with the entertainment company, saying his republican rival's position is, quote, bizarre. let's go right now to des moines, and we have senior writer for "the dispatch," david drucker. we've all been asking, everybody has been asking, when are people going to go after trump by name? he did it yesterday, talking

about how trump's entire family moved to florida. it was a horrible state. he was doing a horrible job. why did your entire family move to florida? a good question. yesterday, he was quite direct, going after donald trump. i think maybe we're starting to see a new phase of the campaign, where it actually looks like a traditional campaign instead of somebody patting donald trump on the head all day. >> yeah, this looks a lot different, joe and mika, than 2016, and a lot different than 2024 has looked up until now. becoming a candidate, ron desantis is clearly unleashed himself when it comes to the former president. strategically, i think he is doing it correctly so. when you talk to voters in iowa, which i've done the past couple days and i have been doing repeatedly over the past couple months, they want a republican that focuses on the future and focuses on a lot of these cultural issues that are very important to them. but when confronted with questions about his rival, they want a candidate who is willing

to stand up and just be blunt and honest about it and not shy away from that. that's what the governor is doing so far. look, he's got to come from behind. we'll see if he can run a competent campaign. we'll see if voters really take to him. so far, it's been really interesting to watch in two ways. one, he's not a very dynamic speaker, but the audiences are eating up the content of his speeches. what he is able to do, which is different than a lot of senators i've covered, instead of saying, "i propose legislation," he's able to say, "i signed this into law." that carries a lot of weight here. secondly, this is just very different, usually, when a political spouse is involved in a campaign, male or female, they will introduce the candidate, then they step to the side and they're done. so far, what governor desantis likes to do with his wife, the first lady of florida, casey desantis, she comes up in the middle of his speech. he invites her up. she gives a mini speech, a riff of her own for about five, ten

minutes, then she steps back down into the audience, and he continues on with the rest of his speech. it's a different -- it's stylistically different. the audiences like her. you know, she has all of the charm and the savvy that he doesn't always appear to have. i think he understands that she is a very potent weapon for his campaign. i think that's why he is involving her the way he has. >> she's definitely an asset to his campaign. david, you know, the book on ron desantis, not just from the national media, but from the media in tallahassee and politicians, republicans included in the state of florida, he is, as you eluded to, not real company in that room, doing the retail politics and the glad handing and the schmoozing and things you have to do to earn votes in a place like iowa. as you watch him on the campaign trail, is that a fair assessment of the politician he is? >> well, it's a fair assessment of the kind of politician he has been up until recently.

my reporting from tallahassee a couple months ago delved deep into this, and i had a lot of republicans in the florida capital question whether he was going to do this, right? if he was going to run for president, was he going to stick around in the room and shake hands and pose for selfies? he didn't like to do it. he didn't like to do any of it. he's not a small talker. he's doing it. willie, i've watched him now a couple weeks ago in iowa. i've watched him the past couple days. he is working the room. he is hanging outout. and getting back to his wife, an important factor here, she also does it. they work opposite ends of the room. they have almost equal crowds around them for handshakes, selfies and comments after the speech. so he understands, presumably, that this is what you need to do if you want to win. he's doing what is required to put himself in a position to win. >> you know, jonathan lemire, i

think one of the reasons why, even after the twitter launch, i thought that ron desantis had a chance to catch up with donald trump is there's something else about him. you hear him talk and, again, yes, there's a lot of virtue signaling. he looks at the polls, sees what the most hard core part of the base wants, and he gives them that. he also can -- i mean, this sounds simple, but i can tell you for an exhausted republican party that's had to deal with donald trump, he can speak in complete sentences. he's articulate. he can string -- >> it's a contrast. >> right. -- sentences, paragraphs together, and it is the contrast. so he's not a glad hander. i have to say, jeb bush, you know, jeb bush was uncomfortable around people. of course, he knew how to -- i mean, he knew how to do what he needed to do, but he wasn't like his brother in that way. jeb was a policy guy.

you know, jeb got up and talked policy, man, like, you knew exactly where he wanted to take the state. people really responded to that in a big way. i have to say, with ron desantis, i think sometimes we're focused so much on what he can't do, which is he can't glad hand like w. he can't glad hand like reagan. we don't focus on what he is doing and what audiences in iowa and new hampshire and the early states are going to see. that's a guy who is smart, a guy who can actually deliver a speech and answer questions in a way that resembles, again, some semblance of logic. that's something donald trump just still to this day can't really do. he insults somebody. he has a little punch line, and that's about it. >> yeah, if you look at a transcript of a desantis speech, it is coherent. transcript of a trump one, very different.

you're right, that is something he can do. he also, to david's point, can point to a record of things he has done with executive power there in florida. he's also raised a lot of money. despite the glitchy launch last week on twitter, his campaign said they bankrolled a ton of cash. we know he's caught donald trump's attention, who is pounding him multiple times a day on truth social. speaking of desantis' name, he attacked the desantis or desantis. he calls him rob now. i think it was a typo but he's going with it. david drucker, the field is about to grow. mike pence is going to be where you are in iowa sometime next week. he is going to announce his campaign. chris christie is going to do the same in new hampshire. give us your pence of the field here as it grows more crowded. the conventional wisdom has been, that's good for trump. what lanes can pence and christie find? >> well, we will find out. look, you know, governor christie has not wanted to run unless he thought he could mount

a viable campaign. he's told me many times, staying at a holiday inn express, it's not glamorous enough to do this, just to go on a kamikaze mission to take down trump. but he is going to, i think, sequester himself in new hampshire, focus on the front runner, who remains trump for now, and see if he can make some headway. mike pence will be interesting to watch in this regard. there are a lot of republicans and democrats i talk to all the time, usually in washington but also around the country, who say, what happened to the ronald reagan version of the republican party that i liked so much? that's how mike pence is going to run, both on issues and temperament. we'll see if there's a market for that in the republican party in these early states, such that he can become a contender. he also will not shy away from criticizing the front runner, although he tends to conduct his politics in a little more of a civil manner. we'll see how that works out for him. the conventional wisdom, as you say, jonathan, is that the more

crowded this gets, the better it is for trump. the trump campaign certainly feels that way. that could end up being the case. i think the real question is, is it crowded when it started -- when voters start going to the polls in iowa, new hampshire and south carolina, or does it thin out again as people try to mount campaigns and fail? also, is this a little bit different -- and i'll tell you, from a donor aspect, one way it is different is this. in 2016, different republican donors were picking their favorite candidates, and they were making sure their coppers were full so they could get to the starting line. a lot of republican donors are keeping their powder dry. they don't want to keep candidates in the race that don't have a chance to win and help trump. some of the donors might back candidates they don't necessarily like all that much, as long as they feel like that candidate is on the rise and is in a position to beat donald trump. we'll have to see how this plays

out in the coming months. >> interesting. senior writer for "the dispatch," david drucker. thank you very much for coming on this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," with a deadline looming, the house passes president biden and speaker mccarthy's debt ceiling deal, but what happens now over in the senate? we'll go over that. plus, steve rattner has charts on all of this. russia launch as new round of missile strikes on kyiv overnight after more than a dozen attacks throughout the month of may. we'll have the latest on the fighting overseas. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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welcome back. it is 36 past the hour. beautiful shot of the capitol in washington, d.c. that's where the house of representatives passed the biden/mccarthy debt ceiling bill last night. the final vote was 314 to 117, with members from centrist groups like the house problem solvers caucus, the republican governance group, and the new democrat coalition, providing the critical votes needed for the bill to pass. most of the votes against the legislation came from members on the idealogical ends of both parties, the house progressive caucus and the house freedom caucus. while both groups were vocal in the lead-up to the vote, moderate congressional members quietly ended up with a win, showcasing the reshuffled power structure in this new era of divided government. >> i mean, willie, it's

fascinating, isn't it? we hear from the extremes on both sides talking about all of the problems with this bill. we hear this may be the end for mccarthy. man, 314 to 117, whenever i'd be on the house floor and look at a vote that was supposed to close, i mean, you rarely got to the 300s. this was a rout. it really does show that, sometimes, the people that control the house are the ones in the middle who don't run in front of television cameras every time they have something to say. >> hair on fire. >> with their hair on fire, right. >> exactly right. in this time of our crazy, wild politics, where the loudest extremes get a lot of attention and make all the noise, president biden, his team at the white house, speaker mccarthy and his team in the house, went ahead responsibly and negotiated this thing pretty quietly. they listened to the right. they listened to the left.

remember, there were calls from progressives for the president to invoke the 14th amendment, to take that huge step and raise it unilaterally, the debt ceiling. he rejected that, resisted that. he said, "no, we're going to do this the right way." kevin mccarthy, for all the flaws we've talked about now for year years, he did the job. the vote total surprised people counting the votes even 24 hours ago. yes, there is a group on the right and there is a group on the left who rejected this, but by and large, the center held here. the responsible thing happened. now, that bill heads to the senate, where both majority leader chuck schumer and minority leader mcconnell endorsed the measure. during a news conference yesterday, schumer stressed senators can't afford to amend the bill and send it back to the house. quote, that'd risk default, plain and simple. joe, it looks like senators we've talked to on this show and off the air, this will be done by the end of the week. the x date comes june 5th now, according to treasury secretary

janet yellen. >> yeah. >> we talk about kevin mccarthy. we talk about joe biden. here's another example, joe biden. >> i know. >> again, knowing how things work, everybody was saying we were going to default, this was going to be a catastrophe. add this to the list. the guy has been around. he knows how to get things done. you know, in this case, kevin mccarthy, same thing. he's been around. they knew how to stop the country from defaulting. >> one of our next guests has written about this. we have also with us, with charts, former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst, steve rattner looking at the winners and losers in this. also with us, u.s. editor at "the financial times," ed luce. his piece is "game, set and almost match to president biden on the debt ceiling." >> ed, for all of the gibberish that we hear from the trump

right, that joe biden is a communist, a child molester, whatever they say. >> the biden crime family. i like that one. >> all the crazy stuff, he's some left-wing freak, you know, he's only centrist, really, running in 2020. democrats picked him. and because he is a centrist who knows how to make government work, one piece of bipartisan legislation after another. here, it's not even close. lbj said, you always push. you know, you want it to be as close as you can make it. that proves that, well, this one, this one wasn't even close. the center held in a big way, didn't it? >> it did. i mean, the story of biden over many years, many decades, particularly the last few years, is that he is seriously underestimated. >> always. >> the right, of course,

persuaded themselves that he is senile. i think what they're mistaking that for is a very calm temperament. he doesn't play the excitement game. even now, with this extraordinary victory, he's not playing the excitement game. a mutual friend, david rothkopf, said, when he scores a touchdown, he is happy to allow other people to do a victory dance, which is a good way of putting it. he sees the sort of longer-term impacts. it's too early to celebrate because it's got to pass through the senate. he takes the calm, mature, been around more blocks in washington, d.c., than almost anyone else in this town approach, in order to get this bill passed and avert catastrophe. what was the fuss about? i mean, this is a real, just impure policy in fiscal budgetary terms.

this is elephant givs birth to a mouse situation. what the fuss was about? i don't know. i'm sure, steve, we'll have more breakdown on the numbers here, but the bottom line is biden keeps being underestimated, and he keeps pulling off wins. >> katty. >> yeah, ed, all of that is right, and it is extraordinary he's managed to do this. actually, you know, we saw a moment, god forbid, of republicans and democrats doing the sensible thing. but there is this looming question about how this feeds back onto america's reputation around the world. we're going to go through this again, chances are, in two years' time. the whole image of america is competent, as having a government that works, it has already, even though a deal has been struck, has already been struck. you know, when you have the german finance minister telling american politicians to grow up, you wonder what america's enemies are thinking. it's not, as i was even told by a republican, this is not a good look.

>> i guess it would be better than the italian prime minister telling him to grow up. but germans tend to be boring and adult in their politics. >> not a bad thing. >> no bad thing. good reason for it. you're quite right, the debt ceiling hasn't been fixed. the 14th amendment legal route would be way too risky with this supreme court. the chances they would strike it down is way too high, and that'd create the equivalent of a default. it'd create a market panic. two years from now, we're going to get another debt ceiling showdown, depending on who is president and who controls the house. but, remember, kevin mccarthy and the freedom caucus and others wanted this to be only a one year extension. the whole thing would have been replayed again in an election year.

it's a two-year, so it'll be after the next election. they wanted america to essentially tie its hands behind its back in budgetary terms for ten years. they got two-year spending limits. they wanted to essentially repeal the inflation reduction act, all the clean energy stuff biden passed last year. they didn't get any of that. they wanted, i think, most tellingly, to gut the irs. really ironic since which is supposed to be a fiscally responsible jihad. they wanted to gut the state's responsibility to gut taxes, and biden preserved that. you live to fight another day. america, i don't think, is in a position to solve this debt ceiling, this absurd debt ceiling rule, which is unique to america. it's not in a position, biden is not in a position to get rid of the debt ceiling sword that hangs over it, but a win is a

win. >> right. >> compared to what we were expecting, this is a win. >> all right. ed luce, we'll be thinking about the elephant and the mouse all morning long. thank you for bringing us the image. >> yeah, thank you for the visual. >> thanks, ed. let's swing over to the southwest wall, where steve rattner is with his charts. let's dig into the details of this deal. we talked a lot about the politics. who got the better of this one? >> well, i'm with ed on this, and i think the ed line on his op-ed kind of says it all, game, set and almost match to biden. one thing to note about that bipartisan vote that you guys were talking about is that there were more republicans who voted against this, against the thing their own speaker negotiated, than there were democrats. you guys had some fun yesterday with words like ephemeral, and it is an indication that, in fact, the white house did get the better of the deal. they're not taking a victory lap at the moment because they don't want to upset what looks like a positive course in the senate. but, you know, i think you'll

see them perhaps do that at some point because they deserve it. we can take a look at some of the provisions. ed mentioned a few things. this is a comparison between the two bills. this is the house gop bill that they passed. this is what they said they were prepared to have go into law. this is the deal that ultimately emerged. they wanted -- i'll give you a couple examples. they wanted to cut domestic spending, non-defense, to $555 billion. it was $744 billion in the current fiscal year. it ended up at $704 billion. ed mentioned the ten-year caps. this is really important. they wanted to cap this thing for ten years. they only got two. if the democrats were to be back in power in two years, they can undo as much of this as they want to. he mentioned the irs clawback. wanted $80 billion. they got maybe not $21 billion. the number could be smaller. the irony here is that the irs actually -- more money to the i

irs reduces the inflation because more avoiders can be found. the republicans wanted a broad work requirement. they wanted basically everybody receiving public assistance, other than social security, to be working. they got a tiny fraction of that, which we'll talk about in a second. on the student loan situation, where there has been this moratorium, the republicans wanted every penny of that money paid back. they're not getting any of that. all they're getting is that the freeze that's in existence on student loan repayments would end, which it is going to anyway. it would restrict the ability to put in another moratorium, which nobody wants to do anyway. essentially, there's no difference on student loans for what is going -- what would have happened anyway. no change on taxes on either side. no increasesloopholes

closed. we can discuss whether that's the best idea, but that's where they came out. republicans wanted to repeal all of the green energy tax credits in the inflation reduction act. they gotze roh on that provision. >> so, as we move to your second chart, steve, obviously, speaker mccarthy touted this deal to his caucus, saying we cut $1.5 trillion over a decade, a massive savings, more than we've been able to get in many, many years, so we ought to vote for it. the freedom caucus disagreed that it was enough, but enough republicans got the bill through. what are the spending cuts really like. >> let's look at that. as i said before, we can look at the fiscal 2024, the next year, of non-defense discretionary. that's where all the action was. that's what was on the table. nothing else was on the table really to be changed. so the be and his budget proposed a bit over $800 billion. as i said before, this is the

2023 amount. this is $744 billion. the republicans wanted it down at this 550 level we talked about. ended up here, about $40 billion, as i said, less than what we are going to spend anyway. a bit less, $110 billion less than the biden proposal. $145 billion more than the republican proposal. we didn't end up in the middle. we ended up on the biden side of the ledger. this one is really important. as i mentioned a minute ago, the republicans wanted a lot -- this is snap, our food stamp program. the republicans wanted a lot of these people out there working, and a very broad work requirement. they also wanted a work requirement on what we would call the welfare program. they got absolutely zero on welfare. food stamps, people between 50 and 54 would have a work requirement, but they exempted

veterans. they exempted people with housing problems from all of this. there are some numbers coming out, suggesting that, actually, there may be fewer people working, at least required to work, under this than what we have now. certainly, only at worse, a very tiny sliver more, and nobody on the welfare side of the equation. >> steve, you know, since you didn't vote for donald trump, there will be some people that will suggest that you're a communist and trafficking children like all of us. they suggest i'm a communist because i actually believe in small government and because i've been fighting for it my entire life. well, they support a guy who increased the deficit and debt more than any human being in history. talk about socialists, communists, reckless, big spenders. that's who they are. let's talk about who we are so people understand where you're coming from. you and i have been critical of massive spending.

you and i have talked about our concerns about debt, even during the obama administration. you were part of an organization that urged president obama, republicans and democrats, to bring down the national debt, to be more fiscally responsible. you've been critical of the biden administration, much to their consternation, about big spending programs and inflation. you've warned that inflation was coming, that it wasn't transitory. i can go down the list. but you have been very concerned about deficit and debts. with that as a background, with us being concerned about the debt, $31 trillion debt which donald trump contributed to more than anybody in american history, how does this deal work for us? i know the national debt still goes up, but is this a good balance between the two sides as far as you're concerned, as

someone who has been concerned about the debt for years? >> well, look, it's a start. it does reduce the debt and deficit over the long term. let's just take a look at some of the history that you referred to, joe. i think you'll see what the magnitude of the problem is. so this is our history of revenues and expenses on a national basis, and all the stuff in the middle is deficit which becomes debt. if you go back to the late '90s, in the clinton year, we actually had a surplus for a few years. then we got into the financial crisis, and it all ballooned. then we started working it down, working it down, and then trump shows up right here. since trump showed up, what's happening? the deficit and the debt gets larger. obviously, there was covid, but even before there was covid, you had the trump tax cuts which were supposed to pay for themselves. instead, you can see revenues going down here as the percentage of gdp. on the spending side, for all

the brave talk, spending started to go up, even before the covid spike. all this pink stuff between these two lines, all this pink stuff are deficits and debt that trump added to our problem. under biden, you see outlays coming down, revenues going up. we're starting to get the deficit now. this will help, but it is a big problem in which trump was a contributor, not a helper toward getting to a lower deficit picture. but we shouldn't also forget, joe, and this is something you and i have talked about a lot over the years, that we do have a long-term structure issue we have to think about. i don't want to end on a debbie downer note, but we have to talk about all the aspects of this. we've been cutting from non-defense discretionary, and you can see that non-defense discretionary, which is everything from the labor department, epa, fda agenies that make our lives

better, we've been cutting from them in a gradual way for a long time in order to offset the fact that there are large parts of our budget, which do include social security and medicare, and i'm not suggesting going there and hacking away at them, but we have to recognize that as a percent of our gdp, those costs have gone up, squeezing this down. that's a trend that, unfortunately, is not showing any sign of abating. >> steve rattner, thank you very much with the charts this morning. coming up on "morning joe," from budlight to target, and now chick-fil-a, we'll talk about the latest brands to be caught up in america's culture wars. "morning joe" will be right back. you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b.

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welcome back to "morning joe." it's just about the top of the hour. look at that beautiful shot of the white house on this, i guess it's a summer morning. it's the summer now. >> well, i mean -- >> is it summer? >> getting there. >> summer is the 22nd. >> it's june 1st. >> it's light at 4:30, 4:45 in the morning and late at night, yeah, it's summer, man. >> we're getting 8:30 sundown now. it really does feel like we're stepping into summer. i have to say, this is a beautiful time in new york city. beautiful in washington, that shot. it's not too hot, the humidity is low. this is peak new york weather right now. >> everyone is happy. >> it really is. >> jonathan lemire and katty kay are still with us. joining the conversation, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle. >> mike. >> you showed up, mike. nice of you to show up. we appreciate that. kind of grumpy. >> we need you.

>> "politico's" sam stein is with us. great to see you, sam. the investigation into former president donald trump and the classified documents that he took with him when he left the white house. multiple sources tell cnn that the 2021 audio recording of trump acknowledging that he kept a document about a possible attack on iran. it would undercut trump's primary defensive argument, that he declassified all documents he brought with him from the white house to mar-a-lago. cnn reports the july 2021 meeting was held at trump's golf club in bedminster, new jersey, with two people who were working on the autobiography of trump's

former chief of staff mark mae meadows, including a communications specialest margot martin, who regularly taped trump's conversations with authors, to make sure they accurately recounted his remarks. on the recording, trump's comments reportedly suggest he would like to share the investigation contained within the document, but he can't because he's aware he no longer has the ability to declassify materials after having left the white house. cnn did not listen to the recording but cited multiple, unidentified sources describing it. the recording has not yet been confirmed by nbc news. trump has denied any wrongdoing. >> so, so here's the fascinating thing, mike barnicle. well, i guess not fascinating. but trump has been on tv repeatedly lying. >> said he declassified things. >> back in september --

>> "i dream of jeanne." >> remember, he was on sean hannity's show, and sean hannity said, "hey, you'd never do this stuff they're saying." he said, "sure i would. i could do it. i have the power to do it." hannity pushed him more, and his response was, "if i did i declassified a document, the document becomes declassified." of course, he lied at the cnn town hall meeting, saying he could do whatever he wanted to do. he could show it to whoever he wanted to show it to because it was declassified. he thought it was declassified, so it was declassified. what do we find out? in the tape, we find out the opposite. it goes to intent, doesn't it? donald trump knew he had improperly taken a classified document out of the white house, and it was still classified and he didn't have the power to declassify it as a former president. >> joe, you know, we have andrew

here, and he is going to speak to this, i assume, with much more specificity and knowledge than any of us, but this is going to be -- it is going to shape up, i would think, from people who we've spoken to, as the defining moment, not only for the republican party but for the country. because if the words espionage, treason, are hinted at in the filing documents, people are going to have to finally make up their minds. he's a tough guy. i like how he talks, he's a tough talker. the stuff about the woman, it's all made up. you know, they're after him because he's donald trump, all that stuff. that's going to go out the window. it'll go right out the window because it'll be a defining moment, whether he chooses himself, according to the documents, or whether he chooses the country. he's clearly chosen himself at

every turn of his adult life. we're going to find out from jack smith's investigation exactly what the story is. >> as advertised, let's bring in nbc news legal analyst andrew wiseman for much more on this. as you read through the report, first from cnn, not yet you us by nbc who haven't listened to the tape, but there is a tape in which donald trump reportedly confesses, that, yes, i have a classified document with me. i thought it from the white house. i don't have the ability to declassify it, et cetera. what do you read into what we know so far just from the media reporting? secondly, what it tells you about where this investigation is right now? >> i'll do the second part first. which is, i think if this audio tape exists, this is not a question of if there are going to be charges, it's just a question of when. the proof that we have learned just publicly is so strong, and

jack smith is such a competent and aggressive prosecutor, it is inconceivable to me that this would not be charged. having a tape recording of the perspective defendant admitting his possession of a classified document that he had no right to have, and not just any classified document. i think it is really important to remember that what he talks about, reportedly, is a classified document involving something that is unbelievably sensitive, which is war plans of the united states against another country. so this is not just taking love letters of kim jong-un or salacious material about a president in france. this is exactly what the department of justice and the intelligence community is worried about. there also has been some discussion in the last 24 hours about whether this document exists or not.

whether it's just bluffing. jack smith knows this. that the document does exist. it'll be very interesting, also, too find out whether this is one of the documents that was turned over by donald trump back to the archives or whether it was something that they're still looking for. in other words, what is the current status of that document? is it something that was obtained by jack smith from donald trump that's pursuant to the search or not, or is it going to be an example of a document that he should have turned over in response to the subpoena and did not? that's an open question and could lead to additional perspective charges involving obstruction. >> andrew, let's get you a break down a little more of the details we know about this. does it matter, in terms of the investigation, charges that could come, that at least so far

there is no suggestion that trump was showing this off to people, that he was sharing the document with folks, that he simply had it, labeled as secret in terms of the classification levels, not classified, not top secret, but secret? just broadly, tell us what the espionage act is. what kind of charge would that mean in penalty if you carry it as the former president? >> sure. let's remember, government documents, whether classified or not, belong to the government. they're not to be retained by private citizen. the former president is a private citizen. so, for instance, when i was in the department of justice, the number of documents i could take when i left the department of justice would be zero. so you're not supposed to have them. that's a possession of government documents. in itself, it's a crime. if they are classified, there can be an additional type of charge, but it's not required that the material be classified or classified at a particular

level. what you're looking at here is whether the person knowingly took the documents or knowingly retained the documents. the import of this tape recording, if it exists as reported, is that you've got donald trump admitting that he had in his possession a classified document. doesn't matter if it's secret, top secret, it's classified. that itself is a crime. finally, with respect to dissemination, the reporting is that there does appear to be at least some dissemination of the information because donald trump, although he doesn't turn the document over or quote from it, he notes what is in there. the fact we're talking about the fact it involves war plans involving iran is because, reportedly, that is what donald trump said was in the document. if that proves true, it is a form of dissemination, it is a

separate reason when the department is deciding whether they can bring charges. i should say, also from a political perspective, to differentiate donald trump from the apparently ongoing investigation of former vice president pence and president biden, where there's no suggestion that there was any discrimination of information. >> exactly. in addition to the classified document probe, special counsel jack smith is also investigating donald trump's efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election that he lost. according to sources who spoke with "the new york times," smith recently subpoenaed white house staffers who may have been involved in the firings of the administration's top cybersecurity official shortly after the 2020 vote. that official, christopher

krebs, engaged the former president by -- sorry, it enraged the former president by releasing a statement nine days after the election, which called it, quote, the most secure in american history. >> wait, he pointed -- >> that's -- >> that's his guy, right? >> that's his guy. >> top cybersecurity official, right? >> five days later. >> he said it was the most secure election in american history. >> really upset him. >> wow, that's a trump official that said it was the most secure election in american history. >> five days later, krebs had been fired for the, quote, highly inaccurate statement. >> oh, boy. >> the justice department is also reportedly asking witnesses about broader efforts made by trump's presidential personnel office to test the loyalty of government officials and potential hires. additionally, "the times" reports smith's team is looking into how personnel office staffers interacted with the doj in the final weeks of the trump

administration. >> you know, that is not going to go really well for them. >> no. >> you look at the january 6th hearing, and you have people who were -- >> you don't do that. >> i mean, jonathan lemire, you have people who were donald trump's, like, attorneys, representing him through impeachments. but in those final weeks, you had these guys rising up. we saw this in the deposition, calling out these would-be, i mean, coup leaders inside the doj. you know, i'm not so sure donald trump is the only person in trouble here. when you're trying to overthrow the federal government, when you're trying to overthrow a presidential election, yeah, i don't think that works well. i don't think they're just going to arrest the rioters on the outside of these government buildings. i think there are people on the

inside of the government buildings that have a lot to worry about, as well. >> yeah. that's the dynamic we've talked about on this show for a while, joe. we know it's hundreds of charges, people charged now, people arrested and convicted, incarcerated because of what they did on january 6th at the capitol itself. the question has been, well, where are the charges coming for those who sent them there? whether it was donald trump himself with his rhetoric or those in government who helped try to perpetuate that fraud, that lie, who we know had presentations to try to steal this election, fake electors to try to get vice president pence to give the final go-ahead on that fateful day. of course, he did not. sam stein, let's bring you in on this and get your assessment as to, first of all, the classified documents if you want, but also this, this idea that there's the documents and now the developments of january 6th. it is just the legal net is just closing in on trump, in matters that seem to be far more serious and politically damaging than

the one indictment we've already gotten out of manhattan. >> we're prone to say it's about to drop on donald trump. we've said it a million times before. obviously, he still is where he is. in this case, you can't escape the fact that there are these twin investigations happening simultaneously with the campaign. they're going to collide at some point. look, mike barnicle didn't set me up like andrew, maybe i lack the expertise that andrew has, but it strikes me this documents case is so cut and dry at this point in time. even if you just put aside everything else, just looking at the one case, the obstruction and now, of course, the actual quality of the document that he took, this is a real problem. this is a ticking time bomb for the republican party as it goes through the primary process where your leading candidate is facing incredible legal peril. i guess my question for andrew, because we've covered the

substance of the matter and how different this is from, let's say, a love letter to kim jong-un, for instance, is more about the process at this point. jack smith, we don't quite know when he discovered this document -- sorry, this audio recording. but the fact it's coming out now, what can we try to ascertain from the timing here, about discovery, about the investigation, and about, ultimately, when you suspect charges will come down from the special prosecutor? >> that is a great question. it's always fraught to give predictions, but i would think that the department of justice and jack smith are going to be very concerned about getting information into the hands of the public and trying to have a trial before there is an election. not for the sake of speed but for the sake of the electorate knowing what the proof is, so

they can factor that in in deciding who to vote for. that means -- that's a long way of saying that i think they'll feel a lot of internal pressure to act very quickly. there is, i think from a procedural perspective, we've heard that donald trump has sent this letter to the attorney general so he can appeal to the attorney general who has the power to sort of do a thumbs up or thumbs down on any potential indictment. i find it highly unlikely that the attorney general would reject a potential indictment proposal from jack smith. the only question there is how long that appeal process would in the department take. then i actually -- if i guess, i'd say it'll probably be the next couple weeks that you will see some sort of charge on mar-a-lago. i think january 6th may take a little longer because it is a much more complicated case.

i agree with you with mar-a-lago, the proof seems alarming and relatively clear cut. >> andrew wiseman, legal analyst, thank you for your incite this morning. we'll be following this as it seems to get more serious by the day. chick-fil-a is the latest company to face criticism from right-wing activists, accusing it of going woke. several ultra right personalities are upset after discovering the fast food chain has a diversity, equity and inclusion policy. and a vice president who oversees its implementation. one of the most shared posts comes from a self-proclaimed political strategist who suggested a boycott of chick-fil-a late monday night. the post has more than 7 million views on twitter. the next day, charlie kirk, the founder of the conservative group for teenagers and young adults, added to the outrage,

tweeting, without evidence, about a supposed blueprint to, quote, pressure and demonize right wing companies to make them go bankrupt or become more progressive. here's the deal, this policy is not new. chick-fil-a has had an dei initiative, like a lot of companies, since as least 2020. the executive in charge of it has held the position since that time. chick-fil-a has not commented on the calls for a boycott. joe, i mean, where do you begin with this? >> the insanity. you know, it started with a budlight stuff. >> right. >> you have people taking ar-15s, willie, and shooting budlight cans. >> oh, my god. >> target had a display which -- of something that, again, freaked people out, and they went crazy. now, they're going on to chick-fil-a. so, you know, i like

chick-fil-a. >> i like the fries. >> what i did, i did me a little investigation, like what horrible, woke, marxist things these people at chick-fil-a said. i'd like to read it, if that's okay. chick-fil-a said, and this is what offends the right wing. "we are committed to ensuring mutual respect, understanding and dignity everywhere we work." now, it gets really left wing and marxist. they go on to say, "our purpose is to glorify god and to have a positive impact on all we come into contact with at chick-fil-a." they talk about the critical importance of humility and believing in the best in other people, and their goal is to find common ground. one right winger was particularly outraged that the

ceo, during an event to talk about their humility, got down and shined the shoes of a black man. this is pure marxism. now, of course, as you know, the leaders of chick-fil-a have long had a christian faith. they talk about glorifying god. anybody that's read the bible, the little red letters, like, and understand, they would immediately see the reference there. people that actually understand the bible and god's word, that that's when jesus washed the feet of the disciples. peter said, "no, no, no, i will not let you wash my feet." jesus talked about servant leadership. the whole idea that the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. so i can tell you, if you're just on twitter trying to provoke, you wouldn't understand the reference. if you actually understood

anything about what you claim to understand, the second you saw that, you go, oh, that's when jesus washed all the disciples' feet, to show them the importance of humility and servant leadership. this is a clown show. it just keeps going. the hatred and the ananimosity, willie, just over the top. and now, they're going after a company who talks about their purpose being to glorify god and to be humble. >> uh. >> joe, this one sort of fries your brain a little bit because, as you and i know, as lifelong fans of chick-fil-a, this has been a beacon for conservatives, this company, as it has come under attack from the left, from progressives who don't like the fact they do sometimes prayer in a meeting or they're closed on sunday because they're guided by their faith at that company and some of the causes they've supported over the years. so this, when i read this, i said, chick-fil-a, conservatives are going after it?

i had to read through it to understand it, and it actually doesn't make any sense. but you do have to understand that just that term, d-e-i, that acronym sets off alarm bells for certain people on the right, and for twitter, people who live there. it's the reason ron desantis talked about it in the opening conversation that didn't go so well with elon musk. dei, esg, these acronyms, they say, they are symbols of wokism. now, they're accusing chick-fil-a -- again, i can't believe i'm saying it -- chick-fil-a is an enemy of theirs. it's another company being the focus of this anti-woke movement. target, because of a pride collection it has, people have been posting videos on social media of themselves going into target's pride section and damaging the merchandise, harassing employees about the brand's lgbtq-focused clothing.

far right politicians like representatives marjorie taylor greene and lauren boebert posted messages against the company. senator vance of ohio said target has, quote, waged war on its customers by selling pride merchandise. in response to the backlash, target announced it'd pull some of its pride-themed merchandise. joining us now, the president and ceo of glaad, sarah kate ellis. today is the first day of pride month. great to have you on. so much to talk about, but let's start there and your reaction to not just the rhetoric we're seeing against target, but the decision by target then to sort of cave a little bit and remove some of that pride merchandise. >> yeah, i think what's really important is to add the word "extremist" to all of this. this is a minority voice that has a loud megaphone right now. target, they said it, they've laid out their playbook.

they want to make pride toxic. which is supposed to be a celebration of our community and lifting up of our community. they are trying to poison the waters. target has had a display for years, decades probably, at least ten years, for pride. so this year now, they are targeting these folks. what is interesting, though, and often horrifying, is that they're using violence. this was not, let's boycott. here is a sign-on letter. this is ak-15s. this is, we're coming to destroy the store. this is bomb threats. it's at an increased level of intensity. i think one of the things that's really interesting on this first day of pride is a report that we're actually breaking with you, releasing first with you, that 70% of americans feel that corporates should sponsor lgbtq moments and events, and should

include lgbtq folks in their advertising. this is not the majority of americans. that's what is really important to focus on in this conversation. because we're giving a big megaphone to a small group of people. in terms of target's response, i can't say i'm happy with it. i think if you back down to bullies, you give them more energy. so i think that target and these other companies need to step up. you've seen companies who have, they've gone after them, nike, northface, and they said, no way, we're sticking with our values. we believe in this, and we are moving forward. they backed down. that's really important to keep in mind, as well. >> sarah kate, you know, the corporate boycotts, the threat of volence you mentioned, the anti-trans rhetoric and legislation that we're seeing at

once, i was speaking to the lgbtq community who said they entered this pride month with a sense of fear. they worry that a time that's meant to be so celebratory actually could be dangerous. they suggest they'd be concerned about going to some pride events because they're afraid of what could happen. you mentioned the possibility of guns. talk to us about how you and your organization are feeling right now as we head into this month with this as the backdrop. >> yeah, i think there have been over 500 anti-lgbtq bills proposed. at glaad, we recorded 160 threats of violence or acts of violence against lgbtq specific events. so there is this looming fear and threat around our community. it's always existed. it's amped up more than ever, i think, today. america is more dangerous than ever. i mean, if we look at the school shootings and what's going on in this country. if you're a marginalized community who is often used to

know your place in society through fear and violence, this is not a great moment for us. what's amazing, though, in our study we just released is that america is not behind this. a super majority are for lgbtq equality, like 84%. 96% of americans believe that all schools should be completely accepting for all youth. so this rhetoric is just that, it's a small minority. it's a rhetoric. it is -- it owns the airwaves right now, though. a big part of that is because if you look at the statistics, 30% of americans say they know someone who is transgender. 70% of the country is coming to know transgender people through reporting out what ron desantis has to say or greg abbott. >> sarah kate, these are obviously terribly turbulent

cultural times, but was there a spark? was there a moment in the last ten years or so when there was such a violent and hysterical overreaction to drag shows, lgbtq clothing, was there a moment or a couple of moments, do you know? >> so i would say pre-marriage equality, we saw quite a bit of legislation, proposed legislation. i mean, basically, george bush ran on banning lgbtq marriages. so we did see a big backlash and a blip, a moment when there was progress happening. whenever there is progress, there is a snap back reaction to it, right? that's what we're seeing right now. as people are understanding how transgender and gender-conforming folks are, it's a snapback. majority of people, americans are welcoming.

americans believe in equality. americans believe everyone should live the life they love. i think this is a very small group of people with an outsized voice, in a moment that is being fed by politicians. i mean, these politicians are building their careers and are fundraising off the backs of lgbtq folks right now. >> all right. the president and ceo of glaad, sarah kate ellis, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. we really appreciate it. >> thank you. all right. take care. turning back to the biden/mccarthy debt ceiling bill that is headed to the senate after passing the house last night on a bipartisan basis. the final house vote was 314-117, with members from centrist groups like the house problem solvers caucus, the republican governance group, and the new democrat coalition providing the critical votes needed for the bill to pass.

joining us now, republican congressman mike lawler of new york. congressman, thank you for coming on the show this morning. we appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> yes, it's good to have you. you were one of the yes votes. what brought you to yes? >> as i said on your program and throughout this entire debate, for me, there were three critical components. the president and the speaker needed to negotiate. we needed to cut spending. we could not default. default was never an option. you know, the speaker and the president over the last two weeks negotiated a deal. i think it's a good deal on behalf of the american people. it starts to bend the curve in washington. we cannot continue to borrow and print new money at these levels. we start to change that. non-defense and non-veteran spending is below fiscal year 2022 levels. we capped spending going forward at 1% growth over the next six years, saving american taxpayers

$2.1 trillion. at the end of the day, we're in a divided government. you need to find compromise. you've mentioned the problem solvers. i am part of that conference as well as rg2 and republican main street. the objective for all of us was to find compromise and meet the standards and objectives that we were hoping to do. that's what we did. we bent the curve here. a lot of work to do. is it a perfect deal? no. it never is. but that's part ofgoverning and part of being an adult. you don't always get what you want. >> on that, being an adult and not getting everything you always wanted, in the problem solvers, there is a problem within, it would appear, within a specific percentage of members of your party in the house of representatives. they were quite vocal in their antipathy toward this deal. i assume they're not going away.

how is that going to work out going forward on the floor of the house for you and your party? >> look, i think there's a segment of those folks that were never going to vote for any deal, no matter what it is. that's fine, that's their prerogative, their position. for the vast majority of us, we were not going to allow a default. at the end of the day, you have this give and take. we saw the beginning of the year during the speaker vote, it was contentious. over the last, you know, five plus months, we've been able to move our agenda through the floor. i think the speaker has been severely underestimated time and again. i think he has handled this masterfully. i think, you know, we will move forward as a conference and as a house. you need to find compromise. i remind everybody, democrats

control the senate and white house. anything that is going to be enacted into law needs bipartisan support. that's how we continue forward. the house republican majority has been working through our commitment to america, our agenda, and we will continue to do that. but the debt ceiling was a critical hurdle, and i remind everybody, chuck schumer had a strategy. the strategy was, don't do anything. house republicans can't pass anything. we'll get a clean debt ceiling. that passed miserablemiserably. the end of the day, there's always rifts but you work through it, move through it and live to fight another day. >> congressman, good morning. you make an obvious but important point. this is what happens in a negotiation. it's what adults do. to make a deal, you give up stuff, get some stuff, and that's what happened here. some of your colleagues, as you referenced there, congressman ken buck, you colleague from

colorado, came out saying, speaker mccarthy, his word, not mine, is a eunuch here, and he won't be long for his job. his phones are ringing off the hook with angry con stitch yept constituents. do you believe speaker mccarthy is in trouble, or is that your caucus making noise? >> i don't. everyone is entitled to their opinion on this. emotions can run high in the heat of the moment. i think the conference, by and large, is unified behind the speaker. again, we have been able to pass a lot of bills, a lot more than probably many people anticipated after that speaker vote, but the reality is, we are moving forward. we passed the bill yesterday. you know, i mean, think back, can anybody remember how people voted on previous debt ceiling deals? probably not. at the end of the day, we had a job to do. we did it. we're moving forward.

now, through the appropriations process, house republicans will have a further opportunity to look at the spending of this administration and continue to bend the curve. you know, i just remind my colleagues, if you remove the speaker, you grind everything to a halt. the objective here is to advance the work of the american people and not our own self-interest. >> you guys got the job done. we'll see now if the senate can move quickly, as well. republican congressman mike lawler of new york. congressman, thank you for joining us, as always. appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> sam stein, we'll close this segment with you. moving forward now, as we turn the corner, most members of the senate say they'll go through. there will be noise, maybe motions to slow the debate. it did not look like the senate will approve this deal, go to the president's desk and be signed to avert the crisis. >> the vote in the house got over 300. you don't really see contentious

pieces of legislation get 300 vote, which means it is not that contentious a piece of legislation. >> yeah. >> the senate will move rather expeditiously for them, i guess, in getting this to the floor. the congressman, i think, made a couple valid points there. one is that kevin mccarthy came into the room with extremely low expectations about how he would be as a speaker. i think he has cleared those and then some early on. this vote, you know, it's hard to imagine it going more smoothly for a speaker with that type of slim majority. he got it done, got some serious concessions. joe biden ultimately the same. incredibly low expectations from within his party about how he'd navigate this, with a lot of progressives, assuming he'd give up the star. even some republicans saying he couldn't find his pants, then only to turn around and say he out negotiated us. biden, once again, kind of defying his cynics and really

coming through with a deal that the vast majority ended up supporting. it's a remarkable moment. the only thing about the congressman, i wish i could ask him, he said default was never an option. i was curious, if that is the case, would he support getting rid of the debt ceiling, which i think there is questionable utility for as a matter of governance. i'll leave it at that. >> good question. sam stein, thank you very much. >> sure. still ahead on "morning joe," the republican presidential race is heating up with chris christie and mike pence both set to launch their campaigns next week. what that could mean for 2024 and the effort to topple the front runner, donald trump. plus, the diabetes medication ozempic has gained attention for its dramatic weight loss effects. doctors are out with a new warning for those using it to trim down. coming up in our fourth hour of "morning joe," we'll be

joined by two stars of the hit broadway show "and juliet." the musical has been nominated for nine tony awards. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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no, no, stop! oh you're no fun. [lock clicks shut] 42 past the hour. after attacking kyiv with drones 17 times in may, russia stepped up its attacks on ukraine's capital overnight by firing ground-launched missiles directly into kyiv, killing three people, including a child, and injuring ten others. the short-range ballistic missiles damaged a children's hospital, multiple schools, and a police department. "the associated press" reports while the ukrainian military manages to shoot down many of the weapons launched into kyiv, residents are anxious and tired after weeks of sleepless nights due to the sounds of explosions.

katty kay, we had video yesterday of just tens of thousands of people hiding in the subways. first lady of ukraine, olena s zelenska, is trying to shine the light on the trauma to children, happening to a generation now in kyiv and the cities that are battlegrounds. >> we saw the video this week of children running when they saw some of the debris from these missiles exploding in kyiv and the impact that must have on them. they looked terrified. these are kids 5, 6 years old, running down the streets with backpacks. this is clearly a campaign by moscow ahead of the expected offensive that is going to start, we expect, imminently from the ukrainians, to wear down the ukrainian population. but whether it has any impact on the actual war itself is, i think, much more up for debate. this is going to be a slog that the ukrainians are going to go through with this offensive, and trying to attack kyiv doesn't

affect the front line in the east. you have zelenskyy at a european union summit in moldova, on ukraine's board e still with the support of the european union, the support of the international community, and getting ready to launch the offensive against the russians in the east. other headlines now. a small number of patients taking the popular drug ozempic for weight loss reporting a concerning new side effect. the diabetes medication has recently gained attention for its dramatic weight loss effects. now, some patients are reportedly becoming malnourished while taking the drug. ozempic works in part by blocking the brain's hunger signals and causes the stomach to empty more slowly, leaving people full longer. one reported side effect of the drug is nausea. some users have found that nausea plus a reduced appetite have blessed them without any

appetite at all, leading to some rare cases of malnutrition. doctors say patients who experience such extreme outcomes from the medication may need to stop taking it all together. actor danny masterson faces 30 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty yesterday of raping two women in the early 2000s. he was charged with three counts of rape. the jury convicted him of two and deadlocked on the third. this was masterson's second rape trial. after the first ended in december with a hung jury on all three counts. masterson, known for his role on "that '70s show," is a prominent member of the church of scientology. prosecutors say he raped three women in his hollywood hills home between 2001 and 2003 after drugging their drinks. all three victims were members

of the church. prosecutors say masterson used his standing in scientology to silence them, avoiding consequences for decades. his attorneys are expected to appeal the verdict. coming up, reverend al will join the table. we'll discuss a new audio docu-series, exploring the impact of black culture through popular music. one decade at a time. "morning joe" will be right back. and i was like that- that's what everybody sees? i'm back, and i got botox® cosmetic. the lines were so prominent it's all i saw in the photograph, so now when i take photos, and i see myself in photos, its- it's me, i just have fewer lines. botox® cosmetic is fda-approved to temporarily make frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better. the effects of botox® cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection

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performing "fast car" at a

birthday party for nelson mandela. that is one of the songs our next guest deconstructs on the podcast "being blake the '80s." joining us now is teree and reverend al sharpton. so excited to see you both. let's start with the song "fast car." one of the best songs ever recorded. it's had a resurgence, luke combs, the country star, has a cover out now. what did you want to look at in this song and what did you learn about tracy chapman?

>> there was a couple things that talk about what was going on in the '80s. she's talking about poverty and trying to escape poverty and black poverty expand in the '80s. that concert, the birthday concert for nelson mandela, 600 million people watched that concert. he was in jail 25 years at that point. part of what was going on is that we had an afro centric mindset. the whole world is watching. when tracy chapman does that song, the whole world freaks out. that's the moment she becomes a superstar. before that her career was going nowhere. she wouldn't even have been there if not for affirmative action. she grows up in cleveland, single mom, single child.

her life is going nowhere. someone gives her a scholarship and her life takes on a totally different trajectory. we're seeing all these things in the '80s, affirmative action, the rise of poverty, leading to tracy chapman having this amazing career. all these great songs speak to the issues that happen around them. >> i think that one of the things you touch on that's very, very critical is that people need to understand the culture reflected what was going on in the social order and it reflected what was going on in the culture. i became known in new york for activism in the '80s. public enemy was the soundtrack to our marches. talk about how one reflects the

other. we all know we shall overcome was the anthem of the '60s. it didn't work in the '80s in the urban area. >> music is talking about the issues going on, especially hip-hop. r&b and soul music do that. we talk about public enemy and max incarceration. they have a song about that. we talk a lot about the crack epidemic. de la soul does a song and one of the members of the group, his brother was going through a crack epidemic. the song is a true story about how his family is dealing with it. there were so many families dealing with crack addiction in the '80s, my brother, my mother, whoever is dealing with that and he's talking about it in the song. through the episode we talk

about how the crack epidemic had an impact on the country. >> "i'm coming out" diana ross, "she works hard for the money" by donna summer. >> "i'm coming out" was meant to be an anthem for gay people. they didn't tell diana ross that. she saw it as her personal reinvention. disco in general really helps gay liberation. one of the guests talks about he comes out to his father in the late '70s. his father says that's fine, but i don't know any happy gay adults. as the flowering of disco in the late '70s we start to see a lot of happy gay adults on the public stage. this person saying i felt more comfortable growing as a gay

person because i'm seeing this happen in the culture. the culture is feeding his desire to go out in the streets in the '80s and say we demand more. >> donna summer, an icon, tina turner, just recently passed away. the role of black women in black life is so underestimated in white america. can you speak to that? >> absolutely. donna summer, "she works hard for the money," speaking at chason's, famous l.a. restaurant, the bathroom attendant is sleeping. she says she's working hard for the money. the women, they found her, she had a nursing exam in the morning. she's tired. she just wanted the customers to go home. donna summer saw, she works hard

for the money, thought that, wrote that at the table. these women are singing about we need money, not in a gold digger way, help me deal with the bills. a lot of the men they're dealing with are unemployed or underemployed. they're comfortable singing about we need more money. we're talking about black women's economic empowerment issues. every song is about what's going on in the community and how do the times speak to that. >> it's interesting. mika has been talking about knowing your value. it's so interesting that she goes to conferences and a lot of time women hear things and they're so moved by it and it's like the first time you heard it. when i think of donna summer, i think here's this black woman who tells her record company,

who's not treating her right, and listen, i got no problem going back and singing in the church choir. you treat me right. you give me the money i'm worth or else i'm out of here. i mean, that's not something that, like, male artists did that much. it shows that -- when i hear that song, i think about the story of the attendant in the bathroom, but i also think about donna summer herself. talk about emempowerment, aheadf her time, powerful stuff. >> we talk about donna summer the queen of disco, she had multiple number one hits. she was an extraordinary artistic figure. disco in general, we don't give it enough credit. i lift disco up a little bit. disco was an extraordinary movement.

it's all about love, positivity, self-esteem and some people look back on it in a downgraded way. this is an extraordinary movement. disco never really died. it moved into another form, but it still -- >> it also shifted the whole way we did black music because a lot of the r&b acts that used to travel with bands, all that changed. i remember james brown used to say to me, we don't need 20 guys on the road anymore. he said they put on tracks and played and everybody is dancing and shifting. it also had an economic impact on the band. >> you talk about dancing. we take it for granted. we go to a club and dance with a woman. nobody thinks about that. there was a time in this country, in this city when it was illegal for a man and man to dance together or a woman and woman to dance together.

for people to find a space where it was okay to dance, that's inherently political. disco emerges out of places like the loft which was not a club. it was a guy's loft where he said you guys can dance with whoever you want and it became a sort of club. it was a guy's apartment. >> all eight episodes of "being black, the '80s" are available now wherever you listen to your podcasts. thank you so much for sharing this with us this morning. still to come on "morning joe," you may have forgotten about space force, but it's still a thing. there's a fight in washington over where its headquarters should be. and nasa's investigation into ufos straight ahead on "morning joe," the third hour starts right now. that's a sacred element of

our country. they can't use the debt ceiling to negotiate. i say, if they don't give you massive cuts, you have to do a default. we'll fix it in two years. i'll get it done permanently and properly. it is passed and i guess i knew it was going to pass, but we'll get it fixed and get it fixed properly in two years. we're going to get it fixed and fixed properly. we'll get it fixed in two years. >> they're going to get it fixed in two year. >> in two years. >> he had a chance to fix it in 2017. what did he do? >> well, he called the debt ceiling sacred. >> sacred. >> then he urged a default. now donald trump is back in the mushy middle promising a big fix down the road, you know, like

infrastructure, health care and a border wall. meanwhile, ron desantis -- >> desantis. i don't think i should -- >> i think you should. i think it works. >> really? >> if i say it, you should do it. >> mika wants me to change my name to joe subaru. it's been scarborough my whole life. joe subaru. >> if you're ramping up for a campaign, maybe it's time for a rebrand. people love a good subaru. it's a reliable automobile. >> great car. >> the desantis campaign won't confirm one way or another how to say his name. we're happy to say it however it's meant to be said. >> just tell us. >> genuinely not sure how to say

the governor's name. >> you know, willie, he called himself ron desantis his entire life. called himself ron desantis when he was running for governor. called himself ron desantis after he was governor. then suddenly "politico" reports his wife wanted him to change his name, which i understand. mika, the pronunciation to deh-santis. come on, man. >> let's nail it down so we can move forward. joe subaru reminds me of joe izuzu. let's try it today. workshop it and see how it

feels. >> okay. >> joe izuzu a great commercial. i had actually one of those izuzu troopers. >> oh, my god. >> i didn't know at the time if you coughed that it rolled that way. i loved it. i got to say it was, you know, stick. it was standard and -- >> i like subaru and always wanted a subaru. >> you do whatever you wanted to do with it. i would get dirt and shovel it in the back of it, resod the lawn. >> way deep in the weeds. >> it was great. i don't want to be joe izuzu, but joe subaru, i know what mika is saying here. >> brzezinski. >> i think i'll keep my name. you said brzezinski and you said

when you were marrying me you were going to be scarborough. >> don't talk about that. >> you didn't do that. you're telling me to be brzezinski. >> willie, help me. >> starting the show with a bang. little therapy. >> how does that make you feel? >> this is not where we talk about those things. this is so obvious. i told you this for years. >> what? >> just stop. >> stop what? >> i'm going to continue the headlines. ron desantis continues to criticize donald trump while campaigning in iowa after he hardly said anything about the former president for months. we're also following two former trump allies ready to jump do the 2024 race. we'll look at the impact, if any, chris christie and mike pence could have on the growing field. and we'll have the takeaways

from nasa's research team trying to explain hundreds of sightings from the mid '90s, along with joe subaru and willie. we have the host of "way too early" and u.s. special correspondent for bbc news. all right. we're following new reporting involving the investigation into former president trump and classified documents that he took with him when he left the white house. multiple sources tell cnn federal prosecutors obtained a 2021 audio recording of trump acknowledging that he kept a classified pentagon document about a possible attack on iran after leaving the white house. the existence of the recording undercuts trump's primary defense that he declassified all

the documents he brought with him from the white house to mar-a-lago. cnn reports the july 2021 meeting was held at trump's golf club in bedminster new jersey with two people working on the autobiography of mark meadows and trump aides and margot martin who regularly taped trump's conversations with authors to make sure they were accurately recording his remarks. this is interesting. this is about people writing books about themselves and things that people want to put into history about their time in the white house. >> it also shows where the special counsel may be in the investigation. that recording reportedly indicates trump understood he had, in fact, retained classified material after leaving the white house, that it was still classified while in

his possession and he no longer had the ability to declassify it. on that recording trump's commenting suggest that he would like to share the information contained within the document but he could not because he's aware he no longer has the ability to declassify materials after having left the white house. cnn didn't listen to the recording but cited multiple sources describing what was on the tape. the recording hasn't been confirmed by nbc news and trump has denied any wrongdoing. joining us now is hugo lowell. walk us through what you know about this tape having not listened to it, but having heard the accounts from people who have. what did the former president say and what does it tell us about what he knew about the documents in his possession? >> reporter: our reporting suggests he went a little further and on the tape he made a suggestion that he should have

declassified this military document related to iran when he was in the white house and he still had presidential power to declassify, but he had not done so. it comes back to the point about how he seems to be acknowledging on tape for the first time that the theory about how he declassified everything that ended up at mar-a-lago and elsewhere were totally declassified because he thought about declassifying it or because he took it with him to the residence. i think the fact that the documents, according to our reporting, was classified at the secret level is significant. that's the level that the government charges in espionage cases. you don't want something that is too classified because it's difficult to get the intelligence committee to declassify that for trial.

something at the confidential level is probably too low of a threshold for it to be shown to a jury. the justice department always looking for secret level documents. i think this makes it worse for trump. >> donald trump knew what he had was classified. he knew he brought something he shouldn't have to mar-a-lago. if this is coming out of jack smith's investigation, who is leading the doj investigation, what does it tell you according to your reporting, hugo, about where the special counsel is in the investigation and whether he may be bringing charges perhaps sometimes soon? >> reporter: espionage investigation. if you're looking at the sort of documents trump had in his possession and might have been showing other people -- we should say on the audio tape

it's not clear that trump had this document in his possession at the time, but we have reporting from other witnesses before the grand jury of other questions asked, it's showing it's primarily an espionage investigation. the fact that we are talking about the classified documents and what trump might have shown people, that is textbook espionage investigation under section 793 of title 18. >> this also shows when trump has been talking about this he's been lying time and time again. of course, as we saw in town hall meetings, republicans cheer

whenever he brags about being a liar. special counsels are so excited about that. when i say republicans, i mean republicans at that scene where they cheered about the debt ceiling and thought he was being a hypocrite. jack smith doesn't think it's funny. when donald trump goes on sean hannity and says i can declassify things by just thinking about it, a sucker is born every day and republicans repeat those talking points. he lies at the cnn town hall meeting and said i can do whatever i want to do with it. we find out with this audio recording, just like the audio recording in georgia that donald trump is in legal hot water. even trump knows, in these

recordings, that he can't declassify just by thinking about it. he didn't declassify just by thinking about it. in fact, he knew he was in possession of a classified document that he improperly, illegally took from the white house. >> yeah. now it turns out there were tapes. there were always problems around i've declassified these documents just by thinking about it argument. there would have been some kind of paper trail showing he did that. what would happen to those declassified documents when he took them back to the white house? would they get reclassified? not to mention you would have allies in an uproar if it was possible to declassify in this way. it's looking like there could be more than just obstruction if there's some kind of espionage

case as well. i don't know what that means in terms of the president or his supporters. i guess his supporters will buy his argument that he's the victim of the greatest witch hunt ever. his die-hard supporters, the amount of legal problems he's facing from a special counsel who is an independent special counsel and not a political appointee, does that chip away at the voters we're talking about in the suburbs of atlanta and milwaukee and philadelphia? >> the thing is jonathan, that's the point. there's hard core supporters who will say it doesn't matter that donald trump is a liar, doesn't matter he stole classified documents, doesn't matter he obstructed justice, doesn't matter he broke the law, doesn't matter he kept lying and moved documents before they were coming to get the documents, doesn't matter he got caught on

tape lying. they'll say that. go a little below the surface and they go, i'm so exhausted by this guy. when they aren't having to admit they voted for him twice and that they keep defending him, you scratch below the surface and i hear it time and time again, they're so exhausted by him and caddy brings up a great point. as we talk about the republican nomination, republicans have the choice do they want to win or do they want to lose. if they want to lose, i can let them know they need to keep backing donald trump because this news, and i think the indictment that's sure to come now from the justice department, is really going to hurt donald trump in the suburbs of atlanta, philly, detroit, milwaukee, you name it, maricopa county.

trump say it's fine. they won't say it, but they like that he's a liar. they like that he lies to the fbi and the doj. they like that he lies to everybody. they think in somehow perversed, twisted logic, they think it's like sticks to the libs by being a liar constantly. living your entire life being a liar in public surface, that's what they think. the problem is the -- we'll get to the debt ceiling in a minute, i don't think that's where most of america is. i think most of america actually, you know -- there are a lot of voters who decide elections, jonathan, who will hear this and it will push them further away from donald trump, make them more exhausted by the

constant lies, the constant legal problems, the constant violations of laws and just basic standard ethics. >> the basic way to look at the 2024 race, they'll swing voters, what possible reason has donald trump given them to come back in 2024. this adds to that. the hardest core trump supporters, they're with him forever. nothing can change their minds. there's another slice of republicans who did vote for trump maybe in '20 as well who probably want something different, who recognize that even these -- as these indictments helped trump in the gop primary polls, it's not going to help him in a general election. it's almost impossible to see a way it does. hugo, i want to turn to the

investigation and turn to the cast of characters. margot martin was a junior white house staffer, but followed trump into his post presidency. she plays a larger role in his life. mark meadows former chief of staff is the one who had this book. who else is jack smith talking to? has he interviewed these two? of course other employees at bedminster who could shed light into the investigation. >> reporter: from what we understand, the trump legal team learned about the tape, not through their own client, but because margot martin had her laptop and devices imagined by prosecutors working for the special counsel and got asked about the tape when she testified to the grand jury hearing evidence in this case in midmarch. then the trump legal team itself got a subpoena for the tape and it went downhill from there.

she's not the only person. there have been multiple witnesses to whom this tape has been played. we should remember that the special counsel subpoenaed almost every employee that works at mar-a-lago, not just the political staff, not just two or three lawyers who work for trump, but also the cooks, the maids, the assistants to the valets. they were interviewing groundsmen, people connected to the i.t. and security system. they had the two who oversee security at the trump organization properties go in to testify. the special counsel has basically spoken to everyone. the last time the grand jury met was may 5th. it may have expired may 18th. we have to assume at this time the investigation is coming to a

close and charging decisions are being considered right now. >> political investigations reporter hugo lowell, thank you for your reporting. coming up, chris matthews is standing by. he joins the table. we're looking forward to the return of inspiring america, celebrating the stories of ten exceptional honorees who have made a lasting impact in their communities. it spotlights every day americans who have made a positive impact on the world. it's saturday june 10th on abc and it's available to stream the next day on peacock, cnbc and nbc news now. we'll be right back on "morning joe."

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politics now. florida governor ron desantis has stepped up his criticism of former president donald trump. desantis made a -- >> is that how you say it? >> i'm trying to say his name the way he said it. desantis made appearances in four different towns in iowa yesterday touting his efforts to push florida further to the right. while he never mentioned trump by name during his speeches, desantis criticized the former president's policies saying he would have gotten rid of anthony fauci during the pandemic and

would have closed the border. >> leadership at the end of the day is not about entertainment. it's not about building a brand. it's not about virtue signaling. it's about producing results. you really need a disciplined, energetic president willing to spit nails and fight the needed battles every day for eight years. you can't worry about the legacy media says. you have to clean house on day one. if you have a problematic bureaucrat like fauci, you don't elevate him. you bring him in and tell him to pack his bags, you are fired. you have to be willing to do that. >> it's so funny. he talks about -- he said you do things. you don't virtue signal. virtually everything he says is

virtue signaling. he goes after one funny issue after another. brings up anthony fauci, virtue signals about that. he virtue signals about disney. he virtue signals about books. he doesn't talk about inflation. i haven't heard him talking -- the thing is what about focusing on jobs, inflation. >> guns and abortion. >> a lot of other issues. with abortion, that's something that is real. he has completely impacted the lives of women in florida and will stop businesses from coming to the state of florida if they have a choice to go somewhere elsewhere you don't have a ban on abortion. desantis did mention the former president while talking to reporters later. questioned the former president's commitment to

conservatism. he called out trump for siding with disney saying his position is, quote, bizarre. let's go to des moines. we have david druky. people are asking when are people going to go after trump by name. he talked about how trump's entire family moved to florida. if it was such a horrible state, why did his entire family move to florida? great question. yesterday he was going after donald trump. maybe we're seeing a campaign where it's looking like a traditional campaign. >> this looks different than 2016 and a lot different than 2024 up until now. becoming a candidate, ron desantis, has unleashed himself when it comes to the former president. strategically he's doing it

correctly so far. when you talk to voters in iowa, which i've been doing, they want a republican that focuses on the future and a lot of the cultural issues important to them. when confronted with questions about his rival, they want a candidate who's willing to be blunt and honest about it and not shy away from it. that's what the governor is doing. look, we'll see if voters really take to him, but so far it's been interesting to watch in two ways. one, he's not a very dynamic speaker, but the audiences are eating up the content of his speeches and what he's able to do which is different than a lot of senators i covered, instead of saying i propose legislation, he's saying i signed this into law and that carries a lot of weight here. secondly, this is very different. usually when a political spouse is involved in a campaign, male

or female, they'll introduce the candidate and step to the side and they're done. so far what governor desantis likes to do with his wife, casey desantis, she comes up in the middle of his speech. she gives a mini speech, a riff of her own for about five, ten minutes. then she steps back down into the audience and he continues with the rest of his speech. it's different. the audiences like her. she has all the charm and savvy that he doesn't always appear to have. i think he understands she is a very important weapon for his campaign. i think it's why she's involving her the way he has. >> she's definitely an asset to has campaign. the book on ron desantis, not just from the national media, but the media in tallahassee, he's not real comfortable in that room doing the retail

politics and the glad handing and all the things you have to do to earn votes in a place like iowa. as you watch him on the campaign trail, is that a fair assessment? >> it's a fair assessment of the kind of politician he's been. my reporting from tallahassee delved deep into this. i had a lot of republicans in the florida capital question whether he was going to do this, right, if he was going to run for president. was he going to stick around and shake hands and pose for selfies? he didn't like to do it. he's not a small talker, but he's doing it. i've watched him now a couple weeks in iowa. i've watched him the past couple days. he's working the room, hanging out and getting back to his wife, she also does it.

they work opposite ends of the room. they have equal crowds around them. he understands presumably this is what you need to do if you want to win, and he's doing what is required to put himself in a position to win. >> you know, jonathan, one of the reasons after the twitter launch i thought that ron desantis had a chance to catch up with donald trump is there's something about him. you hear him talking and there's a lot of virtue signaling. he looks at the polls and sees what the base wants and he gives them that. he also can -- this sounds simple. for an exhausted republican party that's had to deal with donald trump, he can speak in complete sentences. he's articulate. he can string paragraphs,

sentences together and it is the contrast. he's not a glad hander. jeb bush was uncomfortable around people. he knew how to do what he needed to do. he wasn't like his brother in that way. jeb was a policy guy. you know, jeb talked policy and you knew exactly where he wanted to take the state. people responded to that. with ron desantis, sometimes we're all focussed so much on what he can't do, which is he can't glad hand like w. he can't glad hand like reagan. we don't focus on what he is doing and what audiences in iowa and new hampshire will see. that's a guy who's smart, a guy who can actually deliver a speech and answer questions in a way that resembles some

semblance of logic. that's something donald trump still to this day can't do. he insults somebody. he has a little punch line and that's about it. >> yeah. if you look at the transcript of a desantis speech, it's coherent. a transcript of a trump one, very different. he can point to a record of things he's done with executive power in florida. he's also raised a lot of money. his campaign said they bankrolled a ton of cash. he's caught donald trump's attention who is pounding him multiple times a day. he started calling him rob for some reason. my sense is that was a typo and now he's going with it. that's a dynamic in this case. david drucker, the field is about to grow. mike pence is going to announce his campaign.

chris christie is going to do the same in new hampshire. give us your sense of the field as it grows more crowded. the conventional wisdom is that's good for trump. what lanes can pence and christie find? >> we will find out. governor christie didn't want to run unless he thought he could mount a viable campaign. he said staying at a holiday inn express is not glamorous. he's going to sequester himself in new hampshire and focus on the frontrunner and see if he can make headway. mike pence is going to be interesting in this regard. there are a lot of republicans and democrats who i talk to all the time, usually in washington but around the country, who say what happened to the ronald reagan part of the party that i liked? that's how mike pence is going to run on issues and

temperament. we'll see if there's a place for that such that he can become a contender. he won't shy away from criticizing a frontrunner. he conducts his politics in a little more of a civil matter the conventional wisdom is the more crowded this gets, the better it is for trump. that could be the case. the question is is it crowded when voters start going to the polls in iowa, new hampshire and south carolina or does it thin out as people try to mount campaigns and fail? also, is this a little bit different? from a donor aspect in 2016 different republican donors were picking their favorite candidates and making sure their

coiffures were full. some people might back candidates they don't like but as long as they have a chance to beat donald trump. >> interesting. david drucker, thank you for coming on this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," with a deadline looming the house passes president biden and speaker mccarthy's debt ceiling deal, but what happens in the senate? plus, steve ratner has charts on all this. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. a big story to ♪ i take once-daily jardiance, ♪

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capitol in washington, d.c. that's where the house passed the debt ceiling. the final vote was 314-117 with members from centrist groups provided the critical votes needed for the bill to pass. most of the votes against the legislation came from members on the ideological ends of both parties, the house progressive caucus and freedom caucus. moderate congressional members ended up with a win showcasing the restructured power structure in this new era of divided government. >> it's fascinating, isn't it? we hear from the extremes on both sides talking about all the problems with this bill. we hear this may be the end for

kevin mccarthy. man, i got to say, 314-117, i mean, whenever i was on the house floor and would look up at a vote that was supposed to be close, you rarely got into the 300s. this was a route and it really shows that sometimes the people that control the house are the ones in the middle who don't run in front of television cameras every time they have something to say. >> with their hair on fire. >> with their hair on fire, right. >> in this time of crazy politics where the extremes make the noise. president biden and his team and kevin mccarthy and his team went ahead and responsibly negotiated this thing. they listened to the right and the left. there were calls from the progressives to invoke the 14th amendment and raise it unilaterally. he rejected that.

he said, no, we're going to do this the right way. kevin mccarthy for all the flaws we've talked about, he did the job. as you say, that vote total even surprised some people. there is a group on the right and group on the left that rejected this. by and large the center held and the responsible thing happened. now that bill heads to the senate where both chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell have endorsed the measure. during a news conference schumer stressed senators cannot afford to amend the bill and send it back to the house saying, quote, that would risk default plain and simple. it looks like senators we've talked to on this show and off the air that this will get done by the end of the week. the x date comes june the 5th according to treasury secretary janet yellen. >> we talked about kevin mccarthy and joe biden. here's another example, joe biden, again, knowing how things

work. everyone was saying we were going to default. it was going to be a catastrophe. add it to the list. the guy has been around. he knows how to get things done. you know, in this case kevin mccarthy same thing. he's been around. they knew how to stop the country from defaulting. >> let's swing over to the southwest wall where we find steve ratner. steve, dig into some of the details of the bill. who got the better of this one? >> i'm with ed on this, i think the headline on his op-ed says it all, game set and almost match to biden. one thing to note about the bipartisan vote you were talking about is that there were more republicans who voted against this, the thing their own speaker had negotiated, than democrats. you had fun yesterday and it's an indication that the white house did get the better of the

deal. they're not taking a victory lap because they don't want to upset what's a positive course in the senator. you'll see them do that at some point because they deserve it. we can take a look at some of the provisions. this is a comparison between the two bills. this is the house gop bill they passed. this is what they said they were prepared to have go into law. this is the deal that emerged. they wanted to cut -- just a couple examples. they wanted to cut domestic spending, nondefense spending to 555 billion. it would have been 744 billion in the current fiscal year. it ended up at 704. the ten-year caps, this is important. they wanted to cap it for ten years. they got two. if the democrats are in power in two years, they can undo as much of this as they want. they wanted 80 billion for the irs claw back.

they got maybe 20 billion. that number could be smaller. the irony is that the irs reduces the deficit because they can collect more from the tax evaders and tax avoiders out there. nonetheless most of this was preserved. this is important. i'll talk about this in more detail. the republicans wanted a very broad work requirement. they wanted everybody receiving public assistance other than social security to be working and they got a tiny fraction of that which we'll talk about. on the student loan situation, there has been this moratorium, republicans wanted every penny paid back. they're not getting any of that. all they're getting is that the freeze that's in existence in student loan payments will end, which is going to any way, and it restricts the ability to do another moratorium.

there's no difference on what's happening on student loan. no change of taxes on either sides. no increases on loopholes closed. importantly, the republicans wanted to repeal all the green energy tax credits in the inflation reduction act and they got zero on that provision. >> as we move to your second chart, steve, obviously speaker kevin mccarthy touted his deal by saying we cut$1.5 trillion in spending. the freedom caucus disagreed it was enough, but enough republicans agreed to get it through. what were the spending cuts really like? >> let's take a look at that. as i said before, we can look at fiscal 2024, nondefense discretion, that's where all the

action was. nothing else was on the table to be changed. the president in his budget proposed $800 billion. as i said before, this is the 2023 amount, 744 billion. the republicans wanted it down at this 550 level we talked about. ended up here, about 40 billion less than what we're going to spend anyway and then a bit less -- about 110 billion less than the biden proposal, 145 billion more than the republican proposal. we didn't end up in the middle. we ended up on the biden side of the ledger. this is really important. as i mentioned, the republicans wanted a lot of these -- this is s.n.a.p., our food stamp program. republicans wanted a lot of these people working and a very broad work requirement. they wanted a work requirement on what we'll call the welfare program. they got zero on welfare.

on food stamps, all they got was that people between 50 and 54 would have a work requirement, but they exempted veterans. they exempted people with housing problems from all this. so there are some numbers coming out suggesting that actually there may be fewer people working, or at least required to work under this than what we have now. certainly only at worse a very tiny sliver more and nobody on the welfare side of the equation. coming up, our next guest is breaking down the four breaking down the four big surprises so far in the republican race for president. susan page joins the conversation straight ahead on "morning joe." ♪♪

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coming up, former u.s. attorney joyce vance joins us with her reaction to the new reporting that donald trump was

captured on tape talking about a classified document he kept after leaving the white house. that's ahead on "morning joe."

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look, i've seen the tweet about tapes. lordy, i hope there are tapes. >> lordy, i hope there are tapes. that was jim comey's reaction on capitol hill back in 2017 after donald trump sent a vaguely threatening tweet about their private conversations being recorded. it turns out there are tapes, only these ones reportedly show the former president admitting he knowingly held on to a classified document after leaving the white house. nbc news national correspondent gabe gutierrez has the story.

>> reporter: overnight as gop rivals line up against former president trump, another twist in the investigation that looms over his campaign. >> well, i did everything right. i did nothing wrong. >> reporter: citing multiple sources familiar with the investigation, cnn is reporting that prosecutors have obtained an audio recording indicating trump knew he kept classified material after leaving the white house. the recording is from a july 2021 meeting in which trump discusses a classified pentagon document about a potential attack on iran according to cnn, which noted it has not listened to the recording. nbc news has not confirmed the recording. prosecutors are looking into the former president's handling of documents he took from the white house and would be interested in whether trump has shared secret material with people not authorized to see it. trump has consistently claimed that he declassified the documents through his power as president. >> if you're the president of the united states, you can declassify just by saying, it's

declassified, even by thinking about it. >> i was there and i took what i took and it gets declassified. >> reporter: now cnn is reporting that in the recording according to two sources, quote, trump's comments suggest he would like to share the information, but he's aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records. in a statement to nbc news, a trump spokesman calling the investigations witch-hunts and saying leaks from radical partisans behind this political persecution are designed to inflame tensions. trump has brushed off the investigation and pointed out that classified documents have also been found at president joe biden's residences, but it could still be fodder for his opponents in the 2024 race and two more are about to enter. sources telling nbc news trump's former vice president mike pence and chris christie who endorsed trump in 2016 both set to announce their bids next. in an interview overnight, trump still focusing on attacking his main rival, florida governor ron desantis.

>> he was a very disloyal person. >> reporter: desantis in new hampshire today after a flurry of campaign stops in iowa. >> leadership is not about entertainment. it is not about building a brand. >> all right, jonathan lemire, reverend al sharpton and we have chris matthews joining the table, washington bureau chief for "usa today," susan page is with us, and former u.s. attorney joyce vance. >> so, chris matthews, so funny listening to donald trump's people talking about these radical leftists, these witch-hunt people. it's always the leftist, the marxists, the freaks, and, yet, all the evidence we always get comes straight from donald trump. are donald trump's people recording the conversations for accuracy? are trump's people testifying

against him on the january 6th committee? i mean, this is death by a thousand self-inflicted cuts, isn't it? >> well, you're so right about the self-inflicted cuts. it was "access hollywood" which was his tape on the bus, we're all listening to him on the bus. now the worst -- we thought he couldn't survive that wound. then he said i want all women who have had an abortion, i want -- there needs to be some form of punishment. he was the one leading the ringleaders of the evangelicals, not the evangelicals. he was pushing for punishment. any woman who has been abortion, it's all on the record on tape and here we have it again thanks to the report that he was talking about these documents being clearly not in his control legally and you're right, it's a hell of a string of self-incrimination. hell of a string. >> you know, you look. you look at, willie, at what's going on here, trump has one of his own people recording these

conversations that end up getting him probably in perhaps the worst legal trouble that he's going to get into other than in georgia where a tape of him asking an official to rig the election there, willie, going to get in trouble there too. >> yeah, i had the same thought, that of the cases still in front of donald trump, these two special counsel cases, the one in fulton county in georgia, there's an awful lot of evidence of his own voice on tape apparently in this case as cnn is reporting and others have matched, that there is a tape where he says, yeah, this is a classiied document. at that town hall a couple of weeks ago with cnn he said to the moderator, look, i took what i took effectively conceding that he took a bunch of stuff. it's just a question of whether it was classified and the fbi says, yeah, it was, that's why we exercised the search warrant to go get it after you wouldn't hand it over. as you listen to this media reporting and the details we can

suss out of it, bigger picture, jack smith, how close he may be. your friend and colleague andrew weissmann was with a couple hours ago saying this effectively tells us there are charges coming. do you agree with that? >> i do. i think he's dead on the money here. we've known that charges are coming, and what makes that very obvious, i think, to prosecutors like myself who've worked on these cases is that trump didn't just retain classified material, he actually tried to hide it from the government, and it's that additional level of conduct that merits prosecution here. this new evidence is really pretty remarkable. we obviously don't have insight into how jack smith intends to use it, but there are at least two possibilities. one is this incident that's captured on tape could become a substantive count. if the reporting is accurate this was a document classified at the secret level, that might be the kind of document

prosecutors call the goldilocks document that is not so insignificant that it won't convince a jury to convict, but not so significant that the intelligence community will insist on holding on to it. it might be something that could be declassified. that's not clear, because it's about iran battle strategy, but if it could be, that could be a charge that smith brings. it's also powerful evidence and joe made this point earlier of proving a state of mind and here they'll have to show not only intent but willfulness and show that trump knew what he was doing violated the law, some law and by saying that he can't immediately declassify this stuff, he can't show this stuff to folks, that really moves prosecutors' case forward and, by the way, something that's intriguing here, this, if the reporting is correct, comes off of a trump staffer laptop. her laptop was imaged when the

fbi seized it. she was questioned about this particular tape. it's why we know that it's there. what are the odds that there aren't other tapes where trump continues this long, slow process of self-incrimination, you know, my prosecutor instincts say there's more. >> yeah, and the idea of the recording from trump's side was to make sure all the interviews were portrayed accurately when they came out. they could turn out to be incriminating evidence against him. jonathan, even while joyce was talking, our justice department and ken dilanian confirmed the story, a source confirms the special counsel's office has a recording of former president trump discussing a classified planning document he had kept related to iran and acknowledging on the tape that it is classified. the recording was made in 2021, and it was played during grand jury testimony, the source confirms to nbc news, jon.

>> that's a significant deal there, willie, and this is something that puts this former president in real legal peril. it does seem like the walls are closing in as we discussed earlier. we thought that before and trump always seems to find a way to get out of it but we don't know that's going to be the case now and it's one thing to say this manhattan case, you know, he can dismiss, it's different if he's being accused in georgia, let's say, of election interference and here by his own words saying that he did have classified documents when he shouldn't. of course, the politics of it, mike, is that trump has, was caught on tape and on "access hollywood" and said that isn't my voice. with brad raffensperger, he denied it was him. the politics of it, just anything will change for the republican party. >> if he's indicted by jack

smith, special prosecutor on either mar-a-lago or january 6th or both, what do the republicans do? susan page, i have no idea. i shudder to think of what might happen in that they will not recognize reality, never mind that he'd be criminally culpable as chris matthews just pointed out, self-indicted himself verbally over the years many, many times but what do the republicans do? they have stuck with him through absurd possibilities of a candidate and they're still with him. >> hey, here's one way it might be different. you know, joyce just said charges are coming, and these are not charges relating to personal misbehavior, it's not related to fraudulent business practices. this is related to his actions as president and as a post president dealing with government documents and government secrets, so this is a whole new order of legal peril. this is a much more serious situation than we've seen donald trump face before. i don't know that that changes, the sentiments of republican

voters who have stuck with him but i think it might. this is not exactly what we've seen happen before with him, mike. >> now, you have known donald trump for decades. what's going through his mind now? we always hear publicly that he's cocky and it's a witch-hunt. privately from sources close to him i'm hearing quite different things that he understands this is real trouble. just knowing him for decade, what's his thought process? what is he thinking right now? >> i think that he is probably close to panicking or panicking on the legal front. he is very good at spinning things as he did talking on the bus and getting caught on tape talking about grabbing women or other things, but now he's dealing with prosecutors, and he knows better than most that you can't spin prosecutors and you can't spin juries, so i think

he's very concerned about this, because he's not now just playing to how do i spin the public, but how do i deal with a prosecutor with my own voice? you know, there was a guy that had an expression that a fish wouldn't get caught if he kept his mouth shut and nobody ever told donald trump that. he keeps indicting himself. [ laughter ] i think that the problem he has, many of us that have known him, the first 15 minutes of any conversation with him is i, i, me, me, i have this, i've done that. >> that's the whole conversation. >> and it included classified documents. he's got to tell on himself, and i think this might finally be his undoing at least legally. >> i mean, we're talking fish, we're talking a big mouth. a lot of talking going on. big easy target for being caught. and he does. he's either, you know when he's

talking it's either projection or confession. i am wondering and we'll talk some more about this, chris matthews, in the next block. but a lot of republicans starting to jump in this race. ron desantis actually instead of playing it, you know, sort of playing patty-cake, playing bean bag, he's now, let's just say, maybe he is starting to shift over to hardball yesterday making the comment, well, if i did such a bad job in florida, why did all of donald trump's family move there when i was governor? and he went after him yesterday in other ways too pretty tough. you think we'll see a slugfest here. >> first i want to underscore what the reverend said about fish and opening mouths. i completely agree with that in life. in life, generally. to put it lightly. i think the president has -- the way that lbj started a fight with richard nixon back before the 1966 election and made nixon

the big star who eventually got the nomination again for president. he picked his enemy and i think trump has picked desantis or mr. desantis in "presumed innocent," mr. delaguardia. he completely agrees with the decision to fight the establishment, liberal, whatever you want to call it, he wants to blame them all for the deep state and to say i got re-elected in 2020. he has picked his opponent so the two-thirds of the republican party now is down for pardoning everybody on january 6th. that was a big decision. in other words, the republican party now believes in pardoning everybody that tried to kill police officers on january 6th who were doing their job. anybody who had a job like that that i had and mike had, even for a few minutes knows what those cops were facing. they were facing people coming at them with every kind of arms

including the flag to bring them down and get their way to try to break into that house chamber. so i think he really has picked his opponent. he's defined the republican party as being pro-pardon for january 6th and that part of the party will never give in and they'll fight in november of 2024. it will be a fight to the finish in pennsylvania. they are not giving up -- they are with desantis and trump on the pardon which to me is a capital offense pretty much politically. >> politically, yeah. you actually have people who are turning convicts and rioters and people who abuse and batter police officers with the same american flag that troops have taken into combat for centuries turning them into heroes. that tells you all you need to know about why that party is

losing the middle of america. so, joyce, talking about january 6th, that we hear, that investigation moving forward as well. that is, of course, i think the investigation that pro-democracy forces are most focused on, hoping that donald trump will be held accountable along with all the rioters he inspired to overturn the election but that is without a doubt, that's the most difficult case to prove, isn't it? >> it is a difficult case to prove. there seems to be a straight line charge, joe. it's this notion and increasingly the courts have confirmed that this is something that's available here that there was a conspiracy to interfere with the operation of government and for trump that would look different, i suspect, than it would for the oath keepers and proud boys conspiracies where they've just been convicted and now we're starting to see

sentencing for actually fighting, the ability, the willingness to use force. here we would be talking about charges that would be focused on things like the fake elector scheme, the intimidation campaign against mike pence, all of the steps that trump was involved in perhaps took a leadership role in in trying to interfere with congress ago certification of the electoral college vote and increasingly it looks like prosecutors are in that stage where they're dotting their is and crossing their ts, but as you say, it's a difficult -- it's a complicated case. there will be equities inside of the justice department on the appellate side who will want to look very carefully at possible defenses including constitutional defenses, but i'm sort of reminded of the wisdom i learned in years as a prosecutor, which is that it's possible to overthink your cases. and when you have evidence available that suggests that you can obtain a conviction and when

you believe you can sustain it on appeal, then it's time to go, and that is doubly true in a case like in that is so critically important for the future of our country. i don't think we can understand the importance if he's indicted for his full range of conduct. >> former u.s. attorney joyce vance who is co-host of just an incredible podcast. i'm a big fan. thank you so much for being here. greatly appreciate it. >> all right, coming up on "morning joe," the republican field for the 2024 nomination is about to add two more names. we'll look at how two former trump allies could shake things up and other surprises from the race so far. and a little later, two of the stars from "and juliet" join the table. lorna courtney nominated for

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welcome back. it's 21 past the hour. >> let the music breathe. >> did you just -- don't -- who are you calling that? is that t.j.? >> okay, come on, baby. >> oh, my god. >> you know it was so great. welcome back to "morning joe." i'm supposed to read important things, but instead i want to listen and talk to my good friend chris matthews about a few things. so, chris, here we go. let's, first of all -- i

wanted -- catastrophizing. every day is the worst day. it's washington's never been worse and this is the most partisan congress ever. we've heard it time and again, chris, we heard it in the '90s with bill clinton, we were impeaching bill clinton and balancing the budget four years in a row. we've been hearing it over the past couple of years. even people in joe biden's own party said, old man, you don't understand the way of washington. you're too old. you can't get bipartisan compromise, and joe biden ran over them. one compromise bill after another, one bipartisan achievement after another. we heard the same thing at the beginning of the debt ceiling, you can't even negotiate with him. i know you, like me, have had the experience where you've gone to the floor and expected the

vote to be close and then you look up and whenever you see a number over 300 you're like, wow. the extremes just -- the extremist freaks that have been shouting the loudest, they just get ran over by the middle. it looks like that happened last night, talk about that. peace breaks out. >> the middle-middle. the two middles met with each other. it was biden who said after going along with schumer and the others, we're not going to negotiate, he did negotiate and sit down with kevin mccarthy and worked out a deal that made mccarthy's people happy enough. they promised to produce 150 republican votes. they gave them 149. i wonder about that arithmetic. you wonder if somebody is sharpening the knife to let them know it was that trick y the democrats came through and lost only 40 some members just like they did in 2020. remember after nevada, after

bernie sanders walked away with nevada, even after that, they said, wait a minute, if this keeps going in this direction we're going to lose the general election probably. not for anything bad about bernie, it's just it's not going to balance out so that klobuchar quit and bloomberg quit and all of a sudden there was a chance for biden to win in south carolina and he didn't just win but thanks to jim clyburn, he won big, really big and swept super tuesday because they realize that's a professional political party which the democrats are, you have to win. and yesterday they decided, there's such a word as must. there's such a word as must. you have to pass the debt ceiling bill. it's a stupid bill. it shouldn't be there but you have to pass it. there's no -- there was never going to be a next week in any good news for the united states if they hasn't done what they did last night. now it's set up for the senate to probably get through with this and that's how they cleaned up the whole problem that they faced, which was ignited when the republican party re-elected

kevin. when they said we'll put kevin mccarthy back in, they said one vote will bring this guy down and we can't wait to do it. so it did change history that the democratic left and the democratic center got together and once again survived and that's all they've done is survive. next year they'll have to survive again with a president who is older than he should be. he's just too old, you might argue but he's up against a highly passionate republican party either under trump and tim scott, i think it's going to be trump and tim scott, to really put the juice on but professionalism can win in the end. i think we saw that again last night. >> and, susan page, time and time again, joe biden is underestimated. i haven't quoted newt gingrich a lot over the past 10, 15 years, but after the 2022 midterms, newt actually spoke the truth to other republicans saying, we keep underestimating this guy.

you know, we always -- newt said we used to always laugh at how democrats would and liberals would underestimate reagan and eisenhower. we're doing the same thing to joe biden, and they keep doing it to joe biden. they're talking about laptops. joe biden's trying to figure out how to get infrastructure bill deals. they're talking about biden crime family with no evidence at all. he gets bipartisan gun safety. i mean, and you just keep going through it. >> and preventing a third world war the whole time. >> preventing a third world war the whole time through it and you look here, he's teamed up with kevin mccarthy, another guy, let's face it, underestimated time and again, and kevin mccarthy calleds everybody's bluff. basically said, okay, you want to vote me out, why don't we go ahead. go through 15 votes, i'm going to end up being the speaker at the end and you'll only make me stronger doing it. kind of remarkable vote total

last night, susan, wasn't it? the center did hold. >> yeah, you know, i think there were widespread predictions including by me they would pass it by one vote or two because it would be that difficult. joe biden underestimated his style of politics, underestimated -- achieved this without a lot of public chest thumping. kevin mccarthy, as you were saying, also underestimated it. there were real doubts he could corral it and how hard that can be. he did that and he survived in the speakership and that, i think, bodes well. you talked about catastrophe every day. it bodes well in the short term for our democracy, for washington, it worked the way it's supposed to work, both sides making some compromises to get something that had to be done getting it done. >> susan, i want to talk about your new piece about the republican field and the republican race. so far people looking to unseat president biden. we've got new entrants in the

last 24 hours or so, chris christie will get in next week and learned at nbc news that former vice president mike pence will enter next wednesday on his 64th birthday so the field is getting large. as you write about surprises what are some of them including the fact that the field is pretty big for a guy in donald trump who is supposed to be this unbeatable behemoth figure, almost a religious figure to some in conservative circles, but sure are an awful lot of people willing to step into the ring with him in this primary. >> i think two things have happened. i think number one, donald trump looks a little more beatable and i think ron desantis looks a little less formidable as the guy who can challenge him and win the nomination. now we're going to end up with a field that is roughly the size of the field we had in 2016, you know, when we had those debates in january of 2016 there were ten republicans on stage which seemed like an enormous number by next week we'll be up to nine credible republicans in the fight. so that is one of the surprises that we've seen. the other is how much difficulty

republican candidates are having talking about abortion. you know, this was the world's easiest issue for republicans before roe v. wade got overturned. now it's become a conundrum for them. it's got a lot of downsides. ron desantis signing a six-week ban on abortion but doing it in the dead of night and not talking about it very much on the stump. donald trump who enabled roe v. wade to be overturned by a supreme court appointments to not want to talk much about the issue. he didn't talk about it in his announcement. these are surprises, i think, willie. >> so, rev, let's talk about the non-trump, non-desantis contestants in the primary. it's christie, it's going to be pence. nikki haley, maybe governor sununu will jump in. a 30,000-foot first blush analysis. do you see any with a credible argument or case to make and a realistic path? >> i don't see any at the out set.

i do think with christie coming in who has said he will take trump on, i think he's going to push a lot of them that may have tried to avoid the trump issue to have to take it and take an issue there. and i fast forward to what happens in the republican debates, particularly if trump shows up, which he's going to have to eventually and have a christie and others start shooting directly at trump like a political firing squad. trump cannot handle fighting. he is thin-skinned. he's a narcissist and he is good at going one and two and in terms of saying something provocative. when he's under fire, i predict that he will react in a way that will be ugly. i don't think his base moves but i think what they will end up doing is making sure that democrats are re-elected.

the match will be lit by christie. >> you know the president of the united states and if you were to talk to him today, tell me that i'm wrong about what he would say to you today. he would probably say to you something like this, hey, man, you know, you guys can write all you want about i'm too old, you guys can write all you want about people in 2020 voted for me and they're not going to vote for me now because they don't like the way i walk and my foot hurts and i'm fragile but you got to admit i'm pretty good at being president. >> yeah, i think that's right and i think he's proven it this week. i think the decision that he made and these are always quiet decisions, when he broke from schumer, i think probably got together on this, i'm going to negotiate with mccarthy because it's easier to get 314 than 218 if you're just a republican. if i threw it back to mccarthy and say you get your 218 to death keep the debt ceiling quiet, he'll never get it because he's got 5 or 10 or 40

or some people that will vote against him. unless he moved it and said let's talk about the growth of government and let's talk about work requirements, let's put some of these things on the table and we'll talk about them and work out something that will make your guy healthy enough politically and so i basically think that by throwing his own weight into the fight he made it easier for kevin mccarthy and he made it possible for both of them to win. that takes a strategic decision. i don't know if it was anita dunn or any of those guys inside the white house, but somebody in that room figured out, no, you got to get in this fight and negotiate with kevin mccarthy. >> i think it was him. >> well, if that was his decision, that was the right decision and it was somehow, we watched him -- remember the debates in 2020 where listeria warren and bernie sanders would fight it out waving their hands like wild people and all about them. it was going to be elizabeth or bernie. it wasn't going to be biden. biden was sitting there with nothing. he didn't say anything. he just waited them out.

i don't know whether it was thoughtful or not but it did turn out that in the end and i have problems with the left but they came aboard and they said we're going to work with the middle and the democratic party, which is always accused of being divided, democrats divided as usual, they worked together. >> hakeem jeffries played a big role in that. hakeem jeffries came lew. >> he was the one that nancy pelosi wanted. i'm sure clyburn goes along with him. he was the leader -- a young guy, alternative to aoc but you'll notice the squad really didn't cause a lot of trouble this time. the left, if you will, the progressive, 101 members of that caucus, i just noticed that they got only 46 against the bill. so, in other words, the more -- most of the progressives went with biden, which is very interesting. >> let me tell you something, let me tell you something, it goes counter to the caricature,

chris, and rev and everybody else, the caricature of the progressive caucus and the democratic party, they're supposed to be marxist, extremist, you look -- no, you look at -- as you know very well it's not always been this way with the progressive caucus. you look at the extreme discipline. you want to talk about extreme, they have -- they have disciplined themselves, they've stood shoulder to shoulder with a moderate president they don't agree with on a lot of things and been there for the big votes when nancy pelosi needed them for the big votes. they were there last night. some of them, i completely respect them, say we can't vote for this but we're there. we're, you know, we had roe on yesterday who said i won't vote for it but i understand joe biden did the best that anybody could have possibly done. there's real discipline there. so i just want to underline that. you're exactly right.

one other thing, chris, yesterday talking about how early the race is. everybody loves to say, oh, trump's won this. desantis doesn't have a chance. i'm old enough to remember and i know you are too because you were there, i remember 1979 seeing all of those stories, teddy has a 2-1 lead over jiminy. kennedy going to beat carter by 2-1 margin at this point in the cycle in 1979. we remember jiminy carter's famous prediction on what he would do to ted kennedy if ted kennedy ran, and he did it. he won. can you just underline how early it is in this process and for people saying that desantis can't win or this person can't win, they don't know what they're talking about. >> you know, it's history does have a lot of stories to tell. one of them is ike eisenhower mentioned earlier today. you know, eisenhower was the preferred candidate of the democratic party in 1948.

all the roosevelt children, eleanor roosevelt, the americans for democratic action, the mayor of new york, the mayor of chicago all said we got to get ike to be our nominee because we can't stand this guy truman. he's no good. truman won a big old election but four years later henry cabot lodge asks ike why don't you run as a republican. he said, okay, i'll allow my name to appear on the ballot and won the whole thing and served as a moderate. a moderate president. we actually had one, a moderate president, a moderate republican, eisenhower republican. that's the last time the two parties got together. they're pretty far apart but very divided down the middle. you know, trump could win the next election. he could still win in pennsylvania, winning, doubling up on western pennsylvania like he did in ohio. he could win outside the bubble here, outside the cellar root where everybody agrees on everything, he could -- outside they're still mad at the liberals and establishment and tired of the country that can't

get anything done except avoiding a default but we did avoid the default and to me that's everything because there's such a word as must as i said before. there is a word called must. after all this talk and turmoil, we had to pass this deal. we had to and we did. that shows we can still survive but that's not governing, surviving. it's not enough. >> yep. >> susan page, we'll give you the final word. >> yeah, well, it may just be surviving but surviving is better than not surviving and that was the barrel of the gun we were looking down before. >> yeah, that's a great point. >> chris matthews, susan page and reverend al, thank you all very much for being on this morning. great to see you guys. >> and we learned something. >> yeah. >> i don't know if it was a preacher that told rev that. >> yeah. >> but if a fish keeps his mouth closed. >> oh, my god. >> he doesn't get caught. >> reverend. >> amen, reverend. >> amen.

>> that's a good one. >> i think all of us could say amen to that. >> yes, i'll write this on a piece of paper in front of you every day. i'll get a little sign and put it here. >> that would be great. i would love that. >> coming up -- no. coming up, nasa takes an historic step toward solving the mystery about the existence of alien life. a group of scientists studying hundreds of ufo sightings spoke publicly for the first time yesterday about their findings. what they revealed is next on "morning joe."

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on ufos held its first public meeting coming ahead of a report to be published in summer. gadi schwartz has details. >> this is spherical orb. >> reporter: in a first public meeting wednesday, nasa scientists dove head first into the other worldly universe of ufos. in the four-hour meeting the panelists commissioned analyzed and spoke about the more than 800 cases they're looking into. their main findings, the need to stop making fun of ufo research and more importantly to start collecting better data on the far out subject. >> without sufficient data, we are unable to reach definitive conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution. >> reporter: the panel worked to create a road map for nasa to better evaluate and categorize the growing number of what they

are now calling unidentified anomalous phenomenon saying while most sightings can be explained up to 5% of cases remain a mystery. >> in order to do science with these, we have to get our own data. >> reporter: this man is an astrophysicist. getting good data, and maybe we'll have an answer? >> we need to build our own and start watching the skies then we'll be in a position to, you know, to begin to say whether or not there's anything actually unusual here and whether there's anything that even goes beyond human physics. >> reporter: within the last year congress has held two hearings on ufos and separate from nasa the pentagon has created a department, the all domain anomaly resolution office to study unexplained sightings. >> this is a newly released video. you'll notice there are two dots moving back and forth. >> reporter: even with a growing focus on the unknown nasa

cautions. >> there's no guarantee that all sightings will be explained. >> that's nbc's gadi schwartz reporting. mike barnicle, here we are, several days past the ending of "succession" and because of the weird way that television streams, we're not supposed to really talk about things. >> but it was so good. >> perhaps in a year or two i can talk about -- >> what can't we talk about. >> "pinky blinders" that ended three years ago. "succession," i want to get your opinion on how it ended and read -- joe klein wrote a great column about it and he touches on the line that we've talked about logan roy saying, and joe klein is talking about how "succession" turns the mirror on us and he talks about how baby boomers elected trump. took the family business, literal democracy and ran it

into the ground. the most important line delivered by logan roy to his children is, i love you, but you're not serious people and joe klein writes, i have that fear about us, that we are ill equipped to govern ourselves. we can leave the commentary about america to the side for now, though. i would recommend strongly people read joe klein's column on this and "ted lasso" which also ended yesterday but, mike, i'm curious, your thoughts on the ending of "succession." >> i thought it was pretty good the way it ended and probably the only way it could have ended and logan telling them three or four episodes ago you are simply not serious people, they prove the point at the end of "succession," especially. >> right. >> especially kendall. ken was so intent on becoming his father, reclaiming his father's throne, being his father, that he ended up losing

it, but he lost it internally in a fight with his own family. i mean, his brother left him right there in the final scene and his sister storming out of the cabinet or not the cabinet room but the board meeting and refusing to cast a vote for kendall and going off and trying to get away from it and finally ending up casting the vote, the definitive vote against kendall becoming logan, becoming the father and kendall disappearing at the end. >> yeah. yeah and kendall probably going to take a big drink at the ending of it all. so, jonathan lemire, it's interesting, we've had this series for years just showing this horrific trust fund babies, just how twisted up they are, by how badly their parents treated them and it is fascinating.

joe klein does point out and spoiler alert for people who haven't seen "succession," he points out that logan roy, a self-made man, who escaped with his brother, we found out at his funeral, that incredible speech escaped in a ship and they had to stay quiet for three days because they were as little children afraid that a german u-boat would sink them if they heard anything, and he points out that logan becomes a self-made man, and his kids don't, but who wins in the end? this guy from the midwest that everybody mocks and ridicules because he's just such a striver. >> yeah, and the other winner, of course, being the swedish tech giant and mogul. yeah, but you're right and i think that is -- the joe klein

column, i read as well, turns the mirror on us and we don't always like what we see. this terms of the show itself i won't spoil it further. mike did that already but in terms -- it was so well done and so well crafted and i'd argue one of the best shows we've ever seen from main cast to the supporting players, extremely well written and we're seeing the importance of the written word during the writer's strike but also magnificently put together, a full lived in universe and great show. i think the ending was a solid ending. it didn't quite hit theuniverse great show. i think the ending was a solid ending. it didn't quite hit the peak for me, the episode you just mentioned but it still ended the show well and a classic we'll not soon forget. >> and you look, you talk about it and joe klein points this out too, who would have seen this coming, but keiren culkin,

especially during the funeral scene and through the end of the series, he's the standout actor. >> incredible. >> extraordinary job. up next, ann juliet, the musical full of pop hits is up for nine, count them, tony awards. lorna courtney and betsy wolf got two of those nominations, and they join us next on "morning joe." on "morning joe." playing pickleba...!

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♪♪ ♪ and you're going to hear me roar ♪ ♪ cause i am a champion and you're going to hear me roar ♪ >> wow, it is a version of shakespeare like you have never seen or heard before. that's a clip from the tony

nominated broadway show & juliet. it's a reimagining of shakespeare's romeo and juliet flipping the script on the tragic love story. the audience is treated to the story of what would have happened next if juliet had not ended it all over romeo. and got a second chance at life and love on her terms. the show pulsates with a sizzling sound are track featuring some of the biggest pop songs from the '90s to today including hit tunes from katy perry, ariana grande, britney spears, the backstreet boys and many more. joining us are two of the show's stars, lorna courtney, and betsy wolfe. you were here in early february, and there was a lot of tony buzz surrounding you and the show at the time, so fast forward to this morning, you and betsy are both nominated for tony awards

in all, the show is nominated for nine tonys. this is amazing, and betsy, it's your birthday? >> oh, thank you, it is my birthday. this is exactly how i wanted to spend it. >> and for you i give you a tony. >> thank you. >> this is amazing. it just seems like such a powerful production. tell us what each day is like, betsy, i'll start with you since it's your birthday, playing your characters and working on this production, is it exhausting? is it exhilarating? how do you get the energy up time and time again? what's it like for you? >> honestly, it is all the things you said. it's exhausting. it's exhilarating, but what always grounds us is the story. it is such an incredible story told with heart, with wit. it's funny. it's joyous, and it's just a story that i wanted to be

telling right now, and i know and obviously by audience's reaction, they go nuts, it's clearly the story they want to be seeing. it's really a joyous time. >> lorna, congratulations on the nomination. >> thank you. >> so you were up on stage, you're obviously singing these songs everybody knows. it sounds like a simple question, but how much fun is it to be up there? >> oh, my gosh, it's so much fun. and even if we're like tired because, you know, it's tony season so we're doing a lot, you cannot not have fun in this show. like it's just like as betsy was saying, it's so much fun, and even people that think that they don't know the songs, they actually know the songs because the songs are just everywhere, and you have a great time, and you end up leaving changed and moved in some way because not only is it fun, but it's a moving story, a story about second chances and love,

multigenerational love, friendships, relationships, so it's very relatable. >> so betsy, happy birthday, by the way. >> wow, thank you. >> we still have the clip from the play, okay, romeo and juliet, how does that happen out of romeo and juliet, and tell us, if you can, both of you, your instincts of how it happened and what happens in your story as opposed to romeo and juliet? >> so i think this is what is so hard to explain about this musical, they think, wait, you're taking these pop songs, the most famous pop songs, william shakespeare's most famous play, and somehow it all works. we basically flipped the script. i play ann hathaway who gets to come in, and kind of surprises him, i'm just here sweetheart to like watch the show, and from there she says i think i have some thoughts, and i think that that's where just the real

comedy comes in of this idea of like what if, what if we could all have a second chance. what if we chose the bold choice. >> what if juliet doesn't die. >> what if she doesn't die, and it's empowering. it's funny. i think that's the other thing that shocks people. it's hysterical. >> and lorna what do you think? >> i think exactly that. it's empowering. it's uplifting. it's from -- it's very like female empowered and moving and after the show i have so many like young girls just looking up at me with bright eyes and they're moms and they're just so overwhelmed and overcome like with joy and the spirit of the show. i'm glad that we can make an impact in that way. >> that is so wonderful. you guys just keep on enjoying

it & juliet is playing now on broadway at the stephen sondheim theater. lorna courtney and betsy wolfe, congratulations to you both. thank you both very much, and best of luck. let's get that tony. all right, that does it for -- yes, that's a big yes, and be proud of yourselves. i love that. that does it for us this morning, ana cabrera picks up the coverage right now. hello, and thank you so much for joining us on this thursday. it's about 10:00 eastern. i'm ana cabrera reporting from new york, and this morning the clock is rapidly running down on capitol hill. the senate gaveling in at this hour with the debt deal on its docket, and with just days until a historic default. the deal passed the house late yesterday. it was an overwhelming bipartisan majority voting yes. will 60 senators vote the same and