nikki haley was asked about abortion, she was speaking to a very conservative audience in iowa, but she was also speaking to a national audience. so walking that fine line, going -- taking a middle road approach. >> and on the hill's website right now you can find julia's new reporting on desantis' would go of the evangelicals and also how the abortion issue looms large over the republican field right now. thank you for joining us this morning. thanks to all of you for getting up way to early on this monday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. we shall fight on the oceans, we shall fight with great confidence and in the air. >> the woke mind virus represents a war on the truth so we will wage a war on the woke. we will fight the woke in education. >> we will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the landing grounds. >> we will fight the woke in the corporations. >> we shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. >> we will fight the woke in the halls of congress. >> we shall fight in the hills. we shall never surrender. >> we will never ever surrender to the woke mob. so sad. >> a little historical perspective on wars. there are wars. >> a little hysterical perspective on this. you know, there was a great profile piece of ron desantis by mark lebovich and it talked about how everything seemed so sort of -- i don't know -- i don't know triefd. that it was all just very contrived. when he is going on and on, there will be -- and he's trying to sound churchillian and he's talking about -- again, most americans are going, huh? >> what is this? >> what?

and he just keeps beating it. >> it's like america is not florida and that one little area in florida, by the way, ron desantis, but he continues to brag about his efforts to fight woke. we've got a lot to get this this morning. >> that is seriously so 19 -- so 2021. it really is. >> speaking of actual wars, we will have new reporting this morning on what is happening in ukraine as moscow is claiming its forces stopped a major attack that may be a part of ukraine's long awaited counteroffensive. plus, new action is expected this week in the classified documents case against donald trump. it comes as the former president is being condemned for once again praising a murderous dictator. we will dig into both of those stories. and a look at the gop hopefuls campaigning in iowa as two more names are likely to join the field this week. good morning and welcome to "morning joe."

it is monday, june 5th. with us we have the host of "way too early" white house bureau chief at "politico" jonathan lemire. the host of ""politics nation"" and president of the national action network reverend al sharpton is with us. we also have u.s. special correspondent for bbc news katty kay and the founder of the conservative website the bulwark charlie sykes is with us this morning. >> charlie, again, i've gotten to the point now, i mean, obviously like a lot of people as concerned about the extreme wokeness, you know, over the past several years, college campuses, you know, people getting fired for saying things that should really have just started a debate. you could go on and on. people getting shouted on, the hecklers veto. but i'm at a point now, and i have been for about six months, if i get a newsletter and it says woke in the headline, i erase it immediately. seriously, it is the pet rock of

2023 politics. >> it's a chia pet. >> it was a thing a couple of years ago, but when you have the head of berkeley law school, when you have the head of yale, when you have the head of all of these elite universities going, come on, you guys have gone too far, like enough with the hecklers veto, there has been a correction that ron desantis -- and, by the way, when suddenly you have right wingers saying racist things about chick-fil-a and trying to cancel chick-fil-a as being, quote, woke, for basically talking about their devotion to jesus christ, they jumped the shark a long time ago. >> no, by the way, i really love the juxtaposition of winston churchill and ron desantis. reminding us that ron desantis is not winston churchill and cannot play one in this campaign. there is no question about it,

there are problems of liberalism on college campuses, something i've been writing about for 20 or 30 years but ron desantis is not dealing with the liberalism in american culture, he is basically just employing a buzzword. a few years ago the buzzword was cancel culture, they started talking about crt and no one knew what they were talking about. they have come up with this word that has become this drone in the background. i think it goes to what you were, you know, referencing mark lebovich's profile of ron desantis, there seems something rote about the guy, inauthentic that somebody has handed him a card and said say this word over and over and over again. you know it's bad when even donald trump is saying nobody knows what the word woke means. to the heart of this in terms of the substance, you know, the fight for democracy is a fight for liberal constitutional

democracy. that means pushing back against i will liberalism and there is illiberalism on the left. what ron desantis represent is illiberalism on the right, the use of government power to eye lens ideas that he doesn't like, to punish people who say things that he disagrees with. that is the ultimate illiberalism and i think that's really the danger at the heart of this constant buzzword invocation by ron desantis. >> and, again, it's so old. the thing is they don't realize they say it's so 2021. i mean, if you read the closing of the american mind and the intro by allen blum in 1986 -- in 1986. if you read harold blum's introduction to the western canon in 1986 he was daring the progressive left, the extremists to try to cancel shakespeare. i mean, they were talking about this, they've been talking about

this for 40, 50 years, as you and i would agree, for good reason. >> right. >> but now it's just like it's very rote, it's very contrived and it's been beaten into the ground. let's get to our top story this morning, we are learning new details about the justice department's investigation into former president donald trump's handling of classified documents after leaving the white house. nbc news has learned exclusively that the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the case is expected to meet again this week in washington, d.c. that is according to multiple people familiar with the investigation. they say activity for the grand jury appeared to have slowed in recent weeks. prosecutors working for special counsel jack smith have been presenting the grand jury with evidence and witness testimony for several months, but it is not clear if prosecutors are prepared to seek an indictment

at this point. prosecutors reportedly faced two central legal questions, one, did trump wrongfully retain classified documents after he left the white house? and two, did he later obstruct the government's effort to retrieve them? that's the big question. the justice department would not comment on the status of the investigation. former president trump maintains he has broken no laws and has dismissed the investigation as a politically motivated smear campaign. there are people who say biden did it, pence had documents. >> no. >> point two is the difference. >> i mean, it's very clear this is going to be a very easy case and the pleadings will be clean, slick, to the point. donald trump obstructed justice. he obstructed the investigation. he lied. we're going to get to his lawyers memos that came out that jack smith now has that are going to be devastating for the

cause, jonathan lemire, but bottom lining this, again, let's just circle back. he's calling it a witch-hunt, other spokespeople are calling it a witch-hunt, lawyers are calling it a witch-hunt but you and i both know based on people we have been talking to close to donald trump, they know this is not a witch-hunt. they -- let me say the words, let me say the words -- they feel -- are you ready -- the walls -- everybody say it with me -- closing in on this one. so, yes, people can mock me for saying that, just like they mocked people on the show for saying it before the manhattan da came down with charges, but based on everything i'm hearing, jonathan, based on what you're hearing, at least last week, they are extraordinaily concerned about indictments coming down in this case because they know he lied and he got caught lying to the feds. >> one of the former president's ex-lawyers made the rounds on the sunday shows this weekend,

it was a performance of bravado saying that he doesn't think that trump will be indicted but that stands in stark contrast with what most legal experts say and what most of trump's inner circle thinks privately. they are deeply concerned, joe, the people you and i have been talking to. the small signs are adding up. this report now from nbc that the grand jury is going to be reconvening again after having had a few weeks off, reconvening in washington. the little development a week or so back that we talked about briefly on this show but i think flew under the radar, the letter from trump's lawyers that trump posted on truth social asking for a meeting with prosecutors, a meeting with attorney general merrick garland. he is not going to get a meeting with the ag but that's the kind of thing you do, that's usually an end stage moment in an investigation when the defendants, potential defendant's attorneys think charges with coming, they try to make one last plea to ward them off or to ask for smaller less serious charges and that is a sign of how worried trump's

lawyers are. yes, there are similarities, i suppose, with the cases with pence and biden in terms of having documents they shouldn't, but those are superficial similarities that end quickly. both pence and biden returned the documents, trump did not. in fact, there's detailed reporting about the steps he has taken to keep them, to obstruct the investigation, to prevent the federal government from returning them and the people i spoke to near the president feel like this could come and could come soon. a matter of weeks. >> and, rev, most of the people that i've spoken to that are part of this process say donald trump is not going to get charged for the same things -- doing the same things that biden and pence did. not going to get charged for that. he's going to get charged for obstructing justice for -- obstructing the investigation, lying to the fbi, lying to the doj, doing the sort of things that put people in prison. >> that is the same thing i'm

getting from people with knowledge of the law. and when you have your lawyers go and meet with the prosecutor, it is usually because it's at the end and they're trying to negotiate how they're going to deal with the charges or because you want to have your client go before the grand jury and testify. well, the irony in this case is donald trump is going to testify before the grand jury. they're going to play a tape of donald trump saying himself that he had knowledge of what he was doing and what he was doing was not declassified. so he's going to have the opportunity to speak, he just won't be there in-person. he ran his mouth and now his mouth will be heard, i believe, by the grand jury. >> to your point, rev al, the recorded recollections of one of donald trump's lawyers could end up being key in the classified documents inquiry against the former president. "the new york times" reports that last year during a long drive to a family event evan

corcoran recorded his reflections about his job representing trump in the investigation into his handling of classified documents and according to the "times" in complete sentences and a narrative tone that sounded as if it had been ripped from a novel, mr. corcoran recounted in detail a nearly monthlong period of the documents investigation according to people familiar with the matter. mr. corcoran's narration of his recollections covered his initial meeting with mr. trump in may, last year, to discuss a subpoena from the justice department seeking the return of all classified materials in the former president's possession, the people said. it also en compassed a search that mr. corcoran undertook last june in response to the subpoena for any relevant records being kept at mar-a-lago. last march a federal judge ordered corcoran's recordings to

be given to the office of the special counsel jack smith. that decision setting aside what is known as the crime fraud exception pierced the privilege that would have normally protected such musings. the paper notes the level of detail in the recording is said to have angered and unnerved close aides to mr. trump. >> that's the important part. unnerved close aides to mr. trump because they understand what's in there. >> those aides are worried it contains direct quotes from sensitive conversations. corcoran did not respond to the "times" request for comment. there's also, joe, we will go to katty, but there's also the recordings from mark meadows' book that were taken where trump has these recordings taken where people are writing in his book to keep the record clean to make sure that the facts are there and in there as well are issues about the documents. >> a lot of --katty, a lot of

recordings going on out there and of course the procedural leap that has has to be made to have access to an attorney's recordings, an attorney's recollections of his meeting with a client is a court believing that that relationship was used to further a crime. so even before we get to what the grand jury is going to do, we have a federal judge who has pierced the attorney/client privilege shield because she says it's very likely a crime has committed. so, again, that shows us just how far along jack smith is in this prosecution. >> yeah, and there are now numerous tapes of course including that one where he talks about the document that he has on iran that is potentially very sensitive to america's national security interests. it was interesting listening to his attorney on the morning shows, he says he doesn't think

there is an indictment coming, there is nothing nefarious going on. all of the other reporting around jack smith's investigation of this does point to the idea of intent and intended obstruction. i think those are the key differences. he was talking about donald trump in the context of hillary clinton and her emails on the server. it's apples and oranges. this is not about that. it's about whether donald trump took the documents which mike pence and joe biden also did, then he did a different thing which was he intended to keep them and obstructed the investigation into getting them back again and this disclaimer that he has that they were declassified in his mind somehow and therefore they were not sensitive documents, my understanding is you can't take any of these documents whether they're declassified or classified. anyway, that doesn't hold up because in the tape about iran he's talking about the fact that he has them. they weren't declassified, there is no paper trail of them being declassified and did he not

intend -- he knew he had them and he didn't offer them up to the investigators and the archives in the way that he should have done and in the way that mike pence and joe biden did. >> and that's what could get him in trouble. by the way, the former president who once again offered kind words for north korean leader kim jong-un. on friday the former president posted the praise on his social media website in response to north korea being elected to the world health organization's executive board. here are some of the responses from trump's republican primary opponents when asked about his comment. >> what did you make of donald trump congratulating kim jong-un? >> well, what i will say is let's not forget kim jong-un is a thug and a tyrant and he has tested ballistic missiles against our allies, he's threatened us. there's nothing to congratulate him about. >> i was surprised to see that. i mean, i think, one, kim jong-un is a murderous dictator. the world health organization is

a bankrupt organization, like kim jong-un is bad, but then joining that, we need to be getting out of that and rejecting the who lockdown treaty and not congratulating about being involved in the w.h.o. >> whether it's my former running mate or anyone else no one should be praising the dictator in north korea or -- or praising the leader of russia. >> charlie sykes, the most blood thirsty dangerous tyrant on the globe right now and donald trump goes out of his way praising him and this is a guy who is leading -- again, leading the republican party. again, you do wonder how in the world any republican in the base could vote for this guy. >> well, i think this is an interesting story because this is not the first time that donald trump has praised a murderous dictator and this is

not the first murderous dictator that he has praised but what is interesting is the chorus of blow back from the republicans, including brian kemp the governor of georgia who is not actually running for president. so we are seeing republicans, you know, waking up, looking around going, hey, you know, donald trump is saying things about some of the worst people in the world. now, what's interesting about this, joe, and i'm certainly not, you know, saying this is going to be a game changer or -- of any kind. >> no. >> but it is interesting that republicans have decided that this is a wedge to go after donald trump to say, okay, you know, let's highlight something that is clearly indefensible. because there may be a pro-putin wing of the republican party but i don't think there is a pro-kim wing. i think it's a vanishing small number of base voters who will go kim jong-un -- by the way, he misspelled his name, we ought to mention that. maybe it was just a simple reaction or maybe it is a decision by the -- on the part of some of the republicans to

begin hitting back against donald trump and highlighting some of the most bizarre elements of his character and his behavior, which is hills fascination with vladimir putin and with kim and with people like erdogan and viktor orban, all of the world's thugs out there, the authoritarian leaders. so i thought it was interesting that it's not new that donald trump praises dictators and maybe it's just a flash in the pan, but it's interesting that republicans called him out on it and called him out rather forcefully. >> yeah, saw that. they went on the record. it seems like a change. charlie sykes, thank you very much. still ahead on "morning joe," a small plane crash lands in virginia after causing a scare in washington, d.c. by flying through unauthorized air space. nbc's courtney kube joins us with more on that. plus, moscow claims to have thwarted a large-scale attack by ukraine. we will have that new reporting and what ukrainian president

zelenskyy is saying about an anticipated counteroffensive. also ahead, another military provocation by beijing. what we're learning about a near coalition between a chinese war ship and a u.s. navy ship. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. we will b. ♪ ...i'm over 45. ♪ ♪ i realize i'm no spring chicken. ♪ ♪ i know what's right for me. ♪ ♪ i've got a plan to which i'm sticking. ♪ ♪ my doc wrote me the script. ♪ ♪ box came by mail. ♪ ♪ showed up on friday. ♪ ♪ i screened with cologuard and did it my way! ♪ cologuard is a one-of-a kind way to screen for colon cancer that's effective and non-invasive. it's for people 45 plus at average risk, not high risk. false positive and negative results may occur. ask your provider for cologuard. ♪ (group) i did it my way! ♪

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(♪ music ♪) take a lap, rookie. (♪ ♪) (♪ ♪) where could reinvention take your business? accenture. let there be change. time to get up. it's monday morning, everybody. >> you know, new york city, jonathan lemire, home of the new york yankees. >> yeah. >> uh-huh. >> boston, home of -- >> little jack had a bad

weekend. >> little league -- >> he was in boston. >> yeah, jack sat through the rain. >> heartbroken. >> through the cold rain to watch -- watch us blow the second game. then yesterday -- do we have -- do we have like one of the worst -- worst plays that you will ever see on any level of baseball? here we go. okay. this is -- >> oh, my. >> now look at this. >> that part is fine. this part is fine. okay. you're not going to get him at home, you're not going to get him there. who is that to? >> let me tell you something, all i can say is i'm glad i never did that on my little league or senior league team because, man, we would be running laps for a month. >> my 8-year-old's team won their game this weekend and they played much crisper than the red sox did. this is terrible. it's a nice hit and run, a

single through the right side, that happens, but the throw from -- you are not going to get the guy at the late and then the catcher -- >> you are not going to get him. >> the catcher just throws it to the base but no one is there and then the worst part is there's no one backing up the play and they are all just standing there watching t it was emblematic of a pretty dreary couple days for the sox who is also lost chris sale to injury. the yankees, i hate to report it, the yankees are playing well. this is aaron judge making a great catch on saturday, literally breaking the wall at dodgers stadium. he's a little banged up, he didn't play last night, he has to get tests back in new york but great catch and the yankees win two out of three in l.a. over the weekend. >> not good. i don't even want to see these. can you take that down, please? it's getting painful. jonathan lemire, remember when i said they were a fun team to watch? i withdraw my comment. you know, the thing is, really

quickly and we will move on because there's nothing good to say about them, is their bullpen is just an absolute wreck, their pitching is an absolutely wreck and it's not like we haven't been saying all off-season that that was going to be the problem. they have some hitters that could actually do some things when they're hot, but their pitching staff is just -- it's -- it's the worst. it's the absolute worst. >> yeah, they went into the season on paper, we all could see the flaws, the pitching staff was old, it was unreliable, you know, they get a handful of good starts out of chris sale, he gets hurt, the bullpen, they spent a lot of money on it, it's really not that good. they've got some guys in the lineup who can hit and we love alex cora but there's not much to say for the people right now. they're back at .500 like we sort of expected all season long. >> if you have to put a 38-year-old out twice when it's 45 degrees within four or five hours of each other to try to save the second game of a doubleheader, it's not a good

sign. >> no. all right. let's move to news now. yesterday afternoon the u.s. military scrambled two f-16 fighter jets to respond to a private business jet that was flying over restricted air space in d.c. the response caused a loud sonic boom that was heard across the region. the cessna was not responding to radio transmissions. it then crashed in the shenandoah valley in virginia. officials say there were no survivors. according to the faa the plane took off from tennessee and was headed to long island when it suddenly turned around and flew down to d.c. it's not clear why the pilot was not responding or how the plane crashed. "the new york times" reports the plane was owned by the company encore motors of melbourne, florida. the man who runs it, john rumple told the "times" his daughter,

2-year-old granddaughter, her nanny and a pilot were on board the flight. he says they were returning to east hampton, new york, for a four-day visit to his home in north carolina. joining us now nbc news national security and military correspondent courtney kube. what more can you tell us about the military response? i will say twitter was going wild about the massive sound that many said sounded like an earthquake had hit d.c. >> it wasn't just a sound, mika, there were also people near andrews air force base who reported feeling the boom. so feeling a shake. that may have been where the reports of a potential earthquake came from. what essentially happened here was this plane it took off from tennessee, made its way up towards long island and then it turned back around and started headed back towards d.c. well, once it came close to and then even breached the restricted area over the washington, d.c. area, norad jets were scrambled. they scrambled them from andrews air force base, a couple of

f-16s. because of the potential urgency of the situation, being the fact that the plane was flying somewhat erratically, the pilot wasn't responding to any kind of radio calls, because of that those military aircraft were authorized to fly at a super sonic speed. that's where this sonic boom came in. essentially they fly so quickly that it makes this enormous sound that people all around the area were able to hear. well, those two jets made their way to the cessna, they were able to intercept it, they even fired off some flares with the intent of trying to gain the pilot's attention. the flares basically just burn up in the air, they don't ever fall to the ground, no one is in danger from them, but the pilot never responded and ultimately as you mentioned mika, it continued to fly. it started a very rapid descent because it got down towards southwestern virginia and crashed into a forest, fortunately an area where there was no one around. as you mentioned, it seems everyone on the aircraft was

killed, mika. >> horrible. let's get to some international relations or strategic problems here. beijing's defense minister is defending the actions of a chinese war ship over the weekend that veered across the bow of an american destroyer in the taiwan strait. u.s. indo-pacific command says the maneuver occurred at a distance of 150 yards in an unsafe manner. that's close. it happened on saturday. the same day u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin spoke about the status of the u.s. relationship with china, saying the u.s. would, quote -- would not flinch in the face of bullying or coercion from china and will continue to sail in the taiwan strait and south china sea as they are international waters. yesterday china's defense minister told a gathering of defense officials in singapore that the so-called freedom of navigation patrols are a

provocation to china. so, courtney, what's going on here? what are the chinese doing? >> so -- and this incident over the weekend a lot of our viewers may db g. 150 yards that's not that close, it's not a problem, one and a half football fields but you have two enormous ships that do not turn on a dime. you can tell from this video it's not just the proximity of it, it's the fact that it cut directly in front of the destroyer. the destroyer may not have the ability to veer off course to avoid a coalition. that's what makes this so potentially provocative here. viewers may remember just a few days ago there was another incident where a chinese military jet cut directly in front of a u.s. military rc-135, that's a surveillance aircraft over the south china sea. we saw from video that the u.s. military released that it came so close and flew directly in its path again that the u.s. military aircraft actually hit the wake of the chinese jet.

you can see the u.s. aircraft shaking as they go through the wake of that jet. so two very close calls here in close proximity. to your question what are the chinese doing here? they claim that these flights, these ships that are sailing through these areas, the south china sea, the taiwan strait, that they are not in international waters and that it's the u.s. military provoking the chinese. i should point out in the south china sea the u.s. military when they fly in there, they maintain that that is international waterways, international air space, but they consider those freedom of navigation operations. essentially what that is is them saying, look, we don't recognize the chinese stakes to this area so we are going to continue to sail and fly here so that we can show that this is not chinese land and space here. the taiwan strait is different, though. the u.s. just considers that open transit and so the concern here is that if you have a close

call that turns into a potential coalition or something, it has enormous potential strategic consequences for the world at this point, mika. >> all right. nbc's courtney kube, thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. let's bring in the president of the council on foreign relations richard haass. this is an awkward dance, everybody stepping on each other's toes, you have an attempt to get the secretary of defense with his counterpart in china, you have the chinese nix that. we send our cia director burns over to meet with the chinese, there are good meetings there. biden g7 conference says he's hopeful that things are going to be going well there and there's going to be a hope that all of this tension is going to leave sooner or later. you have jamie dimon and elon musk going over to talk economics, they meet with some of the top chinese officials there.

now you have these two near -- well, these two incidents that are -- >> provocative. >> very provocative. so it seems that china can't figure out exactly what they want to do and what they don't want to do with the united states. tell us what's going on. >> well, in the military side everything that courtney said was correct. i would add one thing to it, joe. china actually wants to raise the level of risk out there. they want the united states to essentially blink. part of this is the chinese believe that they have a much greater stake in what's going on with taiwan and the south china sea than we do. i literally once had a senior chinese official say to me we are willing to die to the last chinese for taiwan. you americans are not. and what they believe is that by turning up the level of risk the possibility of something that could escalate, particularly the time the united states is obviously involved in europe, that they can get us to pull back from what they see as these, quote, unquote,

provocative actions which is simply our underscoring the fact that they have interesting in that part of the world. your associated point is right, we are getting mixed signals. jake sullivan the national security adviser had a good meeting with his chinese counterpart in vienna about two weeks ago, but the chinese are essentially -- they're saying we will meet with you on economic issues because we care about that, we will have some meetings on the diplomatic side even though they're still ticked off with us for what the secretary of state did canceling the meeting and the visit because of the balloons, but they are not extending it to the security side where they do want to keep the temperature high. >> i'm not sure exactly when they told you they would die to the last chinese for taiwan, but obviously after ukraine, after everything that's happened, after they hear where congress s sounds like congress will be as unified on taiwan as it is on ukraine, there's, you know -- there's just not an upside for the chinese being provocative

right now. you would think they would want to sit down and try to put the genie back into the bottle and go back to the arrangement that we had a year ago. >> yeah, it's interesting, you know, we're calling for conversations in order to reduce the chance that you will have an incident between american or chinese forces and if an incident were to happen, which sometimes do, that the incident would lead to some type of escalation. the sort of things, for example, we had with the soviet union for decades during the cold war. you had hot lines, you had the incidents at sea agreement and so forth, these were confidence building measures. it's interesting that the chinese are pushing back on that and the more the administration asks for t joe, the more the chinese are pushing back. it's almost like they have concluded that this is something that we want so badly that to give into it would be some sort of a favor. i just think that's wrong. i see this as simply something that's in the interest of both countries, the last thing either needs is an incident that would

escalate and if it ever did escalate seriously, you know, talk about a situation for which there would be no winners. the economic repercussions of a major incident in this part of the world, given how central it is to the global economy, would be incalculable. i don't quite understand the chinese behavior other than, again, that by raising the level of risk they think they can somehow get us to back off big commitments in this part of the world. >> that's not going to happen. i mean, that's just not going to happen. if you look at what the united states has done over the past six months to a year, katty kay, it hasn't happened, it's not going to happen, the pressure on biden is fierce. if anybody ever sensed that there would be any backing down, you know, there would be an outcry in congress that would stop the president from backing down at all. it's never going to happen so -- and she had this idea that he was going to separate europe from the united states and

europe they -- you know, macron, other people met with xi, they were polite and said they wanted to reopen negotiations. they have sent a pretty clear message you are not going to divide us from the united states. we are not going to divide the u.s., eu relationship. >> no, clearly that's held strong. the best that the u.s. i think could do at the moment is carry on the kinds of visits that bill burns did, that jake sullivan did. you know, there is some fault here on the u.s. side, too, they proposed a meeting with a defense official and lloyd austin and the defense official is under u.s. sanctions and the chinese didn't like that. i think you have to kind of try to figure out how can you make this relationship work because on the military side you have to try to avoid some kind of mistake that leads to a serious conflict, but there are a whole host of issues around which the u.s. and china need to cooperate. they need to cooperate on things like climate change, for example. one way to isolate russia further would be for the u.s. to be having more diplomatic

contacts with beijing, not less of them. that would be the way to try to push russia out of the picture, particularly as it looks like china wants to play some kind of negotiating role or at least show the global south, india and brazil, that he is involved in some kind of negotiating role. there are opportunities for the u.s. to work with china here and those have to be taken. it can't just be this kind of cold war situation that we are in because a mistake could happen as we've seen over the last few days that would lead to something far more serious and is certainly not the united states' interests. all right. coming up we will talk to katty and richard and and our panel about the latest developments out of ukraine. by the way, volodymyr zelenskyy was the surprise speaker at the johns hopkins graduation. >> how good is that? >> incredible. the students were so excited, they were surprised by his -- and applebaum introduced him and he told them one of the most precious things they have is

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45 past the hour. now to the latest out of ukraine. russia says it repelled a large-scale ukrainian offensive in the eastern province of donetsk. it's defense ministry released a video this morning claiming over 200 ukrainian soldiers were killed in the battle. ukraine has yet to respond to russia's statement. the kremlin recently said one of its top military commanders was at a forward post in the front lines. as the ap reports this may be an effort by moscow to respond to criticism inside russia that its

top military leaders have not been visible enough at the front. ukrainian president zelenskyy, mean while, tells the "wall street journal" that ukraine is ready to launch its counteroffensive. it's unclear whether the situation in donetsk is part of that effort. >> and of course a big question, jonathan lemire, that remains is when will the spring offensive actually begin? >> yeah, and it's not clear that it will -- we will know exactly when it will begin. it may be incremental, there's some thought that some of the little fighting that's already happened may be the start of t we should take every claim the kremlin makes with a grain of salt in terms of how they say they've repelled this particular offensive. but, richard, we know that whether this is the part of the offensive now that muddy season is over or whether the offensive has already begun or whether it's a few weeks away still, ukraine is going to make a push and there is a sense among western allies, including knows in the white house, that they're going to need to make some sort of progress to keep momentum

going to ensure the continued support of the rest of the alliance. what's your assessment of like how much do they need to do and when do you think settlement talks might begin? >> first of all, you're exactly right, there is not a whistle that blows and says this is the beginning of the offensive. there could be probes, there could be explorations and what the russians are saying is also to be expected, because they want to win the political war here, the psychological war. i think we have to put all of that aside. an interesting question, what's enough in order to justify a third season or a fourth season of this policy. jonathan, my prediction is that's going to be debated come the fall, that ukraine will perhaps gain a little bit of territory, i could be wrong, we are all speculating here, but a lot of people are going to say are two or three or four more years of this going to really liberate all of what russia is holding in crimea or in the east? the answer, probably not. well, what then? at what point do we need to transition and add a diplomatic dimension to the strategy?

when do you need to have peace talks of some sort? what sort of assurances do you provide ukraine as an inducement to enter into talks as a message to the russians that continuing the war would be futile. my guess is we are six months away from that. we will get through this fighting season and as we talked about the other day the russians may want to play it out for another year hoping that someone like donald trump will end up in the white house and american support for ukraine will fall off. so my guess is we probably have one or even two more years of this, but i think probably by this time in the spring of '25 if ukraine has not regained much of the land that it has lost not just in -- certainly since 2014, then i think we're -- i think essentially they come under real pressure to negotiate. >> richard, how much of the politics in the united states going into an election year, presidential and congress, and the appetite of the electorate

to support -- continue to support enthusiastically this war, if that dims, how does that affect where the united states stands in terms of supporting zelenskyy and then how does that affect where zelenskyy tries to go into negotiations? when you see russia aggressively trying to get other support, there's even stories of african countries that are siding with russia. how do the politics work? >> i actually don't think this is a big political issue here. i don't see people going to the polls, if you look at the midterm elections virtually nobody was voting on the basis of this. it comes up every now and come primary or debates way to differentiate trump and desantis on this. i don't see this as a big political issue. this is not going to bring -- in part we're not involved militarily on the ground in the sense of american soldiers. there's no bring the troops back kind of thing. so i think whoever is president is going to have considerable discretion, either to continue

what we're doing, if it's president biden, nikki haley or to turn down the tap if it's a donald trump or ron desantis. so i actually don't think there will be so much political pressure as candidates and potentially individuals wanting to differentiate themselves. >> richard haass, thank you very much for coming on this morning. >> richard, like to say anything about the muddy season that the red sox is going through right now. >> i was going to say the following which is it is quite extraordinary you and professor le mere, you can spend 10, 15 minutes talking about the red sox. the fact the yankees won the series against the dodgers on the short list of the best teams in baseball, it deserved a little bit more oxygen than the two of you -- >> now giving us editorial critique. >> i just want to say that -- >> stumbling grows stronger. thank you, richard. >> the biden two step. plus, new reporting on the next phase of president biden's

re-election campaign now that the debt limit deal is behind him. "morning joe" will be right back. ind him. "morning joe" will be right back from prom dresses to workouts and new adventures 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. although uncommon, up to 1 in 5 survivors of meningitis will have long term consequences. now as you're thinking about all the vaccines your teen might need make sure you ask your doctor if your teen is missing meningitis b vaccination.

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atlantic region can expect 12 to 17 named storms this year with five of them, five to nine of them possibly becoming hurricanes. an estimated 1 to 4 of them being major ones. great. coming up, is there a double standard when it comes to investigating president biden versus former president trump? we'll show what a house republican on the oversight committee had to say about that. that is next on "morning joe." o" when moderate to severe ulcerative colitis keeps flaring, put it in check with rinvoq, a once-daily pill. when uc got unpredictable, i got rapid symptom relief with rinvoq. and left bathroom urgency behind. check. when uc got in my way, i got lasting, steroid-free remission with rinvoq. check. and when my gastro saw damage, rinvoq helped visibly repair the colon lining. check. rapid symptom relief. lasting, steroid-free remission. and a chance to visibly repair the colon lining. check. check. and check.

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what does it mean to you? how do you define woke? >> there's a lot of things. bilogical boys playing in girls sports. gender pronouns in the military now. all of these things pushing what a small minority want on the majority of americans, it's too much. it's too much. i mean, the idea that we have bilogical boys playing in girls sports, it's the women's issue of our time. >> okay. that was republican presidential candidate nikki haley explaining what woke means to her, missing the irony the word woke means small matter of americans. president joe biden made a lot of headlines this fall, last week w this fall last week, during a graduation ceremony. yikes. looked like it really hurt, but

he seems fine. it inspired a new piece from one of our next guests, calling the biden two-tep. we'll dig into that. plus, we could learn what, if anything, the fbi has for house republicans today as they continue to dig for alleged dirt on the president and his family. >> it's just not going well at all. >> my point is, i made it last week, it doesn't work. keep digging. it doesn't work. it's not me. i don't think people respond to this. >> yeah. >> let's be done. >> and they're being called out now by fox news hosts. you actually have -- i mean, katty kay, you actually have chuck grassley, one of the most senior members in the united states senate, when pressed about this supposed document that everybody is talking about, and that it could exonerate the president, grassley goes, we

don't care if he's innocent or not. and that's just -- that's again, michael kinsley's definition of a gaffe where somebody in washington accidentally tells the truth. i mean, we have that time and time again whether it's the durham investigation, whether it's the comey investigation, these people keep humiliating themselves and it's left to "the wall street journal" editorial page to try to clean it up for them, but even they're saying there's no smoking gun. >> yeah. coming out on top of the committee chair said this was good for ratings. you wonder what the impetus is. emeka is right, when you look at the polling heading into the 2022 midterm elections, the idea of investigating the biden family didn't rank anywhere -- i literally didn't see it anywhere in the top 10 polling issues that people were concerned about, and yet it's something that certain members of congress

and the republican party are very focussed on. they should be investigated and found. but the durham report found that there wasn't the smoking gun that certainly donald trump had been hoping for. and there didn't seem to be any indication, haven't seen it yet. so it's not something that resonates with the american public so far. maybe republicans think if they carry on with these committees -- i don't quite know what the political rational is because they haven't been resonating. haven't seen this creep up in polling around what issues people are concerned about. so i'm not quite sure why they're continuing to spend quite so much time on it. >> yeah. just doesn't seem to make sense. you know, rev, when you're preaching, i mean, you need a message that's not going to put the people in the choir behind you asleep. and this biden crime family and the hunter biden's laptop and this, that -- as we say, if he's guilty of a crime, arrest him.

charge him. and if a jury convicts him, a jury convicts him. so be it. all these things about the biden crime family, this, that and the other, they keep pushing and they keep finding absolutely nothing. and it ends up at the end of the day just being an embarrassment for them and as katty said, most americans just don't care about this unless you're the wife of the supreme court justice that's talking about putting the biden crime family on barges outside of gitmo. >> absolutely. and when you see no response and you keep pushing something that you can't really bring anything out that would be even something perceived as a smoking gun, it takes away from the credibility of things you may want to bring in the future that may get a reaction. it to me how tone deaf they are if people aren't tuned in.

if i'm preaching not only is the choir sleeping behind me, they start snoring, i might want to get a different message. >> yeah. >> so here is what republican senator chuck grassley said last thursday that joe just referenced. take a look. >> you talked to the fbi director christopher wray on the phone yet, right? and you're trying to get a look at this document. from what i understand, he says you're okay to come to the bureau and look at it. is that the case? and is that good enough for you? >> well, it's not good enough for me. we asked for the document a month ago. it's been subpoenaed. he ought to respond to a subpoena. we're doing the constitutional job of oversight. i have read that document. if he would read it, and it's an unclassified documents, he admits it exists, and we aren't interested in whether or not the accusations against vice president biden are accurate or

not, we're responsible for making sure the fbi does its job. >> again -- >> i'm so -- >> agaffe. >> a gaffe? >> a gaffe in washington when you accidentally tell the truth and you don't mean to. jonathan lemire, that's exactly -- >> that was last thursday. >> chuck grassley just did there where he's acting shocked and stuns and admits he's already seen the document. and then he admits that biden hasn't done anything wrong and that this is just all show biz. this is all political gesturing. this is all raising -- again, it's what durham did. >> yep. >> made a fool of himself. it's exactly what comey has been doing. when he has absolutely nothing. absolutely nothing. and here is grassley, now they're talking about this document. we need the document.

this is horrible. this is the worst thing ever. well, but he said you could come look at the document. i've already seen the document. okay. and -- well, it doesn't matter if he didn't do anything or not or whether the accusations were lies. again, these people keep making fools of themselves. why don't they talk about inflation? why don't they talk about the rising cost of rent? why don't they talk about the southern border? why don't they talk about crime? why don't they talk about quality of life? why don't they lead with that because this biden stuff is getting them nowhere? >> poll after poll after poll suggests the american people just don't care. senator grassley gave up the game right there. made it clear this is about politics. so that was last thursday. and then yesterday, house republican on the committee investigating the biden family's business dealings was called out over double standard when it comes to the probes into the president. on fox news,over sight committee member pat fallon was discussing

a document that republicans hoped to obtain today that they say contains allegations that joe biden committed financial crimes in his time as vice president. despite not yet seeing the document, fallon was adamant yesterday that it could implicate biden in a crime, yet he seemed to brush off the possibility of the same unseen document exonerating the president. >> if it disproves or dispels suspicions and allegations, will that exonerate then vice president biden? >> oh, no, not at all. it's just once -- it's just one document. it's an fd 1023, one claim. there's so many others. >> is the fbi credible, let me finish, either when the agency is investigating the former vice president or the former president? is the fbi, and its sources, credible? >> of course you hope so, but you also don't want to see two different -- a two-tier justice system. >> so congressman, you're doing

a really good job of squirming around my questions. >> okay. >> i see you setting up -- hang on. let me finish, please, sir, what i see you setting up, quite frankly, if this document doesn't give you the evidence that you're looking for, then you're going to keep digging, even if it does, you're going to keep digging. no matter what is in this document, what the fbi does or doesn't do, they're political. >> in this particular instance, we'll be fair, as i think we always are. >> wow. >> now that's how you do it. that was good. let's bring in the host of the podcast "on brand" with donny deutsche, donny deutsche. and columnist for the daily beast, david roth cough joins us this morning. good to have you both this morning. >> we talk about the hypocrisy of these republicans and the fbi, donny, they talk about wanting to defund the fbi. they talk about the fbi going after donald trump in 2016 and beyond. they don't talk about the fbi

out of new york leaking document after document, leaking story after story throughout the entire 2016 campaign against hillary clinton. they don't talk about the bizarre letter written ten days before the presidential election that even donald trump admits helped him get elected president of the united states. they never talk about any of that. it's the same thing here. if the fbi finds anything that hurts joe biden, it's credible. but if they do anything and find anything that hurts donald trump, well, they'll just defund it. what clowns. >> what clowns and what do they talk about? well, i have what they call the big three they talk about. they talk about this ridiculousness with this biden crime family, hunter biden. then they talk about this -- we'll get to it, obviously touched in the last hour, nikki haley saying the biggest issue for women today is trans athletes playing sports and this ridiculous super woke -- >> oh lord. >> there is something called abortion maybe for more than 65%

of women in this country is a bigger issue. and talk about super wokeness. >> donny, let me just say, too, i see columns talking about this, writing about this, as if the international organization for amateur sports has already banned men who transition post puberty to competing. and that's where most organizations are going. that's where they're moving. and there is an overwhelming consensus for that in america. again, they're about two years late to this game. >> yeah. this woke thing, you hit it in the last hour is just so, so overused, overdone, oversaturated. the third thing, the big comment they always have, biden trip. those are the big thing, super wokeness, biden trip, and the biden crime family. on the other side, 240,000 jobs

created last friday, more legislative victories over the last two years than any other president, as we saw him deptly handle the debt crisis. republicans, to your point, don't talk about crime, inflation, health care, education, they talk about what i call that weeny big three. and they have fallen down and can't get up. >> okay. >> mika. >> doing it for years. >> this is what we talked about, going into 2022, well i'll take this to rev, going into 2022, this was a real concern and republicans were making it, that democrats weren't talking about the issues that mattered the most to american people. they weren't talking about inflation. they weren't talking about crime. they weren't talking about homelessness and quality of life issues for people in cities. they weren't talking about the chaos on the southern border. and then, they immediately proceeded to start flooding american's mailboxes with

mailers about trans athletes and disney world and issues that literally mattered to a small, small segment of the most intense, far right republican base. as far as compared to inflation, compared to crime, these -- and so what happened? they got absolutely crushed because americans wanted to talk about inflation. they wanted to talk about crime. they wanted to talk about abortion. they wanted to talk about the proliferation of military weapons going out into the streets of america. and my god, republicans just got hammered in swing state after swing state. >> and they got hammered about their own hammer because they started majoring in minors and minoring in majors. you have to deal with the major concerns of the electorate if you want their vote. and i can't for the life of me

understand who is advising these candidates that are taking these very marginal issues, speaking to a small sliver of people on the far right and not talking about issues that can in effect, challenge the incumbent president and the democratic party. they're not even close. they're not in the stadium. you can't hit a home run in the parking lot. you have to get in the stadium and take a swing at the ball that's being pitched. and you're right. inflation, crime, these are things that you can debate and maybe gain some ground. but talking about things that no one cares about is political malpractice. >> it's a waste of time as well. so, with just two days to spare before the u.s. reached a potentially catastrophic default, president biden on saturday signed legislation to extend the nation's debt ceiling. the fiscal responsibility act of

2023, suspends the debt limit through january 1st of 2025 after the 2024 presidential election. instead of holding a public ceremony with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, the president signed the legislation in private, posting this video on twitter. david roth cough, in your latest piece entitled "call it the biden two-step:how to stumble and grow stronger" you write this, given the outcome we have seen this week, isn't the real issue, to paraphrase ronald reagan, not whether biden is too old, but his opponents are too shallow and inexperienced to keep up with him. biden handled a negotiation with congress once before, vice president during the obama years. observers concluded, while he helped get a deal, he perhaps given up too much. he learned from that. he saw the obama and trump

responses to putin's invasion of ukraine were inadequate, when flaws in the planning process regarding the exit from afghanistan were identified, he and his team learned from it. what those who observed joe biden and his performance as president will recognize is that his opponents should be, where? ere time they find something to iter about, he is growing, getting stronger, and preparing to outsmart, outwork, outcompassion, and outlead them yet again. and this is -- we have been talking a lot here, joe, it's like david had tweets last week that was so interesting in terms of media coverage of biden and sometimes the media feeling they can't even do press on biden that has any positive narrative because it might seem imbalanced when the bottom line is there have been some wins, some real

wins. >> the thing is, though, not even some wins, david. historic number of bipartisan pieces of legislation. you can just look at data. you can look at the evidence. you can look at the hard facts. joe biden has already in three years had more bipartisan legislation than i mean any president this century. certainly more than donald trump, more than barack obama during his eight years, more than george w. bush during his eight years. i think probably more than bill clinton during his eight years. though bill clinton did have a good bit of bipartisan legislation as well. but certainly in three year's time he has done more as far as legislation goes and bipartisan legislation than any president this century. we can say it. it's true. >> well, you put your finger on it. the reason they don't talk about the facts is that the facts make the case against them and make the case for biden.

the reason they talk about empty investigations that are going to go nowhere or photo op or the president accidentally slipping is that if they talk about the facts, they're going to be in a defensive and losing position. biden has passed 300 pieces of bipartisan legislation or signed 300 pieces of bipartisan legislation in the past two years. he has created more jobs or overseen the creation of more jobs in 2.5 years than any other president has in four years. last week, while people were talking about, you know, the president slipping on a stage, not only did you have another major legislative triumph, you had the secretary of state in helsinki, the city where donald trump kowtowed to vladimir putin, standing up and welcoming finland into nato, a nato that is stronger than ever and that is helping to defeat russia in

what will be a big strategic victory for the united states. of course they don't want to talk about the facts. the facts are kryptonite to the republicans. >> david, so why are joe biden's approval ratings so anemic? >> well, first of all, joe biden's approval ratings are based on what the coverage is. you have half the country looking at a media bubble that doesn't cover his successes. and then you've got the other half of the coverage looking at stories where, as mika said a minute ago, people don't want to say, hey, look, the president is doing all this good stuff because that might seem, you know, unbalanced. we have to offer the republican side. except, the republican side is donald trump, a former president about to be indicted again, probably and again. the republican side is holding the country hostage in this fiscal debt crisis that they

manufactured and we shouldn't have gone through. the republican side is during the last administration achieving next to nothing. and this one being one of the most productive administrations in probably 60 years. probably since the johnson administration. and so, you know, if that story doesn't get out, well, of course the approval ratings won't be quite as high. having said that in the last election, it was biden candidates doing well, trump candidates doing poorly. the last presidential election, it was biden winning, trump losing. the maga people are losing ground. we saw that in the negotiations in the congress last week. so, you got to say to yourself, maybe these popularity ratings don't matter so much when actual elections and actual results do. >> david, you're right. biden has been in many ways a transformational president between the ira launched an industrial policy in the united

states that simply didn't have before and stepped up pressure on china in the process. but, these -- the issue around his age is not something just that the media brings up. this is something when i talk to democrats, they raise it. democrats up on the hill will raise the issue of joe biden's age, clearly one poll after another shows that voters are concerned about an 80-year-old running for president. if you were advising the white house, how would you advise them to tackle this issue? >> well, i would advise them to tackle exactly as they have. joe biden said, look, this is my age. you have to evaluate it for yourself. but, don't look at him in terms of one dimension. evaluate it in terms of how much he has gotten done, evaluate in term of how healthy he is versus other presidents. evaluate his age and fitness versus the candidates he's actually running against. evaluate it against the quality of his team, the people around him.

some of them are much, much younger. some of them -- it's the most diverse administration in american history. it's extremely competent. it is working together extremely well. the presidency is not a one-man job. it's kind of a corporate job. and he's succeeding in that regard. so, you know, i think biden is saying, look at the facts. look at the truth. look at what i've got done. don't look at it one dimensionally. and the other side is saying, hey, look over here at trans athletes and swim meets. it's just not an issue. that's because they're running scared from the biden record. >> let me ask you, donny, obviously you were advertising legend, branding legend. it's got to be frustrating for you to see joe biden, again, 300 pieces of bipartisan legislation that he signed into law in 2.5 years. he's created more jobs in two

years than any other president or has overseen the creation of more jobs over the past two years than any other president over four years. you've got western -- the western alliance getting stronger, expanding, going all the way in to helsinki and to finland. 600 to 800 miles of border now, nato border, up against russia. i mean, this is -- this is a record that any president would absolutely love to run on. why is joe biden sitting at 40% approval rating? and who what do they need to do? how do they get this message out? >> the message will get out. i'm going to do the jack webb thing and just the facts, man, nothing but the facts. you'll see in the next story i see in the prompter you guys getting into biden's election campaign. i could not wait if i was in charge of his advertising to get

in there because very often with presidential campaigns you've got to do a lot of kind of just little shuffling of the cards, make things up, do a distraction. here you've got the meat on the bone. you've got the facts. and where as the republicans right now had to do a campaign for them, i don't know what i would do. i don't know where i would go. so i think as we start to get closer, we're 18 months out now from the 2024 election, as we get closer and the billions of dollars are going to be being spent -- excuse me, guys, are going to being spent on the facts the quiet competence, the list you just went over, it is going to register. unfortunately we're not at the campaign season yet. and as david pointed out, we are kind of hit with just the kind of media echo chambers of ridiculousness. but once we get into reporting of the facts in a campaign, i don't want to say reporting, stating the facts in a campaign, you'll see those numbers start

to jump. once again, you have those dirty little things on your side. the facts. >> yeah. and you know, david has also said, how long are we going to go talking about polls, talking about polls, going oh my god, the polls are horrible. they're horrible. and then you have the election. and then the day after the election, you go, wait, the polls were wrong. the polls are always wrong. i go back and i think leading up to the 2022 midterms, joe biden's numbers were horrible. people were saying, well, if a president's numbers are that bad, there's no way his team is going to do well. >> turns out people don't like insurrections. >> people were talking about the red wave. we weren't. but everybody else was talking about the red wave. there was no red wave. >> yeah, no, there was not. >> so again, polls as we said last week, when we were talking about ted kennedy beating jimmy carter by a two to one margin a year out, right now polls don't matter. i will say, as donny said, this continuing to succeed, it's an

old saying, nothing succeeds like success. >> yeah. >> and that's what we're seeing here. if he keeps piling up the numbers and when you go into campaign mode, you can do that and who knows. maybe republicans will continue mailing their mailers of trans swimmers from 2020 into people's mailboxes across swing states and continue losing. >> looking for laptops. let's bring in nbc news white house correspondent mike memoli who has new reporting on president biden's re-election campaign. mike, what are biden's plans now that the debt limit deal is behind him and maybe he can focus a little bit on this. >> that's right, mika. the president and his team certainly took a lot of lumps over the course of the last month during these debt negotiations. even fellow democrats thinking he was creeding to kevin mccarthy. that was strategic. their ethos was to prioritize the win and the idea of getting in a daily tit for tat with

republicans was going to be counterproductive to that. and you look at the result in the end and the white house team now is in overdrive to sell this accomplishment, not so much because of the deal itself but something that wasn't in the legislative text, this idea that the president despite all the cynics and against all expectation, followed through on that promise he made to voters in the 2020 campaign, that he would be able to unite the country at a time of divided government, get republicans to the table and have a strong bipartisan win in the end. look at the margins in both the house and the senate. we saw the president doing that himself with that oval office address on friday night, the biggest platform a president has. and right from the get-go, i'll correct you guys, the president said 350 bipartisan bills he signed into law. but, as i talk to biden advisers, they say he is now going to be not necessarily focussed on the deal itself, but this is getting back to regularly scheduled programming, as they put it. he wants to now -- you'll see

this on friday, go to north carolina, talking about the expansion of jobs the need for job training, to employ the work force created by these legislative achievements. this adviser put it to me, we certainly are going to talk about the fact that the president has followed through on his pledge to unite the country here, as another example of that but campaigns are all about contrasts. and one of the strongest contrasts that the biden team thinks they have is a president who simply drama free, puts his head down, and does the work. is focussed on the economy at a time that this growing republican field seems to be arguing to your earlier discussion as well how to define woke and how to wage war against it. that's what we're going to see really the campaign try to do this sort of shadow campaign. he's not really going to ramp up campaign rallies until next year following that obama model. one thing we will see as the month continues here is a return to fundraising, too. that's another big imperative ahead of the fundraising deadline at the end of the month. >> nbc's mike memoli, thank you

so much for your reporting. donny, i have to go to you really quickly, again, mike points this out, he clarifies it. joe biden 350 pieces of bipartisan legislation signed. and ron desantis and everybody else is talking woke, woke, woke, woke, woke. again, something that i said on this show, mika and i heard a lot about from liberals, even, in 2021. you're not hearing it again in part because there have been some corrections. you have the head of berkley's law school, yale law school, stanford law school going hold on, hold on, we're not going to let these woke mobs get in the way of free speech. they're saying it at the most elite law schools in america. so, common sense americans are going, okay. there may still be a problem, but they're working on it. and yet these republicans are

all acting like it's 2019, 2020 and they just keep freaking out. well, joe biden is talking about -- >> winning. >> -- job training and signing bipartisan bills. >> yeah. the woke movement officially jumped the shark. joe, you touched on this earlier with the chick-fil-a move. right wing company, i don't say that negatively, very family values, closed on sundays, the head of the -- dan cathy came out against same sex marriages. they're very conservative. now all of a sudden -- >> very conservative. i wouldn't say right wing. >> you're right. very conservative. obviously a great company. and they came under fire they have a dei initiative, diversity, coming under fire from right wing groups. that's the official moment that woke officially jumped the shark and put fonzi on skis in honolulu. >> donny deutsche, we'll see you

back in our fourth hour for the latest installment of brand up, brand down. i can't wait. >> david, any final thoughts? >> well, you know, you talk about this and it reminds me of something you were talking about earlier, and that's the red sox and the yankees. the red sox don't score enough runs. the yankees score enough runs. they win the games. biden is scoring runs. >> there you go. columnist for the daily beast, david ropfkof. still ahead on "morning joe," the federal grand jury hearing evidence about donald trump's handling of classified documents is set to meet again this week. we'll have that new reporting and what it could mean for the former president. plus, how an obscure voting tool could convince republicans to vote for democrats. newsweek editor at large tom rogers, joining us to explain

that ahead. later this morning, actor james marsden, look at the latest project "jury duty" a documentary-style comedy series. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪♪ i'm your overly competitive brother. check. psych! really? dude, that's a foul! and now you're ready to settle the score. and if you don't have the right home insurance coverage, well you could end up paying for all this yourself. so get allstate. ♪ well you could end up paying for all this yourself. with wet amd, sometimes i worry my world is getting smaller because of my sight. but now, i can open up my world with vabysmo. vabysmo is the first fda-approved treatment for people with wet amd later this morning, actor later this morning, actor

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preservision areds 2 contains the only clinically proven nutrient formula recommended by the national eye institute to help reduce the risk of moderate to advanced amd progression. preservision is backed by 20 years of clinical studies. so ask your doctor about adding preservision and fill in a missing piece of your plan. like i did with preservision. now with ocusorb better absorbing nutrients. you better have plan-b, because if plan-a shows we're going to the far reaches of both sides, the far left and the far right and people don't want to go to the far left and the far right, they want to be governed from the middle, i think there is -- you better have that plan-b available and ready to go. >> and you're saying it possibly could include joe manchin? >> i'm not saying who is it going to include or exclude. i'm saying you better have plan-b ready, shannon, because that's what it will take for this country to remain the super

power of the world, to give confidence to people around the world that the reserve currency should be the u.s. dollar. the support for freedom and democracy should be the u.s. government and the u.s. defense department. we can do that. you can't do it from extremes. >> okay. ruling it out, not ruling it out? >> not ruling anything in, not ruling anything out. >> okay. >> okay. democratic senator joe manchin of west virginia pressed in an interview with fox news yesterday about the possibility of him waging a third-party bid for president. let's bring in cnbc founder and newsweek editor at large, tom rogers into the conversation. he's out this morning with a new piece that explains how there could be a little known but powerful alternative to the two-party race, called the fusion party system. and, i quote, there's an obscure voting tool that could convince republicans to vote for

democrats. how is that possible, tom? >> well, good morning. well, when i was last on i was talking about that no labels effort to create a major third party that joe manchin wouldn't commit one way or another to, but it is a scary prospect because it's the one way i think that you could create political fission, splitting apart the electorate in a way that say donald trump could be re-elected by carrying swing states in a way he couldn't otherwise. so, that's identification of a real issue, that there are republicans and independents looking for another way that may not want to support either major party. what fusion tickets do is allow people to vote for a major party candidate but not vote for them on that party's democrat or republican line. this is something, for instance,

mayor michael bloomberg used when he ran for republican mayor in new york but had the independent party backing which allowed a lot of democrats that didn't want to pull the lever for a republican to vote for him. and it could be a very important tool for biden to be able to capture republican and independent votes with voters who just do not want to pull the lever for the democratic party because they don't necessarily feel they want to support the entirety of the democratic party program. the issue is that other than new york and connecticut and in presidential races for -- in california, it's illegal to have fusion parties in the other states. they're banned. the supreme court ruled about 20 years ago that it was up to the states, whether or not they could have fusion parties.

finally there's some steam going to try to create the opportunity for these additional ballot lines for a major party candidate. for instance, in michigan, the head of republicans and independents for biden is trying to get a michigan common sense party registered, has to challenge this in the courts, but there are about 12 states that have broad enough freedom of association provisions in their constitutions and don't have state supreme courts controlled by maga republicans that these have a shot. but it's going to take some real doing. >> tom, in new york, as you said, we know about these parties like you said the independent line that michael bloomberg used, new alliance party, and on a national level, many of us believe that had ross perot not ran in '92, that bush

might have been re-elected in terms of bill clinton. so as you look at this possibility of no labels party, which could appeal to some on the right, and you are talking about what biden could do in the center or the left, do you feel that there's any real effort nationally by those that support biden to say let's have this other lane here because there may be a no labels party. and if so, how would that be organized? because if they have to challenge it state by state now in terms of allowing it where states don't allow it because of what you stated legally, wouldn't they have to be getting this going rather quickly? >> you're absolutely right, rev. i think that's the difficult thing here. working its way through the state courts, between now and the 2024 elections is a very tough timetable. and this may be something that

ends up playing out more post 2024 than for this cycle, although we may get it done in a few states. nonetheless, in new york, this could be very important. we have a conservative party in new york and a working families party in new york taking back the house of the democrats. this fusion party issue could be really important. those two parties i mentioned operate more at the political extremes. i think if there was a fusion, pro-democracy, pro-abortion choice ticket that just stood for those two notions, that there are an awful lot of republicans and independents in the long island and hudson valley where we lost five seats to republicans and gave mccarthy majority and the speakership, getting the house back, using fusion ticket lines could be important centrist fusion ballot line could be put through.

>> all right. tom rogers, thank you very much. we'll be reading his new piece online today for news dlsz week. tom, good to see you. coming up, another military provocation. raises heightened tension between the u.s. and china. what the defense department is saying between a close encounter between a chinese warship and an american destroyer over the weekend. plus a member of the foreign relations community, senator ben cardin joins the table. that's next on "morning joe." from prom dresses to workouts and new adventures 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. although uncommon, up to 1 in 5 survivors of meningitis will have long term consequences. now as you're thinking about

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beijing's defense minister is defending the actions of a chinese warship over the weekend that veered across the bow of an american destroyer in the janis

mackey frayer has more. >> reporter: a close encounter in the taiwan strait. the defense department releasing this video that it says shows a chinese warship almost running into an american destroyer on saturday, coming within 150 yards of it, forcing the ship to slow down to avoid a collision. the navy ship had been conducting a joint military asian between taiwan and mainland china. calling on china's leaders to, quote, reign in that kind of conduct. >> accidents can happen to cause things to spiral out of control. >> reporter: china's defense minister blaming american provocations by being in the area. telling the u.s. to, quote, mind your own business. and take good care of your own people. navy vessels and jets. all prompting a warning from the

u.s. >> we do not seek conflict or confrontation. but we will not flinch in the face of bullying or coercion. >> reporter: these close calls are happening more often. the latest last week over the south china sea when a chinese fighter jet flew across the nose of an american surveillance plane in a maneuver the u.s. called aggressive. earlier this year, nbc news was on board a u.s. navy aircraft intercepted by a chinese jet that flew 500 feet off the wing for over an hour. china saying it will continue to take necessary measures to protect sovereignty and security. >> nbc's janis mackey frayer with >> janis mackey frayer with that report. let's bring in a member of the foreign relations committee, democratic senator ben carden. a lot of crosscurrents. what do you make of the china moves? it seems so provocative, the warship coming ever so close and

the american plane having to ride in the wake of china's. >> it's good to be with you. the freedom of the sea is critically important for commerce. what china is doing is against international law. we have a responsibility to make sure we keep these channels open to international commerce. the secretary of defense said, it's absolutely accurate. china has to recognize that these provocative actions can spin out of control. so it's very dangerous, but we have to maintain the freedom of commerce and the sea. so the china seas have always been a little controversial with china, but we must maintain the freedom there. >> part of figuring out strategy is to try and understand what the strategy is of the other side, and in this case, china. what do you think they're doing? >> china is trying to establish itself as a power in the entire china sea region. it's not just the u.s.

interests. there are so many other countries that are compromised by what china is trying to do, including vietnam, including japan, including south korea. so we need to work with the freedom of the seas issue to make it clear we are not going to back down from our ability to conduct international commerce and for our security reasons. we have to be very clear. we have to stand up to china's bullying. we cannot allow them to get away with this type of intimidation. we see it not just in the seas but in the air as well. we have to recognize that china is becoming more belligerent and more of a military threat in the region. >> so, senator, the president is host the prime minister of denmark and great britain this week. ukraine, of course, nato's response to russia's invasion will be top of mind. reports this morning that russia has claimed to have repelled what they say is a significant ukrainian incursion. we all know to take the

kremlin's word with a grain of salt. tell us what you may have heard about what's happening there and your assessment as to where this conflict stands and what ukraine might need to accomplish. >> it puts them in a strong toer position to hopefully figure out a way we can end the open conflict and get russia out of ukraine. this is a critically important moment. you can't, as you said, trust anything that comes out of the kremlin as far as accuracy is concerned. the truth is that ukraine is doing very well. the international support is very strong. and we are prepared to continue to help, so we're optimistic that we will make progress during this counteroffensive and there will be an opportunity we hope for an off-ramp so that russia can remove its troops from ukraine. >> senator, there's a new report out in london from the royal

united services institute indicating the ways in which the russian military has made corrections to some of the missteps it made early on. they're better as using their infantry and pulling out ukrainian positions. there is always some tendency for bias in the u.s. when it comes to ukraine's chances, but how much are you hearing about the degree to which russia has improved its military tactics recently ahead of this spring -- i guess summer offensive now? >> well, we know russia has a major military capability. we know that. think back to february of last year. no one would have predicted that ukraine would be in existence today let alone where they are on the battlefield. ukraine has been motivated. they've been effective. and they're continuing to be effective in holding back the russian aggression. this is russia's war of aggression, and ukraine has defended its sovereignty with extreme effectiveness.

so it may take longer. we don't know how long it's going to take, but ukraine is going to maintain its sovereignty and win this war. >> senator, two parts. one is the concern domestically about we're spending a lot of money in ukraine. could that money be spent here in some of the things that are on the chopping block, so to speak. how do we deal with that going into a political year both congressional senate races and the presidential race? and secondly, what can you tell us about the united states engaging and dealing with the conflict in sudan. i've been hearing a lot about that. i visited sudan a few yearing ago and it's crazy. >> ukraine is the front line for democracy. the investments we're making with the ukrainians is for our own national security defense. we know russia would not stop with ukraine. they would continue to the ball tick countries and beyond that.

it threatens our national security. so, this is an investment, and one which we think is the price we're paying in order to preserve democracy not just in europe but in the united states. sudan is a tragic situation with both of the warring factors taking irresponsible action in regard to civilian losses. it's a tragedy. we hope that the negotiations for a cease-fire will work. we have our doubts. the united states needs to be engaged in getting the parties to come to the table and negotiate. so we are active many sudan, but as a facilitator, and we will continue to do that. >> democratic senator ben cardin of maryland, thank you very much for coming on this morning. we appreciate it. we also understand that you have announced your retirement. so, we wish you well, sir. >> i've been asked. i'm not running for re-election. not my retirement. i'll still be here.

>> but not running for re-election. all right. up next, a look at a busy weekend in iowa for republican presidential candidates not named donald trump. look at that. there's a bunch of them now. plus, we'll get an update on the classified documents case against the former president as the grand jury is set to reconvene this week. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ live your best day, every day with the power of the gelflex grid. sleep better. live purple. as americans, there's one thing we can all agree on. the promise of our constitution and the hope that liberty and justice

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welcome back to "morning joe." it is monday, june 5th. look at that beautiful shot of new york city. i think it's summer. i know it hasn't officially begun, but look at that. it's a beautiful day. it is monday, june 5th. jonathan lemire, reverend al sharpton are still with us. it's good to have you all with us as well as we launch the third hour of "morning joe." we're learning new details about the justice department's investigation into former president donald trump's

handling of classified documents after leaving the white house. nbc news has learned exclusively that the federal grand jury hearing in evidence the case is expected to meet again this week in washington, d.c. that's according to multiple people familiar with the investigation. they say activity for the grand jury appeared to have slowed in recent weeks. prosecutors working for special counsel jack smith may have been -- have been presenting the grand jury with evidence and witness testimony for several months now. it's not clear if prosecutors are prepared to seek an indictment at this point, and the justice department would not comment on the status of the investigation. former president trump maintains he has broken no laws. let's bring in nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian and congressional investigations reporter for "the washington post" jackie.

it's good to have you both with us. ken, we'll start with you. what do we know as we go into this week knowing that the grand jury is reconvening? >> good morning, mika. well, what's significant about this wednesday meeting that we're reporting on is that it does appear that the grand jury has not met for several weeks. trump's former attorney tim parlatore confirmed that on "meet the press" yesterday, that he hadn't been aware of any grand jury meetings. he also said, consistent with my reporting, it appears they've interviewed almost every possible witness they could in this case, including almost everybody who work on the staff at mar-a-lago, almost everybody who had any understanding and knowledge of what was happening with those classified documents. he confirmed "the new york times" reporting that prosecutors have a tape of evan corcoran, trump's lawyer, but not his lawyer in this case a any longer because he had to testify as a witness, memorializing his interactions with the president on the topic of that search for classified

documents that didn't end up finding all the classified documents. frankly, we're on indictment watch here. we don't know what's going to happen. but one possibility is on wednesday the grand jury vote es on whether to indict this case. we know the saying that prors could convince the grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. that's one of the possibilities. it's also possible they're interviewing some final witnesses in this case. it was interesting to hear, again, trump's former lawyer not really mounting a defense on the facts on "meet the press" but really talking about how there's problems bringing the case because there may be too many classified documents that prosecutors don't want to put in public, which is a real concern, obviously in all cases involving classified documents, you know, and suggesting there are issues with what whether the president could declassify these documents but not suggesting that the president didn't have classified documents that he wasn't supposed to have.

>> right. and it is true, as they say, you can indict a ham sandwich. but it is so much easier to indict that ham sandwich if it lied to both the fbi and the justice department about having classified documents. jackie, you're reporting also a lot of things could be going on right now. you said there's also the possibility about bringing back witnesses who have now been given immunity to get testimony from them. but at the end of it all, just like ken, you say it does appear from all of your sources and reporting that jack smith's inquiry is reaching an end. >> that's exactly right, joe. as ken noted, there are a number of reasons why this grand jury could have been impaneled. we know the last time they actually appeared and convened was may 5th, so it has been a significant period of time, which is eyebrow raising. and we know that smith is wrapping up the investigation.

we have a tiny bit of new reporting which is that sources familiar with the conversations have told "the post" that the national archives has been urged by the justice department to wrap up the document requestses the doj has made. they subpoenaed the national archives for what i'm told is how v thousands of documents related to trump's efforts and any sort of classification conversations that occurred throughout the case -- the course of the trump administration. and this is of course to sort of bolster the justice department's case on one of the tracks of the investigation, which is this argument that trump has put forward and has sort of been shattered in recent weeks that he declassified all of these documents that he kept. but as we know, the justice department has already obtained some information that shows that that is actually not the case from this tape of trump on tape saying and acknowledging that he didn't declassify things to

these, again, these document productions that the national archives is turning over to the justice department, just sort of standard things any administration goes through. training on declassification, best practice, safeguarding documents, and the national archives has not been given an exact date of when to produce these dusms by, but they've been told to wrap things up as quickly as possible. >> ken, one of the things we've learned about donald trump is he can have bravado on stage but often his innermost fears are exposed on social media, truth social now. over the weekend we had a lot of truth social posts about this particular investigation, most in all caps, i might add. also mike pence, noting there won't be charges gen his former vice president and says that's great, but what about me? i'm being set up too. we know these cases are very different. if an indictment were to come down, whether that's potentially this week or in the weeks ahead,

walk us through what that would look like. remind the viewers as to how this would go for a former president of the united states. >> great question, jonathan. so, we went through this a little bit in new york. this is the federal system, so it operates slightly differently. but what tends to happen in the federal system is the grand jury votes to indict and that indictment is placed under seal, then it's returned to the clerk's office, and generally then the defendant is given a chance to self-surrender, particularly in this case there's no risk of flight. so then you would start to have arrangements made about a presidential movement to washington, d.c., and as with the surrender in new york, presumably donald trump would have to come to the federal courthouse, assuming it's brought in d.c. in order to bring it to the southern district of florida, you would have to read hundreds of transcripts to a separate group of people. that's unlikely.

assuming it's brought in d.c., he would have to come to the courthouse. i say that. that's not 100% certainty either. there's to a potential they could do a virtual first appearance. but most like he'd have to come here, and in that moment making his first a appearance in the courtroom, the indictment would be unsealed and we would get our first look at the charges gen him. he would then be released, processed and released, and then we would have this -- the case would be in front of us, and then, you know, it's all these things that happened in a federal case, all these procedural matters, and best-case scenario, the fastest this thing could possibly go before it gets to trial would be probably about a year. that's how long it took the paul manafort case to get to trial in washington, d.c., as opposed to the virginia one, which is a fast procedure says. but that's assuming donald trump doesn't litigate some of these unusual issues that may only apply to a president in that case, and if those have to go to the higher courts it could take

a lot warning. >> we remember back in the election challenge, you would have giuliani, crazy woman, i forget her name -- >> oh, my gosh. >> -- all these people holding press conferences outside of the courthouse, and then they would go into that courthouse, and then the judge, the federal judge -- >> right. >> -- federal judge would say, so let me ask you, mr. giuliani, let me ask you, counselor, are you actually saying here that there is widespread voter fraud? because he obviously heard what he said outside. giuliani, oh, no, no, your honor, no, your honor, because, again, trump has dealt with a prosecutor in new york city. >> right. >> trump has dealt with a new york state judge and jury. trump has not dealt the way he's about to deal with the feds.

a federal judge, a federal prosecutor, and you talked about gravity returning? let me tell you something, that is the mantle of the legal system. it's, like, the gravitational pull is great. and there's just no b.s. the truth social and all this other stuff, as my grandpa would say, that is a horse of a different color, completely different color. and this is something, again, that donald trump hasn't faced. and i suspect this is why jonathan's reporting, my reporting suggests that trump and everybody around him very, very disturbed and concerned about what's coming down the pike. >> well, yes. and it is a whole different ball game as you described. and i think that's why some experts who felt strongly about trump on a number of these cases wished that the manhattan indictment was not the first one. >> yeah.

>> whether or not no man is above the law no matter the crime, they kind of wished it had been one of these perhaps. and that is if this happens. but it's looking likely there is some sort of movement, and the reporting that is coming in doesn't look good for donald trump. >> right. and, you know, reverend al, as maggie, who's covered for a long time has always said, donald trump is always just trying to survive the next five, ten minutes. you've known him for a very long time. again, it's one thing if you are leaking things to the tabloids throughout your 40-year new york career, and if you're, you know, getting into fights with rosie o'donnell, if you're doing -- you know, if you're in the political sphere and you know you can say and tweet the most outrageous things in the world, and you basically live a lie and you get away with it because of this false bravado, you go to federal court, man, that stuff,

that stuff and a quarter won't even buy you a cup of coffee in new york city because it's worthless, isn't it. >> absolutely worthless. that is why you saw giuliani and powell and others change their rhetoric from outside with the bull horn to when they were standing in a courtroom. and i think it's also why you saw donald trump ask for his lawyers to go with the federal prosecutors to see where this is going. but jackie, knowing donald trump as long as i have, won't he try to politically, outside of i think his defense, but politically try to spin if he is charged and if he's not charged in a way that is to his advantage? if he's charged, he'll say this or that, if he is not charged, he'll act like it exonerating

from everything, new york, georgia, everything. isn't he trying to position himself in a flo no-lose political situation in terms of the republican primary? >> he is. that is true. but even his aides have privately conceded, for example, when the tape came out last week or at least sort of a description of the tape that cnn first reported of the former president being on tape talking with mark meadows, his biographers and researcher, and a handful of aides waving around, brandishing a potentially classified document saying he should have classified this document when he was in office but he didn't. aides said this tape is extremely problematic for the former president. they're concerned about any more part of this tape coming out. they do not want some of the evidence that jack smith has collected to continue to come out. and i think these private fears sort of belie the public bravado that you see trump putting on, that there are real electoral

concerns that these facts and this case that is going to now be waged a bit more publicly as we approach an actual potential indictment, that it's going to hurt his polling numbers. of course, though, that's not going to stop trump from doing what he always does, which is trying to weaponize this and show it as, you know, yet another example of the way bureaucracy, the doj, and the fbi has been weaponized against conservatives and that they hold a bias. you see republicans simultaneously as the drum beat on jack smith's investigations is growing loupder and louder, now moving to ratchet up some of their correctional investigations. james comer is going to hold christopher wray potentially in criminal contempt this week. we'll see if that is vote happens. i think you'll see more public moves like that trying to paint this investigation as completely

politicized. >> all right. "the washington post's" jackie alemany and ken dilanian, thank you both. we'll see be seeing a lot of you guys. thanks for coming on this morning. republican presidential hopefuls were in iowa over the weekend for a roast and ride fund raising event. every declared gop presidential candidate except for front-runner donald trump attended the event, delivering shortened versions of their stump speeches in front of voters at the iowa state fair grounds. also in iowa, cnn held a town hall last night for former south carolina governor nikki haley. the 2024 presidential candidate spoke for an hour and a half to voters as she tries to build momentum for a campaign which is only receiving single-digit support in most national polls. here are some of the highlights. >> it is in the best interest of

america, it's in the best as best as of our national security for ukraine to win. we have to see this through. we have to finish it. i am unapologetically pro-life. having said that, i don't judge anyone for being pro-choice any more than i want them to judge me for being pro-life. >> the six-week ban theoretically came to your desks, would you sign it? >> i will answer that when you answer -- when you ask kamala and biden if they would i free to 37 weeks, 38 week, 39 weeks. then i'll answer your question. so when it comes to our schools, secure our schools. there would be one point of entry. there should be a law enforcement officer at every school. we should make sure there's a clear bulletproof tape that we have at courthouses and airports. we should have that on our schools to protect them. and we should have a mental health counselor at every single school, not a guidance counselor but a mental health counselor. >> some states have been experimenting with red-flag laws, which enables law enforcement and the courts to

temporarily either remove guns or block people from being able to purchase guns, individuals who have been adjudicated in some way, from posing a threat to themselves or others. is that something you might support? >> no. i don't trust government to deal with red-flag laws. i don't trust they won't take them away from people who rightfully deserve to have them. >> i'm wondering how willing you are to talk to the people, republican voters, to say that wasn't true, that didn't happen. >> i've been on the record to say that while i think that we had issues, i don't think that any of them changed the election. i have also said when he said it was a beautiful day, january 6th, i think january 6th was a terrible day. >> so, you know, jonathan lemire, you go down the list there, and certainly a hell of a lot more mainstream, more of a main street republican than what we've seen over the past six, seven years. she understands the importance

of freedom prevailing in ukraine instead of russian invasion. on the issue of abortion, she said, you know, i respect people who are pro-choice. i hope they'll respect me for being pro-life. that is a good starting point to actually have conversations. schools, i mean, if they want to toughen up the schools, if they want to secure the schools, i'm fine for that. if the federal government, if she thinks the federal government has the money to do that to the schools, i have no problem with security around the schools. in fact, that's a good thing. but you get to just one thing she said that's troubling to me, red-flag laws, something that 80% of americans support, at least 80% of americans support. and the idea is of course to take weapons of war away from people who are mentally disturbed, who threaten their spouses, who threaten their

friends, who threaten their co-workers. and this whole thing about i don't trust government, wait. there are slaughters in banks, there are slaughters in churches, there are slaughters in christian schools, there are slaughters in synagogues, in uvalde, in parkland, there are slaughters in sandy hook, slaughters all over these places. and time and time again we hear stories about a brooding person, an angry person that people were concerned about. and so, again, i want to keep this in perspective. she said a lot of things there. but i think main street republicans, mainstream republicans also would be very comfortable with, that i think are positive signs. but that red-flag law, it's just again a window into the soul of the republican base that eve on the most basic gun safety laws that would keep weapons of war

out of the hands of mentally insane, mentally unstable people, they don't even do that. >> red-flag laws enjoy widespread support, and opposing red-flag laws and deciding to harden schools, dealing with guns themselves, people with the ability to access guns, that's right out in of the nra playbook, the republican par i's cultural attachment to guns. it seems like few are willing to defy that orthodoxy. she had more mainstream appealing views perhaps, and we know her poll numbers are very low right now. maybe that can change. but one note here, joe. she said like a very human thing about how she doesn't want to judge someone who's pro-choice just as she would not want anyone judging her being pro-life, she didn't answer the question about the national abortion ban. i was talking to some white house officials at the end of last week over the weekend, they say they can't wait, they

literally cant wait until the first republican debate where undoubtedly there will be a question asked, show your hands if you represent a national abortion ban. they think that moment right there at the beginning of this race is going to crystallize the difference between what president biden is and any republican is over the issue that may very well decide the next election. >> so, rev, she had an interesting retort to jake tapper, which is, ask joe biden, ask kamala harris. do you put it at 38 weeks? do you put it at 39 weeks? because the truth is if you want to know where americans are in the polling, you know, abortion issues are all over the place. but the plurality of americans support 15 weeks, 16 weeks, right? get through the first trimester, and a couple of weeks after

that, that's where most americans are on this issue. and you don't hear democrats -- democrats don't want to be nailed down to, yes, i support a 15-week ban, i support a 20-week ban, i support a 24-week ban. they won't do that either. democratic candidates need to be ready, too, because again, americans don't support 35 weeks, they don't support 38 weeks. they want exceptions for life of the mother. but there is a place in there where there is a consensus. i know 15 weeks is not where any democratic candidate will ever go, but that is where most americans are. >> i think she telegraphed what can be a very delicate and touchy point for democratic candidates that they ought to be prepared for when she -- not by the way answering tapper's question, went to i'll answer that when you ask joe biden and

kamala harris about 38 weeks. that means that they should be prepared for that. that's going to come up. and you're right. i think that most americans are certainly pro-choice, but there is not an unlimited amount of choice in terms of the timetable that they would go for. and i think that they need to really be prepared to hear that because i think nikki haley was waiting on that, to throw that out there, not only as a defense, because she didn't want to get penned down, but really forecasting that's where they're going to try to go with this whole right to choose debate. >> all right. a federal judge in tennessee has struck down a new state law that made it illegal to perform drag shows where children might see them. in a 70-page ruling, judge thomas parker determined the law violates the first amendment, writing it was quote, both

unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad. the first amendment requires any law that infringes on freedom of speech to be narrow and well defined. let's bring in nbc news correspondent antonia hilton, who's been covering this story for "meet the press" reports. antonia, tell us more about what this law has stipulated and about this ruling striking it down. >> well, mika, this law came to be after months of republican lawmakers and activists in the state of tennessee arguing that drag was inherently sexual and threatening to children. although i should mention drag shows have been a large part of the culture in tennessee and elsewhere, particularly in cities like nashville, for decades. in the recent months, it had kind of come to the forefront in social media, and lawmakers needed a priority to pass this law. it was a pretty short statute. as the judge ruled himself, it was a bit vague, and lawmakers had debated back and forth,

people, business owners, performers had come to the capitol and arked not that this was just a violation of their first amendment rights, although that was certainly central, but also that it was potentially going to be hard to enforce for local law enforcement agency who is may not be familiar with drag, who might not ono much about these performances, who, for example, might not know the difference between a transgender woman who is just walking down the street and someone they think is in a performance outfit. this was all part of intense debate there. it was just one piece of a whole host of legislation dealing with linebacker bth q people that was part of a very intense session this year. take a look at some of my conversation with senator zack johnson, the majority leader, and the person who authored this legislation. have you been to drag shows? >> i have not. but i've seen videos of drag. i guess i should say have i been to places where a man was dressed as a woman and performing or singing and maybe they were dressed -- it was a

halloween party and they were dressed up as dolly parton? of course i have. >> are you trying to send a signal some types of people aren't welcome in tennessee? >> the only signal is you shouldn't be simulating sex acts in front of children. >> he released a statement this weekend after the law was struck down saying he was disappointed of course, but they're also going to be looking at their options. they hope the attorney general appeals this to the sixth circuit, so the fight isn't over, here. some of the performers, they there's a sense of relief but also still fear. in tennessee, many lgbtq people are afraid of violence in their lives. other laws are still on the books. kids who are transgender in that state have to cycle off their medication in order to comply with the law in the coming

months. there is a sense of security for the community. it's pride. but there's this pervasive feeling of this isn't over yet. more laws may be to come. >> nbc's antonia hilton, thank you very much for your reporting this morning. we appreciate it. more of antonia's reporting on this issue is available on nbc news now and peacock and youtube. still ahead on "morning joe," a sonic boom was heard across washington, d.c., yesterday, as u.s. fighter jepts tried to intercept a small plane flying through unauthorized air space. we'll get the reporting on what happened. plus, a look at a new documentary that explores the question, how do we make sure workers are paid what they're worth instead of believing they are only worth what they are paid? that's ahead on "morning joe."

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we're learning more this morning about that deadly plane crash near the nation's capital yesterday afternoon. sonic booms were heard across the region as two air force fighter jets pursued an unresponsive private plane which later crashed in rural virginia. nbc news correspondent tom costello has the latest. >> reporter: scrambled from joint base andrews near washington sunday, two f-16 fighter jets racing to intercept a private cessna citation jet approaching restricted d.c. air space. the air force pilots radioed the cessna pilot but got no response. >> this is an armed air defense fighter transmitting on 121.5. you have been intercepted. >> reporter: on the ground, the sonic booms from the fighter

jepts rattled the greater d.c. area, shaking homes from annapolis, maryland, to northern virginia. the thunderous sounds so loud concerned residents called 911. but as the f-16s approached the runaway plane, they could see the pilot appeared unresponsive. the plane had taken off from tennessee headed to long island, new york. then did an unexplained 180, turning south again as air-traffic controllers tried unsuccessfully to raise the pilot and told other planes to stay away. that's when the fighter jets were scrambled. >> if they were intercepting an aircraft that was doing 70 or 80% of the speed of sound and needed to intercept that aircraft quickly, the only way to do it would be to go ahead and go supersonic to increase the closure rate on the target aircraft. >> reporter: the air force pilots try using flares to get the pilot's attention and continued following the cessna

as it flew over d.c., then into virginia, where it apparently ran out of fuel and crashed. our nbc station wrc captured these images of the crash scene west of charlottesville. it was registered to a company in melbourne, florida. owner john rumple tells nbc news his daughter, grandchild, a nanny and pilot were on board. the episode similar to the 1999 private plane crash that killed golf legend payne stewart and five others. they became unresponsive after their plane lost oxygen pressure. in a similar situation, a pilot would have just seconds to act. >> you've got to be on oxygen within five seconds or you'll begin to lose consciousness. >> oh, boy. nbc's tom costello reporting. up next, in a series of provocations, china is trying to play chicken with the u.s. military using fighter jets and warships. that story straight ahead on "morning joe."

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welcome back. we've been talking about china's increasingly dangerous military maneuvers around american assets, both in the skies and in the seas. let's bring in richard haass. richard, this is a bit of an awkward dance, everybody stepping on each other's toes. you have an attempt to get the secretary of defense with his counterpart in china. you have the chinese nix that. we send our cia director burns over to meet with the chinese. there are good meetings there. biden, g-7 conference says he's hopeful that things are going to be going well there. there's going to be a hope that all of this tension is going to leave sooner or later. you have jamie dimon and elon musk going over to talk economics. they meet with some of the top chinese officials there. now you have these two near -- these two incidents that are --

>> provocative. >> -- very provocative. so it seems that china can't figure out exactly what they want to do and what they don't want to do with the united states. tell us what's going on. >> well, on the military side, everything that courtney said was correct. i'd only add one thing to it, joe. chinese actually wants to raise the level of risk out there. they want the united states to essentially blink. part of this is the chinese believe that they have a much greater stake in what's going on with taiwan and the south china sea than we do. i literally once had a senior chinese official say to me, we are willing to die for the last chinese for taiwan. you americans are not. and what they believe is that by turning up the level of risk, the possibility of something that could escalate, particularly if the united states is involved in europe, that they can get us to pull back from what they see as these, quote, unquote, provocative actions, which is

simply our underscoring the fact we have interests in that part of the world. but your point is right. we are getting some mixed signals. jake sullivan, the national security adviser, had a good meeting with his chinese counterpart about two weeks ago. the chinese are essentially -- they're saying we'll meet with you on economic issues because we care about that. we'll have some meetings on the diplomatic side, even though they're still ticked off at us for what the secretary of state did, canceling the meeting and the visit because of the balloons. but they are not extending it to the security side where they want to keep the temperature high. >> richard, stay with us. we want to talk about another huge story on the world stage, ukraine preparing to hit back hard against russian forces, the latest on the looming counteroffensive next on "morning joe." ught you were on vacation? it's too expensive. use priceline, they've got deals no one else has. what about work? i got you. looking great you guys!

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ed a large-scale ukraiian offensive in the eastern province of donetsk. its defense ministry released a video claiming over 200 ukrainian soldiers were killed in the battle. ukraine has yet to respond to russia's statement. the kremlin recently sent one of its top military commander was at a forward post on the front lines. as the a.p. reports, this may be an effort by moscow to respond to criticism inside russia that its top military leaders have not been visible enough at the front. ukrainian president zelenskyy meanwhile tells the "wall street journal" that ukraine is ready to launch its counteroffensive. it's unclear whether the situation in donetsk is part of that effort. >> and of course the big question, jonathan lemire, that remains is when will the spring offensive actually begin. >> yeah. it's not clear that it will -- we will know exactly when it will begin. it may be incremental. there's some fought some of the

fighting that's happened may be the start of it. we should of course take every claim the kremlin makes with a grain of salt in terms of how they say they've repelled this particular offensive. but, richard, we know that, whether this is part of the offensive now that muddy season is over or whether the offensive has begun or whether it's a few weeks away, still, ukraine is going to make a push. and there's a sense among western ally, including those in the white house, that they're going to need to make some sort of progress in order to kind of keep momentum going to ensure the continued support of the rest of the alliance. what's your assessment of, like, how much do they need to do? and when do you think settlement talks might begin? >> first of all, you're exactly right. it's not like a whistle that blows and says this is the beginning of the offensive. there could be probes, explorations. what the russians are saying is also to be expected. they want to win the political war here, the psychological war. i think we have to put all of that say v aside. you raise an interesting question, which is what's enough in order to justify a third

season or fourth season of this policy? jonathan, my prediction is that will be debated come the fall, that ukraine will perhaps gain a little bit of territory. i could be wrong. we're all speculating here. but a lot of people are going to say are two or three or four more years of this really going to liberate all of what russia holds in crimea and the east? probably not. what then? at what point do we need to transition and add a diplomatic part to the strategy, have peace talks of some sort, what sort of assurances do you provide ukraine as an inducement to enter talks. my guess is we're still six months away from that. we're going to get through this fighting season. as we talked about the other day, the russians may want to play it out for another year, hoping that someone like donald trump will end up in the white house and american support for ukraine will fall off. my guess is we have probably one or two more years of this.

but i think probably by this time in the spring of 2025, if ukraine has not regained much of the land that it has lost, not just in -- certainly since 2014, then i think essentially they come under real pressure to negotiate. >> how much of the politics in the united states going into an election year, presidential and congress, and the appetite of the electorate to support, continue to support enthusiastically this war, if that dims, how does that affect where the united states stands in terms of supporting zelenskyy? and then how does that affect whether zelenskyy tries to negotiations when you see russia aggressively trying to get other support. there's even stories of african countries siding with russia. how does the politics work? >> i actually don't think this is a big political issue here. i don't see people going to the polls. if you look at the midterm

elections, essentially nobody was voting on the basis of this. it comes up in the republican debates as a way of differentiating with both trump and desantis. i don't see this as a big political issue. we're not involved militarily on the ground in the sense of american soldiers. there's no bring the troops back kind of thing. whoever is president is going to be considerable discretion to continue what we're doing or to turn down the tap if it's donald trump or ron desantis. i don't think there will be so much political pressure as candidates and potentially individuals wanting to differentiate themselves. we have a full recap of a very busy weekend from the campaign trail. vaughn hillyard is tracking the candidates through iowa. he joins us next. ndidates throu. he joins us next

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welcome back. a new film opened this friday about what the director calls the, quote, greatest existential threat to our country today. ♪♪ >> there just won't be justify jobs to give all americans a decent livable wage. >> i want my kids to grow up in a society where they don't have to struggle as hard as we do. that's what we need to fight for. >> build on the affordable housing act? >> oh hell no. >> i want a life. >> the trick in trickle-down economics is getting you to believe that anything that's good for rich people is good for everyone. anything that is good for anyone else can cure the economy.

>> they're not going to take care of the employees, somebody has to. >> they don't invest in us. >> it's just not sustainable. the system is going to collapse. >> the documentary is entitled "americonned." shawn, i'd like to start as to why you decided to take on this project, what was driving you and what you hope viewers will take away from it. >> sure. thank you for having me. basically my family was able to immigrate here in the 20s from ireland from abject poverty. they worked as servants here.

then the new deal was introduced. they were able to ascend to the middle class. during my lifetime, we've watched that erode year by year by year for short-term profits and it's destabilizing the country. we see it in the newspapers every day. it's easy to manipulate people who are suffering working extremely hard and not making it every month and get them to blame others, you know, immigrants, people that don't look like them. it's a very scary time. >> if this has been a slow motion train crash we've seen coming for 20 or 30 years, i saw something probably a decade ago that talked about how there were

more people that worked for general motors in detroit back in the early 1980s than work at the googles, the apples, all of these tech companies that are supposed to save our lives. you can drive through any town in new england and see a town that's boarded up and see a town all around that factory struggling. how do we reverse this? >> we have to band together. we can no longer allow ourselves to be divided by race, religion, gender, anything. come together and demand that we have a path to the middle class for everyone that works hard and build a strong middle class. because without that, we really will have a very unstable country and we could even lose democracy. that's really the message of the

movie. the hope is people like chris smalls, you know, stood up and went up against the most powerful employer in the world and they won. they spent $25 million to defeat them. i've never had more hope than i have now, but we have to all band together and make it happen. even the billionaires will have a country and a world that they don't want to live in. >> just to remind the viewers of your story, you led a walkout at the start of the pandemic of an amazon warehouse on staten island, new york. you were fired that same day. eventually led amazon labor unions that helped found that. talk about your experiences and how much of a threat, in your estimation, is this for workers like you who have trying to show up every day who may not be able to. >> yeah. you saw what they just did with the supreme court ruling.

they're trying to reverse workers' rights in this country, something that's been on decline since the 60s. us sticking up and standing up and speaking for workers' rights even during the pandemic was necessary as essential workers. that mean we're a necessity. if we're deemed essential workers, that means we have to be treated as such. my journey, even though it began in the pandemic, i think it resonated with everybody in the working class that was going through job loss or unemployment or just living check to check or not at all. this is an epidemic that's been going on for decades. what we've done is we gave a little glimmer of hope by bringing people together to take on this trillion dollar company amazon. >> that glimmer of hope, chris, would you say that was the call

of your being able to organize? i think me looking at it from afar and from heading a civil rights group, what i liked about what i saw that you did is that you were able to organize not only against, as he said, the most powerful company, but you organized across racial lines and never stopped being authentic. you never stopped being chris, whereas you didn't conform to a certain model. you stayed you, which i think added to your charisma. a lot of other unions couldn't organize. >> yeah, absolutely. we call it new school labor. if you told me i could be as cool as a rapper as a union organizer when i was a kid, i might have been doing this a long time ago. as a former musician, growing up in college i was a former

rapper, and now being a union organizers and making it appealing, making it look cool to the younger generation, i'm walking into classrooms now talking to middle school kids. they're telling me how bad jeff bezos is. it's good that we're resonating with the younger generation. i hope the education piece on what labor rights are and working people's rights are in this country, it catches up to that. we need to educate the younger generation at a younger age. >> that means i can start wearing my medallion again. >> we need the sweat suit. >> the documentary hits theaters on friday. it will be available on video on demand next week. shawn, i'm curious. did you get any response from amazon? >> we have not gotten any response from amazon. amazon is just one of the companies. it's a stand-in for so many

companies that don't care about their workers and really don't care about their customers anymore. it's all about extracting wealth. $50 trillion has been extracted from the middle class to the top 1%. we need a stronger america. >> thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. we're about three minutes into the fourth hour of "morning joe." republican presidential hopefuls were in iowa over the weekend for an annual roast and ride fund-raising event hosted by senator joni ernst. every candidate except for donald trump attended the event at the iowa state fairgrounds. as for the former president, there was another new development in the legal battles that he is facing. nbc news correspondent kristin

welker has the latest. >> reporter: the investigation into trump's handling of classified documents may be at a turning point with the grand jury expected to meet again this week, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation. if special counsel jack smith decides to indict mr. trump, it would be the first time a former president has been charged with a federal crime. mr. trump argues he had the right to keep classified material at his mar-a-lago estate. >> i took the documents. i'm allowed to. everything i did was right. we have the presidential records act, which i abided by 100%. >> reporter: the former president is also under investigation for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election by the justice department and prosecutors in georgia. and in new york, he's pleaded not guilty to felony charges of falsifying business records with his trial set to begin next march. mr. trump remains the overwhelming republican frontrunner for 2024, trailed by

florida governor desantis campaigning in south carolina over the weekend, taking aim at mr. trump's claims he can fix the country in six months. >> don't let anyone tell you they can do this in 24 hours or six months. this is going to be trench warfare. >> reporter: mr. trump also facing criticism from his former u.n. ambassador nikki haley over the january 6th attack on the capitol. >> he thinks it was a beautiful day. i think it was a terrible day. >> reporter: and lashing out over his praise of kim jong-un including mike pence, who's expected to announce his campaign in iowa this week. >> whether it's my former running mate or anyone else, no one should be praising the dictator in north korea. >> reporter: also chris christie is set to kick off his run in new hampshire tomorrow.

>> kristin welker with that report. joining us now, nbc news washington managing editor carol lee and vaughn hillyard. the latest on the investigation surrounding the former president, it seems like there's a lot of activity, especially surrounding the mar-a-lago documents. >> what's significant about this moment is we saw the grand jury looking into former president trump's handling of classified documents take a bit of a hiatus. they haven't met in a number of weeks. now they are expected to meet this week. that is significant, because all signs amid all of this continue to point toward this investigation nearing some sort of conclusion. what we don't know is if the grand jury is going to meet and take a vote on whether or not to indict the former president or if they're going to continue to hear from more witnesses. but they've already heard from a lot of witnesses over the course

of months. former president trump's former lawyer said they've really talked to everyone who would be significant in this case. we're expecting the grand jury to convene. we don't know exactly what is going to come out of that, but we do know prosecutors have been looking at this request of whether the former president trump wrongfully detained these documents, whether he tried to block the government from retrieving those documents. then the question is out there about whether or not he wrongfully disclosed classified information that he had in his possession. those are the questions hanging over this. we don't know exactly what's going to happen, but again, all signs are pointing to this reaching some sort of conclusion soon. >> you look at what's going on right now in iowa. it's fascinating, everybody

showed up except the frontrunner. we talked about it before. iowa is kind of a quirky place. it may not be like new hampshire. but iowa is kind of quirky in that they notice what candidates show up and don't show up. what did you pick up while you were out there? any undercurrent about donald trump not bothering to attend? >> i was there throughout several hours of the event. what i kept coming back to was how abnormal it felt for a republican party event over the last eight years. there was not the maga red throughout the crowd. there were not chants of trump, trump, trump. it felt like a republican party event of old. they were glad-handing, shaking hands, taking photos with folks. none of the candidates said the

name donald trump on stage. take a listen. >> we're not big trump fans. there's a lot of bluster. good ideas, but a lot of bluster. i like mr. scott. we share the same faith. he has an arduous road ahead of him, being black and a republican. >> i've talked to mike pence a few times. i like mike. he's a good moderate conservative, religious family man. >> i'm not 100% trumper this time. he did some great things. i liked what he did when he was in office. i just didn't like all the bantering in the background. >> what makes you pause and say i'm not for trump this time around? >> lots of things.

i think he was a great president. i just wish he would keep his mouth closed and do his work. >> the interesting thing was each of those three folks who were skeptical about trump this time around, i asked them to what extent the investigations are top of mind to them. each of them said no, that it is witch hunt. that's not why they're looking beyond. for those candidates there, there's an opening. they've got two months to qualify for the debate stage. i talked to senator joni ernst. i asked her when was the last time she spoke to donald trump. she said it was several months ago now and she extended the offer and there was a decision made not to come to the event and legitimize the other

candidates. >> vaughn, it's fascinating those three republicans that you spoke to, they sound just like my family members, my friends, people that we run into wherever we go that were big supporters of donald trump, people that we don't talk about january 6th to, people that we don't talk about, you know, the rigged election in quotes to, people that we don't talk about the indictments to, because we know they're going to be on donald trump's side on all of that. despite all of that, the response is the same. they'll say, which of course makes us wince, yes, he was a great president, but then they'll go, but god i'm tired, i wish he would just shut up, i wish he would stop insulting people.

he's so rude. >> or they'll just say there's too much drama and they won't go into anything specific and they will say it's a witch hunt. they'll go down every conspiracy theory still rabbit hole. >> exhaustion is really setting in even among some of his loyal supporters. >> because it's about him all the time. at every one of those events, when you go to a republican event over the last eight years, it's about donald trump and donald trump alone. what was telling about the event on saturday in iowa is that you had kim reynolds, joni ernst, chuck grassley and they were able to go on stage and talk about things that were not donald trump and loyalty to donald trump and the maga movement. that didn't exist. sure, some of the remnants of it. ron desantis is running very

much of sort of an echoing of donald trump in terms of a political policy figure. but in terms of the man and the amount of oxygen he soaked up from these rooms, that was gone. it just felt like an old-school iowa event. if you were one of these republican operations, you've got to be feeling like you have a little bit of room especially since these folks are open minded even though they believe all the investigations are a witch hunt. >> the investigations from the special counsel, we may have some big news sooner than we could anticipate. what is the latest that the trump team says as to his defense. in the town hall he said, oh

yes, i could take documents. or that audio recording that came to light where he acknowledged he had possession of a classified document but can't share it because it's still classified. what are they going to do? how are they going to try to fight this? >> some of it depends if there is an indictment, what the charges are. because what we've seen is the former president and people around him say he has the right to declassify anything just by thinking about it. that is not an argument we've yet seen in court. that could be something that is different here. there will be a legal process and a political spectacle. those are two very separate things. the legal process will be very formal. if there's an indictment, it will come in under seal. the former president will appear

in person or virtually, likely in washington, d.c., but we don't know. then there's the political spectacle of this. you're going to see the former president's critics pounce on this. you'll see the former president likely try to fund raise on this, cast himself as a victim of another witch hunt and lean into that way he has presented himself to his base. one of the interesting things that's a bit of a wildcard is the former president's 2024 rivals. what do they do? when the new york indictment happened, there was largely a rallying around the president, that this was not serious, that the president was being targeted and things like that. now we've got formal candidates. we have a couple more republicans who are going to jump in the race this week. we don't know what this indictment, if there is one, is going to look like. we also know they're sharpening their knives a little bit when it comes to attacking the former

president. it will be very interesting to watch. >> carol lee and vaughn hillyard, thanks, guys. we appreciate it. youtube is saying it will stop removing content that falsely claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen. the move reverses a policy put in place more than two years ago amid a wave of misinformation. the google-owned platform on friday announced it wants to protect the ability to, quote, openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions. why? >> i don't get that. >> why do you want to do that? why do you want to make sure disinformation spreads like wildfire?

why do you want to be open to that? >> the "new york times," the "washington post," all these other places would be held liable if they put out false information. so youtube is now saying we're cool with false information. i'm just baffled why these big tech companies think that they just don't have to live by the rules that everybody else has to live by. that's one of the reasons we're in trouble, our democracy is in trouble. two years later you have youtube saying, you know what, we're fine with the conspiracy theories that almost took down american democracy, we're fine with the conspiracy theories that led to riots on january 6th, we're fine with the

conspiracy theories that, again, almost destroyed our election because it overturned a fair and free democratic election. i mean, explain this to me, rev. i don't understand. >> i wish i could explain it. i mean, it is an outrageous decision. and the timing of it, as we're getting heated up toward an election process and the preliminaries starting within days. you already have candidates announcing every week. now you're going to allow them to open the gates for disinformation? didn't we just see fox news hit with a huge judgment and a huge decision? it makes no business sense and it makes no sense in terms of the future of how we have discourse in this country. it's an outrageous decision, and i hope it's legally challenged

by many people. >> let's get more on this from the coanchor of squawk box, andrew ross sorkin. >> i'll give you an explanation. it may not be rational. you may think it's shameful. we are now in this environment where big tech and big companies writ large are so concerned about the regulatory world that they are confronting and frankly the house of representatives they could be confronting and others that could be thinking about regulating them, that this is one way, they think, to get in their better graces. this is as much a political calculation as it is an economic one, the economic one being, if there is greater regulation against them, they're going to have a harder time down the

line. >> you're saying they're doing this because they know that republicans that might take control of washington are conspiracy theorists who spread lies that undermine american democracy? >> they are so fearful of this republican party. you can look at what ron desantis has done in florida. that's almost become symbolic of the situation. they are so fearful of that. plus, i think in some cases a sense in parts of the country, unfortunately, who believe some of this misinformation, that their services therefore aren't fair more broadly. there are enough people who have that view, unfortunately. so i think they are unfortunately pandering to both perspectives. you mention the economic piece. i can't imagine this helps with advertisers. it hasn't helped elon musk with

advertisers. in that regard, it's very hard to understand how they get to this conclusion. >> it really is. also later today at its world wide developers conference, apple is expected to announce a mixed reality headset capable of offering immersive virtual reality experiences as well as a view of the real world with digital objects and environment laid on top of it. is this a game? >> they're going to look supposedly like ski goggles. this is the next much more immersive and, frankly, expensive version of the metaverse. the expectation from apple is not that this is going to be a barn burner. it's not that everyone is going to run out and for $3,000 buy this. this is the tip of the iceberg

in term on the idea that a plasma tv screen which used to be $10,000 have come down remarkably in price. this is the beginning of that. >> how is this different from google glasses? >> google glass was something you could see through. this is going to be much more like occulus. it has cameras on the outside looking for you. this is a super sophisticated metaverse where we're all going to be in the same room together and we're going to be looking at each other and there's going to be gaming, there's going to be office capabilities. we'll see. some people say nobody wants to live in this world and there's other people who think this is the future. >> everyone in the room is going to have a $3,000 pair.

>> come over to my apartment and we can, like, play risk together. >> those are the trivial versions of it. there are serious ones. you know, a doctor in new york or in california could help somebody in africa somewhere. literally there are real purposes to this. it could change travel. if you want to go on a trip and see something, you could literally go on a trip and put your goggles on. i know that may not sound nearly as fun as getting on an airplane, but this is where it's going, folks, i think. we'll see. >> i'm sure apple hopes that people will be looking back at this clip like we look back at the "today" show clip where they're laughing and mocking the coming of the internet. >> remember that?

>> really quick. >> i don't know where the saying comes from you can't keep a good man down, we've all heard that saying, right? i am fascinating, andrew, by the fact that the fed can't keep a strong economy down. by the way, i would say this if donald trump were in office, whoever was in office, i'm usa number one. we've got a strong, powerful military, and this economy, the fed can't keep it down. >> can't keep it down. the strength of the consumer, the strength of jobs, even wages have remained elevated. the question is going to be what the fed now does about it, because it's not as effective as they want to be.

do they keep pressing? the market doesn't think so. we've now talked to enough fed watchers who think they're going to have to. boy, is this economy moving. the one thing a number of bankers are starting to worry about is the idea that consumers are using more and more credit. at some point in this economy, there are some people spending beyond their means, and when does this become a problem. boy if things keep going, maybe it never does. >> thank you very much. coming up on "morning joe," in a new twist on reality tv, jury duty drops an unsuspecting civilian in a fake courtroom process run entirely by actors. that includes james marsden who joins us with a look at the documentary style comedy from amazon studios. studios

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denver does have a timeout, but they're not using it. won't go. fight for the rebound. martin. and it's over. the miami heat have tied the nba finals. what a comeback on the road for the heat. >> what a comeback indeed. the heat become the first road team in the playoffs to win in denver. murray's game-tying three-point attempt rimmed out at the buzzer. miami trailed by as many as 15 points last night and were down eight going into the fourth

quarter before a 17-5 run that put them ahead for good. the heat outlasted a 41-point effort from the nuggets' star to win game two, 111-108 and tied the nba finals at 1-1. game three is wednesday night in miami. we got quite a few things to talk about. first of all, jonathan lemire, we'll let ellie gould hold on for one second. they've put out a poll of florida republicans done by usa today. ron desantis ahead of donald trump in a new poll of florida republicans 48-40%.

we're only in june of an election that's still nine months away. why do i bring this up? because he was way down a couple of weeks ago. this is going to be fluid. it is a marathon. anybody that counts desantis out is out of their mind. >> he is still best positioned to be the trump alternative despite the stumbles out of the gate. he reported a big fund-raising number day of. it's almost exclusively big donors. he is very popular in his home state of florida. he won reelection handily less than a year ago. he's someone who over the last couple of years has made himself a national figure. he's got to get vetted on the road. we'll have to see how he does.

he's had some stumbles there as well. to your point, it's right. we are so far from the first votes being counted. we have so many indictments potentially between now and then, and that could change the race too. >> i'm getting conflicting news on the poll. we'll check that out. elliot gould, as you know, chris licht made news for all the wrong reasons on friday, a profile i think even he would say is disastrous. he's obviously our friend. he's a member of the family. i just want to read -- he spoke to cnn employees. we don't usually talk about the competition, but this is obviously the top news media

story of the past several days. this is what chris told cnn a couple of minutes ago. i know these past few days have been very hard for this group. i fully recognize this news cycle and my role in it overshadow the incredible week of reporting we just had and distract from the work of every journalist in this organization. for that, i am sorry. as i read that article, i found myself thinking cnn is not about me, i should not be in the news unless it's taking arrows for you. your work is what should be written about. to those whose trust i have lost, i will fight like hell to win it back because you deserve a leader who will be in the trenches, fighting to ensure cnn remains the world's most trusted name in news. i mean, that's exactly what you want from somebody that made a mistake. they step forward, they admit the mistake and say i'm very

sorry, head down, let's get to work. >> yeah. i would never bet against chris licht. he's one of founding cousins of this show, obviously colbert. i think he's got a lot of unfair press. i think, once again, cnn is a long, long way from their reported demise. he's a tough guy and he could take the punches and punch with the best of them. >> we shall see. the humility is very good. >> it's important. there's a lot of things that have happened since he took over, some we agree with, some we don't agree with. but there's a lot of cross currents here that have yet to play out if you follow the industry. i thought that was a good statement, very self-aware and important. >> the suggestion that somehow cnn was like shangri-la and this

powerhouse until chris licht walked through the doors kind of denies everything that happened as far as money goes. >> it's strange. a lot of the coverage of the story talks about cnn being -- >> a ratings juggernaut. i love jeff zucker. he's a friend of ours too. he saved my job at nbc more than one or two times. i'm not knocking jeff, but this idea it was a ratings juggernaut, when it just wasn't, that's not jeff's fault, that's just bad reporting. it wasn't. it was in third place. you look at what phil griffin left, msnbc was first, fox was second, cnn was third. that's how it was a lot in those final years. again, not a knock on jeff at

all. cnn is a really hard place to run for the best of them, and zucker's the best of them. i think in time chris will be proven to be the best of them too. >> let's see where chris is a year or two from now, because i think good things come from cnn. i wouldn't bet against chris. >> that's an old pop. so thumbs down. >> brand down. >> brand down for joe. that was from last year. but my point remains. we have a long way to go and i wouldn't count out ron desantis. let's go through brand up/brand down. >> nba dynasties? >> we're going to have our fifth nba champion, a different nba champion than the last five years. we had bucks, golden state,

lakers and toronto. we'll have a new one this year. we're used to these great dynasties. we love the nba and we love the parity. >> what about working at home? >> we talk about this a lot on the show. you would think as we get farther from the pandemic, there would be less working from home. but from february to may, the companies having these weird hybrid work at home structures has gone from 20 to 30%. a lot has to do with a very strong job market, that basically workers are running the asylum these days. i think it's horrible for mentoring, young people and collaboration. i think it's one of worst things that's happened to this country

in a long time. >> you have a brand down in terms of trusting your consumer. >> walgreens in chicago has a store where there will only be two aisles where consumers can buy things off the shelf, essentials, toothpaste, things like that. the rest of it is kiosks where you go and pick it up at the counter. that's because of all the shoplifting. there's been over $100 billion of shoplifting lost. this is sad. this is a problem in metro areas. >> we have online religious services, which we know gained popularity during the pandemic when people couldn't go. seems like they have stayed that way. >> still the choice is to pray in synagogues and churches and what not. it seems 25% people now are doing their religious practicing online. that's an incredible number when you think about it.

that's the good news of a pandemic. >> of course, south park in the front row for blaming canada. blame canada. you're saying don't blame canada, because canada is brand up, baby. >> they're the first nation to put warnings against cigarette smoke on the cigarettes themselves, on the actual cigarettes you'll see things like puffing is poison, smoking with cause impotence. i think that's fantastic. you can't do enough to stop people from smoking. they want to get their smoking down to 5% of the population by the year 2035. >> these are obviously brand downs, because they're the seven most hated brands in the country. >> this is interesting. this is done by the harris poll axios reputation poll.

they take ethics to citizenship. the most hated brand, guess what, the trump organization. imagine that. >> come on. >> you know the trump organization is right there with as an incredibly trusted corporation. followed by fox corporation. everyone thinks what happened with dominion has not put a chin chink in their armor. it's meta followed by tiktok. >> trader joe's. thank you. coming up, award winning

actor james marsden joins us. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." right back more "morning joe. ♪♪ with fastsigns, create striking custom visuals that inspire pride district-wide. ♪♪ fastsigns. make your statement. [ tires screeching ] jordana, easy on the gas. i gotta wrap this commercial, i think i'm late on my payment. it's okay, the general gives you a break.

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do you think that he would be a distraction? >> not for me, no. >> with all due respect, i don't think you'd be a distraction either. >> it's kind of like candid camera but in the courtroom. that's a clip from the amazon docu-style comedy series "jury duty." the show chronicles the inner workings of an american jury trial through the eyes of the star studded juror in that clip ronald gladden. he has no idea the entire cast is fake. everyone except him is an actor, including james marsden. since its debut, "jury duty" has become the number one title on amazon.

what it took to create the carefully planned world inside the courtroom, here to tell us all about it is james marsden. welcome to the show. this looks like so much fun. take us through a little bit. tell us about your character and more about this whole setup. >> thank you for having me. my character, it's me, or a sort of heightened, entitled hollywood version of myself. i was approached with this bizarre concept of doing essentially the truman show mixed with little bit of the office. i got excited about the improvisational element of it and the sort of live theater part of the whole thing, not knowing who this gentleman was or how he was going to react was part of the appeal. it was also a great source of anxiety for me throughout the whole shoot. >> it does have an office feel

to it, i have to agree with that. let's take a look at the scene from the show when the jury is sequestered and arrives at the hotel, but james's character has hired a private bailiff so he can stay at home. let's watch. >> hey. >> hey. what's your name? >> officer yates. >> nice meeting you. >> i'm going to sit in the back. i get a little car sick in the front. thank you. >> >> i don't know. >> guys, i'm bummed. i have to leave you. my lawyer says this whole private bailiff thing which is coming out of my own pocket, not cheap, it allows me to stay at home, but he's got to stay with me. no offense, kind of a bummer. you guys are going to have the

best time. my god, so jealous. >> okay. this seems like -- is it a lot of improv? it's fun. i can't tell if i like or hate your character. >> there wasn't dialogue scripted, it was more like comedic beats. marsden tries to get out of jury duty by saying he's aa distraction. he leaves the others to be sequestered in a crappy hotel. again, ronald -- the show works i think because ronald is such a good guy. i never wanted to be a part of something that was going to be mean-spirited or cruel. they told me what we're trying to do is create a hero's journey for this guy, so by the end of it he hopefully is our hero and unites this kind of a circus of a bunch of weirdoes that we dance around him. it worked. it could have gone many different ways.

we got really lucky. hopefully you get a little feeling -- there's a little kind undertone to it by the end. not to ruin it for anybody, but it's a lot of fun, and i had a lot of fun making fun of the hollywood celebrity, self-involved version of myself. clearly i'm not that in real life. >> we believe you on that one, james. let's talk a little bit. no spoilers. tell us some of the basics. what sort of trial is it? how long does it last? and how difficult was it for you and the cast to maintain that character, the facade, so the real person wouldn't get a clue as to what was going on? >> right. well, it was a really elaborate setup for sure. we worked with a couple of the producers who do all of sacha baron cohen's stuff. they're used to the live element, being secretive about the whole thing, keeping the truth that the whole thing is a

facade. it was unlike anything i've ever shot before. you're basically in a courtroom. it was an abandoned courtroom down in huntington park, south of l.a. we populated it with background players and a lot of improv artists and created this whole elaborate scheme. the cameras are rolling for five or six hours a day. you're kind of staying in character the whole time. hopefully the stuff that comes out of your mouth is either funny or -- you can't be too absurd, otherwise he's going to think the whole thing is fake. he's going to become suspect. you've got to kind of keep it real. any time he did get suspicious, we would dial back the crazy, silly stuff. it would be hours and hours of boring court so he would say, well, this can't be a reality show because it's too boring. it was remiepds you to be really nimble and a level of

adaptability. if he wanted to take a left and we wanted to take a right, you've got to go left with him and figure it out. >> so finance. "jury duty" is streaming now on amazon freevee. james marsden, thank you very much for coming up. this looks fantastic. take care. >> thank you. we'll be right back with look at the morning headlines. more "morning joe" when we return. e morning headlines. more "morning joe" when we return ♪ i have type 2 diabetes, ♪ ♪ but i manage it well. ♪ ♪ it's a little pill with a big story to tell. ♪ ♪ i take once-daily jardiance, ♪ ♪ at each day's staaart. ♪ ♪ as time went on it was easy to seee ♪ ♪ i'm lowering my a1c. ♪ jardiance works 24/7 in your body to flush out some sugar! and for adults with type 2 diabetes and known heart disease,

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a few minutes before the top of the hour. the arizona daily star reports on a number of industries that are struggling to replenish a workforce diminished by a surge of retirements that began during the pandemic and has continue since. the growing problem is affecting a wide variety of fields from construction to manufacturing to nursing to accounting. the surge in retirements along with a slowdown in immigration are seen as the primary factors behind the labor shortages. let's go to kentucky where the

lexington herald leader, trying to make public school breakfasts and lunches to every student free of charge. about 20 states have considered bills this year that would make free school meals permanent. advocates for the move say it helps remove the stigma associated with receiving free and reduced-price lunches. that does it for us this morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage after a quick final break. coverage after a quick final break. tter breathing, symptom improvement, and helps prevent flare-ups. breztri won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. it is not for asthma. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. don't take breztri more than prescribed. breztri may increase your risk of thrush, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. call your doctor if worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vison changes, or eye pain occur. if you have copd ask your doctor about breztri.

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