see, you know, the amount of energy there is on the republican side, amount of desire to get back in the white house, i think democrats, you reported that biden had speculated about not launching until the fall. democrats implored him, hey, we have to start raising money, while he's doing these events on ai and everything else. a lot of the focus of the trips is let's get money and cut the big checks you can do jointly with the dnc. >> and more fundraisers scheduled in the days ahead, in democratic strongholds like new york and chicago. national political correspondent for "axios," alex thompson, thank you as always. great to see you this morning. and thanks to all of you for getting up "way too early" with us on this wednesday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. you have made a decision on the primary. >> i haven't, but i do say why would i allow a hostile network, fox, pretty hostile.

>> you get a fair shake. >> why would i allow a hostile network and allow people that are polling at zero, polling at zero, one is zero with an arrow left. why would i allow people at 1 and 2% and 0% to be hitting me with questions all night. i don't think it's fair. >> that was former president donald trump's noncommittal answer on debating the other republican candidates because of their polling numbers when new data shows his own are starting to slip amid his federal indictment and the possibility of another indictment for january 6th coming this summer. >> the numbers are starting to slip, and you look at the people outside the hard core republican base, republicans and even

independents leaning republican. you get outside of that to swing voters, to independents, to everybody else. something like 85% of those voters. i think he needs to drop out of the race right now. >> we'll have more on that ahead. also ahead, we're learning more about the plea deal for hunter biden as there is some dispute this morning on whether the justice department's investigation into the president's son is finished or not. plus, developments from deep in the atlantic ocean. canadian aircraft detected underwater noises in the search for the missing titanic tourist submersible. we'll have the latest. good morning, and welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, june 21st. with us, we have the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at "politico," jonathan lemire. nbc news national affairs analyst, john heilemann, and host of and executive producer of show time's "the circus" and

sam stein is with us this morning. donald trump is losing some support among republican primary voters. in the latest cnn survey, 47% of registered republican and republican-leaning independents say trump is their choice to lead the 2024 ticket. that is down 6% from a poll taken last month. but still 21 points higher than florida governor ron desantis who is in second place. former vice president mike pence, and former u.n. ambassador nikki haley round out the top 4 with no other candidate polling above 5%. the poll shows trump's favorability rating has fallen 10 points among republicans since last month from 77% to 67%. additionally 27% now say they have an unfavorable view of the former president compared to 18%

in may. among all americans, 59% say trump should end his 2024 campaign now that he has been federally charged. that number is much higher at 85% among non-republican voters. and finally, 55% of americans say the former president broke the law with his mishandling of classified documents, while another 30% say his actions were unethical, but not illegal, and i want to know who those people are because trump himself says he broke the law, like he's saying it with his words, and they still can't get there. which is hard to understand. >> let's go through these numbers, devastating numbers for donald trump, and you know, maybe he ends up winning everything. who knows. we've got a long way to go. john heilemann, i have been saying for a long time, with people discounting desantis and

the entire republican field, we have a long way to go. at this point when this started in 2007, we're talking about hillary clinton running against rudy giuliani. long way to go. at this point in 1979, jimmy carter was losing to ted kennedy, getting about 1/3 of the democratic vote to ted kennedy's 2/3 of the democratic view. less than 50% of republicans now, according to this poll, support donald trump in a primary. this is a guy obviously former president of the united states, less than 50%. 1/3 of republicans say they have an unfavorable view of donald trump. 6 in 10 americans say he should get out of the race right now. and when we talk about -- well, 55% of all americans say he broke the law. but when we take out the hard

core gop base, we look at democrats, independents, swing voters, the people who are going to decide this election, 85% of americans say he should get out of the race right now. and what the question that this begs is what in the hell are republican voters thinking that want to actually win the white house back in 2024? >> well, joe, what are they thinking? i think a large and growing number of them are thinking how do we get out of this, and i think, you know, this is the connection between these two sets of polling. you have to think of them as different things as you and i talk about all the time. you've got this nomination fight, and you've got the general election. we are familiar with donald trump's vulnerabilities as a general election candidate.

those are growing. and we have apparently, starting to see some connection between the two. they're separate by connected. you have a substantial, not yet a majority of republican voters, but a substantial number of them who are -- where the thing that people saw before the raid at mar-a-lago back last year, people who were getting trump fatigue were saying, you know, he's a loser, give him a gold watch. let's figure out some way to tell this man he did make america great again, and send him off to a happy retirement. how republican voters looked at him. they have rallied around him ever since then, and now it seems like there's starting to be signs in the republican nomination fight where the older, the prior dynamic is kicking in, and republicans who want to win, not all of them, the base is still incredibly loyal to trump, the most powerful focus in our politics, the loyalty and intensity of people who love trump. that's enough to make him formidable in any gop nomination

fight. the numbers are starting to show signs of wear, and some signs of cracking around his support in the party, and that's creating openings for some of his rivals. >> and sam stein, two numbers here that if i were trump, i would be very concerned about, i mean, if i were trump, i would be much more concerned about spending the rest of my life in jail, but politically, and i'm serious about that, politically, two numbers, and that is a majority of republicans do not want donald trump to be their nominee. he's under the 50% mark for people who say they'll support him. the majority of republicans don't want him as their nominee, and the majority of americans, 55% say the guy committed crimes. those two numbers are very hard to get around if you're donald

trump. because what we're going to see most likely is we're going to see new jersey indictments coming. we're going to see georgia indictments coming. we're going to probably see the january 6th indictments come, and they're just going to stack on top of each other. >> yeah, so, you know, we've been -- there's two things that can be true here. one is we have been down this road before where in the wake of an immediate scandal involving trump we see a dip in his poll numbers including among republicans. this happened, for instance, after the "access hollywood" tape, it happened, for instance after the impeachments, it happened after january 6th. the second thing is this could be a unique circumstance for all the reasons you pointed to. this legal trouble that he finds himself in by definition is not going away. he has to go to trial. there will be days he's in court

where evidence is being presented against him. it's not even the extent of the legal troubles we know about, there are at least two cases in which we could see subsequent indictments, so the issue here is not simply that he's being hurt by this indictment. it's that this is a continuous news cycle that could keep the poll numbers trending downward for him, you know, still, even with all of this as you know, a 21 point lead over ron desantis, and the majority of republicans maybe don't want to see a nominee. you want to win state delegates over the primary. you need to be the one that wins the state over all the delegates. we have been down the road in 2016, and that's the bind republicans are in right now. they may not like the guy. they may want to get rid of the guy. enough of it may be fine with it that they're bound to the man. >> sam makes a good point that this is not a story that's going away. not only indictments on the

horizon for reporting that we know, but there are going to be court dates, appearances, not something that he can shrug off. is trump able to use that as a rallying point for republicans, possibly, but it also could be, joe and mika, this is the moment that republicans who like trump, who have voted for them, once, probably twice before, but really just want to win and i feel like, hey, this is something that even if they feel like these are witch hunts, even if they feel like these are unfair prosecutions, they have to look at this and go, this is not going to help him next year, the independent swing voters, suburban women, the voters who decide elections, none of these indictments are going to help trump's case with them. they're simply not. so if it's not trump, who is it? i mean, we are seeing in this poll, it should be noted, no rise for desantis whatsoever, not yet. the launch there has not gone particularly well. pence and haley are up a smidge, just a smidge. we're a long way off. there's time for the numbers to grow.

at least so far, even as trump is showing a little wobble, there doesn't seem to be anyone else seizing the moment. >> here's what could make the wobble worse, a number of well-known conservatives are expressing surprise and shock over former president donald trump's interview on fox news this week, in which he doubled down on handling of nuclear secrets after leaving the white house. during the interview, trump defended himself against the federal indictment brought by special counsel jack smith spelling out 37 counts against trump with a trial date now set for august 14th. conservative radio host and blogger tweeted quote, guys, trump admitted on tv tonight he withheld documents from the grand jury. game over legally. what an idiot. ed morrissey the first rule about federal indictment club is you don't talk about your case.

the second rule of federal indictment club s really, don't do this. trump just admitted obstruction on national television. frequent legal commentator from fox news jonathan turley, bret baier conducted an extraordinary interview with donald trump who discussed the criminal allegations in detail. statements of this kind are generally admissible at trial, and here's what former new jersey governor and current presidential candidate chris christie had to say. >> the problem for donald trump in all of this is his own conduct. he's his own worst enemy. none of this would have happened to him or the country if he had just returned the documents. it appears to me last night as a former prosecutor that he admitted obstruction of justice on the air last night to bret baier. i can tell you this, his lawyers this morning are jumping out of whatever window they're near. >> and that's the thing. >> can't say it's a witch hunt

when you admit to doing it. >> when you admit to doing it, and also, this is the thing, we are looking at erick erickson, ed morrissey, the national review, you have a group of conservative commentators who have either been pro trump or anti-donald trump during donald trump's reign, and these -- in this conservative media construct, there are a lot of people that are hearing for the first time, donald trump is guilty. donald trump has admitted to obstruction of justice. donald trump is toast said one. donald trump has no defense in this case. >> and he just made it worse. >> and every time, it's crazy, john, we all know he has no

discipline. but every time he goes on the air, he moves himself one step closer to prison. >> yeah, not good. i mean, if he hasn't done this consistently since the fbi showed up at mar-a-lago, this is a consistent pattern of his, his more or less, to mika's point earlier, he continues to maintain the things that he's admitting to are not illegal. this is where the cognitive dissonance comes in for trump. he has this view somehow contrary to everyone else who's read the statutes involved or understands the law, essentially when you're president you can do what you want. if you're a star you can do anything, if you're president you can do anything. if you think they're declassified in your head, they become declassified, and they are his. his boxes, his documents, the

rules don't apply to him. from a legal standpoint, devastating. conservative lawyers who have stood up for trump in every instance are looking at him saying, dude, you are digging this hole so deep that you, with all the help in the world you're not going to be able to get out of it legally. i will say that politically if you want to make the counter case, the counter case is 2016. a split republican field, you don't need 50% to sam stein's point, you don't need 50% to win a winner take all primary. a split republican field. the trump base looks at all of these talking heads and says they're rhinos, they think fox news is now liberal. they've dismissed it all and can trump win a republican nomination fight with a split field and a hard core 40% of the republican party. i'm not saying they will be able to maintain that. maybe it will all dissolve over

the next few months but that's a winnable race for donald trump f he can keep his 40% who laugh at the erick erickson's and john turley's of the world. >> right, but sam stein, we're talking about something really bigger than a republican primary contest. >> right. >> we're talking about donald trump's pending case. and his freedom. or whether an ex-president is going to jail because what he does may hold a minority of republicans together supporting him but he's not only proving as again erick erickson, bill barr, chris christie, you go down the list, he's not only proving that he committed the actions, he's

on tape proving the intent of why he's doing this. this is this case, it's open and shut. the only thing trump can home for is jury nullification. this case, if you just look at trump's own words, as barr said, as all of these other conservatives said, open and shut case against him. >> no, you're wrong. there's a statute that says you don't have to comply with the subpoena if your documents are intermingled with golf shoes, and trump knew that. and so all of these legal commentators need to go back to school and study the law. >> of course, i'm embarrassed. >> i thought you were a lawyer, joe. no, this is classic trump, right, he speaks and causes more trouble for himself. and it's almost like a kind of like fake it until you make it

type of attitude about the law. eventually it will catch up to you. i don't think the only end game is jury nullification, draw it out until you are elected. we're talking about as it's a form of political strategy, which underscores the craziness and seriousness of the times we're in, which we could very well, in fact, we'll likely have a leading presidential candidate, one of two people in line for the presidency who could go to jail and it's really sort of a race between the justice system and our politics to see which one comes first. that's nuts. >> and jonathan lemire, there's the political events because donald trump seems to have no defense legally, the political defense seems to be that james carville, look over there, look at the bird, and whether it's hillary clinton, which of course

donald trump's justice department refused to prosecute her for four years in a row because they said there was nothing to prosecute her over, donald trump's department. and now it's moved to hunter biden. i saw your tim scott clip, we're going to talk about this in the next segment, the tim scott clip where he's thanking god for chuck grassley a guy who mumbled on television, when suggesting there's nothing in the tapes or the documents, he says, well, we don't care whether he did anything wrong or not. you talk about a witch hunt. we're going after him and it doesn't matter whether he did anything wrong or not, and then you've got comer where the "wall street journal" editorial page says a lot of smoke, no fire. and that's what -- again, it's

one after another after another, these investigations. a lot of smoke, no fire. and yet, this is what they're saying, what they're doing in a hope of distracting from a ex-president stealing nuclear secrets. >> an ex-president stealing nuclear secrets who could be facing several more indictments before the summer is out, yes, senator scott thanked congress -- god for congressman comer who admitted the point was to bring poll numbers down, and lost track of the whistleblower and witnesses who may not have existed or certainly not have a credible story to tell. it is purely a distraction, whataboutism to point to the hunter biden case, which we're going to talk about in a few minutes, and use that to shift focus away from what's happening

with donald trump, the two-tier system of justice. we're going to hear that nonstop for weeks and months ahead here. and it's a distraction, but it also is a potentially dangerous one. senator scott in that clip, if he were to be elected president, he would launch an investigation from the white house. and a scott administration to investigate president biden and his family. we right now, it's a threat here. it is a threat. we're in a new place, where we have already one candidate. >> geez. >> he's literally promising, as mika said, she was watching the clip, tim scott is literally saying i promise if elected to weaponize the justice department, and i'm going to be the one doing it. >> yep, he said it right out there what the republicans are accusing the biden administration of doing, the

weaponization of the government or the deep state did against trump, he flat out said he would do it. that's a dangerous promise there, and we have right now, donald trump of course already under investigation. you have republicans saying they'll do the same, they're flat out saying it to biden and his family. it's a distraction, and a scary one. we shouldn't lose sight of it. still ahead on "morning joe," speaker kevin mccarthy is calling hunter biden's plea deal a sweetheart deal, but it was approved by a trump appointed judge. we'll show you the moment he was pressed on that. >> what did he say. >> we'll show you. donald trump wants the death penalty for drug dealers but fails to realize it would apply to a woman he pardoned. >> does he want her out or executed? i'm really confused. we'll play you the interview from fox news, and a live report from beijing on china's reaction to president biden calling xi jinping a dictator, you're

watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. >> the timing there. morning joe. we'll be right back. >> the timing there. we cannot be the city on the hill if we are not first a nation of law and justice. we can't be the city on the hill. we cannot philippe etienne our destiny as america if we do not have the lady of justice wearing a blindfold. we all have to be treated equally under the eyes and the laws of our country. and when the bidens get away with that, we feed to thank god for senator grassley and congressman comer for doing their jobs, but i can tell you, if they can't finish their investigation, president tim scott will finish it. scott will finish it

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28 past the hour. overnight, we learned of a new development in the missing titanic submersible. according to the u.s. coast guard, a canadian military air craft quote detected underwater noises in the search area late last night indicating that the vessel may be nearby. the coast guard did not specify the nature of the noises but search efforts are now relocating closer to the area where they were heard. however, the time for rescue efforts is running out. as it's estimated the vessel has less than 25 hours of oxygen left for the five passengers who left to tour the titanic's

wreckage on sunday morning. we're going to get a live report from nbc's tom costello in the next hour of "morning joe." >> jonathan lemire, the times articles this morning and last night, devastating on oceangate. one expert after the other told the owner this was a dangerous, dangerous vessel, that they needed to go through safety regulations, they needed to be certified, and the owner refused time and time again. the headlines here, oceangate, the company that operates the vessel was warned of potentially catastrophic problems, and let me say, as the "times" pointed out, those warnings were quote unanimous from experts. somebody else said you drop like a stone for two and a half showers said a passenger on a prior trip to the titanic. reckless doesn't quite seem to

match up and describe the scale of irresponsibility here by the owner. >> there's reports a former employee raised concerns. he was dismissed for doing so. there's questions about the quality of the equipment and the parts that the submersible is composed of and it can't be said enough, the risk. that is so deep, the water pressure is so intense and the temperatures are so cold that even the smallest of failures, and the engineers have been talking about this and posting about it, the smallest of failures would lead to basically instant death for everyone on board. you're so deep down there by the titanic. we obviously are hoping for a miracle here. but as mika just noted, the clock is really running out. in terms of the oxygen supply. we don't know the status of any of the equipment, whether it's got power, what's the temperature like, what do they have in terms of other supplies,

the sound, maybe that is a clue, maybe targeting the search will lead to success, it is dire time and certainly, joe, to your point, there will be lots of questions raised about what went wrong here. >> and as we said next hour we'll get a full in-depth report from nbc's tom costello on this developing story. we're learning new details about the plea deal reached between the department of justice prosecutors and hunter biden. president biden's son will plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and avoid prosecution on a separate felony gun possession charge, allowing him to avoid any prison time. two sources tell nbc news the deal includes a provision in which the u.s. attorney has agreed to recommend probation for the tax violations. legal experts say the federal gun charge is a rarely used

statute that makes it illegal for someone addicted to drugs to possess a weapon. this is the first time the justice department that has brought charges against a child of a sitting president. the charges against hunter biden are the result of a five-year investigation by federal prosecutors, fbi agents and irs officials. the investigation was led by the u.s. attorney for delaware, david weiss. he was appointed by former president trump. >> most u.s. attorneys are moved on after a new president comes into office. are you saying that joe biden kept this trump appointee in delaware? >> yes, this man was appointed by donald trump, and then permitted by president biden to remain in office. >> that's highly unusual, by the way. >> in order to continue the probe. >> highly unusual. talk about full transparency. an attorney for hunter biden issued a statement to nbc news,

with the announcement of two agreements between my client hunter biden and the united states attorney's office for the district of delaware, it is my understanding that the five-year investigation into hunter is resolved. however, weiss's office stated yesterday that the investigation is ongoing. >> so before we continue, john heilemann, and before we hear the total stupidity by republicans just lying through their teeth about crimes in the biden crime family, most people, most legal experts i talk to here have an analysis, if his last name were not biden, these charges would have never been brought. that said at the same time, if his last name was not biden, the

plea deal would not have been as generous. by the way, this is the same plea deal they basically offered hunter or that hunter's people offered the feds 18 months ago, based on my reporting. so it's very interesting. feds wouldn't have brought this charge against somebody whose last name was not biden. at the same time, a lot of legal analysts think the fed's deal may have been more generous because his last name was biden. >> god knows there are moments when often we over the course of the last few years have since donald trump came into office and subsequently, those of us who are not lawyers say simple country lawyers like yourselves pretend to be lawyers or do legal analysis. this is one where i have heard a wide variety of things from lawyers. and the nonideological bar,

people have a difference of opinion about the nature of the plea deal. certainly the case, the first part of the dialectal, if it weren't for the fact that hunter biden was named biden and it can't be said enough times when you listen to people like kevin mccarthy and others, the two-tier system of justice, you just want to say -- >> double standard. >> here's this trump appointed prosecutor, kept in office by joe biden, something that donald trump would never have done in a similar circumstance. can you imagine an obama appointed prosecutor looking into one of the trump kids, if trump won the presidency and saying you know what, for matters of perception, i'm going to leave in obama prosecutor in to look at don jr. because i

want to make sure everyone has full faith in the legal system and it not be politicized. all say republicans who want to take this up, who want to figure out some way to pivot away from donald trump's legal woes, they focus on this, and stay two-tier standard of justice, he got a sweetheart deal, morons when y these things. you can say a lot of things but not that. >> add to that, ivanka and jared worked in the white house. they worked for donald trump, billions have come in from saudi. there's so many questions. we're going to talk about kids, do we even want to talk about kids. >> the thing is, if these same republicans -- >> and hunter biden did something wrong. >> had been complaining when ivanka got trademarks in china,

licenses in china to sell -- >> she traveled around the country campaigning. it's true. >> let me finish the sentence. she got licenses in china to sell her goods around the same time donald trump was meeting with president xi, and jared, a guy i communicated with an awful lot, $2 billion from the saudis. $2 billion. and, again, i mean, it's a lot of money. we haven't said much about it here. a lot of money. and i'm just saying, if republicans -- if republicans are going to say this about hunter biden, then where's the other side of this. when they start talking about illegal influence peddling because sam stein, first, here's

how republicans humiliated themselves yesterday. >> they were angry at the plea, calling this a sweetheart deal, including kevin mccarthy press bid a reporter by the fact that it was a trump-appointed u.s. attorney who made the charging decision. take a listen. >> continues to show the two-tier system in america. if you are the president's leading political opponent, the doj tries to put you in jail and give you a prison term. if you are the president's son you get a sweetheart deal. >> there is a trump appointed u.s. attorney held over into this administration. why won't you accept a thorough investigation. >> it was a thorough investigation? >> reporter: i'm asking you. >> so you believe it's a thorough investigation. >> of course he can't answer this question. earlier this month, that attorney david weiss sent a

letter to republican congressman jim jordan, writing that he had been granted ultimate authority over the hunter biden case by attorney general merrick garland, that included the responsibility for deciding when, where and whether to file charges against the president's son. so sam stein, again, for people that don't understand this, don't understand how it works, as john said, it is remarkable that joe biden allowed this guy to hold over, something donald trump would never do. it's also remarkable, i mean, tim scott, saying in front of that audience, that lady justice must be blindfolded, we must treat people the same. these are the same people that overwhelming support donald trump being able to steal nuclear secrets and want to defund the fbi because the fbi went to retrieve some of the

most important sensitive classified documents the u.s. government has and they're lecturing, tim scott is lecturing us, lecturing the 85% of americans who think donald trump should even run for office because he stole nuclear secrets? >> yeah, i mean, so i think it's helpful to understand where the republicans are coming from, to understand what they have been saying about hunter biden and what they have been investigating about hunter biden because they're conflating a couple of things here. for about a year and a half now, republicans on the hill have been insisting that hunter biden's private business dealings were secretly an attempt for them to enrich his father. hunter biden was not investigated by david weiss for the business dealings. he was investigated for tax avoidance and the illegal owning of a firearm, and for those allegations, he was, you know,

he pled guilty in what i think ostensibly, if you ask any legal expert was a fair resolution to that case. house reasons aren't talking about that, they're talking about an entirely different set of issues that they want to conflate into one big scandal. that's why you have kevin mccarthy and others saying, how could they let them off. they let them off because the crimes they were looking at, allegations they were looking into were not what the republicans wanted to look into. the bigger issue is you have a situation which congressional republicans are saying we need justice, blind justice. there can not be a two-tiered system, and you have leading presidential candidates, donald trump and tim scott, and to a degree, ron desantis, taking a stance that says the executive branch oversees, the justice department, and can instruct the justice department to explicitly investigate the president's enemies, opponents and so on and so forth. donald trump said he wants to

appoint a special counsel to investigate joe biden. tim scott alluded strongly to doing the same in the clip that we saw. they are not themselves advocating for blind justice but they want blind justice in this case. >> the interesting thing is none of them protested two weeks before the 2020 presidential election when donald trump ordered his attorney general to arrest joe biden and joe biden's family. nothing ever happened like that before in american history where a sitting president is behind in the polls and he orders his attorney general to arrest his opponent and his opponent's family, and jonathan lemire can't underline it enough, can't underline it enough. so "wall street journal's" opinion page said a lot of smoke here, no fire. we keep hearing about audio tapes, and then we hear there's nothing on audio tapes.

comer keeps -- i mean, it is and unfortunately this term has been overused, maybe we have overused it theory, but this is straight out of joe mccarthy's playbook. this is mccarthyism where you throw one unsubstantiated charge after another after another up against the wall. and we can tick through every one. and people who have been harshly critical of the media's response to this, even admit when pressed there are no crimes here. could there have been unethical behavior, sure. should hunter biden have flown on air force 2 when he was going over to china to make a business deal? no. unethical behavior. you can have a debate about that, and then compare that to what donald trump did. compare that to what other presidents did. but again, nobody's come forward

with a crime. it is all smoke, no fire, and a hell of a lot of mccarthyism here. >> to your point, there are members of the biden inner circle, some of the president's close advisers, hunter biden made poor decisions in recent years. he has not been charged criminally. nothing is found to be illegal with the poor decisions, and he did plead guilty to this matter, the taxes. to sam's point, this isn't going anywhere. unsubstantiated allegations, the republicans have seized on them, and primed their audience for years. this started in 2020, they primed their audiences for years that hunter biden is the lynch pin for the biden crime family. there are allegations, unsubstantiated about corruption and the like and they feel like they need to deliver. >> what they're saying is, a crack addict, a guy who has been a crack addict is the master mind behind this incredible

international crime ring that some how goes all the way to the oval office, and they have been investigating him for years. they can't, and i've asked, they can't off the record, they can't on the record, they can't name one crime that was committed. they say, oh, we think the fbi might have a tape. oh, we might have something over here, and whether it's grassley having to say i don't care whether he's guilty or not, i don't care whether he's done anything wrong or not, basically we're still going to conduct this mccarthy investigation, or whether it's comer, coming up time and time again, empty. i mean, it's a joke. show us the crime. what's the crime? we'll report the crime here every morning. >> yeah, it's pure politics, and they are suggesting the two master minds are someone, as you say, hunter biden who has admitted that he has a substance abuse problem or joe biden who

republicans paint as being daft and unable to walk across the stage. that's the charges here. >> lost his mind, and he's part of the crime syndicate. >> they're going to seize on this. they're going to stay with it, and we're going to be living with the hunter biden smoke for years to come. we should note my reporting about response inside the white house, obviously real relief from president biden and his family that this matter is behind them, and senior biden advisers have been far more worried about the personal toll this has taken on the president more so than any political one, even as they acknowledge of course the politics are going to be with us, and we did hear from the president briefly yesterday out in california saying simply that he was proud of his son. so let's bring in congressional investigations reporter for "the washington post," jackie alemany, and justice department reporter for the "new york times," katie benner. jackie, you have two pieces out this morning. the first one looks at the gop whistleblowers on the biden

family, and who they are. >> yeah, mika, we were trying to sort of just give our readers a lay of the land in terms of all of these accusations that republicans have been hurling at the biden family. we were sort of prepared for this kind of response, regardless of whatever charges david weiss ended up pursuing against hunter or whether or not there was going to be a plea deal. i think initially we had sort of figured that the rallying cry would largely be that, you know, the attorney general sort of missed the boat, and was not able to actually cut to the substance of these alleged pay for plays. we're now seeing this message of a sweetheart deal, there being two tiers of justice. but i think as this goes on we're going to continue to see people like jim jordan and james comer try to continue to muddy

the waters despite having no proof or anything substantiated connecting joe biden to sort of any illegal activity. nevertheless, there are a host of whistleblowers, people whom democrats are accusing of exploiting this whistleblower status who continue to claim to have dirt on the bidens. >> katie, we've said before that some legal experts i have been talking to offered sort of a dialectal analysis that if his last name wasn't biden, the charges may have never been brought, and also the last name biden may have provided a better deal than a lot of other people get. reading your story and looking at your reporting, the entire hunter biden episode requires dialectal thinking because as you say, it doesn't give either side the narrative they want. >> absolutely. i mean, when you look at this investigation, it took five years. it began multiple attorneys

general ago, and it was something that was started in multiple districts across the country, finally consolidated in delaware. every single possible lead was run down by this u.s. attorney who as you have pointed out several times was appointed under donald trump's administration, and that included a national security investigation, possible money laundering violations, a close look at his dealings with countries like china, and even though we can all agree that some of this behavior doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem moral, that doesn't necessarily mean that it rises to the level of a criminal act. it doesn't violate the federal statute, so in the end what weiss found after turning over all of these rocks are the charges that hey, katie. i have a very clear and straightforward question, which is, the lawyer

yesterday said, he did not anticipate this is the end. he did not anticipate further charges, would not have made this deal if he anticipated further charges coming. what is your take on if there is solid ground or not, is there some chance this thing could result in porter further charges, or at least with this prosecutor, this is a done matter? >> to say this is an ongoing investigation, an ongoing investigation does not necessarily mean it is an ongoing investigation just of hunter biden. keep in mind, before i mentioned, it had so many tentacles, it is possible these are still being wrapped up and it might be about other people and hunter biden's orbit. >> jackie, sam stein here. two ways to read this in the vantage point of house republicans, what is a serious right of a two tier justice system has come to push, the other what we know is that this might open up some avenues for

them here at having been deprived, potentially, of evidence or documents they wanted to gather hunter biden because of his ongoing doj investigation. what is your read on whether this accelerates their investigations, frustrates them, and what is the next year look like in respect to those investigations? >> yes, that is a very good point. in terms of the momentum of when these arrive, unfortunately, is coming when congress is getting out of town and taking summer recess. i actually think we will see republicans sort of recalibrate and redirect their investigative focus. i think going forward, they could focus on this one whistleblower in particular, who has been largely credible, especially in comparison to the other whistleblowers that the house republicans have touted so far. this is someone named gary shapley, who has been very public so far about his claim, he was someone who worked in the irs and was a supervisory agent of the irs side of the

hunter biden investigation. he testified before the house means committee in a closed- door hearing with republicans and democrats. we have not yet seen the results of that interview or any additional claims made by shapley. the fact that this investigation is now on its way to apparently closing means that he could potentially speak further and maybe go further, either before congress or in some other venues to continue to air some of what he viewed as unethical practices that were not in line with how normal investigations would go. i think that there are a number of other targets, like potentially going after finally impeaching department of homeland security secretary alexander biochemist, that the gop is now i am going forward.

>> justice department reporter for the "new york times", katie better, thank you for your reporting this morning and congressional investigations reporter for the washington post, jackie, thank you as well. coming up on "morning joe," president biden escalates tensions with china by calling their president a dictator. we are live from beijing with china's response to that. we will be right back. let me put a reminder on my phone. save $700 dollars. pick up dad from airport? ohhhhhh. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ (psst psst) ahhhh... with flonase, allergies don't have to be scary. spray flonase sensimist daily for non-drowsy,

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welcome back to "morning joe." it is 6:57. a beautiful look at the white house this morning. i don't know, maybe some mates asking, why after we finally got a meeting with president xi, joe biden would call him a dictator, then i would say, i guess we should not ask how the meeting went, and they are

responding. >> china is responding this morning after president biden yesterday called the chinese president a dictator. biden was addressing a crowd at a fundraiser in california and talking about the spy balloon incident from february, when nbc news reports, he said quote, the reason why xi jinping got very upset in terms of when i shot down that balloon with two boxcars full of spy equipment, and he did not know it was there, he added, that is a great embarrassment for the haters when they did not know what happened. >> let's bring in foreign correspondent, jenny mackey from beijing. i am sure you will be able to explain to us this morning why the president of the united states called president xi a dictator, just hours after we finally got that meeting between antony blinken and president xi . >> it is a difference a day

makes in this world and the very complicated u.s. and china relationship. chinese officials are outraged. they are incensed. i can't recall a statement from the ministry of foreign affairs here that was so sharply worded. they are using words like, extremely observed, irresponsible, provocative, and a violation of political dignity . what is curious, though, is that none of this is resonating on chinese social media because the word dictator is not one that will typically go past the censors. what we have seen though is a spike in the hashtag topic, biden's son pleads guilty, that has emerged on chinese social media this afternoon as a reaction of the mood. there is a lot of concern for where this leads the diplomatic

mission by secretary blinken. it happened literally 24 hours later, after i sat down with secretary blinken, after he had met with xi jinping and he felt like relations were in a better place, that they were at least stabilized, so that they could push forward on other issues and try to make some progress. this was also going to create some discussion there in the u.s., among critics of the white house who had said that the biting administration appeared to be delaying decisions, like export bands, or covid origins in order to keep the visit on track, to not have it go off the rail. that was something i push to secretary blinken when i spoke with him on what he would say to those critics. here is what he had to say. >> what you say to critics who argue that, you pull punches and made trade-offs, like

delaying export controls, or covid origins intel in order to keep this trip on tap? >> i would say, that is quite simply wrong. we don't pull any punches. i certainly did not pull punches with our chinese counterparts. i think if you look at the actions we have taken, it is hard to make that case. in fact, if you listen to our chinese counterparts, they are saying exactly the opposite, complaining about many of the actions we have taken because, it is necessary to advance our national interest. it would be totally irresponsible not to engage with china. if we are not engaging, it makes it that much more difficult to make sure that the competition does not veer into conflict. >> so, the next 24 hours could be just as interesting, because

the visit by secretary blinken was seen here among chinese officials as necessary once to get to the ones they really want to see. the commerce secretary, treasury secretary, they are expected to visit here in the next week. these are the people who get to hold the substantial discussions on the economy. they are the gatekeeper on x export bands, technology, the sort of measures that china is looking at to try and shore up its economy with so much evidence pointing to the fact that it is slowing down. whether it will be just more words exchanged over the next 24 hours, as always remains to be seen. >> janice, this is obviously an extraordinarily complicated relationship, but the one thing i think most international observers understand is, whether they like each other or not, both sides at each other,

whether china likes what joe biden said, even though it is causing a lot of confusion, even here in the united dates, that he would the day after blanket's visit, china's economy is sputtering, over 20% of young chinese are out of work, they just have not had the bounce back after covid that everybody is expecting. as we talked about before, they greet american businessmen and women almost as long lost friends, because they desperately need western investment. talk about that. >> well, you could see it in the comparison of the treatment between secretary blinken and let's say bill gates, who was here last friday. when secretary blinken arrived at the airport, he was greeted by the u.s. ambassador, and a fairly high ranking chinese official. there was no carpet. the

meetings he had with his chinese counterparts over the next couple of days weren't very warm, if you look at the readouts. the words were actually quite harsh. secretary blinken, from all intents and purposes, sat there and took it. his request to have the defense lines of communication restored was rejected by chinese officials because the u.s. still have sanctions on chinese defense minister. it was not until an hour before the meeting actually happened with xi jinping that anybody knew the meeting was going to happen with xi jinping . there was a sense that either side, both sides were waiting to see how things went before there was the agreement that he would sit down with xi jinping for 35 minutes. xi jinping at the head of the table, secretary blinken off to the side, at a reasonable distance, the chair a little bit lower. contrast that with the treatment for bill gates, who was here last friday, it was a fireside chat with xi jinping

in an ornate wooden chair with a beautiful background, and there was a warm that just did not exist with the secretary of state. it shows the different diplomatic peace and economic peace are two entirely different things here. chinese officials really need to sure up the economy. there was every indication that the growth that defined modern china over decades is slowing down and there are no quick fixes for pages from the old book to try and get it back. they are looking for some relief. they are looking for foreign investment at a time when they are also intensifying some of the laws and screens he performed year. it is a very, very tricky position for chinese officials on how they play be diplomatic part of the u.s. relationship, because they so badly need the economic one. >> great context. thank you, nbc's janis mackey frayer for your reporting.

we are a few minutes into the second hour of "morning joe" on this wednesday, june 21st. john hellman still with us. joining the conversation, we have my chronicle, and nbc news senior executive editor for national security, david rohde joins us as well. we will start this hour, a little late into the hour, with new polling showing donald trump is losing some support among republican primary voters. the lady seen in survey, 47% of registered republican or republican leading independence say, trump is their choice to lead the 2024 ticket. that is down 6% from a poll taken last month. still, 21 points higher than laura governor ron desantis, who is in second place, the poll also shows. trump's favorability rating has fallen 10 points among republicans since last month from 77% to 67%. additionally, when he 7% now

say, they have an unfavorable view of the former president, compared to 18% in may. >> something about nuclear secrets. >> it could be. >> among all americans, 50% say, trumps it into his campaign now that he has been federally charged. that number is much higher, 85% among non-republican voters. finally, 55% of americans say, the former president broke the law with his mishandling of classified documents, while another 30% say, his actions were unethical, but not illegal. and you have him saying out loud, that he did it. you have people really upset that he is actually admitting he did it. let's not forget, this is on top of him being found liable of sexual abuse and defamation, on top of him being indicted in manhattan. there is no denying about having an affair with a star,

it is just about the money . there is a lot piling up on this man for primary voters to have to deal with peers >> and illegal payoffs. that is what the manhattan case is about. of course, you add on top of that, a riot that he started. you have january 6 investigations moving forward, which he probably will be charged, new jersey, probably the most serious crimes may be brought in new jersey because what he did at bedminster. you look at what is happening in georgia right now, you can also expect another indictment there. this takes us back to what chris cristi said, which is, all of this stupidity, talking heads saying, indictment, this is good for donald trump. not in the long run. no indictment is good for anybody. you may see people running immediately supporting, but

actually, the bottom line there should not be down 6% from last month, it should be 85%, mike barnicle, 85% of americans who are in the republican party, we are talking about independent voters that do not lean republican, but swing voters in pennsylvania, georgia, all over america, 85% say, get out now. you should not run for president . the other numbers really quick, less than 50% of republicans say they are supporting now, went there to have a unfavorable view of donald trump. 55% of americans say, he broke the law, instilling the nuclear secrets, instilling the secret war plans with iran, in stealing america's greatest weakness peers >> you know it is interesting with those numbers that were just shown, i would call the

human nature aspect of those poll numbers. everyone in america knows somewhat or encounters someone doing the course of their lives, no matter what happens with that person, it is always someone else's fault. donald trump has had massive video appearances over the last couple of month in reference to all the indictment and everything like that, and nothing is his fault. >> the party of personal responsibility, personal responsibility, personal responsibility, that is what they always said. they never want to take personal responsibility, now they are run by a guy who commits crime, after crime, after crime that he admits to one television, but they always want to blame someone else. they want to blame hillary, they want to blame hunter, they want to blame anybody else, but the guy who stole the nuclear secrets. >> the combination, it's not me , they are gaming up on me, and

the name-calling is really old, really lame. bret baier, the other evening, when he referenced all the name- calling, that has an impact. >> especially because bill barr was his guy. they are seeing now who he really is in real time. it is painful peers >> bill barr went to the wall for donald trump, did things, if not illegal, certainly unethical, time and time again. he finally checked out when donald trump was pushing the stolen election routine after the election was over. but you know, barr has been harshly critical and a number of well- known conservatives were shocked after donald trump's primetime interview on fox news this weekend, we doubled down on his handling of nuclear secrets after leaving the white house. >> conservative host and blogger erick erickson tweeted, guys, trump admitted on tv

tonight, he withheld documents from the grand jury, game over. >> came over! eric is not the first person to say, game over! >> and he is not the first person to say, what an idiot. said that as well. morrissey tweeted, the first rule of federal indictment club, you don't talk about your case. second rule of federal indictment club is, really don't do it! did trump just admit to obstruction on national television? i think he did. frequent legal commentator for fox news, jonathan turley tweeted, bret baier conducted an extraordinary interview with donald trump who discussed the criminal allegations in detail. statements of this kind are generally admissible at trial. here is what former new jersey governor and current republican

presidential candidate, chris cristi, had to say. >> the problem for donald trump in all of this is his own conduct. he is his own worst enemy. none of this would happen to him or the country if he would have just returned the documents. it appears to me last night, as a former prosecutor, that he admitted obstruction of justice on the air last night to brett there. i can tell you this, his lawyers this morning are jumping out of whatever window they are near. >> not really good. mike, you again have donald trump not only admitting to the crimes, but also caught on tape, proving the intent, that he knew he could not magically conjure this up in his brain. you have him on tape, and bret baier pushed him on this as well saying, if i were president , i could declassify this document, but now that i am no longer president, i can't declassify this document. he goes, i wonder what we do now?

seriously, his lawyer. his lawyers have to be jumping out of the window. he keeps admitting, as all of these conservatives say, he keeps admitting to the crimes. >> and they can take use of what is potentially his only out on this, they can't put him on the stand. they cannot put him on the stand. >> can you imagine that, putting this guy on the stand time and time again? he is admitting the crimes every time he does an interview , more admissions that will be used, as jonathan turley said, in court against donald trump to prove the charges, and as he said, one of these charges, just one of them is a life sentence for him. >> i said this before, there's

a ringing in my ears over and over again, trump says, if you are a star, they let you do it. if you are president, they let you do it. whatever president-- status he has obtained in this case, president, the law is whatever he decides it is. in his fevered imagination, he is not admitting the crimes here, he is admitting to actions he regards as legal because who does them, in fact they become legal, which of course is not how courts of america operate. i think any sane lawyer working with donald trump looks at these, not just ready to commit harry carey watching him go on and doing this repeatedly over and over again, has admitted to facts, that according to most readable or interpretations of federal law, will see this being devastating. admissions of guilt of course very serious charges that open him up to very serious prison time.

i don't think trump thinks of it that way. i think trump thinks, the moment he decides to do them, they became legal. that is obviously bunkers and is qualified, i would say for anybody ever becoming president of the united states if you think about the law that way. i think that is how he thinks about it and the only way you can start to explain how he does these things over and over again, he does not have the same understanding of what a law is and is relative relationship to law that everybody else does in america. >> and from the very beginning, he talks about my military, economy, my documents, binders, my that, by kevin. he seriously thinks-- remember, early on, a look at my african american voters. >> that was horrible! >> everything is my, my, my!

and it is this mindset again, which people in the republican party and 77 million americans were fine with saying, i beat ices, i turned around the economy. it is this mindset that has led him to this legal peril with these documents, because they really do think nuclear secrets, he really does think nuclear secrets belong to him. like louis xiv, i am the state. >> only i can fix it, remember, those were trump's promises. also donald trump who can never admit a mistake. we saw this time after time, the campaign trail in the white house, he would try to talk around something, he would lie about it, he would have to sometimes try to retroactively pull prove that he was right. let's recall famously that hurricane and the map, the sharpie, we try to suggest he

did not make a mistake in suggesting alabama was in pat forde hurricane and brought out a weather and had drawn the forecast had shown the forecast was in danger, i was not wrong, they were. that is what we are seeing here again, david wrote, where he officially should keep his mouth shut, which anyone sensible with you. he's trying to justify his behavior, i wasn't wrong, i wasn't wrong, and by doing so, only getting in more legal trouble. let's get your analysis of this legal situation and i want you to see the bigger picture in terms of legal peril that potentially faces trump, including whispers there could be something in new jersey as well. >> the most dangerous charge for him is obstruction of justice, that he intentionally blocked the fbi from getting the documents back. it is extraordinary what he did, again, on national television, he showed intent. that is the key thing here, is best defense is, this is accidental or something like that. i am not talking to jack smith every day.

while trott's defense lawyers were extremely frustrated, i think jack smith's lawyers can't believe he made the statements. that is by far the strongest charge they have. i think this is hurting him politically. you can see in the polls, modern republicans tired of all of this noise and his broader debate that was talked about earlier of how the justice department should be misused about presidents attacking their enemies. the whistleblower released the pentagon papers just passed away. folks need to remember history. basically, richard nixon broke into the psychiatry office to try to get information to smear him. talking all of these norms that exist now, the fbi and justice department must be independent of politics, we don't want to be in a country where the fbi access secret police, going out, getting dirt on the president's enemies, or making criminal charges against him. it is a pivotal moment. sorry, inky peers

>> no, no problem at all. it is definitely an inflection point from the country. we have more with the interview from bret baier, donald trump is advocating for imposing the death penalty on convicted drug dealers, but it appears he is not here on exactly what that means. in a second part of his interview with fox news host bret baier that aired last night, trump touted his pardon powers while in office saying, they were focused largely on nonviolent offenders. he specifically cited the case of alex johnson, whose sentence was commuted in 2018. baier, however, pointed out that johnson would face the death penalty under trump's proposal for people convicted under drug distribution crimes. >> nonviolent crime, as an example, a woman, who you know very well, who was in jail, she had 24 more years to serve.

she served for 24 years, alice johnson. she was at the super bowl. high quality. she was on a telephone call and they were involved in selling marijuana, mostly marijuana, and she got like 50 years in jail. >> she would be killed under your plan, as a drug dealer. >> no, no, oh, under that, it would depend on the severity. >> she is technically a former drug dealer. she had multimillion dollar cocaine rings. >> she can't do it, okay? by the way, if that was there, she would not be killed, it would start as of now-- >> but your policy. >> starting now, but if it were death penalty, she would not have been on that phone call, she would not have been a dealer. >> i've got to think of braier

and jonathan swan should get together this weekend and have a drink. brett just starts laughing. he is probably so lost. trump is like, i commute this sentence, it is so great. and brett goes, you know under your policy would have killed her, right? well, no, because that was back then, and he starts laughing because trump's is so clueless about the fact that he is bragging about committing commuting the sentence of a woman who under his own policy would have been killed! >> watching him right there in the clip, it is stunning he was president of the united states peers >> what is stunning he is still running. >> that he survived that so far. >> stupid! >> we survived, but my god,

that is a perfect example of just how clueless donald trump is on policy and the fact that he is bragging about this tough on crime deal that he has, and he does not even realize that a woman he is bragging about would have been dead under his new policy. even bret baier cannot stop from laughing at him. >> i have only one word to say an immediate reaction-- what? trump is like, what a minute, what you just say? back when he was running for president, back in 2015, there was an interview they did with chris matthews where chris matthews says, are you pro-life, trump says, yes. wisconsin primary, 2016. he says, yeah, pro-life. and chris says, if a woman has an abortion, you are going to

put her in prison? it was like it never occurred to trump saying, we wanted to make abortion illegal, someone would have to go to jail. he saying exactly the same thing, what? and chris is like, someone is going to jail, we would have abortions in jail, i would not do that. what is it mean if you want abortions to still be illegal, which he said, no, basically what he's saying here. when it comes to policy, understating the case. as you know, the appeal with donald trump politically, he is not like as a bill clinton work mind on matters of policy. but boy, when you see him in some of these cases, the obvious natural, like an elementary school level understanding of, if this, then that, having seeing him stumped in that way. i don't want to because too critical, it seems this qualifying to me that you would have a president that says, oh yes, my plan would put this person to death, i probably should not talk about how great it is.

>> the moment his brain froze. >> like the chain came off the bike. >> and the trump people are trying to tout this time around, it is more about policy. a lot of people watching his youtube videos. let's set aside his embarrassment in the interview, connecting back to where we started with the hunter biden talk and the idea of weaponization and department of justice potentially, we know put republicans are going to let this go. we heard from senator scott, promising this would continue into the election. we don't have to wait that far. the house republicans will carry this matter and go left or the quote, biden cram crime family. how do you see that playing out? is it for them to find, or will this be more smoke to try and distract? >> four more years for the trump administration when it controlled congress, when it controlled the justice

department to bring charges against quote, unquote fighting crime family, it has not happened. bill barr looked into this himself. he had the u.s. attorney, again a trump in pointing in pittsburgh looking at this talk of bribery. nothing there. david white, the u.s. attorney in delaware in this plea deal, there were no charges about bribery, because david white's trump appointee did not find evidence of any kind of bribery toward hunter biden, and not joe biden. there is one fbi report where it seems like an russian oligarch is claiming there were these brides, but no proof whatsoever. joe biden hiding millions of dollars. he has made his tax returns public, but no proof of this. i think the claim will continue, again, bill barr did not bring discharge when he was attorney general. >> david road, thanks very much for being on this morning. we want to turn out to that submersible that went missing near the titanic. the u.s.

coast guard said, underwater noises were heard at some point yesterday. joining us now, nbc news correspondent, tom costello is live at the coast guard command center in boston. tom, what is the latest? >> good morning. this was a canadian p3 surveillance plane, flying over the area and dropped a sonar buoy, and it picked up some banging in the water, they don't know precisely what it was weird we don't know if it was a ship or people inside the sub. that canadians are rushing assets to the zone more ships, more helicopters, planes, i should say, as well as underwater drones. they have got a big challenge, though, if they can locate this missing so, how will they locate it up and out of the water? the hatch can also only be opened from the outside, not the inside. they only have about a days

worth of air left inside the sub. >> a glimmer of hope this morning in the desperate search for that private sub in the north atlantic. the u.s. coast guard says, a canadian aircraft, using sonar buoys to try and locate that minivan size vessel, detected underwater noises in the search area and overnight multiple reports suggest banking was heard at 30 minute intervals. according to an internal government on the search. four hours later, banking was still heard, and it was unclear if those were the same noises detected by the sonar buoys. nbc news has reached out to government authorities, but so far has not verified the documents. the sub and its five passengers disappeared sunday, near the wreck site of the titanic, and with less than a days worth of air, locating that bethel is a critical first step. at a depth of 2 1/2 miles, it would require specialized equipment to reach and potentially bring the vessel

back to the surface. >> will the u.s. navy or canadian navy be able to get salvageable equipment on time before the air runs out? >> what i can tell you is, there is a full-court press effort to get equipment on scene as quickly as we can. >> among those on board, oceangate founder, stockton rush was piloting the sub. this past year, you talked about the risk of diving to the titanic. >> at some point, safety is a pure waste. if you want to be safe, don't get out of bed, don't do anything. at some point, you will take a risk. >> also on board, businessman paul-henri nargeolet and billionaire hamish harding . the explorers club, a group of hearty founded set overnight, we understand likely signs of life have detected at the site. >> we are hopeful. it is a dangerous situation. no light, completely black, freezing cold out there. >> for safety in the spotlight with a passenger saying a

waiver of mention, the sub had not been approved or certified by any regulatory body. experts point out, the sub can only be opened from the outside. >> the clock is ticking for them. that takes whether they are floating on the surface, or on the bottom alive. >> bbc news has reviewed a legal document, a subtle from 2018, a legal lawsuit in which one member of the company sued the company claiming, they had not certified aircraft dive to the bottoms of the like they claimed to. we now know several dozens of people in the industry warned of potential catastrophic problems with that mini sub diving down to the depths of the titanic. all of that as a backdrop with the clock ticking again and about 24 hours of air left inside that mini sub. back to you. >> thank you so much, nbc's tom

costello. we can only hope and pray they will be okay. mike, the owner talking about, rush, talking about it is dangerous even to get out of bed. there is a wide gulp between when you stepped out of bed, and the dangers of getting into this craft, that one expert, after another expert, after another expert said, was not safe. >> i get up every morning, nearly every morning, i drive my car to have miles down the road to pick up the newspapers and the like that, that is certainly not going to have miles underneath the surface of the ocean. this is just a catastrophic affair that is going on. the cost of it, the financial toll, the human toll, the idea that at some point-- you just raised it off air, mika, what point does this thing collapse due to pressure? >> the pressure is immense down

there. >> my god, such a tragedy for people inside of there. you look at him charging a quarter of $1 million for everybody going in there, they pay a lot, think about the money, the resources being used, because he did not have the right safety measures in place and we are praying that they get found. i can't imagine the horror they are going through. mike, it is not like the entire industry did not warn this guy that he was running a dangerous operation. >> he had been warned multiple times. the point you race earlier, what happens if in the next few hours, they do locate it? how do you get it up? what kind of vehicle do we have, or is in the area to go down would have miles to list another vehicle up off the ocean floor? >> they can't get them out.

still ahead on "morning joe, " democrats are pushing for abortion rights as we near one year since the end of roe. senator cortez masters is our guest to talk about that. you are watching "morning joe." . we will be right back. back. [ tiger dust by yello playing in the background ] turn right on to western avenu. [ dog barks ] you have reached your destination.

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lomita feed is 101 years old. when covid hit, we had some challenges. i heard about the payroll tax refund that allowed us to keep the people that have been here taking care of us. learn more at getrefunds.com. welcome back. here is a few of the other stories making headlines this morning. one of the world's most famous physicians says, the u.s. is going backwards when it comes to equality. in a new interview with the uk's radio times, legendary british singer, elton john criticized anti-lgbtq laws in the u.s., likening them to a spreading virus. the 76-year-old specifically singled out laws recently enacted in florida, calling them quote, disgraceful.

taylor swift is expanding her area store. the new singer announced 42 international stops, that is a lot, on top of the eight she added earlier this month. the new dates included extra shows in mexico, argentina, and australia through august of next year. swift kicked off her areas tour back in march. i guess there is still a chance for you to go to a taylor swift show. >> i have been to three already. i've got a season ticket to everything she does. and singer, adele, reportedly bought sylvester stallone's house, but would only accept it on one key condition. stallone told the "wall street journal", the singer demanded he leave behind his rocky statute to telling him, if he

took it with him, it would quote, blow the whole deal. stallone added, he likes the renovations adele is currently making to the house. stallone first created and portrayed rocky balboa in the 1976 film that has since been turned into a sprawling franchise. and i get she wanted the statue, so she got the statue. that is a weird one, dan, i am not going to lie to you. back to politics now, the one year anniversary of the end of roe. senate and house democrats are planning to push for measures to codify reproductive rights into law. running is now, democratic senator, catherine cortez masto of nevada , whose freedom to travel act aims to protect women to cross state lines to get an abortion. let's talk about that. do you have the report for that? what are you hoping to accomplish you for women in your date? wood let me say, the reason why this legislation is here, because i have heard from, not only doctors in my state, who

are chilled by other states, criminalizing states who have chosen to really support women's reproductive freedom, but also knowing, even-- remember when the texas law first passed, we had some women coming to nevada. really, what i am seeing across the country with legislators and others wanting to criminalize women from traveling to states like nevada, where we respect a woman's right to choose. his legislation is important. it is supported the democrats. unfortunately, republicans are not there. i would hope they would get on board. our goal here, we have the anniversary coming up of the repeal of roe versus wade. the goal is to continue to ensure that people understand, this is a fight. we can't let our foot off the gas. we have to continue to push this issue. my legislation i have introduced, supported by democrats, we will do a you see today on the floor, but other

legislations to support reproductive rights world will also get on the floor. at the end of the day, if a famous republican were to get up and say, they don't support or trust women, they should have to stay on the floor and say it and blame why. >> i don't disagree. just curious about your republican counterpart. have you had a chance to have conversations about this? we have learned over this past year, that if we needed this lesson, i don't think anybody did, it is about women's lives. women in real time are either risking their lives, they have pregnancies with fetal abnormalities, or they are being forced to give birth to stillborn babies, or babies that suffer and die shortly after birth, and they are being sterilized, because they cannot have the care they need. do they confront those realities in conversation? >> no, and i will say this,

some of my colleagues that i have had the chance to talk with, they recognize it, but they still want to push some sort of federal abortion ban. here's what is so crazy about this. when the doc came down, it allegedly respected state's rights. in nevada, we have a law that protects the woman's right to choose. now, my extreme republican counterpart here want to go even further and erode our rights in the state of nevada and go down this path to criminalizing women. you have seen it, talked about it. we have seen so many women whose lives are on the line, because their doctors are too afraid to provide them the essential healthcare they need. think about this, women who have babies, want to get pregnant, have a family, now, their doctor is second- guessing, because of these federal republican laws, what type of medication, medicine they will provide that are essential for these women. literally, the republicans that

i talk to are really pushing us back to this 19th-century politics, when we have 21st- century medicine that should be helping women, all women, no matter what their religion, what their background, wet their party is. it is really about making sure women have access to the essential healthcare they need in this country. this is the fight that we see playing out now, unfortunately. even though, for the past 50 years, we have had something, a lot on the books, that has worked to everyone. a woman's right to choose with her family, with her doctor, making those decisions about her essential healthcare is so important. i will say one final thing that is the reason i am back here in the senate. in my state, it was not just democrats, it was republicans and independents that understood what was happening with the far right eroding women's rights to choose.

they knew that nevada was an essential state to control the senate. that is why in my state, i heard from so many men, women, republicans, democrats, men and women about this issue and concerned with what they were seeing on the far right. >> senator, you may be able to have rational discussions with any republicans, who for years, have favored smaller governments about the fact that many of them support a piece of legislation that would penalize a woman for crossing a state border to have a medical procedure? mac i would think my colleagues that i talked to would think it is rational, but it is not. you go down this path, i support states rights, when i don't support states rights. now, we will criminalize all women because we think it is important for the pro-life, political, this politics to play out so we can win control for the senate. this is our avenue to do so, so we will go down that path. what they are forgetting is that, across this country, so many men and women, this is an emotional issue for them. it touches them at their home, the beginning of their family, and women's healthcare. that is

my across the country, not just in nevada, but across the country, so many women and men support the right of a woman to make decisions. we see what is happening across the country and we have to continue to push back. this week, we will continue to fight for this legislation and draw attention to the fact that , these far right extreme republicans are not even following a majority of what the public wants in this country. >> senator catherine cortez masto, inc. you so much for joining us this morning. next here on "morning joe," a behind-the-scenes look at the 1994 republican revolution and how it led to the rise of modern conservatism. we will be right back with that. heartburn acid n with just one pill a day. choose acid prevention. choose nexium.

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respect, you are now my speaker and let the great debate begin. i now have the high honor and distinct privilege to present to the house of representatives, the gentleman from georgia, newt gingrich. >> wow, that was former house majority leader handing the speaker's gavel to newt gingrich. do you remember that? that was in the 1994 mid-term elections, and nearly two decades later the country still feeling the affects of the seismic shift in power. and now former chair of the national republican congressional committee, and newt gingrich's co-author of

"march to the majority." how did you meet? >> i had to lie, and i told him i was a campaign manager, and so we go through the whole thing and at the end i say, well, i am actually not and i am running for office, and he goes, i know that. i said what campaign manager should i get, and joe said don't bother you would eat them alive. i always say this, joe, seriously, 90% of the advice i am still giving 30 years later, i am giving from that campaign school in '93 and all of the advice that you and everybody else gave. it was an extraordinary school. >> well, thanks very much. joe, you were an extraordinary student at the school. i think you had the most interesting campaign in the

country in 1994. i remember your two half-hour videos that you put on public television stations and ran them continually into cycles 24 hours a day and that was the heart of your campaign. you said to me, you know, this is a great technique to use because people wake up all during the day and night and they turn something on television and they get to see me, and they were never disappointed in that regard. >> they ran it 24 hours a day for the last couple of weeks, and it was $30 for the past 24 hours, and people were screaming, take it down, take it down, i'll vote for you, but please take it down. joe, we are here to talk about you and 1994 and how 1994

changed for good or for ill, and talk about republicans taking control for the first time in a generation. >> well, it was huge. we had -- one of the things that newt and i talk about in the book are the efforts that had been made from 1968 forward in trying to elect majorities to the congress, first to the senate and then to the house, and then we recounted our failures over the course of those years, in particular when newt gingrich first came to congress in 1978 and then all the way up to 1994. but we learned some things each time around and each election cycle. i was at the national congressional republican committee as campaign director for two years and then executive director, and we tried lots of things and nothing ever seemed

to work, at least working in the way of electing a majority. in 1994, remarkable things fell into place, and i talk about that in the appendix of the book about things that are necessary for a majority to exist. one is, and this is really important for today as well, that you really -- candidates at parties really need to know what they are for, not necessarily always about what they are against but what they are for and what they are going to do and how that will affect the lives of constituents. i pushed that very hard. the other thing about 1994 is the great work that bill paxton did in recruiting candidates everywhere. we had the highest number of candidates for congress that we ever had, 432 were running in 1994. the third thing was to train those candidates in some way so they understood what the contract for america was all

about, and what it was we would do if we were elected and we were specific in saying if we don't bring these ten items to vote in the first 100 days of the congress, fire us and elect somebody else. that contract was much more specific than anything that had been done in the past. finally, you build the resources of time, money and people and use them wisely, and we had help because the opposition was screwed up as well. >> joe, the thing is there are a lot of people watching right now that obviously a lot of people that are watching are not fans of newt gingrich and are not fans particularly of the contract with america. for anybody, and this is why this book is so important, whether you are democrat or republican, whatever party you are running i often ask myself year after year, election cycle after election cycle, why

parties didn't do what you did in '94. before i went on the campaign trail, it was not like a policy paper, there were facts, there were poll numbers and suggested language and i would pick it up and look eight and find one or two things and think, that's pretty good, and put it down. there were campaign schools that campaign managers and candidates went to, 30 years later i can tell you, it was so organized. the contract with america, you say it and a lot of people get angry with it, and most of the items were supported by 70% of americans and democrats for most of the items, the majority of the democrats voted for the items. the power of a simple message saying this is what we are going

to do, and if we don't, fire us. that was just an unbeatable message. i don't know why more people have not used that message since. >> i can't figure that out either. that's one of the reasons why people should read "march to the majority." it was fun to work on and fun to remember and recommend -- reminisce with newt, but knowing what you are for makes a huge difference, and we had 6 million more voters for the republican candidates for congress than in the history of the country, and part of that is because we were so direct on what we were going to do and we were so specific that if we did not do that, get rid of us. people have a feeling now about, gee, there are things that we need to do and things that have

to happen, and i am saying that in this book, "march to the majority," which we are thrilled, by the way, is a top 20 best-seller right now in the nonfiction category, and we are thrilled about the acceptance of the book, but it has helpful hints about our stories and what we did. newt was doing pretty much inside of the congress and what that was like, and my writing part of the book is what was going on in the political world and what it was and how we tried to effect the change that came about. we are very proud of the book. >> joe, certainly newt gingrich, a very strong speaker, at least initially. let's get your assessment of the current speaker, kevin mccarthy. he got kudos for shepherding through the budget deal, but in

the wake of the debit deal with president biden, he's facing rebellion in far-right members of his caucus, and give us an assessment of his work so far? >> i think speaker mccarthy, he's a great student of politics. you know, he came from the very rough and tumble system in california where he was minority leader. he understands leadership and he understands -- one of the things he understands is one of the points that i make in the book about understanding where people are coming from and how you try to unlock them as opposed to getting into a fight with them. that's a very encouraging sign that i see in speaker mccarthy. he has a tough road. there's no question. there's a narrow majority and

narrower than it should have been in my judgment and he did an enormous amount of work in raising money for candidates and building the commitment to america program, and my own view on that was, you know, there were 150 items in it and i think it could have been a little briefer. in any event i think he's doing a good job so far and he has a heck of a hard job to do. >> the new book is "march to the majority: the real story of the republican revolution." joe, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning, and congratulations on the book. >> thank you so much, joe. all right. we had a little delay there. >> yeah. >> i talked about being organized, getting an organized message out. it's interesting, the republicans, i remember when we ran in '93 and '94, and we felt like the democrats were muddled,

and it would be pretty easy pickings. what you find now as we go into 2024, it's the republican party that seems to be in disarray. it's democrats time and again in 2020, in 2022 pulled out a lot more voters than republicans ever expected, and it's something we don't talk about enough. i don't think people in the media talk about it enough, and we talk about how dysfunctional democrats are before every election, and you look at 2018 and you look at 2020 and 2022, one of the reasons donald trump was so freaked out in 2020 is because they hit all their targets. it's just that biden and the democrats did an exceptional job in pulling even more people out. >> there's a couple things joe gaylord mentioned to the point that you are raising, and you basically said candidates should

talk about what they are for rather than what they are against, so it seems, i think, to a lot of people for a long time now the republicans have been talking about anger and their resentment over what the democrats stand for -- >> they don't even need a contract with america. they don't need ten items they support, just talk about the economy -- >> peoples' lives. >> how people look forward to a brighter future and talk specifically about that, but it's all conspiracy theory and all stolen elections and hunter biden's laptop. if i were running the republican party you would not have lost seven years in a row, but if i was in the republican party right now, mike, i would say you want to talk about conspiracy theories, do it at hometown halls, but here we are talking about issues.

if you want to talk about a balanced budget, talk about a balanced budget. if you want to talk about tax cuts, talk about tax cuts. if you want to talk about regulatory relief for small businesses and other things, do that, but when you start with a conspiracy theory, that's all they are going to cover. >> there's one other element of the piece that we just displayed with joe gaylord, the lead-into it, the handing over the gavel to newt gingrich, that's from another century. that's gone. the dialogue like that is gone. >> what he never said, kevin mccarthy, it was like it hit him over the head with the gavel. that stupidity, again. the power of grace -- this is what people don't understand in politics. let me give an example of a democrat that did it. bill clinton, a guy, you know,

we knocked heads in congress, but what bill clinton would do, if somebody said the republicans said they want to do x, and if it was a good idea, bill clinton would say, they're right. you would sit and go, wait, he admitted they were right. the power of grace on the campaign trail, and the power of liking people, and the power of being positive. i think there's a book -- >> yeah. >> for decades ago, the power of being positive. this is something that somehow the party of reagan has completely forgotten. >> oh, it has. john is still with us, and neil's new podcast, "courtside," launched today and unpacks the cultural implications of major supreme court cases, and great

timing to have this podcast. we are continuing to talk about the fallout from donald trump's primetime interview this week, and he doubled down on the documents he had from the white house, and some people are thinking, what was he thinking? eric erickson tweeted, guys, trump admitted on tv tonight he withheld documents from the grand jury. game over. what an idiot. and then the first rule of the federal indictment club is you don't talk about your case. the second rule of federal indictment club is really don't do this. did trump just admit to obstruction on national television? frequent legal commentator for fox news, jonathan turley said

bret baier conducted an interview with donald trump, and statements of this kind are generally admissible at trial. then there's former new jersey governor and governor presidential candidate, chris christie, who said this. >> the problem for donald trump in all of this is his own conduct. he's his own worst enemy. none of this would have happened to him or the country if he just returned the documents. it appears to me last night as a former prosecutor that he admitted obstruction of justice on the air last night to bret baier. i can tell you this, his lawyers this morning are jumping out whatever window they are near. >> add to that what andy mccarthy, a contributing editor at a legal review and fox news contributor, he had this to say

about reaction from former attorney general under trump, bill barr. >> how does he get that into the record without appearing as a witness? >> there would have to be -- this is why i don't think he has a defense. first of all, i think if you do that under the presidential records act there should be a document supporting it, otherwise he has to have a witness that shows that he did it, and i don't think he has that, and it's irrelevant that he doesn't have a defense to the charges. >> assuming he thinks it's a relevant argument and they want to make that argument to the jury, how do they get the assertion that he classified them into his mind into the record without him going on the stand? go ahead, and talk through the music. >> he has to testify to it. >> he's not a victim here. he was totally wrong that he had

the right to have those documents. those documents are among the most sensitive secrets that the country has, and he has to be in the -- they have to be in the custody of the archivist, and he kept them in a way at mar-a-lago where anybody that cares about national security, their stomach with churn at it. here i think the government acted responsibly. they gave him every opportunity to handover the documents, and they acted with restraint. they talked with him for almost a year to get those documents and he jerked them around, and they went to a subpoena and according to the library he lied and obstructed that subpoena. then they did a search and they found a lot more documents, and they are not -- i don't think they are sure now whether they have everything. >> more from barr, neil, who

wrote this recently in the free press, for a basic respect for the truth it's time that republicans come to grips with the hard truths about president trump's conduct and its implication, and chief among them trump's indictment is not the result of unfair prosecution, this is a situation entirely of his own making, the effort to present trump as a victim is cynical, political propaganda. it certainly seems that many people that have spent the last eight years and their representations defending donald trump are running for the exits. >> that's exactly right, joe. i am afraid to say this because lightning might strike me down, but i agree with bill barr. i mean, donald trump has acted with the most gross disregard of national security imaginable,

and this is not just bill barr's view but it's almost everybody in trump's former cabinet, whether it's his former chief ofs staff, or defense secretary, or his vice president, mike pence, they have all come out and said exactly this. to me the surprising thing for somebody like barr is, you know, where were you for the last several years? this is -- trump and the mishandling of the documents is not different from the way he mistreated other laws and our constitution, and it's the same pattern but this time, as bill barr says, he's toast. the evidence looks overwhelming, and the person that agrees with it is donald trump in that fox news interview this week. >> speaking of the fox news interview, maybe you can clear something up for us. is what donald trump said under questioning from bret baier, is that admissible under trial?

can you use those transcripts and his words against him in a trial? >> yeah, there's no fox news exception into the federal rules of evidence, and it's not like they were given in an unmirandized way in law enforcement and he was not warned anything could be used against him, and he was volunteering on his own and there was no coercion or anything, and you might have to coerce me to be on that but not donald trump, so i think he has no leg to stand on and this is going to be admitted as against him. >> the plea agreement struck by hunter biden, and the department of justice. we have heard a wide range of reactions from the legal community as to the appropriateness of the charges, you know, and obviously republicans are claiming

favoritism here. >> the prosecutor was not aoc or merrick garland, and the guy's name was david weiss, and he was appointed by donald trump and he is well respected and the former career top prosecutor before getting a political appointment by trump to be the chief executing officer from delaware. and then the questions from jim jordan last month, weiss classified in a letter to congress that he and not merrick garland had the decision over hunter biden, and this agreement does have to be signed off on by a federal judge.

i don't think there's any doubt the judge will sign off on it, because if anybody really has to complain here, i would say it's actually hunter biden, because first-time offenders like this almost never get prosecuted and certainly don't get jail time. if anything the sentence is harsh and not lenient. >> i will steal away a scarborough question, because of something we discussed earlier in the day, and joe used the word dialectal, and his vocabulary is ahead of mine, and i had to look it up, and all of you lawyers that know more about this and this is where my legal knowledge isn't clear, but in practice joe's claim is there's a consensus view that being named biden -- if he was not named biden these charges would never have been brought, but on

the other hand being named biden, this plea deal is favorable to him and you have to hold these two thoughts in your mind, and what do you think about the analysis? >> i think i disagree with the second half, and if he were not named biden this would have been an easier deal with less on him, and what i think has happened is hunter biden has become such a politicized and demonized figure in american politics, that any charging figure no matter what it was, it would be too lenient, and if prosecutors said it would be life in prison, republicans would complain they didn't seek the death penalty. >> might be a little extreme, as you said, for first time. i want to ask -- i am so excited about your podcast, and i say that because i -- i am a nerd about following the supreme

court. i still am convinced that roberts kept talking to cavanaugh last year on dobbs saying, dude, in so many words, dude, do not go that way, stay with me on mississippi, 15 weeks plurality supports, and that's an evolution and not a revolution. when i see the alabama case this year, and i see the native american case this year, and it seems that cavanaugh is listening. roberts seems to be moving him more in his direction, which leads us to the case that everybody is waiting for, the affirmative action case for harvard and unc. the fact pattern coming out of harvard is absolutely horrific. they discriminated against asian americans. i am wondering if bad facts will make bad law here or whether you leave the supreme court is going to be able to, again, be

dialectal here, and strike down what harvard and unc has done, but not make it a sweeping attack against affirmative action over all? >> it's the hope that you are saying that the supreme court moderated after last year, and i don't think we have enough cases to decide that. i do this every year, joe, and right now things look okay for the left and in the last half when the left has been losing case after case, after case, affirmative action may not be one, and so your viewers know i do have an interest in it. a sensible affirmative action plan is a compelling state

interest. the bigger question here, and this is what the podcast talks about, it's not just abortion or who we marry, but it's how we vote and how we pray and how we pay taxes and whether we can have guns and inflation and you name it, and the law is supposed to be something for human beings, and it's increasingly becoming our cane, and so the podcast brings a nonlawyer each week to talk about a major supreme court case. next week i will have john legend and then jeff coons, trying to do all of those things to explain what the supreme court is and take it behind the scenes of the case. i agree with you, joe, about chief justice roberts. i think he has such a concern for the institution of the court that he's hopefully able to

exert some sort of moderating influence in the last ten days. >> former acting solicitor general, thank you very much. "courtside" launches today on sub stack. thanks for being on this morning. and the people that posted bond for the embattled senator george santos will be revealed. he insisted on keeping the names of his bond sponsors private, and the court suggested one is irrelative of the congressman's, and santos was asked about their identities and this was his response. >> that is information you will never get because that is -- your intention is to go and harass them and make their life miserable. you are not getting that. >> wow. but a district court judge sided

with media organizations pushing for the names to be public. >> he said you will never have it. >> she ordered for that to be unsealed tomorrow at noon, giving people time to with draw as sponsors before being revealed, and santos's lawyers have not responded to request for comment. and joining us, dan goldman of new york, and greg landsmen of ohio, and they are forcing one committee to reveal if george santos has provided the committee with the names of the people that posted his bond. >> thank you for being with us, and mike barnicle is with us as well, and he has the first question. >> dan, when you ran for congress and won did you ever think your background after working in the attorney's office and stuff like that, did you think you would deal with this

level of craziness in the congress of the united states? >> not at all. certainly congress's reputation has taken a hit over the last few years, and certainly we never thought we would be patrolling the halls with such an outright fraud that deceived his voters in order to become a member of congress and now he's being protected by the republican party who refuses to expel him or force him to resign, and that's in part why we introduced the resolution today is not only to make sure that george santos is complying with all requests from the house ethics committee, which is different from the court where he has been indicted, but also to make sure that the house leadership abides by its own representations when they moved to refer his expulsion motion that would not 60 days they would have a resolution from that ethics committee.

this resolution we are introducing today is forcing the ethics committee to respond to the speaker's demands as well as to make sure that a member of congress is following the rules of the body. >> congressman, let me ask you this question, which is, is it your position, your view, that part of the reason why congressman santos doesn't want the names to be known is because it could give a further suggestion that this has to do with russian backing, that there is russian supporters behind him? i saw a comment of you where you said he has taken a russian issue -- >> there are three big issues and one has to do with what

people back home talk to me about constantly, is we need congress to work and are frustrated with a host of things, including the santos issue that needs to be brought to an end as quickly as possible, and that's why we are calling on the ethics commission to finish this by the 17th. the second thing is trust. folks are struggling to trust this institution. for dan and i, we care deeply about this institution and we want to regain that trust. to your question there are legitimate concerns that he is comprised. if you look at his relationship with some of the russian interests and the fact that when he talks about ukraine or russia, it is almost word for word what the kremlin is putting out, and so whether that gets revealed as part of disclosing who paid for the bail or not, you know, national security

folks, members of congress, i certainly have very legitimate concerns and we need an answer as soon as possible because he's still voting and doing interviews and making comments and that's a big problem. >> you repeatedly called on speaker mccarthy to ask santos to resign and he refused to do so, and he hinted he would not support his re-election bid and he's still voting in congress and often the speaker is counting on his support and this comes at a time when he faced a rebellion from members of the far right in his own caucus, and how much faith do you have in the speaker and the republicans to make the right decision? >> obviously we have no faith at this point. george santos should have resigned months ago when it was revealed when he lied about his parents' involvement in 9/11, and his reaction to the pulse

club shooting, and it's not just lies about his background and education but lies about the events of the last century that he now has taken advantage of, and there's no place for somebody like that, and yet speaker mccarthy continues to protect him because he's putting his politics over the peoples' representation. he is trying to make sure he has as many votes as possible, and that's clearly why he's protecting george santos. he, himself, said in may when they move to refer the resolution to expel him to the ethics committee, where it already was that he would ask for an expedited investigation to report back in 60 days, and that's what we are trying to hold him to, to see whether he is a man of his word. i don't have a lot of faith that

he will do that because he has demonstrated that he will protect george santos at all costs, but that's what we are asking for here. >> congressman, sometimes the rhetoric on both sides of the aisle where both of you work sounds like it's coming out of a bunson burner with santos, and hunter biden, and so the question is what is it like on the floor from a day-to-day basis? is it civil or filled with more anger? >> sometimes it's civil and sometimes it's frustrating. yesterday, you know, they went after adam schiff, they want to sensor him. they went after the president and want to impeach him.

it's frustrating. i think the biggest issue is there are hundreds of bipartisan bills that are -- that have been introduced. we need them to get to the floor. most of us want to work. we have to get past a number of things, including the santos issue, and that's what we are asking leadership to do and this congress to say, hey, let's be done with this and let's go to work. >> all right. democratic congressman from new york and of ohio, thank you both for being on this morning. a few other stories making headlines this morning. controversial media personality, andrew tate and his brother have been indicted on charges in romania of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized crime group. the internet celebrity known for his remarks and his brother,

trystin, were held in detention over concerns they would flee, and lawyers for the brothers called the indictment predictable and promised to prove their innocence. as the u.s. educational system slowly recovers from the high cost of the pandemic and remote learning, students' test scores are taking a hard hit. according to the national assessment of educational progress also known as the nation's report card, math and reading scores sunk to their lowest level in decades. among the country's lowest performing students, math scores dipped down to levels that have not been seen since 1978. in reading the scores set the clock back to levels lower than 1971. the first year that data was collected. the results cut across gender

and race in every place around the country, and the tests were taken by students in the fall of 2022 when most teachers and students returned from remote learning. a "price is right" contestant is accused of celebrating his win a little too hard. take a look. >> higher, lower, lower, higher -- yes! whoa! >> so this man, henry, dislocated his shoulder on the show last week. his wife then had to come up and spin the wheel for him. the long-running game show posted this video to instagram with the caption, he won a trip to hawaii and the er, adding

that henry is all healed now. oh, my gosh. still ahead on "morning joe," we will give you the 2024 polling that shows donald trump's lead slipping in the face of legal issues. oxygen running out. we will have more on the search for the submersible to the "titanic." we'll be right back. "titanic." we'll be right back.

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let's talk about that new polling which shows donald trump is losing some support among republican primary voters in the latest cnn survey. 47% of registered republican and republican-leaning independents say trump is their choice to lead the 2024 ticket, and that's down 6% from a poll taken last month, and still 21 points

higher than florida governor, ron desantis, who is in second place. former vice president mike pence and former ambassador nikki haley round off the top four with no other candidate polling above 5%. and the poll shows trump's factorability rating falls ten points from last month, from 77% to 67%. additionally, 27% now say they have an unfavorable view of the former president compared to 18% in may. among all americans, 59% say trump should end his 2024 campaign now that he has been federally charged. that number is much higher at 85% among nonrepublican voters. finally, 55% of americans say the former president broke the law with his mishandling of classified documents while

another 30% say his actions were unethical and not illegal, and i want to know who those people are, because trump himself says he broke the law. he's saying it with his words and they still can't get there -- >> well, so let's go through these numbers. pretty devastating numbers for donald trump. you know, maybe he ends up winning everything. who knows? we have a long way to go. but people have been discounting desantis and the entire republican field, and we have a long way to go at this point. when this show first started in 2007, people were talking about hillary clinton running against rudy giuliani. a long way to go. at this point in 1979, jimmy carter was losing to ted kennedy, getting one-third of the vote to kennedy's two-thirds vote. a long way to go.

and according to the poll -- this is a guy, obviously former president of the united states, and less than 50% support him. one in three republicans now say they have an unfavorable view of donald trump. 6 in 10 americans say -- about 6 in 10 americans say he should get out of the race right now. when we talk about -- well, 55% of all americans say he broke the law. but when we take out the hard core gop base, we look at democrats, independents, swing voters and the people that will decide this election, and 85% of americans say he should get out of the race right now. the question that this begs is, what in the hell are republican voters thinking that want to

actually win the white house back in 2024? >> well, joe, what are they thinking? i think at large and a growing number of them are thinking how do we get out of this? this is the connection between these two sets of polling. you have to think of them as different things, as we talk about all the time, you know. you got the nomination fight and then the general election. we know donald trump's vulnerabilities for general elections is growing, and you have a substantial -- nottet a majority of the republican voters, but a substantial number of them where people, what they saw before the raid at mar-a-lago, people who were getting trump fatigue were saying he's a loser, and give him a gold watch and figure out a way to tell this man he did

make america great again and send him off to a happy retirement, and i'm talking about how republicans looked at him, and then they rallied around him, and there seems to be signs where the prior dynamic is kicking in and republicans that want to win, again, not all of them, and the base is incredibly low, and trump is the most powerful force in our politics, and it's the loyalty and the intensity of people that love trump, and that's enough to make him formidable in any nomination fight, and the numbers are showing signs of wear and cracking around his support in the party, and that's creating openings for some of his rivals. coming up, we are taking a look at donald trump's upcoming trial concerning his handling of classified documents and why that august 14th date could get pushed back a bit. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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where they were heard. however, the time for rescue efforts is running out as it's estimated the vessel has less than 25 hours of oxygen left for the five passengers who left to hour the titanic's wreckage on sunday morning. >> it's devastating for

oceangate. one expert after another told the owner that this was a dangerous, dangerous vessel and they needed to go through safety regulations, and they needed to be certified. the owner refused time and time again. oceangate, the company was warned of catastrophic problems, and as "the times" pointed out, those warnings were, quote, unanimous, from experts. you drop like a stone is what one said, and there's a scale of irresponsibility here by the

owner. >> there's questions raised about the quality and parts this submersible is composed of. it can't be said enough, the risks, the water pressure is so intense and the temperatures are so cold, that even the smallest of failures, and engineers have been talking about this and posting about it, but the smallest of failures would lead to instant death for everybody onboard because you are so deep down there by the "titanic." we are hoping for a miracle here, and as mika just noted, the clock is running out in terms of oxygen supply, and we don't know the status like if they have power and what is the temperature, and the sounds, maybe that is a clue and maybe targeting the search could lead to success, and it's dire time, and joe, to your point there will be lots of questions raise

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beautiful shot of new york city. a little before 9:00 a.m., ten of here on "morning joe." back in 20 to 02, chris paul signed his letter of intent to play college basketball at wake forest university in the state of north carolina. the very next day, he received a call that would change his life forever. paul's grandfather, nathaniel jones, also known as papa, was rob and assaulted at the service station that he owned. he suffered a heart attack and died at the scene. chris paul in his first game for wake forest would go on to score 61 points, the same age as his

grandfather, nathaniel was, when he passed away. paul dedicated the performance to him. and now after 18 seasons in the nba, the future hall of famer is out with his new book about his career and the impact his grandfather had on him. it's titled "sixty-one: life lessons from papa on and off the court." chriss paul joins us now. great to meet you. thanks for being here. congrats on the book. >> thanks for having me. i really appreciate it. >> let's talk about what was ovbly a tough call. what was that moment like when you learned your grandfather, so important to you, had died? >> yeah, it was tough. i lost his wife, my grandmother, when i was 7 years old to lung kangser, and my granddad was my best friend. at 17, learning how he had passed away and died, it was tough. it was tough for me and my family. >> and "sixty-one," a magical thing, that was his age and the number of points you scored.

what was that game like for you? >> the game was intense, right. i was 17 at the time. my career high to that point was 34. so i went into this game with this heavy heart, and to have 59 points and to hit a floater and get fouled, i had 61 so i walked to the free-throw line and i just threw the ball out of bounds. i hugged parents, never knowing one day i would get a chance to play in the nba and have all these different life lessons, but everything my grandfather taught me for my 17 years i sort of discuss in the book. >> let's turn to that. tell us about some of those lessons that your grandfather imparted to you and you're trying to share now in the book. >> yeah. so my grandfather had the first black-owned service station in north carolina. i'm from the south and i grew up going to my granddad's service station all the time, working. so i was changing tires, checking oil and all this stuff. my granddad just always showed me the work, right. so even if he had the money, me

and my brother needed shoes or what not, he wouldn't just give us the money. he'd be, like, if you want these shoes, you're going to come here and work. it translated to my entire career and just doing the work, right, and just not taking anything for granted. >> let's talk about that work ethic because it would seem that's so key to longevity. it wasn't that long ago players' careers, they didn't last 18 years. there are a handful now. was that lesson from your grandfather, that fuel to keep working at it year after year after year? >> no question. my grandfather stressed the importance of family and loving what you do. i'll be going into my 19th season next year, and i'm so grateful for that. my grandfather's hands were just always covered in oil and grease. we could be going to a nice restaurant to eat and you just look at his hands and you, like, you know he does something that requires working with your

hands. for me, i've had four hand surgeries over my career, so it's crazy how joan it all ties together. >> so heading into your 19th season, it's a little unclear where you'll be playing. you were traded this week, phoenix suns where you were, sending you to washington as part of a trade. and you told "the new york times" this week you learned about the trade by a text message from your son. that's right? >> yeah. i was headed here to do everything for my book release, and is that's how i found out. but i have a 14-year-old son, a 10-year-old daughter. i've been in this league a long time, so things happen. it is what it is. >> what's your response? i know the phoenix team, guys were in the finals a couple years ago, close to a title, kevin durant, devin booker, a new owner, isaiah thomas playing a role too. what do you think? >> it's a lot of stuff going on. you know, i mean new owner,

matt, and everything that's going on with the team, i had a chance to talk to both a couple days ago. i'm so grateful for the time that i spent in phoenix, you know, the last three years have been amazing as far as me, my family. >> and tell us what do you think happens next? are you looking for them to move you, buy out, what do you think? >> that's a good question. i don't know yet because nothing's official. there has to be trade calls and all this stuff to take place. i'm just figuring it out before i go back. >> the nba draft tomorrow. that plays a role perhaps. most importantly, congratulations on the new book. we're so glad you're here. it is called "sixty-one: life lessons from papa on and off the court." chris paul, thank you very much. that book is out now. >> thank you. all right. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll return with a look at the news and break down the plea deal between the doj and hunter

biden. plus we'll show the response from the president and his political rivals. also ahead, insight on a ruling from trump-appointed judge aileen cannon. it appears favorable to the prosecution in the classified documents case.

i got him elected, and i thought it was very disloyal when he said yes, i'd run. i got him past the races and the primary because he was losing by 30 point tos or more. >> is loyalty a question? >> i'm a big loyalist. some people right in this room have told me sir, don't worry about loyalty. it doesn't mean anything in politics. i said it does. i got the guy elected. he came to see me, let's say weeping, because he was dead. he was getting out of the race. i said if george washington endorsed you, you're not going

to win. he said, sir, if you endorsed me, i think i could win. >> sir, i may just be a balloon floating in your backyard, sir, but sir, your hair looks beautiful today. he has like an inanimate object -- >> what is that about? power? >> he's just so insecure. this raging insecurity, so needy that -- sir this, sir that. >> that was donald trump taking credit for ron desantis winning florida's gubernatorial race in 2018. it comes as new polling shows trump's legal issues are starting to catch up with him. we'll go through the numbers plus new details in hunter biden's plea deal, which republicans claim is proof of a double standard at the justice department. one of them is speaker kevin mccarthy, who called it a sweetheart deal despite it being approved by a trump-appointed

prosecutor. >> and of course when he was asked about that trump-appointed prosecutor, he just didn't answer the question. >> president biden appeared to unravel any good will from secretary of state antony blinken's trip to china after calling xi jinping a dictator. >> yeah. diplomatically -- >> they're a little mad. >> curious timing. >> welcome to the fourth hour of "morning joe." it's 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. on the east. jonathan lemire is still with us for the hour. following his latest indictment -- >> jonathan called me a dictator a couple weeks ago. >> jonathan? i don't think that's what he said. >> i would never say such a thing, joe. but i will say what happened last night, and i've been texting with white house aides about this, and there is a sense of any politics, including this president, they tend to get a little too comfort fumble the fund-raiser settings because they're surrounded by friendly

donors, cheering their every word. there's not usually a camera or a tv crew, but there are some reporters taking notes. sometimes, it's not the first time it's happened with president biden this has happened and other politicians, too, they say things they don't realize are going to be for public consumption. that seems to be the case here and no doubt it has enflamed tensions with china. i've never used those words referring to joe scarborough. >> you look back, and you were so right, for some reason politicians, presidents, presidential candidates, they get into these settings, theetsz fund-raising settings, and they're completely relaed most of time. mitt romney got in trouble with the 47% remark, barack obama talked about americans clinging to their guns, their god, whatever else they said. i mean, and religion. so many mistakes are made where people let down their guard,

they're trying to impress their biggest supporters, and something like that comes out. >> yep. >> and in this case, it has international ramifications. >> for sure. now, following his latest indictment, new polling is showing that most americans are ready to move on from donald trump. in the latest cnn survey, 59% of all adults say the former president should exit the 2024 race after being criminally charged earlier this month. among nonrepublicans, that number sits at a massive 85%, and it's not just democrats and independents expressing fatigue with the former president. in a republican primary, trump's support has fallen six points since last month, although he still leads florida governor ron desantis by 21%. among those same republicans, trump's unfavorability rating has also climbed by nine points. >> again, that's a spread, jonathan lemire, but not if

you're a former republican president running in a republican primary. let's look at these numbers quickly. you've got the overwhelming majority of americans saying that he should not run, almost 6 in 10 americans saying that. and then you look on the other side, you guys can take that down now, on the other side of it, you've got less than 50% of americans, less than 50% of americans saying -- or republicans saying that they're going to support him, jonathan. so, again, these numbers moving in a way that aren't really in donald trump's favor. >> so, certainly a bad trend line if you're the trump campaign. we talk a lot about how there are some republicans that will always stay with trump, always, always, always. the question is how big is that group? is it just 35%, 40% or larger? he as president would have a favorability rating, huge

numbers. that slipped since he left office but still remained high. now we've seen a ten-point drop. we had the poll earlier that shows in the gop primary field he's dropped six points there. no one else has really gained on him and someone will eventually have to. and the bigger this field is, the more fractured support, he can win with under 50%, he can win if that number is lower than it is now. but this is a trend line. it's early. we'll have to see other polls, but if more indictments come, as they are expected, and he keeps having to show up for court every couple months, well, it's going to remind americans of this problem, and it's hard to see how that can help him, certainly in next year's general election to be sure. >> again, talking about swing states, which we talk about all the time, when you have 85% of americans who aren't republicans saying that donald trump should get out of the race now, 85%. that's really striking. i think there's one other story, one sort of subplot if you look at all of these number, and, jonathan, that is ron desantis

is not kind of -- he's not gaining ground. he's lost support over the past couple of months, and as donald trump's numbers go down among republicans, you would expect desantis' to go up. they're just not. it is early, but at this point, he surely is not taking advantage of this. look at him stuck at 26% even as donald trump's support is slipping. >> it's early, but desantis was popular among republicans before he jumped in the race, when people knew less about him, other than he was the trump alternative, and won a big re-election in florida in november. but since then, he's gone to war with disney, he signed into law an extremely restrictive abortion ban. trump has been taking shots at him day after day. trump has been pounding desantis, seeing him as his chief rival. and his numbers haven't gone anywhere. we have seen, you know, pence, haley, they've gone up a little,

still in the single digits, but desantis at the very least is not taking advantage of trump's stumble here. he had a glitchy war on twitter. he's been raising plenty of money, we'll give him that, but otherwise his message so far is not breaking through. he has time to turn it around, but he's disappointed a lot in the gop who viewed him as the trump alternative to beat. meanwhile, new reaction to the plea deal reached between the department of justice prosecutors and hunter biden. republicans are outraged, accusing the justice department of a double standard. nbc news chief white house correspondent kristen welker has the latest. >> reporter: president biden standing by his son, hunter, reacting to his plea deal during an event in california tuesday. after a five-year investigation into hunter biden's finances, he struck a deal with federal prosecutor, agreeing to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges for failing to pay income taxes in 2017 and 2018

and avoiding prosecution on a felony charge of illegally possessing a gun while he was using drugs. two sources tell nbc news the government will recommend probation. >> i think what's fair is, you know, my client gets along with his life. >> reporter: it comes days after former president trump pled not guilty to 37 felony charges tied to his handling of classified material. mr. trump on social media comparing hunter biden's plea deal to a mere traffic ticket, adding, "our system is broken." some republicans saying the doj has one standard for mr. trump and another for president biden and democrats. >> while i welcome these charges and the guilty plea, i have a sense that this will do very little to allay the concerns of millions of americans that we just simply don't have equal treatment under the law. >> if you were the president's leading political opponent, the doj tries to literally put you

in jail and give you prison time. if you are the president's son, you get a sweetheart deal. >> reporter: attorney general merrick garland has pledged he would not interfere in the investigation, which has been led by u.s. attorney david weiss, a trump-appointed prosecutor. >> that should give people some comfort that this is not some sweetheart deal but this is pretty standard. >> reporter: republicans have blasted hunter biden for his past work for burisma, a ukrainian energy company, while then vice president biden was in charge of ukraine policy. savanna asked candidate biden about that in 2020. >> no one's found anything wrong except they say it's a bad image. >> do you agree? >> and my son said that. yeah. >> and that's the thing. joe biden has already said it. >> people aren't listening. >> joe biden's already said it sets a bad image. biden's not been happy with the bad image, with the look of

this. but here's the thing. they keep talking about how he's done something illegal, the biden crime -- ginni thomas, put them off barges off of gitmo, the biden crime family. i won't quote aaristotle, but they're just making things up. what's the crime? they can't tell you. there might be a tape out there somewhere. then we find out there's nothing on the tape. then they say -- i mean, you have chuck grassley, who tim scott's going thank god for chuck grassley, really? doesn't really matter whether he did anything wrong or not, we don't care, he said. he's saying we don't care about the facts of the case. we just want to hurt joe biden. what did comber say? he said we don't care if he did something wrong or not. we just want to bring his poll numbers down. they said it.

they said the quiet part out loud, that this is all smoke and mirrors. there's nothing here legally. unethically, does it look bad? yeah. it looks bad. i think it looks bald. joe biden says he thinks it looks bad. does it look bad that, you know, donald trump's son-in-law got $2 billion, $2 billion, $2 billion from the saudis? yeah, that looks kind of bad. does it look bad that donald trump's daughter got licensing agreements in communist china after he sits down and meets with president xi? yeah, that looks bad. >> they both work in the white house under donald trump and special counsel. >> both working in the white house. again, not something we really obsessed on because we don't obsess on children. but the republicans, the republicans, they look past that. >> let's talk about them. >> you can talk about it. there's really absolutely no

comparison. it's also just like tim scott, it's like tim scott saying lady liberty, lady justice must be blind, and then they're applauding him. saying this to a group of people, a majority of whom want to defund the fbi or abolish it because they're trying to protect america's nuclear secrets. you really -- you think justice should be blind, or do you think justice should keep one eye covered up? that eye is the one looking at donald trump. i mean, again, i think hypocrisy understate what is's going on here. >> you think about the stupidity of kevin mccarthy's statement. you want to talk about presidents' kids, then compare hunter biden to jared, ivanka, done jr., and his wife's sexy dance during the january 6th insurrection. do those comparisons. go for it.

have fun with those comparisons because there are so many to make, and it would be -- we wouldn't have time in this show so go over all the hypocrisy and abuse of power with president trump's kids. but we're focused on the presidency, and we're focused on the future of this country. as you said and joe biden will agree, hunter biden made some poor decisions and he's paying the price, he's pleading guilty on the tax issues. and it is really sad. we are reporting on it. we're right here, not calling foul on this. >> by the way, unlike republicans, we're not saying the fbi should be defunded or the doj should be defunded. we've said all along, if somebody is guilty of something, he should be charged. >> that's what he has to do now. >> one more thing that's really important to understand here, donald trump would never have kept one of barack obama's u.s.

attorneys on who was investigating donald trump's children. never. ever. in a million years. but joe biden did. joe biden kept a trump-appointed u.s. attorney on, did absolutely nothing, allowed the special prosecutor to continue to humiliate himself, durham, and actually won an investigation investigating the investigators. that was twice as long as the underlying investigation. but the justice department had a hands-off approach. again, why are we even talking about this? they're liars. these republicans are liars when they're running around and they're saying they're interested in justice. they're not interested in justice. they're not interested in lady justice, lady liberty or whatever having a blindfold on because they want us all to look away from the fact that a former

president, first of all, was part of a conspiracy to commit sedition against the united states, secondly, that he stole nuclear secrets. as bill barr and other cabinet officials said, donald trump's not the victim there. he stole the secrets. the doj politely asked for the secrets. donald trump refused to give them up. they sent a subpoena. he talked to his lawyer and said let's lie about these things and hide them. he then lied to his attorney. they finally came down and got the documents. bill barr said donald trump's not a victim, donald trump has committed crimes, bill barr believes and other conservatives believe, he's admitting to them every single night. why isn't tim scott, so interested in the equal application of the law saying

that? i don't understand. >> and kevin mccarthy. >> kevin mccarthy. and lindsey graham. we're not talking about nuclear secrets being stolen here. we're not talking about illegal payoffs to porn stars. we're talking about nuclear secrets being stolen and not returned. we're talking about defense posture, weaknesses actually in the united states. we're talking about our plans to attack iran in a war being kept by donald trump. >> there's your choice. >> why won't you talk about that, tim? why won't you talk about that, kevin? why won't you talk about -- do you not care about nuclear secrets anymore? >> apparently not, nope. >> donald trump has proven not only can he shoot somebody on 5th avenue and kevin mccarthy and tim scott and lindsey graham will defend him, he can steal

america's nuclear secrets. now, donald trump said that back in 2016, i can steal america's nuclear secrets, and my people won't care. i don't think people would have actually believed that in 2016. >> just want to remind people -- >> unfortunately, that's the reality we're facing. that's what this republican party under donald trump now has become. >> when he was running for president years ago, i remember experts who had time with president trump, who were just very thrown off and shaken almost by his obsession with nuclear secrets and why can't we go nuclear. >> why can't we use them. >> so here we are wondering what possibly could have been done with those documents. maybe nothing, maybe something. >> let's bring in former specialist to president biden.

and the state attorney for palm beach county and from "the washington post," the five-minute fix, amber phillips. thanks for being with us. dave, let me start with you and actually start by talking about these republicans that are saying that, oh, justice is slanted and tilted and everything else. you look at the hunter biden deal. you also look at the claims of illegality with hunter biden. and you see first of all a deal that most legal scholars i'm talking to are saying seems to be in line with what you should expect, even though some say first-time offenders probably wouldn't have gotten this tough of a deal. secondly, i keep asking the question of republicans, of trumpers, of conservative media types, what's the crime?

what's the crime in the biden crime family? they have no answer. it's just modern-day mccarthyism, isn't it? >> it sure is, joe. you said it, critics of this deal only have themselves to blame. they live if a right-wing echo chamber and believe the lies that hunter biden is dr. evil, the mastermind of an international crime syndicate. so when a five-year investigation comes up with minor offenses and probation, they go apoplectic and they blame prors. the prosecutor in this case, the u.s. attorney, was appointed by donald trump. and he was given complete authority by merrick garland to continue the investigation and file whatever criminal charges he thought were appropriate. equal justice under the law means that hunter biden should be treated no better and no worse than anyone else. if his name was hunter smith, he probably would not have been charged for the gun crimes. that's rarely enforced.

that law bans drug users from possessing weapons. it's close to being thrown out by the courts right now as unconstitutional. also, hunter may not have been charged with tax offenses, and since he is a first-time offensive ender and he paid the money back and during the two years he didn't pay taxes was in the throes of addiction, the probation deal here was appropriate. >> yeah. if his last name were not biden, these charges probably would not have been brought. that's what most legal analysts and experts were saying. i want to bring up joe biden, how deeply personal this has been for joe biden. i'm hearing reports that biden's upset because this is the same deal that the defense counsel offered to the u.s. attorney's office 18 months ago, and they balked at it i guess just to drag his name through the mud is what they're feeling. i'm not suggesting that at all.

joe biden loves his son very much. this has been extraordinarily painful. i want you to talk about that for the family. and at the same time let's continue to be dialectical, that's the word of the morning, everything i've heard is joe biden has been angry for quite some time with the dealings that had been going on here and has let the family know in no uncertain terms how angry he is and how he's been disappointed, not because they broke laws but because of the appearances that they were bad. >> yeah. remember, this investigation by the prosecutor, the republican prosecutor, has now lasted five years, which is longer than ken starr's investigation into whitewater and monica lewinsky of a president. we are talking about a presidential candidate. but back to your question, look, this is personal. the bidens are a close-knit

family and a strong family. what i would say is that -- and i talked about this a little last week with dr. b. in 1987, but they raised their family in the '70s and '80s and early '90s when there was much more civility in politics. dr. b. was pregnant with ted stevens' wife, katherine, they were good friends. they would go out. joe biden and john king would fight all day in the senate, and the four of them would go out to dinner at night. one thing dr. b. would always talked about and what stunned her, and the context here is the reason why i think the bidens are so personally hurt by this, is because kids were always off-limits, you know, politics was politics, but it stopped at the family. and that's what's changed here when democrats had power in 1991, they didn't launch

investigations into michael reagan accusations of stock fraud and 1990 when joe biden was judiciary chairman, he didn't launch investigations into the current president, neil bush's son, who basically cost the taxpayers a $1.5 billion bailout that federal regulators sued him for. and when you were in congress, you guys didn't go back into the '80s and investigate roger clinton's drug habits. things are different. they're humans like all of us, and when you prick them, they bleed. >> so, this concludes, we believe, this chapter of the hunter biden saga, the legal one, but there's a political one still being played out. republicans voiced their displeasure yesterday, about the two-tier justice they claim is in play and the biden crime family has gone unpunished. but there are some things they

can do because they control committees in the house. walk us through as best you know from your reporting what are the next steps here? they're only going to escalate their probes into hunter biden and try to make some sort of connection with his business dealings and the president. >> i think that's right, jonathan. you heard republicans yesterday, particularly the chair of the oversight committee, james comer, saying we're going to continue to investigate biden. if this federal investigation is over, ours is still ongoing. let me try to figure out what that investigation has found. i spent a good deal of time in the past couple weeks talking to republicans and democrats on this house oversight committee, and in trying to figure out -- they've been investigating for a year now, as joe keeps asking, what crime do you allege that the biden family has committed. so far, they have all these really vague allegations like there's a bribery scheme involving president biden, and that's based on an informant

tip, somebody, anybody can walk into the fbi and say i hear there's something wrong with president biden, and the fbi looked into it and says there's no "there" there. but you hear house republicans talking about this eyebrow-raising allegation a lot. but there's just no evidence of it. and president biden also, the white houses stresses, he's released 25 years of his tax returns. you would think if he was vice president and getting paid by foreigners to change policy, that would be in there. another allegation is that biden personally benefitted from his son's business deals. hunter biden, it does seem like, when president biden, when he was vice president was working in ukraine or china, there was hunter biden sitting on the board of the ukrainian energy company, he was trying to strike a deal with a chinese tycoon shortly after vice president biden left office. and so he was almost following, it appeared, his father to do business deals.

but republicans say that munl that hunter biden was getting -- and by the way, there's nothing illegal with children of presidents, especially if they're not in the white house doing business abroad, republicans say the money that he was getting was being funnelled to president biden, who personally benefitted from this. they've subpoenaed thousands of bank records from various biden family members, other associates, and there's just no evidence of this. and then the final and last allegation, the one that i don't think is going to go away anytime soon, is that there's just something nefarious hidden in hunter biden's laptop, and that's the one that i think keeps this hunter biden investigation moving forward despite all the other allegations being wispy thin, because you can take any email, any photo, there's even nude photos on there, and any text and turn it into some kind of allegation. >> yeah. "the washington post's" amber

phillips, well put. >> a great breakdown. >> it is, especially where she said, you know, joe biden has released his tax returns on and on and on, and again, tax returns were a big issue for former president donald trump, not to go back, but he wouldn't release his. they've been as transparent as they can be, and, yes, there are some questionable decisions, maybe not illegal, but maybe somebody else wouldn't have done that for sure. >> right. >> former special assistant to president biden michael la rosa, thank you for being on, and state attorney, thank you. >> let me ask you about this jury pool really quickly. i know the trial for donald trump has been moved up to fort pierce. that takings it out of miami. fort pierce, you look at st. lucie county, i think it's a 50/50 breakdown, but where does a jury pool get taken from? and is that going to be a more red jury pool than say miami?

>> it will, joe, if it is in fort pierce, it culls from a five-county region, not including palm beach region, which is blue, but five counties in the treasure coast, four or red and the fifth, st. lucie, the population sent tler, is a swing county. i have the order right here, and in the order is something interesting. she says that modifications can be made as necessary as the matter proceeds, which meanings it's not set in fort pierce yet. i could envision the venue changing to west palm beach because fort pierce is not used to high-profile cases. the reason it's thereupon is because judge cannon is the only judge based up there. it's 60 miles north of west palm beach. it's unclear if they have the security infrastructure that can handle the chaos that's going to ensue. courthouse parking there is a mess. >> yeah. i was just going to ask that question. how can you -- how can you hold the most important criminal trial probably in u.s. history

in a small courthouse without the infrastructure, first of all, to make sure that everybody's protected including the former president, when you have miami, which has all the infrastructure, when you have west palm beach, which has all the infrastructure and the ability and all of the resources needed to conduct, again, the most important trial i think we probably have had certainly in recent history? how can you do that in a rural county? >> yeah. it would be very difficult. miami is about 130 miles away from fort pierce, so i don't think judge cannon is going to agree to go down there, three hours of driving each way each day. >> right. >> but west palm beach is about 60 miles away and it's a real possibilities. keep in mind, joe, although palm beach county is a blue county, 43% of the voters voted for trump. 43% out of 12 jurors is five.

all it takes is one juror to say no, i'm not going to send my favorite president to the hoosegow, and that is a hung jury. that may be trump's best defense, not based on the evidence or the law, just based on what's called jury nullification. he hopes he can get a trump loyalist on that jury to keep him out of prison. >> all right. coming up on "morning joe," just 48 hours after his secretary of state's visit to beijing, president biden escalates tensions with china. we'll tell you what he said. and a new documentary devils into the case of a chinese spy that tried to steal trade scents from a handful of america's biggest companies. also ahead, a new report on the ethical concerns surrounding donald trump's latest real estate deal, this time in oman. that's next on "morning joe."

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welcome back to "morning joe." it is 36 past the hour. questions are being raised this morning about former president donald trump's agreement to work with a saudi firm to develop a hotel and golf complex in the gulf of oman. according to "the new york times," the oman deal has taken his financial stake in one of the world's most strategically important and volatile regions to a new level, underscoring how his business and his politics intersect as he runs for president again amid intensifying legal and ethical troubles. an investigation by the paper reveals the venture puts trump in business with the government

of oman, a relationship trump and his son-in-law, jared kushner, developed while in office. nobody see a problem here? nobody see any -- "this is as blatant as hit comes," said virginia canter, the chief ethics counsel to citizens for responsibility and ethics. "how and when is he going to sell out u.s. interests? that is the question this creates. it is the kind of corruption our founding fathers most worried about. the trump organization declined to comment to the times on this report. by the way, the documents, like think about it. also, china is responding this morning after president biden yesterday called chinese president xi a dictator. biden was addressing a crowd at a fund raiser in california and talking about the spy balloon incident from february when nbc news reports he said, "the reason why xi jinping got very

upset in terms of when i shot that balloon down with two boxcars full of spy equipment is he didn't know it was there. that's a great embarrassment for dictators when they didn't know what happened." meanwhile, a new documentary shows just how intense the battle with china over intellectual property has become. >> reporter: this is a spy story. >> this is as big of a case as we've had in 20 years. >> there is a chinese spy trying to obtain secret technology. >> a story that shows how millions of american jobs now and in the future are on the line. >> i think every major american corporation needs to assume they are a target to be either replaced or gutted. >> what's at stake here for the u.s. economy? >> american quality of life, american innovation, ultimate american national security. it's not just wall street, it's main street. >> china's corporate spy war

explains how beijing is using covert agents to attempt to infiltrate and steal from some of america's biggest corporations. the documentary airs tonight on cnbc at 10:00 p.m. eastern. joining us now, the host of that documentary, senior washington correspondent for cnbc, eamon. this as we try to stabilize relationships with china. what's going on? >> we saw blinken in china trying to mend fences over the weekend and early this week. now you have the u.s. intelligence community looking at china's efforts to steal from american corporations. we've been working on the documentary since october. i tell you i got into it because my sources in the u.s. intelligence e intelligence community kept telling me we don't think that corporate america gets it. they don't fully understand. the general sort of thinking in corporate america for years about this has been, well, the chinese are stealing because they're behind, they want to

catch up. they're going to narrow the gap. it will be expensive and cause us some problems. but it's basically not a huge deal. what the intel community guys were saying that the corporate folks were missing was it's a two-part plan, one to steal the intellectual company, and then to hand it off to selected chinese companies, success diz their products and eliminate the american incumbent companies in that space. so that's a much deeper threat than a lot of people in corporate america assumed they were dealing with. that's why we started this documentary. >> there are so many flashpoints between washington and beijing right now, it's easy to overlook this one, the corporate side of it. so there aren't many things in d.c. that brings republicans and democrats together these days, but one of them is this need to do more to combat china, to curb china's rising influence, in this case theft. what are some of the measures being considered? >> what we look at here is a case involving g.d. aviation.

there was a chinese intelligence agency in china trying to crack into it to get fan blade technology. it sounds obscure, but it's crucial to making profitable jet engines and to making a jet engine company like a g.d. aviation or a boeing, for example. they tried to get an engineer inside g.e. to leak them the technology. the fbi approached the engineer in ohio, flipped him, and sent him back to the chinese as a double agent. so a classic sort of spy versus spy tale of a double agent going back to the chinese. the chinese thought we've got secret sources, he'll give us the secret plans for the jet engines. in reality, he was sending fake plans that had been doctored by ge back to the chinese. they thought they were getting the good stuff. i won't reveal the ending of thousand case ended up, but that's the kind of level of espionage they're seeing. when we talk to cia experts as we did for this piece, they say what we need to do is a lot more double agent operations and send

more spies back out because that's the only way you can fight a spy versus spy war. >> the documentary "china's corporate spy war" airs tonight on cnbc at 10:00 eastern time. cnbc's senior washington correspondent, ea meshgs on javrs, thank you very much for bringing us that report. >> thank you. coming up, rescue crews continue the desperate search for a miss missing tourist submersible that went missing while diving toward the "titanic. "the disaster has some questioning why anyone would pay a high price to take such a dangerous trip. just ahead, we'll get a look at what that expedition is like from those who have been there. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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47 past the hour. search-and-rescue efforts continue for the missing "titanic" tour submersible, which disappeared on sunday hundreds of miles off the coast

of the u.s. and about 13,000 feet under the ocean surface. nbc news correspondent looks at the submersible the titan and what it's like to explore the "titanic's" wreckage. >> reporter: for the price of $250,000, oceangate exploration gives passengers a once-in-a-lifetime experience. there's not a trip like this. >> an eight-day journey from newfoundland to the "titanic" wreck site about 900 miles off the coast of cape god. the ceo stockton rush, one of those on board the titan now, told nbc in 2022 passengers have to do more than pay a steam fee. >> this is a real expedition. we have all kinds of challenges. >> reporter: former passengers say you have to sign a massive waiver that right up front says the trip can result in death. once passengers board the support ship, oceangate provides

a vessel orientation and safety briefing. >> platform, ready to dive. >> reporter: the submersible can't do much on its own. it's attached to a floating platform and dragged to sea by motor boats. its controls are quite basic. >> we run the whole thing with this game controller. >> reporter: the vessel detaches and starts to submerge. >> you feel somewhat like you're on a totally different planet as you descend. >> reporter: it takes about 2 1/2 hours to travel over two miles deep under the sea. passengers describe the vessel as cold with only one porthole to allow passengers to look outside. and by all accounts, it is cramped. at just over 22 feet long and 8.3 feet high, this photo shows the seating configuration in practice. passengers on the floor barefoot. so, what if nature calls on the roughly ten-hour mission? there is a small bathroom with a privacy curtain. and oceangate says they turn the

music up loud. the passengers describe the moment they reach the bottom as emotional. >> to softly land like that with just a little puff of debris was movie-like. >> reporter: the up close and personal view of the "titanic" wreckage can last four or five hours. passengers who have reached these depths, an exclusive club. more people have gone into space. but going this deep under water is actually technologically harder to engineer. >> this incident is causing broader tourism industry and especially extreme tourism to be looked at under a close microscope to say, are we doing everything we can? are we minimizing risk? >> nbc's kristen dahlgren with that report. nbc's kristen dahl that report, and with time and oxygen running out, we will be following the story. we will bring you updates as they develop. so global citizen is taking its calls to address climate change into action tomorrow with

its power our planet event in paris. the campaign is calling for a major shift in the way the world's financial systems work with developing nations as they transition to clean energy, deal with natural disasters, and address their most pressing needs. the event will take place at 2:00 p.m. eastern and will feature appearances and performances from the likes of lenny kravitz, billie eilish, h.e.r., michelle yeoh, and many, many more. it's going to be amazing. joining us now global citizen cofounder hugh evans. talk more about the ultimate goal here and how people can be involved with this from around the world. >> well, thank you very much, mika. we're thrilled tomorrow that 20,000 global citizens will join us here live in paris to power our planet, a campaign calling for urgent financial reform and debt relief for the world's

emerging markets who are crippled by the current debt crisis due to no fault of their own. we know that we need ultimately the world bank and new president r.j. banger to step up. he needs to stretch the world bank's balance sheet and ultimately initiate what's called a debt pause clause to enable emerging markets when they're crippled by debt as a result of natural disasters to be able to invest that money into their own populations, not repaying the world bank. we also need the world government's meeting under the presidency of president emmanuel macron of france tomorrow to commit to deliver on their promises of $100 billion of climate financing that they committed to under the paris climate change agreement. this involves the u.s. government principally. janet yellen is here in person, and we know that often what happens is the u.s. government will repeat the same talking points that they've said year after year after year that they will fulfill their promised former secretary of state john

kerry continues to say this, and they have not lived up to their promise to ultimately commit the 11 or odd billion dollars that the u.s. government needs to do to ultimately give their fair share under the paris climate change accord. >> and give us a sense of -- i see names behind you that i've named, some of the stars that are joining forces, performing, showing up. who else will be there? >> well, in addition to obviously the incredible headliners like lenny kravitz, billie eilish, h.e.r., john batiste, we're also thrilled that this event is going to be co-chaired by the prime minister of barbados who's joining me in paris now. the prime minister is champion on behalf of barbados through this campaign calling for e equity and justice on behalf of obviously her own nation but also the caribbean region and also emerging markets all around the world because this is a

global campaign, and under her leadership we know that this is about this power of public policy meets pop culture. we have the world's greatest artists together with the world's greatest leaders coming together. we need those leaders to act. we need the u.s. we need janet yellen to step up. if they don't, then there's no way we can actually enable markets to transition to clean energy and withstand natural disasters in the future. >> you can catch global citizens power our planet tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. eastern time on youtube and apple music as well as at globalcitizen.org. hugh evans, thank you very much. good luck tomorrow, we'll be watching. >> thank you, mika, and thank you to everyone at "morning joe." >> all right, take care. a few other headlines as we close out the fourth hour. nearly one-third of the nation's homeless population lives in california a new study found

this. a sweeping study published by the university of california san francisco also found that almost 90% reported that the cost of housing was the main reason they could not escape homelessness. the state now has more than 171,000 people who are homeless, 30% of the national total. the study also found that california's homeless population is growing older in age with the median age now at 47 years old. turns out the pentagon overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to ukraine by $6.2 billion overed past two years. a detailed review of the accounting error found that the military used replacement costs rather than the book value of equipment that was pulled from pentagon stocks and sent to ukraine. as a result the department now has additional money in its coffers that will be used for future security packages.

a pentagon spokesperson said the accounting mistake will not affect the ongoing delivery of aid to ukraine. fans and former players are posting tributes to former pittsburgh steelers linebacker clark hagens, a popular sports radio host announced his death last night. the 46-year-old played 13 seasons in the nfl, most of them in pittsburgh. he was a member of the 2005 steelers team that won the super bowl. so far no cause of death has been released. and that does it for us this morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage after a quick final break. ck final break.

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