we know how people will be able to throw her off. we'll see one candidate give a full explanation and an answer to a question, and it will stand in stark difference to donald trump. >> you're describing a very low bar that people should clear, i suppose, when they want to be president. republican strategist and msnbc political analyst, susan, really appreciate it. >> thank you. and thank you for getting up "way too early" for us this friday morning. we made it to the weekend. "morning joe" starts right now. . "morning joe" starts right now virtually 100% of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants, you know that? most of the job creation has gone to migrants. in fact, i've heard that substantially more than -- beyond -- actually beyond. it's a much higher than that.

>> some, among other things, suspicious math there for the former president yesterday calling what he calls a news conference, but it featured much of what he typically says at his rallies. we have more from that event in just a moment. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, august 16. along with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of "the washington post" eugene robinson and managing editor at the bulwark sam stein is with us. sam. thank you for joining "way too early" this morning. >> donald trump held a second so-called news conference in many weeks, this one at his club in bedminster, new jersey beforehand trump was seen meeting with mypillow ceo mike lindell who continues to deny the results of the 2020 election. as for the event, trump spoke for just under an hour before

taking several questions from reporters at the end. initially he held back from making personal attacks against vice president kamala harris and read from scripted remarks which included many falsehoods, lies, but as things went on it turned into what we typically hear at the rallies. take a look. >> i won pennsylvania and i did much better the second time. i won it in 2016 and did it much better the second time. i tend to poll low, in some cases, really low. you know in, 2016 i was polling low because people didn't want to say who they are voting for. i don't know if that's supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is, and -- and we did very well in 2016, and we did much better in 2020, much better, but bad things happened. i think i'm entitled to personal attacks. i don't have a lot of respect for her. i don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and i think she will be a terrible

president, and i think it's very important that we win, and whether the personal attacks are good, bad, i mean, she certainly attacks me personally. she actually called me weird. he's weird. it's just a sound bite, and she called j.d. and i weird. he's not weird. he was a great student at yale. he went to ohio state. i don't think people know who she is yet. when people -- really people didn't know. can you ask the man on the street, i saw it on one of the shows today. they asked a man on the street what's the last name of kamala? nobody knew. it's harris. nobody knew the last name. she's a very strong communist lean. you're all going to be thrown into a communist system. it's a communist system. you'll be thrown into the system where everybody gets health care. >> you can be thrown into a communist -- you're going to be thrown into a communist system. by the way, willie, let's see here. let me check the dow.

over 40,000 yesterday. 40,500. our economy -- >> inflation cooling. >> actually stronger relative to the rest of the world than any time over the past half century. our economy unbridled capitalism, whether you like it or not, unbridled capitalism ruing the day in america. more billionaires than ever before, more millionaires a than ever before, more wealth created than ever before. you look at real wages for working americans, it's been going up, as you pointed out, willie, consistently for quite some time. what he just said is wrong and it's more of a denigrating of the united states of america. we are a great country. we are a strong country. we are economically powerful. again, this so-called communist country has a state like texas

that has a bigger economy than russia. california a bigger economy than india. like we are strong and powerful. we are wealthy. our economy bother than any in the world and nobody across the world thinks oh, those americans, they are communists. no, they are like those americans -- american capitalism keeps rolling on. keeps getting stronger. keeps getting more powerful. >> the timing, among many other things yesterday was way off. even on fox if you watched it there, he was talking about how the economy was cratering, the markets are tanking. as a little box in the corner of the screen showed the markets soaring, and this came one day after that inflation report that heartened so many economists, liberal and conservatives showing that inflation had really cooled, that grocery prices are up just 1% year over

year and the entire of sort of idea of the press conference, we'll play another bizarre clip of him, standing in front of boxes of cheerios and talking about how he wanted to take the cheerios back to his cottage and have a lot of fun with them. we can deal with that later. >> oh. >> but the prices of groceries, still too high as we stipulate. still too high, but in the 24 hours before he had that press conference, this report came out showing that prices are cooling, so he's flailing. i guess, mike, he thinks in some way because he's doing them so often, two within the space of a week, one at mar-a-lago, one at bedminster yesterday at his members-only club, that these help him somehow, that he's maybe baiting vice president harris into doing a press conference of his own, but the more he talks, the less sense he makes, to a lot of people, not to his hard core supporters but to a lot of people, and as we keep saying the harris campaign, it's thrilled to have this kind of material out there once a week. >> don't you think that he does

these press conferences or whatever you want to call them just because he wants to see himself on tv. he wants to be on tv. that's who he is. yesterday was tough. i mean, there were a couple of day baseball games. i was watching those in the afternoon, but i decided to watch the former president at his press conference surrounded by groceries, and it was a tough watch. you have to have a lot of time on your hands to listen to him. >> yeah. >> and to joe's point, he continually, no matter how he begins what are soliloquy he's talking about whether it's about cheerios or the economy, he ends up running this country into the ground. >> yeah. >> no matter what topic it is. >> why? >> in one element he was talking about the dangers to jewish people in this country, and he said it's so severe that here's the quote, sam played it earlier, maybe we have it today. we'll play it further. honestly, you don't have a chance. so that's -- you don't have a chance. if you're living in america under who he calls kamala, what

does he call her, kamala? >> he knows how to say it. in private moments he says it correctly, yeah. >> but the running down of this country is a consistent underlying theme in everything he says, and in terms of elections, elections are about the future. people want to feel optimistic about the future for their children, and he's the exact opposite. >> here is that they'reos moment i was talking about. this is the former president of the united states speaking about inflation at his bedminster golf club. >> they did a nice job, wow. i haven't -- that's good. i don't like the tags very much. look at that, up 46%, eggs, wow. up 65%, wow. school lunches up 65%. how can a family afford that? look at here. that's a nice job. i think i'll take them back to my comment and have a lot of fun. like the cheerios. i'm going to take them back.

bacon is through the roof. all for the roof. >> made for tiny hands. >> stupid country. he calls america a stupid country. he says we're a loser country. he said the american dream is dead, and, again, there's just such a disconnect with where i think almost all americans are. i think most americans are really proud of this country and know that we're the greatest country in the world. we have fed more and freed more people than any other country ever. our economy is stronger than ever. our military is stronger relative to the rest of the world than ever. i can't -- i keep talking about the goodness of america and the greatness of america because you have one party that keeps tearing down america, and i will tell you yesterday we can talk about cheerios and all that other stuff, but yesterday along these lines donald trump actually did something that once

again undermines the greatest of america. he insulted recipients of the medal of honor. his comment was one of the first things he said when he was talking at another event yesterday at his golf club in new jersey, and that was anti-semitism, praising mayorum adelson whom he awarded the medal of freedom in 2018 and then he went on and argued that it's better to get a civilian award than to get -- get an award given to american heros who are given those awards because of sacrifice to their country in war. you're not going to believe -- well, actually if you listen to what general kelly said and what jeff goldblum has written you will believe it, but this is what he said yesterday. >> i have to say, i watched sheldon sitting so proud in the white house when he gave miriam

the presidential medal of freedom. that's the highest award you can get as a civilian. it's the equivalent of the congressional medal of honor, but civilian version. it's actually much better because everyone gets the congressional medal of honor, the soldiers. they are either in very bad shape because they have been hit so many times by bullets and they are dead. she gets it and she's a healthy, beautiful woman. >> i mean, first of all, jeff goldblum did say it i think in -- the outtakes of "the fly." it's friday morning. stephanie goldberg and general kelly have said donald trump, willie, just didn't understanded the sacrifice that our men and women have made and called them suckers and losers, quizzically asking general kelly why. why would somebody sacrifice themselves? what's in it for them, and then, of course, yesterday saying a

civilian award was much better because you didn't have to get shot up with bullets or die to get those awards, and he has a long history, willie, of disparaging american veterans and service members. >> he does. i mean, you said it right. this is shocking but not surprising because of the pattern. this is not a one-off. this is the way he thinks about people who serve the country in uniform. in 2015, trump mocked, of course, late senator john mccain for having been a prisoner of war. remember he said, quote, i like people who weren't captured. according to "the atlantic" trump repeatedly questioned the intelligence of service members and requested wounded veterans be excluded interest military parades. he cancelled a trip to pay respects to america's war dead in europe, reportedly asking staff members, quote, why should i go to that staff cemetery. it's filled with losers talking about americans who died in war. and in a separate conversation trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their

lives at bella woods as suckers, and when a navy s.e.a.l. was killed the commander in chief passed the responsibility to his superiors saying they lost ryan. he has such deep respect for people of the military and those who earn the congressional medal of honor. it shows who he is. he doesn't understand the sacrifice of people who earn that award, but, boy, if you're famous and rich and he perceives you as beautiful and you meet the casting call, you're the real winner. >> yeah. there's something really warped inside of him. there really is. just something -- i guess the word weird is overused, but -- but all that -- all that we just played is weird, and it is just

appalling that he would speak of america's heroes that way. i mean, the heroes, many who made the ultimate sacrifice for the country, and he simply does not get it. he doesn't understand. there's a connection there that's not being made, and, you know, you saw it where for years he was president and, boy, if he ever became president again, i would really worry about this country because of -- of that -- of that emptiness, that lack inside of him, that lack of empathy, that lack of patriotism. it's just not there. it's not there. it's not there. >> sam, you've covered the former president. you've written about the former president. we see the former president every day on tv.

one part of us, i don't know about you, but part of me is not surprised by these comments because donald trump is the singular act. he does not understand. he cannot comprehend what it's like to be part of a unit and whether it's a company of soldiers, a platoon over a group of people in an office. he does not understand the idea of group effort. what was your view when you heard that tape we played earlier this morning, that you played earlier on "way too early," when he was talking about the dangers to jewish people? we're going to play t.rack it up. >> toxic poison of anti-semitism now courses through the veins of the radical democratic party. this is a group of -- a radical group of people. i never thought i'd see it. they have gone crazy, and instead of expunging this hatred

kamala harris is pandering to it. if you have a president like her, obviously you don't have a chance. >> sam? >> so i -- i had not seen both that and the comments about the congressional medal recipients until this morning. i had seen the hour and a half long news conference, if you want to talk about it, and, you know, look, like you, mike, i watched the whole thing. at times it's painful. but it also gets at this weird dichotomy around trump. on the one hand we all gawk at it. he's a carnival barker. he's talking about cheerios, making about prices from the goods in front of his country club. the disconnect there is profound. he's at his country club, and minutes later he's talking and denigrating people who were injured in the line of service. that to me really just sort of symbolizes him, right?

on the one hand we kind of go numb to it a little bit and on the other hand you still get shocked and you can still get shocked by what he says. i'll just say as a matter of politics, and i know this is not about politics because that's secondary, it doesn't matter about politics. one is -- two points. one is he started the press conference, literally the first word out of his mount is kamala harris has destroyed the world, destroyed the world, okay? once you start there at that level, it's tough to really up the ante. if you've destroyed the world, you know, you can't really go much further than that, okay. so i'm not really sure that serves him well to start alternate level and two is, look, i mean, the -- the republican campaign right now, the trump campaign is going really aggressively at tim walz on grounds that he exaggerated his service but more importantly on grounds that he ducked out of serving in iraq right before his unit was deployed because he

wanted to pursue a political career. as i read trump's remarks yesterday, tim walz should be celebrated, right, because who would want to do that? who would want to risk service, so i don't really see how they can on the one hand accuse tim walz of doing what he did and then on the other hand trump get up there and say only suckers really go and serve. the real medal recipients are those who get the presidential medal of freedom, not congressional one. >> yeah. you know, sam, he's also in his time, he's told -- he's called groups in charlottesville that chanted jews will not replace us holding torches, called them good people, so there were good people on both sides. he had said that any jew that doesn't vote for him is not a good jew, and when he talks to americans who happen to be jewish, he calls benjamin netanyahu your prime minister. he calls the israeli ambassador

to america your ambassador, calls the country your country suggesting that if you're a jew, you're not fully american. >> yeah. he's talked -- the dual loyalty trope, i think people need to understand this. the dual loyalty trope is inherently anti-semitic, because it suggests that people like me, jews born in america we're not loyal to america but only to the jews in the jewish state and he's pushed this stuff since running for president and then he gets up there and says, you know the real threat to america is on the other side and doug emoff who is the first jewish spouse of a vice president is not sufficiently jewish.

you can't imagine how deflating that is. we don't identify with israel because it's our faith. in fact, a lot of jewish americans find the israeli government in its current incarnation abhorrent. we have the capacity for independent thought and loyalty toe america and he removes that from us when he says things like the things that you just read. >> still ahead on "morning joe," president biden and vice president kamala harris hold their first joint event since the democratic ticket change. we'll show you the warm reception that the president got and his victory lap on lowering prescription drug costs, but, first, our next guest says the harris and trump campaigns aren't focusing on policy. instead, they are being driven by emotions and vibes. that conversation is ahead on "morning joe." we're back in 90 seconds. n "morning joe." we're back in 90 seconds one thing we know is true: no matter race, gender, ethnicity... the need to screen when due...

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swap earlier this month has arrived back on american soiled. vladimir kara-murza was treated yesterday. he and his family met with president joe biden at the white house. and the secret service has approved a new plan to better protect president trump at outdoor rallies. >> that bar is awfully low. what are they going to do? >> are they actually going to surround the president? >> secure the perimeter and stop the president from doing jumping jacks after he's shot and there could be another active shooter out there. i think, there are many so many stories coming at us so quickly. >> you're right. >> this is a story we need to stay on for a very long time. >> what the heck happened there? >> to figure out what the heck happened with the secret service. how could they have so badly secured the perimeter and so badly operated while gunfire was going off, and why did it take them so long to get him off the stage, and why did they keep him

exposed for ten seconds, and why did they stop when he said hold on. hold on. i want to get my shoes. no. you hear gunfire and at any other time the secret service grabs the person and pulls him off the stage and covers them up. i still -- there's nothing that makes sense about the secret service and how they operated, and i'm not sure how anybody in a managing position keeps their jobs. >> well, two sources familiar with the plan tell nbc news the secret service will now use bulletproof grass to protect trump at outdoor events. the protective measure is already provided to president biden and vice president harris, but it was not approved for trump due to transportation issues for the glass which is typically transported by military aircraft. back to politics now, donald trump's running mate senator j.d. vance said in a 2021 speech

that companies that back abortion rights just want to pool of cheap labor with workers unaffected by those caring for children. vance was referring to a statement from stacy abrams who said that a georgia abortion ban would be bad for business. >> she was right. this is something those of us on the right have to accept is that when the big corporations come against you for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they don't want people to parent children, she's right to say that abortion restrictions are bad for business. >> nbc news asked vance about those comments during a campaign event in pennsylvania and he doubled down saying he believes much of corporate america views children as curses rather than blessings. >> very often corporate america is not especially friendly to parents with young children,

especially young moms with young children, and i think that we have to promote a culture of pro-family thinking and pro-family policy in this country where we see children as -- as blessings and as resources and not as curses which is how i think way too many companies and frankly too many of our leaders in washington think about our young children. would i very much like for our young moms and young dads to be able to have whatever family they want to have and for them to not feel like it's going to ruin their career or ruin their future. we should be encouraging young moms and dads to bring life into the world, and i think there are a whole host of ways that we prevent them from doing it, and that's got to change. >> gene, yes, we should encourage young families to make choices. ivf may be one of those choices. >> yes. >> perhaps because the -- the mother's health or concerns.

they may not feel like the state should force or compel them to -- to have a forced state-compelled birth. perhaps a family wants to step in when their 10-year-old daughter has been raped by an illegal immigrant in the state of ohio and instead they want to get together with their doctor and preacher and mental health provider, and they want to be able to make that decision as a family instead of making the raped 10-year-old girl plead. that's the lunacy of all of this. he's sitting up there saying what he's saying and just ignoring everything that's happening because of donald trump's ban. >> yeah. and incident if you want to be

pro-family, why -- maybe it would be pro-family not to have to worry that children would be -- we would be shot in the schools because of the easy availability of assault weapons and -- but, you know, that aside. what is he talking about? what -- what corporate america is he talking about that is anti-child? he's just inventing this sort of strawman to attack with this sort of oblique angle that doesn't really relate to anything in the real world or to anybody in the real world, and he does it without any policies behind it, right? fine. let's have a generous national family leave policiy is that

mothers and fathers get a chance to spend a good time with their newborns. let's have, you know, all sorts of other policies that encourage and make it easier for parents. i heard no search agenda. i heard this weird and frankly untrue slur on corporate america, and i'm not usually a defender of corporate america writ large but i just don't see what he's talking about. >> coming up, we'll show the intentions of people not wishing

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ryan t. writes, "moving is stressful. can you help me take one thing off of my to do list?” ugh, moving's the worst. with xfinity, you can transfer your internet in just a few taps. just a few easy moves. did somebody say “easy moves”? ♪ ♪ oh no. no, i was talking about moving your internet. this will move the internet. ♪ ♪ ooh, ooh. -let's keep it professional. professional dancers! -ok! stay connected during your move with the best in home wifi. easily transfer your services in the xfinity app. bring on the good stuff. we can speak all afternoon about the person that i am staging on this stage with. [ cheers and applause ] there's a lot of love in this room for our president. and i think it's for many, many

reasons, including few leaders in our nation have done more on so many issues, including to expand access to affordable health care than joe biden. [ cheers and applause ] and today we take the next step, thank you, joe, forward in our fight. >> thank you, joe! thank you, joe! thank you, joe! >> for years big pharma fought pleas to lower the costs for drug care. look, at this time we finally beat big pharma. [ applause ] and i might add with no help from republicans, not a single republican voted for this bill, period, not one in the entire congress.

and get this. you may have heard about the republican project 2025 plan. they want to repeal medicare's power to negotiate drug prices, but big pharma -- let me tell you what our project 2025 is. beat the hell out of them. >> president biden and vice president harris at an event in maryland yesterday touting the administration's new agreement to cut certain drug prices. >> and let me say the front page of "the new york times" talks about the billions of dollars, the billions of dollars that this program is going to save and it's really telling that not a single republican, you know, they claim to be fiscally conservative. they claim to want free markets. none of that. none of that. they didn't want to make these

big pharma companies negotiate with medicare. joe biden got it done, and there's going to be billions and billions of dollars worth of savings for the taxpayers in the years to come. >> so with democratic enthusiasm on the rights, new polling shows the so-called double haters, voters who disliked both the democratic and the republican presidential candidates has been cut in half after kamala harris joined the race. according to the latest monmouth university poll, just 8% of voters do not have a favorable view of harris or trump. when biden was leading the ticket, that number was more than double, 17% didn't have a favorable view of either candidate. so joining us now, national politics reporter for "the boston globe" james pinnedel. his new piece harris and trump aren't focusing on policy. instead, their campaigns are

driven by emotions and vibe. >> this is all very shocking. i mean, this has never happened before. kamalot, hope and change, morning in america. i mean, these campaigns for the most part are about vibes, aren't they? you look and so often it is, you know, a turn of a phrase, you know. ronald reagan's there you gon or -- or again barack obama hope and change that wins the day. >> yeah. there's an overall theme that even, joe, when you ran for congress in 1994, you know, you ran with the contract of america and in the next presidential election george w. bush put out policy and you can go through every single election where we had specific policy ideas for a specific problem facing the country but underneath, it on this particular campaign right now, voters aren't demanding the

specifics. journalists are not. this election seems to be much big. i'm not saying it's good or bad but it's an observation so far that this campaign is not been one on how exactly we fix problems with the economy or the border and so on and so on. >> james, good morning. can you speak to how extraordinarily those vibes that you write about this morning have shifted in the last month. it was doom and gloom all summer, particularly after the debates and in some quarters there was a sense of resignation. donald trump is going to win. how do we deal with that? how do we lock down the senate and house so he can't run roughshod through washington and how quickly in the last three and a half weeks or so things have changed in terms of those vibes. >> even, if you want to go back to 2020, democrats were saying, look, joe biden is not my favorite person but he's the only democrat who can beat donald trump and it turned out to be true. such a tight election it's

probably very true, and this time obviously joe biden is not my favorite democrat, but maybe he's the only one we got. he is the president, but now there obviously is a different vibe shift. the democrats now think, wow, maybe we can actually win this elect. you talked about the double haters in the beginning of this segment, very real. and the enthusiasm gap is obvious. how long this lasts, this still feelings like a honeymoon. obviously it lasts through the convention next week. we'll see what happens with the first major challenge for the harris campaign if it ever happens. >> james, i was going to ask you. how do they bottle this up? we have 83 days or something like that. she's got the convention and then the debates. she has a war chest unlike anything we've seen for advertisements, but at some point, you know, do things get cheap and so how do you foresee that happening? >> well, look, as one source put it to me the other day, this presidential campaign is not exactly a roller coaster. it feels like it, but it's

really a kiddie roller coaster. the margins of gaining up -- going down are still within one, two or three points. there's no doubt about that, and obviously we expect this to be a longer campaign. september will be a very critical point, particularly whether it comes to that presidential debate or anything else that could happen in the world. look, what kamala harris is doing right now is changing the electoral map. we're no longer just talking about the blue wall states which we were in the final days of the joe biden campaign. can he just win pennsylvania and michigan and wisconsin to block trump? there's now the southern belt strategy, and the mere fact that donald trump is on the air in north carolina, that he went to asheville earlier this week shows how the map is changing the moment kamala harris is on the ticket. >> all right. national political reporter at ""the boston globe,"" james

pindal, thanks so much for joining us. >> and coming up, a piece that says that kamala harris' best campaign surrogate is donald trump. and also joining the conversation this morning is senator bob casey to explain what he's hearing about the race from voters around his ballot ground state. "morning joe" will be right back. ground state "morning joe" will be right back still have symptoms from moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn's disease after a tnf blocker like humira or remicade?

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♪ down a southern bridges road ♪ >> come on, mike barnicle. come on, mike barnicle. >> you hang out with those guys, don't you. how great are the eagles. >> they are good. >> don henley might be one of the greatest musicians of all time, joe, and the eagles, of course, for years, they had the number one best-selling album of all time, "eagles greatest hits." i don't know if it's still number one or not, but, yeah. of course, there's also the dude, you know, in the back seat of the cab saying i hate the eagles which was a one-liner for the ages out of movies. i could listen to the eagles all day long. let's do it, as a matter of fact. >> willie, of course,

extraordinary to see what glen frei and don henley started and all the great musicians. >> what a beautiful song. i'm so glad you let that breeze. i was sitting there. forgot we were on tv. great job by q in the control room. >> yeah. it's beautiful. you know, willie, it is a great song. that documentary is a great documentary, not as great as the documentary on you and me and our escape from turkey. we'll talk about that later. >> yeah. >> we're not competing. you know, it did pretty well at the box office. not quite as well as "dead pool" and "wolverine" which has now crossed the billion dollar mark, and -- and let me tell you something, little jack. >> wow. >> get the swiss miss chocolate cocoa out. putting on his little german shorts and suspenders, and he's going to run downstairs, and he's going to hear uncle willie talk to one of the stars of this

extraordinarily successful movie. >> jack goes what, about 6'3" still wearing the lederhosen. still wearing the knee socks and lederhosen on sunday. this is an interview you'll see later on this show, this morning, special for "morning joe" which is my interview with ryan reynolds. you said "dead pool" and "wolverines" crossed the billion dollar mark at the box office. by this time tomorrow it will probably become the highest grossing r-rated movie of all time. it passed "oppenheimer" sand about to pass "joker" before that. also something we've shared for the past decade, his late father and my father has parkinson's

disease. he's doing new work around parkinson's and we had a great heart-to-heart conversation about that and "dead pool" coming up in our fourth hour coming up on "morning joe." >> i look forward to that. >> that's very cool. i like to watch that. i'll tell you what i can wait to watch, the red sox lose again, sam stein. >> why do they keep doing that? what's going on? what's going on? >> stuck in mediocrity. ups and down. barnicle knows this, stretches where things seem so optimistic and then we play poorly. i was going to use a different word. you know, this is what i expected. we're aiming for the third wild card spot at this juncture. there it is. 63-57. we're stuck in mediocrity. >> yeah. i mean, i think that's a lot better than many of us expected at the beginning of the year. we don't know exactly what's going to happen. you look at the second half of the season, and we've had a reversal. in the first half of the season the e.r.a. was great, among the best in baseball and now it's

one of the worst. our hitting was a little below average first half of the season. second half of the season, we're doing very well, but there is no doubt we keep blowing the leads. you look at the big series like coming up after the all-star break against the dodgers. really a good pull ben would have won two of those three games. instead we got southwest. you look at the opportunities with houston and look at our opportunities with the rangers, and, i mean, we keep blowing games. i'll tell you. the rangers game the other night looked more like 2022. >> that was painful. >> that was painful. >> one of the most painful losses of the year. brutal. >> you know what the story is. a group of young pitchers, some with more promise than others, but neither of them have ever exceeded the number of innings that they have had to pitch this summer and they are gassed. they are gassed. there 's the old ancient red sox curse. no matter what the sun is out or not, no matter whether you're sitting at a ball game watching

a day game or a night game you know there's a storm cloud above your head. you know suddenly it's going to rain, it's going to darken and you're going to get the bad news in terms of reality of baseball. >> willie, i know we won the world series-ins '04 rand '07 and '13 and '18, but barnicle, he remembers '67, '75, '78 and '86. >> '86. >> i'm telling you. it is -- it is -- it's like -- it's -- it's like people in the balkans. they remember what happened in the 14th century. instead of good things. >> what? >> i'm serious. >> i was talking to a friend after winning fourth world

series after all these years of losing. i can tell you where i was when bucky didn't hit the home run. they would much like rather tell that story. like the bosnians would like to talk about things in the 14th century than talk about the good things. >> i had the same thought as mike was lamenting watching the red sox. pre-2004 thinking. guys. it's been 20 years. you guys have been great for 20 years and to your point, joe, after begrudgingly after 2004 when the red sox won -- a red sox fan congratulating him and he said well, this just starts the next curse. you haven't won the world series. >> it's not a curse. >> it's not a curse. >> it's not waiting for a rebirth of the curse, but basically being a red sox fan, a lifelong baseball fan, you know that no matter how great things, are someone in the sixth,

seventh inning, someone in early july, early september, is going to come along and remove your fingernails when you watch a game. that's how painful it can be being a red sox fan. >> can i say this. can i just say this, gene robinson. if you were a boston fan, you would love this team. we've got a lot of great young players. we've got a couple of young players who have actually been out this year. we've got a couple of great young players in aaa that are going to be coming up next year. this is a team 20 clear for, a team that has a future. >> yeah. forgive me for not weeping for the red sox, okay. i mean, the poor little underfinanced team that will can never afford anything. give me a break. come on, you guys have won like four championships, four world series. the washington nationals, well, we didn't have a team and now we have a team. they won once. they won in '19 with, of course,

a great team and now all our stars are playing for other teams including our greatest star who is playing for willie's yankees. juan soto, and less talk about those yankees for a second. they -- boy. i'll tell you. they are looking pretty good this year. i thought the orioles had them for most of the season, but the yankees are -- are coming on. they might actually live up to their reputation. >> make it stop. >> i think -- i'm thinking, willie, they will win 110, 112 game, win the world series in four games. i don't see how this team is stopped. >> i just hope -- my sweet young boy was only three months old the last time the yankees won a world series in 2009. i just hope he gets to see with his teenage eyes or his adult eyes some day the yankees win a world series. it's been so long. children. think of the children. >> all right. >> okay. >> speaking like a cleveland fan there. >> thank you all for this

wonderful waste of time and thank you. we appreciate it. still ahead -- >> she's voting sam off the island. he's out. >> yeah. still ahead only joe as kamala harris prepares to formally accept the nomination at the dnc next week we're rooking out for some of the rising stars. historian doris kearns goodwin will join us to talk about the leaders who emerged after their appearances at political conventions. "morning joe" is coming right back. nventions. "morning joe" is coming right back

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and i weird. >> well, i guess -- i guess they -- they would want to have a beer with me because i do like to drink beer. >> he's not weird. >> he was a great student at yale. >> i'm sure they are going to call that racist, too, but it's good. i love you guys. >> wow. >> donald trump taking issue with being called weird. while simultaneously railing against windmills, communism and what he calls a coup against president biden. welcome back to "morning joe." it is friday, august 16. anyone glad it's friday? anybody. >> i wish it were monday. i want to do this again. >> yeah, you do. >> mike barnicle and eugene robinson are still with us and joining us we have the staff writer at the "new yorker" susan

glasser and host of the podcast "on brand with donny deutsch." donny is here with us. >> it's always friday in donny's world. >> in donny's world, absolutely. so, donald trump appears to have insulted recipients of the medal of honor. the comment was one of the first things he said while speaking at an event at his golf club in bedminster, new jersey about anti-semitism. while praising miriam adelson who he awarded the medal of freedom back in 2018, he then argued the civilian award is better than the one that is given to soldiers. >> i have to say, miriam, i watched sheldon sitting so proud in the white house when he gave miriam the presidential medal of freedom. that's the highest award you can get as a civilian. it's the equivalent of the congressional medal of honor but civilian version. it's actually much better

because everyone gets the congressional medal of honor, that's soldiers. they are either in very bad shape because they have been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead. she gets it and she's a healthy, beautiful woman. >> i don't -- mike, i don't know in the history of american politics anybody that i've ever heard saying anything remotely as callous as that but it does line up with general kelly, his longest running chief of staff said who said that he didn't understand why people would serve and sacrifice for their country and also what jeffrey goldberg in quoting people that served with donald trump talking about how donald trump said that -- that people who died were losers and suckers, and he didn't want to go to the cemetery. here you have him saying, you know, the civilian honor is much better than the military honor because you get the military honor you're either shot up or dead. i do wonder what all of those medal of honor winners who have

sacrificed so much and the families have fallen -- fallen of american heroes think when they hear a former commander in chief say that >> you know, joe, we just lost a medal of honor recipient. he died a few days ago, maybe a week oak, colonel bucha read. look up his obituary and read his objectry. he was awarded. you never win any medal. he was awarded the congressional medal of honor for his capacity to take care of the men who were serving under him during a fight raging in the jungle of vietnam. you should read his obituary for the extraordinary things colonel bucha did after he left the service, so there's that. there's also what we just witnessed what, we heard from the former president of the united states who alluded to this before. he is a uniquely damaged

individual, a solitary individual who cannot understand the concept of belonging to a group whether it's a group of people, voters or of individuals. he can't understand it. he's all about himself. he's a solo act. susan glasser, you've been covering him now probably for too many years writing about him, probably too much in your mind, but this capacity of this man to not understand others because his focus is always on himself is truly astounding to a lot of people. >> yeah, mike. are you know, i really appreciate your comment there about the fallen soldier t.remind me when we were reporting about our book of trump in the white house. another example. remember how he wanted to hold a military parade. he came back from france and the bastille day parade. well, according to our reporting he said there was one thing he really didn't like about the

bastille day parade in france, and that was that there was a group of soldiers, honored french soldiers in that parade who had lost limbs, who were in wheelchairs and the like and he said i don't want that in my parade. it doesn't look good for me, and, of course, the shocked advisers said what are you talking about, sir? those are the host honored soldiers, those who sacrificed the country. he said i don't want it. it doesn't look good for me and i'm reminded of that in those comments yesterday. he believes somehow that those who sacrifice for their country are not whole, are not, you know, rather as being brave he sees them as, quote, suckers and losers and -- and, you know, this campaign i think is once again casting the idea of trump and the questions around his fitness for office. trump can't stop from putting those questions squarely in front front of the american

voters and especially now that biden has dropped out. it seems to me that trump himself is making the issue of his capacity for office. his -- his erratic personality. that's the issue of the campaign. >> we talked a lot about even to the numbness of what donald trump says and does from the public, from the media frankly. many times when he said what he said about john mccain in 2015, it was viewed as totally disqualifying. it's over for him. it wasn't it turned out, and that was one of the early warning signs he would do well and survive that. but, man, when he stopped for those of us who honor the service of veterans and people who are injured and die in war, for those of us who have family members whose lives were forever altered by a war that -- that he dodged. we have to stop and point out again and ask people who support him do you agree with that? are you okay with that the way he's talking about, our

veterans. >> according to kelly you didn't want to see amputees on stage. i'll tell you another thing that just continues to offend me, when he continues to talk about what a good jew is. first of all, i'm a proud jew and i'm a proud democrat, voting democrat and what a good jew is about, donald trump you know nothing about, about being selfless and empathetic and doing for others. you're the antithesis of what judaism stands for. i'm so tired of people telling me automatically the republicans are good for israel and the democrats are not. the biden administration has left israel prosecute this war in every single way they need to prosecute it and donald trump has been -- that's his solution. kamala harris has come out that says israel needs to defend itself. go after terrorists and do it in a humane way and she's concerned about humanitarian efforts. as a jew i'm okay with that so i'm tired about this head fake that republicans are better for the jews than the democrats. it's just not true.

>> susan, have you a new piece online for the "new yorker" saying kamala harris' best campaign surrogate is donald trump. in it you wrote, quote, practically every time donald trump has opened his month since joe biden stepped aside he's made the case for his manifest unfitness for office. what better assistance could kamala harris ask for. consider the past few days. on sunday trump actually claimed in a social media post that harris' campaign had faked a crowd of 15,000 people who had shown up for a recent rally at a detroit airport hangar. on monday night in a two-hour conversation on x with its owner elon musk, trump went off on so many tan gents that it was almost relief when he mentioned his apparent plan to self-exile to venezuela if he lost to harris. by wednesday in a speech in

north carolina, trump once again made a mockery of republican leaders who have been publicly pleading with him to abandon personal attacks on the vice president in favor of a more substantive policy focus case for himself. in a press conference on thursday afternoon, trump mocked harris as a communist who is going to run -- ruin the entire world if she is elected. when trump began attacking harris in earnest a couple weeks ago he condemned the remarks as the racial background he condemned it as a show. let the show play on. at least for a few more months, every time trump talks he is make the case for her, and, you know, i get -- i get the feeling, susan, the campaign knows that because they do a lot of his quotes on social media and respond with one or two words. >> yeah. i noticed yesterday that they actually promoted trump's press

conference in advance and sent out a press release giving the time and date and location of the press conference yesterday, and -- and, you know, you're not going to be going out on a lim at this moment in the trump arc if you predict that he's going to say some, you know, weird and bizarre and nonsensical things in public. you know, he can't stop himself from seeking the spot light and what's viking to me is kamala harris' political imperative and donald trump's personal imperative have now collided. he has a perm need to constantly be in the subject and to change the story if he's ever about the opponent and she's in need for this election to be about donald trump and his fitness for offers and not about herself, and i think it's those two things that are converging right now in this remarkable campaign. >> you know, donny, i -- i wanted to check this to make sure that donald trump goes around and he does say that if you're a jew and you don't vote

for him you're a bad jew. i just went back and checked the numbers after the statement. in 2020, 77% of the jewish vote voted for joe biden. only 21% voted for donald trump. and -- and even in the run up to the 2024 election when joe biden was the candidate, 72% of -- of jewish voters said they were going to vote for joe biden and only 22% for donald trump, so all we hear, and we always hear it in the media, and we hear it about house, you know, donald trump is going to win a huge number of black votes. he's going to win a huge number of jewish voters because he posted embassy to jerusalem. he's going to win this. he's going to win that. it just never pans out. i mean, you know, kamala harris is -- i would be surprised if she didn't get 74%, 75% of the

jewish vote this year. i'd be very surprised if -- if that weren't the case in the years to come as well. >> i couldn't agree more. three-quarters of jews vote democrat. >> he's saying three-quarters of jews in america are bad jews because they don't vote for him. >> yeah. this is the man that said there were good people on both sides of charlottesville and donald trump is the most transactional human being alive and i think he would sell anybody down the river, including israel. i believe nothing he says, and as i said three-quarters of jews vote democrat. they will continue to, and it's a head fake this automatic, oh -- this is what jews should do. shame on you, donald trump, it's disgusting. >> gene, i'm curious your thoughts. adding to what susan says, it does seem that for all the

mocking of joe biden running his campaign from his basement in 2020, it really does seem that you look at the times that donald trump has left his country clubs to do an event, it's incredibly -- incredibly low, a low number, and here we're showing what is this for fighting purposes reluctantly. harris and walz, rambling incoherently, spreading dangerous lies in public. >> he wants people to see it. >> they do. they want people to see it. and i've got to say it puts the campaign staff for donald trump in an interesting position. of course, when things go badly, he's going to blame them. they are nervous about him going out there. he told people for some time

less trump is more. the less he's on the campaign, the better he is, and they believed while he was in trial, they thought that was the best place for him to be. >> yeah. >> because there was a gag order. he can go out and give his two-minute press conference. >> yeah. >> he can claim he was the victim and then he could go home and say nothing else. >> yeah. >> those days are gone. he section posed, and -- and, you know, he's either going to keep talking the his country clubs or he's going to get out and go to speeches and say more things that the harris campaign is going to feast on. >> and it's the same old act. i mean, he's got his greatest hits that he comes out with in every appearance. twice this week his campaign aides tried to line him up to talk about the economy. they did it twice and it didn't work either time because he

won't have to talk about the economy. he doesn't want to talk about the economy. he wants to talk about, you know, the late great hannibaling lecter and he wants to talk about all this nonsense that he -- that he talks about in his rallies because that's his act. he hasn't changed or updated his act. he thinks it worked for him before and he doesn't have any new material, and so it -- it's -- the more he goes out there, it's true. it just -- it's not helping him now, and it is i believe helping kamala harris because it draws the contrast, and so it certainly gives her no incentive to do anything other than what she's doing now. she and tim walz are going around to these rallies and big crowds. they have a lot of enthusiasm, and -- and i think that -- that

contrast is just serving her very well. we'll see if anything changes when we get to the debate, but, again, certainly until then and probably after that it's going to be donald trump's greatest hits over and over again. >> there's three issues, inflation, crime, the border. inflation, crime, the border. now you can look at all three of those stats and the harris campaign will have a response to all three of those stats based on how things are today, but republicans, their best tact inflation, crime, the border for the record over the past three years, but can't seem to discipline himself to do that. >> no. he has trouble with that. susan glasser, thanks very much for being on with us this morning. we'll be reading your new piece which is online now. and we're following the new developments in the investigation into the death of actor matthew perry. five individuals are now facing

charges in connection with his fatal overdoze in october of last year and nbc news correspondent has more in this report. >> reporter: nearly ten months after beloved "friends" star matthew per owe piece fatal ketamine overdose, federal investigators have now charged five people in connection with the actor's death, including two california doctors, mark chavez and salvador plasencia. an alleged drug trafficker who is known as the ketamine queen and perry's live-in assistant kenneth iwamasa who said he repeatedly injected perry with doses of the drugs that led to the actor's death. >> these defendants took advantage of mr. perry's addiction issues to enrich themselves. >> while three of the defendants, including perry's assistant have already agreed to me deals, on a deal.

>> the amount of how much was prescribed in the treatment process, i don't have all of those answers now but there was definitely a doctor/patient relationship. >> investigators outlined perry's tragic final weeks alleging doctors and dealers sold the actor dozens of vials of ketamine for upwards of $65,000. according to the document, dr. plasencia sent text messages saying how much to charge him for the drug writing i wonder how much this moron will play and let's find out. dr. plasencia and dr. chavez violated the oath they took to care for their patients. instead of do no harm, they did harm so that they could make more money. >> court documents also indicate perry's assistant told investigators in the days leading up to his death iwamasa injected his boss approximately

with six to eight ketamine shots per day and found perry unconscious on at least two occasions. on the day perry died iwamasa said he gave three different shots to the actor with perry saying shoot me up with the big one. hours late other he was found face down and unresponsive in his jacuzzi. he died from the acute effects of ketamine. he had been open about his abuse of drugs and anxiety. >> we're sending a clear message. if you're in the business of selling dangerous drugs, we will hold you accountable for the death that you cause. >> that is incredible. we'll be talking more about that ahead. still ahead on "morning joe," as vice president kamala harris prepares to unveil his economic agenda today, our next

guest has been a leading voice in calling for a crackdown on excessive price increases. democratic senator bob casey of pennsylvania is standing by. we'll talk to him about that and his competitive senate race. before we go to break, willie, later on "morning joe," you'll bring us your interview with ryan reynolds. we look forward to that, but also who do you have for "sunday today?" you know, we've been away for five weeks because of the olympics, the spectacular olympics and we thought we'd come back in style with none other than the great billy joel. >> come on. >> i spent some time out in donny's neck of the woods on the east end of long island with the legend himself billy joel checking out his boat and sitting down about half a century of music, joe. going through his entire catalog. >> unbelievable. >> the story behind his songs and how he dreamed up "piano man," all of it. a great conversation coming up with billy joel over there on

nbc. >> who gets more big gets in the history of television that mr. willie geist? >> barbara walters. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. rs you're watching "morning ♪♪ joe." we'll be right back. ♪ when migraine strikes, do you question the tradeoffs of treating? ubrelvy is another option. it works fast to eliminate migraine pain. do not take with strong cyp3a4 inhibitors. allergic reactions to ubrelvy can happen. most common side effects were nausea and sleepiness. ask about ubrelvy. shopify's point of sale system helps you sell at every stage of your business. with fast and secure payment. card readers you can rely on. and one place to manage it all. whatever the stage, businesses that grow grow with shopify.

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beautiful live picture of the united states capitol at 7:26 on a friday morning. vice president kamala harris is set to release her first major economic plan as a presidential candidate later today in north carolina. it will include, we're told, proposing a federal ban on corporate price gouging for food and groceries earlier this year. our next guest democratic senator bob casey of pennsylvania introduced the price gouging prevention act which promises to crack down on corporate price gouging and protect american families from so-called greedflation. senator casey joins us now. a member of the senate finance and intelligence committees and currently running for re-election in a race too could determine the balance of power in the senate. senator, good morning. great to have you with us. so let's start with this idea of price gouging. a lot of economists, not just conservative ones but even more moderate and some liberal ones

believe that the margins are so thin at a grocery store that they are not gouging prices, that they are just trying to keep up with supply and demand. what do you say to that? >> willie, here are the facts in terms of corporate america. this is what we're talking about here. the big companies, the companies that are -- that are producing food and the companies that is are -- that are manufacturing household items, that's where the price gouging is taking place. look, between july of '20 and july of 2022, corporate profits rose 75% in america. that's five times the rate of inflation, and we shouldn't just accept it and say there's nothing we should do about it. we should point it out as i've done in a greedflation report, a shrinkflation report. the junk fees that the administration has worked on, so in a whole range of fronts you've got corporate america after getting the biggest corporate tax cuts anyone can

remember, jacking up their prices and just saying get used to it and bragging about it on shareholders we propose so we've got to do three things. go after them and use price gouging legislation to do that and to give the federal trade commission power it does not have right now and secondly, to roll back those big corporate tax breaks because obviously they didn't need them, but i think the idea that we should just throw up our hand and say that's capitalism, it's ridiculous. look, if a company has costs here and they offset it with prices, no one would dispute that or argue with that, but when they jack up their prices, hiding behind inflation or hiding behind the idea of -- of the pandemic causing there are supply chains. it's a lot of bs. we should go after them. if they are not price gouging, they got nothing to worry about. >> let me read you a quick passage from the piece in "the washington post" this morning, an op-ed that writes, quote, it's hard to exaggerate how bad

the policy is, it is in all but name a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food, supply and demand would no longer determine price levels. they. curious how on that report in "the washington post" and who should decide whether or not it's a deceptive level? >> it's not at the grocery store level. this is at the corporate level. we've never seen the are record level of profits in america in the past couple of years and when they do that they are bragging about increasing prices so my point is we should give the federal government the power to investigate, just run of the mill price gouging and give the people an opportunity to -- to fight back against them. as i said, if they are not

engaged in corporate price gouging, they have nothing to worry about, but this is long overdue. people are tired of just accepting higher prices. now, consumers obviously have a lot of power here, and because i've pointed it out for the better part of nine or ten months now, people are putting pressure, and some of that public pressure is working on some of these big corporations, but, look, they have had it pretty good. they got -- they got the biggest tax cut imaginable along with the billionaires, that's why they are attacking me in this campaign. they know i won't vote for their tax cuts and they also know that i'm not going to give up on prosecuting this case on corporate price gouging, and people get it. >> so, senator casey, as you just indicated, you're up for re-election, again, in pennsylvania. as you go around, not just western pennsylvania, your home area but the entire state, how do you cope with the fact that the republican nominee for president nearly every day, and

he did it again yesterday, he concentrates on fear of the future without trump. there's a fear of the future, and this country is really a third world nation, all of the usual stuff that he's been spewing for a long time. what does your ear hear when you're out there with voters ? >> well, mike, look, all across our state like in a lot of states, every state really, people are concerned about costs, this issue of gouging and the prices -- the food prices and prices for household items and so many other things that we buy whether it's hotel accommodations or renting a car, just hidden fees and all of that, so we hear about that a lot, and -- and i think i think people want us to fight back against us and we have proposals to do it. one of the best things we can do is what vice president harris will outline today, among many ideas, something i've been a leader on, which is give a chance for families raising children a bigger opportunity to

benefit from the child tax credit. we found a way to reduce child poverty and we can help these families, especially if you have the prices going up for food all the time or gas prices or anything else. we should give families the power to have the resources to -- to manage those prices, but that's what i hear about most of the time, the high cost and how we can get them done. now the prescription drug win that we got yesterday and the cap on insulin that's already been in effect. those have had the effect or will have the effect of lowering prices for seniors, but -- but we got a long way to go to lower costs and i think she's speaking to that in the campaign. >> and there was good news in that inflation report a couple days ago in terms of prices at the grocery store. democratic senator bob casey of pennsylvania, thanks, as always, for your time. appreciate it. >> thanks, willie. donny, there's a lot of talk about vibes in this election an certainly they have shifted in an historic way in the last month or so, but today there's policy and yesterday there was

policy on prescription drugs. today it's about the economy, ways in which if you look at the data and now inflation ticking down, still too high, of course, but the data in terms of unemployment and growth and retail sales, we heard about yesterday moving in the right direction for the country. >> you know, they keep saying, that you know, trump shouldn't run on attacking kamala. he should run on issues. the issues have fallen the democratic way. first of all, crime is down 24% versus when donald trump was in fact number one. fact number two, as far as illegal border crossings, they are at a low point at a lower point than when donald trump was in office right now. thirdly, the economy, gdp growth, wages, unemployment, inflation cooling, any way you look at it, so not only are the vibes on the side of the democrats. the issues that the republicans plan to run against have been worn down dramatically and the issues are lining up with a democrat. >> he's talking about a third world country, a hell hole that doesn't exist right now.

it's a fantasy. >> the country is robust. yes, people are still struggling with inflation. >> yeah. >> but as a guy who ran a business for 25 years and knows a little bit about business, not a lot, just a tiny bit, i don't think you can have an economy that is doing any better than it is right now and on top of that we're probably going to get a rate cut coming up so the economy -- the numbers -- the most recent poll numbers, forget which poll that was, only a five-point difference between kamala and trump on who would do better on the economy. traditionally trump usually is 10, 20 points better than the democrat so interesting. >> it is interesting, and, willie, real wages have been up now as we -- as we discuss yesterday for quite some time? real wage growth is outpacing the growth of inflation and inflation down as we just heard from donny. chances are very good we'll get a rate cut coming up this month and i want to go down again so

people don't get mired in details. if they -- they don't want to get mired in details, let's just look at the big picture and let's just say it again. when donald trump says america is filled with losers and that we're a loser country and that it's a hell hole and things are going so badly in this country, the economy is terrible and full of communists. we have a gdp of their 26 trillion every year. russia, who he says their leader is brilliant, 1.4 trillion. a smaller economy than texas. and as i said, california called a hellscape by all republicans and some socialist state. california has the fourth largest gdp on the planet. a gdp larger than great britain.

a gdp larger than india, a gdp larger than any country in japan, china and the united states. by the way, china is not even a close second to us. so i don't get it. i don't get -- i don't get republicans running around talking about how bad this country is when in fact we're more powerful, we're stronger and more than an economic monolith today than we've ever about. >> as you said, most americans, would i venture to say all americans for all its flaws are proud to live here. they do believe it's the greatest country on earth. >> proud, yeah. >> and they want to work to correct the things we need to correct about it but they don't share, most americans, his view of america as a third world country and the hell hole and the data doesn't support that. that's not what's going on here. donny, always great to see you. have a great weekend. >> joe, are you coming to the hamptons this weekend? >> yeah, no.

i don't do that. i'm just going -- mika will probably have me shoveling ditches and stuff like that, building trenches, you know, trying to get water up to the main shack. >> just for a few, i've been trying to get joe and mika out to the hamptons for years and i don't know that it's going to happen. >> i've never done the hamptons, never done it. >> as judge smail said in "caddy shack" the world needs ditch diggers today. more on the ukrainian surge into russia that is now expanding. and senator j.d. vance trying to defend more of his comments on abortion rights and how he doubled down. "morning joe" will be right back. doubled down. "morning joe" will be right back

she grew up in a middle class home. she was the daughter of a working mom. and she worked at mcdonald's while she got her degree. kamala harris knows what it's like to be middle class.

it's why she's determined to lower health care costs and make housing more affordable. donald trump has no plan to help the middle class, just more tax cuts for billionaires. being president is about who you fight for. and she's fighting for people like you. i'm kamala harris and i approve this message. growing your business is easy once you know the moves. with godaddy websites plus marketing, you can quickly create a website, and ai will customize it for you. get your business out there and get more customers in here. no sweat... for you anyway. create a beautiful website in minutes with godaddy.

♪♪ well, what a beautiful shot of dallas, texas at 6:43 a.m. welcome back. ukraine's defense ministry published a video on social

media this morning and said to be taken during the early hours of ukraine's military push into russia earlier this month. in its daily update, ukrainian president zelenskyy says the forces have liberated over 80 russian settlements since russia's first incursion and since they first went on the counterassault. with us former reporter for "the wall street journal" matthew brzezinski who is stationed in kyiv and moscow for the paper and executive director at the mccain institute, dr. evelyn farkas. she is the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for russia, ukraine and eurasia. i'll begin with you, dr. farkas. first of all, first of all, you've been saying that ukraine has needed to go on the offensive like this since march to keep their options open. you actually talked about how this -- this incursion into russia actually expands their options even beyond the presidential election. talk about that, if you will.

>> yeah. i think, joe, what the ukrainians are doing very cleverly is demonstrating to vladimir putin and to their supporters in the west and around the world that they can take the military initiative, that they can, you know, launch an offensive, a surprise offensive, that they are able to actually put some pain points on russia. the russians have, you know, some real choices to make now, and that means that if there's a negotiation, you know, regardless of the outcome of our elections, if there's a negotiation ukraine now has more leverage to use against russia and that's very clever. f'er this forced back from these positions, they still actually have demonstrated all of those things, and so, you know, because they can launch another offensive later, perhaps, so i think they have opened up for themselves more room for maneuver, and we know diplomatically also that they have been fanning across the globe, you know, going to china,

again, keeping their options open for diplomacy while demonstrating strength on the military battlefield. >> matthew, talk about president zelenskyy and how you believe that this is the second time that he's come to the rescue of ukraine in the time of greatest need. >> yeah, good morning, joe. this really shows the incredible importance of having a good leader. as you mentioned, president zelenskyy came to ukraine's rescue at a tire time of need, first during the early days of the invasion when the russians were -- were running in on -- on kyiv from all sides, and everyone expected him to flee to poland, and he started posting all these videos on social media where he and his ministers were standing outside government buildings and saying, look, i'm here, my cabinet is here, we're standing right here. we're not going anywhere. come and get us if you can. that literally rallied the whole

nation, and in fact the world, you know, this defiant david versus goliath, and now the second time this incredible bold move that he made which was so risky to go into ukraine. he did not ask permission from his backers in the west, and if he had they probably would have said no. he crossed one of vladimir putin's, you know, reddest of red lines risking, that you know, if he drops nukes on and he took troops from his already depleted and very thin lines to go in and if they had been stopped at the border would have been a humiliating defeat. in doing so i think he's bought ukraine another year of the will to fight and he's also reinvigorated enthusiasm of all of the backers. look, these are churchillian moments and this is where great leaders sideline and i'm really,

ream really impressed with what he's done. >> matthew, as you just indicated, this is the first time since world war ii that russia has been invaded, and it's been invaded by the ukrainian army. is there any way to measure the level of embarrassment and perhaps the military reaction combined on vladimir putin due to the invasion. >> well, zelenskyy joins the ranks of napoleon and hitler as the only other world leaders who have sent troops that deep into russia, and this has had a very profound effect on the collective consciousness of all russian people. you know, who are fueled by this relentless propaganda that sort of gives them an outsized role in the world, and this is not only a humiliation for vladimir putin, but this has a profound impact on ordinary people

everywhere which, you know, maybe question their leadership perhaps in russia and their primacy, you know, in the region, so, yes, this is an incredibly important decision that zelenskyy made and it brought ukraine another year of fighting and i'm not sure that russia can sustain much more than another year. so when the history of this is written this may be one of those turning points. >> evelyn, if i may, can i switch wars for a second. >> sure. >> negotiations are going on once again on a cease-fire hostage deal in the gaza, war -- we're told not to -- not to expect a puff of white smoke any time really soon. why not. i mean, aren't -- haven't the outlines of a deal been clear and what is the hangup and is his name been benjamin

netanyahu. >> yes, eugene. i mean, i think the problem is that -- that really the israeli government right now because in netanyahu's cabinet and perhaps netanyahu himself believes that. there are opponents to a two-state solution and fundamentally they are working as these negotiations are ongoing to change the dynamic inside of israel, putting pressure on the west bank, so we're not just looking at a dangerous situation for israel in the north, you know, coming over the border from lebanon, thehands potential attacks and real attacks. we're not just looking at what's happening in gaza, but there's also a problem brewing inside of israel, and the actors inside of netanyahu's government right now, they and actually some american citizens out and creating a ceasefire so that you can go to a stable, secure situation in

gaza, and ultimately a two-state solution, but you can see if the end of the road is a two-state solution, we need to put more pressure on israel and more pressure on iran and hamas. right now the iranians look like they want to play ball. they are holding back, and it seems that the qataris, the egyptians, the outside actors are being effective at least at keeping people at the table, but as you said, i don't think people are expecting a puff of white smoke this week. >> yeah, and evelyn, you know, reading from david ignatius this week, he said it's back from the u.n. security council, the group of seven, and israel's security establishment also supports the peace plan and hamas has dropped its main objection. even the defense minister galant says benjamin netanyahu's goals are unrealistic. so the only holdout in the middle east the that man right there who we have said, who

we've reminded people, and there have been no answers that this is the same man who funded hamas indirectly for years, who kept telling qatar to send hundreds of millions, billions of dollars to gaza, and hamas specifically who knew in 2018 of their legal and illicit funding that kept hamas going and kept their war machine built up, and right now, evelyn, it's very clear. i'm glad you brought up internal problems in israel, and the two-state solution because again, it's plain as day that he -- from the very beginning, has wanted to distract the world's attention away from the west bank, toward gaza, and the reason he's wanted to do that is he wants to build so many illegal settlements and make things so bad in the west bank that a two-state solution will forever be killed. >> that's right, joe, and if i can just say it's really putting the israeli defense force as you mentioned, the defense minister,

but when i was in israel in june, former officials, you know, former military commanders were really worried about whether israel can sustain first of all, the external attacks because if iran does launch another attack, if hezbollah attacks, they're not sure whether they can hold all those, you know, hold the defense, and these missiles might get through and there will be loss of israeli lives, and then second, they're being put in a horrible position in the west bank where they're being forced to essentially choose between palestinians, regular civilians, and these very radical violent settlers. so there's a rift in netanyahu's government, and the military is really in a precarious position right now, joe, because they do want to move to a ceasefire. >> yeah. >> they recognize they can't kill every last hamas fighter and they want the hostages to come home. >> well, while the world wants a ceasefire and wants the hostages home, there is one obstacle

right now, and his name, not surprisingly, benjamin netanyahu. executive director at the mccain institute, dr. evelyn farkas, and thank you, matthew brzezinski, thank you as well. greatly appreciate it. coming up, you remember those bibles that donald trump was selling and endorsing? well, now we know how much the former president made off that business venture with singer lee greenwood. we'll tell you the number ahead on "morning joe." we'll tell you the number ahead on "morning joe. your memory is an amazing thing, but sometimes it can start to slow down. but did you know prevagen can help keep your memory sharp? the secret is the powerful ingredient, apoaequorin, originally discovered in jellyfish and found only in prevagen. in a clinical study, prevagen was shown to improve memory in subgroups of individuals who were cognitively normal or mildly impaired. stay sharp and improve your memory with prevagen. prevagen. in stores everywhere without a prescription.

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former president trump has made $300,000 on branded bibles. that's according to a personal financial disclosure form released yesterday. the bible listed in the disclosure as the greenwood bible semis for $59.99, and includes a handwritten chorus to the song "god bless the usa" by lee greenwood. the limited edition copy said to bear trump's signature also available for $1,000. mike, personal profit of the word of the lord for donald trump. >> yeah. you know, willie, i'm sure you'll understand this. i prefer to stick with my rosaries blessed by pope francis in my pocket right now. >> there you go. you don't sell them, do you? you just keep them in your pocket. >> i've never had an offer on them, but i wouldn't. voters did not want to cast the ballot for either president

biden or donald trump, and they're responding to the new state of the race. we'll show you how the double-haters, and how they're now feeling about their options of vice president harris on the democratic ticket. we're back in 90 seconds. on th democratic ticket. we're back in 90 seconds ♪ i am, said i ♪ ♪ and i am lost and i can't ♪ punch buggy red. ♪ even say why ♪ ♪ i am, i said ♪ ♪ ♪

virtually 100% of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants. you know that? most of the job creation has gone to migrants. in fact, i've heard that

substantially more than -- beyond -- actually, beyond it. the number of 100%. it's a much higher number than that. >> some, among other things,s is -- suspicious math there from the former president from what he's calling a news conference, but it featured much of what he typically says at his rallies. we have more from that in just a moment. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, august 16th along with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, eugene robinson, and sam stein is with us. sam, thank you for doing "way too early" this morning. donald trump held a second so-called news conference in as this weeks. this one at his club in bedminster, new jersey. beforehand, trump was seen meeting with mypillow ceo mike

lindell who continues to deny the results of the 2020 election. as for the event, trump spoke for just under an hour before taking several questions from reporters at the end. initially he held back from making personal attacks against vice president kamala harris and read from scripted remarks which included many falsehoods, lies, but as things went on, it turned into what we typically hear at the rallies. take a look. >> i won pennsylvania and i did much better the second time. i won it in 2016, did much better the second time. i tend to poll low. in some cases really low, you know. in 2016, i was polling low because people didn't want to say who they're voting for. i don't know if that's supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is, and we did very well in 2016, and we did much better in 2020, much better, but bad things happened. i think i'm entitled to personal attacks.

i don't have a lot of respect for her. i don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and i think she'll be a terrible president, and i think it's very important that we win, and whether the personal attacks are good, bad -- she attacks me personally. she called me weird. he's weird. it was just a sound bite and she called jd and i weird. he's not weird. he was a great student at yale. he went to ohio state. i don't think people know who she is yet. when people -- because really people didn't know. you can ask the men on the street. i saw it on one of the shows today. they asked the man on the street today, what's the last name of kamala? nobody knew. it's harris. nobody knew the last name. she's a very strong communist lean. you're all going to be thrown into a communist system. it's a communist system. you're going to be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care. >> you're going to be thrown into a communist -- you're going to be thrown into a communist

system. by the way, willie, let's see here. let me just check. the dow, over 40,000 yesterday. 40,500. our economy -- >> inflation cooling. >> actually stronger relative to the rest of the world than any time over the past half century. >> mm-hmm. >> our economy -- unbridled capitalism, whether you like it or not, unbridled capitalism, ruing the day in america. more billionaires than ever before. more millionaires than ever before. more wealth created than ever before. you look at real wages for working merges. it's been going up. as you pointed out, consistently it's been going up for quite some time. what he just said is wrong, and it's more sort of the denigrating of the united states of america. we are a great country. we are a strong country. we are economically powerful.

again, this so-called communist country has a state like texas that has a bigger economy than russia. california, a bigger economy than india. we are strong and powerful. we are wealthy. our economy, better than any in the world, and nobody across the world thinks, oh, those americans, they're communists. no, they're, like, those americans -- american capitalism keeps rolling on, keeps getting stronger, keeps getting more powerful. >> yeah. the timing among many other things yesterday was way off. even on fox, if you watched it there, he was talking about how the economy was cratering. the markets are tanking and there's a little box in the corner of the screen that showed the market soaring, and this came one day after that inflation report that heartened so many economists, liberal and conservative, showing that

inflation had really cooled, that grocery prices are up just 1% year over year, and the entire press conference -- we'll play a bizarre clip of him in front of cheerios saying he wanted to take those back to his cottage and have a lot of fun with them. we'll get into that later, but the price of groceries still too high as he stipulates. still too high, but in the 24 hours he that that press conference, this report came out showing that prices are cooling. so he's flailing. i guess, mike, he thinks in some way, because he's doing them so often, two within the space of a week, one at mar-a-lago, and one at bedminster yesterday at his members only clubs that this help him somehow, that he's baiting vice president harris to do a press conference of her own. the more he talks the less sense he makes, not to his hard core supporters, but to a lot of

people. as we keep saying, the harris campaign is thrilled to have this kind of material out here once a week. >> don't you think when he does these press conferences or whatever you want to call them, just because he wants to see himself on tv -- he wants to be on tv. that's who he is. yesterday was tough. i mean, there were a couple of day baseball games. i was watching those in the afternoon, but i decided to watch the former president at his press conference surrounded by groceries, and it was a tough watch. you have to have a lot of time on your hands to listen to him, and to joe's point, he continuely, no matter how he begins whatever soliloquy he's talking about, whether it's about cheerios, whether it's about the economy, he ends up running this country into the ground. >> yep. >> no matter what topic it is. >> why? >> in one element, he was talking about the dangers to jewish people in this country, and he said, it's so severe -- sam played the quote earlier. maybe we'll play it further. honestly, you don't have a chance. so that's -- you don't have a

chance if you are living in america under who he calls camel-a. >> he knows how to say it. in private moments, he says it correctly. >> this is a consistent, underlying theme in everything he says, and in terms of elections, elections are about the future. people want to feel optimistic about the future for their children and he's the exact opposite. >> so here is that cheerios moment i was talking about. this is the former president of the united states speaking about inflation at his bedminster golf club. >> they did a nice job. haven't. i don't like the tags very much. look at that, up 46% eggs. wow. up 65%. wow. school lunches, up 65%. how can a family afford that? but look at this over here. what a nice job. i think i'm going to take some of them back to my cottage and have a lot of fun. like the cheerios.

i haven't seen cheerios in a long time. i'm going to take them back with me. bacon is through the roof. they're all through the roof. the milk. >> made for tiny hands. >> you know, stupid country. he calls america a stupid country. he said we're a loser country. he said the american dream is dead, and again, there's just such a disconnect with where i think almost all americans are. i think most americans are really proud of this country and know that we're the greatest country in the world. we have fed more and freed more people than any other country ever. our economy is stronger than ever. our military is stronger relative to the rest of the world than ever. i keep talking about the goodness of america and the greatness of america because you have one party that keeps tearing down america, and i will tell you yesterday we can talk about cheerios and all that other stuff, but yesterday along

these lines, donald trump actually did something that once again, undermines the greatness of america. he insulted recipients of the medal of honor. the comment was one of the first things he said when he was talking at another event yesterday at his golf club in new jersey, and that was about anti-semitism while praising someone he awarded the medal of freedom in 2018, and then he went on and he argued that it's better to get a civilian award than to get an award given to american heroes who are given those awards because of sacrifice to their country in war. you're not going to believe -- well, actually, if you listen to general kelly, you'll believe

pit. this is what he said yesterday. >> i have to say, miriam, i watched sheldon when we gave her the presidential medal of freedom. it's the equivalent of the congressional medal of honor, but civilian version. it's actually much better because everyone gets the congressional medal of honor. that's soldiers. they're either in very bad shape because they have been hit so many times by bullets, or they're dead. she gets it, and she's a healthy, beautiful woman. it's great. [ applause ] >> i mean, first of all, jeff goldblum did say it in the outtakes of "the fly." it's jeffrey goldberg and general kelly who said he just didn't understand the sacrifice that our men and women have made and call them suckers and losers.

quizzically asking general kelly, why? why would somebody sacrifice themselves? what's in it for them? and then of course, yesterday, saying the civilian award was much better because you didn't have to get shot up or die to get those awards. he has a long history of disparaing american veterans and service members. >> he does. this is right. you said it. this is shocking, but not surprising because of the pattern. this is not a one-off. this is way he thinks about people who serve the country in uniform. in 2015, trump mocked, of course, late senator john mccain for having been a prisoner of war. remember he said, quote, i like people who weren't captured. according to "the atlantic," trump repeatedly questioned the intelligence of service members and requested wounded veterans be excluded from military parades. he canceled a trip to pay respects to america's war dead in europe reportedly asking staff members, quote, why should i go to that cemetery? it's filled with losers, talking about americans who died in war.

in a separate conversation, trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives as suckers for getting killed. suckers. when a u.s. navy s.e.a.l. was killed in yemen, trump was the commander in chief and he passed the blame to his generals saying, quote, they lost ryan. eugene robinson, that clip really captures donald trump, doesn't it? i mean, it's infuriating to those of us who have deep respect for military veterans and for those who earned the congressional medal of honor, but it shows who he is, which is he doesn't understand the sacrifice of the people who earned that award, but boy, if you're famous and you're rich, and he perceives you as beautiful and you meet the casting call, you're the real winner. >> yeah. there's something really warped inside of him. there really is. there's just something, you know, i guess the word weird is

overused, but all that that we just played is weird, and it is just appalling that he would speak of america's heroes that way, and, you know, the heroes, many of whom made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, and he simply does not get it. he doesn't understand. there's a connection there that's not being made, and, you know, you saw it the four years he was president, and boy. if he ever became president again, i would really worry about this country because of that emptiness, that lack inside of him, that lack of empathy, that lack of patriotism. it's just not there. it's not there. >> sam, you've covered the

former president. you've written about the former president. we see the former president every day on tv. one part of us -- i don't know about you, but part of me is not surprised by these comments because donald trump is a singular act. he does not understand. he cannot comprehend what it's like to be part of a unit, whether it's a company of soldiers, a platoon, or a group of people in an office. he does not understand the idea of group -- group effort. what was your view when you heard that tape we played earlier this morning, that you played on earlier -- on "way too early," when he's talking about the dangers to jewish people? they're going to play it. >> the poion of anti-semitism courses through the veins of radical democrat party. i mean, this is a radical group of people. i never thought i would see that

either. they've gone crazy, and instead of expuning this hhatred, kamala harris is pandering to it. if you have the wrong president like her, honestly you don't have a chance. >> sam? >> yeah. so i had not seen both that and the comments about the congressional medalry accept -- recipients until this morning. i had seen the hour and a half long news conference if you want to talk about it. like you, mike, i watched the whole thing. at times it's painful, but it also gets at this weird dichotomy around trump which is on the one hand, we gawk at it. he's a carnival barker. he's talking about cheerios and talking about the price of goods in front of his country club. the disconnect is there. he's at his country club, and then just minutes later, he's talking and denigrating people

who were injured in line of service, and that to me, really just sort of symbolizes him, right? on the one hand, we can -- we've kind of grown numb to it a little bit, and on the other hand, you still get shocked and you still can get shocked by what he says. i'll just say, you know, as a matter of politics, and i know this is not about politics because that's secondary, but as a matter of politics, let's talk about this. one, is -- two points. he started the press conference. literally the first word out of his mouth was kamala harris has destroyed the world. once you start there at that level, it's tough to really up the ante. if you've destroyed the world, you know, you can't really go much further than that, okay? i'm not really sure that serve him well to start at that level, and two is, look. i mean, the republican campaign right now -- the trump campaign is going really aggressively at tim walz on grounds that he exaggerated his service.

more importantly that he ducked out of serving in iraq right before his unit was deployed because he wanted to pursue a political career. as i read trump's remarks yesterday, tim walz should be celebrated, right? who would want to do that? who would want to risk service. so i don't really see how they can on one hand accuse tim walz of doing what he did, and on the other hand,trump say, only suckers get up there and serve. the only real recipients are the presidential medal of freedom. not the congressional one. >> yeah, and, you know, sam, he's also in his time, he's told -- he's called groups in charlottesville that chanted "jews will not replace us" holding torches, called them good people. he said there are good people on both sides and he said any jew that doesn't vote for him is not a good jew, and when he talks to

americans who happen to be jewish, he calls benjamin netanyahu your prime minister. he calls the israeli ambassador to america your ambassador. he calls the country your country, suggesting that if you're a jew, you are not fully american. >> yeah. he's talked about -- the dual loyalty trope, people need to understand this. the dual loyalty trope is inherent by anti-semitic, and the reason it is, is because it suggests that people like me, jews who were born in america, actually aren't loyal to america. we're loyal to jews, and only jews in a jewish state, and he's pushed this stuff since he started running for president, and then he gets up there and he says, well, you know, the real threats to anti-semitism are on the other side, and doug emhoff, the first jewish spouse to serve. in the big four. that being the president and vice president, he's not sufficiently jewish, and i don't

think people quite appreciate just how insulting that can be, but also how deflating it can be because jewish americans are americans. we don't identify with israel because it's our faith. in fact, a lot of jewish americans find the israeli government in its current incarnation, abhorrent. we have the capacity for independent thought. we have the capacity for loyalty to america, and he removes that from us when he says things like the things that you just read. still ahead on "morning joe," president biden and vice president kamala harris hold their first joint event since the democratic ticket change. we'll show you the warm reception that the president got and his victory lap on lowering prescription drug costs, but first, our next guest says the harris and trump campaigns aren't focusing on policy. instead, they're being driven by emotions and vibes. that conversation is ahead on "morning joe." we're back in 90 seconds. ahead "morning joe." we're back in 90 seconds

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released by russia in a prisoner swap earlier this month has arrived back on american soil. vladimir kara-murza was diverted to germany after leaving russia to be medically treated. yesterday, he and his family met with president joe biden at the white house. and the secret service has approved a new plan to better protect former president trump at outdoor rallies. >> well, that bar is awfully low. what are they going to do? are they going to actually -- >> surround the perimeter? >> secure the perimeter and stop the president from doing jumping jacks after he's been shot and there could be another active shooter out there? i still -- again, i think there are so many stories coming at us so quickly. this is a story -- >> you're right. >> -- that we need to stay on for a very long time. >> what the heck happened there? >> to figure out what in the heck happened with the secret service? how could they have so badly secured the perimeter and so badly operated while gunfire was going off, and why did it talk

them so long to get him off the stage, and why did they keep him exposed for ten seconds, and why did they stop when he said, hold on, hold on? i want to get my shoes. no. you hear gunfire, and at least every other time -- the secret service grabs the person and pulls them off the stage and covers them up. i still -- there's nothing that makes sense about the secret service and how they operated, and i'm not sure how anybody in a managing position keeps their jobs. >> well, two sources familiar with the plans tell nbc news the secret service will now use bullet proof glass to protect trump at outdoor events. the protective measure is already provided to president biden and vice president harris, but was not approved for trump due to transportation issues for the glass which is typically transported by military aircraft. coming up, another day,

another comment by jd vance about women's bodies. we'll show you what the republican vice presidential contender is saying now. that's next on "morning joe." ex. hi, my name is damian clark. and if you have both medicare and medicaid, i have some really encouraging news that you'll definitely want to hear. depending on the plans available in your area, you may be eligible to get extra benefits with a humana medicare advantage dual-eligible special needs plan. all these plans include a healthy options allowance. a monthly allowance to help pay for eligible groceries, utilities, rent, and over-the-counter items like vitamins, pain relievers, first-aid supplies and more. the healthy options allowance is loaded onto a prepaid card each month. and whatever you don't spend, carries over from each month. other benefits on these plans include free rides to and from your medical appointments. you pay nothing for covered prescriptions, all year long. all plans have

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♪♪ back to politics now, donald trump's running mate, senator jd vance, said in a 2021 speech that companies that back abortion rights just want a pool of cheap labor with works unaffected by those caring for children. vance was referring to a statement from stacey abrams who said that a georgia abortion ban would be bad for business. >> she was right, and this is something those of us on the right have to accept, is that when the big corporations come against you for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they don't want people to

parent children, she's right to say that abortion restrictions are bad for business. >> nbc news asked vance about those comments during a campaign event in pennsylvania, and he doubled down saying he believes much of corporate america views children as curses rather than blessings. >> very often, corporate america is not especially friendly to parents with young children, especially young moms with young children, and i think that we have to promote a culture of pro-family thinking and pro-family policy in this country where we see children as natural -- as blessings and as resources and not as curses which is how i think way too many companies and frankly way too many of our leaders in washington think about our young children. so i would very much like for our young moms and our young dads to be able to have whatever family they want to have, and for them to not feel like it's going to ruin their career or

ruin their future. we should be encouraging young moms and dads to bring life into the world and i think there are a whole host of ways in which we prevent them from doing it, and that's got to change. [ applause ] >> gene, yes, we should encourage young families to make choices. >> yeah. >> ivf may be one of those choices. >> yes. mm-hmm. >> perhaps because the mother's health or concerns. they may not feel like the state should force or compel them to have a forced or compelled birth. perhaps a family may want to step in when their 10-year-old daughter has been raped by an illegal immigrant in the state of ohio, and perhaps they want to get together with their preacher, and they want to get together with their doctor and their mental health provider and

they want to be able to make that decision as a family instead of making the raped 10-year-old girl flee jd vance's state. i mean, that's -- >> absolutely. >> -- again, that's the lunacy of all of this. he's sitting up there saying what he's saying and just ignoring everything that's happening because of donald trump's ban. >> yeah, and incidentally if you want to be pro-family, why -- maybe it would be pro-family not to have to worry that children would be shot in their schools because of the easy availability of assault weapons and -- but that aside, what is he talking about? what corporate america is he talking about that is anti-child? he's just inventing this sort of

straw man to attack with the sort of -- from this bleak angle that doesn't really relate to anything in the real world or to anybody in the real world, and he does it without any policies behind it, right? okay, fine. let's have a generous national family leave policy so that mothers and fathers get a chance to spend a good time with their newborns. let's have, you know, all sorts of policies that encourage and make it easier for parents. i heard no such agenda. i just heard this weird and frankly untrue slur on -- on corporate america, and i'm not usually a defender of corporate

america writ large. >> right. >> but i just don't see what he's talking about. all right. coming up, we're going to dig into new polling that shows kamala harris winning over the voters who weren't ready to cast a ballot for donald trump or joe biden. "morning joe" will be right back. oe biden. "morning joe" will be right back (bell ringing) someone needs to customize and save hundreds with liberty mutual! (inaudible sounds) (elevator doors opening) wait, there's an elevator? only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, ♪ ♪ liberty. ♪

i could speak all afternoon about the person that i am standing on this stage with. [ cheers and applause ] there's a lot of love in this room for our president. [ cheers and applause ] and i think it's for many, many

reasons including few leaders in our nation have done more on so many issues including to expand access to affordable health care like joe biden. [ cheers and applause ] and today we take the next step. thank you, joe. forward in our fight. [ chanting "thank you joe" ] >> and for years, big pharma blocked medicare from negotiating lower drug prices. the consequence, they're going to maintain the exorbitant price increase in the profits that are uncalled for. look. this time, we finally beat big pharma. [ cheers and applause ] and i might add with no help from republicans -- not a single republican voted for this bill, period. not one in the entire congress.

[ boos ] and get this. you may have heard about the maga republican project 2025 plan. [ boos ] they want to repeal medicare's power to negotiate drug prices, let pharma get back to charging whatever they want. let me tell you what our project 2025 is. [ cheers and applause ] beat the hell out of them. [ cheers and applause ] >> president biden and vice president harris at an event in maryland yesterday touting the administration's new agreement to cut certain drug prices. >> and the front page of the "new york times" today talks about the billions of dollars, the billions of dollars this program is going to save, and it is really telling that not a single republican, you know, they claim to be fiscally conservative. they claim to want free markets. none of that. none of that. he didn't want to make these big

pharma companies negotiate with medicare. joe biden got it done, and there's going to be billions and billions of dollars worth of savings for the taxpayers in the years to come. >> so with democratic enthusiasm on the rise, new polling shows the number of so-called double haters, voters who dislike both the democratic and the republican presidential candidates, has been cut in half after kamala harris joined the race. according to the latest monmouth university poll, just 8% of voters do not have a favorable view of harris or trump. when biden was leading the ticket, that number was more than double. 17% didn't have a favorable view of either candidate. so joining us now, national politics reporter for ""the boston globe,"" james pindell. they're not focusing on policy. instead their campaigns are

driven by emotions and vibes. >> james, this is all very shocking. i mean, this has never happened before. camelot, open change, morning in america. i mean, these campaigns for the most part are about vibes, aren't they? i mean, you look, and so often it is, you know, a turn of a phrase, you know, ronald reagan's there you go again, or again, barack obama hope and change that wins the day. >> yeah. there's an overall theme, but even joe, when you ran for congress in 1994, you know, you ran with a contract of america. in the next presidential election, george w. bush put out an entire book. the jokes were all about the al gore lock box. you had policy ideas for a specific problem facing the country, but underneath it on this particular campaign right now, voters aren't demanding the

specifics. journalists are not. this seems to be an election that's about something much bigger. i'm not saying it's good or bad, but it's an observation that so far, this campaign has not been one that has been based on how exactly we fix problems with the economy or the border or so on and so on. >> james, good morning. can you speak to how extraordinarily those vibes that you write about this morning have shifted in the last month? it was doom and gloom all summer for democrats, particularly after the debate, and they thought there was in some quarters, a sense of resignation. okay. donald trump's going to win. how do we deal with that? how do we lock down the senate and the house so he can't run roughshod through washington? and how quickly have things changed in terms of those vibes? >> you know, even -- if you want to go back to 2020, people were -- democrats were saying, look. joe biden's not my favorite person, but he's the only democrat who can beat donald trump, and it turned out to be true. it was such a tight election, it

was probably true, and this time obviously, joe biden's not my favorite democrat, but maybe he's the only one we got. he is the president, but now there obviously is a different vibe shift. democrats now think, wow. maybe we actually can win this election. you talked about the double haters in the beginning of this segment. very real. in the enthusiasm gap, it's of course, where this -- how long this lasts. this still feels like a honeymoon. obviously it lasts through the convention. next week we'll see what happens with the first major challenge for the harris campaign if it ever happens. >> and james, i was going to ask you, how do they bottle this up, right? we have 83 days or something like that. just got the convention, and then the debates. she has war chest unlike anything we've seen for advertisements, but at some point, you know, do things get choppy? if so, how do you see that happening? >> well, look. as one source put it to me the other day, this presidential campaign is not exactly a roller coaster. it feels like it, but it's

really a kiddie roller coaster. the margins of going up, going down, are still with one, two, or three points. there's no doubt about that, and obviously we expect this to be a longer campaign. this september will be a very critical point, particularly when it comes to that presidential debate or anything else that could happen in the world, but look. what kamala harris is doing right now is changing the electoral map. we're no longer just talking about the blue wall states which we were in those final days of the joe biden campaign. can you just win pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin to block trump? there's now this southern belt strategy, and the mere fact that donald trump is on the air in north carolina, that he went to asheville earlier this week, shows how the map is changing the moment kamala harris is on the ticket. >> all right. national political reporter at "the boston globe," james pindell, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. we appreciate it. coming up, what prosecutors

are saying about the five people criminally charged in connection with matthew perry's death last october. how the late actor's own doctors are involved. >> and his assistant. >> it's incredible. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." edible that's straight ahead on "morning joe." life, diabetes, there's no slowing down. each day is a unique blend of people to see and things to do. that's why you choose glucerna to help manage blood sugar response. uniquely designed with carbsteady. glucerna. bring on the day.

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♪♪ ♪ there are stars in the southern sky ♪ ♪ southward as you go ♪ ♪ there is moonlight and moss in the trees ♪ ♪ down the seven bridges road ♪

♪♪ come on, mike barnicle. come on, mike barnicle. you hang out with those guys, don't you? how great are the eagles? >> don henley might be one of the greatest musicians of all times. the eagles, of course, for years they had the number-one best-selling album of all time. of course, there's also the dude in the back of the cab saying i hate the eagles, which was a one-liner for the ages from a movie. i could listen to the eagles all day long. let's do it as a matter of fact. >> the documentary, extraordinary to see what glenn frey and don henley started.

>> what a beautiful song. i'm so glad you let that breathe. great pull by q in the control room. >> beautiful. willie, that documentary is a great documentary. did pretty well at the box office, not quite as well as "deadpool" and "wolverine" which have now crossed the billion-dollar mark. he's going to run downstairs and hear uncle willie talk to one on the stars of this extraordinarily successful movie. >> about 6'3", 215, still

wearing the lederhosen on sunday. we appreciate that. this is an interview you're going to see later on this show is this morning, which is my interview with ryan reynolds. you said it. "deadpool" and "wolverine" the highest-growing movie of all time. ryan reynolds and i got together to talk about that and also we've shared for the last decade or so, which is, his late father and my dad both have parkinson's disease. we had a great heart-to-heart

conversation about that. >> i can't wait to watch that. the red sox lose again, sam stein. what's going on? >> we're stuck in mediocrity. we have stretches that seem so optimistic, and then we play poorly. this is what i expected. i guess we're aiming for the third wildcard spot at this juncture. we are stuck in mediocrity. >> that's a lot better than many of us expected at the beginning of the year. the first half of the season our e.r.a. was great. our hitting was a little below

average the first half of the season. we keep blowing leads. look at the series coming out of the all star break against the dodgers, we got swept. look at our opportunities with houston, with the rangers. we keep blowing games. the rangers game the other night looked more like 2022. >> that was painful. joe, you know what the story is. we have a group of young pitchers, some with more promise than others, but not any of them have exceeded the number of innings they've pitched this summer. they're gassed. there's the old red sox curse. whether you're watching a day game or a night game, you know there's a storm cloud above your

head. it's going to rain, it's going to darken, you're going to get bad news. coming up, presidential historian and our good friend doris kearns goodwin is our guest straight ahead on "morning joe." is our guest straight ahead on "morning joe.

with just 81 days left until the election, trump needs to focus on the issues, so let's hear this intellectual, focused economic policy speech. >> crooked joe, he didn't do interviews either. remember joe? what kind of ice cream is your favorite? vanilla. that was george flopadopolus. >> okay. start by attacking the guy you're not even running against anymore. now that you're warmed up,

economics. go. >> we can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way. he's getting out. in fact, they're not even giving him a good spot to speak. he's speaking on monday. that's the worst day. >> monday is the worst day? that's a garfield policy. [ applause ] >> come on. joe biden is not in the race anymore. let's focus on your current opponent. >> barack hussein obama. >> oh my god. girl, you got to move on. he does not think about you. >> oh my goodness. 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

coast. "the daily show," very good lately. >> they have jon and a great cast doing what they do best. it's a busy friday. kamala harris holding her first event with president biden, set to rally today in battleground north carolina, where she will roll out her new plan for the economy. donald trump called a news conference. it wasn't quite that. this one in bedminster, new jersey. >> reporter: this morning, vice president harris heading back out on the campaign trail after holding her first official event with president biden since he dropped out of the race. >> she's going to make one hell of a president. >> reporter: the pair in maryland heading a white house effort to lower drug prices that

take effect in 2026. >> the today we take the next step -- thank you, joe -- forward in our fight. >> thank you, joe! >> reporter: today here in battleground north carolina, campaign officials tell nbc news harris will roll out new housing policies, including a tax incentive for builders of starter homes, up to $25,000 assistance for first-time home buyers and cracking down on landlords that jack up rents as well as a federal ban on price gouging in the food industry. president biden is ramping up his attacks on former president trump. >> who's the guy we're running

against? what's his name? donald dump or donald whatever? >> reporter: president biden is out with a new accusation. >> they're trying to turn this into a race war. they're trying to turn this about who you are, what your ethnicity is, what your background is. that's not who we are. >> you'll be okay if you have the right president. if you have the wrong president, like her, honestly, you don't have a chance. >> reporter: donald trump speaking at an anti-semitism event. >> this is a radical left lunatic that we have running for office. i'm trying to brand her as such, because if i don't, you know, they get a lot of support. >> reporter: at his home in bedminster, new jersey, the former president hammered harris on the economy. >> you don't have to imagine what a kamala harris presidency

would be, because you're living through that nightmare right now. >> reporter: the former president not shying away from personal attacks, despite republican allies in recent weeks urging him to stop them. >> i think i'm entitled to personal attacks. i don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and i think she'll be a terrible president. people say, oh, why don't you be nice? they're not nice to me. they want to put me in prison. >> reporter: nikki haley said he can't win this way. >> i appreciate her advice. i have to do it my way. >> reporter: the press conference included trump's, quote, lies and delusions. he discussed how he survive last month's assassination attempt. >> it's a miracle. maybe we will save the world. this world is going down.

>> reporter: the secret service will start using bullet protective glass to protect trump so he can resume rallies. >> you know, willie, it's just like "the daily show" said, he just goes off on a tangent. he doesn't talk about the issues that his campaign wants him to talk about. they say keep talking about inflation, crime and the border. instead, he does the very things they repeatedly say he shouldn't do. he makes fun of kamala harris. he questions her intelligence. he questions her blackness. name it, he does it, all of these things showing he doesn't have the discipline his own

campaign staff and republicans think he needs to have to win this election. >> there's this ongoing charade where insiders leak to the press around donald trump and sometimes they go on television and say he's got to change tact, he's got to get to the issues. the strategy appears to be to put him out there a lot. he did a press conference at mar-a-lago a week ago, then add bedminster, new jersey. he was asked about nikki haley's criticism and, rarely, politely didn't attack her and said, i appreciate her advice, i just have to do it my way. we have a great group this hour. jen psaki is here, john

heilemann, doris kearns goodwin and jim messina, who served as white house deputy chief of star to president obama and ran his election campaign. there was early in the summer after the debate certainly with joe biden and trump true doom and gloom among democrats about where this was headed, hopes perhaps that they could hang onto the senate and the house and thwart donald trump as he went into another term. it's still the middle of august, and there's a long road ahead. >> the two numbers i'm looking at, the first is enthusiasm. that's a number you can track the best.

who has enthuiastic supporters? right now it's the harris campaign. they were down 20 points before president biden got out. they now have a 14-point lead. you need to do two things. you need to vote and get your friends and supporters to vote. in these orphan states that aren't part of the presidential landscape but will control the house and senate, democrats have exploded in the senate races. democrats are up four points since harris got into the race in the senate races and the house races, showing big numbers in the states of new york and california, which is where the biggest number of these house swing seats are that will decide who has the election. the second number is these double haters, voters who don't like either one of them.

they think about politics only four minutes a week. they have gone from basically a tie between the two parties to kamala harris leading trump by 41 points with these double hater voters. that is a very big number and shows the enthusiasm we've been talking about. >> one of the problems the campaign staff are having right now is they can't get donald trump to focus on the issues, on inflation, on crime, on the border, on the issues they want him to talk about. and it seems every time he goes out and gives a press conference or a speech or whatever you want to call what he's doing at all of his country clubs, he says something that's deeply insulting to women, deeply insulting to medal of honor winners, saying the medal of

honor he gave to miriam mendleson much better than the congressional medal of honor, because if you get one of those, you're shot up or dead. >> i'm still processing that line of reasoning from yesterday and how deeply insulting it is to anyone who's served and how you can't imagine any previous republican or democratic candidate doing something quite thategregious. there is this battle to define kamala harris. she is trying to define herself, and her allies are trying to define her imagine. donald trump and the republican campaign are trying to define her in a different way. why is she winning that battle? she's winning that battle because she's won every single news cycle since she became the de facto nominee. she's talking about the future.

donald trump is stuck in the past. he's putting out piece by piece, whether it's on policy -- today she's going to start to outline her economic policy, talk about her biography, this effective stump speech she's been giving. the republicans are not just running a bad campaign to try to define her. they are running like nine different campaigns at the same time. i just saw an add on our air where they're trying to willie horton her. they're trying to turn her into mike dukakis, it's a crime ad. trump says she's the dei candidate, she's the manchurian

candidate. on the other hand, she's very familiar, according to trump. she's a candidate who just turned black to take advantage of some kind of affirmative action program that put her where she is for some good reason. she's a standard san francisco leftist/communist, et cetera, et cetera. you're never going to succeed if you have nine different messages and the most undisciplined candidate in the history of the world, because the advertising doesn't matter in a presidential race this late compared to the free media, the earned media, especially when your candidate is donald trump and every time he goes out he's spouting all kind of different things about her and in the middle of all that says about five things the media rightly focuses on instead of his message against kamala harris. that's the story right now.

she's winning the most important battle right now partly because of how well she's performing and how much donald trump and the campaign are flailing. >> the harris campaign is gleeful that donald trump wants to keep having these news conferences, if you can call them that, because every time he does, he gives them more material. because of that enthusiasm in polling among democrats, we have an entirely different convention obviously next week in chicago than we would have had a month ago, where there was a lot of consternation about the candidate. president biden will be speaking on monday, kamala harris on thursday. what do you think this dnc needs to accomplish for democrats? >> i spent some time with the governor. i had a shot with him, which i

don't recommend. there are some things that will feel different and be different. there hasn't been a convention with people attending like this in eight years, of course, because of covid. her sorority, the divine nine, will be in the room. maybe we'll see some camo hats for tim walz. they have a stage dedicated just to creators, people who do content for social media platforms. a lot of people have gotten to know her over the last couple of weeks. there's a lot of joy associated with her campaign. people are excited. this is her best opportunity between now and november to

introduce herself to an even wider swath of the public. talking about her bio, talking about her future message and drawing a contrast with donald trump. this is a huge moment for her next week. the piece that is also different -- and you touched on this -- is that joe biden, the president of the united states who's beloved in the party is speaking on monday night. there's a lot of excitement. a lot of people are feeling quite emotional about that. a lot of people are flying in for that. there's going to be a staff party, i hear, after that. that's going to be a big moment monday night, standing ovation, i would expect. people want to celebrate the president given the decision he made and all the accomplishments over his term. >> it's going to be quite a

week. you look at that line-up. doris, i'd like to talk to you about this election and one that you saw up close. there are so many parallels. 1968, you have lbj dropping out in march, and then chaos. you have the chaos of martin luther king being killed a week or so later. bobby kennedy runs. he's assassinated june 6th. the chicago convention, absolute chaos. george wallace jumps in. he splits the new deal coalition, especially in the south. humphrey ends up losing, humphrey the only democratic nominee to skip the primary process until kamala harris. with all of that as a historical

backdrop backdrop, how does kamala harris avoid the pitfalls of 1968? >> one of the things that happened in 1968 is they were aware the anti-war protesters would be there. they didn't know how many would be there. the police were over-responding to it. scenes of bloody confrontations with the protesters were side by side on the nomination night. hopefully we can learn from history. there's a ghost of 1968 and grant park and what happened there. there's another grant park echo we have to hope for. that was when obama accepted the nomination and he spoke in grant park. that was a sense of hope and

joy. it can be the echo of 2008 in grant park. >> talk about what you've seen over the past three, four weeks. any parallels for you in recent american political history of a candidate who undervalued by members of her own party, undervalued even by members of her own administration coming out and overperforming the way she has thus far. >> normally you see the candidate going through the primary process. because that didn't happen with kamala harris, she appeared really as a new person to most of us who had seen her as vice president, but had not seen her in front of crowds. it was almost like a changed candidate on the horizon. she has the value of the

resources of the presidency behind her and the idea that she's a changed candidate. i don't think we've seen anything like it for a long period of time, precisely because we've seen candidates go through the primary process. they're vetted, they've made their mistakes. but she appears like a new person. it's really something we haven't seen in history. >> comparing kamala harris to none of the people i'm about to mention, because we don't know what her story is going to look like and if she wins, what her presidency would look like. it is fascinating, though, that you've seen this transformation among people in the democratic party especially and a lot of people that kamala harris has grown quickly before their eyes. i'm reminded every time i read the horrific quotes of what

contemporaries said about -- well, you could name any president really, but what contemporaries said about abraham lincoln, what contemporaries of fdr said, that fdr was a shallow, empty suit, sort of a playboy type of guy who was too shallow and weak to get to the white house, ronald reagan, a b-list, failed actor, just seen as a joke. ronald reagan was a punchline of archie bunker in 1976. the guy was just considered an absolute joke when he started running in 1980 by most people in the media and the elite. along with fdr, those two presidents really probably did

more to define the 20th century than any two presidents. >> you know what's interesting, joe, even ronald reagan in 1976, when he lost that race to gerald ford and gerald ford unexpectedly invited him to give a talk after the nomination and reagan came on stage. i don't know why he did that. he was hoping for unity. ronald reagan came on stage and essentially gave what would have been his acceptance speech had he got the nomination. it was incredible, beautiful. he set a tone on television that allowed people to say he's the one, he's the future of the republican party. four years later, he was the nominee. that was the first convention i watched. my mom called me and said you've got to come down, this young

irish-american catholic is about to be president. john kennedy, 39 years old, was second, almost winning that nomination. then he gave a sort of concession speech. i remember looking at him. he had a full head of hair, he was thin, he was tanned, he was handsome handsome. he made a national journey that night and four years later he's the nominee. and barack obama gives such an extraordinary acceptance speech. we in the blue states worship god, we are little league champions, we have friends who

are gay in the red states. it's just what the country wanted to hear. suddenly he emerged on scene. who will be the young people we don't really think about now and that i had might be the future leaders of america. >> jim messinamessina, you're g sorting through all this stuff. you have all this enthusiasm. it's an entirely new race with kamala harris in. but then we get down to the nitty-gritty after labor day. >> we're going to have an 80-day sprint for the seven battleground states that really matter the most. maybe we can take some other states into it. the republicans have tried to take a couple states into it. that seems like it failed. democrats are looking at some reach states like florida and

ohio. the easiest way is wisconsin, pennsylvania and michigan, the blue wall. you'll see the campaigns basically camp out there. a reminder why everyone's in north carolina this week. north carolina voters get their absentee ballots 21 days from today. we'll start to get numbers about who's turning in their ballots, who's enthusiastic, is north carolina in play for harris, can trump hold it? these are going to start to move very, very fast. we're going to start to look at these swing voters that start to wake up around the convention. the convention is the one moment you have to make your case. after kamala harris does that, we're going to be at an absolute 80-day sprint to figurer out who's going to be the next

president of the united states of america. coming up, the latest developments in the investigation into the death of matthew perry. five people now are facing charges in the late actor's fatal overdose. also ahead, it topped a billion dollars at the box office, on its way to being the highest grossing r-rated movie of all time, it is "deadpool and wolverine." ol and wolverine. like what is your glucose and can you have more carbs? before you decide with the freestyle libre 3 system know your glucose and where it's heading no fingersticks needed. now the world's smallest and thinnest sensor sends your glucose levels directly to your smartphone. manage your diabetes with more confidence and lower your a1c. the #1 cgm prescribed in the u.s. try it for free at freestylelibre.us

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i came to bayview hunter's point, where there was only one pediatrician to serve more than 10,000 children. daniel lurie said, i'm going to help. we opened a clinic for our most vulnerable children. i have worked shoulder to shoulder with him as we have brought solutions where people thought the problem was unsolvable. daniel doesn't take excuses. he holds himself accountable. and i know that he can do it for the city of san francisco. beautiful shot of san francisco. the golden gate bridge, one of the many beautiful american landmarks willie and i missed when we were jailed in turkey in the early 1970s for about 3, 3 1/2 years. the documentary, one of the

biggest documentaries of all time through the mid-70s. it was pretty incredible. >> the standing ovation we got at the venice film festival, i'll never forget that moment. it went on and on and on. >> almost made the four years in the turkish jail worth it. well, maybe it didn't make it worth it, actually. >> tunnelling our way out with spoons from the mess hall. i'm glad i listened to you in the end. we got out, you know? >> i just kept telling him, i love cereal. i learned how to say lucky charms in turkish, said it, got the spoon. can you imagine people just like watching this show for the first time in 17 years? what's going on here? [ laughter ] >> i won't talk about the '87

masters. we've been unseated at the box office. "deadpool & wolverine" has become the highest grossing film of all time. a lot of blood there, kids. the good news is people are back in the movie theaters. last year we were so heartened to see "barbie" and "oppenheimer" do so well at the box office. americans will go to the theaters again. >> that's one of the things ryan reynolds, who i had a chance to sit down with, talked about. this will become the

highest-grossing r-rated movie in history, surpassing "oppenheimer" and "the joker" for the number one spot. ryan and i got together to talk a little bit about "deadpool & wolverine," but also something we share. both his and my fathers have parkinson's disease. he's talking about some of the early warning signs he saw before his own father passed away about nine years ago. ryan reynolds is back in action as the unconventional marvel superhero deadpool. this time he's brought an old friend along for the ride. >> i'm the wolverine.

>> yes, you are. i'm going to need you to come with many right now. last week i walked about new york city with hugh. it was wild. it felt like we maybe saved a baby from a burning building. people find a lot of joy and happiness in the movie, and that's the thing i'm most proud of. >> after racing past a billion dollars at the box office, "deadpool & wolverine" is on track to become the highest-grossing r-rated movie of all time. but now the third installment of reynolds' passion project is facing competition at the box office with "it ends with us" starring his wife blake live lee. >> you're bitter rivals.

>> it's the sign of a good relationship. it's always been the one constant with blake and i that, like, we really root for each other. >> 47-year-old reynolds is father to four kids with live lee. their newest addition, a baby boy arrived last year. it has ryan rethinking a complicated relationship with his own dad james, who died in 2015 after a 20-year battle with parkinson's disease. parkinson's affects an estimated one million americans including michael j. fox and my father bill geist. i was reading through your dad's story. my gosh, is it almost shot for shot our story, which is diagnosed at a pretty young age. my dad was 47. and denial for a long time. as a matter of fact, we didn't name it for a long time. >> my dad maybe said parkinson's

three times in his life to me. >> it wasn't until late in my dad's battle that i knew hallucinations and delusions were common among people with parkinson's. >> he is teaming with his mother to alert americans to some lesser-known warning signs. >> he was convinced he had been in the car with me. he was not in the car. >> people think of parkinson's disease as a motor disease where they have tremor or slowness or difficulty walking, but it's so much more complicated than that. >> i just kind of casted it as, oh, he's losing his marbles. had i known, i would have handled it better.

i would have been a much more patient person. my father would have felt less alone. >> in the final months, a moment of joy. >> my daughter james is named for him. >> for more on ryan's campaign go to more to parkinson's dotcom. he has been such an incredibly strong advocate. we sing the praises of our friend michael j. fox, who's leading us all in this effort against parkinson's. >> we've always been inspired, willie, by your involvement and are so grateful for that. very busy there with that interview of ryan reynolds, but also a great one coming up and one that i'm really excited to watch, willie. a guy who, man, he just keeps

going and he's still at the top of his game. >> yeah. this weekend on "sunday today" after a long olympics break, we are back on nbc with billy joel, the music, 50 years' worth with the piano man. we went out to the east end of long island. he's a boater. he goes out and catches tuna off montauk and everywhere else. really the conversation is about the stories behind the songs, the inspiration, how he thinks about them now a little bit differently when he wrote them. he's such an interesting musician. he's fascinated by all different kinds of music, takes different inspiration as he moves along through his career. that's coming up this sunday over on nbc.

>> i can't wait to watch it. now, turning to the tragic news out of hollywood where yesterday federal prosecutors charged five people with providing ketamine to actor math mathew perry who died last october of an overdose. to figure out where this case is going, let's bring in the state attorney for palm beach county dave aaronberg. were you surprised by the indictments? >> no, i was not. they have three cooperators. the two big fish are going down. one is facing life in prison, the other is facing up to 120 years in prison. as a prosecutor, it's difficult to get evidence to charge drug dealers for the death of their clients, because when you have someone with substance use

disorder, they often have multiple drug dealers on speed dial. that gets the attention of federal officials. you have huge resources piling in. at the press conference, you had the u.s. attorney and the dea administrator. you have this ketamine queen, who had previously been involved in an overdose that led to the death of another person. her alleged greed finally did her in. dr. plasencia mocked perry's addiction, really gross. whether it's a schedule two opioid or a schedule three like ketamine, i've seen so many greedy predator who is exploit people with addiction. it started with drug dealers being nothing more than doctors wearing white coats and ended

with street dealers. >> dave, we have john heilemann with us. he has a question for you. john. >> hey, dave. look, one of the challenges here is the fact that essentially all drug dealers, whether they say it out loud or not, are willing to do what you just said these guys were willing to do to matthew perry. perry's assistant is also facing charges. can you talk about those charges and how strong they might be? >> he's the one who injected the ketamine into matthew perry. i think the feds are cutting him a deal where he faces up to 15 years in prison if he cooperated. he'll probably get a lot less, because he's the key to identify with the drugs came from. he's the one who bought it and

administered it. it looks like it was the ketamine queen, not dr. plasencia who provided the drug. his testimony is the crucial link. that's what allows prosecutors here to go forward against the main supplier. he's crucial. when he gets on the stand, the lawyers for the ketamine queen are going to try to eviscerate him, saying, if you cut a deal, you're the one who did this, you're the one who should be in prison. >> dave, really quickly, you're the d.a. in palm beach county, the state attorney in palm beach county where donald trump resides. what is the law there as far as convicted felons voting? >> i've got a lot of questions about it. it's the first time i've had a

chance to talk about it, so i'm glad you asked me. florida law is unclear on when a felon loses the right to vote. there was an attorney general's opinion back in 1977 that says that a voter's felony conviction requires removal from the voter rolls only after the conviction has been finally affirmed by the appellate courts. but in 1995 there was an opposite opinion saying that conviction of a felony means you're immediately disqualified. the florida legislature need to address this conflict and clarify it. because there's such ambiguity, he's not going to be prosecuted because he can hold up the attorney general's opinion. there's a different question on what the supervisor of elections will do.

the palm beach county supervisor of elections has notreceived any notice with regard to president trump. if they did, then the state will go with an emergency meeting of the cabinet, all republicans, and restore trump's voting rights, treat him differently than anyone else. >> the conflict makes it sound like a possible law school exam question for law school students next year. coming up, my next guest is calling on policy makers to determine exactly what a national security threat is as we look to elect the new president. "morning joe" will be right back. ew president. "morning joe" will be right back and look at me now. you'll never truly forget migraine, but zero-migraine days are possible. don't take if allergic to qulipta®. most common side effects are nausea,

constipation, and sleepiness. qulipta®. the forget-you-get migraine medicine™. she grew up in a middle class home. she was the daughter of a working mom. and she worked at mcdonald's while she got her degree. kamala harris knows what it's like to be middle class. it's why she's determined to lower health care costs and make housing more affordable. donald trump has no plan to help the middle class, just more tax cuts for billionaires. being president is about who you fight for. and she's fighting for people like you.

i'm kamala harris and i approve this message. vo: the true test of leadership... is having courage to meet the moment. the climate crisis threatens everything we hold dear. this president acted boldly, he took on the polluters and their lobbyists... and passed the most important legislation to combat climate change that the world's ever seen. right now, it's giving millions of americans new, cleaner, cheaper energy choices, and it's already created over three-hundred-thousand clean energy jobs across america. and, most importantly, it will protect the planet we love... for the people we love. making air and water cleaner, for this generation and the next. at a time when so much of our politics is about what divides us, joe biden showed us that character, and common purpose, will prevail. when history looks back on this moment, on this man, he will be remembered for meeting the true test of leadership.

thank you, mr. president.

a new piece in foreign affairs magazine is taking a

closer look at key national security threats that face the united states. the author daniel drezner makes the case that we are going to have to do a better job of finding what exactly constitutes a national threat. daniel is with us. he is a professor of law at tufts university. this is a conversation we used to have. remember the powell doctrine? before that, i guess it was the weinberger doctrine. we've gotten a bit away from that. why is it important that we focus on it again? >> i think the best way to put it is that if everything's a national security threat, then nothing is a national security priority. to be fair to policymakers, there's a lot of challenges

we're facing nowadays. technology means that there are whole domains like cyberspace that never used to be thought of as rick areas that are now -- risk areas that are now potential security threats. you have both parties yelling about a variety of different concerns. you have trump yesterday declaring that we need to boost oil or coal production, otherwise that's a national security threat. democrats are say figure we don't promote clean energy, that's a national security threat. and the problem is is that you wind up having a situation where everything gets put in the national security bucket, and nothing ever gets removed. the one political penalty you will pay is if you say this is not a national security threat, and then suddenly it flares up. remember last fall when jake sullivan, biden's national security adviser, talked about the middle east has been quieter now than it ever has been. then a couple days later, october 7th happens. so the one thing that politicians don't want to do is

declare something is not a national security threat and then get burned when they're proven wrong. and so there's every incentive to declare something a national security threat, and almost no incentive to say no, this is the thing we absolutely need to focus on. >> daniel, there is an interesting point. i will acknowledge i've been a part of probably writing speeches that say climate change or the threat of the climate crisis is a national security threat. there are a lot of them i happen to think it is. >> it's all your fault. >> it might be. it's an interesting point. how do you -- what do you recommend in terms of how the messaging should be developed so that -- you know, what should fall off the list? what's the criteria? that's one of the challenges here. >> no, i agree. i think one of the things that policymakers need to do is potentially develop a scorecard where they say, look, this is a threat that we need to worry about over the next 18 to 24 months, and you know, you're talking about what's going on in gaza or in ukraine. whereas on the other hand

something like climate change is a concern now, but it's going to become a much greater threat if we don't act in the next five years, the next ten years and so on. so one of the things is to give voters and to give policymakers a sense of time scale. there are certain things that are urge end, there are certain things that are far more important, and then also year to year actually force national security policymakers to essentially re-jigger that scorecard. because if you make it a priority list, then essentially something has to be at the top, something is going to be, you know, further down. and that actually forces a prioritization. i don't want to say that all of the problems that spall makers are raising -- policymakers are raising aren't important, they are important. but some have got to be more important than others or we're going to do everything very badly. >> hey, dan. i want to take you a little bit away from the specifics of this discussion to the broader discussion that we're having in the presidential campaign.

as you look forward here, and i'm not asking you to predict the future, but what do you imagine the contours of the debate between kamala harris and donald trump are going to be on foreign policy if there is a debate on foreign policy that's meaningful over the course of this fall campaign? >> i expect what you would see is in some ways a variant of what donald trump talked about yesterday from his side which is basically the argument that if kamala harris is elected we're going to have world war iii because other world leaders won't respect her. he very well might explicitly say they don't respect her because she's a woman. that's what he's said in the past. harris i suspect will try to argue that under the biden administration we have, you know, resurrected and restored a lot of the sort of alliances and partnerships that were cornerstones of u.s. foreign policy for 70 years. and she intends to pursue that

even more vigorously. and also pay attention to foreign policy for the middle class. this is a line that biden ran on in 2020. we're obviously going to see some variant of that i think, probably in the speech later today from kamala harris, but also throughout the campaign. these are sort of broad generalities. i think the other issue that you would expect to see in a debate is going to be israel. obviously donald trump wants to somehow try to paint kamala harris as hostile to israel. also at the same time suggesting that she is unsympathetic to palestinians because michigan matters. harris will probably be playing a little defense there. on other hand, she has the advantage of potentially creating at least some separation between her and biden on questions of the treatment of palestinians and on the way that israel's prosecuting that war. >> let's dig a little deeper on your piece and also on the defining of what a direct threat

to america's national security is, and we'll use an example in the past and use an example today. in congress when there's an arms services committee, my argument was that the bosnian war and the war in kosovo was not a direct national threat, though tragic, not a direct national threat and not worth of risk of sending american troops. it ended up going extraordinarily well for a lot of different reasons. that was my argument. today we have many people saying the same thing in the republican party about ukraine. i think there's a great difference between a balkan civil war and ukraine. but i'm curious what you would say about both of those instances. would you consider both of those direct threats to america's security? >> bosnia was definitely not a direct threat to u.s. national security.

it was always a regional conflict. even if the serbs had managed to completely overrun bosnia it's not like they had designs on the rest of western europe or anywhere else for that matter. on the other hand, russia directly invading a country that it recognized as a sovereign country and deciding that, no, in fact those borders don't matter anymore, that's an obvious threat to our nato allies. and the real problem with russia and ukraine is that if putin is successful in redrawing the territorial map through the use of force, that's a precedent that shatters an awful lot of international law for the last 80 years and would obviously incentivize him to try to do something similar in places like belarus or moldova or even potentially the baltic states. so to be clear, i think if the war stays in ukraine, it's not a direct threat to national security. but the possibility of that war

then causing knock-on effects on u.s. national security is far greater than what was going on in bosnia 20, 30 years ago. >> we saw our failure to respond to what happened in georgia in 2008 and crimea and ukraine in 2014, possibly encouraging this. all right, dan, thank you so much. greatly appreciate you being with us. you can read his new piece on line in foreignaffairs.com. thank you so much. and jen psaki, can't wait to see your show this weekend. you're going to take us on a behind-the-scenes look at the democratic national convention. tell us about it. >> so i sat down with alex hornbrook. you can see there, we were backstage. we got a look at the new stage they're going to have for the first time for creators. and we talked about what the themes of this convention are going to look like and what's going to be different about it. so we're going to have a big piece on sunday where we'll show everybody that. and governor pritzker will be in there, too.

>> going to be exciting. i can't wait. that does it for us this morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage in 90 seconds. thanks for being with us this week. as always, thank you for your patience. a caring man took a walk. he saw people suffering. anxiety ran high, hatred rose. i'll prepare a feast and bring them together he thought. but some refused to join him. he was heartbroken because he wanted everyone to be filled. not with food and wine, but with compassion. ♪ ♪

right now on "ana cabrera reports," the number-one issue for voters takes the number-one spot on the campaign trail. in a few hours, vice president kamala harris will lay out