majority in the senate. that being said, there are a number of tight races that we're watching closely from, you know, montana, especially in the senate, to, as we've repeatedly discussed, this very tight margin in the house. republicans have a five-seat majority there. there are a number of people who are running for re-election in the swingy, moderate districts who do still maintain a lead. but democrats are planning on now running with kamala at the top of the ticket and are feeling much more positive about their prospects. >> certainly, odds are both houses decided by razor thin margins. "the washington post"'s jackie alemany, thank you, as always. we'll talk soon. >> thanks, john. >> thanks for getting up "way too early" with us on this tuesday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. remember, as president,

donald trump blocked overtime benefits for millions of workers. [ crowd booing ] he opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage. as the president said, he appointed union busters to the national labor relations board. [ crowd booing ] and, don't forget, he supposed so-called right to work laws. >> i remember a time when republicans talked about things like freedom, they meant it. they would never turn their back on our allies. but that's not these guys. trump and vance, when they talk about freedom, means government should have the freedom to invade every corner of our life. they talk about small government, small enough to be in your bedroom. small enough to be in your exam room. small enough to be in your library, telling you the things you should make decisions about. >> the harris-walz campaign spent the labor day holiday speaking to union workers in battleground states.

meanwhile, donald trump and jd vance took the day off from the campaign trail. we are now just a little over two months away from election day. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it's tuesday, september 3rd. along with joe, willie, and me, we have the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at "politico," jonathan lemire. bbc's correspondent katty kay. associate editor at "the washington post," eugene robinson. and president emeritus of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. he is the author of the weekly newsletter "home and away," available on substack. usually, isn't the day after labor day before an election when it really kind of takes off? >> yeah. >> this is it, right? >> this is considered to be the start of the campaign, willie. things are lining up.

interestingly, we're going to be showing poll numbers in a minute. i'll say, the numbers have shifted dramatically. in the shifts, i saw one number this weekend, over the weekend, that showed that women now 45 and under see abortion as the top campaign issue, the top political issue in america, over the economy. and that's gotten donald trump, you know, saying he's going to be pro-choice advocate, in effect, using pro-choice advocate's words, saying, i'll be a great champion for reproductive rights. then he changes back when he's chastened. then he changes back on the six-week abortion ban. all over the place right now. the numbers certainly aren't going in his direction. he understands, as he's always understood, that the position that he is responsible for, the terminating of roe v. wade, as he said it, is very unpopular going into these final two months of the campaign. >> yeah.

he's really known that since dobbs came down. after the disastrous midterm elections for republicans where there was supposed to be a red wave in 2022 and there wasn't, he said outwardly, it was the abortion issue. we talk too much about abortion, despite the fact he appointed three supreme court justices who got rid of roe. obviously, he knows. you can tell by his flailing just in the last few days on the question of when an abortion ban in florida should start. six weeks is where it is now. there is an amendment 4 on the ballot this november. he's been all over the place on that the last couple days. you're right, we've turned the corner. about two months until election day. we have the debate between donald trump and kamala harris. here's where the race stands, it'll be close. a poll finding no big bounce in support for vice president harris coming out of the democratic national convention a couple weeks ago. the latest abc news/ipsos poll

finds the race essentially the same as it was before the dnc. harris up 52% to 46% among likely voters. 46% of those polled see harris favorably as a person, compared to 33% see donald trump favorably. 33% versus 58% who have an unfavorable impression of donald trump. 53% of the people in the poll view harris qualified to be president compared to 47% for trump. the gender gap has widened. vice president harris leads by 13 points among women, up from 6 points pre-convention. donald trump is up 5 among men, 54 to 41 for an 18-point gap there, joe. again, maybe not a big bounce coming out of the convention as some people in the democratic party had hoped for, but when you look at the before and after, meaning with joe biden at the top of the ticket and now

with vice president harris at the top of the ticket, there is a remarkable change. >> yeah, there is a remarkable change. you look at the characteristics, all the things that donald trump was ahead of before harris got in the race. he's now behind. i think the most striking thing, mika, when you're looking and people are trying to sort through this race, what direction it's going, you just look at the favorable/unfavorables. donald trump way upside down by close to 20 points. in the 30s for likable. then you have kamala harris actually upside, i think 46 to 43. that is a huge gap. then you have the crazed behavior. it's really almost too much to get your arms around, and i understand that's the idea of it. the claims are so outrageous.

they're so disconnected from the truth. trump moving all over the place on issues from abortion to immigration, now saying we need more immigrants in the united states. all of this stuff, the crazy stuff at arlington, they're absolutely desperate. and the campaign has said internally, they know they can never bring -- they can't make people like trump. >> right. >> so their goal is to make people hate kamala harris. >> yes. >> that's where we are. and if they can't get americans to hate kamala harris, then they understand she will win. >> you mentioned flip-flopping on one of many issues, but one of them was reproductive rights. the former president continues to struggle on the issue with a series of flip-flops. evangelicals have supported him, in part, because of his strong pro-life stances, but he undercut that support last month in a social media post, claiming

he would, quote, be great for women and their reproductive rights. days later, in an interview with nbc news, he was pressed about florida's six-week abortion ban. >> well, i think the six week is too short. it has to be more time. so that's -- and i've told them i want more weeks. >> you'll vote in favor of the amendment? >> i'm voting that -- i am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks. >> the republican presidential nominee has now come out against the florida ballot measure that would extend the time women in the state have to get an abortion. conservative backlash to his earlier comments was swift, with some on the right warning trump was risking losing a key block of anti-abortion voters. he attempted then to clean up his comments on friday. watch. >> are you voting yes or no on amendment four in florida? >> so i think six weeks, you need more time than six weeks. i've disagreed with that right from the early primaries when i

heard about it. i disagreed with it. at the same time, the democrats are radical because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation, where you can do an abortion in the ninth month. you know, some of the states like minnesota and other states have it where you can actually execute the baby after birth. all of that stuff is unacceptable. so i'll be voting no for that reason. >> okay. that was just a ridiculous lie. the harris campaign issued a statement following trump's latest comments. quote, donald trump just made his position on abortion very clear, he will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme, it applies before many women even know they are pregnant. jonathan lemire, there are many, many, many different angles we could take on this. the nine-month lie is one that we've seen pervade the republican party since the onset of the campaign. it is a complete lie, although it is taken by many republican

followers and maga voters. they just take it. they think it happens because it is said enough and echoed enough on different right-wing networks. it's not corrected. the bigger issue is all his different answers is what trump does. it confuses people. no one really knows where he stands. ultimately, nothing matters. it's a bigger part of, some would say, some dangerous trends toward fascism in this country. but for this election, could the lies work? >> yeah, it's certainly more of the firestorm of falsehoods. it's also how his campaign is, frankly, panicking about the abortion issue. i've talked to those in trump world who said the former president himself acknowledged privately he thinks abortion could be the biggest problem his campaign faces this november. we know that publicly hetried

to downplay it. advisors are worried on where it stands. hence the flip-flops, as trump is trying to be pinned down on where he stands with the florida abortion regulation. vice president harris received some criticism last week after the cnn interview, saying she changed her position on a few things. there were slight modulations. trump deserves that scrutiny times ten for how he seems to flip-flop on things like this, here abortion, depending on the latest poll he has seen. on polls, we should note, it seems like harris got her convention bounce pre-convention. democrats were so excited about the change in the ticket. that's when the burst of energy came. katty, we are seeing a few other polls showing upticks for her52 margin of error. we haven't been able to say that much in this campaign because it's so close. harris has momentum, and the abortion issue is a big part of it. >> i love the idea of a

pre-convention bounce. that's what we should all be looking for in the future. pre-show round of applause, as well. >> i'd be into it. >> some of the democrats i've spoken to over the course of this weekend have expressed concern that the polls have not gone as far ahead for harris as they might have expected, given the enormous amount of fundraising, the huge burst of enthusiasm in august, and a successful convention. they had hoped she would be more convincingly ahead, particularly in the swing states. if you have to think that because of the republicans' electoral majority, she needs to be six points ahead in terms of the popular vote nationally, she's just about there. now, all the focus going to be on the swing states. abortion being a main issue for women coming up ahead of immigration and the economy is incredibly important. women decide elections in america. they vote in bigger numbers in america. but if it's also going to be an election about economy and immigration, he still has an advantage on that. i think the harris campaign is

right to stress, as it did over the course of this weekend in pittsburgh, they go into this as the underdogs. that's the best way for them to approach the last few weeks. >> mika, you touched on this, but it has to be said again. the idea that donald trump has contempt for voters, to suggest that babies are being murdered after they are born as part of some abortion program in blue states, that's called murder. that's not happening. also, as you know and you've said many times, abortions that happen after 21 weeks or 24 weeks are extremely rare. women don't want to have an abortion at that point. it means something medically is wrong and they have to have an abortion. that's not an elective thing that women do casually. john makes an important point, which is the entire argument the trump campaign is making about kamala harris is she has no core. she stands for nothing. she said one thing in 2019, and now she's saying something different to be electable. watch donald trump in the last week just twisting in the wind on this question of abortion.

>> everything they accuse her of, he is 100 times over. the balance just bounces right back on him. we're going to come back to politics in just a moment. we want to move now to the tragic developments in the middle east. on saturday, the israeli defense forces found the bodies of six hostages inside a tunnel under the gazan city of rafa. among them, 23-year-old american-israeli hersh goldberg-polin. all were captured by hamas october 7th. five from the supernova music festival and one from a kibbutz in southern israel. a forensic examination found that all six hostages were shot and killed at close range. a spokesperson from israel's health ministry says they were murdered thursday or friday. their bodies were found less than a mile from the tunnel where a 52-year-old israeli hostage was rescued last week. hamas claims the hostages were

killed by idf fire, a claim israel's military says is false. there was no exchange of fire in the tunnel upon rescue. president biden and vice president harris both spoke separately with the parents of hersh goldberg-polin on sunday. in a statement, president biden said, "hersh's parents, john and rachel, have been relentless champions of their son and of all the hostages held in an unconscionable conditions. i admire them and grieve with them more deeply than words can express." hersh was laid to rest in jerusalem yesterday. hundreds joined in the procession. thousands packed the streets to mourn and show support to the hostages remaining in captivity. later in the day, hersh's parents delivered heartwrenching eulogies in memory of their son. >> the most common word i've

received from people, thousands of messages, is -- i'm sorry. hersh, we failed you. we all failed you. you would not have failed you. you would have pushed harder for justice. you would have worked to understand the other, to bridge differences. you would have challenged more people to challenge their own thinking. and what you will be pushing for now is to ensure that your death, the deaths of all the soldiers, and so many innocent civilians are not in vain. >> how do we live the rest of our life without you? i pray that your death will be a turning point in this horrible situation in which we are all entangled. i take such comfort knowing you are with caramel, eden, almog, and alex. from what i have been told, they

each were delightful in very different ways, and i think that is how the six of you managed to stay alive in unimaginable circumstances for so very long. you each and every single one of you did every single thing right to survive 329 days in what i'm pretty sure can only be described as hell. i send each of the families my deepest sympathies for what we are all going through, and for the sickening feeling that we all could not save them. okay, sweet boy. go now on your journey. i hope it's as good as the trips you dreamed about because, finally, my sweet boy, finally, finally, finally, finally, you're free! i will love you and i will miss you every single day for the rest of my life. but you're right here. i know you're right here. i just have to teach myself how to feel you in a different way.

and, hersh, one last thing i need you to do for us. now i need you to help us stay strong. and i need you to help us survive. >> the news of the killings has led to renewed criticism of israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu. when asked by reporters yesterday whether netanyahu is doing enough to secure a cease-fire and hostage release deal, president biden answered, no. just last week, the israeli newspaper "haaretz" reported that israeli's defense minister slammed netanyahu over his handling of the situation, saying the prime minister's decisions could, quote, kill all the hostages. the editorial board of the israeli publication "haaretz" is out with a new piece titled "the israel public's moment of truth." the board writes in part this, "it was hamas terrorists who

pulled the trigger, but it was netanyahu who sealed their fate. the prime minister likes to think of himself as mr. security, but he will go down in history as mr. death and will abandonment, written in the hostages' blood." defense minister gallant, who once again proved himself to be the only man in the security cabinet where there are no men, warned that this decision meant bearing the deal and sentencing the hostages still alive to death. but to no avail. when the public wanted to block the judicial overhaul, it succeeded. when the public wanted to stop the defense minister from being fired, it succeeded. and this time, too, had the public wanted a deal to happen, there would have been a deal. for this reason, the public must now take to the streets en masse. it must answer the calls of the hostage families to shake up the

country, immediately. time is running out. if there isn't a deal now, they will all die. >> you know, yesterday, we heard some people on the far right, both in israel and america, critical of joe biden. for saying what the world has been saying, for what netanyahu's own cabinet has been saying, his defense ministers, that he was not doing enough. netanyahu is, as you remember, if you watch this show, you remember, netanyahu is the same person claiming this holy war against hamas, who knew hamas was a terrorist group in 2018, along with donald trump, knew about their secret funding. did nothing about it. three weeks before october the

7th, qatar was asked by netanyahu and his government to continue funding hamas. it was benjamin netanyahu and his government, security forces, who left the borders open for the october the 7th slaughter. it was benjamin netanyahu in charge when there were bands of terrorists that went through the country, savagely killing people, some having to wait 12, 13 hours. >> is it still too soon to talk about that? >> for help, for help. they still, netanyahu and his cabinet still won't explain why he is the man who funded hamas. that right there, that's the man who funded hamas. people talk about qatar. people talk about iran. it was netanyahu that kept

pushing qatar to depend hundreds of millions of dollars in propping up hamas. it was benjamin netanyahu that knew about hamas' plan a year, a year before the attack came. it was benjamin netanyahu who enabled and funded hamas for years. now, he is using that war to stay in power, to avoid prison, and risking a regional war every single day. this crisis was brought to you by netanyahu's horrific leadership, and he knows when he leaves, he will be remembered as the worst prime minister in israeli history. so that's why he doesn't want the war to end. if you don't understand, i promise you, it takes ten minutes of searching on your google machine. it takes ten minutes to

understand netanyahu funded hamas. he kept the money going. he enabled them. he strengthened them. all so he could terrorize the west bank with illegal settlements. all so he could kill a two-state solution. >> avoiding -- >> hamas are terrorists. we've always said, they're blood-thirsty, horrific terrorists. but as "haaratz" said, it was netanyahu who enabled them. richard haass, when you have the defense minister saying before the killings to netanyahu in the cabinet meeting, when the world is saying, "do the cease-fire deal," when the hostage families are saying, "do the cease-fire deal," when his intel community

is saying, "do the cease-fire deal," his defense minister is saying, "the cease-fire deal," and he refuses to do the cease-fire deal, it is -- it is netanyahu who refused to do that. what joe biden said yesterday with a no, a gentle no, that's far, far less than what those closest to netanyahu said. which was, "you are going to have the hostages killed." netanyahu, head down, move forward, understanding what everybody understands. the second this war is over, his government collapses and there's a chance he goes to jail. >> israel on this issue, joe, is extraordinarily divided. the most recent polls show the country almost evenly split. bibi netanyahu is not going to

agree to this deal because, you know, for the reasons you say. his government would come down. the investigations on october 7th would commence. more broadly, it would start a large debate about, you know, what comes after in gaza. what do you do about palestinians in the west bank? again, his government wants no part of it. you have a bizarre situation here diplomatically. i'll talk about the diplomacy. the personal side of this is just so painful. it was so real and raw, what we heard at the funeral. you've got two parties here, the israeli government and hamas, neither of whom wants a deal. and you have the united states almost trying to make up for what the two parties lack with its own efforts. that never works in diplomacy. that never, ever works. i think what we're facing is what we've talked about on this

show now almost for a year. this goes on. this is now a grind. you know, this will just continue in gaza. what we've seen over the last few weeweeks, as if this were n bad enough, we're seeing essentially a new front open up between israelis and the palestinians on the west bank. the west bank is beginning to look a little bit like gaza. >> yes, it is. >> extreme maliciousness. >> calculated. richard, explain, that's calculated. it has been calculated. when people say, why did netanyahu, like, urge qatar to fund hamas in gaza? he wanted to keep gaza over there, and because extremists now run his government, right-wing, religious extremists run his government, it's important for them that he goes in and does whatever he can to disrupt the west bank. because he understands, one

illegal settlement after another, with mobs running wild on the west bank, the lawlessness going across the west bank, he understands, that kills a two-state solution. this is all -- and this is what israelis understand. this is what americans need to understand. this is all calculated. it's always been calculated. to play to the hard right, religious extremists of israel, to go in and declare war against the palestinian authority and the west bank, while funding, again, please, let's all remember, netanyahu is the man who funded hamas through qatar. >> this is as simple as divide and conquer. the israeli government looked the other way at funding for hamas because they wanted to set up competition between hamas and the palestinian authority for exactly the reason you suggest.

they didn't want any dynamic whatsoever to grow up that would potentially cause palestinians to rally around a diplomatic or political path that would create pressures for a palestinian state, the end of settlements, what have you. that's why the israeli government essentially allowed hamas to thrive in gaza. meanwhile, they're allowing settlements to continue on a grand scale. nearly half a million israelis live in settlements now in the west bank. they simply don't want this process, if you will, to gain any momentum politically. i think what they prefer is to keep this both in gaza and the west bank as a security issue. fundamental difference. an open-ended security issue. the only relationship they want with palestinians is a security issue rather than a political or diplomatic issue. it's true of gaza and true now of the west bank. what worries me, you've got nearly close to 3 million

palestinians in the west bank. just over 2 million in gaza. what we're looking then, potentially, is an open-ended military relationship in both of these venues, which is terrible for palestinians and, i would argue, terrible for israel, as well. consequential for the united states. >> against this backdrop, hundreds of thousands of israelis participated in mass protests over the weekend over the news of the deaths of those six hostages. let's bring in international correspondent matt bradley, live from tel-aviv. matt, what are you seeing there today? >> reporter: yeah, well, these protests are about to be starting in a couple hours from where i am. this place has been rechristened hostage square. i was here two nights ago, a little after the news came out of the six hostages whose corpses were found dead in the gaza strip. it's inspired a new wave of anger just rolling across the country. it was starting here where i saw

six mock cove coffins carried f here down to what is essentially israel's answer to the pentagon. that is where we saw hundreds of thousands of people screaming really against benjamin netanyahu. of course, they're blaming hamas, as we've heard. but the anger against benjamin netanyahu, the prime minister, is so much stronger today than i've ever seen it before. last year, i was here even before october 7 covering those judicial reform bills that netanyahu was trying to railroad into the government. he eventually yielded on them. you know, this is a man who is used to not being loved by his public. he stays in power because of the divisions that are really deep in israeli society and have been cleaved open once again by the conversation around these hostages. that is the issue here. whether or not to defeat hamas totally, or whether or not to free the hostages. it looks as though, once again, benjamin netanyahu is siding with this commitment to completely destroy hamas, even if it means, even if it means surrendering the lives of those

hostages. that's not me saying that. we've heard that, as you mentioned, from the defense minister, gallant. he said this repeatedly in more than one cabinet meeting that we've heard in the israeli meeting. it's come to shouting matches, where he accused the prime minister of leaving the hostages to die. we're about to see another full, third day of rage in israel. the intention here is to essentially bring this country to a standstill, to arrest everything, and get everyone to push netanyahu to cede to some of the concessions for the relief of hostages. amid the rage and grief, including from the funerals of the hostages, including hersh goldberg-polin's funeral, gut-wrenching from his mother and father, still punctuated by politics, but amidst all this, benjamin netanyahu last night started his address to the nation with a poignant, almost

apologetic statement. he was asking for apologies from the hostages' families. immediately, he pivoted into what became a lesson in geostrategy. he even had props. he had a map where he showed why his main demand, and this is the thing that held up these negotiations so much over the past month, is that the israeli forces, the idf, remain in a corridor called the philadelphi corridor. it was between the gaza strip and is egyptian sinai corridor. also, a bisecting avenue. he said at length this was not a new demand and went into a history lesson about how he has tried to press for israeli presence on the philadelphi corridor before under previous prime ministers. this was another lecture to the israeli public, a public much in mourning, one that wants to see

his back, not just see him concede on these negotiations, but one that wants to see him leaving office. that is what i heard over and over again from these protesters by their hundreds of thousands in the streets and what we're hear again tonight. and i think for the rest of the week, the anger here is >> gene robinson, they believe they're close to a deal. we've heard it several times, a take it or leave it deal for hamas and israel. unclear what either side is willing to concede here. we've had these glimmers of hope. we've had this diplomacy. you've had american diplomats, including the secretary of state, going to broker this deal, to no avail. we're not sure what optimism the president sees, other than trying to express something in this moment.

>> i'm not sure either. negotiators get close to a deal, and then the goalposts get moved. here, netanyahu clearly moved the goalposts with a demand that is unacceptable. the control of that corridor between gaza and egypt is unacceptable to gaza -- to hamas, excuse me, that israel control the corridor. more important, it is unacceptable to egypt. that's a nonstarter for egypt. again, he doesn't want the war to end. richard haass, here's my question. if you look at the long career of benjamin netanyahu, who has been prime minister for many years, the longest serving israeli prime minister, i believe, in the nation's history, has his policy been -- can we say his policy is from the river to the sea,

essentially? has he not hollowed out the west bank in a way that makes a two-state solution, even if everyone decided tomorrow that, yeah, that's the way to go, hasn't he made that almost impossible? hasn't he set israel on a very different course from that which its founders wished? of course, they wanted a jewish democracy in the middle east. how does israel remain a jewish democracy under a one-state solution that absorbs somehow, or encompasses 5 million dispossessed palestinians? >> you put a lot on the table there. it's hard when you speak of bibi netanyahu to speak about a consistent, sustained policy. he's an opportunist. it's one of the reasons he's

survived politically as long as he has. yes, he has allowed settlements to grow dramatically. he's not participated in diplomacy. i think there are people around him in his government, and that's what's so stunning, who do believe in an israel that goes from the river to the sea. with bibi netanyahu, it is hard to know what he believes in, but he's clearly supporting, allowing, or tolerating policies that will make it extraordinarily difficult to resurrect diplomacy. the fact you don't have a partner on the other side, either hamas or the palestinian authority, makes a bad situation that much worse. what bibi netanyahu allowed is essentially drift. we're seeing the consequences of decades of drift. we're seeing what's happened in gaza. we're seeing it in the west bank. ultimately, yes, i'm not sure you have a one-state solution, you may have a one-state

non-solution. not anything that's formally codified. just a version of what you see today, the territorial division will continue to evolve. yes, it does raise fundamental questions about whether israel will remain a jewish democracy. at some point, you have to choose. bibi wants to put off that choice. i think it has real consequences, among other things. in britain, the partial arms cut off, and here, it's real consequences not just for israel but its support in the world. will people continue to be so sympathetic to an israel that remains an open-ended occupation of these two pieces of land and 5 million palestinians? i am not so sure. but that's what increasingly is on the table. >> to this point, the white house, and we heard from vice president harris specifically, say they're committed to israel's ability to defend itself, to its security. obviously, netanyahu has been a thorn in president biden's side. a real obstacle to this deal

being done. and we heard from the president, and the white house suggesting a take it or leave it time of agreement could be put on the table in the days ahead. there's skepticism that's the case. it's not like the white house is going to walk away from this in the months ahead if a deal isn't done this week. it's a hardball tactic, pressuring netanyahu to get an agreement done. joe and mika, the president's optimism seems to be a note of tempt of reassurance to the families. there's not a real sense to the people i've talked to that a deal is close, that a deal is on the horizon. certainly, that adds to the anguish of what we have seen from the family members, including the heart breaking moments from the funeral over the weekend, joe and mika. >> there has been extraordinary frustration from the president, from the administration, for six months now. because they have understood that they not only had to work

with benjamin netanyahu, but they had to work with benjamin netanyahu in trying the to secure a cease-fire, when benjamin netanyahu's goals were the same goals diplomatically as hamas'. that is, to kill any peace deal. richard haass talks about a decade of drift that's led to the current state. it's always important to remember, that drift has been calculated. he funded hamas, netanyahu did. he and donald trump knew where the funding was coming from, the illicit funding in 2018. they let it continue. donald trump refused to do anything about it. netanyahu refused to do anything about it. they continued that funding of hamas. three weeks before october 7th, and the worst slaughter of jews since the holocaust, benjamin netanyahu sent his mossad leader

to qatar and said, "fund hamas. keep funding hamas." and the reasons were very clear. hamas didn't want a two-state solution. benjamin netanyahu didn't want a two-state solution. and his continued power base has now gone far right, they didn't want a two-state solution. their enemy in their mind was the west bank. because the west bank posed the greatest threat for a two-state solution. dealing with the palestinian authority, a younger palestinian authority, that would have led to a two-state solution. so you're going to be lied to today. you're going to be lied to by a lot of people today. you're going to be lied to by a lot of americans today that are on certain cable news channels, that are going to be filling up social media.

they're going to lie to you. they're going to tell you that you have to support benjamin netanyahu and this is the pro-israel position. i've been pro-israeli before a lot of these yahoos were even born. and i will remain pro-israeli. but understand, understand, benjamin netanyahu's own defense ministers, benjamin netanyahu's own intel ministers in his cabinet told him he needed to go for a cease-fire. not only because he was going to kill all the hostages if he continued down this path, as we saw in that israeli newspaper, but also because his goal of, quote, destroying hamas was an unachievable goal.

that hamas could be kept out of power in gaza. by the way, that's just a bottom line. for anybody. hamas can never, ever, ever run anything again. they need to constantly be on the run. everybody in the cabinet agrees with that. they also said, you've reached the end, netanyahu. now, bring the hostages home. when he refused, mika, when he didn't listen to his defense ministers, when he didn't listen to his intel community, we saw what happened this weekend. unfortunately, this is what israel faces for as long as netanyahu clings to power at all costs. >> richard haass, thank you very much for being on this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," president biden joins vice president kamala harris on the campaign trail for the first time since exiting the 2024 race. what he had to say from

battleground pennsylvania. plus, former president trump claims he had every right to interfere with the 2020 election. >> confession. >> there he goes again. >> there's his confession. >> we'll play those new remarks for you. >> what is this, perry mason? >> what the harris campaign is saying in response. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. we planned well for retirement, but i wish we had more cash. you think those two have any idea? that they can sell their life insurance policy for cash? so they're basically sitting on a goldmine? i don't think they have a clue. that's crazy!

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i do weave. you know what the weave is? i'll talk about, like, nine different thing, and they all come back brilliantly together. it's like, friends of mine that are english professors, they say, it's the most brilliant thing i've ever seen. but the fake news, you know what they say? he rambled. it's not rambling. it's not rambling. you do it for hours and don't mispronounce one word. >> that is donald trump in front of a crowd in pennsylvania, rambling incoherently. part of a brilliant strategy he calls the weave, joe. i like how he sort of lays it out like it is from the beautiful mind.

he's seeing what the rest of us don't see. all moving together. i love that he famously surrounds himself with english professors from our finest institutions. >> well, i mean, it only makes sense. his great, great uncle went to m.i.t. >> yeah. >> when i'm walking down the street in new york, walking down sixth avenue, i trip and fall and hit my head and get up, i meant to do that. i meant to do that. i didn't mean to do that, i just tripped and fell. >> it also gets to the truth, jonathan, that everything is in his head. he hears the criticism, hears he's rambling too much, and projects and tries to explain it away to a crowd who doesn't know what he is talking about. >> he has to respond to everything written or said about him. he is undoubtedly watching right now, angry we're talking about the weave. he had been -- >> no, he's not. >> president biden dropping out of the race, ask focus was squarely on donald trump's age, donald trump's gaffes, his

misstatements and rambling at these rallies. of course, he has to hit back and invent something known as the weave. to justify what he's done, almost like a stand-up comedian with a multi-part act, bringing home the punch line three jokes later, referring to the old one, the callback. >> i'm still waiting for it. >> jonathan is one of the great white house reporters of our time, and i hate to do this. i mean, look at -- >> this is a tough setup. >> this is not good. >> he had nancy pelosi say, what this said vladimir putin say. he probably should never go, actually, east of warsaw. but i will say, donald trump doesn't hate that we're talking about the weave, willie. he loves that we're talking about the weave. because it, of course, underlines his theory that

everything is together. again, it's like the beautiful mind. everything is swirling around. yeah, i know, it works. it works for him. >> the words are lifting off the newspapers, and he is seeing how they connect. he's got it -- >> sherlock. >> yeah. >> hannibal lecter. >> yeah, hannibal lecter and the english professors. more seriously, donald trump said he had, quote, every right to interfere in the 2020 election. he made this statement during an interview that aired sunday night on fox news, while claiming that dozens of criminal charges he faces connected to the indictments actually help to boost his poll numbers. >> whoever heard, indicted for interfeing with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it, you get indicted and poll numbers go up. when people are indicted, poll numbers go down. it's such nonsense.

>> straight up confession there, he had every right to interfere in the 2020 election. harris-walz issued a statement, "everything donald trump has promised on the campaign trail, from terminating the constitution, to imprisoning his political opponents and promising to rule as a dictator on day one, makes it clear that he leaves he is above the law. now, trump is claiming he had every right to interfere in the 2020 election. he did not." katty, end quote from the harris campaign there. >> no, sometimes donald trump is pond wonderfully transparent and tells it the way it is. i'm waiting for the name of that specific english professor who tells him he is doing so well. he's in a moment where, clearly, he still has not figured out, after five weeks, six weeks of kamala harris being the democratic nominee, how to take her on. you know, we see him throwing

out twists in his abortion line, in his immigration line, it is a reflection. donald trump is transparent. when he does things like that, i think it reflects how he is trying to find something. he is trying to find some form of attack against her. the words he's come up with haven't done it. his campaign say, when i talk to them, september is going to be the month. you'll see a whole string of very aggressive ads hitting her as being socialist. as being the kind of person who is too extreme for americans to vote for. but, so far, everything they have tried to level at her has not stopped her edging up and catching him up in the polls and surpassing him in some polls. >> joe, do you remember when we were going to see a more disciplined donald trump? >> yeah. >> oh, right. >> remember that? it was like three weeks ago or something. he was going to stick to the issues. he was going to stick to the economy.

national security. you know, that way, he was going to win. all of a sudden, you know, that's a very, very distant memory now. he is so all over the map every time he opens his mouth. and he is trying to find something, throw something against the wall that will stick to kamala harris. he's trying to get on top of the news cycle again because she has been smoking him. she's been getting bigger headlines and bigger crowds and bigger money. it just drives him crazy. >> well, what's so sad is there are actually commentators out there, there are people in the mainstream media who suggest that this, you know, switching on abortion, switching on immigration, the thuggishness at arlington is all part of some grand, 3d chess donald trump is

playing. it's not but pathetic apologists. even in the mainstream media for donald trump. the fact is, that everything they're doing is not working. they're saying, kamala harris -- the first attack was kamala harris is a left-wing socialist, right? now, they're attacking her for being moderate. oh, she's changing all her positions. she's now a moderate. we can't allow her to be a moderate, as they're announcing to voters that she's a moderate. and then that leads them to the flip-flop attack. and then, you're right, gene, there's this new trump? he goes out and says that he's going to be the biggest champion of women's reproductive rights. he undercuts the florida six-week apportion abortion ban, says he is voting against it. says he is voting for the legalization of marijuana in florida. then he says, we need more

immigrants. we need more immigrants because a.i. and all this stuff. you know, the flip-flop attack, how exactly do you accuse kamala harris in an effective way, in a campaign, of flip-flopping, gene, when donald trump has flip-flopped on conservatives -- so-called conservatives, they're not conservative, on right-wing trumpers, their top two issues, abortion and immigration? he's flip-flopped on both of them. >> yeah, and now he is flip-flopping in the same sentence, right? you know, entirely different positions on abortion in the same sentence. so he says, oh, six weeks is not enough. it's got to be more weeks. but i'm voting against the measure that would get rid of the six-week abortion ban in florida. in the same sentence. it is one thing if you say one thing one day and a different thing the next day.

you can't really get away with that, but you certainly can't get away with changing a fundamental position in the same sentence. just for the record, by the way, his ridiculous claims about democrats supporting infanticide and that's what the florida referendum would do. the referendum, if you read it, specifically protects abortion rights until the point of viability. it's not, you know, a nine months and beyond. it's just a lie. he just lies and lies and lies, as if no one will ever call him on it. >> certain networks and websites, you will not hear that it is a lie. of course, this all comes from a man who is the reason roe was overturned. he takes credit for that, and that has made life for women in the united states less healthy and, for some women, a living

hell. thank you, donald trump. >> the thing is, when you're running, you have a position, i couldn't -- you embrace that position. when you run to it, away from it, back to it, you cause more concern. willie brought this up, mika. the pro-life community has supported donald trump. after '22, he blamed the pro-life community to the 2022 losses. he said the overturning of roe was stupid, that it was bad politically. now, he's going back and forth. if there was somebody that said, you know what? i don't like donald trump. evangelical, he is unchristlike, he's really terrible to people all around him, if that's what they're saying, but i'll vote for him because of abortion, and then he does what he is doing now, you know, you freeze some of those people.

>> where do you stand? >> who do what some people i know did in 2020, they stayed home or wrote in somebody else. >> gene, thank you very much for being on this morning. coming up on "morning joe," from a statement win for the georgia bulldogs to usc's upset over lsu, and the start of the post-saban era at alabama, paul finebaum and pablo torre will join us with their first impressions from week one of the college football season. that is "morning joe." we're back in two minutes.

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beautiful shot of new york city a few minutes before the top of the hour. >> it's fall. >> fall is here. >> come on. >> let's take a look at the other stories. >> are you happy when it is fall or kind of get a little sad? >> i'm sad happy. >> sad happy? >> excited about the year. >> you're sappy. >> yes, okay. >> i guess it's the same thing. i guess a lot of people, when

fall comes, you're like, okay. it's new. >> close to the top of the hour, so i'm going to take a look at the other stories. >> excited about it. hold on, you have to let me weave. college football. i'm weaving. >> really? >> all right. time for a look at the other stores making head likes this morning. russian president vladimir putin is visiting mongolia today. >> whatever season it is, i'm happy to be with you. >> stop that. that's so awkward. nobody wants to hear that. >> everybody wants to hear that. y'all uncomfortable? oh, they're covering their ears. >> russian president vladimir putin is visiting mongolia today, a country that technically should arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes in ukraine. mongolia is a member of the international criminal court system which is bound to detain suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued. but mongolia is highly dependent on russia for fuel. >> huh. >> the kremlin said last week it

wasn't at all worried about putin being handed over to the hague. a heat wave in southern california could bring temperatures up to 119 degrees this week. >> come on. >> 119. climate scientists say the summer of 2024 is likely to go down as the hottest or second hottest ever recorded. los angeles mayor karen bass says the city will be opening cooling centers across the area. and the united states has seized a luxury aircraft in the dominican republic being used by venezuela's strongman, nicholas maduro. official says the plane was illegally purchased in the united states and smuggled out of the country in violation of american sanctions. the biden administration is trying to put more pressure on the authoritarian leader following a widely disputed election earlier this year. >> you know, that looks like pablo's jet. >> no. pablo's jet is a little bigger.

>> is it? >> yeah. it's got this red velvet inside. he loves it. >> really? huh. >> he is into the red velvet. >> i guess so. from his corporate jets. turning back to politics now. >> that's a successful podcast. >> yes, pablo's? look at the jets. they're expensive. turning back to politics now. the harris-walz campaign spent the labor day holiday speaking to union workers in battleground states. seniorgutierrez has the latest from the campaign trail. >> reporter: biden and harris in a rare campaign appearance, courting labor alliances on labor day. >> when union workplaces are safer, all workplaces are safer. when unions are strong, america is strong. >> reporter: the vice president saying that u.s. steel should remain domestically owned,

rather than be sold to a japanese company. >> i trust her. >> reporter: the latest attempt to win over blue collar workers in critical swing states. >> i'll tell ya something, kamala and i are damn proud that we protected the pensions of over 1 million workers and retirees. >> reporter: harris visiting michigan earlier in the day. >> we are out here running like we are the underdog in this race because we know what we are fighting for. >> reporter: while her running mate, governor tim walz, hit wisconsin. >> really simple. it's really simple. when unions are strong, america is strong. >> reporter: recent polls show vice president harris doing better than former president trump nationally and in key battlegrounds by a handful of points, but within the margin of error. compare that with polling that mostly showed trump with a narrow edge before biden's departure from the race. >> we needed a new spark. >> reporter: natalie and her husband have been union workers

for decades. >> we're a little bit more excited for having a younger, more upbeat candidate, that's going to stick up for us. >> reporter: notably, though he courted rank and file workers throughout his campaign, former president trump wasn't on campaign trail. he is expected for a town hall on wednesday. he is hophoping an updated indictment in the election interference case against him will bring more momentum. >> you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it, you get incite indicted and poll numbers go up. >> he says he has every right to interfere with elections. that was nbc's gabe gutierrez reporting. let's bring in msnbc political analyst, former u.s. senator claire mccaskill. and columnist for "politico," jonathan martin. we will not talk about the lsu/usc game with jonathan. we're not going to go there.

>> jet lag is bad enough from vegas. >> it was a great game. great post game press conference. a lot of great theatrics there from the lsu coach. >> exactly. i thought coach kelly took it well, didn't you, the loss? i thought he was level headed in defeat. you know, took responsibility. that was good. >> i mean, it was the worst acting i've seen since the ivy league republican populists go out and go, "i am for the little man." no, it was pretty bad. claire, so i've been -- first of all, the polls, claire, obviously breaking kamala harris' way. we talked about an abc/ipsos poll that showed her up, i think, six points. but you go inside there, and, again, this is a snapshot, talks about trend lines. what i thought was so fascinating about this, you go in there and look at the favorable/unfavorable ratings. you see kamala harris, unlike

most politics not only in america but across the west, she actually has positive approval ratings. i think it is 46%/43%. donald trump way upside down. we have seen the continuation of bizarre behavior from the trump campaign, flip-flopping on immigration, flip-flopping on abortion, flip-flopping again on abortion. the thuggery at arlington. of course, the mainstream media trying to make this like any other race, going, "yes, but what about kamala harris' interview?" it is ridiculous, what the mainstream media is doing, trying to make this like any other race when it is so clearly not. but talk about donald trump's flip-flopping and the impact it will probably -- well, let's just say, the impact it had on races that you were in or that i was in, especially when you're accusing your opponent of

flip-flopping, and trump flip-flopping on abortion and immigration. >> yeah. it's really interesting to me. because if there's one subject that voters are unforgiving about flip-flopping and not being clear about your position, it's reproductive rights. it is really not something that most voters understand, well, what's changed? why are you destroying roe v. wade, then now all of a sudden saying, well, abortion should be legal for longer than six weeks? that makes no sense to voters. because there is nothing -- like kamala changing on domestic oil production, domestic energy production, that makes sense. there is a situation where the more we producedomestically, the less carbon that goes into the air because other countries don't produce it as efficiently and carefully as we do. also, more fracking means more

natural gas and means less oil. there is some rational for her coming more to the center on something like that. there's none on this, other than his own political high. you know, and i am so sick of this thing about the policies. joe, somebody needs to explain to me why the democratic senate candidate have been running ahead of their opponents, both before and after joe biden was in the race. they've been ahead the whole time. based on the same policies. based on the same policies. anybody who thinks trump, oh, if he just holds to his policies, everybody will be okay, no, it won't be. if that were the case, these democratic senate candidates would have been in trouble. they've never been in trouble. we've been running ahead in every battleground senate race since the beginning of this campaign. >> jonathan martin, we often say voters tune in after labor day to a presidential election. here we are, seven hours and seven minutes after labor day. we've shown the polls, margin of

error race in the polls, six-point advantage for kamala harris in the abc/ipsos poll. neck and neck in just about every state that will decide this election. as everyone settles back into school and work today, what is the state of the race? >> competitive, toss-up, maybe the slightest tilt toward the vice president but not by a lot. look, you know this. for a democrat to win the electoral college, they've got to have a pretty healthy lead in the national popular vote. right now, the data shows she has that in the national popular vote, but it is closer in the swing states. i think the biggest difference between now and when president biden was the nominee is that the vp has an insurance policy. the insurance policy is called the sunbelt. she doesn't just have to win michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, and the omaha house district to get 270. she can go to arizona, nevada, georgia, north carolina. she won't necessarily win all four, but if she puts two of those four into her column, it

gives breathing room around the great lakes, in a way biden didn't have. that is the question. can she make inroads into a georgia and north carolina? if she does, it takes a lot of the pressure off pennsylvania, in particular. i think, you know, i'm watching those states the most closely right now. >> jonathan, let me ask you and also jonathan lemire on your reporting. what you saw about "the boston globe" story that came out yesterday about a trump campaign aide or somebody that was on the trump massachusetts team, telling new hampshire workers, get out of new hampshire. >> right. >> the trump campaign decided this is no longer a swing state. it's harris'. go to pennsylvania and work instead. do you have any -- did you follow up and get info on that story? >> i can tell you from being at the gop convention in milwaukee before biden dropped out, there

was talk about new hampshire, minnesota, virginia, north carolina -- and new mexico as being competitive states. that's an illustration of how the map receded for trump. he's not going to be able to play in those reach states. in fact, now, i think trump is more focused on protecting the sun belt than he is going into the traditionally blue states like new hampshire and minnesota. >> we should note, the trump campaign aide who said that about new hampshire no longer being a battleground state has been dismissed, no longer president trump campaign. they're not publicly conceding that, but there's no doubt the map has changed with vice president harris' attention to the top of the ticket. there is -- states that republicans thought they could potentially put in play, when they thought they weregoing to a blowout, no longer. no one is talking about colorado and new hampshire anymore. to jonathan martin's point, the sunbelt opening up for vice president harris. she spent a lot of time in

georgia, including on a bus tour last week with her running mate. expect the same in the weeks ahead, i'm told, in north carolina. she'll do a similar bus tour there, including to rural counties. drive up the vote, reduce the republicans' margin of victory. claire, they're not ignoring the blue wall trio either. in fact, it should be noted that president biden, still popular in the states, certainly among older voters, he was in pennsylvania yesterday and is going to wisconsin and michigan this week. i don't think we'll see biden on the campaign trail a lot for harris, but when he does go, it'll be targeted. it'll be in those places. because there are some concerns that, as well as harris is doing right now, particularly surging in the sunbelt, she does have a little bit of weakness in those rust belt states, particularly pennsylvania. >> yeah. and it's not an accident that this is around unions. joe biden is proudly the most

pro-union president probably in my lifetime. he's really made it a focus of his first campaign, all of his campaigns, but certainly his campaign four years ago and certainly now and during his presidency, to strengthen the union movement in america. by the way, that's where we saw a lot of erosion, democrats, with union rank and file. the president said, go hillary, go joe biden, but trump had eaten into some of the base of the union voters. the fact that the unions are so strong at this point, and she is polling now significantly ahead of trump among rank and file union members. the other thing i want to point out is the disparity of money. look at the money being spent in these states right now. look at michigan. it is 55 million, harris. $6 million for trump.

wisconsin, $33 million, harris. only $3 million for trump. >> claire? >> north carolina, 26 to 3. it is crazy how much more resources they're pouring into these states compared to the trump campaign. >> let's talk about on the ground, too, claire. i mean, you and i both know, anybody who has ever run a campaign knows, you know, talk is cheap. somebody can have a lot of money, but if they're not investing it the right way on the ground, they lose. talk about the advantage, the massive advantage that democrats have to trump. that harris has to trump in their field operations, on the ground operations. >> right. >> this is one of the reasons why this trump person was panicking. he was like, you know, pennsylvania, they're outworking us, outorganizing us. you guys need to leave new hampshire and go to pennsylvania. but you look across all the swing states, and harris' ground

game is so much better than donald trump's. >> yeah. listen, what they did at the rnc is they basically shut their field operation and said, we'll let the packs do it. they're spending their money on trying to figure out how to steal an election, on voter suppression, not certifying voters, hiring more lawyers. meanwhile, democrats have really, in the last four election cycles, have really gotten busy on the ground game. i talked to the people at the convention that are in charge of the harris hard money ground game, in terms of deploying it, and those who are on the soft side, which means those being paid by pacs. they have gotten more resources. they have doubled amount of money they've received in this campaign already than what they received in all of 2020, in terms of resources. they are hiring thousands and thousands of people.

they have tens upon thousands of volunteers to supervise and get out on the ground. it is really something. this country has never seen a ground game like the democrats will put on in this election, partly because of the strength of the volunteer base that surged since kamala harris became the nominee. >> part of the problem for donald trump about opening this map up is now he'll have toreso which he has less of, in the sunbelt states, which he thought he had lined up. also, the other thing i'm watching emerging in the polls over the last week or two is really this huge split between young women and young male voters. clearly, trump doing better with the young male voters. every time kamala harris speaks at a union venue, joe biden speaks, there is a message there for white men, in particular, non-college educated white men, in particular, who are breaking heavily for donald trump, and peeling some of those away for her would be useful.

>> all right. claire mccaskill, go chiefs. jonathan martin, final word? >> yeah. >> lsu? >> tough, tough. no, this is an important point. there was a guy in that clip from the michigan rally yesterday behind kamala harris named brent booker in the orange shirt. he runs the labors union. that is a key union in the building trades, guys. claire mentioned this a minute ago. can kamala harris sustain support from the building trades? typically, male iron workers, operating engineers, those are the exact kind of voter who broke for trump in 2016, defied their leadership. it is that rank and file in places like michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania, that's going to be so key. can she keep that element of labor, especially the rank and file, white, hispanic and black men in her corner? if she does, it'll give her a better chance to win. >> it'll be critical. we'll have mr. booker on the show in the 9:00 hour.

jonathan martin, as always, thank you so much. jonathan, it is a long season, my friend. >> a 12-team playoff. we have a shot, joe. >> come on. >> keep hope alive. >> keep hope alive. the dream never dies. thank you, j-mart. >> okay. after a wild weekend in college football season openers, there was another big surprise last night. >> one-possession game, going for it on fourth down. you have one-one coverage on the bottom of the screen. they will snap it. a side arm lob, and it's intercepted! max tucker down the sideline. inside the ten yard line. first and ten, boston college. >> feels like panic. you have the momentum. >> bc converts. >> wow. interception returned for 58 yards set up b.c. on florida

state's goal line for another touchdown to give b.c. a 15-point advantage in the third quarter. the eagles' coach, bill o'brien, his era at b.c. started with a 28-13 road viktctory over fsc. drops the seminoles to 0-2 for the first time since 2021. bring in bestselling author and espn commentator, paul finebaum. and msnbc contributor, pablo torre. >> he has a mug. >> work that coffee. we'll start with paul. >> please. >> paul, we talked soon after coach saban left alabama, and, you know, he just wasn't going -- he said, i recruit him once, i'm not doing it every year. that's where we have right now with nil, with this new era. i've got to say, it was, you know, my son and i were watching the games all weekend, pretty crazy. here's the quarterback. last year, he was at boise

state. the year before -- it's really changed. one thing i really noticed, and one thing that -- we loved your show yesterday, my son and i were listening to it, the radio yesterday -- is that this new era has really brought just massive change. not only for the players, but teams. look at fsu. this is a team that was building, building. suddenly, everybody else is trading around. they may have made a miscalculation at quarterback and they're 0-2. you look at clemson. this was the part of the show we liked the most, you tried to get a viewer to say how bad the program was, but clemson, they didn't get involved. they have fallen desperately behind. talk about what you saw this weekend and what it suggests the rest of the season is going to look like. >> joe, let me start with clemson. as you know, they were at the

top of the heap a couple years ago. they played for four consecutive national championships, beating nick saban two of those times, and went to six playoffs. but this transfer portal and nil era began a couple years ago. since it has, there are only four schools in america that don't have a starter that they got from the transfer portal. the three academies and clemson. dabo sweeney is old school. he will not change. he has not had a decent question since trevor lawrence. before that, deshaun watson. former quarterback was the quarterback for fsu. a reason they're 0-2 and out of the playoffs. remember, fsu last year, joe, this is a team that had the attorney general of the state of florida threatening to sue the cfp to get them into the playoffs after they failed to get into the playoffs. alabama did get in, as you know. they lost 63-3 in the orange

bowl. lost the opener against georgia tech. they lost last night. before december 3rd, the sun has come up across the country, and they're essentially out of business for the 2024 season on september 3rd. >> yeah. pablo, again, that really speaks to this new era we're in. it's not like, okay, this is a team we have. they did well. fsu did so well last year. you look and say, that's a team, the trajectory going up. again, you know, you make the wrong, i'll call it a trade, you make the wrong bet, and they have a quarterback who is obviously overmatched by his opponents. talk about that. also, talk about the other game. i thought the lsu game, apologies to j-mart, it was an awesome game. what a great way to start football. i'm not just saying that, paul, because it was lsu, but two great programs playing in primetime sunday night. what an amazing kick-off. then the fsu game last night.

alabama, of course, starting slow but picking up. what were your highlights this weekend, pablo? >> it was hard to ignore how this weekend in college football was a case study in the macro changes we have seen. look, yeah, is florida state nearly running the weave, or are they actually one of the worst teams in football that has been outclassed by a bunch of new programs that figured out how to operate the transfer portal? the clemson story isn't insignificant. the brian kelly story isn't insignificant. there's a head coach who, again, when he is putting on this affectation of an accent and no one is buying it, and he goes and loses to s.c. in front of america and punches the table, in what is maybe the most honest display of authenticity, because he is mad at his life and station in this landscape of college football, or, he's one of the worst actors you've ever

seen, hard to tell on that one, as well. what we're looking at is a way in which the job of college football coach is also fundamentally changing. deboer at alabama had a great opening weekend, but it is hard to ignore he replaced nick saban, who looked at the macro changes and was like, this is too chaotic for me. as much as the 12-team playoff is going to even keep fsu's hopes briefly, glimmeringly alive, because they can win the conference and get an auto bid, the reality there is the best teams didn't used to need that help. we have down-ballot races, to borrow a term from politics, that are going to matter deeper into the season. we'll get two-loss teams that are relevant. but if you're a coach of college football, and paul knows this, maybe you say to yourself, before i was a recruiter and that was my main advantage. now, i'm a guy who has to manage essentially a salary cap. what do i do now? it is a very different shop. >> paul, my friend, you know where i'm going here.

nashville. >> yeah, baby. >> the hokies come to town. we had to have this one. you have to win the out of conference games if we're vanderbilt. >> we doing this? >> coach, nashville guy, played at vanderbilt, came home to take over this program. he said it after the game. this is one of those games as a 30-year vanderbilt fan where you can feel it. great first half, you give it away in the second. we revert back to form. but they clawed back and won in overtime. so proud of that team. now, i don't live in a fantasy world. you look down the schedule and see alabama, texas, lsu, tennessee, missouri, auburn, kentucky. gets harder from here. but what a great, great moment in nashville. >> thomas, the running back. >> it was, willie. i was on a plane watching the game, thinking of you and my wife, also a vanderbilt grad. we only hear from vanderbilt grads, joe, when they win a game, which is about every two, three years. >> oh, paul, come on now. >> it was a significant moment.

virginia tech was predicted by some of my colleagues at espn to make the playoffs. >> yeah. >> now, they're really after the commodores, anchored down. >> paul, really quickly, let me ask your thoughts on alabama. your thoughts on milroe. your thoughts on the defense. my gosh, on the safety we picked up from michigan. then 17-year-old wide receiver who just was extraordinary. >> i was encouraged. they looked good. they were playing western kentucky. they'll go to wisconsin in two weeks. that'll be the first test before georgia comes to town the end of september. joe, you couldn't help but think, as i covered as a young reporter, the transition after bear o'brien, he died four weeks after he retired. but to see nick saban, 72 years old, looking 52, watching the game from a luxury box, was just

more of the more startling things i have witnessed in my career of watching college football. he looked happy, too. [ laughter ] >> paul finebaum. >> first time in 17 years. we started our season without coach saban, he looked happy. you know, that gruff exterior, at times, also was sort of play acting. we were down there, and he was gruff to me, willie. i asked the simple question, isn't the sun nice? shows how stupid you are. as we go to break, he turns to mika, and i catch him, pinwinks going, i'm just having fun. >> very sweet. >> it was nice to see him. >> ramajamas? >> it was so nice to see him. >> how long along was that, willie? >> 12 years ago, 13?

it was a long time ago. >> paul finebaum, pablo torre, thank you, both, very much. we'll see you back, pablo, thursday for the kick-off. >> fire up the jet. >> nfl season. >> get your jet ready, baby. still ahead, we'll play for you a new ad from republicans who are against donald trump's campaign. it comes as the group launches a multimillion dollar effort in swing states. plus, editor in chief of "the atlantic," jeffrey goldberg joins us. >> he'll be happy. >> to discuss his book entitled "on heroism: mccain, milley, mattis, and the cowardice of donald trump." that is straight ahead on "morning joe." has no idea she's sitting on a goldmine. well she doesn't know that if she owns a life insurance policy of $100,000 or more she can sell all or part of it to coventry for cash. even a term policy. even a term policy? even a term

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he's a war hero because he was captured. i like people that weren't captured, okay? i hate to tell you. he is a war hero because he was captured. okay? >> donald trump's infamous moment in 2015 when, as a candidate, he disparaged senator john mccain's status as a war hero. those comments open up the new book by editor in chief of "the atlantic," jeffrey goldberg. "on heroism, mccain, milley, mattis." >> congratulations, jeff.

we'll get to the book in one minute. i do want to underline something that i saw you talk about on "washington week." of course, since you started hosting it, more people watch that than watched the beatles on ed sullivan. it's really changed the landscape of everything we do. >> he does a good job at the weave. >> notice, if you go to school now, kids have the gold book, right? they have his haircut. >> no one weaves like i weave. >> i know. >> you're a weaver. >> yeah. >> weavers. >> yeah, yeah, the weavers. also a folk fan. >> yeah. >> jeff, you made the point to your guests that donald trump will be brutish at arlington, going places no other politician has gone. he will have bizarre tweets daily that suggest he is deeply unwell. he will flip-flop on issues like

abortion and immigration and just about everything else, lie constantly. yet, the media will pretend like this is 1996 and it's clinton-dole. they'll go, yes, but kamala harris had tim walz with her in her first interview. and this is -- i notice the pace of -- and i hate criticizing the mainstream media because, mainly, they do things right, but there is almost a desperation for them to pretend this race is like every other race. and the false moral equivalency is getting pretty bad. we're just one day past labor day. talk about that, if you will. >> yeah, no, i mean, this really struck me. i mean, it should have struck all of us about nine years ago, right? but it really struck me when he did his long thing on sharks and

batteries. whether it is better to be killed by a shark or a battery falling into the ocean. last week, it was this -- another sort of disposition about irrelevant things. i was thinking, my god, if kamala harris spent ten minutes on stage randomly talking about whether -- first of all, he doesn't even understand how batteries work and how stored energy works. if he spends last week talking about how people don't eat bacon anymore because of windmills. it's not normal. i mean, it's not normal, and we can't act as if it is normal. so we're operating with a double standard. kamala harris, we parse her speeches, her interviews as if she is a serious human being who is taking slightly different positions on x or y or z, and we're holding her accountable. that's fine. it's especially fine in a normal circumstance. but here, we have a situation where she's talking about things

with a normal bandwidth of political discussion, and he is saying abnormal things. we're treating them the same. there's two different races going on. there's two very different candidates. i'm just saying, say what it is. which is, this person is outside the bandwidth of what politicians have been like through our modern era. >> that's not an argument against holding kamala harris accountable for what she said she believed in 2019 and what she believes now, but it's holding donald trump to the same standard. >> right. >> we touched on this arlington flap from last week. the united states army, not some liberal podcast or something, confirmed the trump campaign physically pushed aside somebody who works at arlington. by the way, tells you everything about it, didn't want to press charges because he or she feared the backlash or the hate that

would come his or her way. it gets to your book, "on heroism," that have been forming the narrative of donald trump. including the piece from john kelly in 2020, when he confirmed to you that donald trump talked about suckers and losers at a cemetery, and wondering what was in it for them, talking to a man who lost his son not so long ago at war. tell us a little bit about the idea of the book. >> yeah, yeah. just to be clear, john kelly said in 2023 that -- to another network, that, you know, donald trump has done x, y, and z, but my first story in 2020 was based on numerous sources from inside the administration. trump spent time arguing with the sources, as if there wasn't a long record of him disparaging

soldiers, generals, and, obviously, john mccain. this is all rooted in john mccain in a kind of way. the 2015 moment was one of the most bizarre moments in american political history. a lot of people, including me, thought, oh, well, there's one thing a republican candidate especially can't do, which is disparage war heros. like, that's not in the republican playbook, right? >> that's it. >> and he does this, and i thought to myself, well, that's that for trump. back to our regular programming. but he went up in the polls after that. obviously, he won the presidency. so i was trying to understand for a long time, trying to understand why voters are reacting to him that way. then the more time elapsed, the more you realized that disparaging the military, disparaging the generals who work for him, disparaging wounded veterans, literally saying, i don't want to see them. i don't want them in a military

parade because it makes me feel bad or it's gross or it's not pleasant to look at, you know, this is a regular occurrence. that's why this arlington cemetery incident is not -- it doesn't stand alone. he doesn't understand the role of the military in the psychological and social, patriotic life of america, and he never really has. this book is an attempt to try to figure out why he has these attitudes. the truth is, i don't know why. the one answer i would give is that he has contempt for everyone. we notice it more when he expresses contempt for people we generally hold in very high regard. including and especially john mccain and the various generals who did work for him for a time. >> jeffrey, the number of prominent figures, mattis, kelly, milley, who all, in

various ways and forms, have spoken out against donald trump, have warned what he could provide, which, in itself, is such a change in norms for the military. they're all featured prominently in your book. tell us about them, particularly milley, who you described as the heart of what you're doing here. >> it's an important piece of this. general milley was put in a position that no other chairman of the joint chiefs was ever put in, which is to say, dealing with a president who very overtly and acidly was trying to politicize the military. remember, you know, presidents have arguments with generals all the time. president obama had arguments about troop levels in afghanistan. the back and forth is normal. in the case of donald trump, he would tell -- he would discuss with the joint chiefs ideas that were illegal, right? i mean, he would talk about -- and then he'd talk about, you

know, shooting people in the legs. why don't we just shoot demonstraors in the legs, american demonstrators? that was one of the triggering mechanisms in all of this. he would continuingly insist the american military, i mean, the regular army, not national guard even, by 82nd airborne should be deployed against american citizens. this came up in the summer of 2020 especially. people like general milley were put in a position that no other generals have ever been put in, which is, and this is my words, not general milley's or general kelly or general mattis, deal winning a president who is emotionally unstable and intellectually limited. in other words, donald trump had no understanding of civil-military relations, right? donald trump had no understanding of why a military would be apolitical. donald trump literally told john kelly, the general, marine

general who was then his chief of staff, he literally said, i don't understand why you guys can't be like hitler's generals. general kelly pointed out hitler's generals repeatedly tried to kill him, but that is a factual aside. all of them faced this in their own way, which is, what is this man saying? again, outside the normal bandwidth of what people talk about in a democracy. >> obviously, he attacks anyone who crosses him, including someone respected like general kelly or general milley. before we let you go, we want to talk about israel right now. the bodies of six hostages recovered over the weekend, shot at close range according to the israeli government. >> yeah. >> now, we're seeing these protests, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets in tel-aviv. where does this moment go from here? pressure being applied to prime minister netanyahu, he seems not to be terribly concerned about the pressure that's being applied domestically. where do you see it going from

here? >> i think the mystery for a lot of americans, who don't live in a parliamentary democracy, how can a man at 20% approval rating and whose party controls a quarter of the seats in parliament, how does he maintain his grip on power? coalition politics. everyone in his narrow coalition is there for reasons of self-interest or party self-interest. imagining that -- one should never underestimate netanyahu's ability to stay in power. he's been doing it for 15 years, mainly in one contiguous stretch. i don't necessarily see the opposition overwhelming this. but, you know, something is breaking in that society. they had a quarter million people out on the street on saturday in just one city. demanding that the government put its primary emphasis on negotiating a hostage release rather than the total defeat of

hamas. most israelis would like the total defeat of hamas, precisely for the reason we talked about, for executing these kids, these young hostages, and a million other reasons. but i don't expect netanyahu to give up power easily. and he's outfoxed generations of opposition leaders. so i don't know where it's going, but i do know that netanyahu is not going. >> the meantime, 101 hostages, israeli hostages, still somewhere inside gaza. the new book is "on heroism, mccain, milley, mattis, and the cowardice of donald trump." editor in chief of "the atlantic," jeffrey goldberg, great to see you. >> thank you. coming up, michigan governor gretchen whitmer is standing by. she joins us on the heels of vice president kamala harris campaigning in her state yesterday. we'll talk to the governor about where things stand in her critical battleground state. that's next on "morning joe."

joe." a live look at the white house. beautiful day in washington. it is 47 past the hour. the harris campaign is kicking off its fighting for reproductive freedoms tour in palm beach, florida, today. according to the camcampaign, t bus tour will emphasize the stark contrast between vice president kamala harris and former president trump on the issue of choice. the reproductive freedoms tour is expected to hit 50 cities across the nation before november's election. joining us now, michigan's democratic governor, gretchen whitmer. she is a co-chair of the harris campaign. she's also author of "the new york times" bestselling memoir entitled, "true gretch." great to have you back on the show. let's start with this tour on reproductive freedoms. i'd call it health care for women, abortion health care. curious, why start in florida?

some would say, isn't that trump country? >> well, it's kind of an epicenter of trump's flip-flops, right? >> yeah. >> i think bringing the message to the people, talking with women and health care providers and our families, that's how we had such a historic outcome in our '22 election here in michigan. but it is important even for michiganders and floridians and new yorkers to know, what's at stake if we have a second trump presidency. project 2025, they're proposing monitoring women's pregnancies. i mean, this is draconian, scary moment. we know you can't trust donald trump when it comes to women's fundamental rights to make our own decisions and access health care. so kicking it off in florida, i think, made a lot of sense. i'm confident we're all going to get the benefit of being a part of this conversation here in michigan, as well. >> i would think in states like florida, the message would be beyond reproductive freedom, my right to abortion, but how about

my right to be saved by a doctor when my life is in danger? my right to health care. i would think in florida, where there is a six-week ban, there are women who are struggling right now with serious questions as to where they should go if they need help. >> there's no question. we know that over a third of american women have no ability to access abortion health care until they're literally dying. it is a scary situation across this country, and as we have seen from trump, he has praised his appointments to the united states supreme court. he was happy when was happy whe fell and the dobbs decision, what came out. now he is trying to pretend that he wants longer than six weeks, even though he flip-flopped on that. you can't trust donald trump it comes to women's health, access to health care. that's just one of many issues you can't trust donald trump on.

this we know for american women and our families and the health care community is very important to us all. >> governor, we know that there is polling suggesting amongst women at least abortion rights have crept up even to the number one issue that they are concerned about. but overall, the polls are consistent. the number one issue for all people in america is still the economy, inflation, the cost of goods. do you think the harris campaign is as far as you can see in michigan is doing enough to address that issue and then the issue of immigration? >> i appreciate the question. and i would submit that abortion is about the economy, too, right. the most important profound decision, a person or family or woman will make is whether and when to bear a child. this is about our personal economy. this is about our collective economy. how can women get in the work force if they can't make their own decisions about whether and

when to bear a child or access health care. when you look at donald trump who wants to rip the rights away and kamala harris who wants to give women greater access, when you look at kamala harris' platform to get more money in the pockets of americans versus donald trump who wants to throw tariffs that will get passed on to people and cripple the american consumer, we know this is a stark choice whether it's on the economy as many people define it or about the personal economy. kamala harris is the one who is going to empower people and help more americans keep money in their pocket versus donald trump, whatever is in donald trump's best interest at the time, which is why you can't trust this guy. >> yeah. you know, i'm curious. i really think it makes a lot of sense to go to 50 states or 50 cities and to go to places where perhaps they don't have as much information, and that problem is in the media as well, governor. there are right-wing networks that people watch all day long

where they are breathing in and hearing a constant stream of ugly things about joe biden or ugly things about kamala harris really lately even pushing over into the misogynistic and disgusting. and so my question is are you welcome on fox news? and if you are, would you go there to bring the message, because some call it kind of an arm of the trump network, but heading in there to speak to those viewers, would that be a good strategy and is it possible? >> absolutely. and i will go anywhere and talk to anyone on any subject, frankly, especially on something as important as this upcoming election. we know that at the end of the day the american voter is smart. they work hard. the average person in this country is a hard-working person trying to do right by their families. they expect their leaders to work harder than they do and to be better than they are if

that's possible. i think it's really important to ask yourself, who is going to make your life better? we know that kamala harris has focused on the people, has lived average normal life like most americans have, doing hard jobs that paid by the hour, versus a guy who never has, who doesn't talk about his vision for america but wants retribution or wants to otherize people. so every one of us has a choice to make. what we put out in the world and consume. most people are tired of politics as usual where it's nasty and personal. they want leaders who solve problems. that's a powerful message that the harris/walz campaign and administration needs to bring to the people and i want to be a part of that, i have been a part of that, will continue, i will talk to fox news, to anyone. >> democratic governor of michigan gretchen whitmer, thank you for coming on this morning. her new book is available now. thank you very much for being

on. the group republican voters against trump is launching a new multi-million dollar ad campaign in some of the key battleground states that will decide the election this november. take a look. >> i am a two time trump voter. >> in 2024 i cannot support donald trump. >> trump is 100% -- >> responsible for january 6th. >> treatment of women. >> disgusting. >> trump calls servicemen suckers and losers. >> it will be worse than the first term. >> kamala harris is a prosecutor. >> he is a convicted felon. >> in 2024 -- >> i will be proudly voting for kamala harris. >> republican accountability package responsibility for the content tv this advertising. >> the push also features 80 billboards showing former trump voters from swing states saying they will now vote for harris over the former president. joining us now sarah long well, executive director of republican voters against trump. also the publisher of the

bulwark. where will this new ad run? tell us more about it. what's the strategy behind it? >> we are launching in pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, arizona, and nebraska, too. some of the key states where we think that kamala harris is going to need to overperform to defeat donald trump. the strategy is simple. you have got to build a permission structure for republicans, soft gop voters, right leaning independents, people who voted for donald trump and everybody our campaign voted for donald trump at least once and many times -- many cases twice. but they are out on him. and what we've seen -- i do focus groups all the time with voters. one of the things we have seen is a tremendous openness from some trump voters, many of them are the kind of sort of obama/trump voters back from 2016. they tend to be people who only tune in right around now as the

election gets really close. and we've seen a tremendous openness to voting for kamala harris. people are interested. they want to hear what she stands for. many of them don't know that much about her, even though she was the vice president of the united states. so they are getting to meet her for the first time. and so what we are doing is taking republican voices, trump voting voices and elevating them so that is a signal basically, a permission structure for other republican voters whokamala curious to say because i voted for trump or because i identify as a republican i am interested in voting far kamala harris and i am doing it because donald trump presents such a threat or i will tell you actually what we hear from a lot of the voters more than anything else is people are bored by trump. they are bored with all of the drama. they are tired of the insults. they are tired of the lies about the election.

they want to know what is somebody going to do for them. they want to know how they are going handle the economy, handle inflation, and they are interested in a new pitch. that's what kamala harris has for them. >> i would add the word exhausted. republicans are using that word to describe trump. so one of the major flaws with polling in recent cycles is there seems to be an -- people theorize because some are unwilling to admit to a pollster i am voting for trump. do you think there may be some republicans who may not be willing to acknowledge to a pollster por friends and family i am not streeting republican this time around, i am voting forlt democratic nominee and when it comes to the ballot box the privacy of the ballot box push the button for harris? >> this is especially true of working class women where you'd be surprised how many of them are thinking about this race and sort of an entirely new frame t they like kamala harris.

we are seeing sort of non-college white working class women a openness to her now. some has to do with abortion as an issue. but a lot of it is that they just feel like she is for them, something we say, she seems normal. they like the choice of tim walz as the vice president. and so they are not 100% there yet. i sort of want to be clear that what they are saying is i'm interested. i am listening. although in other cases we are seeing people who voted for trump in the focus groups -- we just did one recently. i think you might have sound from it. the entire group voted for trump previously and every single one of them was going to vote for harris and a lot of it was the contrast that they see between her message as being optimistic and upliftk and donald trump's doom and gloom. they are tired of this and i like the idea of something new. >> executive director of republican voters against trump and publisher of the bulwark,

sarah long well, thank you very much for coming on the show. still ahead, donald trump and j.d. vance made the surprise move of staying off the campaign trail yesterday while president biden, vice president harris and governor tim walz were all in battleground states. a recap for you just ahead on "morning joe." we're back in 90 seconds. knowing that he's getting good nutrition, that's a huge relief for me and my dad. (sings) old bean piglet head yes that is your name. if you saw his piglet head you would say the same. toot toot.

remember, as president, donald trump blocked overtime

benefits for millions of workers. he opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage. as the president said, he appointed union busters to the national labor relations board. and supported right to work laws. >> i remember a time when republicans talked about things like freedom, they meant it. they would never turn their back on our allies. but that's not these guys. trump and vance when they talk about freedom means government should be the freedom to invade every corner of our life. they talk about small government simultaneous small enough to be in your bedroom, exam room, small enough to be in your library telling you the things that you should make decisions about. >> the harris/walz campaign spent the labor day holiday speaking to union workers in battleground states. meanwhile, donald trump and j.d.

vance took the day off from the campaign trail as we are now just little over two months away from election day. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it's tuesday, september 3rd. along with joe, willie, and me, the host of way too early, jonathan lemire. u.s. special correspondent for bbc news katty kay. associate editor at "the washington post" eugene robinson and president emeritus of the council on foreign relations richard haass, the author of the weekly newsletter home and away on substack. >> this is considered to be start of the campaign, willie. and things are lining up. interestingly, we will be showing some polling numbers in a minute just to set it up. but i will say that the numbers have shift dramatically. in the shifts, i saw a number

this weekend, over the weekend, that showed women now 45 and under see abortion as the top campaign issue, the top political issue in america over the economy. and that's gotten donald trump, you know, saying he is going to be pro-choice advocate, using pro-choice advocates' words saying i am going to be a great champion for reproductive rights and then he changes when he gets chased and then he changes back, says he is going to be against florida's six-week abortion ban. i mean, all over the place right now because the numbers certainly aren't going in his direction. and he understands, as he has always understood, that the position that he is responsible for, the terminating of roe v. wade, as he said it, is very unpopular going into these final two months of the campaign. >> yeah, and he has known that since dobbs came down.

let's be honest. after the disastrous midterm elections for republicans where there was supposed to be a red wave in 2022 and there wasn't he said outwardly it was the abortion issue, we talked too much about abortion, despite the fact that he appointed the three supreme court justices who got rid of rowe. he knows. you can tell by his flailing of just in the last few days on the question of when an abortion ban in florida should start six weeks is where it is now, there is that new measure amendment on the "bullet train" this november. you're right. we turned the corner. this is the homestretch. two months to election day. one week until that huge debate between donald trump and vice president kamala harris. as you wake up to the end of summer here is where the race stands. it's close. a poll finding no real big bounce in support for vice president kamala harris coming out of the democratic national convention a couple of weeks ago. abc news ips sew poll finds it

the same as it was before the dnc with harris up 52-46. that's among likely voters. attributes, 46% of those polled see harris favorably as a person versus 43% with an unfavorable impression of her. 33% see donald trump favorably, 33 versus 58% who have an unfavorable impression of donald trump. 53% of the people in the poll view harris as qualified to be president compared to 47% for trump. meanwhile, the gender gap has widened. vice president harris now leads by 13 points among women, up from six points pre-convention. donald trump is up five among men. 54-41 for an 18 point gap there, joe. again, maybe not a big bounce coming out of the convention that some people in the democratic party hoped for. when you look at the before and after, meaning with joe biden at the top of the ticket and now with vice president harris at the top of the ticket there is a

remarkable change. >> yeah, there is a remarkable change. and you look at the characteristics, all of the things that donald trump was ahead of before harris got into the race, he is now behind. the most striking thing, when you are looking and people are trying to sort through the race and what direction it's going, you just look at the favorable/unfavorables. donald trump way upside down by, you know, close to 20 points. in the 30s for likable. and then you have kamala harris actually up. i think 46-43. that is a huge gap. the trump campaign has said, and if you see some of just the absolute crazed behavior, and it's just -- it's really -- it's really almost too much to get your arms around and i understand that's the idea of it, that there is so -- the claims are so outrageous. they are so disconnected from

the truth. trump moving all over the place on issues from abortion to immigration. now saying we need more immigrants in the united states. all of this stuff, the crazy stuff at arlington. they are just -- they are absolutely desperate. and the campaign has said internally, they know they can never bring -- they can't make people like donald trump. >> right. >> so their goal is to make people hate kamala harris and that's where we are as -- and if they can't get americans to hate kamala harris, then they understand she will win. >> so you mentioned flip-flopping on one of many issues, but one of them was reproductive rights, and the former president continues to struggle on the issue with a series of flip-flops. evangel gulls supported him in part because of his strong pro-life stances but he under cut that last month, claiming he would be great for women and

their reproductive rights. days later in an interview with nbc news he was pressed about florida's six-week abortion ban. >> i think the six week is too short. it has to be more time. and so that's -- and i told them i want more weeks. >> so you will vote in favor of the amendment? >> i will be voting we need more than six weeks. >> the republican presidential nominee has now come out against the florida ballot measure that would extend the time women in the state have to get an abortion. conservative backlash to his earlier comments was swift with some on the right warning trump was losing a key block of anti-abortion voters. he attempted to clean up his comments on friday. watch. >> are you voting yes or no on amendment four in florida? >> six weeks, you need more time than six weeks. i disagreed with that from the early prime ministers when i heard about it. i disagreed. at the same time, the democrats

are radical because the none months is a ridiculous situation. you can do an abortion in the ninth month. some of the states like minnesota and other states have it where you could actually execute the baby after birth. and all of that stuff is unacceptable. so i will be voting no for that reason. >> okay. it that was just a ridiculous lie. the harris campaign issued a statement following trump's latest comments, quote, donald trump just made his position on abortion very clear. he will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme it applies before many women even know they are pregnant. jonathan lemire, there are many, many, many different angles we could take on this. the nine month lie is one that we've seen purveyed the republican party since the onset of the campaign. it is a complete lie, although it has taken by many republican followers and maga voters whole

cloth. they think it happens because it's said and echoed enough on different right-wing networks. it's not corrected. the bigger issue is that all of his different answers is what trump does. it confuses people. nobody really knows where he stands. and ultimately nothing matters. it's a bigger part of some would say some dangerous trends towards fascism in this country. but for this election, could the lies work? >> yeah, certainly more of the fire hood of false strategy we have seen from trump for a number of years. it's how his campaign is panicking about the abortion issue. i talked to those in trump world who said that the former president himself has acknowledged privately he thinks abortion could be the biggest problem his campaign faces this november. we know that the -- publicly he downplayed it. advisors are worried. hence, the remarkable flip-flops in the last week about trump

here as he is trying to pin down where he stands on this florida abortion regulation. and vice president harris received some criticism last week after this cnn interview saying she changed her position on a few things. trump deserves that scrutiny times ten for how he seems to flip-flop on things like that, abortion, seemingly every day depending who he is talking to, depending to the latest poll he has seen. on polls, should note harris got her convention bounce preconvention because democrats were so excited about the change in the ticket. that's when the burst of energy came and we are seeing a few other polls showed a little uptick for her ever since and that 53-46 is outside the margin of error. it does seem like the close harris has momentum and the abortion issue is a big part of it. >> i love the idea of a preconvention bounce. if we have a pre-show round of

applause as well. look, i think, you know, some of the democrats that i have spoken to this weekend have expressed concern that the polls have not gone as far ahead for harris as they might have expected given the enormous amount of fundraising, huge burst of enthusiasm in august and a very successful convention and they hope she would be more ahead particularly in the swing states. if you have to think because of the republicans electoral majority she needs to be six points ahead in terms of the popular vote nationally, she is just about there. now all the focus is going to be on the swing states. abortion being a main issue for women coming up ahead of immigration and the economy is incredibly important. women elections in america. if it's going to be about the economy and immigration he has an advantage on that.

the harris campaign is right to stress as it did over the course of this weekend and in pittsburgh that they go into this as the underdogs. that's the best way to approach the last few weeks. >> you touched on this. the idea that donald trump has you have such contempt for voters, suggesting that babies are being murdered after they are born in blue states, that's murder. that's not happening. and as you know and you said many times, abortions that happen after 21 weeks or 24 weeks are extremely rare. women don't want to have an abortion that point. it means something is medically wrong and they have to have an abortion. that's not an elective thing women do casually. and jon makes the point about kamala harris is that she has no core. she stands for nothing. she said one thing in 2019. now she is saying something different to be elect the. watch donald trump in the last week just twisting in the wind on this question of abortion. >> everything that they accuse her of he is 100 times over.

the balance bounces back on him. coming up, we will turn to the developing news from israel where mass protests erupted after another six hostages were killed last week in gaza. we'll get the very latest from tel aviv when "morning joe" comes right back. " comes right back to support memory in older adults. so you can keep saying... you mastered it! you fixed it! you nailed it! you did it! with centrum silver. clinically proven to support memory in older adults.

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we want to move now to the tragic developments into the middle east. on saturday, the israeli defense forces found the bodies of six hostages inside a tunnel under the gaza city of rafah. among them, 23-year-old american israeli hersh goldberg-polin. all six hostages captured by hamas on october 7th. five from the supernova music festival and one from a ka buttes in southern israel. a forensic examination found all six hostages were shot and killed at close range. a spokesperson from israel's health ministry says they were murdered thursday or friday. their bodies were found less than a mile from the tunnel where a 52-year-old israeli hostage was rescued last week. hamas claims the hostages were killed by idf fire, a claim israel's military says is false and that there was no exchange of fire in the tunnel.

president biden and vice president harris both spoke separately with the paris of hersh goldberg-polin on sunday. in a statement, president biden said, his parents have been relentless and irrepressible champions of their son and have all of the hostages held in an unconscionable conditions, i admire them and grieve with them more deeply than words can express. hersh was laid to rest in jerusalem yesterday. hundreds joined in the procession and thousands packed the streets to mourn and show support to the hostages remaining in captivity. later in the day, hersh's parents delivered heart-wrenching eulogies in memory of their son. >> thousands of messages is, i'm sorry.

hersh, we failed you. we all failed you. you would not have failed you. you would have pushed harder for justice. you would have worked to understand the other, to bridge differences. you would have challenged more people to challenge their own thinking. and what you will be pushing for now is to ensure that your death, the deaths of all of the soldiers and so many innocent civilians are not in vain. >> how do we live the rest of our life without you? i pray that your death will be a turning point in this horrible situation in which we are all entangled. i take such comfort knowing you are with carmel, eden, alex, ori. i am told they were delightful in different ways. i think that's how the six of you managed to stay alive in unimaginable circumstances so

very long. you each and every single one of you have did every single right to survive 329 days in what i'm pretty sure can only be described as hell. i send each of the families my deepest sympathies for what we are all going through. and for the sickening feeling that we all could not save them. okay, sweet boy, go now on your journey. i hope it's as good as the trips you dreamed about because finally my sweet boy, finally, finally, finally, finally you're free! i will love you and i will miss you every single day for the rest of my life. but you're right here. i know you're right here. i just have to teach myself how to feel you in a different way. and hersh, there is one last thing i need you to do for us. now i need you to help us stay strong.

and i need you to help us survive. >> the news of the killings has led to renewed criticism of israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu. when asked by reporters yesterday whether netanyahu is doing enough to secure a cease-fire and hostage release deal, president biden answered, no. just last week, the israeli newspaper reported that israel's defense minister slammed netanyahu over his handling of the situation saying the prime minister's decisions could, quote, kill all of the hostages. the editor your board of the israeli publication is out with a piece entitled the israeli public's moment of truth. the board writes in part this. it was hamas terrorists who pulled the trigger, but it was netanyahu who sealed their fate. the prime minister likes to think of himself as mr.

security, but he will go down in history as mr. death and mr. abandonment written in the hostages' blood. defense minister yoav gallant, who proved to be the only man in the security cabinet where there are no men warned this decision meant bearing the deal and sentencing the hostages, who were still alive, to death. but to no avail. when the public wanted to block the judicial to overhaul, it succeed the. when the public wanted to start the defense minister from being fired it succeeded. this time had the public wanted a deal to happen, there would have been a it deal. for this reason, the public must now take to the streets en masse. it must call, it must answer the call so the hostage families to shake up the country immediately. time is running out. if there isn't a deal now, they will all die. >> you know, yesterday we heard

some people on the far right both in israel and america in critical -- being critical of joe biden for saying what the world has been saying for what netanyahu's own cabinet has been saying, his defense ministers, his intel ministers, that he was not doing enough. netanyahu is, as you remember, if you watch this show, you remember netanyahu is the same person claiming this holy war against hamas who knew hamas was a terrorist group. in 2018, along with donald trump, knew about their secret funding. did nothing about it. three weeks before october 7th qatar was asked by netanyahu and

his government to continue funding hamas. it was benjamin netanyahu and his government and security forces who left the borders open for the october 7th slaughter. it was benjamin netanyahu in charge when there were bands of terrorists that went through the country, savaging killing people, some having to wait 12, 13 hours -- >> this is still too soon to talk about that. >> for help. and they still, netanyahu and his cabinet still won't explain why he is the man who funded hamas. that right there, that's the man who funded hamas. people talk about qatar. people talk about iran. it was netanyahu that kept pushing qatar to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in propping up hamas.

it was benjamin netanyahu who knew about hamas' plan a year, a year before the attack came. it was benjamin netanyahu who enabled and funded hamas for years. and now he is using that war to stay in power, to avoid prison, and risking a regional war every single day. this crisis was brought to you by netanyahu's horrific leadership. and he knows when he leaves he will be remembered as the worst prime minister in israeli history. so that's why he doesn't want the war to end. if you don't understand, i promise you it takes ten minutes of searching on your google machine. it takes ten minutes to understand netanyahu funded hamas. he kept the money going.

he enabled them. he strengthened them. also all to trithe west bang. he could kill a two-state solution. hamas are terrorists. we have always said they are bloodthirsty horrific terrorists. it is netanyahu who enabled them. and richard haass, when you have netanyahu's defense minister saying before the killings to netanyahu in the cabinet meeting, when the world is saying do the cease-fire deal. when the hostage families are doing the cease-fire deal, when his intel community says do the cease-fire deal, when the defense minister says the cease-fire deal and he refuses to do the cease-fire deal, it is

netanyahu who refused to do that. so what joe biden said yesterday a no, a gentle no, that's far, far less than what those closest to netanyahu said, which was, you are going to have the hostages killed. and netanyahu, head down, moved forward, understanding what everybody understands. the second this war is over, his government collapses and there is a chance he goes to jail. >> israel on issue, joe, is extraordinarily divided. the most recent polls show the country almost split. netanyahu will not guilty f agree to the it deal because for the reasons you say.

the government would come down. the investigations on october 7th would kmens. and more broadly, it would start a large debate about what comes after this gaza. what do you do about palestinians in the west bank. his government wants no part of it. so you have a bizarre situation here diplomatically. i'll talk about the diplomacy. the personal side of this is just so painful. it was so real and raw what we heard at the funeral. but you have got two parties here. the israeli government and hamas. neither of whom wants a deal. and you have the united states almost trying to make up for what the two parties lack with its own efforts and that never works in diplomacy. it never, ever works. so i think what we are facing is what we've talked about on this show almost for a year, that this goes on, this is now a grind, and, you know, this will just continue in gaza.

and what we have seen the last few weeks, if this were not bad enough, we are seeing essentially a new front open up between israelis and palestinians on the west bank. the west bank is beginning to look a little bit like gaza. >> yes. calculated -- richard, explain that's calculated. it has been calculated. when people say why did netanyahu, like, urge qatar to fund hamas in gaza, because he wanted to keep gaza over there and because extremists now run his government, right-wing religious extremists run his government, it's important for them that he goes in and does whatever he can to disrupt the west bank because he understands with one illegal settlement after another, with mobs running wild on the west bank, the lawlessness, going across the west bank, he understands that

kills a two-state solution. this is all -- and this is what israelis understand. this is what americans need to understand. this is all calculated. it's always been calculated to play to the hard right religious extremists in israel to go in and declare war against the palestinian authority and the west bank while funding again, please, let's all remember, netanyahu is the man who funded hamas. through qatar. >> this is a simple as divide and conquer. the israeli government looked the other at funding for hamas because they wanted to set up competition between hamas and the palestinian authority for exactly the reason you suggest. they didn't want any dynamic whatsoever to grow up that would potentially cause palestinians to rally around a diplomatic or

political path that would create pressures for a palestinian state, the end of settlements, what have you. so that's why the israeli government essentially allowed hamas to thrive in gaza. meanwhile, they are allowing settlements to continue on a grand scale nearly 500,000 israelis live in settlements now in the west bank. they simply don't want this process, if you had will, to gain any momentum politically. so i think what they prefer to keep in gaza and the west bank adds a security issue. open ended security issue. the only relationship israelis want with palestinians is a security issue rather than a political and diplomatic issue. it's true of gaza and it's true now of the west bank. and what worries me, you have got nearly close to 3 million palestinians in the west bank. close to -- just over 2 million in gaza. what we are looking potentially is an open ended military

relationship in both of thieves venues, which is terrible for floridians and i would argue terrible for israel as well and consequential for the united states. coming up, we will stay in the middle east for new reporting on the underground battles being waged in gaza. how terrorist fighters were preparing for tunnel warfare long before their attack on israel. that conversation is straight ahead on "morning joe." you'll find them in cities, towns and suburbs all across america. millions of americans who have medicare and medicaid but may be missing benefits they could really use. extra benefits they may be eligible to receive at no extra cost. and if you have medicare and medicaid, you may be able to get extra benefits, too, through a humana medicare advantage dual-eligible special needs plan. call now to see if there's a plan in

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hundreds of thousands of israelis participated in protests over the weekend over the news of the e deaths of the six hostages. international correspondent matt bradley live from tel aviv. what are you seeing today?

>> reporter: yeah, these protests are about to be starting in a couple of hours. this place has been christened coverage square. i was here two nights ago after the news came out of those six hostages who is corpses were found dead in the gaza strip. that's inspired a new wave of anger that is rolling across the country. it was starting here where i saw six mock coffins carried from here all the way down to what is essentially israel's answer to the pentagon. that's where we saw really hundreds of thousands of people screaming really against benjamin netanyahu. of course, they are blaming hamas. but the anger against benjamin netanyahu is so much stronger today than i have seen it before. last year i was here before october 7th covering those judicial reform bills that netanyahu was trying to railroad into the government. he yielded on them eventually. this is a man use today not

being loved by his public. he stays in power because of the divisions that are really deep in israeli society and that have been cleaved open once again by the conversation around these hostages. and that is the issue here. whether or not to defeat hamas totally or whether or not to free the hostages. it looks as though once again benjamin netanyahu is siding with the commitment to completely destroy hamas even if it means surrendering the lives of the hostages. that's not me saying that. we heard that from defense minister yoav gallant. he said this in more than one cabinet meeting we heard about in the israeli media. he accused the prime minister of leaving the hostages to die. this is -- we are about to see another full third day of rage in israel. the intention is to bring this country to a standstill. to arrest everything and get everyone to push netanyahu to

accede these concessions on releasing the hostages. amid this rage and grief we heard yesterday including from the funerals of the hostages, including from hersh goldberg-polin's funeral, a gut-wrenching eulogy from his mother and father, punctuated by politics. amidst this, we heard from benjamin netanyahu last night. he came out and started his address to the nation with a very poignant almost apologetic statement. he said he was asking for apologies from the hostages' families. then immediately he pivoted into what became a lesson in geostrategy. he even had props. he had a map. he showed why his demand, and this held up these negotiations so much over the past month, is that the israeli forces, the idf remain in a corridor, the philadelphia corridor. another name for the border between the gaza strip and egypt

sinai peninsula. that and a bisecting avenue through the middle of the gaza strip separating north from south. this is a new demand. though he said last night at length that this was not a new demand and went into a history lesson how he tried to press for israeli presence on the philadelphia corridor before under previous prime ministers. this was another lecture to the israeli public, a public very much in mourning, one that wants to see his back not just see him concede on these concessions, on these negotiations, but one that wants to see him leaving office. that's what i heard over and over again from the protesters by the hundreds of thousands in the streets and what we will be hearing again tonight. i think for the rest of the week the anger here is implacable. >> thank you. coming up, our next guest leads a group with 500,000 members. brent booker president of the laborer's union of north

america, backing kamala harris for president. our conversation with him straight ahead on "morning joe." hi, i'm jason. i've lost 228 pounds on golo. ♪ changing your habits is the only way that gets you to lose the weight. and golo is the plan that's going to help you do that. just take the first step, go to golo.com. (♪♪)

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i do the weave. you know what the weave is? i'll talk about like nine different things. they come back brilliantly together and it's like, friends of mine that are english professors say, it's the most brilliant thing i have ever seen. but the fake news, you know what they say? he ramled. it's not rambling when you have -- what you do, you get off a subject, mention another tidbit, get back on to the subject. and you go through this and you do it for two hours and you don't even mispronounce one word. >> that is donald trump telling a crowd in pennsylvania the other day rambling, rambling

incoherently actually part of a brilliant strategy he calls the weave. joe, i like how he sort of lays it out like it's from "a beautiful mind." he is seeing things the rest of us don't see and the pieces of the puzzle are moving together. i also love the idea he famously surrounds himself with english professors from our finest institutions. >> well, it only makes sense because, after all, his great, great uncle went to m.i.t. it's like when i am walking down the street, you know, in new york and actually walking down sixth avenue and i trip and fall and hit my head. i get up, i meant to do that. >> oh, man. >> i just tripped and fell. >> it also gets to the truth, jonathan, that everything is in his head. he hears all of the criticism. he hears that he is rambling too much. so he projects and gets at it right away and tries to explain it away to a crowd who doesn't know what he is talking about. >> he is watching right now

angry we are talking about the weave and he had been with president biden -- >> which weave? >> president biden dropping out of the race. the focus was squarely on donald trump's age. donald trump's gaffes, misstatements and rambling in these rallies. of course, he has to hit back and invent something known as the weave to justify what he has done. almost selling it like a standup comedian with a multipart act who brings home the punchline three jokes later referring to an old one. that's what trump claims he is doing here. >> i hate do this because jonathan is one of the great white house reporters of our time. i mean, you look at what he -- >> tough setup. >> he had nancy pelosi say what, what he had vladimir putin say. why he should probably never go actually east of warsaw. but i will say, donald trump

doesn't hate that we're talking about the weave, willie. he loves -- >> the weave. >> that we are talking about the weave because it, of course, underlines his theory that everything is together. again, it's like the beautiful mind. everything is swirling around and, yeah, i know. it works. it works for him. >> the words are lifting off the newspapers. he has it all -- >> sure. >> hannibal lector. >> yeah, and those english professors. meanwhile, donald trump says, how about this, more seriously, he had, quote, every right to interfere in the 2020 election. he made the statement in an interview sunday night on fox news while claiming that dozens of criminal charges he faces connected to the indictments helped to boost his poll numbers. >> whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a

presidential election where you have every right to do it, you get indicted and your poll numbers go up. when people get indicted, your poll numbers go down. it's such nonsense. >> straight up confession there. he had ever right to interfere in the 2020 election. the harris walls campaign wrote everything donald trump promised on the campaign trail from terminating the constitution to imprisoning political opponents and promising to rule as a dictator makes it clear he believes he is above the law. now trump claims he had every right to interfere in the 2020 election. he did not. >> no. sometimes donald trump is wonderfully transparent and tells it just like it is. i am still waiting for the name of that english professor. i'd like to know who it is who tells him he is doing so well. he is in a moment where clearly

he still has not figured out after five weeks, six weeks of kamala harris being the democratic nominee how to take her on. and i think when you see him throwing out twists in his abortion line, in his immigration line, it is a reflection. donald trump is transparent. when he does things like that, i think it reflects how he is trying to find something. he is trying to find some form of attack against her. the words that he has come up with haven't done it. the campaign said september is the month. you will see a string of very aggressive ads hitting her as being socialist, as being the s the kind of person too extreme for americans to vote for. >> joe, do you remember when we were going to see a more disciplined donald trump? >> yeah.

>> remember that? >> right. >> it was like three weeks ago or something. he was going to stick to the issues, stick to the economy and national security, and that way he was going to win. all of a sudden, that's a very, very distant memory now. he is so all over the map every time he opens his mouth. he's trying to throw something against the wall that will stick to kamala harris, and he's trying to get on top of the news cycle again, because she has been smoking him. she's been getting bigger headlines and bigger crowds and bigger money. and it just drives him crazy. coming up, the dow jones opens up today in record territory. cnbc's andrew ross sorkin joins us with business before the bell when "morning joe" comes right back.

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coming up, our next guest is a pulitzer prize winner who worked right here at msnbc news. david rohde joins us with his new book on the justice department, the fbi and democracy. it's entitled "where tyranny begins." david joins the conversation straight ahead on "morning joe." n straight ahead on "morning joe."

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live look at los angeles. it's 6:00 a.m. on the west

coast. time to wake up. jonathan lemire is still with us. we begin with the latest developments in the middle east where on saturday the israeli army recovered the bodies of six hostages held by hamas in gaza. among them, 23-year-old american israeli hersh goldberg poland. >> reporter: protests set to continue after two days of clashes brought the anger right up to prime minister benjamin netanyahu's doorstep, demanding he reach a deal to free the remaining israeli hostages in the gaza strip. the spark that ignited this anger, the discovery of six dead hostages in a tunnel in gaza over the weekend. >> everybody feel like they had to do something. >> reporter: one of them an american whose funeral was held yesterday. >> go now on your journey.

i hope it's as good as the trips you dreamed about. because finally, my sweet boy, finally, finally, finally you're free. >> reporter: president biden asked about netanyahu -- >> do you think he's doing enough? >> no. >> reporter: they might offer a deal this week in hopes of reaching a cease-fire agreement. yesterday netanyahu directly addressing the families of the six murdered hostages saying i'm asking your forgiveness. troops remain on gaza's southern border, a key sticking point in negotiations. hamas says in response it would send other hostages back in coffins if the israeli military campaign continued. also releasing this video of one hostage before her death.

eden telling her family she loves and misses them. on friday, eden's father touching her coffin as he mourned. >> earlier we read an editorial that said it was hamas terrorists who pulled the trigger, but it was netanyahu who sealed their fate. the prime minister likes to think of himself as mr. security, but the editorial goes on to say, but he will go down in history as mr. death and mr. abandonment. and of course, in that editorial they also bring up the fact that before the killings, his decisions could kill all the hostages. this at the same time that his defense ministers, as david

ignatius reported, his intel agency, everyone was strongly encouraging him to make a cease-fire deal, because they believed -- people around him, the defense ministers and intel agencies around them believe they had done all they could do to degrade hamas in a meaningful way. >> netanyahu making clear in that press conference yesterday that he's not budging. let's bring in writer ronan bergman and peter biener. ronan, i'll start with you in tel aviv. if you could walk us through what we're seeing in the streets of tel aviv and how that pressure may or may not factor into the thinking of prime

minister netanyahu. >> i think with all the warnings that were widely published, the minister of defense, the intelligence community, the military, the minister, they all say there are no security caveats, there are no real concerns that should stop israel from taking the deal, totally contradicted by netanyahu. on the other hand, that the lives of the remaining hostages are in dire threat, and every day in the tunnels of hamas are pure misery and torture. just after they said that, hamas executed the six because they believed that israel is coming to rescue them. i think the fact that the cabinet was forced by netanyahu

to take the vote which the mossad chief said was totally unnecessary, just in defiance of the negotiation, a vote to say israel will never withdraw, will never move its forces from the southern border. so any kind of agreement with hamas and with egypt has created such anger with the israeli public when they learned about the murder of these six. [ indiscernible ] it was hamas that pulled the trigger. hamas kidnapped them. hamas is a terrorist organization. but their lives could be saved. [ indiscernible ] we uncovered the draft of the agreement. the names of four of these

people, these late hostages were mentioned to be released in the first two weeks of the deal if netanyahu would have take it. they could have been out together, safe, united with their families in israel. >> we just heard from president biden over the weekend when asked if prime minister netanyahu was doing enough to get a deal, he flatly said no. it's been well chronicled the frustration this administration has with the prime minister, believing he is perhaps trying to prolong the war to stay in power. is there anything else the white house can do? we've heard this talk of a take-it-or-leave-it deal. unclear what that means. is there anything president biden can do or vice president harris can do with the political winds at her back to get this

done? >> ask netanyahu nicely and then ask again and ask again. remember the nature of this relationship. we give israel more in military aid than we give to any other country. we defend israel when save for us, there would be resolutions of condemnation at the u.n. security council. we do a tremendous amount for benjamin netanyahu. now, the only thing that the biden administration is asking netanyahu to do are the things that his own security officials and his own public want him to do. so the u.s. can do more than ask. we can use our leverage. >> yeah. so, peter, what does that look like? what specifically does that look like coming from the biden administration? what's the first step you think they should take? >> i think the biden administration should have said long ago that there is a law on the books in the united states called the leahy law.

it says the united states cannot give military aid to any foreign country who has military units that are committing, in our estimation, gross human rights violations. the person in charge of imp implementing that is just applying the standard we have. i think we should have done that long ago. this is the kind of leverage we have. >> and ronen, where do we go from here? what do you expect to be happening in the next 24-48 hours? >> the israel specialists are saying we're totally against the process in the last few weeks where basically the u.s. has adopted except for what president biden said yesterday, but it feels that the u.s.

administration, according to some israelis, is not very keen to go into a clash with netanyahu. basically they said he adopted their position and israel has done everything it could and now it's in the hands of hamas where netanyahu is not just objecting what the u.s. has proposed. prime minister netanyahu has inserted new position to the israel agreement that he signed on may 27th, when hamas accepted most of this. he just inserted new positions in order to sabotage them. at the end of the day, most of the people that are in the loop of the secrets of the negotiation, believe there's no other course to make prime minister netanyahu sign the deal that would save the lives of the hostages and recommended by his own generals and intelligence.

[ indiscernible ] >> staff writer for the "new york times" magazine ronen bergman and msnbc analyst peter bienart, thank you very much. ukrainian president zelenskyy says at least 41 people have been killed by a russian strike in the central part of the country. and 200 others were injured during an attack at a military training facility. the attack is one of the deadliest carried out by russian forces since the war began 900 days ago. we turn to the presidential race. democrats spent labor day on the campaign trail with vice president kamala harris and president biden and governor tim walz appealing to union workers in major swing states. nbc news chief white house

correspondent peter alexander has the latest. >> reporter: with just nine weeks to go, the battle for the white house is now a dramatically changed race, harris with the current president, joe biden, campaigning for the first time alongside his vp, who now topped the democratic ticket. >> she has a backbone like a ramrod. she has the moral compass of a saints. this woman knows what she's doing. >> reporter: harris in pennsylvania using the labor day holiday to emphasize her commitment to union workers. >> when union wages go up, everybody's wages go up. when union workplaces are safer, all workplaces are safer. when unions are strong, america is strong. >> reporter: noticeably off the trail, mr. trump, but attacking harris on his social media platform writing all americans are suffering during this labor

day weekend. also, the president sparking new controversy by insisting he had every right to interfere with the 2020 election while repeating his false claim that criminal election interference -- >> who ever heard of getting indicted for interfering with an election where you have every right to do it. you get indicted, and your poll numbers go up. >> reporter: multiple sources familiar with harris' preparation tell nbc news she's held a series of work sessions between campaign stops and her official duties, unlike mr. trump, who shared the stage with president biden this summer, it will be harris' first debate in nearly four years. >> nbc's peter alexander with that report. just to sort of put a frame around trump's comments that, oh my gosh, can you believe you get indicted for interfering with an

election, trying to interfere with the outcome of a democratic election. people just let it go by. it just goes by as another thing that happened. you might not even hear about it depending on the network you're watching. they might even avoid that. that seems like one of the major headlines of the moment. >> i've seen it. it's happening more where you have people in the mainstream media, you also have people who, you know, may run podcasts or newsletters, and there's this false moral equivalency. donald trump is brutish at arlington. his staff pushes around and then deeply insults people who have committed their life to keeping that cemetery a hallowed place. and people -- there will be all these false moral equivalencies. donald trump, again, the fact that people in the media are trying to play this, like i said

before, it's like 1996, dole versus clinton. >> right. >> it's insanity. again, you have one guy saying he's going to terminate the constitution, one guy saying he's going to use seal team six to kill his opponents. the fact that it's normalized, i understand there are news networks, if not propaganda networks, that push that agenda. i also understand there are people in the mainstream media trying to round off all the rough edges of donald trump. actually it's getting worse by the day. >> the man who wants to pardon the january 6th convicts, the

people who attacked the capitol, also wants people to think he shouldn't be indicted for interfering with an election, that he should be allowed to, it's his right. this is big news. it should be, and it shouldn't be compared. >> but kamala -- kamala harris had tim walz in an interview with her. that's the scandal, they think. and they will put that in the same breath with, you know, talking about donald trump and, again, what he did at arlington or what he said about terminating the constitution or what he said about being able to execute political opponents with seal team six, or what he said about shutting down entire television networks that are not loyal to him, what he said about kim jong-un, what he said about xi, what he said about putin, what he said about one dictator after another, how he's modeled -- he's going to model his second term after orban, a guy who, again, has bragged

about destroying democracy in hungary and he brags about being illiberal. david roehd joins us next. "morning joe" will be right back. next. "morning joewill be right back for a limited time, subway just dropped the price of every footlong in the app to $6.99. wait, subway did what?! $6.99 footlongs? yep! says right here. $6.99 for any footlong. get this deal in the subway app now before it's too late.

right now across the u.s., people are trying to ban books from public schools and public libraries. yes, libraries. we all have a first amendment right to read and learn different viewpoints. that's why every book belongs on the shelf. yet book banning in the u.s. is worse than i've ever seen. it's people in power who want to control everything. well, i say no to censorship. and i say yes to freedom of speech and expression. if you do too, please join us in supporting the american civil liberties union today. for over 100 years, the aclu has fought for your rights and mine. including the right to read all manner of books. so please call or go online to myaclu.org. for just $19 a month, only $0.63 a day. you can become a guardian of liberty

and help protect all the rights promised to us by the u.s. constitution. make no mistake, this move to ban books is a coordinated attack on students right to learn. this is a clear violation of free speech. that's why the aclu is working to fight against censorship in all its forms. it is so important now more than ever. so please call or go to myaclu.org and become an aclu guardian of liberty, for just $19 a month. use your credit card and you'll get this special we the people t-shirt and more to show you're helping to protect the rights of all people. the aclu is in all 50 states, d.c. and puerto rico defending our first amendment right of free speech and all of your constitutional rights. because we the people, means all of us. so please, call or, go online to myaclu.org today.

welcome back. time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. it is once again illegal to possess small amounts of hard drugs in oregon, this after a law decriminalizing drugs expired on sunday night. the initial progressive measure, first enacted in 2021, required officers to hand out $100

citations instead of jail time. but there were immediate problems with the program, including a shortage of health care providers for drug users and a soaring number of fentanyl overdoses. >> willie, not to be painfully obvious, but, yeah, delegalizing -- everybody goes, oh, delegalize all drugs, hard drugs, et cetera et cetera. how shocking that you had people that were addicted to drugs lying in public spaces, littering everywhere they went, setting up -- it is the madness mainly on the west coast now. but, you know, we had a 49er, a first-round draft pick, getting

shot in the chest in the middle of the day in one of the most traveled spots of san francisco. i mean, we have just seen on the west coast -- you and i talk about it all the time. we've talked about it all the time. when we tell people, hey, you know what, you can steal up to $1,000 and it's not going to be a felony, yeah, people are going to go in and they're going to loot stores. they're going to -- you know, they can live anywhere. it's dangerous for them. there's nothing progressive about them. it's dangerous for them. it's unsanitary. it's unhealthy. it's dangerous for people who live there. it's dangerous for tourists. but this madness on the west coast, i really don't know when it's going to end, because california supposedly is going to be changing that $1,000 law to $400. but if you look at the fine print, it doesn't go far enough. >> yeah. the oregon story that mika just took us through, that was seen by a lot of advocates of this

idea as a test case. they were hoping it would go well, and it was an abject failure. it was a disaster. it led to more problems. a lot of people said, yeah, of course that's what happens when you legalize this stuff. if mayors and governors are now able to resist some of these ideas pointing to oregon as a case where it just did not work. >> yeah. also making news this morning, former governor andrew cuomo will testify about his handling of the covid crisis, particularly the thousands of deaths that occurred in new york nursing homes during the pandemic. a 2021 investigation found that the state under counted covid-19 deaths in nursing homes by approximately 50%. cuomo says the blame should be aimed at the trump administration for the lack of

testing and for the former president's outlandish comments about the virus. >> there are a lot of stories about what happened with nursing -- >> -- available for them -- >> -- pushing people in norms. despite all that, are we looking at possibly the next mayor of new york city. >> there are certainly rumors of that case, that andrew cuomo who resigned amid accusations, that he is eyeing a comeback. new york city mayor eric adams had very poor polling numbers, polling at 20%. people are pretty unhappy with his handling of the city. there's been some scandal swirling around him, perhaps he had done some favors for the turkish governor.

members of his staff have been subpoenaed but he's not been charged with any crimes. the city saying they will primary him in next year's mayoral race. political sources i've talked to are buzzing with the chatter that he's at least thinking about making a bid for gracie mansion and taking adams head on. >> clearly wants back on the stage. and that election is next november, so still some time ahead. our next guest is reporting on strategies donald trump used in the white house andly to turn the country's most powerful law enforcement agencies into personal political weapons. the justice department, the fbi and the war on democracy, awe shore david roehd, two-time pulitzer prize winner joins us now. david, good morning, good to see

you. congratulations on the book. >> thank you. >> this really puts some meat on the bones and does deep reporting that donald trump sort of acted the way a mob boss would act, which is to punish his enemies, use the agencies he had to do that and to help himself. you get into some of the specifics about how he did that. >> the first half of the book is on trump. it's a clear pattern. a strategy where he would fire people who threatened him, spread conspiracy theories. and it worked, i think, to a greater extent than many of us had realized. i focused on this because this is still an issue today. you may have mentioned earlier in the show, but donald trump had a new book come out today. it's a picture book of him with various world leaders. one of the pictures is with mark zuckerberg. the caption, which trump authored himself, says first he tried to sway the 2020 election against him. that's false. trump said if zuckerberg

interferes in the 2024 election, zuckerberg will spend the rest of his life in jail. that's the concern here what he would do in the next term. would he go even farther than he did in the first term? >> you get into details how donald trump -- that the fear was real in the fbi that they didn't want to cross privately the man who could cost them their jobs. >> publicly humiliating them, publicly threatening them and publicly firing them. that sent a clear message in washington to those who don't make that much money. he called them deep state. there is no evidence of an organized secret kabal of doj and fbi officials trying to

block him from office. it's a meeting two weeks before the search of mar-a-lago. hyper partisanship seeped into the investigative team and there was deadlock on whether to carry out a search. one of the fbi officials thought this was going to play into trump's deep state conspiracy theories. doj officials said we've tried to get those documents. we've issued a subpoena. he's defied it. there was bitter acrimony between these two groups, and that's alarming. you had the kind of suspicion and hyper partisanship that is so rife in our politics now slowing down and delaying an investigation. >> was the fbi hesitant because they feared donald trump or because they sided with him politically? >> no. i want to be fair to the people involved here. they feared the impact on the fbi itself.

the main person who was head about this, the head of the washington field office said we're playing into trump's m.o. if we go in and search mar-a-lago. that person wanted to wait a little bit longer. in the end the deputy head of the fbi said there is probable cause here to carry out this search. let me be clear. all of these people, even the doj prosecutors saw this as a lose-lose situation. they feel like if they don't act aggressively against trump, they're criticized by democrats. if they do act aggressively against trump, they're criticized by republicans. the fear is that people won't want to go into public service anymore. >> you write about how federal law enforcement just seems, you know, inadequate. they're not up to the chance of the task of prosecuting a former president for all these political reasons. >> our system isn't built for

think. i think one of them -- i want to be really nonpartisan here. i think liberals think indicting trump would be a political silver bullet. it turns out it's incredibly difficult to prosecute a former president of the united states, tremendous assets, tremendous political backing. it actually helped trump politically in terms of helping him get the nomination as a republican. doj officials told me it's a clumsy process, that resolving our political differences through a trial, through a criminal indictment doesn't work. jamie raskin, the real firebrand democrat on the january 6th committee said to me in one interview that we have to win this politically, that it's a political struggle. that's why this is going to be such an important and competitive race this fall. >> in one of the reviews i saw someone rightly explaining your

title, saying you aren't some resistance warrior that actually is a very important historical basis to your title. can you explain that? >> sure it's a quote from john locke. it's where tyranny begins, the justice department, the fbi and the war on democracy -- they protect their friends. i found trump did try to do that in his first term. >> he has said out loud if he's elected, he will decide who goes to jail and who's pardoned and

will aggressively use it. just to put it into perspective, we were talking about the deep state, the fbi, donald trump being hostile toward the fbi, again, the problem with what donald trump's done with the fbi, what he's done with the justice department, it's just been so politicized. so whatever's good for him is good for the justice department and good for america, in his eyes. bad for him, bad for the justice department, bad for america. you go back, obviously -- and i know you go into this in the book, but you go back to 2016 and donald trump's running around the campaign trail. he's praising the fbi. he's praising comey, because they were attacking hillary clinton. of course, the new york office throughout the 2016 campaign, backs written on the campaign say the new york office had a decided pro-trump and anti-hillary tilt.

then, of course, the comey letter ten days before the election, many historians believe that letter in and of itself swung the election. so this agency, this fbi agency that trump supposedly hates so much right now, he actually loved it and praised it when it was going after his political opponent, right? >> that's true. and what i found is that the problem here is that there's so much hyper partisanship. i think we need nonpartisan public service in our law enforcement agencies, in the fbi and doj. we need non-partisan election clerks counting the votes, non-partisan judges. if we don't have that, it becomes a threat for our democracy. that's why, again, this fall will be such an amazing test for american democracy. >> in the time since you started reporting and writing this book, the supreme court came through with this immunity ruling, which obviously impacts everything you

write about in this book. if donald trump is reelected, how will that change this dynamic? >> it dramatically changes it. former justice department officials, major characters in this book, said they were very surprised by the ruling. current justice department employees were surprised as well. it's never existed before in american history. but the supreme court says all conversations between the president and the attorney general are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution. so the president, donald trump, can call his attorney general and say i want you to investigate mark zuckerberg and prosecute him. he can probably start that process, and he could, you know, possibly even jail mark zuckerberg. zuckerberg would appeal to the supreme court, and they would have to decide. it's an extraordinary thing, though. it's been a check on presidents since nixon that you don't use the justice department to attack your political eneenemies. if you do, you'll pay a political price. >> donald trump will put in a

lackey as attorney general and get whatever he wants out of that relationship. >> put in an acting attorney general, and then you get around this confirmation process. >> it's called "where tyranny begins." it's on sale now. david, always good to see you. congrats on the book. >> thank you. coming up, business news with andrew ross sorkin, including comments from vice president harris on the proposed sale of a storied u.s. company. "morning joe" will be right back. company "morning j" will be right back

u.s. steel is an historic american company, and it is vital for our nation to maintain strong american steel companies, and i couldn't agree more with

president biden. u.s. steel should remain american owned and american operated. and i will always have the back of america's steel workers. >> vice president kamala harris yesterday at a joint campaign address in pittsburgh where she pledged her support for u.s. steel to remain american owned. her announcement coincides with the white house decision to oppose the company's planned sale to a japanese steel firm earlier this year. >> let's bring in andrew ross sorkin. on the front page of the "wall street journal," investors' attitude on stocks gets ultra bullish even with the s&p 500 around 18% this year. they bet the rally will continue. i'm far too conservative to ever think that way, but a lot of people make a lot of money

thinking that way. then below the fold you have a story on the war and it is ugly in silicon valley. you talk about a wicked divide. mika is holding up the front of the business and finance section talking about brazil banning x. there you go. andrew ross sorkin, go. >> we're going to hit a couple of different doors here. first, u.s. steel real quick. vice president harris not actually on a different page than former president trump. in both cases they are saying they want to keep u.s. steel a u.s. company. they're doing that in large part because of the unions and the backing they're going to get. it creates some kind of question about what open markets look like. it will raise questions longer term, but politically there's a little bit of agreement there, oddly enough. the "wall street journal" article, fascinating this

morning, because it does talk about these newly minted millionaires, 401(k) millionaires and just how much the market has risen. by the way, that's despite all the uncertainty, ukraine, israel, the election, of course. when you really think about the market, it's forward indicating in that people are making a bet today on what they think the market and the real economy is going to look like 12 and 18 months from now. they're betting it's going to be getting better. now, we can make some different debates about what that means in terms of politics and what they're betting that former president trump becomes a president or that vice president becomes a president. but you look at some of the betting lines on that, not just the polls, but the actual betting and it is very, very close right now, pretty much a tossup, if you will. and the story below that that

you mentioned, this piece about silicon valley. silicon valley was for a very long time considered a combo of sort of obviously a blue state and california, relatively liberal, but there was always this libertarian strain. now it's come to a head in a completely different way where friendships are being broken, people are screaming at each other. you know, talk about the family that goes to thanksgiving and can't talk to each other at the table. that's where we're at now in a remarkable way in the valley, and it's new. the question is whether that then spills over into the rest of it in social media in terms of how these companies operate, mark zuckerberg coming out with comments. you have google -- you know, some people want to be shy -- they don't want to say anything. then you have others like the guys from all in, which is the podcast that's become immensely popular in the valley who seem to be in large part, not all,

but supportive of former president trump. you have this real disconnect going on. by the way, a lot of it has do -- let's be honest -- with taxes. that's a lot of what the debate going on in the valley has to do with is taxes and what's called unrealized gains, which is the startup community and how much they're going to get taxed and if you're a startup are your shares going to be taxed before an exit event, before you've had a chance to sell them. that's what this is about, taxes, taxes, taxes. >> andrew, we're going to talk about brazil and musk and x. as we segue to that, i've noticed the hostility on elon musk's x feed. it's really just really over the top. you know, i -- we -- you know, i -- i was talking about all the reasons he shouldn't by twitter.

part of it was he'll be distracting from what he's brilliant at doing. but, man, he seems -- again, if you just look at his feed, he's just doubling and triple down in a way that no other ceo would do. >> and he has the disposition to do that. tesla holders don't seem to be giving him a hard time. obviously x is privately owned, he owns it. and spacex has been doing so wildly well, that those shareholders are not upset. the brazil story is interesting. we always talk about the power he has, all these assets he owns and how they could create a conflict or interaction, and now they are. in brazil, of course, x has now been banned by this judge. what's happening now is that's impacting starlink, which is the satellite service that's run by spacex. so there is going to be a question at some point whether,

you know, what's happening on x, which is his privately owned business, is going to impact shareholders of spacex. i agree with you. i think social media brings out the nastiness and meanness in just everybody, unfortunately. but it's shocking to see it play out the way it has, especially because you have so many silicon valley players who are all effectively tweeting at each other in oftentimes the nastiest ways. >> all right. andrew ross sorkin, thank you very much. we'll see you tomorrow. coming up, governor tim walz has some harsh words for donald trump and his running mate yesterday on the campaign trail. we'll bring you those remarks to union workers and get reactions from the head of one of the largest labor unions in the country. est labor unions in e country. when my doctor gave me breztri for my copd

things changed for me. breztri gave me better breathing, symptom improvement, and reduced flare-ups. breztri won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. it is not for asthma. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. don't take breztri more than prescribed. breztri may increase your risk of thrush, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. call your doctor if worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain occur. ask your doctor about breztri.

he does know something about working people, donald trump does, he knows how to take advantage of them. that's what he knows how to do. every single chance these guys have gotten, they have waged war on workers and the middle class. as president, trump blocked overtime for millions of workers. why pay the bills, he doesn't pay his own, why should we pay somebody for overtime. that's what they do. he opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage, for god's sakes, that shouldn't be difficult. if people put in an honest day's work, they should receive an honest day's pay. >> governor walz speaking at a labor fest yesterday. he and vice president harris rallied with union supporters, while donald trump and j.d. vance noticeably absent from the campaign trail. general president of the labors international union of north america, brent booker who was at

yesterday's harris rally in detroit. thanks for being with us today. interested to see what the energy was like from your perspective in the room and what your half million members think about this ticket of harris and walz that you have endorsed? >> yesterday was a great day. we were across the street from our local union in detroit. the fire marshal had to shut it down for the amount of people that wanted to get in. we had to turn around a couple hundred members who signed up to go to the event. there's a real energy. our members want to go out there, they want to hear from the vice president and governor walz. so yesterday, to be able to spend time with kamala harris on labor day, in detroit, when they had one of the first parades over 100 years ago was an honor for us and for our membership, and looking forward for the next 63 days now to get her across the finish line. >> president biden often boasts that he is the most pro union, pro labor president, perhaps the nation has ever had. he of course no longer at the

top of the ticket. do you think his vice president, kamala harris, has the same credentials and if so why? >> it's been the biden/harris administration for the past three years. she has been part of the joe biden, kamala harris most pro union presidency administration certainly in my lifetime, so she absolutely has the credentials. she was a part of that. she was a part of the negotiating the infrastructure bill that's going to be a decade, not a week, not a month, a decade of investment in our country's infrastructure. so she gets credit for that. she cast the deciding vote on the inflation reduction act that's turning green jobs into union jobs. she gets credit for that, credit for the manufacturing jobs under the chips and science bill, and certainly gets credit for the american rescue plan that offered, you know, assistance to define benefit pension plans to ensure that our retirees, joe

biden and kamala harris sovld solved that. she absolutely has the credentials to carry on the legacy of the most pro union administration and most pro union president with joe biden. >> so it is no secret that the last two elections 2016 and 2020, donald trump despite not getting much in the way of endorsements from union leadership did receive a sizable share of the votes from rank and file. what are the arguments you're making to your union members against supporting trump this time around? >> we're asking our members to vote with their paycheck, and look at the jobs that have been created in the last four years. look at the recovery we have come out of this pandemic. look at the opportunities that they have because of not just pro worker administrations, or pro worker laws and legislation, but pro union laws and legislation. and tie in a direct line from our members' paycheck to the piece of legislation that was signed into law by joe biden that was negotiated by kamala harris. so we've got to get out on to

the job site, meet our members where they're at, get in the community and make sure they understand and have a conversation with them, and draw that straight line from a piece of federal legislation like there was with infrastructure work, or c.h.i.p.s or the ira, to their paycheck that they're getting every thursday and every friday now because of what this administration has done. so it's just having conversations with our members, and we've got a lot of conversations to have, and we're well on our way to doing that right now. >> general president of the laborers international union of north america, brent booker, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. we appreciate it. >> thank you for having me and i hope you had a happy labor day. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back with more "morning joe." h more "morning joe."

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willie, america stops today. >> it does. >> the tuesday after labor day, we all stop collectively and give thanks. vandy is back. >> you're so nice to mention it. >> huge upset, focus on alcorn

state at home. final thoughts, jonathan lemire, one that hangs over this four-hour show, the weave, i think, and as long as you're going like that, you're doing something right. >> and donald trump describes the weave, the ability to stitch together all sorts of topics, some he hits minutes before and land the punch lime. if i had the ability to remember what we talked about four hours ago, i would do the same. if i could recall the opening of the show, it feels like a distance measure. perhaps bc beating fsu? >> not everyone has the gift for the week. >> he's the weaver, i'm not the weaver. >> it's the dream weaver. >> exactly. >> it's also more like the unraveling. >> that does it for us this morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage right now. right now on "ana cabrera reports," breaking news out of ukraine, more than 40 killed in