Second, but he was in a thing called the civil war. You can understand that. Andrew jackson was really, really treated badly. In fact, his wife died during the process. A lot of people said she died because of the way they were treated. I mean, she was heartbroken and broken in so many other ways. I heard that for years. And i look now, even last night i was saying it. I said, Andrew Jackson or anybody else, when you think of the fake things, nobody has been treated like trump in terms of badly. No, thats true. Thats true. Thats definitely true. There is some truth to that, willie geist. Its hard for me not to also look at the person asking the questions. I mean, are you kidding me . These networks floating trumps lies. Im not going to make fun of it or anything, but it is creating a whole level of lies that people are swallowing whole because they think thats news. They think those are facts. Thats the part thats sad. I mean, its pathetic that donald trump parallels himself to Abraham Lincoln and anybody else, but it is more pathetic and truly pathetic that our democracy is on the line. Because if that guy becomes president , look at his last house guest. Thats our country. Yeah, i mean, thats pure north korean state media, that kind of interview. Why are you treated so badly . Why are you so great . Why are people so mean to you . Also, another thing happened to Abraham Lincoln that former President Trump didnt get to, assessing who was treated worse in terms of leave that right there. Yeah. Leave that right there, yeah. To your more serious point, its a good one, which is, there are all kinds of Media Outlets friendly to donald trump whose audiences are receiving that message, the one you saw. Theyre not receiving messages about his stolen documents. Theyre not receiving messages about his attempts to overturn the election in 2020, all the legal trouble in front of him were about to talk about. Theyre hearing that. You have a not a majority of the country but a large swath of the country that is taking what you just saw there as news. Exactly. Theres a lot going on, actually, with donald trump that they might want to consider, but theyll probably never hear about it, at least in terms of facts. Along with willie and me, we have host of way too early, jonathan lemire. Former aide to the Bush White House and state departments, elise jordan. Big day for trumps legal issues. Former President Trump is expected to be in court today for a hearing in the federal classified documents case against him. In fort pierce, florida, u. S. District judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear arguments on two of trumps motions to dismiss the charges against him. The first argues he was allowed to store classified documents in unlocked rooms at his club under the president ial records act. This, he claims, was all good. The second motion claims the main statute used to form charges against the former president is unconstitutionally vague. In that interview yesterday with the rightwing network newsmax, trump defended his actions. I took them very legally, and i wasnt hiding them. We had boxes on the front a lot of the boxes had clothing, were moving out, okay, unfortunately. Were moving out of the white house. I had the right to do it, in my opinion and my lawyers opinion and Everything Else. Lets bring in former litigator and msnbc Legal Correspondent lisa rubin. Good morning. Apologies for putting this to you again because weve addressed this a thousand times. The president ial records act, does it cover what donald trump did . It does not cover what donald trump did. Willie, there is a definition in the president ial records act for what could count as personal and what is president ial. Donald trumps argument is effectively, its president ial if i classified it as such in my mind. Everything in my mind was personal before i sorry, personal if i say so in my mind. Everything in my mind that i took with me was personal, therefore, there can be no criminal prosecution against me. Right. Again, apologies for making you answer that question for the 1,000th time but well keep doing it as long as donald trump makes that argument. More broadly speaking, this classified documents case, where are we . Were hearing about judge canon and delays, delays. Where are we in the progress of bringing this to trial . A couple weeks ago, judge canon had a hearing where she took argument from both sides, when the case should be tried. She has yet to issue a Scheduling Order Setting A Trial Date. In the meantime, shes Hearing Argument today on two motions to digs miss. Dismiss. Im not a betting person, probably would make a miserable one, but the fact she set oral arguments on two motions to dismiss makes me think maybe she thinks she can get rid of this case without setting a trial date. That is frightening, given the gravity of the charges here and the evidence that supports those charges. Whats going to be the states defense then . What will we hear from them today if they try to counter what judge canon your theory, may be looking to make it go away. What is their argument going to be . First, the president ial records act doesnt support the interpretation and almost the perversion that donald trump is trying to give to it. That the president ial records act would hold that any number of the things donald trump took with him are inherently president ial and should have gone to the National Archives. There was a process to follow. The people in the white house surrounding donald trump were well aware of the process and in communication with the National Archives before he left the white house, let alone after it was brought to his attention, were missing stuff. The kim jongun letter, the letter barack obama left for you. That kicked off a cat and house game with the National Archives, then the fbi was chasing after trump to collect all the things he took. As you well know, he was not honest with them at any step of the process. He deluded his lawyers by having the boxes moved in this bizarre threecard monte he was playing with his legal team. I dont think itll hold up. In terms of the unconstitutional vagueness of the statute here, he is talking about the willful retention of National Defense documents. He says, among other things, that the phrase National Defense is unconstitutionally vague. He says that the unauthorized retention is another aspect of what is unconstitutionally vague here. We know this has been used to prosecute lesser stature people. Recently, a National Guardsman in massachusetts, i believe he got 21 years. 21 years in prison because of what he did, which, granted, was pretty egregregious. At the same time, it shows the Classification System is totally broken. How can, with a straight face, and nothing will happen to donald trump when what he did was equally egregious in terms of the crimes of these other lowranking, very lowranking soldiers and Defense Contractor . Elise, we see that all around us, right . We see that in the federal election interference case, too. 950 people have been sentenced and convicted for crimes associated with january 6th when the instigator in chief remains free from trial right now. It is no different here. Donald trump is immune to arguments that other people are doing time for the same things he has done and, in many cases, he has done worse. Lisa, im curious. I understand this is the reality, the process, the judge we have in this case. But if trump is not held accountable for taking classified documents into his club, into his home, in boxes, claiming theyre his, getting his workers to be involved in what is a crime, what is the precedent that will set, if somehow he skates from this . It is a terrible precedent, mika, which is why people like me are socon Certainconcerned A Rule Of Law and its survival in the post trump and during trump era. The notion that a former president can escape to their private residence with hundreds of hundreds of documents that affect the National Defense, lie about it, Enlist Maintenance Workers and valets in the crime, expect them to take the fall, and walk away scotfree, and then, potentially, get elected to the office again, thats unfathomable. Not just take the documents but obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. Correct. All the attempts to have those recovered, as well. Im struck by the clip you played of greg kelly interviewing him, nobody has been treated worse than trump. No one has treated us worse than trump has treated us. He is skating on this. Hell be in court in florida today trying to get this dismissed. Just north of there in georgia, the judge in the Georgia Election interference case has dismissed some of the charges against former President Trump and his codefendants. Judge scott mcafee dropped six counts, three applying directly to donald trump, who still faces ten Felony Counts in that case alone. The six counts focused on Accusations Trump and his codefendants asked Public Officials to violate their oaths of office. The judge found the language in the indictment too generic and did not specify which part of which oath of which constitution, state or federal, trump and his codefendants had been accused of asking georgia officials to violate. In that ruling, judge mcafee writes, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crime but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission. They dont give the defense enough time to prepare. End quote. The judge left the door open for prosecutors to reindict on these dropped charges. Judge mcafee expected to rule tomorrow on whether d. A. Fani willis should be disqualified from the case. Lisa, lets talk about what this is and what it is not. It is a splashy headline. Counts dropped against donald trump in georgia. Seems what the judge is saying is, you didnt explain these well enough. What are you accusing them of . What did the oath of a constitution violation, what do you think they did . They can refile and reindict or appeal the ruling. What judge mcafee pointed out himself, he said in the federal system, you file a motion for a bill of particulars. You ask for greater specificity and detail. If the court says you deserve it, you get it. We move on. We move to trial. Georgia law doesnt allow for that. Hes saying, im constrained here. I wish i had the same powers the federal court does, but this isnt the case in georgia, therefore, ill give you an extra six months from this order to reindict on these six counts, should you choose to. That having been said, this is not the big deal and the huge victory lap that the Trump Campaign and steve sato are making it out to be. Here is why. First, the rico count remains. Thats a count that for all defendants could lead to 5 to 20 years in prison time if convicted. More importantly, that rico count is alleged through a series of what are called overt acts. These are the things people do in furtherance of a conspiracy. Rico is a conspiracy. Hes saying, look, you might not have alleged with sufficient specificity what aspects of the oath you were trying to get these other georgia elected officials to violate, but you can consider each of these episodes as overt acts in furtherance of the rico charge here. Meaning, it comes into the trial still. We can still talk about the raffensperger call as proof of the rico charge. We can still talk about the call that, for example, trump made to now deceased Georgia Speaker, imploring him, you appoint the fake electors. All those things for these six counts are still a part of the case. What they are not is separate, independent charges with which these people can be convicted. Fair to say, these were poorly assembled or poorly argued. Well give you another chance to make your case because i dont know what youre arguing, is what hes saying. Poorly pled is how lawyers would describe it. You did not put together a Charging Instrument in the form of the indictment that gives these people enough notice to prepare for trial. It is a violation of their Due Process Rights as a result. Again, big picture here, rico charge remains. Not a single defendant here got off without remaining charges against them. Trump still has ten. Even mark meadows has the rico count, having got rid of the other one against him. And this is all still evidence in the case. It can be used to prove the conspiracy. Mika, the 91 Felony Charges against donald trump becomes 88 Felony Charges against donald trump. Could go back to being 91. Right. Thats where i want to ask lisa, are there other for those who arent completely reading into this, how did this come about . Was there a motion to drop . Is there a possibility other charges randomly, seemingly, could be dropped throughout this process . Does this delay the trial in any way . What is the timing of the trial as it appears now, and if and when it starts, does trump have to appear . Does the timing look like itll happen before the election . A lot of questions. You guys give very good pop quiz. Ill try to address those all. Mika, this came about because trump and others of his codefendants moved to dismiss these specific counts. It is called a special demur in georgia which they filed. They have a number of other motions to dismiss, aspects of the indictment or the indictment as a whole. For whatever reason, this is the one judge mcafee dealt with this week. What to read into it and how itll affect the trial remains to be unseen. But you can consider this, like, an element of judicial housekeeping. If you are preparing for the next stage of pretrial proceedings, you want to move the case along irrespective of who will be in charge, fani willis or someone else, you want to call the indictment. If there is a time to narrow the charges, now is it before we move into a phase where youre going to expect other defendants to perhaps plead out, or youre going to bring this closer to a trial date than we are now. It was an interesting choice that judge mcafee did this before ruling on the fani willis motion. On one hand, he might want to do this before he hands it back to her, as embarrassing as the proceedings were. On the other hand, he might be trying to call the indictment before he says to the prosecuting counsel of georgia, your turn. Find a prosecutor who is equipped to handle this indictment. On the point, judge mcafee gave himself tomorrow, a selfimposed deadline, to decide whether or not fani willis will be disqualified. We thought this was coming, the fani willis decision. Instead, it was the Surprise Move to dismiss the counts, at least temporarily. Lisa, you laid it out, what the document may be foreshadowing. If you had to hazard a guess, what do you think will happen . Well, i want to take this document out of it because i dont think this really impacts his decision on that. Its a hard, hard call, john. I think judge mcafee is struggling with what the right legal test is. If an appearance of impropriety is enough to disqualify fani willis, based on georgia case law, hell say the appearance of impropriety is there. On the other hand, i dont think we saw the proof that she and nathan wade financially benefitted from his involvement in the case. This is a woman who makes more than 200,000 a year. The amount of money in their vacationing, as lavish as it seems to be normal american, is not enough to justify the sort of bizarre, concocted schemes the defendants advanced. On top of that, it is still a he said he said, right . We dont have any clear indication of who is telling truth, and the Phone Records dont change that, even if mcafee lets them in. It could go either way. I think this is going to end up being a blemish on fani willis history no matter how it turns out. Stay tuned, also, to see if they face Disciplinary Proceedings from the state bar based on accusations that they werent telling the truth, even if she holds on to the case. All right. Msnbc Legal Correspondent lisa rubin, thank you very much. Aplus on the quiz. Yes, aplus. Aced it. For sure. Passed. Thanks. Still ahead on morning joe, well get to the fight over tiktok. Some top lawmakers argue its not about banning the app, its about National Security. Well be joined by a House Democrat who cosponsored the bill that passed yesterday. Plus, were taking a look at President Bidens swing through the midwest as he works to shore up the blue wall ahead of november. And hunter biden says he wont return to capitol hill next week for a public hearing in the Impeachment Inquiry against his father, President Biden. What his lawyers are saying about the, quote, carnival sideshow. Youre watching morning joe. Were back in 60 seconds. Welcome back. The attorney for hunter biden says the president s son will not testify next week in a public hearing for the House Oversight committee. Bidens lawye sent a letter declining the request, calling the hearing a, quote, carnival sideshow. Howell added hed consider testifying if the panel also included relatives of former President Trump. The letter was dismissed by comer, saying he expects hunter along with his business associates. So far, theyve come up with, a, nothing. B, nothing. C, nothing. If you looked at Donald Trumps family members, youd be able to see they have benefitted in many ways that seem inappropriate, perhaps as inappropriate as some of the relationships that hunter had that ultimately added up to no law breaking. I dont know, 2 billion from saudi arabia, it seems kind of unseemly. Maybe its okay. Its completely unseemly. Are you kidding me . These people are crazy. Why doesnt hunter just come back and do it publicly and have it air in the court of Public Opinion . He was fighting for public testimony, i believe, a couple months ago. I think hed benefit from that, frankly, just for more clown show to be shown to the public. Hell come across as likable and someone paying his penance for his addiction and trying to move on. I question the decision not to show up and do it and submit to what will be definitely unpleasant and uncomfortable, but ultimately gets more of his side of the story out there to the public. It was a surprising decision since, by all accounts, hunter biden got the best of the closed door hearing, the private hearing a few weeks ago. Republicans came out of it sort of embarrassed and baffled by the lack of questioning and the fact that james comer, the chair, didnt even take a single question. Hunter biden and his team felt good about the strategy. Theyve been pushing back on republicans. Now, he has trials looming in california on the gun and tax charges. That trial scheduled to start in june. That may be part of his thinking here. Certainly, you know, people close to him say he does not want to be a distraction for his fathers Reelection Campaign. Mika, it is an aboutface because hunter biden and his team had been the ones pushing for the public hearing. Republicans saying they want him to show up anyway. All right. Well be following that. Still ahead, Steve Rattner is standing by with new charts, factchecking some of Donald Trumps biggest attacks on President Biden. Morning joe is back in a moment. J. P. Morgan Wealth Management knows its easy to get lost in investment research. Get help with j. P morgan personal advisors. Hey, david ready to get started . Work with advisors who create a plan with you, and help you find the right investments. So great getting to know you, lets take a look at your new investment plan. Ok, great this should have you moving in the right direction. Thanks jen. Get ongoing advice; and manage your investments in the chase mobile app. No. No. Nuhuh. Yeah. Oh. Yes. Oh yeah. Yes. Isnt this great . Yeeaahhhh yeah, i could do a cartwheel in here. Oh hey would you like to join us . No. We would love to join you. Still dark over the United States capitol at 6 27in the morning. The Appropriations Bill must be passed ahead of the supplemental that would provide aid to ukraine. Speaker johnson made the claim yesterday. He also said the delay was because the white house was slowwalking questions to his answers on ukraine. In the sequence of events, it was important for us to not put the supplemental in front of the Appropriations Bills because it would affect probably the vote tally, ultimately, on the approps. We had to get our government funded. I made two requests of the president and his cabinet in the Situation Room within hours of my being handed the gavel. October 26th, i talked to jake sullivan. I spoke within a couple days to the Secretary Of State, secretary of defense, the president himself. I said, there are a couple things we need on ukraine, these answers to these key questions. What is the end game . What is the strategy . How do we have accountability over the funds weve sent . Are we sending the right Weapons Systems . As you know the history of this, it took them not weeks but months to provide some of the answers. We still dont have all of them, though theyve done more lately. The process has drug out not because of the house but, in my view, because of the white house being unwilling or unable to provide the necessary answers for us to process that sooner. Jonathan lemire, the claim now from the speaker is the Foot Dragging from the House On Ukraine aid that has been condemned widely across the west. Weve heard from european leaders putting pressure, this week, polish leaders. Ukrainian leaders putting pressure on speaker johnson to get the aid, saying theyre holding it up. He is claiming it is the white house. Thats not true. We the factcheck that. Johnson said publicly and says privately, look, i support getting some aid there. He hasnt had the ability to follow through and get enough republicans on board. There is the block on the far right who oppose the aid, and thats the block that ousted Kevin Mccarthy and threatened to oust him. He is being very mindful of that. He is yet to move forward. We have the Discharge Petitions that are in the house right now. There is a democratic one circulating, a republican one circulating. Those are possibilities but long shots as to whether or not that can circumvent and get the aid done. Ukraine had recent success with Drone Strikes within russia itself, but on the battlefield, theyre running out of ammunition. We reported yesterday about the pentagon able to scrape together savings they found. Theyll have a small package head there. Thatll help. But it is a drop in the bucket compared to what the Biden NationalSecurity Package would be. Elise, the pentagon is having to find these ad hoc pots of money. Funny how they can do that over at the pentagon. Yes, they have that unique ability in American Government to dip in. I mean, ukraine is going to collapse without continued United States funding. Its not like germany and the europeans are going to step up enough, you know, if this really does not come through. Its really their last go, too, at a good, solid chunk of funding before financially donald trump gets reelected. The stakes are pretty high here, and i do not see how those renascent republicans in the house come along. It doesnt seem like theyre budging, only hardening in their position. It is the position of donald trump right now. No one is going to deviate from donald trump in the Republican Party. Thats the other piece. Its a matter of eight months or so if donald trump is reelected, putin gets exactly what he wants. Its all the time he needs. In the house yesterday, a bill that could ban tiktok unless its Chinese Parent Company divests itself of the app in the u. S. Passed. Now, it faces a tougher fight in the senate. Savannah sellers has more. Reporter the bill needed twothirds of the house to pass, and it got that easily. The yays are 352. The nays are 65. Reporter now, it goes to the senate where it will likely face a tougher road. If signed into law, itd give Chinese Parent Company bytedance just six months to divest tiktok or face the possibility of a ban on the app. The legislation prompted by National Security concerns, including fears the Chinese Government could access americans personal data and feed them content that would influence their views. Our intention is for tiktok to continue to operate but not under the control of the Chinese Communist party. Reporter 50 democrats and 15 republicans voted no. Its an overly broad bill that i dont think would stand First Amendment scrutiny. It is opening pandoras box, and im opposed to this bill. Reporter Aligning With FormerPresident Trump, who once tried to ban tiktok but now says hes against that. Tiktok fighting back hard, even flying creators to washington. Hello, this is my son. Reporter Jason Lynnton shares his life as a dad with his 13 million followers. What would it mean for you and your family if tiktok were to be banned in the u. S. . Itd be devastating. Being able to just launch out a positive message would be completely stopped. I wish it was a bad dream but its not. Reporter jt layborn uses tiktok to promote his clothing company. Could this impact how people vote . Absolutely. Reporter tiktok says it has 170 million users in the u. S. According to an nbc news poll, 22 of voters use the app once a day or more. The potential political fallout with those young voters not lost on some senators. Cutting out a large group of young voters is not the best known strategy for reelection. Reporter republican Mike Gallagher, the bills sponsor, says thats not a good enough reason to ignore a looming National Security threat. I dont think courting the cliques of 17yearolds should take precedence over allowing our foreign adversary to dominate what is the primary news source for americans under the age of 30. Reporter tiktok says his ceo was on the hill but it is unclear if he met with lawmakers. They maintain theyre not owned or controlled by the Chinese Government. This legislation, if signed into law, will lead to a ban of tiktok in the United States. Savannah sellers reporting there. Part of what strikes you here, elise, the vote. This was not a small group of extremistings. This was a vote of 35265 to pass this through the house on a very, obviously, bipartisan basis. But there are holdouts. A lot of the Progressive Caucus says this goes too far, had questions about free speech and other things. Well see how it does in the senate. Whats your view of this . It is really disappointing that so many elected officials are willing to take such a draconian stance against free speech. It is a really broad bill. Define what is the limiting mechanism here and how its not going to extend and creep into other liberties of americans. It also just, you know, anytime the National Security state is so adamant that something must be done for the safety of americans, maybe we should probe into that and make them explain exactly what the limitations are going to be that are going to be set and what the precedent that is going to be Going Forward, so that more of our rights arent curtailed. This will be a closer call in the senate, john. You hear leader schumer kind of having it both ways in his public comments, figuring out where his caucus really is on this question. Certainly, the idea would be this divestment, but i dont know how possible that is. Tiktok aggressively lobbying against this, pushing users to pressure senators and the rest. President biden said hed sign it though the Biden Campaign jumped on tiktok. Thats where a lot of voters are, particularly the Younger Voters they need to reach. Politically, it is so stupid. You know, they trotted out the National Security concerns. We heard donald trump flipflop on this. When he was president , his administration moved on the way to banning it. Didnt follow through but he was hawkish on it. Now, hes suggesting to support it because the chance for votes and the investor who can give money. Donald trump had probably little to do with that. That, too. Now, he sees the wind. He is very good at seeing where the wind of Public Opinion is going, and thats why he is suddenly protiktok. Im sure theres a financial reason involved, too. But he is very good at sensing the mood of the public. Also very good at being pushed around by rich guys on the patio of maralago. True. Well talk more about this in the next hour. Well be join bid the cosponsor of the tiktok ledge slar, representative Raja Rish Kishnamoorthi on what to do if this becomes law. Moorthi on whaf this becomes law minute ule. Go to safelite. Com. Singers safelite repair, safelite replace. Heres to Getting Better with age. Heres to beating these two every thursday. Help fuel today with boost high protein, complete nutrition you need. Without the stuff you dont. So, heres to now. Boost. The will states that mr. Marbles will receive everything he needs in perpetuity thanks to autoship from chewy. I always loved that old man. And he gets the summer house. What . Save 35 off your first autoship order. At chewy. Numbers move you. But some can stop you in your tracks. Like the tens of thousands of people who were diagnosed with certain hpvrelated cancers. For most people, hpv clears on its own. 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Morikawa on 18. He is really boxed in here. Not a good spot. Off the Comcast Business van. Into the vending area. Oh, not the fries wheres the ball . Anybody see it . Oh wait, there it is back into play and. Aw no, its in the water. Wait a minute. Are you kidding me . You got to be kidding me. Rolling towards the cup, and its in the hole what an impossible shot brought to you by Comcast Business. Although its not official until the conventions this summer, a biden trump rematch is on the horizon for november. Nbc news projects both men won enough delegates to officially lead their parties in the fight for the white house this fall. As the race heats up, trump has been sticking to familiar attack lines about President Biden. Joining us now with a factcheck is former treasury official and morning joe economic analyst Steve Rattner. Hes got it all in charts. Well start, steve, with the issue of crime. Take a look. We are a nation where free speech is no longer allowed, skp where crime is rampant and out of control like never, ever before. The carnage line, hes always going with the carnage, steve. Is it true . Well, no. Crime is not out of control like its ever been before. In fact, crime is actually continuing to drop under President Biden. Lets take a look at Violent Crime. This is per 100,000 people in relationship to the size of our population. You can see that Violent Crime, since 2020, has dropped by 15 . 339 Violent Crimes per 100,000 people. Its below any place it was during the trump administration, and its had this huge drop in 2023. The same is basically true of property crime. You can see here, this is people robbing homes and things of that like. Down 7 . 1,830 per 100,000 people. This is a complete fiction, that crime is up under the biden administration. Yeah. At the same time, there are different areas of the country experiencing Different Things and a mixture of crime and homelessness is very personal to people in their neighborhoods. Again, you cant deny the data and the trends that were seeing. Theres also Donald Trumps false claims when it comes to president Bidens Energy policy. Listen to this. On day one of our new administration, we will end bidens nationwrecking war on american energy. Hes wrecking the energy. Okay. Steve rattner, again, what are the facts . Yeah, wrecking the energy business. We have had Record Energy production under the biden administration. This combines nuclear, fossil fuels, and renewables. You can see here that we have never had Energy Production this high. The other thing that he says is that he is going to make us Energy Independent again. The fact s we are Energy Independent. Weve been Energy Independent now for five years. In fact, our energy exports, mostly oil but also some national gas, hit a record last year. In fact, america has we produce more oil than any country in the world has ever produced in history. Yeah, and he talks a lot about the economy and how it was better under him. Also attempting to rewrite history on the deficit and debt. Listen to donald trump. We were going to pay off debt. We were going to reduce taxes further. We gave you the biggest tax cut in the history of our country, bigger than the Ronald Reagan tax cut. Wow. The actual numbers show something very different, right, steve . Yeah, he did give us a big tax cut, that part is true. Yeah. What it did, it increased the deficit. When he says we were on track to pay off the debt, look what happened to the deficit, even before covid. Even before covid, because of his tax cut, the deficit was going up, up, and then covid hit. Under biden, hes brought it down. Under the new, proposed budget, hed bring it down further. Because of the deficit, when he talks about how he was going to pay off the debt during his first term, he added more debt than any other president in history. Some was covid. 3. 6 trillion. But there was also 5 trillion of debt that had nothing to do with covid. Trump signed a series of Spending Bills that increased our spending by over 2. 5 trillion. The idea that he was a president that was going to attack the deficit and debt problem is actually completely false. Steve, when President Biden put out this week his projected budget, there was a lot of pearl clutching from republicans about adding to the deficit when they were silent, for the most part, as donald trump added 8 trillion to the deficit. The chart directly behind you on the war on energy, the one you talked about a minute ago, donald trump has been posting drill, baby, drill, quite a bit lately. Is it fair to say that sounds more of an endorsement of what joe biden is doing right now . Yeah, the drill, baby, drill, stuff i find astonishing. Record Energy Production is gotten by drilling. We need to transition away from fossil fuels, but for now, we need them. The idea that biden has been antienergy or somehow curtailed our drilling is completely belied by the fact we are producing record amounts of oil and natural gas. Morning joe economic analyst Steve Rattner, thank you. The only problem i see here, and this is not a joke, is that we could do our entire fourhour show factchecking everything donald trump says, and we would not even scratch the surface. Thats the problem that were confronting in this election and for this country moving forward. Steve, thank you. Coming up, pablo torre joins the table to discuss the top headlines in sports. Plus, well get his take on a former nfl mvp being floated as a possible vp pick. Okay. Thats next on morning joe. Theres Nothing Better than a subway series footlong. Except when you add a new footlong sidekick. Like the ultimate bmt with the new Footlong Pretzel. Nothing like a sidekick that steps up in crunch time. [laughing] not cool man. Every Epic Footlong deserves the perfect sidekick. Well, it is still dark out, but if you look closely at 6 50 in the morning, you can see the concord making its way up the hudson river here in New York City where it is going to arrive to be on display at the intrepid once again. Take my word for it. Lets turn to sports. Major League Baseball opening day just two weeks away. Major, major Injury Concern for us New York Yankees fans surrounding our ace. The team has shut down gerrit cole with no official timetable for his return. The cy young underwent an mri earlier this week after reporting discomfort and since visited a specialist in los angeles who recommended further testing. Yikes. The yankees hoping to have cole back sometime in may or early june. Jonathan lemire, please suppress your glee for a moment. For real. This is one of the best pitchers in baseball. Im a yankee fan. Youre a red sox fan. We understand that. This is not good good. They say a month or two, but that seems like the beginning of something. We dont root for injuries, willie. Did i pull that off . The face was straight. No, this is. Cole, we were talking just this week, because there were major free agent pitchers, blake snell, wanting the longterm deals. No Starting Pitcher should get that because pitchers get hurt. Cole seemed to be the exception to the rule. Hes been worth every penny. One of the best pitchers in baseball. Won the cy young last year. This is a concern. The tone around it changed. A day or two, they thought itd be a month, which is a big deal but the yankees could survive that. Now, lump of cole on the back of the new york post. This surgeon is the best in the business, performs a lot of tommy john surgeries. We dont know it is coming here, but it is worrisome for cole this year and Going Forward. Seems his arm is an issue. Do the yankees try to sign a free agent pitcher to make up for cole if he misses time . Itd come with a major luxury tax penalty. 60 million or more. As we talked about, those guys want sevenyear deals. You cant do that. Gerrit cole has been awesome for the yankees. He was a bright spot last year. Lets hope he is okay. Lets bring in, youve seen him in the wide shot chuckling over here. Thank you for the laugh. Collective misfortune. Im a yankee partisan, too. I dont like when people say, the surgeon is really good. Thats not helping me right now. We dont want a surgeon in the conversation. No thanks. Pablo torre, you know that by now. Good to see you. Lets look ahead a little bit to the yankee season. Juan soto, protecting judge in the lineup, the lineup looks good but you were counting on having cole at the top of the rotation, obviously. Willie, lets be honest, there is a binary sort of dynamic to how we should feel about the season. Last season was the worst season in my lifetime. Worst season in 30 years of rooting for the yankees. Granted, ive only known roses and the canyon of euros. They didnt make the playoffs, 82 and 80. This is an allin dynamic so you win or misery. I laughed to john, in his face, about how the red sox will finish last in the a. L. East for the Third Straight year. Careful now. I now deserve this, i suppose, cosmically. Look, juan soto, aaron judge makes me feel great. It does. Its just that i like the yankees. Its not my money, man. Why are we not spending more 300 million contracts on these guys . Id like them to shore up the lineup, please. This generation of steinbrenners seems less willing to open the check book to play for players. Disappointing. Were destined for last. Im hoping for the best on cole. The lineup is tough. Well keep us in it. Staying within the pages of the new york post, robert f. Kennedy says hell announce his Vice President ial pick on march 26th at an event in oakland. Why are we telling you this in a Sports Segment . A source tells nbc news the independent president ial candidate offered the slot to an individual, and that individual has accepted the offer. Earlier this week oh boy. Kennedy jr. Confirmed to the New York TimesNew York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former minnesota governor jesse the body ventura were on his short list. This cant be real, right . Hes floating these names for fun. Is Aaron Rodgers, who is an active member of the New York Jets, fully expected to return this season, would he be on the Campaign Trail during the week and playing Football On Sundays . I i just want to attack this from the perspective of a jet fan. I have a lot of takes about just what this means. Why is Rfk Cornering The Market on 9 1 conspiracies, the sandy hook demos. The story is Aaron Rodgers happens to be a guy who told cnn, pamela brown, the whole thing was a conspiracy. That was the reporting. I say all of this to say, if im a jet fan, how do i feel . Even beyond the human horror of what that means, that conspiracy in specific, like, is that still a line we cant cross . Well find out, i guess. I think about football. After all of that, i think about, this is the guy who said we need to eliminate offfield distractions. Aaron rodgers is the human being that had those words exit his mouth. Now, to be the first athlete in history to mount a president ial, Vice President campaign is just one of those on the nose things that you would laugh at if you also didnt worry about what it says about, i dont know, democracy and ourselves. Kennedy and rodgers, of course, corresponded over their vaccine skepticism, denialism. Cnn highlights the Conspiracy Theory, allegedly shared by Aaron Rodgers, about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting not being real. This is alex jones stuff. It is disgusting, appalling. Pamela brown, a reporter behind the piece, said she was introduced to rodgers covering the Kentucky Derby in 2013. Upon hearing she was a journalist with cnn, rodgers immediately attacked the news media for covering up important stories, he said. According to the report, rodgers brought up the sandy hook shooting, claiming it was a government inside job and the media was intentionally ignoring it. Brown recalls rodgers asking her if she thought it was off that there were men in black in the woods by the school were not going to get into this stuff. Rodgers, through an agent, declined to comment to cnn in response to this. Cnn had a second source on this. Hes been saying this to a whole bunch of people. It is arguably the most disgusting Conspiracy Theory in all of the qanon, Alex Jones World that has descended on this country the last decade or so. John, the question for me is, at this point, if you are the New York Jets, Aaron Rodgers is a broken down 40yearold who won one super bowl a decade and a half ago. Same number of super bowls as Jeff Hostetler and nick foles. Is it worth it to have this guy . You have an awful lot of nets fans in newtown, connecticut, i promise. Aaron rodgers, his play was slipping at his time in green bay. He played four plays last year before he was injured, suffered an Achilles Tendon injury. We dont know how hell bounce back. Thats just the football context. It is the most loathsome Conspiracy Theory out there. If he believes it, he is a loathsome human being. We know from his former teammates who have told people hed float 9 11 conspiracy theories, too, maybe the second worst Conspiracy Theory in american society, pablo. I dont see how the New York Jets can employ this guy. If this is real, let him go be robert f. Kennedy jr. s running mate. Theyll lose in embarrassing fashion. Dont let him play for your team again. This guy doesnt care about football anymore. Can i say that . It should be insulting for Aaron Rodgers to hear someone say that about him, but every indication is he wants to talk about and complain about and be victimized by and become a messianic figure because of alleged cancellation. Why . Is it us, aaron, or is it you . For Aaron Rodgers, the answer is never Aaron Rodgers is the problem, despite all the people around who are voting in the other direction. By the way, the sandy hook families have suffered more than a decade because of that Conspiracy Theory, been harassed. Insane. Theyve had to move. Not disclose where their children are buried. Its the most horrific thing. If Aaron Rodgers is really talking about this, i dont know how the jets keep him. You have tyrod taylor, let him be the quarterback. Pablo, great to see you. Well get back to the new developments with Donald Trumps legal trouble, including the hearing in florida of his handling of classified documents. Were back in 90 seconds. Why choose a sleep number smart bed . Can i make my side softer . I like my side firmer. Sleep number does that. The queen sleep number c4 smart bed is only 1,599, save 300. Shop now at sleepnumber. Com my predecessor and allies in congress, including your senator ron johnson. [ booing ] well, he voted against the Infrastructure Law that funds this project. They want to undo everything i talked about. My predecessor talked about infrastructure every week for four years. He didnt get a single thing done, not one. Ron johnson and every republican in congress voted against the Inflation Reduction Act which is helping fund these projects, and he wants to appeal it. Bidens message to supporters in wisconsin as he looks to gain more support in Midwest Swing states. Willie, we talked about wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania being the states that really, if biden sweeps those, its almost impossible for donald trump to get to 270. And wisconsin has been sort of the latter day florida, florida, florida, florida. Its the one that is the closest. Its the tightest. This year, not only does the biden team feel better about wisconsin, a lot of political observers are saying this is a state thats actually looking custommade for joe biden in 2024. This one actually may be a bit less difficult for him to win this year. Yeah, well see. I mean, theres no mystery to what the next eight months mean. It means joe biden or donald trump has to win those states. Its that simple. Youve got to win michigan. You have to win wisconsin. You have to win pennsylvania. Thats the group. Thats where the focus will be and should be. John heilemann just sat down. As well as former alabama senator doug jones. Great to have you both here. Thats why were seeing, john, the focus from the Biden Campaign. Yes, theyre in georgia, campaigning elsewhere, but they know where this will be won and lost. It is no coincidence, you know, Aaron Rodgers out of wisconsin. As soon as he left wisconsin, the state started looking better for joe biden. Thats the whole thing. Okay. Sure. I wanted to get on the Aaron Rodgers thing a little bit there. You could. That is actually i mean, let me try to guide you somewhere else here. Lets talk about money. Joe biden breaking all records as far as fundraising goes. I talked to a prominent democratic fundraiser a week ago who told me for the first time in decades, instead of calling saying, hey, were going to have a fundraiser. I know this is a tough time but every Single Person she called, picked up the phone, and the response was uniform. How can i help . Thank god you called. Ive been waiting for you to call. So much is on the line. How can i help . That feeds into, on the democratic side, on the biden side, recordbreaking numbers. On the trump side, we saw the numbers have collapsed this year for individual donors. You also have larger donors saying either he is too extreme or hes already spent billions of dollars on legal bilbills, i dont want to pay him to pay his lawyers. So you look at states like wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania. I mean, theyre basically individual senate races. Theyre going to be microtargeting those states. If youve got billions of dollars to do it, you can do it. If you have a couple hundred million to spread around the country like donald trump, its going to end up being a Really Big Uphill Climb for him. For sure, joe. On both sides, theres something to say here. One of which is, you know, if youre in the Biden Campaign and you think about what your challenges are between now and november, you know, there is the challenge of trying to get Democratic Base voters to turn out who lost enthusiasm for joe biden. We know who those groups are. Young voters, africanAmerican Voters, latino voters. The biden argument is, when the race comes into focus, those people will come home. The voters will come home. The Fundraising Number is like a leading indicator of that. The place where the focus on the race, the people who are fully aware and have been for months, that donald trump is going to be the nominee of the Republican Party, which he now is the de facto nominee, as we pointed out, he has the delegates, thats been clear to the donor community. People at the big dollar level and the small dollar level. Those are the people focused on politics. They know donald trump is going to be the nominee, now is the nominee effectively, and they are already champing at the bit to get money into the Biden Campaign. They realize what the stakes of the election are. If youre the Biden Campaign, youre propagating the theory that once its clear the voters will come home. Its the leading indicator, once democrats really look at this race, voters will go in the same direction the donors have. On the trump side, you know, you can say a lot of things about republican donors, but one thing you cant say is that theyre idiots. If you are a large dollar republican donor, you look at Donald Trumps financial circumstances, whats going on at the rnc, the way in which his legal peril is impacting the financial peril, and you say, im not sure that my money in this campaign is going to be used for what its supposed to be for. You know, theres all kinds of speculation about what is going to happen to dollars that go into Donald Trumps coffers at this point. If youre sitting there, youre kind of on the line, a lot of the donors dont like donald trump anyway. Theyd rather have seen some other republican on the ticket because theyre more electable. Theres a lot of uncertainty there. That is not going to help donald trump in the fundraising war against joe biden. I think, joe and mika, you know, this is a twoday swing here, michigan and wisconsin. We know it is twothirds of the blue wall that donald trump cracked in 2016, joe biden restored in 2020 for democrats. This Campaign Going to be fought on lofty ideas like democracy. These two days, its about things like infrastructure. Its about things like social security. Its about things like everyday improvements in the lives of the people there. Well hear from the president today about his support for labor unions there in michigan. That also are among the battle lines where this Campaign Going to be fought. The Biden Campaign feels it is a winning argument, particularly in those states. Elise, were not exaggerating to say when donald trump goes to these states, he seems to be more out there, more unmoored, more accusatory, more angry, more violent in his attacks, more unamerican in his support for Vladimir Putin. You have all of this crazy and dangerous stuff going on at the same time in his speeches, and then biden goes and talks about infrastructure. He talks about, you know, obamacare. He talks about insulin, 35 now instead of a couple thousand dollars because of pharmaceutical greed. I mean, thats and i know a lo of people that Talk Politics and pundits dont think that stuff adds up. I can tell you, as somebody on the Campaign Trail, and ive done it four times, if you do out there and do it and you keep hammering the facts while theyre attacking you, people eventually, they listen to the facts. They dont listen to the craziness and the ground noise. You look at the importance that the Biden Campaign has put in wisconsin. They really are trying to step up there. They have their Campaign State Headquarters in milwaukee now, trying to juice enthusiasm among black voters in milwaukee who havent been turning out really since obama was on the ballot. And you see he is talking about infrastructure. He is going into areas and making that a focus. He is trying to get back some enthusiasm there among voters he needs to win. The question with trumps fundraising, though, is donald trump going to be able to be on the airwaves in the summer, in the fall . Is he going to be massively outspent by joe biden like he was last goaround . That really was such an advantage for joe biden. Its going it remains to be seen if trump can get back to a level where he can compete. Former senator doug jones, id love to bring you into this and ask, what is the key to winning pennsylvania, wisconsin, michigan, and cutting through the fire hose of falsehoods that come from the Trump Campaign every single day . Mika, i think there is a combination. What the president is doing now is absolutely a key. I mean, weve been trying to get the message out about what this administration has done over the last three years and what they intend to do over the next four years. I think thats really important. Thats where the rubber meets the road. Write it home. Conversations with folks about the infrastructure, about broadband, about health care, you name it, thats what this administration has been doing. I also think this, i also think that you cannot overlook the third Party Candidacies of folks that might siphon antitrump vote. They have to look and make sure they explain and educate the electorate in those states, that this is a winner take all. The Electoral College doesnt give leeway on things like this, and it is winner take all. If votes are siphoned away from joe biden, itll only help donald trump. It is an important factor, especially in the key states if the third parties get on the ballot. Because they cannot win. There is no way on gods green earth a Third Party Candidate or independent candidate can get 270 electoral votes. It is a throw away vote. All right. Former President Donald Trump is expected to be in court today for a hearing in the federal classified documents case against him. In fort pierce, florida, a u. S. District judge, Aileen Cannon, is set to hear arguments on two of trumps motions to dismiss the charges against him. The first argues trump was allowed to store classified documents just like this. Unlocked rooms at his club under the president ial records act. Yeah, thats he claims this was okay, right by the potty. Not okay. Well see if the judge, who i guess desperately wants to be appointed Something Else by donald trump, will make the mistake she did before and then get absolutely excuriated by the 11th circuit. She can rule what she rules, but no court will uphold a preposterous argument. The main statute used to form charges against the former president is unconstitutionally vague. In an interview yesterday with the rightwing network newsmax, trump defended his actions. I took them very legally, and i wasnt hiding them. We had boxes on the front. A lot of the boxes had clothing. Were moving out, unfortunately, from the white house. I had the right to do it in my opinion and my lawyers opinion and Everything Else. Thatfantastic. Just not true, what he said. Lets bring in attorney george conway. George, so lets just say that donald trump accidentally packed his shirts, golf shoes, and some classified documents and took it down, discovered it, and then said, hey, ive got these things. You guys need to have them back. No hard, no foul. They would have come to get them. They would have taken them back. In fact, thats exactly what happened in joe bidens case. Here, doesnt matter what he says on newsmax or fox. Here, he had the documents. He knew he had the documents. He lied to the fbi about the documents. They tried negotiating to get the documents back. He gave some of them back. In fact, he had his lawyers actually sign affidavits swearing the documents were back. Ended up, they were lying. He kept more documents. He then tried to get his i. T. Guy to destroy the evidence. The i. T. Guy refused. He then asked someone else to flood the i. T. Room with water from the swimming pool. That guy refused, as well. They are now testifying against donald trump. For all the idiots out there or let me say, not idiots, all those who have been brainwashed and are in Donald Trumps personality cult, Immune To Facilities and whats right and whats wrong in this situation, clarify for them, if you will, george, the difference between those two scenarios. I think you just did. What trump is arguing is, as you say, absolutely preposterous. I mean, he is arguing, first of all, the records belong to him under the president ial records act. Literally, the president ial records act starts by saying precisely the opposite. Official papers of the president belong to the United States of america, and the president can have certain rights to look at those papers after the fact but they have to go through the National Archives. None of that, you know, has anything to do even with the classification. The Classification Issue is something that doesnt affect the fact that he took these documents and then squirrelled them around. Theres no argument that this is somehow unconstitutionally vague. I mean, he obstructed justice. Theres no question about that. People go to jail for that all the time. Theres no question that these materials contain National Defense information. Even if he could pull the magnificent routine with an envelope to the head and say, these are declassified, theyd still be National Defense information under the Espionage Act. Each of those counts subjects him to a potential of ten years in jail. There are dozens of counts. Yeah. Yeah . George, most telling here is, again, donald trump has done so many things throughout the process just to undermine, to gut every one of his arguments. The whole argument of, well, i could declassify these if i want to, of course, undermined by his statement to his Campaign Manager when he was showing her top secret invasion plans of iran. Saying, this is classified material. If i were still president , i could declassify it, then id have no problem showing everybody in the room this. But im not president anymore, so i cant declassify these materials. Again, even that claim is a bogus claim. He cant be carnack the magician. He cant be trump the all powerful expresident. He broke the law. He knows he broke the law. He admitted he broke the law. Thats absolutely right. It is an open and shut case with all the witnesses against him talking about how telling the prosecutors and the grand jury about how he hid the documents and lied about the documents, had his lawyers lie about the documents, tried to destroy the evidence, so on and so forth. As you mentioned, i mean, its all thats just devastating evidence. Its not a complicated case. Yes, there is sensitive National Security information in those documents, but the precise content doesnt matter. Thats the reason why this case isnt that complicated. There isnt some kind of it just is like a drug bust case. You basically he had the drugs, the documents, people saw him with the documents. He hit the documents. You know, the evidence was in his office and in his bathroom and in his ballroom at his own private resort. Its just this case should be going to trial right now, frankly, were it not for the bizarre actions of this District Judge at the very beginning who tried to hamstring the justice departments investigation and the grand jury investigation and had to get slapped down by the u. S. Court of appeals in georgia twice. If it werent for that, and if it werent for other delays, i mean, this case any other judge, i think, would have had this case tried or ready to be tried as of now. Senator jones, you were the u. S. Attorney for the Northern District of alabama for four years. Right. If you had this evidence in front of you as a prosecutor, which as george laid out, its there. There are pictures of it. Documents are there. No one is denying that. What theyre claiming is he had the right to do it. The president ial records act explicitly says he doesnt have the right to do that. Then there is the obstruction piece. Weve heard from multiple witnesses, including another one this week, about the lengths donald trump went to to conceal this, to get people to come around and help him hide this stuff from the National Archives until the fbi had to issue a subpoena and come in and get the documents. As a prosecutor, you like the evidence you have in this case . [ laughter ] absolutely. That was such a softball question. The facts, the law, everything is on the prosecutors side. I agree with george, this case should have already been tried. This is you know, there is a speedy trial. Theres all sorts of things that could have gotten this case to trial. What donald trump is doing right now is purely political. He is speaking to his political base. Hes not speaking to that court. He is trying to delay these processes, thinking he will get elected president again. He is shoring up his base every time he makes a Statement Like that. I am surprised a little bit that the lawyers can in good faith put those arguments in front of the court. They just are absurd on their face, in my view. I think george explained it really well. Joe, before we end the block, i kind of have a Palate Cleanser. Fantastic. You know charlie rose talking to people and going, how do you do what you do . What you do . Exactly. I couldnt do that. I tried it. This is another version of that. Yeah . Id call it a Palate Cleanser, except it might wretch. Take a look. Yikes. Mr. President , im very curious about what it is like for you, your life, you know . No one has gone through what youve gone through. Nobody in Human History has really and i know you have supporters, friends, family they say it is lonely at the top. Im actually curious, is it ever lonely for you . I mean, no one can fully relate to what youve been through and what youre going through. Are you ever lonely . So i was over the years, i love history. I study history. I was always told Andrew Jackson as a president was treated the absolute worst. He was really lambasted. And i heard Abraham Lincoln was second, but he was in a thing called the civil war. You can understand that. But Andrew Jackson was really, really treated badly. In fact, his wife died during the process. I mean, a lot of people say she died because of the way they were treated. I mean, she was heartbroken and broken in so many other ways. I heard that for years. I look now, even last night i was saying it, and i said, i dont care. Andrew jackson or anybody else, nobody has when you think of the fake things, nobody has been treated like trump in terms of badly. Yeah. Is that it . Yeah, thats it. Well, willie, listen. Yeah, i dont think that was a Palate Cleanser. Yeah. Lets sort through that. Mr. President , youve been treated worse than anybody in history. Aw. Lets start with a couple. Jesus christ was crucified. Oh. Little worse. Joan of arc burned at the stake. Thats two we can notch above there. Martin luther king. Abe lincoln assassinated. Martin luther king assassinated. Bobby kennedy assassinated. Jfk assassinated. Thats a little worse. Black americans, lets see, did anything happen to them . Yes. Ripped from their country. Ripped from their homes. Put in chains. Dragged across enslaved ships to america where they were slaves from 1619 until 1860 thats a little worse, yeah. I think thats worse than what donald trump is going through. Lets see, i dont know. Willie, no one in Human History, mr. President , has gone through more than you have gone through. Willie, where do i begin . I dont know. Where do i begin, as the song goes . Started with jesus christ. I mean these sad, sad people who are so freakish to try to elevate this you know, he plays like a strongman. Plays the victim. He is such a poor, pathetic, weak, snowflake. Hes a snowflake. I want dr. Evil to Start Talking about his father and how all the things his father did to him. And donald trump will next take that on board. Oh. The accused chestnuts of being lazy. But its just so insane, willie, that he is here, you have this billionaire, was president of the United States, and hes just such a victim. Hes so weak. Everybody is picking on him. Everybody is trying to play right into the victimhood. Listen, we republicans used to i mean, when i was a republican, we were like, you know what . Dont be the victim. Dont be weak. You know, the pull yourself up by your bootstraps type nonsense, thats what republicans used to be about. Personal responsibility. Now, it is all victimhood. Look what theyve done to me. Theyre such babies. Its what they used to accuse democrats and progressives of being, right, victims and whiners and all that. Snowflakes. Such whiners. At this point, it is Donald Trumps rational for reelection. He says it out loud at rallies. Im being indicted for you. Im honored to be indicted for you on all these counts. So you saw it. I mean, joe, we talk about this all the time, whether it is Lindsey Graham or now like the guy doing the interview yesterday, how do you look yourself in the mirror after that . You sit across from donald trump and fluff him, talk about why are they so mean to you, sir . How do you get through it . Honest to god, i dont know how youd look your children in the eye after doing that, even catch a glimpse of yourgs in the mirror while you were shaving. I guess theyre beyond humiliation because they like the power. Fluff em. John heilemann, and im serious, talk about how victimhood, vicvictimhood, the thing republicans used to despise, saying they were a party of victims, talk about how republicans have become the victims, a party of resentment. Look at what the black person did to me. Oh, look what that 14yearold trans volleyball player could do. She could bring down the entire western civilization. Stop. Its all of these preposterous things that they come up with so they can be the victims. So the white majority, like evangelicals, people who are in the majority in every respect are victimized because a 14yearold trans volleyball player in butte, montana, wants to play on the varsity volleyball team. Im making that particular one up, but it is really that crazy. Its like the governor of utah when he vetoed one of these pieces of legislation, antitrans legislation. He said, um, you know, there are only three trans athletes in our entire state. You people are burning the entire state down over this. Maybe we can sit around the table and talk and figure this out. Its just like the southern border. They dont want to sit down and figure it out. They want the issue so they can go on these news shows and talk about how their way of life is being trampled on by those mean elites. Right. So, first of all, mika offered a Palate Cleanser earlier and then she played that interview for us. It wasnt a Palate Cleanser. Then willie talking about someone fluffing donald trump. I really need a Palate Cleanser now. Thats the worst thing ive heard ever. Okay. Joe, this is the story of donald trump and the story of what has happened, as you say, to the modern contemorary Republican Party. The party has become a party of grievance. Theres been a realignment in terms of what the Constituent Parts are of the Republican Party. It is increasingly this kind of and this realignment is reshaping american politics. Its become the downscale party, the less educated party, the more economically strained part of the electorate, and that is there is a large number of voters. This is what made donald trump president in 2016. It is what, despite his failure in 2020, its what turned out 8 million more voters in 2020 than in 2016, the case of seething grievance. Make America Great again is about grievance, white grievance, but its about, we have lost our country. Someone has taken the country away. Weve not gotten what we are entitled to. Now, a strongman will get it back for us. So much is ludicrous about that argument, but that is the political power of donald trump. It rests on grievance. He is a kind of ludicrously almost kind of parody of a snowflake at this point. But he does embody and becomes the kind of thing upon which a lot of voters project their sense of grievance. They see donald trump as a persecuted figure. They feel persecuted themselves. They are the losers. Others are the winners. Please make us the winners again and stop those people from being the winners. That has been his political power. That is largely what the Republican Party is all about now. I will say, in conclusion, ive been to a lot of donald trump rallies in 2016, 2020, and this cycle. Theres always these songs he plays, right . Youve been to enough rallies to know. He gets in trouble sometimes with the artists for playing them. Artists say, dont play my song, which i would do, certainly. The song that really would be the Trump Theme Song at this point, and Linda Ronstadt would demand he stop, but itd be the perfect Trump Theme Song. Poor, poor, pitiful me. When she says, no, he can go back to playing the qanon song under his rallies. Senator, let me ask you about, you won election in the reddest of red states as a democrat. Extraordinary feat. He never whined. He never complained. I havent heard doug jones complain once. You know alabama voters because of the state where you lift and have for so long. We were looking yesterday and discussing it, Donald Trumps win in georgia two nights ago. Right. He won big, yes, but there were 90,000 republican votes cast not for donald trump. 75,000 or so more nikki haley. Ron desantis got votes. Chris christie got a couple thousand. I guess the question is, republicans in birmingham, republicans in mobile, suburbs like that, are they thinking twic about donald trump . If they are, where are they going to go . Thats the issue. They certainly are in those areas, in those suburbs. The rural areas of alabama and the south, not so much. You still see the trump flags. You still see the bumper stickers and Everything Else trump. But i think in the suburbs, in the business community, theyre concerned. They see a lot of republican policies that they like, but at the same time, they see someone unhinged. They see things that give them a lot of pause. You have a new generation of republican Business Leaders in alabama and elsewhere, and they are torn right now. They see some things that they like, but at the same time, they have been so conditioned to be republicans and not to waiver from that, it is difficult to get them to move, much less speak against somebody. You dont see that happening a lot. I think the suburban voters, those typical Middle Of The Road voters, theyre going to have a hard time. In a state like alabama, its not going to matter. In georgia, i think the president can be President Biden can still win georgia again, even though most people are writing that off, because of the antitrump vote in the republican primary. I think he is a weaker candidate that most people think. I really believe donald trump is a much weaker candidate that folks know about and think about, because they see the rallies and the strongman. If you look and start dissecting the vote, that is where the rubber meets the road. Yeah. Ill tell you what, mika, not only georgia, i agree, georgia is still in play because of the suburbs that i think will break for biden, but North Carolina. Yeah. Because their extreme governor, thats a state that went for donald trump by 1. 5 points. Its only become more urban the last four years. And you have a gubernatorial candidate completely unhinged, who could take one or two points from the entire party. For sure. I have a couple questions before we go, randomly chosen for george conway. Palace cleanser . No. I dont know if george is prepared for this question. Okay. Were going to be watching the Documents Trial as it unfolds, but back to the civil cases. Donald trump hosted, i guess he had to put the money down to do his appeal for the e. Jean carroll case. He defamed her again, and theyre considering suing again. My question to you is, since he is a candidate, are there federal elections requirements, or because it is a civil lawsuit, is there any Public Information rules where we could know where he got the money that he used to post the bond . Yeah, i dont think so. For example, i think thats one of the reasons why e. Jean carroll did not challenge the bond. All her concern is, will the bond be paid and will it be paid promptly after trump loses his appeals. Right. They changed the terms of the bond to make it pay out more quickly. Shes satisfied. Theres really no basis in that litigation to look at the bond. Maybe it might be different for the New York State litigation because it is going to be a much larger bond. It is going to be interesting to see whether or not he can get that one, also. The thing to remember about all this, i did the math last night, this man is Accruing Interest on those judgments, the three judgments, two to jean carroll for 88 million, one to the state of new york for, i guess, 464 million or Something Like that. I calculated the interest last night. Its 17 per second. Per second. Its just these are staggering amounts. I just dont know whether hes going to be able to come up with the second bond. Well see. But if he puts the money down, doesnt the interest stop . Can someone pay it for him . No. No, no. The interest does not stop. Oh, my gosh. The interest does not stop. The interest keeps going, postjudgment interest, until the judgment is finally paid. Whether or not he bonds the judgment or not and takes an appeal. Wow. It is 17 per second from now until the time that the plaintiffs get to collect the judgment. Thats staggering. As to whether somebody can pay it off, i mean, you know, there would be legal i think somebody could out of the goodness of their heart, if you want to call it goodness. Could pay off this half A Billion Dollar amount. It probably would be income to donald trump. You have to pay taxes on it. Itd be quite a mess. I dont think that republican you know, he is taking over the Republican National committee and firing half the staff and moving it down to florida. I dont think theyre going to raise much money for this organization that is essentially being decimated in an Election Year, which is just absolutely crazy. I mean, thats i dont know where he goes from here. Maybe hell get the pond. Maybe somebody is putting up the money for it. I dont know. Okay. Conservative attorney george conway, thats staggering. 17 a second. 17 just went by. Former u. S. Senator doug jones of alabama. Nbc News NationalAffairs Analyst john heilemann. Thank you, all, very much for being on this morning. Still ahead on morning joe, well be joined by democratic congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi who cosponsored the tiktok bill that passed in the house yesterday. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. Theres Nothing Better than a subway series footlong. Except when you add on an all new footlong sidekick. Were talking a 2 footlong churro. 3 Footlong Pretzel and a five Dollar Footlong cookie. Every Epic Footlong deserves the perfect sidekick. Order one with your favorite subway series sub today. Rylee from rylees realty hi this listing sounds incredible. Lets check it out. Says here it gets plenty of light. And this must be the ocean view . Of aruba . Huh. This listing is misleading. Well, when at t says we give businesses get our best deal, on the iphone 15 pro made with titanium. We mean it. Amazing. All my agents want it. Says here. inviting pool. Come on over too inviting. Only at t gives businesses our best deals on any iphone. 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Nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent Garrett Haake reports. Reporter for social media giant tiktok, an uncertain future this morning as the bill calling for the company to split from its Chinese Parent Company or be shut down now heads to the senate. The u. S. House on wednesday in a rare and overwhelmingly bipartisan vote passing the measure that requires bytedance, the parent company, to sell the app within six months. Republican Mike Gallagher wrote the bill. What do you say to people who fundamentally dont understand why the app where they watch silly dance videos and a National Security threat . The possible for dangerous propaganda is too immense to allow an adversary to have this control over what is increasingly becoming the dominant News Platform in america. Reporter lawmakers and National Security experts have long been concerned with bytedances ties to the communist Chinese Party, which many believe can and does store data from american users. Partly because of a National Security law that requires Chinese Companies to share data and other information with the government. The reason that is valuable to the Chinese Communist party is it begins to allow them to know how to influence americans. Reporter in its annual threat assessment, the u. S. Intelligence Community Says china used tiktok in the 2022 midterms, warning it could do it again in the falls president ial election. Tiktok repeatedly denied any connections to the Chinese Government, with the companys ceo responding to the house vote late wednesday. We will continue to do all we can, including exercising our legal rights, to protect this amazing platform. Reporter just 65 house members, mostly democrats, opposed the bill. It is an overly broad bill that i dont think would stand First Amendment scrutiny. The other issue is that there are a lot of people who make their livelihoods on this. Reporter increasing jt. Its how i feed my wife and three children. Reporter even those who suggest a divestment see a doubleedged sword in an Election Year. 20 of American Voters use tiktok at least once a day. Cutting out a large group of young voters is not the best known strategy for reelection. Nbcs Garrett Haake reporting on that. Joining us now is one of the democrats who coauthored the tiktok bill. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of illinois. Hes on the House Select Committee on china. Congressman, thank you for being with us. What message do you think was sent to the communist Chinese Party . Why was it important that message got sent . I think the message was, look, the American People enjoy tiktok, and we in Congress Want the platform to continue to operate. But we want bytedance to divest its vast majority of ownership in tiktok. This was not a ban. It was a divestment bill. Its really not about tiktok, its about bytedance. Just so your viewers know, bytedance is a Chinese Company that has 100 ownership of tiktok. The editor in chief of bytedance is the secretary of the Chinese Communist party cell embedded at the highest rankings of diet bytedance to make sure all products, including tiktok, adhere to, quote, correct political direction. So that is why we are asking for the divestment of tiktok. Well, i mean, they push propaganda. Posts that sow confusion in the United States and undermine americas interests somehow go viral. But if you, lets say, decide to post anything on uighurs or hong kong or other issues, about human rights, suddenly, those wont go viral. In fact, they wont see the light of day. Im wondering, from what youve heard from senate colleagues, do you have hope that they will do the right thing and stop allowing the communist Chinese Party to spy on americans, to push propaganda on americans, and use algorithms to impact our elections negatively . Yes. Weve had many conversations. Obviously, we want to respect the process that leader schumer has for taking up this bill, but i think theres a lot of interest. Ive got to say, what tiktok did last week and in its lobbying campaigns have really backfired and caused more people to support our bill, including in both chambers. Just as an example, on the morning of the vote in the house energy and Commerce Committee to take up this bill, tiktok sent out a push notification and popup on millions of users phones using geolocation data of minor children to get them to call their members of congress in order to continue accessing content on tiktok. These minor children flooded our offices with phone calls and asked questions like, whats a congressman . What is congress . One person impersonated a member of congress son to get his tiktok back. This type of influence campaign is exactly what this bill was intended to address and what got people so upset about tiktok. Congressman, good morning. For all the valid criticisms you make of tiktok, and weve all seen them all, were aware of them, what do you make of the argument about the First Amendment were hearing from your progressive colleagues who voted against this bill, though it passed overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis, that this will not pass scrutiny, this could be a 90 vote in the Supreme Court if it makes it up that high on First Amendment grounds . I take their concerns seriously. About half the Progressive Caucus ended up voting for this bill. The reason why is simple. They know theres no First Amendment right to espionage or First Amendment right to harm our National Security. The First Amendment covers speech, not conduct. Certainly not anybodys right, including the Chinese Communist partys, to somehow use the platform to do harm to americans. So i think that is why working with the biden administration, we came up with language that was not a ban but, rather, a divestment to ensure that we address the legitimate furst amendment rights and concerns of users while, at the same time, addressing National Security concerns. Congressman, to that point, weve certainly heard the opposition suggest its not just being dubious of the National Security concerns, raising awareness about the First Amendment, but also saying this is unprecedented. Feeling like this is a step the congress has never taken before. What is your response to that, they feel this could be the beginning of a slippery slope . This is not without precedent. That is incorrect. The lgbtq app, grinder, was owned by a Chinese Company. Once it became clear the Chinese Communist party had access to Sensitive Data about lgbtq members of the u. S. Government and military, they were forced to divest. They did so quickly because the app was very valuable, much like tiktok, and there was no disruption to users. Thats what wed expect in this case, as well. All right. Democratic congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of illinois, well continue this conversation. Lots of debate around itment we appreciate you coming on this morning. Thank you. Thank you. While tiktoks fate may be decided by congress, its just one app in a sea of them that goes largely unregulated by the government. Joining us now is frank mccourt, the founder and executive chairman of project liberty, Whose Mission is to give greater rights and control when it comes to the internet. His book is titled, our biggest fight, reclaiming liberty, humanity, and dignity in the digital age. Great to have you here. A successful businessman running a big company. Owned the Los Angeles Dodgers for a time. Youve really made this your issue. Lets just explain for our viewers as we begin here what you view as this fight. What are we up against here . Yeah. I wrote our biggest fight to shed light on a project we started, project liberty, which is really to reimagine how the internet works. And to reclaim our, not just our data, but what id call our personhood in the digital age, and regain control of it from the machines of big tech. I mean, we talk endlessly about the harms of the internet today. Its time we focused on what is fundamentally wrong and fix it. Thats what this project is all about. Youve committed half A Billion Dollars through project liberty to this fight. How do you attack something that seems so difficult to get your arms around, that is, in fact, unregulated . These apps that are so popular, that despite the harms they cause, that young people, in particular, are addicted to, where do you begin . Yeah, it is interesting, this conversation about tiktok. Of course, it is unique because it is a National Security issue. However, all of these platforms, all these apps you basically a type of a take our data, scrape it, aggregate it, and apply algorithms. Its unhealthy, right . We talk about the First Amendment issue and Fourth Amendment, which is search and seizure. Why on earth would we be allowing all our data to be owned and controlled by any third party . We need to fix how the internet works so rather it be all about devices and data, we put individuals in charge of their data, and so this project is really highlighting the fact that this is an infrastructure problem, and we can fix it. If we fix the engineering, put you and i in charge of our data, then we have a new evolved internet where the new apps are involved in clicking on our use of data. We get to control our privacy and data. How would that work as a practical question . It feels like the genies out of the bottle. Weve already given up so much over the last decade, 20 years, whatever its been. Every time you sign up for something, you give up a piece of yourself. How does this go down the road . Stop giving pieces of yourself mindlessly and endlessly to these platforms . Im a thirdgeneration builder and much of it is infrastructure, including internet systems. We need to, you know, this is just a just technology. Its designed and engineered in a certain way. Right now it prioritizes machines, devices, and links data. Why not link people . Why not put us in charge of our data . We can be in charge of all the things on the internet, and rather than be in this endless cycle about the debates and the harms, like, how are we going to put out that fire . Why on earth are we giving out our data . If i were to say, im going to deliver your mail for free, other than being suspicious, i would say, tell me that deal. Ill put cameras in every room of your house, and ill open your mail and read it and your relationships is mine, and ill read your 13yearold daughters diary, and if shes concerned about her weight, ive got some stuff to sell her. Im going to actually profit from a 13yearolds vulnerability. Its ridiculous. Its we need to start thinking about this as its our data, and start focusing on the Fourth Amendment and a little less on the First Amendment. Frank, the stories about the impact on children and teenagers are especially horrifying, the Mental Health issues that come from using this technology. What could be done in the near term . What is the most feasible policy solution to protect children and young adults as theyre maturing and using this technology . We now know the harms and especially the harms to children. This is fact. The ceos of these companies are not fixing it. Our politicians are not fixing it. So what we need to do is take matter into our own hands, and we can fix this, and i think thats two things. One as i mention, fix the technology, but project liberty is not even really a tech project. Its a social project, a civic project. We need to talk about this issue. We need to talk about this at the kitchen table. We need to talk about this on the sidelines of the soccer our kids soccer matches. We need to talk about it after church and go into schools and say, whats being done about this . This is a crisis. The harm is not only to kids. The harm is also to democracy. Were not even governable anymore. Its because this very technology that im talking about is polarizing us. Its designed to do that. So if we fix it, take control of our data rather than be controlled, then we can begin to solve the problem. As the old saying goes 100 . If you are not paying for a product, you are the product. I want to read you the lead editorial in the wall street journal today. Just one part of it that speaks to how blindly we are all flying and we dont understand how our society, how our political system is being hacked sometimes by people who consider themselves americas enemy. The hitch in taking over tiktok may be that tiktoks algorithms are controlled by bytedance engineers in china who answer to the Chinese Communist party. The Chinese Communist party placed export restrictions on its algorithms. Tiktoks u. S. Operations may be sold, but not the Key Technology that powers the app the South China Morning Post reported. So here we see, its the algorithms. The algorithms that the Chinese Communist party wants to hold, and the alalgorithms, and im n comparing xi to zuckerberg, but its still the algorithms that zuckerberg says, its far too complicated to explain to you anyway, and we go down the list. We are flying blind on how these companies are manipulating our children, manipulating us, manipulating our democracy. Yeah. Well, thats the problem, joe. We have the reason i cite thomas payne in the book and he was really kind of the inspiration, is, you know, in 1775, before this great country was started, he put a very simple choice forward to his his fellow settlers in what was not even the 13 colonies and he said something. Look. You have a choice. Do you want to continue to be a subject of a monarch or do you want to be a citizen . And a citizen comes with rights, human rights, and Property Rights and so forth, and thankfully our people chose citizenship, and this great country was created. Were at a similar moment right now and this is a point i make in the book. We have become subjects in this digital age. Our data, and please dont think of it as data. Its who we are. Everything about us is now digitized. So in this age, our personhood is now owned by someone else. Joe, you dont own you. You know . I dont own me. Were owned by these platforms. We need to fix that and be digital citizens, not digital subjects, and then we can begin to look at how democracy works in a digital age, but in the meantime, if we have technology that is manipulating us and causing our democratic process, our political process to be totally polarized, dysfunctional, and paralyzed, were just not going to get anywhere. Its were spinning our wheels, and so lets fix the tech, but lets this time not leave it to just the technologists. Lets bring it to the social sciences and the parents. Everybody has a viewpoint on this, and we now know how powerful this internet is, and how dependent we are. Lets redesign it so it works for us and not by machines. Ill conclude by saying we are still a device. We are not a person. We are an ip address and were being dragged into a future we dont want by machines, by tech. Lets change that. It sounds like a perfect situation where you have airliners that were forced to give passengers their own bill of rights. Right. It seems to me that read this book, talk to your members of congress. It seems that we need a bill of rights, an online bill of rights where we say, if you want us if you want us as a customer, these are the things that you have to do, and i think you lay it out beautifully, frank. Joe, i would actually say, we want we need our technology to actually fulfill protect our rights, the rights we have now, and fulfill our policy objectives. We dont need a separate set of rights. Weve got great rights. Its just these big tech platforms are just running roughshod over them. We kind of fell asleep on this, and didnt realize how valuable our data was. We have been connected to the internet 24 7. The new book is entitled our biggest fight. Frank mccourt, thank you very much. Thanks, frank. We really appreciate it. Youre welcome. Thank you. Coming up, hunter biden will not return to capitol hill for public testimony to the House Oversight committee, but says theres one condition that could change his mind. Well tell you what it is. Plus, we will fact check Donald Trumps false claims about President Biden and the economy. Also ahead, well hear from republican senator katie britt about the backlash over her state of the union rebuttal. Were back in two minutes. State of the union rebuttal. Were back in two minutes. Business. Its not a ninetofive proposition. Its all day and into the night. Its all the things that keep this world turning. The gotos that keep us going. The places we cheer. And check in. They all choose the advanced Network Solutions and round the clock partnership from Comcast Business. See why Comcast Business powers more Small Businesses than anyone else. Get started for 49. 99 a month plus ask how to get up to an 800 prepaid card. Dont wait call today. Mr. President , im very curious about what its like for you in your life. You know, youre no ones gone through what youve gone through. Nobody in Human History has really and i know you have supporters, friends, family, they say its lonely at the top, and im actually curious. Is it ever lonely for you . I mean, no one can fully relate to what you have been through, and what you are going through. Are you ever lonely . So i was over the years, i love history. I study history, and i was always told that Andrew Jackson as a president was treated the absolute worst. He was just really lambasted, and i heard Abraham Lincoln was second, but he was in i think, the civil war, so you can understand that, but Andrew Jackson was really, really treated badly. In fact, his wife died during the process. A lot of people say she died because of the way they were treated. I mean, she was heartbroken and broken in so many other ways, and i heard that for years, and i look now, even last night i was saying it. I said, theres no i dont care. Andrew jackson or anybody else. Nobody has when you think of the fake things, nobodys been treated like trump in terms of badly. No, thats true. Thats true. Thats definitely true. There is some truth to that, willie geist. Its hard for me not to also look at the person asking the questions. I mean, are you kidding me . I mean, these networks that are networking trumps lies and im going to keep it serious. Im not going to make fun of people or whatever, but it is creating a whole level of lies that people are swallowing whole because they think thats news. They think those are facts, and thats the part thats sad. I mean, its pathetic that donald trump parallels himself to Abraham Lincoln and anybody else, but its more pathetic and truly pathetic that our democracy is on the line because if that guy becomes president , look at his last house guest, and thats our country. Yeah. I mean, thats pure north korean state media, that kind of interview. Why are you treated so badly . Why are you so great . Why are people so mean to you . Also, another thing happened to Abraham Lincoln that former President Trump didnt get to, in terms of treated badly. Well leave that right there. Well leave that there, but to your more serious point, its a good one which is there are all kinds of Media Outlets friendly to trump whose audiences are receiving that message, the one you saw. Theyre not receiving messages about his stolen documents. Theyre not receiving messages about his attempts to overturn the election in 2020, all the legal trouble in front of him that were about to talk about. Theyre hearing that, and so you have a not a majority of the country, but a large swath of the country that is taking what you just saw there as news. Right. Exactly. And theres a lot going on, actually with donald trump that they might want to consider, but theyll probably never hear about, or at least in terms of facts. Along with willie and me, we have the host of way too early, jonathan lemire, former aide to the george w. Bush white house, elise jordan, and big day for trumps legal issues. Former President Trump is expected to be in court today for a hearing in the federal classified documents case against him. In fort pierce, florida, u. S. District judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear two motions to dismiss on the motions against him. It was the way he stored classified documents at his club under the confidential records act. He claims this was all good. The second motion claims the main statute used to charge against the former president is unconstitutionally vague. In that interview yesterday with the rightwing network newsmax, trump defended his actions. I took them very legally, and i wasnt hiding them. We had boxes on the front of the and a lot of those boxes had clothing. Were moving out. Unfortunately, were moving out of the white house. I had the right to do it in my opinion and the lawyers opinion and Everything Else. Lets bring in lisa rubin. Lisa, good morning. Apologies for putting this to you again because weve addressed this a thousand times. The president ial records act. Yes. Does it cover what donald trump did . It does not cover what donald trump did. Willie, theres a definition in the president ial records act for what could count as personal and what is president ial. Donald trumps argument is effectively, its president ial if i classified it as such in my mind, and everything in my mind was personal before i im sorry. Its personal if i say it so in my mind, and everything i took with me was personal, therefore can be no criminal prosecution against me. I apologize for making you answer that question for the thousandth time, but well keep doing it as long as he makes that argument. More broadly speaking in the classified documents case, where are we . Were hearing about the young judge, and delays and delays and where are we in the progress of bringing this to trial . Judge cannon had a hearing when she took arguments from both sides. She has yet to issue a Scheduling Order Setting A Trial Date and in the meantime, shes Hearing Argument today on two motions to dismiss. Im not a betting person. I would probably make a miserable one, but the fact that she hasnt set a trial date and yet has set oral arguments on two motions to dismiss makes me think maybe she could get rid of this case entirely without having to set a trial date, and that really is a frightening prospect, i think given the gravity of the charges here, and the evidence that supports those charges. Whats going to be the states defense then . What will we hear from them if we hear judge cannon try to make the whole thing go away . The president ial records act doesnt support the interpretation and also the perversion that donald trump is trying to give to it, that the president ial records act would hold that any number of the things donald trump took with him are inherently president ial. They should have gone to the National Archives. There was a process to follow, that the people in the white house surrounding donald trump were well aware of that process and in communication with the National Archives before he left the white house let alone in a new process that started afterwards when the National Archives brought to their attention. Hey, were missing a bunch of stuff. That includes the kim jongun letter, the letter barack obama left for you, et cetera, and that kicked off a process of the cat and mouse game with the National Archives and the department of the fbi were chasing after trump to collect all the things he took, and as you well know, he was not honest with them at any step of this process. He, in fact, diluted his own lawyers, and suckered them into it by having the boxes moved in this bizarre threecard monty that he was playing with his own legal team. I dont think that will hold up. In terms of the unconstitutional vagueness of the statute here, hes talking about the willful retention of National Defense to wants. He says among other things, that the phrase National Defense is unconstitutionally vague. He says that the unauthorized retention is another aspect of whats unconstitutionally vague here. We all know this statute has been used to prosecute many other people of lesser stature in this country who have never made such an argument, let alone had a court sustain it. Thats what i wanted to ask you about because, you know, youve recently a National Guardsman in massachusetts. Yes. I believe he got 21 years. 21 years in prison, yes, because of what he did, which granted was pretty egregious, but at the same time, shows that the Classification System is completely broken. How can with a straight face, and nothing will happen to donald trump when what he did was equally egregious in terms of the crimes of these other lowranking very lowranking soldiers and Defense Contractor . We see that all around us, and in the federal election case too where 950 people have been sentenced and convicted for crimes associated with january 6th when the instigator in chief remains free from trial right now. Its no different right here. Other people are doing time for the same things he has done, and in many cases, he has done worse. So lisa, im curious. I understand this is this is the reality. This is the process. This is the judge that we have in this case, but if trump is not held accountable for taking classified documents into his possession to his club and leaving him in open boxes, claiming theyre his, getting his workers to be involved in what is ostensibly a crime. Whats the precedent that that will set if somehow he skates from this . I think its a terrible precedent, mika, which is why people like me are so concerned about the rule of law, and its survival in the posttrump and during trump era. The notion that a former president can escape to their private residence with boxes upon boxes of hundreds of classified documents or document that is otherwise affect the National Defense, lie about it, and list maintenance workers and valets in that crime oh my god. Expect them to take the fall and walk away scotfree, and potentially get elected again. Thats unfathomable. And obstruct the attempts to have those recovered. Im struck by the clip you played. No ones been treated worse than trump. I would flip that around. No one has treated us worse than trump has treated us. Well see if that continues. Hell be in court in florida today trying to get this dismissed. Meanwhile just north of there in georgia, the judge in the Georgia Election interference case has dismissed some of the charges against former President Trump and his codefendants. Judge scott mcafee dropped six counts in the case, three of which applied directly to donald trump who still faces ten Felony Counts in that case alone. The six counts focused on Accusations Trump and his codefendants asked Public Officials to violate their oaths of office, but the judge found the language too generic and did not specify which oath were state or federal, trump had been accused of asking georgia federal officials to violate. In that ruling, judge mcafee quis, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes, but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission. Adding, they do not give the defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently, end quote. Trumps attorney in the case praised the ruling. The judge left the door open for prosecutors to reindict on these dropped charges. Judge mcafee also expected to issue a ruling by the end of the week tomorrow on why Fulton County d. A. Fani willis should be disqualified from the case. Lisa, lets talk about what this is, and what it is not because its a splashy headline. Counts dropped against donald trump in georgia. Yep. It seems what the judge is saying, is you didnt explain these well enough. What exactly what are you accusing them of . What oath of the constitution did they violate if you think they did, and giving them a chance to refile and indict again. Thats right. They can refile and reindict or appeal the ruling. I want to point something out to you that judge mcafee pointed out himself. He said, in the federal system the way this works itself out is you file for a motion of a bill of particulars and you ask for greater specificity and detail, and if the court says you get it, we move onto trial. Georgia doesnt allow for that, and hes basically saying, im constrained here. Right . I wish i had the same powers that a federal court does, but this isnt the case in georgia, so ill give you an extra six months from this order to reindict on these six counts should you choose to. That having been said, this is not the big deal and the huge victory lap that the Trump Campaign is making it out to be, and here is why. First of all, the rico count remains, and that could lead to 10 to 25 years in prison, and that rico count is alleged through a series of what are called overacts. These are the things people do in furtherance of a conspiracy, and rico is a conspiracy, and hes saying, look. You may not have alleged with sufficient specificity what aspects of the oath you were trying to get these georgia officials to violate, but you can consider each of these episodes as overacts in furtherance of the rico charge here meaning it comes into the trial still. We can still talk about the raffensperger call as proof of the rico call, and the call that trump made for example, now to deceased Georgia Speaker david rawlsdon. For all these things, all of these counts, theyre still a part of the case. Theyre not separate, independent charges with which these people can be convicted. Is it fair to say that these what the judge is saying to the d. A. To fani willis and her office is, these were i dont know if poorly assembled or poorly argued. Were giving you another chance to make your case because i dont even know what youre arguing. Theyre poorly pled is what theyre arguing. You did not put together a charging indictment something that gives these people enough to prepare for trial. Again, big picture, not a single defendant got off without remaining charges against them. Trump still has ten. Even mark meadows has the rico count even getting rid of the other against him, and this is all still evidence in the case, and can be used to prove the conspiracy. So mika, for now, the 91 Felony Charges against donald trump becomes 88 Felony Charges against donald trump, but could as lisa said, go back to being 91. Right. So thats where i want to ask lisa about are there any other how did this, for those who arent completely reading into this, how did this come about . Was there a motion to drop . Is there a possibility other charges randomly seemingly could be dropped throughout this process . Does this delay the trial in any way . And what is the timing of the trial as it appears now, and if and when it starts, does trump have to appear, and does the timing look like it will happen before the election . A lot of questions. You guys give a very good pop quiz. Ill try to address those all. Mika, this came about because trump and others of his codefendants moved to dismiss these specific counts. Its called a special demer, and thats the motion they filed. They have a number of other motions to dismiss asking them as a whole. This is the one judge mcafee dealt with this week. What to read into that, and how it will affect the trial still remain to be unseen, but you can consider this judicial housekeeping. You want to move a case along, and irspective of who will be in charge, whether thats fani willis or someone else, and you want to call the indictment if there is a time to narrow the charges. Now is it, before we move into a phase where youre going to expect other defendants to plead out or youll bring this closer to a trial date than we are now. I thought it was an interesting choice that judge mcafee did this before rule on the fani willis motion. On one hand, it might tell you he wants to do this before handing this back to her. He also might be saying, your turn. Find a prosecutor who is equipped to handle this indictment. On that point, judge mcafee gave himself tomorrow, a selfimposed deadline to decide whether or not fani willis will be disqualified from this case. He says hes ready, so we expect it tomorrow. We heard news from georgia yesterday. We thought this was coming. Instead it was the surprising move to dismiss these counts, at least temporarily. You laid out what the document may be foreshadowing. If you had to hazard a guess, what do you think will happen . Well, i want to take this document out of it because i dont think this really impacts his decision on that. Its a hard, hard call, john. I think judge mcafee is struggling with what the right legal test is. If theres enough impropriety to disqualify fani willis, hell say that appearance of impropriety is there. On the other hand, i dont think we saw the incontrovertible proof that she and nathan wade benefitted from his involvement in the case. She makes 200,000 a year, and the amount of money is as lavish as it seems to the normal american, is simply not enough to justify the sort of bizarre, concocted scheme that the defendants advanced, and on top of that, its still a he said he said, right . We dont have any clear indication of who is telling the truth and the Phone Records dont change any of that even if mcafee lets them in. So i think it could go either way. I think this is going to end up being a blemish on fani willis history no matter how it turns out. Stay tuned also to see if they face Disciplinary Proceedings from the state bar based on accusations that they werent telling the truth even if she holds onto the case. Coming up, donald trump continues to make outlandish claims about the economy. Hm. If only there was someone who could chart this out like the real numbers. Steve rattner is here to do just that just ahead on morning joe. Morning joe. Kayak. No way. 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Com welcome back. The attorney for hunter biden says the president s son will not testify next week in the public hearing for the House Oversight committee. Bidens lawyer abby lowell sent a letter to Committee Chair james comer declining the request, and calling the hearing a, quote, carnival sideshow. Lowell added his client would consider testifying before the committee if the panel also included relatives of former President Trump. Comer responded with a statement dismissing the letter and writing that he still expects hunter biden to appear along with three of hunters former business associates. Elise jordan, let me get this straight. So far theyve come up with a, nothing, b, nothing, c, nothing, and if you did look at Donald Trumps family members, you would be able to see that they have benefitted in many ways that seem inappropriate perhaps as inappropriate as some of the relationships that hunter had, that ultimately added up to no lawbreaking, but i dont know. 2 billion from saudi arabia, it just seems kind of it seems unseemly. I could be wrong. I mean, maybe its okay. Its completely unseemly. Are you kidding me . These people are crazy. I just wonder why doesnt hunter just come back and do it publicly . Just have it air in the court of Public Opinion because he was fighting for a public testimony i believe just a couple of months ago, and i think he would benefit from that frankly, just for more clown show to be shown to the public, and then, you know, hell come across as likable and as someone whos just, you know, paying his penance for his addiction and trying to move beyond. I really question the decision not to just show up and do it and submit to what will be definitely unpleasant and uncomfortable, but ultimately gets more of his side of the story out there to the public. A bit of a surprising decision since by all accounts, hunter biden got the best of the closeddoor hearing, the private hearing a few weeks ago. Republicans came out of it sort of embarrassed and baffled by the lack of questioning and the fact that james comer, the chair, didnt even take a single question, and hunter biden and his team felt really good about how it went, and their whole strategy for recent months has been aggressive and pushing back on republicans. He does have trial hearings in california on the gun and tax charges. That tried scheduled to start in june. That may be part of his thinking here, and certainly those close to him saying he doesnt want to be a distraction for his fathers reelection. Republicans saying they want him to show up anyway. House Speaker Mike Johnson says the Appropriations Bills to fund the government must be passed ahead of the National Security supplemental that would provide aid to ukraine. He made those comments yesterday at the gop conference. He also again claimed the delay was because the white house was slowwalking answers to his questions on ukraine. In the sequence of events, it was important for us to not put the supplemental in front of the Appropriations Bills because it would affect probably the vote tally ultimately on the appropriations and we had to get our government funded. I made a request to the president and his cabinet in the Situation Room literally within hours of my being handed the gavel. The morning of october 26th, i went there and talked to jake sullivan. I spoke within a couple of days to the Secretary Of State and secretary of defense, the president himself, and i said, theres a couple of things we need on ukraine. We need these answers to these key questions. Whats the end game . Whats the strategy . How do we have accountability over the funds . Are we sending the right Weapons Systems . All those things. As yall know the history of this, it took them not weeks, but months to provide some of those answers. We still dont have all of them. Theyve done more lately. That process has been its drug out not because of the house, but because, in my view, because of the white house being unwilling or unable to provide the necessary answers for us to process that sooner. So jonathan lemire, the claim here from the speaker now is that the footdragging from the House On Ukraine aid thats dn condemned widely across the west. Weve heard from european leaders, and from polish leaders and ukrainian leaders putting pressure on mike johnson, that its the white houses fault, that theyre the ones holding that up, something the white house obviously deny. We can fact check that. Thats not true. The white house has been urgently pushing for this aid to get to ukraine. He says this publicly, but privately he says, i support getting aid there, but he doesnt have the ability to follow through and get enough republicans on board. Theyre off course. The block on the farright that oppose aid ousted Kevin Mccarthy. Hes being very mindful of that, and he has yet to move forward. We have these Discharge Petitions and theres a democratic one and republican one circulating. Those are possibilities, but long shots as to whether that will be able to circumvent johnson and get this aid done. There have been Drone Strikes within russia itself, but on the battlefield, theyre running out of ammunition. Weve reported yesterday about the pentagon able to scrape together savings they found, and it will send a package, and it will help, but its a drop in the bucket compared to what the National Security package would be. Its this money. The pentagon, yes, they have that unique ability in American Government to, you know, dip in, but yes. I mean, ukraine is going to collapse without continued United States funding. Its not like germany and the europeans are going to step up enough, you know, if this really does not come through, but its really their last go too at a good, solid chunk of funding before potentially donald trump gets reelected. So the stakes are pretty high here, and i do not see how those reticent republicans in the house come along. It does not seem like theyre budging, and theyre only hardening in their position as it it is the position of donald trump right now, and no one is going to deviate from donald trump and the Republican Party. Thats the other piece of this. Its only a matter of eight months or so if donald trump is reelected. Putin gets exactly what he wants. Thats all the time he needs. Meanwhile in the house yesterday, a new bill that could ban tiktok unless its Chinese Parent Company divests itself in the app. Now it faces a tougher fight in the senate. Savannah sellers has more. Reporter the bill needed twothirds of the house to pass and it got that easily. The yeas are 352. The nays are 65. Now it goes to the senate where it will likely face a tougher road. If signed into law, it would give Chinese Parent Company bytedance six months to divest tiktok or face the possibility of a ban on the app. The legislation prompted by National Security concerns including fears the Chinese Government could access americans personal data and feed them content that would influence their views. Our intention is for tiktok to continue to operate, but not under the control of the Chinese Communist party. Reporter 50 democrats and 15 republicans voted no. Its an overly broad bill that i dont think would stand First Amendment scrutiny. Its opening pandoras box and im opposed to this bill. Aligning with former President Trump who once tried to ban tiktok, but now says hes against that. Tiktok fighting back hard, even flying creators to washington. Hello. This is my son. Reporter jason lenton shares his life as a dad with his 13 million followers. What would it mean for you and your family if tiktok were banned in the u. S. . It would be devastating. Being able to launch out a positive message would be stopped. I wish it was a bad dream, but its not. Reporter j. T. Layborn uses tiktok to promote his company. There will be people who will not be reelected because of the way they choose to vote on this ban. Reporter there are 170 million users in the u. S. 22 of the voters say they use the app once a day or more. Its not lost on some senators. Coming out of a large group of voters is not a strategy for reelection. One of the bills sponsors says thats not a good enough reason to ignore a looming National Security threat. I dont think courting the clicks of 17yearolds should take precedent over allowing our foremost foreign adversary to dominate what is becoming the primary news source for americans under the age of 30. Reporter tiktoks ceo was on the hill, but its unclear if he met with lawmakers. The Company Maintains it is not owned or controlled by the Chinese Government. This legislation will lead to a ban of tiktok in the United States. Savannah sellers there. What strikes you here is the vote. This was not some small group of extremists. This was a vote of 352 to 65 on a bipartisan basis, but there are holdouts. A lot of the Progressive Caucuses, this goes too far. They had questions about free speech and other things, and well see how it does in the senate, but whats your whats your view of this . Its really disappointing that so many elected officials are willing to take such a draconian stance against free speech. Its a broad bill. Define what exactly is the limiting mechanism here and how its not going to extend and creep into other liberties of americans. It also just, you know, any time the National Security state is so adamant that something must be done for the safety of americans, maybe we should probe into that and make them explain exactly what the limitations are going to be that are going to be set, and what the precedent that is going to be Going Forward so that more of our rights arent curtailed. This will be a closer call in the senate. You hear leader schumer having it both ways trying to figure out where his caucus really is on this question. The question would be this divestment, but i dont know how possible this is. Tiktok is lobbying against this, and asking people to petition senators, and the biden said hell sign this, but the Biden Campaign just jumped on tiktok. Politically its so stupid. It is, you know, they have thought of the National Security concerns. Weve heard donald trump of course, flipflop on this when he was president. His demonstration moved on the way to banning it, but he was hawkish on it, and now hes suggesting he would like to support it because of the chance to win votes and the donor of who could give him money as an investor. The wheels might have been turning during the trump administration, but donald trump had probably very little to do with that. Politically now he sees the wins. Hes very good at seeing where the wind of Public Opinion is going, and thats why hes suddenly become protiktok. Im sure theres some financial reason involved too, but hes very good at sensing the mood of the public. Hes also very good at being pushed around by rich guys on the patio of maralago who are investors in tiktok. Coming up, donald trump is expected to attend a hearing today in the criminal case involving his handing of classified documents including Nuclear Secrets taken to his beach club. 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Get a free line of unlimited intro for a year when you buy one unlimited line. Visit xfinitymobile. Com today to learn more. Although its not official until the conventions this summer, a biden trump rematch is on the horizon for november. Nbc news projects both men won enough delegates to lead their parties in the fight for the white house this fall, and as the race heats up, trump has been sticking to familiar attack lines about President Biden. Joining us now with a fact check is former treasury official and morning joe economic analyst, Steve Rattner. Hes got it all in charts. Well start, steve, with the issue of crime. Take a look. We are a nation where free speech is no longer allowed, and where crime is rampant and out of control like never, ever before. The carnage line. Hes always going with the carnage, steve. Is it true . Well, no. Crime is not out of control like its ever been before. In fact, crime is actually continuing to drop under President Biden. So lets take a look at Violent Crime. This is per 100,000 people in relationship to our size of our population and you can see Violent Crime since 2020 has dropped by 15 . 339 Violent Crimes per 100,000 people. Its below any place it was during the trump administration, and its had this huge drop in 2023. The same is basically true of property crime. You can see here, this is this is people robbing homes and things of that like, down 7 . 1,830 her 100,000 people. This is complete fiction that crime is up under the biden administration. Yeah, and at the same time, there are different areas of the country experiencing Different Things and a mixture of crime and homelessness is very personal to people in their neighborhoods, but again, you cant deny the data and the trends that were seeing. Theres also Donald Trumps false claims. When it comes to president Bidens Energy policy, listen to this. On day one of our new administration, we will end bidens nationwrecking war on american energy. Hes wrecking the energy area. Okay. Steve rattner, again, what are the facts . Wrecking the energy business. So we have had Record Energy production under the biden administration. This combines nuclear, fossil fuels, and renewables, and you can see here that we have never had Energy Production this high, and then the other thing that he says is that hes going to make us Energy Independent again. The fact is we are Energy Independent. We have been Energy Independent now for five years, and, in fact, our energy exports, mostly oil, but also some natural gas, hit a record last year. So, in fact, america has we produced more oil than any country in the world has ever produced in history. Yeah, and he talks a lot about the economy and how it was better under him, and also attempting to rewrite history on the deficit and debt. Listen to donald trump. We were going to pay off debt. We were going to we were going to reduce taxes further. We gave you the biggest tax cut since the Ronald Reagan administration. The numbers show something very different. Right, steve . He did give us a big tax cut. That part is true, but what it did is it increased the deficit. When he says we were on track to pay off the debt, look what happened to the deficit even before covid. Even before covid, because of his tax cut, the deficit was going up, up, up, and then of course, covid hit, and under biden, hes actually brought it down and under his new proposed budget, he would bring it down further, and because of that huge deficit, and he talks about also he was going to pay off the debt during his first term, he, in fact, added more debt than any other president in history. Some of it, yes, was covid. 3. 6 trillion, but there was also 5 trillion of debt that had nothing to do with covid, and trump signed a whole series of Spending Bills that increased our spending by over 2. 5 trillion. So the idea that he was a president that was going to attack the deficit and debt problem is actually completely false. And steve, when President Biden put out this week, his projected budget, there was a lot of pearlclutching from republicans about adding to the deficit when they were completely silent for the most part as donald trump added 8 trillion to the deficit. The chart directly behind you on the war on energy, the one you talked about a minute ago, donald trump has been posting drill, baby, drill, quite a bit lately. Is it fair to say that sounds more of an endorsement to what joe biden is doing right now . There this drill, baby, drill stuff i find astonishing because obviously you only get Record Energy production by drilling and we have been drilling. Obviously there are concerns about fossil fuels. We need to transition away from them, but for now we need them, and the idea that biden has been antienergy or curtailed our drilling is blinded by the fact that we have record amounts of oil and natural gas. Coming up, well go to the white house as President Biden continues his Campaign Swing through key battlegrounds today. Eugene daniels has the latest when morning joe comes right back. The latest when morning joe comes right back so this is pickleball . Its basically tennis for babies, but for adults. It should be called wiffle tennis. Pickle yeah, aw whoo these guys are intense. We got nothing to worry about. With e trade from morgan stanley, were ready for whatever gets served up. Dude, you gotta work on your trash talk. Id rather work on saving for retirement. Or college, since you like to get schooled. Thats a pretty good burn, right . Got him. Good game. Thanks for coming to our clinic, first ones free. 3, 4 thanks for coming to our clinic, hey are you ready for me are you ready are you ready what causes a curve down there . Can it be treated . Stop typing, and Start Talking. It could be a medical condition called peyronies disease, or pd. And it could be treated without surgery. Find a specialized urologist who can diagnose pd and build a treatment plan with you. Visit makeapdplan. Com today. Heres to Getting Better with age. Heres to beating these two every thursday. Help fuel today with boost high protein, complete nutrition you need. Without the stuff you dont. So, heres to now. Boost. Hey, dad. I got an a on my book report. Thats cool. And i went for a walk in the woods and i didnt get a single flea or tick on me. You are just the best. Right . Im great. You are great. Oh, brother. This flea and tick season, get 20 off your first pharmacy order at chewy. Major League Baseball opening day just two weeks away. Major, major Injury Concerns for yankees fans surrounding our ace. The team has shut down gerrit cole with no official timetable for his return after reporting discomfort in his elbow. He since has visited a specialist in los angeles, who recommended further testing. The yankees hoping to have him back in the rotation sometime by may or early june. Hes one of the best pitchers in baseball. This is not good news. They say a month or two months. We dont root for injuries, willie. We were talking just this week, because there are a couple free agent pitchers out there who want long deals. Cole seemed to be the exception to the rule. Hes been a workhorse. He signed a deal with the yankees. Hes worth every penny. This is a concern. The tone around it has changed a little bit. For a day or two they thought maybe it would be a month, which is still a big deal, but the yankees could survive that. Now you see lump of cole on the post. But this l. A. Surgeon is one of the best in the business that performs a lot of tommy john surgeries. Do the yankees try to sign one of those free agent pitchers to make up for cole . It would come with a major luxury tax, 60 million or more. Gerrit cole has been awesome for the yankees. Lets hope hes okay. I dont like it when people say, dont worry, the surgeon is really good. Thats not helping me right now. Pablo, good to see you. Lets look ahead to the yankees season. Juan soto protecting judge in that lineup, going 23 somewhere in there. The lineup looks good, but we were counting on having cole at the top of the rotation. Theres a binary sort of dynamic to how we should feel about this season. Last season was the worst season in 30 years of rooting for the yankees. They didnt make the playoffs. This season, its an allin sort of dynamic. The binary is you win this thing or its misery. Gerrit cole being out after i laughed about how the red sox are going to finish last in the a. L. East for the Third Straight year. I now deserve this, i suppose, cosmically. Juan soto and aaron judge makes me feel great. Why are we not spending more 300 million on contracts on these guys . Id like them to shore up the lineup. Gerrit cole, injury or not, the red sox are still going to finish fifth. Dont worry about that. That lineup is tough. Staying within the pages of the new york post, robert f. Kennedy says he will announce his Vice President ial pick on march 26th. A source tells nbc news the independent president ial candidate has offered the slot to an individual, and that individual has accepted the offer. Earlier this week, kennedy junior confirmed to the New York TimesNew York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former minnesota governor Jessie Ventura were on the short list. Aaron rodgers is an active member of the New York Jets. Will he be on the Campaign Trail during the week and playing football on sunday . As a jet fan, why is Rfk Cornering The Market on 9 11 con conspiracies . Aaron rodgers told cnn that whole thing is a conspiracy. That was the reporting. If im a jets fan, how do i feel . Even beyond the human horror of what that means, that conspiracy specifically, is that still a line we cant cross . Well find out, i guess. This is the guy who said we need to eliminate offfield distractions. Aaron rodgers is the same human being who had those words exit his mouth. Now to be the first athlete in history to mount a Vice President ial campaign is just one of those on the nose things that you would laugh at the you didnt worry about what it says about democracy. From border invasions to nuclear threats, Vladimir Putin has never stopped fighting the cold war. A new series on netflix tracks the decadeslong conflict. Well have a preview straight ahead on morning joe. Straigh ahead on morning joe. Rsv is out there. For those 60 years and older protect against rsv with arexvy. 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Com. 250 couples will need to make room for a nursery. man ah ha vo 26 people will go allin. woman yes vo this family will get two bathrooms. And finally, one vacationer will say. man yeah, woo, im going to live here. vo but as the euphoria subsides, the realization hits. man ive got to sell the house. all [screams] vo dont worry, just sell and buy in one move when you start with opendoor. woman oh wow. vo oh yes. Start with an allcash offer at opendoor. Com they did a poll, and half the people who used tiktok say they do believe it poses a threat to National Security, but they still use it. What the hell, right . Half the country supports a National Security threat for president. Might as well dance. I dont think we fully understand how crazy these kids are going to go if they kill tiktok. For teenagers, losing tiktok is a bigger deal than losing your virginity. Im not kidding. This is like taking away all their imaginary friends at once. You know what kids used to do for tiktok . Drugs. This is not an attempt to ban tiktok. Its an attempt to make tiktok better, tictactoe, a winner. Thats how you explain it to the young people. Nancy tictactoe, a winner. Welcome to the fourth hour of morning joe. 6 00 a. M. On the west coast, 9 00 a. M. In the east. President biden is set to Campaign Today in michigan, one of the Battleground States where he defeated donald trump in 2020. Trump, meanwhile, is set to attend a hearing today in his classified documents criminal trial in florida. Nbc news chief White House CorrespondentPeter Alexander has the latest. Reporter this morning with the general election off to the races, President Biden will campaign in michigan, while former President Trump returns to court in florida as part of his classified documents case. I took them legally. I wasnt hiding them. Reporter mr. Trump praising the georgia judge after he dismissed 60 counts. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes. Reporter the judge found those counts lacked sufficient detail, but that prosecutors could refile them. Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty. President biden is hitting his second midwest battleground in two days, first michigan, then wisconsin. The president emphasizing his bipartisan success investing in americas infrastructure. My predecessor talked about infrastructure week for four years. He didnt get a single thing done. Reporter one key challenge, stubborn inflation. In milwaukee, these Business Owners have felt pressure from rising costs, but support President Bidens views on social issues like reproductive rights. I said i do feel a lot of the issues that he touches on are not just meant for today, but for future generations that hes not even going to see. Reporter another Business Owners politics are on display at his auto body shop. I want our National Security back. I want our tax money to stay here. The former president is expected to be in court today in the classified documents case against him. Lets bring in joyce vance. Joyce, what are trumps lawyers arguing . So the arguments on the docket today are that somehow trumps possession and retention of classified information is forgiven, because he classified or reclassified the documents as his personal records under the president ial records act. Hes also making an argument that the laws are unconstitutionally vague. Thats a fascinating argument, particularly since trump was briefed on how he was required to handle these materials by lawyers in the White House Counsels Office while he was in office and before he left the presidency. So arguing that he didnt understand what conduct could have been criminal under this law is a nonstarter. Neither of these motions are due to be granted. Theres been a bunch of legal moves. I want to ask about the one in georgia, where some of the cases seem to have been thrown out, at least temporarily. The Trump Campaign is painting that as a win for donald trump. Presumably, if they did the paperwork again and filed better pleas, then we could be back up to 91 cases against donald trump, is that correct . This is such an important question, because what happened yesterday in Fulton County is sort of a hypertechnical inside baseball sort of thing. They said some of the charges werent specific enough. The judge agreed, which is why he dismissed those counts. He said theres just not enough information the way this indictment is drafted for the defendants to understand what theyre alleged to have violated, because supposedly these defendants solicited georgia officials to violate their oaths of office. So theres a little bit of concern when those oaths cover everything in the georgia and United States constitutions. The judge said if we were in federal court, the prosecution could just come back and explain what laws theyre talking about, but in georgia we have this different procedure. So he dismissed those. The prosecution is free to go back to the grand jury and get new charges. These same charges are covered in the rico count, which is still standing. On the georgia case, this announcement yesterday came as a bit of a surprise. Weve been anticipating the judge will make a decision soon about d. A. Fani willis and whether or not shell be disqualified. What could happen . Were coming up on spring break in Fulton County. Judges like to get their calendars cleaned up before they take off for spring break. Im married to a state court judge. Ive watched this happen over time. I think thats what were seeing here. This issue about fani willis disqualification is an interesting one. She only gets disqualified if she has a conflict of interest. The evidence presented does not establish that. The judge seems to be flirting with creating a little bit of new law and saying the standard should focus on whether or not theres the appearance of impropriety if she continues on the case. If hes willing to create new law, he may well remove her. Joyce vance, thank you. Well be going live to the courthouse a little bit later on in this house as the hearing begins in the classified Documents Trial. So the Republican National committee is closing all of its Community Centers it established for minority outreach nationwide and laying off their staff, two source tell the New York Times. The paper reports the centers, which were based in several states, including california, new york, North Carolina and texas, were part of a years long effort to encourage blacks, latino, asian and native American Voters to join the party. What were seeing here is exactly what Vaughn Hillyard was talking about a couple of days ago. Theres a growing concern in the trump camp that they just dont have the money to do the basics to run a campaign. Vaughn was even talking about those speeches that donald trump loves to give at those rallies. They run at about 400,000 each. Theyre going to have to make some tough decisions on how many rallies hes going to be able to do. These centers that were supposed to pull black and hispanic voters over to support trump and the rnc, now these are getting shuttered. It has to be part of a bigger economic cash crunch that were going to see donald trump facing throughout this entire campaign. We know the Trump Campaign has been talking big about their efforts to win over black voters. This cant help that. Donald trump has been dynamite at raising money in smalldollar donations. That has not been quite as good this time around. And what money he does raise is going to his legal fees. That deprives other republicans of that cash. We know the democrats are swimming in money. Theyre opening 40 offices in milwaukee alone. There is this sense the president s Reelection Campaign is setting records. One thing thats not close is the cash advantage that biden is going to have. Do you think that will be enough to bury donald trump . Well, it was in 2020. I mean not being on the air waves at the end of the campaign really hurt donald trump in a tight election with joe biden. Joe biden was able to outspend trump 21. He had millions more in ads on the airwaves. I do think trump can benefit from a Lean Organization in some sense. Its what he did in 2016. He does fine small and lean and not being seen as part and parcel to big donors. By the end of the campaign, post convention, hes going to need to be on the airwaves. As President Biden tours the midwest in an attempt to shore up support there, a union has a new ad out endoring him. In michigan, we have a lot of hunters in the woods. Many of these people support joe biden. People have an opportunity to work and put food on the table. Thats through President Bidens infrastructure dollars. Hes bringing manufacturing back to the midwest. Roads, bridges, everythings getting rebuilt. Everythings just booming. That is a strong ad. Lets bring in White House Correspondent for politico eugene daniels. If you watched that and just focused on the guys in there, most people would probably look at the men and think this isnt a biden ad. These arent typically the kind of voters people tie to joe biden. You see those guys in camo, going hunting, theyre talking about the chips act. Thats not what people normally think about as democrats. This campaign is going to be focusing on a really diverse coalition, bringing in a bunch of different people like they did in 2020. Its also part of a series of ads focusing on union members, their families and really targeted to those three important states, michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. These three guys in the video they focused on are going to be part of the group that meets with President Biden today in saginaw, michigan. This is another example of this Biden Campaign leaning into the president and regular people. There was a father and his kids about Student Loans a while back. The president was at their house. This is kind of the same thing, showing people that they want to show this president as someone who is fighting for regular people and that this election is going to come down to that. President biden today in michigan, his are going to be pushing that contrast. The Campaign Says theyll be hitting trump on his comments about being open to cutting medicare and social security, something that the president has openly negotiated in states of the union with House Republicans about. Now the leader of their party has been saying hes open to doing that. These ads and this kind of tenor is going to continue as we head into november. Eugene danieldaniels, thank very much. There are certain states that may be a bit more of a stretch this year, possibly even georgia. There are some concerns about georgia, maybe some concerns about arizona. Those are going to be a little tougher this year. You look at biden in those ads, a guy from scranton, youre talking about the upper midwest, thats where joe biden looks most natural and most at home. I agree. Arizona particularly is the one that seems to have trended more red in the last four years. Georgia is bound to be very close again. It could swing into the trump column this time around. The Biden Campaign focusing on those rust belt states. Wisconsin looks very strong for them. The Democratic Party has kept the offices open. Michigan, because of the gaza war, recently has had a lot more attention. This kind of ad could help in michigan. The rust belt is where, if he can hold them, he has the reelection. Coming up on morning joe, new reporting on the misleading story about sex trafficking that republican senator katie britt told in her state of the union response. It turns out that anecdote has been part of her ongoing repertoire. Plus in the wake of the house bill that would force tiktok to divest from its Chinese Parent Company, this morning theres a new potential buyer. Andrew ross sorkin will tell us who it is, next. Ross sorkin wi o it is, next. Heres to Getting Better with age. Heres to beating these two every thursday. Help fuel today with boost high protein, complete nutrition you need. Without the stuff you dont. So, heres to now. Boost. Hi, im michael, ive lost 62 pounds on golo and i have kept it off. So, heres to now. Most of the weight that i gained was strictly in my belly which is a sign of insulin resistance. But since golo, that weight has completely gone away, as you can tell. Thanks to golo and release, ive got my life and my health back. Get help reaching your goals with j. P. Morgan wealth plan, a digital money coach in the chase mobile® app. Use it to set and track your goals, big and small. And see how changes you make today. Could help put them within reach. From your first big move to retiring poolside and the other goals along the way. Wealth plan can help get you there. J. P. Morgan Wealth Management. Republican senator katie britt of alabama says she was reassured by mike johnson that her rebuttal to the state of the Union Address would be fine. She has had a week of backlash of criticism over her misleading story about a sex trafficking victim. She sat down with senator ted cruz on his podcast. The funny thing is, hes like, dont worry. People are going to tell you Horror Stories about all these things that happen, and peoples careers being blown up over it. Hes like it will be fine. The thing that was the coolest is youre played by Scarlett Johansson. I mean, how awesome is that . Katie, Scarlett Johansson is hot. Snl has come after me a bunch of times. They dont ever have tom cruise play me. How come you get a gorgeous movie star . Theyre so funny. Britt went onto add that her crime was putting too much passion and heart and soul into her speech. Senator britt has told her misleading anecdote about sex trafficking at least five separate times, in preferences and cable news interviews over the last year to criticize the biden administrations border policies. She knows exactly what shes doing. Politicians will do this. Very trumpy. I dont think to this degree, but politicians will do this. They will tell stories. They will exaggerate. She blurred a lot of things together. After shes caught red handed trying to make something that happened during the bush administration, trying to attach that to joe biden and to say how could this happen in america. Im a big believer in this case they screwed up. Forgive me, i wont do it again. But we do have a much bigger problem in the u. S. People would be fine with that. I dont think she can do that, though. I agree. Her defense was odd, wasnt it . She said, oh well, i was never trying to criticize the biden administration, but she was giving the response to President Bidens state of the Union Address in an Election Year in which joe biden is running against donald trump and immigration is a huge issue. Why would you be criticizing anything other than joe bidens policies at that particular moment . Now the news that is coming out that shes used that story several times, its hard to believe she didnt know that a that was a story from back in the bush administration. Congress has such low Approval Ratings at the moment in part because people dont feel theyre getting the truth from congress. How refreshing is it when a politician actually has the courage to say i messed up . I think that wins a huge amount with voters. You have to actually care to say that. A lot of these republicans, this is trumps bench. This is the next generation of trump republicans, who not only lie for a living, but they dont care who theyre hurting or the fact that theyre lying. We talked about meeting a couple of members. Again, good people, seemed like they were getting into politics, Public Service for the right reason. And then Elise Stefanik just randomly and weirdly decided to go from being this main street republican to just a total trump maga freak. If you knew her before that decision, you would understand what a loss that is not only to the Republican Party, but to the country, because she really could have made a big difference. Katie britt, when i spoke to her during the sec championship game, same impression. She seemed to be and people after they saw me talking to her, came up and said, hey, i know youre a conservative, joe, and shes one of us. Shes like pretrump republican. Shes like a reagan republican. Shes one of the good ones. I was like that is just absolutely awesome. So when i saw her speech, i was like, you know, i felt sorry for her actually. She was just thrown out there. I didnt judge her for that. Were all human. You just keep going. This story, she needs to own up to it. Shes not donald trump, and she can be so much more. Just say, hey, i screwed up, im sorry, lets move on. Is there any room for that in trumps party . Not in Donald Trumps party. You see how someone like katie britt, who i had heard from other people in politics, yes, she is a serious person. She was the chief of staff to a senator. Thats a very rigorous job. It takes a lot of knowledge about policy and politics. Part of the problem with her presentation is she actually is, quote, a normie, but trying to be trumpian. Its unauthentic. It just doesnt work. Now shes gone down this path and its hard to extract yourself once you go there. As a former speech writer, i cannot believe such a major address would not have had basic fact checking. Whoever works for her and hadnt figured out that anecdote was factually incorrect is very embarrassing. Its bad staff work, and it shows a lack of judgment. I dont think they care. Whoever was coaching her, senator, be yourself. Speaker johnson, its fine. Be yourself, senator. Thats all she had to do. When shes herself, when not trying to be overly dramatic, you know, it works extraordinarily well for her. So you have that, and then you have just the lie or the very strong suggestion that somehow this multiple raping happened in Joe Bidens America and her anguished cry that she couldnt believe this was happening in our country. She didnt say this was happening under george w. Bush. Instead, she left the impression that it was biden. It was in mexico. And it was in mexico misleading is an understatement, guys. Okay. That was lie. The woman lied flat out. Now shes doubling down. Just clean it up and move on. Its not that hard. First, on the delivery, she gave interviews right before the speech and she comes off as completely normal, and you can see the appeal. It was so overly coached and overly dramatic, it was truly dreadful. Youre right that she could have just simply owned the mistake. Maybe that would have helped. Instead, we have republicans souring on her performance, thinking it might take her off the Vice President short list. She was simply doing what is rule number one in maga world, never, ever, ever apologize, never admit youre wrong no matter what mistake youve made. The house yesterday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would lead to a ban of tiktok in the United States. Lawmakers in favor of the legislation say its goal is solely to divest the popular social media platform from its Chinese Parent Company. Opponents say its a form of censorship. Moments ago, former treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin revealed this. This story gets stranger by the moment. Tell us about it, andrew. A real turn of events. We saw yesterday the house deciding to effectively force what they would describe as the divestment of tiktok. Some say its a fullon ban, because realistically, the Chinese Government may not allow the sale of tiktok to a u. S. Buyer. And that it has to be done in six months may make it impossible to find a buyer and make it all work. This morning, in what turned out to be a breaking news moment, the former secretary of the treasury telling us he is prepared to put together a group and is, in fact, already in the process of trying to put a group together, trying to become a white knight, if you will, and believes strongly he can actually work with the Chinese Government and that they would accept him as a potential buyer. We will see what happens now, but this is invariably going to be even more politicized than it was just 24 hours ago. We still are waiting on the senate. That will be the next step in all this anyway. The houses bill is going to sit there. Its unclear whether the senate is going to take this up. Then its a question of is it really a National Security threat or not . Well see. And the answer to that is yes, according to me. Strange bedfellows are remarkable, because of course former President Trump has said that he didnt want to ban tiktok, even though he was the one with the treasury secretary who tried to ban it. Because a billionaire came into maralago and told him not to. Its pretty simple. When we spoke to former President Trump on monday, i asked him directly about whether the billionaire had asked him. He clearly said no. He said we had no conversation about this whatsoever. His view is if you get rid of tiktok, its going to make facebook more powerful. He says facebook is the enemy of the people. He came on your show, and he lied. This is the wall street journal editorial page talking about the problem with an american like the former secretary buying it. The communist Chinese Party placed export restrictions on its algorithms. Tiktoks u. S. Operations can be sold, but not the Key Technology that powers the app, the South China Morning Post reported. The chinese want to keep controlling the algorithms, because they want to be able to impact our election with disinformation. They want to be able to send disinformation when the israel Hamas Conflict comes up. They want to send disinformation to our children. They want to shape american popular culture. Why wouldnt democrats and everybody in the United States senate want to get the communist Chinese Party out of americas business . I dont know the answer to that. Well see what happens. I think part of whats happening here is there is such an inflow of phone calls to senators and representatives around the country saying please dont let tiktok die. I think that is putting a bit of a hamper on what may happen next. It doesnt have to die. All theyre saying is we can keep tiktok going, but communist Chinese Party, youre not going to control the algorithms. An American Company has to control the algorithms so you dont data mine what journalists are saying who write negative things about you. The practical issue is this, if the Chinese Government says were not going to sell you this at all or they can say well sell you a shell of whatever tiktok is and you have to build your own algorithms, its unclear whether that is doable or whether that mines in practice if it dies. You have six months. Youre going to get the data or all of the users, but youre not going to get the algorithm. You effectively have to build an algorithm while the plane is in the air, if you will. There are technological folks who seem to think that is a tall order and the app would have to go through some kind of period where it wouldnt work or not have all the functionality and people then migrant to other apps. You get back to the issue that maybe folks just decide theyre going to use instagram or youtube shorts. This is not hard. Andrew ross sorkin, thank you very much. Still ahead on morning joe, a new documentary examines the relationship between the u. S. And russia, analyzing key events from the cold war through russias invasion of ukraine two years ago. The director of the series joins us next on morning joe. E seris us next on morning joe. My moderate to Severe Plaque Psoriasis held me back. Now with skyrizi, im all in with clearer skin. Things are getting clearer. i feel free. To bear my skin, yeah thats all me. Nothing is everything with skyrizi, 3 out of 4 people achieved 90 clearer skin at 4 months. And most people were clearer even at 5 years. Skyrizi is just 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. Serious allergic reactions. And an increased risk of infections. Or a lower ability to fight them may occur. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms,. Had a vaccine, or plan to. Nothing and me go handinhand, nothing on my skin, thats my new plan. Nothing is everything nows the time,. Ask your doctor about skyrizi,. The number one. Dermatologistprescribed biologic in psoriasis. Learn how abbvie could help you save. The will states that mr. Marbles will receive everything he needs in perpetuity thanks to autoship from chewy. I always loved that old man. And he gets the summer house. What . Save 35 off your first autoship order. At chewy. In the summer of 1980, the National Security advisor brzezinski, who worked for president carter, got the call at home in the middle of the night. It was brzezinskis military assistant colonel odom. He said we got an alert there are 200 soviet missiles headed towards the United States. Brzezinski says, well, get better confirmation. Odom calls him back and says, i was mistaken. Its not 200. Its like 2,000. In later years, brzezinski said he chose not to wake up his wife. Washington would be gone in a matter of minutes. He thought she was better off dying in her sleep. He gets ready to wake up the president of the United States and say, you have a choice to make. And just before he does that, he gets another call from his military advisor saying its a false alarm. Wow. It was remarkable hearing your father talk about that story. You can hear a pin drop. He was talking about being downstairs. He said his wife and his children were upstairs and he just sat there knowing that the end was going to come in the next ten, 15 minutes. He was just sitting downstairs in the dark letting it happen. I said, well, what will you advise the president . He said, well, if they were going to get us, then theres no way we were going to allow those s. O. B. S to get away with it. Were going to do the same to them. When i would tell that story, i used to get sort of tortured inside. I was 14. So that would have meant my brothers were 16 and 17 maybe. We were so terrible. We had no idea what kind of stress he was under. I just wish i could have been a little nicer. I was a horror show. Can you imagine that . Everybody has a bad day. You dont want to tell your kids about the bad day. That happened in the middle of the night. That was a bad night. Hey, dad, how did you sleep last night . No. We probably were fighting, my brothers and i, the next morning while he was trying to process what happened the night before. That was a clip from the new Netflix Docuseries entitled turning point, the bomb and the cold war. The ninepart series gives an inside account of the tense and sometimes precarious u. S. And soviet relations from the Manhattan Project and the advent of the nuclear bomb to the rising tensions between america and russia since the end of the cold war and through Vladimir Putins invasion of ukraine. Just yesterday putin said in an interview that russia was ready for nuclear war with the west if the conflict escalated to that point. The emmynominated director and executive producer of the series brian nappenberger joins us now. Its incredible. I feel like Everybody Needs to watch this to understand whats happening today. Brian, whats so fascinating is its not just what we grew up in, not just what we experienced going through the cold war, but as you point out, its important because it helps us better understand what were going through right now. Yeah. That definitely hit home with us when we started this. We were two or three months into creating this series when putin invaded ukraine. We were just glued to the television. That was a very dramatic moment. Tanks were rolling into kyiv, and there was an assassination attempt on zelenskyys life. Putin famously said that the breakup of the soviet union was the worst geopolitical tragedy in history. Putins version was riddled with errors. It became immediately apparent we were telling a modern story of what was happening in ukraine and using that to go back and tell this broader history of the cold war and harrowing moments like we just saw. Talk about having a bad night, joe is right. Can you unpack that a little bit more for us. Youre saying everything youre seeing in ukraine is kind of an echo of the cold war period. Spell that out a little bit more for us. Putin is famously a child of the cold war. He was a kgb agent in dresden before the berlin wall fell. Theres a famous line he says in the book that was written about him with an extended interview where he talks about calling moscow. This was when protests were gathering, the fall of the berlin wall was imminent. People were taking to the streets. He remembers calling moscow and trying to look for direction. He wants to use force against these protesters. The famous line is, moscow was silent. He sort of vowed not to be silent again. If you look at him and his history particularly through the 90s and the conditions that set the stage for his coming on the world stage, its very consistent. He often talks about old soviet borders, even borders of the russian empire in a kind of nostalgic way. Certainly ukraine has been mixed up with that right from the very beginning as soon as he becomes leader. He uses a lot of cold war tactics. We see a lot of misinformation, disinformation, Nuclear Saber rattling. We are still very much feeling the tensions of the cold war. We have new reporting in the last week or so that u. S. Officials were concerned putin would use a tactical nuke on the battlefield in ukraine about a year ago. There was also the cuban missile crisis. How close do we come . The clip that you just saw is just unbelievable. That could have been the end of the world. I mean, you really have to stop and think that could have been it. Once those missiles are launched, that decision had been made, you dont get to call them back really. I guess even more frightening than that scene is, its not isolated. Theres lots of scenes like that. By 1983, there are so many misunderstandings, mistakes, human error. Of course, the rhetoric is so amplified at that point. Reagan called the soviet union the evil empire. By 1983 there were Armed Nuclear weapons. You have the shooting down of the korean airliner. A lot of people in hindsight look at 1983 as maybe the most dangerous year in all of Human History. We go through the cuban missile crisis too. Some of that played out in public. We didnt know about this stuff until much later. Its pretty disturbing. What was it like interviewing survivors, japanese survivors of the bombing of hiroshima . For me, that was the most emotional part. Ive done a lot of documentaries. I think some of the most emotional interviews ive ever done. I didnt realize how many people still had memories of that day. We talked to one person whose brother had seen the actual bomb come out. The skies were clear. There were no other airplanes in the sky. He saw the bomber come down. Going through those days and what happened, its incredibly moving. Weve forgotten how dangerous independence are. With the collapse of the soviet union, it sort of receded in our mind. Nuclear weapons are still with us. Its something we have to take very seriously. Trump did the treaty lapse. Were at a point now where in the next two years or so for the first time in 50 years we wont have any treaties that govern the deployment of nuclear weapons. Highly recommend that you see all nine episodes of turning point, the bomb and the cold war, streaming right now on netflix. Thank you so much for producer, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. And for this work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. All right. Take care. Coming up, a key hearing on Donald Trumps classified documents case is set to begin just moments from now. Well go live to the courthouse in fort pierce, florida, next, in two minutes. In two minutes my name is oluseyi and some of my favorite moments throughout my life are watching sports with my dad. Now, i work at comcast as part of the team that created our ai highlights technology, which uses ai to detect the major plays in a sports game. Giving millions of fans, like my dad and me, new ways of catching up on their favorite sport. Were Just Moments Away from a key hearing in the documents case against former President Trump. Joining us now, nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian who is outside the courthouse in fort pierce, florida. Ken, what can we expect today . Reporter good morning. We can expect donald trump in the courtroom as he was for the last procedural hearing in this case, and his lawyers are going to argue two of his many motions to dismiss these charges or most of them, on what are really some extraordinary grounds. One hes saying that the president ial records act meant that President Trump could take any document he wanted out of the white house and deem that personal, and no one can question it. Thats his essential argument under the president ial records act. Of course jack smiths office says thats ridiculous, that suggests that the president is above the law, and that the president ial act is a civil law that has nothing to do with the criminal laws under which President Trump has been prosecuted. Theyre saying once he wasnt president anymore, he had no right to collect and keep classified documents let alone hide them from investigators and obstruct justice. The second point his attorneys are making is the Espionage Act under which most of the charges were brought is unconstitutionally vague. Its a 1917 law. It is vague. But this argument has been tried many times in the past and failed, and in fact, most of the classified documents prosecutions that have been brought in recent years under theiespoonage act, most recently Jack Teixiera who pled guilty. Most experts think this was a long shot. But the judge is expected to hear arguments all day on these matters and she has entertained some rather esoteric arguments from the trump side before. Well have to see exactly what she does. Nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian, thank you so much. Good luck there. Lets bring in criminal defense attorney and former watergate prosecutor john sell. Thank you so much for being with us. What do you expect to hear from these hearings today, and does donald trump have a chance to have this case dismissed . Oh, i think he has zero chance of having the case dismissed. The president ial records act was passed after watergate which i had a small part in prosecuting. It basically said the records belong to the American People, they do not belong to the president once he leaves office, and its absurd to think that he could take Nuclear Secrets and bring them back to maralago and stall them in the store them in the basement and the ballroom. And the second argument about the statute being vague, there are a member of people who are serving, have served prison terms, trump has argued that this law applies to traitors and people like that. Thats could, but its been used countless times against people who take records and retain them, and thats what hes charged with unlawfully retaining record that arent dont even have to be classified. Both of his arguments are going to fail. I think judge cannon is going to do the right thing. All right. John, you believe its not going to be dismissed, but do you think theres a chance that whether its todays proceeding plays a role or not, further delays could occur in this trial which would push it beyond election day . Delays occur in every trial. And in fairness, every criminal defense lawyer including me, whenever we make motions, delays come with it. So the answer is yes. I think that this case will not be tried before the election. And i think that the trump team saying theyre ready in august, what theyre just trying to do is to be able to say to judge chutkan we cant go to trial, we have a case against judge cannon and play off one another. Former watergate prosecutor john sale, thank you so much for being on the show this morning. Well be watching this and covering it live all day. Its going to be fascinating to see how she rules today. Yeah. Considering, again what ken pointed out. Kent put in a nice way. Yeah. Shes had some esoteric rulings in the past. 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Breaking news right now on ana cabrera reports, donald trump returns to a courthouse in florida. The focus of todays hearing, two motions to dismiss the criminal case involving classified documents found at maralago. Well explain the arguments. Also ahead, is time