a lot of people are afraid of him. i ve been doing it for 22 years. i m not the least bit afraid of him. chris christie sure seems to be dropping more hits about a possible presidential campaign as he continues to criticize donald trump we ll have more of those comments straight ahead. and weeks after the first lady said he s running again, president joe biden finally appears ready to make it official, we think plus, the fight for endorsements in florida is not going well for ron desantis, his cool touch to republicans hadn t paid any dividends yet we re going have to have new reporting on trump s personal efforts to connect with lawmakers. good morning and welcome to way too early on this friday, april 21st i m jonathan lemire. thanks for starting your day with us. we begin with this news. president joe biden is preparing to formally announce he is running for re-election next week the president s team is plning to launch his 2024 campaign soon potentially as early a
especially those in certain districts, who fear democrats can be looking like they re not willing to work with the other side, who want to see democratic leaders, including the president, to say they have been able to have some conversations based on what has been presented, even if what is presented isn t viewed as a plan by those on the left. we should note just the fundamentally different approaches here. the white house is saying, look, debt ceiling and the budget are separate issues. let s get the debt ceiling done, then we can have negotiations about the budget mccarthy is trying to link them. what is the latest there is there any discussion or negotiation scheduled between the two sides? not as of now i mean, republicans are still trying to figure out where they stand on this. i mean, mccarthy can only afford to lose about four votes with what he has proposed he has to make sure he has the support to move forward with what he has presented. axios has some new reporting,
to the bill there is one lone senator who appears to be accepting at least parts of it guess who it is? i think what i saw in the response by kevin mccarthy was 1% that s very reasonable to me right now especially with the spiraling debt we have i ve always said i ll vote if i have that, but i think it s the perfect opportune time to do the right thing and that s basically sit down and look at our long-term financial situation. and what kevin mccarthy put on the table was a tremendous opportunity for us to have a good negotiation even with senator manchin s positive comments about the bill, some swing district republicans have already said that they won t vote for the legislation. it may, in fact, struggle in the house where mckrgty can only afford to lose four republican votes to pass a bill without any republican support from across the aisle. joining us now washington bureau chief. good to see you again.
house speaker kevin mccarthy is getting a better idea of where members in his party stand on his debt ceiling package there is some skepticism among number of lawmakers who feel as if the budget goes too far on some things they may not be able to defend before their voters heading into re-election so we were just talking with congresswoman, democratic congresswoman from vermont about this very issue, the debt ceiling. she expressed on the budget committee. she expressed great confidence in how president biden is handling this issue. other democrats, you re reporting, are starting to get anxious about how the white house is handling the debt ceiling crisis fill us in yeah, well, biden is saying that he wants a commitment from republicans that they will raise the debt ceiling, just as they ve done multiple times. under both republican and democratic presidents. there are a number of lawmakers,
condolence letters, one was from trump signed donald and the other was from desantis wife and not the governor himself desantis has not yet jumped into the 2024 race but is expected to do so in the coming months joining us now the co-founder of punch bowl news, ana palmer. she is an msnbc contributor. thanks for being with us let s start with the gop side. right now experts thought it would be a two-person race but trump is far ahead and his lead over desantis only widening. as you talk to republicans there on capitol hill and throughout the country, how are they viewing this race? are they surprised the former president has the lead he has? it s a great question i think there s a couple of things here at play in the dynamics, the first the personal trump touch he does so well and