from his own lawyers, and furthermore, there s evidence of him saying things that are completely incompatible that this was an idea. do you believe he lied to the justice department do i personally believe it? yes, i do. that s former attorney general bill barr, continuing his criticism of done in another sunday show interview. we ll have more of barr s damning comments about the president in just a moment. meanwhile, 2024 republican presidential candidate chris christie is mocking the rnc for its loyalty pledge we ll explain. and we ll have the very latest from beijing as u.s. secretary of state antony blinken meets with chinese president xi jinping amid heightened tensions between the world s two largest economies. good morning and welcome to way too early on this monday, june 19th, juneteen. i m job nathan lemire. thank you for starting your day and week with us. former attorney general bill barr is offering a scathing new case against former president donald
g getting up way too early on this monday morning. morning joe starts right now. donald trump s position on the national debt is identical to joe biden s. there have been promises made about draining the swamp, building the wall, doing all these things you know, none of that came to fruition. he is a child when someone disagrees with him. he engages in reckless conduct. i don t need to read the indictment or believe its allegations are true, though i m pretty confident they are. clearly, it was unauthorized, illegal and dangerous. i view them serious and disqualifying for a commander in chief. anybody who doesn t want to look at the facts should be disqualified from running, not just trump. so many of those people saying that worked for him yeah. you had his attorney general. you had his national security adviser. you had his secretary of defense. you had his top ranking officials. all republicans. all supporters of donald trump all people that stood
elites these are people who are the insiders these are people from the deep state. they re not the true believers. the true believers will stick with donald trump and, of course, the true believers would staff a trump 2.0 administration, wouldn t they? yeah, and i think that s a dangerous thought for us all charlie, let s get you in on this idea of a pardon. this has been a strange republican litmus test, the idea of how the candidates in the field, you know, when asked if they would pardon if trump were to be convicted on federal charges. some suggested even president biden should do it preemptively, in a moment of national unity. pretty sure that s not going to happen. pretty sure. what do we think abilout the republicans and how they re responding to it it is interesting, the degree to which the republican party internalized the idea, that they re launching against the fbi. that s an issue. the issue of pardon will haunt them the next year it is strange they d be talking ab
has not yet been convicted of course, in order to be pardoned, you have to be a convicted felon, convicted of federal charges, and then have to at least implicitly acknowledge your guilt so, number one, we re getting ahead of ourselves number two, it is unlikely that donald trump will ever acknowledge his guilt. but i can t imagine that republicans, when they laid out what they want to run on in 2024, want to run on, you know, a platform of obstruction of justice and pardoning a convicted felon former president. charlie, lastly and briefly, you know, we talked last week of how president biden is staying silent on this and telling democrats to be quiet. as that is going on, he has slowly ramped up his re-election campaign it was off to a slow start, but the fundraising blitz has begun. he appeared at a union rally over the weekend aides are saying he is focusing on getting the job done. what do you think? the above the fray approach, is that the right one for joe biden right now? we
two years after president abraham lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation. juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021 after congress passed a bill to embrace the occasion we ll have much more on juneteenth a little further ahead on morning joe. right now, let s turn back to politics. we have the founder of the conservative website the bulwark, charlie sykes with us. charlie, thanks for being here. morning. we ve been talking a bunch this show about republicans sharpening their attacks on donald trump when it comes to his federal indictment chris christie, no surprise. bill barr, no surprise although, perhaps a little bit surprising, just how vorciferous he has been. i was compiling a list this morning of all the trump insiders who have broken with the president. i mean, we use the word unprecedented a lot. obviously, nobody has ever been, you know, impeached twice.