political violence. with philadelphia s independence hall as a backdrop and flanked by two marines he frames the critical midterm elections as a choice between democracy and extremism. this morning the white house is pushing back on criticism that the president s speech was political. officials saying it was, quote, entirely about democracy. let s go straight to the white house, cnn s jeremy diamond is there. how do they feel about how it went, jeremy? reporter: john, biden s message last night was unmistakable democracy is under assault and president trump and his allies are the ones assaulting it. last night s rare prime time address wasn t just a warning about donald trump and trumpism, it was also a very clear call to action, call to action for voters to act and make their voices heard in the midterm elections. equality and democracy are under assault. we do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise. reporter: president biden issuing an urgent call to americans an
so walk us through. hey, fred. this is a big day yesterday. when we got this document. we learned a lot, frankly. and you almost never get this level of transparency. these are documents that the doj wanted to keep secret. thankfully it was released yesterday with some redactions. remember the timeline here. this was the warrant application that they submitted to get permission to search mar-a-lago. that came months after the national archives had already gone to mar-a-lago to retrieve 15 boxes of information that former president trump voluntarily turned over. voluntarily. once they looked in those boxes, they were alarmed with what they found and here is why. look at these numbers, fred. 67 confidential documents. 92 that were marked secret and 25 marked top secret going in ford from the least serious to the most serious. not only that, fred, this affidavit that we finally got to look at yesterday, it gave us new details about the classification markings on some of th
it said it found 184 classified documents in boxes retrieved from mar-a-lago in january including 25 marked top secret. some of the markings indicated the material was about human sources or spies that often work with the cia. underscoring fears the documents may contain america s most sensitive secrets. marshall cohen joins me now. it seems we re learning more and more by the hour, what are we learning about the damage assessment? it came in in the last hour it s a letter from our top intelligence official that she sent to lawmakers yesterday, answering their question, which is are you going to figure out if national security was put at work risk here and the answer was yes. she said, quote, the department of justice and the office of the director of national intelligence are working together to facilityate a classification of review of relevant materials. then she goes on to say, odni will lead an intelligence community assessment of the potential risk to national securit
he says are threatening the very foundations of our republic. plus, trump s lawyers and the justice department face off in federal court. we ll explain the big developments to come out of the special master hearing. and, a hot holiday weekend arrives with little to no running water for nearly 200,000 people in mississippi. the state has troops on the ground to help in the water crisis. good morning. and welcome to way too early. i m jonathan lemire. on this friday, september 2nd. thank you for starting your day with us. we ll begin in philadelphia, where president joe biden issued a dire warning about threats to american democracy last night, in a rare prime time address. standing outside historic independence hall, where the united states constitution was written and signed, the president spoke directly about the dangers posed by the trump-backed wing of the republican party. here s some of what he had to say. quality and democracy are under assault. we do ourselves
america. the president saying today s gop is, quote, dominated, driven, and intimidated by maga republicans. we ll have complete political and historical analysis of his address to the nation. plus, the latest developments in the investigation of former president trump s mishandling of classified documents, as another conservative legal voice predicts trump will be indicted. good morning and welcome to morning joe. it is friday, september 2nd. with us, we have u.s. special correspondent for bbc news, katty kay with us. the host of way to early, white house bureau chief at politico and the author of the big lie, jonathan lemire. pulitzer prize-winning columnist at the washington post, eugene robinson. and nbc news presidential historian, michael beschloss joins us this morning. glad to have you all. so much to talk about. jonathan lemire, i must start with you. it is like secretariat at the kentucky derby in 1973. starts out slow and then, boom, takes off. i kn