tax cuts and deregulation. but his escalating trade war puts that at risk. he aspires to be ronald reagan, but his tariff folly echoes of herbert hoover. so much for the wall street journal s support, joe. well it s ben sasse talking about make america 1929 again, a great statement. and jon heilemann before we go to break, talk about the politics of this. who does he who does he think he s helping? does he think this is going to help him win in pennsylvania and wisconsin again? i think he must. look, the one thing that s true about this is, those of us who are free traders, have thought that the president s stance on these matters have been wrong-headed from the very beginning,or but he has been consistent. one thing donald trump said from the very beginning when he got in the race in 2015 is i m a protectionist. i m going to slap tariffs on
that as well. but you know, jon heilemann, i love how people when they talk to you about the power of pardons and the power to indict a president, they speak in absolute terms just like i heard three, four, five months ago that it is impossible to indict a sitting president. the fact is, it s not impossible to indict a sitting president. regardless of what the justice department s own guidelines are. you may break past those guidelines and this president may find himself indicted. the same thing with the power of the pardon. if the president of the united states starts moving towards pardoning people that are impacted in his own investigation take that up to the supreme court. i bet you ll find at least four justices, maybe five, who say that when a pardon actually undermines the reason why the founders put that power in place
and governor, i have great respect for you, i have great respect for your tenacity, for the fact that you just don t give up. but rod, you re fired. thank you very much. welcome to morning joe. it s friday, june 1st, i m kasie hunt, we are having some trouble with joe s camera at the moment. so hopefully he ll be with us shortly. willie is on assignment for the today show, mika will be back on monday. with us we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc, jon heilemann. the kids are running the asylum. msnbc contributor mike barnicle. do we have the flames for mike yet? are those ready? i have them myself, but you don t. all right. donnie deutsche is here and former aide to the george w. bush white house and state department, elise jordan and columnist and associate editor
everybody is not more concerned about this. yes, we were all offended, most of us were offended. certainly my friends were offended, but at the same time that infants were being ripped from the arms of their mothers, that ivanka trump was clueless enough to have a picture of her holding her baby and the first thing that would have to come to your mind is donald trump promoting a policy that rips babies out of the hands of their mothers. we all get that. but to get from that to what she said on tv, and the tbs airing it? and then tbs putting it on their website? and tbs not getting how deeply offensive that would be? is just beyond me. your thoughts? jon? yes, i, look i agree with all that. and it s, it mostly it goes to, i think it speaks to stupidity. you could have a reasonable debate in the scale of
for the washington post david ignatius. jon heilemann, where do you want to start here with these pardons? where do i want to start? kasie, kind of extraordinary. we alluded to this here in some of the footage at the top of the show. interesting, some of the connections between some of the people who the president has pardoned and who he is thinking about pardoning. they are connected in various ways through various people who have held the job who yently hold the job now as special prosecutor, people who have had connections in the past. pat fitzgerald, jim comey. the president seems, there s no direct evidence to say that this is true or at least in reporting we ve seen so far, but the president seems through his pattern of pardoning and the pardons he s thinking about or thinking about giving, he s trying to send a message to people about what he, about his willingness to do pardons, but also about what he thinks of some of the people who have involved in prosecuting these cas