we ll go over what exactly happened and what it could mean for putin s leadership as well as the war in ukraine. plus, republicans continue to veer toward an electoral cliff, backing former president trump despite his mounting legal challenges, even as many voters are deeply disturbed by his multiple indictments. perhaps that s why president biden is leading trump in a 2024 matchup. and a year after the supreme court stripped away abortion rights, the high court s approval rating is in the basement at just 31%. we re breaking down the new poll numbers just ahead. good morning and welcome to morning joe. it is monday, june 26th. joe is off this morning. we begin with this weekend s developing news out of russia, where the head of the mercenary group, wagner, launched the most direct challenge to vladimir putin s grip on power in his 19 years as president. it started on friday when yevgeny prigozhin, the leader of a private army, posted a video to social media. in it, h
war plans against iran, with people who were at his golf club in new jersey two years ago. we re going to have expert legal analysis on this seemingly damning piece of evidence in just a moment. it comes as the justice department will meet this week with someone who stood up against trump s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. trump s lawyers are also busy in new york trying to get the ex-president s hush money case moved to federal court. we ll have the latest on that. we ll also get a live report from moscow for an update on that revolt against russian president vladimir putin. good morning and welcome to morning joe. it is tuesday, june 27th. joe is on assignment, but willie is back. with us, we have the host of way too early, white house bureau chief at politico, jonathan lemire. former press secretary and now msnbc host, jen psaki. founder of the conservative website the bulwark, charlie sykes. a lot going on in politics, willie, but this audio tape, of course,
today on inside politics, cnn obtains audio that pits donald trump against himself. trump wants you to believe he was playing pretend, but listen here and you decide if it sounds like trump was telling the truth about showing off a classified document. this was done by the military and given to me. plus john roberts doesn t break. the chief justice with a theory to let states rewrite how they count your votes. and the house speaker opens pandora s box. kevin mccarthy suggests that maybe donald trump is not the republicans best bet to beat joe biden. let s go behind the headlines and inside politics. up first, which donald trump do you belief within the former president s legal team has to contend with a new problem. prosecutors can play this to a jury. isn t it amazing to have a big pile here? look. this was him. they pregnant prented me this. this is off the record. this was him. this was the defense department. this was him. this wasn t done by me. this was h
july 4th holiday weekend, already this evening, those major airports slowing to a crawl. dangerous storms in the northeast causing a ripple effect tonight, stranding passengers across the u.s. a new round of storms now coming. flood watches also in the east at this hour. washington, d.c. up through philadelphia, new york to boston. and tonight, as we come on the air, the new warnings, the smoke from those canadian wildfires now set to return. already in chicago and the surrounding region. and tonight, new york s governor now warning it s coming back to parts of the northeast. also tonight, that audio recording of former president trump. abc news obtaining the recording, what trump can be heard saying about what he calls highly confidential secret information containing those potential plans to attack iran. trump saying, quote, this is secret information, look at this. a staff member later telling him, we have a problem. tonight, the new response from trump. pierre thomas in
special counsel jack smith is looking for in the classified documents probe. as with the $5 million defamation and sexual abuse judgment against donald trump, his own words are once again being used against him in a court of law. this time we re of course talking about that stunning february 2021 audio recording. donald trump bragging about a secret document with plans to attack iran at bedminster. to a writer working on a book, the discovery of that recording according to report from the wall street journal we discussed on this program last week, we know was a watershed moment that helped spur doj into pursuing a criminal case against the ex-president. days after his indictment on 37 felony counts, the ex-president claimed this. there was no document. that was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about iran and other things, and it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. i didn t have a document per se. there was nothing to declas