makes no sense to me. yeah, it really really, that s well put. doesn t make a lot of sense. i think what most republicans want, they want a strong leader who can win. that doesn t mean that he needs to imitate donald trump every step of the way, but that s the lesson he s taken. sarah longwell and michael tomaski, thank you, both, for being on this morning. ahead on morning joe, a look at where the debt ceiling negotiations stand with time running out to avoid a default. plus, a six-week abortion bill is headed to the south carolina senate today. we ll talk to a reason republican senator working to block the band. and david remnick is detailing the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters and performers of the past 50 years.
report at all about president trump. i hadn t heard that before. and i mainly listen to conservative news. and i hadn t heard anything negative about that report. president trump had been exonerated. let s get into it with michael tomaski who writes mueller reiterates he wants the evidence to speak for itself but the evidence wasn t allowed to speak for itself, as he knows, barr spoke for it. and jonathan who s been writing about the reaction among conservatives to mueller s approach. what do you think, michael, of what you just saw there and how this relates to what people are really learning? that was staggering. not surprising, but staggering and depressing to see. there are millions of people out there like her. well, ari, as you know, you quoted from my piece, thank you for doing that. but what i tried to say in that article was that bob mueller has
francisco, not boyy a long shot. take a look at another local paper. same deal, not on the front page at all. new york times front page but still on the right, not the far left where you d want a big story of yours to land. what do you make, both of you, in order, starting with michael, of the very divergent responses out there and the worst response that you can have which is it not make the front page at all? yeah, that s the most important part and those little squibs on the bottom of the san francisco chronicle and others. there s great anticipation among liberals inside the beltway and who are very tuned in whose heads are inside the beltway, wherever they may live. there s great anticipation that this is going to move the needle in a big way, mueller speaking, and that it s going to change public opinion and it s going to change numbers on impeachment. i m not so sure. i m not so sure.
think in the method he took to get there, which is read the report. final thought, michael? my final thought is that if the democrats want to pursue impeachment hearings, pursue an inquiry, they need to do more of the work to massage public opinion. they re not going to get any more out of robert mueller. they re not going to get more out of him. he may go testify, but he s made it pretty clear what would the point be. so the ball is completely in the democrats court right now. and the larger point here that is where the constitution meets the public discussion is, this isn t the first communications revolution we ve lived through and probably won t be the last. as soon as you get to what s the congress going to do, you re talking about a jury that has constituents. and so at a certain point mr. barr and i think the trump white house were very prepared to try to work the constituents about
reprehensible and you ll think he ll take one last chance to try to give red meat to the base. there is another hypothesis. there s no doubt, no doubt the fbi informed the white house. but they could have informed the chief of staff and, you know, it s possible that he could have decided to keep trump in the dark for a little bit until the guy was certain to be apprehended, knowing the recklessness and the erraticness of the commander in chief. so one possibility is he actually didn t know. although, i think by 10:00 a.m. he has to. and then that he s still in his mode of partisan, blaming the victim, et cetera, is really deplorable. and michael, the president actually criticized in that tweet that we just showed, criticizing cnn about the comparisons to oklahoma city. but under each of our last few presidents you can find an example of something that was threatening to the entire country.