fascist dictatorship, and so bill barr, after, i've got to say, humiliating himself for several years, bill barr decides, this is where i get off. this is enough. >> this is my line. >> i believe in an imperial presidency, but i don't believe in a fascist presidency. that's what donald trump was asking him to do. asking him to steal an election. asking him to arrest his political opponents. asking him to do the sort of things, again, that fascist dictators do. he wouldn't do it. now, trump has turned on him. as far as fani willis goes and jack smith and everything else, again, we can point you back to it and play it for you again, what we were saying in 2019. if donald trump lost in 2020, he would run again, and he'd run again simply to avoid all the crimes he was committing. i'm not good at math, but that was four years ago. four years ago, we were saying he will run again so he can try to avoid -- >> jail. >> -- going to jail. here we are. i must say, a lot of people were saying that, so it's hard to believe anybody is stupid enough, watching that show, to completely forget that we all saw this coming like a freight train out of the mist. now, he says this when, again, he's running to try to avoid jail time, as we've been saying for four years. >> pretty much the only reason. that was, by the way, donald trump going after his former attorney general, bill barr. also, the prosecutor seeking to hold him accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. we'll have the new developments on the former president's legal troubles that now includes his twitter account. >> they didn't want to turn the information over to the government. in fact, they wanted to run and rat out the government. meanwhile, trump's former campaign manager is calling the results of tuesday's special election in ohio, quote, rocket fuel for the democrats. we'll have much more on the fallout for the republican party. plus, the latest from hawaii, where raging wildfires have turned deadly overnight. >> oh, such a sad story. >> we'll have the latest. with us this morning, we have u.s. special correspondent for bbc news, katty kay. pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor for "the washington post," eugene robinson. and senior columnist for the daily beast, matt lewis joins us this morning. we begin with a new court ruling that has revealed months before charging donald trump in two separate cases, special counsel jack smith's office executed a search warrant of the former president's twitter account. according to the redacted ruling made public yesterday, the justice department executed the warrant back in january, despite being challenged by the elon musk owned company. musk refused to turn over trump's account at first because of his objection to a part of the warrant that barred twitter from informing the former president that his account was being searched. >> it was a criminal investigation. >> wow. the billionaire claimed the order, quote, violated the company's first amendment right. >> that's a little flexible these days, by the way, with twitter. >> they were sanctioned $350,000 and ultimately forced to comply after a judge ruled there was, quote, probable cause to search the account for evidence of criminal offenses. the judge also found, quote, reasonable grounds to believe that telling trump about the search beforehand would give him the chance to destroy potential evidence. it's unclear what evidence smith's office collected as a result of the warrant. you'll remember trump's twitter account was banned in the days following the january 6th attack, but it was restored last year after musk purchased the company. nbc news has reached out to trump's lawyers and twitter, which has now since been renamed x, for comment. >> didn't get any. jean robi gene robinson, it is fascinating, a polite way to put it. a company that bends backwards to do what the chinese communist party wants them to do, other dictatorships wants them to do, are now worried about first amendment rights and, "oh, we need to notify donald trump," even though that would actually hamper the investigation. >> yeah, they seem to have no problem following government instructions, orders or restrictions elsewhere in the world, especially china. they have a problem doing what the u.s. courts instruct them to do, which they're legally required to do and which they finally did after being sanctioned and fined. you know, what's fascinating about this is one worries, one wonders what it is in that account they wanted to go after. are they trying to, you know -- something that you can't see publicly? are they trying to get into his direct messages? it is unclear to me exactly what it is, but, clearly, jack smith thought there was something in there, and we'll see what it was, i guess, in the fullness of time when it comes out in court. >> joining us now, nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian with more on the former president's legal woes. ken, first of all, what's your take on the twitter story, or x? >> mika, i think eugene is absolutely onto something there. obviously, donald trump's tweets are public, right? you can even now go online and find the old account which has been dormant for two years. but what's not public are direct messages or, for example, drafts of tweets that were never sent, or metadata that might show whether a tweet was sent from a phone or a desktop. if you'll recall the january 6th committee trying to get those outtakes of the video that trump was making on january 6th, a message to the rioters, and the point of that was to try to figure out what he didn't say, what he didn't want to say, what he proposed to say. again, this is speculation, but people are wondering if that is one of the things jack smith is going after. another fascinating thing about this is that for a few days, smith and his team reached out to twitter through the channel that they had established for legal process, and nobody responded. elon musk had gutted the staff of the place to such an extent. any of us who tried to reach out to their press operation have found the same problem. finally, you know, the special counsel gets through, and then twitter delays. in fact, they were fined $350,000 by the court for that initial reluctance to comply with this, again, search warrant. not a subpoena. this is getting content, which is protected by the fourth amendment. you need to go to a judge and show evidence of crimes. very significant development. we'll have to see how it figures in the case. >> yeah. obviously, a lot of -- all of president trump's tweets are public and can be found in a different way. a draft of a tweet, is that saved? if you type something out, does anyone know? if you erase it, is it in there? is that what they're looking at? >> you're asking me that because i'm a technological wiz kid. >> it's public. >> it begs the question, katty, they're in search of a crime. if it's not on the public tweets, you wonder where that is. >> i'm not even a simple country lawyer, but i don't see how something that is written in draft, which would be your kind of thoughts or things you didn't actually put into action, that seems less pertinent than perhaps things that were sent to your dms that you'd written to somebody else. we know trump is careful about not sending many texts and emails to people. it's not a form of communication he favors. did he send a lot of dms? i don't know whether his twitter account is full of the kinds of conversations, effectively, which is what direct messages are, one to one conversations, is it full of the direct conversations he would have been having that would be useful to prosecutors? it is intriguing. i'm sure we'll finally know. we will get to know during the trial what happens, but it'll be intriguing to see what this led to. the trump campaign is taking on the former president's indictments in a new attack ad. >> can i just say this? >> yeah. >> if they went searching, it is because somebody on his staff said something like, "you should check the direct messages or check the drafts. he's given someone else the password, so anybody can open it up and see the drafts." like, they're just not going to do that fishing expedition. >> yeah, that's what i -- >> i was just thinking as we were talking about it, if they went searching there, they went searching because a trumper who worked on the inside of trump's team said, "hey, you'll want to know how who communicated, go there." >> yeah. so this attack ad, the minute-long television spot names the prosecutors and investigators that brought charges against him, connecting them to president biden. the majority of the ad focuses on fulton county da fani willis and spouts a number of inaccurate and misleading allegations. willis addressed the ad in an email to her staff, calling it derogatory and false. the ad is scheduled to air frequently in fulton county, georgia, as well as nationally. time to air as willis is prepared to bring charges against trump and his allies, maybe next week. >> matt lewis, that is just specifically designed to influence a future jury pool. >> of course. >> by actually doing a hit job against law enforcement. so you do the hit job against law enforcement, spread all of these lies, and what are you doing? what you're doing is, again, you're tampering with the jury pool. >> absolutely. and i think, you know, the interesting thing is that we have, what, four indictments now, so i'll try not to confuse them, but in georgia, legally, the people i talk to who are legal experts -- i'm not even a country lawyer either -- they say that the, you know -- what's happening in georgia, for example, and the mar-a-lago case, that both of those cases would legally be very easy to prove. whereas, the january 6th case, legally, even though obviously what trump did was, you know, in my opinion, he incited the riot, but legally hard to prove. but the difference, of course, is venue, right? so if you're having a trial in washington, d.c., that's going to be a very different jury pool than if you're having it in florida. and i do think, obviously, donald trump is engaged in, you know, sort of preemptive witness tampering. joe, to your point about the twitter thing, i think that is the other interest thing. like, i'm listening to all of these conservative legal experts who are talking about the january 6th trial, and they're basically saying, "yeah, what trump did is horrible, but i'm not sure he broke the law. it's going to be hard to prove that he actually broke the law." i think the thing to keep in mind is, that jack smith knows things we don't yet know. whether it is somebody flipping on him, as you've sort of suggested, whether it's his former chief of staff or whoever, there may be details that come out that are dispositive. so this -- we don't know yet what jack smith knows. >> ken dilanian, i want you to underline that fact. also, i'll just make -- i'll just take note that, again, over the past several days, i've been disturbed by the fact that establishment republicans who claim to be anti-trump, even if they were anti anti-trump at the same time, have all said, "oh, this is jack smith. this is about the first amendment. or what about hunter biden's laptop?" a lot of different distractions from jack smith and january 6th. for some reason, the republican establishment that was anti-trump is now scurrying back to him, claiming, somehow, that jack smith is attacking donald trump for using his first amendment rights. i mean, we saw that memo yesterday. my gosh, the conspiracy that was hatched, seems to me, again, i don't know as much about the law as you i'm sure, but it seems to me to be a laughable offense. this has nothing to do with the first amendment. it is a conspiracy to push fake electors on mike pence to change and to discount the votes of tens of millions of americans. >> and, joe, not all of the republican accomplishment is trying to justify it. you may have noticed that alberto gonzalez, the bush administration attorney general, wrote an op-ed the other day and came out and said," look, this indictment is very strong, and i'm disturbed my fellow republicans and pundits on fox news are impugning the justice system and the justice department," that he used to lead. he knows it is full of non-partisan people who are pursuing the law and, in this view, the indictment was quite strong. you're absolutely right. the cheeseboro memo, the lawyer from wisconsin who was advising trump, appears to be the blueprint for the false elector scheme. there's some covering language in there. for example, he said, "we should only execute this if there are plausible legal claims that we think are going to show fraud." of course, that wasn't -- by the time false electors were voting in december 2020, there were no plausible legal claims. they went forward anyway, and that's the crux of the issue here. joe, i also want to go to what you said about jury tampering and trump's, you know, inflammatory criticism of prosecutors and now the judge in the federal case. i've been talking to legal experts. i wrote a piece about this which will be published later today. it's a really horrible dilemma that all these judges are in because donald trump is running for president, and political speech is the most protected speech under the first amendment. yet, normally, a criminal defendant would not be allowed to get away with trying to influence the jury pool by impugning the prosecutors. but a lot of experts i talked to, even ones critical of trump, think that these judges are going to have to choice but to let him do almost everything, except threaten like he did the other day with, you know, "if you come after me, i'm coming after you. yeah." that's what they think would be the line, threats against judges or prosecutors. then there is a horrible situation of what do the judges leverage? they can fine him, but the ultimate leverage is they can throw him in jail. now, we're into this situation where a person with lifetime secret service protection, can they be jailed? how will the secret service react? we say this all the time, but we are in really dangerous, uncharted territory with these legal cases against the former president. >> right. i fear for former law schools who are going to be grappling with this first amendment question in con law. you have the balancing of protecting prosecutors, stopping somebody from subverting the judicial process, the legal process, a criminal process. that's on one hand. on the other hand, you have, again, political speech. as we said yesterday, all free speech is not created equally. the constitution, the supreme court has also valued political speech the most and are the least likely to interfere with political speech. >> you can tell the difference between political speech and threatening a witness. >> that's where these come together. yes, you can. >> i mean -- >> it is not always going to be simple. speaking of former attorney general alberto gonzalez, we can ask him about all this. he will be our guest at the top of the hour. in an interview last night, trump essentially admitted that he inter interfered in georgia's 2020 election. discussing his phone call to secretary of state brad raffensperger. >> i believe i won that election by many, many votes. many, many hundreds of thousands of votes. that's what i think. i expressed that on the phone call, and i said, "i don't know what the number was, 11,000 or something. i said, what i need is 11,000 votes. i won this thing by hundreds of thousands of votes. that's my opinion. it's a strong opinion, and i think it's born out by the fact s. we're see that." >> i think i won the masters in 1987. i'll take the trophy from the person they awarded it to. i think i have more number one hits and gold records than the beatles, rolling stones and cw call combined. come on. >> they had to do a disclaimer on the network. >> he knows they didn't win by hundreds of thousands of votes. newsmax, afterwards, did a disclaimer, saying that they knew joe biden legally won the context. >> ask him about it. >> this idea among donald trump and his trumpers, just because he says he believes, as somebody said yesterday, he owns all the money in the bank, doesn't mean he can have a conspiracy, like an "oceans 12" conspiracy -- or "ocean 13," i forget, to have brad pitt go in, break into the safe and take all the money out of the bank. >> yeah. >> here again, yet another admission, "yeah, i told him i needed 11,000 votes." that perfect phone call not sounding so perfect anymore, gene. >> no, it's not. i think that was "oceans 11" when they took the bags full of money out of the casino. but in any event, no, you can't just say, you know, "i believed that i was a billionaire," and go rob the bank. you can't just say, "i believed i had won the state," and then not just ask, but pressure and try to intimidate the secretary of state of georgia into illegally inventing or changing 11,780 votes so you can -- so you could then have won the state by one vote. you know, let's -- you know, the perfect phone call, right? it was perfect for prosecutors who were trying to prove what donald trump did. this is astounding. it is a riot that newsmax ran a disclaimer afterwards. obviously, they have a better purchase on reality than donald trump does, and also, frankly, they see what trump is doing in continually coming out with this stuff. >> yeah, i think we have that disclaimer. it's kind of a strange way of covering it, but here, take a look at how it plays out. >> i totally dispute that election. i think it's ridiculous, what happened. they allowed that to happen, and that the media doesn't want anybody to talk about it. we just have to make sure they don't cheat on the elections. that's the question i get, "sir, will they do it again? will they cheat again?" we're not going to let them. i believe i won that election by many, many votes, many, many hundreds of thousands of votes. that's what i think. >> to note, newsmax has accepted the election results as legal and final. [ laughter ] >> oh, my god. it's so rich. it's so rich. >> just pop that in. >> they have to pop that in. >> pop it in. >> of course -- >> don't want to get sued. >> matt, cost fox $787 million to keep churning up the lies. they're now liable for maybe up to another $1 billion. newsmax actually famously had their morning anchor get up out of a chair when mr. pillow was spreading his lies and was, like, smartly, one of the great moves in recent cable news history, got up and just walked off the set, left the chair there. but, you know, they sit there and let him spew lies for an entire interview, knowing that they are lying. >> knowing that they have to say this disclaimer. >> then they have to say this disclaimer because they know that they're letting him lie through the entire interview. >> yeah. i think, you know, donald trump's entire, i guess, argument now, at least in two of the four cases, is the george costanza defense, right? it's not a lie if i believe it's true. and so he has to commit to the bit. actually, what the newsmax thing reminds me, like, a little bit of maybe professional wrestling. you know, where donald trump is in this act, and now when they cut back to the announcers at the end, they have to, you know, we're called world wrestling entertainment, not world wrestling federation. they have to kind of give away that this is for entertainment purposes only. but i think the damage is done, though, to be honest. i don't know that the disclaimer at the end -- we find it, you know, obviously hilarious and very telling. for people who are watching, the wrestling fans so to speak, i don't know the disclaimer matters to them at the end. but it is surreal and very post modern, i have to say. >> yeah. ken, before we end the block, i want to hear a little bit more about this fbi raid in utah, where a man was killed. tell us what happened. >> it's a tragic segue from, you know, false claims on newsmax to a story about a trump supporter. 75-year-old craig robertson in provo, utah, who had been posting things like, in september, "the time is right for a presidential assassination or two," first joe, then kamala. so the fbi decided to go and try to arrest him yesterday morning at 6:00 a.m. with president biden coming to the region. as they were serving the arrest warrant, they say he was armed, and they shot him to death. but he had been threatening not only the president and the vice president, but d.a. alvin bragg in new york, the attorney general there, letitia james. he called merrick garland a nazi. he owned weapons and a trump hat and a camouflage sniper suit. he was living in his own reality. this is the tragedy that ensh ensued. there was an analysis published the other day, that threats against public officials across the country have absolutely spiked in the last year. that's just looking at federal charges. many of them are not captured around the country, but there is a climate of angry rhetoric that has erupted into actual action, threats and action, like we've never seen before. so these words that these politicians say that, in many cases, as you just demonstrated are false, they have consequences, guys. >> yes. >> you know, katty, they do have consequences. of course, there are 77 million -- i guess it was like 77 million people who voted for donald trump, and the overwhelming majority of them obviously not doing this. the problem that i think anybody will tell you, whether even pre-trump, the problem is with lies and propaganda, where you're constantly turning the other side into enemies. you're going to find people like this tragically without guardrails. you're going to find people that buy into the lies, that buy into the conspiracy theories, and you see it -- you saw it on january 6th. one lie after another. you know, it's not until they're arrested, it's not until they're in jail, it's not until they talk to their family members who are like, "what were you doing," that they sort of come to. tragically for them, it's too late because they're in jail. again, you have a guy here making one threat after another, wanting to assassinate politicians. >> and arming up. >> and arming up. the costs of this paranoia that is ginned up by donald trump or trumpers or the nra through the years. we've seen it through the years, where they're constantly pumping up paranoia. they're coming to take your guns. they're coming to take away the second amendment from you, and then defining the second amendment in the most exaggerated, unconstitutional way. this all comes, unfortunately, at a tragic cost, and it did again yesterday. >> yeah. i mean, one of the traits of trumpism that i found traveling around the country is the kind of free-floating anger, and it can attach itself to anything. to gender issues, to race, to immigration, to the libs, to the establishment, but it's very real. it kind of morphs as time goes on. but the worst consequences of the anger, in a country where there are a lot of guns, are the attacks we saw that played out in utah yesterday. we are living in this very tense environment. we did hear -- i mean, 2022 was interesting, the midterms, because we did hear then, and i heard it, interviewed people who told me there was going to be a civil war if the republicans lost. it didn't happen. so, you know, there are moments where we may -- we shouldn't catastrophize, and we may think there's going to be something terrible that happens, and the country holds back and reigns itself in. the votes at the midterms were accepted without consequence and without violence. so let's see what 2024 happens. let's keep our fingers crossed. but it is a terrible situation we're in, that we have to keep our fingers crossed about something peace and security and acceptance after an election here. >> it is. >> you know, we have been a 50/50 nation for the past 20, 25 years. the only difference is that, obviously, since donald trump came in, what used to be normal has now been turned into a reason for a, quote, civil war. i mean, we were basically 50/50 in the 2022 election. republicans expected to do much better. they underperformed. joe biden, if you looked at the polls in 2020, was expected to do much better. in states like wisconsin where it was, like, he's supposed to win by 13, 14, 15 points if you believe the polls, underperformed. why? we are, for the most part, a 50/50 nation. and these lies that, again, are spread come at a great cost, and it's something that -- it's something that, unfortunately, is even turning now against our military. >> yeah. >> because now, fox news, i mean, they've run documentaries saying that the fbi is coming to kill people who are trump supporters just because they're trump supporters. forget about the assassination threats and everything else. and they run documentaries saying that helicopters that were used in afghanistan are going to come to the united states and be used against american citizens who were trump supporters. you have not just people in fox news but people in the united states congress over the past year who have called our military leaders pigs. called our military leaders pigs, like some left-wing marxist hippie from 1967. they've called them pigs. you have a republican senator spewing hate to the military, saying he wished they were more like russian military troops. again, all of these stupid conspiracy theories, all of this extremism, it's now leading a lot of trump supporters to hating the very institutions conseratives once proudly defended. the united states military. the fbi. law enforcement. they want to defund, mika, an agency that stops terrorists from attacking the united states of america. that's where we are. >> twisted. >> it's becoming mainstream. >> nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian, thank you very much for being on this morning. >> thank you, ken. also, we are following breaking news out of hawaii, where officials say at least 36 people have been killed by the fast-moving wildfires sweeping across the western part of the island of maui. dozens more are injured and being treated for burns. hundreds of homes and businesses are destroyed, and communications on the island are crippled. thousands of residents have evacuated with some diving into the ocean for safety from the flames. the devastating wildfires have been fanned by strong winds from hurricane dora passing south of the hawaiian islands. let's bring in meteorologist angie lassman for the latest on what the conditions are for firefighters. angie, what's the latest? >> good morning, guys. yeah, so we're going to see some improvements. that's the short term of it. but we really have a recipe for these winds to remain elevated. critical fire weather will be with us a while longer. we have hurricane dora just to the south of the island, and that is a low pressure system. just to the north of the island, we have a high pressure system. when you have differences in pressure, that creates wind. we had strong trade winds blowing through parts of that region and gusting up to 50, 55 miles per hour. we know when we have all the recipes for fire, we're going to teal with it spreading quite quickly when we have the strong winds. over the next 24 hours, this is the good news, both of those systems will move away. they'll move west, but the winds don't immediately subside. 30, 35, 40-mile-per-hour winds in the short term, and fires are still burning at this hour. on top of that, we'll see the winds calming down. we don't have a lot of rain in the forecast. we're dealing with really dry conditions. on the island, we've got moderate drought and severe drought in place. we'll have some dry winds on the leeward side of the island. as i mentioned, not a lot of rain in the forecast. we'll see a few of the passing showers. at the very least, the winds will come down which will help the firefighters, of course, battle the conditions they're dealing with in maui, mika. >> keep us posted. angie lassman, thank you very much. >> it is a terrible situation out there. gene, really quickly, i just wanted to go back to you. i want to expand on what i was saying about the lies that people are being told about the fbi. >> yeah. >> if fox news and donald trump and trumpers are telling people the fbi is coming to kick down your door and kill you, what happens when the fbi shows up at somebody's door who has been threatening to assassinate and planning to assassinate the president of the united states and the vice president of the united states? he comes out shooting. >> that's correct. >> he's been told by fox news and the trumpers that when the fbi shows up, they're going to kick down your door and kill you. >> so -- yeah. >> so you talk about real-life consequences. these lies create real-life consequences and put the lives of law enforcement officers on the line and make their already tough and dangerous job even more dangerous. >> absolutely. so after this incident in utah, you know, what it tells the authorities, the fbi and local police and others, that because of this rhetoric that is being spread by what used to be the law and order party, obviously is not now, the next time, they have to go in with more armor and more weapons because they're likely to confront somebody who shoots next time. i mean, this is -- words are -- words have consequences. words are dangerous. lies have consequences. and it is just shocking to me, as somebody who remembers the way that hippies talked about the fbi in 1967, it's just shocking to me to hear the republican party not just adopting that rhetoric, but turbocharging it. essentially saying that, you know, the fbi is a bunch of stormtroopers who are going to come in and kill you. it's just astounding to me. donald trump just sort of, i guess, unplugged, took the plug out of the hole and allowed all of this stuff to come out. but, wow, it's just amazing. and what a tragedy yesterday, that 75-year-old guy who believed the lies. you know, that's the tragedy. >> like many others. >> that's the danger, is the guardrails are taken off because they hear this on tv. they hear it from politicians. so they're ready to start their own civil war when law enforcement comes to check on an assassination threat. >> well, i just wonder how judge chutkan is going to be dealing with trump's, quote, political speech with her experience, trying january 6th rioters seeing how infected their minds were. it'll be very interesting to see how affected she might be by some of the words he puts out there, maybe more than other judges. you never know. still ahead on "morning joe," top republicans are sounding the alarm after voters in ohio rejected a measure that would have made it tougher to protect abortion rights. what it means for the fight over abortion access and the 2024 election. plus, a top evangelical leader is warning about conservative christians rejecting the teachings of jesus as, quote, liberal talking points. we'll show you those new remarks. also ahead, former arkansas governor and 2024 white house hopeful asa hutchinson is our guest this morning. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. what do we always say, son? liberty mutual customizes your car insurance... so you only pay for what you need. that's my boy. ♪ stay off the freeways! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ stop right there! this week, get the denny's super slam starting at $7.99. hungry for all your breakfast favorites? when you want america's biggest breakfast starting at $7.99... at denny's, it's diner time. now open really late. postmenopausal women with hr+ her2- metastatic breast cancer are living longer with kisqali. so, long live family time. long live dreams. and long live you. kisqali is a pill proven to help women live longer when taken with an aromatase inhibitor. and kisqali helps preserve quality of life. so you're not just living, you're 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[ applause ] this is an outrage, but under this tyranny, elected officials can be removed simply for political purposes and by a whim of the governor, and no matter how you feel about me, you should not be okay with that. >> that is monique, who was an elected florida state attorney, slamming governor ron desantis after he abruptly suspended her yesterday. this is now the second time in one year that desantis has removed an elected official from their position. an elected official. >> elected official. >> both are democrats. replaced by republicans. his executive order accuses her of underprosecuting crimes, but she says this is an attempt to jumpstart his presidential primary bid. monique joins us now. >> thank you so much for being with us. i have to admit, i've been -- my family moved to florida, like, over 40 years ago. i've been involved in politics for quite some time. despite that, even i am shocked that a governor can just boot out somebody who was elected by the people. that's what everybody needs to understand. you weren't appointed by anybody. you were elected by the people, and, as you said, this sort of dictator move, it is shocking. what has been the response for your constituents and the people who voted for you just three years ago? >> well, you know, you're right, it is shocking, and the nation should be shocked by that. essentially, we are dealing with a dictator. we're dealing with someone who is overreaching his political authority and removing a little -- removing elected officials simply for not being politically aligned with him. typically, the removal rules were used to remove individuals who had been arrested or convicted of crime, or individuals who had fallen into addiction and weren't able to properly perform their duties. but now, this governor is using these rules to remove people who simply are democrats or remove elected officials in democratic counties which he is retaliating against pause because they didn't support him in the election. this is a sad day in florida. it's a sad day in america, and the whole country should be watching. because if we're not careful, this could become the next president of the united states. >> and the thing is, there is nothing conservative about this guy. i'm a conservative. i'm a small government conservative. we believe the power starts at the local level, and anything the local level can do, you give it to the local level. if they can't do it, the state level does it. if they can't do it, the federal government does it. everything is upside down with desantis. he's like a centralized state authoritarian. whether he is banning small businesses from running their businesses the way they want during covid or banning -- or going after baseball teams. now, here, this seems to be an even greater breach. i'm curious, what do your constituents, what do the people of your district think about you being elected, you campaigning, you debating, you running against another candidate, you winning the election, then him just unilaterally deciing to fire you, push you to the side for a campaign talking point? >> well, people are upset. there is no doubt about that. i ran on a very specific platform, and i kept my word. i stood by the things that i said that i would do based on research and analysis of the criminal legal system over my 20 years of practice. i talked about mass incarceration in this country and how florida leads the nation in incarceration. and i ran on a platform of implementing things that would change that. using the strong arm of the law when necessary, but also implementing programs that would divert people from the criminal system. the constituents are upset. they are angry because their votes have been stolen from them. they elected someone to govern according to their values, and that's been stripped away. he didn't put in someone who was close in ideology or anything like that because there was some, you know, malfunction with my way of doing thing. he put someone in who was opposite of what the people elected and what the people wanted. all at a time when crime is down in central florida. so there is no public safety reason for him to take this step. there is strictly a political reason, and you said it best, to jumpstart his failed presidential campaign. >> mika, doesn't matter whether people agree, as she said, as the state attorney said. it doesn't matter whether people agree with her philosophy on crime or not. i suspect, i don't know all the details, i suspect, based on what she said, maybe i would disagree with some parts of it. >> maybe. >> but make no mistake, if republicans can basically fire elected officials because they disagree with their philosophy, don't republicans understand that a democratic governor in the future can fire somebody because they think that they're too much of a, quote, law and order official. >> right. >> this is such a dangerous anti-democratic step, that as the state attorney said in her press conference, her views and ideology don't matter here because the people already endorsed them with their vote three years ago. >> understood. ms. worrell, aside from speaking out on platforms like this, do you have any other options? are there legal options? how does this -- i understand you intend to run again. how does this change what you're fighting for in the state of florida? >> so with your question toward our legal options, we have assembled a legal team, and they are currently reviewing the executive order and making determinations about what the next steps are legally. i filed for re-election in march, and that hasn't changed. i am still running for re-election. what i'm running for hasn't changed. the people voted for it by an overwhelming majority, by 67% of the vote i won in 2020. >> wow. >> oh, my god. >> so i trust that they will speak again, despite the backdoor efforts that the governor is currently making to gerrymander the court circuits in the same way that he has gerrymandered the voting districts. >> gene robinson with "the washington post" is next. gene, the state attorney won with two-thirds of the vote. >> yeah. >> and she won on a platform far different than ron desantis'. he has replaced a state attorney that won with two-thirds of the vote, now with somebody who is a federalist society member, who i suspect wouldn't get 14% of the vote. >> yeah. >> this is just so anti-democratic. it's really shocking. >> it is shocking. it's shocking to me. ron desantis is like, you know, a tin hat would-be emperor at this point. with, i guess, a napoleon complex or something. it's incredible. state attorney worrell, i'm curious as to, first, are there others of your colleagues, other states' attorneys in florida who might be subject to this same sort of whimsical and political ouster by ron desantis, or did he just zero in on you for various reasons? you know, because you're so popular, because you were pursuing policies that he didn't like and, frankly, perhaps because you're an african-american woman. but, you know, for political reasons. >> bingo. >> are there others also in danger? >> yup. >> well, i think that, you know, you can look at the democratically elected prosecutors across the state, and each of them are in danger. but i think that as it comes to me, all the reasons you stated, gene, are factual. i think that i am unapologetically opposed to his way of doing things. because he is a bully, because he is a weak authoritarian, he has decided to retaliate against me by my removal. he's not stated one valid, legal ground for my removal, because we still have prosecutorial discretion in this state. but i believe if you look around, i believe there were three democratically-elected prosecutors out of the 20 circuits in the state of florida. i think each are in jeopardy. also something to watch for is the gerrymandering of the judicial circuits. in doing that, he'll be able to wipe out all democratically elected prosecutors by merging them with red counties. >> all right. >> i have a feeling governor ron desantis picked on the wrong democratically-elected state attorney. that's my gut. >> absolutely. >> thank you for knowing your value. i have a feeling we will see you once again. >> madame state attorney, thank you so much. >> monique for state attorney. thank you so much for having me. >> there we go. matt lewis, this really confirms what republicans in tallahassee have been telling me for some time. when i say republicans, i'm talking about people like you and me that are part of the, oh, i don't know, reagan republican party, the small government republican party that i used to be a member of. that actually believed in small government and a bottom-up leadership instead of top-down. i've been told by so many people in tallahassee over the past year or two that if you don't like donald trump, you will hate ron desantis. they don't like donald trump. but they say he is -- he is like a tyrant. again, these are republicans. i don't know a whole lot of democrats in tallahassee, to be honest with you. these are republicans. they'll say, like, they always tell me, "look at how he banned small business owners from implementing safety precautions during covid." they couldn't keep their businesses open. look at how he banned cruises, you know, cruise liners from doing the same thing. so they couldn't make millions of dollars. they couldn't operate. look at how he went after politically to try to hurt the tampa bay rays for posting a tweet after uvalde, in sympathy of the children there. of course, we have the war on disney. there is fear. there is fear and loathing among all ceos in the state of florida. they won't admit it on the record, but they say it to lobbyists all over the state. they're like, "we're afraid. we can't do anything because this guy will come after us for political purposes." it's just -- it is a top-down, state-centered, like, authoritarianism type approach, isn't it? >> i think it is, joe. look, i think this is indindicae of a schism within the conservative moment, such as it exists today. you noted kind of the reagan conservative philosophy that existed for decades, which believed in limited government and that it was inappropriate to use the power of government to try to impose your beliefs on other people. and i do think it is very clear that there's now a big section of the republican party and the conservative movement, you can call them common good conservatives, or there's different names for it, but essentially, they believe that it is incumbent, if you are a republican or conservative who gets elected, you must use that power to impose your beliefs in a non-democratic way, right? so outside the scope of your powers, of what you've actually been granted. and so i think that ron desantis is maybe the avatar of this philosophy, and what he is doing in florida, it's right wing, but it is not conservative in the sense that we knew for decades, joe. and to restate something you said earlier, i don't understand how a conservative could watch this and not be afraid that it is going to be used against us down the road, you know? is it crazy to think that a democratic governor or president could have enough power to decide to impose left-wing progressive values on conservatives? once mite makes right, it's a slippery slope. i think it is something we should push back against, even when it is our own team doing it. >> matt lewis, thank you very much for being on this morning. matt's new book entitled "filthy rich politicians," is out now. still ahead on "morning joe," a former u.s. attorney general has a message for his fellow republicans. quote, the justice department is not biase alberto gonzalez, who served in the bush administration, is our guest at the top of the hour. plus, in ohio, voters there pushed back republican efforts that could have stripped the rights of women. ali vitali has more on the fallout from the critical special election when "morning joe" comes right back. le spend category. hi. ♪♪ you don't have to keep tabs on rotating categories... this is the only rotating i care about. ... or activate anything to earn. your cash back automatically adjusts for you. can i get a cucumber water? 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election. they could have done it 2 1/2 years ago, by the way, if they really wanted to, but they never thought it was going to be necessary. >> yeah, well, actually, we did think it was necessary, and we actually said in 2019, donald, that you were going to run for president again if you lost because you would want to stop the prosecutions from coming. >> right. >> because you knew they were coming. everybody knew. they were coming because you deserved to be prosecuted. in fact, mitch mcconnell said, after criticizing you for january 6th, in that indictment proceeding, he said, "look, this isn't the forum to do it. there's a forum to do it, and it's in the courtroom." so the head of the republican party in washington, d.c., said, "do the investigation, and you can go after him and indict him for crimes that were committed on january 6th." so, again, this whole, like, there ain't nobody acting like a third-world dictator more than donald trump and ron desantis. we'll get to that in a second. >> that was donald trump last night repeating his false claims that the department of justice and the fbi have been weaponized against him. our next guest is trying to set the republican party straight. former u.s. attorney general, alberto gonzalez, joins us in just a moment. also ahead this hour, we're going to get historic perspective on trump's legal issues by looking back on richard nixon's resignation. which came 49 years ago this week. plus, a republican presidential candidate who is still trying to qualify for the first debate, former arkansas governor asa hutchinson will join us just ahead on "morning joe." it is just a few minutes past the top of the hour. katty kay and eugene robinson are still with us. joining the conversation, we have former u.s. senator, now an nbc news and msnbc political analyst, claire mccaskill. good to have you on board, as well. >> claire, before we get to the attorney general, i want to start with you. i was talking to matt lewis. we kind of come from, you know -- we were inspired to become republicans with the reagan revolution. the idea was, what we always said, what i said when i went to washington was, trust the people. if local government can do it, let local government do it. if they can't, the state government can do it. if they can't, then the federal government can do it. sort of a bottom-up approach, right? we now have, though, unfortunately, in ron desantis, in donald trump, this top-down approach that is trying to literally take the votes away from the american people. of course, january 6th, the fake electors scheme to rob tens of millions of americans of their vote. in tennessee, the tennessee legislature deciding that two black politicians needed to be kicked out of the legislature. you talk about free speech,prot. the white woman who protesting, she stayed in there. in florida, the black woman who got 67% of the vote. >> monique worrell. >> she ran on a progressive platform that maybe i disagree with, but she ran on a progressive platform that 67% of the people voted for. that's called democracy. ron desantis has fired her, kicked her out. it's really shocking. then, of course, we have what happened in ohio this past week, where ohio has referendums that allow 50% of the vote to be enough to pass a referendum, a state referendum. they suddenly decide to move it up to 60% because they know they're going to lose an abortion battle. this is -- it is literally anti-democratic movements to take votes away from americans. it looks like, not all republicans because i certainly have a lot of friends who are concerned about it, but it looks like the trump wing of the republican party, they're all in. they don't care about democracy. they just care about power. >> yeah. you know, i spent a lot of time in politics, listening to republicans lecture me about the evils of the heavy hand of government. they have now taken the heavy hand of government and done the most damaging thing you can possibly do in a democracy. that is figure out how to keep people from voting and how to cancel out people's votes. and how to make sure that the people don't have a voice that is strong and clear at the ballot box. what happened in florida with desantis is beyond outrageous. i mean, i was an elected prosecutor. i ran for office. i think i got those kinds of numbers when i ran as a democrat in the kansas city area. i think about what it would feel like for someone to just come in arbitrarily and say, "you know, i don't care what the people who voted for you said. i think i know better." that is not a heavy hand of government. that's a hammer. that is a sledgehammer wiping out people's right to be heard. what the people in ohio said this week very clearly is, "we get what you're doing, and we don't agree with it." they do, in many ways, joe, they don't just do it, you know, by calling secretaries of state and saying, "i'm going to engage in conduct to try to take away votes," they do it by trying to keep people from voting. to try to limit their ability to vote. whether it's mail-in ballots or whether it is college students, the republican party has, over the last five to six years, has tried to circle this country with barbed wire, around people having their voices heard. i have to tell ya, people need to get on it and get out there and work as hard as they know how to stop this incredibly dangerous trend the republican party has made part of their foundational politics. >> let's bring in former u.s. attorney general, alberto gonzalez. he served in the george w. bush administration, and now is the dean at the belmont university college of law. we thank you very much for being on this morning. >> mr. attorney general, thank you so much for being with us. i have noted on this show over the past several years, republicans, like yourself, republicans that have stood up and spoken out for the rule of law, even when it doesn't break in their direction. i often quote "the wall street journal" editorial page whenever they've spoken out against donald trump's worst excesses. i have noticed, though, since the last indictment regarding january 6th, that establishment republicans that had been critical of donald trump's actions are now starting to talk about a two-tiered justice system. you know, i read something that anne applebaum said last week that said, if the republican party continues to attack the rule of law, i don't know how our constitutional republic survives. that's why we were so struck by your opinion piece, and we're grateful for you to be here. can we talk about your concerns about the rule of law, the republican party, and how it intersects in this trump indictment? >> sure. joe, thanks for having me. listen, i don't view my presence here or the op-ed that i wrote as intended to set republicans straight. mainly, i'm there to remind republicans about what we stand for. in particular, to stand up for the department of justice. people don't realize that over 99% of the people that work at the department are career employees. they often don't care who the president is, who the attorney general is, what party the attorney general is. so they go to work day in and day out. i wanted to remind people that i think the department is doing the very best that it can. i'm not saying they're perfect. sometimes mistakes are made, and i point that out in the opop-ed. by and large, they do a good job. differences that occur sometimes in prosecutions are based upon facts, based upon the evidence, the experience of the prosecutor. sometimes you'll have perhaps different outcomes in cases that look similar but may, in fact, be very different because of the facts and the evidence that a prosecutor is able to present and get in a trial. again, this is about a reminder of who we are as a party. you know, party for the rule of law. a party for economic and individual liberty. a party for national security and our military. a party that believes in the value, the importance of law enforcement. that's who we are as a party. i just, again, that was a motivation for the op-ed. >> well, just to underline something that you said, that they are career professionals. most people in the justice department are. for republicans, for donald trump supporters who are saying, "oh, what about hillary clinton? what about hunter biden?" let me underline that donald trump wanted hillary clinton indicted under his department of justice, and the attorney general said that there wasn't anything to indict her on. those arguments are absolutely without merit. mr. attorney general, i want to underline once again what you said and have you continue talking about it. because i've noticd my former party, which used to support law enforcement, since donald trump has become president, many people in that party have attacked the department of justice relentlessly, have attacked the fbi relentlessly. talk about the importance of republicans doing what republicans used to do, and that is defending the rule of law and defending the justice department that holds that on its shoulders every day. those professionals. >> well, we all as american citizens have an obligation to respect and to protect the rule of law. let's just get that straight. put that on the table. but it is a department of justice that has a primary responsibility as a government institution to protect the rule of law, to ensure that people engage in conduct that is consistent with the laws passed by representatives of the american people. and the more the department is criticized, and sometimes the criticism is valid. there's no question about it. mistakes get made because the department is run, comprised of human beings, and we are all imperfect. sometimes we make mistakes in judgment. but, by and large, they get it right. of course, we have a system of rules of evidence and judges and independent jurors who ensure that the department gets it right in terms of moving forward on prosecutions. but the more there's criticism of the rule of law, i think the more people lose confidence in the department of justice and government generally. this is a very dangerous position to be in. the fact it's okay to criticize government officials endlessly, it's okay to ignore the rule of law, it is okay to ignore statutes and the constitution, that puts us in a very dangerous place in my judgment of the country, and i think in the judgment of many other americans. not just republicans in this country. >> mr. attorney general, there is an interesting article, op-ed by jack goldsmith of the bush administration. he is more critical of the department of justice than you have been, but his biggest point is however this prosecution of donald trump pans out, it could end up weakening the justice system in this country. if he is sent to prison or if he is found guilty, you'll have a huge number of americans who believe he has been unfairly treated. is there a way around that, do you think? is there a way that this trial could be conducted in such a way that, actually, it would restore faith in the execution of justice in this country? >> well, one way that is being discussed, and i offered up an opinion about this, as well, is to have the trial televised. federal trials are not televised. you know, that is -- this is a case where perhaps it calls for public trial, so people can see how our justice system works, can see the evidence that a prosecution is going to present, can see the defense that's put on by donald trump and his lawyers, and have faith in the outcome, in the judgment of 12 independent jurors. so that might be one way, in this particular case, where the american people may be more willing, despite what donald trump may say publicly, that the american people may be more willing to accept the outcome of the trial. >> former attorney general alberto gonzalez, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. we really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> thank you, sir. after voters in ohio rejected a measure that would have made it harder to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, some republicans and prominent conservatives are sounding the alarm on the decisive issue. donald trump's former campaign manager, bill stepien, is warning that abortion could provide, quote, rocket fuel to president biden's re-election bid, saying, quote, there shouldn't be any sugar coating over what happened. it was a major setback in what became a very public fight between pro-choice and pro-life groups. this happened in ohio, which is not a pink state anymore. this is a state that is red. he goes on, the bigger concern is what this means for 2024. national pro-choice groups are at the ready and ready to pounce. we know democrats aren't excited at all about joe biden. these groups are going to provide rocket fuel to a pretty unenthusiastic candidacy and be on the ground and be knocking on doors. we're going to be breathing life into a pretty unenthusiastic campaign. as the republican party remains divided over the issue, democrats see this as a new opportunity and road map for 2024. since the supreme court overturned roe v. wade last year, abortion has been on the ballot in some shape or form in seven states, and the issue has won in every election. >> claire, in montana, it won. in kansas, it won. in kentucky, it won. in ohio, it won. in michigan, it won. in vermont, it won. in california, it won. you want to talk about -- and, of course, in the '22 midterm elections, we heard about the red wave. watch out, the red wave. oh, wait, no. no red wave came. in part, when we saw those exit polls that said, like, 35%, 38% of americans said abortion was their top issue, i remember somebody commenting on tv saying, "wait a sec, is that just the democratic party?" no, it's everybody. so you talk about awakening a sleeping giant, these republicans actually believed they could take away a right that americans have had for half a century, and there wouldn't be a response to it. the reaction gets more extreme by the day. >> yeah. the interesting thing is the republican party, the base of the republican party, this dog has been chasing the bus for so long, that now that it's caught the bus, it has not changed its behavior. they are still pushing states to go further. they are still pushing states to -- because now, the washington republicans, a lot of them say, well, it's up to the states. what did ohio do? ohio tried to limit the ability of the state to have a voice. in my state, they've gone so far as to say, no exception for rape. no exception for incest. so, you know, a 13-year-old girl who is being repeatedly -- or 12-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her uncle and gets pregnant, she cannot legally obtain an apportion in the state of missouri. by the way, even in the states where there are six weeks, she probably couldn't because the uncle told her that if she tells anybody, she's going to hurt her or hurt her mother or hurt her family. she's afraid and doesn't even understand why she at no time -- didn't get her period. she's going to be a criminal because she needs to terminate a pregnancy that occurred within her own family? that's what they've done, joe. they have gone so far, they have lost way more than 50% of america. they've lost a huge chunk of their own party. they don't seem to be able to correct this. turnout and persuasion are the two elements of a successful election. i think we're going to have a lot to say about turnout around this issue next year. >> anybody that heard claire's fact pattern, heard the suggestion that a 13-year-old might be raped by an uncle and not be allowed to leave the state, you may think, oh, that's too extreme. republicans would never do that. let me remind you, the candidate that was running for governor in the state of michigan in 2022 said just that. the reason we don't want exceptions for rape is for the 14-year-old girl who gets raped by her uncle, and the republican position is, keep those decisions out of the hands of the parents. keep the decision out of the hands of the pastor or the priest that's talking to the family. out of the health care provider, out of the mental health care provider. it really is -- >> makes no sense. >> it's a savage, cruel position to take. >> yeah. >> about 85% of americans, 90% of americans agree with me, that that's extreme and savage. yet, that's the position of the republican party. >> let's bring in nbc news capitol hill correspondent ali vitali, who is back from reporting in ohio, doing "way too early" duties this morning, as well as sharing with us some of your reflections from being in that state during that special election, which really sent a message once again about what joe was just saying, where people stand on this issue. >> i love the way that you guys took the time to underscore that each time this has been on the ballot, it's been a win for proponents of reproductive access. it is not just in states that you'd expect, like california. the fact this is happening in kansas, in kentucky, in ohio, in red states, is really a wake-up call. i think what senator mccaskill is saying, that republicans have been chasing this bus and now not changing their message, what i've heard from republicans, including before this vote in ohio, is they might be the party that were chasing this bus, and now they caught it and might get run over by it. there is concern. it's founded. each time we have seen this on the ballot since dobbs, republicans have suffered losses at the ballot box. it puts them in this really tough place going into 2024. yes, you have most of the republican contenders who don't want to get into the weeds on the abortion issue, on the republican presidential side saying, "this is back with the states now. that's where it should be." it's fine it's back in the states. we've watched state by state so far as these referendums against abortion access have fallen. but at the same time, as long as the states are debating it, this rises to the national consciousness. even if states are making the decision, it doesn't go away as a national issue. 2024 is still a national election. it is why you're seeing people like bill stepien sound the alarm about ohio. it's one state, fine. 2023, an off year, okay. but it has a lot of blinking warning signs for republicans. when you see 3 million people come out in the middle of august in an election that was announced pretty spontaneously by the standards of lead time that you typically have on elections, and the way people were able to come out on this, it is a warning sign. republicans are showing no signs of changing their tune on this. you have to make it through a primary to make it to a general. but being pushed more to the right on this in the presidential primary this cycle will have big implications in 2024. and if we're looking at the states still, you have to remember the fact that in arizona, they're popping up a similar constitutional amendment push that we're seeing in ohio. it's not a sure thing, but they'll vote on that in november. we're seeing similar pushes to enshrine protections in places like florida. places like missouri could be fertile ground. senator mccaskill knows this, it is one of the states with the most restrictions on abortion access. it is a salient issue, and it's not going away. >> ali vitali, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> ali talked about the blinking lights, warning signs. montana, kentucky, kansas, i mean, states that went for trump overwhelmingly. >> ohio. >> ohio, a state that comfortably went for donald trump. it's been trending red. kansas and kentucky, you kidding me? michigan, a state that republicans before '22, republicans had control of the legislature. the house and the senate. they lost it in '22, as well as the governorship. they were routed. then we talk about wisconsin a lot. >> yup. >> the race for the supreme court that republicans were saying, conseratives were saying was one of the most important in their lifetime. they got crushed. they got crushed because the issue was, well, the fact that republicans had an 1849 abortion law. a total ban that they kept on the books, even when they were warned to moderate it, they didn't do it. >> rocket fuel. still ahead on "morning joe," former president trump says he won't be signing the loyalty pledge that's required to participate in the first gop primary debate. we'll show you his explanation for that. wasn't he -- anyhow -- >> yeah. plus, 49 years ago, gerald ford took office and attempted to heal the wounds of watergate and help a reeling nation move on. but as donald trump faces multiple trials, would ford's approach still work today? we tackle that question with presidential historian, next on "morning joe." >> as we bind up the internal wounds of watergate, more painful and more poisonous of foreign rules, let us 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washington post"'s eugene robinson has the first question for you, mark. >> hi, mark. good to see ya. listen, i think i remember that day, when gerald ford issued that pardon. it was controversial then and is still controversial now. there are people who think it was a mistake. as a historian looking back, how do you see the lessons, if there are lessons, from that moment to the situation we're obviously in now, where we have a former president who is facing indictment on criminal charges? >> the question, eugene, is did it set a precedent that we have to live by today? the answer is it probably did. but gerald ford couldn't have seen that at the time. the reason for the pardon, which ford granted about a month after taking office -- he took office on august 9th, 1974, and the pardon was granted september 8th, a month later. the reason he did that, he couldn't move ahead in the office of the presidency with that hanging over the fate of the country, in some respects, and it was locking him up. he couldn't go on to the duties of being president and handling the issues that were holding us back at that time, including an economy that was suffering from stagflation and a lingering war in vietnam. so he just wanted to put it past the country, so he decided to pardon richard nixon. it is interesting, eugene, because, later, ford was asked what the disqualifying trait for the presidency should be. he said, arrogance. this was just four years after leaving the office. he said, "arrogance. not that the american people would ever elect an arrogant president, but if you got an arrogant president, viciously arrogant, god, help the country." he couldn't have foreseen donald trump, but if he had, i doubt he would have granted that pardon. >> mark, give us a sense of the difference in the country in '73 and in today in america. i mean, if you're thinking of how america did overcome, it got beyond watergate, healed itself to some extent. do you see that as possible after the trump years and the calcification of politics we've been talking on this show for the last few weeks and months, or do you think we are in such a different time now that we can't get beyond donald trump? >> it is a dramatically different time, katty. one of the things i'm struck by when you hear those inaugural remarks by gerald ford 49 years ago, is he talks about the constitution still work. here, the people rule. you know, the system worked at that time. >> yeah. >> the most remarkable thing about the resignation of richard nixon is that he was getting pressure from his party to resign the office. just before his resignation on august 8th, when he announced to the american people that he would not stay in the office, he was visited by three republicans, republican leaders. the republican leader of the house, john rhodes, the republican leader of the senate, hue scott, and conservative stalwart barry goldwater. they urged nixon in the face of all of the evidence that was mounting around watergate, to resign from the presidency. nixon did that for the good of the country. it hurt nixon for sure, but he did it for the good of the country. and you saw republicans putting country above party. so it was a very different time in american politics. in my opinion, katty, much of this is around the cul of personality that is donald trump. the difference between today and almost half a censure are ago is, to my mind, the information landscape. conservatives are getting a very different stream of information from conservative news outlets, a different narrative and truth. >> mark, it is interesting that you point out that republicans could have power if they took it. if they banded together and confronted him, it could be a powerful moment for, frankly, the help of our country. but i'm interested in your perspective on the relationship between trump and nixon. it almost seemed to me that trump really admired nixon for breaking the law, maybe not for resigning, but for breaking the law. talk about how their relationship developed, particularly after nixon left the white house. >> nixon wrote trump a letter that trump displayed in the white house, in which i believe pat nixon had seen donald trump on phil donahue. he said, "i didn't see the program, but mrs. nixon says you have the stuff. you know, you have something. if you ever did go into politics, then good luck." i don't remember the exact content, but it was a very encouraging letter from richard nixon. i don't know trump's view of nixon, but he was flattered by the attention of richard nixon. this was somebody who wanted to be around power, who wanted all the flattery he could get. so getting some from a former president was, i'm sure, very fulfilling to donald trump at that time. >> presidential historian and ceo of the lbj foundation, mark updegrove, thank you very much for being on this morning. a former top official for the southern baptist convention is sounding the alarm on the state of evangelical christianity in america. in an interview with npr, the editor in chief of "christianity today," russell moore, declared christianity in the u.s. to be in, quote, crisis, and warned that conservative christians are now rejecting the teachings of jesus as, quote, liberal talking points. take a listen. >> well, it was the result of having multiple pastors tell me essentially the same story, about quoting the sermon on the mount parenthetically in their preaching, turn the other cheek, to have somebody say after, "what did you get the liberal talking point?" what was alarming to me, in most scenarios when the pastor would say, "i'm literally quoting jesus christ," the response would not be, "i apologize." the apologize would be, "yes, but that doesn't work anymore. that's weak." when we get to the point where the teachings of jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis. >> well, we are in a crisis. those of us that grew up in the evangelical church, because the radicalism of jesus was -- what the romans didn't understand about jesus, what the world didn't understand about jesus, gene robinson, was that what he sought was the antithesis of power. >> exactly. >> when asked about the government and taxes, he's like, "render to ceasar what is his and that what is the government's to the government." look at easter. it is a perfect example of that. the teachings of the church have been twisted beyond recognition with church members, and some pastors, pushing one lie after another lie after another lie about jesus, and twisting and contorting his words, his gospel, even the sermon on the mount. >> yes. this is, i think the technical term for this is blasphemy. this is blasphemous. this is wrong. jesus was seen as a mortal threat to that sort of authoritarian power. and the idea that people can call themselves evangelical christians and, yet, not just fail to live according to the words of jesus, but outright reject the words of jesus, reject what jesus said in the sermon on the mount, in his other teachings, is just astounding to me. i don't understand. i don't see how that is -- how that is possible. i think that is not possible. i think they are not evangelical christians if they reject the words of jesus. that simply is -- that can't be. >> claire? >> yeah, talk about a weird moment. i'll tell you when it crystallized for me. there has been no one who has been more representative of the evangelical movement in politics than mike pence. now, think about this scenario. he is in front of an evangelical crowd in iowa. i mean, these are very -- these are the people that live their life through the church. the evangelical church. he comes out and is booed consistency and constantly booed, and this man has done nothing but just cleave to the evangelical church throughout his career, in the way he has voted, in the way he has held office, and they booed him. they didn't boo him because he doesn't believe in jesus. they didn't boo him because he doesn't understand the beatitudes. they booed him because he had the nerve to follow the constitution. >> because -- yeah. >> that shows you how far down the rabbit hole the evangelical movement has gone. >> because, in these circles, it has nothing to do with the beattitudes, nothing to do with the sermon on the mount, nothing about the words of jesus christ. it's all about power. whenever somebody talks about donald trump, "oh, he's the servant of god." >> oh, my god. >> he's this, that, the other. you know, just start in the sermon on the mount. just start in matthew. read the beattitudes and find one that belongs to him. blessed are the meek, the merciful. blessed are the pure in heart. blessed are the peacemakers. i mean, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. i mean, again, we all fail. we all fall short. >> but he has intoxicated them. >> but you just look at everything jesus said. from matthew 5 to the end of matthew 7, the sermon on the mount, none of them, none of those characteristics seem to line up, even evangelicals would say, with jesus' teachings. when russell moore talks about how pastors are complaining that they can't even teach the words of jesus anymore without members of their congregation coming up and calling them liberal talking points, it's kind of -- >> it's a trump infection. >> -- easy to see why the pews are emptying out. coming up, we're less than two weeks away from the first republican presidential debate. so far, eight candidates have qualified. our next guest is hoping to secure a spot on the stage. former arkansas governor asa hutchinson joins us next on "morning joe." i'm your overly competitive brother. check. psych! and i'm about to steal this game from you just like i stole kelly carter in high school. you got no game dude, that's a foul! and now you're ready to settle the score. game over. and if you don't have the right home insurance coverage, well, you could end up paying for all this yourself. so get allstate, and be better protected from mayhem, yeah, like me. thanks, bro. take a lap, rookie. real mature. ♪♪ with fastsigns, signage that gets you noticed turns hot lots into homes. ♪♪ fastsigns. make your statement. welcome back. the first republican primary debate is coming up in less than two weeks, and former president trump says he will not be signing the rnc's loyalty pledge that is required to participate. >> when you're at 75%, 80%, and other guys are at zero, 1%, 2%, 3%, you do say, what's the upside? am i going to go up one point? but they could go up. you know, they're not dumb people. they're senators. they're governors. they're intelligent people. you have some very good people. i think you have some very good people, and you have some people -- i mean, i have a problem with the debate for another reason. i wouldn't sign the pledge. why would i sign a pledge? there's people on there i wouldn't have. i wouldn't have certain people as, you know, somebody i'd endorse. they want you to sign a pledge, but i can name three or four people that i wouldn't support for president. >> meanwhile, "the hill" is reporting that florida governor ron desantis has signed the loyalty pledge. according to the outlet, desantis and entrepreneur vivek ramaswamy are the only two gop candidates to have met the other qualifications for the first debate and signed the pledge. joining us from des moines, iowa, is republican presidential candidate and former governor of arkansas, asa hutchinson. it's great to have you back on the show. so what is it going to take to get on that debate stage? is it possible? >> absolutely. we've met the criteria for polling, which was a big lift for us. then, secondly, we have to have 40,000 donors. we're over halfway there. we've got a ways to go. we have a couple weeks to do it. so the answer is, if you want to -- want somebody on the debate stage that will speak the truth about donald trump, go to asa2024.com. give us a dollar. that helps us get there. so it's all up to the people of america to help us get on the debate stage. i expect to be there, and i look forward to it. >> talks about how great the economy is, but the fact is inflation has been baked into the price of goods, and that strains the pocketbooks of families. secondly, the interest rates are up which causes -- it's more difficult for young people to get homes, to buy a car. so it's the economic issues that's going to be focused on in 2024, and part of that is our energy policy, and whenever you look at our energy policy, i do believe we need to have environmentally friendly means of production, but we've got to produce. we've got to produce from all sources because that's the integral part of the success of our economy as well. >> right. the governor of the -- yesterday from the energy department that the united states is producing more oil than ever before. there's going to be a record-breaking year. do we need to do even more than that? >> well, i do think we do. we have to have a consistent energy policy, and that was the challenge with president biden at first. he said he wanted to go all green, and then we wound up going to venezuela and others, saudi arabia, to say, hey. can you produce more? and so that's not a good position for the united states of america. so whenever there is turmoil in the world, we need to have consistent production, and we have to have sufficient energy that we can help support our allies and friends as well. >> governor, how do you square that with what we've seen over the course of the summer, what we saw in hawaii just yesterday which is all of the evidence, is mounting evidence of climate change and a planet that is rapidly warming? how would you -- how would you -- would you keep on some of what president biden has done for the climate change agenda? >> some of it would stay in place, but we need to have a pro-growth energy policy in an environmentally sensitive way as we can, but we can't penalize the united states with holding back on our production if the world is not going to meet their obligations as well, and so yes. we need to take the environment and climate change very seriously. it starts with each individual. the government has a responsibility. i just worry about artificial -- not artificial, but timelines that are too severe that really makes us in jeopardy in terms of our economy, but also in terms of our quality of life and our competitiveness with other countries. >> governor, it's almost startling to hear a presidential candidate in the republican party talking about issues. clearly your party has drifted from the things that i always heard republicans talk about. smaller government, energy production, free trade policies, but i want to circle back to the debate. i want to circle back to this requirement that you have to find 20,000 more people to give you at least a dollar in order for you to get on the debate stage. when i watched, which was fascinating to me is you have a couple of rich candidates, and i think the governor in south dakota or whatever, and the other guy who's a rich tech guy, they're offering people $20 to give them a dollar. now call me old-fashioned, but that feels like they're buying somebody's vote and support which last time i looked was not an american principle of democracy. as a prosecutor, i would have gone in -- i know you have been a prosecutor. i would have gone after people who were trying to buy people's votes or participation in a democracy like a debate. so what is your feeling about that? should they be looked at by the ftc that is a wonder at this point? shouldn't it be wrong they're paying people to give them money? >> no. i'm not criticizing them and their means of collecting the $40,000, but the fact is i'm not a self-funded candidate, and the rnc rules is burdensome on the candidate instead of focusing on other ways of raising money and focusing on other styles of campaign. i've got to spend all of my time at the iowa state fair trying to get on the stage with $1 contributions. that's not helpful and it's not good for our democratic process. when you talk about the issues though, i just want to make this point that i want to be in the minority. i assume donald trump not participate in the debate because we want to talk about the issues and i think there's a lot of contrast between the republican candidates as it stands and it would be nice to be able to have that serious policy discussion, but if he participates, he will be the focus and i'll be out there speaking the truth about he's not the right leader for our country. >> all right. republican presidential candidate, former governor asa hutchinson, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. >> great to be with you. thank you. and coming up -- >> great to have you. we're getting a better look at the devastation in hawaii. wildfires have killed at least 36 people. we'll get a live report from maui. plus, the benefits reaped by justice clarence thomas from a network of wealthy patriots during his three decades on the supreme court. it appears to be far more expensive than previously understood. we'll have that brand-new reporting. also ahead, new developments in donald trump's legal troubles including how his twitter account played a role in the special counsel's investigation. and the potential fourth criminal indictment coming for the former president as the fulton county d.a. is expected to present her trump election case to a grand jury in georgia next week. we'll be right back. ight back. from prom dresses... ...to workouts... ...and new adventures. you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past... they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b. although uncommon, up to 1 in 5 survivors of meningitis will have long term consequences. now as you're thinking about all the vaccines your teen might need, make sure you ask your doctor if your teen is missing meningitis b vaccination. - the will states that mr. marbles will receive everything he needs in perpetuity. thanks to autoship from chewy. - i always love that old man. - and he gets the summer house. - what? - [narrator] save more on what they love and never run out with autoship from chewy. this woman is not a capable woman. she's a woman that has and maybe a change of mind, and i don't know what she's doing. i really don't know. all i know is kotb have done it 2 1/2 years ago. if she was going to do something, and this is about a perfect phone call a call where i'm questioning the election. i'm telling them that in my opinion, the election was rigged. you need people with courage, you know, bill barr was a coward. he was afraid to do things. he was afraid he was going to be impeached, and i was very rough on him. i will say. i said, you have to do something. you're an american. you have to do something, bill, and he just was a coward. he was afraid to do anything. jack smith, he's like a -- he's like a deranged individual, and i think we're doing very well with that guy, but he is -- he's a sick puppy. >> he needs to trademark the confession because it really is so true. everything donald trump ever says in his confession are projection. he said -- bill barr did everything he could do to defend donald trump until donald trump told him a couple of weeks before the election, i need you to arrest my opponent and his family and throw them in jail so i can win the presidency, the election. i mean, that is straight out of a fascist dictatorship, and so bill barr after i've got to say, humiliating himself for several years, bill barr decides, this is where i get off. this is enough. >> this is my line. >> i may believe in an imperial presidency, but not a fascist presidency. that's what donald trump was asking him to do, asking him to steal an election, asking him to arrest his political opponents, and asking him do the sort of things again that fascist dictators do. he wouldn't do it and so now trump turned on him, and jack myth and everything else. we can point you back to what we were saying in 2019, that if donald trump lost in 2020, he would run again, and he would run again simply to avoid all the crimes he was committing. again, i'm not good at math, but that was four years ago. four years ago we were saying, he will run again so he can try to avoid -- >> jail. >> -- going to jail, and so here we are. i must say a lot of people were saying that. so it's hard to believe anybody's stupid enough watching that show to completely forget that we all saw this coming like a freight train out of the mist, and now he says this when he's running to try to avoid jail time as we have been saying for four years. >> that was by the way, donald trump going after his former attorney general, bill barr. also the prosecutors seeking to hold him accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. we'll have the new developments on the former president's legal troubles that now include his twitter account. >> they didn't want to turn the information over to the government. in fact, they wanted to run and rat out the government to donald trump. >> meanwhile, trump's former campaign manager is calling the results of tuesday's special election in ohio, quote, rocket fuel for the democrats. we'll have much more on the fallout from the republican party. plus, the latest from hawaii where raging wildfires have turned deadly overnight. we'll have the very latest. with us this morning, we have u.s. special correspondent for bbc news, caddy kay, eugene robinson, and matt lewis joins us this morning, and we begin with a new court ruling that has revealed months before charging donald trump. jack smith's office executed a search warrant of the former president's twitter account. according to the redacted ruling made public yesterday, the justice department executed the warrant back in january despite being challenged by the elon musk-owned company. musk refused to turn over trump's account at first because of his objections to apart of the warrant that barred twitter from informing the former president that his account was being searched. >> it was a criminal investigation. >> the billionaire claimed that the order, quote, violated the company's first amendment right. >> it's a little flexible these days by the way. >> with the former president to communicate -- to communicate with the former president. twitter was held in contempt of court and forced to comply after a judge ruled that there was, quote, probable cause to search the account for evidence of criminal offenses. the judge also found, quote, reasonable grounds to believe that telling trump about the search beforehand would give him the chance to destroy potential evidence. it's unclear what evidence smith's office wanted as a result of the warrant. you'll remember trump's twitter account was banned in the days following the january 6th attack, but it was restored last year after musk purchased the company. nbc news has reached out to trump's lawyers and twitter which has now been renamed x for comment. >> didn't get any. gene robinson, i must say it's fascinating. a bit fascinating that a company that bent over backwards to do what chinese communist party wants them to do and other dictatorships, what they want them to do are now worried about first amendment rights and said, oh, we need to notify donald trump even though this -- that would actually hamper the investigation. >> yeah. they have no problem following government instructions orders or restrictions elsewhere in the world, especially in china. they have a problem doing what the u.s. courts instruct them to do, which they're legally required to do, and which they finally did after being sanctioned and fined. it's, you know, what's fascinating about this is one worries and one wonders what is in that account they wanted to go after. are they trying to, you know, something that you can't see publicly? are they trying to get into his direct messages? it's unclear to me exactly what it is, but clearly jack smith thought there was something in there, and we'll see what it was, i guess in the form of some time when it comes out in court. >> joining us now, nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken delanian. what's your take on the twitter story or x? >> mika, i think eugene is absolutely onto something there because obviously donald trump's tweets are public. you can go online and find that old account which has been dormant for two years, but what's not public are direct messages or for example, drafts of tweets that were never sent or metadata that would show it from a phone or desktop. the outtakes that trump was making on january 6th, a message to the rioters, and the point of that was trying to figure out what he didn't say, what he didn't want to say, what he proposed to say, the speculation and a lot of people were wondering if that's one of the things, and another fast-naming thing about this that's comical is for a few days, smith and his team reached out to twitter through the channel they had established for legal process and nobody responded because elon musk had gutted staff of the place to an extent that any of us who reached out to the press operation found the same problem. the special counsel finally gets through, and then twitter delays and they were fined $350,000 by the court for that initial reluctance to comply with again, a search warrant. not a subpoena because this is getting content which is protected by the fourth amendment. so you need to go to a judge and show evidence of crime. so very significant development. we'll have to see how it figures in the case. >> yeah. so obviously a lot of -- all of president trump's tweets are public and they can be found in a different way, a draft of a tweet. is that saved? if you type something out, does anyone know, and then you erase it, is it all in there? is that what you are looking for? >> you're asking me that because i'm a technological whiz kid. it begs the question, if they're in search of a crime, you wonder where that is. >> i'm not even a simple country lawyer, but i don't see how something that's written in drafts which would be your thoughts that you didn't put into action, that seems less personal than things that have been sent to your dms or that you have written to somebody else. it's not a form of communication he favors. did he send a lot of dms? i don't know whether his account is full of the conversations effectively which is what direct messages are, one to one conversations. is it full of the kind of direct conversations that he might have been having that would be useful with prosecutors? it's intriguing. it'll be interesting. i'm sure we'll finally know. we will get to know during the trial what happened, but it will be intriguing what this led to. >> so the trump campaign is taking on the former president's indictment in a new attack ad. >> i knew you were going to say this. if they went searching, it's because somebody on his staff said something like, you should check the direct messages or you should trek the drafts. he's given somebody else the password so anybody can open up and see the drafts, like, they're just not going to do that fishing expedition. i was just thinking as we were talking about it, if they went searching there, they went searching because a trumper who worked on the inside of trumps team said, you want to know how we communicated? go there. >> this attack ad, the minute-long television spot names the prosecutors and investigators that brought charges against him, connecting them to president biden. a majority of the ad focuses on fulton county d.a. connie willis, and found a number of inaccurate and misleading accusations. willis addressed this in an email to her staff calling it derogatory and false. the ad is scheduled to air frequently in fulton county, georgia, and it's timed to air as willis prepares to bring charges against trump and his allies and we're looking at maybe next week. >> that is just specifically designed to influence a future jury pool by actually doing a hit job against law enforcement. when you do a hit job against law enforcement, spread all of these lies and what are you doing? what you are doing is, again, you're tampering with the jury pool. >> absolutely. i think the interesting thing is that what, four indictments now trying to not look into them, but in georgia legally -- the people i talk to -- i'm not even a country lawyer either. they say that the, you know, what's happening like in georgia for example, and the mar-a-lago case, that both of those cases would legally be very easy to prove, whereas the january 6th case legally, even though obviously what trump did was in, you know, in my opinion, he incited the riot, but legally hard to prove, but the difference is venue. if you are having a trial in washington, d.c., that's going to be a very different jury pool than if you are having it in florida, and i do think obviously donald trump is engaged in, you know, pre-empted witness tampering. joe, to your point about the twitter thing, i think that is the other interesting thing, like, i'm looking to all of these conservative legal experts who are talking about the january 6th trial, and they're basically saying, yeah, what trump did is horrible, but i'm not sure he broke the law. it's going to be hard to prove that he actually broke the law, and i think the thing to keep in mind is that jack smith knows things we don't yet know, and whether it's somebody flipping on him as you sort of suggested, whether it's, you know, his former chief of staff or whoever, there may be details that come out that are like this, but we don't yet know what jack smith knows. >> ken, i want you to underline that. i'll just make notes again over the past several days. i have been disturbed by the fact that establishment republicans who claim to be anti-trump, even if they were anti-anti-trump at the same time, they said, oh, this is jack smith. this is about the first amendment or what about hunter biden's laptop or -- a lot of different distractions from smith and january 6th. the republican establishment that was anti-trump is scurrying back to him claiming somehow that jack smith is attacking donald trump for using his first amendment rights. we saw that memo yesterday, and my gosh, the conspiracy that was hatched, it seems to me again and i don't know as much about the law as you i'm sure, but it seems to me to be a laughable thing. this has nothing to do with the first amendment. this is a conspiracy to push fake electors on mike pence to change and discount the votes of tens of millions of americans. >> and joe, not all of the republican establishment is trying to justify it. you may have noticed that alberto gonzalez, the bush administration attorney general wrote an op-ed the other day and came out and said, look. this indictment is very strong, and i'm disturbed that my fellow republicans and pundits on fox news are impugning the justice system and the justice department that he used to lead because he knows that it's filled with non-political, nonpartisan people who are trying to pursue the rule of law, and in his view, the indictment was quite strong. so you're absolutely right. the memo we learned about yesterday by the harvard-trained lawyer from wisconsin, it appears to be the blueprint for the people. there's language in there that says we should only execute this if there are plausible legal claim that is we think will show fraud. that wasn't -- false electors were voting in december, 2020. there were no plausible legal claims and they went forward anyway, and that was the crux of the issue there. i want to talk abjure tampering and trump's, you know, inflammatory criticism of prosecutors and now the judge in the federal case. i have been talking to legal experts and wrote a piece about this which will be public later today, and it's a really horrible dilemma that all of these judges are in because donald trump is running for president and political speech is the most protected speech under the first amendment, and yet normally a criminal defendant would not be allowed to get away with trying to influence the jury pool by impugning the prosecutors, but a lot of experts i talk to, even ones very critical of trump think that the judges will have no choice but to let him do almost everything except threaten like he did the other day with, you know, if you come after me, i'm coming after you. that is what they think would cross the line, if he starts posting things that would be perceived as threats to the judge or prosecutors. then you'll be in this horrible situation where what do the judges leverage? they can fine him, but the ultimate leverage is they can throw him in jail, and now we're into this situation where a person with lifetime secret service protection, can he be jailed in how do marshals react? we are in really dangerous, uncharted territory with these cases with the former president. coming up with this week's vote in ohio, a roadmap for 2024. democrats think so, and they want to make reproductive rights a centerpiece of the presidential campaign. we'll dig into that reporting from nbc morning news. 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um, it's called commitment. could you turn down the volume? here, you can try. get way more into what your into when you stream on the xfinity 10g network. in an interview last night, trump essentially admitted that he interfered in georgia's 2020 election. to georgia's secretary of state, prad raffensperger. >> i believe i won that election by many, many, many, hundreds of thousands of votes. that's what i think, and i expressed that on the phone call, and i said, i don't know what the number looks like, 11,000 or something. i said, what i need is 11,000 votes. i won this thing by hundreds of thousands of votes. that's my opinion. it's a strong opinion, and i think it's worn out by the facts and we'll see that. >> yeah, and i think i won the masters in 1987. i'm going to go take the trophy from the first person they awarded it to. i think i have more number one hits and gold records than the beatles and rolling stones combined, and i think -- come on. he thinks he won by -- >> we have to do a disclaimer. >> he didn't win by hundreds of thousands of votes and news max actually did a disclaimer saying they knew that joe biden legally won the contest, but this idea -- >> didn't have to ask him. >> this idea that donald trump and his trumpers, and just because he says he believes and somebody said yesterday, he owns all the money in the bank, doesn't mean he can have a conspiracy like an "oceans 12" conspiracy. or "oceans 13," i forget which one it was, to have brad pitt to break in and take all the money out of the bank. >> yeah. >> yet again, another admission. ied to him i needed 11,000, but that perfect phone call, not sounding so perfect anymore, gene. >> no, it's not. i think that was "oceans 11" when they took the bags full of money out of the casino, but in any of that -- no. you can't just say, you know, i believed that i was a billionaire and go rob a bank. you can't just say, i believed i had won the state, and then then not just asked, but pressure and try to intimidate the georgia secretary of state into illegally inventing or changing 11,780 votes so you could then have won the state by one vote. it's, you know, the perfect phone call, right? it was perfect for prosecutors who are trying to prove what donald trump did. this is -- this is astounding, and it is -- sit a riot that he ran the disclaimer afterwards. obviously they have a better purchase on reality than donald trump does, and also they see what trump is doing in continually coming out with this stuff. >> yeah. i think we have that disclaimer. it's kind of a strange way of covering it, but here. take a look at how it plays out. >> i totally dispute that. i think it's ridiculous what happened, and that they allowed that to happen, and that to me, we don't want anybody to talk about it. we have to make sure they don't cheat on the elections. will they do it again? will they cheat again? we're not going to let them. i believe i won that election by many, many votes. many, many hundreds of thousands of votes. that's what i think. >> the election results as legal and final. >> oh my god. it's so rich. so rich. they just have to pop that in -- >> pop it in. >> because -- >> don't want to get sued. >> it cost fox $87 million to keep churning up the lies. they're now liable for maybe up to another billion dollars. news max famously had that are morning anchor get up out of the chair when they were spreading lice. it was one of the great moves in recent cable news history, got up and just walked off the set, left the chair there, but, you know, they, you know, they sit there and they let him spew lies for an interview knowing that they're lies -- >> knowing they have to say a disclaimer. >> and saying a disclaimer because they know they're letting him lie through the entire interview. >> i think donald trump's entire argument now at least in 2 of the 4 cases is the george costanza facts, right? not a lie if i believe it's true, and so he has to commit to the bit, and actually the news max thing reminds me a little bit of professional wrestling, you know, where donald trump's the favorite or whatever, and he's in this act, and now when they cut back to the analysis at the end, they have to -- we're now calling it world wrestling entertainment and not the world wrestling federation. this is entertainment for some, but i think the damage is done though to be honest. i don't know if the disclaim aert end -- we find it obviously hilarious and very telling. for people who are watching the wrestling fans so to speak, i don't know if the disclaimer matters to them at the end, and so -- but it is -- it's surreal and very post-modern after that. >> and ken, before we end the block, i want to hear a little bit more about this fbi raid in utah where a man was killed. tell us what happened. >> it's a tragic segue from, you know, false claims on news max to a story about a trump supporter, 75-year-old craig robertson in provo, utah who had been posting things like in september, the time is right for a presidential assassination or two. first joe, then kamala, and then the fbi decided to go and try to arrest him yesterday morning at 6:00 a.m. with president biden coming to the region, and as they were serving that arrest warrant, they say he was armed and they shot him to death, but he has been threatening not only the president and the vice president, but d.a. alvin bragg of new york, the attorney general there, leticia -- letitia james, and he had on a trump hat in a sniper suit. he was living in his own reality. this is the tragedy that enpseudo. this is not a one-off. there was just an analysis that threats against public officials across the country have absolutely spiked in the last year, and that's just looking at federal charges. many of them are not captured around the country, but there's a climate of angry rhetoric that has erupted into actual action, threats and action like we've never seen before, and so these words of these politicians today that in many cases as you just demonstrated are false, they have consequences, guys. coming up, one of our next guests is a lifelong republican who describes donald trump and his allies this way during the january 6th hearing. >> a clear and present danger to american democracy. >> we'll speak with retired judge, michael luttig, a long time conservative who's raising alarms about the ex-president's attack on democracy. "morning joe" is coming right back. back tomize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. you could save $700 dollars just by switching. ooooh, let me put a reminder on my phone. on the top of the pile! oh. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ i suffer with psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis. only pay for what you need. i was on a journey for a really long time to find some relief. cosentyx works for me. cosentyx helps real people get real relief from the symptoms of psoriatic arthritis or psoriasis. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, had a vaccine or plan to or if ibd symptoms develop or worsen. i move so much better because of cosentyx. ask your rheumatologist about cosentyx. struggling with the highs and lows of bipolar 1? ask about vraylar. because you are greater than your bipolar 1, and you can help take control of your symptoms - with vraylar. some medicines only treat the lows or highs. vraylar treats depressive, acute manic, and mixed episodes of bipolar 1 in adults. proven, full-spectrum relief for all bipolar 1 symptoms. and in vraylar clinical studies, most saw no substantial impact on weight. elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. call your doctor about unusual changes in behavior or suicidal thoughts. antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults. report fever, stiff muscles or confusion which may mean a life-threatening reaction, or uncontrollable muscle movements which may be permanent. high blood sugar, which can lead to coma or death, weight gain and high cholesterol may occur. movement dysfunction and restlessness are common side effects. sleepiness and stomach issues are also common. side effects may not appear for several weeks. ask about vraylar and learn how abbvie could help you save. when nature and science get together... pretty sweet things can happen. like our senokot laxative gummies. to relieve occasional constipation, senokot starts with the natural senna plant that science transforms into a yummy gummy! sweet! senokot laxative gummies. being middle class right now, it's tough making ends meet for sure. republicans in congress say if we just cut taxes even more for the biggest corporations the money will eventually someday trickle trickle down to you. right. joe biden would rather just stop those corporations from charging so damn much. capping the cost of drugs like insulin. cracking down on surprise medical bills and all those crazy junk fees. there's more work to do. tell the president to keep lowering costs for middle class families. ♪♪ really quickly, i want to go back to you, and i want to expand on what i was saying about the lies that people are being told about the fbi. >> yeah. >> fox news and donald trump and trumpers are telling people the fbi is coming to kick down your door and kill you. what happens when the fbi shows up at somebody's door who's been threatening to assassinate and planning to assassinate the president of the united states and the vice president of the united states? he comes out shooting because he's been told by fox news and the trumpers that when the fbi shows up, they're going to kick down your door and kill you. so -- so -- >> so yeah. >> so you actually -- you talk about real-life consequences. >> mm-hmm. >> these lies create real-life consequences, and put the lives of law enforcement officers on the line and make their already tough and dangerous jobs even more dangerous. >> absolutely. so after -- after this incident in utah, you know, what it tells the authorities, the fbi and local police and others that because of this -- this rhetoric that's being spread by what used to be the law and order party -- obviously it's not now. the next time they have to -- they have to go in with more armor and more weapons because they're likely confront somebody who shoots next time. i mean, this is -- words have consequences. words are dangerous. lies have consequences, and -- and it is just shocking to me as somebody who remembers the way that hippies talked about the fbi in 1967. it's just shocking to me to hear the republican party not just adopting that rhetoric, but turbo charging it, and -- and essentially saying that the, you know, the fbi's a bunch of storm troopers who are going to come in and kill you. it's -- it's just astounding to me, and the -- donald trump just sort of, i guess, unplugged the plug and allowed all of this just stuff to come out, but wow. it's just amazing, and what a tragedy yesterday. that 75-year-old believes the lies. that's the tragedy. >> that's the danger is the guardrails are taken off because they hear this on tv. they hear it from politicians, and so they're ready to start their own civil war when law enforcement comes to check on the fascination threat. >> i wonder how the judge will be dealing with trump's, quote, political speech with her experience, with the january 6th rioters and seeing how infected their minds were. it will be interesting to see how affected she might be by some of the words that are out there. >> yeah. >> maybe more than others. you never know. still ahead on "morning joe," what's driving the day on wall street. we're joined by cnbc host of "morning bell," and "morning joe" is back in a moment. ♪♪ nd "morning joe" is back in a moment ♪ from prom dresses... ...to workouts... ...and new adventures. you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past... they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b. although uncommon, up to 1 in 5 survivors of meningitis will have long term consequences. now as you're thinking about all the vaccines your teen might need, make sure you ask your doctor if your teen is missing meningitis b vaccination. my cpa told me i wouldn't qualify for the erc tax refund, so i called innovation refunds. their team of independent tax attorneys will work with your cpa to determine if your company is eligible. 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[ applause ] this is an outrage, but under this tyranny, elected officials can be removed simply for political purposes and by a whim of the governor and no matter how you feel about me, you should not be okay with that. >> that is monique warrell who was an elected florida state attorney slamming governor ron desantis after he abruptly descended her yesterday. this is the second time he has removed an elected official from their position. an elected official. >> an elected official. >> both were democrats who were replaced by republicans. his executive order accuses her of underprosecuting crime, but she says this is an attempt to jump start his presidential primary bid. she has vowed to run for her position again, but before he does that, she joins us now right here on "morning joe." good to have you on. >> good morning. >> thank you so much for being with us. i have to admit i mean -- i have been -- my family moved to florida, like, over 40 years ago. i have been involved in politics and intimately involved in politics for a very long time. i just -- i've got to say. despite all that, even i am shocked that a governor can just boot out somebody who was elected by the people. that's -- everybody needs to understand you weren't appointed by anybody. you were elected by the people, and as you said, this sort of dictator move is -- it really is shocking. what's been the response from your constituents and people who voted for you just three years ago? >> well, you know, you're right. it is shocking, and the nation should be shocked by that because essentially we are dealing with a dictator. we're dealing with someone who is overreaching his political authority and removing a little bit -- removing elected officials simply for not being politically aligned with him. typically the removal rules were used to remove individuals who had been arrested or convicted of crimes or individuals who had fallen into addiction and weren't able to properly perform their duties, but now this governor is using these rules to remove people who simply are democrats or remove elected officials in democratic counties which he's retaliating against because they didn't support him in the election. this is a sad day in florida. it's a sad day in america, and the whole country should be watching because if we're not careful, this could become the next president of the united states. >> the thing is there's nothing conservative about this guy. i'm a conservative. i'm a small government conservative. we believe the power starts at the local level, and anything the local level can do, you give it to the local level. if they can't do it, the state level does and it they can't do it, the federal level does it. everything is upside down with desantis. he's, like, a centralized state, like, authoritarian. whether here's banning small businesses from running their businesses the way they want during covid, or banning -- are going after baseball teams, but now here this seems to be an even greater breach. i'm curious, what do your constituents -- what do the people of your district think about you being elected, you campaigning, you debating, you running against another candidate, you winning the election, and then him just unilaterally deciding to fire you, to push you to the side for a campaign talking point? >> well, people are upset. there's no, you know, doubt about that. i ran on a very specific platform, and i kept my word. i stood by the things that i said that i would do based on research and analysis of the criminal legal system over my 20 years of practice. i talked about mass incarceration in this country and how florida leads the nation in incarceration, and i ran on a platform of implementing things that would change that, using the strong arm of the law when necessary, but also implementing programs that would divert people from the criminal system, and the constituents are upset. they are angry because their votes have been stolen from them. they elected someone to govern according to their values, and that's been stripped away, and he didn't put in someone who was close in ideology or anything like that because there was some, you know, malfunction with my way of doing things. he put someone in who was completely opposite of what the people elected and what the people wanted all at a time when crime is down in central florida. so there is no public safety reason for him to take this step. there is strictly a political reason, and you said it best, to jump start his failed presidential campaign. coming up, former secretary of homeland security, jeh johnson weighs in on the growing number of threats being made against public officials. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." i was stuck. unresolved depression symptoms were in my way. i needed more from my antidepressant. vraylar helped give it a lift. adding vraylar to an antidepressant... ...is clinically proven to help relieve overall depression symptoms... 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switching. ooooh, let me put a reminder on my phone. on the top of the pile! oh. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ if i had to name ten artists that i've been involved with, he's in the top five. >> most memorable artist. >> he was a wandering spirit around the city. when he sang, it was like, whoa, this guy's got it. >> we expected big things and he did absolutely nothing. >> how many records do you think he sold in america? >> in america? six. >> nobody had even heard of him. how can that be? >> to us, it was one of the most favorite records of all time. he was the first opposition to apartheid. >> oh wow. >> two south africans search for rodriguez, the greatest songwriter most people have never heard of. he released two albums in the '70s that flopped in the u.s., but became massively successful in south africa, where he was compared to such legends as bob dylan and cat stevens. the owner of a capetown record store, said to me of us south africans, he was the sound track to our lives. here's the thing. rodriguez appeared to have no idea of his success. he quit music and settled down in detroit, started a family and made a living through manual labor. it wasn't until 1997 when one of his daughters discovered a website dedicated to him that rodriguez learned of his success abroad. rodriguez passed away on tuesday at the age of 81. joining us now is one of his daughters, sandra rodriguez kennedy along with the founder of light in the attic records matt sullivan, whose label reissued rodriguez's albums. wow. >> it's always been such an extraordinary story. we're sorry, first of all, for the passing of your father and certainly thinking about you and your family now. we thought this would be a wonderful time to celebrate his remarkable life and legacy and what he meant to south africans fighting apartheid, all while he was basically a day laborer in detroit. tell us about that incredible life that your father lived and what you're the proudest of. >> i'm extremely proud of him for pursuing his musical career amidst, you know, people telling him work in auto plants or get a real job. he just persevered as the artist he is and has always been. i was born in 1964, and i knew from birth that he was a rock star and i loved the songs as much as his fans. we have a lot of relationships, my father and i. we're business partners, we're musicians, we're friends, we're politicals, we're activists. he's my father. so he belongs to me as much as he belongs to the world and his global audience. yeah, thank you. much gratitude to everyone for their well wishes and condolences and their outpouring of love. i can feel it. it's a vibration. he had a vibration of love and wisdom, and he shared that with us. so i'm grateful for him, the way his mind works. >> yeah. matt, it is hard to fathom that he was working with people say, yeah, i used to be a musician. really? come on, man. there's that moment where he first plays and you're like, this can't be real. and then he steps out on stage in south africa in 1998 and you look at the faces of the people. it's literally like elvis came back to life. there are people that were weeping and cheering. he just stood on stage and they just cheered and kept screaming. he was so humble. he said, thank you for keeping me alive. i have a feeling this extraordinary story and his music will stay alive for a long time. talk about this extraordinary slice of not only rock history, but also of ending apartheid in south africa. >> it's incredible. his music was the sound track to the anti-apartheid movement in south africa. you went in everyone's house. his records were as popular as a simon and garfunkle. it's mind boggling the music that he wrote. i wasn't there in 1998. watching that footage again for the 50th time, it makes me want to start crying, because you see people's faces. you're right, it's like elvis coming back from the dead or the beatles. it gives me goose bumps. he was a remarkable person. his essence in spirit was unlike anybody else. he changed my life and shaped me into a better person and all of us at light in the attic and everyone he met. his music is definitely going to carry on. he had such a strong spirit. just undeniable. >> sandra, i've got to say, yes, him going back to south africa and having this triumphant concert tour and renewed success, that was moving, but it wasn't as moving as what he did after. he went back to detroit, he lived in the same home. the money he gave to friends and family members. he continued living an extraordinary humble life, almost a monk-like life and would just sit in that house. there's that incredible scene with just him, an acoustic guitar, this really humble home he's living in, the snow quietly falling outside. it was almost like a religious experience. it's extraordinary. he stayed true to himself through it all, didn't he? >> that is correct. he said he's not giving his money away. he said he's investing in people. he wanted economic freedom for people. he was very much a part of the civil rights movement, of the united migrant workers' plight, poverty. i won't glamorize poverty. one of his shortcomings and weaknesses was that he wouldn't ask for help. he would find a way. i've just figured that out now. grief is a holy time. i held his hand. i'm his medical spiritual person in his life. he would say keep me alive when he was getting weak. so we did everything. i was with him when he breathed his last breath. it was very, very peaceful and very textbook, the way a person takes up spirit. now he's eternal and he's gone to the hereafter and he's spirit, so he's totally free. >> yeah. >> sandra rodriguez kennedy and matt sullivan, thank you both so much for sharing part of this incredible legacy now with us. in honor of rodriguez's legacy, his family will be putting on a concert this saturday in detroit at the masonic temple from noon to 11:00 p.m. the event will be free to the public. we are three minutes into the fourth hour of "morning joe." former senator claire mccaskill back with us and sam stein is with us. we begin this hour with yesterday's fatal fbi shooting of a utah man accused of making online threats against president biden and others days before the president visited the state. the bureau had been aware of the suspect for several months, tipped off by a social media company concerned by his posts. nbc news senior white house correspondent kelly o'donnell has the latest. >> reporter: new this morning, this video of the deadly encounter outside a utah man's home wednesday. the fbi was there to arrest him for alleged threats to assassinate president biden. the suspect was shot and killed by agents just hours before the president was due to land in utah. the fbi says it had been tracking months of vulgar and violent threats against the president and other prominent democrats made by craig d. robertson, believed to be in his 70s. wednesday morning the fbi shot and killed robertson while serving a warrant at his home. >> the swat team went through his back door with a battering ram. he was like i'm not coming out, [ bleep ]. >> reporter: here is a look inside the weapons stockpiled, displayed on his social media. the timing became urgent wednesday when the suspect made fresh threats tied to the biden scheduled visit. the fbi says robertson knew about the trip. i hear biden is coming to utah and referred to cleaning the dust off the sniper rifle. investigators told the court his photos and comments showed robertson had the gear and was prepared to use sniper tactics. in the arrest warrant, robertson's own post had described him as a maga trumper. the fbi also noted he had been wearing a trump had when he was under surveillance. pages of detailed and graphic death threats targeted many of the same public figures mr. trump often talks about. officials responsible for prosecuting the former president, including manhattan d.a. alvin bragg. >> the criminal is the district attorney. >> reporter: more than angry words, the official papers charging robertson with crimes say he had, quote, intent to kill at a minimum d.a. bragg and president joe biden. robertson threatened federal agents too. president biden later arrived in utah and was briefed on the deadly incident and the threats. now to the new developments in one of the federal indictments against donald trump. yesterday we told you about a previously unseen memo that outlines the plot to overturn the 2020 election results by donald trump and members of his inner circle. the memo which was obtained by the "new york times" was allegedly sent in early december 2020 by trump lawyer kenneth cheeseboro, who is one of the co-conspiracies described in the latest indictment of the former president. in the note, he details the so-called fake electors scheme, which falsely claimed former vice president mike pence had the power to block the certification of the states' votes on january 6th, all just to buy time. cheeseboro admitted that the supreme court would likely reject the plan. in a statement to nbc news, cheeseboro's lawyers write that he was simply providing legal advice to trump's campaign, but that whether the campaign relied on that advice as he intended will have to remain a question to be resolved in court. those efforts by drip and his lawyers to subvert democracy has in no small part led the american bar association to create a task force for american democracy. it will focus on three things. depoliticizing how elections are administered, educating the public on the principles of our democracy, and advancing improvements in election systems in order to root out distrust sowed by certain political leaders. joining us now the cochairs of this newly formed task force, former secretary of homeland security under president obama jeh johnson and retired judge jay michael ludwig, who served on the court of appeals for the fourth circuit. >> thank you for your strong, uncompromising voice on protecting and defending the constitution of the united states. i heard of friend of mine going i like the new judge ludwig. my response was, no, it's the same judge who's always respected and defended the constitution of the united states. talk about this task force and also the threat from our party, my former party, i would guess your former party. talk about the threat to democracy that's before us now because of the undermining of the rule of law. >> mika and joe, thank you so much for inviting secretary johnson and me to join you this morning to introduce the country to the american bar association's new task force. american democracy is in crisis today. it is the most important issue facing the nation between now and 2025 and beyond. the continuing false claims to this day that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the former president and the republicans, those claims have laid waste to americans' confidence in their elections and also to their faith in american democracy. aba president mary smith in announcing this blue ribbon task force of the nation's 1.5 million lawyers said that we lawyers must run to the storm. all americans must run to the storm, joe, that is the crisis of american democracy today. >> jeh johnson, how does the task force plan to do that, to run to the storm? what actions and what policies will you be pushing to try and reach the goal of the three points laid out as we introduced this task force, including educating the public? >> so, first, thank you for having us on. i'm honored to serve as a cochair with judge luttig, who's one of the heros of january 6th, in my opinion, serving with him on this task force to strengthen our democracy. that would be the capstone of my public services career. everything is on the table, in my opinion, from not only looking at how we educate young people american civics, but also how our cyber security, social media, conventional media contribute to or distract from our democracy to the very manner in which we elect candidates for federal office in our country. we've put together a really extraordinary distinguished nonpartisan bipartisan group of americans to look at this with us. retired former judges like judge luttig including judges from the ohio supreme court and carly fiorina, the head of the naacp legal defense fund. we're going to take the next year to go on basically a listening tour around the country. we're going to do our own research, develop some recommendations that we will develop a year from now that i hope and believe will be implementable and gain support of the american people. lawyers don't have a corner and a monopoly on wisdom. we have a number of basic patriotic americans that will help us out. >> i'm hopeful that in this process there will be some effort to look at the lawyers who have violated their oaths to the law and to the constitution by embracing the big lie and the fraud. i know there have been some lawyers who have had disciplinary hearings, a few that have been disbarred in a few jurisdictions. but do you all plan on looking at how well are lawyers policing themselves as it relates to supporting our democracy? this seems like an empty exercise to me if we can't keep our own house clean as lawyers. >> the lawyers of the nation are uniquely qualified and position positioned to protect and preserve american democracy and the rule of law. this task force first and foremost will be looking into the issues surrounding our constitution and the rule of law that have come out of the attack and assault on american democracy and our institutions of democracy and law over the past two or three years. the task force is not likely to speak directly to the counsel that was provided to the former president in the lead-up to january 6th. but certainly at a 40,000 foot level, the task force will address the profound obligations of lawyers under the constitution and the rule of law. >> i have a question for secretary johnson. i'm not a lawyer. i am married to one. i would never say that lawyers are not important because of that. however, in this case, you know, our government was built on a system of checks and balances. one of the things that i think people who are concerned about democracy and its future point to as a failure was the in ability of our political system to hold those checks and balances or barely hold them together. for that i look at the second impeachment and the idea that, well, he's out of office soon, we can let the courts decide this. in fact, it was a political issue, the second impeachment and it was kind of punted down the road. my question to you is, on this task force how directly will you work with elected officials to sort of persuade them as the judge did in the lead-up to january 6th of the critical nature of democracy and its fragility too? >> that's a good question. we do expect to engage, first of all state secretaries of state who are responsible for running elections in their respective jurisdictions. one of the missions in this task force, in my view, needs to be looking at what incentivizes political actors to engage in extremist rhetoric, extremist behavior, what incentivizing them when you have something like 400 safe seats in the house of representatives to basically cater to their extremes and respected constituencies. when it comes to the issue of lawyers, this is what happens when a president systemically drives out of his administration anybody who has systemically kept the guardrails. you cannot give your client simply legal advice they want to hear. you have to give them the best and most sustainable legal opinion about what the law calls for, authorizes and prohibits. >> former secretary of homeland security jeh johnson and retired federal judge jay michael luttig, thank you both for being on the show. >> thank you for your service to this country. we turn now to the devastation in hawaii with thousands of residents fleeing their homes on the island of mow maui as wildfires destroy an historic town. miguel almaguer, what is the latest? >> reporter: the death toll has risen to a staggering and sobering 36. that number can continue to rise. meantime, behind me evacuees slept overnight in this gym. there's upwards of 4,000 people who evacuated this area, all as three major wildfires continue to burn at this hour and they're moving in multiple directions. >> oh my god. >> reporter: driving past burning homes and walls of fire, for some, this is what the harrowing escape from maui looked like. the historic town of lahaina in ruins swallowed by named and ungulfed in smoke. the apocalyptic scene unfolding in west maui on wednesday, flames spreading onto boats and pouring into the ocean while the desperate plunged into the pacific to escape the inferno. >> i was the last one off the dock when the firestorm came through the banyan tree and took everything with it. >> reporter: as the coast guard plucked people out of the water, more people overwhelmed hospitals with serious burns. as 80 mile per hour wind fans the flames, ground support was suspended for hours. 911 and cell phone coverage was also down, creating chaos amid the panic. >> when you see some auntie on the ground probably dead and you can't get in connect with your family, you just think the worst. >> reporter: with at least three major fires still burning on the island, resources are thin and the true extent of the damage is unknown. these dramatic before and after photos capturing a glimpse of the changed landscape. >> local people have lost everything. they've lost their house, they've lost their animals. it's devastating. >> reporter: this morning, a tropical paradise turned into a hellish landscape. the biggest concern, of course, is that death toll and the possibility that it will continue to rise. again, it stands at a staggering 36. meantime, officials are trying to get many of the folks in this shelter behind me to other islands where there's additional services. all of the local governments here say they are overwhelmed and overrun with evacuees. >> miguel almaguer live in maui, thank you very much for that report. coming up, more luxury trips, vip passes to sporting events and dozens of private jet flights. we are digging into new reporting on the billionaires who have helped supreme court justice clarence thomas live a lavish life. "morning joe" will be right back. lavish life. 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maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but the appearance of impropriety is so crystal clear here. that is what a reasonable person sees. even under the rules he sent to the senate, he has violated those rules consistently and constantly during his time on the bench. if nothing is done about it, it's going to further erode the legitimacy of this court. >> i don't know how you can't be compromised when you're being given lavish gifts. i'm going to put that in quotes, because it feels like it's in exchange for something. personal hospitality might be dinner, banana bread, not tuition, jet flights, vacations, yacht cruises costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. how is this man not compromised in his ability to make an objective decision? are we all joking ourselves here? this is not just a joke. it's an assault on our system and on the supreme court and what it is supposed to b and the credibility in it. i mean, these are valuing millions of dollars ultimately. this is over decades. how is this man not completely compromised? >> first of all, i can be bought off with a good banana bread, so don't underestimate that. secondly, i want to credit propublica for incredible journalism here. just putting my editor's hat on for a second, i don't think this is the final iteration of the story. what i would think is the next chapter, just me speculating here, 38 paid-for vacations by four individual mega donors, to me, that sounds like someone is coordinating a vacation system for clarence thomas. when you and i plan family vacations, you don't just randomly call donors, hey, i've got the slot open, can you pay for my trip out west on your jet? someone clearly, or at least i would think, is organizing these types of outings and maybe even matching a donor with the event. that, to me, is where the issue goes next. who is doing the organization around this? and are they the ones who actually have a stake before the justice? propublica noted that none of these three businessmen, putting aside harlan crow, had overt cases before the court at the time they were sponsoring these vacations, which on the surface suggests, okay, maybe there's nothing wrong here because they didn't have intersecting business. my question as an editor would be, who is helping organize these events? >> looking into all of that, claire, just curious, putting ginni thomas aside for a second, there's that whole part of the story there and her text messages to mark meadows and her friend, husband, whatever. let's leave that aside for a second. just this information in itself, if you dig deeper as sam has suggested and it is found that there is no question that his decisionmaking is compromised, what else? should he step down? what would you suggest? >> well, certainly i would be all in favor of him stepping down. i do think the senate at this point has a real obligation to try to get more information from these billionaires. sam's right. is clarence thomas sitting in his office one day and he gets a call from tony novelli, hey, i was thinking about you today, why don't i hook you up with a really fancy vacation for you and ginni? how does this happen? is the federalist society anywhere in this? is leo, our friend that was painted in the picture with thomas which hangs in harlan crow's vacation home, this wide network of lawyers going back into law school know if they want to be a federal judge when the republicans are in charge they need to belong to the federalist society. the same man who gave the list to trump of who he could appoint to the supreme court, are they involved in this? it would not surprise me if leo was the matchmaker. we're going to get clarence another $100,000 vacation, who are we going to call to do it? there's a lot more digging that needs to be done. it either needs to be done by journalists, like at propublica, or on the united states senate judiciary committee. >> these are really important questions. who else is involved and connected? to capitol hill now, where far-right republicans in the house have been for months pushing for a formal impeachment of president biden. as nbc news senior national political reporter sahil kapur reports, launching an impeachment for a political win could cost them the majority. what are you hearing? >> reporter: speaker mccarthy has opened the door into this impeachment inquiry into president biden. he's got a thin house majority. he can only lose four votes before this effort collapses. he's dealing with a group of 18 house republican members who sit in districts that president biden won. we talked to a lot of those 18 for this story, and the common thread is they're very uneasy about going down this path. some of them are conflicted about whether to even launch an inquiry into impeachment, but they roundly agree they have not seen evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors to move forward with impeachment proceedings against president biden. there's congressman don bacon who represented a swing district in omaha, nebraska. quote, it's too early for a formal impeachment inquiry. he says we should have more confidence that actual high crimes and misdemeanors occurred before starting a formal impeachment inquiry. brian fitzpatrick says he's worried they're turning an impeachment inquiry into a vote of no confidence in the british parliament. david joyce in ohio sees himself as a pragmatist and a voice of reason. he says you hear a lot of rumor, but that's not fact to me as a former prosecutor. i think there has to be facts and due process, and i have not seen any of that today. democrats for their part say that republicans are essentially trying to impeach hunter biden. they're trying to make insinuations that president biden was involved in his son's foreign business dealings, but they haven't proven any link that goes back to 1600 pennsylvania avenue. jerry nadler says, quote, through all the slander about president biden, there's no evidence whatsoever that he's involved in any of this. he says nadler told me it's not an impeachable offense to have a troubled son. he says republicans are only doing this to distract from the very serious criminal indictments facing donald trump. the white house was even more blunt. they said kevin mccarthy is pandering to the far right with, quote, a baseless, evidence-free impeachment stunt. some republicans are mindful of the calendar. just about four months after congress comes back from the august recess, it will be an election year. some republicans believe if they are to do impeachment, they need to get it done this year lest it bleed into an election year. republicans made that exact accusation about democrats when the first impeachment of president trump bled into the election year of 2020. >> sahil kapur thank you so much. now to some breaking news on the economy. the consumer price index rose 3.2% from a year ago in july, slightly below what was forecast. let's bring in the coanchor of "squawk box" andrew ross sorkin. what does it mean? >> it means that inflation is coming down. that's a good thing. you're seeing markets rally on the back of that news. it doesn't mean the fed is finished when it comes to raising interest rates. we're still in the threes. the federal reserve has said over and over again they want to get to two. it's going to be hard to get to two. there's a real question mark going on even within the fed and the economic eco-sphere about whether a 2% goal is the right goal. that's really the next debate. there's even a debate about what the fed is doing and has that been the thing that's helped bring inflation down, or is it really just supply? we've finally gotten through all these supply chain issues that came up during the pandemic. we've sort of worked our way through those. how much of the fact that inflation has come down is a function of the pressure that jay powell and the federal reserve have been putting on the me, or have all of these other factors changed that dynamic? lots of questions, not a lot of answers. >> while we have you, also you have news on a shakeup at disney. >> shakeup at disney. prices are going up at disney. if you have disney plus or hulu, the price is going to go up. by the way, if you have espn plus, same story. disney has been and you're looking at an image of bob iger, the ceo who came back to the ship to try to right the ship has had a big challenge in sterm terms of slowdowns in the streaming world. he's trying to figure out what is the right path. one of the things we saw in the past 48 hours is a deal that espn made for the first time in the gambling world in terms of betting with penn gaming, a deal $2 billion. there were questions for years about would disney get into the betting and gambling business and maybe they wouldn't because they're a family-oriented brand. they've now chosen to do that. later on in 2024 disney expected to buy-out the remaining stake of hulu owned by our parent company, comcast. bob iger trying to find ways to raise some money and figure out what does the future at disney even look like? do they own something like abc in the future? a lot of these linear channels have stopped growing. he's now talking openly about potentially selling or spinning those channels off. >> andrew ross sorkin, thank you very much. up next on "morning joe," we'll have a look at some of the stories making front page headlines across the country. 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loved ones? >> we've got one job to do right now. >> i've got a message. >> that was part of the trailer for the apple tv plus series hijack. it stars idris elba who plays a savvy corporate negotiator on a seven-hour flight from dubai to london that is taken over by armed passengers. the story unfolds in realtime with seven one-hour episodes. and joining us now are the show's executive producers, jamie laurenson and hakan kuseda. if anyone is watching this and doesn't want a spoiler alert we're going to have one a little bit here. jamie, i'll start with you. i guess give us a sense of what plays out here and a little bit about idris elba's character and how it's so key to what ultimately happens. >> yeah, well, idris plays sam nelson, who as you say is a corporate negotiator, and i guess his real skill is in reading people and reading a room. that's been his kind of professional makeup until this point where he finds himself in the most unfortunate situation you can, on a hijacked plane. and really the story is about how he manipulates and works his way onto the side of the hijackers and starts to unpick their thinking from within, and it's -- so it's both a high octane thriller as well as a kind of an intelligent look at a crisis situation i guess. >> hakan, same question for you, what drew you to this project? >> well, it was an idea that was sort of pitched to us just on a sort of sheet of paper actually. it was just the concept, this came up with by george kay and jim smithfield, writer and director of the show. george cites this inspiration from being stuck in a tunnel for a few minutes on the euro star and having his imagination sort of run wild with him about maybe something terrible was about to happen. of course nothing happened, it was totally fine, but it was the trigger of inspiration for him to come up with this idea of, you know how would you cope with a crisis situation with a bunch of strangers and what would play out. it was something, you know, whilst it's sort of a sort of fanciful concept, it's something really relatable and we could sort of see straight away there was a great sort of way to tell a thrilling story. >> so let me just tell both of you, i'm fans. i know that you all did slow horses also on apple plus. >> oh, wow! so first and most importantly, is there going to be a season two of "slow horses"? >> yes, we are in the works on that at the moment. we work with cecil films on that show, and we're in post on that at the moment, so that should be coming on apple plus later in the year. >> it's terrific. now, idris elba who for many of us who are big "wire" fans is forever and will forever be known as stringer. he is a phenomenal actor, it people haven't seen him in "the wire" or haven't seen him in "luther," he is really something else. i'm curious if there were others in the running, or did you set your sights on idris from the very beginning? >> it was also idris. it was him from the start. very early on in the process it was identified that this would be a great opportunity to work with him and it was effectively written with him in mind. >> yeah. >> you can't imagine anyone else as sam nelson. he brings amazing sort of magnetic intelligence to the role which is unbeatable. >> the first -- the first season of hijack is streaming now on apple tv plus, executive producers jamie laurenson and hakan caussetta, i agree with claire, slow horses amazing. that does it for us this morning, ana cabrera picks up the coverage after a quick final break. from prom dresses... ...to workouts... ...and new adventures. you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past... they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b. although uncommon, up to 1 in 5 survivors of meningitis will have long term consequences. now as you're thinking about all the vaccines your teen might need, make sure you ask your doctor if your teen is missing meningitis b vaccination. featuring fresh artisan bread piled high with tender roast beef, smothered with melty provolone cheese, just enough chipotle mayo and served with hot au jus for dipping. try the roast beef or pastrami french dips today. only at togo's. featuring fresh artisan bread piled high with tender roast beef, smothered with melty provolone cheese, just enough chipotle mayo and served with hot au jus for dipping. try the roast beef or pastrami french dips today. only at togo's. right now on "ana cabrera reports," we're tracking several major breaking news stories as we come on the air, including horror in hawaii. the death toll from devastating wildfires on maui climbing to 36, a stunning loss that authorities expect will still grow as search and rescue efforts continue this morning. aerial video of a once picturesque town showing complete destruction. history dating back to the 1700s wiped off the map. also breaking this morning, donald trump's two co-defendants in the classified documents case appearing in court this hour in florida. our cameras caught one of them arriving just a few minutes ago. this a