doc ronnie johnson. everybody know the congressman from texas? he was the white house doctor. >> no, actually, they don't know him. they don't know ronnie johnson. >> who is ronnie johnson? >> nothing like mocking your opponent -- >> there is a randy johnson. >> -- mental acuity when messing up the doctor who administered your test who is sitting in the audience. >> person, man, woman, horse, ronnie johnson. >> the name of trump's former white house position turned u.s. congressman is ronny jackson. >> wait, what? >> not johnson. >> what? good morning. welcome to "morning joe." >> that's confusing. >> monday, june 17th. what else is new, right? with us, we have nbc news national affairs analyst and a partner and chief political analyst at puck, john heilemann. pulitzer prize winning writer and analyst eugene robinson. peter baker. symone sanders townsend. thanks to all of you being in early on monday morning. >> john heilemann. >> right. >> i'm new at this politics thing, but i'm guessing if you're going to make fun of your opponent for being cognitively disconnected from facts and figures, it's probably good for you to not be disconnected cognitively from facts and figures as donald trump was this weekend. >> well, jim, it's good to see you this morning here on monday. or is it chuck, chuck scarborough? joe, joe scarborough. >> yeah. >> i mean, glass houses, man, you don't want to be throwing stones. people live in glass houses and shouldn't be throwing stones. that's all i'll say. >> you know, the thing is, too, it's getting really more obvious, mika, that they have, the trump campaign understands they have a serious problem with donald trump on facts, on issues, on you name it, because they have to keep engaging in cheap fakes to make joe biden look bad. they've done it this weekend, the past several weeks. they have "the new york post" doing it, rnc doing it, all these right-wing stooges on x doing it. if you have to make stuff up, if you have to make stuff up, obviously, you don't feel like you have a strong enough campaign to win outright. >> no. i mean, they're grasping in many different ways, but i think that's trump being trump, getting names wrong and getting information wrong. i don't think he cares. our top story -- >> well, you know, i fear having a president like that, i really do. >> uh-huh. >> with storm clouds of world war ii on the horizon. >> oh, for sure. >> yeah. >> absolutely. our top story this hour, the biden campaign took in a record haul at a star-studded fundraiser over the weekend. the campaign says it raised more than $30 million in los angeles on saturday, breaking the record for the democratic party's largest fundraising event ever. nbc news could not independently verify that claim. president biden appeared at the event alongside former president barack obama, george clooney, julia roberts, jimmy kimmel. kimmel moderated a conversation. at one point, asking president biden about the supreme court and the possibility that the next president will likely have an opportunity to appoint two justices and what voters can do about that. >> elect me again. i'll tell you why. i'm not just saying it. the next president is likely to have two new supreme court nominees, two more. two more. he's already appointed two that have been very negative in terms of the rights of individuals. the idea that if he's re-elected, he is going to appoint two more flying flags upside down is really -- i really mean it. >> could this be the scariest part of all of it? >> well, i think it is one of the scariest parts of it. look, the supreme court has never been as out of kilter as it is today. i mean, never. i taught constitutional law for nine years. this guy knows more about it than most. look, the fact of the matter is, this has never been a court that's been this far out of step. by the way, when we said after the decision that overturned roe v. wade, the dobbs decision, you had clarence thomas talking about the fact that there were going to be other things we should reconsider, including in vitro fertilization, contraception, all these things. by the way -- >> including same-sex marriage. >> by the way, not on my watch. not on my watch. >> boy, you know, peter baker, this has proven to be such a key issue when you look at what's happened in '22, in '23, and a lot of the special elections at that time. even in red states like kansas, kentucky, have gone overwhelmingly for choice on this issue. now you add ivf that's been thrown into the mix. you add contraceptions that have been thrown into the mix. the biden campaign really does believe this is going to be one of the most vital issues for their base, don't they? >> they do. what you hear the president doing there is expanding beyond issues specifically of abortion rights to say, okay, the first step on their path toward reversing a whole series of rights, right? one of the themes they have emphasized again and again was the idea of freedom. freedom is a word that republicans have used successfully over the years, and the biden campaign wants to take the word back a little bit. talk about not just women's rights but, as he pointed out there, lgbtq rights and the rights of any married couple or non-married couple as, you know, defined by the supreme court way back in the '60s to have the ability to decide when to have contraception and not, all those things. he's pointing to a future that sounds dark and scary in order to galvanize democratic voters. they may be upset with him about age, inflation, whatever else. he's saying, there are things at stake, things you care about on the table if you're not getting out to vote. >> you know, mika, peter brings up a great point, underlines a great point. democrats are taking back the word freedom. nra would say, support freedom, vote scarborough. vote whoever they thought was right on gun issues. now, you have democrats talking about freedom. i'll tell you, i've seen focus groups where it really cuts through. libertarians are saying, libertarians are now saying, wait a second, this government can hardly do anything right, in their opinion. why in the world are we going to turn our bodies over to them to make decisions about health care? in this focus group i saw, that was a man speaking in a swing state. >> right. >> so this is about freedom. you see the freedom of women that also, i think for a lot of men, they see if that could happen with the women they love, it could also happen to them. >> i think in this election, the supreme court is definitely taking center stage for a lot of people who might not have thought of it so much in their vote. but with alito hanging flags upside down in his house and then lying about it. >> his wife. >> bold-faced lying about it. we don't know if his wife did it. we don't know if anything they're saying is true. there was some altercation with a neighbor where the wife was called a bad name. that happened after the flag was hung upside down outside their house and at their beach house. we don't know what the truth is about that because they keep lying about it, so that's one supreme court justice. then you have clarence thomas who literally refuses to follow ethics rules when it comes to taking gifts from republican donors. refuses. i mean, he's been asked now for several years to please cough up the information, and he keeps forgetting $250,000 plane flights. this is the u.s. supreme court. symone, for women -- and you're right, joe, the men who love them, the men who are really clued into the pain that losing 50 years of health care rights is causing to women right now -- this is front and center. this isn't some sort of issue in the background for this election. for women, it's life and death. >> it is very, very true, mika. you know, we had dr. nesbit on our show on this past weekend, and dr. nesbit used to be head of the d.c. department of health, now at georgetown. before a board certified physician for ten years. what about the young women diagnosed with cancer in their early 20s or late 20s/mid 30s and the doctor tells them that you need to freeze -- we suggest you freeze your eggs if you want to have the option of having a family later in life? >> yeah. >> this supreme court, some of the justices are poised to take that option away. you have republicans across the country that are poised to remove that option away for young cancer patients. women literally being told they must be on death's doorstep before they can be helped and saved. lest we forget, we are awaiting a decision from the supreme court on idaho, what's happening in idaho, on if a woman who is pregnant comes into the emergency room, her right to be saved, to be helped, to be stabilized. idaho says, well, if she is pregnant, we need to make sure the baby is in tact and we don't want to do anything to hurt the baby. what idaho would like to do right now is potentially let that woman, again, be knocking on death's doorstep before they do anything for her. all right. now, to former trump white house communications director alyssa farah griffins saying president trump often talked about executing people at white house meetings. griffin highlighted an april interview from former attorney general bill barr where he was asked if he remembered a time when trump called for a leaker to be executed. here's what he told cnn. >> alyssa farah griffin, trump's communications director, posted yesterday and said that you were present at a moment when trump suggested executing the person who leaked information, that he went to the white house bunker when the george floyd protests were happening outside of the white house. do you remember that? >> i remember him being very mad about that. i actually don't remember him saying executing, but, you know, i wouldn't dispute it. you know, it doesn't sound -- the president would lose his temper and say things like that. i doubt he would have actually carried it out, you know. >> but he would say that on other occasions? >> you know, the president had -- i think people sometimes took him too literally and, you know, he would say things like similar to that in occasions to blow off steam, but i wouldn't take him literally every time he did it. >> oh, you mean like he'll get rid of roe, just blowing off steam? griffin went further, saying trump had called for executions multiple times. >> bill barr kind of said, like, i don't recall that specific instance, but there were others where he talked about executing people. i'm like, how you rationalize that that is a person fit and sound judgment to be president of the united states. they're reading the tea leaves. they know there is a real chance he's going to be president again. there's not a lot of glory or, like, victory in being right but being on the wrong side of trump. i think that's ultimately what it comes down to. >> gene, let's get this right. the attorney general of the united states. >> yeah. >> heard the commander in chief calling for the execution of staff members. >> yeah. >> and then when he is asked about it, after he's made clear that he is going to endorse for president the man who is calling for the execution of staff members, because i guess barr is shocked and stunned by joe biden's, like, student debt relief plan -- that's where they always run to. well, if you think january 6th was bad, calling for the execution of staff members was bad, what about joe biden's three-tier plan to relieve students of their debt? which they actually do. >> yes. >> that's their go-to. you think january 6th was bad. >> mm-hmm. >> here we have a guy who is attorney general, a lawyer. i'll tell you, lawyers, i'm not even a good lawyer, but you get lawyers in conversations, they remember things. they have a dictaphone going. they've got, you know, it going in their heads. if you hear something like that, your mind is trained to set that apart. okay, the president of the united states just said we should execute staffers for leaking. >> yeah. >> i mean, what barr says is so laughable. what alyssa said is so chilling. >> scary. >> we actually have republicans -- so scary. we actually have republicans that are going to go out and endorse a guy who called for the execution of fellow staff members, then claims he doesn't remember it. >> yeah, yeah. i don't specifically remember that, but i won't deny it, right? >> right. >> i won't say that he didn't call for execution of staffers because that's the sort of thing he did, right? that's the sort of thing he said. >> right. >> this is insane, right? i mean, step back for a second. we're talking about the president of the united states talking about how members of his staff should be executed. for, you know, leaking information that he didn't want leaked, which was not national security information or anything. it's just something he thinks is embarrassing to him. absolutely unprecedented and insane. like a lot of things that trump is saying now, we shouldn't just sort of walk past it and say, as bill barr said, oh, well, people are taking him too literally. well, i'm sorry, but that's like the only way i know how to take people, right? i mean, i can't, you know -- when you say, i want to execute that person, and you're the president of the united states, i have to take you literally. when you stand in front of a rally in las vegas and talk about, you know, boats and electrocution and sharks, i have to take you literally. i don't know how to take it otherwise. and this is a person who was elected president of the united states and who has a chance of being elected again. that should cause all of us to -- just to step back and think for a minute. this is not normal, and this is not acceptable or safe for the country. >> joe, mika, i want to just think about it this way, the most charitable interpretation of what bill barr is saying here, right, is something like, the president of the united states on a regular basis would blow off steam -- i think that was his phrase, right? >> yup. >> he'd get mad and say things around the table like, let's imagine, i want to have this leaker found and executed. but, blowing off steam, you know, if we can find the leaker, i'd like to take him on the back lawn and have him shot. say he wasn't being serious, just blowing off steam. as a matter of temperament, is that the guy you want as the commander in chief sitting in the oval office? a guy who, when he is frustrated, when he is blowing off steam -- again, to use barr's formulation -- is someone who, the way in which he exercises his frustration is to casually talk about having people who work for him shot, executed in some way. i don't know if that's by hanging or by a guillotine or by the firing squad. i think it speaks to a temperament that is the kind of temperament that leads you to a president of the united states who, when your vice president is on capitol hill in the middle of a riot that you have incited, and the people at that riot are talking about lynching the vice president, your temperament, that person, that president, is the kind of person who says, i'm not going to do anything to call off the mob that i incited. i'm just going to sit up here and let it play out. i'll say quietly, according to at least some of the reporting we've seen in some stuff for the january 6th committee, said, you know, maybe our supporters have it right here. maybe mike pence deserves this. maybe he deserves to be killed. >> right. >> to be strung up on the capitol grounds. i think, you know, you don't have to get all the way to donald trump was ordering the execution of staffers to think that this is a very dangerous temperament, dangerous mindset to v and one that shows an enormous lack of respect for the office, for the seriousness of the position, and is someone who is not in control of himself in a way that you would want a president to be. >> but let's put this all in context, because you are right. when donald trump got the riot going on january 6th, as lindsey graham and kevin mccarthy said he was responsible for these riots, not only did he not call off the attackers when they were saying, "hang mike pence." not only did he tell staffers, according to their testimony, that maybe mike pence deserved hanging. he put out a tweet at a perilous time which put mike pence in even more danger. >> right. >> he decided to do that. mika, these comments that we're now finding out that, again, that barr is claiming he doesn't remember, you have to put these in proper context, too. this is a guy running for re-election in 2024, running to be president of this united states again in 2024, who said, the chairman of the joint chiefs needs to be executed, has had his lawyers argue, he can execute political opponents with s.e.a.l. team six and can't be charged criminally. >> right. >> who has talked about finding media companies guilty of treason, jailing them. has called for the immediate arrest of his political opponents. we keep hearing it from his people. we heard it again this weekend from his people, that anybody who opposes trump, trump's opponents need to be jailed. so this wasn't just one stray comment five years ago. this is active. it's ongoing. and because he is so craven to be, i guess, relevant, the former attorney general of the united states is willing to go along for the ride. >> well, your point is well-taken. it is definitely well documented that there are really scary tendencies on the part of this former president. but even if anybody said something like that in jest or to blow off steam in any situation, if it happened on the front porch of your house or if you said it on the show, it would be offputting. it would be striking. people would think something is wrong with you. >> for a president to say it in the oval office, talking about it. >> come on, let's be honest. >> talking about executing political opponents and generals, it is relevant. >> very. >> it is to be taken literally. still ahead on "morning joe," the latest on the war in gaza as the israeli military announces a new daily tactical pause and prime minister benjamin netanyahu moves to disband his war cabinet. plus, we'll dig into the supreme court's decision to strike down a federal ban on bump stocks. what is being said about that ruling. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. so i hired body doubles. mountain climbing tina at a cabin. or tree climbing tina at a beach resort. nice! booking.com booking.yeah. if you have generalized myasthenia gravis, picture what life could look like with vyvgart hytrulo, a subcutaneous injection that takes about 30 to 90 seconds. for one thing, could it mean more time for you? 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