Fight over the debt ceiling and a possible plan b for House Democrats. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has plans to send active duty troops to the Southern Border as soon as next week. We will explain what the Military Personnel will be doing down there. Also ahead, new testimony in the civil trial against donald trump. It comes as the former president decides not to take the stand in his own defense. New reporting this morning on Text Messages that ultimately led to Tucker Carlsons firing. We also will have a look at the latest aid package headed to ukraine as its forces prepare for a Spring Offensive against russias army. And writers expected back on the picket lines today as the wga strike is already impacting several shows, late night going dark for starters. Good morning, welcome to morning joe, it is wednesday, may 3rd, with us we have the host of Way Too Early, white house, jen palmieri, Cohost Of The Circus and former chairman o. Of the republican committee, Michael Steele. We remain one game behind you in the al east. Were moving on up. We may be in the cellar, last place, but watch out. You look at the orioles, theyre an Exciting Team, 209. Im so happy for their fans. Its going to be exciting. Its a long season, as we always say, willie, and judge is hurt again. He had a great year last year. Avoided injuries, but those have started back. But jonathan lemire, our red sox, bake. Barnacle, the cynicism of barnicle. Jack and i love watching every night. They are so exciting. Theyre the little engine that could. There was a sign where the home run would put a twinkle in barnicles eye. No longer. This team has been pretty resilient. They have a number of games where they have fallen behind and come back to win. Guys are stepping up. Its a testament to the manager. A nice win for the sox. To your point about the orioles, a lot of high draft pictures. They have come up through the system. Thats a great baseball town with a great park. Its fun to see. It is fun to see, and its so amazing being able to watch all of these games on your phone, and theyre moving so quickly, its so fun. You know, times, jonathan, havent always been so easy for willie and me. Uhoh. And i think about this especially on his birthday. Oh, man. Im going to we were in turkey in 1971. Had my birthday locked up that year. Thats tough. Theres an old turkish saying that i scrawled on the wall for him before he woke up when Something Like, i dont know, we shall wear golden robes and eat the fatted lam like ottoman kings. Its all i could give him that year, but look at where weve come. Look at where weve come, willie. Okay. This is my way. Im saying happy birthday, you know, happy birthday, willie. Thanks, joe, i would love to say we were wrongfully detained but we deserved to be in that cell in turkey for that stretch there. Not proud of what we did, but weve come out The Other Side, and i think weve done okay for ourselves. Were not allowed to go back. We tried. Cant go back for a couple of decades at least. You know, jen, some people give hallmark cards. Do you want part of this . This is what i do. Like jen said, after she was kind enough to pick me up from the turkish prison, she put her arms around, me, even though she was 4 years old, were stronger in the broken places. God makes us stronger in the broken places, and i said thank you very much, jen palmieri. Sitting next to willie, hes overcome with the warmth of your birthday wishes, its heartfelt. Inspiring. Hey, joe, this is the most fascinating part oh, im sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, the most fascinating part was when willie made a little Birthday Cake out of a bar of soap. Gift to myself. A moving moment. It is. Erin copeland wrote about, it is simple gifts like that. So but anyway, willie, i got to tell you, i was flying back from atlanta. I interviewed tyler perry yesterday. Love him. Just an extraordinary man. Yes, he is. An extraordinary story. Heres a guy who was homeless. He was living in a car and there were times that things got so bad he was thinking about taking his own life, and he said it was his faith and his mom that pulled him through, and took a tour around his Atlanta Studios yesterday. Just an extraordinary man. So were going to be playing some of that over the next few days. But as i was coming back from the airport, i was really taken by how many people were coming up to me saying wish mika a happy birthday, and make sure to remember willies birthday tomorrow. Im sitting there going, everybody knows, your birthday is may the 3rd. We celebrated mikas very nicely, a beautiful event for her daughter carlie last night. We have that may 2nd, may 3rd connection that we have had together for the last 16 years weve been together. We compare the two and the three together, people can remember it pretty easily, so thank you, joe, for your sincere turkish birthday wishes. We appreciate it. And this will all be taken out in post. This is great. Lets turn to the headline this morning. We begin with the Multiday Man Hunt for the suspect accused of killing five of his neighbors, including a child. Authorities say they caught the man about 15 miles from the Scene Of The Crime after someone called in a tip to the fbi. Nbc news correspondent sam brock is live outside the jail in cold spring, texas. Sam, good morning. How did they track him down . Reporter yeah, willie, this was really a remarkable turn of events given the fact that when we spoke 24 hours ago, authorities had no idea where Francisco Oropesa was. Now hell be brought to the jail in San Jacinto County. A man accused of murdering five people brutally, including a 9yearold child who was only trying to protect his mother. There was a tip that came in from the fbi tip line at 5 15 yesterday. By 6 30, whatever that information was, it prompted an immediate swarming and oropesa was already behind handcuffs. We have video that appears to show him being arrested at a private residence. Not clear whose residence it is. We pressed whether or not there was a connection. They did not provide that information. There were three agencies involved in taking him in without incident and without injury. Texas dps, u. S. Marshals, and the elite unit of border control, all three getting on scene and bringing oropesa in handcuffs back into a police car where he was brought to montgomery county. This is in the city of cut and shoot, texas, 15 miles away from the brutal massacre, where it occurred. Shocking to some as it wasnt clear whether he was in southeast texas, another part of the state, mexico, and it turns out he was in the backyard of his living space the entire time. The chronology and the specifics a bt about how he got that, that remains unclear. The sheriff in San Jacinto County talking about how this came to pass and where he was found. He was caught hiding in a closet underneath some laundry. They effectively made the arrest. He is uninjured, and he is currently being taken to my facility in cold springs. Reporter now, it is not apparent at this point, willie, whether or not hes actually been transferred or not. The expectation is if it hasnt happened already its going to later today, and this news comes in light of information that was broken by nbc news yesterday regarding the violent past of Francisco Oropesa, specifically that in 2022, his wife had filed for a protective order because she claims in sworn testimony that he beat her, that he physically closed his fists, punched her, kicked her on the ground, in the backside, in the face, in the mouth. This narrative painted by neighbors of someone who at least to the best of their knowledge was someone who wasnt violent, never aggressive, never raised his voice. Theres documented evidence she filed a protective order against him. I asked the sheriff that, knowing that he was deported four times and there were repeated calls to his residence because of gunfire. Did that prompt further investigation, did you look into this, yes, and we tried to arrest him in 2022, a constable went around to another county trying to track down oropesa and wasnt successful, and ultimately his wife decided not to prosecute him, and that was just the end of it. That prompts quite a few questions about how there wasnt more scrutiny and search for this man. Of course, to fatal consequences a year later. Five people killed, including a 9yearold child a couple of days ago, and a lot of people in texas feeling a little bit better that hes now in police custody. Nbc news correspondent sam brock in texas for us this morning. Sam, thank you so much. Jon, we were watching Way Too Early this morning, had story about Tucker Carlson, new Text Messages coming to light. Perhaps some of the motivation about why fox may have let him go. A racially charged text message reportedly sent by Tucker Carlson to a fox news producer is providing more insight into why the cable news station fired the former host last week. Just one day before the company was set to take the stand for A Billion Dollar defamation trial last month, the times is reporting that this previously redacted message came to the attention of Fox Executives. The times reports it was sent to one of his producers in the hours after the january 6th insurrection that reads in part this way. A couple of weeks ago i was watching video of people fighting on the street in washington. A group of trump guys surrounded an antifa kid and started pounding the living crap out of him. It was three against one at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable, obviously. Its not how white men fight, yet suddenly, i found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they would hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Carlson later goes on to write that he quote shouldnt gloat over the mans suffering but according to the times, the earlier portion of the message was concerning enough that it contributed to foxs decision to settle with Dominion Voting Systems for more than 787 million and ultimately fire the host. Other messages including ones where carlson disparaged Fox Executives and used sexist language also reportedly led to his firing. The contents of this latest message are part of redacted Court Filings and were disclosed to the times in interviews with several people close to the dominion lawsuit but have not yet been independently confirmed by nbc news. Nbc has reached out to carlsons attorneys and fox news for response but has not heard back. A representative for carlson did tell the times that he had no comment on the story. So Michael Steele, i just want to get your reaction to the latest revelation, a text message that seems to be part of a larger puzzle as to why Tucker Carlson was shown the door. Yeah, it doesnt surprise me. I think that a lot of what, you know, we now know from the dominion case really filled in some of the back story about exactly how these hosts like tucker operated within the fox ecosystem. I mean, the fact that Something Like that could be sent to a colleague and it sort of sits there, and nothing happens or comes from it, and its not until you get into this sort of adversarial, prosecutorial setting in which it becomes public or potentially becomes public that they see some reaction. It really speaks to the culture inside the building in many respects that that type of communication doesnt rise to a point where, you know, hes brought in by the leadership of the company saying what the hell are you talking about, how white men fight. You want to see somebody get killed on the streets of d. C. . And so i think theyre probably going to be more of this, quite honestly. Even though this case is settled in that regard, you still have the smartmatic case coming forward. Dont know, you know, all the access to emails and the documents they have there, but it really speaks to a culture, i think, that had grown up inside of fox that you could communicate that way with a producer, with someone of authority inside the building and everyones okay with it. And the culture was, just a culture of no accountability specifically for their biggest star. And, you know, those lines had to horrify them knowing that that was going to be out publicly, especially when you looked at all the other things that were going to be going out, him repeatedly using the c word to describe women, to describe one of trumps lawyers when he was pushing back against the very election rigging lie, the big lie that trump pushed, and here you actually have a fox news host saying you wanted a group of trumpers to kill a kid. His words. I wanted them to kill the kid. You mix that up with again, the c word used to describe women that he worked with or that came across him. The antisemitism that we hear is going to be coming out in the producers lawsuit. Its just hard to imagine why they wouldnt at the end feel like it was their best legal move, political move, pr move to send him on his way. And his son put together a compilation a few days ago when people started engaging in this really bizarre antitucker babbling, sure hes this, sure hes that, but he did some really good things. The trains ran on time. Sure, weve heard it from bari weiss, we heard it from andrew sullivan, people that i read regularly, and they did this anti antituckerism, and said he had the receipts and wanted to show all of these people that weren were engaging anti antituckerism, saying whatever bad things Tucker Carlson did, at least he was antiwoke. This is what theyre defending whenever they go to the mat for tucker. White supremacy thats the problem. This is a hoax. Theres no evidence that White Supremacists were responsible for what happened on january 6th, thats a lie. Even if it makes our own Country Poorer, and dirtier and more divided. Demographics, demographics, remember the Great Replacement Theory, was a Conspiracy Theory. Its more like a statistical flat. The way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country. Congresswoman ilhan omar, a symbol of americans failed immigration system. Dating Montel Williams is something within her range of experience. Is she good at it, we cant say. Shes done it. For masochistic reasons, One More Time. It might be time for joe biden to let us know what Ketanji Brown jacksons s. A. T. Score was. You should be elevated on the choices you make, not your dna, because thats rwanda. Were not precisely sure how george floyd died. Very few unarmed black men are killed by white men these days. The only administration is getting black people to sell more weed in the cities. You never see politicians transition into malcolm x, why is that, maybe because malcolm x didnt talk like a sharecropper. Xenophobia, seems almost an technique. This show has taken a stand against color blind equality, and against racism. And there are, jen, there are people, again, people who ive read who think make some very important points on different issues who are actually going out defending him saying, well, andrew sullivan, tucker represents something nonetheless real, a deepening suspicion of corporate and government authority, and bari weiss says, you cant deny how important tucker was and is. Nelly and i watched his monologues and not quite nightly but the next day on you tube. Lets see. What else did she say. Just said he was one of the only people on tv who made viewers aware of the new military industrial complex. The alliance between big tech and the government. I mean, you know what, i could name about five other people. I want you guys to play that clip again, and i want you to play the clip because i want these people who are defending Tucker Carlson, i want them to see once again what theyre defending. Play the clip. White supremacy, thats the problem. This is a hoax. Theres no evidence that White Supremacists were what happened on january 6th, thats a lie. We have a moral obligation to admit the worlds poor even if it makes our own Country Poorer and dirty and more divided. Demographics, demographics. Remember the Great Replacement Theory was a Conspiracy Theory . It sounds more like a statistical fact. Ilhan omar is living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country. Congresswoman ilhan omar a symbol of americas failed immigration system. Can a single human being be as loathsome as ilhan omar. Dating Montel Williams is within her range of experience. Is she good at it, we cant say. Shes done it. For masochistic reasons, One More Time. Might be time for joe biden to let us now what ketanji jacksons l. S. A. T. Score was. You should be based on the choices you make, not your dna, because thats rwanda. Were not precisely sure how george floyd died. Very few unarmed black men are killed by white cops. Wheres george floyd when you need him. The only Job Training Program is getting black people to sell more weed in the cities. You never see politicians transition into malcolm x, why is that. Maybe because ma