they re donating 15, 25, $100 because they believe in donald trump. they re not giving him that money so he can pay his personal legal fees, and let s remember something he s a billionaire, self-professed billionaire. why can t he use his own money to pay his personal legal fees and not use money coming from the public? it s disgrateful. some straight talk there as presidential candidate chris christie essentially calls donald trump a grifter there on cnn as he continues his anti-trump campaign in the early stages of the 2024 race. meanwhile a book from former trump s chief of staff seems to dispute the former president s latest claim he did not show-off u.s. attack plans to people at his new jersey golf club. and president joe biden hits the road to highlight how bidennomics is helping every day americans. good morning. welcome to way too early on this thursday, june 29th. i m jonathan lemire. thanks for starting your day with us. let s get right to the headlines here.
inside russia. right now vladimir putin is still in charge. in fact, he might have just spoken for the first time since the attempted rebellion over the weekend. we ll tell you what he said and why there are questions about when and where this new video of putin the kremlin released this morning has come from. it has been a confusing and volatile 72 hours. longtime ally yevgeny prigozhin began and quickly called off an attempt to overtake the military leaders. how close did he get? why suddenly did he turn around? putin is known for viciously crushing dissent. why exactly did he let prigozhin go? the warlord hasn t been publicly seen or heard from since he apparently fled on saturday. we have reporters in moscow, ukraine and the white house along with experts on russia, putin and prigozhin. whatever happens in russia will have a profound impact not just on the stability of that country, but far-reaching consequences for the war in ukraine and well beyond that. it can affect
family whether we offer ourself as one of them i think different times call for different leadership. yeah, you know, he tried to kill my family and tried to kill me, but, you know, it remains to be seen, whether i may support him for the republican nomination there you go. scene. we re not here there you go that s he admitted last week, mika, that donald trump put his family in danger and his own life in danger mm-hmm. for i have to say, for me, for everybody that i know, that s the end in an attempt to subvert or democracy. there s that. but let s just keep with the family like, let s go a little john dutton here. you know, you protect your family he admitted last week that somebody tried to kill his family you know, don t go all john dutton on the revenge part, the other side of the boarder. at least you can say, i m not going to support him no, no, jonathan, you know, he tried to have me is and my family killed on january 6th while trying to subvert d
course? i think the president going to kyiv doesn t settle that problem once and for all. ideally, it would have been great had he shown up, you know, with senator mcconnell or somebody like that who is strongly in support of the war. again, it sends a reassuring message to ukraine about american staying power. which, jonathan, is critical for europe. europe has followed behind and with the united states for the most part. this is leading from ahead, and that is what is required in this instance. we are now past 6:00. welcome to morning joe at this morning. joe, mika and willie have the day off. i want to bring in katty kay, special u.s. correspondent for bbc news, into our live, rolling coverage of this presidents day and president biden s surprise trip to ukraine, one meant to show a real symbol of solidarity, katty, with kyiv, as it has weathered russia s invasion now for 12 months. yeah, jonathan, what a day for us to kick off presidents s day, to see these images.
rise. a strategic victory for ukraine and its war with russia. retaking a key city and a territory. this as a putin ally urges him to take more drastic measures in the fight. and portland oregon homeless crisis, no laughing matter. she confronted him about it at a city council meeting. much more on this ahead. we began with fox team coverage. steve harrigan kicks things off for us tonight. steve. we have been going up and down the coast along highway 75 seeing these flooded communities. we are about to see how this dodge ram doesn t this water. this worker checking on some downed lines. before they could turn the power back on here. 700,000 people. they will be back at 95% of the people with power. we have remarkable drone footage as well. it shows the flooding in these neighborhoods. two-3 feet of water around many houses. cut off from the rest of the place. we have seen a lot of rescues yesterday. today we have been seeing more salvage. people going in and trying to get