substitute government, someone providing security, thousands of hamas fighters will survive and seep back into the population and take over society. the absence of a serious, viable plan for what comes after rafah is the major, glaring weakness in israeli strategy. >> national security adviser jake sullivan heading to israel in the coming days. israel said we won't go into rafah while he is in the region, but after that, all bets are off. richard haass, thank you. we'll talk to you again later on "morning joe." thanks to all of you for getting up "way too early" with us on this friday morning and all week long. "morning joe" starts right now. you referred to president trump as a boring cartoon misogynist, didn't you? sounds like something i would say. a chinese-dusted cartoon villain? that also sounds like something i said. >> you referred to president donald trump as dictator d-bag, department you? cohen says, sounds like something i said. >> damn! trump is just sitting there

while his own lawyer roasts him. look, i get the defense's argument that you can't trust michael cohen because he hates donald trump, but, to be fair, everyone who has ever worked with donald trump hates donald trump. at some point, you have to be like, i think it's trump. >> we also learned what the defense ordered for lunch today. 14 pizzas, four cheese, five pepperoni, four sausage and pepperoni, and one chicken, bacon, and ranch. no word yet on what trump's lawyers ordered. >> boom, boom. >> okay. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." willie, it is, today, officially, i have triple sourced this, friday. >> she did. >> yes. >> we did it. >> friday, may 17th, everybody. >> we made it. >> welcome to "morning joe." along with joe, willie, and me, we have the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at politico, "jonathan lemire.

and associate editor, the great eugene robinson. >> jonathan lemire going to hang his american flag upside down because the red sox lost last night. >> i did text that to you last night. >> it was a neighbor, a rays fan, that you're doing it for -- what? >> you are not. >> yes, pictures taken. we'll get to it later this morning. >> no. >> the supreme court justice, samuel alito, american flag at his home, hung upside down, a signal of distress, done in the days after january 6th. it was a symbol of the stop the steal movement. it was hung at the justice's house. he blames his wife. >> blaming the wife thing, for people in public eye in trouble, that's going around. >> don't ever do that. >> i'm scared of you. i would never do that. willie, this circles back to these people, and i will say these people, these trumpers, who have spent their entire life attacking people for being insufficiently patriotic.

>> yeah. >> then they lose, and they just hate america. they hate america. they're constantly going around saying how weak we are. they hate our military. they say our weak our military is when it is the strongest in the world. they hate our economy. they claim the president of the united states is a socialist. the dow yesterday made all of these people a lot richer, breaking 40,000 for the first time, despite donald trump's lies that it would collapse if joe biden was president of the united states. they hate this country. they attack this country. the only time they love it is when their person is in office. and i've got to say, and we have a lot of legal, brilliant minds around this table. >> our team here, yeah. >> they can speak to this later if they want to. i will tell you, growing up, one of my friends' fathers was a federal judge. i had no idea until i got older whether he was republican or

democrat. that was the case in northwest florida, very conserative place. the federal judges kept themselves beyond reproach. they never talked politics, ever. in the privacy of their homes, if you ask them an opinion, they would just say, "not my job," right? "i'm a judge." they actually took their oath seriously. for a supreme court justice, and i will say, my opinion only, but the guy most likely to have had something to do with the leaking of the dobbs decision. >> yeah. >> leaking it to "the wall street journal" or somebody connected to him leaking it to "the wall street journal" because he wanted to keep brett kavanaugh and amy coney barrett frozen in place. i think history will show that. but that aside, for a guy who is

a supreme court justice, that let that happen at his own home in one of the most fraught times in american history since the civil war, it's just sad. it shows how little respect he has for the institution. it shows how little respect he has for the law. it really does. it's disgusting. it's just disgusting. >> willie. >> by the way, we can't overstate the timing of this, which is, january 17th, 2021. think about where we were as a country. still completely shaken by what had happened on january 6th. a sitting supreme court justice has a flag flying upside down at his home that is a symbol of solidarity, as john said, with the stop the steal movement. we should explain a little here. "the new york times" is reporting that a photo of an american flag outside the home of supreme court justice samuel alito has been made public.

the flag flown upside down. as "the times" notes, the inverted flag has become a symbol of trump supporters who claim, again, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen. reading from the piece now, quote, "the upside down flag was aloft on january 17th, 2021, the images showed. president donald j. trump's support e including some brandishing the same symbol, had rioted at can capitol a little over a week before. mr. biden's inauguration was three days away. photographs were obtained by "the new york times." while the flag was up, the court was contending whether to hear a 2020 election case with justice alito on the losing end of the decision. in coming weeks, the justices will rule on two climactic cases, involving the storming of the capitol on january 6th, including whether mr. trump has immunity for his actions. their decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to overturn the last presidential election and his chances for re-election in the

upcoming one. i had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag, justice alito said in an emailed statement to "the times." it was briefly placed by mrs. alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs." joe, there you have it. >> wait a minute. >> you're going to hate on america because of something a neighbor did? >> you're going to blame your wife? make up that excuse? >> what is this? >> my wife was mad at a neighbor. >> blaming wives. anybody care to jump in here? >> i want to know, what person, let alone woman or wife, would do that in response to a problem with a neighbor. >> eugene, a neighbor upsets me, comes out and upsets me because the rays beat the red sox. they truly suck, and so i'm mad. i'm not hanging my flag upside down.

>> right. >> none of this -- this is dumb as when i heard about the dobbs leak. nobody believes him. >> no, nobody believes him. >> speaking of. >> he says briefly, you know, that "the times" story had neighbors suggesting that -- briefly meant for a period of days, this flag was flying upside down at justice alito's house. the idea that, you know, a yard sign that says something rude, apparently said something rude about president trump, is enough for a supreme court justice, who is supposed to be non-political, supposed to be, you know, less political than caesar's wife, would do this. i'll just say, do this, not allow his wife to go out and run up the flagpole, but would do

this. now, of course, as alito always does, try to sort of brazen his way through it. i mean, i'll just say it. i have thought for a long time that alito is the worst justice. he is one of the worst justices that we have seen on the supreme court since the days of, you know, taney and the other justices that enabled decades of jim crow. i mean, he's just -- his opinions have always struck me as intellectually dishonest. coming out with a predetermined result. now this. it is just stunning to me, stunning. >> it's not just that it was a few days after january 6th. while the flag was flying upside down, the court was contending as to whether or not to hear a 2020 election case. let's also remember, of course, judy thomas, the wife of clarence thomas, part of the same stop the steal movement.

now, you have two justices potentially compromised on this issue as we head into another election which could end up before the court again. >> right. chuck, ideology is irrelevant. again, i've known progressive federal judges. i've known conservative federal judges. they hold themselves beyond reproach. this is really -- again, for the time, it's just unbelievable. >> something you said earlier, joe, really resonated with me. you grew up in the florida panhandle and a florida's father was a federal judge. no idea what his politics were. i spent my professional life in federal court around federal judges. i have never seen or heard anything that would suggest to me that ideology played a role in their decisions. some of the judges were great. some were good. some were mediocre. they got some stuff right, got some stuff wrong. but i've never seen politics

infect their work. by the way, i can extend that a little further. it was true of the federal prosecutors with whom i worked. we never had a political discussion in two decades in our office. >> ever. >> ever. same with the -- >> chuck, i want you to underline that fact. people have to understand, that despite what they see from -- i will just say this -- from justice thomas and justice alito, people take their oaths seriously. conservatives, moderates, progressives, they see themselves as officers of the court. dammit, they held this country together after january 6th. >> among my colleagues were liberals, moderates, progressives, conservatives, all stripes, but we never discussed it. in fact, i remember once, joe, walking through our office parking lot and seeing a bumper sticker on someone's car which startled me because it was a

political bumper sticker. i had never seen that ever before. turned out, that particular federal prosecutor borrowed his spouse's car because his was in the shop. that was the only time i even saw a bumper sticker in our parking lot expressing a political view. it was so unusual that i noticed it. >> yeah. also with us, we have former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. how ya holding up, covering this trial? >> it's a lot. >> all day, every day. msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos. we also have to talk about the criminal hush money trial with former president donald trump. >> right. >> which we'll get to now. it could wrap up next week. we'll find out from the experts here. star witness michael cohen is set to return to the stand on monday after trump's legal team tried to hammer away at his credibility yesterday. court is in recess today, so the former president can attend his

son, barron's, high school graduation this morning. lead defense attorney todd blanche says cohen's questioning will likely wrap up on monday. the prosecution has said it does not plan to call any additional witnesses, and the defense says it may not call any either. that means closing arguments could begin as early as tuesday, clearing the way for jury deliberations by the end of next week. but hold on a second, willie. lisa, am i wrote about that? you shook your head. >> i was talking to someone in the control room. i'm lifting the curtain, i'm sorry. >> go ahead and communicate. i wanted to make sure the information was right. willie, we're looking now at what happened yesterday. >> another day of cross-examination of michael cohen yesterday. he testified he spoke directly to former president trump on the phone about the payments to stormy daniels. cohen asserted he contacted trump through trump's bodyguard,

keith schiller, on october 24th, 2016, about the hush money payments. it's about two weeks before election day. defense attorney todd blanche pressed cohen about phone records, showing he texted schiller that day. cohen asked how to handle a teenager prank calling him. cohen said he did not remember that message. blanche said, quote, "do you recall texting keith schiller at 7:48 p.m.?" who can i speak to, the dope forgot to block his call on one of them." do you recall that? >> sounds right, yes. then schiller simply says, "call me." cohen called schiller immediately after for a conversation that lasted only about a minute and a half. blanche accused cohen of lying, suggesting he did not speak to trump during that call about stormy daniels as he had testified. cohen, however, insisted both topics for covered, despite the

short length of the call. the defense tried to paint cohen as having a vendetta about trump. here's a portion of his podcast played in court. >> i truly [ bleep ] hope this man ends up in prison. it won't bring back the year that i lost, or the damage done to my family, but revenge is a dish best served cold. and you better believe i want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to me and my family. >> lisa, you were down at the courthouse again yesterday. we talk about the podcast moment, but let's go back. it was confusing as you listen to it. what was todd blanche, the trump defense team getting at between the text between michael cohen and the bodyguard, keith schiller. >> there was a narrow implication and a broader one they were trying to draw. cohen's testimony about the phone call on october 24th between him and keith schiller, which he testified was really a call to trump about the stormy daniels settlement, wasn't true.

they presented him with text messages and phone call records that hadn't been part of his direct examination. the insinuation was, you manufactured this. when you said you talked to keith, in order to talk to trump about finalizing the storeny daniels settlement, that didn't really happen, did you? you had a minute and 30 second long phone call, juxtaposed with the texts about the 14-year-old prank calling you at the time. it is clear you called keith schiller to complain about that, to get secret service involved, to get security involved in these harassing phone calls. it had nothing to do with stormy daniels. may or may not be true. it is also true that two days later on the 26th, there is indisputably calls between michael cohen and donald trump. i expect on redirect, we'll hear a lot from the prosecution about that. michael cohen certainly notified donald trump and spoke with him for some longer period of time as he was finalizing it. the broader implication that todd blanche was trying to draw is if you can't trust michael

cohen about this phone call, can you really trust any of his testimony about the conversations he had with donald trump at the time? after all, this was nearly eight years ago. isn't it really the case that michael cohen's recollection is not organic but is, rather, the construction of multiple sessions upon prep sessions with prosecutors from the manhattan d.a.'s office who have constructed a memory in michael cohen that didn't organically exist about a conversation that never happened and others, as well. >> danny, i have expressed at times skepticism about this case even being brought. i will say, though, yesterday, when commentaors were talking about how this was a perry mason moment, i was like, no, it's not. a juror isn't going to go, eight years ago, a minute and a half conversation, da, da. it seems to me, the bigger problem is the podcast where he says he wants the guy to go down. the prosecution can clean this

up on redirect, can't they? >> i agree, but you and i are in the minority. the vibe i've been getting is folks feel that was the perry mason moment. to that, i say, when it comes to cooperating witness types like cohen -- and cohen, if we step back, isn't even close to the worst kind of cooperating witness you normally have on the stand. >> right. >> these are hardened criminals normally. >> right. >> this is not cohen. so the prosecution knows he is going to get dinged on things, especially because a lot of these allegations happened eight years ago. juries will forgive memory lapses. >> of course. >> from that long ago. i wasn't in the courtroom, but from what i could see, i think this is something that, one or two things will happen. either the prosecution will choose to clean it up on redirect, or, joe, they may not even think it is that big a deal. they may go for the better moment, which is to stand up and say, we're good. we have no further questions for this witness. i just didn't think it was that damaging. the prosecution is going to concede, essentially, and they have, cohen is flaky. cohen is a guy that, you know,

isn't the most reliable person, but he's believable on these issues. you know, i've been guilty of this before myself in cases, where you find a factual inconsistency, and you really hammer it and think it is going to be the perry mason moment. but if you hammer it too much, it looks a little petty to the jury. >> right. >> it's really hard to say what the jurors are thinking. it just didn't strike me as something that was fatal to the prosecution. everybody knew that cohen was going to get hit with his inconsistencies on cross-examination. i don't think it came as a surprise to the prosecution. i don't even think the defense thinks that they've completely dunked on the state's case. >> chuck, how would you handle this moment with cohen? what would be the plan? once cohen is done, we may be out of witnesses unless donald trump is called to the stand. >> first, preliminarily, i agree with joe and danny. perry mason moments happen on perry mason. >> exactly. [ laughter ] >> they don't tend to happen in courtrooms. it'd be extraordinarily rare.

second, i also agree with danny, that either the government cleans it up or ignores it. cross-examination of mr. cohen lasted, what, 17 1/2 years? at the end of that, this is what we're left with, that there was a discrepancy about a phone call eight years ago? great. he's probably wrong, but was he intentionally wrong? if he was intentionally wrong, that's the problem. >> talk about jurors for a second. when the jury goes back, they're not going to go, oh, my god, there's a minute and a half phone call. he texted him the night before about one topic. they're going to go, it was eight and a half years ago. they could have talked about two things in passing. i can talk about a lot of things in a minute and a half. >> so if it was -- yes. if it was unintentionally wrong, joe, which is the view the jurors would take of this, i'd imagine, and even if the government doesn't clean it up, i think it's a shooting star. >> water under the bridge. >> choose your analogy, your

metaphor. >> a shooting star. >> exactly. >> spilled milk. >> a flaming supernova. keep going. spilled milk is a good one. let's write this down. >> we have four hours. >> a pencil must be lead. >> go ahead, chuck. >> i have no idea what i'm talking about, but that is typically true. at the end of the day, i think that in a long cross-examination, jonathan, it's not going to matter that much. the jury looks at it holistically. in the main, can we trust this guy? is he corroborated by other documents, witnesses? in the main, even if he got a few things wrong, is he credible? that's the jury's determination. i don't think this incident undermines that. >> all right. lisa, looking ahead, a day off today for barron's graduation, but court next wednesday. what are we expecting here? what can we know to expect? >> court on monday. >> court on monday. >> i think todd blanche will

wrap up with michael cohen fairly quickly, and then we will see how much redirect the prosecution has of michael cohen and whether they go into this phone call or spend more time on larger issues. >> should they go into the phone call? >> i think they should. because it affects them, as well. i think one of the problems with the phone call -- you know, i'm sort of in between danny, chuck, and you, joe, and the people whose hair is on fire here. i think one of the problems with the phone call is it also suggests the sloppiness of the d.a.'s cause. cohen said on the stand, i've never seen this phone call. in all the prep sessions i had for the last eight years, i've never thought about these phone calls or these texts. that means someone in the prosecutor's office likely missed them in their prep sessions. remember, they're getting call records and texts from a variety of different sources. they already brought in people from at&t and verizon and the like. they missed this. then the question becomes, if they missed this, what else might they have missed? so there is a potential larger

issue there. if i were them, i would clean it up, but, you know, different people make different strategic choices. i also agree that the larger question is, do you believe this guy, given the propensity of other, actual lies he's told when this just could have been a misunderstanding. >> i said court on wednesday because i thought there was a proposal to actually -- >> there was. >> okay. did that happen? >> it didn't. some of the jurors came back and said they weren't available on wednesday. >> okay. >> on monday, after they're finished, presumably when they finish, prosecution rests their case, defense has a choice, whether they'll present a case of their own. i would predict, i'm curious what chuck and danny think, that the defense will not present any case but leave the issue dzingel dangling over the weekend, leave the prosecution in the dark. tuesday morning, we'll start to see, i would expect, summations. the jury will be instructed. then as early as thursday, they

can start their deliberations. >> danny? >> seem right? >> sounds about right. >> phew. >> it is a good chance the defense calls no witnesses and put on no case. i lend to lean toward not calling witnesses if i don't have to. i'm very risk averse. if you are risk averse, that's usually the approach, unless there is something you absolutely need from a witness. >> right. >> then you think, well, are they going to call one or two? that is a strange choice. if you call one witness, you've sort of put on a case and it shows the jury, well, you put something on but only had one witness. i think if it is that minimal, maybe it is better to just say, look, they haven't proven their case. stand on beyond a reasonable doubt, the presumption of innocence, the burden of proof. pound the podium. you didn't call any witnesses for your alternate theory, but it seems more and more their theory is just going to be, they didn't prove the elements they needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. >> chuck? >> sounds about right to me,

too. statistically, it would be unusual, very unusual to put the defendant on the stand. extremely rare. more typically, the defendants will not -- the defense will not mount a case. nor do they have to. the burden is on the prosecution. it's always on the prosecution. it never shifts from the prosecution. to the extent they have certain theories about the weaknesses of the prosecution's case, joe, they've tried to deduce that through cross-examination. that's the more typical route. >> right. >> okay. former u.s. attorney chuck rosenberg. msnbc legal analyst lisa rubin. msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos. thank you, all, very much. a-team in thespilled milk, supe, shooting star. >> thank you. ahead, russia and china strengthen military and diplomatic ties.

what it could mean for ukraine. and nato amid moscow's ongoing invasion. we're back in 90 seconds. wes

[ growl ] ready for the road trip. everyone comfortable. yep, there's plenty of space. i've even got an extra seat. wait! no, no, no, no, no. [ gasps ] [ indistinct chatter ] [ sigh ] let's just wait them out. the volkswagen atlas with three rows of seating for seven. everyone wants a ride. [ snoring ] ok, get in. [ speaking minionese ] yippee! and see "despicable me 4" in theaters july 3rd. rated pg. this morning, russian president vladimir putin continues his visit to china with several more meetings with chinese president xi jinping. yesterday, the pair signed a joint statement deepening the comprehensive, strategic partnership, as they're calling it, between their countries, as poet leaders face rising tensions with the rest. the move comes as putin wages a

new offensive in ukraine. earlier today, putin met with the chinese vice president, where he expressed that he is grateful for china's initiatives to resolve the war in ukraine. joining us now live from beijing, nbc news international correspondent janis mackey frayer. what more can you tell us about this visit by putin to beijing? >> reporter: well, this is a key visit for vladimir putin. his first foreign trip since securing another six years in power. fitting that he would make it to see his old friend, xi jinping. china's no limits partnership with russia and the close personal relationship between putin and xi jinping are arguably among putin's most important ties. and the timing of this is significant. it is coming as russia is intensifying the war in ukraine. at the same time, the u.s. is intensifying pressure on china to do more to stop russia's war

on ukraine. russia is pulling closer to china economically. at the same time, the u.s. seems to be pulling away. just earlier this week, imposing stiff tariffs on a number of chinese goods, including 100% tariffs on chinese electric vehicles. putin is making this trip, trying to score another win, in that he is looking to ensure the economic lifeline that his number one trading partner has provided. the two men have talked about deepening their cooperation on military, on energy, on financial institutions. russia's use of china's currency. then, of course, the subtext to all of this is the shared vision they have of a new global order, a new take on international relations, as they say, which is something on which they are strategically aligned, willie. >> janis mackey frayer live in beijing, thanks so much.

joe, rolling out the red carpet, china for vladimir putin. all the trappings of a state visit, the military, everything you could expect, making a big show of standing side by side with the man who now is in year three of his invasion of ukraine. >> yeah. you know, i mean, this is not 1970. this would be -- if president xi met with gavin newsom, he'd be meeting with someone with a larger economy than vladimir putin. >> what is so striking to me, vladimir putin is willing to be a junior partner in this relationship. it's just the case. he is humiliating himself and basically making himself a vasil of china. richard haass shaking his head, which he does after every new

york giants game. let's bring him down. >> the author of "home and away." >> exactly. also detailing the ups and downs and downs of the giants' football season. available on "substack." former aid to the george w. bush state department, elise jordan. and reporter for "the wall street journal," matthew brzezinski. thank you for being with us. richard, we saw in the early '70s, of course, the sosoviets, china, and the united states constantly playing off each other. in this case, you have vladimir putin with a battered military and a weakened economy, basically throwing himself into the arms of president xi and saying, "save me." >> that's not surprising. he doesn't have a whole lot of options, joe. what's surprising and disappointing is that xi jinping has doubled down on his relationship with vladimir putin. there were a lot of people a couple years ago when they first

signed their no limits agreement on the eve of the invasion of ukraine who basically are saying, gee, maybe xi jinping regrets this, particularly after things didn't go so well. >> right. >> what we saw the last couple days is we now see china doubling down. >> is this a reaction, though, to the united states doing what i think the united states should do? "new york times" highlighted it. we've been talking about it. joe biden strengthening the presence, whether it's in guam, philippines, with japan spending a lot more on their military, nuclear subs to australia, the hemming in, the hemming in of china in the east. do you think this may be a reaction to that? >> in part. >> a logical reaction. >> china doesn't have allies. russia is now a strategic partner. the united states, the great comparative advantage is we have japan and other allies. >> right. >> i also think it reflects

china's assessment that, whether it is joe biden or donald trump, there's very little upside in a relationship with us. right now, there's almost a competition between the two parties as to who can be tougher on china. biden never removed trump's tariffs, just added new ones this week. the chinese have basically discounted any possibility of a better relationship with us, and they may also see a real advantage in the united states being bogged down, increasingly depleted by supplying ukraine in a war on europe. >> elise, i'm not saying this because i'm an american. i'm saying this because if you just take a couple steps back, china needs us a lot more than we need china. is he really going to trade a good relationship with a russia that has an economy the size of texas? maybe now a little weaker than texas. instead of the west? you know, again, i always have to remind people of this, because the earth is not flat.

we have a $26 trillion economy. europe has a $25 trillion. russia is at $1.4 trillion, roughly. china going, we're going to side with the $1.4 trillion economy and live in this isolated side of the world and have bad relations with $50 trillion, $60 trillion worth of trade. >> i agree with richard. i think xi and china, they've made the calculation that it is not going to get better with the united states, no matter who is in office. politically, stateside in the u.s., it is such a strong issue to be seen as aggressive toward china. that's not going to change, whether the contender is a democrat or a republican. so you look at what is happening now. china, it is an advantage if the u.s. dollar gets weaker. it is an advantage if the u.s. is using all of its arms

supplying israel and ukraine and is running shortages. it is an advantage to china, anything that happens to the u.s. that weakens our economy and our arms. >> can i say one other thing? i don't think xi jinping says he has to choose, but he can have his cake and eat it. he can strategically relate with russia, and american business will be enthusiastic about maintaining access to the china market, he figures he is probably okay. that's why, for example, you see xi jinping courting american business leaders. i don't think they see the opportunity cost you're -- >> it is not a zero sum game for him. >> exactly. >> matthew, we've talked often here about the reasons why russia felt the need to invade ukraine. in a discussion you and i had offline earlier this week, fascinating insight, that if you really step back, it begins to make sense, at least in putin's

mind, why he was so desperate to make ukraine, to swallow ukraine up. talk about that. >> well, i think that putin may be looking to have a military solution to what is essentially a demographic problem. russia has terminal demographics. it is effectively dying. not even necessarily a slow death. bear with me with some numbers here. in 1991, when the russian federation emerged from the husk of the soviet union, it had a population of 150 million to our 250 million. since then, our population has grown to 335 million while russia's has fallen to just over 140 million. worse yet, in the next 20 years, by the kremlin's own estimates, while the u.s. will be over 400 million, russia's population will continue falling to around 130 million.

the united nations thinks it'll go to 115 million. >> first of all, why is that? why is there this demographic time bomb that has blown up? it makes sense, why they desperately need ukraine. that's number one. number two, how is this impacting putin's ability to fight this war? >> the statisticians will tell you that russia has very low birthrates, high immigration rates, and it has high mortality rates. what that doesn't say is, you know, why. the short answer is, russia is a -- >> have willie -- >> -- very unattractive place to live. putin has been in power 25 years. when the next term is done, he'll be in power longer than stalin. only catherine the great will have ruled russia longer than putin. russia has turned into a

thuggish, repressive, society, where kremlin cronies have $700 million yachts with full-time crews of 250 people. literally running costs around $70 million, $80 million a year. the obscene wealth at the top and the incredible poverty at the bottom, coupled with the kgb running rampant, made russia an unattractive place to live. people have voted with their feet. >> yeah, and they have voted with their feet. obviously, some of the brightest minds, the tech minds, the very people putin needs, have left the country. but these numbers, i mean, 335 million americans to 140 million russians. that's going to expand to 400 million americans to 130 million. i mean, that is a demographic time bomb that is going off now. >> yeah, and one putin is trying to address, perhaps, with this

land gap in ukraine. >> yeah. >> the trends aren't going to end up in his favor. speaking of ukraine, richard, putin is in beijing looking for reinforcements. he is not getting lethal aid, but china continues to send supplies his military can use. nato, front page story of "the new york times" today, nato allies are inching closer to sending troops into ukraine to train ukrainian forces. we know how much president biden has prized, revitalized the nato alliance. its 75th summit will be this summer held in washington. take us to this decision. there is real risk here, too. >> wouldn't be combat troops. probably talking about trainers. right now, the training of ukraine is taking place in places like poland. the idea is just to step it up and to have more people on scene, probably give them a little more tactical advice. i think it is a reflection that the trajectory of the war is moving against ukraine. what we've seen in the last few months, in part because of the delay in u.s. military aid for several months, then also because russia has really geared up, in part because of chinese

help, north korean, iranian help, and their own wartime economy, the tide of the battle is turning against ukraine. not decisively but the trend is clear. i think what you're beginning to see are people in nato saying, what can we do to stem this momentum? that's why we're probably going to see this step of having trainers inside of ukraine itself. one of the points, demographics in russia. i think the demographics in china are more stark. 1.3, 1.4 billion. by the end of the century, we're looking at a country with 800 million. think about the difference there. >> by the way, matthew brought it up about russia, dead right. i'm so glad you brought up china, too. i've talked to one ceo after another who has told me, china is a wreck in every way. their security forces, the oppression, xi, what he's done over the past five years to some of the brightest minds, but they always bring up the demographic time bomb there, too. they say 20, 30 years from now,

they're going to be haunted by the one child policy. >> people are voting with feet in china, too. if you are a young person who is entrepreneurial, there is no place to go. the only danger of this, and there is a debate among foreign policy types, does this lead china to be more assertive or aggressive? if you have a leadership that can't scratch the itch of nationalism by high levels of economic growth, does china look at taiwan as their salvation? interesting, xi jinping constantly uses the word rejuvenation. the rejuvenation of china is not demographic, not economic. the question is whether it comes through foreign policy adventure. that is the thing we have to worry about. as the economy fails, as the demography falls, does china look for some other out? even if you are right, and i think you are, joe, china faces enormous headwinds, that doesn't necessarily mean good things for us. >> yeah, certainly doesn't mean stability. look at the guy hunched over in

the seat right there, vladimir putin. there is a reason he went into ukraine. because he knows, as matthew said, his country is dying. what happens when china starts sensing the same thing? >> what is also -- well, it's not just because his country is dying. he needed something positive to show. this is his legacy. >> right. >> the parallels between ukraine and taiwan are quite interesting. in both cases, putin and xi see them as organically part of the country. that's another reason that china is so supportive of putin. they don't mind this precedent. >> willie, of course, in the middle of all of this, india, which, of course, is absolutely fascinating, a battle for, again, where modi decides to go. >> yeah. i mean, they're playing a role in all this that doesn't get much publicity as it probably should. let's bring in a member of the ukrainian parliament. chairwoman of the country's commission on arms control. thanks for being with us this morning. i want to talk to you about why you're in washington this week.

first, just get your reaction to the images we've been seeing, the discussion we're having about vladimir putin being welcomed with open arms, the red carpet rolled out by xi jinping and china. what does that signal to you from where you sit? >> unfortunately, ukraine has been saying for quite a while that china is just pretending to stand aside this war. so far, we've seen that the north korean and the iranians have been supporting russia with weapons directly. china has been supporting them economically and using the dual use. they're sending tons of stuff to russia that can be teared apart and the chips can be used later for the bombs, for the missiles, and for the drones that are hitting ukrainian cities and civilians every day. unfortunately, this is very sad, what we are watching right now. this is the fight between the democratic countries, the free world, and the autocracies. china is watching closely what is going to happen in ukraine, whether the western world is going to support ukraine enough

to win, and then decide whether they're going to go after taiwan or not. we can see that, unfortunately, their uniting and supporting each other might be faster than the allies are united to support ukraine. >> you are in washington, a town, city, and capitol that took far too long to get ukraine its much-needed aid, but it came last month. making its way soon to the battlefield where it is desperately needed. what do you expect that to do. >> what difference will that make, and what more do you need? >> first of all, i'd like to thank every american citizen for the support that is coming. unfortunately, we ran out of the intercepters, which are the missiles for the air defense. russia managed to bomb all of our power plants. we don't have electricity in kyiv right now, and this is very sad. because it was postponed, we were not able to shoot back and to put down their ballistic

missiles coming to our cities and our capital. right now, they have those coming, so we can at least protect our civilian population. ukrainians are grateful to the americans for supporting our population. but, unfortunately, even with the weapons coming right now, there is a huge problem. we've been talking this week to the congress people, people in the nsc, people on the hill, that ukrainians need exactly what you are showing right now on the screen. ukrainians need an ability to actually strike russia at the border. what russians are doing at this moment, because they understand there is a ban for ukrainians to use the weapons we have right now from the united states and other countries against the russian troops on their territories and against the military targets. they're putting everything they have, all the artillery, right next to the border, shelling our cities and destroying our

villages. all we're asking to do is do the buffer zones so the ukrainians can hit exactly the targets. we're talking about the artillery, the air systems that are shelling the cities right now, like kharkiv, which is the second biggest city in ukraine. it is 30 kilometers from the border. it can be easily reached. this is 15 miles that can be easily reached by the russian artillery. unfortunately, there is nothing we can do because we're not allowed to use the munition we have, to use the weapons we have, to hit them back. we're asking to give us this defensive opportunity right now, to protect our cities and to hit the military targets. there are machines, weapons hitting us every day, destroying and demolishing the cities. >> all right. member of the ukrainian parliament. >> oleska, thank you so much for being on this morning. we really appreciate it. >> thank you so much. i'm wondering, matthew, your thoughts on nato sending troops

to help ukraine as military advisors. it sort of sounds like 1963 and vietnam. again, if it -- well, it just complicates things a great deal, doesn't it? >> well, i mean, thus far, we've said categorically no to that. however, we've said categorically no to all the previous red lines and have done them in the beginning. remember, before, we'll never send tanks, never send f-16s to ukraine. we won't give them, you know, longer-range missiles. we've ended up doing all of that. you know, it is likely that that is something that's down the pike. at the moment, the russian offensive has managed to seize an area that is roughly twice the size of manhattan. we shouldn't press the panic button. these gains have not been that substantial. we are seeing that vladimir putin is running out of money.

when you are fewer and fewer subjects, you have to squeeze them harder and harder. last month, he raised taxes, income taxes, by as much as 25% for the first time in years. the longer this goes, we'll see whether russia's economy can sustain this for another year or two. it may not be necessary to escalate by putting nato troops in ukraine. >> all right. former reporter for "the wall street journal," matthew brzezinski, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it. when we return, we'll have -- >> i was just going to ask richard about the knicks, but that's okay. we don't have to. >> you just stepped on my line. >> okay. we'll do it later then. >> hold on. t.j., can you edit this? >> start again. three, two, one. >> start over. >> all right. former -- hold on. ready, three, two, one, go.

this is so hard. >> i know. actually, we have to think about it. >> thank you so much. former "wall street journal" reporter matthew brzezinski. greatly appreciate it. when we return, we will have richard haass, former -- or what are you? >> president emeritus on the council of foreign relations. >> author. >> tv's own willie geist. pulitzer prize-winning columnist gene robinson will talk about the new york knicks. exciting. >> the pga. >> terrible. >> oh, my god, i'm asleep already. we'll be right back. i have moderate to severe crohn's disease. now, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are looking up, i've got symptom relief. ♪ ♪ control of my crohn's means everything to me. ♪

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oh, boy. >> willie? >> willie? >> welcome back to "morning joe." 6:53 on a friday morning. back with sports news, guys. we'll get to the nba playoffs. good game last night. huge game for the knicks in indianapolis. there's a lot to talk about. we're just getting some wild, breaking news from the world of sports. >> what's happening? >> espn reporter, jeff darlington, covering the pga championship at valhalla golf course, he says, this is his report, he witnessed it with his own eyes. world number one golfer, scottie scheffler, who is, as always, in the hunt after the first day of the pga championship at valhalla yesterday, was arrested while trying to pull his car into valhalla golf club.

darlington says there was a misunderstanding about the traffic patterns. scottie scheffler went around the police car, according to jeff darlington. police car pulls him over, screams at scottie scheffler, "get out of the car!" according to jeff darlington, scheffler exit td vehicle, the officer placed him in handcuffs, and obtained him in the back of a police car. >> what is going on? >> this is at the valhalla country club, famed club. this is him playing yesterday. >> oh, my gosh. >> scottie scheffler is one of the two or three most famous golfers on the planet. hopefully they've sorted this out. according to jeff darlington of espn, it was a misunderstanding about how to get in. he went around a police car when he wasn't supposed to, and found himself in handcuffs before the second round of the pga championship. >> come on. >> added context here. the reason why the traffic pattern was changed, this is per the louisville career journal, a pedestrian had been hit by a bus outside the golf club and was killed early this morning.

>> oh, my. >> what? >> there is a lot happening here. the rounds were already delayed, and it appears scheffler was not aware, perhaps, of the change in traffic patterns, tried to go around the police officer. >> all that happened this morning? >> 5:00 a.m., a bus hit a pedestrian and killed the person. >> that's dark. >> that is unbelievable. >> more to come. >> the update to the traffic pattern due to this. >> i guess -- i don't know. richard haass, we'll put that all to the side right now. >> that's kind of -- >> that's insane. >> that is. >> obviously tragic. >> tragic. >> let's talk about the round yesterday. the same scottie scheffler who won the masters started yesterday with a bang. >> with an eagle, holed out on the first hole, his first shot for an eagle. ended up 4 under par for the round. xander schauffele, from california, 9 under. shot a 62 yesterday. >> geez. >> rory mcilroy, who a lot of

people had him as second favorite in the betting, 5 under. it'll be an interesting few days. this is stunning. i hate when sports is overshadowed by this tragedy. this is really sad. >> it's unbelievable. unbelievable, also, the best golfer in the world, a cop doesn't recognize the best golfer in the world and throws him up against a car and cuffs him. >> also, scottie scheffler, if you know him, is the most religious, upright, family guy. >> nice guy. >> nice guy. i don't think he's ever cursed in his life. the idea that it would happen to him is unimaginable. >> unimaginable. willie, going from golf and just truly bizarre this morning to nba basketball. these series, i mean, you think you know what's going to happen. indiana crushing the knicks or the knicks crushing them. i was sure that denver was just going to coast after, you know, they came back and had a huge

blow. i was sure denver was going to coast over the timberwolves. timberwolves said, not to fast. >> timberwolves win the first two games on the road in denver, beat the defending champions. some say it'd be a sweep. denver wins the next three. they look like they're moving on. last night, just the t-wolves and anthony edwards, antman, blowing out the denver nuggets. there will be a game seven. timberwolves and nuggets. anthony edwards scored 27 points in a, ready for this, 115-70 blowout. unbelievable. >> unbelievable, willie. can you talk to the uninitiated like me about this kid, anthony edwards. not people -- not saying he is michael jordan, but there have been real jordan esque moves this series. >> yeah. they won by 45 points last night on the back of anthony edwards.

you know, he came out of university of georgia as just an unbelievable athlete with huge upside. he is a dunker at first. man, he has rounded into an incredible, all-around player. he has a jump shot. he does, dare we say, move at times like michael jordan. he finishes at the rim for basically a guard, unlike anybody else. now, he has a three-point shot in his arsenal, too. truly maybe the best, young player in the league. incredible. they have a chance. there is a game seven to knock off the defending champs. >> they do. he's a human highlight reel. gets a guy to move, throws it off the backboard, runs in, gets it, jam. >> self-alley-oop. >> yeah. >> phenomenal athlete. if they do pick off the defending champs and, you know, they probably would be favored in the conference finals against dallas or probably oklahoma

city. this is about to be anthony edwards' league. he is the new star. having said that, it is in denver. it is game seven. nikola jokic is the best player right now, three-time mvp. we'll see where that goes. richard, joe, there are other series being played now. >> really? >> there is a game tonight, as well. >> yeah. you know, willie, i mean, there's not been a lot to cheer for if you are a new york sports fan of late. just ask richard. >> yankees are doing just fine, thank you very much. >> it is may, okay? >> rangers. >> seriously? oh, my god. >> same thing you say about the polls. >> exactly. >> willie, i don't know i've seen new york sports fans as excited about anything as they are about the knicks right now. >> yeah. there is something about this team. they bring you along. jalen brunson has been a revelation. tonight, they're back on the road. in this series, it's been really hard to win. this is the eastern conference

semifinals. knicks try to put away the pacers tonight on the road in game six. it won't be easy in indianapolis. indiana victory would send the series back to madison square garden for a game seven on sunday. richard, we're both knicks fans. game seven is out there, a possibility. nice not to need it, but it's been tough to win on the road in this series. >> the road team has won every game. they need to rest before going up against the celtics, the best in the east. they're really battered and depleted, several starters out for the season. at least they're playing now an eight-man rotation with alex burks coming back. hope springs eternal. you're right, what joe said, over 50 years, the knicks have been rebuilding. this has been the first moment people are really excited about the team. they play hard. we'll see. i'm feeling good. you got to love them this year.

>> gene robinson, we were so lucky to grow up, great nba players, great nba teams. you know, we always talk about the '80s. the '70s, not so bad either. the '80s may have been the peak of the nba. >> yeah. >> you had michael, magic. you had larry. you had the bad boys out of detroit. bad boys, they were thugs. the thugs out of detroit. >> they were. >> the easiest team to hate. but it was great. i will tell you, i've kind of stuck to college basketball recently. my son is a massive fan, but it's put me to sleep. this is the first nba playoffs i've really, like, they're pulling me in, man. there is something so dynamic about this. it is not just the knicks. >> no, they've got me. i mean, these playoffs are, in a sense, ruining my life because it's so hard to get up in the morning. >> it's brutal.

>> i watched all of that game last night, that 45-point blowout. >> stop. >> i couldn't -- anthony edwards is just so compelling. you know, if he's not the next michael jordan, he will do until the next michael jordan comes along. i mean, it is uncanny, the way he took over not just on offense but on defense, the way he led the team. he's still a kid. it reminded me of those -- of jordan's bulls trying to get past those bad boy pistons. remember, they ran up against them year after year and couldn't quite get past them in the playoffs. they'd get beaten up by the pistons. here, minnesota is trying to get past denver. who knows? jokic is the best player in the game right now. that's going to be an incredible game seven. i confess, i'm kind of rooting for a game seven in the

knicks/pacers series, because why not? a game seven at the garden, are you kidding? >> holy cow. >> that's going to be wild. jalen brunson is amazing. before tuesday's game at the garden, i thought the knicks were done. jalen brunson put them on his back, and he's just amazing. wow. >> yeah. >> okay. >> we are knicks fans, but we have to say, the pacers are really, really good, too. a great, young team. >> we don't have to say that. >> tyrese halliburton is incredible. i'm just preparing us that there might be a game seven, richard. that's a good team we're playing. mika, i swear we'll get off sports after this. but there won't be a game seven at madison square garden for the stanley cup playoffs. a road win over the carolina hurricanes last night for the rangers. down 3-1. chris kreider's third period hat trick. >> come on. >> hat trick in the third period

bringing new york back from the two-goal deficit. rangers win, 5-3, and await the winner between the series with the bruins and florida panthers. panthers up 3-2 in the series. game six is in boston tonight. if the bruins win that game, you have another game seven there. you could potentially be seeing a rangers/bruins eastern conference finals in the nhl, as well. >> knicks and celtics final. >> wrap this up now, okay? >> new york and boston both. >> i mean, i talked about the early '70s a second ago, but, man, richard, i mean, namath and the jets, then, you know, the knicks, all of these things going. we've got a chance. i mean, of the knicks, the rangers, dare i say it, the yankees, i mean, this is about as good of a sports spring as new york has had in a very long time. >> alas, even i can't make the case that the giants ought to be

on your list this year. i'm sorry. >> all right. >> you know -- >> i'm ending it. >> willie, if we're talking about new york football teams. >> oh, my gosh. >> the best football team are the jets. they have an extraordinary team. >> i don't know about that. >> great defense. >> they need help at the quarterback position, of course. it's kind of hard. what was -- what was aaron rodgers' latest? >> he's got worms in his brain, i think. >> no, that's -- >> he was on with tucker carlson. >> what was his thing? >> he wished president biden knew as much about american history as vladimir putin knows about russia's history. >> oh, my god. >> exactly. >> go to willie. >> jets are a great team. they need to find a quarterback. >> yeah, they've got a great, great defense. >> great team. >> broken down old podcaster under center for them right now. >> that was worth the wait. >> mika, i lied. one more note. we just learned that scottie scheffler has been released from police custody. >> oh.

>> after the incident, he will be on the tee shortly for the second round of the pga championship. >> oh, my goodness. >> what a morning. >> that'll be distracting. i'm thinking that might throw you off. >> shake my game. >> yeah. >> don't know much about golf but -- >> it is a training tool. >> -- it takes concentration, right. still ahead, we end this now, democratic senator richard blumenthal of new york will join the conversation. susan glasser is out with a new piece that explores donald trump and the elucid fantasy of the 2024 election game-changer. we'll explain what that means. >> people say mika doesn't like when we do sports. >> yeah. >> she just underlined it by saying, "this ends now!" >> i ended it. all right. also ahead, nbc's morgan radford will join us with a look at how generation z grapples with online misinformation, and why younger people are more likely to fall for fake headlines. this is an important

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by next week, trump will rub out of supporters and show up with roger, what do you think of the judge? totally corrupt. i wouldn't say that. the great american people -- it's rigged. why would you say that, roger? welcome back to "morning joe." jonathan lemire is still with us. joining the conversation, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle. >> mike. >> you look good. >> sorry i'm late. >> you were late, by an hour and ten minutes. >> it was a rough night last night. >> nbc news national affairs analyst john heilemann.

also always slightly late. >> what? >> am i here? >> let me finish up, heilemann. >> fair enough. >> sometimes -- >> here i am. here i am. >> i don't know what's going on, but, like -- >> 7:00 hour is starting at 7:10. >> -- he doesn't show up, especially when he is in l.a. all right. john is a partner and chief political columnist at puck. staff writer at the "new yorker," susan glasser. host of "the political scene" podcast. great to have you all on board. at the table with us is democratic senator richard blumenthal of connecticut. he is a member of the homeland security armed services and judiciary committees. i get flashbacks. >> you go way back, right? >> i started out in local news in connecticut, and senator blumenthal, you were the attorney general. >> i was the attorney general. >> if you had lollipop bans or different things, we always went to the attorney general. he had lots of legislation and

ideas. >> yeah. >> concerns about the safety of children and families and always was very innovative. >> lollipop bans? >> i'm joking. >> mika was a star. >> i was not a star. >> morning star with really big hair. >> i did have big hair, okay. maybe that's why i'm going to look this way. >> no, no, no. willie, we have gotten an update from espn. >> oh, no. >> i don't know, but i suspect, jonathan lemire and i have concluded that there may be one less kentucky police officer at work on monday. what's the latest? >> the latest is, willie just noted it, scheffler has been released. the espn reporter who witnessed this exchange, jeff darlington, has now said that when he approached the police car, he saw scheffler taken in handcuffs, and asked the officer what was going on, this was the officer's response. quote, "there is nothing you can do. he's going to jail."

a little bit of a power trip, perhaps, from this officer. scheffler did -- was put in cuffs in the back of the car, taken to the station, but apparently released. >> willie, i'm sure everybody associated with the tournament is absolutely horrified. again, this guy is known as being, you know, as richard said, a guy of deep faith, even tempered, all-around great guy. it is unbelievable that the best golfer in the world, trying to get in, is pulled out of a car, thrown up against a car, cuffed, and then sent to jail. >> yeah, i mean, as john said earlier, i didn't realize there had been a tragedy there a couple hours ago. i think there was some confusion about the traffic pattern. >> more to the story. >> clearly, scottie scheffler, the number one golfer in the world, wasn't trying to elude police to get in. he was trying to get in for his tee time at the pga championship. we'll get, i'm sure, many more details of this as it comes out.

based on the information we have right now, it sounds pretty outrageous, especially if he was thrown against the car, thrown in the back of the car. but he is out now and will play today. but wow. >> can you believe that? >> all right. >> yeah. mika, top of the last hour, i'm so glad senator blumenthal is here from the judiciary committee. talking about the alito household, having an american flag that they hung upside down in the days following the january 6th riot. make no mistake, people that were doing that were aligning themselves with the rioters who were ultimately responsible for the trashing of the united states capitol. the families of police officers would also say the death of four cops. >> the explanation that the alito family put out. >> pathetic. >> it is disturbing. "the new york times" has

reporting with an american flag outside of the home of supreme court justice samuel alito, the flag being flown upside down. as "the times" notes, the inverted flag, and as joe mentioned, has become a symbol of trump supporters who claim, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen. reading from the piece, quote, "the upside down flag was aloft on january 17th, 2021. the images showed president donald j. trump's supporters, including some brandishing the same symbol, had rioted at the capitol a little over a week before. mr. biden's inauguration was three days away. alarmed neighbos snapped photographs, some recently obtained by "the new york times." while the flag was up, the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case with justice alito on the losing end of that decision. in coming weeks, the justices

will rule on two climactic cases involving the storming of the capitol on january 6th, including whether mr. trump has immunity for his actions." >> you know, center, alito denied this. >> right, and blamed it -- >> blamed his wife. >> there ya go. >> which, of course, i'm waiting for history to determine who leaked the dobbs decision. but here we have one of the most fraught times in american history. cases going before the supreme court determining -- and the court ruled, correctly, that, actually, the will of the people should be affirmed. but you have two justices who were directly or indirectly taking sides. we already know about justice --

about jenny thomas. how disturbed are you by this? >> i am beyond disturbed, joe. i was a law clerk to justice blackman on the united states supreme court when this kind of behavior would have been unimaginable. you wouldn't have read about it in a book of fiction. now, this kind of conduct is taking down the supreme court. it's -- >> nobody would have believed it if you put it in a book of fiction. >> no one would have believed it. justice alito should not sit on any of these cases involving donald trump. he ought to recuse himself. here is the challenge to chief justice roberts. the united states supreme court's credibility is plummeting. >> all-time low. >> completely. >> lower than perhaps even the united states congress, and that's saying something. it is due to the supreme court's own self-inflicted wounds.

alito and thomas directly involved in the january 6th insurrection. now, they're going to sit on cases involving pivotal legal questions? absolutely unthinkable. i think that chief justice roberts has to take leadership of this court. he has to tell these justices that they have no business sitting on the court. it will still be able to decide the cases but not with justices alito and thomas. because, by virtue of flying the flag upside down, whether it was his wife or not, it was his own. justice thomas, through his wife, being involved in helping to organize the insurrection, both have a direct interest here. >> you know, mike, i was talking before, growing up in a conservative area with federal judges who, sure, were very

conservative. but i knew a few of them fairly well. you could not get them to talk about politics in the privacy of their own home. there was a line. they felt like they had the duty. they believed it was a sacred duty not to be involved in politics. here you have a court run by chief justice john roberts, an institutionalist, a man who i think may be one of the last institutionalists in the supreme court, but an institutionalist who has seen ethics problems come up regarding payments to justices, who has seen just the most disturbing politicalization through jenny thomas and now this.

he's got to do something. he's got to make a statement. really, i actually -- i believe the american court system separates us from other countries. it is usually the leveling wind. even if we disagree with some decisions from time to time, things keep getting worse. their approval rating gets lower. soon, that i going to lose respect by the overwhelming majority of americans. then a tyrannical president can run over them and just ignore their rulings, like andrew jackson did. >> joe, you served in the house of representatives. senator blumenthal serves in the united states senate. there is accountability in both bodies to a certain extent. there are some rogues. people get away with things, no doubt about that. but there is accountability. there is no accountability on the united states supreme court, none. you're correct, justice roberts,

people who know him, who i know, indicate he is a solid guy, a responsible guy, and has his eye on his legacy. his legacy is going to be ruined by the behavior of people like justice alito. susan glasser, on the point of the supreme court having no accountability, on the point of the supreme court about to rule on presidential immunity, i mean, what impact do you think internally, in washington, among the collective powers, in the senate, in the house, in the presidency, what is their view of the supreme court's function today in the supreme court's behavior today? >> yeah, i think this is another story about lack of accountability in our institutions. it's part of the overall crisis of faith that americans have in all of our political institutions right now. i think when you look at the question surrounding donald trump for eight years, many people looked at donald trump's behavior. the fact he was able to get away

with so many things for so long and saw a lack of accountability. well, he is in a courtroom right now. the question is, who polices the supreme court? i'm curious to hear from senator blumenthal whether there is any prospect of any legislation ever coming through that says that the supreme court needs to be more accountable. there is a real question whether the court even enforces its own rules. as that very important "new york times" story points out, the supreme court actually warns its employees regularly against any displays that could be interpreted in a partisan manner, in a political manner. when "the times" asked the court spokesperson, do these rules apply to the justices, they did not receive an answer. to me, that speaks to an institution without any accountability. it is really an important piece of reporting, and it is very upsetting. >> senator, this comes at a moment where americans' faith in the courts have declined per polling. the courts are perceived as far

more political than ever before. it comes at also a fraught moment for the nation. we're in an election year. one of the leading candidates is currently on trial. there is a sense of real unrest and tumult. now, we have this, where i think more and more americans might feel like, well, this is, in fact, rigged. the gig is -- this is not going to be done in a fair and done way with the constitution in mind. how worried are you about where this nation is heading right now as things are only going to grow tenser between now and november? >> i couldn't be more worried. here's the reason it goes to michael's point. you know, the judicial system has no armies, has no police force. its orders are obeyed because of its credibility, because people trust it. it has squandered that trust. the ones who have squandered it most irresponsiby are the highest court justices. we've worked for a code of

ethics, been rejected by republicans. we've worked for an inspector general. my proposal is the judicial branch have an inspector general, just like every other agency of government. the supreme court has no code of ethics uniquely among the branches of government. so i think it is a moment of reckoning for our democracy in a very real sense because of the trust that has been lost in our judiciary. i think we have a bipartisan obligation. we ought to come together as republicans and democrats because this issue is bigger than either party and any of us individually. >> well, and, unfortunately, again, at a time when faith in the supreme court is so low, you look and you have a supreme court that is slow walking the january 6th case. the d.c. circuit, i've got to say, i'm rarely shocked by what comes out from the supreme court. you know, i wasn't even shocked at dobbs.

i was like, wait, these people said since they were in law school, they believe it is a states issue. don't be shocked when people have been saying -- but i will tell you, i was shocked by the immunity decision. i thought the d.c. circuit's extraordinary decision would be immediately affirmed. >> court wouldn't take the case. >> court wouldn't take the case. they're slow walking the january 6th case, the supreme court. you look what's happening with the stolen nuke secrets case, the stolen war plans case. you look at that. there is a judge in south florida that was excoriated by the most conservative circuit court in america for being just bias. the mistakes she is making now regarding jury instructions, we won't even get into it, it is laughable. you would get an f in law school. >> it's the judge they got. >> it's the judge they got, i

get it. i'm just talking about, you add those two things, and it looks like people are doing things for donald trump. you look at what thomas has been doing ethically. you look at what ginny thomas was doing regarding january 6th. now look at what alito is doing with the flag hung upside down. i'll say it, right after dobbs, you had amy coney barrett who, you know, i will say, though i disagree with her on things, i respect her, going to a federalist society dinner and making light of opposition after dobbs. making light of that. i'm telling you, people who grew up around federal judges are seeing this behavior from the top justices in the land, and it is like they're from another

planet. >> right. >> i don't recognize my party. i do not recognize this type of behavior from any federal judge. >> i think, you know, joe, you and i have, over the years, talked about this. you know, you used to be able to talk about harry blackman. appointed by richard nixon. you know, ends up authoring the opinion in roe v. wade. john roberts, supposedly a conservative justice, behaving like a partisan, surprises everybody and affirms the affordable care act, keeps it on the books. that's the tradition we had for a long time, which was not that the justices didn't have idealogical predispositions but they routinely would do things that surprised people. so you could never predict what would happen on a big, historic case because it turned out that a supposedly liberal justice was conservative or a conservative justice ended up being liberal. >> john roberts and the affordable care act. famously said, don't ask us to do it when you can do it at the ballot box next year. >> i think, you know, we're at

the end now of 25 years where, with bush v gore, and people were stunned to see this court appearing to act in a nakedly partisan way. it has been 25 years of erosion and erosion on the basis of thesedictable outcomes on the basis of who you were appointed by. the ginni thomas case, the federalist society, the hanging of the flag upside down, in some world, you may be able to dismiss it as outside the court action, besides the fact you said which is the most crucial thing. there is nothing more important than the notion that a president who has been indicted for having been a participant in and having led an insurrection against the united states government, that that case be heard before this election. so the former president, donald trump, would have legal and political accountability, so voters would know whether this man was guilty of having

committed a crime of that nature. there is no conceivable world in which we are really going to say, whether you're conservative or liberal, that the president of the united states is beyond the reach of the law, is immune from any prosecution, for anything he does when he is in office. yet, the u.s. supreme court, the wholly predictable, partisan way, decided to say, as you said, slow walk, and i'd say an outrageous decision not to take, to just pass on this case. given what the appeals court had done. there was another one answer, which is, there is no issue here. other than the partisan issue. now, they're almost certainly going to guarantee we will not have a verdict in the case before voters go to the polls in november. it is a shocking -- not a symbolic thing. i'm not down playing the hanging of the flag upside down. that is the leading indicator. that is what is reflective of

this total casting aside of any attempt or pretense of being nonpartisan. it is just, we are doing what our conservative ideology tells us to do, and we're working for donald trump. >> yeah. >> it is a moment of reckoning for the chief justice. >> yeah. >> it is an unaccountable institution, appointed for life, but the chief justice has an opportunity. he has an obligation to take action. congress has an obligation to take action. there are remedies like a code of conduct and inspector general that can be imposed here. it is really up to the chief justice most immediately. >> senator, before you go, i talked about lollipop bans at the beginning. you actually had a lot of cases in connecticut to protect children, and you have now a bipartisan bill, the kids online safety, kosa. how is that going? >> it is going really well. we're at a crucial moment

because between now and june 21st, i am very hopeful we'll have a vote. we have a real opportunity here with 70 members of the united states senate co-sponsoring a bill that will impose accountability on social media for the harm they're doing in driving toxic content at kids. bullying, eating disorders, self-harm. >> yup. >> you have talked about it very perceptively and repeatedly. we've put together a coalition. marcia blackburn, republican of tennessee, and myself, bipartisan. joe knows well, to get 70 members of the united states senate to co-sponsor a bill -- >> is a lot. >> -- pretty powerful. we need to get it done at this moment. >> absolutely. >> it will give parents tools to protect their children. we've been working on this for three years now. i just want to salute the parents as well as young people who have come forward to support

this bill. they have been very powerful because of the losses they've suffered. it's about the design of these products and trying to address the mental health crisis. >> absolutely. >> yeah. >> it is an urgent situation. you know that just because these tech companies who make these products and these platforms, they don't let their kids have phones and get on them. that should tell you everything you need to know. senator richard blumenthal, thank you so much for being on this morning. >> thank you, senator. still ahead on "morning joe," there are growing concerns about misinformation and the 2024 election. a new study is looking at who is most affected by a.i. generated fake news. the results might surprise you. nbc's morgan radford joins us next with more on that. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ahhh! with flonase, allergies don't have to be scary. spraying flonase daily gives you long lasting non-drowsy relief. flonase all good. also, try our allergy headache and nighttime pills.

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back on "morning joe" at 7:36. susan glasser, your piece, "on trump and the elusive fantasy of 2024 election game-changer." what do you mean by that, susan. >> the election is stuck, right? it is basically too close that call. it is hard to envision that americans are really going to change their mind in large numbers at this point about donald trump and joe biden. for better or worse, they're hardened in people's images right now. if you look at the number of battleground states, they're not changing. it's hard to see anything that's

going to make a difference. yet, we have two potential things that in any normal election year could make a huge difference. donald trump on criminal trial. right now, we're looking at a verdict sometimes as soon as next week. the polls consistently suggest there is a possibility that even some significant percentage of republicans claim that if trump were to be -- to have a criminal conviction, to become an actual felon, that might make a difference in their vote. the other thing is, this debate that's now been agreed upon, the earliest presidential debates ever since televised debates began between the presidents. coming up in june, normally, that might make a difference, especially if people with wavering on whether or not president biden is up for another term in office, on whether donald trump -- perhaps they've forgotten all of the crazy things, as unimaginable as that is. two big game-changers, and, yet, i think there are a lot of

structural reasons for why there might not be a difference. it is hard to see it being anything other than too close to call right down to the end. but, you know, i mean, i'm trying to remain open. these are big moments coming up. >> it is hard to find somebody who does not have his or her mind made up about these two men, but the campaigns are hoping there are enough persuadables there, perhaps in the suburbs, for example. susan glasser, fascinating, new piece at "the new yorker." thanks so much. mika? >> awesome. this week, a bipartisan group of senators released a road map for combating misinformation stemming from artificial intelligence. it encourages a.i. creators to implement robust protections ahead of this year's election while still protecting first amendment rights. joining us now, nbc news correspondent and anchor for nbc news now daily, which is doing great, by the way. >> thanks, mika. >> love watching you guys. whose new reporting on who might

be most affected by a.i.-driven misinformation. what did you learn? the answer ca scares me a lot o it scares me a lot. >> it scares me, too. it's not the baby boomers or millenials having trouble clocking misinformation but generation z. a third of adults under the age of 30 regularly get their news from tiktok. so, of course, we wondered, how does this generation actually distinguish between what's real and what's fake, and what does all of this mean for how they're going to vote this year? the answers we got, trust me, they were pretty surprising. >> reporter: misinformation is everywhere. from altered voices at a college football game. >> i rn from my position. >> reporter: to a.i.-generated political announcements. when it comes to actually spotting it, a recent survey found younger americans performed worse than their older counterparts on a misinformation test designed by the university of cambridge.

with generation z, americans between 18 and 29, scoring worse than any other age group. so what does that mean for this upcoming election? >> that's an amazing thing. >> reporter: we sat down with gen-z journalism students to find out. >> roughly half of you get your news from social media. studies have found that gen-z is actually more susceptible to misinformation than older generations. >> i would believe it. >> you believe it? >> yes. >> it is not a surprise. gen-z basically grew up with tablets and iphones. we're the facebook, youtube, tiktok, twitter generation. >> it's all on the same thing. all the same platforms, both real and fake news. there's no really differentiating. >> reporter: so we decided to put them to our own test. >> each of you has a card. one has real, one has fake. >> reporter: showing examples of real and fake news. found on the internet, some created by a.i.

they spotted several of the fakes pretty easily. like this a.i.-generated image of joe biden in military fatigues. >> the guy in the back, his face is, like, very distorted. it is not looking natural. >> ready? fake. you spotted it. >> reporter: but others were trickier. is this photo of the bidens and the carters real or fake? the answer is real. this was actually taken by the white house. what's fascinating about that, it was probably done on a wide-angle lens. >> reporter: this a.i.-generated image of former president donald trump fooled half of the group. >> this one is fake. this was an a.i.-generated image. shared by an x user. >> oh, my god. >> this is, like, an eyeball. >> yeah, that's another thing. a.i. tends to really mess up words. >> reporter: it is a concern shared by both congress and new

crops of non-profit organizations. like truemedia.org. >> my biggest concern is that when it gets to the fall, even the 48 hours before the election, that we will be flooded with false images showing president biden being rushed to the hospital, showing that there is an active shooter at an election site, and having all these things be false, but be credible. >> reporter: in the end, these students got a passing grade. >> i honestly thought i would fail because it's just so easy to create a.i. images and headlines. >> the most important part is to not see stuff like that and move away from that being part of our info stream. >> reporter: with one surprising result. >> from doing this test, it almost feels like you all aren't so worried about thinking that fake things are real but, instead, when you see real

things, you're not actually sure if they aren't fake. am i hearing that correctly? does that sound of skepticism affect the way that you feel about voting at all? >> it makes it a lot harder to think about voting because you have to do a lot of extra work to find out if the things you're seeing are real. >> does it make you say, why even engage with it? >> there are definitely times where i'll be thinking, why bother? if i cannot tell any sort of difference between the two. >> between true and false? >> between true and false. >> i'm heartbroken. >> between true and false. what's interesting, mika, is, you know, we only focus on those who were generation z and voting age, but some new surveys are showing how this next generation of voters, whose who are under 18 get their news. among the findings, more than half of teenagers are getting news from social media. among those who get news from youtube, 60% say they're more likely to get it from celebrities and influencers

rather than traditional news organizations. >> the problem is, a lot of it, you know, if the news was -- if there was guidance and triple sourcing, but they don't do it. >> that's the thing. when i'm in the field and talking to people, i want them to know, at a news organization like this, there are so many layers of checks and balances and fact checking to make sure what we bring you is accurate, right? >> nbc news correspondent and anchor for nbc news now daily, morgan radford. great piece. thank you very much. come back. you heard how artificial intelligence can negatively influence younger generations, but our next guest is going to do the flip side, explain how the technology can benefit students. that's ahead. before we go to break, willie geist, what do you have planned for "sunday today?" >> first of all, such a fascinating report by morgan, as always. she's so good. makes us better. coming up on "sunday today, " an

interview with one of the most in-demand stars in hollywood. glen powell. had a breakout performance in "hang man." he paired with sydney sweeney in "anyone but you," made $220 million at the box office. now starring in a film directed by the great richard linklater that powell co-wrote, co-produced, and stars in, "hit man." smart guy, so fun. glen powell coming up this weekend on nbc "sunday today." we'll be right back here on "morning joe" on a friday morning.

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intelligence continues to grow in the classroom, educators now are split on the new technology's benefits. according to a pew research survey 25% of teachers in america think ai does more harm than good for the students. our next guest, however, thinks ai is the future of education. let's bring in the founder and ceo of the nonprofit educational organization academy sal khan, the author of "brave new words: how ai will revolutionize education and why that's a good thing." so, sal, we just had a segment talking about the pitfalls of ai. give us reason to hope that this really could lead to a more positive brave new world. >> yeah, and the reality is everything you just showed in

that last segment is real, no pun intended, but the reality is there are some positive things. in education obviously ben chatgpt came out they were like kids are going to cheat and they are going to cheat and are cheating but chatgpt wasn't built for education. as i write in the book there are ways to use the same underlying technology to really support teachers and really support students. i started khan academy almost 20 years ago tutoring family, i used to be an analyst in a hedge fund, and i started really trying to scale up what i was able to do on on one-on-one tutoring and i did it with videos and software. when we started to see what was possible in the last couple of years with some of these frontier ai models it starts to get really close in certain ways to what i was able to do with my cousins. so our goal is that's a positive use case and can support

teachers, lesson planning, progress reports, a preliminary grade, teacher should be in charge at the end of that and then you can get some real net benefit of it. >> what you've done with khan academy was revolutionized and democratized education to some extent, your education modules are accessible in most countries in the entire world. how does ai impacted the product that you're able to put out into the world? what's the most positive thing? >> so our mission as a nonprofit is free world-class education for anyone anywhere. i tell our teams there's many ways you could do that, lobby governments to spend more on education or things like that. our vehicle has always been there's these scaleable technologies that used appropriately could actually get more personalization, if kids hopefully do have access to school but if you are in parts of the world that don't have access to schools or schools don't have certain classes we want to raise the floor there. people say on demand video is great but what happens when a student wants to ask a question

or now kids are cheating with ai, how do you solve that? what if the ai supported the student but that ai is connected to the teacher, so that ai -- they can tell the teacher the entire process. so when you take these technologies and put them on something, they're not free because it's very computationally intensive, but it's going to get pretty close to free. i think it's going to make these things that can be world class a lot more accessible. >> salman, how duds ai help a 5-year-old learn to read? >> yeah, and we haven't gotten there yet. we have an app, khan academy kids, it's free, everything i'm talking about is funded with philanthropy, but we can imagine in the next couple of years you will see apps that a child could sound out words with, it could ask the child to write out a letter and it will be able to recognize that letter. a child will be able to play games in the real world, hey, why don't you build this with blocks and the app will say great job.

i don't think that's a replacement for humans, ideally even khan academy kids we say that's best when a parent, a sibling, a grandparent is significant next to their child and doing it together, even then it should maybe be for 20, 30 a days max. >> is ai in competition with the in-class teacher? >> i don't think so. the way we frame it, we have already tens of thousands of students and teachers, this coming school year will be hundreds of thousands, we're partnering with hundreds of school districts around the country and actually now around the world. the first thing we tell teachers, how much time do you spend writing lesson plans, grading papers, writing progress reports? it's usually 10, 15 hours a week doing that type of task. i said imagine if your school district discovered all sorts of resources and they could hire teaching assistants for every one of you to do those types of things and provide more personalized support for students but report back to you and also hold students accountable if they try to cheat or try to cut some corners. every teacher is like, yes, sign me up for that. >> thank you so much for being with us. the new book is titled "brave

new words: how ai is going to revolutionize education why that's a good thing." just rave reviews. bill gates calls it a master class on anyone interested in the future of education. adam grant says the same thing. walter isaacson, tony blair all saying if you want to know about the future of education read this book it's on sale. thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. still ahead on "morning joe" we're going to bring you legal expert analysis on michael cohen's testimony in donald trump's hush money trial and what we can expect next week in court. plus, we go to the "new york times" reporting on stop the steal symbol outside of the home of supreme court justice samuel alito. we're back in about two minutes. alito. we're back in about two minutes.

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still ahead on "morning joe," we will get the latest

from beijing on vladimir putin's state visit to china and dig into how that relationship will impact the future of the war in ukraine. we are back in just 90 seconds. .

you referred to president trump as a boarish cartoon miss oj gist, didn't you, defense attorney todd blanche asked. >> it sounds like something i would say. >> a cheat toe dusted cartoon villain. >> also sounds like something i would say. >> you referred to president

trump as dictator d-bag, didn't you? cohen says sounds like something i said. >> damn. trump is just sitting there while his own lawyer roasts him. look, i get the defense's argument that you can't trust michael cohen because he hates donald trump, but to be fair anyone who has ever worked with donald trump hates donald trump. at some point you've got to be like, i think it's trump. we also learned what the defense ordered for lunch today. 14 pizzas, four cheese, five pepperoni, four sausage and pepperoni and one chicken, bacon and ranch. no word yet on what trump's lawyers ordered. okay. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." willie, it is today officially -- i have triple sourced this -- friday. >> it's friday. >> yes. >> okay? >> we did it. >> friday, may 17th, everybody. welcome to "morning joe." along with joe, willie and me we

have the host of way too early white house bureau chief at "politico" jonathan lemire and associate editor of the "washington post" the great eugene robinson. >> jonathan lemire officially deciding he's going to hang his american flag upside down because the red sox lost last night. >> i did text that to you. >> it was actually a neighbor -- >> there were pictures taken. yes, we will get to this later this morning. >> no. >> the supreme court justice samuel alito, american flag at his home hung upside down, a signal of distress, done in the days after january 6th. a symbol of the stop the steal movement. hung at his house, he blames his wife. >> blaming the wife for people in a public eye for trouble -- >> don't ever -- >> i would never do that. but, willie, this circles back to these people, and i will say

"these people" -- these trumpers who have spent their entire life attacking people for being insufficiently patriotic and then they lose and they just hate america. they hate america. they're constantly going around saying how weak we are, they hate our military, they say how weak our military is, when it's the strongest in the world. they hate our economy, they claim the president of the united states is a socialist. the dow yesterday made all of these people a lot richer, breaking 40,000 for the first time despite donald trump's lies that it would collapse if joe biden was president of the united states. they hate this country, they attack this country. the only time they love it is when their person is in office. i've just got to say and we've got a lot of legal brilliant minds around this table, so they can speak to this later if they want to. i will tell you growing up one of my friend's fathers was a

federal judge. i had no idea until i got older whether he was republican or democrat. and that was the case in northwest florida. very conservative place. the federal judges kept themselves beyond reproach. they never talked politics, ever. in the privacy of their -- their homes, if you asked them opinion, they would just say, not my job, right? i'm a judge. they actually took their oath seriously. and for a supreme court justice -- and i will say my opinion only, but the guy most likely to have had something to do with the leaking of the dobbs decision, leaking it to the "wall street journal" or somebody connected to him, leaking it to the "wall street journal" because he wanted to keep breath kavanaugh and amy

coney barrett frozen in place. i think history will show that, but that aside for a guy who is a supreme court justice that let that happen at his own home in one of the most fraught times in american history since -- since the civil war is just -- it's just sad, and it shows how little respect he has for the institution. it shows how little respect he has for the law. it really does. it's disgusting. it's just disgusting. >> willie? >> and by the way, we can't overstate the timing of this, which is january 17th, 2021, think about where we were as a country, still completely shaken by what had happened on january 6 and a sitting supreme court justice has a flag flying upside down at his home that is a symbol of solidarity as john said with the stop the steal movement. we should explain a little bit here.

"the new york times" is reporting that a photo of an american flag outside the home of supreme court justice samuel alito has now been made public. the flag flown upside town. as the "times" notes the inverted flag has become a symbol of trump supporters who claim, again, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen. reading from the tweets, quote, the upside down flag was aloft on january 17, 2021 the images showed. president donald jn trump supporters including some brandishing the same symbol had rioted the capitol a few days before. alarmed neighbors snapped photographs, some of which were obtained by "the new york times." while the flag was up the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case with justice alito on the losing end of that decision. in coming weeks the justices will rule on two climactic cases involving the storming of the capitol on january 6 including whether mr. trump has immunity for his actions.

their decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to overturn the last presidential election and his chances for reelection in the upcoming one. i had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag, justice alito said in an emailed statement to the "times." it was briefly placed by mrs. alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs. >> wait. wait a minute. >> so you're going to hate on america because of something a neighbor did? >> you're going to blame your wife? >> and blame your wife? >> and make up that excuse? >> what is this? >> my wife was mad at a neighbor? >> blaming wives. anybody care to jump in here? >> i want to know what person, let alone woman/woman, would do that in response to a problem with the neighbor. >> eugene, a neighbor -- >> your husband -- >> a neighbor upsets me, comes out, makes fun of me because the rays beat the red sox last night

and the red sox really suck. >> okay. >> so i'm mad. i'm not going to hang my flag upside down. >> right. >> none of this -- >> right. >> this is dumb as what i heard about the dobbs leak. >> okay. >> nobody believes him. >> no, nobody believes him and there's no reason to believe him and he says -- he says briefly, you know, that "times" story had neighbors suggesting that briefly meant for a period of days this flag was flying upside down at justice alito's house. and the idea that a yard sign that says something rude, apparently said something rude about president trump, is enough for a supreme court justice who is supposed to be nonpolitical, who is supposed to be, you know, left political than caesar's wife would do this. i will just say do this, not

allow his wife to go out and run up the flagpole, but would do this, and now, of course, as alito always does, try to sort of brazen his way through it. i mean, i will just say that i have thought for a long time that alito is the worst justice. he is one of the worst justices that we have seen on the supreme court since the days of, you know, roger tawny and the other justices that enabled decades of jim crow. i mean, he's just -- his opinions have always struck me as intellectually dishonest, clearly tailored to come out to a predetermined result. you know, and now this. it's just stunning to me. stunning. >> it's not just it was a few days after january 6. while that flag was flying upside down the court was still

contending as to whether or not to hear a 2020 election case. let's also remember ginni thomas, the wife of clarence thomas, part of the same stop the steal movement. now you have two justices potentially compromised on this issue as we head into another election that could very well end up before the court again. >> jacques, i really -- ideologies are irrelevant. again, i've known progressive federal judges, i have known very conservative federal judges. they hold themselves beyond reproach. this is really -- again, for the time, it's just unbelievable. >> something you said earlier, joe, really resonated with me. you grew up in the florida panhandle and a friend's father was a federal judge. >> right. >> and you had no idea, none, what his politics were. so i spent my professional life in federal court around federal judges. i have never seen or heard anything that would suggest to me that ideology played a role in their decisions.

some of the judges were great, some were good, some were mediocre. they got some stuff right, got some stuff wrong, but i've never seen politics affect their work. by the way, i can extend that a little bit further. it was true the federal prosecutors with whom i worked, we never had a political discussion in two decades in our office. >> ever. >> ever. >> ever. people -- i want to underline that fact because people have to understand that despite what they see from -- i will just say this -- from justice thomas and justice alito, people take their oaths seriously. conservatives, moderates, progressives, they see themselves as officers of the court and, dammit, they held this country together after january 6th. >> and i have no doubt that among my colleagues were liberals, moderates, progressives, conservatives, all stripes, but we never discussed it. in fact, i remember once, joe,

walking through our office parking lot and seeing a bumper sticker on someone's car which startled me because it was a political bumper sticker. i had never seen that ever before. it turned out that that particular federal prosecutor had borrowed his spouse's car because his was in the shop. and that was the only time i even saw a bumper sticker in our parking lot expressing a political view. it was so unusual that i noticed it. >> also with us we have former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. how are you holding up covering this trial? >> it's a lot. >> all day, every day. >> it's a lot. >> and msnbc legal analyst danny sevallis. the trial could wrap up next week, we will find out from the experts. the prosecution star witness michael cohen is set to return to the stand on monday after trump's legal team tried to

hammer away at his credibility yesterday. court is in recess today so the former president can attend his son baron's high school graduation this morning. lead defense attorney todd blanche says cohen's questioning will likely wrap up on monday. the prosecution has said it does not plan to call any additional witnesses and the defense says it may not call any, either. that means closing arguments could begin as early as tuesday, clearing the way for jury deliberations by the end of next week. willie, so we're looking now just at what happened yesterday. >> and another day of cross-examination of michael cohen yesterday. he testified he spoke directly to former president trump on the phone about the payments to stormy daniels. cohen asserted he contacted trump through trump's bodyguard, keith schiller, on october 24th, 2016, about the hush money payments. it's about two weeks before election day.

defense attorney todd blanche pressed cohen about phone records showing he texted schiller that day in which cohen asked how to handle a teenager who was prank calling him. cohen responded saying he did not remember that message. blanche said, quote, do you recall texting keith schiller at 7:48 p.m.? who can i speak to regarding harassing calls to myself and office? the dope forgot to block his call on one of them. you don't recall that? cohen responded, it sounds right, yes. blanche then noted a return text to cohen where schiller simply says, call me. blanche then pointed out cohen called schiller immediately after for a conversation that lasted only about a minute and a half. blanche accused cohen of lying, suggesting he did not speak to trump during that call about stormy daniels as he had testified. cohen, however, insisted both topics were covered, despite the short length of the call. the defense also attempted to paint cohen as having a vendetta against trump. here is a portion of his podcast that was played in court. >> i truly [ bleep ] hope that

this man ends up in prison. it won't bring back the year that i lost, or the damage done to my family, but revenge is a dish best served cold. and you better believe i want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to me and my family. >> okay. lisa, so you were down at the courthouse again yesterday. we talked about that podcast moment in just a second, but let's go back to -- because it was a little confusing maybe as you listened through it. what was todd blanche -- what was the trump defense team getting at with that text and phone call between michael cohen and the bodyguard, keith schiller? >> let's talk about there was a narrow implication and then a much broader one, willie, that they were trying to draw. the first thing they were trying to say is cohen's testimony about the phone call on october 24th between him and keith schiller, which he testified was really a call to trump about the stormy daniels settlement wasn't true. they presented him with text messages and phone call records that hadn't been part of his direct examination and the insinuation was you manufactured

this. when you said you talked to keith schiller in order to talk to donald trump about finalizing the stormy daniels settlement, that didn't really happen, did it? you had a minute and 30 second long phone call with him and juxtaposed with these texts about the 14-year-old who was prank calling you at the time, it it's pretty clear that you called keith schiller to complain about that, to get secret service and security involved in these harassing phone calls, it had nothing to do with storm. that may or may not be true. it is also true that two days later on the 26th there is indisputably calls between michael cohen and donald trump, and i expect on redirect we will hear a lot from the prosecution about that, that michael cohen certainly notified donald trump and spoke with him for some longer period of time as he was finalizing it. but the broader implication that todd blanche was trying to draw is if you can't trust michael cohen about this phone call, can you really trust any of his testimony about the conversations he had with donald trump at the time? after all, this was nearly eight

years ago and isn't it really the case that michael cohen's recollection is not organic, but is rather the construction of multiple prep sessions upon prep sessions with prosecutors from the manhattan da's office who have constructed a memory in michael cohen that didn't organically exist about a conversation that never happened and others as well. >> you know, danny, i have expressed at times skepticism about this case even being brought. i will say, though, yesterday when commentators were talking about how this was like some perry mason -- no, it's not. a juror is not going to go, oh, my god, eight years ago a minute and a half conversation -- i mean, it seems to me the much bigger problem is the podcast where he says i want this guy to go down. i mean, the prosecution is going to be able to clean this up on redirect, aren't they? >> i agree but i think you and i are in the minority. the vibe i've been getting is that a lot of folks feel like this was that kind of perry

mason moment. to that i say when it comes to cooperating witness types like cohen and cohen if we take a step back, isn't even close to the worst kind of cooperating witness you normally have on the stand. these are hardened criminals normally. this is not cohen. so the prosecution knows that he's going to get dinged on things, especially because a lot of these allegations happened eight years ago. juries will forgive memory lapses from that long ago. >> of course. >> i wasn't in the courtroom, but from what i could see i think this is something that one of two things will happen, either the prosecution will choose to clean it up on redirect, or, joe, they may not even think it's that big a deal. they may go for the better moment which is to stand up and say we're good, we have no further questions for this witness. i just didn't think it was that damaging because the prosecution is going to concede essentially and they have throughout the case cohen is flaky, cohen is a guy that isn't the most reliable person, but he's believable on these issues. i've been guilty of this before myself in cases where you find a

factual inconsistency and you really hammer it and you think it's going to be that perry mason moment, but if you hammer it too much, it looks a little petty to the jury. >> right. >> so it's really -- it's hard to say what the jurors are thinking. it just didn't strike me as something that was fatal to the prosecution. everybody knew that cohen was going to get hit with his inconsistencies on cross-examination, i don't think it came as a surprise to the prosecution and i don't think even the defense thinks that that they've completely dumped on the state's case. >> how would you handle this moment with cohen? what would be the plan? and once cohen is done we may be out of witnesses unless donald trump is called to the stand. >> first preliminary aerl, i agree with joe and danny. perry mason moments happen on perry mason, they don't tend to happen in courtrooms. it would be extraordinarily rare. second, i actually agree with danny that either the government cleans it up or ignores it. cross-examination of mr. cohen

lasted, what, 17 and a half years and at the end of that this is what we're left with, that there was a discrepancy about a phone call eight years ago. great. he's probably wrong, but was he intentionally wrong? if he was intentionally wrong, that's a problem. >> all right. still ahead on "morning joe," the leaders of russia and china agree to strengthen military and diplomatic ties. what that could mean for ukraine and also nato amid moscow's ongoing invasion. we will go to beijing for the very latest. we're back in 90 second. latest. we're back in 90 second. s. s. some people just know that the best rate for you, is a rate based on you, with allstate. because you know the right way to save.

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this morning vladimir putin continues his visit to china with several more meetings with chinese president xi jinping. yesterday the pair signed a joint statement deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership as they're calling it between their countries as both leaders face rising tensions with the west. the move comes as putin wages a new offensive in ukraine. earlier today putin met with the chinese vice president am he expressed that he's grateful for china's initiatives to resolve the war in ukraine. joining us now live from beijing nbc news international correspondent janis mackey frayer. what more can you tell us about this visit by putin to beijing? >> reporter: well, this is a key visit for vladimir putin, his

first foreign trip since securing another six years in power, and fitting that he would make it to see his old friend xi jinping. china's no limits partnership with russia and the close personal relationship between putin and xi jinping are arguably among putin's most important ties, and the timing of this is significant in that it's coming as russia is intensifying the war in ukraine, while at the same time the u.s. is intensifying pressure on china to do more to stop russia's war in ukraine. russia is pulling closer to china economically, at the same time that the u.s. seems to be pulling away. just earlier this week imposing stiff tariffs on a number of chinese goods, including 100% tariffs on chinese electric vehicles. so putin in making this trip is trying to score another win in that he's looking to ensure the economic lifeline that his

number one trading partner has provided. the two men have talked about deepening their cooperation on military, on energy, on financial institutions. russia's use of china's currency and then of course the subtext to all of this is this shared vision they have of a new global order, a new take on international relations as they say, which is something on which they are strategically aligned, willie. >> janis mackey frayer in beijing, thank you. we will talk more about the global implications of the chinese/russian alliance when richard haass joins our conversation next on "morning joe." chard haass joins our conversation next on "morning joe. with e*trade from morgan stanley, we're ready for whatever gets served up. dude, you gotta work on your trash talk. i'd rather work on saving for retirement. or college, since you like to get schooled. that's a pretty good burn, right?

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welcome back. we've been talking about the growing alliance between russia and china and what it means for the war in ukraine and beyond. with us now richard haass, the author of the weekly newsletter "home and away."

also a former aide to the george w. bush white house. also matthew brzezinski. thank you for being with us. richard, we saw in the early '70s, of course, the soviets, china and the united states constantly playing off of each other, in this case you have vladimir putin with a battered military and a weakened economy, basically throwing himself into the arms of president xi and saying, save me. >> that's not surprising because he doesn't have a whole lot of options, joe, but surprising and disappointing is that xi jinping has doubled down on his relationship with vladimir putin. there were a lot of people a couple years ago when they first signed their no limits agreement on the eve of the invasion of ukraine who basically are saying, gee, maybe xi jinping regrets this, particularly after things didn't go so well. what we saw the last couple days

is we now see china doubling down. >> is this a reaction, though, to the united states doing what i think the united states should do, "new york times" highlighted t we've been talking about it a couple years ago, joe biden strengthening the presence, whether it's in guam, philippines, with japan, spending a lot more on their military, nuclear subs to australia. the hemming in -- the hemming in of china in the east, do you think this may be a reaction to that? >> in part. >> i mean, a logical reaction. >> look, china doesn't have allies, russia is now a strategic partner. the united states the great comparative advantage is we have japan and other allies. i think it also reflects china's assessment that whether it's joe biden or donald trump there's very little upside in a relationship with us. right now there's been a competition between the two parties as to who can be tougher on china. biden removed trump's tariffs,

just added new tariffs this week. so i think the chinese are basically discounted any possibility of a better relationship with us and they may also see real advantage in the united states being bogged down, increasingly depleted, by supplying ukraine in a war in europe. >> elise, and i'm not saying this because i'm an american, i'm saying this because if you just take a couple of steps back, china needs us a lot more than we need china. is he really going to trade a good relationship with a russia that has an economy the size of texas or maybe now a little weaker than texas, instead of the west? you know, again, i always have to remind people of this because the earth is not flat. we have about a $26 trillion economy, europe has a 25, $26 trillion economy yearly. china is at $17 trillion. russia is at $1.4 trillion

roughly. so you are talking about china going, we're going to side with the $1.4 trillion economy and live in this isolated side of the world, and have bad relations with, you know, 50, $60 trillion worth of trade. >> i think -- i agree with richard, i think that xi and china they've made the calculation that it's not going to get better with the united states, no matter who is in office. politically stateside in the u.s. it is such a strong issue to be seen as aggressive towards china, and that's not going to change whether the contender is a democrat or a republican. so you look at what's happening now and china, it's an advantage if the u.s. dollar gets weaker, it's an advantage if the u.s. is using all of its arms supplying israel and ukraine and is running shortages. it's an advantage to china anything that happens to the u.s. that weakens our economy and our arms. >> i don't think xi jinping thinks he has to choose the way

you set it up, i think he thinks he can have his cake and eat it. he can associate with russia and he thinks that american business will be so enthusiastic about maintaining access to the chinese market i think he figures he's probably okay. that's why, for example, you always see xi jinping courting american dis beaders. i don't think they see quite the tradeoff or the opportunity cost. >> it's not a zero sum game for him. >> exactly. >> matthew, we've talked often here about the reasons why russia felt the need to invade ukraine. in a discussion you and i had offline earlier this week, fascinating insight that if you really step back, it begins to make sense at least in putin's mind why he was so desperate to make ukraine -- to swallow ukraine up. talk about that. >> well, i think that putin may

be looking to have a military solution to what is essentially a demographic problem. russia has terminal demographics. it is effectively dying, and not even necessarily a slow death. bear with me with some numbers here. in 1991 when the russian federation emerged from the soviet union it had a population of 150 million, to our 250 million. since then our population has grown to 335 million, while russia's has fallen to just over 140 million. worse yet, in the next 20 years by the kremlin's own estimates while the u.s. will be over 400 million, russia's population will continue falling to around 130 million, and the united nations thinks it will go to 115 million. >> first of all, why is that? why is there this demographic

time bomb that has blown up and it does make sense why they desperately need ukraine, that's number one. and number two, how is this impacting putin's ability to fight this war? >> well, i mean, the statisticians will tell you that russia has very low birth rates, it has high immigration rates and it has high mortality rates. what that doesn't say is, you know, why. the short answer is russia is a -- >> have -- >> -- a very unattractive place to live under putin who has been in power for 25 years and when this next term is done he will be in power longer than stalin and only katherine the great will have ruled russia longer than putin. russia has turned into a fuggish repressive kleptocracy build where the average person subsists on $800 a month while

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let's bring in a member of the ukrainian parliament, she's chairwoman of the country's commission on arms control. thanks for being with us this morning. i want to talk to you about why you're in washington this week, but first just get your reaction to the images we've been seeing, the discussion we're having about vladimir putin being welcomed with open arms, the red carpet rolled out by xi jinping and china. what does that signal to you

from where you sit? >> well, unfortunately ukraine has been saying for quite a while that china is just pretend to go stand aside this war. so far we've seen that the north korean, the iranians have been supporting russia with weapons directly. china has been supporting them economically and using the dual-use -- they're sending tons of the is it you have to russia that can be tear apart and the chips can be used later for the bombs, missiles and for the drones that are hitting ukrainian cities and civilians every day. so unfortunately this is very sad what we're watching right now because this is the fight between the democratic countries, the free world and the autocraies and china is watching closely what's going to happen in ukraine, whether the western world is going to support ukraine enough to win, and then decide whether they're going to go after taiwan or not. so we can see that unfortunately they are uniting and they are supporting each other much faster than the allies sometimes

are united to support ukraine. >> so you are in washington, a town, a city, a capital and a body that took far too long to get ukraine its much needed aid, it did come last month, $60 billion worth making its way to the battlefield where it's desperately needed. what do you expect that to do? what difference will that make and what more do you need? >> so first of all i would like to thank every american citizen for the support that is coming because unfortunately we ran out of the intercepters which are the missiles for the air defense and russia managed to bomb all of our power plants. we don't have electricity in kyiv right now and this is very sad because it was postponed we were not able to shoot back and to put down the ballistic missiles coming to our cities and our capital. right now we have those coming, so we can at least protect our civilian population and ukraine is very grateful for the americans for supporting our

population, but unfortunately even with the weapons coming right now there is a huge problem and we've been talking in d.c. for this week to all of the congress people, people in the nsc, people on the hill that ukrainians need actually exactly what you're showing right now on the screen, ukrainians need an ability to actually strike russia at the border. what russians are doing at this moment, because they understand there is a ban for ukrainians to actually use the weapons we have right now from the united states and other countries against the russian troops on their territories and against the military targets. they are putting everything they have, all their artillery right next to the border shelling our cities and destroying our villages. all we're asking to do right now is to do the buffer zone so the ukrainians can hit exactly the military targets, we are talking about the artillery, we are talking about the mlrs systems

that are shelling the cities right now like carer kharkiv. it can be easilier reached, this is like 15 miles that can easily be reached by the russian artillery. unfortunately there is nothing we can do because we are not allowed to use the munition we have to use the weapons we have to hit them back. so we're asking to give us this defensive opportunity right now to protect our cities and to hit the military targets, the machines, the weapons that are hitting us every day, destroying and demolishing the cities. >> all right. member of the ukrainian parliament. >> thank you so much for being on this morning. we really appreciate it. coming up, we will go live to the white house to speak with one of the president's top advisers, steve benjamin joins us ahead of president biden's commencement speech at morehouse college this weekend. "morning joe" is back in a moment. ege this weekend "morning joe" is back in a moment

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welcome back. live look at new york city at 48 past the hour. michigan will be a key state in this year's presidential election and recent polling continues to show a close race. young black men have emerged as a key voting block that could either push joe biden across the finish line, or help give trump the best black voter support for a republican presidential candidate in recent history. joining us now nbc news correspondent trymaine lee who sat down with a group of black men who are deeply involved in their community to see how they are feeling this election cycle. also with us is the president of the national action network and host of msnbc's "politics

nation," reverend al sharpton. great to have you both with us. >> the rev has been telling us for some time that joe biden's support among black voters, not as intense as it usually is for democratic voters, but -- for democratic presidents, but especially among black men. what did you find? >> president joe biden won michigan by a little more than 125,000 votes in 2024 and -- i'm sorry, 2020. in 2024 it's expected to be just as close, but there is a demographic of voter that could play a crucial role in who wins the state and perhaps the white house. black men. i caught up with a group of guys in detroit that said if politicians want their vote, they're going to have to come and work for it. >> reporter: come and work for it.

this group of black men shows up day after day offering protection, resources and respect. every day y'all out here filling the gaps. >> yes. that's where the people at. >> they help fill the void between people and politicians. >> people come in and holler at us about things they may need. if they're struggling with bills. >> they're everyday faces in some of detroit's most disinvested communities. >> we are one of the leading organizers on the ground in detroit, literally as close as you're going to get to black people in this city. we haven't heard from a democrat or republican. >> i got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth

time. a lot of people said that's why the black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against. >> black men have not benefitted proportionate to other populations in terms of economic opportunity and economic health, much less wealth creation. so we have to be honest about that. >> black men are poised to become something of a swing vote, some polling showing trump is on track to capture a larger share of black voters than any other republican presidential candidate since 1996. why? >> they just want to get the votes and that's it. >> people pander for our votes. we know we've never seen this person before ever, so we know it's fake. >> biden, trump and rfk junior

have visited. >> people are worrying about their next meal or if they're going to be able to keep the lights on. >> we've never seen these people. they're not real people. they come to michigan and these places but it's not in our places. >> who among you is definitely going to vote in this election. just one. so you haven't decided whether you're going to vote or not? >> i'm undecided. >> me and my family, we're democrats. >> i don't know who i'm going to vote for. >> we just want to feel your vibe. >> if you really want the black vote, spend more time in the black community with black people hearing about their problems.

>> the brothers of new era are doing what they do best, showing up for black people in a way they can feel. >> what's up, brother? >> as you saw, just one of those guys, the elder gentlemen is definitely going to vote in the presidential election and for biden. tracking with the generational divide between black men and their support and their openness to donald trump, we're seeing something different between generational and gender lines. >> rev, you've been talking about this for some time, that black men are going to be so key in michigan especially, as jonathan was bringing up before, because a lot of arab americans may not be there in the numbers they have in the past supporting joe biden.

we always talk about white men, how are white men going to vote, they're the swing voters, et cetera? that's not the case this year. it is now black men that the biden/harris team have to connect with. >> absolutely correct. i believe that they can. i just don't know why they don't get the message. i think the piece is so important, because one of the things said by one of the men on the piece that i know for a fact is the disconnect between those politicians, black and white, and people on the ground. when i started "politics nation here" some people in harlem said he won't be doing the saturday morning rallies anymore. i still do. you want to be on the ground where people are. you can't speak for people you don't speak to. the one thing i'll say,

trymaine, the biden people have so much that they could work with so much material, it's almost like a malfeasance on their part or malfunction in the campaign. because if i were running against donald trump and i want to talk to black men, i'd bring up the central park five, who donald trump called on getting the death penalty, and they exonerated and he still didn't back up on that. these are young black men. you want to know about donald trump and young black men? look at the central park five, the only race case he ever took a position on in 40 years in new york. he never said anything about any

other case. >> you're there every saturday with the people. kamala harris came and went to the african-american museum, the creme de la creme of black new york but not in the hoods or ghettos or going to a church with older consistent voters. they're leaving a lot of votes on the table. these people have concerns, but they never see any of these politicians, or if they do, it's every four years, never on the ground. >> one guy said let's open up a town hall and talk to the people. it wasn't a biden official. it was deacon joe scarborough. [ laughter ]

>> that's so important. thank you so much for the report. up next, the latest on the world's top-ranked golfer arrested by police this morning ahead of the second round of the pga championship. i'm so confused. >> they get a mugshot. >> a house oversight committee meeting devolves into chaos during a hearing to hold attorney generalmerrick garland in contempt of congress. in contempt of congress.

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south carolina senator tim scott is feeling confident. >> america loves president trump because he's plain spoken, easy to understand and he is clear as a bell. >> that part -- no, that part is actually true. when trump talks, it's as clear as a bell. >> bing bong bong bing bing bing

bing. >> i've never seen that one before. that's a new one. bing bong bing bing bong. welcome to the fourth hour of "morning joe." it's 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. in the east. joining us now, pulitzer-prize winning author doris kearns goodwin. her new book is titled "an unfinished history." >> it's an extraordinary story. i absolutely love it. we're going to talk to doris in a second. i've got to say, jonathan, you see pictures and you're not sure are they real? >> yep. >> that the top golfer in the world tried to get on time for

his tee time. he gets thrown up against a car, he gets handcuffed, he gets sent to jail. there's a mugshot. >> scotie scheffler has been charged with felony assault on a police officer. he was taken into custody by louisville metro police after trying to drive into the golf club after a man was struck and killed earlier by a shuttle bus. this is an account on espn sportscenter. >> he tried to pull around what he believed to be security, ended up being police officers. they told him to stop.

when he didn't stop, the police officer attached himself to the vehicle. scheffler then traveled another ten yards before stopping the car. the police officer then grabbed at his arm, attempting to pull him out of the car, at which point scheffler opened the door. the police officer pulled him out of the car, pushed him up against the car and placed in handcuffs. he was placed in the back of a police car in handcuffs, very stunned about what was happening, looked toward me as he was in those handcuffs and said, please help me. he very clearly did not know what he was happening in the situation. >> this would be -- again, number one golfer in the world. i just haven't been following golf that much lately, but number one golfer in the world,

one of the masters, started yesterday with an eagle on hole 1. this would be like police throwing patrick mahomes against a car and throwing him in jail right before he's supposed to start the super bowl. >> scheffler was booked on charges of second degree assault of a police officer, third degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding officers directing traffic. all start tee times were delayed because of that fatal traffic accident early this morning. a picture came on twitter/x, which is not particularly reliable these days as to what's real or not. but there was a video of scheffler in an orange jumpsuit.

it is real. he has been charged and has been released now and is heading to go tee off. >> that is crazy. >> this is the same police force that shot and killed breonna taylor. what was the resolution of that? >> they were not punished to the degree of the law. i mean, you're dealing with justice in louisville which is what breonna taylor's mother and others have been talking about for a long time. i mean, the absurdity of the story that the policeman didn't even ask why did you keep driving, nothing, no interrogation. just i'll jump on the car to stop you. this shows you the mentality we were dealing with with breonna taylor in the louisville area.

>> very curious and concerning. >> nobody's comparing this, obviously, to breonna taylor. >> my point is it's a very militarized police force. >> what are they thinking? the espn reporter who's looking at it the entire time is -- >> just baffled by it, and tried to even intervene. the officer said to him, there's nothing you can do, he's going to jail. >> wow. >> i'm going to turn to politics now. this too is disturbing. at a house oversight hearing devolved into chaos as the attorney general refused to hand over the audio recordings of president biden's interview with

special counsel robert hur. >> reporter: chaos on capitol hill overnight. >> order! >> reporter: a hearing about the justice department's handling of an interview devoling into percentage attacks. >> you don't have enough intelligence! >> move to strike! >> order! >> i move to strike. >> the opening insult coming from far-right republican marjorie taylor greene attacking democratic congresswoman jasmine crockett. >> i think your fake eyelashes are messing up. >> order! >> democrat alexandria ocasio-cortez coming to crockett's defense. >> that is absolutely unacceptable. how dare you attack the physical appearance of another person! >> are your feelings hurt! >> aw. >> baby girl, don't even play.

>> oh, really? >> crockett eventually hitting back. >> i'm just curious. just to better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee starts talking about somebody's bleach blond, bad-built butch body, that would not -- >> a what now? >> it was a push to hold attorney general merrick garland in contempt after audio recordings of president biden's interview with robert hur. president biden exerted executive privilege to deny house republicans the recordings. garland recommended that, warning the release would damage future law enforcement efforts. the president did nothing legally wrong, but in his report referred to the president as a

well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. the white house counsel and republicans saying they only want it released to chop them up and distort them and use them for political purposes. >> we have absolutely nothing to add. it just speaks for itself. it's so disgusting, so sad. i was not in congress during the era of good feelings. we had impeachments and government shutdowns. we had newt gingrich against bill clinton. but i will tell you, even during the worst of times, even in the middle of impeachments, bill clinton and newt gingrich would get on the phone and they would talk about things that were going on in the world. in one particular instance while the impeachment was going on, they talked on the phone about

iraq and the dangers presented by saddam hussein. i saw time and time again john kasich being called terrible things and still sitting down, patiently talking to members on the other side, democrats doing the same thing. it is unfortunate. if you want to know what you can do to make a difference, you can figure out how to stop gerrymandering in your state, because somebody like marjorie taylor greene has nothing to worry about. she cast her insult out there. 30, 40 years ago before we had computierized gerrymandered districts, there's no way she

would have been elected. there's no way. so she insults a black woman, and i guarantee you contributions to her campaign will skyrocket. let's talk about something more uplifting. >> a historic anniversary. 70 years ago today the world witnessed a landmark supreme court decision that changed the path of public education. in the milestone brown versus board of education civil rights case, the supreme court unanimously ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional and inherently unequal. the suit combines several cases in which black children and their schools had far fewer resources than their white peers, which included longer commutes, lower quality class, overcrowding, fewer opportunities and less money.

yesterday president biden commemorated the anniversary by meeting with plaintiffs and family members at the white house while also stepping up efforts to highlight his administration's commitment to racial equity. >> doris, much to celebrate about this date. it's also a reminder, though, and it's something you write about in your book, the civil rights battles that raged throughout the '60s and the fight for justice, you know, it reminds us that today when we hear people say, oh, it's the worst it's ever been, really? no. this is a reminder how much things have changed in 70 years and how bad things were for black americans, for hispanic americans, for, quote, the others. >> the great thing about the civil rights movement is it changed public sentiment.

when marches were happening, the majority of people in the country came to the deep understanding that segregation was wrong. the civil rights act of 1964 came to the realization that all the diversions taking away the right to vote in the south was wrong. the civil rights bill was approved. think about that supreme court decision on brown v. board. it was unanimous. justice warren knew there were people who didn't want to overturn precedent, but he knew it was important for the country, for the institution, so that congress worked in the '60s, the supreme court worked in the '60s. you've been watching a congress now that you can't imagine young people wanting to join. i just want to go back and live in that time, as troubling as it was. >> after i got out of congress, people would say, oh, i bet

you're glad you're out of song. no, actually i loved it. i loved every minute of being able to make a difference in people's lives. what surprised me is i went up as a hard-charging small-government ideologue who wanted to balance budgets. now the things that remain, not the balanced budgets, obviously. people would walk up to me and say you helped me. you helped my grandparents they were about to lose their farm. >> constituent services. >> basic constituent services. politics was an honorable profession. it was, and it should be. >> it was what you did with it that helped other people. as i was listening to doris, what a lot of people today don't

remember or understood or have studied if they weren't alive, earl warren, who was the chief justice then, was a republican. and we saw a republican in the white house, dwight eisenhower. it was not that republicans and democrats had this acrimony around race and other things in the '60s like we see now. when a republican can sit there and this is the first supreme court decision we'd seen since the end of construction that gave blacks rights. this was the landmark case, '54, '55 rosa parts sits in. it started with thurgood marshall, a black attorney educated at howard university, later on the supreme court,

argues before a republican supreme court with earl warren and is able to break segregation. it's a real day that we need to get all of the implications of. >> what happened in '64 and '65, i think we all appreciated it less when it seemed like that arc of history was bending toward justice. now that we're running into so many roadblocks, you look back and go, my god, what was accomplished in '64 and '65 was breathtaking. you write about it in your new book. >> thousands of people were able to put themselves on the line and fight for something. that movement then reaches the highest councils of power where lyndon johnson sat at that time. lucky we were that he came in

making civil rights a first priority. he had the power to help congress make those decisions. that's what changes things, when public sentiment creates public change. the conscious of the country was fired. everybody wanted to do something about it. >> it's a great example of how extraordinary things can come out of tragedy. you look at the harsh reaction to the freedom writers and, of course, the birmingham church bombing, it shocked americans out of their slumber and it moved history, it bent history. >> that is something we talk about often, is you can't get in the way of your own message. what they had the discipline to

do, as doris is saying correctly, they suffered to show the point that they were raising, rather than they be belligerent or violent and get in the way of their own point. the fact that john lewis and the freedom riders and others allowed themselves to be beaten. the fact that jose williams and james bevel got dr. king to allow them to put school children on the streets of birmingham and the police had the dogs there ready to bite. if people had not seen that, i don't know if we would have gotten the civil rights act passed. >> meanwhile, president biden will be heading to atlanta this weekend to deliver the commencement address at morehouse college. some students and faculty raised

concerns regarding biden's speech, prompting a senior official to visit. >> thanks for joining us. let's start there. what are some of the concerns that you heard from those at the college in advance of the president's speech, where some protests are certainly expected? >> thank you for the question. my actual intent in going down there was to do what we do here in the office of public engagement at the white house every day. we realize we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. we're supposed to listen twice as much as we talk. we want to make sure we're listening deeply to what these young men at this very unique place at morehouse college is. it's literally the only institution of higher learning

on the planet where any day 2500 young men are being trained for leadership. they shared literally a range of concerns that you might expect from five young men of different backgrounds. we talked about everything from world affairs to neighborhood leadership and how the focus on entrepreneurship and creating wealth, what their degrees might be worth. we talked about student debt. and obviously we talked about hbcu support. the president has supported hbcu's with $16 billion. we had a chance to listen very closely, but also to share some of the issues the president's been working on with the intent of making sure that as we prepared for the commencement address, that the president was

able to center these young men who have worked very hard. four years ago was a very different time as we emerged from the greatest pandemic since 1918, the greatest social unrest after the murder of george floyd, it was important for us to realize some of these kids didn't have a graduation from high school and now these young men need to make sure they have a meaningful commencement. president biden plans to deliver on that. >> these commencement addresses certainly are not policy speeches, but because it is a presidential address, policy does seep in. how does president biden plan to address the war in gaza and our ongoing support for israel? >> sure. i'm not going to get ahead of the president, obviously, but i do know he's thinking very deeply about how to center this special experience for these

young men on sunday while recognizing he is a leader of the free world and that the challenges we face in the middle east are challenges we've faced for generations, helping people understand, yes, that israel is our ally, the challenges of october 7th, but yes, the historical challenges we face here. and focusing on the fact that israel has a right to defend themselves. president biden is clear he's in search of enduring piece and making sure humanitarian aid is available to gaza and, more importantly, that innocent should not have to suffer in any situation. i believe he'll weave that in. the goal is very much on these young men.

who are young leaders. >> thank you very much. >> rev, talk about how important it is for the president's speech at morehouse, especially that these are young men who four years ago didn't have a graduation because of covid. >> morehouse is the college martin luther king went to. i think it is an opportunity for the president to talk about his dreams for those students, but at the same time what he's done tangibly to contribute to a climate and legislative reality that helps those students. and it's a time he can address what's going on in gaza in the name of dr. king.

some of the students will john -- nonviolently protest, and he ought to embrace that. get a feeling rather than parachuting in like they're visiting somewhere from heaven visiting mortals. >> you talk about the 1960s and you and your husband's extraordinarily close connection with so many of the events that happened. of course, this past week we talked about debates. of course, 1960 was really the first, the big one. it made a difference. what was your take about what happened this past week.

>> i'm so glad i think this is happening between the two candidates. i think it may be the most watched since 1960. you'll see their characters and who they are and how they act under stress. what happened in 1960, being the first debate, they had no idea the impact it would happen, but it made jfk a celebrity. suddenly people are jumping up and down. they'd seen him on television seemingly best nixon. he gets in the morning of the debate. john kennedy is sitting in his bed with all the cards in front of him. he has breakfast, then he takes a nap and relaxes. they go into that studio and jfk

is relaxed, nixon is sitting there sweating. that's what mattered, vitality and confidence. john kennedy's problem was that he was too young, so they wanted it to look like he had facts and experience. >> we watched that debate. dick said let's have a debate date night and watch the debate. >> you say kennedy went ahead after the debate and the lead held. >> the lead held. it was still very close, but it made him into a figure of stature with the president. it gave him experience and vitality and the confidence that he carried moving forward.

>> doris kearns goodwin, her new book is titled "an unfinished love story." coming up, the dow crossed 40,000 for the first time yesterday, a strong indicator of the health of the u.s. economy. police, another day, another new streaming bundle, this time involving fox, espn and warner brothers as media companies continue to search for ways to survive. andrew ross sorkin joins us next to break it all down. all down with wet amd, i worry i'm not only losing my sight, but my time to enjoy it. but now, i can open up my world with vabysmo. (♪♪) vabysmo is the first fda-approved treatment for people with wet amd

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welcome back. we have an update on scotie scheffler after he was arrested this morning outside valhalla

golf club early this morning. he was taken into custody by louisville police while trying to drive into the entrance, where traffic has been stopped after a man was struck and killed by a shuttle bus in an earlier incident. court records show that scheffler was booked on second degree assault of a police officer, third degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding signals from officers directing traffic. he is scheduled to tee off in about 30 minutes. >> i mean, golf more than any other sport i've played is a mind game. i mean, how do you do it? >> i don't know. we should note that second degree assault on a police officer is a felony charge. he's number one in the world. if anyone can do it, i suppose it's him, but how could you not

bring this onto the course with you? i think there's going to be a lot of questions about the response of this police officer. >> it seemed like there was shock from the espn reporter that was there that this was going on. the police officer's response, basically we're going to assert our authority. >> we don't know enough. >> in general, i would say that the trend of sending our excess humvees to these police departments around the country hasn't really worked out that well in terms of maintaining a calm environment. i would just say the general rule maybe we should think about our police forces and not try to turn them into the military. >> let's wait and see. obviously, there was a terrible tragedy before this happened where someone was struck and killed. we'll be following this.

for now, we're going to bring in andrew ross sorkin. we have a lot to talk about. >> andrew, we talked about it before, how joe biden's a social and, of course, just the opposite. the dow showed it yesterday, 40,000. after donald trump said in a debate, if joe biden is elected, the dow will crash. no. it's actually much better under joe biden. >> there's no question. by the way, not only is it better under joe biden, you can go back over the last 40 years and map it against whether there's a republican in the white house versus a democrat. almost invariably, actually, it's a very odd thing that for some reason democrats have been cast as some kind of socialistic group, when, in fact, the stock market and economy has almost universally done better.

it's sort of a surprising thing that i don't think gets enough air. >> no. i think the biden campaign knows about that. they wasted no time capitalizing on the historic high, posting this video on social media. >> if biden wins, you're going to have a stock market collapse the likes of which you've never had. >> the dow broke 40,000 for the first time in history. >> look at that market. >> we know the markets have been relatively strong. >> we see earnings increasing for the second quarter. we see record earnings estimates from the third and fourth quarter. >> i've been doing this a long time. i never expected the dow to hit 40,000. >> wow. >> president biden also connected the milestone to voters' pocketbooks, posting, this is great news for americans' retirement accounts and another sign of confidence in america's economy. i'm building an economy from the

middle out and bottom up, and our investments are making a difference. >> this is another thing that is beyond dispute. we've been seeing since the 1980s the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer. that trend is reversed over the biden administration. >> inequality is slightly narrowed. you want it to narrow even more. the truth is, in terms of americans who have money in the market, it's still less than 50% of the country. in terms of what you see with wages and the like, even with the inflation picture, clearly things have gotten materially better. i want to take on one thing you're going to start to see from the trump camp, you're starting to hear this theory, you know, the stock market is projecting what the world's going to look like in 12 months from now. and given where we are in the polls, the reason the stock market is so high is because i'm

going to be the president. i'm not so sure. >> we talked in the past about streaming wars. it's really heated up this week. a lot of people are cord cutting. so these huge media companies, including comcast have got to figure out ho to get those streaming numbers up to compensate. >> in the past go weeks, both the rebundling of all these services -- so originally you'd buy these thins a la carte. now everything is coming together. competitors are now putting their packages together. on top of that, this idea that

netflix, which has always said it was not going to get into the live sports business, didn't want to have to rent content, said they're going to have an nfl game on christmas day. of everybody's position in this sort of chess game, netflix's position is now clearly the strongest. it's going to be the place where everybody, if they're going to have only one, that's the one they'll had. >> where do you see this going particularly for sports? >> you're about to see the nba get a big media deal, including with amazon. you're going to start to see this on streaming. there was a few for a very long

time that they didn't want to go the streeting route because all they cared about ultimately were eyeballs. even if the tech companies weren willing to overpay, that money was not enough for them. now that you have netflix and amazon with huge numbers of viewers. and the nfl are the game. >> we can talk about nba, major league baseball. when peacock had the dophins and the chiefs, people said, okay, i got to get peacock. >> it's an unbelievable juggernaut. i don't know what stops it. the question is how much can

they command for more and more of their business. also, can they split up more and more of the business among many different streamers. you're starting to see the way the nba is planning its season, it's no longer one network or one company. it's going to be five companies. we'll give you the thursday night, we'll give the monday night and the sunday night. it's going to make it a little bit harder for people. >> thank you. coming up on "morning joe" -- >> policing is inextricably linked to the racial history of this country. >> police associated with colonizers, wealth and whiteness. >> the police targeted people marked as nonwhite. >> slaves, indigenous and

working class people. >> police were able to double down on their power time and time again. >> there are a lot of people that feel that policing is out of control. but it's also the case that there is horrific crime, and it also is out of control. >> that was a clip from "power" the new netflix documentary about the history of policing in america. its director joins us, next. we'll be right back. next. we'll be right back. (vo) dan made progress with his mental health... ...but his medication caused unintentional movements in his face, hands, and feet called tardive dyskinesia, or td. so his doctor prescribed austedo xr— a once-daily td treatment for adults. ♪as you go with austedo♪ austedo xr significantly reduced dan's td movements.

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in the united states, police power is essentially unregulated. >> anybody who moves to hold police accountable, faces a challenge. >> the biggest problem with policing today is that most of the harm that polices causes is perfectly legal. ♪♪

>> how did we get here? we may share this country, but it is your america and my america the same place? has it ever been? >> that was part of the trailer of the new netflix documentary titled "power." the film focuses on the argument that police departments in america were originally created to protect property, not people, and that the systemic abuse black and brown americans face at the hands of police today can be traced back to the earliest days of policing in the united states. joining us now, the director, producer and writer of "power," emmy winning and academy award

winner yancy ford. >> this looks extraordinary. we showed a clip earlier of someone you interviewed also talking about how crime is prevalent, americans are scared. >> yep. >> and this is so extraordinarily important. talk about the balance, the history versus the needs today and the right type of policing. >> sure. one of the things i hope to do with "power" is educate these communities that are dealing with crime about the origins of police. i think the goal of power is really to get at a 30, 000 view

of where policing is and where it needs to be. we have people in communities saying we need police to serve us in a particular way. we need to define community safety on our terms and have police partner with us. that way, as opposed to the history of reforms of policing, which has always come from police back into communities, but never from communities outward to police. >> i think the importance of your documentary is it puts into context, i think, a lot of us that have been out there questioning police -- you know i spent a lot of my life doing that. we're not anti-police. at the same time, we're also the ones that in many ways need good policing, because the high crime around the country is in our community. talk to me about the paradox where we want policing to

protect us. i grew up, we had four locks on the door in brownville, with a bar that slides across as one of the locks. at the same time, we said, oh my god, the cops are beating up joe down the block. talk about that double life we have to live. >> sure. it's interesting what happened to scottie scheffler this morning happens to people around the country all the time. forms of policing swept up lots of people into the criminal justice system that didn't actually belong there. i think what communities have been saying for a long time is there's a distinction between people who critical crimes and people to live here because thi is where they call home and who need to be respected by communities -- by police and not in the model in the old '90s model of community policing. that model also came from

police. what they need is for people to sit and listen to them and follow what they say is necessary to make their community safer, which isn't always only police, right? it's the structures that keep kids off the street. it's schools, jobs, education. you go back to a scene in the movie where martin luther king jr. asks somebody in los angeles what he thinks, and he says we need jobs. he literally says we need jobs. we'll be fine. we don't get jobs, we'll tear up los angeles. >> yancy, is there a city that has reformed and has moved beyond past abuses that you're inspired by, or have you seen a downward trajectory in terms of how police departments are changing within the modern era? >> so there's a lot of different, you know, projects happening. camden, new jersey, has got something underway, and we'll see over time if the reform model in camden actually works

out. there's different things happening with community organizations in philadelphia, in brooklyn. but i think that the larger lesson is that these small reforms on an individual department basis are not a replacement for what needs to happen on an institutional level with policing. >> right. have there been any -- just to tag on her question, what has worked? >> i have to tell you, mika, right now i have a difficult time pointing to things that work. what i do in the movie is i point to an individual inspector in minneapolis, right? inspector charlie adams who works in the fourth precinct. this is where he grew up. a precinct that struggles with crime. and as an individual inspector, what he does is he takes his officers to the holocaust museum in washington, d.c., to learn about police complicity in the holocaust. he takes them to the legacy museum, in montgomery, alabama

to learn about police complicity in the lynchings that swept the country, and he really also believes in working with communities. he also has this men's group that works and meets on a monthly basis, and we see him struggling to achieve what he wants, which is a reduction in crime, while also coming up against what the system wants which is to track kids who are committing crime into a preincarceration facility. and so we're left with, i think, efforts that start out well-intentioned but that ultimately peter out and fail because they're not informed by community input. >> the summer of 2020 after george floyd's death was meant to be an inflection point in the relationship between communities and police, have you seen any real changes, or are you still seeing the police just grow more and more militarized? >> i think the change that we've seen since the murder of george floyd is the really transparent militarization of police, right? i think that ten years ago in ferguson after the death of

michael brown was the first moment where folks were like, hey, wait, what is this armored vehicles on streets of our cities? this is a protest. this is not a war. what we've only seen in the last four years is that police have been more and more militaristic in their response to civil unrest. they've been more militaristic in response to ordinary crime. it makes you sort of ask the question how thoroughly have our police and military become one? is there a distinction that we can make any longer between the military and the police? and i think in power you see that there is very little distinction at this point in time between the two. >> the new documentary is called "power." it's streaming now on netflix. director yancy ford, thank you very, very much for coming on the show this morning. we appreciate it. we'll be right back with more "morning joe." we'll talk about it later, ok? (♪♪) what does a cat need?

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we now have a statement,

really it's still hard to believe. they arrest rim, they take him to jail. he's now on the golf course, the number one golfer in the world. >> what is going on? >> scottie scheffler. moments ago, he's set to tee off in about 20 minutes or so. we first brought you this story, witnessed by jeff darlington, scottie scheffler has given darling ton this statement. this morning was proceeding as directed by police officers. it was a very chaotic situation, understandably so considering the tragic accident that had occurred earlier and there was a big misunderstanding of what i thought i was being asked to do. i never intended to disregard any of the instructions. i'm hopeful to put this to the side and focus on golf today. of course all of us involved in this tournament express our deepest sympathies to the family of the man who passed away in the earlier accident. it truly puts everything in perspective. there had been prior to the incident with scheffler, a man was hit by a shuttle bus just

outside the course and was killed, which was already delaying matters this morning. scheffler was then arriving and per police, did not obey the directions of the police officer there, which led to this incident, which led to the arrest, including a felony charge. we'll see what happens now, but scheffler in this statement, accepting some responsibility and hoping to put it behind him. >> we'll give the final 15 seconds to our resident libertarian, elise jordan. >> it sounds like scottie was a jerk to the police officer. it was a misunderstanding and i give his com staff props because that's a great statement to kind of try to make it water under the bridge. >> okay, rev. >> that was a great libertarian statement. i still say the police ought to be more cautious on who they do and what they do. >> we'll be following this obviously all day on msnbc along with all the day's news. that does it for us this morning, have a wonderful weekend, everything. ana cabrera picks up the coverage