bipartisan effort. i think he'll talk about that, too. >> definitely a bipartisan effort on the hill. we'll certainly be listening to what the secretary of state has to say overseas. jennifer palmieri, thank you for getting up with us. thank you for getting up "way too early" on this friday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. >> it is just before the top of the hour. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, april 19th. let's get right to the breaking news out of the middle east. israel has carried out a limited strike against iran. that's according to a person familiar with the situation who tells nbc news officials are now assessing the damage caused. the attack was carried out overnight. iranian state media reports explosions were heard in one city near the site of the country's largest nuclear research complex.

the international atomic energy agency confirms there has been no damage to nuclear facilities. "the new york times" reports three iranian officials believe the attack was carried out by small drones, possibly launched from inside the country. the officials say the strike hit a military air base. another group of drones were reportedly shot down. now, a source familiar with the situation tells nbc news, the u.s. was not involved in the strike. defense secretary lloyd austin had spoken with his israeli counterpart yesterday afternoon, but it was not known if he was told about israel's plan to attack iran. israeli officials have not yet commented on the strike. the move comes less than a week after iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones toward israel. that was done in retaliation for a deadly strike earlier this month on iranian diplomatic building in syria. iran's attack, however, was mostly thwarted with help from

the u.s. and several arab and western allies. now, yesterday, before israel's attack, iran's foreign affairs minister reiterated a warning that his country would respond to any use of force by israel. it's not clear what the country will do, but the u.s. embassy in jerusalem has issued a security alert, asking employees and their families to restrict their travel out of an abundance of caution, willie. >> let's go straight to jerusalem where we find nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel. what more do we know about the extent of this strike, about what iran might do in retaliation, in this back and forth that's been going on since april 1st, since the israeli strike that killed two generals in damadamascus? the united states says it was briefed there would be an attack last night. did not participate, though. what else do we know this morning?

>> reporter: we know this attack appears to have been quite limited. the iranians are telling their people through state media that this was no big deal, to stay calm, that life is continuing as normal. here in jerusalem, things are very much proceeding as normal. people are out. buses are running. people are on the streets. shops are open. there have been no air-raid sirens. same in tel-aviv, all across the country. the military has not given any guidance here, telling people to seek shelters or to listen for upcoming radio announcements. the attack, according to iranian media, took place in the city of isfahan on a military base. there were some air defenses in action in the city. you could see flashes in the sky. but then, iranian media, shortly afterwards, had been showing pictures of life going on as normal in isfahan. they showed pictures of the area

around the nuclear facility, also calm, no damage there. the message coming out of iran officially to the public is that there was an attack, that it was largely unsuccessful, thwarted, and that people should continue to go about their business. here in israel, they are not talking about it publicly at all. an official telling nbc news that, yes, israel did carry out this strike but not providing any details and that they are conducting a battle damage assessment. now, i've been speaking with officials in the region, and they describe this attack as not symbolic but marginal was a word that was used. they do not know if iran plans to carry out some sort of count strike or leave it here, the shadow war that has been going on between iran and israel for decades to recede back into the

shadows and not tip this region into a regional war. >> richard, as you say, these strikes by both sides over the last week or so have been limited relative to the damage and casualties, both israel and iran are capable of inflicting on each other. could whatever comes next be larger, that a population center could be attacked, or have they settled what they need to settle here with this back and forth? >> reporter: i think it is too early to tell, but an indication is probably the messaging that both governments are telling their people. if israel expected that there would be a massive counterstrike, i'm quite sure they'd be informing the public to take precautions. when israel was anticipating the strike over the weekend from iran, the israeli military went into overdrive. they were doing hourly briefings, telling people to take it seriously, to go into the shelters, to stay there for

ten minutes or more. this country, for the last six months, has been on war footing. when the air-raid sirens go off, often, people are now shrugging them off, not paying attention, not rushing to their shelters because it has been going on for six months. the fact that they didn't issue any new guidance, it seems to be a sign that israel at least hopes that this phase is over. it doesn't mean the conflict is over. there is the ongoing war in gaza. there is the potentially pending military operation against rafah. it seems that iran and israel will continue to carry out attacks against each other. there are almost daily attacks between israel and hezbollah in southern lebanon. but the overt, open war between iran and israel at this stage, we're not sure if these were last licks or if a new round is coming. but looking at the messaging on

both sides, it seems that both sides may be trying to pull it back from the brink. >> right. nbc's richard engel reporting from jerusalem, thank you very much. let's bring in now former supreme allied commander of nato, retired four-star navy admiral james stavridis. he is chief international analyst for nbc news. and president emeritus of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. he is author of the weekly newsletter "home and away," available on substack. also with us, former aide to the george w. bush white house and state department, elise jordan. and former chairman of the republican national committee and co-host of msnbc's "the weekend," michael steele. and pulitzer prize-winning columnist and associate editor of "the washington post," eugene robinson is with us this morning. thank you, all, for joining us this morning. >> admiral stavridis, what's your best read on what happened last night and what's been happening over the last 12 to 4 hours? >> i think it was, indeed, a

muted strike, a limited strike. clearly, israel, as we talked about earlier in the week, joe, had a basket of options here. they could have gone big. there were certainly voices in israel calling for that. they could have simply left it as cyber, non-kinetic kind of operation. they chose, as you and i talked about a few days ago, kind of in the middle. i think what they sought to do, and they accomplished, was to show that they can penetrate iranian air defenses. we'll know a bit more here over the next 24, 48 hours as battle damage assessments come out. i, for one, believe that we're now in a 90% probability that this will settle down, go back into the shadows, follow a path of de-escalation. i think there's still a 10% chance it could flair up in a bigger way.

i'll close by giving you indicators to watch over the next few days. richard engel mentioned one of them, which are the public statements coming out from tehran and jerusalem. those are reassuring at the moment. number two is activity from hezbollah to the north. are they going to ramp up, be unleashed by tehran? they've got 100,000 plus missiles. that's the threat, i think, our israeli friends are watching for this morning. third and finally, you know, the admiral is going to say it, watch what happens at sea. if iran really wants to retaliate and go largely back against jerusalem, they could do it at sea against israeli shipping, or they could close the strait of hormuz. final thought, those are small probabilities at this point. i think we're probably in a position to see things settle down. let's hope so. >> richard haass, was this just

the latest and final round of shadow boxing between israel and iran, trying to prove something to each other, to their constituencies, to regional friends and enemies, or are you expecting more? >> i think we're all in violent or non-violent agreement this morning. this is carefully calibrated. the israelis felt compelled to respond, to show they could reach iran if need be. they could hurt them if need be, but they didn't hurt them this time. the fact the iranians are downplaying it at home suggests to me they don't feel compelled to retaliate against the retaliation. i think this showed bibi netanyahu, who we're often critical, in this case, he resisted what he was getting pressured to do from his right. he did less rather than more. i think the biden administration should feel pretty good in terms of calming down the reactions. i think, excuse me, this is also

a realization on the israelis. they have their hands full. they've still got gaza. they'll have to make some big decisions about rafah and occupation. they face, as the admiral was talking about, a massive threat from hezbollah still, and it got active a few days ago. it is possible the west bank will get more militarized. they have problems there. i think this is really an interesting case. you see it sometimes during the cold war, joe, that adversaries figure out how to signal. there is nothing formal, nothing explicit. i think what we saw here is actually some sophisticated signaling and messaging by israel and iran. >> you know, mika, iran has been careful not to escalate too much in this situation. also, people throughout the region that i spoke to after the soleimani assassination said

iran was very quick to launch the missiles, to send a message to their people, but just as quick to call intermediaries and say, "tell the united states that's it." >> right. >> "we're not doing anything else. we just needed to do that." this is -- you have, in both the case of israel, as was just said, and in the case of iran, two countries that have enough on their hands right now. they do not want to get into a regional war with each other. >> that's the question, admiral. do you feel, as richard pointed out, israel has its hands full and it has its friends in the u.s. and also in the region who have really come to israel's defense in recent weeks, do you think they did just enough to send a message but not enough to look like they're not responding to the urging of friends in the region and by the u.s. to not make this worse and not to have it escalate into a wider war?

>> yes, i do. in particular, you're right to put your finger on the coalition aspect of this. that's what knocked down 350 drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles. that was all hands on deck effort, including u.s., uk, britain, jordan, as we've said i think quietly, saudis were cooperating, providing some intelligence, shall we say. this was a wonderful example of coming together, in this case to defend israel. the israelis don't want to knock that off course. second and final point, now the attention kind of shifts to capitol hill to look at the aid package for israel. as israel shot down 350, they probably used up close to 1,000 intercepters to do that. they need to replenish those

stocks. that's in the aid bill. i'm hoping to see that get done this weekend alongside the as critical, certainly, aid bill for ukraine. >> admiral, it's on track because, last night, house democrats saved those packages of foreign aid bills proposed by speaker mike johnson, which contained aid to israel and ukraine. in a rare move, all four democrats in the house rules committee joined the five republicans in passing a procedural vote that allows the bills to advance to the house floor for a vote. usually, it is the majority party alone that passes these rules in committee and on the floor. the democratic votes were needed because three republicans on the committee voted against the bills in protest that aid for ukraine was not paired with border security measures. in an interview last night, speaker johnson acknowledged the rebellion within his own party from a small faction and admitted he will need those democrats to get his aid packages passed this weekend. >> we have continued to work every single day.

we passed resolutions. remember what we said at the outset, we only control one chamber. i barely have control of that. i can't -- senate won't advance our legislation, and the president won't sign it. he won't fulfill his obligation. why is the border not in the package? he didn't have the votes to do it. i have a handful of my republicans at least who will not advance a rule to bring that to the floor to combine it with the ukraine and israel funding. they won't do it. if i don't have the republican votes, that means we have to have democrat votes. >> michael steele, kind of an explosive scene on capitol hill yesterday when the small group of republicans who don't want any aid going out the door, some of them at all, others saying we don't want it without border security measures, although, remember, let's say for the, i don't know, thousandth time, there was a bipartisan border package sent over from the senate, but put that aside for a moment. what do you make of speaker johnson standing up to the hard

right maga members of his caucus and saying, "we're going to get this money to ukraine"? he wants this vote to happen by saturday. >> it says to me a number of interesting things, but i think the top line is that he's come to the conclusion that, yeah, he may have to sacrifice his speakership to get something done. he recognizes the importance of this moment, that all of the loud noise from his right flank still does not solve the problem that's in front of him and the country. that is, what do we do about aid to ukraine? what do we do about assistance to israel? what do we do on a number of these other hot spots? most importantly, of course, ukraine. that reality is set in. the other part of it is, i think he recognizes that he has been the dog that has been wagged by the marjorie taylor greene tail. she's the one who has driven a large part of this. i was talking to some folks earlier this week. there is a frustration with the

way that she is sort of manhandling the speaker in this matter, giving him very little room to negotiate. making it so much harder to get the piece that they really wanted, which was the connection of border security to ukraine, even though as we noted, we've been here before and they had the deal. the fact of the matter is, a lot of folks are a little bit tired of that, and i think he saw that opening. the speaker decided to move into it. he went to the leadership on the other side, to hakeem jeffries, talked to the democrats on the committee, and has now finally been able to carve out that space to move this initiative forward. we'll see the votes this weekend. bravo to the speaker. he recognized that his speakership was worth sacrificing for the country. >> yeah, you know, it's an

interesting dynamic. michael steele was talking about it, where you have people that are pushing back against the speaker. it is an interesting dynamic. you can get away with that for only so long. i know because we were constantly pushing against newt gingrich to get more, get more, get more when we were trying to get the budget balanced. you can push to a certain degree, and, at some point, you blow up the legislative process enough to get what you want. everybody turns against you. i think that's what we're seeing here. there are a lot of people that have just had enough at the couple of back benchers that are controlling what they do when it comes to ukraine funding. it looks like the speaker, who certainly should be applauded, i will say, for what he's now saying about ukraine, what he's

now saying about the united states' role in the world, something that joe biden has been saying for a really long time, i'm glad he's saying it. i'm also glad that we're getting to a point where a lot of these back benchers, you know, what they're doing is going to amount to sound and fury signifying nothing. they're going to get rolled. mika, as far as this lie goes, about, "oh, we can't pass ukraine funding until we take care of our own border" -- >> oh, come on. >> we took care of our border. >> yeah. >> you had james lankford, joe biden, you had republicans in the senate, all coming together. >> for the strongest bill they would have ever got. >> strongest bill ever. yesterday, fox news host neil cavuto called out donald trump and those republicans who killed the strongest bipartisan bill will on border security. here's part of the exchange yesterday with the author of the legislation, conservative

republican senator james lankford of oklahoma. >> you're a real gentleman about this, and i know you're not trying to zing your colleagues, but it is your colleagues in your party, sir, who torpeded this, who didn't get the facts right on what you outlined was in that measure. they killed it, ironically not democrats. >> right. it was. it was painful to watch it. it got stirred up in the presidential politics, and several of my colleagues started looking for ways, after trump said don't fix anything during the presidential election, it's the single biggest issue, don't resolve it, we'll resolve it next year, my colleagues backed up and looked for a reason to shoot against it and walk away. that's a decision everybody makes, and my issue is, if we're pursuing everything, we very often end up with nothing. if we're pursuing someone coming later to fix it, later seems to never come. when we have a moment to fix things, we should fix as many things as we can then, then come back later and fix the rest.

>> that's on donald trump, senator. >> again, he's got an office that he is running for. he's got a campaign he is running. i'm already in office. i've got a responsibility to be able to carry on this. i think everybody cares about the future of the country. president trump has a biggest picture of a lot of other issues he is looking for. if we have a president biden again, this never gets any better. i think president trump sees this as a moment that if this gets fixed, maybe a few people don't vote, and we have a whole host of other issues in the future. >> i have no idea what he said at the end, but he hit admit that, once again, elise, you have republicans that have stepped in the way of getting anything done. the strongest words to use against the republican house, elise, right now, come from republicans in the case. chip roy's quote some time back saying that the house republicans have done absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing. name anything that they've done. you have james lankford saying that donald trump and republicans killed the toughest

border security bill ever. then you've got the head of the republican intel committee in the house saying that republicans in the house are spewing vladimir putin and russian talking points. i mean, their own words are devastating against them. >> joe, when you were in the house and you and your colleagues in the '90s were fighting, you were fighting for a balanced budget. you had a policy goal. here, we just see chaos. we don't necessarily see what the policy is. are the republicans who are opposing the aid doing it to force the ukrainians to come up with a strategy, to come up to define the instate? it is unclear. it is just swirling around. >> it's just noise. >> it is just noise for the same of political noise. there are real questions to be answered right now, richard. we have a finite stock of munitions. we're giving israel a lot. we're giving the ukrainians a lot.

israel is obviously heated up. last saturday, we used a ton of our own stock. we have to make sure america is still secure, also. how are they going to evaluate these hard choices when it comes to keeping our arms supply up to what it needs to be to be prepared for any possibilities of war and america? >> yeah, the short answer, we don't have enough to go around. we have, in some ways, demobilized what we used to call the defense industrial base, the defense manufacturing base. we have three geographies. you have the middle east, aid for israel. you have europe, aid for ukraine. you have aid for taiwan in this, the third geography. and we have ourselves. we simply don't produce enough in the way of arms and certainly ammunition. one of the things i'm hoping comes out of this, beyond the immediate, it'll be arbitrary. we'll send some to israel, some to ukraine, won't be enough for either but it'll be better than what we've got now. one of the things we actually

need is a serious conversation in this country about our ability to produce sufficient arms. we're moving into an incredibly dangerous world. look at the israelis, the iranians, the use of drones, the use of the new generation of missiles and so forth. we have got to, in some ways, catch up to the changing technology and build the industrial base to produce adequate stuff. we are not there. it'd be nice to put aside the politics once we get through this bill over the weekend and have a serious conversation about our ability to produce enough. >> you know, richard just uttered words that seem so, like, last century, serious conversation. we haven't seen serious conversations in this country anymore. i have a question for admiral stavridis, though. when we look -- okay, so we had the israeli response last night

to iran. proportionality, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. you know, an iranian-american friend who has relatives in isfahan, she's wondering how proportional this was. nonetheless, in the larger scheme, obviously, israel could have done more there and could have wreaked more damage. but let's look to the other side of that small country now. there's still the question of rafah. what do you think is going to happen in the next weeks about rafah? do you think the israelis are, indeed, going to invade, or do you think not? >> i would say that the unblinking eye of the media will shift back pretty quickly, as events hopefully settle down in terms of interstate warfare

between israel and iran. eugene, you're right to put your focus, in particular, on rafah. i think the thing to watch here is the network of tunnels underneath all of gaza. about 400 miles of tunnels, this is where hamas trains, equips, organizes, directs, launches attacks. israel knows those tunnels are the military center of gravity here, so they're going to work their way through that tunnel complex. they're already doing it in the northern part of gaza. they're going to get after those tunnel systems, incredibly complex, under the area in the south, under and around rafah. the problem for them, quite obviously, 1.1 million gazans displaced into that area. the israeli military will need to come up with a reasonable plan to move as many of that

civilian population as can be moved out of the area of the objective. they will, to answer directly the question, will they attack rafah? i think eventually they will. they'll have to go after the tunnel complex and probably 8,000ish hamas fighters who are still there. to do that effectively and in compliance with the laws of war, they've got to move a million people. i can't think of a harder military problem. >> let's get back to the politics of this on capitol hill. let's bring in capitol hill correspondent ali vitali. ali, what to you expect to be playing out next on capitol hill in terms of getting aid passed, but also among the republicans who want to put the speaker's job in peril? >> look, i was listening to richard haass say that we should take the politics out of this, and he looked forward to the moment when that happened. it is hard for me to see that that moment will ever happen,

especially given the ways this foreign aid package has played out. not just over the course of this week, enjoys, but over the course of the last month and a half or so because of the way we saw speaker johnson leave the senate supplemental version of this languishing, waiting for the house to take into account up, and now we're seeing him take it up in a different fashion but the same substance of what the senate was trying to push in the first instance. we're probably going to see, today, a lot more reaction and hemming and hawing, but we're also going to see under suspicion, requiring a two-third majority to pass it, a border bill go to the floor. the reason they're doing that is because they couldn't get it through the house rules committee last night. it's not something democrats would come along with. three republicans on the rules committee were voting against the speaker's plans. that was probably going to be true on the border. it is definitely what happened on the foreign aid package. so the foreign aid package piece of this is likely on a glide path at this point.

we know that democrats are seriously entertaining and are likely going to vote for it. the fourth piece of this bill is the thing that's sort of a little bit up in the air, though i think the way they wrote the tiktok provision, not just sweetens it on the house side of the building for democrats but also gives it a little bit of a softer landing pad on the senate side of the building. of course, they'll take that up at some point in the coming days after the house passes this on saturday. it's really the argument over what happens next for the speaker, that many of us are watching closely. it is striking to watch the speaker on a conservative network say that he barely has control of the chamber and that he barely has control of his conference that has the majority in the house. yes, it's the reality, but watching him admit that after the day he had yesterday i thought was really telling, given the fact that we spent a good chunk of yesterday morning talking with republican members who had just come out of a huddle with speaker johnson, wherein they were urging him not

just to move more quickly on the foreign aid pieces of this but also that he should not make any moves to try to change the rules around a one-member threshold on a motion to vacate. that conversation got very tense. there were more members now saying they have diminished confidence in the speaker. the person at the center of it, marjorie taylor greene, isn't giving any timeline or if she'll ratchet up her threat for his job. all of that is very much up in the air. the politics still very present. >> the speaker facing an actual, physical confrontation and insults from the maga members yesterday. >> yeah. >> another busy day ahead for you on capitol hill.vitali. richard haass and james stavridis, thank you, as well. to put a fine point on this, ukraine may have moved off the front pages of a lot of the newspapers recently, but it doesn't mean the threat has gone away. two days ago, a city in the north of ukraine was attacked during rush hour. 18 killed, dozens more injured.

right afterward, president zelenskyy said, "we don't have the capability to stop this anymore. we don't have the patriot air defenses we need, the ammunition we need," pleading, once again, for the american congress to send help. >> we'll continue to cover this. we have a lot more to get to this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," jury selection in donald trump's hush money trial is almost complete. we'll go over what happened in court yesterday and what to expect when proceedings pick up again in just a few hours. you're watching "morning joe." we're back in 60 seconds.

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needed to complete the jury. the process appeared to move faster than expected yesterday after two jurors seated on tuesday were excused at the start of the proceedings. one said she was not sure if she could remain impartial after identifying information about her was made public. another was excused following concerns from prosecutors that one of his answers during questioning was not accurate. if no other jurors are excused and five more alternates are selected, jury selection should wrap up today. judge juan merchan said he is hopeful that opening arguments will then begin on monday. joining us now, former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. lisa, what stood out to you yesterday in terms of the jury selection process? it seems to be on track. this judge is really trying to keep things tight. i'm also curious your reaction to donald trump's response to

the day. >> you know, mika, yesterday was a combination of the stunning. sometimes, the jury proceedings are ponderous, particularly when the prospective jurors are reading their answers to the jury questionnaire. yet, at other times, as noted, it can move with lightning speed. particularly where the parties are exercising both their challenges for cause to particular jurors and what are called peremptory challenges, the chan challenges that allow to strike jurors for whatever reason whatsoever. watching them make the tactical decisions and live with the consequences were stunning to me. in particular, the defense ran out of their peremptory challenges earlier than expected. in part, because judge merchan was not generous with them in granting challenges for cause. for example, one of the people who ended up on the jury is a woman who said, "i don't have strong opinions of him, but i don't like his persona."

then she elaborated, "when he presents himself in public, he seems selfish and self-serving, and i don't appreciate that in a public servant." that's a woman who ended up on the jury yesterday. in part, because there were other people who were offensive to the trump team that they struck earlier, then they ran out of the ability to challenge folks like that particular juror. >> fascinating, lisa. also, yesterday, toward the end of yesterday's proceedings, trump's legal team asked prosecutors to provide the names of the first three trial witnesses. prosecutors refused, explaining while they typically would turn over that information, they did not want to in this case, because trump already has been posting online about potential witnesses. the judge said he could not blame prosecutors for that objection. trump's attorneys offered to commit to the court that trump would not post about any witnesses, but the judge responded, quote, i don't think you can make that representation. >> oh, my god. >> so, to say the least, trump's

attorneys say, "sure, we'll control him this time. he won't tweet or truth social about the jurors and the witnesses." how unusual is this, first of all? in a typical trial that's not of john gotti or another mobster, would they protect the identities of the witnesses like this? >> no. i can't underscore, willie, how typical it is to provide the names of witnesses. maybe you have some skirmishes about how soon you have to turn it over. is it the night before, three nights before, as it was in this case? but it is totally standard for each side to provide the other with a list of the witnesses they're expecting so they can prepare their cross-examinations. here, as you noted, josh steinglass, one of the d.a.'s lawyers said, "look, i normally do this as a courtesy, but here i can't because the defendant is still tweeting about these witnesses." merchan said, "i can't fault them for that."

todd blanche said, "i can promise you he won't tweet," to which merchan said, "you can't make that representation." blanche said, "we'll treat it as attorneys' eyes only information and won't share it with the client." merchan said, "i'm not going to direct them to do that either." there is a level of distrust here. both of the defendant and also sort of a level of distrust that they can't be independent from their client. i don't think merchan was angry with blanche. if anything, sort of reminiscent of a similar moment with joe tacopina, who litigated the first e. jean carroll trial, where he also tried to make a particular representation. if you give this information to me, i won't share it with my client and my client won't do anything. judge lou kaplan said something to, "i don't think you can make that representation." it is less about the lawyer and more about the client. of course, it exists against the backdrop of trump continuing to tweet and the d.a. making an

application to hold trump in criminal contempt for ten social media posts in the last, you know, several days that they say endangers those witnesses. on one hand, you have judge merchan saying, "i'm not going to order them to provide the names of those witnesses," and on the other, you have a hearing tuesday on whether to hold him in criminal contempt. a judge who says," i won't order your adversary to provide you with a list of their witnesses" is probably someone leaning toward granting some form of sanctions and holding trump in criminal contempt because he sees that danger that the d.a.'s office does. >> lisa, it's been -- i was slightly amused because all the hype going into this voir dire of the jurors was, oh, my god, this could take weeks. we could be here for two, maybe three weeks. we got this done in four days, five days. talk a little bit about that

process. it wasn't just because everyone ran out of their peremptory, you know, choices there, you know, preventing certain jurors and getting others. what was it about this process or this judge that allowed that to happen so quickly, that we're now, today, presumably getting the remaining five alternate jurors, and what does that say about the process or the trial starting on monday? because i don't think anyone thought we would be here. i mean, maybe we'd go another week. you sort of ramp up into it. all of a sudden, bam, monday, we could be full on. >> we could be. i want to caveat that by saying each side gets two peremptory challenges per alternate juror, meaning they have ten, again, to select five alternate jurors. today could be not the end of this jury selection process. i expect that it will be, but who knows? >> right. >> that said, you asked me, michael, what are the choices merchan made that allowed this

to go so fast, and there are two. one, right off the top, he asked people, if you feel like you can't be fair and impartial, raise your hand and you're excused, no questions asked. usually, it doesn't happen like that. you have to justify yourself. he also asked people, if you feel like you're unable to serve for any other reason, raise your hand, and those people, too, were able to go. usually, those are people who are called to the bench and asked to justify that, as well. i'm caregiving for a small child. i watch an elderly relative. i have a job that's so demanding that i can't be here. those kinds of things, people were allowed to sort of, on the honor system, say, i can't do that. >> take themselves out. >> that itself saved a lot of time. the other thing that allowed it to go fast, merchan has been stingy with challenges for cause. several jurors were offensive to the trump side, in particular, and they said, "this person should go because they are bias." in many instances, merchan said," i don't agree," and that forced them to exercise the peremptory challenges to get rid

of jurors they felt were not acceptable. the end of the day, they were out of them. there were jurors in the box, and they had to take what they were left with. >> wow. msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin, thank you so much for your coverage. of course, we'll be seeing more of you as this continues. coming up, we'll bring you updates from the middle east after israel strikes overnight in iran. also ahead, we'll go through the large pro-palestinian protest yesterday on the campus of columbia university and the school's response to it, by calling in the nypd. "morning joe" is coming right back. i'm a bird stuck in larry bird's attic. and i'm goin' cuckoo. what the heck. what you got larry? may the best bird win.

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beautiful, live picture of lower manhattan at 6:45 on a friday morning. more than 100 pro-palestinian protesters were arrested on the campus of columbia university yesterday. it came just one day after the school's president was questioned by lawmakers on capitol hill about incidents of anti-semitism on school grounds. nbc news correspondent antonia hylton reports. >> reporter: confrontation at columbia. police removing protesters from campus.

citing extraordinary circumstances. columbia university president called in the nypd to clear an encampment of pro-palestinian student demonstrators. the encampment set up wednesday morning, the same day she testified on capitol hill about anti-semitism on campus. >> we have to uphold freedom of speech, but we cannot and shouldn't tolerate abuse of this privilege to harass and discriminate. >> reporter: in a letter to the university community, she noted, protests have a storied history at columbia. anti-vietnam demonstrators look over buildings on campus in 1968. but in asking for help from the police, she said, the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university. >> we are risking, like, our academic standing just to, like, show the administrators that we are not okay with their decisions. >> reporter: several demonstrators today stomping on an israeli flag. some students saying they feel

unsafe on campus. >> i feel as though people are kind of weaponizing anti-semitism. >> reporter: demonstrators telling us they plan to keep their protests going despite the police presence. >> do you feel like this administration has clamped down on students and faculty members' free speech? >> 100%, yes. i believe that. >> reporter: new york city's mayor saying police made 100 arrests on a campus severely divided. >> nbc's antoia hylton reporting from columbia university in new york. joe, yesterday, you saw another case, several in recent weeks, where heads of school, chauns chancellors, administrators, have said, there is a line between free speech. we've allowed you to protest, go to certain places. we've opened dialogue on campus, given you a place to have debates. when it comes to harassment of jewish students, interrupting

the operations of a class, a speaker, people moving through campus, you can't do that anymore. >> exactly. whether you're talking about the interruption of the functioning of the golden gate bridge or the normal functioning of columbia university, you know, it's too much. it's too much. you can have free speech without, again, stopping the normal functioning of these institutions. it's really unfortunate that you have people stepping forward saying, "well, we have to do this because israel is so terrible, this and that, and look what's happening to the palestinian people." i didn't see these protests when 10,000, 30,000, 50,000, 100,000, 500,000 arabs were killed in

syria in assad's civil war. did we see this when saddam hussein was killing a million muslims? i didn't see the protests. so, protests have a time and a place, and nobody should trample on first amendment rights of people who want to support the palestinian cause or want to support israel's cause, but that's not the way it's going on college campuses. right now, it has been overwhelmingly one sided, and it's not just jewish students who are feeling the pressure. it's also other students that are feeling the pressure to take extreme positions, anti-israel positions. i'm glad the president of columbia university has stepped forward. you know, some people may call allowing students to take over

president's offices at columbia in the 1960s a storied tradition. i don't. i call that anarchy. like, if you're president of the university and you're letting students take over your office, maybe, maybe you should seek employment elsewhere, because i guarantee there are a lot of parents that send their children to schools who don't want students running the place. they'd like grown-ups to run the place. it looks like that's what's happening in columbia. >> i'll speak for -- you know, i went to vanderbilt university. they've had a lot of this on their campus in recent weeks. a group of students a couple weeks ago pushed their way into kirkland hall, where the chancellor's office is. they pushed aside an unarmed security guard, sat there for 20 hours doing exactly what you're talking about, joe. >> no. >> the chancellor said, you're all suspended, and one by one, reviewed their cases and expelled three of the students. >> good. >> said, "we've given you a place to have free speech.

we've given you a place to protest. we've given you a space to voice your opinion. we have symposiums where both sides of this discussion can be heard. you didn't participate in that, but you broke into our office and sat here. three of you are no longer students of this university." that was one of the first schools to do that, and you've seen more since then. jeremy peters of "the new york times" is writing about this. he has new reporting on how those administrators are responding to a surge in anti-israel protests on campus. also with us, ceo of the anti-defamation league, jonathan greenblatt. his group is out with new data on anti-semitic incidents in the united states in the last year. jeremy, it seems to have been, just within the last couple weeks even, a bit of a change in the approach that some, not all, that some leaders of campuses, of universities across the country are taking with these protests. what did you find in your reporting? >> that's exactly right, willie. schools have had enough.

vanderbilt issued what are believed to be the first expulsions of student protesters related to demonstration stemming from the october 7th hamas attack on israel. from vanderbilt to nyu to columbia to the university of michigan to pomona, schools are saying, basically, "look, this is not about free speech. you have a right to speak up. you have a right to demonstrate. what you don't have is a right to harass and disrupt." that's what's really been impeding these university's core mission, which is to educate your students. you can't have an environment that is constantly disrupted, where students are subject to harassment, with they're spin upon, yelled at, where graduation ceremonies, or like the incident i wrote about at my alma mater, the university of michigan, this honors convocation that was supposed to be this lovely, celebratory

moment where kids who were the highest achieving students are honored. their parents and grandparents are there. what happened? it got disrupted and had to be shut down early because of pro-palestinian protesters standing up and shouting down speakers and unfurling banners. this is something i think universities have been slow to acknowledge. i mean, remember during the trump years, universities really became this cauldron of protesting activity, where this overly sensorous culture developed. if there was a speaker who was conservative or aligned with trump, instead of letting that person speak, a lot of times, the speak would be canceled out of fear for the safety of that speaker. or people would interrupt the speaker. now, you know, i think universities are saying, we didn't do enough to rein that in, but now they are. >> you know, the thing is, that's happened over the past couple of years, but this has

been a problem for a long time. i'll just say it, brats who are protesting when, say, christine lagarde tries to speak at a graduation, or condi rice tries to speak, or even christine todd whitman one time was canceled from speaking at the graduation. i have to say, you're either the adult running the campus or you're the child that is incapable of controlling students. the students are there to learn. that means all the students are there to learn. not just students who decide this one issue is the most important issue to them, and i certainly understand, if gaza is the most important issue, especially to palestinian students in american. but it goes well beyond that. you can't shut down an entire campus. your right to free speech doesn't mean your right to impinge upon everybody else's

free speech and their ability to function in a university setting. >> right. having said that, we're going to continue this conversation after a break with jonathan greenblatt how we look at this amid an uptick in anti-semitism. we'll be right back. (♪♪) (♪♪) oh no. [scratching] with chewy, get flea meds delivered before the itching begins. (♪♪) or after, but before is definitely better. good job. save 20% on your first pharmacy order and get it delivered right on time.

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it's the top of the hour. we're following breaking news from overseas this morning. israel carried out a strike against iran overnight, and the scope of the attack is unclear

right now. a person familiar with the situation tells nbc news officials are assessing the damage. iranian state media reports explosions were heard in one city near the site of the country's largest nuclear research complex, but the international atomic energy agency confirms there's been no damage to any nuclear facilities. a source familiar with the situation tells nbc news the u.s. was not involved in the strike. some countries in the middle east, though, are weighing in on israel's actions overnight. egypt's foreign minister put out a statement a short time ago saying the country is deeply concerned about an escalation between israel and iran and warned about the consequences of expanding the -- the expanding conflict and instability in the region. >> let's bring in columnist and associate editor for "the washington post," david ignatius. take us through the last 24 hours diplomatically between the

united states and israel, and then what happened on the ground in iran. >> joe, i should begin by saying my information is limited because it's still not entirely clear what happened. but as of 24 hours ago, the united states was still urgently counseling israel to be careful about retaliation and a new cycle of escalation. the u.s. view had been, after the spectacular success, to use the term senior administration official used after saturday night's defeat of the missile pa barrage, to take the win. you demonstrated your ability to deter iranian attacks. don't take this into a new round. from monday on, i heard from israeli officials, we are going to strike back. it was a question of when and

how. all week long, there had been intense debate within israel about what form of retaliation they should take. also, the israeli defense forces needed to regroup after saturday night's action, decide on a battle plan, decide on precisely what they wanted to do. there was a range of options and targets. we have a sense now that they opted for something on the low end of this scale of possibilities. it seems as if what israel has done is demonstrate an ability to strike at and during nuclear targets without having a devastating strike that might have prompted reaction. the statement about no major imagine at isfahan, a major nuclear facility, is the most important we've seen yet since the iaea is reliable. the factors that i think are going through people's minds this morning are, first, has

israel damaged its relations with its emerging allies in an anti-iran coalition? saudi arabia, the uae, egypt, jordan, are those countries, in fact, happy that israel has taken this limited action, or are they, as the egyptian statement suggests, really upset? my guess is they're probably relatively content. israel, final thought, needs to be thinking, as it enters this new stage of action and reaction, about its role as leader of the anti-iran coalition. that is the position that it's taken after defeating iran's missile barrage. it is something very precious. it is a gateway to a more stable future for israel. i hope israeli officials are thinking carefully, as they've been counselled to do by the white house, not to, in any way, jeopardize that role by actions

that seem to be unwise, overreactions that plunge the whole region into a region-wide war that would be damaging for everyone. for jordan, for saudi arabia, for all the countries that might be involved. >> david, american officials have come out just in the last few hours and said, yes, we were told about this strike ahead of time, but underlined, no, we did not participate in this. this was a unilateral israeli strike, limited strike inside of iran. what is your sense at this point of the leverage that the united states has with bibi netanyahu, or the pressure president biden really can place upon netanyahu, and is the prime minister open to that? is he listening to it? does he hear president biden when he says, slow down a little bit, pull back for your own good? >> so i think netanyahu, in a sense, has been running against the biden administration in his

efforts to remain in power. the leverage on netanyahu himself is limited. i think the better question, willie, is to ask, what's u.s. leverage on the israeli war cabinet as a whole? these decisions are being taken collectively. it is said that there were arguments in israel, in the immediate aftermath of iran launching its wave of 100 ballistic missiles, 300 munitions overall, this strike that really did change the balance of deterrence and willingness to use power in the middle east, it was argued that israel should go right away, pow. just a big roundhouse swing back. u.s. strongly felt that was a mistake. that prevailed. israel held off, engaged with iran in internal discussions, and finally came up with this, as i say, seemingly fairly limited option. i think we're now in a period

where you can almost see the outlines of a campaign for the next prime minister of israel. i think we're in the battle now for people to jockey and see who might replace netanyahu. one obvious person is the defense minister who has been a hawk and very close to washington the last couple weeks. another person is benny gantz, former head of the israeli military who has already called for new elections. but i think the position the united states wanted to be in was as friend and supporter but also as restraint for israel, just to preserve our position in our own coalition with our allies, who are very upset about what israel has done. >> all right. "the washington post"'s david ignatius, thanks so much. let's bring into the conversation staff writer at "the new yorker," susan glasser. she's a co-host of the "political scene" podcast.

and also, columnist david french. david, i'm curious about your thoughts on the balancing of this shadow boxing, really, between iran and israel and where we find ourselves now. i mean, you know, if iran had wanted to exact revenge on israel, they would have found a better way to do it. they knew what was going to happen with the missiles. same thing with israel going back to iran last night. it seems a lot of shadow boxing going on. i'm wondering if the two sides, you think, at this point are ready to stop and let things cool down a bit in the region. >> the limited nature of the strike leads me to believe that israel is wanting to put a period on this particular episode. iran took a roundhouse swing at israel. that 320 missiles, they're obviously hoping to do serious damage. the attack was, as was just

said, a spectacular failure. in many ways, israel didn't have to extend much further to show its military dominance, but what it did is, again, it just showed that it can strike into iran with relative ease. whereas, iran sends 300 missiles and virtually none of them get through. now, that doesn't mean israel should be complacent. it can't count on american and prettyish pilots and jordanian pilots every time to help defend it from iran. israel obviously wants this thing to cool down a bit, but it also wanted to send iran a message to restore deterrence, that says, hey, you'll have trouble hitting us, and we can quite obviously hit you, which is a classic demonstration of that capability in the hopes of restoring deterrence. i think the real hope now is that is the end of this particular round. but we will see. i mean, when the sun rises all over the rest of the world and

everyone takes a deep breath and sees where we are, we don't know exactly the next steps, but it is obvious what israel was trying to do. a limited strike to send iran a message after iran's own strike against israel failed. >> susan, elise jordan here. do you agree? do you think that this strike was enough to give an exit ramp to both parties to cool down and not break out into a greater regional war? >> well, look, it's the threat of regional war has been, i think, the focus of so much of the kind of behind the scenes diplomacy over the last six months. i would point out that as long as we're talking about israel versus iran, we're not talking about what's happening in gaza. for israel, at the moment, certainly internationally, that is a good thing. they have watched their international credibility slipping away. they have seen the united states

grow increasingly impatient with their actions in gaza. to a certain extent, the events of the last few days have actually gone to israel's benefit, in that we are talking not only about them in relation to allies coming together, the united states, britain, france, jordan, saudi arabia, all, in effect, supporting israel against iran. that's something that's in their interest. but it does appear they're strongly trying to message right now that there's a climb down of sorts, that this is it as far as this round of hostilities goes with iran. >> michael steele, i'm just -- in terms of the politics of this here at home, aid to israel but also president biden's position in all of this, trying to influence israel in the right way and move forward toward a solution that doesn't spread out into a wider war, how do you think he is doing, and what

might be the challenges ahead for the administration? >> you know, i think it's interesting. the fighting has all been within the republican caucus. it has been the pushback against johnson, who is caught between the administration and his right flank. now that he seemingly, jonathan, -- johnson, that is, put together a coalition with israel, ukraine, and taiwan, the administration has received a little bit of a release of the pressure valve there. they've held the course and have been steady in its determination to balance the challenges on the ground in israel while also now having to deal with the introduction of iran and its aggression. at the same time, trying to move that aid package. it seems that that effort has worked out for the

administration. they have held netanyahu at bay for the most part in terms of taking more aggressive actions on the ground, at times, allowing humanitarian aid and relief to get to the palestinian people, and at the same time now positioning, you know, speaker johnson to deliver this weekend the aid that the administration has sought for a long, long time. in the political sense, in a real way, mika, this has been, you know, deft political handling by an administration caught between two very difficult positions, and has seemingly been able to manage to get to the other side of that with less noise on the ground in israel and more resources on the way for ukraine. we're going to turn back now to the discussion we were having a few moments ago on what's

happening on college campuses in the wake of the hamas terror attack on israel. with us, the ceo of the antidefamation league is here, jonathan greenblatt. that's along with "new york times" reporter jeremy peters. jonathan, first, overall, in terms of how columbia managed the situation yesterday. it seemed to escalate a little bit. they brought in the nypd. your thoughts? >> i would give president shafik an "a" for enforcing the rules, right? let's just step back. students clearly have a right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but you don't get the hecklers veto. you certainly don't get the bigots blockade. as jeremy said in the last hour, i mean, what we're seeing at columbia, like at pomona, like at michigan, like at brown, like so many of these other schools, it's where these overprivileged individuals think that, somehow, they're allowed to build encampments in the middle of the quad.

they're not. somehow, they're allowed to threaten and intimidate, spit on, and harass their jewish classmates. they're not. and it's about time that the presidents and these campus administrators across the country say, "you have to play by the rules." talk about the height of entitlement, right? thinking you can just act with impunity wherever you want. it is funny, we're talking about iran a few minutes ago. iran has their military proxies like hezbollah, and iran has their campus proxies like these groups, like sjp, jvp. look at them. this is like a demonstration in tehran. you can't believe it is happening in morningside heights. as you know, president shafik testified before congress on wednesday. she did much better than her counterparts last december because she basically said, "we have a problem, and we're going to fix it. this is the first step in fixing it." i give her an "a." >> jeremy, take us through not

just what happened at columbia but also what's happening across the country. college administrators understanding, much like they -- took them a hell of a long time to figure out in a lot of places -- how to stop a heckler's veto, so you actually could have first amendment rights exercised by people on all kinds of the political spectrum. but talk about the sort of awakening of these college administrators who understand that people send their children to school and people go to school to learn, not to be backdropped on some protest spectacle on the middle of the campus lawn. >> so i think there are a number of dynamics going on here. one is the pressure from congress, which is investigating incidents of anti-semitism on

all sorts of college campuses. that's clearly had an impact because what college president wants to be hauled before a congressional committee and forced to testify? there is pressure from alumni, from donors, from students and faculty who feel like these protests have become too hostile and oppressive. then there is also, joe, the realization among university administraors that campuses have just become really inhouse pit -- inhospitable places lately. may be too little, too late, but they've realized, we can't allow the heckler's veto. we can't allow tent encampments. as in the case of pomona, which was an extreme example, we can't allow tour groups, students, prospective students and their parents being led around on campus tours being harassed by protesters, shouting

anti-israeli slogans at these prospective student tours. like, there's just been such a breakdown of norms and civility on campus that schools are saying, enough. >> jonathan greenblatt, it's funny, you don't hear a mention of the hostages, the israeli hostages being held inside gaza. you don't hear a mention of the horrific, inhumane, outrageous violence of october 7th, unlike we've seen in human history. but here we are. some schools are taking a stand. this spins us into the new adl report you're here with today that speaks to some of this, not on college campuses necessarily, but more broadly. what'd you find? >> adl does an audit every year where we track anti-semitic incidents. what we saw in 2023 was worse than any year in history. in 45 years, we've never seen numbers like this. nearly 9,000 incidents in '23.

that's 140% greater than the prior year. that is almost 900% greater than what we had a decade ago. hundreds and hundreds of these incidents on college campuses. like jeremy was saying, we've seen examples, willie, of student tours being harassed. i'm worried about graduation. if you're a college president watching this now, if you are an alumni of a college watching this now, if you're a donor watching this now, you tell your alma mater that they need to get the graduation ceremony right and not allow these hecklers, these bigots to interfere with what the students have been waiting for. this is the class, willie, that missed their covid graduation from high school. god help the universities that don't stop these lunatics, these anti-zionists from interrupting these kids' chance to finally have a college graduation. i'm sorry. i'm a parent of kids in college. this is not what i'm paying for.

no one should think that these children have the right -- i mean, i call them children because that's what they are. like, when you break the rules, expect to face the consequences. in this environment, willie, what we've seen with anti-semitism is literally a five-alarm fire. i'm glad, like jeremy said, campus administrators are finally waking up. you see the grades up there. god bless brandeis and elon university. how can columbia get a d? how can it be that harvard and stanford and m.i.t. get fs? i hope this is the beginning of a change, the beginning of a process of reformation, because our universities desperately need it. not just for our jewish kids, for the sake of all of the students. >> ceo of the antidefamation league, jonathan greenblatt, thank you very much for coming on this morning. we appreciate it. and national reporter for "the new york times," jeremy peters, thank you, as well. still ahead on "morning

joe," "politico's" jonathan mar tin joins us. we'll be talking with him about his piece entitled "trump, the front-runner? not so fast." plus, jury selection in trump's hush money trial will get under way again in about two hours as lawyers seek five more alternates. we'll talk about what to expect with opening statements likely to begin on monday. and before we go to break, willie, what do you have planned for "sunday today?" >> well, this is attention to "ted lasso" fans like joe scarborough. hannah waddingham who plays rebecca on the show. she's fantastic. broadcast and westend star for a long time who has now become a global star because of "ted lasso," starring in "the fall guy" with ryan gosling and emily blunt. she's a delight. so talented, so charming. so much fun to spend some time with.

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i guess their reasoning is they want russia to win so badly, that they want to oust the speaker over it. i mean, it's a strange position

to take. you know, i think it's -- i think they want to be in the minority, too. they think it is an obvious reality. >> yeah, that's one way of putting it. republican congressman dan crenshaw. >> wants to win so badly. >> strange position to take. >> bizarre position to take. >> don't really get it. >> again, why do you have people from rural districts parroting vladimir putin's talking points? very strange. >> very strange. anyhow, he is criticizing members of his own party acting strange, threatening to remove mike johnson as speaker over funding for ukraine. david french and susan glasser are still with us. susan's piece for "the new yorker" is entitled, "did mike johnson just get religion on ukraine?" >> susan, it certainly looks that way, does it not? >> what happened? >> he is quoting ronald reagan. he's saying all the sort of things -- >> he was just at mar-a-lago. >> -- that david french and i have been saying for years and wondering why he hasn't been

saying for six months now. >> you know, the hour is late. let's just say that for ukraine. it's already a disaster on the front lines payoff this months' long delay by republicans, by mike johnson. for him to come out the other day, it was almost this, like, out of body experience. he was talking as if, you know, he was a republican from the before times. you can only imagine that donald trump was not happy to hear mike johnson talking about -- he used the phrase axis of evil. he said, "i believe the intelligence." i was struck by that line after years of republicans tearing down the credibility of american intelligence agencies, just following trump. you know, he said very explicitly, "if we don't stop putin in ukraine, he will roll further, perhaps into the balkans or against poland or another nato ally." this was like an out of body experience for mike johnson.

as a rank and file nobody in congress, he voted against all previous ukraine assistance packages. you know, what does it mean? i do think it is important. he is obviously not a resistance hero yet, joe, right? he is endorsing donald trump. in the end, ukraine's fate, it hinges not on this $60 billion, which is crucial right now, but on what happens in the u.s. election this fall, i think. >> right. when you're a back bencher and you're worried about your district, that's one thing. when you actually, david french, are speaker of the house and you get briefings and you get intel briefings and you suddenly understand that fisa is needed to stop the next islamic radical attack on the united states or the next attack from some other force outside the united states,

suddenly, it's quite sobering. but it is interesting what susan just said, that he sounded like a republican from the before times. he sounded, david, like one of us. in fact, he was saying exactly what we've been saying here and what you've been saying over the past several months. >> look, i applaud it. i applaud it. >> same here. >> i think a couple things are happening at once. one, the situation on the ground in ukraine was becoming obvious to everyone. there was no ambiguity here on the urgent necessity of american aid to keep russia from winning this war. the other thing that was happening is his hard-right flank was getting crazier and crazier. he began to realize, i think, and he should have known it a long time ago, he is not dealing with serious people. he's not dealing with people who have both eyes on american national security. he's dealing with a fringe that is just lost to conspiracy land. you cannot govern a country

kowtowing to that faction. look, seeing the rise of a kind of coalition arrangement in the house is good for the united states of america. it's good for this country when we have bipartisan legislation that protects american allies and protects american national security. this is one of those no-brainer pieces of legislation in many ways that was being held up by some of the weirdest, wildest, craziest, and almost you hate to call them arguments, in american public life. just wild propaganda was holding up this aid. i think at long last, he realized he's not really speaker of the house, not really, if he is beholden to marjorie taylor greene. so this is where he decides he has to be speaker of the house if he is going to hold that position. marjorie taylor greene, if she's going to take him on, let her do her worst. i think this was not just an important moment for ukraine, for israel, for taiwan, it was a very important moment for american governance. i've known mike johnson for many

years and have had many disagreements with mike johnson in recent years, but this is the mike johnson that i knew a long time ago. this is a mike johnson, a man who had real principles. i was very glad to see it. >> "new york times" columnist david french and "the new yorker"'s susan glasser, thank you, both. david, we were happy to have nancy on the other day, the better half. >> i'm sorry you downgraded to me. i'm sorry you downgraded to me. >> she's amazing. all right. thanks for coming on this morning. let's bring in senior political columnist for "plate politico," jonathan marti his piece, "trump the front-runner? not so fast." what are you seeing playing out, jonathan? >> i think the trump is going to win conventional wisdom got out of hand the last couple months. there's, frankly, some overcompensation from people who aren't trump fans but want to see him.

like, they get it. they're in touch with real america, kind of unlike perhaps they weren't in 2016. but this assumption that he is a sure thing kind of doesn't fully factor in that donald trump is donald trump. he's going to say and do things that are going to be detrimental to his own cause. he has an aptitude for self-sabotage unlike any politician we know. this is a campaign that still has six months to go, and a lot can happen. there's known unknowns and unknown unknowns. the idea that this is inevitable, that trump is coming back for a second term, i just don't think is reflected in the data or the reality of donald trump the politician we know. >> j-mar, michael steele here. i found that headline an interesting one. you know, trump may not necessarily be the frontrunner. you're talking about in terms of

the race between him and biden or inside the party? who is taking this guy down inside the party? i think everyone is lined up. yeah, if he is not the frontrunner, who is? >> in terms of the race between he and biden, i mean. >> okay. all right. i was like, frontrunner? >> trump clearly is the dominant figure in the gop. he has been for almost nine years now. that's unquestioned. look, there's obviously a third of the republican party, the old guard, maybe some folks on this very show right now, joe scarborough, who are embarrassed by trump, who find trump to be, you know, an appalling figure, but it's math. the one-third is vastly outnumbered by the two-thirds, so trump clearly controls the gop. guys, he's always been a minority political leader. he's never sniffed 50% of the vote in either election. obviously, he's presided over losses up and down the ballot in

his own party since 2017. so the idea he is some political colossus is not reflected, obviously, i don't think, in history or in the data today. now, we all get it. this is an election of six states. biden's coalition is tenuous. biden's numbers are really bad. he's going to have a huge challenge. but i just don't think the idea that, you know, david cameron going to mar-a-lago, like, that wouldn't happen unless this conventional wisdom hadn't set in that trump is a sure thing, you know? >> j-mar, president duda, two days ago, met with donald trump in new york because donald trump is obviously here sitting for that trial. >> yeah. >> what is your sense of the truth about the way the trump campaign feels about this? obviously, they always project confidence, that we are the frontrunner. we're going to beat joe biden. do they worry that as these trials go on, as we've seen in the last week, donald trump just kind of sitting powerless in a

courtroom with more to come, do they concern that cuts into some of the confidence they're projecting, that they worry about it? >> yeah. real fast, by the way, on the duda meeting at trump tower, i had a western official tell me the trump world has encouraged the embassies to have foreign leaders go visit trump on his turf. this is an active effort by trump's advisors to get these foreign leaders to go see him. because they like the image. they know what the image projects, willie. look, there's no question that the trump campaign can only control so much, right? they have a candidate who is really somebody who is going to do what he is going to do and say what he is going to say. they have limitations in what they can do. if you saw the letter this week of him trying to create, willie, his own nil, a 5% cut, as they say in philadelphia, getting a taste, you know, that kind of

thing where you're trying to get a cut of down ballot candidates who use donald trump's image in an ad is not the effort of a campaign that's trying to put together an organization in michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania. it's an organization that is trying to placate donald trump and pick up some cash while doing it. i think a lot of their time, willie, is focused on keeping mr. trump happy. when you're doing that, you're not putting together a winning campaign. >> well, and he's just got to be mi miserable, having to sit in court all day. good luck trying to keep him happy. >> one can imagine. >> i don't know what that's like. senior political columnist for "politico," jonathan martin. always good to have you on. >> thank you, mika. coming up on "morning joe," a strong show of force from the kennedy family as more than a dozen members endorse joe biden for president. we'll play for you their comments even as robert f. kennedy jr. continues his

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the biden administration is facing pressure to help secure the release of a princeton doctoral student being held hostage in the middle east. there was a protest outside the white house on monday as president biden was meeting with the iraqi prime minister. the group was trying to bring attention to the kidnapping of 37-year-old elizabeth serkov, studying in baghdad last year when she was taken by a terrorist group who is backed by the iranian government. before his meeting with the prime minister on monday, the state department said president biden would raise the issue with the iraqi leader. of course, we will be following this story. over one decade ago, american freelance journalist james foley was covering the civil war in syria when he was kidnapped by isis. he was held captive for two years then executed by the

terrorist group on camera in 2014. seven years later, his mother, diane foley, traveled to a virginia courthouse to speak with one of her son's imprisoned captors and to find answers. she has a new book on those meetings entitled "american mother," and she joins us now. we want to thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. let us know what you learned in some of those meetings. i know it is all in the book and it's a journey for you even after your son's death that is incredibly compelling. give us a sense of parts of that journey. >> i -- well, good morning to you both. it's good to be with you again. last time i saw you was shortly after jim was killed, so i thank you for your time. it was -- it was necessary to

talk to alexander kodi for me because jim would have. jim was always interested in the underdog and folks that might be disenfranchised. i think alexander, as a young immigrant, without a dad, you know, was bullied and jim would have wanted to hear him out. i felt it was necessary to speak to him. we have to almost and find ways to talk to those we don't agree with. that was a lot of the reason. plus, i wanted to tell him about jim. i wanted him to know how jim was as a person. >> you spent three days in a virginia courthouse. >> yes. >> talking with this man, which i'm sure took a lot to sit down and look him in the eye and find some humanity and some mercy

even. can you take us inside the conversations? what was it like on a human level? >> to be honest, i had to pray to be present and see him as the young man that he is. really the same age as one of our younger sons who has obviously made some awful choices, you know, and it is important he be held accountable. by the same token, he also lost his freedom and probably ability to ever see his family or country again. the whole experience was sad but healing in the sense that he heard me, and i feel that i heard him. he did express quite a bit of remorse, to be honest. >> diane, elise jordan here. your empathy and your courage has just been incredible and is so inspiring. you know, the book, i'm so excited to read, but how much in

the book do you talk about what you did to change how american hostages are rescued by the american government? because part of the frustration with your son's struggle was that the u.s. government really did not step up to the plate. they even harmed your efforts and threatened you with prosecution if you and your husband pursued outside action. you have changed -- now there is a hostage coordinator. so many rescues have been possible, so many hostages have been released. can you just talk about how you did that? >> well, that is jim's legacy, and it gives me joy in many ways. when jim was taken in 2012 through 2014, there was no u.s. hostage enterprise. no one to help me.

that was part of the reason i was sent in circles. our government did not know what to do with me, actually. and i was ignorant of the policy of non-engagement with captors. obviously, if you don't engage at all, the captors will get rid of the hostages and kill them. that's what happened with jim, kayla mueller, peter kassic, and steven. i felt as a country we could do much better. thanks to many good people, we have. we now have a u.s. hostage enterprise with dedicated government officials who brought home more than 100 u.s. nationals. people who were targeted like jim, free of any crime, had not committed any crime at all but were targeted because they were americans. more than 100 have been brought home. it's a huge national security

threat in all honesty. it is a challenge to us. americans are targeted when we travel internationally. we truly are. >> the book is titled "american mother," and it is available now. diane foley, thank you very much. >> thank you for your time. >> thank you for writing this book and for coming on the show this morning. you can find more information by clicking on james foley foundation.org. once again, thank you so much. still ahead, we're going to get a live report from jerusalem for the latest on israel's strikes overnight in iran. plus, we'll get expert legal analysis on donald trump's hush money trial as the case moves closer to opening arguments. "morning joe" is back in just a moment.

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prominent members of the kennedy family endorsed president biden yesterday even though one of their own is running against him. nbc news senior white house correspondent gabe gutierrez has the details. >> reporter: with his opponent stuck in court, president biden on the attack in battleground pennsylvania. >> the 2024 election are about two fundamentally different visions for america. donald trump's vision is one of anger, hate, revenge, and retribution.

>> reporter: the campaign touting the endorsement of 15 kennedy family members even though one of their own, robert f. kennedy jr., is running against him as an independent. >> the best way forward for america is to re-elect joe biden and kamala harris to four more years. [ cheers and applause ] >> reporter: responding to his family's endorsement of his opponent, rfk jr. posted on america, we are divided on our opinions, but united in our love for each other. the environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist first ran as a democrat. now his campaign is polling above 10% in a few key swing states where biden is trailing trump. people involved tell nbc news though it's not clear which candidate president biden or former president trump would lose more votes to rfk jr. kennedy told vaughn hilliard

this. >> i hope to draw equal numbers from both of them. i think at this point, i'm probably drawing more from president trump. >> gabe gutierrez reporting on that. still ahead, the very latest on the retaliatory strike in iran. what we're learning about the limited response and the concerns about a wider escalation in the region. "morning joe" is coming right back. e region "morning joe" is coming right back take it from your inner child. what you really need in life is some freakin' torque. what? the dodge hornet r/t... the totally torqued-out crossover. it's time. yes, the time has come for a fresh approach to dog food. everyday, more dog people are deciding it's time to quit the kibble and feed their dogs fresh food from the farmer's dog. made by vets and delivered right to your door

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♪♪ good morning, and welcome to "morning joe." it's friday, april 19th. let's get right to breaking news out of the middle east. israel has caried out a limited strike against iran. that's according to a person familiar with the situation who tells nbc news officials are now assessing the damage caused. the attack was carried out overnight. iranian state media reports explosions were heard in one city near the site of the country's largest nuclear research complex, but the international atomic energy agency reports there has been no damage to any energy agencies. iranian officials believe the attack was carried out by small drones, possibly launched from inside the country. the officials say the strike hit a military air base. another group of drones were reportedly shot down. now a source familiar with the situation tells nbc news the

u.s. was not involved in the strike. defense secretary lloyd austin had spoken with his israeli counterpart yesterday afternoon, but it was not known if he was told about israel's plan to attack iran. israeli officials have not yet commented on the strike. the move comes less than a week after iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones toward israel. that was done in retaliation for a deadly strike earlier this month on iranian diplomatic building in syria. iran's attack however, was mostly thwarted with help from the u.s. and several arab and western allies. now yesterday, before israel's attack, iran's foreign affairs minister reiterated a warning that his country would respond to any use of force by israel. it's not clear what the country will do, but the u.s. embassy in jerusalem has issued a security alert asking employees and their families to restrict their

travel out of an abundance of caution, willie. >> let's go straight to jerusalem where we find nbc news chief foreign correspondent, richard engel. richard, so what more do we know about the extent of this strike, about what iran might do in retaliation, in this back and forth that's been going on since april 1st, in the israeli strike to killed two generals in demascus? the white house says it was briefed there would be an attack last night. did not participate though. what else do we know this morning? >> reporter: we know that this attack appears to have been quite limited. the iranians are telling their people through state media that this was no big deal, to stay calm, that life is continuing as normal. here in jerusalem, things are very much proceeding as normal. people are out. the buses are running. people are on the streets. shops are open. there have been no air raid

sirens. same in tel aviv, all across the country. the military has not given any guidance here telling people to seek shelters or to listen for upcoming radio announcements. the attack according to iranian media, took place in the city of isfahan on a military base. there were some air defenses in action in the city. you can see flashes in the sky, but then iranian media shortly afterwards have been showing pictures of life going on as normal in isfahan. they've shown pictures of the areas around the nuclear facility. also calm, no damage there. so the message coming out of iran officially to the public is that there was an attack, that it was largely unsuccessful, thwarted, and that people should continue to go about their business. here in israel, they are not talking about it publicly at all. an official telling nbc news that, yes, israel did carry out

this strike, but not providing any details, and that they are conducting a battle damage assessment. now i have been speaking with officials in the region, and they describe this attack as not symbolic, but marginal was a word that was used, and they do not know if iran plans to carry out some sort of counterstrike or leave it -- leave it here, and move onto a task of de-escalation, allow the shadow war that has been going on between iran and israel for decades to recede back into the shadows and not -- and not top this region into a regional war. >> richard, as you say, these strikes by both sides over the last week or so have been limited relative to the damage in casualties both israel and iran are capable of inflicting on each other. is there a concern now that whatever comes next could be larger? that a population center could be attacked or do they feel like they've settled what they need

to settle here with this back and forth? >> reporter: i think it's too early to tell, but an indication is probably the messaging that both governments are telling their people. if israel expected that there would be a massive counterstrike, i'm quite sure that they would be informing the public to take precautions. when -- when israel was anticipating the strike over the weekend from iran, the israeli military went into overdrive. they were doing hourly briefings, telling people to take it seriously, to go into the shelters, to stay there for ten minutes or more. this country for the last six months has been on war footing. so when the air raid sirens go off, often people are now shrugging -- shrugging them off, not paying attention, not rushing to their shelters because it has been going on for six months. the fact that they didn't issue any new guidance, it seems to be a sign that israel at least

hopes that this phase is over. it doesn't mean the conflict is over. there is the ongoing war in gaza. there is the potentially pending military operation against rafah. it seems that iran and israel will continue to carry out attacks against each other. there are almost daily attacks between israel and hezbollah in southern lebanon, but the overt, open war between iran and israel at this stage, we're not sure if these were last licks or a -- or if a new round is coming, but looking at the messaging on both sides, it seems that both sides may be trying to pull it back from the brink. >> right. nbc's richard engel reporting from jerusalem. thank you very much. let's bring in now, former supreme allied commander of nato, retired four-star navy admiral, james stavridis. he's a chief international analyst for nbc news, and president emeritus of the

council on foreign relations, richard haass. also with us, former aide to the george w. bush white house, elise jordan and former chairman of the republican national committee and co-host of msnbc's "the weekend," michael steele, and associate editor of "the washington post," eugene robinson is with us this morning. thank you all for joining us this morning. >> admiral stavridis, what's your best read on a what happened last night and what's been happening over the last 12 to 24 hours? >> i think it was indeed a muted strike, a limited strike. clearly israel as we talked about earlier in the week, joe, had a basket of options here. they could have gone big. there were certainly voices in israel calling for that. they could have simply left it as cyber, nonkinetic

cooperation. we've talked about it a few days ago. it was kind of in the middle, and it was to show they can penetrate iranian air defenses. we'll know a bit more here over the next 24, 48 hours as battle damage assessments come out, but i for one, believe that we're now in a 90% probability that this will settle down, go back into the shadows, follow a path of de-escalation. i think there's still a 10% chance it could flare up in a bigger way, and i'll close by giving you a couple of indicators to watch over the next few days. richard engel mentioned one of them which are the public statements coming out from tehran and jerusalem. those are reassuring at the moment. number two is activity from hezbollah to the north. are they going to ramp up, be unleashed by tehran? they've got 100,000-plus

missiles. that's the threat i think our israeli friends are watching for this morning, and then third and finally, you know, the admiral's got to say it. watch what happens at sea. if iran really wants to retaliate and go largely back against jerusalem, they could do it at sea against israeli shipping or they could close the strait or hormuz. final thought, those are small probabilities. i think we're probably in a position to see things settle down. let's hope so. >> richard haass, this is just the latest and final round of shadow boxing between israel and iran trying to prove something to each other, to very constituen constituencies, to regional friends and enemies, or do you expect more? >> no. i think we're all in violent, or even nonviolent agreement this

morning. this was calibrated. the israelis felt compelled to respond to show they could reach iran if need be, that they could hurt them if need be, but they didn't hurt them this time. iran doesn't feel compelled to retaliate against the retaliation, and i think this has showed that bb netanyahu, who we're often critical of, and i think in this case, he resisted to do what he was being pressured to do from the right. he did less rather than more. i think president biden should feel pretty good in terms of calming the reactions, and this is the realization on the israelis. they've got their hands full. they've still got gaza, and they have to make big decisions about rafah, and occupation. they face, as the admiral was talking about, they face activity from hezbollah. they have problems on the west bank. they've got problems there. i think this is really an

interesting case. you see it sometimes. you saw it during the cold war, joe, that adversaries figure out how to signal. there's nothing formal. there's nothing explicit, but i think what we saw here were sot -- some actually sophisticated messages from israel and iran. >> and mika, iran has been careful not to escalate too much in this situation. also people throughout the region that i spoke to after the soleimani assassination said iran was very quick to launch the missiles, to send a message to their people, but just as quick to call intermediaries and say, tell the united states that's it. >> right. >> we're not doing anything else. we just needed to do that. this is -- you have in both the case of israel as was just said,

and in the case of iran, two countries that have enough on their hands right now. >> right. >> they do not want to get into a regional war with each other. >> and so that's the question. admiral, do you feel that as richard pointed out, that israel has its hands full, and it has its friends in the u.s. and also in the region who have really come to israel's defense in recent weeks? do you think that they did just enough to send a message, but not enough to look like they're not responding to the urging of friends in the region, and by the u.s. to not make this worse and not to have it escalate into a wider war? >> yes, i do, and in particular, you're right to put your finger on the coalition aspect of this. that's what knocked down 350 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles including u.s., uk, britain, jordan.

quietly saudis were cooperating, providing some intelligence. shall we say this was a wonderful example of coming together in this case to defend israel. the israelis don't want to knock that off course, and then second and final point, now the attention kind of shifts to capitol hill to look at the aid package for israel. as israel shot down 350, they probably used up close to 1,000 intercepters to do that. they need to replenish stocks. that's in the aid bill. i'm hoping to see that get done this weekend alongside the -- it's critical certainly, a bill for ukraine. >> and just hours before israel struck iran, the house saved a foreign aid bill proposed by speaker mike johnson.

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last night house democrats saved those packages of foreign aid bills proposed by speaker mike johnson which contain aid to israel and ukraine. in a rare move, all four democrats in the house rules committee joined the five republicans in passing a procedural vote that allows the bills to advance to the house floor for a vote. usually as the majority party alone that passes these rules, in committee and on the floor. the democratic votes were needed because republicans voted against the bills saying they were not for border security measures. speaker johnson acknowledged the rebellion and admitted he will need those democrats to get his aid packages passed this weekend. >> we have continued to work every single day. we've passed resolutions, but again, remember what we said at the outset. we only control one chamber, and

i barely have control of that. the senate won't advance on this legislation and the president won't sign it. he won't fulfill his obligation. why is the border not in this package? we didn't have the votes to do it. i have a handful of any republicans at least who will not advance a rule to bring that to the floor to combine it with the ukraine and israel funding. they won't do it, and so if i don't have republican votes, minds i have to have democrat vote votes. >> kind of an explosive scene when republicans who don't want any aid going out the door, none at all, and some says we don't want it without border security measures, even though for the thousandth time there was a comprehensive bipartisan border package sent over from the senate, but we'll put that to the side for a moment. what do you make of speaker johnson for a moment just in these last couple of days really, standing up to the hard right maga members of his can you -- caucus saying, we're going to get this money to

ukraine? >> it says to me a number of interesting things, but i think the top line is that he's come to the conclusion that, yeah. he may have to sacrifice his speakership to get something done. he recognizes the importance of this moment, that all of the loud noise from his right flank still does not solve the problem that's in front of him and the country, and that is, what do we do about aid to ukraine? what do we do about assistance to israel? what do we do in a number of these other hot spots? most importantly, of course, is ukraine. that reality is set in. the other part of it is, i think he recognizes that he has been the dog that has been wagged by the marjorie taylor greene tail, and she's the one who's driven a large part of this. i was talking to some folks just earlier this week. there is a frustration with the way that she has sort of

manhandled the speaker in this matter, giving him very little room to negotiate, making it so much harder to get the piece that they really wanted which is the connection of border security to ukraine even though as we noted, we have been here before, and they had the deal. the fact of the matter is a lot of folks were a little bit tired of that, and i think that he saw that opening, and the speaker decided to move into it. he went to the leadership on the other side, to hakeem jeffries, talked to the democrats on the committee, and he has now finally been able to carve out that space to move this initiative forward, and we'll see the votes this weekend. so bravo to the speaker. he recognized that his speakership was worth sacrificing for the country. coming up, there is a gag order against former president trump, but you might not know it judging from his social media posts. lisa rubin has the latest on the criminal hush money trial playing out in new york city.

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jury selection in donald trump's hush money criminal trial is almost complete. the process resumes later this morning, a day after 12 jurors were selected and sworn in. the jury is made up of seven men and five women. one alternate was also chosen. five more alternates are still needed to complete the jury. the process appeared to move faster than expected yesterday after two jurors seated on tuesday were excused at the start of the proceedings. one said she was not sure if she could remain impartial after

identifying information about her was made public. another was excused following concerns from prosecutors that one of his answers during questioning was not accurate. if no other jurors are excused and five more alternates are selected, jury selection should wrap up today. the judge has said he is hopeful that opening arguments will then begin on monday. joining us now, former litigaor and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. lisa, what stood out to you yesterda in terms of the jury selection process? it seems to be on track. this judge is really trying to keep things tight. i'm also curious, your reaction to donald trump's response to the day? >> mika, yesterday was a combination, and it was stunning. the jurors are reading the

answers or the prospective jurors are reading their answers to the jury questionnaire, and yet at other times as you noted, it can move with lightning speed, and particularly where the parties are exercising, there are both challenges for cause to particular jurors and some challenges that allow them to strike jurors for whatever reason whatsoever. watching them make those tactical decisions, and then have to live with the consequences of those were really stunning to me. in particular, the defense ran out of their challenges earlier than expected in part, because the judge was not generous with them for granting them for cause. for example, one of the people is a woman who said, i don't have a strong opinion of him, but i don't like his personality. she said, i don't like that in a

public servant. she ended up on the jury because there were people who were offensive to the trump team that they struck earlier and they ran out of the ability to challenge folks like that particular juror. >> so fascinating, lisa, also yesterday toward the end of yesterday's proceeding, trump's legal team asked prosecutors to provide the names of the first three trial witnesses. prosecutors refused, explaining while they typically would turn over that information, they did not want to in this case because trump already has been posting online about potential witnesses. the judge said he could not blame prosecutors for that objection. trump's attorneys offered to commit to the court that trump would not post about any witnesses, but the judge responded, quote, i don't think you can make that representation. to say the least, trump's attorneys say that, sure, we'll control him this time. he won't tweet or truth social about the jurors, and the witnesses. so how unusual is this, first of all? in a typical trial that let's

say of john gotti or another mobster, would they protect the witnesses like this? >> no. and i can't underscore for you, willie, how typical it is to provide the names of witnesses. maybe you have skirmishing of how soon you have to turn it over. is it the night before like in this case? it is totally standard for each side to provide the other with a list of the witnesses that they are expecting so that they can prepare their cross-examinations, but here as you noted, josh steinglass one of the lawyers said, look. ordinarily i do this as a courtesy, but here i can't because the defendant is still tweeting about these witnesses, and that's when the judge said, i can't fault them for that. he made promises, and merchand said, i don't think you can make that, and they said, we'll treat it as attorneys' eyes only information. then merchand said, i won't

direct them to do that either. there is a level of distrust here. there is a level of distrust that they can't be independent from their client. i don't think merchand was angry with blanch, but it was a similar moment of tacopina who was with e. jean carroll where he tried to make a particular representation. he said, i won't share it with my client. my client won't do anything with it, and similarly, judge kaplan said, i don't think you can make that representation. it's less about the lawyer and more about the client, and of course, it exists against the backdrop of trump continuing to tweet and the d.a. making an application to hold trump in criminal contempt for ten social media posts in the last, you know, several days that they say endangers those witnesses. so on one hand, you have the judge saying, i won't order them to provide the names of those

witnesses and on the other, you've got a trial -- i'm sorry, a hearing coming tuesday on whether to hold him in criminal contempt. if you're looking to read the tea leaves, the judge who says, i won't order your adversary to provide you with a list of their witnesses is probably somebody leaning toward granting some form of sanctions and holding trump in criminal contempt because he sees that danger that the d.a.'s office does. coming up, our next guest says there is no corner of the united states that has not been touched by anti-semitism. jonathan greenblatt joins with us a new study on the startling rise of harassment, vandalism, and assault aimed at jewish americans. that's next on "morning joe." g . i love your dress. oh thanks! i splurged a little because liberty mutual customized my car insurance and i saved hundreds. that's great. i know, right? i've been telling everyone. baby: liberty. did you hear that? ty just said her first word. can you say “mama”? baby: liberty. can you say “auntie”? baby: liberty. how many people did you tell?

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more than 100 pro-palestinian protesters were arrested on the campus of columbia university yesterday. it came just one day after the school's president was questioned by lawmakers on capitol hill about incidents of

anti-semitism on school grounds. nbc news correspondent antoia hylton reports. >> reporter: police removing protesters from campus, citing extraordinary circumstances. the columbia university president brought this in for the encampment of protesters. the same day the president testified about anti-semitism on campus. >> we must uphold freedom of speech, but we cannot and let this turn into harassment and discrimination. >> reporter: anti-vietnam demonstrators took over buildings on this same campus in 1968, but in asking for help from the police, she said, the encampment and latest disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the

university. >> we are risking, like, our academic standing just to, like, show the administrators that we are not okay with their decisions. >> reporter: several demonstrators stomping on an israeli flag. some students saying they feel unsafe on campus. >> i feel as though people are kind of weaponizing anti-semitism. >> reporter: demonstrators telling us they plan to keep their protest going despite the police presence. >> do you feel like the administration has clamped down on students and faculty members' free speech? >> 100%, yes, i believe that. >> reporter: the police saying they've made more than 100 arrests on a campus severely divided. >> jeremy peters is writing about this. he's got new reporting on how those administrators are now responding to a surge in anti-israel protests, and jonathan greenblatt, his group is out with data on anti-semitic

data in the last year. jeremy, i'll begin with you. it does seem to have been just in the last couple of weeks even, a bit of a change in the approach that some, not all, but some leaders of campuses, of universities across the country are taking with these protests. what did you find in your reporting? >> that's exactly right, willie. schools have had enough, and vanderbilt issued what are believed to be the first expulsions of student protesters related to demonstrations after the october 7th attack, and from vanderbilt to pamona, schools are saying, this isn't about freedom of speech. you have a right to demonstrate. what you don't have is a right to harass and disrupt, and that's what's really an impeding these universities' core

missions and to educate your students and you can't have an environment that is constantly disrupted where students are subject to harassment, where they're spit upon, where they're yelled at, or where their graduation ceremonies -- like there was supposed to be this lovely, celebratory moment where kids who were the highest achieving students, and they were honored and their parents and grandparents were there. what happened? it got disrupted and it had to be shut down early because pro-palestinian protesters were standing up and shouting down speakers and unfurling banners, and this is something i think universities have been slow to acknowledge. i mean, remember during the trump years, universities really became this cauldron of protest activity where this kind of overly sensor yous culture developed where if there was a

speaker who was conservative or aligned with trump instead of letting that person speak, a lot of times the speech would be canceled out of fear for the safety of that speaker or people would be interrupt the speaker, and now, you know, i think universities are saying, we didn't do enough to rein that in, but now they are. >> we want to get to you now. just in terms of how columbia managed the situation yesterday, it seemed to escalate a bit. they brought in the nypd. your thoughts? >> well, i would give president shafik an a for actually enforcing the rules, right? so let's just step back. students clearly have a right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but you don't get the heckler's veto, and you certainly don't get the bigot's blockade, and as jeremy said, i mean, what we're seeing at columbia like at pamona, like at michigan, like at brown, like, at so many of these other schools, it's where overprivileged individuals think that somehow they're allowed to

build encampments in the middle of the quad. they're not. some others are allowed to threaten, intimidate spit on, and harass their jewish classmates. they're not, and it's about time that the presidents and these campus administrators across the country started simply saying, you've got to play by the rules. i mean, talk about the height of entitlement, right? thinking that you can just act with impunity. we were talking about iran a few minutes ago. iran has their proxies like hezbollah, and they have their campus proxies like these groups like sjp and jvp. look at them. this is literally, like, a demonstration in tehran and you can't believe it's happening in morningside heights. as you know, president shafik testified before congress on wednesday. she did much better than her counterparts last december because she basically said, we have a problem and we're going to fix it. this is the first step in fixing it, and like i said, i give her

an a. >> jonathan greenblatt, you don't hear mention of the hostages being held inside gaza. you don't hear a mention of the horrific, inhumane, outrageous violence of october 7th unlike we've seen in human history, but here we are and some schools are taking a stand, and that spins us into the new adl report that you're here with today that speaks to some of this not just on college campuses necessarily, but more broadly. >> we track anti-semitic incidents and what we saw was 2023 was worse than any year in history. in 45 years, we've never seen numbers like this. nearly 9,000 digits in '23. that's 140% greater than the prior year. that is almost 900% greater than what we had a decade ago, and hundreds and hundreds of these incidents on college campuses, and like jeremy was saying, we've seen examples, willie, of

student tours being harassed, and i'm worried about graduation. if you are a college president watching this now, if you are an alumni of a college watching this now, if you are a donor watching this now, you tell your alma mater that they need to get the graduation ceremony right and not allow these hecklers, these bigots to interfere with what these students have been waiting for. this is the class, willie, that missed their covid graduation from high school, and god help the universities that don't stop these lunatics, these anti-zionists from interrupting these kids' chance to finally have a college graduation. i'm sorry. i'm a parent of kids in college. this is not what i'm paying for, and no one should think that these children have the right -- and i call them children because that's what they are. like, when you break the rules, you should expect to face the consequences. so in this environment, willie, what we've seen with the anti-semitism is literally a five-alarm fire, and i'm glad like jeremy said, that campus

administrators are finally waking up. you see these grades up there, like, god bless brandeis university. how can it be that columbia gets a d? how can it be that harvard and stanford and m.i.t. get fs? something is wrong. i hope this is the beginning of a change. i hope this is the beginning of a process of reformation because our universities desperately need it. not just for our jewish kids, but for the sake of all the students. >> ceo of the anti-defamation league, jonathan greenblatt. thank you very much for coming on this morning. we appreciate it, and national reporter for "the new york times," jeremy peters. thank you. as well. coming up, we'll talk to the democrats' top voice on the intel committee when congressman jim himes joins the conversation. his reaction to the israeli strike on iran when "morning joe" comes right back. strike on iran when "morning joe" comes right back.

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taylor swift fans are waking up this morning to a big surprise. not only did the pop star's highly anticipated new album "the tortured poet's department" go on sale overnight at 2:00 a.m. swift also released a second installment of the album called "the anthology." in all, the double album features 31 brand-new songs. it began breaking records even before its release, becoming the most presaved album in spotify's history. amazing. to another amazing woman, basketball star caitlin clark is reportedly close to signing an eight-figure endorsement deal with nike ahead of her professional debut set next month. that's according to bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the negotiations revealing the

deal is likely to include a signature shoe line. clark was selected as the top pick in the wnba draft by the indiana fever earlier this week following one of the greatest college careers of all-time. she was previously sponsored by nike as a student athlete at the university of iowa. so hopefully her deal comes through, and it's a big one. so americans spend significantly more time working than employees in any other developed country, and new research finds the so-called hustle culture of working extra hours is hurting women if they don't put in the overtime, but also if they do, aye aye aye. here to explain, maggie mcgrath, and msnbc contributor huma abedin. so maggie, your team at "forbes" women covered the finding published in the social

psychology quarterly. break it down for us. exactly what did researchers discover? >> well, mika, to your point, these findings are nuanced, but they're really important in our understanding for how women's work is and is not valued. so effectively, survey participants were asked to evaluate workers with identical performance records. the only difference between these workers is one worked 40 hours a week and another worked 60 hours a week. overall t overworkers should receive greater rewards, regardless of gender, but the 40-hour worker got the same review, so it should be seen more efficient. women tend to work fewer hours per week than to work fewer hours per week than men. one of the big take-aways here is when women are viewed less

positively for their overwork. sur say participants called the 60-hour working men as more competent and committed to their careers. the women who worked 60 hours per week were rated as less competent and needing more time to get the same amount of work done. the overall conclusion is damned if you do, damned if you don't. >> i have so many issues with this because we get more done in less time. we multitask. that's impossible. this seems like a lose-lose for women. any take-away here for employers? how they can help rectify this? >> maggie and i were just talking about damned if you do, damned if you don't. there's a clear road map on things employers can do to make it better for everybody and level the playing field for everybody. for example, what i found interesting about the

researchers saying, number one, instead of rewarding people for facetime, give evaluations based on performance, on results, on the work that you do. women can be more efficient than men. so let's reward them for the work as opposed to showing up at the office for extra hours. one thing employers could do is limit work hours so you get the work done that you need and then you go home. the third thing, which we're all guilty of is encouraging people not to be on e-mail or the phone after work hours. finally, this whole concept of being on the treadmill that once you get on, it's impossible to get off because the more you work, the more the rewards are. maybe there's a limit to what

those rewards will give employees, and that makes it a more fair workplace for men as it is for women. >> you give advice to young women. i'm wondering what you tell them trying to walk this fine line between hustle culture and so-called quiet quitting in hopes of advancing their careers. i know in this business women go through being all things to all people and nobody sees the work that they're doing because they're working for all different parts of the network. >> what i say to young women is find that balance and moderation where you can. i remember coming back from forbes, standing in my kitchen, none of us had slept, it was an extraordinary conference. i'm staring at piles of laundry. i'm opening my fridge. i have carrots that have gone bad in there. my son walks in, says he's hungry. i'm looking at my laptop seeing

how much work i have to do. i'm feeling completely overwhelmed. just take a minute, take a breath and think about going through your checklist. it's not easy. it's one reason like having supportive workplaces like the place you run at know your value is important for all women to be successful. >> speaking of know your value, we're in full swing collecting nominations for the forbes and know your value fourth annual 50 over 50 u.s. list. tell us what we need to do. i think women need to nominate themselves. just because a potential honoree applied and maybe didn't make it in years past, does that mean they could apply again? >> oh absolutely they should apply again. i have three stories of success i'm going to run through very quickly to give as inspiration. the first is sarah mckissick

daniel. she oversees $50 billion worth of architecture projects. she was first nominated in 2021. didn't make the final cut, but applied again in 2023 or someone nominated her, and she made the cut. we had different judges in 2023 as we did in 2021. while the criteria is the same, i think the message i want to convey is what can be a no one year can turn into a question a different year. other examples of this include a jewelry designer who was nominated in 2021. after a second look, she made the 2022 list. then in 2022, beauty entrepreneur laura geller was nominated for the list. we considered her, didn't make

the final list, but was nominated again in 2023 and she made that 2023 list. she is committed to using women over the age of 40 in her marketing and advertising. >> i love it. that has a great message all around. don't let the noes get you down, just try again. you can get all the information about our 50 over 50 list at forbes.com or knowyourvalue.com. you have until may 30th to get those nominations in. nominate yourself. still ahead on "morning joe," we're awaiting any response from the white house after israel struck iran with military force overnight. we'll have a live report from jerusalem when we kick off the fourth hour of "morning joe" straight ahead. ouof "morning jo" straight ahead

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it's the top of the fourth hour of "morning joe," 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. in the east. we begin this hour with israel's strike in iran. earlier this morning an explosion was reported in a city in the central part of the country. iranian officials say a military air base was hit. but israel has not yet publicly commented on the attack. the u.s. is also remaining tight-lipped except to say that america was not involved in any offensive operations. joining us live from jerusalem, richard engel. what do we know so far? >> reporter: so here in jerusalem, you would hardly know that something had happened. there are no new restrictions put in place. people aren't going down into bomb shelters. the military hasn't given any briefings. people here are proceeding as normal. that is the message israel wants

to project to the public, things are okay, live as normal as we go into the passover holiday. surprisingly, even though iran was hit, iran acknowledges that it was hit. it is also downplaying what happened with state media there, trying to project strength, trying to say this was something that happened, but it was a win in a way for iran. one anchor on iranian television even said this was, quote, no big deal. an israeli official tells nbc news israel did carry out a strike overnight. flashes in the sky could be seen from iran's air defenses. u.s. officials say they were informed ahead of time. the target, iranian media reports, was a military base near a nuclear site, which officials say was not hit. but iran so far isn't saying much about it.

instead, iranian media, nearly all controlled by the state, are telling the public to stay calm, shrugging it off, showing the traffic flowing as normal. some media dismissed the incident as a few small drones, claiming they were shot down. in israel, people are out this morning, no sense of panic, calm. earlier this month, israel attacked iran's embassy compound in syria, killing at least 12 people. iran accused israel of crossing a red line. the white house said it was only informed at the last minute. iran responded with a massive barrage last weekend of more than 300 drones and missiles, including massive ballistic missiles. the massive air assault was stopped by israeli air defenses with significant help from the u.s. military and other allies. president biden urged prime

minister netanyahu to leave it there and, quote, take the win after stopping iran's assault. netanyahu refused, saying israel needed to respond. israeli officials telling nbc news israel needed to reestablish deterrents, but would calibrate its response not to trigger a wider regional war. iran threatened that any israeli incursion would trigger an immediate counterattack. so far, that hasn't happened. >> richard, it looks like we've gotten to the point now where you've got the two sides almost shadow boxing, both of them declaring victory. what's the calculation for both of them? >> i think that's probably the best scenario here where you have two sides declaring victory, that's the way you end conflict. both sides have to be able to walk away and tell hardliners on

both sides that they achieved something. what israel was able to prove is it can penetrate iran's air defenses more or less at will. it attacked this military base in a city that has a nuclear facility that was not damaged and a major missile production plant. that is something that israel was able to show to iran, it can hit where it wants when it wants. on iranian tv they're projecting to the people that what happened overnight was a win for iran, that israel carried out this weak, puny, minuscule attack because it was so afraid after what iran did over the weekend

with its ballistic missiles and cruise missiles and drones. it is a way to show to the iranian people that it was the victor here, that it forced israel to respond in a minimal way. that bluster is probably a good sign that things could deescalate, at least in the short-term. it doesn't mean this conflict is over by any stretch of the imagination, but the direct conflict, israel attacking iran on its territory, iran doing the same potentially spinning this entire region into a much more serious war, maybe we're pulling back from the brink. >> richard engel live from jerusalem, thank you so much. let's bring in the ranking member of the house intel committee, democratic congressman jim himes of connecticut. thanks so much for being with us. from a distance, you look at what's been going on, and you have the iranians, who launched

attacks at israel, probably understanding they weren't going to be able to get through the iron dome and all the defenses, but they did it, a barrage of drones and missiles a couple of nights ago. and now you have israel doing a more limited strike back. the message is unmistakable, isn't it? from israel to iran, which is, you can't touch us with hundreds and hundreds of missiles and drones, but we can reach your nuclear facilities at will. >> yeah. i think that's right, joe. good to be with you. what's happening right now is communication. it's deadly serious communication because lethal munitions are being used. it's a classic middle east moment in a way where everybody believes everybody else only

understands the language of force. so if an attack goes unanswered, that's a sign of weakness and the next attack is going to be much worse. the middle east is a very dangerous region and this is a very dangerous moment. i hope what israel did last night is the last volley in this tit for tat. all it takes is one munition to get through to a civilian area and now we're in a full-blown war. when iran decides to do this in a very serious way, hundreds of thousands of missiles from hezbollah are flying into israel. that is a war that is tragic for the people involved, and there is a high probability that we get pulled into it. now is the time for both sides to just stand down and focus on what is already a tragic situation in the israel/gaza conflict.

>> have you been briefed yet on what kind of munitions were used in this strike? were these ballistic missiles or drones? do you have any information about that? >> i have not been briefed on what israel used. we're getting a sense for what the targets were. again, it was not a massive strike. i think joe is right that this is designed to show, if we want to, we can get stuff through to your military bases. i'm glad we had that conversation, but now is the time to stop that conversation and focus on the catastrophic situation in the israel/gaza conflict. >> let me ask you, congressman, about ukraine aid, aid for israel, aid for gaza, aid for taiwan as well. it seem s that it seem the speaker has found his voice. he's sounding like ronald reagan and sounding like joe biden and a lot of democrats have sounded over the last six months or so.

do you think at the end of the day these four bills end up passing? >> i do. it's really been two months this has been so tragic, because it was two months or so ago that the senate passed almost the exact same bill in a slightly different way. ukrainians are dead today because the house of representatives decided to wait two months to act. putin's whole world view was validated that we would waiver, that we would be weak. yes, i do think they're going to pass. it's kind of fun because it's the restoration of majority rule in the house. you have a handful of people who have caused this problem. you're going to see these bills not only pass but with a substantial majority, which is theoretically the way our democracy is supposed to work. >> ranking member of the house

intelligence committee congressman jim himes, thank you very much. let's bring into the conversation claire mccaskill, john heilemann as well as former chief policy advisor for mitt romney's 2012 presidential campaign lon hi chen. >> if democrats want to run against house republicans, all they need to do is use the words of house republicans, whether you're talking about chip roy, who's saying we've done nothing here, whether you talk about the chair of the gop intel committee saying that these people just chew up and absorb russian propaganda and spit it back out. or we could take what dan

crenshaw said, mocking his own party members, just saying the quiet part out loud, that they want russia to win in the war against ukraine. here's what he said yesterday on capitol hill. >> i guess their reasoning is they want russia to win so badly that they want the speaker -- it's a strange position to make. i think they want to be in the minority too. i think that's an obvious reality. >> it gets funnier. >> it's so understated. he goes, yeah, they want russia to win so badly. he goes, that's a strange position to take. very strange that you have back-benchers from rural districts that are spewing russian propaganda points. kind of hard to explain that to the general electorate in the fall campaigns, but that's where

we are. >> yeah. one more thing, it comes down to the simple but disturbing reality is that the republican party has become the party of trump. it's baffling at the level of political logic. we've talked about this time and time again, because many of the positions that donald trump advocates and forces on the republican caucus in the house are positions that are politically toxic. they're politically toxic to donald trump too, but they're certainly politically toxic to republican members of the house in marginal swing districts. the marjorie taylor greenes of the world and the matt gaetzes of the world. the quiet part out loud is the truth of it is, on some basic level, a lot of these members

do, in fact, prefer to be in the minority than the majority. they're much more comfortable in a position of opposition than they are in a position of having to govern anything. some of them think they want to be in the majority, but they don't really or else they would be doing things that are more politically sensible. let's string together every comment like crenshaw's and say we have a lot of fodder here to work with taking republicans' words and using them against other republicans. >> they want russia to win. that's what he said. again, you've got the most powerful chairman on the hill when it comes to foreign policy saying republican members are parroting russian propaganda points. they're saying it, not the "new york times" editorial page or msnbc. they're saying it. >> you think of what ukraine is doing for our safety and the safety of the world.

the "wall street journal" editorial board has a new piece this morning entitled "mike johnson makes his case on ukraine." quote, mr. johnson deserves credit for his show of conviction, which represents the best of the gop in the tradition of ronald reagan. the republican malcontents are shouting about supposed betrayal that mr. johnson should focus on the crisis at the southern border, but they know he'd pass border measures in a heartbeat if he had the votes in the house. the options now are to consign ukraine to defeat or try and hold the line against mr. putin. the latter is still possible, even after months of washington dithering. mr. johnson's behavior is called leadership. the gop would be more popular and better able to govern if more of its members showed such mettle themselves or had more respect for those who

demonstrate it. claire mccaskill, do you agree with this piece in the "wall street journal"? and mike johnson, is he indeed showing leadership? >> yes. it's taken him a while. it's been a slow start. i think he was in over his head. he was very indecisive, very uncomfortable leading, very uncomfortable confronting the crazy caucus, which has been driving this clown car now for a while. keep in mind, you know, the people that are doing this are in very safe districts. they have one simple equation. if we are slavishly loyal to donald trump, who definitely wants russia to win, and if we do performance politics, if we somehow manage to snag ahead line, to get time on "morning joe," to get time in all of these different outlets, then we raise more money. it's money. it's clicks for cash.

that's the new model for these folks that are on the fringes. it is very unhealthy for our democracy. i applaud mike johnson for finally getting his act together. i do think all these bills will pass, although i do think the numbers will be different. i think you'll see some democrats fall away on the aid for israel. and i think you'll see, frankly, some republicans fall away on the aid to ukraine because of donald trump loving putin. >> which is fascinating that you actually have the party of ronald reagan betraying ukraine as much as they are. you look at what this republican house has done and whether it's betraying ukraine, turning their back on israel funding, betraying taiwan, sending a horrible message to president

xi, again, as mike mccaul and other republicans have said in leadership positions, and fisa. donald trump doesn't like fisa, so they try to get in the way of continuing the fisa program, despite the fact they know that's how we stop foreign terrorists. but it does look like mike johnson has realized you can't negotiate with these people. you've got to run them over. >> i think mike johnson's made the decision that he's going to govern. it's a very admirable decision. the question going forward, of course, is what does this mean for the next several debates after this? you mentioned fisa. what's going to happen on that? they'll be able, hopefully, to get aid for ukraine and taiwan and israel across the finish

line, almost in a form of coalition government. but what comes next? are they going to be able to govern? i hope so. i think in some ways this is a promising trend in terms of bringing parties together to cooperate on issues where there is bipartisan consensus. we know foreign aid is more than about giving aid to other countries. it's about advancing american interests by helping our friends and allies around the world. you go beyond that, though, to questions about public policy and the domestic sphere. in an election year it's always tough, but i think we have to take a look at this trend and recognize how unique of a moment it is. we've been stuck in this horrible political paralysis. now we have a decision from a republican speaker to say i'm going to set aside what might be my future career as speaker and

work with democrats to get this done. and that's admirable. >> it's one thing being a back-bencher. it's another thing being on the armed services committee in the senate where you get intel briefings. when you get the first intel briefing, when mike johnson gets the first intel briefing on what fisa is really about instead of what donald trump says it's about, you suddenly realize that terrorist threats, whether it's from isis or al qaeda or another foreign terrorist group, our best shot of stopping those are through things like fisa. >> yeah. i don't think people realize. we always talk about the intelligence community like it's some kind of big group of folks somewhere. i think people think of spy movies and stuff. the vast majority of people on the intelligence committee are either veterans or active military. they are really hardworking,

smart patriots that are trying to keep our country safe. it's just bizarre to me. if you got donald trump right now and put a microphone in front of his face and tried to hold him to an answer on this, what is fisa, he doesn't know. he doesn't even know what it is. he has no idea. republicans used to go to the white house when i was in the senate. they'd come back and have a health care discussion. republicans would say, he has no idea what obamacare even is, what the affordable care act even is. he's just parroting this. yes, we need to be careful about oversight in the intelligence community. you don't want it to run amuck and violate americans' rights. but the surest path to our country being under attack is to actually defang our intelligence community. that's what donald trump is trying to do.

>> it's what donald trump is trying to do. it's what vladimir putin wants him to do. it's what, unfortunately, too many people in the house gop on the back bench that support donald trump want to do. i'm grateful, though. we'll take conversions, even if it's on one issue. i'm grateful mike johnson understands what his committee chairmen have been telling him for some time, that showing weakness in ukraine is showing weakness in taiwan, is showing weakness across the globe. i'm very glad he's talking about funding ukraine, because they desperately need it right now. coming up on "morning joe," apple has pulled two popular apps from its app store on orders from a foreign government. we'll get the latest from andrew ross sorkin on what this means for the tech giant. plus, a long-time restaurant chain may be in hot water after its signature all you can eat

deal backfired. did you go there? >> yeah, i did. it was like a scene out of "curb." they tried to kick me out. >> we'll tell you which one it is next on "morning joe." l you t is next on "morning joe.

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ukraine. nbc news foreign correspondent matt bradley, in collaboration with the nbc news investigative unit, takes a closer look. >> reporter: billions of dollars of russian government money is sitting in banks in the united states and europe. in the weeks following the start of russia's war against ukraine in 2022, the g7 countries banded together and froze some $300 billion in russian assets, more than $6 billion in american banks. >> somebody has to pay for reconstruction. i think it should be putin. not the american people. >> it's necessary and urgent for our coalition to find a way to unlock the value of these immobilized assets. >> reporter: the mechanics of just how to transfer the funds from individual banks to ukraine are already being discussed at the highest levels of government

in the u.s. and around europe, including just last week in the u.k. >> we're making good progress on how to access those funds on an agreed basis. tomorrow the house is expected to finally vote after months of delay on an aid package including what's known as the repo act, which would allow the united states to confiscate the frozen russian assets and transfer them to ukraine. for some in congress, this opportunity to vote on aid for ukraine couldn't have come sooner. >> the cost of abandoning ukraine is much greater than the cost of supporting it. >> reporter: with the outcome of the house vote still up in the air this morning, the initiative is urging their members to show up on saturday. >> they will only work to

confiscate russian assets if the u.s. leads. >> not everyone in the biden administration and not earn in the g7 agrees these assets should be transferred. there is a real debate there. >> reporter: like most things with diplomacy, it's not just complicated. it's controversial. the "new york times" argued last week against unlocking the frozen assets for fear other countries would stop investing assets in the u.s. >> folks say, well, this will hurt the dollar. it's bad for our reputation. i have a pushback to that. i don't want criminals investing in american treasury bonds. >> that's nbc's matt bradley reporting. i'm curious, claire, where you fall on this issue? should we seize their assets? >> yeah, i think we should. keep in mind that all of the oligarchs that have made billions and billions of dollars have done so because putin that

is allowed it. russia is so corrupt. i know there's a lot of justified criticism at income inequality in the united states of america. but in russia, putin's taken it to an art form. if you're in his golden circle, then you make billions. it's all through the russian government. this is different than other countries. i don't think countries that have free and fair open capital markets are going to look down their nose at the united states for doing the right thing here. >> should the biden administration do this? >> yeah, absolutely. i think the repo act is a good idea. i think, frankly, it sets a good precedent, demonstrating countries cannot just flaunt the rule of law and individuals within those countries cannot just flaunt the rule of law and expect the protections of the united states government. i think this is the right policy. hopefully the house can get it passed along with aid for our

friends in ukraine, taiwan and israel. >> obviously a big political winner, right? >> the downside here is so limited, joe. it actually folds back into the argument we were talking about in the previous segment where being tough against russia is a political winner. the republicans have opened the door to make that an even more powerful issue by toadying up to donald trump and by donald trump toadying up to vladimir putin. it's something the biden administration would be wise to take advantage of to the largest extent possible. >> let's bring in andrew ross sorkin from cnbc. the argument that other countries would not invest in the united states in the future if we seized russian assets and used them to rebuild ukraine is maybe not the strongest

argument. we were corresponding about the fact that right now the united states of america, strongest economy, strongest military, reports are now according to data record amounts of investment of other countries in u.s. treasuries, which means other countries around the world have more confidence in u.s. treasuries than ever before. is that right, andrew? >> it's absolutely right. the numbers are better than they'd been in quite a while. we started to worry a little bit in the fall because we were seeing foreign investors not investing in u.s. treasuries. this report suggests, actually, that we are clearly the strongest economy in the world and that's where people want to be. i want to caution if you look through the report, the one country to look at, china's numbers in terms of their investment in the u.s. are

coming down. that is as much a function of their economy as it is potentially of just how they think about the united states as well. i think that's something we'll have to be concerned about longer term. the world is relative. we always talk about where our economy is. i know there's a lot of handwringing about our economy. the truth is, on a relative basis to the rest of the world, we are a shining light at this moment. that's why others are investing in this country. >> another story you're covering, andrew, the "wall street journal" reporting that china is demanding apple to remove signal, telegram, whatsapp, also threads, i guess, from the app store. what's going on? >> not even demanding. demanded and it already happened. this goes to how the government in china works and, frankly, how compliant even u.s. companies are in these contexts. literally overnight china went

to apple and said you got to get rid of whatsapp, threads, telegram and signal off the system. as of now, they're off the app store. it's remarkable because it's an escalation of the conversation we're having in this country about tiktok and how rapidly and quickly these things happen. we've been debating the future of tiktok in this country for now several years. they do this and they do it overnight. there's also something to be said about watching apple say we follow the laws of china. when china says it, we do it. that raises its own set of questions. >> let's talk about what's on the front page of the "wall street journal" today. mortgage rates topped 7%, housing expected to be hit.

it's like gas prices. it's one of the things you're not going to hear in campaign rallies that much, but it hits americans where they live, whether it's gas prices or mortgage rates. talk about this continued inflationary pressure on the market. >> it's having a bigger impact than i think people appreciate. it's not just first-time home buyers that are challenged by these higher rates. i don't think we fully understand the full impact on the economy, but it's having a big impact on mobility in the economy, meaning, if you decided you wanted to move, change jobs, change locations, you very well may already have a mortgage and be a homeowner today at a rate that's probably somewhere in the 3% range. in some ways you could arguing that you're stuck, you can't move in this environment, because the cost of moving today, not just the price of the

home on the other end, but the price of the mortgage, the delta between what the mortgage rate is today and the mortgage rate you've already potentially locked in is so great. we haven't really figured out what that all means to the economy, the fact that people are not moving around the country the way they used to. i think there's going to be a lot of unintended consequences as a result of what that differential looks like. one of the things i worry about is, for those folks who do have mortgages which roll over, meaning they have higher interest rates that are going to hit at some point. maybe they took a five-year or a seven-year arm. at some point those rates are going to move on people. that's a whole different situation of whether people are actually going to have to leave their homes at some point. there are things we've got to start thinking about. >> speaking of unintended

consequences, i mean -- >> stop going to the buffet at red lobster. >> i can't help myself. >> talk about the unintended consequences of my buffet time at red lobster. >> you'd think that all fried food would be a success. it is successful to get us in the door. red lobster may very well be filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy. it doesn't mean it's going away. it just means they're going to file for bankruptcy protection and try to renegotiate leases and prior deals they had. the all you can eat buffet may be part of it. i don't want to overstate the all you can eat piece of it. >> you cannot overstate endless shrimp, my friend. >> i think one of the biggest

challenges they face was the fact they got locked into leases at higher rates than they probably should have. we haven't talked enough about wages for them have become a challenge, in part because they got locked into these higher leases when wages have increased to try to keep waiters and kitchen staff have gone up. it's been a tough challenge for that company at least. >> i love andrew trying to cover the story seriously. thank you very much. have a great weekend. coming up on "morning joe," moments ago jury selection resumed in donald trump's criminal hush money trial, a process that should wrap up today. this despite the dismissal of two jurors yesterday. we'll have the latest for you straight ahead on "morning joe." -was that after i texted the age to screen was now 45?

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welcome back to "morning joe." a live look at new york city at 9:43. john heilemann, a new fox news poll of registered voters in swing states really tells the same story we've been hearing over the past week or two, a tightening of the race, all four of the states within the margin of error. donald trump leads georgia 51-45. michigan 49-46. wisconsin and pennsylvania dead heats, 48-48. again, tightening race as we move from april into may. >> if given my druthers, i know we have to report on polls, but

to the margin of error, my gut and my head both say we'd all be wise to essentially not really care that much about new polls unless they start to show a race that's outside the margin of error. my sense of this race is that all the data we have is that we are going to have a margin of error race in the battleground states from now until election day. the margin of error means there's a margin of error, so these numbers are in some sense meaningless except to say this race is really close. we know that. i think tightening in either direction doesn't matter very much. i do think anybody sitting around on a friday and saying who had a better week politically, joe biden in a battleground state or donald trump in court, i think we all know what the answer to that is. >> it is interesting that over the past six months or so,

courtroom politics have played in donald trump's favor. i am curious now that we are seeing joe biden campaigning and donald trump stuck in the courtroom over the next six to eight weeks, whether those dynamics change a bit. also, i've just got to say when i was in public office, i never cared about the bottom line of the poll. i just obsessed on trend lines. there's an unmistakable trend post state of the union address that breaks in joe biden's favor, whether it's public polling or private polling. >> i agree with both you and john. i think the trend is good. i also think margin of error polls are really kind of a waste of time. what i would love is for all of these polling folks to just focus on independent voters, voters who have voted for both

donald trump and joe biden or people who are in those congressional districts in those swing states that have elected both republicans and democrats. it's very expensive to poll those voters, those swing voters. but those are the only voters at play right now. yes, they've got to worry about enthusiasm and getting bases out. the democratic party has to really worry about solidifying the coalitions and making sure they understand the importance of voting. it's those voters that go back and forth that are going to decide these states. they don't really get polled in a way you can see because it's so expensive to do it, to find enough of them to make the polls reliable costs a lot of money. >> i'm fascinated by men who voted for biden but who are conservative republicans. are they going to stay with

biden this next go-round? a lot of these men were influenced by abortion and by what they saw happening to women. they chose to jump ship. have the last four years been palatable for them? i'm curious to see if biden is going to be able to hold onto that crucial little sliver and win reelection. coming up, the biden campaign is launching a new effort to get more teachers and school staff to the polls this november. the president of the national education association joins us ahead with more on the educators for biden/harris initiative. "morning joe" will be right back. ♪ limu emu ♪ ♪ and doug ♪ hello, ghostbusters. it's doug... ... of doug and limu. we help people customize and save hundreds on car insurance with liberty mutual. anyway, we got a bit of a situation here.

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brought you to the dance, and you brought me to the dance. no joke. i'm president because of you guys. i really am, and i'm proud as i mentioned earlier, i'm proud to be the most pro-union president in american history. president joe biden in pittsburgh earlier this week at the headquarters of the united steel workers. last month, the steel workers union endorsed biden's 2024 campaign and they are far from alone. since announcing his re-election campaign last year, the president has racked up endorsements from many of the country's largest labor groups including afl's cio, united autoworkers and the international brotherhood of electrical workers. and joining us now the president of the national education association, the largest labor union in the united states.

becky pringle. the group has thrown its support behind biden's 2024 run and is announcing its involvement in the brand new educators for biden/harris coalition. this is a new partnership. tell us about it. >> mika, it's good to join you again this morning. we are so excited for our kickoff this evening where i'll be joining first lady dr. jill biden, who is, as you know, a long-time educator and an nea member, now affectionately called flotus. she'll be joining us with hundreds of educators as we launch our educators for biden coalition. it's a national organizing campaign where we are motivating and activating and engaging teachers and education support staff and parents and allies who believe in public schools, all

coming together to tell their stories of real students, real schools, real educators who through the tenure of president biden has seen increases, record increases in public education and investing in our educators and our students. >> so obviously the biden administration has the greatest advocate ever in the first lady who is an educator herself so that should be amaing tonight, and i know the group plans to highlight really the stark choice that teachers and families will be facing this election. you have a quiz to kind of give people a sense of what they know or don't know about what the biden administration has already done for children in food insecure school areas. what else can you do to really show the choice at hand for american voters, as it pertains to education?

>> you know, mika, i taught science for over 30 years, and when i started in my middle school classroom, i didn't really understand that every single decision that was made about my students at my schools and me as a professional were made by elected or appointed people, but our educators today, they understand that, and that's why they are supporting joe biden and kamala harris because from day one, they listened to educators from joe biden's first speech to his last state of the union speech, you heard him talk about raising wages for educators. you heard him talk about investing in schools. you heard him talk about making sure that we're providing the kinds of supports for students so that we could have the one-on-one resources that we know our students need, and he lived up to those promises,

mika, all of them. and that's why educators all over this country are fired up, and they are ready to go, calling and texting and talking with people at the grocery market, at the grocery store, all of those things they are doing to make sure we reelect him. >> president of the national education association, becky pringle, thank you very much for coming on the show and have a great weekend. thank you. that does it for us this morning, ana cabrera picks up the coverage after a quick final break. that's some bad luck brian.

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