iran, just like russia, is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries on earth. >> workarounds is the name of the game there to lessen the blow of the sanctions. senior washington correspondent for bloomberg news, saleha mohsin, thank you. and thank you for getting up "way too early" with us on this friday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. the trump legal team doesn't really believe the total immunity argument. they're just bringing it up to delay his trials. it is kind of like when your kid asks for water at bedtime, and you know they're trying to delay bedtime because kids don't need water. the conservative justices think trump should have immunity. liberal justices don't. how about we meet halfway? instead of complete immunity, presidents get a hall pass of five crimes that are totally okay if you have the chance. >> two of the criminal cases against donald trump playing out in two courtrooms yesterday across a couple different jurisdictions. at the u.s. supreme court,

justices seem divided as they debated trump's immunity claim for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. you'll hear their remarks with one justice raising concerns that shielding presidents from prosecution could turn the oval office into a seat of criminality. plus, this morning, former national enquirer publisher david pecker is set to return to the stand in the hush money case with defense attorneys continuing their cross-examination. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, april 26th. with us, former white house director of communications for president obama, jennifer palmieri. co-host of the podcast "how to win 2024." rogers chair and the american presidency at vanderbilt university, historian jon meacham. and our legal analyst, former litigaor and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor barbara mcquade. good morning to you all. let's dive right in with yesterday's historic day at the

supreme court where the justices heard oral arguments regarding donald trump's claim he is immune from prosecution for his official acts as president. nbc news senior legal correspondent laura jarrett has details. >> reporter: the u.s. supreme court weighing a monumental question that will decide whether the former president goes to trial for plotting to overturn the last election and win. >> i think the supreme court has a very important document before it today. >> reporter: mr. trump hoping to persuade the justices to find him immune from federal charges. his lawyers arguing the office of the presidency would be completely hobbled without that protection. >> without presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, there can be no presidency as we know it. >> reporter: the special counsel's office indicted mr. trump on conspiracy and obstruction charges last year for his efforts to cling to power, accusing the likely gop nominee of pressuring state officials to reverse the election results.

actions doj argues were for purely personal gain and cannot be shielded from prosecution. >> there is no immunity that is in the constitution unless this court creates it today. >> reporter: the conservatives expressing concern, if future presidents have no immunity, that can open the door to recriminations between political rivals. >> will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? >> reporter: the liberal justices troubled by the prospect of insulating presidents from accountability, raising a series of dark hypotheticals to underscore the consequences of adopting mr. trump's position. >> if a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune? how about if a president orders the military to stage a coup? that sure sounds bad, doesn't it? >> i'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning

the oval office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country. >> reporter: the fallout over efforts to subvert the election results in 2020 stretching beyond washington. in arizona, a grand jury indicted several members of mr. trump's inner circle wednesday, accusing them of falsely awarding the state's electoral votes to mr. trump, despite his loss to president biden. the sending of phony slates of pro-trump electors to congress to disrupt the election's certification on january 6th looming large at the high court, as well. as the justices look to determine the line between a political candidate's actions taken for personal gain from a president's official conduct that could be immune from prosecution. >> laura jarrett reporting for us there. lisa rubin, it was fascinating, first of all, to listen, to get an ear into the supreme court for the oral arguments over nearly three hours yesterday. listening to the untrained ear,

it sounded like the justices are skeptical, to say the least, of a claim that a president, any president, has blanket immunity, absolute immunity for anything he or she does in office. but some of the conservative justices did seem open to kicking it back down to the trial court. what was your read of what we heard yesterday? >> that we're not going to see a trial in tanya chutkan's court anytime soon for the reasons, willie, you just stated. the conservative justices seem to be moving away from trump's claim of blanket immunity. that's a good thing writ large. but the idea that we would then have to have further proceedings to determine which of the allegations in the indictment pertain to official acts versus private acts. by the way, i should note, trump's lawyer did concede certain of the conduct alleged does amount to private conduct. the idea that judge chutkan would on remand have to have a series of hearings or mini trials, as our league andrew

weissmann said, in order to determine that before taking this case to trial, that puts this case on a calendar where it almost certainly cannot be tried before the election. potentially, depending on what happens at the election, not happen at all. >> barbara mcquade, we heard the hypothetical again yesterday of what about if a president decided that the navy s.e.a.l. team six should assassinate one of his political opponents, would it fall under the presidential immunity you're talking about. mr. sour there representing donald trump. it is stunning that we're even suggesting that. what was your read of the way things played out yesterday and what we may hear next? >> well, as mr. sour said to that question, the hypothetical, it would depend on the situation. wow, that's terrifying. you know, my read is that there are several justices, the women justices, who are ready to go.

they think the idea -- perhaps there is some presidential immuity for some official acts, but that the acts alleged in this indictment are not those acts, and let's go already. in fact, justices barrett and kagan were pinning down john sour on trying to say, you'd agree this is a private act, right? using allegations in the indictment. i think hoping to pin hit hymn him down to avoid further delay. some justices think further delay is necessary. the linchpin is chief justice roberts. on the one hand, he suggested it'd be a one-legged stool to allow only the private acts and not have any reference to the official acts. there's a little room, i think, for arguing that the crimes here are not official acts, but you need some evidence of official acts to understand the context. the example chief justice

roberts used was bribery. it might be an official act to appoint an ambassador, but if you do that in exchange for money, a bribe, that could still be a crime. but i think, as lisa said, i agree, at the end of the day, it seems necessary to probably sort out what is and is not an official act here. most notably, the conduct relating to the department of justice and using them or abusing them could be deemed an official act. but jack smith still has one trick up his sleeve, i think, which is to pare down the indictment and use only the things that are clearly private acts here. >> jon meacham, it was really extraordinary to listen yesterday to the urgency donald trump's attorney had, talking about the need for absolute presidential immunity, when we've had 235 years worth of presidents who didn't really need to lean on this. they had no occasion to call for absolute immunity. 45 other presidents. what do you make of what we're

hearing play out in the supreme court on the larger scale, in terms of the presidency itself? >> it's a master class in the complexities of a presidential office that is inherently powerful and more so over time, particularly since world war ii and the new deal. when the manhattan project produced atomic weapons, the president of the united states became, arguably, the most important person in the history of humanity. because the power to destroy is so vested in one person. immense questions here. i thought the arguments were fascinating. i would, of course. but i think it was a fairly, you know -- you would expect this -- it was a mature, interesting,

largely evidence-based, interesting hypotheticals, conversation about the practical application of a kind of character. let me put it this way, the ongoing, the unfolding implications of having a character in the oval office who is more at risk of committing these kinds of crimes than not, if that makes sense. the key thing here was -- i think as justice gorsuch said -- is we're deciding this for the ages. that's interesting because they didn't decide roe for the ages, but we'll leave that aside for a moment. there is this incredibly important question about, would this cycle of political prosecutions result from no immunity claim? i thought the answer on behalf

of the government was pretty compelling. which is, this is an extraordinary case. for anybody following this in a peripheral way, to me, the most important thing that was asked was from justice sotomayor, who asked rhetorically, i think it is safe to say, isn't it true that our democratic institutions depend on the character of the people within those democratic institutions? that is, we heard the justices for a long time yesterday talking about, as they should, lawyers, about every conceivable iteration of something, trying to create doctrines that would stand up to most of those. in the very end, what it comes down to is the character of the person we send to the pinnacle of power. and their willingness to bend and break norms and laws.

what we had in 2020 and into 2021 with the failure to peacefully transfer power was we had someone whose character was not commensurate to that standard. that is something no court can legislate. we have to pick the right person. >> lisa, in some of the coverage, you know, i watched from here yesterday, consternation -- you know, i'm not a lawyer. i felt it. some of the questions you saw from the conservative justices of that seemed to be making the defense's argument for it, you know, seemed to be making -- perhaps making excuses for president trump. how should we -- you know, how should we look at this, how we saw some of the conservative justices and the kind of questions they were asking yesterday? >> i think we should look at it as a form of avoidance. there were embedded in some of the questions the conservative justices were asking a desire to

avoid the facts of this case. that goes back even to the very question presented here. the question presented in any supreme court case is, what is the issue that the supreme court is going to decide? they could have defined that narrowly here, in a way that would have been circumscribed to the facts alleged in the indictment. instead, the question was whether, and if so, to what extent, former presidents are entitled to immunity for their official acts where there are criminal charges against them. that is a broad question. you saw a number of the conservative justices sort of reaching beyond the facts of the indictment to try and pose a series of ever-escalating hypotheticals. at one point, justice alito even saying, i don't want to talk about this particular case. the question i would ask is, why not? this is the case before you. one of the most simple and democracy-enhancing things this court could have done would be to say, there may be circumstances in which presidents are entitled to immunity, but this indictment,

as alleged here, doesn't constitute one of those scenarios, and we as a court can always revisit it if and when the facts present themselves to us that would cause us to have a different conclusion. >> barbara, lisa said right off the top, based on what she heard yesterday, there is no chance that this makes it to trial before the election. certainly no verdict before the election. that seems to be the consensus view. if that is the case, if you agree with that, how does this play out now, for our view viewers. we have the ruling, then what happens to this case? >> it depends on how they decide this case. it seems like, reading the tea leaves, that there will be at least five justices who say that there is limited immunity for a president, not blanket immunity, and that the court needs to have some hearings to decide what's next, to decide which of the

allegations in the indictment fall on the private side of that line and which fall on the official acts side, and then proceed from there. now, it is also possible that donald trump could take an appeal from whatever justice -- judge chutkan decides, which is why people think there is a lengthy delay ahead. jack smith can say, i'll pare this down and include only the crimes that are private acts. or as the lawyer for the solicitor general -- or for the special counsel said yesterday, thinking of donald trump in his role as office holder versus office seeker. there are a lot of acts here as office seeker where i think he could say, fine, even if -- you know, we'll litigate these issues another day, but i'm ready to go to trial on just these issues relating to his private acts. if that's the case, i think that this case could go to trial before the election. >> that's interesting. we'll keep an eye on that.

jen, as you know, the trump team has always felt a delay is a win for them with the theory of the case being, if they can push all of this stuff back with delay, delay, delay, past election day, he gets himself re-elected, makes it all go away. on the other side of that, though, as you also know very well, talking to people around the biden campaign, they are not counting on these cases to save them. they are running a campaign to win. they do believe that his sitting in court and the public being reminded of all these alleged crimes is helpful to them, but they don't believe they're going to be saved by a jury or a judge. >> yeah. you know, when it was -- when we found out a couple months ago that the supreme court wasn't going to take this case up until april, we came to terms with the fact that -- barbara laid out an interesting case for how it may still happen, but it was unlikely to happen before the election. the biden campaign felt sort of somewhat of a relief. at that point, people were still

thinking, maybe there's some other exigent factor here that is going to save us. no one is going to save us. this is on the voters. there is one way to stop donald trump, and that is to elect joe biden. it is sort of clarifying. of course, the sad state of affairs is there are so many cases that you can have your cake and eat it, too. there is a criminal trial going on right now. the voters can get a sense of that. i have to say, within the last week, that trial has felt a little more unhinged. trump felt a little more unhinged then i even expected. i think that does have an impact on the race. still, there's the focus, no one else is coming to save us. this is going to be on the voters to defeat trump. >> jen is right. yesterday, david pecker, the head of "the national enquirer," detailed chapter and verse. we'll get to that trial when we come back in 60 seconds.

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♪♪ beautiful, live picture of the sun coming up over lower manhattan at 6:18 on a friday morning. this morning, attorneys for donald trump are expected to resume questioning of david pecker, national enquirer publisher, in donald trump's hush money trial. vaughn hillyard has a recap of yesterday's testimony. >> reporter: on his third day on the stand, former national enquirer publisher david pecker told the jury he refused to catch and kill stormy daniels' story about her relationship with then candidate donald trump. pecker said he told his right-hand man not to pay daniels the $120,000 she was seeking because they'd already shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to keep other stories about mr. trump quiet. if anyone should buy it, pecker said, it should be donald trump and michael cohen. trump's former fixer. pecker says when he told cohen, quote, he was upset and

responded that the boss, referring to trump, would be furious with me. pecker said he believed mr. trump or his company had paid daniels until cohen told him in december of 2016 that he was the one who paid her. prosecutors are seeking to prove mr. trump doctored internal business records to cover up that payment. pecker also testified trump was aghast when he saw stormy daniels on "60 minutes." >> was it hush money to stay silent? >> yes. >> reporter: pecker said trump called him. he said, we have an agreement with stormy daniels that she cannot mention my name. trump later denied knowledge of the arrangement. on cross-examination, mr. trump's lawyers challenging pecker's credibility and business practices. at a campaign event earlier in the day, mr. trump addressed the testimony of his long-time friend. >> david has been very nice, a nice guy. >> did you know about the payment to stormy daniels before the 2020 election? >> reporter: pecker also testifying about a payment his company did make to former playboy model karen mcdougal, to

keep her alleged affair with mr. trump quiet. pecker said he coordinated with cohen because he was concerned paying mcdougal could violate campaign law. he believed trump was aware of the payment. the prosecution asking pecker, was your principal as you were to suppress her story as to not influence the election? pecker responding, yes, it was. >> vaughn hillyard reporting for us there. lisa rubin, you were inside the courtroom yesterday. i want to get to some of the substance of david pecker's testimony, but, first, if you could, just paint a picture of what the energy was like in the room. donald trump appeared to be more agitated than he has been over the last week and a half yesterday. what was it like in the room? >> it was tense but also there was an energy where just everyone was so interested, including the jurors. tom winter was in the courtroom with me, we were on different sides. i was behind the prosecution.

tom was behind the defense. from his vantage point, the jury was diagonal to him. he said watching the jurors try to process the questioning was like watching a tennis match. their eyes kept going like this, volleying back and forth between the prosecutor's office and pecker, to see how he'd answer them. from where i was sitting, you could catch a glimpse of donald trump, who was more energetic, because david pecker was talking about him and about multiple conversations that david pecker and donald trump had, going well into 2018, that showed, willie, as you just noted, that trump had an awareness that karen mcdougal had come forward, that he consulted with david pecker about what to do, that he was aware that david pecker had paid karen mcdougal, and he perpetually checked in with david pecker to see how karen

mcdougal was doing. in other words, was she sufficiently happy to keep others quiet? when she wasn't, at a point in time after she had sued the "enquirer" and wanted to be released from her non-disclosure agreement, trump was furious to see the interview with anderson cooper. pecker recounted that information, as well, willie. >> it's interesting. shorthand for this trial for some has been the stomy daniels hush money case, but karen mcdougal was the focus yesterday. $150,000 that mr. pecker says he paid. hired her for a job. it was kind of a no-show job as a fitness writer, something like that. how does karen mcdougal factor into this case? how central is she? >> karen mcdougal is not central to the crime itself. remember, again, the manhattan d.a. has charged donald trump with falsification of business records. but what makes it a felony, according to the d.a., is that

those business records were falsified with the intent to either commit or conceal a crime. they have now elaborated on that theory. based on the questioning, it seems that their theory is, donald trump intended to conceal violations of campaign finance law and formed a conspiracy with michael cohen, david pecker, and potentially others to do so. karen mcdougal, in burying her story, was part and parcel of that conspiracy. accomplishing the karen mcdougal story is a necessary predicate. of course, it doesn't get us all the way to the crime. why? because the business records that were falsified are in relation to the stormy daniels payment. yes, david pecker is a very central witness in establishing trump's knowledge and intent in joining this conspiracy and doing it for purposes of subverting the election, but we are going to have to get to the stormy daniels story at some point. it just is not david pecker's to

tell. he testified that he didn't have direct involvement in the purchase or negotiation of the stormy daniels settlement. to the extent "the enquirer" did at all, it was behind his pack. dylan howard, the chief content officer, got involved in it, even though pecker said an affiliation with a porn star will offend our largest distributor, walmart, and we don't want to get into that. but howard kept getting involved. >> from the white house, donald trump would check in on, quote, our girl, talking about karen mcdougal, and pecker would say, "she's quiet. she's fine," end quote. barbara mcquade, we've entered cross-examination. it began yesterday and will resume later today from trump's legal team. what kind of witness was david

pecker for the prosecution? a good way to start? >> oh, i think he was a terrific way to start. you know, he is somebody who is -- has a story to tell. he can establish the timeline. he could begin at the beginning, in august of 2015 when this conspiracy began. and i think there's something very powerful when a person comes in and admits they engaged in a crime itself. he's someone who is friends with donald trump. i think it makes it more difficult to cross-examine him and suggest he is lying because he has an ax to grind, in the way we will hear from others like michael cohen. of course, there will be more cross-examination today, and so that's really the more crucial part of a witness' testimony, to see how they hold up on cross cross-examination. so far, we've seen efforts to suggest the hush money payment is normal for celebrities. we heard about tiger woods, arnold schwarzenegger, other

people like that. i think he's been a solid witness for the government and a good way to start. prosecutors have this idea of rules of primacy and recency. when the jury deliberates, they're likely to remember the first witness they heard and the last witness they heard. you want to start strong and end strong and put the more challenging witnesses in the middle. i imagine michael cohen, and if she testifies, stormy daniels, will come somewhere in the middle because they'll get beat up a little bit. you want to start strong and end strong, and i think they succeeded in starting strong. >> jon meacham, i'm thinking about you sitting here as a presidential historian listening to this conversation. we've become so inured to everything donald trump does, his personal behavior the last ten years, and we're so familiar with some of the details of the cases, we sort of talk through them. when you take a step back and think about just this week, a president who is sitting in a courtroom over a hush money payment to a porn star, we're talking about hypotheticals at the supreme court, his attorneys, of whether or not he could use s.e.a.l. team six to

assassinate a political opponent. when you think of the indictments that came down two days ago in arizona where people on his behalf appointed themselves as fake electors and tried to overturn the results of the election. his chief of staff, mark meadows, rudy giuliani, all wrapped up in this. you do have to take a step back sometimes and just digest how unprecedented, how extraordinary it is to see one man, one president, having allegedly done all of this. >> yeah. it's like "the walking dead," the c-span version, right? it's just this crazy land of things. it is hard to keep it all straight. it's hard to prioritize, to go to barbara's point, of what is the primary one here? what is the most recent one here? that's a really good way to try to figure it out. you know, politically, constitutionally, the most

important thing that unfolded was the supreme court yesterday, trying to figure out what are the powers, what's the limit of the authority of the commander in chief, the president of the united states? that's a vastly important question. it seemed as though the court was -- had a certain awareness of that. they believe they are deciding something forever. interesting, you know, you can argue that perhaps the more conservative approach would be doing something a little more specific, as we were talking about. the new york case is, you know, kind of an only in new york thing. all the characters you're talking about. and the question is, are people who are committed to voting, because the real -- for the rest of us, the question is, are the people who are committed to voting for donald trump again, for the third time, are they

affected by any of this? my own bet is no. this is something they have decided they are willing to put up with. let's be clear, not just willing to put up with, but the hard truth about the american character at the moment is that people kind of like this. let's just be honest, right? this is more entertaining than trying to figure out what to do about the manufacturing of computer chips or the border or dealing with the complexities of the middle east or collective security in europe. those are hard things. if that were what the country really wanted to focus on, guess what? that's what they would focus on. trump is fundamentally an entertainer. that's where he started, right? that's what he walked onto the

stage. the test we're all facing, and i was thinking about this all day yesterday, the test we're facing is, as citizens, do we want a reality show, or do we want reality? do we want to govern our affairs in a less vivid but certainly more serious way? that's a real question for a democracy. do we get what we deserve? i think that that's the question -- that's a question fundamentally that the country has to confront going forward. it is a very stark choice, right? president biden is one way, and former president trump is another. i don't think this is a particularly close call myself, but that's where a lot of the country needs to make their decision. >> yeah. in that reality show, donald trump has cast himself as a martyr, as he sits in this

courtroom. many people are buying that. the question will be, are there enough in the middle who have seen enough of the reality show? the nikki haley voters who keep turning out to vote against donald trump in primaries long after she's dropped out of the race. we'll see. jon meacham, always great to have you on, my friend. see you soon. msnbc legal correspondent, lisa ruben, former u.s. attorney barbara mcquade, thank you, as well. ahead on "morning joe," there is pressure on hamas to free the hostages the group has held for over seven months now. we'll take a look at the statement from the leaders of over a dozen countries. plus, a live look at secretary of state blinken speaking in beijing on the heels of his meeting with president xi. we'll talk to richard haass about the state of relations between the u.s. and china. "morning joe" is coming right back. ♪ i'll be there... ♪

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and invite shannon barnes. dream do come true. xfinity gives you reliable wifi with wall-to-wall coverage on all your devices, even when everyone is online. maybe we'll even get married one day. i wonder what i will be doing? probably still living here with mom and dad. fast reliable speeds right where you need them. that's wall-to-wall wifi with xfinity. live picture of the white house, 6:36 on a friday morning. president biden met with 4-year-old abigail adan, who was freed by hamas. the president posted a picture writing, "last year, we secured the release of abigail, a 4-year-old held by hamas. she is remarkable and uncovering from unspeakable trauma. our time together yesterday was a reminder of the work we have in front of us to secure the release of all remaining

hostages." the president meeting with abigail for more than an hour at the white house. meanwhile, the united states and 17 other countries are demanding hamas release more than 130 people still being held hostage in gaza. in a joint statement, world leaders write, in part, the fate of the hostages and the civilian population in gaza who are protected under international law is of international concern. the leaders called for a deal that would not only secure the hostages' release but also a prolonged cease-fire. qatari officials have been mediating talks between israel and hamas. they say some progress has been made, but the leader of hamas vetoed the latest proposal, including a six-week cease-fire and exchange of hostages. joining us now, the former president of the council of foreign relations, richard haass. author of "home and away," the

weekly newsletter on substack. let's start with the hostages in israel. i'm not sure a strongly worded letter is going to convince hamas, considering it is a death cult who doesn't seem to want to do anything reasonable to release the hostages, but what do you make of the statement made by world leaders, and what progress might there be in getting the hostages home? >> sorry to say, i agree with you here. i don't think this call is going to resonate, to put it gently. i'm also in a serious and really tragic way. i don't know anyone who feels most of the hostages are still alive. that's probably one of the principal reasons that hamas is hanging so tough here, being so difficult, and not wanting them to have this, if you will, exposed. the conditions they constantly put out in exchange are high. they want to end the occupation and so forth. i don't think this is moving

toward either a quick resolution or a positive resolution. i'm really sorry to say that. >> jen, we got that video yesterday, the wrenching video of hersh goldberg-polin. we had his mom on yesterday, rachel, who has been extraordinary through this, giving some hope he is alive and may come home someday soon. the president doing what he can. obviously, we saw him doing perhaps what he does best yesterday, which is spending an hour with a 4-year-old at the white house as she climbed around the resolute desk. what more pressure can the president apply, not necessarily on hamas who is not a reasonable party, but on qatar and other nations who may have some influence? >> i mean, it has sort of this dreaded sense of treading water at this point, then you see across the country campuses really igniting in protest. the president having -- i think they're very aware of what politics they're dealing with. at the same time, the most important thing is to take

whatever levers they can to push towards some sort of cease-fire. it does -- i want to go back to richard about this because it does sort of feel like it is at -- not even just an impasse, richard, but almost a disturbing status quo lull. >> it won't last for long. i think it is more a question of when, not if, israel goes into rafah. you're beginning to see plans being made for moving out some of the gazan civilians. i think the most influence the biden administration can have not whether israel goes in but how it uses military force when it goes in. i think we could be looking, once passover ends sometime later in may, potentially months of a fairly focused, lower-level israeli military operation in rafah. i'd be really surprised if we avoid that. i'm not real optimistic, not

just about the hostages, about hopes for anything looking like a prolonged cease-fire. i just don't see it. indeed, funny enough, the deal on iran where the israelis avoided doing anything big in retaliation with iran, i think, has raised the pressure on netanyahu, at least as he sees it, for doing something fairly muscular in rafah. >> of course, hamas could release these hostages tomorrow and bring this to an end, but it won't because, again, it is a terrorist death cult. that's the only leverage it has, is holding these hostages. richard, secretary of state blinken just wrapped up a meeting with chinese leader xi jinping, discussing the war in ukraine and china's support for russia in the war, as well as beijing's economic and trade practices. this is blinken's second visit to china in less than a year. secretary blinken said he had hoped to make progress on some of these issues. ahead of his meeting with xi, he met with the chinese foreign minister and described the talks as extensive and constructconst.

richard, china continues to help russia in the war against ukraine, a polar opposite position from where the united states is. whats the secretary hope to get done in beijing the next couple days? >> to some extent, the high-level meetings becoming more normal and regular is one of the goals. i think both sides are committed to that ever since november when biden and xi met in san francisco. yes, as you pointed out, there is a desire to put a limit on any chinese aid to russia. it's not working real well. china is not sending military arms, as best we know, but they're sending just about everything else short of that. in many ways, trying to strengthen the russian arms industry, so russia can increase its production of militarily-relevant technologies and equipment and so forth. the emphasis is still to avoid a war. not just over taiwan but probably more imminently in the

south china sea. the fact -- if you remember a couple days ago, the japanese minister was here, there was a trilateral. why? wanted the leader of the philippines to be a part of it. that's probably the most immediate flashpoint. sometimes for the united states and china, it's not what the two can accomplish but what the two can agree to avoid. that's, i think, at the heart of this relationship. willie, think about the backdrop. you just had janet yellen there. tremendous pressure on the chinese not to export all these electronic vehicles and stuff. then you had the legislation, basically sell or ban tiktok. this is a troubled relationship. both sides want to calm it down, but there's no real basis. there's no real intellectual or political consensus for how to move it forward. >> of course, the congress just passed and president biden signed the foreign aid bill that gives aid to our partners in the indo-pacific to bolster against china. we'll keep a close eye on these meetings. secretary blinken is taking

questions from the press now. we will monitor that. richard, stay with us. in our next hour, we'll have an update from national security spokesman on this, john kirby. also ahead, president biden reminding americans what donald trump thinks about the most popular sport in the country. we'll see you a new campaign ad surrounding the nfl draft in detroit. plus, espn's pablo torre will join us with his grades from the teams and last night's first round. jen palmieri not happy with the giants' pick. details when "morning joe" comes right back. i brought in ensure max protein with 30 grams of protein! those who tried me felt more energy in just two weeks. -ugh. -here, i'll take that. woo hoo! ensure max protein, 30 grams protein, 1 gram sugar, 25 vitamins and minerals. and a new fiber blend with a prebiotic. (♪♪)

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2024 nfl draft, the chicago bears select caleb williams, quarterback, southern california. >> no drama around that one. as expected, former usc quarterback, caleb williams, selected first overall by the chicago bears in last night's nfl draft. a record crowd of more than 275,000 fans attended the event in detroit, which, for the fourth time, saw a quarterback selected with the top three picks. the washington commanders followed the bears, drafting jayden daniels out of lsu at two. the new england patriots took

usc's drake maye off the board at three. the teams selected a record-setting six quarterbacks in the top 12 picks, including the surprise number eight pick by the atlanta falcons, who selected the university of washington's michael penix jr. after signing kirk cousins to a four-year, $180 million contract. more on that in a moment. meanwhile, the new york giants did not joint the qb bonanza, adding a new target for daniel jones with the selection of talented lsu wide receiver, malik nabers at number six overall. let's bring in espn's pablo torre. great to see you. >> yes. >> want to get into the picks. let's go big picture for a moment. the scenes of nearly 300,000 people there, by the way, hours before the draft started. i mean, we're entering into woodstock territory now around the nfl draft. it is amazing, the spectacle this has become.

>> yeah, and it is crazy. it's crazy because this is mostly a tv show for everybody at home. here, you have, yeah, post woodstock level crowds gathering. these people are psychopaths, willie. let's be honest. i believe the nfl draft is super fun to watch from home every year. you're sitting there a mile away to get a glimpse of roger goodall hugging somebody. it speaks to the psychosis and the theme of the day, which is always, and jen palmieri is wagging her finger at me because she went to this last year in kansas city, this is a day of delusion. there is no greater day for a football fan than the nfl draft because all things are still possible. no one is a bust just yet. it is winning a press conference. i want to get into that as the context for how we should feel today in reality. >> your delusion is our hope, pablo. it's a day of hope for football fans. i don't think the good people of

detroit are psychopaths at all, just get that on the record. >> they're true americans. >> top of the board, caleb williams, jayder daniels, drake maye. bo nix went higher than some thought. we heard rumblings from kirk cousins' camp, he was confused the falcons didn't get him a receiver, say. >> yeah, let's start with the falcons thing. all of this, again, not to be just a cynic, by the quarterbacks' picks speaks to a desperation on behalf of owners who see the ability to sell hope to a fan base. that's what a quarterback gets you. that is the promise of getting your franchise guy. the michael penix jr. pick is the greatest symptom of this

condition. kirk cousins was told about the pick while it was happening. i don't want to weep too much for him, but kirk cousins is a very good quarterback who happens to be i believe the person in america who is paid more money by people who don't really respect him, than anybody else i've ever seen. the guy is going to wind up getting paid, i believe career earnings of $300 million by the end of this season. the third most money paid to anybody in the history of the nfl. the story of him is, let's gif him a lot of money but constantly undermine him by getting other guys we think could do the job better. michael penix jr. was the biggest shock of the night. when you give kirk cousins $180 million as of march and do this, that speaks to a lack of strategy and foresight that should be worrisome to anybody who has ever heard of the atlanta falcons and how they operate. >> i don't understand why pablo is stealing our joy. don't you write about football for a living? >> i'm the grinch now.

>> i mean -- >> think about the greatest quarterback in the history of the nfl. what round did he get taken in? tom brady was a sixth rounder. patrick mahomes was a tenth pick in the draft. we're not getting to the tenth pick in the draft because that's how the discourse works. who did mahomes defeat in the super bowl? brock purdy, the last pick in the draft. >> right. >> i'm just saying, you should talk about the promise and the potential, but the reality is, nobody knows what they're doing. nobody knows. >> it's a great celebration of america. i love that almost 300,000 -- when i went to kansas city last year for the draft, it's like everyone comes home with a prize. it feels like the first day of football season. it is the dominant cultural phenomenon in america. it's a way for people to come together. you know, let me ask you about the giants. i'm wearing eagles green right now. >> i know. very disturbing. >> this is what's happening in my family, we're going to be eagles fans though we've been

lifelong giants fans. they have saquon. >> richard has been making six ers observations to me all morning. >> i know we have daniel jones as the quarterback. $40 million contract. another year on that. >> yes. >> still, there was some hope from giants fans, like me, that the giants might recruit and take michael penix. the giants could have done that. >> would have made more sense than the falcons taking him. >> would have made sense. you know, there's a lot of new york fans out there wondering i cutlets, living with his mom, the greatest new jersey story in the history of the nfl blanked by jen palmieri. but i get it. nobody believes he is the solution. daniel jones, as much as richard, i believe, you have more faith in him than jen, daniel jones is a sunk cost. how do you hope the $40 million

man? get the receiver. >> i think giants get props for not creating a quarterback controversy. jones for $40 million. he's never had a chance. they've had a terrible offensive line. they now gave him a good weapon. we could argue whether they maybe got the wrong weapon. maybe they should have gotten baures, the best tight end. >> out of georgia. >> maybe another offensive lineman for the right side of the line. they avoided a quarterback controversy. i think they said, daniels jones never had a fair chance. we'll give him another year, try to build a better team. if it doesn't work, draft a quarterback last year. last i checked, giants have five more draft picks this year. i wouldn't be surprised if one of those is their version of, let's go for a late-round quarterback. maybe he'll develop. >> late-round value is there to be had. it is the most underrated part of this thing. you're a day one guy or nothing. we're talking about the day one guys, the first round, but i like the idea of, one more year is a less-inspiring chant than four-more years in the nfl, as well as politics. i don't know if daniel jones is

going, great, richard haass is saying, i have one more year in my career here, great. >> i'm sure he cares what i have to say. >> yeah. >> pablo, what are you looking at the rest of the draft? day one is long. it ends at 1:00 in the morning, ten minutes for every pick. things pick up today and through the weekend. what else are we watching for? as you say, many of the greatest players in nfl history did not go on day one. >> look, selfishly, i'm honors what the jets are going to do. jets took a lineman, who is great. olumuyima, honorable pick. but will the jets take their own late-round quarterback, mid-round even, to thread in the hole the guy has on the job? that'd be a wise move. that'd be a move that would immediately start a lot of, let's say, television appearances. they'll probably veer far beyond football in a way that would make us uncomfortable for yet another year.

>> now we can fold in some politics to the nfl draft. in an attempt to capitalize on all that attention we've been talking about around the draft in detroit, the biden campaign launched a digital ad featuring donald trump's past comments disparaging football. >> football is boring as hell. ♪♪ >> nobody cares about football because of it. ♪♪ >> i mean, it's boring. ♪♪ >> jen, i'm not sure that's going to move a vote, but -- >> sneak it in there. >> donald trump said over the years that, you know, the nfl has gotten soft. you can't knock people's heads off anymore. they're worried about concussions and c.t.e. this coming from the tough guy who never played a sport that didn't involve a golf cart.

what did you make of the ad? >> it's great. biden, they have their finger on the pulse of where culture is, even though pablo is apparently an nfl hater. >> no! how dare you group me with donald trump at the end of the segment. delusion, if nothing else, is wildly exciting and fascinating, make no mistake. jen, to your point, though, the greatest, easiest layup is liking the nfl as a politician. the fact he decided to run against america's lone monoculture is truly one of the greatest and worst heat checks for a politician i've ever seen or could imagine at this point. football is king because we all believe that it is our year this year, finally. spoiler alert, it's not. >> some of us fans don't believe it is our year. >> very good. >> we have a degree of realism. >> richard, there's hope. there's hope. >> yes. >> pablo calls it delusion. again, we want to get on the record and say, pablo torre's views about the good people of

detroit are his and his alone. >> "morning joe" did not approve this message, correct. noted. >> espn's pablo torre just pouring cold water over a thing the rest of us all love in america. great to talk to you this morning, pablo. thanks so much. >> always. we have now crossed into the top of the hour. 7:00 in the morning here on the east coast. joining the discussion, staff writer at "the new yorker," susan glasser. she is co-host of the "political scene" podcast. also, former msnbc host, contributor to "washington monthly," chris matthews. and former attorney and nbc legal analyst joyce vance. good morning to you all. a historic day at the supreme court as justices heard oral arguments yesterday regarding donald trump's claim he is immune from prosecution for actions he took while in office. just around the corner from the united states capitol where the former president is accused of inciting an insurrection, the court's conservative justices seemed open to the arguments being laid out by his legal

team. yesterday's proceedings came after the d.c. appeals court ruled trump does not have absolute immunity. a decision with which the conservative justices appeared to take issue. >> the court of appeals below, whose decision we're reviewing, said, quote, "a former president can be prosecuted for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former president has allegedly acted in defiance of the laws." that, i think, is the clearest statement of the court's holding, which is why it concerns me. as i read it, it says simply, "a former president can be prosecuted because he is being prosecuted. ". >> i think i would take issue, mr. chief justice, with the idea of taking away immunity. there is no immunity that is in the constitution unless this court creates it today. >> did i understand you to say well, you know, if he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake. he is subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else? you don't think he is in a

special, a peculiarly, precarious position? >> he has access to legal advice about everybody he does. he is under a constitutional obligation to -- he's supposed to be faithful to the laws of the united states and the constitution of the united states. and making a mistake is not what lands you in a criminal prosecution. >> on the other side, the court's liberal justices pushed back against the idea that a president should have absolute immunity. justice ketanji brown jackson expressed concern about the precedent that'd set for future presidents. justice sotomayor got trump's attorney to double down on an argument he made earlier this year, infamously, that a former president should be allowed constitutionally to order the assassination of a political rival. >> if the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person

and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts that for which he can get immunity? >> it would depend on the hypothetical. we could see that could well be an official act. >> those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world, with the greatest amount of authority, could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes. i'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the oval office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country. >> a lot to sift through there, joyce vance. let's just take a step back and shake your head a little bit that we're actually having a hypothetical discussion about whether a president of the united states could ask s.e.a.l. team six to take out one of his political rivals, and his legal team making the case for that.

big picture here. what is your takeaway? we were talking about skepticism in the last hour from most of the justices but also the possibility this is kicked back down and drags well past the election. >> yeah, i think that is a strong possibility. something that we should maybe hold on to for a little bit longer is the notion that the argument is not the opinion. sometimes the justices are testing out arguments on each other. the final form of the opinion, when it is handed down, can be very different. but this was an argument that was at odds with the usual reality. we heard a lot more concern from the conservative wing of the court about the risk that some theoretical prosecutor might go after a future president for unusual or unacceptable reasons. then we heard about donald trump himself. his name was only invoked three times during the argument. once by his lawyer, arguing the conduct he committed in

connection with the fake electors' scheme was official contact. twice by michael dreeben arguing for the government. it was a united states versus hawaii court case he was talking about. the discussion wasn't centered on the former president, which was unusual. i've handled 50 appellate arguments, none in the supreme court, but i've never had a case where the defendant was so absent from the argument. i think, to the point of your question, willie, a strong possibility is that the court will come up with a new test, asking the district judge, tanya chutkan, to decide what conduct in the indictment is official, what was personal, or what was president trump opposed to candidate trump. that could delay the proceedings. although, if she is determined, she might be able to get the case to trial. increasingly unlikely.

>> joyce, the consensus view from legal experts, not just progressive ones but conservatives, as well, is that it is a preposterous argument to say a president has absolute immunity, blanket immunity. in other words, he or she could do whatever he or she wants to do and never be prosecuted for it. there seemed to be a few openings from some of the more conservative justices yesterday. have you changed the way you think this court may rule based on what you heard yesterday? >> so, i think we have to consider that possibility. although, you started out by saying, take a moment and consider the lunacy, right, that we've got this hypothetical in the supreme court, can a president use s.e.a.l. team six to assassinate a political rival? it is crazy we're even considering that. also, the permutations. the president could assassinate, i guess, a private citizen he was at odds with, or kidnap a supreme court justice. justice jackson, when she says the oval office could become a crime hub, is very much on point

here. it is tough to see the supreme court adopting this rule. i think it's far more likely that, at the end, this is an opinion that allows some carveout for some form of immunity without saying that it is absolute. >> susan, you're writing about what you call king donald's day at the supreme court. obviously, donald trump dreams of being an autocrat, a king, as you put it, which is, antithetical to everything the country is. as you write, maybe a couple steps closer to that yesterday. >> i'm struck by joyce's point. it was lunacy to hear the arguments being advanced by trump's attorney at the supreme court. not only, by the way, ordering the assassination of s.e.a.l. team six, but other things he said could be official acts, and, therefore, not prosecutable included ordering a military coup. it included selling america's nuclear secrets to foreign

powers. it included bribery. those were all things that fell within the scope of what donald trump wants the supreme court to give him the power to do. and, you know, to joyce's point, the justices did not laugh this lawyer out of the room. not only that, but the consensus at the end of the two hours and 40 minutes was that trump, in effect, was going to win, perhaps not the full case, but to win, and the justices don't want to admit they're winning. we're in an election year. nobody seemed to mention that important fact. i just think the lesson of these last eight years of trump is very clear. the thing we think is unthinkable this morning, that we're talking about, oh, can you imagine? this is crazy, lunacy. well, over time, trump has succeeded in getting to do very many things we thought were unthinkable. this is why i find it to be a warning sign when the supreme court of the united states doesn't, in strong terms, have

somebody challenge trump's lawyer and say, "this is absolutely not how the american system of government is set up to work, with a president who could do these things." >> chris, there is a sense that what's happening in the courtrooms, both in the supreme court but also then in the manhattan courtroom is sort of baked in for trump's supporters, that it won't impact the election. i just don't agree with that. you know, in an election this close, everything matters. at least somewhat. some of the polling lately shows -- the nbc poll from last weekend showed nearly 70% of voters polled said they were paying close or somewhat close attention to the trial in manhattan. 60% of them said that they thought the charges there were serious. i remember in 2018, when stormy daniels did interviews about her affair with trump, even

evangelicals said they believed her over donald trump. i just don't think that this -- i just can't accept that this is good for him and wondering how you think voters are taking all this? >> well, i think they think this case is about now, about 2024, and if you want to have a hypothetical but actually a real case, imagine for the supreme court to look at a case where a president got involved with alternate electoral delegates out in arizona. he called up the secretary of state in atlanta and said, "i want 12,000 votes." he organized a stop the steal rally at the capitol. he sat there for two hours while it went on. all this is a reality today. it has to be judged today. this supreme court has said, "no, we'll think about the long-term impact of what the theoretical decision would mean." i mean, clearly, this is about now. the supreme court in 1974 told

nixon, richard nixon, to release the tapes. they didn't say, release the white house pillow covers or the whitewall tires on the presidential limousines. they said the june 23rd tape has to be released now so that the american people can make a judgment about this president. it's now. this court refused to answer the now question. the issue isn't some theoretical about s.e.a.l. team six or anything like that. it's about this president and what he did and how the american voters are going to judge him this november. i think there's a real problem that they've dillydallied here. i have to wonder about the motive here. i really wonder about judge thomas and what he is up to here, with the way he led this off. he was acting like the chief justice. he was setting the long -- this long caravan ties when we have a reality right now. i'll know it when i see it, the

old pornography case, i'll know it when i see it. don't they see this case? don't they see what's around them in the american culture right now that has to be decided? don't they want to deal with that? apparently, the conservatives don't want to deal with it. >> this could be kicked well past the election if donald trump is re-elected and it could become moot. joining us now, metro police officer michael fanone. he was part of the team of law enforcement officers defending the capitol and the lawmakers inside from the rioters who violently stormed the building on january 6th, 2021, after the trump rally. his book on the insurrection is titled "hold the line." officer, always great to have you with us. you were listening yesterday, nearly three hours of testimony. we should remind people what we're talking about here. this is a question of immunity around the election interference case. that is the idea that donald trump attempted to overturn the election, the lie that drove all those people to the capitol,

and, obviously, caused great pain to you and so many other officers who bravely defended it that day. i'm curious what you thought as you listened to those 2 hours and 40 minutes of oral arguments. >> willie, it was pretty difficult, listening to the supreme court justices debate this in the abstract. having experienced so much of the end result of the president's conduct firsthand. you know, again, like the guest that was just on was saying, you know, where is the urgency to address the matter at hand? the former president's conduct? i mean, the other thing that struck me is i'm less concerned with what the inevitable outcome is, and i'm not a legal scholar and, frankly, i don't have a clue, but why has it taken so

long to get here? it's 3 1/2 years after the american people witnessed firsthand, you know, what donald trump's supporters did, inspired by his lies, in a scheme, this elector scheme to subvert democracy, when they stormed the capitol and beat the hell out of police officers. you know, why did it take that effort -- why did we need a congressional select committee to investigate this and spoon feed the american people probable cause, spoon feed merrick garland probable cause before the department of justice would get its act together and pursue criminal charges against the former president. all of these missteps and mishandling of this conduct has resulted in, you know, what we all now, i think, have come to accept, which is this effort may be too little and too late.

the american people will not see a criminal trial in which this conduct is laid to bear for all americans, so that we can fully appreciate and understand and make a decision come november in the election. >> michael, book is called "hold the line." that's what you faced as a practical matter on january 6th. tell us about the other lessons in the book. you know, particularly, when you wrote the book, you might have hoped that we would have more of a resolution on the legal front. it was up to you to protect the capitol january 6th. it's up to voters to protect the democracy in november. what other lessons have you taken? >> one of the biggest lessons i came to realize was how these institutions that i came to depend on, to protect, things

like our democracy, really don't do anything at all. it's not the institutions. it is the individuals that occupy positions within those institutions. you know, it wasn't the d.c. police department and the united states capitol police department that defended the capitol building that day. it was individual officers. officers that made the conscience decision to go to the capitol, whether part of an organized effort or just, you know, individuals who self-deployed, like myself and hundreds of others, because what they saw happening before them was wrong. it's as simple as that. you know, members of the department of justice who refused to be corrupted by the former president and stood up against him. that brings me to another point. we talk about accountability for the president's actions. i haven't seen any accountability for what donald trump did, he may never be held

accountable, but there have been consequences for january 6th. consequences for people like myself, average, everyday americans who stood up to donald trump, who stood up to the maga movement, and had their lives torn apart and decimated through death threats, losing their careers. i knew ten members of congress who voted to impeach the former president, eight of them don't have their job anymore. so there is a huge ripple effect from what the former president has done that has torn apart americans' lives and livelihoods. >> i want to follow up on another aspect of this. based upon what you went through and saw, what do you think we have to be doing now to prepare for political violence, say, between election day and inauguration day? what do we have to do in the way of training? or do you -- are you at all

comfortable or are you uncomfortable with what you see as the potential threat and the capability to meet it? >> well, first and foremost, i think u.s. capitol police, d.c. metropolitan police department, as far as the individual officers are concerned, i think the training is there. i think since january 6th, or i would hope at least, some equipment improvements have been made. that being said, law enforcement needs to stop considering the optics of things and do what they're supposed to do, which is prepare for the worst possible scenario. i think that there was a lot of concerns, you know, whether you're talking about january 6th insurrection or whether you're talking about the summertime riots that preceded that, that the optics of police officers in enhanced protective equipment, which, when you really think about it, it's ludicrous because

the equipment exists to protect the officer. it is not a weapon. it is protective gear. but that was somehow intimidating and that, you know, we need to dress those officers down, to give the optics it is a more calm and serene situation. we know what these events are capable of, you know, as far as violence is concerned, and we need to prepare for it. >> officer fanone, i obviously don't want to make you relive that day, but it is important, i think, to remind our viewers. january 6th becomes this big kind of blanket nebulous thing about what you went through that day. suffering a heart attack and burns. you were beaten with a flagpole and dragged down the steps. started thinking about your family because you thought that might be the end for you. i'm curious, when you hear the former president go out on the campaign trail and open with his hand over his heart to hear the national anthem with attacked t on january 6th, who were tried,

convicted by juries, and now sitting in prison, when you hear him talk about them as hostages and the idea that he could be president again and release them, offer them pardons, how does that sound to your ear? >> i mean, i think you know me well enough that you can only imagine what my reaction is. listen, donald trump is sick. he is a sick individual. and the idea that he would align himself with criminals who attacked and assaulted law enforcement officers who were only there doing their job, it's sick. anybody who would support that is equally demented. >> you can take those back, the blue stickers off your car, if you're supporting somebody who supports beating up cops on the

capitol. retired capitol police officer michael fanone, we appreciate your service to the country and your willingness to be out front on all these issues. thank you for being here this morning. >> thank you for having me. >> chris matthews, you worked at the united states capitol many years ago. >> that's right. >> i'm curious, as you hear about this officer and all the other officers who put themselves in harm's way, what it must feel like to listen to, not just the former president, but a large swath of the country defend, not the officers, but the people on the other side of the capitol on january 6th. >> our democracy is housed in the u.s. congress, which is what this is about, and the officers were defending it. i was a capitol policeman in '71 when i was coming out of the peace corps, then i was going up

the ranks, you might say. my love is more democracy, for the people elected to come there from all over the country. they're not d.c. residents. they come from across the country to represent our democracy, to vote for us in representation of us. this is how it works. this is how we pick our leaders. this is how we govern ourselves. this is who we are as a democracy. those men and women defending the capitol and defending the speaker's door against people trying to charge through that door, people that look like them in many ways. these are working class guys, a lot of capitol police. they come from west virginia, long distances to go to work in the morning. they're very much like the people, in a way, culturally like the people attacking the capitol. they saw them in throngs coming into the building, trying to destroy everything they believed in, including our democracy. they were fighting for their lives. four of them lost their lives. this guy, i mean, i watch those people at the speaker's door, which i walked through all the time when i was aide to the speaker, and i got to tell ya,

they were fighting for our democracy. they were the good guys. it's as simple as that. the people that refused -- these pictures, they won't look at the video anymore of what happened that day. donald trump is acting like it doesn't matter. and the supreme court yesterday acted like it didn't happen. that's the heart of this struggle for our democracy, our institutions, the people that actually represent what our country is. that's what it is about. they wouldn't even look at it. they acted like it was an ethereal question at some point in the future. gorsuch said, we have to protect something for the future. no. we have to protect our democracy now. 2024 is the year to defend our democracy, right now. right now we have to do it. they have to act. they're refusing to do it. i'm telling ya, a lot of the country is willing to go along with them. people in pennsylvania don't even want to think about it, but it is the heart of the question. do we want a democracy?

do we want to protect it? the officer was one of those who did defend it. are we going to defend it? >> well said, chris matthews. the supreme court entertaining the idea that a president should be immune even if he leads an insurrection against the united states government. chris matthews, thanks so much, as always. we appreciate it. joyce vance, i want to turn to you now and look ahead to the testimony at the courthouse in new york city, where the former president will be sitting again today. cross-examination of david pecker, who used to run the "national enquirer," who has been laying out for the last several days. his practice of checkbook journalism, which is buying stories to bury them to protect donald trump. what should we expect today in the continued cross-examination of mr. pecker? >> mr. pecker was a solid first witness for the government on direct. but on cross, you sometimes learn a little bit more about a witness. the approach yesterday, as far as it got, was pretty soft. there wasn't any effort to, you know, go hard with this witness,

and there may ultimately not be. this is a witness who says he considers the president a friend. trump has been remarkably restrained about talking about david pecker in public. it may be the cross-examination strategy will be to expose the limits of this witness' testimony. he tells a lot of the story about catch and kill to elect the president, but what he doesn't do, necessarily, is put trump in the room or know what was inside of trump's mind. so what we may see on cross-examination today is more of an effort to reign in the impact that his testimony has on the jury when it comes to donald trump and what he thought, knew, and did. >> we will be watching. former u.s. attorney joyce vance, thank you so much, as always. susan glasser, getting back to your piece about "king donald's day at the supreme court," you write about how his vision of america has brought with him so many people in this

country. and using the example of somebody like his former attorney general, bill barr, who, after spending the last couple years ripping donald trump and describing the danger that trump presents to american democracy, said, yeah, i'm going to support him after all, which has been the position of senators that we know and respect on this show, who said, well, he is the nominee of our party. now, some want to be majority leader. but there is still, despite everything we've been talking about the last 90 minutes on this show, there still is a solid movement of republicans behind donald trump or willing to look the other way on all of the things they otherwise say they abhor about the man. >> many years now, it's opinion apparent that donald trump, in his takeover of the republican party, has been successful in getting people to reveal who they really are. while they talk a lot about this or that principle, in the end, the raw power politics and, you

know, the decision when a choice is forced upon them, the decision is partisanship or advantage. i think bill barr is a very clear-cut case of that. in many ways, he's been one of the most public and effective public witnesses against donald trump. remember that it was parr who -- barr who came out december 1st of 2020 and said, while the sitting attorney general, "there is no basis for this. there is no basis to say that there is a fraudulent election here. in fact, there's no evidence of it at all. the justice department is not going to proceed and intervene in this." this was a huge moment. trump's own attorney general was telling him, stop, cease, and desist. barr wrote a memoir that was extremely critical of donald trump. he was very straightforward. in the same way that mitch mcconnell, the leader. they didn't beat around the bush in saying it was donald trump who was responsible for this insurrection at the capitol that

we've been talking about this morning. the supreme court seemed to ignore all of that. they talked about the theoretical possibility of an attorney general in some future situation recommending that the president not do something but never talked about the fact that trump's own attorney general told him, "do not proceed with these activities." nonetheless, he did so. look, without the bill barrs of this world, donald trump would just be an old dude shouting at the television, okay? >> yeah. >> so i feel like that's the heart of the story. i appreciate you bringing it up. because without this, people willing to go along with the delusions and the fantasies and the chaos, people risking their reputation to go into the supreme court and tell the american people that donald trump should have unlimited powers, even to order murder, okay, that's another enabler. that's another kind of enabling.

unfortunately, america is a big country. i guess donald trump is always going to be able to find people to lie and misrepresent and, you know, distort things on his behalf. >> bill barr has called donald trump dangerous, nauseating, and despicable in the last couple years, and now he says he will support him to be president again. "the new yorker"'s susan glasser, thanks so much. we appreciate it. still ahead on "morning joe," national security council spokesman john kirby joins us with much to discuss, including u.s. aid now heading to ukraine. and talks taking place this morning between the united states and china amid heightened tensions. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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secretary of state antony blinken wrapped up a meeting with xi jinping. the two discussed china's ongoing support of russia in its war with ukraine, despite its trade and economic processes. it warned china's relations with united states will stabilize only once america takes a positive and constructive view of china's development. joining us now, white house national security adviser and assistant to the president,

retired rear admiral john kirby. admiral, good morning. good to have you with us. >> thanks. >> it sounds like near top of the agenda was china's support for russia in its war with ukraine. do you all have any evidence it is providing material military support to russia, and, if not, what is it doing exactly? >> no, no evidence they're providing lethal capabilities, willie, weapon systems directly to the russian military. that said, we do know some chinese companies, and, of course, many chinese companies are, in fact, controlled by the communist party, are providing microelectronics, components for military weapons and systems to the russian industrial base, for them to manufacture weapons and capabilities that they use in ukraine. that's really the focus of the conversation that secretary blinken had. >> admiral, so much of the emphasis has been with the chinese, setting up communications links, military to military. >> yes. >> not just dealing with

potentially taiwan but, more recently, the south china sea. >> indeed. >> how worried are we about that? how well are these mechanisms beginning to work? have we actually created something of a hot line and confidence-building measure? is it not quite in place yet? >> it is in place, richard, but i'd say there's more work to be done no cement it and make sure it is sustainable. the military-to-military relations are back on, at high levels, to the secretary of state and down to the indo-pacific commander and his components. that's a good thing. when you have two big militaries, they're operating in some common arias, you want to make sure you pick up the phone and can reduce the risk of miscalculation. but, and this is a big but, you can't take it for granted. unfortunately, we saw in the past, when speaker pelosi went to taiwan, they just shut off the coms link. it is fragile. we want the fragility out of that and make sure the military-to-military communications can be sustained and survive.

the reason you have them is to prevent them being shut down in a case where things are tense. >> we have large amounts of aid going to ukraine again. that'll start up. to what extent are we prepared to talk to the ukraine government about how they use this? in particular, are we going to support them and allow the aid to be used for resuming a quote, unquote, counteroffensive? are we going to say, let's be realistic, use this to play defense, frustrate the russian advance? what to what extent will this be conditioned? >> it isn't, richard. the only thing we have made clear to the ukrainians and they continue to abide by, we don't want any u.s. weapons used to attack russia proper, into russian territory. they understand our concerns. we don't enable or encourage that. that said, we don't dictate on the battlefield how and where they use the munitions and weapons we give them. if they want to go on the offense and push russian forces

back, that's their choice and we respect that. if they want to use it in defense, they can do that, too. in fact, some of the systems we give them are really more designed for defensive versus offensive operations. we have every right. we'd expect they'd want to take advantage of the new weapons they're getting to push russian forces back. as you and i are talking, they're continuing, the russians, continuing to make progress out of the bakhmut access, coming east to west. now, it is slow progress, but they're pushing back on the ukrainian lines. the first, the second, even pushing on the third. that's dangerous. these weapons are going to hopefully get on the battlefield very, very soon, and we would certainly expect that the ukrainians would use them to go back on the offense. >> there's not a lot of time for victory laps when you're president of the united states. but it was less than a week ago that we got an agreement on passing ukrainian funding. it was also just a week ago that the israelis responded with

attacks in iran. two weeks prior, you all were dealing with the iranian attacks into israel. very difficult things across the board for the president to handle. at this point, how do you feel about, you know, the impact that u.s. leadership has? these things are all reinforcing, right? the conversation that tony blinken had with xi would have been very different if the united states had not just delivered funding to ukraine. the conversation would have difficult with israel and iran, if that had not reached some -- equilibrium is too strong a word, but at least the situation has not gotten worse there. you know, how are you feeling about the state of that, that kind of balance right now? >> we're -- >> a lot of continents involved, admiral. >> we're grateful we got the supplemental funding passed, and now we can start to support israel and ukraine. actually, some of the money goes

to the indo-pacific challenges. >> right. >> that's a good thing. it shows, even though it took us too long to get here, it does show that, eventually, you know, american leadership will step up and support allies and partners. it's really important. you'll notice the reaction that has happened from certain parts of the world. when the national security supplemental was passed, the russia reaction was, well, the united states is heading into another quagmire, right? they reacted sharply to the fact that we're now going to be supporting ukraine again. look at the reactions coming out of israel. they know that aid is going to be coming. you can tell how much american leadership matters by the way poet our friends and our not-so-close friends are reacting to the supplemental package and the decisions the president has made. he believes, and i believe recent history certainly bears him out, that american leadership does matter on the world stage. people look for it. they look for cracks in it. like they did when we couldn't get this supplemental. the criticism that came with that. they also understand that the

presidency, american leadership, is a collaborative effort. it is not just the united states alone. it is united states with allies and partners. no other nation enjoys the network of allies and partners the united states has. he's put a lot of effort into revitalizing them. the state visit with the prime minister of japan, prime minister kishida, including the minister of the philippines, marcos. all of that, i think, is the context for what's happened this week. it shows we do support allies and friends. it does matter. people are paying attention. >> admiral, we've been talking this morning about these negotiations brokered by qatar to get the israeli hostages home from gaza. obviously, hamas is not a reasonable partner with which to negotiate. do you believe those will bear any fruit at all? i mean, hamas keeps moving the goalpost and changing what it wants in return for those 130 some hostages to come back. what is the progress there, if

any? >> we sure hope so, willie. i wish i had progress to tell you about this morning. i don't. there was a very good proposal laid at the feet of hamas a couple weeks ago, after bill burns, our cia director, negotiated it in cairo. they've not taken that proposal up, said they won't. yesterday, they said they'd only release the hostages if there was an independent state for the palestinian people. look, there's not going to be an independent palestinian state with hamas in control of gaza. can't happen. if they really cared about the palestinian people, if they really cared about an independent state, they'd lay down their arms, step aside, release those hostages, and let us get on with the business of working with israel and the palestinian authority for a revitalized palestinian authority that can actually manage and meets the aspiration of the palestinian people. as for the hostages, we're continuing to work this every day. even though there is a proposal that doesn't appear to be moved on right now by hamas, that doesn't mean we're giving up on

it. you probably saw the president had a chance to meet with young abigail in the oval office, and her family. i can assure you, he is looking out for the hostages and their families every single day, so is the whole team. we're not going to quit. >> admiral, what about the humanitarian crisis that continues inside of gaza? famine, overcrowding, a lack of food, a lack of supplies. can you speak to the effort to get those supplies to the people who need them? because we know so many of the supplies that are brought into gaza are intercepted by hamas. what can you do to make that situation better for all those people suffering inside of gaza? >> couple of things. number one, as you probably saw, not in the last conversation with prime minister netanyahu but the one before that, the president was very firm, this he needed to see changes on the israeli side about access to humanitarian assistance or we were going to have to look at

changes to our gaza policy. the israelis opened more crosses. they've increased the hours many of the crosses are open. they have generally increased the amount of trucks getting in. one day, in particular, more than 300. there's been a couple thousand the last week or two. that's good, not good enough. it's got to be sustained. we've got to see it increase even more. we also have to make sure that those aid workers feel safe on the ground distributing that assistance. that includes up to north gaza where there's still quite a number of refugees in desperate need. we're also conducting air drops and continue to do that. it's not the best way to get volume in, but we're not getting rid of that as an option. of course, even as you and i speak, willie, the united states military is working to collect and assemble in the area, off the coast of gaza, this temporary pier that can be used for maritime shipments of humanitarian assistance and getting that in. we're a couple weeks away before that capability will be operational, but that'll be another avenue to get assistance

in. >> admiral, i know you have to run. quickly, before we go, you've seen these protests on the campuses. some of them getting out of control. it has become gospel among some of the pro-protesters, that israel is committing genocide and the biden administration is supporting a genocide in gaza. do you see any evidence of israel committing genocide in gaza? >> absolutely not, no. no, there's no evidence. the israeli soldiers are not getting up, getting out of the rack, putting their boots on for the day and saying, "hey, i'm going to go wantonly murder innocent palestinians." now, that said, there has been, and the president talked about this, too many civilian casualties. the number needs to be zero. there are too many people starving, too many people in need. we're going to continue to push israel to do more to alleviate the suffering of the palestinian people and to try to get a cease-fire in place so we can get all the hostages out. then after a cease-fire, try to end this conflict.

the president is committed to that. >> let's hope the hostages get out and the civilians of gaza, who are caught in the middle, get the help they need. communications adviser and assistant to the president, retired rear admiral john kirby. thank you for your time. we always appreciate it. >> good to be with you. coming up next, results of a new poll that focuses on young voters and the issues that matter most to them this election cycle. they could be decisive come fall. and as we head to break, this weekend on "sunday today," my guest is basketball icon steph curry. the man who has changed the game over his 15 seasons in the nba. reflecting on his future now at 36 years old, now with a spot on the u.s. olympic team in paris after the warriors were knocked out of the playoffs before they even began. steph curry, my guest over on nbc's "sunday today" this weekend. we'll be right back right on "morning joe" on a friday morning.

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the university of southern california is canceling its main commencement ceremony because of the protests on campus over the war in gaza. commencement typically draws a crowd of about 65,000 people to the school. now officials there are citing safety concerns for the reason they're canceling. the announcement comes just a day after more than 90 students

were arrested on the campus of usc. last week the school's announced its valedictorian who is muslim and shared pro-palestinian views would no longer speak at the commencement. the university citing security concerns for that decision. meanwhile, more protesters being arrested for their demonstrations on college campuses across the country, bringing the total number of people detained this week to more than 500 at those protests. joining us now, the director of polling at the institute of politics at harvard university. john, good morning. great to have you with us. so i want to dive into your numbers, but something as i'm looking at the list of what is important to young voters in this election in this country right now, despite the protests, despite all the images we're seeing, i note that you found in the latest harvard youth poll, the issue of the war in gaza does not register unless i'm reading it wrong, even in the top 15 as an issue among young

voters. according to the survey, israel and palestine ranks right there at 15th actually in the most important of the 16-issue poll. it's about inflation, health care, gun violence, protecting democracy, immigration all ahead of the israel and gaza war. >> that's correct, willie. we conducted that survey at harvard. i have two other surveys i've conducted, one before that survey, one after that survey, and it doesn't mean that the events in israel and gaza are not important. what that is saying is that the -- the issue that has the most weight between 19 and 20-year-olds is the constant stress about the cost of living, access to health care, gun violence, those series of issues. what the message from that harvard poll showed is that it is a very important issue. and it's very important in the eyes of young people that we

have a permanent ceasefire. by a margin of five to one, they support that, and what also young people are very, very clear about, is they have relatively equal levels of sympathy for the palestinian civilians and the israeli hostages as well. far less sympathy for the government, but what i'm seeing on college campuses is not reflective of the generation as a whole. >> soon,your company social sphere, out with more new polling today looking at where young voters stand ahead of november's election. so much interesting data in here. let's just start with the top line though that joe biden leads among young voters, 51 to 43 with 7% undecided. a slim majority and probably a lot lower of a number than the biden campaign would like to see at this point in the campaign. >> well, yes. thanks, willie, and we're grateful to our friends at snapchat to allow us the opportunity to expand upon what we learned at harvard, the harvard youth poll with social

sphere, my company, and it's about -- we watched the nfl draft, willie, right? it's all about the point spread, i think. biden has a lead and he needs to really cover that spread quite convincingly, i think, and right now despite the fact as i talked about the economic concerns, despite the fact that so many young people feel like the country's headed in the wrong direction, despite the fact that his approval ratings aren't what he would like them to be, he's leading among registered voter. he's leading among likely voters in every poll that i've conducted through a variety of different means over the last couple of months. >> and so in terms of what is stressing young voters in this country, young people in this country, this is -- tracks with what we know that the economy is the problem. price of groceries and gas, 43% feel a lot of stress on a regular basis. access to health care is high on the list. gun violence as you mentioned, credit card balance. what do you see in these numbers, john? >> yeah, willie. when i go out and talk to people

in town halls and focus groups, i ask them, what's a good day? what's something that keeps you up at night? i constantly hear this daily stress that people carry about the idea of just having an opportunity to live their best life and currently this economic stress. many of us -- many older americans are able to see progress in the economy in tangible ways, right? through our 401ks, right? younger people don't have that, but younger people aren't able to see those tangible benefits right now and it's stressing them out and i think it's part of the reason that the biden number is depressed relative to where it was four years ago. >> john, this is really interesting, the constructed poll, and, you know, biden's approval rating is very low. he gets his approval rating, it's 35%. trump is 43%, overall job

performance among young voters, but still biden comes out on top in the -- in the head to head, and i'm wondering if it is because of one chart you have in here that asks -- i think it's really smart the way it's done. how will these issues change under a second biden/trump term as opposed to just asking what's important to you? what do you think is going to happen? women's rights they think will be 13 points better under biden and minus 21 under trump. lgbt and trans rights, 12 points better for biden, minus 36 under trump. student loan debt, really important issue, 7 points better under trump -- excuse me, under biden, minus 10 under trump. so do you think, you know, how do you rank these issues and sort of people guessing when you look at this in the composite, guessing what they think biden/trump will do under each of these issues in the overall decision about what to support? >> yeah, jen. that's the thing about politics,

right? it's not just one single issue. currently what younger people believe is they'll have more individual rights and freedoms on the issue that is they care about in a second biden term. that is clear. that was also clear in the harvard poll that we released a week ago as well. the idea of restricting women's reproductive health was a motivating factor in '22, and it can be a motivating factor in '24 as well. however, it is very clear as we said, the most significant concern young people have today is inflation. they believe that donald trump's economy was better -- the economy was better when he was president. they think it could be better if he were re-elected. that's what the biden campaign needs to square is this sense of economic insecurity that people have, and be very, very clear about that. >> yeah, and, you know, like many americans, john, young people are not happy with their choices. you ask something called the double hater voter, people not happy with either of these as we

take a look, those that are going to hold their nose and vote by 40 points say, well, i guess joe biden is better than donald trump if you are going to make me choice. director of polling at the institute of harvard university, thank you as always for bringing us your numbers. coming up next in a couple of hours, cross-examination will resume for former "national enquirer" president david pecker. we will go live outside the courthouse to hear what we should expect today. "morning joe" is coming right back. ect today. "morning joe" is coming right back today, at america's beverage companies,... ...our bottles might still look the same... ...but they can be remade in a whole new way. thanks to you... we're getting bottles back... and we've developed a way to make new ones from 100% recycled plastic. new bottles - made using no new plastic. you'll be seeing more of these bottles in more places. and when we get more of them back... ...we can use less new plastic. see how our bottles are made to be remade.

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the trump legal team doesn't really believe the total immunity argument. they're just bringing it up to delay his trials. it's kind of like when your kid asks for water at bedtime and you know they're trying to delay bedtime because kids don't need

water. some justices think trump should have immunity, but liberal justices shouldn't. instead of total immunity, presidents get a hall pass of five crimes. >> playing out in two courtrooms yesterday. at the u.s. supreme court, justices seem divided as they debated trump's immunity claim for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. you'll hear their remarks with one justice raising concerns that shielding presidents from prosecution could turn the oval office into a seat of criminality. plus, this morning, former "national enquirer" president david pecker is on the stand with attorneys continuing their cross-examination. it's friday, april 26th. with me, jennifer palmieri. she's co-host of the msnbc podcast "how to win 2024."

rogers chair, the historian jon meacham, and our legal analyst, lisa rubin and former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor, barbara mcquaid. good morning to you all. let's dive right in with yesterday's historic day at the supreme court where the justices heard oral arguments regarding donald trump's claim he is immune from prosecution for his official acts as president. nbc news senior legal correspondent laura jarrett has the case. >> reporter: the supreme court weighing a monumental question that will decide whether the former president goes to trial for plotting to overturn the last election and when. >> i think that the supreme court is very important today. >> reporter: many trump hoping to persuade the justices to find

him immune from federal charges. saying this would be hobbled. >> without presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, there can be no presidency as we know it. >> reporter: mr. trump was indicted on conspiracy and obstruction efforts last year after trying to cling to power. the likely gop nominee, pressuring state officials to reverse the election results. actions doj argues it was for purely personal gain and cannot be shielded for prosecution. >> there is no immunity that is in the institution unless this court creates it today. >> reporter: the conservatives expressing concern. they have no immunity for actions taken in the white house. that could open the door for recriminations between political rivals. >> will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? >> reporter: the liberal justices troubled by the prospect of insulating presidents from accountability,

raising a series of dark hypotheticals to underscore the consequences of adopting mr. trump's position. >> if a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune? how about if a president orders the military to stage a coup? that sure sounds bad, doesn't it? >> i'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the oval office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country. >> reporter: the fallout over efforts to subvert the election results in 2020 stretching beyond washington. in arizona, a grand jury indicted several members of mr. trump's inner circle wednesday accusing them of falsely awarding the state's electoral votes to mr. trump despite his loss to president biden. the sending of phony slates of pro-trump electors to congress to disrupt the election certification on january 6th looming large at the high court as well as the justices look to determine the line between a

political candidate's actions taken for personal gain from a president's official conduct that could be immune from prosecution. >> laura jarrett reporting for us there. lisa rubin, listening -- it was fascinating first of all to get an ear into the supreme court for this oral argument over nearly three hours yesterday. listening to the untrained ear, it sounded like the justices are skeptical to say the least of a claim that a president -- any president has blanket immunity, absolute immunity for anything he or she does in office, but the justices seemed open to kicking it back down to the trial court. what was your read of what we heard yesterday? >> that we're not going to see a trial in tanya chutkan's court any time soon for the reasons that you just stated. the conservative justices seem to be moving away from trump's claim of blanket immunity. that's a good thing writ large, but the idea that we would then have to have further proceedings to determine which of the

allegations in the indictment pertain to official acts versus private acts and by the way, i should note that trump's lawyer did concede that certain of the conduct alleged here does amount to private conduct. the idea that judge chutkan though would on remand have to have a series of hearings or mini trials as our colleague andrew weissmann said, in order to determine that before taking this case to trial, that puts this case on a calendar where it can almost certainly not be tried before the election and potentially depending on what happens at the election, not happen at all. >> and barbara mcquaid, we heard the hypothetical again yesterday about, what about if a president decided that the navy s.e.a.l. team six should assassinate one of his political opponents? would that fall under the presidential immunity that you're talking about? mr. sauer there representing donald trump, and it's kind of stunning we're even suggesting that. what was your read of the way things played out yesterday, and

what we may hear next? >> well, as mr. sauer said to that question, that hypothetical, it would depend under the situation. wow, egads that's terrifying. my read is that there are several justices, the women justices who are ready to go that they think that the idea that perhaps there is some presidential immunity for some official acts, but that the acts alleged in this indictment are not those acts, and let's go already. justices barrett and kagan were really pinning down john sauer on trying to say, you would agree this is a private act, right? and you would agree this is a private act, right? uing allegations in the indictment, and i think to pin him down to afford further delay, there are some justices who think further delay is necessary. i think the real lynch pin here is going to be chief justice roberts who on the one hand did

suggest this idea that it would be a one-legged stool to allow only the private acts and not have any reference to the official acts. so there's a little room, i think, for arguing that the crimes here are not official acts, but you need some evidence of official acts to understand the context, and the example chief justice roberts used was bribery. it might be an official act to appoint an ambassador, but if you do that in exchange for money, a bribe, that could still be a crime, but i think as lisa said, i agree that at the end of the day. -- it seems necessary to sort out what is not an official act here and most notably the conduct relating to the department of justice and using them or abusing them could be deemed an official act, but jack smith still has one trick up his sleeve, i think, which is to pare down the indictment and use things that are only priv acts here. >> jon meacham, it was really

extraordinary to listen yesterday to the urgency donald trump's attorney had talking about the need for absolute presidential immunity when we have had, what? 235 years worth of presidents who didn't really need to lean on this. they had no occasion to call for absolute immunity, 45 other presidents. what -- what do you make of what we're hearing play out in the supreme court on the larger scale in terms of the presidency itself? >> it's a master class in the complexities of a presidential office that is disinherently powerful -- it's inherently powerful that's become more so over time, particularly since world war ii and the new deal. when the manhattan project produced atomic weapons, the president of the united states became arguably the most important person in the history of humanity because the power to

destroy is so -- it's vested in one person. so immense questions here. i thought the arguments were fascinating. i would, of course, but i think it was a -- it was a fairly, you know, you would expect this. it was a mature, interesting, largely evidence-based, interesting hypotheticals conversation about the practical application of -- it's a kind of character. let me put it this way. the ongoing, the unfolding implications of having a character in the oval office who is more at risk of committing these kinds of crimes than not, if that makes sense. >> yeah. >> the key thing here was -- i think as justice gorsuch said, we're deciding this for the

ages. now that's interesting because they didn't decide roe for the ages, but we'll leave that aside for a moment. there is this incredibly important question about would this cycle of political prosecutions result from a no immunity claim? i thought the answer on behalf of the government was pretty compelling which is that this is an extraordinary case, and for anybody following this just in a peripheral way, to me, the most important thing that was asked was from justice sotomayor who asked rhetorically, i think it's safe to say. isn't it true that our democratic institutions depend on the character of the people within those democratic institutions? that is, we heard the justices for a long time yesterday talking about as they should, lawyers, about every conceivable

iteration of something, trying to create doctrines that would stand up to most of those. in the very end, what it comes down to is the character of the person we send to the pinnacle of power, and their willingness to bend and break norms and laws, and what we had in 2020 into 2021 with the failure to peacefully transfer power was we had someone whose character was not commensurate to that standard and that's something no court can legislate. we have to pick the right person. >> lisa, and some of the coverage, you know, i watched from here yesterday. consternation, i'm not a lawyer, you saw some of this from the conservative justices about that, they seem to be making the defense's argument for it. you know, they seem to be perhaps making excuses for president trump.

how should we, you know, how should we look at what -- how we saw some of the conservative justices and the kind of questions that they were asking yesterday? >> i think we should look at it as a form of avoidance. there were embedded in some of the questions the conservative justices were asking, a desire to avoid the facts of this case, and that goes back to even the very question presented here and the question presented in any supreme court case is, what is the issue that the supreme court is going to decide? they couldn't define that fairly narrowly here in a way that would have been circumscribed to the indictment. the question is, whether and if so, to what extent former presidents are entitled to immunity for their official acts where there are criminal charges against them? that's a very broad question, and you saw a number of the conservative justices sort of reaching beyond the facts of the indictment to try and pose a series of ever-escalating

hypotheticals. at one point, justice alito even saying, i don't want to talk about this particular case. the question i would ask is, why not? this is the case before you, and one of the most simple and democracy-enhancing things this court could have done would be to say, there may be circumstances in which presidents are entitled to immunity, but this indictment as alleged here doesn't constitute one of those scenarios, and we as a court can always revisit it if and when the facts present themselves to us that would cause us to have a different conclusion. >> so barbara, lisa said right off the top based on what she heard yesterday, there's no chance that this makes it to trial before the election, certainly no verdict before the election. that seems to be the consensus view, and if that is the case, if you agree with that, how does this play out now for our viewers in a practical question? what happens now? oral arguments get the ruling a little bit down the road here and then what happens to this

case? >> well, it depends on how they decide this case. it seems like reading the tea leaves that there will be at least five justices who say that there is limited immunity for a president, not blanket immunity, and that the court needs to have some hearings to decide what's next, to decide which of the allegations in the indictment fall on the private side of that line and which fall on the official acts side, and then proceed from there. now it's also possible that donald trump could take an appeal from whatever judge chutkan decides, which is why i think people are woried that there is lengthy delay ahead, which is why i said, jack smith has a trick up his sleeve and he can pare down this indictment and include only those that are private acts or as the lawyer for the solicitor general or for the special counsel said yesterday, thinking of donald trump in his role as office

holder versus office seeker, and there are a lot of acts here as office seeker where i think he could say, fine. even if, you know, we'll litigate all these issues another day, but i'm ready to go to trial on just these issues relating to his private acts, and if that's the case, i think this case could go to trial before the election. >> it's interesting. we'll keep an eye on that. jen, as you know, the trump team has felt a delay is a win for them with the theory of the case being if they can push all this stuff back with delay, delay, delay past election day and he gets himself re-elected, he makes it all go away. on the other side of that though, as you also know very well, talking to people around the biden campaign, they are not counting on these cases. >> yeah. >> to save them. they are running a campaign to win. they do believe that his sitting in court and the public being reminded of all these alleged crimes is helpful to them, but they don't believe that they'll be saved by a jury or a judge. >> yeah, and the, you know, when

it was -- when we found out a couple of months ago that the supreme court wasn't going to take this case up until april, we sort of came to terms with the fact that it was -- barbara laid out an interesting case for how it may still happen, but it was unlikely to happen before the election, and the biden campaign felt somewhat of a relief in that, because at that point people were still thinking, maybe there's some other exigent factor here that's going to save us. no one is going to save us. this is on the voters. there's one way to stop donald trump and that is to elect joe biden. it is sort of clarifying, and of course, this state affairs is there's so many cases that you can have your cake and eat it too because there's a criminal trial going on right now. so the voters can get a sense of that, and i have to say in the last week, that trial has felt a little more unhinged. trump has felt a little more unhinged than i even expected. so i think that that does have an impact on the race, but still there's the focus. no one else is coming to save

us. this is going to be on the voters to defeat trump, not the courts. >> jen's right. yesterday david pecker, the former head of the "national enquirer" was in court detailing in chanter and verse how he helped donald trump. we'll get to that trial when we come back in just 60 seconds. ge come back in just 60 seconds ah! with flonase, allergies don't have to be scary. spraying flonase daily gives you long lasting non-drowsy relief. flonase all good. also, try our allergy headache and nighttime pills.

♪♪ this morning, attorneys for donald trump are expected to resume their questioning of former "national enquirer" publisher david pecker in the former president's criminal trial. nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard has a recap of the testimony. >> reporter: on his third day of the stand, david pecker told the jury he refused to catch and kill stormy daniels' story about her relationship with then-candidate donald trump. pecker said, he told his right-hand man at "the enquirer" not to pay daniels the $120,000 she was seeking because they

already shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to keep other stories about mr. trump quiet. if anyone should buy it, pecker said, it should be donald trump and michael cohen, trump's former fixer. he said when he told cohen he was, quote, upset that the boss, referring to trump, would be furious with me. pecker said he believed mr. trump or his company had paid daniels until cohen told him, in december of 2016, that he was the one who paid her. prosecutors are seeking to prove mr. trump doctored internal business records to cover up that payment. pecker also testified trump was aghast when he saw stormy daniels on "60 minutes". >> was it hush money to stay silent? >> yes. >> reporter: pecker says trump called him. he said, we have an agreement with stormy daniels that she cannot mention my name. they denied knowledge of the arrangement. mr. trump's lawyers challenging pecker's credibility. at a campaign event earlier in the day, mr. trump addressed the testimony of his longtime

pretend. >> dave has been very nice, a nice guy. >> did you know about the payment to stormy daniels before the 2020 election? >> reporter: pecker also testifying about a payment his company did make to former "playboy" model karen mcdougal to keep her alleged affair with mr. trump quiet. he was concerned paying mcdougal could violate campaign finance law so they worked up an agreement to campaign for her contributions by american media adding, he believes trump was aware of the payment. the prosecution asking pecker, was your principle purpose to suppress her story as to not influence the election? pecker responding, yes, it was. >> vaughn hillyard reporting there. you were inside the courtroom yesterday. i want to get to some of the substance of david pecker's testimony, but first, if you could just paint a picture of what the energy was like in the room and donald trump who appeared to be more agitated than he's been in the week and a half yesterday, what was it like in the room? >> it was tense, but also there

was an energy where just everyone was so interested including the jurors. our colleague, tom winter was sitting in the courtroom with me. we were sitting on different sides of the courtroom. i was sitting behind the prosecution. tom was sitting behind the defense and from his vantage point, the jury was sort of diagonal to him and he said that at one point, watching the jurors try to process the questioning was like watching a tennis match because their eyes kept going like this, right? volleying back and forth between joshua steinglass and pecker answering them, and from where i was sitting, you could catch a glimpse of donald trump who was far more energetic than he has been in recent days because david pecker was talking about him, and not just about him, but about conversations and multiple conversations that david pecker and donald trump had going well into 2018 that showed, willie, as you just noted that trump had an awareness that karen mcdougal

had come forward, that he consulted with david pecker about what to do, that he was aware that david pecker had paid karen mcdougal and that he perpetually checked in with david pecker to see how karen mcdougal was doing. in other words, was she sufficiently happy to keep herself quiet? when she wasn't at a point in time after she had sued "the enquirers and wanted to be released from her nondisclosure agreement, trump was furious to see karen mcdougal do an interview with anderson cooper. we recapped that conversation as well, willie. >> it's interesting the shorthand for this trial for some has been the stormy daniels hush money case, but really as you note, karen mcdougal was kind of the focus yesterday. $150,000 that mr. pecker says he paid, hired her for a job. it was kind of a no-show job as fitness writer or something like that. how does karen mcdougal factor into this case? how central is she? >> well, karen mcdougal is not

central to the crime itself. remember, again, the manhattan d.a. has charged donald trump with falsification of business records, but what makes it a felony is those business records were falsified with the intent to either commit or conceal a crime and they have now elaborated on that theory. based on the questioning, their theory is that donald trump intended to conceal violations of campaign finance law and formed a conspiracy with michael cohen and david pecker and potentially others to do so. karen mcdougal and burying her story was part and parcel of that conspiracy. so establishing the karen mcdougal story is a necessary predicate, but of course, it doesn't get us all the way to the crime. why? because the business records that were falsified are in relation to the stormy daniels payment. so yes, david pecker is a very

central witness in establishing trump's knowledge and intent and joining this conspiracy and doing it for purposes of subverting the election, but we are going to have to get to the stormy daniels story at some point. it just is not david pecker's to tell. as he testified yesterday, he did not really have any direct involvement in the purchase or negotiation of this stormy daniels settlement to the extent that "the enquirer" did it all. it was behind his back he testified, that dylan howard who was the chief content officer, got involved with that even though pecker had instructed him. we're not a bank, an affiliation with a porn star will offend our largest contributor, and howard couldn't help himself between stormy daniels' lawyer, keith davidson, and michael cohen. still ahead on "morning joe," there is growing international pressure on hamas this morning to free the hostages. the group has held them captive for more than seven months now. take a look at the new statement

and the leaders of more than a dozen countries. "morning joe" is coming right back. zen countries. "morning joe" is coming right back

president biden met with 4-year-old abigail adan yesterday. the white house posted to social media yesterday, last year we secured the release of abigail, a 4-year-old who was held by hamas. she is remarkable and recovering from unspeakable trauma. our time together was a reminder of the work we have in front of us to secure the release of all remaining hostages. the president meeting with abigail for more than an hour at the white house. meanwhile, the united states and 17 other countries are demanding hamas release more than 130 people still being held hostage in gaza. in a joint statement, world leaders write in part, the fate of the hostages and the civilian population in gaza who are protected under international

law is of international concern. the leaders called for a deal that would not only secure the hostages' release, but also a prolonged ceasefire. qatari officials have been mediating talks between israel and hamas. they say some progress has been made, but the leader of hamas vetoed the latest proposal. that deal would have included a six-week truce in exchange of hundreds of palestinian prisoners for dozens of sick, elderly, and wounded hostages. joining us now, president emeritus of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. he's author of the weekly newsletter home and away. richard, good morning. a lot the talk with you about today. let's start right there with the hostages in israel. i'm not sure a strongly worded letter is going to compel hamas given that it's a terrorist death cult who doesn't seem willing to negotiate anything reasonable at all to release the hostages, but what do you make of the collective statement made by world leaders, and what progress might there be in

getting these hostages home? >> willie, sorry to say i agree with you here. i don't think this call is going to resonate to put it gently. i'm also in a serious and really tragic way, i don't know anyone who really feels most of the hostages are still alive, and that's probably one of the principal reasons that hamas is hanging so tough here, being so difficult, and not wanting them to have this, if you will, exposed. you know, the conditions they constantly put out in exchange are high and they want to end the occupation and so forth, so i don't think this is moving towards either a quick resolution or a positive resolution. i'm really sorry to say that. >> jen, we got that video yesterday, just the wrenching video of that mom yesterday, rachel, who's been so extraordinary yesterday through all of this, getting some hope he is alive and he may come home someday soon. the president doing what he can.

obviously we saw him doing perhaps what he does best yesterday which is spending an hour with a 4-year-old at the white house as she climbed around the resolute desk. what more pressure can the president apply not only on hamas, but on qatar and other nations who may have some influence? >> it does -- it has sort of this dreaded sense of treading water at this point, and then you see across the country, campuses really igniting and protests and the president being very aware of what kind of politics they're dealing with, but at the same time, the most important thing is to try and -- is to take whatever levers that they can to push -- to push towards some sort of ceasefire, and it does -- i want to go back to richard about this because it does sort of feel like it is at sort of like not even just an impasse, richard, but almost like a disturbing status quo lull.

>> it won't last for long. i think it's more a question of when, not if israel goes into rafah. you're beginning to see plans being made for moving out some of the gazan civilians. i think the most influence the biden administration can probably have here is not weather israel goes in, but how it uses military force, when it goes in, so i think we could be looking once passover ends sometime later, i'm going to say in may, potentially months of a fairly focused lower-level israeli military operation in rafah. i would be really surprised if we avoid that. i'm not real optimistic not just about the hostages, but about hopes for anything looking like a prolonged ceasefire. i just don't see it. indeed, funnily enough, the deal on iran where the israelis avoided doing anything big in retaliation for iran, i think has raised the pressure on netanyahu at least as he sees it for doing something fairly muscular in rafah. >> of course, hamas could

release these hostages tomorrow and bring this to an end, but it won't because it's a terrorist at the time cult. that's the only leverage it has is holding the hostages. secretary blinken just wrapped up a meeting with chinese leader xi jinping to discuss the war in ukraine and china's support for russia in that war as well as beijing's economic and trade practices. this is blinken's second visit to china in less than a year. secretary blinken said he had hoped to make progress on some of these issues ahead of his meeting with xi. blinken met with the chinese foreign minister and described these talks as extensive and constructive. so richard, what's the objective here as china now we know continues to help russia in the war against ukraine? obviously a polar opposite position from where the united states is. what does the secretary hope to get done in beijing over these couple of days? >> well, to some extent, willie, just the high-level meetings becoming more normal and regular is one of the goals and i think both sides are committed to that ever since november when

presidents biden and xi met in france. yes, as you just pointed out, there's a desire to put a limit on any chinese aid to russia. it's not working real well. china's not sending military arms as best we know, but they're sending just about everything else short of that, in many ways trying to strengthen the russian arms industry so russia can increase its production of militarily relevant technologies and equipment and so the emphasis is still to avoid war not just over taiwan, but probably more imminently in the south china sea. the fact that -- if you remember a couple of days ago when the january these prime minister here, one day there was a trilateral. why? because you wanted the leader of the philippines to be part of it. that's probably the most immediate flash point. so sometimes for the united states and china, it's not what the two can accomplish, but it's what the two can agree to avoid and that in some ways is at the heart of this relationship.

willie, let's think about the backdrop. you had janet yellen there, tremendous pressure on the chinese, and not to export the legislation, and that was sell or ban tiktok. this is a troubled relationship and both sides want to calm it down, but there's no real basis. there's no real intellectual or political consensus for how to move it forward. coming up, we'll go live to the new york city courthouse where donald trump is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments. a preview of today's testimony straight ahead on "morning joe" 73 straight ahead on "morning jo 73 . hey! asthma's got you going through it? grab nucala for fewer asthma attacks. nucala is a once-monthly add-on injection for severe eosinophilic asthma. not for sudden breathing problems. allergic reactions can occur. get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing.

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coming up, a conversation with oscar-winning actress dame

judi dench. she describes william shakespeare as the man who pays the rent. that's next on "morning joe." p the rent that's next on "morning joe. diabetes can serve up a lot of questions. like what is your glucose and can you have more carbs? before you decide with the freestyle libre 3 system know your glucose and where it's heading

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the iconic works of william shakespeare, and the iconic performances of judi dench and the works he's written come together in a fascinating book entitled "shakespeare: the man who pays the rent" through detailed conversations, dench one of the greatest british performers of all-time walks us through rehearsals, and lets us in on the secrets of her successes, failures and backstage fun. the book's author dame judi dench, an associate artist at shakespeare's globe, brendan o'hay, dame judi, it's a great

book to read. it's fascinating listening to you. i feel like we're listening in on something, but i loved -- i loved what your co-author said which was it's impossible to do anything with you. you pick up an orange, you make a production about it. it sounded like so much fun, but could you talk about the process and also the title of the book and how it came from what you and your husband would say to each other in the '70s? >> yes, of course. yes, of course. i mean, the book happened because during covid, brendan said, why didn't i come down and why didn't i talk but with me kind of interrupting all the time and telling him about things that happened. the title of the book "the man who pays the rent" is what michael, my late husband and i used to call shakespeare because

he had been at the rsc. i had been at the old vick and the rsc. >> i talked about the challenges you had with dame judy. also in editing it, you said you had to remove a lot of f-bombs. other than that, it sounded like a glorious experience that i think anybody reading or listening to this would want to be in that room with you all talking about it. talk about the process and what made you want to make it a book. >> it was originally meant to be audio for shakespeare's globe to get us through lockdown. then it morphed into a book. there were so many swear words,

not from me, but still conversation over four years about every shakespeare part played. there were lots of parts you couldn't remember. i would read the scenes to judy, which would trigger lots of memories. >> he was a lifesaver. it was just like having a long conversation with a friend. i was not away of the fact that it was a book, but it was like a wonderful conversation. >> brendan, you talked about her extraordinary memory. we americans don't really know about the graham norton show. all i know is i will see clips on youtube and i'll say, oh my god, how did he get moses and george clooney on the same set

together? it's an incredible show. i heard dame judi recite a sonnet live. i was struck. you talk about her extraordinary memory. walk us through how that made the magic of this book possible? >> i can't remember what i did yesterday, joe, and i certainly can't member what i'm going to do tomorrow. but i can do sonnets. shakespeare is something i can remember. >> i'm going to test you. i'm going to throw a line out of 12th knight. >> what means this lady.

>> she is so good. >> unbelievable. >> dame judi, that is phenomenal. i love the book, and i love the stories of you touring west africa when newly out of the drama school. >> we were asked by the british council if we would go and do the set plays in nigeria, gazan -- ghana and sierra leone. it was to assist if possible. we had the most wonderful time. sometimes everybody joined in.

it was very, very good. in the scene with lady macbeth she has a line, i had to brace myself for it. but it was so challenging, but it was unbelievably rewarding. at the end, everybody came down to the front. there was a wonderful exchange. they helped us with memories. >> i was talking to simon godwin, who's the director of the shakespeare theater here. he said we can bring to him our

own experiences. you, when you talk about shakespeare, you keep coming back to the writing. i was wondering if you felt that too about shakespeare, he's exceptional because he's allowed us to bring our lives to him as well. >> what we don't realize is we quote shakespeare all the time without knowing it. if you want to know about love, about jealously or anger or rage or ambition, i mean, anything you could imagine, shakespeare wrote it. his language is unbelievably accessible. you refer to it all the time, but you don't perhaps realize how much that you do. >> it's extraordinary.

it's called "shakespeare, the man who pays the rent." it's available now. get it. you'll love it. thank you both so much. we really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. we'll be right back with more "morning joe." 'll be right bh more "morning joe. be. so i hired body doubles. 30,000 followers tina in a boutique hotel. or 30,000 steps tina in a mountain cabin. ooh! booking.com booking.yeah so this is pickleball? it's basically tennis for babies, but for adults. it should be called wiffle tennis. pickle! yeah, aw! whoo! ♪♪ these guys are intense. we got nothing to worry about. with e*trade from morgan stanley, we're ready for whatever gets served up. dude, you gotta work on your trash talk. i'd rather work on saving for retirement. or college, since you like to get schooled.

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welcome to the fourth hour of "morning joe." traffic already backing up at lax at 6:00 in the morning. 9:00 a.m. here on the east coast. donald trump expected to be back in the courtroom for day eight of his hush-money trial. it continues one day after the supreme court heard arguments about whether the former president should be immune from criminal prosecution in his

federal election interference case. these are pictures just moments ago of the former president arriving again at the courthouse. for more, nbc news' laura jarrett. >> reporter: the criminal case for donald trump trying to reverse the last election on the rocks. the government showing he cannot be immune because he was still president at the time. the conservative judges skeptical. >> to be subject to criminal laws just like anybody else. >> reporter: still, the justices were mostly unpersuaded that mr. trump should be completely immune. >> i'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the oval office into the seat of criminal activity in this country. >> reporter: pressing his lawyer. >> if the president decides that

his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity? >> it would depend on the hypothetical. that could well be an official act. >> reporter: the case has been bogged down in appeals. the special counsel's office telling the justices that the former president's argument would lead to dark consequences. >> his novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability for bribery, treason, sedition, murder and here conspireing to use fraud to overturn the results of an election. >> reporter: the ultimate result in the case -- >> if you don't have immunity, you're not going to do anything.

you're going to become a terrible president. you're not going to take any of the risks, both good and bad. >> reporter: none of this stopping mr. trump's current trial in manhattan. tabloid mogul david pecker expected back on the stand after telling the jury how his company purchased the story of karen macdougall ahead of the 2016 election, admitting i wanted to protect my company, myself and also donald trump. pecker testifying that while in the white house mr. trump asked him about acdougall saying, how's our girl, to which he relied she's quiet. >> good morning.

a lot to sift through there, but let's go back to the supreme court oral arguments we heard yesterday on this question of immunity. very striking to hear the hypothetical what if a president wanted to have his political opponent assassinated. what were your take-aways from that hearing yesterday? >> it's possibly a decision that's not going to happen until the end of june. you had the more progressive justices really apoplectic in many ways. justice jackson said you can't turn the oval office into a crime center.

justice barrett read from the indictment and made trump's lawyer commit to what is a private act versus an official act. then you had alito and kavanaugh and gorsuch and roberts that former presidents would be targeted if they don't get some type of immunity. you could have multiple opinions written. >> what are the mechanics of that? say we get the decision in june.

how long does this process now take from here? >> it goes back to judge chutkan for what? is it going back to her for trial? or is it going back for her to determine what acts were official and what are private? that's sort of the take-away. if it's that, then there will be no trial before the election. if it goes back at the end of june and says, okay, you can try the case, then it will be miraculous if judge chutkan can get this case tried before election day. it's not impossible, but it's improbable. they can also come up with a decision as quick as they did with bush v gore. that's not impossible, but that's also improbable. >> after hearing some of the

justices yesterday, particularly conservative justices' concerns that donald trump's best hope is delay for all of this, and he may have gotten that yesterday. it was striking to hear some of the discussions happening, whether it was the seal team six assassination debate or the debate over could a president attempt to overturn an election as he did in 2020. these are weighty questions. you had justice ketanji brown jackson say the white house could be turned into a seat of criminality if a president would do anything at any time and face no criminal prosecution for it. what were your take-aways listening to that debate yesterday? >> this plays into donald trump's conception of the presidency, at least when he is president, which is that he can do anything.

he told us that. he said the constitution means i can do anything, to paraphrase. he has made clear time and time again that he will push the boundaries of that power as far as he can and perhaps even further. he said already in this campaign that he believed in termination of the constitution. he called for that in order to remove joe biden from office immediately and reinstate himself immediately without an election. he has said that his next term would be about retribution. the scenario about assassination, obviously we're not thinking he's going to do anything like that, but we're seeing that he believes he can use the office in almost anyway he wants.

he has also talked about using the power of government to punish his enemies in his next term. using the justice department to prosecute people who have offended him including his former aides like john kelly and william barr. he talked about being dictator for a day. we have to see this in the context of his presidency and how he wants to use it for the next four years. >> we can imagine what donald trump would be like if he were completely given immunity. if he has immunity, you can only imagine what a second term might look like under donald trump. >> yeah. you'll notice when judge jackson was bringing up the idea of criminality, she was using a fairly clear hypothetical,

putting this on the most extreme level. we've learned that is not something to be taken as pure hyperbole when donald trump is involved. he has put the bar here at total immunity. donald trump is not drawing distinctions between official acts versus personal acts. he would i'm sure say whatever he did in helping to plan january 6th was an official act. does it suit his personal benefit? of course. he would say this is an official act because i'm president and i should be immune from all oversight. he doesn't draw a distinction between a former president and a current sitting president. look at the new york case. karen macdougall, a lot of that

took place before he was president. it basically gets to absolute power and lack of accountability that donald trump envisions for himself in a presidency. >> speaking of that court in lower manhattan, we just showed former president trump arriving at the courthouse. just a few moments from now we will get david pecker back on the stand. he's under cross examination from donald trump's defense team. what kind of a witness has he been? he's been pretty explicit laying out how his system worked, how he would buy stories to protect donald trump through the years. what have you heard and what can the defense do to him today to undercut what happened earlier in the week. >> they're trying to show, the

defense, that this is what david pecker did not just for donald trump, but for other people. there were a lot of names bandied about that he and donald trump have had a very long relationship that began before the presidential campaign and he did these things for donald trump before then. so they're trying to implant -- all you need is one juror, because that will be a hung jury if that person sticks to their guns. that is a win for donald trump. obviously acquittal is the ultimate win. but a hung jury is a win, because then the prosecutors have to do it all over again. if he was the eyes and ears of the campaign, david pecker was the eyes and ears for the jury to lay out the alleged conspiracy to promote donald trump's election by unlawful

means. he was very good at doing that, at structuring and setting the stage for what happened during the campaign. now he's on cross examination. the defense is making some leeway. he was very credible about who he is. you know, he buys stories. he lies in his national enquirer. he was credible in that way. he was his authentic self. now the defense, they're not trying to prove he's a liar, they're just trying to distance donald trump away from what they're going to say michael cohen was responsible for. >> interesting to hear also mr. pecker say yes that donald trump, after he became president, was still calling to check in and check up on karen macdougall, calling her our girl. david pecker said she's good, she's going to stay quiet.

thank you for your expert analysis. as we continue this morning to see protests on college campuses across the country over israel's war against hamas, some to have demonstrators have been demanding an end to what they say is genocide in gaza. i asked john kirby whether the biden administration has seen any evidence of israel committing genocide. >> absolutely not, no. there's no evidence. the israeli soldiers are not getting up, putting their boots on and saying i'm going to go commit genocide and wantonly murder innocent palestinians. that said, there have been too many civilian casualties. there are too many people starving, too many people in need. so we're going to continue to push israel to do more and to try to get a cease-fire in

place. and then after six weeks of a cease-fire, try to find an enduring way to end this conflict. the president is committed to that. >> that echoes something defense secretary austin testified to before congress. he said israel is not committing genocide in gaza. it's prosecuting a war in which there have been too many civilian casualties. >> a lot of people who are upset at israel are in president biden's camp, the democrats or progressives who he needs in this fall's elections. they're the ones that are most vocal about what israel is doing. president biden has made clear from the beginning that he stands with israel, believes israel has a right to respond to the terrorist attack of october 7th. at the same time he's tried to

walk that line and say that he is concerned about excesses in the battlefield, civilian casualties. he had a tough conversation with netanyahu and there have been some changes on the ground. there is more access for humanitarian aid getting into gaza. a lot of israelis have been withdrawn from gaza. there's the worry about what happens if they go into rafah, where more than a million gazans have been sheltering. that's something president biden has been trying to warn the israeli government about to make sure they do it with a plan that protects civilians. kirby talked about the deal to have a cease-fire. the administration yesterday put

the ononage entirely on hamas. that's something they say the israelis have agreed to recognize hamas is standing in the way of a temporary end to hostilities right now. >> that's why you're hearing more talk that in fact prime minister netanyahu and the idf will go into rafah one way or the other. i want to talk about your latest article for the "new york times" titled "juggling campaign and foreign policy." quote, president biden just signed a bill that could ban president biden from using tiktok but mr. biden plans to keep using tiktok until the new law forces him off of it. campaign advisors were laboring

on wednesday to explain the competing rationale. every president seeking a second term finds himself juggling go different jobs at the same time. running the country and running for office. the commander in chief has to worry about what might be best for the nation even if it's not necessarily best for his electoral chances. israel is an example. he needs the support of young voters. where is do you see this conflict? >> you see campaign joe making life difficult for foreign politician joe. he says things on the campaign trail that may seem at odds at times with the official government policy of his administration. just last week on the campaign trail he was telling a story of being shot down in the pacific

and possibly eaten by cannibals in new guinea. at the time when the president has been courting papua new guinea as part of his indo-pacific strategy to counter chinese aggression in the region. so that was kind of a disconnect there that probably wasn't helpful to the diplomats. similarly about a month or so ago his campaign was trying to make the point that donald trump is cavorting with rogues and unsavory candidates like hungarian dictator victor orban. when the white house is asked does the government of the united states consider victor orban to be a dictator, they're not going to take that bait. we're not using the word dictator in effect. you can see how these are contrasting messaging at times. >> i thought about this while i

was reading your piece buts a in the context of what you cover, the demands and sometimes competing demands of the personal views of the president and the campaign interest of the president and how they compete. how that dynamic plays out in companies, but also presidencies and white houses. >> it's hard to be an incumbent in that sense because you are a sitting head of state as well as a candidate for office. you're asking voters to vote for you, but you're responsible for everything that happens in your government. there's advantages and disadvantages of being an incumbent. we have a president in joe biden who is known for speaking his

mind, who is in fact often off script. he has called himself a gaffe machine because he says things that aren't diplomatically nice but reflect his genuine point of view. last year at a campaign fundraiser he referred to xi jinping as a dictator. most people in washington would agree with that, but it didn't make it easy for his secretary of state trying to smooth over ruffles in the relationship. you do see from time to time a president, particularly this president who likes to say what he wants to say even at the cost of creating a little bit of trouble for his staff. >> in fact, secretary blinken meeting with president xi today with the backdrop of that tiktok

plan. coming up, moments from now donald trump's criminal trial will resume with continued cross examination with david pecker, the former publisher of the national enquirer. also the nfl draft in detroit last night. plus, more on a series of potential blockbuster media deals involving the nba. uster m deals involving the nba.

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this was the scene in detroit yesterday as more than 275,000 fans attended the nfl

draft. kaylee hartung was there. >> reporter: in detroit, it was spectacle, pageantry and celebration. and when the show began, it was just as expected. >> with the first pick in the 2024 draft, the chicago bears select caleb williams, quarterback, southern california. >> reporter: caleb williams fulfilling a dream he'd been working towards since he was 12 years old. >> why are you the right player to change the fate of chicago? >> because i care. i care about the community. i care about the fans. i care about winning games. >> the washington commanders select jalen daniels. >> how confident were you? >> i was pretty confident. let's get to work. washington is going to get

everything out of me. >> reporter: and then -- >> drake may, quarterback north carolina. >> let's go. i'm ready to compete. >> reporter: in a sport where almost nothing is certain, the first three picks ignited an historic night one run on quarterbacks. >> with the eighth pick in the 2024 nfl draft, the atlanta falcons select michael pennic jr. >> the denver broncos select beau nix. >> reporter: the most quarterbacks ever selected that early in the draft. >> six quarterbacks in the first dozen picks. >> reporter: and a show, of course, on stage. >> somebody bring some ibuprofen to the commissioner's green

room. >> the commissioner is okay. >> reporter: the nfl's freshest faces shining bright. >> i went with a double-breasted zip-up. >> this is my louis vuitton suit. >> reporter: in front of a record-breaking draft crowd in detroit, hometown lions fans and their newest star. >> i'm home, man! i'm home! >> for the giants' pick malik neighbors out of lsu. mark leibovich you wrote the book about how the league works. it is amazing to watch this spectacle grow year over year.

about 300,000 fans in detroit last night. all the industry that's built up around the draft, the mock draft, the discussions, the tv shows, the podcasts before you get to this huge annual pageant now, it is something else. >> if the nfl can do one thing better than any other industry in the united states, it is spectacle. between the super bowl and the announcement of the schedule and certainly the draft, they pump this thing up into different tentacles of the united states, whether it's fashion, hollywood, civic boosterism around detroit. it has become such a thing. i went to two drafts and saw it up close, one in chicago and the

next year in philadelphia. it was a massive circus then. then you see it ramping up every year. i liken it to super bowl rings. if you look at the first ring, it was small and tasteful. now these billionaire owners are outcompeting each other to make these massive rings that basically would fit on my wrist. it's an insane arms race to kind of outglitz the last person or ring or draft. it's something that continued to capture the imagination of the american public in all realms. it's a wonder to behold. >> those super bowl rings not subtle, to say the least. let's bring in andrew ross

sorkin. speaking of sports leagues, you're looking at a fight brewing now between media giants over the nba's streaming rights which would see the playoff eventually perhaps go all streaming. >> you just talked about the nfl. this is the next sort of big game in town. it's the big gross sport. basketball is now up for grabs, if you will. jump ball, about what's going to win the rights to this, you have amazon trying to get to it. you have nbc with peacock trying to get access to some of the games. you also have youtube tv trying to get part of the package which historically has been controlled by abc and espn on one end and warner brothers with tbs and tnt

on the other end. how will the nba divide that up? could they split it up in different ways where they're going to take some from each other? we could end up with a bunch of streaming companies and some networks. the nfl hasn't gone this route completely yet, but they're also dipping their toe in with what they did with peacock and amazon already. >> they have the thursday nights. that's clearly the way it's going. you were talking yesterday about this predicament for the fed right now, which is that growth is slowing, but inflation remains stubborn. what are we hearing from the fed? >> i think it's just about to get even more complicated, because this morning we got some

new data that suggests that inflation is continuing to outpace at least the expectations. this is what you call stagflation. i hate to say we're there, but when you have a slowing economy and at the same time you have increased prices, it's not a great place to be. i think we really need to wait a month or two. we have still have a strong economy, but it's going to make it much harder for jay powell at the federal reserve to make a decision about, for example, lowering interest rates. that's not going to happen any time soon. i think it's going to be very hard for them to lower rates in this calendar year. some people with talking about

the policy that depending on how things go, the federal reserve could have to icrease interest rates if inflation continues to persist. >> andrew ross sorkin, thank you. coming up next, court is back in session right now for donald trump's criminal hush-money trial. we'll have the live report from outside the courthouse in lower manhattan, next. rom outside the courthouse in lower manhattan, next.

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welcome back to "morning joe." here are some live pictures of the courtroom in new york city, the hush-money criminal trial resumed just moments ago. former "national enquirer" publisher david pecker is expected to return to the stand this morning after testifying

about hush-money payments to stormy daniels and karen macdougall. trump denies having sexual encounters with the women. joining us from outside the courthouse in lower manhattan, rehema ellis. good morning. >> reporter: good morning. i can tell you when you think about what's going to go on in this courtroom today, it is the defense' opportunity once again to try to poke holes in the testimony that david pecker has provided over the last three days. he was setting up a relationship, a strong bond between himself, michael cohen and donald trump in terms of how money was being passed and being paid out in catch-and-kill schemes, if you will, to prevent negative stories coming out about donald trump during his campaign for the presidency in

2016. one thing brought out in direct examination was david pecker said michael cohen was only to do what donald trump told him to do. he went so far as to say when the two men went to lunch, cohen couldn't pay for lunch for the two of them without the authorization of donald trump. he said that trump was somewhat of a micro manager of his finances. as the defense wants to guard against donald trump having paid for the money for stormy daniels, they tried to poke some holes. he said cohen had paid for the money for stormy daniels. but because he said david pecker refused to pay the money because

he said he already paid hundreds of thousands on the catch-and-kill scheme, he said the boss would be furious. that boss, of course, was donald trump. he learned in december of 2022 that donald trump had paid it. prosecutors are trying to show that donald trump not only paid for it but that he falsified his business records to show that he didn't pay for it. they say that's a crime. the defense has got to poke some holes in the strong line of communication david pecker set up in the direct examination. >> we're told that david pecker has taken the stand again. i want to ask you something. donald trump has been saying repeatedly and did again this

morning in a social media post that they have locked up the courthouse to keep his supporters away. he said the idea is to keep maga supporters away. it's a courthouse, open to the public. there's a park across the street. what's your sense of things? >> i think you can see traffic is moving right behind me. this is not a lockdown. yes, when the former president was enter the courtroom in the morning and leave in the evening, there is a block of traffic to allow his motorcade to move freely and swiftly through the streets. but when he's in that building right behind me, traffic is moving. there's no lockdown. there's a park across the street, a public place that is designed to hold those who want to come and present some public demonstration. there currently are a few trump supporters, maybe ten or 15 people. they're pretty quiet right now.

and nothing is blocking them from being there. >> perhaps he's embarrassed that more people haven't showed up for him. next, historian doris kerns goodwin comparing the protests to the israel/hamas war to the vietnam war with some important distinctions. etnam war with som distinctions

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protests in opposition to israel's war against gaza continue to play out on college campuses across the country. with tensions rising and graduations just days away, some schools taking major steps, they say, in the name of safety. >> reporter: from new york to california -- >> free palestine! >> reporter: -- and illinois to d.c., demonstrations over the violence in the middle east are

spreading across more college campuses just ahead of graduation as tensions flare and arrests soar into the hundreds. police have deployed pepper balls and even tasing one person. and more confrontations between protesters and police at ohio state. after chaotic clashes at the university of southern california, the school cancelling its main commencement ceremony commencement ceremony just two weeks away. >> i don't understand. specifically why are we afraid? >> the university says it won't have time to process the estimated 65,000 guests with its new safety measures in place. the unprecedented move comes after usc already nixed the

graduation speech of its pro-palestinian valedictorian due to safety concerns. >> even if they have to cancel every single commencement that's up to them! but what protesters are defending as free speech, some jewish students call hate speech. >> freedom of speech is very important, and i'm very for that, but i think there is a point where the university itself has a duty to protect all of its students, including the jewish ones. >> reporter: and overnight at the epicenter of the pro-palestinian demonstrations, columbia university ramping up security as counterprotests from outside groups march near campus, demonstrators clashing on campus. >> you have to be sent back -- >> reporter: the clock is ticking on negotiations with students on site of the encampment, though with no clear deadline from the university. >> i'm worried if the university brings in nypd, i think it's going to change the university forever. >> emilie ikeda reporting there.

joining us now pulitzer prize winning author, doris kearns goodwin, she's the author of the new book "an unfinished love story: a personal history of the 1960s." a beautiful book we've talked about some on this show. good to see you. i'm curious with your perspective in the long lens of history, how you view these protests over the last couple of weeks on college campuses, how they differ, how they're the same from those we saw in the 1960s. >> well, i'm actually old enough that i was one of those protesters in the 1960s. i was a graduate student at harvard in 1967 when really it was the main subject of the day, teach-ins, protests, demonstrations, marches, i went down with a friend of mine to a big march in new york, a mobilization march. the two of us came back worried that most of the people were peaceful but there were some carrying vietkong flags. we went back and conservatively

wrote an article on the need for a third party to challenge linden johnson in the hopes that all those protests could be put in the system. we heard nothing from the new republic. i was selected as a white house fellow. we had a big dance at the white house. i danced with president johnson and two days later the new republic finally published this piece with their title how to remove lyndon johnson in 1968. i was certain he was going to kick me out of the program. he finally said bring her down here for a year, and if i can't win her over, no one can. that was my first involvement in the anti-war protests. >> doris, hi, it's peter baker. congratulations on the new book. i'm curious what you see in terms of the parallel between lbj and these protesters and the young people of his era and president biden today and the young people we're seeing in columbia and all these other colleges. is there a parallel there or lessons for the current

president? >> well, i think the most important thing is that with the vietnam protest, there was a clear sense of mission to stop the bombing and to begin negotiating a peace, and what you saw happening among the overwhelming majority of students who joined the mccarthy campaign in new hampshire was that they had been -- he was going to be running against lyndon johnson for the presidential nomination, and the kids had, i think, been taught by the civil rights movement of the importance for discipline, the importance of staying on message, the kids cut their long beards and their hair. girls wore long skirts instead of mini skirts. they knew that their goal was to fire the conscience of the american people, and it worked for them. i mean, mccarthy got 42% in that new hampshire primary. that led to lyndon johnson deciding to make a major speech on march 31st, 1968, where he called for an end to the bombing, stopping the bombing, and he was going to call people to the peace table, and he withdrew from the race, and for a moment it seemed like it had

really worked. my husband was up there with the mccarthy kids. he loved those kids. he was 37. he was an old guy. he used to stay up at night telling them stories about jfk and lbj. then what happened is the north agreed to come on april 3rd to the bargaining table and it was one of the happiest days on lyndon johnson's life. on april 4th everyone was prepared to go from washington to hawaii to begin talks with the officials there. johnson was supposed to join them later that night. the whole plane was filled with white house aides and the news came at 5:30 that martin luther king had been shot. and everything seemed to break apart. fate intervened, the riots happened, the talks eventually broke down, and then you get to the democratic convention, which was much more out of control. i was also at that convention, so i think the discipline originally of the overwhelming majority of the students and the clear cuttedness it was our war, so it's an easier thing to protest than somebody else's war where you don't have control over the same factors. >> so fascinating to have your

view of all of this, presidential historian, doris kearns goodwin, thank you so much. that does it for this morning and this week, we'll be right back here on monday morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage after a short break. coverage after a short break ( ♪ ♪ ) start your day with nature made. the #1 pharmacist recommended vitamin and supplement brand. and when i got there, they have the sushi- this is clem. like sushi classy-

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. right now on "ana cabrera reports," cross examination, the first witness back on the stand this morning in donald trump's hush money trial facing the defense for a second