criminal charges against trump. that is how you think when you are in a cult. >> that is how you think when you're in a cult. >> well put. >> you know, we hear about situational ethics, in the case of republicans, it's situational patriotism. they love the justice department when their opponents are being prosecuted. they love american democracy when their -- when their candidates win. but if they lose elections, suddenly, they hate american democracy and they think it's corrupt. if donald trump is convicted of crimes, of felonies 34 times, suddenly they hate the justice system. but if it goes the other way for them, situationally, it's okay. such hypocrisy. >> so is it biden's justice department being weaponized by biden or is it not? >> yeah. this lays bare everything we've been saying on this show for many, many years now about the hypocrisy. i mean, when you look at the disappointment, frankly, for many republicans about the outcome of this trial, they wanted to be able to say that there is a two-tiered system of justice, that the justice department is out to get joe biden. when, in fact, this jury came back very swiftly, by the way, with a conviction on three counts against the son of the president of the united states. and consider the different responses from these two men. after donald trump was convicted of 34 felony counts, he went crazy, of course. his supporters went crazy. they are coming after him. joe biden personally sent his goons to send donald trump to jail, on and on and on, the system is rigged. we're a third world country. yesterday, president biden put out a statement after his own son was convicted and may go to jail, saying, my son, i'm proud of my son, i don't like the outcome here, but i respect the outcome and we'll work through this as a family. there is the difference. >> there it is! >> and what a stark difference in every way. in every way. you go back to 2000 when al gore had every right to be angry at the outcome of the election. and what did you have al gore doing? conceding. you go back to 1960 and the nixon folks. they knew, in their mind, that illinois had been stolen. richard nixon decided in 1960, he wasn't going to tear america apart. he was going to accept the outcome. now, of course, pat buchanan, when we asked him, willie, why didn't you complain more about illinois, because historians say that it looks like kennedy stole illinois, he said, because we stole kentucky, joe! >> oh, my gosh! >> so maybe there were some shenanigans going on there. but the bigger point is that after the election, after these deeply personal fights, where people and families give everything they have, these politicians in the past have become statesmen. al gore's finest moment. if you looked at his career, i was just blown away by his concession speech. it was extraordinarily moving and said what a lot of people said, if that guy -- >> i know. >> had run -- if we had seen more of that, he would have won the election in 2000, but here, it's all situational. with trump supporters and unfortunately a contaminated republican party, especially in the house, if trump wins elections, then democracy is fine. if trump loses elections, then american democracy is broken. if trump is convicted, then the rule of law is corrupted and we're no better than castro's cuba. if hunter biden is convicted, yeah, well, the justice system works. >> host people with basic values know that's wrong. >> they all know it's wrong. >> still ahead on "morning joe," we're going to be obviously going way deeper into the hunter biden verdict. we'll also break down new poll numbers that show who voters in key battleground states say they believe is best to handle the economy ahead of the november election. >> willie, on this front, we've been hearing for over a year now, willie, that somehow, there was this huge gap on the economies and voters would just never trust joe biden. some polls are starting to show, that massive gap is narrowing quickly, and it's almost like in this -- a lot of economists, a lot of political people have come on our show and say, you know, the economy's a leading indicator here. american consumers will catch up, probably, by summertime. well, it's summer, and they're catching up. it's almost a dead tie in this latest poll on who you trust more in the economy. >> yeah, donald trump was enjoying a wide gap, and some people thought that this would be, despite all the economic data that shows how strong our economy is leading the world, the most resilient post-covid economy in the world, had almost conceded that issue to donald trump. but this new polling shows, as you say, that american perhaps are now feeling that inflation, while very stubborn, does continue to stick down too slowly, but it does continue to tick down. and all the other data including unemployment and growth and the dow jones and all of these other metrics by which we measure our economy are moving in the right direction. and hopefully, people are feeling that in their lives. and perhaps joe biden will benefit from that. it appears he is, anyway, if you look at the growth over the last couple of numbers. >> mika, look at the numbers, it's 3.5 margin of error. you look at the numbers there, it's practically a tie. >> yep. also ahead, we're going to show you how the sinclair broadcast group seems to be working hard to push dubious claims about biden's mental fitness for office to millions of eamericans. they just keep harping on it and perhaps don't realize that that place right into the biden team's hands. we'll talk about that. >> and willie, just going back to yesterday, "the washington post" wrote about on social media, but now you have an entire news network that runs local stations across america, feeding lies -- and they are lies! deliberate lies -- sinclair is feeding deliberate lies to their viewers. if you really think that joe biden is out of is it, you know what, you know, take it straight on with your viewers. but they're deliberately lying and spreading misinformation. it appears from these reports. >> we talk about fox news and some of the other networks at the national level, but it's important to watch closely what people are getting in their living rooms at home on the local news. and there is a group that mika just referenced, a sinclair group, that is literally writing a script for the anchors of certain affiliates, not all, to read, with an agenda. and we're going to play this clip that a reporter has put together of all of them, literally saying the exact same thing about joe biden. it's pretty chilling. >> along with joe, willie and me, we have jonathan lemire, katty kay, and mike barnicle. we begin with what comes next for hunter biden, after a jury yesterday found him guilty on all three felony charges on his federal gun trial. the president's son had pleaded not guilty to the three counts tied to lying on a federal gun application about his drug use. sources inside the defense room tell nbc news that following the verdict, hunter biden thanked everyone there by name, hugged them, and tried to raise their spirits. he later issued this public statement. quote, i am more grateful today for the love and support that i experienced this last week from melissa, my family, my friends, and my community than i am disappointed by the outcome. recovery is possible by the grace of god and i am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time. special counsel david weiss spoke briefly to reporters following the verdict. >> no one in this country is above the law. everyone must be accountable for their actions, even this defendant. however, hunter biden should be no more accountable than any other citizen convicted of this same conduct. the prosecution has been and will continue to be committed to this principle and to the principles of federal prosecution in carrying out its responsibilities. >> hunter biden and his attorney have said they plan to appeal this verdict. as i mentioned, president biden issued a statement reacting to the verdict in his son's gun trial. it reads in part, i will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as hunter considers an appeal. jill and i will always be there for hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. nothing will ever change that, end quote. last week, the president said very clearly, he will not pardon his son. president biden also had an emotional reunion with hunter late yesterday. the two hugged on the tarmac after the president changed his schedule and flew to delaware following an event in washington, joe. >> yeah, i just wonder, the prosecutor said that hunter biden shouldn't be treated differently than anybody else. so why was he? because he was. if his last name was smith, these charges would have never been brought. if his last name was jones, they would have never blown up the plea deal that they had already done, that the judge respected. i mean, you know, again, i'm a big believer -- it went to the jury and i believe in the system. and we'll always believe in the system, but he doesn't need to come out and lie and say that hunter biden's being treated like everybody else, because hunter president biden is there because of his last name, end of story. and a lot of trump people can say the same thing about what happened in manhattan with alvin bragg, but in this case, biden was there because of his last name and nothing else. >> and by the way, some republicans have said the same, joe. senator lindsey graham said this last week, you even had some very pro-trump republican members of congress, again, disappointed by this outcome, because they wanted to show a two-tiered system of justice, saying that this trial had always been kind of silly, that it was a distraction from more serious things to look at with hunter biden. they're saying that now, after the fact. let's bring in former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent, lisa rubin. lisa, good morning. what's your reaction to the verdict in delaware? >> my reaction, willie, is that this is the parmatic, "both/and" situation. you can find that the jury's decision is just. that hunter biden knowingly applied for a firearm understanding that he had been an addict and that addiction is a continuing state, it doesn't start and stop, that once an addict, always an addict, and at the same time, as joe said, you cannot only find this situation to be totally tragic, but believe that it never should have happened in the first place. that the plea deal that was engineered between the u.s. attorney's office and between hunter biden's then lawyers was one that should have been honored. and it fell apart principally for two reasons. it fell apart first because the prosecutors wouldn't commit themselves to saying that the plea deal fully resolved all possible investigations against hunter biden, including those under the foreign agent registration act, stemming from his work in ukraine. but the other reason it fell apart is because the judge who oversaw this trial bristled at the idea that she should have to supervise the question of whether hunter would be in compliance with the diversion agreement that was set up to handle the gun charges. and the reason that that deal was struck in the way that it was, is an unspoken reason, and i'll tell you what it is. it's because the prosecutors here and hunter biden's lawyers feared that because the diversion agreement was two years in duration, in a possible future department of justice, controlled by trump and/or another republican who was retributive against hunter biden, that that person would have an excuse to say, hunter biden was out of compliance, that he deserved to be thrown in prison. they didn't want a future republican doj to have control over that decision. and therefore, in the plea agreement, they engineered it so that the judge would oversee that determination. when they presented the plea deal to her last july, she said, why should i be in control that? that's not my decision to make. what she didn't understand, what no one could say to her on the record is, we're doing it this way because we fear retribution against mr. biden if it's not set up this way, your honor. >> lisa, could you speak to the jury, what happened yesterday at a jury trial. the son of the president of the united states of america is on trial in delaware. his neighbors, delaware residents are sitting in judgment of him. 12 ordinary people, citizens, sitting in judgment on the son of the president. the president doesn't interfere in this case. the president announces that he will not pardon his son. hunter knows that he lied on the application. that's why he's there. at the end of the day, do you think ordinary americans give enough thought to how this system is a miracle, a gift to this country, a gift to democracy, the jury system, and the way it works. it worked in new york and it worked in wilmington. >> and most of the time, mike, it does work. i wish they would give more thought to the miracle that is our jury system. it's endemic to the democracy that many of us believe is teetering on the brink right now. this is a testament to what is unshakable by our democracy. i was struck by the three jurors who came forward yesterday and talked to members of the media, and one in particular who essentially said to our katy tur yesterday who said, i believe this case should have been prosecuted, i believe the charges should have been brought, i believe he is guilty of these charges, and yet i believe jail time is completely inappropriate, not only because of how the charges were brought aabout, because of the underlying facts, this is a person who's brought his life around, he's married, he has a young son, he's earning a living, and the circumstances that led to the charges in the first place. let's remember, hunter biden owned a gun for 11 days. and the reason that the gun was recovered is that his sister-in-law, hailey biden, was so fearful that he might use the gun to harm himself, that unthinking, she took the gun and deposited it in a trash can outside a wilmington grocer. that struck a chord with that particular jury. i believe this case should have been brought, i believe he was guilty, and yet, i can see it as the tragedy that it is. >> president biden learned of the verdict while he was at the white house preparing for, ironically enough, a speech on gun safety. he then changed plans, made an unscheduled trip back to wilmington, delaware. he embraced his son on the tarmac, as you can see there. the family spent last night in wilmington and then the president will fly this morning to italy and the g-7. and i have reporting that in recent weeks ahead of the trial, president biden made the point, joed, that you did, saying that if he weren't running for re-election, he believed that hunter would have gotten that plea deal, that plea deal that fell apart last summer at the last moment. that plea deal, which would have kept hunter biden out of prison. and now, we shall see, but he could face a lengthy prison time, possibly, depending what the judge decides. and in terms of the fallout going forward, first and foremost, this is a personal toll on president biden. we know how close he is to his son. he texts and calls him each and every day, aides worry about that, both on this overseas trip and as sentencing is approaching. as far as the politics, which we'll dive into later, campaign aides both for biden and trump don't think this will change the trajectory of the race, but they do suspect that it will be a flashpoint come their first debate, where donald trump may make some very personal, ugly attacks at president biden. and we should expect president biden to stay, you know, some aides want him to flash a temper there and say, look, i'm a father, this is my son, this is inappropriate, thinking that could resonate with voter, that that would be a very real, human response. and the biden campaign, they'll continue using nomenclature like "convicted felon" to describe donald trump, they won't back away that, because donald trump is on the ballot, hunter biden is on the. >> let's be very clear about this, in the debate, i've heard a lot of people talking about this concern. mike barnicle, if i'm joe biden and i'm on the debate stage with donald trump and he starts talking about hunter biden as some sort of retort against his own 34 felonies, i would stop, i would turn, look around the stage and say, excuse me, hold on. hold on. i don't see hunter biden up here. hold on, donald, let me check -- >> maybe he's -- >> i don't see eric over there. wait, wait, eric's not here, so, i'm not running against eric. i'm running against you, donald. and you're not running against hunter biden or the ghost of hunter biden, who's not here, you're running against me. and up here, the two people that are going to run this country for the next four years, of the two of us, only one has been convicted of a felony! and you've been convicted of 34 felonies, donald! so let's leave our kids out of this. let's leave our family out of this. you don't want me to start talking about what you and your kids and your in-laws did in your name to get rich off of your back during the presidency. boom. that's it. >> saudi arabia. >> ends it. end it. and you know what, he should take any crap from trump and he needs to be ready. because donald trump has 34 felony convictions. joe biden, none. those are the two people on stage. and he shouldn't -- biden's people should double down right now and go harder at trump than ever before on the fact that he's a convicted felon. well, if that happens, if it occurs during the course of that debate in two weeks, that donald trump does say something about hunter biden, in addition to saying what you just said, it might be best if he reprised joseph mccarthy, the lawyer, mr. welch, in the mccarthy hearings, turning to joe mccarthy and saying, have you no sense of decency, sir? and in this case, he could turn to donald trump and say, not only have you no sense of decency, sir, but you realize that the office of the president of the united states is not built around a thirst for revenge, it's not built around a thirst for going after every opponent who said something negative in your perception about you, during your presidency or during your life today. it's not about that. it's about the country. it's about not damaging the country, with the kind of language and behavior that you have exhibited nearly every day of your adult life. >> yeah. that's true. while the trump campaign decried the former president's guilty verdict, they were quick to call hunter biden's conviction a distraction from joe biden's alleged crimes. meanwhile on the hill, most republicans touted the party line, that there is two-tiered system of justice in this country. joining us now, nbc news capitol hill correspondent, ali vitali. ali, what are we hearing from republicans now? >> it's exactly that, mika. and it's what we expected. we've been asking republicans, especially those in the house, consistently throughout the hunter biden trial, what they think about this and if it assuages any concerns that they have, unfounded as they may be, about a two-tiered system of justice. listen to what they said. you'll find this does not assuage them. watch. >> well, first, let's remember, this was joe biden's corrupt doj that tried to negotiate a sweetheart plea deal with outside immunity unrelated to this case. >> there are two tiers of justice, and again, they wanted to let him off of everything. >> do you think that the department of justice is still weaponized against conservatives, even though we see this verdict here today? >> absolutely. when they tell school moms they're domestic terrorists because they don't like what's being taught in their classroom and other things, we can go into it, but i do still think they are, yes, ma'am. >> this is going to be, guys, yet another moment where we watch republicans say thing publicly, forcefully with cameras in front of them and then we listen to a more nuanced approach behind the scenes. sources, operatives, all of these people who are involved in the presidential election and all of these various races up and down the ballot. and one of those told our colleague john allen, this verdict makes it less of a bumper sticker issue in their minds, and takes some of the momentum out of trump's sails to be able to say that the justice department is only being weaponized against him. now, clearly, we're seeing that. and and i think the other fascinating thing is, and we'll get more of this as we're able to talk to more voters, there are going to be those republican voters who agree with exactly what those congressmen and senators said in that clip that we showed. they are going to toe the party line, this is exactly what they expected. this is politics, pure and simple. but there are also going to be those people, and i know the biden campaign think this, too, that had the reaction that we saw some voters in bucks county, pennsylvania, had to one of our embeds yesterday. that this man hunter biden has been through a lot. that they felt sad watching this prosecution. that's going to be something that plays out over the next few months. and while hunter has always been wrapped up in his father's re-election efforts, it is so far from being the same things. the prosecutions and legal troubles of l hunter biden are shades of different than the prosecutions, verdicts, and criminal penalties and felonies of the man who's trying to be the republican nominee and once again be the president, donald trump. >> yeah, you know, it's so interesting that, you know i've talked over the past couple of days that how this disinformation on joe biden and somehow that he's lost it, always accrues to joe biden's advantage, because he outperforms. so republicans are actually hurting themselves. i think of marjorie taylor greene holding up pictures of hunter biden at his very lowest, when he was on crack, when he was -- >> i think it might even be revenge porn -- >> -- undressed. and holding that up, to give americans a view of just how low hunter biden sunk. and i remember in the first debate, we talked about how the first debate was so bad for donald trump, it was bad for donald trump in a large part because he went after hunter biden. and i heard a chorus of conservative voices, hard-right conservative voices who hated joe biden's politics, right after that, about how deeply offended they were, that someone went after a child. because guess what? we all have children, children all have challenges to varying degrees, and every parent, whether they're republican, democratic, or independent, they understand that. and katty kay, when we see these pictures of hunter biden now, after the conviction going around hugging everybody. >> cheering them up. >> cheering them up. being the one to say, it's going to be okay, hugging his father in an embrace that is so -- is so moving, not everybody works on a political campaign or works on a cable news show. the voters who are going to decide this can see into the eyes of these people. they can see them together. they can see the love in this family and come to the same conclusion that that jury came to, katty, which is, this is a man who has been through so much. look at him now. look at where he has come. and anyone who wants to beat the shit out of a man who has been struggling through addiction and has come out on the other side, man, that's somebody who is going to gain the wrath of a lot of voters. this is a losing issue. i've said it before, i'll say it again. this is a losing issue for donald trump on any debate stage. >> yeah, there's something awfully poignant about joe biden saying that if he had not made this decision to run for president again, that he doesn't think that his son would even have gone to trial, let alone been convicted. the wait of that -- god forbid, if he was to lose in november, what's he going to feel in november, that he ran and his son potentially has to go to jail. there's an awful kind of shakespearean tragedy quality to the biden family from the crash onwards. but i think you're right from the voters that will make up their decision late, don't tend to be voters that are focused very much on policies that are dear to them early on, necessarily, or party issues that are dear to them, necessarily. or even kind of be particularly by the very nature of the fact that they could go either way. they're not massively partisan. so what are the things that are going to make those voters decide in the end. they know all about joe biden. they know all about donald trump. it is potentially something personal, something emotional, something like a father hugging his son. and i think that it will be tough for donald trump to take on hunter biden come the debates, exactly because of what you say. this is the kind of thing, if we're trying to think, what is it that's going to push somebody one way or the other when they wake up in the morning on election day, they may not have even decided, could it be an emotional thing of that relationship? >> lisa rubin, where does this go for hunter biden in terms of legally, sentencing and other decisions on his fate and appeal? >> well, first, mika, we have to get to the sentencing, and that is generally anywhere between two to three months to four months out from the jury verdict. after the sentencing, hunter biden will have 14 days to serve a notice of appeal. and when we think about what kind of issues he might appeal, i think the biggest one is the constitutional question. and that's a statute that basically says that someone who is a user of or has been addicted to a controlled substance, a stimulant, a narcotic can't be in position of a gun, and obviously, there's a required question that's related to that on the form. there is a case that's currently percolating through the federal courts. it was decided by the fifth circuit court of appeals. there is a fully briefed petition to the supreme court on the constitutionality of that very statute. and guess who brought that petition? it's joe biden's department of justice. so when people say, joe biden is not a decent man, he is a person who reappointed the u.s. attorney investigating his son, told another media outlet he wouldn't pardon his son, and is defending the constitutionality of one of the very statutes under which his son was just convicted. that's not a person who doesn't believe in the rule of law. that is a person who is standing between the rule of law and something far more pernicious, mika. >> wow. >> and hunter biden has that tax trial also coming up in september. it's not over for him, in term of his legal troubles. ali vitali, we heard reaction from not so much donald trump yesterday, but the campaign saying that this wasn't the real issue. the real issue, and then they throw up that smoke screen about ukraine and russia and china and the biden crime family. they've decided again that somehow that the president of the united states, who they describe as feeble and addled is also the mastermind behind an international crime syndicate. that is now the issue, but when you look at those issues, republicans have walked away from their impeachment hearings and their effort to impeach this president of the united states, so in the congress that you cover every day, what comes next? are they still pursuing this? we've heard from james comer about all of this smoke with no fire. there hasn't been fire for years now. where are they going with this, if anywhere? >> we've watched house republicans specifically use their gavel power to be the front line of defense for the former president on this. i share your confusion, willie, on how current president biden can be both the puppet master of everything in the universe, and also too feeble to make it between a podium and his office. i also struggle with the comparison that the trump campaign continues to make there, but look, we have watched and will continue to watch the ways that james comer, who you mentioned, but also jim jordan, who's the head of both the weaponization of government committee, who has been pretty quiet lately, and the house judiciary committee who has been much more active in trying to mount these investigations to muddy the water in all of the legal issues surrounding donald trump. they will do that perhaps in their most explosive fashion some time next month. right now it looks like july 12th. the day after trump's sentencing in manhattan, they will have the manhattan district attorney, alvin bragg, come before them, testify in public fashion. that is something members of that committee have wanted for months. they've been demanding documents to that effect. when the attorney general himself was before congress just last week or two weeks ago, this was one of the central issues that they tried to press him on. they did not get what they wanted, in terms of being able to underscore and find evidence of a two-tiered system of justice or a weaponization of the of justice department. but nevertheless, they will continue trying. and i think that's what the trump campaign is going to continue leaning on, this quote/unquote evidence that congress has unearthed that doesn't do the job of being the evidence that they need it to be, to support these theories of why donald trump is in the legal trouble that he is, when the reality is, of course, that he's in the legal trouble that he is, because of his own actions that jurors have found to be credible. ic the other thing, though, that strikes me in this conversation as we talk about the role of family and campaigns, and i've done several of these, and i know you guys have, too, that as reporters, if kids of candidates weighed into the politics of it and are out on the campaign trail and are campaigning that i think we've all come accustomed in the trump era, where the kids are literally serving in the administration, they're out on the road, they're making endorsements. donald trump jr. has become a real figurehead within the maga movement, those are the people that you cover then as if they are adjacent to candidates. when you have family members who are taking steps back, who are not overtly in the politics of it, they are not supposed to be treated the same. and of course, we're watching this leveling of the playing field right now in 2024, but this is not the way it usually is. >> great point. nbc's ali vitali and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin, thank you both very much for your coverage this morning. and still ahead on "morning joe." on the heels of the "wall street journal" publishing a, let's just say, questionable piece on president biden's mental acuity, we're digging into new reporting about another media outlet pushing deceptive attacks on biden's age. plus, one of donald trump's former attorneys is voicing new concerns about what kind of retribution trump might seek against his political opponents in a second term. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." we're back in 90 seconds. ead on "morning joe." we're back in 90 seconds at care.com, it's easy to get a break, even if you're not on summer vacation. join millions of families who've trusted us and find caregivers in your area for kids, seniors, pets, and homes. go to care.com now to find the care you need this summer. 35 past the hour. the sinclair broadcast group, which is owned by a right-wing media mogul, seems to be working hard to push dubious claims about president biden's mental fitness for office. of and they're pushing it to millions of americans. erin rupert of public notice and jud lagom of popular information highlighted how sinclair has aggressively worked the claims about biden's age into dozens of local broadcasts across the country. the station aired a segment that re-packaged a widely criticized "wall street journal" article that questions biden's acuity. local anchors all introduced the segment with a nearly identical script on how the president's mental awareness will affect the upcoming election. here are just some of them. >> "the wall street journal" calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. as matt gelka tells us, the issue could decide the election. >> "the wall street journal" has published a story which calls the mental fitness of president biden into question. as national correspondent matt gelka tells us, the issue could be an election decider. >> should he be on that or any ballot? "the wall street journal" is out with new reporting, calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. as national correspondent, matt gelka tells us, the issue could be an election decider. >> as "the wall street journal" is out with reporting calling into question the mental fitness of president biden. we want to know, are you worried about president biden's mental fitness? as national correspondent matt gelka tells us, the issue could be an election decider. >> as "the wall street journal" is out with new reporting, calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. >> and as national correspondent matt gelka tells us, the issue could be an election decider. >> i mean, and willie, the issue here is, of course, local news. i think people trust local news more than they trust national news, because they know those news anchors. but it's actually not local reporting, it's spoon-fed from a right-wing leadership group that's spreading disinformation. and it's, you know, i guess it's just a sign of the times. but again, we talk about pushing back on disinformation. it's pretty tough when that disinformation is coming from local news networks, whose bosses willingly want them to spread lies. >> and local news anchors, local newspapers, people trust them, they live in their communities. and sinclair owns, i think, almost 200 stations. and as you can probably see there by some of the stations, those were fox, but abc, cbs, nbc. these are stations that people have on in their living rooms all the time. it's not unusual for a network to feed to their affiliates national coverage, so they can have -- they don't all have reporters in washington and new york. but what is a little unusual here, jonathan lemire, is the narrative being pushed so specifically about a piece from another, well, the -- not from sinclair, but from a murdoch-owned entity in the "wall street journal," about joe biden, pushing the story, as we have sort of dissembled over the last few weeks, is filled with problems. >> sinclair has become a rising force in media over the last couple of presidential cycles. as you say, couple hundred stations there. polls suggest that americans trust local news more than national news. this probably has an impact. and we saw this in 2020. the biden campaign tried to flag moments like this. they're certainly doing it again now. you know, amplifying the good work here done by the reporters who identified this trend. and it's something that also just points to, on the right, beyond sinclair, includes fox news and other murdoch organizations, and even those further to the right, they're much so marching in lockstep. and sort of touting the party line and agreeing on certain talking points, much more so than other, what you would call more mainstream media, or even some of the more liberal media organizations that are out there. and it is something that in a moment, in such a fractured media ecosystem, does make a difference. and both campaigns are having challenges with this, that just, you know, with fewer eyeballs on what we consider traditional media, more and more people getting their media in other sources, including their phones, it's just hard to break through. but it does seem like that "wall street journal" reporting with all of its flaws is one of those stories that did. >> and they stand by it. "the wall street journal". >> they know it's a lie! i mean, willie, the crazy thing about it, they know it's a lie. and how do we know they know it's a lie? because they have the kevin mccarthy quotes from the actual meeting at the white house that supposedly mccarthy later sid showed that he was in a haze. they have the quotes from people around kevin mccarthy who said, yeah, mccarthy would say that biden was bonkers, publicly, but then quietly would whisper to us, privately, what an effective negotiator he was. that was reported in politico. that was reported in mainstream publications, before "the wall street journal" piece. they know they were spreading a lie at "the wall street journal." those editors knew it, the reporters knew it, they did it anyway. and the only guess i can have is that it came from above. in fact, outside "the wall street journal" newsroom, that is the only way to justify that story, when you had, as i've said before -- >> i mean, that's a guess. >> as i've said before on this show, you have "the wall street journal" that's actually been going under new leadership, i think, in a really great direction. so that's just like, what -- which of these don't fit? that story doesn't fit. and i -- there are a few explanations other than, it came from above and they were told they had to put it in. >> and whoever put it in, it's certainly had the desired effect, which is a couple of weeks of coverage, now it feeds up, as we just saw, the ecosystem feeds into sinclair, gives them something to talk about. they can use that as their way of telling a story of what they say is jo biden's outline. we've heard from democrats in the last week or so who said they spoke to the "wall street journal" for that piece and that their views were not included in that. the fact of the matter is, there are a lot of people in this country, even democrats, and we know privately who express concerns about joe biden's age, but you can express that and report that in a more direct and shall we say, honest way than it was presented. >> in context. in context to the opponent and his behavior and his fitness. that would be fair, especially given the shark battery speech that happened at time, around the same time, there's a story to be done there about trump's fitness. >> there are so many stories to be done there. and yet -- >> president obama -- >> "the wall street journal" seems to be enured to it. coming up, more and more young women are calling dating in the social media age a nightmare. we'll dig into a new story for "new york" magazine about what's behind the struggle to find the right partner. >> boy, this is important. >> this is. >> this is so important. >> "morning joe" will be right back. so important. >> "morning joe" will be right back (male vo) dan made progress with his mental health, but his medication caused unintentional movements in his face, hands, and feet called tardive dyskinesia, or td. so his doctor prescribed austedo xr— a once-daily td treatment for adults. ♪ as you go with austedo ♪ austedo xr significantly reduced dan's td movements. some people saw a response as early as 2 weeks. with austedo xr, dan can stay on his mental health meds— (dan) cool hair! (female vo) austedo xr can cause depression, suicidal thoughts, or actions in patients with huntington's disease. pay close attention to and call your doctor if you become depressed, have sudden changes in mood, or have suicidal thoughts. don't take if you have liver problems, are taking reserpine, tetrabenazine, or valbenazine. austedo xr may cause irregular or fast heartbeat, or abnormal movements. seek help for fever, stiff muscles, problems thinking, or sweating. common side effects include inflammation of the nose and throat, insomnia and sleepiness. ♪ as you go with austedo ♪ (male vo) ask your doctor for austedo xr. ♪ austedo xr ♪ basically, what you're saying is 95% of the population is undateable? >> undateable! >> then how are all of these people getting together? >> alcohol. >> that was "seinfeld's" take on the dating world back in the '90s. >> that sounds like scott galloway right there. winner takes all. >> it seems things have only become more bleak in the age of social media. and a lot of other things. in a new piece for "new york" magazine's "the cut" entitled, "is dating a total nightmare for you right now?" several women talk about why they feel dating is nearly impossible these days. joining us right now, feature's editor at "the cut," katherine thompson, also with us professor of marketing at the nyu stearns school of business, scott galloway. and we've heard you talk a lot about some of the underlying causes to this one problem, which branches out to, we're worried about all of our young people. but katherine, i'll start with you. i want to know more about what inspired this piece, anecdotally. i'm hearing from a lot of young women who want to date young men. the simple answer to that is, there are none. they say there are none. why is that? what's behind it? >> hey, mika, thank you for having me. i mean, this piece came about in the way that a lot of our best stories do, which is that we were just seeing a lot of chatter online, specifically around tiktok videos of women in their late 20s, early 30s, crying into the camera about how fed up they are with the dating scene. and about the lack of connection that they feel when they go on dates with men. i should emphasize that we are talking about women who are seeking men as partners. >> and they feel like, sure, they're going out, meeting people through dating apps, for example, but they're just not making it past early dates, forging a deeper connection with the people that they meet, and what we heard a lot of, that they felt that the men they were going out with did not share their priority s. priorities. >> and what did they say about the young men they tried to have relationships with? what was the description of what -- you say they feel they didn't have the same priorities. what were their priorities? >> well, these women have spent a lot of time and effort focusing on their career and are now at a place in their life where they want to settle down with a partner who perhaps wants marriage, perhaps wants kids, but they're finding that the men they're going on dates with just do not want to form a long-term relationship and are not looking for a deeper connection. a lot of the women felt that they were being strung along just for sex and not for a deeper emotional connection. >> you know, scott, the first time i think i saw you talking, it was about how dating apps had completely messed things up, you know, sort of a winner-take-all. that 10% of the most attractive, successful men were getting 90% of the market interested in them, and that created a lot of men, guys that were home, not dating at all. this is an interesting angle, too. and of course, it's all anecdotal, scott. but it's so anecdotal. it's kind of like in politics, when i talked on ten doors and nine people were telling me the same thing, i knew i didn't have to take a poll. in this case, we have heard from so many young women, college, post-college, you know, why aren't they dating? they say, there are no men out there. what do you mean? there have to be -- no, there are no men out there to date! and it's something that is baffling to us, because of our experiences growing up in the '70s and the '80s and the '90s. but what's going on there, man? what is going on? >> first, it's good to be with you, and katherine, congratulations on the article. so crotteau genie was an italian statistician, and he came up with a statistician. one meant one person had all of the money. if you apply the genie coefficient to online dating, where the majority of relationships of people began online, it would have the same genie coefficient or inequality of south africa or venezuela. and what i would push back on a little bit, what i hope there's a follow-up article on, is that it's not that these women can't find a man, it's that they can't find a man they want to day. and what you have online is a very reductive analysis. and that is men primarily evaluate women on aesthetics and men on their ability to signal resources. and that's the bad news. for men, though, they have a more porous filter. they find more women attractive. women have a much finer filter for who they find attractive. so the majority of women are all showing their attention to a small number of women. 50 men on tinder, 50 women, if you're in the top 10% of men in terms of attractiveness, you get tremendous inbound opportunities and quite frankly, that doesn't lead to good behavior. i would describe it as port ya polygamy, and that's what the article is about. but let's be clear, it's pretty bad for all parties involved here. a man -- of average attractiveness -- has to swipe right 115 times to get one coffee and then four of those five coffees will ghost him. so the average man has to swipe right 500 times to get one coffee. >> so, scott, as you lay out, the way mates used to meet was through work, through friends, through going out socially, maybe meet somebody at a bar. you meet them at school, of course, was another way. but that seems to have gone away. we're still going to those places and doing those things for the most part, so why has that receded so much? >> that's exactly right. you're getting to the core of the issue. and that is, if you talk to couples who have been married 50 years, 70% of those couples or more will say that one partner initially was not as interested in the other. it's usually the women who was not as interested in the man, because again, see above, a finer filter. but over time, that man got to demonstrate excellence, he was kind, i liked the way he smelled, he performed well at work, he was smart, he was good to his parents. and the places that men can demonstrate that excellence, a religious institution, work, school, a bar, young people aren't going out or going to these places nearly as much. so essentially, there's no place for people to follow in love. it's an immediate reaction, a reductive analysis, of whether they're in lust at that moment. the result is just a skyrocketing level of loneliness, a lack of household formation, and for young men, it's a disaster. here's a stat. two in three women under the age of 30 are in a relationship. only one in three men under the age of 30. why? women are dating older, because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. the result is a cohort of young men that don't have a guardrail of a relationship, which is more important for men than women. women maintain strong financial, professional, and platonic networks. men come off the rails without the guardrail and the motivation of a relationship. >> i would push back, though, on this notion that women are not necessarily going out to, you know, bars or, you know, pursuing run clubs, tennis leagues, volunteering, other real-world activities where theoretically they could meet a like-minded individual who shares their values. a lot of these women who spoke to us are doing that. and still have not met a partner that they feel shares their priorities. and what we heard over and over from the women we spoke to is they find it very patronizing and unhelpful to be told that, you know, all they need to do to find their person is to get off the apps and get out there in real life and, you know, strike up a conversation at a coffee shop, in a grocery store. one of the women we spoke to is trying to do that more, in hopes that she will strike up some connections. but that is not a solution that is going to necessarily work for everyone. and women are right to meet people in real life, because nobody is satisfied with the state of being on the dating apps right now. >> this is exactly why we want this discussion, with these two specific guests, because it's so critically important. and we are hearing, again, this, too, that even for young women who were going out, trying to find men, the question always comes back, where are they? where are the men? >> and after the break, i want to ask scott about the status of young men today and some of the challenges they're facing. we're going to continue this incredible conversation. it's really important, after a quick break. we'll be right back. portant, afa quick break. we'll be right back. rudy's mug shot from his indictment in arizona was just released. this is real. take a look at this. a lot of people are making fun of the picture, but some have come out to support rudy. >> really? >> yes. mr. berns from "the simpsons" said, "i think he looks good." then uncle joey's puppet, mr. woodchuck from "full house" said, yeah, why are they making fun of him. and danny devito from "the penguin" said, seems like a perfectly good picture to me. gillum from "the lord of the rings" said, don't listen to the haters, it's a nice photo. and finally, this guy said, could have been worse. >> welcome back! it's the top of the second hour of "morning joe." we have a lot to get to this hour, the latest on the guilty verdicts in hunter biden's trial, also, donald trump's revenge tour and more on how many believe he will take revenge against his opponents or anybody who made him angry, if he wins a second term in office in the presidency. but we're going to continue our conversation that we just left before the break with features editor at "the cut," katherine thompson, and professor of marketing at the nyu stearns school of business, scott galloway. the touchoff was the headline and the story about dating today, and why young women are finding to it to be so difficult and they're giving up. and katherine, the article explorers why dating today is so difficult. this article also really gives us a picture of how -- what all young people are facing today in terms of challenges, severe challenges, and a loneliness epidemic. but in the piece, quote, each women offers different theories on why dating is such a drag. taylor blames technology and spencer says, men her age are more interested in getting bleep faced every weekend than in committing to a relationship. the article continues, haas is concerned about the online network of menace rights activist who is want to turn men against women. but the one common thread throughout these conversations, though, is that women believe their romantic priorities are fundamentally different than those of guys their age. that may not be a new problem, but it feels especially pressing in the age of andrew tate and swiping left. andrew galloway, can you give us a sense to the state of young men today and the challenges they're facing and the changes you're seeing, the trends in terms of their behavior. >> well, the trends are nothing short of incrediy discouraging. excuse me, four times to kill themselves as women. three times as likely to be addicted. 12 times likely to be incarcerated. you have able-bodied men who are no longer seeking work. one in three men under the age of 30 hasn't had sex in the last year. we heard the word "sex" and our brain fires a bunch of different places, but think of it as a key step to a loving, secure relationship. so what we have is the largest cohort of lonely, broke, young men, and that's the most dangerous person on the planet. when women don't have opportunities for romantic relationship, i'm not suggesting their loneliness is any less tragic, but they tend to maintain a friend network and a professional trajectory. it ends up that men without the prospect of a romantic relationship just have worse outcomes than women. and i'm not saying that the problem is any less dire for women, but the stats are pretty overwhelming. in urban cities -- >> scott, how did we get here? how did we get here? like, you know, i'm old, i understand i'm old, but even people younger than me, it wasn't that long ago that there were functioning relationships. like, you've said, you go to church or you go to school or you go to community events, you go to the sports events. whatever! how did we get here that it is so bleak for men, on one point, and for women, socially? >> it's a variety of reasons. one, if we're going to have an honest conversation about mating, we have to have an honest conversation. women mate socially and economically horizontally and up and men horizontally and down. and when the pool of horizontally and up shrinks every year because men aren't doing better and women are doing better, and we should do nothing in the way of women doing better economically, there are just fewer and fewer potential mates, and it's speedballed by what is the real culprit here, and that is the deepest resourced, most talented companies and people in the world want to convince men that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. you don't need friends to go on discord or reddit, you don't need a job, go on coinbase and trade stocks, and you don't need to shower and go out and be attractive to potential mates, you can just go on a porn site. so what we have is a group of people, men, who aren't making the effort. and i want to acknowledge katherine's point, aren't leaving their house. in addition, one in three relationships used to begin at work. young people are no longer going into work as often. and if you're a young man at work, are you more or less inclined to express some sort of romantic interest in a potential romantic partner now than 40 years ago? >> mm. >> katherine, there's so much there in what scott is saying. we know, for example, that women are now earning more than men. in the united states, it's something like a third of women are earning more than men. we know that women are becoming more liberal, while men are becoming more conservative. we're seeing that political divergence in the sex. and i just wonder how much all of that divergence is playing into those women who are going to coffee shops, were going on running groups trying to find somebody, particularly the money part of it. nobody really likes to talk about it, but what impact does that have if they are earning more than the guys around them? does it make the guys less likely to want to go up and approach them as a potential romantic partner? >> well, i should note, we spoke to a slice of women who are dealing with this issue, and i would say that none of them explicitly brought up that the issue that they had with the men that they were meeting is that they didn't have a good enough job or weren't making enough money. that is not the main complaint that we heard. the main complaint that we heard is that the men that they were meeting just did not want a relationship, wanted to keep things open or just were not giving as good conversationally and emotionally as the women felt that they were giving their dates. politics, though, did come up in a few conversations. a few of the women we spoke to felt that they were really turned off by a few dates where the men, in one instance, somebody denigrated the black lives matter movement and the woman pushed back on that and the man didn't receive it well and that made her swear off going on dates with men for about eight months. so that is a hyperspecific anecdote, but there is certainly something to, you know, the research indicating that women are becoming more liberal while men are becoming more conservative. but again, that can't explain the full extent of this disconnect. that is not something that everybody is experiencing when they go on a date. that seems to be pretty experience-specific. >> i think the common word here is "remote." everything is remote. the guys don't go out. you do work remotely. you even socialize remotely, if you socialize. it is a huge societal problem that is leading to mental health problems. and i appreciate you both addressing different angles of this. they're all incredibly important and we would like to have you back. and we're going to do a morning mika episode on this exact issue, the entire show. the new piece for "the cut" entitled "is dating a total nightmare for you right now?" it's online now. features editor for the cut, katherine thompson, thank you so much. scott galloway. >> thank you. >> thank you as well. scott's new book, by the way -- >> it's fantastic. >> it is. it's entitled "the algebra of wealth." that is a fabulous read. >> important. all right, a little bit late, but was worth it. turning to politics now, and a former trump white house attorney sounding the alarm on what donald trump has planned for his political opponents if he wins the election and returns to the white house for a second term. attorney tye cobb who served in the first trump administration warned that the former president's focus on the topic of revenge in interviews following his conviction in the new york criminal hush money case is a big red flag. cobb said, quote, i think there should be concern, adding, from a 30,000-foot of view, what i see is trump angrier now that be he was before, because he is convicted now. and that matches reporting from john lemire and others that trump is just beyond angry and listening to nobody and is just obsessed on revenge. >> in multiple interviews in the recent days after his conviction on 34 felony counts by a jury, trump has pushed the idea of revenge and retribution in his second term. take a listen. >> people are claiming you want retribution. people are claiming you want what has happened to you done to democrats. would you do that, ever? >> look, what's happened to me has never happened many this country before. and it has to stop, because -- >> wait a minute. i want to hear that again. "it has to stop ". >> it does have to stop. because we're not going to have a country -- >> if you're elected, what does that mean? define that. >> look, what i've gone through, nobody has ever gone through. i'm a very legitimate person. i built a great business. based on what they've done, i would have every right to go after them. i have a lot of lawyers that are friend and this and that. i had probably 25 guys over the course of a couple of months say, whatever you do, don't testify, because you'll say something that's a little bit off, and you will be indicted for lying, for perjury. these are evil people. these are sick, evil people. >> i think you have so much to do, you don't have time to get even, you only have time to get right. >> well, revenge does take time, i will say that. >> it does. >> and sometimes revenge can be justified. i have to be honest, sometimes it can. >> wouldn't it be terrible to throw the president's wife and the former secretary of state -- think of it, the former secretary of state -- but the president's wife into jail. wouldn't that be a terrible thing? but they want to do it! so, you know, it's -- it's a terrible, terrible path that they're leading us to. and it's very possible that it's going to have to happen to them. >> let's bring in editor in chief of the atlantic, and former u.s. attorney, barbara mcquade. she's the author of a book that just becomes more relevant by the day. you look at "the washington post" article yesterday, look at our reporting on sinclair today. "attack from, how disinformation is sabotaging america." mike barnicle and jonathan lemire as well as katty kay is still with us. jonathan lemire, i need to go to you first, just to get a follow up on my reporting, and i know yours, too, from inside the trump campaign is, he's angrier than ever. he's not listening to anybody when it comes to pushing back on revenge. and we see time and time again, hannity say, right to move him to saying that he's not going to take revenge. and we didn't show the clip where trump says, i know you want me to say something nice, but these are -- but i have every right to go after them. and then you had doctor phil, trying to say, you're not going to take revenge, are you? and he said, these are sick, evil people, revenge would be justified. and nobody trying to push back on the hillary clinton part, where he talks about very possible he's going to seek revenge. like, he's fired up and he's ready to go when it comes to seeking revenge to anybody whose opposed them in the past. >> and i'm told there's a similar dynamic behind closed doors when he meets with advisers or other republicans, where he'll talk about revenge, sometimes get a look, like, do you really mean that? and he makes it clear, he does. this is his retribution. that's the word that has been the center of this trump campaign for a year now. and that has only been heightened with his anger about this criminal conviction. and let's be clear, he is blustering about how he would be fine with going to prison if he had to. he would be a martyr for the cause. he says things very differently in private, per my reporting. he also makes it clear on truth social, with those all-caps screeds, just how concerned he is with the prospect of ever being behind bars. and he and his team are putting together an actual agenda of revenge. this is going to be his rhetoric, which is sometimes what happened in 2020, trump would spout something off, but his administration would be unable or frankly at times unwilling to follow through. but there are not going to be grown-ups in the room this time. there are not going to be guardrails. there are going to be true believers and loyalists. if trump says he wants revenge, they're going to do just that. >> jeff goldberg, you're on that list, too. welcome to the club, donald trump recently going after "the atlantic," for reporting the truth. and working what others have said, his chief of staff, his longest serving chief of staff, that trump didn't get sacrificed, and when he reported that he had told people around him that people who went to war and died were losers and suckers, he, of course, got angry. he's still pushing back on you now because of a biden ad. but again, that was confirmed by his longest-serving chief of staff, wasn't it? >> yeah, yeah. john kelly, former marine general, who lost his -- one -- his son in afghanistan, confirmed on the record after my story appeared, well after my story appeared, that these things happen. but you know, my story was well sourced and not refutable, obviously. and so, he keeps bringing this up, to be fair, biden keeps bringing it up. because the biden campaign believes that this is an effective line of attack. i'm not so sure it's an effective line of attack. i think all of this knowledge that we have about donald trump, his personality, and his beliefs, baked in already to the formula here. starting with this has attack on john mccain in 2015. but i kind of -- i'm under the impression that this really gets at trump, because it could soften his support among veterans, among military people, if they come to the belief that he really, truly has a lack of respect more them and their service. >> barbara mcquade, yesterday's verdict in the hunter biden trial was not a surprise, really, when you look at the evidence that was presented. it's not a surprise that the jury was only out for three hours, but a lot of people, it was probably a surprise when they thought about it, which was probably not a whole lot. the average person has problems of their own out there. but the son of the president of the united states was on trial. the jury was made up of his neighbors, basically, in delaware. the president indicated that he would not pardon his own son. and yet the reaction on one side of the political aisle was incredible. does this worry you at all that we are sleep walking into a situation where the nuts and bolts of this country are going to come popping apart because of the derangement syndrome on the right? >> i do worry about it, mike, all of these calls for retribution, and they're coming not just from donald trump. we've heard steve bannon, stephen miller, even john yoo, a former department of justice official, the author of the famous "torture memo," someone on the extreme right, but one of the things he has written is that it is necessary to go after political rivals, to go after people in the democratic party, and the purpose of that is to delegitimize the prosecution of donald trump. one of the things he has written is, we can't let this conviction of donald trump stand in history. and so what we need to do is to charge and prosecute other prominent democrats, so that people will understand, this is just one more political weapon. and the danger there, of course, is that when people believe that criminal prosecution is simply a political weapon, it delelegitimatizes the criminal justice system altogether. that means people are less likely to obey the rule of law. and it also encourages people to take the law into their own hands in the form of vigilante violence. >> it's so interesting, jeffrey. if there are those who think that this is paranoia or, no, he wouldn't go that far. that's crazy. that's not for this country, i think it's important to remind people to look at what he's already done. the first time around. whether it's talking about the january 6th rioters who are in prison, saying he wants to pardon them, calling them hostages, or looking at actually what he's done with the help of his leonard leo picks for the supreme court, donald trump takes credit for overturning roe. >> which people said -- people said would never happen. >> people said that would never happen. 50 years of rights, abortion health care, dncs, anything you need to get health care during a problematic pregnancy or a problem in your pregnancy, you can't get now. women right now, thanks to donald trump are bleeding out on bathroom floors, in their homes, they're big sterilized. i know this -- i would love for this to sound crazy and extreme. it's actually happening. >> along with 10-year-old girls getting raped and having to flee states, victims of incest having to flee states. >> that's what trump has already done. and i actually -- i hope that people who think that this is overkill, oh, he would never have retribution -- think about that image. of a woman bleeding out instead of getting simple health care, because of donald trump. he's denied that to them. and i wonder, jeffrey, why people don't believe their eyes. >> yeah and their ears. i mean, this is fairly simple in a way. you don't need an intelligence agency to understand what donald trump is going to do if he becomes president again. he's tell us every single day. we're having -- we're getting proof on a daily or weekly basis of a couple of things. the first is that he is focused mainly on retribution. he's focused on not making the mistakes -- mistakes in scare quotes -- that he made the first time around, in which he empowered people in the establishment, and they tried to build guardrails around him. that's gone. that's finished. this time he'll do the muslim ban right ""right" again in square quotes, so that it actually works and it isn't challenged again. that's one thing. i listened to the entire las vegas rally speech this past weekend. i listened it to mainly because i was mentioned in it and i wanted to find out the context of this. and i hadn't listened to a full speech in a couple of months. there was a ten-minute segment in there about being -- you know, whether it's better to be eaten by a shark or electrocuted by a battery. and i feel like, and this is -- i'm going to beat this drum over and over again, i feel like we should, in the media, be covering -- we should be covering the -- i don't know what word to use for those kind of soliloquies, those kind of unhinged soliloquies people need to understand that he's not well, right? and that it's all part of the same package, the desire for revenge. the contempt that he has for everyone, including veterans and soldiers, and these strange flights of stream of consciousness thoughts that if we're coming out of the mouth of joe biden, we would be talking about the 25th amendment. we would be talking about the possibility of removing him from office. it's -- you just have to watch and listen and keep your ears open, and you'll see exactly what's coming. nothing's going to be a surprise. right? because he's just articulating it over and over and over again. >> yeah, and we've been playing the last couple of days, that speech exactly, and that segment of the speech, as republicans talk about the mental acuity of joe biden, just watch the ten minutes on the shark and the battery and the rest of that 102-degree speech, as his supporters are fanning themselves and sweating behind them while the former president is there in las vegas doing that, the current president was in normandy talking about commitment to allies and to democracy. so barbara, your book, "attacked from within," is going to become, i suspect, more and more important as we go through these next five months before election day, as donald trump and his allies turn on fire hose to spew the lies. one of the things you get at in the book iscombatting misinformation, combatting disinformation. they see an edited clip of joe biden, which doesn't show the full context. how do we, in the face of this fire hose, how do we stop and get the right information into people's hands as they go into the voting booths? >> well, one of the things we can do, of course, is providing them with accurate information and helping voters know where to go for accurate information. having a plan ahead of time. so, someone's secretary of state website, for example, will have accurate information. i often tout the league of women voters as a place where you can get accurate information, because you know, we are going to see a deluge of false claims designed either to influence the outcome of the election, to dampen turnout, or to convince people that voting is not worthwhile, because the election is rigged. some of the things we're already hearing from donald trump and some of his supporters about their refusal to accept the outcome of the election until they know what it is is already planting those seeds that the election is rigged. so we have to build that resilience by helping people know, where to get accurate information about the election, how to vote, and how the system works, so that they aren't duped my these false claims. >> you know, mike barnicle, it's -- when somebody tells you who they are, you're supposed to believe them. when somebody tells you what they're going to do, especially donald trump, who seems more unhinged than ever, it's as everybody has been saying, it's important to believe them. and rachel maddow came out a couple of nights ago who said she was concerned that she might be sent to a camp. it sounds crazy, but it's not, because of what donald trump's been saying. he's been accusing this network and its parent company of being traitors that need to be banned from the air. steve bannon and kash patel, who many people believe will be his next cia director, look straight in the camera and said that they were coming after "morning joe" and warned us, as well as our producers, watch out, we're coming after you. kash patel agreed with steve bannon. it doesn't get anymore direct than that. this is is same guy that accused me of being a murderer a dozen or so times, wanting me to be arrested, tried, executed. that was in his first term! right? so it's a pretty direct threat to criminals who don't bow down to him, he says should be found guilty of treason and executed. he said he'll fire any u.s. attorneys that don't go after his political enemies. we can go on and on and on. but as mika said, people need to believe what he's saying. they need to hear what he's saying and understand that a second donald trump term takes america into a very, very dark place. >> joe, to jeffrey goldberg's appoint, people do hear what he's saying, but it's not really explained fully to them by the media. this guy is not well. any time he speaks on any day of the week, he will say something, for a specific length of time, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever, 1 minute. he is not well and he is running for the president of the united states. and the media has to stop sleep walking past this. "the wall street journal" had the extensive story about joe biden. if they ever did a similar story, a clear reporting of donald trump's rhetoric, donald trump's behavior, donald trump's attitude toward what would be a potential nightmare of a next term, his second term, based upon revenge, based upon hate, based upon his enemies, this country would no longer exist the way it has existed for nearly 250 years. >> yeah. other people who work for trump say they're available for that interview, by the way, if "the wall street journal" does actually want to add some context and cover the other side. barbara mcquade, thank you. her book "attack from within: ow disinformation is sabotaging america now." editor in chief of the atlantic, jeffrey goldberg, thank you as well. really appreciate it. so more than two months after a container ship struck baltimore's francis scott key bridge, the 700-foot wide fort mchenry federal channel has reopened. joining us now, maryland governor wes moore. he's a member of the biden/harris campaign's national advisory board. and we appreciate your being on this morning. talk first about the impact that had on baltimore's economy and the speed to which the bridge finally has been reopened. >> you know, i remember that first morning when we now saw a ship the size of three football fields was trapped inside the patapsco river, with six mariners unaccounted for and with now tens of thousands of tons of steel that was sitting in the middle of the river, mangled. and we knew that one of the main vehicles for economic activity, not just for baltimore, not just for maryland, but for the entire region was now stuck to a halt. and i remember that first morning, when people said that this would take multiple months. our course director said that people were telling him this could take up to a year to clear the channel with the amount of debris sitting in the water. and this morning, i have to tell you, i'm really proud of my state. i'm really proud of the coordination that in maryland, we do big things, because we do them in partnership. and now, despite being told this would take multiple months, we now have the full federal channel. we're talking 700 feet by a 50-foot depth. that is now allowing ships and traffic and commerce to commence in the city of baltimore, in the state of maryland, and also looking at how many people were impacted, that during this time, because we're able to work in partnership with the biden administration, partnership with our local leaders, partnership with a private sector, that tens of thousands of workers who were working at the port, who that very morning were afraid that they no longer had a job. the close to 1,000 businesses, small businesses, that worked with the port of baltimore, we were now able to stand up programs to be able to support workers, work retention programs, businesses who said they would not lay off workers. this has been a case study on how to get things done big and fast, and the only way to do that is by working together. i'm incredibly proud that this morning, despite such a tragedy that we saw a little over two months ago, that this morning we can say that baltimore is back. and it's because we decided to work together in this moment. >> governor, good morning. it's good to see you. a lot of people saw this news a couple of days ago and said, wow, that was fast. it made me think it was one years ago right now that that bridge collapsed in pennsylvania on i-95. and that was back up and running in 12 days. so for all of the complaints, and there are many of them, and many of them are valid about the pace of business inside federal and state governments, how did you get this done, and what lessons can be shared with others? >> i think the big thing is that we worked together. my phone rang at 2:02 in the morning letting me know that the key bring was gone. we began mobilizing assets, first responders, who were on the bridge within minutes making sure that they could stop the flow of traffic. i have to give them a shout-out, because they saved countless lives that morning. mobilizing the members of the state police and the divers who within an hour were in the water, working to save lives, working with our department of transportation, who were already coming with re-routing partners, because we knew that people were hours away from waking up and figuring out that the place that they used to be able to get to work, that that was now gone. that tens of thousands of port workers, who were about to wake up and realize that they did not have a place to go to work. how to make sure that we're supporting the families. so i laid out four directives that first morning. one was that we had to support the families and give them comfort and closure, families of the six mariners we lost. the second was that we had to support those who have been directly impacted by the crisis. and that included the port workers and the first responders and their families. the third was that we had to do everything in our power to reopen the federal channel as quickly as possible. and the fourth is that we have got to fully rebuild the francis scott key bridge. and we stayed focus. we did not let anything distract us. we stayed coordinated with both the biden administration, who have been remarkable, the private sector, who have been tremendous partners throughout, our local leaders, and we know that now, that we're coming to the completion of this phase, of getting the federal channel reopened. i have the same focus, i have the same diligence on making sure that we have accomplished that fourth directive, which is getting the francis scott key bridge rebuilt. >> all right, maryland governor wes moore, thank you so much for coming on with the update this morning. we appreciate it. all right. still ahead on "morning joe," new reporting about how donald trump's allies are already preparing for him to claim election fraud in one key battleground state this november, even if he wins, just to prove a point about imaginary fraud. plus, the latest from the middle east, as the leader of hamas appears to be putting off a cease-fire deal in hopes that more bloodshed will help his cause. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. 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"the portland press herald" is taking a look at low voter turnout during maine's primary election yesterday. election officials reported extraordinarily low turnout at the polls statewide for congressional and legislative primary races. maine's secretary of state attributes the weak turnout to the state that most statehouse primary races had only one candidate running. and "the indianapolis star" is reporting on a new drug designed to slow the progression of alzheimer's disease. in an independent panel of experts to the food and drug administration unanimously backed the new drug from eli lilly, which has shown to slow cognitive decline and memory problems. the fda will decide later this year whether to follow the panel's recommendation. we'll follow that. and coming up on "morning joe," president biden is touting his efforts to strengthen gun safety legislation. we'll show you his latest remarks on that next on "morning joe." power e*trade's award-winning trading app makes trading easier. with its customizable options chain, easy-to-use tools, and paper trading to help sharpen your skills, you can stay on top of the market from wherever you are. e*trade from morgan stanley at bombas, we're obsessed with socks. tees. and underwear. because your basic things should be your best things. one purchased equals one donated. visit bombas.com and get 20% off your first order. while i am a paid actor, and this is not a real company, there is no way to fake how upwork can help your business. upwork is half the cost of our old recruiter and they have top-tier talent and everything from pr to project management because this is how we work now. you're changing the nation, you really are. you're changing the nation. it builds upon the dozens of executive actions my administration has taken to reduce gun violence. more than any of my predecessors, and i suspect more of all of them combined. everything from cracking down on ghost guns, gun trafficking, and so much more. folks, we're not stopping there. it's time once again to do what i did when i was a senator. ban assault weapons! >> that was president biden giving remarks at a gun reform event yesterday, moms demand action. his comments come after some sandy hook school shooting survivors are set to graduate from high school today. roughly 12 years after a gunman massacred 20 of their classmates and six adults in that building. >> it is extraordinary the legacy that those parents and those family members are building, despite the hell that they've been put through. being called actors. how inspiring, shannon watts, what she has built up -- >> it's incredible. >> it's incredible what she's built up through the years with moms demand action, and that was what joe biden went to, the event, shannon's event. >> joining us now, academy award winner griffin dunne. he spent years working with the brady campaign. he's also the author of the new memoir, the friday afternoon club. it's incredible. i want to get to the book in just a moment. but first, tell us about your work, griffin, with the brady campaign. >> well, it started -- it started some time ago. my -- my parents were victims' rights advocates, as a result of my sister being murdered and the injustice that took place and the defamation that happened to her during the trial. and i wanted to be an activist in a similar area, and i've always been outraged by the proliferation of guns. i and worked with the brady campaign making psas, and through that, i met a lot of families, a couple named sandy and lonnie phillips, whose daughter was killed in aurora. and more recently, by making a short -- or a play, rather, called "just five minutes," written by francine wheeler, whose son, ben, was killed in sandy hook, we're putting that on. i mean, she was an actress who with david, her husband, moved to sandy hook out of new york for the safe neighborhood, to raise their children. and they are also, you know, victims of these outrageous phone calls, the harassment that has taken place, what they've had to live through on top of everything else. and i saw those interviews with those kids who were graduating, who would have been in ben's class. it just broke my heart, and i fought so -- i just thought of the wheelers. and i thought of all of those families. >> yeah. >> mike? >> you know, in the book, in this incredible book, "the friday afternoon club," about your life and your family, there is a section in the book about the impact that the death, the murder of your sister, dominique, had on the family. but before that, i would like to start with the idea that you grew up basically -- surrounded by a cavalcade of stars. i can't think of anything better to ask you, than to introduce the book to the viewing audience, is that humphrey bogert was the reason you moved to los angeles. what a sentence. >> how about that? yeah, my father was in live television. and he did playhouse 90. and they were doing a production of the petrified forest with -- that humphrey bogert eventually made into the film. and he always liked my father. and actually, frank sinatra was the one who also on playhouse 90, and he told frank senatery, you should bring out dominick dunne to be the stage manager, because they were going to shoot in los angeles, the live broadcast there. so we went to los angeles, he and bogey hit it off right away. it turns out bogey is a preppy. did you know that? >> i did know that. >> so they went both to these very posh schools and hit it off right away. and humphrey bogert said, hey, what are you doing tonight after -- and now my dad is a stage manager. he's putting down the tape. he's like, you know, clipboards and all of that stuff. because you want to come to a party and get into a suit and meet me over. and it was -- that night was sinatra singing with judy garland and lauren bacall. and dad called up my mom in new york and woke her up and says, lenny, pack your bags! we're moving to l.a.! and that's just what he did. >> so you moved to l.a., your father became one of the great chroniclers of true crime. maybe the predecessor for all the true stuff that goes on now, writing for "vanity fair." there was a tenth anniversary party that your parents had for their tenth anniversary. a cavalcade of stars. just incredible, the people who were there and everything like that. but your movement through the lives of your parents, your uncles, john gregory dunne, how did you -- didian, people like that, and what possessed you to sit down and write this? there's a fever, too. >> i could not stop writing it once i was going. i have been collecting stories over the years that are about my family or about my descendants, my great grandparents or grandparents, whose lives were also extraordinary. i always recognized my family was unusual and each one had a very different story, and even our animals were eccentric when i was growing up. but we had this life-changing moment in our family, which was the murder of my sister. >> yeah. >> and that was part of our story. when i started to write it, i didn't know that would become such a part of it, and as i wrote chronologically i was getting to that dark chapter but i was laughing all along the way, and as i was writing it telling each of my family members stories, and i thought as a result of the murder and the trial had a disastrous outcome where the killer only did 3 1/2 years. i saw my family and my parents in particular, my brother, an incredible character, we came together so strongly. i had enough perspective to really look at that, how that terrible chapter in our lives, how much we grew from it and how close we became and that my mother became an activist and started victims of homicide in california. they changed laws that protected the rights of the victim and are now implemented in three other states, and she was in a wheelchair. she was awarded a medal by president bush. i wanted to tell their story and everybody to meet my family. >> humphrey bogart gets you to move to los angeles, and you are rescued, and did you have an ambivalent relationship with the whole hollywood world? >> i was embarrassed to be from a down called beverly hills, where the "beverly hillbillies" were, and "90210," and i wanted to be new york, and it didn't turn out that way. my own art was to get away from all that kind of socializing hollywood, the importance of celebrity, but in the distance, i found myself, you know, looking back. my father collected scrapbooks with all the names that were so important and all the famous people in them and he would hand write who each person was. and i looked and said, this is amazing, this is an incredible document about hollywood in the '60s, from 1959 to 1967. now i fully embrace it. i went out and wrote a book about it. >> you sure did. >> the new book "the fry afternoon club: a family memoir," on sale now. thank you, griffin dunn, for sharing your family with us and writing the book. >> thank you. still ahead on "morning joe," we will go over the double standard and how republicans acted differently. sure, i'm a paid actor, and this is not a real company, but there is no way to fake how upwork can help your business. search talent all over the world with over 10,000 skills you may not have in house. more than 30% of the fortune 500 use upwork because this is how we work now. this is our future, ma. godaddy airo. creates a logo, website, even social posts... in minutes! -how? 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[ bird squawks loudly ] to a pet shop. meg's moving company uses t-mobile. so she scaled down her fleet to save money. and don's paying so much for at&t, he's been waiting to update his equipment! there's a smarter way to save. comcast business mobile. you could save up to 70% on your wireless bill. so you don't have to compromise. powering smarter savings. powering possibilities. the contrast today is just staggering. apparently when a republican is convicted it's weaponization, but when a democrat is convicted, the president's son no less, that's justice. give me a break. the republicans still believe that president biden is weaponizing the system, because if he is he's doing a poor job. people are saying that biden orchestrated the conviction of his own son in order to justify the criminal charges against trump. that's how you think when you are in a cult. >> that is how you think when you are in a cult. and in the case of republicans, it's situational patriotism, and they love the justice system when their opponents are being prosecuted, but if they lose elections, suddenly they hate american democracy and they think it's corrupt. if donald trump is convicted of crimes, felonies, 34 times, suddenly they hate the justice system. but if it goes the other way for them, all right, situationally they are okay. such hypocrisy. >> is it the justice department being weaponized by biden or not. >> yeah, we have been saying that on the show for years, the hypocrisy. republicans wanted to be able to say that there's a two-tiered system of justice, and this jury came back swiftly with a conviction of three counts against the son of the president of the united states, and consider the different responses from the two men, after donald trump was convicted of 34 felony counts, he went crazy, and his supporters went crazy, and the system was rigged and you had prominent united states senators saying we are like cuba and the jury system is broken and we are a third world country, and yesterday president biden put out a statement after his own son was convicted and may go to jail saying i love my son and we will respect the outcome as a family. there's the difference. >> what a historic difference in every way, and you go back to 2000 when al gore was frustrated, and he conceded. go back to 1960, the nixon folks knew illinois had been stolen and he was not going to tear america apart and accept the outcome. pat buchanan, when we asked him why didn't you complain more about illinois because historians say it looks like kennedy stole illinois, and he said because we stole kentucky, joe. maybe there were shenanigans going on there? maybe the bigger point is after the election, after the deeply personal fights where people and families give everything they have, these politicians in the past have become statesman. al gore's finest moment -- >> it absolutely was. >> i was blown away by his concession speech, and if they guy had run -- if we had seen more of that, he would have won the election in 2000. here, it's all situational. with trump supporters, and unfortunately, a contaminated republican party, especially in the house, if trump wins elections, the democracy is fine. if trump loses elections, then american democracy is broken. if trump is convicted, then the rule of law is corrupted and we are no better than castro's cuba. if hunter biden is convicted, well, the justice system works. >> people with basic values though that's wrong. >> they all know it's wrong. >> we will be going way deeper into the hunter biden verdict. we will also break down new poll numbers that show who voters in key battleground states say they believe is best to handle the economy ahead of the november election. >> willie, on this front we have been hearing for over a year now, willie, that somehow there was this huge gap on the economy, and voters would just never trust joe biden. polls are starting to show that massive gap is narrowing quickly, and it's almost like a lot of economists and a lot of political people have come on our show and said the economy is a leading indicator here. american consumers will catch up probably by summertime. well, it's summer and voters are catching you know and it's almost a tie on who they trust with the economy. >> yeah, trump was enjoying a wide gap, and now this new polling shows, as you say, americans perhaps now are feeling that inflation, while very stubborn, does continue to tick down, too slowly, but it does continue to tick down, but the other data and the growth and the dow jones and all the other metrics by which we measure our economy is moving in the right direction, and hopefully people are feeling in that in their lives. >> mika, you look at the numbers, and it's a 3.5 margin of error, and it's practically a tie. we will show you how the sinclair broadcast group seems to be working hard to push dubious claims about biden's mental fitness for office to millions of americans and they keep harping on it and perhaps doesn't realize that plays right into the biden team's hands. we'll talk about that. >> going back to yesterday, "the washington post" wrote about it on social media, and now you have an entire news network that runs stations across america feeding lies, sinclair is feeding deliberate lies to their viewers. if you think that joe biden is out of it, you know what, take it straight on with your viewers. but they are deliberately lying and spreading misinformation, it appears from these reports. >> we talk about fox news and some of the other networks at the national level but it's important to watch closely what people are getting in their living rooms on the local news, and the sinclair group is literally writing the script for anchors of certain affiliates, not all, to read with an agenda. it's pretty chilling. we have jonathan lemire, and katty kay, and mike barnicle. we begin with what comes next for hunter biden. after a jury yesterday found him guilty on all three felony charges on his fed gun trial, the president's son pleaded not guilty to the three counts tied to lying on a federal gun application about his drug use. sources inside the defense room tell nbc news that following the verdict, hunter biden thanked everyone there by name, hugged them and tried to raise their spirits. he later issued this public statement, quote, i am more grateful today for the love and support i experienced this last week from melissa, my family, my friends, and my community than i am disappointed by the outcome. the recovery -- recovery is possible by the grace of god, and i am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time. special counsel, david weiss, spoke briefly to reporters following the verdict. >> no one in this country is above the law. everyone must be accountable for their actions, even this defendant. however, hunter biden should be no more accountable than any other citizen convicted of this same conduct. the prosecution has been and will continue to be committed to this principle, and to the principles of federal prosecution in carrying out its responsibilities. >> hunter biden and his attorney have said they plan to appeal the verdict. as i mentioned, president biden issued a statement reacting to the verdict in his son's gun trial. it reads in part, i will accept the outcome of the case and will continue to respect the judicial process as hunter considers an appeal. jill and i will always be there for hunter with our love and support and nothing will ever change that. end quote. and last week the president said clearly he will not pardon his son, and he had an emotional meeting with hunter yesterday with that hug on the tarmac. >> the prosecutor said hunter biden should not be treated differently than anybody else. why was he? because he was. if his last name was smith, these charges never would have been brought, and if his name was jones, the plea deal would have not been blown up by the judge, and we will always believe in the system, but he doesn't need to come out and lie and say hunter biden is being treated like everybody else. hunter biden is there because of his last name, end of story. a lot of trump people can say the same they know about what happened in manhattan with alvin bragg. but in this case, biden was there because of his last name and nothing else. >> by the way, some republicans said the same, joe. senator lindsay graham said that last week, and even had very pro trump members of congress disappointed by the outcome because they wanted to show a two-tiered system of justice saying this trial was silly and it was a distraction, and they are saying that now after the fact. let's bring in lisa ruben, msnbc legal correspondent. what is your reaction to the verdict in delaware? >> my reaction, you can find that the jury's conviction here is just, that hunter biden knowingly possessed and applied for a firearm understanding that he had been an addict and that addiction is the continuing state, it doesn't stop and start but once an addict, always an addict. you can see the situation as tragic, but it never should have happened in the first place, and the plea deal engineered should have been honored. the other reason it fell apart is because the judge that over saw the trial bristled at the idea that she should have to supervise the question of whether or not hunter would be in compliance with the diversion agreement set up to handle the gun charges. the reason the deal was struck in the way it was is an unspoken reason. i will tell you what that is. it's because the prosecutors here and hunter biden's lawyers feared that because the diversion agreement was two years in duration, if a future department of justice controlled by trump or another republican, that person would have an excuse to say that hunter biden was out of compliance and deserved to be thrown in prison, and they didn't want a future republican doj would not have that power, and the trump said why should i be in control of that? that's not my decision to make. and what nobody could say to her on the record is we were doing it this way, because we fear retribution by mr. biden if not set up this way. >> the son of the president of the united states of america is on trial in delaware. his neighbors, delaware residents, are sitting in judgment of him. 12 ordinary people, citizens, sitting in judgment in the son of the president. the president announces he will not pardon his son. hunter knows he lied on the application. that's why he's there. at the end of the day, do you think ordinary americans give enough thought to how this system is a miracle, a gift to this country, a gift to democracy, the jury system, and the way it works. it worked in new york, and it worked in wilmington. >> most of the time, mike, it does work. i wish they would give more thought to the miracle that is our jury system, and it's endemic to democracy that many of us feel is teetering on the brink right now. this is a testimony of what is unshakeable about our democracy. i was struck by the three jurors that came forward and talked to members of the media, and one said i think this case should have been prosecuted and i believe the charges should have been brought and i believe he's guilty, and yet i believe jail time here is entirely inappropriate, because not only of how the charges came about but because of some of the underlying facts here. this is a person that has brought his life around and he's married and has a young son and earning a living, and let's remember hunter biden owned a gun for 11 days, and the reason the gun was recovered in the first place was because his sister-in-law, halle biden was fearful he might use the gun to harm himself, she took the gun and deposited it in a trash can outside a grocer. i believe this case should have been brought and i believe he was guilty of it and i can see it as the tragedy that it is. >> president biden learned of the verdict while at the white house while preparing for a speech on gun safety. he then changed plans and made an unscheduled trip back to delaware and embraced his son on the tarmac as you see there. the family spent last night in wilmington and the president will fly this morning to italy and the g7. i have heard reporting that in recent weeks ahead of the trial, president biden made the point, joe, that you did, saying if he were not running for re-election, he believed hunter would have gotten the plea deal, the plea deal that fell apart last summer at the last moment. the plea deal which would have kept biden out of prison, and now, and we shall see, he could face a lengthy prison sentence, and first and foremost, this is a personal toll on president biden. we know how close he is to his son, he texts and calls his son every day, and aides worry about that. the politics, which we will dive into later, campaign aides for biden and trump don't think it will change the trajectory of the race, and we should expect president biden to say -- some aides want him to flash a temper and say i am a father and this is a son, and this is inappropriate, and it could be a real human response, and the final campaign, as a final point, they will continue to use things like nomenclature -- >> let's be clear about this. in the debate, because i have heard a lot of people talking about this concern, and mike barnicle, if i am joe biden and i am on the debate stage with donald trump and he starts talking about hunter biden as some retort against his own felonies, i would stop and turn and look around the stage and say, excuse me, hold on. i don't see hunter biden up here. donald, let me check -- i don't see eric over there. wait, eric is not here, and so i am running against you, donald, and you are not running against hunter biden or the ghost of hunter biden who is not here, but you are running against me. the two of us, only one of us has been convicted of a felony, and you have been convicted of 34 felonies, donald, so let's leave our kids and family out of this. you don't want me to start talking about what you and your kids and your in-laws did in your name to get rich off of your back during the presidency. boom, ends it. and he shouldn't take any crap from donald trump and he needs to be ready because donald trump has 34 felony convictions. joe biden, none. those are the two people onstage. biden's people should double down right now and go harder at trump than ever before on the fact that he's a convicted felon. >> if that happens and occurs during the course of the debate in two weeks, if donald trump does say something about hunter biden, in addition to saying what you just said, it might be best if he reprieves mr. welch in the mccarthy hearings, turning to mccarthy saying you have no sense of decency, sir? in this case, he could turn to donald trump and say have you no sense of decency, sir, but this is not built around the thirst of revenge, it's not about revenge about somebody that says something about you, and it's about not damaging the country with the kind of language and behavior you exhibited every day of your adult life. coming up, we will get reaction from capitol hill to the hunter biden verdict. nbc's ali vitali is tracking the gop's response. she joins us straight ahead. "morning joe" is back in just 90 seconds. he trade, we talking about movin'. no thank you. (reporter 2) you could use opendoor. sell your house directly to them, it's easy. (kev) ... i guess we're movin'. ♪♪ sandals jamaica sale is now on! with rates from $199 per person per night. visit sandals.com or call 1-800-sandals why choose a sleep number smart bed? can it keep me warm when i'm cold? visit sandals.com wait, no, i'm always hot. sleep number does that. now, save 40% on the sleep number special edition smart bed. plus, 0% interest for 24 months shop now at sleepnumber.com stphaoeufpltd while while the trump campaign decried trump's verdict, on the hill most republicans touted the party line that there's a two tiered system of justice in this country. joining us now, nbc news correspondent, ali vitali. what are we hearing from republicans now? >> it's exactly that, mika, and it's what we have expected because we have been asking republicans throughout the house what they think about the hunter biden trial and if it persuades them as unfounded as it may be, a two-tiered justice system. >> it was joe biden's d.a. that tried to have a sweetheart deal. >> do you think the department of justice is still weaponized against conservatives even though we see the verdict here today? >> absolutely, when they tell school moms they are domestic terrorists because they don't like what is being taught in the classroom, yes, sir. >> this will be another moment where we watch republicans say things publicly, forcefully, with cameras in front of them and then listen to a nuanced response, and all of these people involved in the election and races up and down the ballot, and this verdict makes it less of a bumper sticker issue in their minds and takes winds out of trump's sails to say the justice department is being weaponized against him. we will get more of this as we are able to talk to more voters, but there will be those republican voters that agree with what the congressmen and senators said in that clip that we showed, they are going to tow the party line, and it's politics, pure and simple. i know the biden campaign thinks this, too, where there was reaction to voters, saying the man, hunter biden, has been through a lot and they felt sad watching this prosecution. that's going to be something that plays out over the course of the next few months, and i think you are right to underscore that while hunter has been wrapped up in his father's re-election efforts, it's so far from being the same thing, the prosecutions and legal troubles of hunter biden are just shades of different than the prosecution's criminal penalties of the man who wants to be the president, donald trump. coming up, the world bank calls the economy exceptional and better than expected, so why don't more americans believe it? christine romans joins the conversation straight ahead on "morning joe." right now you can get a free footlong at subway. just buy any footlong in the app and get one free. just scan the qr code and enter promo code flbogo. it only works from the other side of the screen, buddy. you still got a land line in your house. order now in the subway app. the sinclair broadcast group, which is owned by a right wing media mogul seems to be working hard to push dubious claims about president biden's dubious mental fitness, and they are pushing it to millions of americans. it was highlighted how sinclair aggressively worked the claims about biden's age into dozens of local broadcasts across the country. the stations aired a segment that repackaged a widely criticized "wall street journal" article that questions biden's acuity, and local anchors introduced a segment with a nearly identical script on how the president's mental awareness will affect the upcoming election. here are just some of them. >> "the wall street journal" calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. the issue could decide the election. >> "the wall street journal" published a story that calls the mental fitness into president biden into question, and the issue could be an election decider. >> should he be on that or any ballot. "the wall street journal" is out with new reporting calling into question the mental fitness of joe biden, and the issue could be an election decider. >> as "the wall street journal" is out with reporting calling into question the mental fitness of president biden, we want to know are you worried about president biden's mental fitness? the issue could be an election decider. >> "the wall street journal" is out with new reporting calling into question the fitness of president biden. >> the issue could be an election decider. >> willie, the issue here is, of course, local news. i think people trust local news more than they trust national news because they know the news anchors, but it's not local reporting but spoon fed from a right wing media group spreading disinformation. i guess it's a sign of the times. again, we talk about pushing back on disinformation. it's pretty tough when that disinformation is coming from local news networks whose bosses willingly want them to spread lies. >> yeah, local news anchors, they trust them, and sinclair owns almost 200 stations and you can see there by some of the logos, those were fox, nbc, abc, and it's not unusual they feed to their affiliates. what is unusual is the narrative being pushed so specifically about a piece from another -- well, not from sinclair but from a murdoch-owned entity and the "wall street journal" about biden. >> sinclair has been a rising force in media over the last couple of presidential cycles, as you say, a couple hundred stations there. polls suggest people trust local news more than national news. it something that beyond sinclair, those further to the right, they are -- it's something, it does make a difference. both campaigns are having challenges with this, with fewer eyeballs than what we consider in traditional media, and it's just hard to break through but it does seem like that "wall street journal" reporting with all of its flaws is one of the stories that did. >> they stand by it. "the wall street journal." >> they know it's a lie. >> willie, the crazy thing about it, they know it's a lie, and how do we know they know it's a lie? because they have the kevin mccarthy quotes from the actual meeting at the white house that supposedly mccarthy later showed he was in a haze, and they have quotes from mccarthy saying biden was bonkers publicly, and then quietly whisper to us privately what an effective negotiator he was. that was reported in politico. that was reported in mainstream publications before "the wall street journal" piece. they know they were spreading the lie at the "wall street journal." the editors knew it and reporters knew it and did it anyway. the only guess i can have is that it came from -- from above. in fact, outside "the wall street journal" news room. that's the only way to justify that story, when you have, as i said before -- >> you don't have to guess. >> as i said before, you have "the wall street journal" that has been going under new leadership, i think, in a really great direction. it's like, which of these don't fit? that story doesn't fit. there are a few explanations other than it came from above and they were told they had to put it in. >> whoever put it in, it certainly has had the desired affect which is a couple weeks of coverage, and now as we just saw the ecosystem feeds into sinclair and it gives them something to talk about and they can use that as a way of telling a story about joe biden's decline. we have heard from democrats in the last week or so that said they spoke to the "wall street journal" for that piece and their quotes and views were not included in that. there's a lot here. the fact of the matter is there are a lot of people in the country, including democrats, and we know privately sometimes express concerns about joe biden's age but you can report that in a more direct and honest way. coming up inside donald trump's 2024 playbook, or as "rolling stone" describes it, heads, i win, tales you lose. why the state of georgia is at the center of the ex-president's plan. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." straight ahead on "morning joe." ♪♪ with fastsigns, create striking custom visuals that inspire pride district-wide. ♪♪ fastsigns. make your statement. 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(♪♪) at evernorth, we combine medical and pharmacy data with behavioral health data to identify members in need of care. predicting and treating behavioral health issues quickly... while lowering costs for plan sponsors and members. that's wonder made possible. evernorth health services basically what you are say something 95% of the population is under dateable. >> updatable! >> then how are all these people getting together? >> alcohol. >> that was "seinfeld"'s take on the dating world back in the '90s. >> sounds like scott galloway there, winner takes all. >> seems things have become more bleak in the age of social media and a lot of other things. the cut, is dating a total nightmare for you right now? several women talk about why they feel dating is nearly impossible these days. joining us now, features editor at "the cut," scott galloway. scott, we have heard you talk a lot about the underlying causes to this one problem that branches out to we are worried about all our young people. i want to know more about what inspired this piece antidotally, and i am hearing from young women that want to date young men, and the simple answer to that is there are none. they say there are none. why is that? what is behind that? >> thank you for having me. i mean, this piece came about in a way a lot of our best stories do, which is that we were seeing a lot of chatter online specifically around tiktok videos of women in their late 20s, early 30s, crying into the camera about how fed up they are with the dating scene, and about the lack of connection that they feel when they go on dates with men, and i should emphasize we are talking about women seeking men as partners. >> correct. >> they feel like, sure, they are going out and meeting people through dating apps, for example, but they are just not making it past early dates, forging a deeper connection for the people that they meet, and what we heard a lot of was we felt the men they are going out with did not share their priorities. >> what did they say about the young men that they tried to have relationships with? what was the description of what -- you say they feel they did not have the same priorities. what were their priorities? >> well, these women have spent a lot of time and effort focussing on their career and are now at a place in their life where they want to settle down with a partner who, perhaps wants marriage, perhaps wants kids. across the board what they are finding is the men they are going on dates with do not want to form a long-term relationship, and they are not looking for a deeper connection. a lot of the women felt that they were being strung along just for sex and not for a deeper emotional connection. >> you know, scott, the first time i think i saw you talking, it was about how dating apps had completely messed things up, you know, sort of a winner take all, that 10% of the most attractive and successful men were getting 90% of the market interested in them and that created a lot of men, guys that were home not dating at all. this is an interesting angle, too. it's all antidotal, scott. it's like in politics, when i knocked on ten doors and all the people were telling me the same thing, i knew i did not have to take a poll. in this case, we have heard from so many young women, college, post college, you know, and why aren't they dating? they say there are no men out there. what do you mean? there has to be. no, there are no men out there to date. it's something that is baffling to us because of our experiences growing up in the '70s, '80s and '90s. what is going on there, man? what is going on? >> good to be with you, first, and katharine, congratulations on the article. there was something called a genie co efficient which would measure a country's inequality, and one meant one person had all the money, and if you apply the genie co efficient to online dating where relationships of people begin online, it would have the same inequality of south africa or venezuela. when i hope there's a follow-up article on, is it's not the women can't find a man, but it's they can't find a man they want to date. men evaluate women on aesthetics and women on their ability to find resources. the majority of women are all showing their attention to a small number of men. 50 men on tender, and 46 of the women show attention to just four men. if you are in the top 10% in attractiveness, you get tremendous opportunities and quite frankly, that doesn't lead to good behavior. i would call it worship polygamy. the average attractiveness has to swipe right 115 times to get one copy, and 4 of the 5 copies will ghost him. >> so scott, as you lay out the way mates used to meet was through work, through friends, through going out socially and maybe meeting somebody at a bar, and you meet them at school, of course, was another way. that seems to have gone away. we are still going to those places and doing the same things for the most part, so why has that receded so much? >> that's exactly right. you are getting to the core of the issue, and if you talk to couples who have been married 50 years, and 70% of those couples will say one partner initially was not as interested in the other, and it's usually the women not interested in the man, but overtime that man got he sm. he performed well at work. he was smart. he was good to his parents. and the places that men could demonstrate that excellence, a religious institution, work, school, a bar, young people aren't going out or going to these places nearly as much. so, essentially there is no place for people to fall in love. it is an immediate reaction, reductive analysis of whether they're in lust at that moment. the result is just a skyrocketing level of loneliness, a lack of household formation, and for young men it is a disaster. here's a stat. two in three women under the age of 30 are in a relationship. only one in three men under the age of 30. why? women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. the result is a cohort of young men that don't have a guardrail of a relationship, which is more important for men than women. women maintain strong financial, professional and platonic networks, men come off the rails without the guardrail and motivation of a relationship. >> coming up, our next guest says prosecutors would not have charged hunter biden if he wasn't the president's son. nbc news legal analyst chrissie greenburg joins us to explain. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." explain. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." it's your time to cash in. so don't just play. stay... at northern california's premier casino resort. book your getaway now at cachecreek.com. it's your time to cash in. so don't just play. stay... at northern california's premier casino resort. book your getaway now at cachecreek.com. coming up, remembering president george h.w. bush on what would have been his 100th birthday. historian and biographer john meacham joins us from the late president's library and museum in college station, texas. 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i mean, the idea that you now see my colleagues across the aisle trying to say this is all part of the plan, i mean, just sounds ridiculous. there is something that did or did not happen, joy, in this case. you didn't see members of congress going to the courthouse standing with hunter, you know, in their men's warehouse suits holding press conferences. no democrat called to defund the fbi or defund the doj. no democrat is calling for a civil war as a result. democrats stand for the rule of law. remember, law and order. and we have been saying that trump's not above the law. hunter biden is not above the law. no one is above the law. >> democratic congressman jared moskowitz of florida, calling out what he sees as a double standard from republicans who reacted so differently to hunter biden's verdict than donald trump's verdict. we'll dive more into what happens next for hunter biden. welcome to the fourth hour of "morning joe" at 6:00 a.m. on the west coast. time to wake up. 9:00 a.m. in the east. the host of "way too early" jonathan lemire is with us. joining the conversation we have rogers chair and the american presidency at vanderbilt university historian john meacham is with us this morning. our top story this hour, secretary of state antony blinken is in doha right now, where he just wrapped up a press conference with qatar's prime minister. the two discussed the war in gaza and the negotiations to secure a cease-fire. it comes as hamas has officially responded to the latest proposal. the group's proposed amendments reiterate its long-standing demands that the cease-fire must lead to a permanent end to the war. here's what secretary blinken had to say about that. >> hamas could have answered with a single word. yes. instead, hamas waited nearly two weeks and then proposed more changes, a number of which go beyond positions that had previously taken and accepted. as a result, you heard the prime minister say this, the war that hamas started on october 7th with this barbaric attack on israel, on israeli civilians, will go on. more people will suffer, more palestinians will suffer, more israelis will suffer. >> because of hamas. i think this is all because of hamas. hamas started the war with their terrorist acts, with the largest slaughter of jews since the holocaust. that's something a lot of protesters on college campuses this year kind of looked past. in fact, a lot of those protests were led by groups that actually hailed the slaughter of all of those jews. >> yeah, it is very convoluted and also the hostages being held in communities who are those people holding the hostages. >> yeah, that's the thing. it is not really convoluted, is it? we have people that are, like, you know, the people holding the hostages are supposedly leaders of the community. >> meanwhile, the leader of hamas has reportedly been resisting pressure to agree to a cease-fire deal with israel because he thinks more fighting will work to his advantage. "the wall street journal" obtained messages sent to hamas officials who are negotiating with qatari and egyptian mediators. the journal reports he had shown a cold disregard for human life and made clear he believes israel has more to lose from the war than hamas. in one message, he calls civilian losses in national liberation conflicts, a, quote, necessary sacrifice. in a more recent one, he told hamas officials, quote, we have the israelis right where we want them. and nbc news has not reviewed the messages in the report. >> jonathan lemire, this is exactly what we have been saying all along. and you're looking at the leader of a group who believes the killing of jews is good for their movement. but the killing of palestinians is even better. and this is, again, long before they intercepted emails, as we have been saying on this show from the very beginning, they did this attack deliberately, to slaughter jews, one, and, two, to force israel to come in, to go after the hamas terrorists, where they are literally using humans, civilians, as human shields. and so, it is revealed, why do they want a peace treaty? unlike just about every other entity that negotiates for peace, they don't want safety for their people. they want more of their people killed. let me say it again. hamas wants more of their people, they want more palestinians killed because they consider that a win. >> right. the value of a human life, doesn't mean much to the military wing of hamas, that's clear. we're seeing it spelled out in the text messages. this is for their own purposes. they went in on october 7th and those were atrocities. and they knew it would provoke a strong reaction from israel. we have and can debate and even criticize how israel has responded to this militarily. we can criticize how prime minister netanyahu has managed this conflict. but at the heart of it, on this side of it, hamas doesn't want peace, they don't want a cease-fire, they want to keep fighting, because they think it will be bad for israel to be condemned for their response. and therefore inherently good for hamas. that's where we are right now in the text messages underscore. there are some in the political wing of hamas who are nodding toward peace, who recognize this can't continue. but if the military wing is going to be like this, this doesn't matter. sinwar is most influential person in the organization. if he's holding them back, then he will hold them back. and there won't get a deal done. they have been -- how many times, joe and mika, have we been here, on the precipice of an agreement, only to have it fall apart? seems like it is about to again. >> well, we'll say the and, and other people said it, john meacham, all that is required for this war to end is for hamas to release the hostages. and for israel to guarantee a right of safe passage for the hamas terrorists to another country. but hamas will not release the hostages because they know israel is going to do whatever they can to bring the hostages home. and to also come after hamas. and that means more palestinians killed in this war, which hamas considers a victory. >> well, it seems to me what we're understandably and somewhat predictably seeing is that diplomacy is hard, this is an intractably tragic region and complex of circumstances, and what the diplomats have been doing, what the president has been doing is working an incredibly difficult problem that didn't really lend itself to easy campus, easy cable chiron, easy twitter rendering, right? this is not something that is -- can play into and provide easy fodder for conversations that in our political culture hop from one thing to another in a kind of manic phase. this is a complicated question. you're talking about life and death issues. you're talking about what is the motive of people, you know, one of the great things about foreign policy is you have to know you have a rational actor on the other side. if you don't understand the motives of the other person, you're never going to get to a different place. and the motives here are not aligned. and so you have to keep working the problem. >> negotiating with hamas is like negotiating with isis. negotiating with hamas is like negotiating with al qaeda, which is to say you can't negotiate with them. >> october 7th brings you there. let's bring in nbc news international correspondent matt bradley, live from jerusalem with the very latest. matt? >> reporter: hey, guys. so what we're hearing also in addition to what we heard from blinken today about the cease-fire proposal, we heard the united nations now, one of the arms of the united nations, is accusing both sides, hamas and the israelis, of committing more crimes on october 7th and in the fighting ever since. they're saying that israel was responding disproportionately to hamas and the gaza strip and at the same time they're saying that hamas committed crimes against civilians in israel. now, also today, we have been seeing another front in the war that has been really heating up and this has been something that i was reporting from in the early days of the fighting back in october. in lebanon, hezbollah fired according to israeli army radio about 150 rockets from lebanese territory into northern israel where there were sirens all day. now, this was in response to israel's killing of a top hezbollah commander overnight. that situation across the border has been hot, it is a major fight, it is only eclipsed and the reason it is not headline news every single day is because it is dwarfed by the fighting in gaza. and israel's fight with hamas. but it is an extremely dangerous conflict and one that now is closer than ever, ever since october 7th, to, you know, breaking out into a full on regional war. hezbollah, like hamas, is backed by iran. so, when we talk about also this blinken announcement today, this was a very interesting thing he said, israel had already agreed, but let's, you know, wind back the clock a little bit to may 31st, when joe biden himself came out and said that there was a proposal for peace, he called it israel's proposal, we have been hearing this before from the administration, that they have said that israel has already accepted, this is israel's idea, this is israel's offer, but at the same time, after that may 31st proposal, benjamin netanyahu and his partners in government and the israeli government spent a lot of time winding back that notion that they had already accepted the deal. we're hearing this fro antony blinken they accepted the deal. he's party to those conversations. it is important to remember the israelis have not publicly stated that they have accepted this deal. so we need to wait for that as well. in addition to that hamas approval of that deal, so, really, when we're talking about whether or not we could see a negotiated peace, we are closer than ever and it was just a couple of days ago it looked as though these two sides were further apart than ever, but now it looks as though they're getting really quite close compared to how these negotiations have been going for the past several months. >> nbc's matt bradley, thank you so much. you know, jonathan lemire, it seems as if -- again, this is mere speculation, but it is just based on everything we have seen the president comes out saying israel has agreed to a deal and antony blinken now saying the same thing. i suspect for netanyahu and his government they can't admit publicly what they're agreeing to privately until they're sure that hamas is also accepted the deal and they can then -- they can all come together at the very end. >> i think that's right. i think that netanyahu is playing to a domestic audience as well. and i think the other part of that coin is that they really think hamas is not going to agree. well, that's more incentive to say, hey, we do agree because there wouldn't be a deal and therefore they also, israel looks like, hey, we're interested in peace here. when will you know that president biden has openly questioned whether prime minister netanyahu is interested in bringing this to a war. this war to a close. i think netanyahu is trying to thread a delicate needle here as to managing the negotiations while also managing what is happening at home. we have seen his coalition government splinter, benny gantz leaving the war cabinet, staying elsewhere in the government. we know some in the far right are pressing netanyahu to keep things going. this is very precarious. i think one thing is clear, if we do get a deal, it will be -- come together at the last moment in a burst of energy but we're just not there just yet, despite the united states' best efforts. >> now to yesterday's verdict in the hunter biden federal gun trial with a jury finding the president's son guilty on all three felony charges tied to lying on a federal gun application about his drug use. a member of the jury spoke to reporters just moments after the verdict was read. in an anonymous interview with nbc news, juror number 10 insisted the decision to vote guilty was not based on political leanings. >> for us, it was not politically motivated. politics never played into anything that we said in the jury room. and as we were deliberating, of course, we spent the first five days last week together and yesterday and today and we were -- we were not allowed to talk about any of the case until trial was over. like i told a lot of reporters, i've seen people do a lot worse than hunter. and didn't do any jail time. so, honestly, i don't think putting hunter in jail is going to help any. i hope that -- i hope that hunter is clean. and i hope that his sobriety is going well. and i hope it continues to go well. >> let's bring in nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian, former deputy chief of the criminal division for the southern district of new york, christie greenburg, she's an msnbc legal analyst, and the president of the national action network and host of msnbc's "politics nation" reverend al sharpton. and, ken, we'll start with you. you had been reporting from the courthouse for the duration of the trial. what more can you add after hearing from this juror, but also seeing the reaction from the biden family and from republicans to this verdict? >> yeah, well, initially there was shock that the jury took only three hours to deliberate this case and came back with a verdict when they did. it was such a chaotic situation that joe biden didn't even make it past security to get in the courtroom to listen to the verdict. she got in late. hunter biden reacted impassively because once it was clear the jury had come back so quickly it was pretty obvious it was going to be a guilty verdict across the board. they hoped for one juror to maybe hang this case. it is fascinating when you watch a trial from gavel to gavel as i did to hear from these jurors. not just this juror, but other jurors have spoken out about this case, and the consensus seems to have been they didn't think that what hunter biden did was all that serious, and in fact when they took their first vote it was 6-6. not because 6 people thought he was innocent, but there was a lot of concern about why this case was being brought and was there any actual harm done? after all, this gun was never fired. and one juror said in fact she thought this case was a waste of taxpayer money. at the end of the day, they had no choice but to convict him. and that sort of raise the question in my mind i've been asking myself throughout the trial as i heard the prosecution present this overwhelming evidence, that hunter biden was using drugs when he bought the gun, which is why they couldn't have found a way to get a plea deal in this case. and, you know, there is a mythology that the judge, we all saw the judge raise questions about the plea deal in the courthouse a year ago. and the deal fell apart that day. but there is a part two to that story, the two parties sat down and tried to continue negotiating and at the end of the day, the hunter biden team was not satisfied with the level of immunity that the prosecution was willing to offer, and so they took their chances at trial and in retrospect that seems to be a catastrophic decision because hunter biden is now guilty of felonies, and the guidelines in this case call for prison time. the judge doesn't have to send him to prison. the judge has a lot of latitude here. but federal sentencing guidelines according to our legal expert danny cevallos call for 15 to 21 months in prison and people have gone to prison for violating this crime who have been in a lot sort of less advantageous social and financial position than hunter biden and the judge is going to have to confront that when she sentences him. >> yeah, i want to underline that fact, that they had a plea deal, that they could have taken, but because they wouldn't grant him total immunity, even over the tax charges, any other charges, they redacted it. so instead of taking an imperfect plea deal, yeah, they risked it all, which, again, in retrospect seems like really bad lawyering. >> yeah. and, you know, we don't know everything that went into their decision making. they were going to -- the plea deal encompassed the tax case, which is actually really significant. that's a more serious case than with greater breadth of evidence, which is going to happen in september, unless they plead it out, than this case. what they weren't willing to offer the biden team was immunity from other conduct that they were investigating including potential foreign lobbying violations. well, guess what, it has been a year, we have seen no sign of a federal investigation leading to an indictment on those charges. that may never happen. that was a sort of theoretical risk that they weren't willing to take. what they have is an actual felony conviction here in this case, and then another trial on very serious tax charges looming in california in september. >> christie, there are many, including me, that feel the case shouldn't have been brought in the first place. that if hunter's last name was not biden, he probably would have never been in front of a grand jury or jury and certainly not a judge facing trial. how do you read this in terms of the seriousness or lack of seriousness that this case warranted, even being brought to court? >> so i completely agree with you. i do not think this is a case that would have been brought. when i was at the u.s. attorney's office in the southern district of new york, i was in the violent crimes unit. i prosecuted many gun cases. and then when i was deputy chief of the criminal division, i oversaw that unit and so i have seen the indictments that came out of that unit on gun cases. i've never seen a stand alone in 12 years never seen a stand alone charge for this, for being a drug addict lying about drug use on -- to be able to purchase a gun. and when you consider the other factors here, you've got a first time offender, somebody who has no criminal history, somebody who did not use the gun, who engaged in no other crime, we're talking one gun, and, i mean, it is just not something you would see charged, given all of the circumstances. because as the jury rightly pointed out, you know, in terms of relative seriousness of gun crimes, this is really on the low end and what you want to do with somebody who has a history of drug use, your objective, where is the harm here? the harm is to the addict, he didn't harm anybody else. so, you want to make sure that person is getting sober and getting the help they need. the original plea agreement that dealt with deferred prosecution and making sure that for two years he was getting sober, like, that's the right outcome here. so, this idea that now we have gone through a trial, which, look, the evidence was overwhelming that he was guilty here, we're not, you know, i'm not saying the jury got it wrong, they did their duty, but what should the sentence be? you can't put this guy in jail for this. >> that's what i want to ask you, in light of what you said, what do you think the sentence should be, what do you think it will be, and will the judge in your opinion factor in some of what you said and not go by the guidelines, which he's not wedded to and consider that rather than jail time? screaming for a below guideline sentence. 15 to 21 months would be far, far too harsh a punishment for a crime that really only hurt hunter biden. so, i would be shocked if we saw a sentence that was within that guideline range from this court. >> msnbc legal analyst kristy greenberg, and ken dilanian, thank you for your analysis. we'll be following this as it plays out. so, today marks what would have been the 100th birthday of president george h.w. bush. john meacham, your recent book about the 41st president is entitled "the call to serve: the life of an american president." so, we're wondering what your reflections are this morning as you are in college station, texas, the home of the george h.w. bush presidential library and museum. what comes to mind? >> how much we need the values and the vision that george h.w. bush embodied, to talk about him is almost as if we're talking about the 19th century or the 18th century, that someone who while imperfect, someone who pursued his ambition, but at critical moments put the country's good above his own political good. even to the price of the presidency in many ways. that's a kind of character, that's a kind of american fiber that we need more and more of in this era where we tend to throw a punch before we even begin to think about what the other guy is saying. that's a great 41 phrase. used to say, always want to know what the other guy thinks. and i was thinking about him, this conversation about the middle east. here's a man who, mika, your father was part of the same world, little different degree in terms of policy views, but that was a generation of folks who had been shaped by the second world war, who understood the lessons of that war. understood that american power was vital, that the way to avoid great cataclysm was to confront aggression early. and to understand that everyone is human. everyone has their own incentives. president bush used to, when he had a few minutes, he would say i want to call up an amir in the desert somewhere and say how's the weather. and someone said, mr. president, you know, you don't need to talk to that amir today. you got other things. he says, well, if i called the amir today, when i don't need him, he's probably going to pick up the phone when i do. and so that vision of politics as a human undertaking is something that i really wish we could not only recover, but strengthen. >> presidential historian john meacham, thank you very much. thank you for those thoughts this morning. coming up, the latest inflation report crossed moments ago ahead of a pivotal federal reserve meeting set for this afternoon. cnbc's andrew ross sorkin joins us to dig into the latest numbers. plus, the world bank reports the impressive u.s. economy is powering the world. so, why don't so many americans believe that? nbc news senior business correspondent christine romans will explain the paradox she's found with a number of swing state voters. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." e voters that's straight ahead on "morning joe." well, it is kind of sad. 29 past the hour, there you see it, coney island, never going to be the same. it's over. joey chestnut will not compete in the nathan's famous hot dog eating contest next month, that's usually where it happens. it is not going to happen. the perennial champion has been banned from the fourth of july event because of his reported sponsorship deal with the competing brand impossible foods. in a statement yesterday, major league eating said in part, quote, we are devastated to learn that joey chestnut has chosen to represent a rival brand that sells plant-based hot dogs rather than competing. and added, we hope he returns when he's not representing a rival brand. in a series of posts on x, chestnut wrote that he was gutted to learn about his ban, and said that the decision will deprive the great fans of the holiday's usual joy and entertainment. i guess it is joy and entertainment. or nausea. chestnut has won the annual coney island contest 16 times, including the last eight years in a row. he ate a world record 76 hot dogs and buns in 2021 and scarfed down 62 to retain the title last year. and think about it, like, the plant-based foods are kind of better for you, i kind of think it was a nice thing he was doing, just fyi. moving on, new polling finds improving views about president joe biden's ability to manage the economy. according to the latest numbers from the financial times and the university of michigan, 41% of registered voters trust donald trump more to handle the economy, compared to 37% who say they trust biden more. as recently as february, trump's lead over biden was 11 points. when that same question was asked, overall voters ranked the economy as their most important issue, by a wide margin, 24 points ahead of the future of social security and medicare. meanwhile, the consumer price index just crossed, showing no increase in may. economists had been looking for a slight increase. let's bring in the co-anchor of "ana cabrera reports," andrew ross sorkin and christine romans. what do you make of the sort of two-sided view on the economy? it seems both sides could be right a little bit, but it has to be put in context. >> it is just fascinating, look at the numbers and i'm sure andrew agrees, these are enviable numbers, except for inflation on just about every measure of the economy. when i crisscross the country, people don't believe it. even when they tell me that they have record home equity, that they have record amounts in their 401(k)s, they are feeling good in their business, they say that the rest of the country isn't feeling it. and so there is this real big disconnect. i think prices and price inflation scars are part of it, but there is also a gloomy hangover from the covid years, and people are just really saying they don't feel great about the economy, even if they look at their own numbers and their own numbers are good. >> so, andrew ross sorkin, what is going on with inflation? >> well, we are getting whipsawed with the data. we'll find out what jay powell thinks about it later today there was an expectation that maybe he wouldn't be lowering interest rates anytime soon in this calendar year ahead of the election because it felt and seemed from the data that inflation was not coming down. well, today, it appears to be coming down a little bit. it appears that the biden administration, you would think, would be very happy about these numbers because the markets are now suggesting that in fact jay powell will -- betting that jay powell will be lowering interest rates sometime this year and that's what you're seeing in the equity markets this morning. for the most part, you also saw inflation come down just a little bit in terms of food, which, of course, has been sort of a bumper sticker for a lot of americans in how they think about inflation. the sticking point on inflation has still been housing, to some degree and there has been a sticky issue throughout the year about elderly care at home, year over year basis up about 11%. that's probably the one sort of bad marker in all this. in terms of the good marks, food has come down and as we said, the inflation piece is a little bit lower than had been anticipated. again, not out of the woods at all. but most folks i imagine if you're sitting in the white house today are thinking this is a good day. >> christine, we were talking, you and i during the break, about the gloom that you and your travelers you say on the air, i picked this up in my travels on my radio show, what do you think can happen that would make americans feel that, yes, we are doing well, because individuals are saying i'm doing good, but i think everything is bad. what can happen in this economic area that could kind of break everybody out of the gloom and the biden administration certainly needs it for the re-election. >> i think two things can happen. all the retailers and this morning we heard starbucks is going to have a $5, $6 bundle. i think people might start feeling better about prices if they see these widespread deals throughout the economy. there are some prices that are actually falling, and the retailers have gotten the message they can't just keep passing on higher prices to consumers. that might take some time, people might start feeling better about that. and just the idea that time heals all wounds. the more time we have between 9.1%, the inflation number that was the worst of inflation, more time that passes, people starting to adjust to a higher baseline for prices, maybe then that can help people feel more confident about all the other things in their life that are going the right way. >> andrew, president biden a short time ago went wheels up for italy. he's en route to the g-7. talk to us, if you will, about some of the economic pieces of the agenda there. there is a lot of debate, deal not done yet, about russian assets being seized, used for ukraine, resistance in europe about that. what do we think is going to get accomplished over the couple of days and the seaside town there in italy? >> look, i don't want to -- it is not that i don't want to speculate oftentimes what we do. i don't think there is going to be an enormous amount of work that is going to advance things in europe necessarily. i'm not suggesting this is all going to be theater either. but in the grand scheme of things, i think that the truth is this was on the calendar, on the docket, something he has to do, but the real focus in between all of these meetings is, of course, what he's going to do when he gets back, which is the debates coming up in -- now two weeks. so i think that most of what is going to happen there is not necessarily going to impact us here and i don't think there is going to be a remarkable shift in terms of what you're seeing out of europe to be honest with you. >> all right, cnbc's andrew ross sorkin and nbc's christine romans, thank you both very much for being on this morning. we appreciate it. and coming um, our next guest has new reporting on how donald trump's campaign views georgia as its laboratory to rig the presidential election. we'll dig into that ahead on "morning joe." lection. we'll dig into that ahead on "morning joe." 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matter what" t-shirt. it is your right to have safe health care. that's it. go online, call, or scan right now. ♪♪ with fastsigns, create factory grade visual solutions to perfect your process. ♪♪ fastsigns. make your statement™. do you know how it feels to have the president of the united states target you? the president of the united states is supposed to represent every american, not to target one. but he targeted me, lady ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud american citizen, who stands up to help fulton county run an election in the middle of the pandemic. >> that was georgia election worker ruby freeman, in testimony for the house january 6th committee in 2022, about being targeted by former president donald trump after his 2020 loss in her state. nearly four years later, trump and his allies are reportedly taking things even further in georgia, with the help of the state's republican-controlled legislature. according to "rolling stone," trump loving elements -- trump is loving elements of the georgia gop have wielded that advantage in a crusade to convert discredited election conspiracy theories into policies well ahead of election day 2024. those tactics reportedly include new laws to limit mail-in and early voting, pushing out republican officials who believe in free and fair elections and plans to challenge georgia's final result even if trump wins, just to prove a point about imaginary fraud in democratic areas. joining us now, senior political reporter at "rolling stone," oswen suswan who broke this. >> this is a situation where in the state of georgia, for 2024, obviously it is one of just a handful of states that is going to determine the fate of the 2024 presidential election. now, just to be clear, up front, if the current polling holds, it looks like donald trump has a good chance of winning georgia outright. having said that, he and his allies including in and out of the state of georgia are not willing to leave that up to chance. the way they are viewing georgia at the moment in some of the most granular ways that for years they have been trying to make actual policy in electoral processes changes in the state is to try to solidify in georgia an electoral philosophy of heads, i win, tails, you lose. that, after all, is one of the defining traits of trumpism, with regard to elections and so much else. many of the sources closer to trump we spoke to for the story including on the ground in georgia, who have been working on these initiatives, view georgia as a quote, unquote laboratory for what they want to do in other states, particularly battleground states and nationwide. now, the reason georgia is unique in this situation is because unlike, say, pennsylvania, wisconsin, even arizona, the reason it could be so much of a maga laboratory in the sense is because they have unified control of so much of the state when it comes to the republican party in the legislature, the governor, the lieutenant governor, the election board, the lieutenant governor is someone who is currently under investigation in the state because of his efforts to help overturn the election for donald trump in 2020. so, what we found in our reporting and i can get into it a little bit more, specifically if you would like, there is a very step by step process on so many fronts to wage this war, and it sits in donald trump sits atop this sprawling network, regularly receiving briefings on this, and doing what he can, even to pressure republicans in the state to oust obscure republican officials who aren't kowtowing to the cult of trump and committing to try to help to speak bluntly rig an election for him. >> as you look at this, though, and i'm familiar with georgia, full disclosure, we have an office in atlanta, national action network, the people were in place, the republicans last election. yet biden was able to win. we were able to elect the first jewish u.s. senator, the first black u.s. senator. is the answer to this plan by trump that has now become perceived as a swing state, that there must be major mobilization on the democratic side? what do you find on the democratic side that could deal with this since it is a real entrenchment of republicans from a very small to a very large city level, they control a lot of the state apparatus. >> an answer, if you are a democratic operative or the biden campaign to win georgia right now is to maintain the margin that you did in 2020. according to the latest slate of polling, it doesn't look like that is necessarily going to be the case, and whatever the polling shows now, there is a good chance that in georgia and elsewhere, this is fought at the margins. what the republican party and the trumpist elements and so many others in georgia are doing right now on the right is to try to hack at the margins as much as they can, when it comes to purging voter roles or trying to magaify the state election board. >> and drop box voting. >> and put the screws to mail-in voting, things like that. >> the new reporting is online now for "rolling stone." thank you very much. we really appreciate you coming on this morning. all right. coming up, one of the world's most renowned portrait photographers turns his lens on his own neighborhood, christopher street. we'll show you his latest collection and hear the stories behind the photos straight ahead on "morning joe." photos straigd on "morning joe. my mental health was better. but uncontrollable movements called td, tardive dyskinesia, started disrupting my day. td felt embarrassing. i felt like disconnecting. i asked my doctor about treating my td, and learned about ingrezza. ♪ ingrezza ♪ ingrezza is clinically proven for reducing td. most people saw results in just two weeks. people taking ingrezza can stay on most mental health meds. only number-one prescribed ingrezza has simple dosing for td: always one pill, once daily. ingrezza can cause depression, suicidal thoughts, or actions in 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celebrate one of the country's most renowned portrait photographers who is celebrating lgbtq culture during pride month. the new exhibit entitled on christopher street trends gender portraits by mark sulager, featuring an array of portraits taken on iconic christopher street in the heart of the city's lgbtq community. the black and white photos were taken between 2013 and 2016 capturing the beauty, the struggle, and theater of an incredible neighborhood and its people. the exhibit opens tomorrow at the isabella stewart gardner museum in boston, and mark seleger joins us now, the former chief photographer for rolling stone. mark, it's good to see you, good to have you on the show. >> hi, guys. >> great to have you here, mark. >> thank you for having me. >> what i love about these portraits and what i love sort of the story behind the story is you didn't really know what you were taking shots of. you weren't out to make any point. you weren't out to -- you were just simply documenting what was happening in your neighborhood. >> yeah. >> what was happening on your street, and then you look back all these years later, and you're like, oh, wow, okay. this was the beginning of something much bigger. >> yeah, and i think there's a lot of truth to the idea that when you see things sort of disappearing, right, it's your obligation or my obligation as someone who documents to be able to contain that and to share it with, you know, the rest of the world, and you know, my neighborhood, i love in -- on the west village, it was gentry fiing, and it was changing rapidly, and i could see that the landscape was changing. the theater was going away. the beauty of this kind of gender equality, you know, almost like an ellis island for gender equality was disappearing, and my curiosity to go out and do portraits led me to photograph just on christopher street because i want to kind of isolate where, you know, that one place was for me, a place i actually would avoid normally, you know, just because of kind of the theater of it. so yeah. >> so for those not going to the exhibit, we can show just a few of them. here we have a couple, a photo that you took. who are these people, and what's the story? >> well, so this is a couple and this is jamal and leomi, and they became our cover subjects, so they both transitioned, and then they found each other, you know, on a dating service, you know. they just found their way to each other, and what i learned from my experience of talking to my subjects who were very open and very honest with me was that who you love and who you are are two different things. so you know, as i dug deep into their story, you can really kind of build, you know, through their own trauma, through their own disappointments, through their -- you know, the disconnection with family, but also the triumphs of being your true self, so the authenticity for me was so important. >> and just two more we have here this beautiful photograph of a woman with a scarf, mahela mcelroy, and also i'll show the third just because we're running out of time, tiny. so tell us about these two photos. >> so mahela i met -- actually, the day before i met her, i went to the pier to photograph some subjects, and there was this complete turmoil, which was somebody had drowned, so the pier was cut off, and the next day i photographed mahela as she was sitting near the pier, and then a year later when she came to the studio, she told me that that had been her boyfriend who committed suicide. >> mark, do you hope that as you tour with the book and the exhibits that it gives a human face in areas of the country we used to call the bible belt and others gives a human face to lgbtq people and transgender. >> absolutely. >> that's what i face, i came out of a hardcore pentecostal church, when i started going to the village, these are human beings with human stories who face family disowning in many cases, family abandonment. >> yeah, reverend, thank you. that's a really, really invaluable point you just made is that most of these -- my subjects had experience like families completely breaking ties with them and, you know, having to go on their own and do it. a lot of times when you see people working the street, they're actually working in order to be able to, you know, afford their operations in order to be able to be their true selves. so the education that i hope this exhibition brings throughout is really, really important. it certainly taught me a lot. >> the new exhibit entitled "on christopher street: transgender portraits" by mark seliger opens tomorrow at the isabella gardner museum in boston. thank you very much. >> thanks so much, mark. always an honor. >> thank you so much. >> all right. that does it for us this morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage in just two minutes. coverage in just two minutes skyt il-23 inhibitor that can deliver remission and visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. serious allergic reactions 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