morning joe starts right now trump indicted the first ever criminal indictment of a former president of the united states came down yesterday when a new york city grand jury convened by the manhattan district attorney s office took the unprecedented step of voting to charge donald trump. because the indictment is under seal, the exact charges are unknown, but we do know they center around that $130,000 payment trump allegedly made to porn star stormy daniels just days before the 2016 election, to keep her silent about an affair she claims the two had a decade earlier according to the star witness in the case, trump s own former lawyer, michael cohen, the trump organization tried to cover up the payment, falsely claiming it was a legal expense. good morning and welcome to morning joe. it is friday, march 31st along with joe, willie and me, we have the host of way too ea early, white house bureau chief at politico, jonathan lemire the host of politics nation, presid
yeah. he has revealed that this is all about performance politics with him this is a harvard educated lawyer he knows that article there is an article in the constitution that specifically forbids what he said yesterday specifically addresseses the founding fathers saying the executives of state shall cooperate with other jurisdictions when laws are being enforced and he, frankly, i can t imagine that trump is going to do anything other than surrender. alvin bragg wouldq quietly surrender. the country should want him to quietly surrender. desantis knows that. he is now telling america, i am just as vacuous as donald trump. the substance of it doesn t matter i am willing to say and do anything and the irony here is, he tweeted that he would violate
how mature we are as a democracy that believes in liberty under law. i don t know how we re going to do. yeah. fair enough. reverend al, maybe you can provide some insight on the prosecutor alvin bragg, this is a man who, to the consternation of people who voted for him, to the consternation of his own prosecutors, refused earlier to charge trump because he didn t believe they had enough on trump. his prosecutors were so angry, they went to the times and talked about how they had trump dead to center, but he just didn t have the counsrage, the power, the strength to go after donald trump even went out a wrote a book about it yet, here we are with alvin bragg being, well, threatened,
for the reasons jonathan just pointed out. also, we got the strange adjustment yesterday, that alvin b bragg, that the grand jury was going to be taking a couple weeks off. we vjoked about it yesterday, ho long they d be taking off. that lulled the trump camp into a false sense of security. donald trump even thanking this grand jury in a post the day before, saying how much he respected this grand jury and how much he thanked this grand jury they actually thought they were going to beat this they actually thought that if he did face any possible indict indictment, it d be for weeks. he was saying a couple weeks ago, i have gained such respect for this grand jury, and perhaps even the grand jury system. yesterday, obviously, willie, donald trump and his team of lawyers, everybody at mar-a-lago, shocked at the timing of this. and he had a misspelling in
see how this historically is specific only to donald trump, michael. you didn t hear republicans doing this when richard nixon was facing impeachment absolutely. richard nixon was facing crimes you didn t hear this new agnew was charged with tax evasion. absolutely. in fact, you had republicans, barry goldwater, the most conservative republican, walking to the white house and saying to ni nixon, hey, the gig is up. get out. right. again, this is something that this is specific to trump, isn t it? it s not even specific to republicans historically. sure it is. again, look who his heros are. mobsters, white supremacists, gangs. you know, you tell a lot by who someone s heros are, and it is beginning to look at least in this case as if those are his. michael beschloss and claire