american democracy and saying, oh, let s just let that hover out there. let s not find out whether i was guilty or not until a year or two after the election. i mean, that s not how an innocent person acts. it s a great point. on your point about talking to sean spicer, i remember i was driving around one early saturday morning, i think it was march of 2017, going to get coffee on a saturday morning, and trump s tweet comes across and says your former boss, barack obama, had tapped his phones at trump tower. i immediately called reince prevent and asked indelicately, what the blank is going on? he was like, what do you mean? you need to read twitter. he looks at twitter and like, oh i ll call you back.
you ask the question, why isn t he here? i thought this was the 800-pound gorilla. this was the great donald who said he was the greatest ever, he was the retribution. he didn t even show up. we ve got an empty chair. retribution now is an empty chair? what am i supposed to do? carry that chair around? what s he scared of? if we re so bad, if we re the seven dwarves, what is the great donald scared of? it seems to me it s a better approach. he won t do it, i don t think he s capable of doing it, but as the wall street journal said somebody s got to do it because they ve got to start culling the field. right, and if trump is also proclaiming himself the greatest debater ever, why is he not here? and if trump does try to upstage the debate by going to georgia that day make that point too.
i think they re optimistic that dean phillips will not challenge the president, but it s prompting unwanted conversations in the democratic caucus. in a race that s expected to be close, that or a third-party challenge like cornell west even taking a few votes would all matter. great stuff as always from white house reporter from the washington post tyler page. thank you for joining us. thank you for getting up way too early with us this friday morning. morning joe starts right now. i resigned on d december 14th because i thought at that point the state votes were certified and that was the end of the legal frost right. and i also didn t like the way he was spouting the big lie. i thought that was irresponsible. he took it much further than even i expected or anyone expected, and during this time, he was being told by lawyers in the white house that if he kept on doing this, he would spend the rest of his life tangling with the criminal justice process. and that s exactly w
in a lot of trouble. hitting up the caps a lock on his truth social post, but you ve got to take it seriously. if you ever seen an image of what happened on january six, right? the guy is running for president, he can t win. imagine how our system of justice would run in that world? it s hard to think about, but it could have been. taking the oath, he s elected president, maybe he would pardon his unindicted coconspirator jeffrey clark and finally succeed installing that guy as attorney general. not a completely farfetched idea if donald trump wins the presidency again. he could not beat making it more clear that he intends to defeat american democracy once and for all if he is given the means. obviously, obviously, it goes without saying, i know i had to say, but a man like that should not be.
pence was also surprisingly spicy and aggressive in going after donald trump. so it does feel as if we have at least entered tentatively, the beginning of what might possibly be a new phase of this campaign. i never disagree. i don t know if i would call mike pence spicy today or ever. but, here s the other piece. the political analysis gets stuck in this sort of lazy calcified, i m not accusing you of this, charlie, he can t win, so why. liz cheney isn t in congress, but she did a whole lot, can t use the word here, a ton of damage to republicans in the midterms. he helped create democracy letters. he helped tell a story using all of trump-supporting republicans of the danger that trump uniquely past and future poses in a democracy. yes, christie is right, but he s complicit. he made this mess.