President trumps Hush Money Trial. He laid out tons of evidence during his testimony including tapes and emails and photos and calendar events. Impressive. One of trumps lawyers might win a case. Well, outside the court defending trump, he made a fraudian slip. Lets pray for our other side on this shameless prosecution. Good morning. Welcome to morning joe. Its wednesday, may 15th, along with joe, willie and me, we have the host of Way Too EarlyJonathan Lemire. You know how long it took us to book him . Years to get stephanopoulos and longer to get Jonathan Lemire. He just wandered . He is a chief columnist. How do you like it . I love it. Dont give me a hard time. Ive been in this seat at least three and a half minutes. Three and a half minutes yeah. Early. Right, you were. Early. Yelling there is that. Im shocked. Im shocked that john couldnt modulate his voice. I usually do that on good morning america. Heilemann is here. Author of the book how the right lost its mind Charlie Sykes is with us. Charlie will have fun today. You know . Charlie, ill be honest with you. Charlies agent extraordinarily tough and we usually have to, like, blow our budget for two months to ever get him on but we saw something he wrote last night and we said we need to get the wisconsin badger in to take it to the fans at the courthouse. Depressing, depressing courthouse . Tight with time this morning. Former u. S. Attorney and msnbc legal analyst joyce is here and she just joined the Brennan Center for justice at nyu law as a senior. My goodness congratulations thank you. Roll tide bring it to the big apple. Yesterday, we were always talk about the fact that donald trump and his supporters say how horrible america is. We are number one militarily and economically and culturally and strong in the universities. Whackos there but universities best universities on the planet. Yesterday, a study came out that comes out anally and america had 19 of the top 25 universities on the planet and the list didnt even include the best one. Really . Alabama. What . It just means america is stronger. We got tired of being number one. Sometimes you have to take a year off. We got a lot to get to this morning. We start with, willie . New york knickerbockers 30point win last night. A lot of concerns had they ran out of gas after blown out by 30 points in indiana. It was bad. Concern with the injuries and no depth on the bench. The garden came alive last night for the Knicks Jalen Brunson had 44 points. 28 in the first half. That guy Isaiah Hartenstein was incredible on the boards. They are all heart, john heilemann. Were you there . I was not but watching with george and lucy on the couch. What an effort. Were you there . I was not but ill be there on sunday night if there is a game sunday night. You know a guy . I do. Larry . Ill say they were all hard. Tom thibodeau is great coach but the concern is he runs his players into the ground and they are great players and that was the concern coming out of mothers day massacre. But, yesterday, man. They were on fire. Jalen brunson keeps making the case for hes as good as anybody in the league and in the nba. His fourth time going over 40 points in the playoffs. He was worn down on sunday. Msg is a special place and that crowd carried the knicks. They rolled over the pacers. Look. Winning game six in indy will be hard. A series the home team has Won Every Game so far but you feel pretty good about a game seven. You believe in these guys the way they play. They were left in dead for indy and momentum In Indianapolis but a season worths of evidence saying dont give up and they play too hard and too together and good last night. We said yesterday when people were freaking out. When there was the Memorial Day Massacre and celtics went into l. A. And absolutely crushed them and i think game two, game one or game two of the 85 series, lakers came back and won. You got to play all seven and put it behind them. A guy who wishes he could put something behind him. You know where we are going . Are we going to the trump trial . Hush money criminal trial . In realtime, mika and i were watching the brady roast with a friend everybody was laughing. We are doing this. No. I was like why is he doing this . Right . You got to help the pacing of the story, sweetie. Im talking to the jury here. We saw it. We were laughing and then as we walked across to our house, which we did, we looked at each other and go, did he forget that he has kids and hes got a mother of the kids. And friends . And friends. We figured that out in realtime. I think most other parents who saw that figured that out in realtime. I really am completely shocked that it took tom brady this long and the backlash that he had to figure out that this was horrible. What is going on there . Especially when he is angry when they tell a joke about, the guy we love, but his billionaire owner, but let some skewer the mother of his children and his children. Yeah. Gisele and bridget moynahan, the mother of his son went after him. Dude, why are you doing this . How much is enough . They are pay him 25 million. He just find 400 Hundred Million contract, he doesnt need 5 million. What does fox sports think about their 400 Million Dollar investment . Im dead serious. We are cheering for tom brady and everybody likes tom brady but, seriously, who is around him . I want to know who is around him. Like, does he listen to anybody . This is something no. Youve got to have people around you that protect you that say, no, tom, dont do that. No, tom, if youre going to make a statement, dont say how sorry you are and say finish with i hope everybody had a great time. Who is around this guy . We blame you, Jonathan Lemire i can tell im getting the brunt of this. He didnt listen to me. I wouldnt have advised him to do this to be sure. To willies point i think he is transitioning his life. He is trying to humanize himself and doing a lot of ads but this was clearly a mistake. Yesterday, he said i gave an interview on podcast and said its fine to take jokes for me but i find that some of them were hurtful to the people i love the mother including his children and mother of his children. He expressed real regret about that, john heilemann. Why didnt he see that in realtime . Why didnt someone get ahead of it and say other ways to humanize yourself but not a roast. Have you ever seen these things . They are so mean. Two times in a persons life you bring the team in what are you attacked with or joked about . One of those is running for president. You got to hire people to look in your background and what the attacks are going to be. If youre doing a roast, on Live Television you got to have a team that goes what is the worstcase scenario . What are the jokes they could make about who in your life . You would think that if you had the right team doing that, you would say if youre tom brady and say, i think ill pass. The thing is, also, he did it jeff frost here is the deal, jeff. Ill do this and say whatever you want to say about me. I dont care. Make fun of me all you want and call me stupid and this and call me that and this. The second anybody makes a joke about my kids, or makes a jokes about my kids moms, im walking off the stage and youre going to be sitting there tap dancing the next two hours. Thats all he had to say. All he had to say. They would have said, okay, tom. He didnt say it. He didnt think ahead. I ask again its his responsibility but who in the hell is around him . Does he have Nobody Taking Care of him . Saying, tom, dont do this. Because, listen when i say taking care of him he is a grown man, yeah, he has been playing football since he was 8. I dont expect him to be like james carville, you know . No. Hes a football player. He needs to be protected and he needs to protect himself. Why are we talking about this right now . He did an interview with the Pivot Podcast he talked about this and he said i got out of football. He said ill be honest, im drifting around a little bit trying to figure it out and im gobbling things up. That sounds fun, lets do that. I think he now realizes he needs to focus a little bit. Here he is on that podcast yesterday. I loved when the jokes were about me. I thought they were so fun. I didnt like the way that it affected my kids. So its the hardest part about, like, the bittersweet aspect of when you do something that you think is one way and then, all of a sudden, you realize, i wouldnt do that again because of the way it affected me. Actually, the people that i care about the most in the world. What john was talking about they could have done, Go To Youtube and type in nicki glazer and i think youll know what is coming. Lordy looking very crest fallen. Does the defense rest . Ive been sitting on this one here but hes made curious decision when he made the comeback. He doesnt know what to do in his life and a mistake we should all turn the page. Speaking of mistakes, mika. Yeah. I have said for the past couple of days, as ive said for the past couple of months, that i believe now that there is a conspiracy. I do believe in conspiracies. I think psychiatrists in blue states have conspired with a the New York Times polster and said, listen. We will split the profits on Psychiatric Care if you guys will have the craziest methodology, which they always have. Maybe they are trying to make up for 20 when they skewed in bidens direction by about four or five points . But every one of these the New York Times siena polls have been widely skewed when you compared them to other polls that come out at the same time. For those who say that is not the case, we will be glad here at morning joe, as you all know, we have a betting line. We will be glad to take all comers who think that donald trump is going to win nevada by 12 points. Okay. We are going to get to that moment. First, exactly one month into Donald Trumps trial, there is new polling that finds, for the first time, the majority of americans believe the former president is guilty. In the latest yahoo news ugov national poll, 52 said he conceal hush money payments to a porn star and up four points from last month and up seven points from when the charges were filed last year. If convicted, 51 would approve of trump serving prison time and 36 disapprove putting him behind bars. Look at that, willie. I guess this isnt a far left wing conspiracy . No. Its the majority of americans. Yeah. Wait. I went to alabama. That is a majority, 51 . Yes. Once you get to 51. As for the political ramifications, the Poll Shows Trump and President Biden tied at 45 in this years election among registered voters. When asked who they would support, if convicted, trump is convicted in the Hush Money Case, if he is, biden takes a seven point lead 46 to 39 . The latest Morning ConsultTracking Poll over 10,000 registered voters finds 44 for trump and 43 for biden. That is within the polls margin of error. Separate new polling of registered voters finds joe biden leading trump in this poll. Biden 47 to 43 . We should know the margin of error is plus or minus 6 for the poll. So, so i got to say its fascinating, willie and we will get into this. The New York Times ran a few polls. They ran the New York Times siena poll which they roll off 15, 16, 17 stories that make people run around manhattan with their hair on fire and washington with their hair on fire. The New York Times ipsos poll run at the same time by the New York Times. Biden is ahead by four points nationally. Four points nationally. Not even an article about it. Any way. As for that the New York Times philadelphia polling that came out Monday Morning in the Battleground States, a lot of reaction so that as we know. Some of the most trusted polsters in the country are calling into question the methodology of the results. You think . John ralston calls trump having a 13point lead in the state, quote, bizarre. Adding that nothing remotely similar has been seen in the state in decades. The founders of Uva Center For Politics larry sabato laughed after seeing the nevada numbers and recommend others do the same. Marc caputo calls the nevada poll, quote, a total outlier. John is raising questions how biden could lose the youth vote in 24 points in michigan and winning it by 27 points in wisconsin. A Million Monkeys with a million cell phones making calls as pollsters is how you do it. Greg sargent expressed dismay and shows 20 of the likely voters polled did not vote in the last two midterms. They are likely voters . But did not vote. 20 didnt vote in the last two midterms . And didnt vote in the last general election or the last two midterms or they have never voted at all. But wait, john heilemann. There is more. People are calling saying this is a reaction to one poll. You go go back and look at the tape. We do this every time when this poll comes. Its always an outlier and the New York Times always gets 15 or 16 articles out of them that everybody rushes to because it says earth ends at 5 00. Hit link. The New York Times 15 times and hit it and they keep Writing Articles about it. Npr has found some of these voters that said you know a voter for biden before, but wait. This guy we checked the voting roll. He has never voted. Not just the people in the surveys but people, the New York Times quoted in their article. Here is one of many people we interviewed who is disillusioned and voting for trump. No record of him voting. Yeah. Okay . No. Are you feeling something, john heilemann, that you want to say . I think maybe an overreliance of voters telling the truth about things in general. Hate to say it. Reporters find this occasionally that the reporters lie. Here is what i say about this poll. If i were to ask you this question, joe, do you know anybody on either side who dont think its the case of the Battleground States that joe biden is stronger in michigan and wisconsin than he is in nevada, arizona, and georgia . It sounds about right. Ive seen some polls that shows george is close. Greg bluestein had an article im not saying its not close. Im not carry water for the New York Times or the methodology of this poll. I keep going back to the thing i try to say every time we talk about these things. I know you know this. What are the polls showing us directionally about the race . Its a different with the New York Times siena poll and you know this. The New York Times feasts on it with click fake stories like a dozen at a time. What im trying to focus on what i think people should Pay Attention to. Im focusing on the New York Times is actively shaping the election cycles where this poll comes out on a sunday and on monday, people go, oh i heard it. Im going dont be so stupid and why we are doing this. Hold on. What i hear is after the siena polls coming out, every time, everything that joe biden has done since the state of the Union Address the money he has put out and all of the campaigning is for not. No, its not. No, its not. There is one poll that is wildly skewed every time and it does shape if its a the New York Times poll versus a morning poll and the New York Times amplifies it 15, 17, times, it warps reality and everybody responds to that in the media and in the political world. All id say about this is that i agree with you. Unless you want to suggest you think is there a conspiracy at the times about this which their methodology is bizarre and larry sabato said this and others said this. Youre saying the New York Times systematically putting the polls out in a way to amplify them to drive the news circle. Cycle. Yes, i am saying that. Im curious as someone i understand your level of sophistication reading the media why you think that is true. What im trying to say is i agree with you. The best bull work against any polls outliers or anything else for people who are actually consumers of this information is to not let these any given news outlet or any given poll shape your perception of the race unduly. John, a that is not realistic. And ill tell you why its not realistically. I know people come up to after every the New York Times siena poll comes out. It completely changes the political battlefield out there for about a week, week and a half. It distorts the questions that are asked of the white house. It distorts the questions that are asked of donald trump. It distorts all of the opinion. It distorts everything. That keeps happening every month when this comes out. And then about two weeks later after the residue of the New York Times siena poll leaves, people go i think joe biden is on a winning streak. Two weeks later it comes out again and its garbage and outlier. Yes, the New York Times when they have all of these experts questioning the methodology, when they are calling 20 of the people likely voters who who didnt vote in the last two primaries or never voted before, when they are e