The rangers will host the flyers. Avalanche with the wild. Way too early and morning joe starts right now. You can do whatever you want. The little i ask you is not to promote it and not to bring him to my games. Black people cant attend his games. [ boos ] i couldnt have said that better myself. Folks, im shocked that sterling would perpetuate the cruel stereotype that white people are genetically superior at basketball spectating. [ laughter ] oh, let me guess because our muscular skeletal structure makes it easier for us to pump cheese. That is racist. And everyone has expressed outrage, folks. Even the clippers players made a statement. Clippers players staged a
silent protest dumping their uniforms on court and wearing the jersey inside out and concealed the clippers logo. They concealed the beloved logo of the clippers which we all know is [ laughter ] i want to say a guy getting a hair cut or [ laughter ] a toenail clipper with googly eyes. [ laughter ] good morning. Its wednesday, april 30th. Good to have you on morning joe on this beautiful day. Its may tomorrow. Oh, gosh. Its so cold. And lots of terrible storms across the country. Well be talking about that soon. Also, barack obama and obamacare, yet another poll out. This time, nbc news wall street journal poll. Well well see how that lines up
with the abc News Washington post poll. It wasnt great use. Plus, did you guys see this, star wars do we have any star wars nerds on the set . Yes, im old school. I wasnt triled with the trilogy but Old School Star wars yes. How about theyre bringing back Harrison Ford, mark hamill and carrie fisher. All three in the seventh star wars movie. This was in a reading yesterday. A script reading yesterday. You can see Harrison Ford to the right of j. J. Abrams. Carrie fisher two over at 3 00. Mark hamill at about 10 00, 11 00 oclock on your screen as well. Mark, are you a star wars nerd . Im looking for jar jar banks. No jar jar banks. I like it fine. I have no figurines. George lucas has been banned,
i think, from this. R 2 did 2 is going there, too. 30 years after the end. Of return of the jedi 1983. No darth, though, hes gone. Yeah. Can they bring him back now . No. Its star wars assisted living. No they had that ghost scene at the end. Flashbacks. I think billy madison, too. They yeed a bobby ewing situation. It was all a dream. Anyway, mike barnicle, msnbc and time senior political analyst, mark hamillton, and the reverend al sharpton in d. C. , anchor for news america and coauthor of the confidence
code ckatty kay, why dont you get us started. Im just worried about that thats a very bbc look. With the hair on both sides. No, lets get a look at news. After promise due process by Donald Sterling, nba commissioner silver delivered a Swift Response to the racist remarks. The views expressed by mr. Sterling are deeply offensive and harmful. That they came from an nba owner only heightens the damage in my personal outrage. Accordingly, effective immediately, i am banning mr. Sterling for life from any association with the Clippers Organization or the nba. Okay. So what this means, in practice is, no practice, no games. He cannot be at the clippers facility or weigh in on any personnel decisions. He can have no interaction with
the team he owns ever again. Thats on top of a maximum 2. 5 million fine. Thats pretty nominal considering that his estimated net worth is around 1. 9 billion. But the question of how long sterling will own the clippers is also in doubt. I will urge the board of governors to exercise its authority to force a sale of the team and will do everything in my power to ensure that that happens. Sterling has reportedly told fox news jim gray that the team is not for sale. And he will not be selling the team. With that said, several groups do appear to be interested in purchasing the team with bidding expected to exceed 1 billion. Magic johnson, boxer Floyd Mayweather jr. And david geffen are all said to be among the interested parties. Farce the actual team the clippers had to prepare for game five of their playoff series
against the golden state warriors. Following commissioner silvers announcement, the team posted this message on their website simply reading we are one. And last night, the game began without delay. Something that almost didnt happen. Both the warriors and clippers and possibly the other four teams playing last night were all reportedly going to boycott last nights games if they were unsatisfied with silvers ruling. Willie geist, the nba moved very quickly. Everybody is talking about the hammer dropping on this guy. They really didnt have much of a choice, did they . No, adam silver did the right thing. Whats to know about him, people say, oh, my gosh, hes only been on the job for three months. Hes been at the nba for 23 years. He serve ted right hand of david stern. He knew this league. He did it the right way. He authenticated the tape. He made sure he had all the information. He did pretty much the maximum that hes able to do. He needs three quarters of the owners to vote. That would be the last piece of the puzzle. The guy has 1 but 8 billion, mike barnicle, he doesnt plan to move anywhere. Donald sterling is a very litigious person. He sueden officer whatever left, business. The nba is probably getting ready to go to course against Donald Sterling. They will win. Theyll force him out before they get to court. One of the reasons, al, that it the nba had to do what the nba had to do is because they sat by and let this guy act in about hornet way since the early 1980s. Long of the owner of the clippers. Everybody knew this guy was, very least, racially insensitive. Hed been sued by elgin baylor. Everybody knew the nature of this guy. Nba had to move quickly, didnt
they . They did. I think they made a very bold and appropriate move. But i think the question that you raise is one that were faced with now. I havent been watching because last night, leaders of those and heads of civil Rights Groups met in the Congressional Black Caucus chair to talk about how do we make sure that there are things put in place in the nba that we make sure these kinds of things doesnt happen again. So as they go through forcing the sale and whatever litigation comes up, what are we going to put in place where a sterling doesnt reoccur . We cant keep going from incident to incident. We must really build in the infrastructure, box of where we are. Were in a time now where you have gays now playing in pro ball. You have all kinds of inclusion. We cannot have a league or any kind of sports where you dont have inbuilt mechanisms to vet these things out and avoid these
things from happening. No doubt about it. Were going to be talking about this throughout the three hours at 8 00. At the top at 8 00, bob costas is going to be here. Katty, lets move on to polling. Bad news in the form of a abc News Washington post poll, now, nbc is out and gives us more ideas on whether the bad numbers on obamacare or the president were outriders or not . Yeah, it doesnt look good. The brandnew polls from the nbc news and the wall street journal. Overall, 40 . 50 disapprove of how hes handling his job. Compare those numbers from the abc news and Washington Post poll, it puts the president deeper under water. 41 to 55 . Thats the lowest approval since the start of his presidency. 36 say the law is a good idea. Thats up one point from last month. 46 , still, though, say its a bad idea. The abc news poll has the law upside down. 44 approval, 48 disapproval. On Foreign Policy, 37 back the president s handling of the situation in ukraine. According to nbc news, thats a sixpoint drop from last month. By the way, 45 disapprove of his approach. The abc news poll showed similar results, 44 to 36 split. Overall, 65 of those polled by nbc news say the countrys in the wrong track. While 27 see things moving in the right direction. Neither of these polls, joe, looking great for the president. Mark har hall. Theres this dissonnence between voters. Between the wall street journal lets pull back and draw back. And frustration with the president s ukraine policy. Its kind of hard for the white house to square. Well, its difficult for any president to be working hard on a Foreign Policy issue and not having people rallying around him and encouraging him. And that is in the second term, the president would like to be able to show strength because domestically things are frustrated too. Theres not a lot of good things to say from the president s point of view. It suggests the midterms are going to be a big problem. And it suggests that hes not going to be able to get a lot done if the numbers stay like this. The things he wants to do, immigration, Climate Change require a strong president. How connected is for people that dont follow it closely, how connect said the president s Approval Rating to results in the midteller election . Its probably the thing that people think is the biggest indicator. If the numbers are as they are now, the water will have a hard time doing well. The danger is that these numbers are artificially high in the sense that the president s big on support. Going about as low as he ever gets in any poll since he took office. The problem is a lot of that support comes from places where we werent seeing contested races. His numbers are lower than the National Number in arkansas, north carolina. Louisiana, alaska. And even iowa. And other places. Colorado where the Battleground Senate race, and the governors races are. The white house needs the president to be in a stronger position by november. These numbers suggest hes got a lot of work to do. The more he works on Foreign Policy, again, David Axelrod has made this point, the harder it is for the country to rally and feel better about him because theyre just not interested as the journal points out. And we heard a couple weeks ago that obamacare, Affordable Care act, 8 million is going to cause a big uptick on this. But right now that doesnt seem to be the case. We talked about it yesterday with the abc poll that it at 44 . Now the nbc poll says 36 think the Health Care Law is a good thing. And democrats were going on to run on it in certain races but still largely unpopular. To my eye, the most vulnerable point of this poll, the most dangerous point of this poll, Midterm Elections or to the presidency itself is the 63 wrong track number. Thats it. Its a pretty big number. Its been stubbornly high. Youd like to think with were a president with accomplishments it would be lower. But its stubbornly high. No doubt about it, again, well see, though, the president
has been to the low to mid40s. And everybody was preaching doom. Read the opeds in december of 2011. I saved a couple of them. Theyre pretty funny to read. Talking about the disaster that was going to befall barack obama. Youre right, there is a base. Hes not going to go in the low 30s and 20s like george w. Bush. Or the mid30s. That 40 of the country love or is with him. So, this will turn out to be, at the end of the day, a turnout operation. If the midterms the 54s are older and wider and more conservative as they are. In every Midterm Election there will be problems if the Obama Administration can turn out what theyre able to turn out as far as the turnout operations in 08 and 12, theyve got a shot of holding the senate. Well, what do you do to
stimulate the turnout in Younger Voters the way they did in 08 and now . I dont think theyre going to. Theres another piece of replicating the obama model. Youre right, one, turn out operation and get the coalition ascended to turn out. The other is to destroy the republican candidates the way they destroyed mitt romney. Its going to be hard to destroy that. Like the Koch Brothers its not going to work. Its not going to work not because of the Koch Brothers, its not going to work because these congressmen and senators get a chance to get in front of voters. It gets so hard to nationalize these elections. Well, the democrats try not to maximize it. Its to cherry pick every individual republican and to to do Opposition Research and say what can we do to disqualify this person . Make them a koch brother ally, whatever it is. Thats their hope. And its their best hope. Because if it is nationalized, if it is a battle of the economy and Affordable Care act, the democrats will lose. Coming up on morning joe, weve got a lot to talk about. Bob costas on his ideas on how the nba can force donald sterth to sell his team. Hes going to be at 8 00 eastern. And David Axelrod. Governor tim pawlenty and dr. Brzezinski will be here. Also, i want to talk about what happened in oklahoma last night. Absolutely horrific. Coming up next on the political playbook a decision whether to hold vote. And struck in legislative limbo. Also news you cant use. But first, bill karins with a check on the forecast, bill . Joe, i know you have such a great interest in families and friends in the pensacola area. Theyve never seen a flood like this, joe. Theres people down there saying
how horrible this is. And were talking about, you know, the water records go back at least 60 to 70 years. And the flooding going on right now is worse than any hurricane weve seen. I mean, thats how bad it is. The totals that weve seen are upwards of one to two feet of rain in the pensacola area since last night. And the last 24 hours. Mobile has been very bad. They had a lot of water rescues there. Look at this image, joe. This is Downtown Pensacola last night. Water on the sidewalks at least two feet deep. As we go throughout the day, these pictures will come in. 10 is closed throughout the region. You cannot travel on it. There are cars stuck for six to eight hours. They literally cant go anywhere. Theres a river rung over i10 to pensacola. Again, this is all associated with that same storm system that brought us tornadoes in the last couple of days. We got away with that. Heres one of the pictures from rob mcgayen. 24. 4 inches of rain for this event. Two feet of rain just northwest of Downtown Pensacola. We did see tornados in eastern north carolina. Thankfully, we didnt whos any lives with those. If youre on the east coast from new england to the midatlantic, a lot of rain today. A lot of airport delays. But it shoun be too bad as far as tornadoes are concerned. Just a few strong storms. Ill continue to give you yip updates from north florida with historic flooding as we go through the morning on morning joe. Well be right back. [ male announcer ] the Wright Brothers started in a garage. Mattel started in a garage. Disney started in a garage. Amazon started in a garage. The ramones started in a garage. My point . Some of the most innovative things in the world come out of american garages. Introducing the lighter, faster cadillac cts. 2014 motor trend car of the year. Aint garages great . The expedia app helps you save with mobileexclusive deals download the expedia app text expedia to 75309 expedia, find yours when salesman alan ames books his room at laquinta. Com, he gets a ready for you alert the second his room is ready. So he knows exactly when he can check in and power up before his big meeting. And when alan gets all powered up, ya know what happens . I think the numbers speak for themselves. Im sold hes a selling machine put it there. And there, and there, and there. La quinta inns suites is ready for you, so youll be ready for business. The ready for you alert, only a laquinta. Com la quinta welcome back to morning joe. You know, willie, a shot of mika there where is mika there cannes. For the festival . Yeah. Shes got a film . Does she really . Yeah. Documentary on vacations in the south of france. No cats around the house. Remember when she had the cat in here . Yeah. Cat in the bag. Cats in the bag. Cats out of the bag. Whoo what a story. It is. Its a story of transformation coming of age. In the south of france . Yeah. I think you better call mika and let her know if shes aware of this or not. The New York Times say prosecutors are close to filing charges against the worlds biggest banks, chris bank suisse is under fire for offering tax shelters and bnb paribas. Feds say its to finish banks without putting them out of business. And twitters stock hits a new low. Despite the fact that the service actually added 14 million monthly active users. And its revenue nearly doubled in the First Quarter. Stocks were down 10 in afterhours trading. This may be a sign that twitter is to remain a niche service. And usa today, federal governments could lose 47 billion if Congress Fails to add to the highway trust fund. The money currently in the fund goes only to existing projects. The funding comes from the federal tax on gas and diesel fuel. But that has not been raised since 1993. Great for the countrys infrastructure. The New York Times a Top InternationalOlympic Committee official says the preparations for the 2016 summer olympics in rio are, quote, the worst he has experienced. The comments add to mounting concerns the countrys not prepared to host the event without international assistance. It also comes just weeks, of course, before the country is set to host the world cup. The ioc will send outside experts to monitor progress in brazil. I was down in rio recently, they say its all going to be fine, on time and budget, willie. So, katty, do you believe that . Are you going to go down with your family and just kind of hang out in rio and watch the world cup . Wouldnt it be great to be there for the final in ri