It was an kprieting night by the donald followed by an Early Morning phone call about Foreign Policy to the gang of morning joe. Since we have dire Foreign Policy issues percolating around the world right now, who are you consulting with consistently so youre ready on day one. Im speaking with myself number one because i have a very good brain and ive said a lot of things. I know what im doing and i listen to a lot of people, i talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time ill tell you who the people are but i speak to a lot of people and my primary consultant is myself. [ laughter ] [ applause ] why do i get the idea when it comes time to pick a running mate, hes going to pick himself for that. Its very interesting. The second that happened we all looked at each other and said that could be the quote of the campaign. In. In realtime. Realtime. And he meant it. Good morning, its thursday march 17. Welcome to morning joe. We have managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, mark halperin, nbc news senior White House CorrespondentChris Jansing and in washington republican pollster and columnist in at the Washington ExaminerKristen Soltis anderson. Good to have you on board. The joke was that he talks to himself and as a punch line its very interesting what you were talking about yesterday morning, what you first reported on we all started to hear rumblings about. Theres a real outreach to republicans from trump. Hes starting to aggressively go after any and all republicans. He believes it is time to seek peace with the Republican Party. Hes doing the smart things that any outsider becoming the nominee of the party would do. Hes reaching out to the old bulls in the party, people like orrin hatch and others who he hasnt needed up until now. Formally to become the republican nominee youve been reaching out to these people for months but hes doing it now. Not all of them are going to be won over but a lot of them are saying, look, this guy is likely to be the nominee, lets make peace with this. As we all know, he can be charming. On those calls hes coming from a great position of strength, hes reaching out. As i understand it, a lot of them are being very
accommodating. Very willing to hear what he has to say. We had willie early the campaign when Hillary Clinton was pressed why did you go to his wedding . She was like hes a fun guy. Thats the thing. Weve known him for 10 years on and off and everybody, whether its Hillary Clinton or you or us or anybody in new york, one on one hes a charming guy. Life of the part yeenchy. Its very interesting, when hes in front of a microphone hell say im great, im great. But when hes in front of you at a party willie, you book, the greatest book ever written. And his first book was the greatest. But its one of the things where people say well, how could that guy get one on one with republicans and pull them over because when hes off camera
hes the opposite in many ways as when hes on camera, the charm comes on. He is charming. I just wonder if charm is enough to twin over as you call him the old bulls who have come out publicly and said hes a disgrace and this guy cant be the standard bearer for our party. Do they get in line with him because they think he would be a good president , do they get in line because theres no alternative. There was some feeling that now that john kasich was in there maybe the Old Washington group would get behind kasich and support his run. Any evidence of that . Some of them are. And i continue to believe hes an undervalued stock here. Hes the fourth most likely next president of the United States, john kasich. Youre talking about kasich . But the second most likely you said he was scattered. That looked like a scattered speech. It looked like you were being polite about trump or kasich . John kasich. He got a great reception in pennsylvania. A very crowded town hall but he didnt seize the moment. Now go back to trump, hes the
first or second most likely president of the United States and if youre a republican, even if you oppose him on some level, you have to acknowledge hes most likely to be your nominee. We can imagine what hes saying in these calls and its intoxicating. Its the first real conversation these people have ever had with donald trump, most likely their nom ghee. And you go back to your home state of florida, joe, antitrump forces spent five, six times what he spent there. Oh, my god. And look what it got them. Theres a reality check for a lot of republicans. And if youre rick scott, and this is what other people are going to start looking at, they dont like him in washington, d. C. , they loved marco in washington, d. C. But you go to a state like florida, the guy is winning by 20 points and florida politicians see he wins everything county except one, he wins 66 out of 67 counties in florida then theyre going wait,
that may not be a risky bet after all, do i want Mitch Mcconnell campaigning with me in barto, florida, or donald trump . Thats easy. And i think well start to see, mika, a remarkable amount of rationalization. I talked with alex burns of the New York Times yesterday, hell be coming on later today, i think well see a tremendous amount of rationalizing over the next two to three weeks because right now everybody will start getting in line. Because trump has no infrastructure. Theres nobody around him and so that presents opportunity for a washington consulting class thats never been shut out like this before. Its very complicated conversation. Even to hear several of you say he is charming. You just isolate that and you could literally launch an avalanche of criticism from people in the media, from
womens groups, from muslim organizations because he has said some horrible things and its not just but notice, mika, when we said charming off camera, charming away from the microphone. Its still a complicated conversation. Thats one of the great ironies. Thats not true. I think some of the things have been said in front of the microphone. Mika, thats what im saying. Give the man a microphone and camera and theres nothing charming about him. Okay. Have him go to events around new york like weve all gone to and suddenly its like Hillary Clinton said, hes charming, hes nice, hes likable. And hillary said in our interview she doesnt recognize the donald trump thats running for president right now. Its very complicated. It should be interesting. But i think the falling in line will be fascinating, too, because those private conversations, then these republicans are going to have to explain publicly and i think this is going to be very challenging for them. I think it will be hard. When it comes to the republican race for president , of course, if theres no donald trump, theres no debate. Next weeks Republican Debate in utah was officially called off yesterday after two of the three remaining candidates said they wouldnt be there. Fox news confirmed the cancellation in a statement writing in part obviously there needs to be more than one participant so the Salt Lake City is cancelled. Trump cited a prior commitment for not doing the debate. Hell be giving a big speech before the prominent Israel Lobby Group aipac on the same day. The Kasich Campaign followed up saying without trump the Ohio Governor wouldnt be there either. The only other republican still run, senator ted cruz, used the opportunity to attack trump calling him ducking donald on twitter. Just not going to work the same way. Lying ted just has more of a ring to it, doesnt it . Ducking donald. Cruz challenged trump to meet him in washington. You have to be careful, also, how you say that. His excuse is silliness and it reflects his assumption that he thinks the voters cant figure out hes not telling them the truth. Aipac would have allowed him to speak at any time, its a multiday conference. He chose to speak in the middle of the debate because hes scared to debate. He looks down on the voters. He thinks theyll believe whatever hes saying. So ill be in d. C. For aipac as well and since donald is running away from the debate im happy to debate him there. So chris we were trying to figure out why he went after megyn del kelly and we said mak pace, i guess he doesnt feel like he has to. If i were donald trump i dont know that id make a different decision. At this point theres not a lot of polling coming out of the upcoming states but arizona is one of the next ones on the docket where he has the endorsements of sheriff joe and former governor jan brewer. So if youre donald trump, you dont want to disturb the
equilibrium in the race that has you on best path to 1,237 delegates. And theres something hes been saying in interviews voters might agree which is how many times do you ask us the same questions . We saw the same exchange between tuesday and marco rubio over immigration over and over and over again. I think there are still really important questions that need to be asked of donald trump and i think fox news when theyve hosted these debates, whether it was Chris Wallace bringing up graphics to contradict things that trump was saying or the video clips megyn kelly introduced to hold cruz and rubios feet to the fire in a previous debate, fox has introduced new questions but generally i think trump will find a sympathetic audience when he says i dont know these that these debates are adding anything to the table, im done with them. Nobody will have a problem it with. There have been so many and it hasnt moved the meter for him. Why would he bother . Yesterday trump warned of requested bat things happened if he gets to on the convention with the most delegates and isnt nominated. If we didnt and if were 20 votes short or if were 100 short and were at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because were way ahead of everybody, i dont think you can say that we dont get it automatically. I think it would be i think youd have riots. I think youd have riots. I think bad things would happen, i really do. I wouldnt lead it but i think bad things would happen. Meanwhile, donald trump is once again training his attacks on Hillary Clinton suggesting she is not tough enough to face russian president vladimir putin. He made his point in a new video posted on instagram with the caption is this what we want for a president . [ barking ] [ laughing ] are you going to go scorched earth with Hillary Clinton . Are you going do all the personal stuff with her and her husband . Are you going to do that . I think id rather not say now. Its early. We had one run in about two months ago and i helped bernie a lot because her numbers came down very big after that, but that was my only real confrontation with her. Well see what happens. But whatever it is, it is. Ill do what i have to do. We were thinking he might rest when he got off the campaign trail. He had a very busy day yesterday cancelling debates, attacking Hillary Clinton, you name it. Talking about riots if hes not nominated. Once again driving the entire news day while, as mark said, he was lounging at home in his
barca lounger. NHillary Clinton in her speeh turned to look to donald trump, he had an Instagram Post that had her barking out of the context. Which in context was really funny and real. You mean what hillary did . Yeah. But to answer bill oreillys question, is donald trump going to go personal on Hillary Clinton . Yes, he is and he introduced it a month or so ago, he spent a week or doing it. It tied the Clinton Campaign in knots. Bill clinton had to just deflect questions on rope lines. It will be interesting to see how they handle that stuff. Lying ted. Little marco. Low energy jeb. And hes also, mark halperin, started and we can expect more of this the low energy attack on Hillary Clinton as well. But you were commenting yesterday on don rickles, what about don rickles. We always wanted to know what a
day off the campaign trail would look like for donald trump. It seems he consumed media by doing four very provocative things that if any other candidate had done one of those things it would have made headlines and filled up their basically news quota for the week. He got dressed to do the bill oreilly interview but Everything Else he did, the web video and the morning shows by phone, including this one, and on twitter, just another show of how he can dominate a day without leaving manhattan or leaving trump tower. Monday is going to be a very big day when he does that aipac speech hes doing instead of the debate because Hillary Clinton is speaking to the same group and while both of them are still in nomination fights, the it will be a side by side comparison for the first time in a forum that you wouldnt think would necessarily play to his strength and im pretty confident shes going try to give a speech to frame the general election not just on issues related to israel but on question of whos ready to be commanderinchief. Its going to be fascinating to see what kind of speech he gives head to head. I think that yeah. Im looking ahead to the speech to aipac but also how they respond, it can kris, to his speech. I havent ever heard him go incredibly deep on these issues. I dont know how he does a speech like that and kind of keeps it light and says believe me. I was talking to people on the campaign yesterday and they feel obviously pretty confident about this area at least of the competition. Where its more difficult is when you talk about this other stuff like the ad we just saw. If youre the Traditional Campaign and if youre us, people who have been through many campaigns and you can look ahead normally and you can say so what are going to be the areas of attack and you can preprepare for what you think the areas of attack will be. With donald trump its almost impossible to calculate where he might go because he goes to places where people have never gone before and so its almost inevitable that theyre going to find themselves back on their heels so aipac, i think, is a
really great opportunity for her because its an area where she feels incredibly competent, they feel they are way ahead of him by miles and miles and miles and they can sort of set the agenda. How many other times in this campaign have you seen anybody but donald trump set the agenda . I wonder, following up on what chris just said about never knowing where the attack went, were you guys as surprised as i was that David Plouffe yesterday repeated what he said several weeks before which was democrats who are underestimating the chaos that this man can cause for Hillary Clinton dont know what theyre talking about. Theres no doubt he fears David Plouffe, a guy who knows something about this donald trump a lot more than any of the other republicans in the race. Hes unpredictable in his attacks and unpredictable in the electoral college. He says he can compete for northeastern states, he might be able to. He can compete for demographic groups that other republicans
couldnt compete for theoretically. He could be blown out but he could scramble the map and make Hillary Clinton play a ton of defense. Lets get to other headlines. The Obama Administration is demanding the release of an American College student sentenced to 15 years of hard labor by north korea. 21yearold Otto Warmbier was found guilty of subversion after allegedly stealing a propaganda banner from his hotel. Former new mexico governor bill richardson, who has negotiated with north korea in the past, says he is working to get the student released. We will see what happens with that. In washington, d. C. This morning, the metro system resumed at 5 00 a. M. After an emergency one day shutdown for safety inspections. A top official with the metro tells the Washington Post the that the shutdown was necessary and this three of the problems discovered during the course of the day were show stoppers that required immediate repair. Sad news from the world of entertainment this morning, frank sinatra, jr. , has died,
son of the legendary crooner and nancy sinatra, frank, jr. , followed his fathers footsteps with his own musical career and worked as musical director for his dad. Sinatra died of cardiac arrest while on tour in florida. He was 72. Finally the Broadway Musical hamilton may have helped founding father Alexander Hamilton keep his face on the 10 bill. The Treasury Department has plans to revamp the bill to include a womans face. Many thought that meant that hamilton would get booted. Linmanuel miranda, the creator and star of the hit musical hamilton met with treasury secretary jack lew this week. He says lew told him youre going to be very happy. I knew that was going to happen. Did you . As popular as hamilton was, i knew if linmanuel get in a room with jack lew, it was over. 10 founding father. Just a little strange. Maybe theyll move him up and
take somebody off a 50. Or have multiple versions of the bill. Like different Sports Illustrated covers . Exactly. Put him on the 2. I think we need the 2 back. I want the twospot back. The star of a broadway show is negotiating with the Treasury Department . He wasnt negotiating. He was in washington to perform at the white house and he had a meeting with jack lew. But he said because . Because hamilton