Chest, neck and face cream from roc. Methods, not miracles. Okay. Good morning. It is tuesday, march 29th. Welcome to morning joe. With us on set in washington we have washington anchor for bbc world news america katty kay. Pulitzer prize winning colu columnist. The president and ceo of politico jim vandehei all with
us this morning. New polls out this morning on the republican and democratic races for president. Trump approaching a key number, and things getting very tight for the democrats. And the fight for the republican nomination may soon be out of voters hands. Why the fight may be turning from the ballot box to state conventions. Well explain that in just a moment. We begin this morning with breaking news. Officials say an egyptair jet liner has been hijacked. Its been a fluid situation with changing numbers and scenarios. According to the airline the flight was on route from alexandria to cairo with 55 passengers on board and five crew at the time of the incident. The plane landed at larnaca airport in cyprus where its sat ever since. The airline says one of the passengers told the pilot he had an explosive belt. A highlevel source close to the operation tells nbc news the hijacking seems to be about a personal matter involving a woman, possibly an exwife. According to the ap, the president of cyprus has said the hijacking is not related to terrorism. Egyptair is reporting that everyone has been allowed to get off the plane except for four crew members, including the pilot and three passengers. Right now we dont know the nationalities of the passengers said to be still on board. Joining us live from london. Nbcs rehema ellis, who has been covering the story since it broke overnight. What do we know more at this point about the situation . What we can tell you right now, mika, is that the ministry of Foreign Affairs has released information saying the hijacker has been identified but his nationality has not been confirmed at this moment. According to the president of cyprus, he was quoted as saying this is not terrorism. He has ruled that out and said its all to do with a woman. We are told that its reported that, once this plane landed in cyprus, these 55 passengers, the
majority of them were allowed to leave the plane with the exception of three and the then the hijacker threw a letter, a piece of paper, from the plane onto the tarmac indicating that he wanted to speak with a woman. Its believed to be his exwife. Its believe that she is from cyprus. It said its reported that she lives in a village not far from the airport and that there are some efforts made to try and communicate with her. A very fluid situation. We should also tell you that the person claimed to have an explosive device strapped to their waist. There is no indication whether or not they actually do because there are lots of questions as to how that could have gotten on board the plane in the first place. The good news is, the majority of passengers have been released and negotiations are continuing. Mika. All right. Rehema ellis, thank you. Lets bring in msnbc correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin who is in the process of
traveling to cyprus. Ayman, you said on way too early that when the story broke you couldnt help but think back to the plane bombing over egypt in october. Explain why you said that. Reporter well, since october when isis militants claimed responsibility for a downing of a russian metro jet plane egypt had beefed up security at all of its airports. So if in fact today this account of this individual did manage to actually bring real explosives onto the plane, this is going to be a major, major setback for Egyptian Security at its airports. The airport in alexandria is an International Airport. By egyptian standards, it is supposed to have very sight securi tight security. The egyptians vowed to beef up. Its premature to say because we
dont know whether he had real explosives. From the perspective of whats happened and what egypt is going through with some of the security challenges and the bombing of the russian metro jet there will be a lot of questions as to whether or not this individual did manage to get real explosives. Once hes on the plane, and as we understand from the press conference that took place, there was on the egypt air flight a security marshal. So there will be questions as well as to whether or not the security marshal, when the situation unfolded, was in any position to try to prevent it from happening. Again, a lot of questions, but also a lot of concerns about the security at some of egypts airports, mika. Ayman mohyeldin. Thank you very much. Well be following this story throughout the morning. Hijacked a plane from alexandria. Mmhmm. Katty, he goes to cyprus, throws a letter on the ground from the plane. To get a message to a woman. Wouldnt an email have been a
lot easier . I think, if im the exwife or the exgirlfriend in question here, this doesnt endear him to me particularly. This may be a grand gesture that he thifrnnks will get her attention. I would walk away and never read that letter. What an absurd thing to do. Put all those families at risk. Terrify the family members. There will be kids on the plane that will be scarred permanently that theyve been hijacked just because he wants a conversation with his exwife, in the world that we live in. Gene, the most outrageous part of it systemically, as you take the outrageousness of this mans actions, but look at the security problem here. Well thats the question, yeah. In this day and age. Whether the guy has an explosives belt on or not. I mean, he could be wrapped with hockey gear for all we know. We dont know. That that one person can
divert an entire plane because of a, you know, love gone wrong . One person can do that. In this day and age how does anybody get on the plane with anything that looks like an explosive belt, particularly. Obviously there was some breakdown in security. We dont know exactly where it was. Well follow this throughout the morning. We do have a lot of politics to get to. A new poll this morning showing donald trump nearing the 50 mark with republican voters. Nbc News Survey Monkey weekly online tracking poll finds donald trump a majority of support. 48 . 21 points ahead of ted cruz who is at 27 . John kasich as you see at 18 . On the democratic side, National Support for Hillary Clinton now stands at 49 , down from 53 last week as Bernie Sanders support is up slightly to 43 , just a sixpoint race. This just days after a new
bloombebloo Bloomberg Politics poll shows them tied with the edge to sanders. While both candidates have their eyes on the final primaries and delegate some say trump is not paying proper attention to the election. The wall street journal reports that while Hillary Clinton is maintaining a strong operation in the battle state of iowa trump is moving on. Strategists in New Hampshire also say there is little left of his operation there. It will be fascinating to see whats happened. Lets talk to jim about the numbers. Donald trump approaching 50 . I think this is a great time for everybody to stop and just churn back over all the predictions that said donald trump would never get to 20, 30, 40. Do i hear 50 . Lets go to the reel. No, no, no. Victory laps make me tired. I say this because the media, especially over the past two weeks, has whipped itself into such a lather and such a frenzy that theyre doing toward Donald Trumps campaign exactly what they did in june and july and august. I had a news director for a Major Network call me yesterday and said, were out of control. He said, i walked into our morning meeting, and everybody around the table said, well, hes done it this time. Its over. Donald trump is finished. And thats the mindset of everybody in the Mainstream Media. I was david sanger actually the desire. Its the desire. Im telling you, the coverage im not saying donald trump is desire should not get in the way of a story. Whatever. Weve got editorial pages for a reason. Weve got newspapers for another reason and broadcast networks
for another reason. The outrageous reporting over the last two weeks on the main pages of the newspapers are repeating the same mistake that everybody is now saying we made back in june and july. Just because they find him offensive, racist, et cetera, et cetera. Theyre missing the story again, jim. I cant believe its happening again. Theyre missing the story again because of their hatred of donald trump. Most of the stuff where he is getting tough scrutiny i would argue deserves scrutiny. He says some insanely crazy things. I understand. He says insanely offensive things and offensive things. Are you offended . Are the voters offended . Are we offended . The thing is youre not offended when hes retweeting pictures it doesnt matter if im offended. I would schroll by the tweet. It doesnt matter if im offended, and i am, about screening muslims to come into the country. Look at what the voters are thinking. I saw a reporter foaming at the mouth about all the things that he doesnt know and all the things he says and all the things he believes and im thinking, thats what the voters liked in the polls. Thats what the premiimary vote want. Theyre not matching the words with the voters. By the way, whenever we start a conversation like this, people love to say, oh, youre not offended by the bigotry. Yes, we are. Weve written columns about being offended about that. For instance, trump is an idiot. Trump is this, trump is that. Its not going to happen. Donald trump is not an idiot. He knows what hes doing. There was a great clip of Andrea Mitchell the other day saying what wed all say about his Foreign Policy. We look at each other and say, yeah, everybody in my district would love that, would love making the egyptians pay for this and the japanese pay for that. Yeah, think were suckers. Again, we are all saying this guy is an idiot. There is no way hes going to win. While donald trump approaches 50 . Theres been a boy who cried wolf situation with this concept of whats offensive political speech. I was in florida shortly after the paris attacks hanging out with my parents, some of their friends. I remember the news coming on and saying that governor rick scott will not allow any of the refugees to come into the state on a temporary basis until we figure out whats going on. It seemed like a common sense position to folks. Lets press pause. I came back to washington and was taping my podcast. She was saying isnt this going to hurt . I said we need to wait for the
polls to come back. A lot of folks say, well, this seems like common sense. For so long those things have been deemed offensive and outside the bounds. But now when things are way outside of the bounds, people are tired of the media telling them their views are invalid. It seems that the more offended we are, the more stories i hear from people that i have known that i would think never in a million years would vote never in a million years would vote for donald trump, and i ask them, why are you voting for donald trump . Because i know theyre not racist. I know theyre not bigots. I know they work with muslims. And they go its always it always boils down to everybody is a clown. Washington has screwed up since, you know, whether its katrina or whether it was the 2000 recount or the dotcom bust or whether it was 2008. They all have their reasons. None of them have to do with all the dog whistles. The mistake i think we in the media often make is not paying attention to the voters and not hearing what theyre saying. Polls you know, months and months and months ago back when people were saying that trumps ceiling was 25 or 30, but if you add it up, the numbers for the outsider candidates, the candidates who basically gave a middle finger to washington, it was over 50 in the Republican Party. Clearly the voters were saying, were tired of the political establishment as usual, politicians as usual. There is no establishment. We should have listened. We flatter ourselves to think we do. Were so offended. Let me read from your piece. No, the media didnt create donald trump. The media created trumps story line ignores the fact that the Mainstream Media are about as popular among the Republican Base as the zika virus. The one exception, fox news, has been tougher on trump than other
outlets not more accommodating. The news media, it seems to me, are guilty only of reporting the news which is that a candidate who has never held Elective Office and displays neither the base of knowledge nor the temperament to serve as president is leading all comers for the nomination. Commentators should spend less time flattering themselves that the news media have the power to make such a thing happen and more time trying to understand why trump is succeeding, winning, succeeding. Winning. Gene actually put in real pretty words, katty, what i was thinking in my head. Which is instead of obsessing over i mean, obsess over the offensive policy positions. Obsess over that. Talk about it, report about it. Editorialize about it but then get to the bottom line, which is, why are we as elites in washington and new york so offended and yet this man is connecting by spending less
money than everybody else on the republican side and looks like hes trying to move towards the nomination that theyre trying to steal from him. Why is that happening . The most interesting thing about this election is not us and its not even actually donald trump. Its what the phenomenon of Donald Trump Tells us about where a group of people are in the country and how they feel disenfranchised and beleaguered and for very many reasons chuck in free trade policies. Tax cuts for the wealthiest, a whole group of working class americans feel theyve been left behind and donald trump has understood that in a way that no other candidate and certainly not the media have done. I say it again. This is not much of a political race. Its not a race between a republican and a democrat. This is a class race. Its a race about a group of largely men, largely white, in their mid 50s, who feel quite understandably that they have not benefited from the Republican Partys policies over
the last 20 years and here is somebody who is coming along and saying, i will give you a better deal. For probably four years now i have been quoting Jeffrey Sachs who wrote in his book a staggering line, average wages for male americans, for men in america, have been declining since 1973. Particularly in the manufacturing sector. Since 1973. And i repeated that because i think we all knew Something Like this was going to be coming. And theyre not responding to obama. Theyre not responding to bush. Theyre not responding to they are responding to whats happened in washington. You see the same thing on the democratic side with bernie. Absolutely. Which we have to get to. Katty from great britain, is dropping her gs today because of that belt. Back in europe. It was enough to bring out the texan in me. On that note. The Justice Department has
dropped its highstakes court fight against apple saying its found a way to unlock the iphone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters without apples help. Federal officials decision comes a week after doj lawyers stopped a court room showdown after a third party came forward with an alternative method for acceleration the phone. What does that mean . It means some hacker hacked into the phone. Exactly. Exactly. Eating cheetos. Mika. You said at the beginning apple should just quietly help them out. Im not saying they should but i wondered why that didnt happen. I had an official tell me three days ago. He said apple is going to rue the say that they didnt quietly go into a back room and say, lets work this out, because they have unleashed the best hackers in america and given them extraordinary economic
incentive to break their code and sell it to the fbi. And he said, so now more people are going to know how to run straight through their encryption than they would have if apple had just quietly you think theyre actually getting money for this . Oh, yes theyre getting well paid, the guys thats the last thing you want to do is open it up. Will the government now tell apple how they did it . Or not . I think not. I read in the times yesterday afternoon apple lawyers now are asking that the government lets them never going to happen. Following the latest news out of cyprus and the hijacked plane. News that it may be a domestic situation and not terrorism. Updates as they develop. Plus, we have seen the
attacks overseas. Does the u. S. Have a reason to worry . The secretary of Homeland Security, jeh johnson, here on set for an exclusive interview. When former cia director Michael Hayden was asked who is better on National Security, trump or cruz, he picked Hillary Clinton. The retired fourstar general, a loyal republican, explains that just ahead. That had to heard. Up next. Jeffrey goldberg joins the conversation. Why Vladimir Putin complained directly to president obama about jeffs reporting. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. Wrely on the Us Postal Service . Because when they ship with us, their business becomes our business. Thats why we make more ecommerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country. Herethere, everywhere. United stes Postal Service priority you
ill tell you, this is i probably maybe shouldnt do this, but what the heck. I am in my last year. I had i had an indepth conversation with president putin a while back. He had read an article on in the atlantic that Jeff Goldberg had done about my Foreign Policy doctrine, and he said, well, i disagree with some
of the things that you said in there. But i pointed out to him, of course, that unlike you, vladimir, i dont get to edit the piece before its published. That was president obama namedropping our next guest at a jo