You have a whole big thing going over here between advertisers and Campaign Contributions and all of the crooked stuff that you have going thank you. Youre welcome. Dont worry about my eggs being cold. Dont worry, they dont feel guilty. This is the press. They have no guilt about my eggs being his eggs are cold now so he should be allowed to it his breakfast. Then ill say its terrible. Exactly. Its my fault. Ill have an orange juice. The press feels guilty. They see my eggs are dying, nobody said please, mr. Trump, have your breakfast. Go ahead, please. I dont need it. Good morning, its monday april 4, welcome to morning joe. With us on set we have managing editor of Bloomberg Politics john heilemann. Msnbc political analyst and professor at the university of Michigan School of public policy, former democratic congressman harold ford, jr. And in washington, republican pollster and columnist in at the Washington ExaminerKristin Soltis anderson. A lot going on. His eggs got really cold, huh . I guess they did. There goes the media again making his eggs cold. He could have just eaten them. Writing a lot of stories about how that means that adolf hitler and mussolini also complained about cold eggs and what does this mean. You do have a good piece in the Washington Post about that. Whats the problem with with that analogy . Very legitimate that stalin also before he killed 30 to 40 million in russia cold eggs. Also complained about cold eggs. Begin with the eggs. This is a sign to come the press will tell you. Especially conservatives. You know what, donald trump in a diner, though, thats a rare site. It shows hes taking wisconsin seriously. Usually he doesnt step off that rope line. He knows hes got a real threat with ted cruz. So were one day away from the votes being counted in wisconsin. The latest polls there show ted cruz with the advantage ahead of donald trump in the cbs yougov poll. John kasich is at 18 . In a Loras College poll, cruz leads by seven point, 38 to trumps 31 , kasich back at 18 . Wisconsin could be a pivotal state for the Cruz Campaign which is trying to argue he can expand into new geographic and demographic areas but trump wasnt giving up any ground, holding rallies throughout the state while cruz barnstormed alongside top surrogates former
candidates carly fiorina, Governor Scott walker and u. S. Senator mike lee of utah, a change from his past Campaign Surrogates like glenn beck and the star of duck dynasty phil robertson. Weve got rick perry and Lindsey Graham and jeb bush and carly fiorina. [ cheers and applause ] and wisconsins own Governor Scott walker. Now, you throw into that mix senator mike lee and mark levin [ cheers and applause ] and youve got the entirety of the ideological spectrum of the Republican Party. Thats what were seeing is were seeing unity. Unity, harold ford . Begrudging unity. Like a lot of those people who are endorsing him, i dont know why theyre doing it, because they really dont want to and they have said that. Well, Lindsey Graham compared him to poison. And jeb bush, it breaks my heart he would do that. Makes me sick to my stomach. The whole thing is sad. No, really. Joe, how much is it lets get to the convention, lets try to stop trump and if we use him as the vessel well pick somebody else. Is that all of it. Explain. Well, i thinks a lot of those people, as mika suggests, are not really theyre miserable. But they think strted cruz i the only viable vehicle to get trump to 1237 then get to cleveland and figure it out. The shift in ted cruz becoming the establishment, the media darling, is remarkable. It wasnt that long ago a few months ago he was the wild one, he was the winger, he was often in right field. Now everyone is rallying behind him in a strange way. You had even those north dakota delegates, theyre unbound delegates but a lot of them who supported ted cruz saying publicly im not really for ted cruz, im just against donald
trump. My next question is when do they have to announce, if this republican establish system doing this, when do they say were for x candidate, were for b candidate . Do they walk away from ted cruz . Do they well, hes got to get 85 , 90 of the remaining delegates to get 1237. Hes never going to do that. Ted . When it becomes clear it will be an open convention, i mean. Right after the first ballot. Man, listen, if either one of these guys, the first two guys, dont get 1237, pack up, go home. But trump still could, right . Trump could, yeah. But if hes at 1236, pack up and go home. Youre saying he should pack up and go home . Im saying ted cruz, the republican establishment can say whatever they want but if they dont get 1237, the party is going to find somebody ems. So, joe, what do you think
the margin is trump has to shore up, can he shore up with 200 delegates . 150 . 25 . Whats the number where his supporters say, look, if you dont give it to him this is going to be i think he gets 1237 or nothing and i think the same thing with ted cruz. I really do. I think the Republican Party would love to have a war against donald trump and theyd prefer it and basically say you know, theyre saying such horrific things about donald Trump Supporters now that its not like theyre going to say oh, well we better keep them on our side. No, theyve declared war. Called them racists. A lot of people who have been considered americas top conservative thinkers have said you cant even be a christian, a real christian if you support donald trump so i mean what else are they going to theyre not going to be worried about it. If trump doesnt get the number theyll say weve got rules for
a reason, go home. The perfect encapsulation of the entire phenomenon is scott walker who a week before he endorsed ted cruz said publicly he thought there would be a contested convention, he thought that would be fine and that he thought that if there was a contested convention the likely ultimate nominee would be someone not running now. Then a week later endorses ted cruz. So thats sort of the transparent that ice about as transparent as you can be. He said a bunch of things about how he was for cruz but a week earlier he had been saying his real goal was a contested convention. So everyone assumes people like scott walker want paul ryan to be the nominee. Jeb bush lets out a statement at maybe 4 38 in the morning in portuguese so [ laughter ] so even harder to figure out what hes saying and he never says again that hes supporting ted cruz. They cant bring themselves to do. It can you imagine . I cannot. What you say may be true about the convention, but if thats true, whats the point of having primaries and caucuses and all this voting and these guys going through this process of winning votes and having people on their side . Why not just have a Convention Every Year and pick a president. Thats how they used to do it. Theyll say we have rules for a reason. Kristin, lets bring you in. Dont you get a feeling that a lot of the republican establishment would far to lose with somebody else than win with donald trump and if he doesnt reach the threshold that is clearly stated in the rules theyll say were throwing this convention wide open. I think if donald trump doesnt have 1237 youll see a big argument from the cruz camp that this is anybodys game but i think anybody is really in the cruz camps mind going to be defined as ted cruz or donald trump. That even there have been movement over the last week end to say well, maybe john kasich, we shouldnt be changing this rule 40 threshold that says you have to have a majority of
delegates in eight states to move forward. I am much more skeptical than you all that its going to be somebody besides donald trump or ted cruz. I think ted cruz has put in place a strategy to collect as many delegates as possible. Hes doing well in wisconsin. You saw what happened in north dakota where he was able to get enough votes for his own slate over the state partys preferred slate and collect almost all of the delegates there. Were going to be moving into states like pennsylvania next where even though donald trump is up in the poll, most of the delegates that will come out of pennsylvania are not legally obligated or bound in any particular way so right now i think it would be funny to see what it must be like to be one of these uncommitted unpledged delegates. How many phone calls they must be getting from the cruz camp, from the trump camp and possibly from the kasich camp. But i think if the party doesnt pick either trump or cruz there is going to be a real potential for massive backlash. Its one thing to say he didnt get a majority trump didnt get a majority, lets open the
convention. Its another thing to say lets bring in somebody who failed to perform up to standards in the primaries and install them as the nominee. I think there would be big backlash. Amidst all that, you write in the Washington Post the damage thats being done that points to what kristen was talking about. There is a lot of damage being done to the party. There is. I gave some quotes you have to read it, you wont believe. I gave quotes out there by top conservative writers saying that i did a double take. That donald trump is the father furor that these single these white men without fathers have been waiting to come to come their way for a very long time and talk about their drug dependency and family anarchy and say they love donald trump speeches, they also love oxycontin. Well, who doesnt . Well, i just wouldnt i wouldnt admit it first of all on the air. But secondly the attacks have over the past couple of weeks
especially just become withering. Its turned on the people. As i wrote in the article but i saw Jonah Goldberg wrote, too, stop looking at the lewandowski fields clip like its the zapruder film frame by frame by frame by frame. The obsession is absolutely outrageous. Well, look, i think its a mistake for any party to go to war with its voters. Thats a recipe for suicide and i think theres a obviously a huge risk and the tricky thing for the party is to figure out a way look, what the party fears, right, is that with trump as the nominee he will not just lose the presidency but the party will lose massively across the board, will lose the senate and the house and have huge downticket ramification so i think their notion on trying to
get an alternative candidate not in the field right now to be the come knee, even if they think theyre almost consigned to the motion theyll lose in the fall at the president ial level but their thought is lets try to save the congress, lets try to save the house and senate. Im not advocating that. Im saying i think thats the theory. I understand that. But you know, willie, these same voters are going to be the ones helping decide who will win the house. Right. These same voters are the voters that helped elect Tea Party Candidates in 14, who helped elect Tea Party Candidates in 10. Who helped elect george w. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and you can keep going back. Just because theyre now supporting a candidate that everybody finds offensive and as i said, my first three candidates gone, they did not survive the early stages of trumpism. I still think jeb bush would have been one of the best president s weve had in a very long time. But the thing is, there is another battle after this one
and the viciousness thats being focused upon Trump Supporters i mean, i my brother has been a life long baptist, a committed christian. Unlike me, hes not a terrible person, hes not a backslider, he is a committed christian. And he is being told by people that he reads and respects that you cant be a christian if you support donald trump. Real christians cant support donald trump. Nicolle wallaces parents are supporting donald trump. And yet other very established republican writers are explaining the phenomenon away as somebody whos looking for a hitlerlike figure. This is not on fringe publications. And im not saying these peoples names because theyre
friends of mine and its but this isnt the fringe part of the republican establishment. They are insulting my brother, nicolles parents, and millions and millions of Successful Americans who are not sitting at home like with needles, discarded needles around their house. Its funny you make that reference, i read that piece that you referenced in your Washington Post column that suggested that it was the drug problem that it was heroin and prescription pills that was leading these people go and vote. The problems in their lives were brought on by drugs and going to vote for donald trump which i thought was quite a leap to make. But i think the point of your piece is the point thats been around for a year now which is that people who criticize the trump voters dont understand the trump voters. They want to go after donald trump and who he is rather than understand why those people are supporting donald trump so theyre reaching for things like hitler and heroin and Everything Else when its because they dont have jobs and white supremacist. They dont have jobs, theyre frustrated by trade, theyre frustrate bade lot of things. So the more productive thing to do would be to understand why theyre supporting donald trump and sway them to your side rathhr than attacking them as drug addicts and hitler lovers. I mean, you look, harreold ford, at george w. Bushs trade policies, you look at the clintons trade policies, Barack Obamas trade policies, its pretty much the same. There is no alternative. And whether youre talking about trade or whether youre talkings about taxes for the rich or whether youre talking about whatever, the fact is that neither the republicans nor the democrats have spoken to people who make less than 50,000 a year. Those tax breaks that doesnt touch their lives. By the way, this is something conservatives were saying in the postmortem in 2013, weve got to figure out how to reach those people. Look, the love that the country seems to have had and the appetite the country seems to have had over the last decade or so sending young kids who war who may not have had a lot of
opportunity, weve pulled from the same pool of people to trade, taxes, theres no doubt bernie and trump are dealing with that. But we have to acknowledge as worried as i am, i think you dont attack your own party, you dont attack your own voters but there have been so many things said at these rallies that people have been unnerved by. Not at the rally but when mr. Trump could not immediately denounce the kkk, the violence at the rallies, most recently some of the more serious conversations around Foreign Policy when he was urging asian nations to perhaps develop nuclear weapons. I think that also helps predicate some of the anger and perhaps some of the unexplained talk about attacking supporters from some of these mainstream columnist ins and so forth. But at the end of the day, you dont attack supporters, you dont attack people in your own party, you figure out how to bring them around. But i am confounded somewhat and puzzled somewhat by how some in the Republican Party are able to continue to embrace a guy that makes the offensive comments hes made about women and racial minorities, especially at time
that it doesnt seem you never did that, i never did that. We may have disagreed on the things but that was not the basis of the disagreement so i once this criticism is coming from but i dont think its productive in the long run to help win supporters back to the party. We have major headlines on the democratic side which well get to and other stories making headline this is morning. Two people were killed, at least 35eers injured after an amtrak train struck a piece of Construction Equipment near philadelphia yesterday. According to amtrak, the train was traveling from new york to savannah, georgia, with 341 passengers and seven crew on board when it collided with a backhoe. New york senator Chuck Schumer said in a News Conference the two People Killed were the backhoe operator and a supervisor. Both amtrak employees. It wasnt immediately clear why the backhoe was on the tracks. Well follow that. Turning overseas now to greece, which has begun deporting migrants and refugees on boats bound for turkey. The operation started at dawn
with 131 migrants boarding two passenger boats on the greek island of lesbos. Those boats arrived in turkey early this morning. The move comes as part of a new deal reached by the European Union to reduce the number of displaced people flowing into europe. And finally, the uphill climb for president Obamas Supreme Court nominee just got steeper this weekend. Two republican senators, jerry moran of kansas and Lisa Murkowski of alaska revoked their support for confirmation hearings for judge Merrick Garland saying they oppose his nomination and see no need for the process to continue. Just hold the hearing. Seriously . Just hold the hearing. Vote no. Be man enough or woman enough to look a guy into the eye how do you say you want to hold a hearing and then come back and say you dont want to hold a hearing . I actually respected jerry
moran when he was saying that hed actually give him a listen. Could they have played into president obamas hands any better throughout this . No. Oh, no, they couldnt. Theres vomit all over themselves. Just a mess. Justice scalia is dead. Were not providing hearings. Like the second after he died they found his body and they were putting out politicized statements. No. Keep doing that. Trump will get 1237. From the very beginning they could not have had it worse. Keep doing it. Do you need me to tell you this . I feel bad for you, actually, it shouldnt have to come from all of us. Do they not know this, harold . Its going to be great. I dont get it. Make America Great