Be in court today trying to get the case against him dismissed. The Army Sergeant was captured by the taliban after walking off his post in 2009. He was freed two years ago. And classes begin at the university of texas today,begin university of texas where it is now legal to carry concealed handguns into buildings. On monday a federal judge denied their request. That does it for us on this wednesday. Hope to see you back here tomorrow. Morning joe starts right now. Lie after lie after lie. It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the state department begins. It is now abundantly clear that clinton set up business to profit from public office. They sold access and specific
actions by and really for, i guess, the making of large amounts of money. All right. Good morning. Its wednesday, august 24th. Mika has the morning off. Where is she, willie . South of france. One assumes. Like a red eye. She got the last trip on the concor concorde. Also from the south of boston legendary im sorry, what was that . Legendary. Legendary msnbc contributor, mike barnicle. You know why, because its agest. Legendary. I think we need to rebrand you. Thats your job. Thank you. Maybe because its old. How about epic. Epic is a little the kid jumps ugly. I said the title is old, not youre old. Communication director for president george w. Bush Nicole Wallace and Political Editor and senior sam stein. Senior. Yes. We have a lot to talk about. Hillary clinton, the foundation thing. Yesterday james carnville came on to explain somebody was going to i cant believe that. Six times. He said somebody is going to hell because bill clinton isnt going to take money any more. James carville set the messaging for that story. We heard what he said. But again and again. We said it at the beginning of the show. The clot foundation does great work. They do all the things that James Carville said. But thats not what were talking about here. Its not. That ap report came out yesterday. In the afternoon. Holy cow. Well get into that news about the foundation. And then donald trump last night with just sort of some floating around on key issues. He told mika that he would have a mass deportation for us back in i think november. Its not what he sounded like last night. Sounded like last night he and sean hannity decided they were going to go easy. He said there is going to be a softening. All we have to do he said is enforce the existing laws. He also said barack obama, like barack obama, he said, you know what, you know how we need to do this. We need to do this like barack obama. Its funny he didnt call him Barack Hussein obama that time. George w. Bush, they did a great job with deportation. We just have to follow. What do you think marco rubio is
thinking about right now. I was called soft on immigration for a guy who wants to emulate barack obama. For the guys who chase him down the rabbit hole. Coming out and basically arguing for the same sort of round them up and get rid of them. Some guys forever alter the ark of their own careers to follow donald trump. Thats a stupid thing. I mean, if you know its going to kill you in the general election, why do you do it . Its like putting your hand on the stove. And you can go back and you can look where we said this will kill you in a general election. South deportation for mitt romney. Same exact genre. Its interesting here, trump is not exactly wrong. There are laws on the books that you can use to do massive deportations. You just need extreme amount of resources to get them done. Incredibly vague with his rhetoric so nobody knows what
position he now holds. Incumbent to say until you put on paper what your new position is, we still have to assume. Not some ridiculous standard to hold donald trump to. A standard you should have. Thats never been, you know, how he rolls, if you will. Whats interesting to me, every time theres a shakeup and every time new advisors go in the question ive been obsessed with. Why wont he get better . Why wont he read something . It seems like at least on immigration theyve got him to focus on the fact that his policy is unachievable. What happens in the echo chamber as he begins to soften, as willie points out, and as donald j. Trump pointed out. What happens . They start reading pages from clinton cash. Ann coulter is already out there saying she hopes this is not true. The people who he cozied up to
are going to be disappointed. To the extent that they abandoned him . I dont know. By the way, this story of him flipflopping on immigration, his key issue is probably going the next 24 hours be overshadowed by the story youre about to take us to, willie, which is, again, a report from the ap with some pretty extraordinary numbers. Lets dig into it. More questions whether private money then influenced secretary of state time and attention when she was there. The Associated Press had to sue the state department to release calendars from her tenure. Clinton donors were granted to secretary clinton in her official capacity. According to the ap, at least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with clinton while she led the state department donated to her Family Charity or pledge commitments to her programs. Combined those 85 donors contributed as much as 156
million to the Clinton Foundation. At least 40 donated more than 100,000 each while 20 gave more than 1 million. The Clinton Campaign called the data flawed and cherry picked. The cham pain says it does not account for more than half her tenure and admits 1,700 meetings with foreign and u. S. Government officials. Referring to clintons meetings with Melinda Gates and Nobel Peace Prize winner tunnis, saying this story reduces yunis to he chaired. Continued to hammer secretary clinton for what he called corruption. If our secretary of state can be bought or bribed or sold, look, whats happening right now with government favors, then the whole american system is threatened. It is impossible to figure out
where the Clinton Foundation ends and the state department begins. It is now abundantly clear that the clintons set up a business to profit from public office. They sold access and specific actions by and really for, i guess, the making of large amounts of money. The specific crimes committed to carry out that enterprise are too numerous to cover in this speech. Justice is supposed to be blind. Its never supposed to be for sale. Hillary clinton thinks she is above the law. Come november, the American People will show her that she is not. The usa today editorial
wrote in writing in, part, the only way to eliminate the odor surrounding the foundation is to wind it down and put it in mothballs to transfer to another large charity. Thats from usa today. The numbers are staggering. I dont know how else to put it. It is so i want to be careful with what i say here. Its just so crass. Yeah. I saw the numbers. I saw the ap report and i just sat there and im like, are you kidding me . I looked twice to make sure it was written by the ap because these allegations have been around for a long time. Clinton cash was a book about this very sort of topic and it didnt get much traction in the main stream media because it was written by someone entrenched in the conservative media establishment. The ap, sort of the most impeachment journalism source. If she was running against a more incredible opponent, this would perhaps be a death note because rather than get to corruption at first, it gets to judgment. Right. What were they thinking . Both clintons. What were they thinking while she was secretary of state to continue this. And it it does show it was about access to a certain extent. To a large extent. They knew she would be running for president at some point. What were they thinking . We were talking to maureen dowd that clintonism includes an ideology and mindset that the rules dont apply to them. Rules dont apply to them and they always make things tougher for themselves than they need to. Just think about this, you know, in the past Hillary Clinton blamed vast right wing conspiracies for going after her. Think about who her main opponents have been this year. The people who were hammering the most. New york times. Bernie sanders. New york times. Bernie sanders. Ron foinier. A democrat. I dont know if hes an independent, but long admired the clintons and voted for them. Now, the Associated Press who called this number like, again, this Means Nothing in the blogging age, i suppose. But if youre the Associated Press to write in a news story this term that it was an extraordinary proportion. Shows you just how out of skew this was. It really was breathtaking when i read this story. Hillary clinton knew she was going to run for president from the minute she lost in 2008. So, she had ample time prepared to position herself to run. That presumably would have included not having a private server put into her home and not
taking the donations to the Clinton Foundation. And having half of everybody that gets in to see you thats not in government. Like having to give to the Clinton Foundation first. And i said it yesterday, James Carville, its also giving speeches to state universities. That you represented. That you represented as a senator for 250,000. There is a lot of poor judgements here. If you go through the list, theres a lot of poor judgments. One of the issues here was that the Clinton Foundation became so large in scope in terms of its Charitable Giving to the foundation, that it became almost impossible for it not to oversee with the state department. You end up having a global universal philanthropist and charitable work. At the beginning they needed to notice that would be a problem. They didnt nos it was going to be a problem. They noticed. I think they dont care. Fine. They should have noticed. By the way, im sorry, not only do they not care, they knew they had a Good Business there. By the way when you have people at the foundation saying, hey, have a good friend. And i talk to you . They know. Not only did they they operationalized. My question to play devils advocate. If Melinda Gates comes to you or unis that says helps with, you know, combatting central crimes in south africa, i would love a minute with the secretary of state. If youre the secretary of states gatekeeper do you say, no, you donated to the foundation. Theyre going to come in no matter what. Sure. Because its Melinda Gates. Fine. Yeah, but isnt that sort of the problem here . You have these people you talk about cherry picking. The clinton find two people. No, no, no. I grant you that. Im just saying, you ended up with a group of global elites and philanthropists here who do the work that constantly goes in and out of what the state department has done and end up with these natural conflicts of interest. This is something the Obama Administration saw from the very beginning. Thats true. And Hillary Clinton and bill clinton did absolutely nothing but make matters worse and create a conflict that theyre having to deal with now. It was for the greater good. It was for the greater good. And as my mother and my aunt carolyn always told me, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It certainly is. You and james backed out. No. By the way, how about this. Talk about a false choice. You let bill clinton go around the world golfing and go to uzbekistan and talk about
pipelines or someones going to help. Hes so good, its crazy. That boy good. Hey, we got the reporter with us who broke the story on Associated Press. Steven brawn. Thanks for being with us. Talk tame about the numbers. Ill go to the criticism that the Clinton Campaign has put out there. Private interest meeting or phone appointments with secretary clinton. 85 of them have been donating or pledging mun tee the Clinton Foundation. The Campaign Says omit more than half of her time as secretary of state and more than 1,700 meetings she had with foreign and government officials. Are they right . Yeah. We were out front about that from the beginning. The point being that as part of secretary clintons work, she met with, obviously, hundreds of World Leaders and their representatives. And, you know, she im sorry. Let me take the ear piece off here. She met with these folks and those entities would have met with her anyway. And were talking, you know, for example, saudi arabia. Which gave a fair amount of mun tee the foundation. We looked at those figures and that was part of her diplomatic task. You said up front, again, and even the headlines in the lead you talked about how you were talking about people outside of government. It seems to me from seeing their attacks on the Associated Press and the reporting that all
theyre doing is reiterating the clintons what you said in your lead. That you only, that the people you looked at were the people outside of government. Because, obviously, people inside of government werent going to be part of this story. Right. I mean, the point was we wanted to look at, you know, among essentially outside interests who came in, got meetings with her, got facetime with her or talked with her on the phone. What we wanted to get a sense of is among them how many had contributed to the Clinton Foundation. And, so, thats how we went about it. I mean, look, theres another half of that number who didnt give to the foundation. She met with Companies Say a number of other companies. Philan philan philanthropies and they also got facetime, too. So its not as if they all did. But its, this is simply a question of access. Who got, who got in . Who got to talk to her . Obviously, if youre a lobbyist, that would be the end game. If you could get, you know, your Corporation Head in to talk with her. All of these folks got that access. You know, were not saying crimes were committed here. Were not, theres no evidence that there were ethics approaches here. But these are the kind of things that Ethics Councils in administrations worry about. And in some cases, you know, they might have stymied meetings like that. All right. Hey, steven, thank you for the reporting and thank you for being with us. We apologize for the ear piece problem. Thats no problem. Where thats how i am all the
time. You have to listen and hear this echo. You hear your own voice. Yeah. I hear other voices, too. Youre talking about when the ear piece is out. Whats the frequency. What is the frequency, kenneth . You know, the voices say, i am legion. Can i make one last point . Are you trying to no, i think it proves that they definitely need to shut this thing down or transfer to it to some other foundation. The people she will meet with, it will just overlap constantly. Stories like this nonstop. Too much ethical murkiness here. We said this yesterday, too, mike barnicle. They are inviting kraupcorrupti. They are inviting influence at pedaling and in the worst way saying, okay, were ahead in all the polls and hillary is going
to be president of the United States. Now, for a limited time only, you can show your appreciation by bringing your tributes to the coming, the coming emperor and lay them at our feet because after she becomes president , were not going to take your money. Its sick. And you know what it is really, they cant have that window because all it does is influence. To make it easier prior to her election right. Were going to establish an easy pass lane so you can come with your tributes and you dont have to stop at the toll booth. Just get right in. That was bill clintons white house. It was like a subway that you just put your token in and you go into the white house. One of my favorite moments in bill clintons presidency is when hes getting all the foreign donations. The lincoln bedroom. They sold the white house and bill clinton, there was a state,
because the people who were like giving him money didnt even know this. He goes, this is a day in america that we call, president s day. Sitting there going, oh, my god. Its unbelievable. So, no it gets to judgment. The question is. You know what, they hate maureen dowd for being so tough on them. But she seems at the end to always get it right about them. They are always victims of their own excesses, nicole. A lot of republicans cheering for them right now and i heard them say this going, thank god i didnt have to cheer for this for 30 years. This is a nightmare because every day youre going, are they going to screw up tomorrow . Two things. One, this is why republicans have been pulling their hair out. Two, this is what animated the
entire Bernie Sanders wing of. This is what animated the people who wanting an alternative to her. This angst exists. I disagree. The sanders people werent animated by this thought . No. I think there is the corporate donations that animated the sanders people. I dont think they would look at this and say jill stein said exactly what donald trump said about Hillary Clinton. I think we need to, im going to get yelled at and you need to look at the totality of what these contributors were doing. For instance, combatting aids in africa is not something that got the sanders people really riled up. It was the corporations giving to clinton and the stuff that ended around the foundation. You know the thing is, if were just as James Carville said yesterday. If James Carville the carville voice. Yes, i can. Whats this . Thats zero. Thats how much money he