Former GOP representative Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski interview newsmakers, politicians and pundits about the issues of the day. Job Approval Rating probably has seven or eight points, maybe even a little more of what i think of as 401 k trumpers right now. I think there are people who are looking at their statements, people who are on the right side of the economic equation any way. They see their numbers going up for all sorts of reasons. And so theyre willing to not really dive in to this russian novel story that no one can quite figure out. And theyre willing to suspend their bizarrely in my view, but they are willing to suspend their ordinary moral judgments about how this president conducts himself and is now representing us on the world stage. But i would not, if i were in the white house, count on that lasting until 2020. Well see. Joe, your latest column in the Washington Post really speaks to this entitled trump finally
feels gravitys unforgiving poll and reads in part, quote, trumps stunning victory created such disorienting shock waves across washington that neither democrats nor republicans understood what the accidental president admitted to me a month after his win. The election could have been held 20 different times, but that was probably the one day i would have won. The President Elect said in december of 2016. Everything came together at once. The resulting political horror show produced Daily By Trump has left journalists and politicians reeling but has failed to alter a few basic rules of politics. First, president s with Approval Ratings in the low 40s lose their majorities in congress. Second, kowtowing to exkgb agents erodes support with registered independents. Third, lying about payoffs to a porn star and a playboy model rarely helps with swingstate voters. Republicans hoping to save themselves from the political storm that will soon wipe away their congressional majorities
would be well served to speak out against trumps most destructive policies, which are anticonservative, ill liberal and sure to bring doom to the once grand old party. Party could be over. It could be. First of all, john, im very humbled to have my piece read on the morning joe. Well, its a good piece. Its what we are talking about. This is your show. Two of yours, but morning joe, thats you. Well. So its good that you get your pieces on your show. I also you have pull with the guys that run the place. That was somebody else. So, it does it seems that trumps victory was so shocking that i think a lot of pundits, a
lot of politicians, i think a lot of republicans have overstated his strength and his magical powers, his gravitydefying political powers. But at the end of the day, this man is still a 40 president. Show me a 40 president , and i will show you a loser. No, no, no, im serious. Show me a candidate that has by the way, his reelect, his reelect, according to the latest merit polls, his reelect in michigan is 28 , in wisconsin its 31 . Show me a guy with a 30 reelect. I will show you a loser. Somebody that loses midterms and somebody that loses a reelection. I just think too often people
overstate his political strength because they were so shocked that he won last time. Look, i think thats the shock is one thing. I think the degree to which his behavior and the ways in which hes departed from republican orthodoxy, various ways hes thrown washington into chaos, the fact that his base which is not 42 , his base is 35. The fact that those people are immovable even in the face of things that so many people object to strenuously causes us also to overfocus on the potency of the base. In the end, hes great to have a potent base. Barack obama rested on his base. Donald trump rested on his base and both of their bases are rock solid. Again, 35, youre a loser. And even if you get those extra ones that meachum is talk about, push up to 40, 41, which is where he is right now. Historically speaking thats a disaster for an inparty president , 40 Approval Rating, youre going to get wiped out in
the midterms if everything we know from history holds true again. Jon meacham, my dad supported Richard Nixon and supported Richard Nixon until the final week. We were taught growing up that Walter Cronkite was a communist. My dad watched him and loved him. When he said thats the way it was, he believed thats the way it was but he still believed it was all a plot by the Washington Post and the New York Times and Walter Cronkite and the Mainstream Media to take Richard Nixon down who they hated. And i remember the morning in 1974 where my dad was reading the newspaper and its just like the scales fell off of his eyes all at once. And he may have said a couple of words that i cant repeat here, the second one was damn it. And then he said, if this man by the way, this is a guy my dad had worshipped since 52. If this man has done one third
of what theyre saying he has done, he should be thrown in jail tomorrow. This is a disgrace. But he said that broken but after the tapes, there was no denying that Richard Nixon had acted abhorrently. Well, this is the week. Were in the anniversary period between Supreme Court decision in which nixon had to turn over everything. He turns over the Smoking Gun Tape where hes ordering the cia to block the fbi from investigating watergate, a conversation that took place i think on june 23rd. So within a week of the breakin. And we forget because in our movietone version of history, we naturally telescope everything. And so we think, break in. Robert redford and nixon gets on the helicopter, right . Thats kind of the popular
version of watergate. Maybe howard baker pops in if youre from tennessee. What really happened was 27 months elapsed. Congressional investigate, two special prosecutors, saturday night massacre, tapes dribble out, phrases like Expletive Deleted enter the conversation. And the fabled moment which is big among the npr left in the country which i love, theres a lot of liberals now who are saying, where is barry gold water when we need him, which is just we should all retire when people are saying that. What they mean is that goldwater and hugh scott and john rhodes went down to the white house and they told nixon he had to go. They did it on august 5th, after the tape came out and then nixon is gone by the 8th. So these things take time. I suspect your dads Expletive Deleted remarks probably happened about this point in the
summer of 74. Quickly to johns point, 34, 35 , that was Joe Mccarthys national Approval Rating after the army hearings. If they take trump back to moscow in an orange jump suit, 35 of the country will be with him. Thats just the way american politics works. One of the president s republican allies, Congressman Darrell Isa says he doesnt think republicans will pay the price in the fall if the president has proven to have lied about the Trump Tower Meeting. If hes proven to have not told the whole truth about the fact that campaigns look for dirt and if someone offers it, you listen to them. Nobody is going to be surprised. There are some things in politics that you just take for granted. So you dont think this has anything longterm impact . He wouldnt be the first politician or president to misrepresent things . Well, you know, businessmen
listen to almost everyone that might be helpful. By the way, they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away. Darrell issa, not my dad. In that case. First of all, so extraordinary. Even in my Little Office as a member of congress, if somebody came to my Chief Of Staff and said, hey, the russian government or the iranian government has some dirt on your opponent, my Chief Of Staff would have said, hey, listen, well get back to you in a couple of days. Whats your name again . Whats your phone number . Well call you back. Would immediately call the fbi. Would immediately call the fbi. This is not a close call. Anybody out there thinking if you listen if thats what
darrell issa thinks, holy cow that is condemning. And here they keep moving the goal post for donald trump. Theyre lying about donald trump. Donald trump didnt know. Now if donald trump knew whats the big deal . No, nobody does this. Nobody has ever done this. Nobody has ever done this that i know of has gotten dirt on an opponent from a sworn enemy, russia, iran, you name it. Never seen it in now almost unfortunately 30 years ive been doing this and covering republicans and democrats in the president ial races and other races. The thing i want to say about darrell issa just goes to the thing hes saying here which is that republicans arent going to pay the price if it turns out that donald trump is lying. I just want to say that actions speak a lot louder than words. Donald trump is retiring from congress, right . So he can spin a rosy scenario for how republicans wont pay any price for Donald Trumps behavior, but it seems like on the basis of his own political
calculations of what was going to happen in his own district, he may have had a different view of what the blood bath would look like this fall. Donald trump has already lied about russian agents coming to his office. Donald trump has already master mined the coverup on Air Force One where he lied and said that the meeting was about adoption, which by the way, over the weekend, a prosecutor said this is perfect to show the guilt, the conscious guilt at the time that Something Big happened in that room because you wouldnt lie about it if it was innocent. Sure. But look, i think one of the problems we have here a little bit is that its a bit of a he said she said. Giuliani was saying yesterday on a sunday show, theres five people who will say donald trump did not know about this russian meeting up against Michael Cohen. I was working in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times in the summer of 1974, so i was sort of watching all this. Meachum can contradict me, but
my recollection were the tapes were the defining moment because you heard him on tape saying this. So far i dont think weve quite seen these tapes from Michael Cohen. He can wiggle and twist his way out of every box people try to put him in. Whats the end game for saying Something Like that . Its obviously clearly something you wouldnt want to support, the president lying about a meeting . Lobbying money . Their own personal self interest, constantly, thats all we see on display consistently. Among republicans who are choosing to prop up these lies and to devalue truth and factual accuracy in the american public. And its really disgusting. I cant believe that were at the phase where, you know, the 12 billion bailout for agriculture because of a dumb policy decision and all of these socalled fiscal conservatives can just get behind it because theyre going to go with trump
no matter what and were just seeing where people really do not stand for much except the ideology of power. Think about that really quickly. Again, and ron johnson and i cant believe im quoting ron johnson because he backed down to donald trump over and over again. Ron johnson correctly said this is soviet style economics. You adopt a stalin in fiveyear foreign policy. The fiveyear plan, right . And you have tariffs. You destroy the economy. And then you come in behind it and after destroying the economy for these farmers, you then prop them up with a 12 billion centralized state payoff after i just got to say a lot of farmers are already subsidized. Like the big Farm Interests . So this is subsidy on top of subsidy on top of subsidy. But we have to cut the deficit, joe. Theres a lot of deficit in washington. Absolutely none. Still ahead, steve eluded to it a few moments ago, we have a full fact check of the president s economic claims that he made, and some of it starts with a simple google search. Why dont people why dont my friends and family just turn on the Google Machine . Just crank it up in the backyard as elise just said, the truth has been devalued. And people must not care. Thats what this president has done. Mika, i dont understand. So many of his lies, so many of his claims can be completely blown out of the water with 30 seconds and just, again, borrow your neighbors Google Machine. They dont care. 30 seconds. And it is a proven lie. By the way, from a thousands different accurate sources. This president started off by saying, look at my crowd size, its the biggest one, when it
was clearly the smallest and people didnt care. Type in trump lie pops up. I give trump this, when he puts his mind to it, hes a Master Messenger and he has branded the media as the enemy of the people and took it up with the publisher of the New York Times. Thats right. When he is at the stage where he is comparing the u. S. Press, the free press, to an enemy on the level of isis or al qaeda, thats a real problem for truth and accuracy. You are absolutely right. Again, the truth is 30 seconds away. Check out google. Check out yahoo. Check out whatever search site. Got to care. Msn, of course, yes. Well get into the New York Times aspect of this story in just a moment. First, lets go to bill karins on the check of the forecast. Bill . Joe f we can get people to do and this stop using your weather app on your phones to get the hourly forecast, we would be all set. He doesnt do that. He calls you. Yeah, that would be smart. So the rain is already back in
the picture of a nice weekend for so many people from the ohio valley, great lakes to the east coast. The humidity is back, too. Along with it, a rainy week. A lot of heavy rain this morning through eastern North Carolina moving up through virginia, virginia beach, norfolk to richmond and it will arrive in d. C. And also towards baltimore this afternoon. Philadelphia north wards the rain should hold off later this afternoon towards this evening. And this week is just like what we started with last week, its going to get humid. Well have on and off rain all week long for the east coast. How much rain . Well, this is through friday. The next five days, two to four inches of rainfall the southeast all the way through the midatlantic. No reason to be watering the grass this week once again. Here is the week ahead forecast. I will add, it stays hot in the west and stays dry and of course we have that car fire, six fatalities and the blaze still mostly unchecked. Theyre just trying to protect structures at this point. As we go throughout the week, the heat continues in the west too. Summertime storms in the southeast. By the time we get to wednesday, here is all the heavy rain on
the eastern sea board. Much of the western haft of the country remains dry and hot. Finally as we end this week on friday, i think the Flooding Problems are going to be worse northern georgia, up State Portions of South Carolina and through much of the southern appalachians we have to watch a lot of the rivers and lakes and streams closely. Areas like new york city, enjoy your monday. This is by far the best day of the week. Low humidity, temperatures are comfortable. The august humidity will arrive as we go to the middle to the end of the week. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. The fact is, there are over ninetysix hundred roads named park in the u. S. Its americas most popular street name. But Allstate Agents know thats where the similarity stops. If youre on park street in reno, nevada, the high winds of the Washoe Zephyr could damage your siding. And thats very different than living on park ave in sheboygan, wisconsin, where ice dams could cause water damage. But no matter what park you live on, one of 10,000 local Allstate Agents knows yours. Now that you know the truth, are you in good hands . Youll make my morning, buty the price ruin my day. Ou . Complicated relationship with milk . Pour on the lactaid, 100 real milk, just without that annoying lactose. Mmm, thats good. Are you ready to take your then you need xfinity xfi. . A more powerful way to stay connected. It gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most Wifi Coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. Its the ultimate wifi experience. Xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. Okay. So on friday President Trump was very quick to celebrate the release of new economic data. Why not . Happy days are here again. In a hastily arranged set of remarks, the president made a number of economic statements. Now, this was 4. 1 growth Second Quarter. He was so excited about good stuff. Good stuff. So what you have to do is check them out and you get a sense of whether or not hes telling the truth. Lets take a look at some of his claims. Okay. I am thrilled to announce that in the Second Quarter of this year the United States economy grew at the amazing rate of 4. 1 . Thats very good. He is correct about 4. 1 growth. 4. 1. If you can do that for a year, brother. Here is thing, most economists would not use the word amazing to describe it. In fact, president obama re