Departments, alise jordan. Communication strategist and political contributor, rick tyler. Willie, that interaction that pete had with the hecklers, there were a few of them, it seemed like the audience made a space for it, and he brought it home. Yeah. There was a heckler there. A little bit of mccain there. Yelling about sodom and gomorrah, protesting that pete ambigui buttigieg was married to his husband. The reason he is doing well is he performs well every time he comes out. You cant come out as a mayor and reach the spot of third place without every time going on the stage, or every time he goes on tv, he performing. Hell be here tomorrow on morning joe. Rick tyler, i ask you about that moment. Am i making too much of it . No. Look, i think Pete Buttigieg, who knows who he is, hes obviously put a lot of thought into these things. He anticipated people might Say Something, and he had something ready at hand. Its like great golf, right . Its how you handle these challenges that makes you a contender. He certainly is one. Well, were going to be talking a lot more about this. The Justice Department, by the way, is expected to release a redacted version of Robert Muellers final report tomorrow. Redacted version means a lot of it might be blacked out, that you cant read it. Have you ever done a foia request, a freedom of information request . Sometimes you get it back, and the whole thing is black. Thatd be amusing. As we build up to the big reveal, it is important to let the viewers know, there may be nothing to see. There may be half of it to see. There may be a lot to see. President trumps lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says the president s legal team is putting the finishing touches on a rebuttal to the report. Well talk about what we may or may not be seeing in the report this time. The buildup to the reports release might be weighing on the president though. It just might be. You see these patterns that sort of set in. Or maybe it is Bernie Sanders. It could be Bernie Sanders getting under his skin. Hes been tweeting a lot about mondays fox news town hall with the president ial candidate. Trump tweeted around 9 00 washington time, many trump fans and signs were outside of the fox news studio last night in thethriving, thank you, President Trump, bethlehem, pennsylvania, for the interview with crazy Bernie Sanders. Big complaints about not being let in. Stuffed with bernie supporters. Whats with fox news . I guess does he produce by tweet, executive producer the show by tweet . Yes. Hes not happy that people who liked what bernie had to say. 11 hours earlier, trump tweeted, so weird to watch crazy bernie on fox news. Not surprisingly, brett baier and the audience was so smiley and nice. Bret is so nice, by the way. Now, we have donna brazile, the newest contributor, former dnc head. Trump has ripped brazile for tipping Hillary Clinton off about a question before one of her 2016 debates with sanders. Fair game. Fox did not respond to trumps latest criticism, but bret baier reacted to the mornings tweet. Thanks for watching, mr. President. Wed love to have you on a town hall soon or even an interview on special report. Its been a while. We cover all sides. Fox, i think, is making an effort, and i think it is great, to open the doors to different points of view. Well see if theyre able to continue to do this, despite the president complaining in real time about their coverage. A lot of people look at fox as his prone begpaganda swing. In the tweet, the language, now, we have donna brazile, talking about fox news. Basically telling his story with the relationship and the netw k network. Theyre not totally celebratory of him, having Bernie Sanders, and hes upset. Tom perez said monday the party is not reconsidering its decision to not hold a debate on fox news, but Bernie Sanders monday evening town hall was the most watched event of the campaign so far, according to early data. Perhaps with the high ratings on mind, President Trump continued his focus on senator sanders in another tweet last night, writing this, i believe it will be crazy Bernie Sanders versus Sleepy Joe Biden as the two finalists to run against maybe the best economy in the history of our country and many other great things. I look forward to facing whoever it may be. May god rest their soul, says President Trump. Its not right. At least three other Democratic Candidates reportedly are open to a Fox Town Hall, including mayor Pete Buttigieg. His Campaign Strategist, liz smith, tweeting yesterday, stay tuned. I suspect that mayor buttigieg is the kind of candidate who will go to fox news. Hes from indiana and can speak to the fox audience perhaps more than some of the more progressive candidates. I think it is great for the Democratic Candidates to do the fox news town halls. Now, i understand the pr trepidation with doing one of the fox news debates after reporting that perhaps donald trump hood gottad gotten an ear preview of the questions. Its not fair if it is supposed to be a level Playing Field. One way to level the Playing Field is show up. If you have good voices going in there and expressing their points of view in an effective way, someone like mayor pete might be able to pull this off beautifully. I think Bernie Sanders did great. He was believable. He was likable. He said things that the audience really wanted to hear. Fox did a good job, having a diverse audience in there. Thats called tv news. Thats called covering campaign. Giving all the candidates equal air time. So if democrats show up, i think the whole thing about fox i mean, itd be smart on foxs part, but it would start to change, wouldnt it . I think the town halls are great. I understand the trepidation with the debate stage, when you have ten candidates and there has been credible reporting that one candidate had favoritism, like during the rnc campaign in 2016. But i think these town halls are absolutely fantastic. You can see how some of the ideas were resonating with the crowd that, would they have been obama bernie voters and not obama trump voters . He is so far off the mark here, banning fox news. Dont do it. Youre running for president of the United States. Isnt one of the basic ideas to reach as Many Americans as possible . This is one way to reach as Many Americans as possible. And to bring people together. I mean, one of the reasons why were concerned about violence and about vitriol, rick tyler, is everyone is going to their corners, and the chief divider is the president. Well, theres no doubt about it, mika. I mean, the president takes every opportunity to, you know, make things political. Basically, he conducts himself with virtually no class. With regards to the fox news interview, i think that Bernie Sanders won over the crowd. I think that event was probably billed to fox news viewers, as he was going to hostile territory. It was most surprising to me, how many people in the fox news audience, were willing to give up their private insurance and move to a medicare for all. That was surprising. That surprised me, and i think it surprised bret baier. Ill say this, when i was on the president ial campaign for ted cruz, there were a lot of people on the campaign who didnt want to do msnbc. I advocated for msnbc, one, to be honest, they gave us what i considered the most fair coverage of the three networks. You always want to reach out and look at the prbroadest audience. Why cut off an audience . It doesnt make sense from a political standpoint. I know joe has talked about this, we love bret baier and martha, along with shep. Fox has some good people. Heres the moment. Mike, you can jump in. The exact moment where bret turned to the audience and wanted to get their reaction on these issues, especially as it pertained to Bernie Sanders. Take a look. This audience has a lot of democrats in it. It has republicans, independents, democratic socialists, conservatives. I want to ask the audience a k question, if you can raise your hands. How many people get their insurance from work, private insurance, right now . How many get it from private insurance . Okay. Now, of those, how many are willing to transition to what the senator says, is governmentrun system . Mike . Well, thats a surprising display right there. To the larger point that were talking about, fox news versus the Democratic Party, as odd as that sounds, if youre afraid of tucker carlson, how are you going to become president of the United States . Go on to fox news. Reach as many people as you can. Show them that just because you have a d after your name, youre not ridiculously far left socialist or whatever. You speak to the common sense needs and problems and attitudes of most americans. I cant understand the reluctance. I understand why some people wouldnt want to do an interview with sean hannity, who was an adviser to the president. Its different. We have evidence from bret and martha and shep smith, wallace. People will give you a fair shake. Now, what was supposed to be a meet and greet for mayor buttigieg turned into a rally yesterday. More than 1 rksz,600 people cam. Protesters did, as well. They stopped the mayors speech when he mentioned his right to marry his husband. As somebody enjoying the first year of married life, i would say freedom is what is at stake, in the idea of a county clerk telling you who you can marry. Remember sodom and gomorrah. Speaking of thing s hello again. Speaking of things that are at stake, that do not belong to a single Political Party. Pete, pete, pete, pete. You know, the good news is, the condition of my soul is in the hands of god, but the Iowa Caucuses are up to you. Our marriage twists by the grace of a single vote on the u. S. Supreme court. On this tenth anniversary of iowa breaking some ground in that regard, i would like to say, thank you. Remember sodom and ga romogo we got it. Promise you, we got it. Remember the beauty of our democracy. Everyone here gets the exact same voice and vote. Okay. We watched a lot of political candidates. What do you make of his political performance . Its pretty good. He really does seem to have some of the it you need if youre going to propel forward. He stayed on his feet. Clearly, its something that he was answering from the heart and has thought about. I didnt know i was educated this week through his interview with Rachel Maddow about his journey with coming out. I didnt realize he was closeted when he was serving in afghanistan, then came out after he got home, saying life is too short. It was a moving interview. You see how comfortable he is there with him. He seems like a person comfortable with himself. That is exactly it. He is thoroughly comfortable with himself. He is thoroughly human and approachable. When he was on with us about a month ago, i asked him off air, i said, what did you fear most, going to afghanistan or telling your parents that you were gay . He paused for a second and he said, wow, he said, you know, i was trembling, i was sweating. He said, i was so fearful. Then he paused and said, but my parents were great. One of those moments, you say, wow, this guys got it. Also, what he did right there in front of 1,000 people, he exposed hate with love. He did it beautifully. Pastorally. He did it in a way that made you want to be there with him. Im going to tell you, as much as the republicans completely misunderstood barack obama, and had no idea how to handle an africanamerican democratic nominee, they will not be able to handle this guy. Because he is truly working from a good center and has the words and education and the articulation and the grounding to express it to people who even dont understand him. Its called depth. Its called moral compass. Its called faith. Its called love for america. He is going to be very hard to handle, if they try to take him on for something he is absolutely not embarrassed about. In fact, he embraces who he is, and he embraces his god. This is the bottom line, the fact that that protester and republicans might have been watching, thinking, this is the moment he goes down, because everyone will expose his no. Its not going to happen. For an interesting exercise, lets compare addressing hate with love, mayor petes reaction to protesters, to donald trump and how he conducted himself on the campaign trail with protesters in 2016. Boy, if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you . Seriously. I will pay for the legal fees, i promise. Go home to mommy. Bye. You know, we do all have a First Amendment right, and they really violate our First Amendment right. What are you going to do, right . Were not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were at a place like this . Theyd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. Like to punch him in the face. Ill tell ya. I mentioned food stamps. That guy who is seriously overweight went crazy. He went crazy. Go home to mommy. Go home. Bye. Go home to mommy. Go home to mommy. Tell her to tuck you in bed. Nasty little ill tell you, nasty people. Try not to hurt him. If you do, ill defend you in court. Dont worry about it. Its a comedy show with the press until someone gets hurt. Rick tyler, final thought on this. You know, i dont want to overstate the mayor pete moment, but it does sort of remind me of john mccain. On the campaign trail, he was confronted by someone calling barack obama a muslim, and he just said, no. There are ways to confront hate, and trump has one, and this young candidate has another. Yeah, absolutely, mika. And i dont really know what the purpose is. I mean, if youre going to if we want to start going down this road, i mean, we can look at the envy, green, lust, sloth, pride, you know. The president , i think hes mastered all of them. If he is trying to get the evangelicals to peel away, they ought to look at donald trump very closely. You know what, mika, too, the chant we heard, about sodom and gomorrah, is like a chant from a different time. Right. Yeah. By that, i mean, we had an nbc wall street journal poll a couple weeks ago that shows fully 70 , 70, of all americans, not just democrats, not just progressives, but all americans are comfortable with a gay president ial candidate and, therefore, a gay president. You can chant it to a small sliver of the electorate, but it is falling on deaf ears in 2019 to Many Americans. He has so many other things to say about what hed do, that this is not what hes running on. It is not a story. It is a side note to who he is. I want to point out, then you can take it up, what the person said to mccain in that moment was not that he was a muslim, but he said it as if it was disparaging. Mccain wouldnt have it. It was beautiful. It makes me that moment makes me proud of our country because you do realize how far weve come. Just from the early 2000s until now, when it comes to equal rights for all americans. I think that the fact that we have a strong contender for the democratic candidacy for president who is openly gay and proud of it, and wants everyone to accept it as it is a nonissue, as it should be, it should not be an issue, and is so easily deflecting that kind of hate, it is just an impressive moment, i think, for our country. All right. We have a lot to get to. Still ahead on morning joe, House Speaker nancy pelosi is again threading the needle between democrats in washington hyperfocused on the president ial investigations, and democrats around the nation who maybe arent. Well show you her efforts to walk that line. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. Every day, visionaries are creating the future. So, every day, we put our latest technology and unrivaled network to work. The United StatesPostal Service makes more ecommerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country. Because the future only happens with people who really know how to deliver it. 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