Watch Morning Joe Highlights: August 19 | MSNBC

so those of us who um who grew up with ronald reagan as one of our political heroes uh we and and bill buckley we conservatives we all remember a moment uh and we read about the moment where both of them separated themselves from the john birch society they realized that unless they separated themselves from the extreme elements of the conservative movement at the time that they could never reach the mainstream buckley did it uh and reagan did it and when they did it well ronald reagan began the the the conservative revolution the night counter revolution in 1966 the reagan revolution if they hadn't have done it then pat brown would have beaten him in 1966 in california and and the world would have been completely different that's what he don't understand about this michael still i don't understand like mitch mcconnell we're gonna play these very illuminating thoughts by mitch and he's saying the truth out loud hey bad you know we may not take the senate back over we should but we may not because the candidates suck he didn't say it that way but the candidates that donald trump's put up there is suck and now he's got his most senior members going around saying things that could get government workers killed and they're the the the people that keep apologizing for the terrorists on january the 6th people he thinks are terrorists i mean his speech from january the 6th and his actions on january 6 very notable but it's having an impact and this is what i don't understand i'll say it again trump lost the white house he lost the house went out of his way did yeomans work to lose the senate for republicans first guy since herbert hoover to lose all three in one four-year term and it's happening again look at this poll from arizona i mean let's just face it i mean mark kelly has underperformed politically uh in many ways he he underperformed in the 2020 election he didn't raise as much money as people originally thought he was lagging behind in the polls six months ago now look at this in arizona it's not close we can see the same thing in wisconsin we saw ron johnson pull ron johnson uh it was was was ahead before now in this fox news poll that came out yesterday he's down four points in the marquette poll which is sort of the gold standard for that state uh he's down by even more points and in pennsylvania dave mccormick dave mccormick would be like walking through walking through the heart senate office building going i wonder what office i should pick out right now the republican that was running against dr oz mccormick would be you know it seriously would already be picking out his office yeah and democrats would have given up on pennsylvania to get dr oz and so now republicans literally said yesterday basically sent out the word we're giving up on pennsylvania that's right we're going to put we're going to put it all in ohio eyes i guess crew today thing was at the end of an item now he choked on his criticism never speak french in an american election john kerry could have told you do you remember that monty python sane philosophy is that a sport that's what i said about crude attack is that a sport so so all of this has an impact and then you add the hate speech on top of that you add the rhetoric where republicans senior republicans are saying they're going to have a strike force that goes in with ar-15s already loaded ready to shoot small business people in iowa g d it is all i'll say this has an impact and if you're a republican you should be as outraged as me even if you are a cold-hearted political beast you should be as angry as me because this is going to beat mitch mcconnell the republican party so why aren't they speaking out like reagan did like like buckley did against the extremists in their midst that are going to have them lose yet another election because they are not reagan they're cowards they're cowards intimidated they've been bullied when you can stand on a debate stage with donald trump who at that point in time in 2016 is at five percent six 6 7 approval and he calls out your wife he calls out your daddy he calls out your mama and you say nothing you've already seen the seedbed laid for how this is going to play out there is not one among them who wear pants who will stand up to him that's the list cheney problem republicans have because she did she showed herself to be better stronger more resilient and more resistant to the trump infection than the men who are in leadership so much so that they pushed her out of leadership so we sit here and we go well why are they doing this look at what they've done right i mean i'm not it's been surprising you understand that they're not understanding about this is a whole new level though they are leading us into another oklahoma city of course and they have talking about civil war and they will do this when it happens and they will blame joe biden they will blame hunter biden and they will blame anybody else and everybody else but themselves which is why you me and other republicans and former republicans have to make it very clear this is on your hands this is what you are creating because you're not taking advantage of this moment in that john birch moment that you refer to to stand up and say and do something about it and what's incredible is 2022 should just be a walk in the park for republicans this should be the easiest this should look like the year i get in 1994. i mean this should this would have been so easy yeah but it's not on every front they are making it difficult for themselves whether it's on social issues like abortion whether it's on the candidates they are choosing whether it's on the violent rhetoric i mean you know just ask the democrats how well defund x goes doesn't go so well with suburban voters right that's why democrats [Laughter] islamic terrorism in america in the suburbs who investigates and chases down terror threats across america while you're sleeping in the suburbs of atlanta the fbi who chases down people that run human trafficking rings and want to snatch your children out of malls in the suburbs of atlanta and charlotte and philadelphia the fbi and you want to defund the fbi you want to turn these agencies people that keep america safe every day from the greatest threats from the drug cartels you want to defund them and they say they want to break them up i said what are you going to break the fbi up into what are you going to do you're talking about my bill here so to the point of your friend i i i think it's important to note he said u.s government can be replaced he or she said that yeah they realize of course that our founders made it very clear that we the people are the government right it's not an institution it's not a building that's what sets us apart from every other republic every two years every election every two years he's saying the people can be replaced he doesn't like the fact that this is what and that's it and we're gonna go to break here but because i i could go all day [Laughter] but they used to always say oh it's ted kennedy it is radical schemes he's a murderer and he's coming after you next and then it was who is the next boogie man they they would go from what it's just c jackson jesse jackson wants to blah blah blah and then you know in recent years it's nancy pelosi he's san francisco liberal she's a radical and then it was aoc a back pincher it's aoc she's running the government and then it's kamalayoch kamala harris he's coming after you it's bernie sanders he's a liberal they now are willing to throw away the greatest experiment in the history of humankind as they are over a moderate over a moderate from delaware whose biggest knock against him with this in his own party was he was too close to credit card companies they have defined radicalism down so much that it is just preposterous willie the federal judge deciding whether to unseal the affidavit in the unprecedented search of mar-a-lago appeared to stake out the middle ground yesterday saying he is inclined to unseal that affidavit magistrate judge bruce rinehart gave the justice department until next thursday to submit redactions in a written ruling the judge said quote the government has not met its burden of showing that the entire affidavit should remain sealed the judge said he would review the proposed redactions and then decide if he agrees with them he did not give a timeline beyond next thursday saying quote this is going to be a considered careful process the government argued against unsealing the affidavit claiming it would jeopardize its investigation and because it contains quote substantial grand jury information with national security overtones the justice department also indicated for the first time yesterday that more than one person inside trump's orbit could be working with the government stating quote the court is aware of what several witnesses said only certain people would have that knowledge trump again yesterday called for the full affidavit to be released without redactions but his legal team did not file anything in the case or even participate in the hearing one of his attorneys christina bob was in court but said she was just there to watch she was pressed about that last night on fox news i'm wondering are you not concerned that because you didn't join any of these motions for again the full release of this affidavit that you're then waving possible objections to the way redactions are being done by the justice department later on because you're you didn't speak in court today nor did you join any of these motions they're going to redact all this stuff and i'm not sure what grounds you're going to have at this point having waived your right to file those motions well we would maintain that we haven't waived our right and that that still is maintained uh you know we need to wait and see i can't be certain at this point because we haven't seen the affidavit we certainly haven't seen the redactions and how it's going to play out but you know we'll be making that decision as it comes out we you know we got to see it we haven't seen it it has been under seal so i i don't know we can't say so joe donald trump's attorney is literally silenced in court yesterday what is that literally what is that what is that you know what that you know poor laura ingram it's like a t-ball coach and says okay you get the bat and what you do is you don't go what you you swing through like that and you walk like it's every night laura's having go okay so you know if you don't object to that you may waive your right to the objections for the and what was it the other day that she was i forget what she was saying um but every night this lawyer comes on and it's just it's it's it's crazy i mean oh oh yeah and then they're talking about leaking the names but george maybe there is some sanity in this madness i'm going to talk to david ignatius in a second about this but he's been doing reporting and and chances are good that while they would like to know the names of now two possibly two people inside calling you know the call coming in from inside the house maybe there are two people now uh inside of mar-a-lago or are inside of trump world informing on him david ignatius has done reporting this week he's been looking and thinking contents probably really bad and it's something that that that trump people don't really donald trump will do what rudy does outside of court rooms and howl and and and make a scene but go inside that courtroom and stay silent because absolutely what republicans in washington dc know and i had friends tell me a couple days ago it's one of the reasons this irs conspiracy theory started is when they figured out how bad this is going to be for trump yeah they're they're they're trying to change the subject they're they're trying to have it three ways okay they're being mendaciously three-faced about it first of all they themselves would like to see the affidavit because you know tony soprano wants to know a bump and sarah is the rat and they want to they want to see who's who's thinking on them that's that's one two is they don't want us to see the affidavit because it's bad okay it's a long affidavit and it's going to have a lot of information about a lot of people saying a lot of bad things about the bad things that the president of the former president united states did and how he squirreled away these documents and refused to give them back when he was repeatedly told he had to give them back and was subpoenaed to get to return them and then third they want an issue a bs issue so they can send out their fundraising grift emails to raise money and say oh they're hiding the dog they're hiding the affidavit from us so those are the three things that are going on and so actually i i i there's there is a method to this to this madness it's all very dishonest and disgraceful but that's what that's par for the course david ignatius dishonest and disgraceful not the first time those words have been used uh to describe uh trump world and their handling of things like this as joe just hinted you've been doing some reporting around the issue give us what you've learned and what is the current state of the investigation so jonathan simply put the government's affidavit is by its own description so detailed so full of the evidence that they've got that they're pursuing that they're arguing as strenuous as they can none of this can be disclosed this is a road map to our future investigation the fact that's being led by the head of counterintelligence prosecutions of the justice department should tell us something this this is the most serious uh kind of prosecution one of the statutes that was invoked before the judge to get the search warrant was the espionage act if you don't know what that means what we do know is that this is a level of seriousness beyond anything that i've watched uh in terms of of trump investigations but you know where is this going um there will be a battle next week over whether any of this affidavit can be can be shown to the public that the judge judge reinhardt says he thinks he can come up with a virgin if you read the the justice bar pleadings they say there is nothing beyond when you redact all the crucial information there's nothing left here it's so rich with detail that might compromise their their investigation the thing that's become clearest to me in my reporting is that this is about classified material that trump took to mar-a-lago that is beyond any of the things that have been stated asserted about russiagate this is about secrets that are so sensitive that their disclosure in in government parliaments could cause grave harm to the united states and there's reason to believe that the trump team simply wasn't honest about what they had so the next chapter of this however much that the trump uh you know bash the irs people are excited about it i don't think is going to have um i think it's going to turn off more people in it than it excites you it's going to be more shocking yeah i mean in order to have an impact certainly in trump world but even with people who may have voted for trump are now a little bit fed up with him the findings that the fbi took out of mar-a-lago i think would have to be enormous because what you're hearing from people who support donald trump at the moment is january the 6th blair didn't even really listen to it all of this is just one more investigation and i think it gets kind of lost in a jumble of investigations that they don't really care about because that is all of the deep state trying to get their guy it seems to me politically in november michael the stuff that is almost more important is what joe was talking about it's this ginning up of violence against fbi agents it's the extremism perhaps of roe v wade there's it's that that is moving people politically because they're not really tuning in to the have been nitty-gr as a class in narrative building but i'm not sure how much they're tuning into that or into the details of investigations and the mar-a-lago stuff if it's not super explosive what the fbi has found it will just be seen as government overreach yeah you know i i can in attacking that guy i'll agree with some of that up to a point i i i will push back a little bit on how the american people are digesting this i think people are paid a lot more attention to this than we may realize in the end um i think it's reflective in where we're seeing uh to joe's point about the importance of the senate the nervousness of mitch mcconnell their internal numbers are showing an enormous weakness in in races that they should be winning not just in the senate but in the house as well the house was oh yeah we got a red wave coming it's now it's like well you know if we get a good sprinkler system that can just shoot in some targeted areas we'll win so i'm not sure that the american people i i think i'm more sure the american people paid more attention to a lot of this the other thing that's very interesting and it goes to uh what david touches on um and certainly what george has laid out is how does suburban suburbia take all this in at the end and and this is not a good narrative for a lot of suburban voters out there and catty on top of this you know yesterday i said this earlier when our show started 14 hours ago that i have a good friend who is an elections uh officer and um in a very republican uh area i don't think he's ever voted for a democrat uh for for president his entire life um and when i was talking about how republicans were targeting irs uh uh officials and also law enforcement officers in the fbi he immediately while i was talking he texted me and said what about election officials he said he said the last four years have just been hell down here so yeah all of all of these people again and even volunteers that we were talking about in georgia people who are volunteer um are are fear for their lives or have their reputations ruined and you you've told a really chilling story about an election official and and and where to park their car to protect them from the bomb blast this was crazy this is a woman who has spent decades working as an election official completely dedicated to the process of democracy and counting votes came across i don't know what party she votes for but she seemed to me very conservative in a conservative district god-fearing woman just about the process she got a death threat that was a bomb threat and the fbi came to her office and said you know what ma'am move your vehicle from the parking lot and put it right outside your office window so that if a bomb is exploded outside your office at least the vehicle will protect you a little bit and stop some of the window shattering it's just i mean it's madness this poor woman you know she was in tears when she was telling me this and she's determined to stay there but she says one in five election officials don't want to operate in these conditions and are just quitting so then how do we have elections right that run smoothly so think of the knock-on effects of that right we're undermining the election officials we're making them too scared to do their jobs and then we get to an election it's going to take even more time to count votes when it takes time to count votes the conspiracy theories start coming in because that's when you have the vacuum of reformation and that's when people start saying the election was stolen so we're perpetuating a system in which people don't trust the democratic process and this this isn't just happening like it's not like oh my god there's there's somebody on the internet who's saying these things and there's nothing we can do about crackpots in their basement or dinner no this is being said by the top republican in the house this is being said by one of the most senior democrats uh senior republicans in the senate this is being said by some of the most top uh some of the most watched cable news hosts um and and they are deliberately again just just republicans chuck grassley i mean you need to talk to this guy you mean you need to talk to him a strike force that goes in with ar-15s already loaded ready to shoot some small business person and i what do you think you're losing in these senate races because you're seen as radical and this is more about this is about far more than politics this is a sort of rhetoric that led to oklahoma city the post ruby ridge post waco rhetoric the militia rhetoric the survivalist rhetoric that led to oklahoma city and if you don't care about innocent lives that are being targeted right now then just know this oklahoma city the tragedy of oklahoma city this sounds very crude and crass it's just the truth we were there we republicans were on the hill when bill clinton was on the run oklahoma city re-elected bill clinton i know it sounds that sounds really harsh but it did because you know what collectively americans said okay this republican movement it's gone too far these guys aren't conservative they're radicals it's happening again look at your poll numbers if you don't care about the next oklahoma city if you don't care about the next fbi office that is attacked well then care about your own political future because this is a really really bad move on your part politically and morally let's add to the conversation criminal defense attorney based in miami john sale he's a former watergate prosecutor and was approached by former president trump's legal team to join their case mr sale thanks for being with us this morning a lot to ask you about this case specifically but curious why you declined the invitation to help represent donald trump hey well good morning well there's not really that much to tell i don't want without violating any confidences so my thought was when i was a very young lawyer i participated in an investigation of a president who had criminal exposure so i thought well i'd love to it's historical i'd love to do it again on the other side and i wanted to be just a lawyer though i didn't want to be involved in the political aspect of it at all but when i dug into the issues the issues are so complex they're so interesting but in my case it would have required me to take a leave of absence from my law firm and devote full-time to doing this and i just wasn't in a position to do that wouldn't be fair to the matters i'm working on now so there was really nothing more but let me to dispel something payment was not an issue the media is speculating well they don't pay their bills that was not an issue they didn't express to me any concern about not liking the lawyers they already had it was just a matter of when i come in and head up a team and let me point out that the department of justice has a whole strike force devoted to these investigations so it was just really a matter of trying to even the playing field and you know the attorney general in his press conference reminded everybody that the president is presumed innocent so i think we ought to bear that in mind also and i guess the only other thing that went through my mind is that a search warrant is probable cause that there's evidence in a particular place at a particular time but it's not an arrest warrant it's not necessarily probable cause that a particular individual meaning donald trump committed any crimes so now you didn't have a principled objection to representing him you just couldn't fit it into your schedule it sounds like mr sale i'm curious what you make of his representation though uh some criticism from defenders of donald trump of the attorney who was in the courtroom just silent yesterday she was dragged onto fox news and kind of admonished by one of the hosts last night for not saying anything it might hurt their future uh case what did you make of the way yesterday's hearing went well you bet i said yes two questions i mean i i don't want to criticize any other lawyers because i don't know everything that they knew to i don't know what instructions i got from that client but by not intervening in the proceeding they're not going to have anything to say about the redactions so i've been a counsel for a lot of people and companies particularly in this district who've been the subject of a search warrant i have never gotten an affidavit and i've heard very very good commentators like dave armenberg who's a terrific state attorney and george conway myself we all predicted the judge would say no and in this case this sort of mixed bag is extraordinary but i think we're going to all be disappointed and i think you know it's pretty clear we're not going to get anything that's going to compromise the investigation we're not getting anything about national security and we're certainly not going to get anything that can even lead to speculation as to who the witnesses are yeah i i mr sale joe scarborough here i think i think that's an important insight because i think a lot of people are expecting whether they're new news organizations or supporters of president trump who are expecting to see a lot from from these documents are going to be uh be disappointed uh first thing i want to underline is what you said and it's just so critical uh we've been saying on the show for quite some time no man is above the law including donald trump but also in this country you're innocent until proven guilty i don't think we can underline that fact enough and i'd love for you to follow up on what you just said about the possibility that yes there may have been a crime committed uh but that crime may not and i'm not saying this isn't the case but we just need to lay this out because i think at times we the media have have jumped the gun in the past but crime could have been committed they they could have presumed that a crime was committed but not necessarily by donald trump himself well there are so many things that we don't know most crimes require criminal intent so we don't know what the president former president knew we don't know what advice he was given we don't know what his intention was to do with these materials and all of that would have to go into the balance before recommending or for attorney general deciding to recommend an indictment against the former president uh so it's just but in terms of talking about the 90-day rule before one of the things that was disclosed early on was that this is in the early stages of the investigation uh so the 90 nothing's going to happen for a long time but they are reviewing neither side knows what they have in terms of the documents so they're doing a filter team where the filter team the government filter team is looking for privileges not only attorney-client privilege but executive privilege the deliberative process privilege which is a sub-part of that you may recall that eric holder was held in contempt by the congress for withholding documents because of this deliberative process privilege but i i would have and i'm not criticizing again other lawyers i don't do that but i would have come in right away to court and ask for the appointment of an independent special master because if i had a client like former president trump who had been investigated and investigated i would think he would be very very distrustful of the prosecutors and the fbi and we would want an independent special master to review for privilege not the government themselves and it's not something i'm making up i mean recently in new york that's been done twice in the southern district of new york so but what i would have done doesn't necessarily mean the other lawyers should have done it i mean every lawyer does you know does what they think is right but i but i want to say one thing i would have tried my very best not to try do what i was doing in the media and i would have done it as a lawyer but within a few days i would have broken my own rule because i would have done everything i could to denounce the rhetoric the threats the threats of violence the threats to the fbi to the judge i mean after what happened that tragedy with judge salas's son i mean we can't say enough to tell people that is a lose-lose situation we can't blame the fbi we can't blame people i believe in the process i believe in the system let the system work and i think the right result will come out well and and you know it really does i'm so so grateful for you saying that and underlining that fact and it does when you look at this situation you look at the fact that the the uh fbi and the attorney general have it appears uh that they understand what an extraordinary situation this is they took some steps to try to make it uh a a bit less uh intrusive you look at the judge's decision yesterday ken delaney and i were talking yesterday and i like you said most legal experts uh had thought that there was no way that this affidavit would be released any part of the affidavit even in a redacted affidavit and you just said that you were surprised yourself you've never seen anything like this happen before i guess that points to the fact that the judge also realizes that this search of a former president is an extraordinary circumstance and requires us all to sort of wade through this together and with everybody doing their best well i think the judge was not influenced by political pressure but i think what you pointed out is right but uh the judge said that a redacted version might just result in meaningless jimmy gibberish i think those were his words but we might see things like why request subpoenas to the former president for documents and showing that the government did go out of their way to avoid doing the search warrant but let me say the next time i have a client who's the victim of a subject of a search warrant they're going to say to me hey why can't i get this partially redacted why can't i videotape it and the answer is because you can't and they just won't let you and we just won't get it so i don't know if this is sort of going to be a precedent that none of us want to live with and like any good criminal defense attorney a freudian slip you say a victim of a they correct yourself that you know if i need a criminal defense attorney that's the mindset i want right there exactly so hey hey a search warrant is not fun and the affidavit never contains anything favorable because it's a one-sided procedure it's it's only one side and it's it's in secret yeah exactly exactly which of course is what makes all of this so extraordinary right now uh that it involves a former uh president criminal defense attorney john cell thank you so much for being with us is is very insightful we appreciate your time thanks thanks for having me [Music] you

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Keywords: msnbc, MSNBC, Specials, Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Willie Geist, MSNBC news, MSNBC live, MSNBC TV, news, breaking news, current events, US news, politics, politics news, political news, elections, morning joe full, morning joe live, morning joe today, Donald Trump, President Trump, Trump, GOP, Republicans, Democrats

Id: b_S7Tio2P7s

Length: 34min 48sec (2088 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022