‘We’re not Russia; we honor our fallen heroes’: Joe slams Hegseth’s media criticism

But you didn't wait for the investigation, did you?

You didn't wait for the evidence.

You proclaimed that they were domestic terrorists at the time.

Why did you do that?

And you didn't wait to attack our law enforcement.

Why did you do that?

Going into a dangerous situation.

Why did you call them domestic terrorists?

These are ICE officers and our HSI officers that day risked their lives to protect that

scene.

So evidence could be reclaimed.

So it could be used in the investigation, because those violent rioters that were here.

So you're proud of the fact that you called them domestic terrorists, is that what you're

telling America?

HSI officers put their lives on the line to protect that scene, so evidence so we could

have.

Yes, they do.

Yes, they do.

But you told a lie about them.

You said that they were domestic terrorists.

Do you regret that?

I offer my condolences to those family and-

Based on what you know today, we're Renee Good and Alex Prety, Domestic Terrorist.

There's ongoing investigations.

Why can't she just say it?

How?

Why can't she just say it?

They've been lying from the start of this.

Yeah.

I mean, just openly lying.

Six stuff.

Six stuff.

And it just keeps continuing.

It just continues.

Yeah, that was Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Nome in a heated exchange with the House

Judiciary Committee's ranking member, Congressman Jimmy Raskin.

The Secretary was also pressed on major questions surrounding a DHS marketing campaign.

We're going to dig into that, a very expensive one.

We're also following a surprise move by the House Oversight Committee, voting to subpoena

Attorney General Pambondi over the Epstein files.

We'll get reporting on how the Attorney General is likely to respond and the latest developments

with the Texas Republican primary for U.S. Senate, incumbent Senator John Cornyn and

Attorney General Ken Paxson are headed for a runoff.

Neither pictured here.

He headed for a runoff in May and President Trump now says he will endorse one of the

men.

Quote soon.

I got to say I was looking to the right and I said, man, okay, Steve Danks leave him

too soon because people still don't know who he is because that looks like in Paxson

to me.

Yeah.

Willie, how are you today?

Doing great.

Doing great.

I think you just saw in that clip from Kristi Nome, why Punch Bulls reporting this morning

that President Trump is calling around on Capitol Hill and asking, should I get rid of Kristi

Nome at the top of DHS?

Like what?

I mean, you have to ask, ask, ask, ask that question.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The question answers itself.

Like months ago.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's also, I've just got to say, well, first of all, before we get serious,

really serious, I remember Willie when I was campaigning in 1994, you know, there were

some people that were, you know, we were all for the second of them, but there were some

that, like, that was their issue and at one point we were in Baker, Florida and one

of these candidates, a right-in candidate, say, if you're not my guns, you're going to

have to come from my cold, dead hands.

And I turned to him, I go, okay, we's kind of intense, very good, I will not try to get

his guns.

But the, the, the, the, the Boston version of that, we are starting to see, we're starting

to, it's unful.

Why don't you just try to tax them for their tea and put it on ships that go on after

their dunkin?

They're going after their dunkin' donuts, we're taking that in area code, six, one, seven,

and I just saw, I just saw that tweet, come and take it, and I'm thinking, you know,

for people in Northwest Florida, you get your guns and, you know, for people in Boston

and surrounding areas for Southeast, you got dunkin' man, they, they better not try

to take their dunkin'.

Look at that.

The, the, the mind meld here, Joe is extraordinary, Jonathan Lamir as Ali Vitale read that story

at the end of the show, looked at it and said, from my cold, dead hands, will you take my

large ice coffee?

I mean, you can't, I mean, not that Republicans were going to win Massachusetts, but I think

we officially can take it off the board forever after that from RFK Jr.

Yeah, take it off the board.

I want to, I do want to get serious here before we get into news, it's very serious.

I know, Willie, like me, you were really concerned by what happened yesterday in the, in the

briefing, Pete Hagseth, when, when our fallen warriors were brought up and the Secretary

of Defense, and the spokesperson for the White House yesterday acted like even mentioning

these fallen heroes' names was like a slur against the President.

They actually tried to make the death of American troops about Donald Trump.

It was, one of the most childish, it was just so childish.

Prove once again, Pete Hagseth's not, he's nowhere, they're prepared to be Secretary

of Defense.

He's emotionally not there, not there in every other way, but these are our fallen heroes.

And the suggestion that we should be like Vladimir Putin and just ignore when American

heroes die in uniform while serving this country.

This is, this is not, keep those pictures up of those American heroes.

This is not about Donald Trump.

This is about these heroes and the families and the friends and the loved ones who mourn

them.

Just to Joe's point, in that briefing yesterday, which Jonathan Lamar and I covered, yes,

we need to talk about Pete Hagseth and the President, but when the Chairman of the Joint

Chiefs, Dan Kame, took to the podium, it is the first thing he talked about.

Of course.

It is the first thing he talked about, and he talked about grief and gratitude and dedication

to this country, which is how you start one of those briefings.

And I remember thinking, watching Pete Hagseth going, how childish is this, is this language

he's using?

And this sort of bro centric tough guy, we sunk their battleship.

It was pathetic, but also embarrassing.

Well, and General Kain came out and he understands these are fallen warriors they have given

their life in defending this country.

And they're not suckers.

We don't believe they're suckers.

So only somebody who would believe that they're suckers, like the Atlantic reported, would

treat fallen warriors, the mere mention of their names or the fact that they died in service

of this country as something dirty or something aimed at Donald Trump, not about Donald Trump,

is about their sacrifice willy, something you've been in that community, something you

have seen up close.

Yeah, well, General Kain, as you say, understands.

He understands that it's about honor and dignity and gratitude for the lives of those

men.

Pete Hagseth, on the other hand, views this as a political problem or a PR problem, saying

the fake news is just trying to make Donald Trump look bad, making him look bad by putting

the names and pictures of fallen American service members on the front page of newspapers

or talking about them on shows like this.

That was an extraordinary moment from a man in Pete Hagseth, who has served, presumably

gets it, but now is so captured by politics, so captured by his loyalty to Donald Trump

that he thinks job one is to be the spokesperson and apologists for Donald Trump and to attack

the news media, to attack any critic of Donald Trump.

That is not your job as Secretary of Defense.

Conduct the war alongside more experienced people, thank goodness, like General Kain,

but he views himself as the spokesperson.

He's not that different from Caroline Levitt in the White House press secretary's podium

yesterday, where she was challenged guys on these questions as well, saying, what are

you talking about?

That we're trying to make the president look bad.

We are reporting the deaths of U.S. service members and President Trump, by the way, has

said there will be more.

And we will report those two.

Well, and again, we're not Russia.

We don't just throw people at the front lines when they die, pretend they didn't die.

We honor our fallen heroes and we think and we pray for the families of Cody and Nicole

Noah, Declan and Declan and the other two who gave their service and Robert, yeah,

sacrifice.

And the ultimate, ultimate sacrifice to this country, Dana Prino said, I think, last night

on the first day, guys, just stop.

Stop with your obsession on the media, they're covering this pretty much down the middle.

And let's remember, again, the fallen and let's honor them and let's pray for their families.

There's nothing wrong with that, Pete.

Nothing, that's what we have been doing as a country for 250 years.

We're not going to stop now because Donald Trump's president.

So stop, stop, act like a man, act like a man, and honor fallen heroes instead of trying

to make it about Donald Trump.

So as we continue to cover the story also with us, President Emeritus of the Council

and Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, co-host of the Restless Politics Podcast, the BBC's

Kadi-K, and co-host of the weekend, and a Washington reporter for MS now, Jackie Alameni.

Before we dive in, Joe, you have been talking with administration officials and also leaders

in the Gulf region about the latest with the situation in Iran.

What did you find?

I can tell you, especially in the Gulf region, the attitude for different today than it

was even three, four, five days ago.

And the reason why is something that we talked about yesterday with David Ignatius, the

number of missiles coming into the area are going down, not only because Iran's using

a lot of their missiles and much of their weaponry, but also because Israel and the United

States have been very effective at targeting the launchers.

So now they're starting to listen.

It's chaotic here.

We don't love how this started, but at the same time, a lot of people have been talking

about going after Iran who has been, you know, the region's enemy since 1979 and Donald

Trump did it.

So we're, we're okay with that.

And I said, does that mean you think this is going to land in a safe place?

And he said, nobody knows that.

Nobody knows that right now.

We're hopeful, but very, you know, very cautious because we saw what happened in Iraq.

We saw what happened in Afghanistan.

We saw what happened in Libya.

We saw what's happened across the Middle East, whether you're talking about Beirut in

83.

And this is not going to be easy, but they believe it's headed in the right direction.

Okay.

So you as an Israel continue to hammer sides across Iran with a new wave of strikes reported

in the capital city of Tehran.

The Pentagon has struck nearly 2,000 targets across the country.

And Secretary Pete Hegseth says things are just getting started, Iranian missile launchers,

government buildings, and regime leaders themselves are all in the crosshairs.

But the fighting is hardly contained to that country as the conflict spreads from Turkey

and Lebanon and to the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman.

So far this morning, Iran claims to have targeted Kurdish groups in northern Iraq as aerate

sirens blare across Israel.

Saudi Arabia said it destroyed a drone along the border with Jordan.

And there's been a new Iranian attack off the coast of Kuwait.

Iran is evacuating the area near the U.S. Embassy in Doha while fighter jets buzz

overheard in neighboring Dubai.

Azerbaijan says two people were injured by a falling drone.

And dozens of Iranian sailors were confirmed killed in a U.S. torpedo strike off the coast

of Sri Lanka.

So Richard, it appears again from the calls I made yesterday that they are very close to

controlling the skies over Iran and are getting most of the targets along the coastline and

are starting to move to the interior.

I'm curious your thoughts here.

If let's just say things go, and this is a big if, I understand when you're talking

about them at least, and especially Iran, let's say we finish phase one successfully uprooting

a good part of Iran's military capabilities of built-ups in 1979.

What do we need in place politically when phase two starts?

That phase as we learned all too well in Iraq is the most difficult phase.

The invasion actually was the easiest phase in Iraq, according to troops who were there.

It was what happened after that caused the real chaos.

So I think that's the question that we need to start asking.

And a lot of people who have doubts, including me, about how we got to where we are, well

we are where we are.

So the question at some point, and I think it's now, has to begin to pivot towards what

we call war termination.

What is the criteria for when we would stop or send signals both to Israel and to Iran

that the time has come to wrap this up?

What is it we require to happen?

Because there's arguments for not having this, just to be clear, continue indefinitely.

When the Secretary of Defense says we're just getting started, well I don't know.

I think we were discovering enormous shortfalls in American weapons and so forth, particularly

in air defense systems.

A lot of countries in the region are extraordinarily vulnerable.

They're energy installations, they're water facilities, and the like.

It's depleting our stocks, which we need among other things for Taiwan and Ukraine.

So the idea that we, I would tell you sort of posit that we don't want this to continue

over.

At some point we hit diminishing returns against Iran.

And I think we're going to have to think about our definition for success.

Do we walk back this idea of a profound regime change?

Are we prepared to live within Iran that still has a security, clerical leadership?

What are we prepared to accept in the nuclear file?

The funny sort of Joe, and I never thought we'd get to this, but this is where we are.

We may have to reopen precisely those negotiations and considerations that preceded the war.

What are we prepared to live with in the nuclear sense?

Are we prepared at any point and this show how to relieve any of the economic sanctions?

Iran is not going to disappear as a country.

It's not going to disappear as a problem.

So the question is when do we transition from a war to essentially a new post-war status

quo?

Yeah, and the question really is, what does that look like?

It'd be very easy to say we're going to sweep aside everybody that worked in the previous

administration for Iran, but that's what we did in Iraq with the bathification and it

led to chaos and years and years of war with Americans caught in the middle of that.

So again, leaders in the region are hoping that they can find elements, just like you've

heard Donald Trump talk about this, that are inside this regime that can take control

of it and still figure out how to be good neighbors.

Well, yeah, I guess the problem with that is the leading candidate to succeed the Supreme

Leader now is his son reportedly.

So that doesn't sound a lot like regime change, but we'll see.

Jonathan Miras, we look at the shifting rationales, justifications for the war yesterday, President

Trump said, quote, if we didn't hit within two weeks, they Iran would have had a nuclear

weapon.

That's a new revelation that within two weeks Iran would have had a nuclear weapon.

Most intelligence officials and experts don't believe that to be true at all, but Donald

Trump seems every day or Secretary Rubio seems every day or Secretary Heggs, it seems

every day to offer something new to justify the action.

Yeah, I've lost track of how many versions they've offered here.

Explanations as to why we went into conflict and we should be clear, administration officials,

siding intelligence have told not just reporters, but Congress in the last few days.

That's simply not the case.

Iran was not going to have a weapon, the ability to have a weapon in two weeks and the President

simply not telling the truth there as he's they still sort of scrambled to justify this

war.

And to a larger point, it's also muddled that the rationale for going in is muddled

and certainly what happens next is muddled.

There's no clear plan.

I mean, the war, Joe's right, I've heard some, I've similar reporting about the number

of missiles launched from Iran at least for the time being has, has dwindled.

There is some thought there may be some stockpiles that haven't used yet, so perhaps that

will they'll accelerate again, but that isn't noteworthy and relief for some of the Gulf

neighbors there.

Still the war is expanding.

We had a missile shock down and go heading into Turkey, NATO defenses did that.

We had the submarine that was a submarine attack yesterday blew up and Iranian warship.

So this is conflict that is showing no signs of abating and you're right, Willie, there

is a chance that what could come next could be worse.

There's simply no clear what the next day is and, and, and, and, and, and, caddy, there's

part of this is so tied up with the, the President and his own personal views.

And I think that's why Secretary Hanks that yesterday went on that, I mean, let's be clear,

disgraceful attack there, you know, of course the media is going to report the deaths.

And honor the lives of those who have been lost and there will be, there will be more,

but everything perceived as a personal insult against President Trump.

And that is why in some ways this war has been so surprising because he's so inclined

to do the one-off strikes, not the longer commitments, not the idea of boots on the ground.

And there was reporting yesterday that some Kurdish groups may be armed and head to the

region, although there's been a lot of pushback on that as well.

So caddy, the question is, what kind of off ramp can Trump live with as he is

clearly in legacy building mode, believing this is an entry for the history books?

Yeah, we heard Caroline Levy, who was sort of vying with Pete Hegseth there to defend

the President and attack the media at any possible, at any possible moment.

I think the off ramp depends exactly on what President Trump wants it to be.

And if this is moving in the direction that Joe is hearing, that you're hearing, that

the reports from the press about the number of missiles being launched from Iran might

seem to suggest the domination, diminution of the number of those.

And if there is some kind of a victory, have no doubt that Donald Trump will claim it

as exactly that.

Even if this falls far short of regime change, the losers in all of this may be the Iranian

public.

But I think Donald Trump will be able to say, look, we have a regime that was threatening

the world, much diminished militarily, angry perhaps at the position that it's in.

There's doesn't need to be any indication within Iran that we're moving from hardliners

to moderates quite yet.

But I think it'll all depend on whether this has some sort of a resolution militarily,

quickly and whether Donald Trump can then turn around and say, look, I did what no other

President was able to do.

In six months, in a year's time, in two years' time, the situation in Iran may look very

different and may not be so US-friendly.

I think we're not going back, we're going from a hot war potentially back to the cold

war we've had for decades with Iran.

And once they've rebuilt their weapon systems, then again, they've become their threat they

were.

But this President thinks short term.

Well, the question is, again, that's what it's face to look like and what regime gets

in there and is it a regime that, let's be very honest, that both the United States and

Israel will allow to be there.

Because Israel, obviously, has had the intel and we've had the firepower and it's not going

to be any easy for any hostile regime to get in there at this point.

So the question is there were reports that Iranian intelligence officers were trying to

make contact through third parties with the CIA to talk about the possibility of some

sort of transition and some sort of deal, but we're a long way off from that.

You know, they have done the outrage.

And then there's Congress, Jackie Alamani, the shifting reasons for immediate threat

seem to come every day.

And yet, the effort to get the War Powers Resolution Act through failed in round one yesterday,

what's next?

Yeah, Mika, this is about to come to the House floor for about this resolution now

between, that was introduced by Thomas Masi and Rokana, but before we get to that, I do

want to address something that Jonathan said because I've had this reporting that just

came to me, but the personal nature of Trump's position on Iran, I have a source who had

lunch with Trump at Mar-a-Lago a month and a half ago who said essentially that Trump

was itching to strike Iran.

And I think it does really get to this idea that so little of this is based on actual

substance and primarily on settling a score against Iran, wanting to legacy build.

And again, a lack of a real justification here.

And there are lots of members of Congress in a bipartisan manner who are taking issue

with this, although not enough for this to pass in the Senate, and likely to fail in

the House today, this proposed resolution has been controversial among some Democrats,

who believe that this is not, they're viewing this through the lens of not necessarily a check

on executive power, but as a potential to not support Israel in terms of the U.S.-Israeli special

relationship.

People like Josh Gottheimer, Greg Landsman, Henry Quayar, Jared Golden, these are people

who are expected to vote against the resolution today, there may be one or two Republicans

that vote in support of it, who again have teed this up as a check on Trump's executive

power.

Those Democrats that are taking issue with today's vote have come up with a resolution

to try to put a check on Trump with another vote on this in 30 days if the military entanglement

with Iran continues up to 30 days, but that's unlikely to come to the House floor, at least

in the foreseeable future, but this is something that has become a lightning rod between both

parties in the upper and the lower chamber right now.

Yeah, and that's reflected your first reporting there, Jackie, and what Pete Hagseth was

saying yesterday about they tried to get him twice and POTUS got the last laugh.

My God, is there no plan?

I mean, is this just about, I think that kind of thing.

There were a lot of people who thought that George W. Bush went after Saddam Hussein

because of reports of assassinations, attempts against his father, George H. W. Bush.

I think in this case, that was the reason.

Yeah, well, they've said there are a lot of reasons.

I think it's very important as we look at the different things that, I'll just say childish

people say around the administration.

I think it's important to stay fixed on the understanding that this has been the epicenter

of this country.

It's been the epicenter of terrorism since 1979, and no, I'm not saying, I'm not saying

that this was well thought out, I'm just saying, if you want to understand why, in Congress

of War Powers Resolution Act may not pass, like it did against Iraq, Ronsman, the epicenter

of terrorism since 1979, they killed 240 American Marines in Beirut, they killed countless

Americans in Iraq.

So this goes far beyond an assassination attempt.

This is something, again, as leaders in the region are now saying, could fundamentally

change the region for decades to come in a positive sense if it's done right.

But that requires planning, that requires fourth thought, that also requires talking

to your allies and figuring out how to do this in the best way.

Thank you, things can be true at the same time.

Coming up on Morning Joe, the House Oversight Committee votes to subpoena attorney general

Pam Bondi as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, will be joined by a Democratic

member of that committee ahead.

Plus, in the Texas Senate primary fight, President Trump is promising to endorse either John

Kornin or Ken Paxton, but says the candidate he doesn't choose should drop out, we'll take

a look at weird things stand in that runoff race.

And as we go to break, a quick look at the traveler's forecast this morning from AccuBeathers

Bernie Reino, Bernie, how's it looking?

From Boston to Philadelphia today, I think the weather world, Mika, is murky, rain, and

drizzle.

Rain and drizzle arrives in Boston this afternoon, anytime in New York City, Philadelphia.

Take a look at Washington, DC, Morning Clouds, fog, a shower, then it's springtime in the

afternoon with clouds breaking.

Have a plenty of warmth across the South, watch out for some thunderstorms though late

in the day and Dallas into the southern plains, they could be severe.

Your AccuBeathers travel forecast delays today, Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia.

To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the AccuBeathers

app today.

It's not 100% clear to me general, and that's not to suggest that I don't support 100%

what is happening, nor that I 100% offer my sport.

I just think I want to ask a couple of critical questions, and I hope you know how much respect

I have for your service, and I think it goes without saying to anybody watching, how much

respect I have for the men making's decisions.

You don't have to patronize me, just ask the question.

Wow, what a wind up to that question, a lot of throat clearing there.

Well after more than four years of withstanding the onslaught of drones launched by Russia

into Ukrainian territory, President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on social media yesterday,

Kiev is prepared to help allied countries and their defense against Iran's drone warfare.

In the middle of his own war, the majority of drones launched by Russia into Ukraine

over the past few years are of Iranian design.

President Zelensky wrote the military will find ways to help when and where possible without

compromising its own defensive efforts against Russia.

This is extraordinary given the reluctance of the United States to help Ukraine in the

way it needs to be helped, that in the middle of a war of defense against Vladimir Putin,

Zelensky saying we've actually developed some technology over these four years to help

defend against these drones, we will share it with American allies by the way in their

defense.

Well it's smart on the part of Ukraine obviously, it's a reminder that they're not just

if we will accost to the United States or the West, they're also a benefit, it's also

a real reminder about one the revolution in drones, how this war is qualitatively different,

and also how the exchange ratio is what's called battlefield math.

Right now we are using million dollar systems to defend against drones that might cost

$10 or $20,000.

I may not be a mathematical genius, that is an unsustainable trajectory.

Yeah, that's a great point and in fact there's been some reporting on that, even as we're

looking at logistics, we're looking at munitions supplies and the U.S. certainly can outdo

what Iran has, but that the math doesn't really work.

They're using these very cheap Russian made drones, and in fact some people I was talked

to in Kiev were saying, well if the U.S. had given us permission to hit some of these

Russian drone factories early on in the war, back then we didn't, they perhaps would

not be able to help Iran supply with these, and it also just goes to show like the different

of approach here between the administration, Richard, you were saying off air, so make

this point now.

The way this administration has handled the Russian negotiations versus these in Iran.

It's fascinating, it's the same two individuals, Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner.

With Russia shall we say we have endless tolerance, endless patience, they are not serious

about negotiations, they're not serious about peace, yet we continue them, and if anything

we lean on Ukraine out of frustration.

Here what, we have a couple of rounds with the Iranians, and suddenly Whitkoff and Kushner

are getting impatient.

They say, negotiations diplomacy can achieve nothing, it's all a ruse, let's go to war.

So the contrast, if you will, between endless patience with Russia, extremely limited

patience with Iran, and by the way there's a lot of us who think that the negotiations

with Iran could have worked, could we have eliminated every Iranian capability?

No, but could we have gotten something better than the old negotiated agreement?

Could we have gotten something, shall we say, better than war quite possibly?

Indeed, that's what makes this a war of choice.

You had alternative policies to use, you could have used negotiations, you had sanctions,

we didn't have to use military force now, and it puts the administration in a bind because

they then have to defend why we had to do that now in this way, and that's what makes

it a war of choice, and it puts them on the defensive, and again it's just hard not

to be struck by the inconsistency in our diplomacy between Russia and Iran.

And Katty let's talk about Kier Simons, were I saying?

Kier Simons?

Kier Simons, not Kier Simons.

Well I'd love to talk about Kier Simons.

I would love to talk to Kier Simons, I love Kier Simons.

I love Kier Simons.

Kier Simons.

I love Kier Simons.

Oh my god, it was better, Kier Simons, amazing, but we'll talk about Kier Simons instead,

and then you talk about Kier Simons offline.

But he has managed somehow, Kierstarmer, to both offend the White House and the Iranian

Revolutionary Guard.

Not an easy thing to do, but he's done it proving yet again that he, well, I don't want to say

he's not up to the job, but I've heard so many people in labor tell me over the course

of the year they've been so deeply disappointed in his leadership.

I'm curious, what's the attitude toward Kierstarmer right now with the White House

angry at him and Iranians shooting at British bases in the region?

Yeah, now he has the Cypriot government as well, angry at him saying, hold on a second,

why didn't you tell us more, help us defend ourselves against those Iranian attacks on

Cyprus?

He has managed to irritate everybody.

He's got that very public rebuke from the president during that meeting with the German

Chancellor.

He's been criticized across the front pages of the British papers.

He was already, as we've spoken about before, in a precarious position.

And I think he tried to draw the line saying, we don't want to be involved in the Iran

war, we're not going to let initially let the Americans use our bases.

And then he had to backtrack on that as a British assets in the region got attacked and

he had to be seen to being allowed to the Americans to defend British assets in the region

as well.

And he's really in a no-win situation.

But I think it gets to also this idea that we've been talking about for the last six months

of Europe needing to be united.

Over the last few days, Joe, we've seen Europe in total disarray over this.

We've seen the Spanish saying, no, get out, we don't want anything to do with this war.

We've seen the German Chancellor arrive and not criticize Donald Trump at all and say,

actually, thank you, you're doing something we couldn't do.

We've seen Kirstama kind of caught in the middle.

We've seen the French now having to send their aircraft when initially they didn't want

to have any part of this.

I mean, the lesson of the last year has been that Europe needs to be united and needs to

have a united defense and foreign policy.

And this last week has shown the huge amount of problems that Europe has being united

on something as fundamental as attacks on Iran.

And Kirstama is going to do it.

Why can't they do it?

I don't understand.

They've seen this coming, Angela Merkel warned them, I think in 2018, 2019, we can no longer

look to the United States.

We have to come together.

That's six, seven years ago.

It seems to me they're in ability to coordinate, actually reinforces what I hear from the Trump

administration all the time that Europe can't get their act together.

Yeah.

And President Macron was right.

I mean, far bit from a Brit to say the French were right, but anyway, it does seem the

Macron was right all along when he said, we need to have more coordinated European defenses

and security and we need to actually spend more money on it.

And he was sort of poo-pooed around Europe.

For having said that, as being pie in the sky and being grandiose, as being self-aggrandizing

because he was pointing out something.

But it gets back, we've spoken about this before, it gets back to the problem.

If you have 27 countries with 27 different, and if you put Britain in there too as part

of the continent of Europe, 28 countries with individual politics, there's not much nobody

in Britain likes Donald Trump very much at the moment.

There are very few supporters and they don't want to be seen to be helping Donald Trump.

And every leader has that issue with their domestic public and then they have issues with their

international public.

So they're closer to Russia.

Are they further from Russia?

Do they want to support Ukraine?

Do they, is Ukraine not such a priority?

And I think that's the reality of, that's the problem Europe has and something urgent is

going to have to push them.

We thought we saw it in Davos.

We thought they'd realized over Greenland.

But then this happens and it exposes all of the flaws and the cracks within Europe.

So we'll continue this conversation.

President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, thank you very

much for coming on this morning and coming up on Morning Joe after being pushed by President

Trump, the Justice Department's investigation into former President Biden falls flat.

We'll explain why the DOJ is dropping its auto-pen case and what it means for future investigations

into Trump's perceived enemies.

Morning Joe will be right back.

Long has settled in over Washington live picture of the White House at 6.45 in the morning.

President Trump's demand that the Justice Department investigate whether former President

Joe Biden and his aides unlawfully used an auto-pen to sign presidential documents,

reportedly has hit a wall.

Federal prosecutors are dropping the criminal pro because they were not able to move forward

with the case against Joe Biden.

That's according to three people briefed on the matter speaking in the New York Times.

The Times reports the investigation, which was run by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington

under Janine Piro, ultimately found no viable criminal case and now has been quietly abandoned.

The auto-pen case focused on Trump's claim, the pardons Biden made in his final month of

office were not valid because Biden supposedly lacked mental capacity and had to rely on aides

using the auto-pen.

Biden has called those claims completely false saying he personally made all clemency

decisions.

Join us now, the co-author of that piece, investigative reporter for the New York Times,

Michael Schmidt.

Mike Good morning, great to see you.

We'll remind our viewers that the auto-pen is used routinely by all presidents, including

President Donald Trump.

So this I think is not terribly surprising to people who first heard about this case that

it wasn't going anywhere, but how did it fall apart?

They couldn't find a law to hang this thing on.

Well that hurts.

Look, this is a story about the inability to bring the case against Biden, but there's

also a story about how the Trump Justice Department continues to fail to do what Donald Trump wants

it to do.

He wanted the Justice Department to seek retribution and vengeance against those people who he didn't

like.

He wanted them indicted and put in jail.

And in most cases, so far, we have seen them struggle to do that.

They struggled on the six who Trump accused of sedition.

They've struggled on Comey and James.

They struggled here again.

And in the larger story of retribution, the arc of retribution where Trump comes out

of the gate with such momentum, by the time he gets to December and they really start

to zero in on putting these people in jail, they have run into roadblock after roadblock.

Those roadblocks have been at the grand jury on the six who accused of sedition.

In this case, it was with the prosecutors who never even went to the grand jury to actually

try and bring the indictment.

They've run into judges, but this is where his power has been checked in different ways.

They haven't given up on this.

There's nothing in this Justice Department is dead by any means.

We saw the other day that the Justice Department had gone out and put a filing to the federal

court saying we are walking away from trying to defend the executive orders against the law

firms, only for the walk away to be reversed just hours less than a day later.

So, who knows?

But for now, these cases have run into different roadblocks and this one being the latest.

There's some reporting that President Trump saw you discussing your piece on this show

about the law firms and was surprised to learn that they were backing away and asked

that to get fired up again.

So in this case on the auto pen, this was part of a narrative as we were just discussing

that Donald Trump had put out there during the campaign and carried over into his second

term here, which is that Joe Biden was incapacitated and they had to use a machine to

design documents.

Did the people in charge, did Ed Martin even Jeanine Piro, did they understand that this

was nonsense that Donald Trump had used that himself and they pursued it anyway or did

they have convictions that there might be some kind of a case here?

I don't know if Ed Martin did.

I think Jeanine Piro seems to have a larger understanding of maybe how the world works

than Ed Martin.

I think that Jeanine Piro is trying to straddle that line between being Donald Trump's

US attorney in a really important office while trying to keep things on the track.

I think that's really difficult of watching people try and do that now for two different

terms and usually it doesn't end well.

This again is not an issue where like many people say one thing on one side, legal

beagle say another thing on another.

This was pretty clear.

There was an OLC DOJ memo that said this was okay.

The use of the auto pen, how Joe Biden made decisions, I would say pretty interesting.

Those are really important, interesting things.

What's interesting and maybe controversial is not criminal.

When you talk to people in the FBI or the Justice Department or anyone else in federal

law enforcement who are confronting this, these attempts by Trump to use the criminal

justice system to jail his enemies, what they say is that there's just a lot of things

Donald Trump doesn't like that aren't criminal.

This is probably a good example of that.

Certainly as you point out, a lot of these efforts at distribution have failed, but there's

still, we shouldn't gloss over the idea that there were people in the Department of Justice

who were willing to at least try to do President Trump's bidding to carry out his wishes here.

I want to ask you though, relatedly, we talked at the top of the show with President

Trump calling around unhappy with the job performance of Secretary Kristi Nome, how safe

is Pam Bondi in her job because there does seem to be that you've heard some growing

frustration that she has been unable to execute some of President Trump's wishes.

Yeah, look, I think to the public, Pam Bondi looks like a Trump lackey and political

ally who will do what he wants, one of his former personal lawyers, but Bondi's department

has not followed through on what Trump wanted.

Go back to the truth social post from September where he tells Bondi to follow through on

these indictments of these different individuals.

Some of those individuals were indicted.

They were able to get those indictments, but they weren't able to get them to stick.

Some of the other names of the people that Trump put in that truth social post, I believe

have not been indicted.

The larger retribution campaign, while having a big impact on the law firms, having a big

impact on higher education, I'm not diminishing what has happened to these individuals who

have been indicted and those people who have faced criminal scrutiny from the department,

but it has not been the clean kill certainly that Trump thought it would be in terms of

being able to do onto others what was done onto him.

Right, right, right.

So while we're on, Pam Bondi, the House Oversight Committee has voted to subpoena the Attorney

General to appear for a closed door deposition as part of its investigation into Jeffrey

Epstein, Jackie Alamani.

What are you hearing about this?

And will we see pictures in video as we did with Hillary Clinton?

Mika, that's a very good question.

It's really unclear, but there are around 50,000 documents that the Wall Street reported yesterday

that are missing from the dump of the Epstein files, which is why, in part, why you saw Nancy

Mace introduced the move to subpoena and call in Pam Bondi yesterday.

There were a number of Republicans who voted with Democrats on this Nancy Mace law and

Bobert, Tim Burton, Michael Cloud, Scott Perry.

These are hardcore maga Trump supporters who feel that Pam Bondi's response has been

wholly inadequate.

It's unclear whether or not she's actually going to appear behind closed doors for a closed

door deposition.

But if she doesn't, Congress has already signals and members on that committee that they're

willing to pursue inherent contempt charges against Pam Bondi.

Of course, that often relies on a referral to the Justice Department for criminal contempt

that falls under Pam Bondi's jurisdiction.

It's unlikely that she's actually going to be arrested and put in the House, the congressional

jail.

But needless to say, this is a very big and powerful statement coming from House members

who want accountability here, primarily with regards to unverified allegations of sexual

misconduct against Donald Trump that has not been included in these files that a lot

of survivors who feel like there are other documents about co-conspirators and their

experiences that are missing so far.

Absolutely.

And there are not just survivors and Democrats who want answers on this Jeffrey Epstein

massive scandal, but some Republicans as well.

MSNAS Jackie Alamany, thank you very much, investigative reporter at the New York Times, Michael

Schmidt.

Thank you, as well.

His new piece is available online right now and right now and right now and right now

and right now and right now and right now and right now and right now and right now and