Welcome back. The search for presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump's
running mate appears to be ramping up,
sources close to the campaign telling NBC News that the
list has been narrowed down to four contenders,
Ohio Senator JD Vance, Florida Senator Marco Rubio,
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum
and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.
All those candidates recently received vetting materials from the Trump
campaign
decision expected to be made before the Republican National Convention,
which kicks off in Milwaukee on July 15th.
In another Trump related development,
in a newly released campaign video,
the former president is doubling down on his claim that
if he's re elected,
Russian President Vladimir Putin will release imprisoned American journalist Evan
Gershkovitz.
Evan Gershkovitz, the reporter for the Wall Street Journal who
is being held by Russia,
will be released almost immediately after the election,
but definitely before I assume office.
He will be home. He'll be safe.
Vladimir Putin, president of Russia,
will do that for me.
And I don't believe he'll do it for anyone else.
And we will be paying nothing.
Biden likes to pay massive numbers.
We will be paying nothing.
The 32 year old Gershkovich has been jailed on espionage
charges in Russia since
2023. That accusation has been thoroughly denied by the US
government.
Joining us now, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor
of the Washington Post as well as an MSNBC political
analyst,
Eugene Robinson. Eugene, let's start there.
Just how dangerous and blatant is this message Donald Trump
sending to Vladimir Putin?
Well, it's obscene. It's absolutely obscene and and disgusting that
he would use this as some sort of
a campaign ploy.
And, you know, the obvious question is,
OK, if, if you could get Vladimir Putin to release
Evan,
do it. Do it now.
The idea that, oh, yeah,
well, if you just vote for me,
I'll, I will, I'll get him home.
It's just obscene. That's the that's the only word for
it.
And either, you know, it does raise the question of
what,
of what sort of communication he might or might not
be having with Vladimir Putin.
But he's probably making it all up,
sending a signal to Putin not to release Evan
until after the election.
Yeah, I, I totally agree.
And just reprehensible. See, there's another word that pops to
mind.
That's a good word. That's a good word.
Eugene. Let's talk about sort of the the Washington story
of the moment.
Wall Street Journal had a report yesterday
suggesting that behind closed doors in some important meetings,
President Joe Biden showing signs of age some and signs,
signs of slippage, as they put it.
The White House fiercely pushed back,
saying that they're pointing to the Republicans quoted saying there
are lots of Democrats out there who saved President Biden.
Sure, he's 81, but he's just fine to do the
job.
Give us your analysis of of this Tempest here as
it revives a storyline.
The White House hoped it was behind them.
Well, exactly it. It brings it back to the fore.
And look, you know, I,
I try, I'm not a media critic.
I try not to do that.
I don't like a lot of navel gazing.
But in this case, I will point out that that
while the story says the reporters did speak with Democrats
who somehow shared this idea of,
of, of Biden slipping in,
in fact, it does not quote any Democrats by name
as saying that.
And it fails to quote a number of Democrats who
were spoken to by the reporters
who said the opposite. So
I, I, I, I'm not going to,
you know, Wall Street Journal is a great newspaper and
it has high standards.
But I think, you know,
a story quoting a whole bunch of Republicans saying Joe
Biden has has lost more than a step
is, is not,
it's, it's not worthy of generating a Tempest over.
It's not news. That's a that's a line,
a campaign line. That's a line of attack that the
Republican Party has used all along.
And so
if there's a revelation there to be made,
I don't think they have made it.
Yeah. I mean, polls suggest,
look, that some voters do care about President Biden's,
but also Donald Trump, only a couple years younger.
He's got a birthday next week.
And we have played time and time again
here in the mornings the signs of,
yeah, complete, complete, complete incoherence at times by Trump.
And so we could certainly do that sort of story
just with publicly available clips of Trump.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Right. And,
Gene, let's close with your thoughts here on the D-Day
anniversary.
The sacrifices of 80 years ago,
but also
how current and and important it is now in a,
a Europe that is once again shadowed by war.
And President Biden gonna stress the need for alliances.
Yeah, this seems like a,
a really, really important anniversary #1 because of what's going
on
in Europe. The the land war,
the biggest land war since World War
2, Putin's attempt to to,
to, to conquer Ukraine, to swallow Ukraine and the threat
that that Europeans feel
in in other countries of,
you know, from Russia.
It's, it's, it's, that's, that's one moment.
And and the other thing is what's what's happening in
the United States,
this pivotal election we have coming up,
the divisions in our country.
And I, you know, what I've been thinking about the
last couple of days and I guess may write about
today is
that, you know, the, the country had divisions before the
country was divided before World War Two in a whole
lot of ways and,
and in some of those ways,
much worse than it's divided now.
And, and we did manage to come together for this
incredible
achievement of of winning the biggest war that there ever
was.
And so maybe we should just keep everything in perspective.
Let's hope you are right.
And we're looking at live footage there from Normandy.
And we will hear from the president
a little later this morning.
The Washington Post Eugene Robinson,
Thank you, my friend. And thanks to all of you
for getting up way too early with us on this
Thursday morning.
Morning Joe starts right now.