Good morning everyone! Happy Tuesday to you!

Joining Morning Joe today are Nicolle Wallace, Nicholas Confessore, Bill Kristol, Howard Dean, Matthew VanDyke, Adam Linehan, Steve Schmidt, Eugene Robinson, Walter Isaacson, Mike Barnicle, Dawn Porter, Fmr. Gov. John Sununu, Sen. Mark Warner, Evan Thomas, Brian Sullivan, Ron Shaich and more...

Jeb Bush Announces Run For White House. The field vying to becoming president is getting more crowded. Jeb Bush, son of one President and brother of a second one, entered the Republican contest with a speech in Miami today/Monday. Meanwhile in Iowa, Hillary Clinton is dogged by questions about an issue splitting fellow Democrats. NY1's Josh Robin filed this report.


"I've decided I'm a candidate for President of the United States of America," Jeb Bush announced Monday.


Bush was Florida's governor for eight years. 


He's also known for something he's been for longer: son of the 41st President, brother to the 43rd.


"Take that from a guy who met his first president on the day he was born, and his second on the day he was brought home from the hospital," Bush said.


Bush family ties are aiding the second son raise an expected tens of millions of dollars.


Being a Bush can also be an albatross in a nation that says it doesn't like dynasties. 


Jeb Bush also tripped recently when asked if he would have invaded Iraq like his brother. 


As competitors join the race, Bush stresses his big-state governorship. 


Poking at his four rivals who are senators, Bush says his experience matters more.


"There's no passing off responsibility when you're a governor. No blending into the legislative crowd. Or filing an amendment, and calling that success," he said.


In terms of issues, Bush promises four percent economic growth and a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants. But immigration wasn't in his prepared speech, until hecklers demanded more. 


"Just so that our friends know the next President of the United States will pass meaningful immigration reform, so that that will be solved," he said.


Meanwhile, the former New York senator stumped in New Hampshire, proposing universal pre-school across the nation.


It would provide new funding for low and moderate income families.


Pressed on a trade deal with eleven Asian nations, Clinton said she hoped President Obama's plan could be made better.


"I said from the very beginning that I would judge the TPP on whether it protected American workers, whether it raised wages, and whether it was good for our national security," Clinton said.


Also in New Hampshire Monday, former Governor George Pataki resumed campaigning.


The Republican took time off after his 30-year-old son in law suffered a stroke last week.


Immigration Protesters Disrupt Jeb’s Campaign Announcement.

Just as Jeb Bush was introducing his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, to the large crowd gathered in Miami for his official 2016 Republican presidential campaign announcement, a row of protesters rose from their seats to deliver a message spelled out across their brightly-colored shirts: “Legal Status Is Not Enough.”

Bush, who has been more compassionate to undocumented immigrants than any of his fellow Republican candidates, stood silently for a few moments watching the demonstrators before going off script to address them. “By the way, just so that our friends know, the next president of the United States will pass meaningful immigration reform, so that that will be solved — not by executive order!”

The candidate was referring to President Barack Obama’s executive action last year that could help protect up to 5 million immigrations from deportation, a move the protesters likely supported.

As the “We want Jeb!” chants started to die down, Bush attempted to get his big speech back on track. “I think I was talking about my mom,” he said. “I kind of lost my train of thought here.”
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Donald Trump may or may not be running for President of the United States. Is The Apprentice Star actually in the race or just looking for attention?

Sale of Turnberry sees property tycoon Donald Trump set to expand his golf portfolio with a piece of Open Championship

Donald Trump. Bouffant billionaire. Property mogul. Reality television star. Presidential candidate? The businessman is summoning the world's media to his Trump Tower headquarters in New York on Tuesday for what he's billing as a "major" announcement. Mr Trump has spent months encouraging people to think he's going to run as a Republican candidate for president. But even at this late stage it's not clear if he plans go through with it. He's publicly flirted with running for office for years but always pulled out at the last minute. This time he looks more serious than usual. Hours after the New York announcement he's due to be in Iowa, the rural Midwestern state where presidential campaigns begin. Whatever happens here are a few things to remember about the man they call The Donald.

Time magazine even deployed its journalistic resources to show how Mr Trump creates his distinctive do.
Republicans were once excited about him. Not so much any more. Donald Trump last suggested he was going to run for president in 2011 to try to deny Barack Obama a second term. Republicans were excited and polls briefly put him ahead of the pack and leading serious contenders like Mitt Romney.
This time it's different. There are eleven Republicans already running and more due to join, leaving less room for the Donald. Polls tend to put him in around ninth place (which, admittedly, is ahead of a lot of so-called serious candidates like Lindsey Graham). He's a Scottish fighter
Mr Trump is nothing if not pugnacious. During his decades in real estate development he's taken on governments and rivals and made millions in the process.
His latest high-profile battle has been with Alex Salmond, whom he accuses of ruining his Scottish golf courses off the Aberdeenshire Coast with a series of wind turbines. “Alex should be ashamed of himself because he is ruining one of the great landscapes in the world," he said angrily.
It may be no coincidence that Mr Trump feels so strongly about Scotland: his mother grew up on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. His history on race relations is mixed
Mr Trump would be entering the presidential campaign at a time when the US is again debating race and the role of police in society.
His own history on race relations is checquered. In 1989, after a white woman was beaten and raped in New York's Central Park, Mr Trump took out full page ads in several newspapers calling for the death penalty.
Some said the ads were race baiting and in the end the five black and Hispanic men convicted of the attack were all exonerated.
More recently, Mr Trump was at the heart of the so-called "Birther movement" which questioned whether Barack Obama was actually born in the US or was secretly born in Kenya, making him ineligible to be president.
Mr Trump said repeatedly he "wasn't convinced" the President was actually born in Hawaii and drew considerable attention as "Birther-in-chief".
In an eventual moment of frustration, Mr Obama showed up in the White House press briefing room to show his birth certificate, taking a shot at unnamed "carnival barkers" as he did so. Is he actually a billionaire? Mr Trump certainly enjoys presenting himself to the world as a financial success. But is he actually a billionaire? That's harder to say.
He unsuccessfully sued a New York Times writer who suggested his net worth was only around $200 million and a 2005 estimate by Deutsche Bank put him at $788 million.
Forbes Magazine's latest estimate is that his net worth is around $4 billion and in 2011 his allies leaked word to Politico that he was in fact worth more than $7 billion.
One of the beautiful things about presidential campaigns? Candidates must fill in financial disclosure forms that give a fairly detailed picture of their assets. What about the Apprentice and the Miss Universe competition?
Mr Trump's money comes from his real estate empire. But his notoriety comes from the US version of The Apprentice, where he made famous the "you're fired" line.
NBC apparently has so little faith that Mr Trump will go through with his presidential campaign that as of March they were still planning to move forward with a 15th season of the Celebrity Apprentice.
He's also the proud owner of the Miss Universe beauty pageant. Here he is in 2010 taking credit for reviving the pageant industry and talking about how "women need to be really smart" to answer the questions asked of them.
Can you run for president while owning a business where women parade in bikinis before a crowd? If anyone can, it's Donald Trump.
Clinton says her wealth is 'secondary' concern for voters. Hillary Rodham Clinton countered criticism that her personal wealth undermines a populist campaign message focused on the economic problems of everyday Americans, saying on Monday that her family fortune is "secondary" to most voters. "I don't think Americans are against success," she told reporters in Concord, New Hampshire. "Those of us who do have opportunities ought to be doing more to help other people do the same."

Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have made hundreds of millions of dollars since leaving the White House from paid speeches— a fortune that even she has struggled to explain.

Last year, she stumbled into a storm of political criticism after saying her family was "dead broke" at the end of her husband's second term. Though in deep debt due to legal fees from various controversies, Bill Clinton quickly moved the couple into the top 1 percent with book sales and speaking fees.

Last month, the couple reported that they earned more than $30 million in speaking fees and book royalties since January 2014.

In New Hampshire on Monday, Clinton seemed more comfortable acknowledging her wealth, describing her family as "blessed." But she also highlighted her middle class roots, pointing out that both she and her husband had federal college loans to pay off. "What (voters) are interested in is who's going to fight for them," she said. "I want everybody to have the same opportunities that I had and my husband had."

While the opening days of her campaign have stressed Clinton's family and career history, her personal fortune has gone largely unmentioned.

Her remarks on Monday came in the midst of a campaign launch focused on her personal biography, particularly her mother's impoverished upbringing, as a way of reintroducing one of the country's best known political figures as a fighter for struggling families left behind by the economic recovery.

On Monday, she focused the first major policy proposal of her campaign on universal pre-K education — an issue championed both by liberal voices in her party, as well as by more conservative governors in Republican-led states, including Texas.

Speaking to parents and children at a YMCA, she promised that as president she would make "high quality preschool" available for all 4-year-old children in the next decade, double federal money for early Head Start programs, and implement a tax cut to help parents with the costs of raising children under age 3. That proposal is one item on a wish-list of progressive policies Clinton has backed over the past three days, as part of her vision of a more "inclusive economy."

"Prosperity cannot be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers," she told hundreds of supporters Monday in a Concord barn.

Those Wall Street financiers include members of her immediate family.

Her son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky has leveraged family ties to raise money from investors for his hedge fund. Her daughter, Chelsea, also worked at a hedge fund founded by a major Clinton campaign donor.

Clinton was paid to speak to financial firms such as Deutsche Bank and Ameriprise Financial. One of her final paid speeches was delivered in March to eBay, which paid her $315,000, records show. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to a group at the YMCA during a camp. Republicans have spent months questioning how the Clinton family has leveraged political connections into personal cash— criticism that may be having some impact on early perceptions of her candidacy.

About 47 percent of Americans said Clinton cares about people like them in a CNN/ORC poll released earlier this month, down from 53 percent in the same poll last summer. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released the same day found a slight decline in the past year on a similar question, with 49 percent saying Clinton "understands the problems of people like you" and 46 percent saying she doesn't.

Republicans are flipping charges successfully leveled against their party in the last presidential race. In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the wealthy co-founder of private equity firm Bain Capital LLC, found his presidential bid undermined by Democratic attack ads painting him as a heartless plutocrat.

"Hillary Clinton has to expect the same kind of treatment," Romney said Monday, in an interview on MSNBC. "How could she get out there and sell a populist message when she makes in one hour a multiple of what the average American will make in a year?" Follow Lisa Lerer on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/llerer

Top Al Qaeda leader reported killed in Yemen. Top al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi was killed Friday in a suspected U.S. drone strike in Yemen's Hadramout region, according to two Yemeni national security officials.

Tweets from known AQAP operatives also spoke of al-Wuhayshi having been martyred, and of AQAP military commander Qasm al-Rimi (also known as Abu Hureira al-Sanaani) having been appointed as al-Wuhayshi's replacement.

U.S. authorities are looking to confirm al-Wuhayshi's death, according to one U.S. intelligence official.

Al-Wuhayshi was the No. 2 leader of al Qaeda globally and the head of AQAP. In a video that surfaced in April last year, the man who was known as al Qaeda's crown prince appeared brazenly out in the open, greeting followers.

In a speech to the group, al-Wuhayshi makes it clear that he's going after the United States, saying: "We must eliminate the cross. ... The bearer of the cross is America!"

The video showed what looked like the largest and most dangerous gathering of al Qaeda in years.

Originally from Yemen, al-Wuhayshi assumed command of AQAP in 2009. He'd escaped a Yemeni prison in 2006, and had previously worked as a personal secretary for Osama bin Laden.

"If it's true, it is a significant blow. Leadership matters," Sen. Angus King, an independent of Maine, told CNN on Monday.

King said the death would hurt al Qaeda, but stressed the group still poses a threat.

"This is a long, difficult struggle that we're engaged in, and it's going to require all kinds of tools," King said.

Reports of al-Wuhayshi's death come shortly after U.S. planes carried out a strike inside Libya, purportedly killing a key terror figure in North Africa.

The target was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran Islamist fighter, who is blind in one eye, affiliated with al Qaeda in North Africa, a U.S. official told CNN.

The Libyan government said Belmokhtar was killed in the weekend strike, something that U.S. officials have not confirmed. CNN's Hamdi Alkhshali, Barbara Starr, Jomana Karadsheh and journalist Hakim Almasmari contributed to this report.

Is Jeb Bush hotter when he speaks in Espanol? Nicole Walace thinks so. She puts him at the top of the 'Hot Bush' list which is not a high bar to reach but anyway, Hillary Clinton campaign denies access to DailyMail.com political editor as Monday's pool reporter in New Hampshire. The Clinton campaign denied access to the designated print pool reporter in New Hampshire this morning. David Martosko of DailyMail.com was told by Hillary for New Hampshire staffer Meredith Thatcher that he was not approved for Monday's pooled events.

When Martosko asked Thatcher to phone her boss, Harrell Kirstein, he was again told that he had not been approved by the campaign.Martosko pressed further and asked Thatcher if he was being prohibited from getting on either of the pool vans, to which she replied; 'I'm afraid that's right.' When he asked why, she responded; 'All I know is what Harrell has told me. I got an email saying the print pooler would be changed for today. Sorry.'Martosko then spoke with Clinton press aide Nick Merrill for 10 minutes and learned that the campaign would not be allowing the designated print reporter to cover Mrs. Clinton today.

Merrill offered varied and contradictory reasons for this decision. First he confirmed that the concern had to do with the Daily Mail’s status as foreign press, saying; 'We’ve been getting a lot of blowback from foreign outlets that want to be part of the pool and we need to rethink it all, maybe for a day, and just cool things off until we can have a discussion.'
Martosko then informed Merrill that the Guardian is part of the pool, and that the pool does not discriminate on the basis of media ownership.

Merrill said that the campaign’s position is that the Daily Mail does not qualify because it has not yet been added to the White House’s regular print pool – something Martosko informed him was a timing issue, not a White House choice, since Francesca Chambers, the Mail's White House correspondent, has been vetted and has a hard pass. 'We’re just trying to follow the same process and system the White House has,' said Merrill. Merrill then insisted that the decision had 'nothing to do' with the campaign considering the Daily Mail foreign press.  'We don’t consider you foreign press,' he said.  Merill then added; 'This isn’t about you. It’s about a larger...' and did not continue his sentence.Merrill later insisted that his reasons were not based on the foreign-press question, but that the campaign simply wanted a day to 'have a conversation' about how to proceed. 'We’re going to make the decision,' he said, referring to choosing whether to give access to the designated print pooler.

Martosko pointed out to Merrill that he seemed to be contradicting himself, noting the murky situation of foreign ownership interests in several outlets in the pool, at which point Merrill reiterated that the campaign could choose to decline pool coverage, and claimed that 'it’s my understanding that the pool wasn’t sending a reporter today.' 
Martosko informed Merrill at that point that 'the pool sent me and I’m here,' and that the pool would show up at all the events today whether or not the campaign chose to grant access, and would request access each time. The pool had been formed at the request of the Clinton campaign, with one reporter, photographer and videographer traveling with the presidential hopeful each day. The pool works by correspondents choosing a rotation of reporters, and the campaign is not supposed to interfere with who is chosen or have a say as to who will travel for the day.

After some confusion about the location of the morning's early childhood education summit in Rochester, Martosko arrived to the event around 10:20am. Secret Service at the main entrance then refused to let him in and advised he go in through another entrance. Visiting that doorway, another agent asked for Martosko's name and outlet. When he responded, a voice from behind the door, the head of Mrs. Clinton's Secret Service detail, was heard saying 'Oh. No.' The first agent then sent Martosko back to the front door, advising that the head of the detail insisted. At the front door again, he was asked to wait while the first agent on duty checked to see if he would be admitted.

The answer: 'No. You can't come in.'

Martosko was advised by that Secret Service agent that he had contacted someone 'with the campaign' named 'Pollard,' who personally said he could not enter the event.
When he asked if he could at least use the restroom, the Secret Service agent advised that the area had been swept already, and suggested he 'hit the woods.' 'We want a happy press corps as much as the press corps does. And we work very hard to achieve that in tandem with them,' Merrill said in a statement. 'It's a long campaign, and we are going to do our best to find equilibrium and best accommodate interest from as many news outlets as possible, given the space limitations of our events.'

Woman accused of aiding NY prison escapees briefly appears in court. Joyce Mitchell accused of giving killers tools.
Joyce Mitchell in court
A prison tailor shop instructor accused of helping two convicted killers escape from an upstate New York prison made a brief court appearance on Monday morning.

Lawyers for Joyce Mitchell waived a preliminary felony hearing, meaning her case will be moved from a Plattsburgh City Court to Clinton County Court.

She has been accused of providing Richard Matt and David Sweat with tools they used in their escape from the Clinton County Correctional Facility more than a week ago.

Prosecutors allege she agreed to be the getaway driver but later backed out.

Matt and Sweat remain at large.

Bob Corker raises concerns about Obama policy on Iran.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker is raising concerns the Obama administration might accept further restrictions on inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities and less than full disclosure of possible military dimensions of Tehran’s nuclear program as negotiators near a final deal with Iran.

Citing reports that suggested the administration might allow further concessions, the Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Monday it is “breathtaking” to see how far the U.S. and the other five world powers involved in the nuclear talks with Iran have strayed from their original goals and statements.

Negotiators have moved from a 20-year agreement to what is in essence a 10-year agreement that allows Iran to simultaneously continue development of an advanced ballistic missile program and research and development of advanced centrifuges, Corker wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama.

That will allow Iran’s economy to be restored with billions of dollars, which he said administration officials have conceded could be used on some level to support terrorism in the region.

“I understand the dynamics that can develop when a group believes they are close to a deal and how your aides may view this as a major legacy accomplishment,” the senator wrote. “However, as you know, the stakes here are incredibly high and the security implications of these negotiations are difficult to overstate.”

Corker urged the administration to push for an “anytime, anywhere” standard on nuclear inspections and complained of a potentially “cumbersome” process in which Iran would not have to admit publicly to possible military dimensions of its nuclear program.

Corker urged the Obama administration to rethink its entire approach “if Iran tries to cross these few remaining red lines.”

“Walking away from a bad deal at this point would take courage,” he said, “but it would be the best thing for the United States, the region and the world.”

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