Morning Joe - 'As big as it gets': Joe on why it was a massive, massive night for Democrats

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

'As big as it gets': Joe on why it was a massive, massive night for Democrats Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And just a few minutes ago, I said to our daughters, your mom's going to be the governor of Virginia. And I can guarantee those words have never been spoken in Virginia ever before. I've spoken with thousands of you over this last year. I know your struggles, I know your hopes, I know your dreams. So serving you is worth any tough fight I have to take on, and I am incredibly honored to be your next governor. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands.

My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty. It was a big night for Democrats. It was a huge night for Democrats. The party's sweeping key races across the country. Some massive, massive night for Democrats. I've been through a lot of these elections off, off here, and this is as big as it gets. I mean, we got Claire McCaskill here. Claire, we've been through this before where a party wins.

big in 2008. You saw this. Party loses big in 2009. We saw it with Donald Trump. Because I'm a nice guy. I've been trying to say, trim yourselves. You're being too extreme. Don't do that with people on the streets. Don't. They couldn't help themselves. And man, they learned what we try to tell people in White House is over and over and over again. You don't buy the place. you rent it. And if you go too fast, voters will knock you on your ass immediately. And that's what happened yesterday. Yeah, I'd say he's on his ass. You know, the thing that was startling to me is if you look at the races outside of New Jersey, New York, and Virginia, because he can make the argument, the Republicans in Congress can make the argument they're blue states. But if you look at

what happened in May, where they rejected, they not only put in red, flag laws on the gun issue, they also rejected voter suppression. And in Georgia, you had Democrats winning a statewide office in Georgia at the state level, which hasn't happened in years. By the way, utility commissioners, two out of five go Democratic. It's a first time a Democrat has even seen the inside of that building in over two decades. Yeah, this is a strong message. You look what happened in Pennsylvania with the Supreme Court. Democrats, massive win there. You look what happened in Kansas. Their idea of gerrymandering killed yesterday on this election.

So Mika, we'll let you go through all the election results because they are huge. This is a thing, though, I've been preaching for a year when people are going, oh, it's the end of democracy. There's always another election. There's another election for people who become too arrogant and think that they own the office they were elected to. and here we are, there's something unbelievably beautiful about this, something we'll talk about later, unbelievably American about this, that it was one year ago that Donald Trump on this day beat Kamala Harris.

And now begins page two. You'll remember, Paul Harvey. Here we go to page two with the rest of the story. All right. In the race for governor of Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger has defeated Republican winsome Earl Sears, flipping the office from red to blue. Spanberger will be the first woman to ever serve as Virginia's governor. And by the way, in the year of the mail, oh, the men have taken over us, all the beta males and the Republican leadership that claimed their he men, oh, men, men, men, men. We had last night and keep the music rolling, I promise, I'll get out of the way so we can keep reading this. You had the first woman ever elected in Virginia as governor. You had the first Democratic woman ever elected in New Jersey.

You had the first Muslim elected statewide in Virginia. You had the first Muslim woman elected statewide as lieutenant governor in the state of Virginia. And you had the first Muslim mayor. elected to run New York City. Democrat J. Jones won the race for Virginia Attorney General, overcoming a text message scandal that threatened his chances. In New Jersey, as Joe mentioned, Democratic Congresswoman Mikey Cheryl, has won the governor's race, defeating Republican and Trump-back candidate Jack Chittarelli.

Willie, Willie, nobody expected it. I mean, I heard Democrats complaining about her campaign for the past two months. We saw polls and said it was too close to call, and she just absolutely thumped her Republican candidate. Again, perspective matters. Chidorelli only lost by three points in 2001. Donald Trump only lost that state last year by about five points. Mikey, Cheryl, like a landslide.

The concerns weren't just in the polls. They were internal. They were worried about how close this race had gotten. it was a blowout. She won by 13 points going away in that race. And, yeah, I mean, there were tons of ads up against her, but she did really well. And we'll get into some of the details of this because I'm from New Jersey.

I'm kind of nerding out on this. When you look in Hudson and Passaic counties, why are those important, heavily Latino communities? Right. Latino men who drifted toward Donald Trump in the last election, flipped by like 20 points in the other direction toward the Democrat in this race. it turns out they don't like watching their neighbors being snatched off the street. Yeah, that's, um, that turned out to be kind of a negative.

Two more big through lines to talk about here. That was an understatement, kind of a negative. Yeah. The Trump administration over the past year has blown an historic opportunity to do what Republicans have wanted to do for a half a century, and that is consolidate Hispanic voters and Donald Trump and Stephen Miller together, together destroyed that. momentum over the past year. Hope it was worth it, fellas. And just the other night, he told Nora O'Donnell, he wants to double down. They're not doing enough. They're not tough enough.

Okay. In New York City, Zoran Mamdani has won the closely watched mayoral race, defeating independent candidate Andrew Cuomo by about nine points. Also last night, we saw the passage of California's redistricting referendum. This move could potentially, give the state five more Democratic congressional seats ahead of next year's midterms, and it really plays Republicans at their own game. It really does. And Jonathan Lemieux, Gavin Newsome, Gavin C. Newsom goes from trolling to owning. Yeah.

Yeah, this was another, this was in doubt when it was first proposed. There was some real thought this might not have passed. And yet this is the Democrats showing a fight. It wins handily. Redistricting California, creating more blue seats in response to what we're seeing from Republicans in Texas. They're moving in other states as well. The last night we hear not Kansas, that's going to be one state that doesn't add itself to the redistricting wars. But this is, so much of this, of course, is with an eye towards next year's midterms. And so many of President

Trump's extreme moves are desperate effort to keep Republicans in power, Senate, and House, doesn't want to be a lame duck, doesn't want to face investigations. But last night, Democrats went big in California. All right. And in the swing state of Pennsylvania, three Democratic justices on the state's Supreme Court have all won another 10-year term. It was a high-stakes selection that saw millions of dollars pour in from both Republicans and Democrats. The result means the top court in Pennsylvania will keep its Democratic majority in the years ahead. Also with us this morning, senior writer for the dispatch and a columnist for Bloomberg opinion, David Drucker. He's an MSNBC contributor.

and politics reporter for Semaphore, Dave Weigel. Good to have you all on board along with Claire. You know, so Dave, this reminds, I mean, I can go actually all the way back to 1993. I was running the next year. We were at an event the night that Republicans won massive in 93. And I thought, what does that matter? And then they, you know, got out the T-shirts. Go here.

This is step one. You're going to win. We're going to win in a landslide next year and years wide. And so I've been looking, always looking at these elections the year after. after I looked at it in 2009, which led to, you know, Barack Obama wins massively in 2008. Republicans went in 2009, 2010. The Tea Party comes. They overreached Barack Obama wins again in 2012.

As it always was, as it always was. Here, though, you look and you see this reminds me a lot of 2017, where Democrats made massive gains after Donald Trump won in 2016, an election that was supposed to change the landscape of America forever. It didn't, and neither did last year's election. Yeah, well, I think the political parties and particularly people in Washington have this bad habit, at least in the 21st century, of overreating what the voters are telling them. Politicians get elected and they think, oh, they want me to do everything I ever said I was going to do.

And if you look at what, and it's, I hate the word mandate, but if you want to look at why voters and demographics, including Hispanics, black men, young voters shifted right in 2024 and voted for Donald Trump. It's because costs were too high. Inflation they thought was out of control. Their economic situation was very, very anxious and uncomfortable. And they thought the economy under that guy was pretty good in his first term. And even though I'm unsure and don't necessarily like, you know, all the things he says and does, I want that.

And the people in charge have not done a good job. and the Democratic candidate, the former vice president, Kamala Harris, is saying she wouldn't separate herself from Joe Biden. So I don't want that. Right. And so Trump and his administration come in and what voters are saying with yesterday, among other things, is you're not focused on the job we hired you to do. We want you focused relentlessly on bringing down costs. People don't think costs have come down. They haven't come down. On top of which, Trump has embraced the most, let's say, ambitious elements of his agenda. And a lot of voters didn't think he would actually do that based on how he talked a lot in the first term but didn't do.

Right. And this should be a signal to Republicans on Capitol Hill that this isn't necessarily different than the first time around, which is how it has looked to them for several months. Yeah. Oh, it's, yeah, it's not different. I mean, you look at what's happened. It's not different, no, Willie. And the thing is, the lack of focus. As I said, a couple weeks ago,

if I have Middle East peace plan on the table, I'm talking about that for the next two weeks. I mean, I can't even count the number of things that we've been through over the past two weeks of voters have had to digest. You know, a grand ballroom, knocking down the east wing of the White House on a whim, blowing up boats in Venezuela that your own team

saying, well, we're not really, Are there really criminals there? Because no fentanyl's coming from Venezuela to the United States. He's got that wrong. I mean, you go down the list. You know, a $20 to $40 billion bell out of Argentina. Are, you know, forcing Americans to take more Argentinian beef instead of American beef? I mean, you know, all of this. There's distraction after distraction after distraction. You know, putting tariffs on Canada because you don't like it. an advertisement in the World Series baseball game,

again, these are all things where people are saying, wait, affordability, affordability, affordability. And whether you're looking at the moderates that won in Virginia and New Jersey or the Democratic Socialists that won in New York City, they're all talking about affordability. All three of them are talking about affordability. You can call them what you want to call them. They were talking about affordability,

and they were talking about pushing back on the excesses of, Donald Trump. Yeah, as you guys both say, people are looking at their lives. It's too expensive. Grocers are too expensive. They just came out and announced that the median age for home buying is now 40 years old. In other words, you can't afford a house until you're 40 years old. 40 years ago was 29. People just can't afford daily life. They can't aspire to the things that they've been told they want. And so when they hear about all this other stuff, they go, what are you doing? We elected you to make things less expensive. Tariffs have made them more expensive. My life is not affordable.

And the candidates that won focused on affordability and implicit in talking about that was a criticism of Trump, which is why is he raising tariffs on countries that are going to make your life more expensive. So it wasn't that direct Trump bad, Orange Man Bad, that was kind of criticized, don't be so obsessed with Donald Trump, but it was implied in their affordability critique. We did get some exit polling from NBC News, majority of men under the age of 30 in the states of New Jersey, Virginia, and the city of New York voted for the Democratic candidate in their respective race

of young men. Huge. Huge. In New Jersey, exit polling shows 68% of Latino voters cast a ballot for Democratic candidate Mikey Sherrill pushing up against 70% there. Massive shift back. In Virginia, exa polling shows 67% of Latino voters voted for Democrat Abigail Spanberger versus 32% who went for Republican, winsome Earl Sears. So Dave,

Weigel, just looking at some of that exit polling and going back again to New Jersey, I was talking about Hudson and Passaic counties, heavily Latino counties there, a 22-point swing in Hudson County back from the Trump election of last year to Mikey Sherrill. She won by 50 points there. And in Passaic County, a 15-point swing back from Trump toward Mikey Sherrill. So these are counties that not just Democrats in New Jersey were looking, at, but Democrats across the country to see which way are things trending right now. Yeah, you nailed that. That's what a lot of Democrats are talking about for a month. What is going to happen in North Jersey? How sticky are those Hispanic voters who moved to

Trump? The answer is, no, they rented Trump for one election. They didn't come back for anyone else. Democrats gained, both in Virginia and New Jersey, gained in state legislative race as bigger than they thought they would. So down the ballot, Latinos who took a chance on Trump were not coming back. And you were talking about the Democratic. Democratic campaigning. They get criticized for bringing up Trump. They were both very consistent in a way that's not necessarily exciting for reporters to cover it. I would have stick on that point because Democrats were campaigning kind of like an hour hand. You talked to them in June, they were talking about the cost of housing, cost of living energy prices. You talked to them in

October, they were talking about the same thing, not about whatever Trump was saying that day or the latest scandal of the week or the latest tweet, the latest outrage. They ran very consistent campaigns and got back voters who voted for them when they were running consistent campaigns in 2016 and in 2020, or I should say 2012 in 2020. So I saw a lot of criticism of the way Spamberger and Cher were running because they were not exciting and voters were a little bit fed up with exciting in important ways. Yeah, and there's also no question. Some of this was a response to Trump overreaction. On the New Jersey race, I heard from two different operatives last night, one Republican, one Democrat, who more or less said the same thing, one word, gateway. The tunnel

that Trump killed, the project that would have helped. He was bragging about it. Wragging about it. Two weeks before the election, bragging about having a Darth Vader. And he basically, I killed that project. A tunnel that would have really helped New Jersey residents commuting into New York City.

He killed it out of spite. Would have created jobs. Would have created jobs. Out of spite because he's angry at Charles Schumer and Hakeem-Jeffries because of the shutdown. And based Democrats who were very nervous about this race and who were, frankly, surprised by the Marjorie. of victory last night said the gateway tunnel was sort of the turning point. And then, of course,

on the other side of that tunnel clear, we have New York City. And we have Zoran Mamdani with his stunning victory here, defeating Andrew Cuomo handily by nine or so points. And look, it's very clear that President Trump is going to use Mom Donnie as an excuse. I've been told and reported and wrote about it last night. They've kind of held off going after New York City, tunnel aside, because they wanted Mamdani to win. They're going to go after him now. We'll see if that's popular, though. It has not been when he's gone after other cities. But for Democrats, it also shows sort of a big tent night, right? You have a Democratic socialist here in New York City winning and far more moderate candidates in Virginia and New Jersey.

Yeah, everyone who says, oh, is Mondami the new face of the party? We have lots of faces in the party. We have moderate helicopter pilots that are women in Virginia. We've got, you know, folks across the spectrum. And that's really the story of last night. You can't win in some states with the stuff that Mondami is for. You can't. In some states, it won't work. But that doesn't mean he's not charismatic, a fresh face, an outsider, and figured out how to campaign in a way that's very effective. Democrats can learn a lot from the way he campaigned.

And the one thing I think is interesting about last night is I think you're going to watch West Moore and J.B. Prisker get on board quickly on this redistricting thing because this thing for Newsom turned out to be a proxy for presidential campaigning. He is now moved to the front of the pack, but because he took this risk and rolled the dice, now the pressure is on J.B. Pritzker to do something in Illinois, and West Moore, and they're all running for president. I don't know how Josh Shapiro is going to get on on the act, but all of them are jockeying right now to be, if you're going to talk about a face of the party, the presidential nominee in 2020. Gavin Newsom really out front at playing.

Trump at his own game on every level, whether it be it's social media trolling, which has been off the hook, spectacular. I mean, and then on top of it now with the Prop 50, I think we're seeing something happening here that other governors can take a look at. How do Republicans face these election results this morning? Well, what they should do, and we're going to have to see how much they internalize this. What they should do is understand that Donald Trump and his style of politics is very human, just as they learned in 2017, 2018, in 2020. The way they have approached the second term is they've seen higher numbers for Trump than in his first term. They've seen lower numbers for Democrats than in his first term. They saw a demographic shift

in their direction in 2024. And that gave them the confidence to not be as well. worried about midterm elections as they were eight years ago. And eight years ago, they were petrified. I think there's going to be a lot of reassessment. I mean, that was everything you just said was erased last night. Correct. And I think there is going to be a lot of reassessment. They're not going to say it out loud. No. Because contradicting Trump gets them into trouble and primary season is right around the corner. You can't win a general if you're not renominated. They need his endorsement in most of these primaries. But I think you're going to see a lot of reassessment. The way they should understand this is the fact that the issues that could sink them next year

are what propelled so many voters to show up yesterday. It's not the Democratic victories. It's the breadth of the victories. It's the demographic shift backed in a leftward direction that has to have them very concerned with slim majorities. And this is the sort of thing where even though their Senate majority is in much better shape, just given red states, blue states, you let things get out of control and the unusual begins to happen. Yeah, it really does. It really could. I will say I was struck last night.

We had to talk about it more in a bit, just stylistically. I had always said Republicans need to be conservative ideologically and moderate temperamentally. Of course, in the age of Trump, they've gone in the exact opposite direction of record-setting debt, record-setting budgets. And And then just meanness, I meanness for the purpose of being mean. If you're Christy Gnome, you stand in front of prisoners in El Salvador in the most notorious prison and you want the shot to show how mean you are, how tough you are. Meanness and, you know, on TV, on podcast. And it's just like owning the lives, being angry, mocking people, ridiculing people.

Last night, Abigail Spanberger stood up and she did something that Donald Trump would never do. I mean, she went, bent over backwards, talking about the service of her opponent who she had just beaten and told people to stop and reflect on that and to thank her for her service. And then she went on and she gave a speech and what did she talk about? The importance of grace. The importance of kindness. the importance of seeing every Virginian in the Commonwealth as a common partner in making Virginia a better place. And she kept talking about them doing it while being nice. It's a good thing we have four hours.

We'll have much more ahead on last night's election results. And New Jersey's governor-elect, Mikey Sherrill, joins us on the heels of her big win. Also ahead, the latest from Capitol Hill as we enter day. 36 of the government shutdown. And President Trump creates confusion over snap benefits and a reminder to sign up for our relaunched newsletter, The Tea, spilled by Morning Joe. Get our hot takes on the day's news, politics, sports, music, entertainment, and much more, plus a direct line to the Morning Joe family, straight to your inbox. Scan the QR code on your screen or go to MSNBC.com slash the tea. Spilled by more.

Good morning, Joe. We'll be right back. Wow. They always say we're loud. But man, with this vote, you guys just scream from the rooftop. New York, tonight you have delivered. A mandate for change. A mandate for a new kind of politics. a mandate for a city we can afford and a mandate for a government

that delivers exactly that thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refused to accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the past you showed that when politics speaks to you without condescension we can usher in a new era of leadership

We will fight for you because we are you. Instead of agonizing over the state of our nation, we organized in an unprecedented way, in a 90-day sprint. People from all over the United States of America contribute their voices and their support for this initiative. We stood tall and we stood firm in response to Donald Trump's recklessness. And tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with an unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result. So, Claire, we now have the second verse to Barack Obama's, don't boo, go vote.

Don't agonize. Go organize. And that is the truth. And set up, you see something on TV that drives you. crazy. Don't go democracy's dead. Start calling your friends organize. Don't agonize. Organize. They did that in California. They did it in Virginia. They did it in New Jersey. They did it in Georgia. They did it everywhere in Pennsylvania. And Democrats just had a mammoth, mammoth night. Republicans can try to spend this any way they want to spend it. But, you know, tough luck. They lost.

And they lost big. Yeah, I really think that the idea that we've talked about at this table and other tables here at this network about the voters being numb to all of Trump's stuff, that everybody's just numb and they're catatonic and they're discouraged and they're depressed. And the Democratic brand is so damaged it can never come back. Well, last night was like a cold bucket of water on all of that. They weren't numb. They're paying attention.

They're seeing the visuals. The visuals of this presidency are incredible when you think about it, whether it's tearing down the East Wing or men in masks, military uniform and masks, you know, throwing women to the ground and in schools and for people coming to court to try to live by the rules. And a president saying we need to do more of that. Yeah. We're not doing enough. People are paying attention. And you're right. I mean, what last night should stand. for is people are paying attention. People know how bad it is. And organizing makes sense.

And I had some communication last night with several U.S. Senate candidates that are running. And what seemed to be an insurmountable map that the Democrats could not win for the Senate, there's some real optimism. There's a spring in the step. I mean, I know we always talk Texas, but I'm telling you, the two candidates for the Senate that are Republicans, in Texas. Their numbers are terrible. And people in Texas know what they tried to do in Texas, that they try to rig the map. And so I really do think that the Senate raises next year are going to be, it's going to end up being much, much closer than people ever thought it could be. Well, you look at Texas and you look at the fact that it went from a 13-point lead for Republicans

to a 9 to 5, and then it jumped back up to double digits. So last year with Donald Trump, so much of that had to do with Hispanics. Because Hispanic, were breaking 40, 45% to Republicans, no more. You know, you beat up Hispanics enough in the street, right? You beat up their mothers. You scare the hell out of their grandfathers. You petrify their children, leave them without their parents, with men and masks come sweeping into your neighborhood,

and you start picking up just for good measure. Americans, who may be Hispanic, who may have brown skin, you have eyes saying, oh, well, we can stop. people if they have brown skin. And you have Brett Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court going, yeah, that's cool. Suddenly, his banks, they're not feeling real good about the grand old party anymore. So why should anybody be shocked? Why should Republicans really that stupid to think that you can have masked men going around the country, beating up brown people and throwing them in unmarked cars, all of it caught in video

and then saying we have the right to stop you in America if you are brown and you have to show us your papers because this were you born and that's what happened that's what's happening now and Brett Kavanaugh and the United States Supreme Court say that's cool

ice can stop people if they are brown and demand that they show them their papers it's like it's straight out of a fascist film. And Kavanaugh said, well, if an American citizen was inadvertently detained, it would be a minor matter, just a brief. And how minor have those matters? Some people have been locked up for hours, if not longer, and traumatized for what has happened. We just showed an exit poll there

out of California. Sixty-three percent of people surveyed said that the immigration measures have gone too far, you know. Wait, but wait, Donald Trump said they haven't gone for enough. They have not. And to Claire's point, I think the defining image of the Trump administration so far are those mass agents, you know, grabbing people off, grabbing people off the streets. And obviously we saw last night in the Latino population, we're seeing poll even before last night that starting to erode his support. And this is another moment where we have found that in the error of Donald Trump, his voters simply don't turn out in the same way when his name is not on the ballot. When it won't be next year. And we'll get that something that Donald Trump wrote last night

and you can go, oh, he's making excuses. It is kind of true. When Donald Trump's on the ballot in 16 Republicans win. He's not on in 17. They lose. He's not on an 18. They lose. He's not on in 19. He lose. He's not on in 20. They lose. He's not on in 21. They lose. He's not on in 23. They lose. He's on in 24. They win. 25. They lose. There is a pattern emerging here as Donald Trump moves toward the final couple of years of his term. And guess what? He won't be on the ballot next year either in the midterm elections or the next year as the next big election in 2020. We've been talking about overreach all morning, immigration overreach. The promise was we're going to send home murderers and rapists who are in this country illegally. It was hard to find anybody who would disagree with that idea to make the border safe, protected, and sealed in many ways that had gotten out of control. Many people supported that.

Many people voted for Donald Trump because of that. As Joe Rogan has said again and again and many others who are otherwise supportive of Donald Trump, this is not what we voted for. We wanted the criminals out of the country. We didn't want you lurking around schools with masks and military fatigue, snatching people off the streets. We definitely didn't want people going to hunger. And now Tom Homan is coming out just saying, flat out. No, we're not just going after violent criminals. We're going to go after everybody.

Right. Yeah, we're going to go after everybody. Right, right. It was a bait and switch when it was advertised during the campaign. Let's go to MSNBC Senior Capitol Hill Reporter, host of way too early. Ali Vitale. Allie, good morning. a busy morning already as we count these election results, and you look at it from the Washington

angle, from the congressional angle, the shutdown obviously played a big part when we think especially about Virginia and those northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, which are kind of de facto parts of Washington. What did you see last night? What are you hearing from sources on the hill about how this happened and what it means? Well, look, they had always felt good about Virginia, and I think it's striking the way that you saw Hakeem Jeffrey's already come out. I imagine he echoes this later when he comes on this program, the idea that House Democrats provide the path forward for what the Democratic Party looks like. He's, of course, looking at two of his own, Spanberger, a long-time member of the Democratic caucus. And then, of course, Mikey Cheryl, still in Congress, now, of course,

governor-elect of New Jersey. But look, I think that this is for Jeffrey's what the path ahead looks like. But I think it's also a roadmap for Democrats who see that focusing on a message of affordability, which still touches Donald Trump, but doesn't directly invoke him every single time. Yes, there was that dynamic. Cheryl tying Chittarelli to Trump, Spanberger, of course, doing the same for Winsome Sears. But I thought in the exit polls there was something so fascinating. The idea that voters, I think it was 47 percent or so of them, said they weren't voting directly as a referendum on Donald Trump. And yet you look at the top issues, the economy, employment, basic kitchen table issues. Those are issues that Donald Trump put his stamp directly on, especially for voters in Virginia, who whether they were talking about it through the lens of Doge or,

through the lens of this current government shutdown. There are so many federal workers in that state. If you're not one of them, you know them. They might be family. They might be friends. They might just be someone in your community. That was an issue that was so centrally baked in the cake. And so for Spanberger, she was able to say that this was a referendum,

even without saying that it was directly a referendum on Trump. And you saw her bipartisan message. Barnacle and I talked this morning about the way that she really brings such authenticity. But I also think in these election results, it allows us to sort of disrupt something. that's been bubbling on the Democratic side, and I think many of us have heard this, this idea of female electability and these candidates of, can they win? It dogs women every time. I wrote a book about it. It drives me nuts. But the proof here is that when women run, they can win. And this is really just as simple of that as that.

If you want women to win, you just got to vote for them. And so I think for Spanberger and Cheryl alike, you watch them now expanding the paradigm of what kind of leadership is possible in Spanberger's case, breaking the glass ceiling in Virginia. All of that is so important, not just in the immediate term, but also as we look ahead to 2028, and again, disrupting this idea that somehow women can't win and be viable, strong standard bears. And again, I mean, you look at CIA operative that served three tours in Iraq, in a Michigan senator.

You look at helo pilots, you know, women in New Jersey and in Virginia. I mean, when Mikey Cheryl began her speech talking about understanding when she took the oath, when she was 18 years old, you immediately said, okay, yeah, I get what was a formative experience of her life, when you have Abigail Spanberger turning and pointing to her father and said, thank you for all you've done for me, thank you for your service to America. I am so honored that I got to follow in your footsteps. You go, oh, okay. I know what she's about. It is. It's, you know, the quality of candidates matter. And Democrats have some great ones. I want to talk about the big tent in a second with you, Claire. But first, you know, David, in my day, ages ago, in the before times, if there was, if there were a Democratic president and a day like this happened, we always had somebody to look to. Maybe it was Newt who said, I have the 12 ideas on how we're going to get through the next 11 days in 10 easy steps or whatever. And you take some and I take some. There was GoPack. The Heritage Institution had really smart people over there that weren't crazy, that weren't like celebrating the platforming of Nazis.

And you could go over there and say, well, I'm thinking about doing a bill on this or that. Or if it were something else that had to do with international legislation, you go to the, American Enterprise Institute. There are, those institutions don't exist anymore, maybe AEI a little bit, but the rest have been wiped clean from the earth because of Donald Trump. I mean, they are, so my question for you is, with Republicans seeing the writing on the wall and understanding that Donald Trump's way forward will not work anymore, especially since Donald Trump's not going to be on the ballot, where do Republicans go this morning to start

planning their post-Trump future? Very good question. I should say that I think the American Enterprise Institute, I just have to say, is still robust and churning out of his left and right. I think the issue is that the dynamic that existed for so long in our lives, Joe, where the conservatives were the majority partner in the Republican coalition and the populace were the minority partner has been flipped on its head by Donald Trump. And so you have these institutions. the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institution. I mean, I could list them, but they do not have the same kind of influence as they once had. Well, in part because they're all scared

of Donald Trump. I actually saw this when I went out to Stanford a couple of years ago. At the Hoover Institution. And one of the greatest conservatives, Hoover Institution, they could get speakers, but those speakers couldn't push too hard against Donald Trump. Are all the funding would go? Well, I think the problem, though, too, is that Republican members of Congress, right? I mean, when you talk about the dynamic of Newt Gingrich saying, all right, here's our 10-point plan and here's what we're going to do, when you have a Republican president who has such a hold over the party because his relationship with Republican voters remains so strong and visceral. But Republican voters, by and large, really like Trump. The way, the same way Zoran Mondani spoke to Democrats looking for leadership.

that's how Republican voters still feel about Trump. And so it is hard for these institutions to have influence because Republican members of Congress are going to look to Trump and they're going to say to themselves, even this morning. Even this morning. They're going to say, wait, I'm going to lose my election next year and I'm going to sit back while they continue to have masked people, grabbing brown people off the street. It's going to impact. Do you remember, you remember, Claire will remember this, but in,

two thousand and approaching the 2006 elections when republicans in the senate and the house started to break that was when it clears good ones by the george god was a good year that's why i knew you'd remember very good year his name was achin but go ahead no no that was 12 was that 12 was talent oh it was even harder goodness right we remember the the super bowls we win not the ones we yeah exactly um and republicans started to break with george w bush on the iraq war Gordon Smith, Senator from Oregon, gives this big speech. Right. So you can see, we may see the beginning of some breaks, but Bush at that time did not have

the relationship with Republican voters the way Trump does. I will say, though, you are exactly right. You could not go against George W. Bush on Iraq in 2004. Correct. You could not. But he was also riding high in 2004 and he was winning. But you could. A great point.

In 2006, a lot of Republicans said, no, no, no, I'm not going down with this. Right. So what do we – here's what you will see, I think, is I'm sure at this breakfast today at the White House, Trump's going to tell Majority Leader Thune and the rest of them get rid of the filibuster. And I think whatever threat he makes about going into their states and making life hell for them, I think they're going to look at what happened last night and say, we didn't want to get rid of it anyway. We're not getting rid of it. You're starting to see some criticism of the Pentagon from Tom Cotton.

from Dan Sullivan, a bunch of Republican senators unhappy with parts of the administration. So you'll see that. But the kind of sort of separation and rebuke you're looking for, they're going to ride this out at least through primary season. Right. I think, by the way, it has to be said, I spent the last couple of days in New Jersey, and a grizzled old Democrat comes up to me last night, and he's Brunswick. I was with the Sherrill campaign, and he's like, you know, Donald Trump gave us an in-kind contribution. I thought we could win.

I didn't expect the breath of the victory that we had. And he said, Cheryl was underestimated. She really knew how to connect with people. To your point about candidates mattering, it is a really big deal when you speak to people's concerns. Yeah. And again, he's a wrecking ball. The gateway tunnel.

I can't stress enough is something I grew up in Jersey. They've been talking about for 40 years. And they finally got it. They're ready to drill and bore and get commuting. meters into the city safer and faster and create a ton of jobs. And he said, it's done. Because I'm mad at Chuck Schumer, we're not doing that anymore. And they went, what? He gleefully bragged about it and talked

about Darth Vader and said, I may do more of this. Just a huge misstep and another in-kind contribution to Mikey Sherrill. One other thing to sprinkle in here, Dave Waggle. CNN poll came out yesterday, but Donald Trump's approval rating at 37%, 63% disapproval. And importantly, for the results we saw last night. Sixty-eight percent of people in that CNN poll say the state of the country is bad. 72 percent say the state of the economy is bad. And of course, that was their number one issue last night, the economy. Yes, I think, and David Drucker was talking about this.

There was a sense of suspension of reality and belief for around Donald Trump ever since November 2024. It looks like the poll might say that he's unpopular. Poll might say that people are worried about the economy, but really do they want Democrats to come in and fix this? Really, do they trust them? That mindset is changing. Trump has, I think, changed politics in a number of ways this year. I'm still agog, not just a Jay Jones winning, but remember how that story played out. It was a Republican colleague of Jay Jones in Richmond who had these texts from him in 2022. National Review confirmed them. She shared them. Jay Jones won. He won bigger than Kamala Harris did one year ago in Virginia, that his colleague,

lost. And I'm thinking of these Democrats who have watched for a year, not just to be told that Trump is president, but be mocked by Donald Trump, be told if they're angry that they're crazy, log on and see the president sharing AI images, making fun of them, dropping feces on them. They got a lot more cynical, a lot more hard edge about this, and they're now a lot more confident that they are not alone, that there might be, once again, when Trump is not in the ballot, which, despite Steve Bannon bringing this up every couple months, will not happen again. When he's not in the ballot, they feel like they are a quiet silent majority, maybe not so silent because there are a lot of people at protests. Things have changed a lot, and people

are going to start looking, I think, as they try to recruit candidates for the midterms, Republicans wonder if they're going to run again. They will look at these polls and say, there is not magic that erases all these numbers we're seeing. There is not something that we're missing that convinces voters that price is not going down is actually not a problem, we might be on to something. We might have a winning political message. It really does, it really does change things. And is it good that voters say, in Virginia, say they're okay with what Jay Jones texted? I don't think so, but it's in the context of Donald Trump getting away with a lot over a very long time and Democrats getting tired of it. I think the expectations are so low.

I also think, though, there's some years, 2006 was one of them. There's some years where the wave is so huge, it carries people over the finish line that should not be carried over the finish line. And last night, that would have been an attorney general candidate in Virginia who texted the most horrific things and then called a political opponent and said the most horrific thing. So yeah, yeah, that's a guy who should not have even been in the race in my estimation after that information got out. But again, and I saw this in 94. There were people. that got swept in that would have never won any other year

and they were gone two years later, you know? But that's, that happens with, with, with, wave elections like we saw last night. Semaphores, Dave Weigel, senior writer for the dispatch, David Drucker, an MSNBC senior Capitol Hill reporter and host of way too early, Ali Vitale.

Thank you all very much for being on this morning and still ahead. The Supreme Court today will hear arguments in a landmark case on the president's authority to enact sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners will go over the implications for the economy and executive power, as Trump labels that a life or death matter for the nation. Morning Joe is coming right back. All right, a few minutes before the top of the hour, a lot to get to this morning.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this morning in the case of President Trump's use of emergency powers to enact sweeping tariffs on U.S. trade partners. The outcome will have major implications on America's economic policy and also test. the bounds of executive authority. The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose taxes. But soon after taking office, Trump declared that a 1977 law gave him the power to impose tariffs unilaterally during emergencies. That statute gives the president certain tools to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat to national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States. That includes the power to regulate imports.

And so, Jonathan Amir, obviously, the president's very concerned about this hearing, says it may be the most important of his term, which is unfortunate, I think, because the Roberts Court is going to be looking at an argument that a 30-second ad during a World Series baseball game constitutes a quote,

national emergency that requires the President of the United States to put tariffs on Canada. Or the Roberts Court is going to have to look at what the President has said about the Brazil's ex-leader, you know, getting prosecuted. And Donald Trump saying it's a national emergency. Right. The definition of emergency. That we're going to have to put tariffs on them because I don't like what judges are doing to my buddy. There's no getting from here to there, even for Brett Kavanaugh,

even for Clarence Thomas, even for Alito, unless they just don't take their job seriously anymore. And they are nothing more but pawns for Donald Trump. I mean, that is the concern, though, because your lawyers have argued, you know, to your point, the national emergency justification flimsy at best for a few of these examples. But so far, the Supreme Court, not always, but largely has been a rubber stamp for what President Trump wants. And he made it clear. We just showed the true social post. He has laid out the stakes of this, calling it a life or death for the country. He even said they were considering having him go to the Supreme Court today to actually show up and like sort of lend his support and therefore pressure the

justices. They have opted against that. But really, this is this is a significant matter, not just on tariffs, too, but also more broadly, executive power. Because right now, that has been the defining characteristic of Trump 2.0, is it every step of the way trying to consolidate more and more power in the overlaw. See, it's power from Congress. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say. As with it, so many of these decisions and moves he's made, there is a role for Congress. Congress has abdicated itself from this process, and now Donald Trump is unilaterally imposing these tariffs. We'll see what the court says. Join us now, California Attorney General Rob Bonta. He is in Washington.

this morning in support of today's Supreme Court oral arguments. California also filed a separate similar lawsuit on tariffs, and the results of today's case will impact California as well. Mr. Attorney General, thanks for being with us. So layout as best you can. Let's talk about the Supreme Court case first. The stakes here, the arguments for and against the president unilaterally imposing these tariffs. Well, the stakes are high. As Americans know, their prices are have gone up. As businesses know, their costs have gone up. Jobs are being lost, and economic activity is being harmed in California alone. We're projected to lose $25 billion of economic activity as well as $64,000 jobs. So a lot at stake here. And if you look at the legal basis

for the tariffs, there really is none. That Trump relies on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEPA, and it never mentions the word tariffs once. It's never been used in its nearly 50-year existence to ever impose tariffs, though it's been relied on 69 different times by presidents, never for tariffs. And there's something called the Major Questions Doctrine. Congress has the power to tax, and if Congress is going to delegate that power to the president, they need to be very clear and explicit in that delegation. And if they never mention the word tariffs never say that the president has tariff authority, then that is clearly not a clear delegation. So as the phrase goes, you don't hide elephants and mouse holes. And so Congress knew what

it had to do if it wanted to give the president the tariff authority. So the arguments on the other side are real stretches. Every court who has decided this case so far, the lower courts, the Federal Circuit, the Court of International Trade, the Federal Court for the District of Washington, D.C., have all found for the states, from my side, found that the president does not have the authority to impose these tariffs. And I believe the law is clear that the text, the plain unambiguous language of the statute, as well as the history and the precedent, and I believe that the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down these tariffs because there's no legal authority to impose them by the president

of the United States. General, you have filled a gap, you and other Democrats across the country that hold the important job that you have in various states. You all have taken up the mantle to challenge this administration on a variety of different topics. Taking aside the hypocritical nature of people who have lectured us about textualism and taking the literal meaning of the Constitution and taking the literal meaning of statutes and molding it like some kind of ugly pretzel into whatever Donald Trump wants. What are the other cases that are ripe right now that you see that the court can weigh in on in the short term in terms of curbing some of this

inappropriate use of executive power that Trump is careening around with? Well, one is with respect to the president's authority, or I'll say lack thereof, to deploy the National Guard and to federalize the National Guard and treat the National Guard as his royal guard, as his own private traveling army, that he can deploy where wants, when he wants, for as long as he wants, for whatever reason he wants, or for no reason at all. That's what he's been doing. He's done that in L.A., in Oregon, in Chicago, in Washington, D.C., and there are rules around when the president can federalize the National Guard and deploy them. There must be an invasion. There must be a rebellion. There must be an inability to execute the laws

with the regular forces. None of those things have existed. And we have a case now out of the Seventh Circuit, where Chicago is, that is before the U.S. Supreme Court on a stay order. So that looks like, and the U.S. Supreme Court has asked for briefing on that issue. So that looks like that's nearing a decision point by the U.S. Supreme Court. A few months back, we had a decision about universal injunctions on our CASA case, our birthright citizenship case, and now we have a ruling on that issue. We, depending on what happens here with SNAP and the president, determination to starve hungry Americans and not provide SNAP funding, which is food for

the Hungary, which is an entitlement program. There could be Supreme Court intervention there, but that's still in the district courts. But most likely the National Guard issue is something that we can soon see some weighing in by the U.S. Supreme Court. All right. California, Attorney General, Rob Bonta, thank you very much.