Morning Joe - Democratic Senate candidates in Michigan faceoff in debate

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

July 8, 2026 - 7am: Democratic Senate candidates in Michigan faceoff in debate Graham Platner latest Rahm Emaunal to criticize Netanyahu in speech in Israel Latest edition of Brand Up, Brand Down with Donny Deutsch Steve Rattner's Charts: How Trump is cashing in on the presidency To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Live look at Capitol Hill for you at almost 20 past the hour in Michigan, Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Dr. Abdul-El-Said faced off on the debate stage last night. It's the first time the Democratic Party candidates have met since state senator Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign and both candidates were quick to attack each other. Unlike my opponent, I'm not running at the first mic or camera, I see. Instead, my head is down doing the work for the people of Michigan who need the work to be done. We're running to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket and pass Medicare for all. There's a reason that both Chuck Schumer and Donald Trump don't want to see me on the inside of the U.S. Senate because I'm a threat to politics as usual.

If Congresswoman Stevens makes it or Mike Rogers wins, either way, Israel will win. A PAC is perfectly fine with either of my two opponents because they know that they will have a comfortable, reliable vote in the U.S. Senate. No one owns my vote and no one owns my policies. Anyone who is contributing to my Senate campaign is doing so because of my proven record of fighting for Michigan. Now here's the thing about it. There is no left or right. Most people out there aren't asking, where do I fit on the left-right spectrum? They're asking, can I afford my groceries when I go grocery shopping? There are many who want to make this run for U.S. Senate about Washington, D.C. insider deals and what's going on with our party leadership.

Friends, this is about the future of Michigan. Who is going to be the workhorse? All right. Let's bring in the host of OnBrand with Donny Deutsch, Donny Deutsch, and politics reporter at Semaphore, Dave Weigel, who has new reporting on Senator Bernie Sanders ending his silence on the Graham-Platner controversy coming out of Maine. Yesterday, calling on the embattled candidate to drop out of the Maine Senate race

amid new rape allegations. One that Plattner denies. Boy, Dave Weigel, I'll let you go on this. What have you heard more on the Bernie Sanders call for him to step down and other Democrats calling for Plattner to step aside? Should he? And what do you make of the timing of the accusation and the accusation itself? Well, Sanders led, I should say, led for behind,

on this. He's answered questions about whether Platterner should quit after a lot of other Democrats did. Sanders was very involved in this race. Plattner's recruitment was part of a strategy that Sanders developed more than a year ago of finding candidates with unconventional backgrounds who were not connected to the mainstream Democratic Party who he thought were more electable. Plattner was, along with Dan Osborne in Nebraska, an emblem of that. There was a lot writing on this campaign in this idea being successful. So what has been happening among progressives who still have this nomination, Plattner is the nominee, unless he decides to drop out by the close of business on July 13th, is to use that leverage

to get someone like Plattner in the seat. And it is a very complicated situation because the argument right now is that primary voters, once Gentmills had dropped out and there was a perennial candidate on the ballot with Plattner, they chose Plattner, therefore the party should honor them to choose someone like Plattner to be the nominee, Roe Con, a couple other people, not Sanders, but some Platner endorsers who said, well, Troy Jackson, who ran for governor with the Bernie endorsement, who was on stage with Platner, he is the next man on deck. He has the same values. There's video. Plattner saying they have the same values. What other Democrats are saying is you're not in a good position to ask for leverage.

And also, how does it help our party? If a candidate, who is in this scenario, quitting the race and leaving politics in disgrace is connected to our nominee. You saw Maine Democrats yesterday, is after my story ran. The executive director of the party say that Plattner's campaign is holding them over a barrel and trying to, quote, put a finger on a thumb on the scale for how the party replaces him. And this is while the party is trying to come up with a process that they think, in the way that the fantasy of a mini-convention, 2024, would have replaced Biden. a process that will make the main Democrats think, all right, we made a mistake, but we had something open and Democratic.

Candidates I've talked to who want this seat and said we should have debates and town halls over two weeks to have this process. Sanders is one of the progressives saying, let's get to that process now. The Platter campaign is saying, let's hold on until we have more of a guarantee that someone we like is the nominee. So, Donnie, a couple of things. Just before I get to my question for you, I mean, this was, of course, an accusation not made in the court. of law. The police was not called. There's no police report, but there is extensive reporting from credible news organizations on this. It was broken by Politico. Any scenario in which Platner fights back? You know, it's interesting. You know, sometimes in life there are little

tells, there are breadcrumbs, there are little hints of what's to come. A Nazi tattoo is one of them. I mean, people held their nose. They overlooked this. They overlooked the Reddit tweets. Obviously, now you have the sexual assault allegations that, to your point, are very credible. They corroborated by the victim's therapist and friend at the time. And there is no scenario where he sticks around. It depends if, let's see if the Democrats are smart.

They have an opportunity here. He would have been a loser in a general election, I believe, against Susan Collins. But right now they have a chance to put in a winnable can. candidate lets you where it ends up. Yeah, we will see Platner. There's been reporting. He may drop out as soon as the next couple of days, but he hasn't yet, and until he does, the Democratic Party and the state of Maine. Wait, Dave, I'll go back to you. We came into this segment here with some sound for that debate in Michigan last night. Let's turn there. It does, it does neatly encapsulate sort of the debate within the Democratic Party right now about just how progressive do we want to be. You know, how do we want to

lean in on certain issues. You know, and again, Democrat, we talked about this last hour. I mean, Democrats, on the whole, feeling pretty good about this November, certainly the House, but the Senate increasingly so, considering how underwater Trump and the Republicans are. Take us inside the debate within the party about what sort of candidates it wants to see be on the ticket come November. Yes, and again, this really started as soon as Kamala Harris conceded defeat, and Bernie Sanders put out a statement saying this is because she didn't listen to the working class.

the Democrats didn't do enough for the working class. El Cayed is the most talented, I think a lot of progressives would agree with that, of these candidates who are running saying the Democratic Party lost, and it's lost a couple elections in a row, because it's lost focus on working class issues, and this is an important part of it now,

it's too focused on giving foreign aid and military aid to Israel. All of this is combined in Michigan. It is a good race for explaining that story. This performance from Stevens last night was the strongest, a lot of Democrats have ever seen her. She has not run for office as the most talented debater in the room.

That was implicit what she was saying. And what has changed in the 18 months is that Stevens, who is a very reliable pro-Israel vote in Congress, is not saying she won't be if she's a senator, is now running where that is a problem. It's not just in Michigan where there's a big Arab-American population, but look at polling from the AP this week. Half of Democrats say Israel committed a genocide in Gaza. She is now running as a candidate promising electability based on her record, but asking Democratic prime voters to overlook that they don't agree with her about Israel.

And that has been a big opening for El Sajia. That's been an opening for a lot of Democrats. It was an opening for Democrats in New York City. The left of the party has been very well organized since November 2024 in finding wedge issues that make the rest of the party, even candidates who've won election before, sound like they don't have what it takes to beat Republicans. You know, Donnie, as Dave is just pointed out, Israel is going to continue to be a huge issue going forward in this fall's elections. Rahm Emanuel is in Israel, where he basically indicted, you know, the president of Israel,

and called for a reestablishment of a relationship between the United States, a redefinition of the relationship between the United States and Israel. Your thoughts. You know, it's fascinating how Israel has become such a wedge issue, such an emotional issue for so many voters. You wonder why, obviously, Israel has his problems and that, Yahoo's got to go. But you just wonder why versus... I'm really crushing that. Yeah.

Yeah, he's got to go. But you wonder why there's not the attention on Sudan or Syria or all the other places where their people are getting, innocent people are getting hurt. It's an emotional issue. It goes back to what a lot of these left-wing people are oppressed versus oppres. presser perception, and it seems to be hitting a nerve, and that's upsetting for me, at least. Yeah, all right. And, you know, Johnny, you mentioned Rahm Emanuel, that speech he's set to deliver in Israel to denounce Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and call for a new approach in the relationship between America and the Jewish state. The potential Democratic presidential candidate is

scheduled to speak at Tel Aviv University and according to the AP Immanuel, we'll say that the current approach between the two countries cannot stand or survive as it has been, adding to maintain the strength of our ties, we need significant changes and a very and a new direction. We'll be following that. We'll cover that speech as it happens. Politics reporter at Semaphore, Dave Weigel, thank you very much for coming on this morning. Dave's latest report. is available to read online right now. And Donny Deutsch, stick around because still ahead. What do slurpees, Gene Wilder, and Cracker Barrel, CEO all have in common.

How long has it been since we said the word slurpy? Who's had a slurpy? Anytime in the past decade. They're part of the latest edition of Brand Up, Brand Down. That's how old we are coming up on Morning Joe. Oh my gosh. Finally a beautiful day in New York City. Look at that beautiful shot as we launched this week's edition of Brand Up, Branddown with Donnie Doidge.

And Donnie, Donnie, you're starting with, do you know that I used to live near a 7-Eleven? Oldhamene Road and Spring Hill Road, McLean, Virginia. I used to go every day. And I would have my slurpy. And you say slurpy is brand up. Slurpy way brand up. up. We're about to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Slurpee in 7-Eleven is Slurpee Day. You get a free small slurpee if you go there. There's a special, Miki, you're going to like this Mountain Dew birthday cake-inspired Slurpy. They're also promoting what they're calling slurpy dates, where you go there and for six bucks get a slurpy with a date, it's a cheap way to have a date. The big one? The big one, six bucks. And, you know, being a single guy, that's really a nice idea for me to think about a way to meet people on a Slurpy date. Lots of 7-Elevens out there in Hamptons.

Donnie, let's turn to number two. Mobland, the TV show is back, brand up. Yeah. I think Mobland is the best show on television. I'm Hardy. Yeah, Tom Hardy, there was a lot of rumors that Tom Hardy was not going to come back for season three. There were a lot of problems on the set, issues between him and Helen Marin and Pierce Brosnan. They've signed them on. I don't think the show works without him.

If you haven't seen Moblin, this is a work of art. It's spectacular. It's Paramount's number two show of all time, and it's so damn. I know it's a favorite of Joe's. So, Donnie, we'll move on to Ford Engineers, because Ford Fire, engineers, replaced them with AI, but then hired them back. That's a brand up. Do you remember the movie Mr. Mom with Michael Keaton where he got fired from working in a general motor, I don't know, Ford or General Motors plant? And they, it all got screwed up and

they brought them back. Well, that's what's happening here. They replaced a lot of what they're calling graying engineers with AI for quality control. And it got messed up. And they brought these people back. And now they're J.D. Powell says they're number one in quality. And we're going to have a lot of these stories and a lot of industries about people, herky jerky, go, you know what? We might need you. after all. Wait a minute. Gene Wilder brand down.

How can you say now? Gene Wilder gets a Hall of Fame brand up. The Gene Wilder AI voice that they're using in a TV, Netflix is bringing a show, a Willy Wonka show that is a competition reality show, people competing in Willy Wonka type challenges in the Chalker factory, and they're using AI voice of Gene Wilder in it. A lot of people are up in arms. I'm not an AI voice guy.

I mean, I think use the real voice and don't use it at all. This is the same company that used Judy Garland's voice for Wizard of Oz. And I'm not quite sure about a Willie Wonka competition show to begin with. Okay. Okay. So in-office jobs is Brand up. What are you talking about? Are you talking about, like, working in office as opposed to work from home?

Yeah, we've talked a lot. I feel so strong in there for young people working for home is not a good idea. You can't get mentored. You don't develop the social skills. It seems that in-office jobs are growing faster at 30 percent than not in-office. office jobs. What's happening is that the employers are liking this. You've got companies that have Amazon, J.P. Morgan, they've gone out to five-day-a-week things. It also, in applying for a job, it takes a lot longer to get a job in the interviewing process without office because it's

hard to tell about somebody. So I'm just so strong about in-office jobs, and I think young people are getting really hurt. All right, dime, we'll move on to brand up luxury travel, but luxury travel, not with kids, but with dogs. Yeah, millennials who a lot of millennials don't have kids. There's a big percentage of them don't. And what they're doing is they're taking their money that's saving for kids. And they're taking their pets. They're putting that money into the pets. And they're taking luxury travel, hotel chains like Rosewood and Amman, have services for dogs, extra thread counten dog beds, in-house, on-house vets. Good Lord. Dog services. 60% of people who have dogs refer to them as their baby. Wait, hold on.

Come on back to me because, oh, I have a picture. I'm getting, by the end of the segment, I have a picture up. We have a new little baby coming, a little baby called Kiki, who's a little baby bulldog. And so we're joining our family soon. That was a big morning Joe announcement. Yeah, Kiki only flies first class, I've been told. So, Donnie, not to be... I love when Joe's not here that you kind of take up the... Take the... Someone's got to do it. Someone's got to do it. Not just to be a spoiler here, but you're a very sunny place today because I look through the list here, including those coming up. There was only one brand down. That AI Gene Wilder,

the only brand down. So therefore, here's another brand up. Cracker Barrel CEO. Cracker Barrel CEO. Now, I don't know if everybody remembers, but six months ago, Cracker Barrel went for kind of a modernization. They changed their logo. They changed their menu items to contemporaries.

Donald Trump said something about it, and their business went terrible. They dropped by 8%. The CEO has since come out and said, you know what? I screwed up, Maya Coppa. I kind of got fired by America, not literally fired,

but, and now she's gone back and put Uncle Hershey's breakfast in. They've gone back to the old location. They were going to do a renovation on 660 stores. They only did four. They stopped. Now their business is strong,

and their stock is up 100% in the last six. So continuing with the Donny George Optimism Day. So these guys. Brand up physical books. First of all, what are physical books? Yeah, physical are books. You remember this. Oh, okay.

You know, they sold 770 million books last year. And it's the only media category where it's outpacing digital sales. Every other media category is losing in its physical nature, or it's traditional media to digital. People like books. What's also happening is TikTok, has their book club. I think it's called Book Talk. It's got 200 billion views. A lot of

influencers are selling books. And people, my friend Harlan Cobain likes that. He likes the real one. Good guy. The best guy in the world. Physical books. I thought you were talking weightlifting books. So the final brand up, brand down. Of course, it's a brand up, is golden roommates. Yes. Remember the golden girls? They all kind of live together. Well, now over 65 people are rooming up. A lot of it has to do with housing courses. They're growing up. three times faster than any other segment in the roommate segment. And the other thing is they say it's really good for loneliness. So a lot of seniors looking for roommates, I'm not going to put it out there yet.

But, you know, I'm okay by myself. I don't want to go there. I know. I know. I know. I'm, I'm, I'm going to stay solo. Look, maybe right here. Mike, you already got a roommate.

So I don't. You got a great room. I got a good one. Oh, my God. I think it's a reality show, Donnie and his three golden roommates. I can see it. And his little dog in a baby carriage trying to meet women. It all works.

It's a good show. And I'll be getting sick soon. We have a big potty adorn in a Deutsch household. Thank you very much. By the way, I have a new baby, too. Her name is Tommy. Pictures to come. Very cute puppy.

Coming up, President Trump has made more than $2 billion in his first year back in office, a major windfall. Steve Rattner, standing by with charts, breaking down that financial disclosure and the questions surrounding Trump's crypto deals. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. Welcome back as we've been reporting President Trump disclosed making more than $2.2 billion while in his first year back in office. Of that total, $1.4 billion came from various crypto ventures that he and his family put their name to.

That includes Trump's meme coin. and the startup crypto firm World Liberty Financial. Let's bring in former Treasury official and Morning Joe Economic analyst, Steve Ratner, with charts on this looking closer at Trump's finances. Steve, what have you found? Let's start with your first chart, cashing in on the presidency.

Yeah, sure, Mika. Look, everybody's read a lot about Trump and all the money he's made from the presidency, but we all know that a chart is worth a million words. So let me show some of this, geographically. And by the way, this may have been the hardest job I've ever had doing this and getting could have been 20 charts down to six charts. It is on a limited amount of material. But let's just start with the basics over here, which is Trump's net worth. So at the end of his

first term, the last time he filed a federal form, he was worth $3.1 billion, all of it essentially from his two main historical businesses, real estate and hospitality. Well, lo and behold, here we are now with the report that he just filed for his finances at the end of last year, as you mentioned, $3.1 billion had become $6.5 billion. The amount of money that he has in his real estate and his hospitality, essentially, actually down a little bit, but essentially, let's call that unchanged. But then he added two huge new categories to his net worth. Cryptocurrencies, $2 billion. And then he started Trump media, as you know, Truth Social, which is essentially just a vehicle for his post,

but it still earned him $1.2 billion of value in the stock. But that's not all of his money. He also gets money and his kids, through his companies that receive investments and things, honestly, because of who they are. So here's, for example, a company called Vulcan elements. Donald Trump Jr. joined 1789 Capital, essentially scaled it up. They got a $600 million investment from the Pentagon. without any competition and with a call allegedly, according to ProPublica, to the Pentagon from

the White House to help get them that money. And then a whole bunch of other cases where the companies of 1789 Capital got government contracts or other government benefits from that association. So, Steve, as you pointed out, the cryptocurrency is suddenly this brand new source of extraordinary wealth for President Trump. And your next chart takes us to allegations of corruption about that. Yeah, so it's, I don't know if it's corruption exactly, but it's certainly graft. And so the Trump family has four basic crypto ventures.

And as it happens, according to some work that Reuters did, they earned $2.3 billion from those ventures, but their investors lost roughly $2.3 billion. There are four companies involved here, two of them public. One of the public companies went down 23% just yesterday, costing those investors a bunch more money. But let's dig into that and see how that works. So the companies at least issue various forms of crypto, but their crypto, unlike other kinds of crypto, isn't really usable for anything for the most part. It's essentially like a pet rock or a meme coin or whatever. It's just something you can own. So World Liberty Financial sold a whole lot of these things at a price as high as 30 cents

each. But it's just gone down, down, down, down, down, down. And here it is down 81% from where it was. And so all this money essentially went in the Trump family pockets. And not only did they get money from selling the coins, every time somebody traded one of these coins, they got a fee as well. And so that was hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump family pocket, out of the pockets of ordinary American investors. And Steve, as you say, there's such a blizzard of news. It's hard to keep track. I'd argue your third chart here points to two of these ways that Trump has made money that have been at times overlooked foreign deals, but also, walk us through this, how he's received payment for pardons. Yeah, I know. It's all, it's all, and none of that, of course, is in his

financial forms, but this is all stuff in addition of that. So it's kind of an incalptable amount of money that they've gotten one way or another. So they have not been shy about receiving investment capital, including and heavily from Middle Eastern countries with which we're now obviously deeply engaged over trying to solve the Iran problem. So they've received something like $13 billion of investment capital from the Gulf just since 2024. The biggest of this is $5.5 billion from the Qataris for a golf resort in Qatar. This is investment capital.

It doesn't go in their pocket, but it's money they can use to make money for themselves. And by the way, Jared Kushner, who famously raised virtually all the money for his private equity firm after Trump won is back raising money again in the Middle East, even as he's serving as the Middle Eastern negotiator. He raised a billion and a half dollars from Qatar at the end of 2024, and he raised another $1.2 billion in 25 and 26 from Gulf investors. So it's kind of incredible that the Middle East negotiator is also raising money for his own funds while he is there. And then, as you mentioned, Jonathan, the Trump administration, Mr. Trump, actually, not the administration, has managed to profit from pardons.

And so if you take one of the most extreme examples, CZ Zhao, the founder of Binance, one of the big crypto, the biggest probably crypto trading firms, right before he got a pardon, he bought $2 billion of one of Trump's coins. Justin's son bought $75 million of a coin and then immediately had an SEC suit against him, pause. But it's not even just money to the Trumps. It's money also out of the pockets in many cases of Americans. Trevor Milton, who was a car executive, was pardoned, but only after he, in addition to which he gave up, excuse me, the obligation to pay restitution to his victims of $600 million. And so he paid money, he got a pardon, and $600 plus million

that was supposed to go to the victims of his fraud never went there. Wow. We're going to need more charts. Morning Joe economic analyst, Steve Ratner, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. And coming up on Morning Joe, Texas Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton has vowed to crack down on voter fraud. But now there's new reporting that he, may have voted illegally multiple times.

We'll dig into that straight ahead on Morning Joe.