Morning Joe - Documents show administration was warned about Reflecting Pool peeling

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

August 20, 2026: 8am — Documents show administration was warned about Reflecting Pool peeling 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.

We got rid of the asphalt here, and this is granite. It's a white granite. It's called a flawless granite. And you can see the kind of granite this is. Granite has a million-year life. It's a very strong stone. This is the highest quality stone you can get, and it's a very special stone.

This is pure white granite, very high quality, and the highest quality. Come on over here. This is a path leading with the same exact granite. Very strong granite. You'll never see a crack in this granite. This is a helipad at the highest level. It can lead any helicopter in the world. They can have events on it.

They can have people go there for cocktails and then walk to the ballroom. This is going to be used for a lot of different celebrations, a lot of different big meetings. It's something we really needed badly for the helicopters, but we get a secondary use, and that's... We can have some beautiful events here. As you remember, I donated the place. I donated the flag polls, one on each side.

Because the White House didn't really have an appropriate American flag. It had a small one on top. We left that, but it didn't have an appropriate American flag. And this is a great poll. This is the top of the line. It's tapered. This isn't a straight up and down job, which looks terrible, frankly. That's a tapered pole.

I'm very good at flag polls. Yeah, we're not so good at winning wars. not good at paying down our debt. Not good at doing the things that he promised Americans he would do when he ran for re-election. That's President Trump, very proud of the new granite at the White House grounds and the new flagpoles as he gave the press corps a tour of his projects yesterday. That 40-minute outgoing outing supports recent analysis by politic fact, which found that Donald Trump is now talking publicly more about construction projects over the first seven months of this year, than any other topic, save Iran. Willie, you know, Maggie Haberman in her book, and along with Jonathan Swan, when they were talking, said his second presidency has come down to a focus on two things. One, construction projects, and two, retribution. Yeah, legacy. The retribution is one piece. Legacy, he believes all the things he's going to leave behind. mean that in a physical sense.

The latest is that helicopter pad that he spent almost an hour showing off to the press. It really is notable, Joe, that he is much more animated and enthusiastic about all of the things he was talking about yesterday, whether it was the grass, giving a shout out to Scott's Miracle Grow, as he's done many times before, talking about the granite signing his name and a helipad saying, we can use this for cocktail parties and we can walk into the new ballroom from here, much more animated than when he's talking about, say, the Iran War while sitting in the Oval Office or when he's seated around a table with his cabinet officials offering him praise and he often falls asleep in his chair. This is what fires him up right now, the legacy projects, the

remaking of Washington, because it's easier. It's what he has done throughout his life. Construction projects, building. He thinks he's good at it. He thinks that putting his name on everything is the legacy where historians will be looking at things, as you point out, like the Iran War, and now a $40 trillion debt as of yesterday. Well, you know, we heard so much about the art of the deal. He can't make a deal. He just can't forget about Iran. He can't make a deal with Americans.

He can't sit down across the table and come to a deal with Democrats. There have been people inside the White House that have been wanting him for a year and a half to make an immigration deal. that would have avoided the type of political bleeding that they've had to endure over the past year and a half by heinous, hateful immigration policies that went well beyond what he promised. The worst of the worst? Not even close. We're going after people who are fighting our wars. We're going after people who are building our communities. We're going after some of the very people that Ronald Reagan was talking about on his last night at the White House when he said that the strength of America was its immigrants, wave after wave of immigrants.

They kept us forever young. They kept us forever on the cutting edge. And they made us different from all other countries. I do want to talk, though, really briefly, Willie, about a legacy that, of course, Iran's going to stay with him. But this $40 trillion debt, it's something, you know, It's one of the reasons I got to Congress and decided to run was we were coming up on a $4 trillion debt. A $4 trillion debt. Now, when Donald Trump got elected, he promised that he was going to, I don't know if you remember, he promised he was going to pay down the deficit and he was going to pay down the national debt. He said it in 2018 that he was going to pay down the national debt. He set it on the campaign trail.

He was going to pay down the national debt. He hasn't done that. And the U.S. national debt just surpassed $40 trillion for the first time ever. That milestone was reached yesterday, only five months after it hit a record $39 trillion in debt in March. Our country is going to borrow more than $2 trillion this year just to pay for interest on the debt, including the war on Iran and tax cuts enacted last year, two trillion dollars for that. And so Donald Trump, who promised,

while he's sitting around there talking about construction projects, he promised he was going to pay off the debt. And yet he's responsible for a massive portion of the national debt. Reuters reports it rose $7 to $8 trillion during his first term, with more than half of it accumulating during, the pandemic response over his last nine months in office. So far, the debt's increased by $3.8 trillion for a total of $11.6 trillion, only six years in office. So think about that.

We've got a $40 trillion debt, Willie. He's responsible many accounts for anywhere from 25 to 30 percent. of America's national debt. So what that means is, of the 45, 46, well, 45 presidents, even though he's 47, of the 45 presidents that this country has had, 45, Donald Trump is responsible for almost a third of this country's national debt, him, the one, the one. And it took us over 210 years for all of those presidents from George Washington, all the way through Bill Clinton, to together collectively, pile on as much debt as Donald Trump has done by himself. It's credible. One final thing, forgive me, but you say 40 trillion in people's eyes glaze over?

Think about it this way. If you made a million dollars every day, a million dollars every day to pay off, the national debt, you would have to work for 109,000 years every day to pay out the national debt. And to put that in, I said, yeah, 109,589 years, I tallied it up. To put that in perspective, that's 20 times, 20 times longer than all of requirements. recorded history. So that's how deep we are in debt. And we're so deep in debt that Americans are now paying interest on the debt at a higher level this year than they're paying for America's national defense. That's the first time that's ever happened where you're actually, your credit card debt from the federal government is actually higher than defense to protect our country.

And you're right. Sometimes these numbers get so big that you can't even process them. So it's important to put them in perspective. But the bottom line for people watching and people in our countries, your interest rates go up as this continues to climb on your home mortgage, on your credit card, on your car payments, all that kind of stuff, among many other problems. And Joe, we've reached the point now. We have a $31, $32 trillion economy with a $40 trillion debt. That's about $124, 125%. If you just do public debt, which is what, but, you know, economists really look at, that's about $32 trillion. Bottom line is our debt to GDP ratio is hovering at 100%, which is not a good place to be

if you're an economy and the strongest economy in the world, and it has real impacts. And as you say, Joe, this is something that was a bedrock conservative principle going after debts and deficits, something you worked on 30-some years ago. Remember, Doge that was all about like getting rid of government waste, streamlining, the government and making it more effective, getting rid of our deficits, bringing down the debt. Well, of course, Elon Musk was nibbling around the edges, making symbolic firings of people in mid-level jobs in the government and not actually getting at the drivers of debt, including military spending, Joe, and we're in the middle of a war with no end in sight.

Well, a war that Americans are having to pay for, and tariffs that are making Americans pay more as far as inflation goes. But you're so right about Doge. I had some people close to the president come to me, telling me how great Doge was. I go, well, what's he going after? And they started talking about the programs. He's not going to save any money. Oh, no, he's going to save.

And you have Elon Musk telling Lutnik. I'm going to cut up to $2 trillion. I just laughed. I said, no, you're not. You might get a couple of million, maybe a couple of billion. I said, you're going after 8% of the budget. And that 8% of the budget that you're going after, there's not enough money to make any difference at all. They wouldn't listen.

They never listen. And so what he did is he ended up being responsible for a lot of cuts that are going to kill a lot of people all over the world, the poorest, the most disenfranchised people all over the world. He's going to hurt a lot of basic functions in the U.S. government and not do anything towards. a federal debt. So $40 trillion. Again, I'll say it again, you would have to make a million dollars every day for over 109,000 years to pay off $40 trillion. It's not going to happen. But politicians in Washington, maybe they have to wait until Donald Trump gets out of town. I don't know. They're going to have to get serious because there's going to be an economic meltdown. And this is not an economic meltdown that will go away in three, six,

months, and it certainly won't be the economic meltdown that any Treasury Secretary is going to be able to buy his way out of because the American dollar will be worthless at some point if these politicians in Washington, D.C. keep spinning us deeper and deeper into debt. Coming up, do artificial intelligence and affordability go hand in hand? We'll talk about that connection being made by one of our next guests. Morning Joe is back in a moment. Coming up, our next guests are telling the story of an American civil rights pioneer. We'll dig into a new book about gospel superstar Mahalia Jackson, whose music helps set the soundtrack in the fight for equality. That conversation straight ahead on Morning Joe.

Welcome back. Let's take a look at some of the other stories we're following this morning, beginning with the CDC, saying that at least 431 people in 32 states have become sick from eating jalapeno peppers contaminated with San Diego. Salmonella. Government officials say the likeliest source is from a batch of jalapenos grown in Mexico, which has since been recalled, but they were served at Chipotle, Kudoba, and other Mexican-style restaurants. Those restaurants removed the jalapenos from their menus earlier this month. So far, 57 people have been hospitalized. No deaths, though, have yet to be reported. Elsewhere, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and his wife, Megan Markle, are reported. moving back to Britain after six years of living in the United States. According to the BBC and other British media outlets, the couple is establishing a private non-royal residents outside London. Their children,

Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, are set to begin at a British school this September. The couple left the UK and stepped back from their royal duties in early 2020 before settling in California and March of that year. I might recommend the New York Post's coverage of this story. They've had some fun with the couple. And lastly, a NASA mission to save one of its space telescopes from falling out of orbit has failed. It was launched back in 2004 to observe distant powerful explosions in the cosmos, but its orbit started to rapidly decay, prompting NASA to hire a small company last year to build a spacecraft that would hopefully correct the telescope's trajectory. But that's That plan was prevented by control issues with that rescue spacecraft.

The telescope is now expected to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere later this year. Still ahead here on Morning Joe, new documents reveal that the Trump administration was flagged about potential problems with the reflecting pool well before Trump blamed the damage on vandals and never provided any evidence of that claim. We're going to go through that brand new reporting ahead here on Morning Joe. That was gospel legend Mahaya Jackson, performing in front of thousands at the March on Washington. I can see the crowds there. Jackson is lauded, of course, as a vocal powerhouse, but our next guests are digging into a lesser-known part of her legacy. Her work fighting for the equality of black Americans. It's the focus of the new biography. Tyler Bahaia Jackson, we're moving on up a little higher, the story of an American civil rights pioneer. And that book's co-authors, Mary D. Williams and Timothy B. Tyson, join us now.

Also with us for the conversation. The host, the Politics Nation, on MS now, our friend, the Reverend Al Sharpton. He is also, of course, the president of the National Action Network. My thanks to all of you for being with us this morning. Mary and Timothy, congrats on the book. Mary, I'll start with you. Why do you think now is the right moment to revisit Ms. Jackson's legacy? but more than that, to bring to light, you know, this other part of it,

not just her incredible singing that has moved millions for decades, but her activism. Because of what the things that our country is going through right now is so important. And I think that her voice was the glue. She had this way of appealing not just to what people listen to, but she appealed to their hearts. and that she understood that we were all God's children and that the music would bring people together. And that's what music does. And she had that authentic way of being so for real because she was not singing to just appease audiences or to make people just simply feel good.

But she was singing to build a community. And so, and that's what we need in today's world. We need to come together and become more unified and become a community because there's so much, division in our world today. So Timothy, tell us a little bit more about that activism. We, of course, just saw the clip of her singing at the March on Washington, but she also performed for the Montgomery bus boycott and sang in both Birmingham and Selma. Yes, she moved to Chicago in 1931 and immediately became involved in building black political power in Chicago doing civil rights work there. And then all through the 40s and the 50s. In 1952, she and Thurgood Marshall were,

We're in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, performing at a voting rights symposium in 1952 in 1956 at the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1957, at the prayer pilgrimage in Washington, which really elevated Martin Luther King to a national leadership. She raised tens of thousands of dollars for the Freedom Rides in 1961 for a Birmingham campaign in 1963, working with Dr. King. She sang at the Selma March in 1965. She was crucial to Martin Luther King's campaign in Chicago, her hometown. Oh, yes. In 1966, she was active in the movement until her death in 1972. Yeah, she was a pillar.

Yeah. Mary, one of the couple of things strike me, which is why I'm so happy you've done this book. people don't understand when Mahalia Jackson became a very important part of the Civil Rights Movement. It also brought a lot of the fundamentalists in the black

church into the movement because many of the black church leaders at that time was opposed to Dr. King. And Mahalia Jackson, stepping over there, brought the whole congregations. I mean, I met her and preached on her show when I was a

boy preacher. But my mother, was a fundamentalist and not in the civil rights movement, but if Mejia was in the movement, it was all right. Talk about how she became a real bridge, even in the black community, of bringing people together and really giving Dr. King and others a place where they didn't seem like they were out of the word of God, because Mejaheya kind of sung them into being culturally accepted,

even in the most conservative realms of the black church. So true, so very true, and good morning to both of you. I forgot to say that. But yes, her voice had that way, but when people trusted Mahalia, Mahalia was not setting out to be famous. That was not her intent. Her intent was to support particular political persons that would really do a work in terms of black community. So when black community members saw her align herself supporting financial,

and otherwise, lending her voice to those that she believed that would work in terms of the community, African-American communities, bringing, you know, kind of really trying to do something about this racial divide. When they saw her engaged, then immediately they became engaged. And the crossover, which came through the Ed Sullivan show, when she began to really cross over, it again became this compelling ability through her music and through just the way her delivery, you know, sometimes just her singing as she would look up,

soon will be done troubles of this world. She would encourage them just by what she offered them in song. You know, Timothy picking up on that, Talk about how she not only was one that was an activist and brought people in the movement that had been a little uncomfortable before that. She was one that gave people a sense of they could get through it. Like Mary just said, soon I'll be done with the troubles of the world.

My mother used to play. Nobody knows the trouble I see by Meheya to where I knew that song before I knew the Star Spangled Barrow. when I was going to school. That's right. I mean, she was really, she was really the one that kept people going all through her music. Yes. That's right.

Yes, Reverend Sharpton, I once saw an interview with you on that movie, Summer of Soul. And you said, Mahalia, Black America didn't know anything about a therapist, but we knew Mahalia Jackson. That's right. That's right. That's right. I thought it was an actual point. Finish your thought, please. Well, she actually, when Dr. King, who was prone to deep depression, would be having a hard morning, he would sometimes call her and she would sing to him over the telephone.

His attorney called it gospel therapy. So that was part of her role was to lift people up, dust them off, you know, and validate their struggle. and give them the strength to keep on going. Yeah. That itself a beautiful legacy. The new biography is titled Mahalia Jackson. Moving on up a little higher, the story of an American civil rights pioneer.

It is available now. Co-authors Timothy B. Tyson and Mary DeWilliams, thank you for being with us and for the song. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Still ahead here on Morning Joe. Our next guest says that Democrats need to create their own Save Act. We're going to get that explanation when Morning Joe comes right back.

A live shot there, the National Mall, which looks just flat out terrible. The grass is ruined there by the World War II Memorial. The reflecting pool is still a mess. Construction crews everywhere. Nice going, everyone. New court documents reveal that the Trump administration was indeed warned about the Lincoln Memorial reflecting his pools peeling paint well before it started accusing visitors of vandalism. Court filings filed yesterday show a.

National Park Service Engineer raised a flag in an email way back on June 11th about the materials being used. Despite that warning, President Trump blamed the peeling on vandals without providing any evidence. And then federal prosecutors went ahead and charged former Olympian David Hearn with destruction of property. Proprosecutors said that they were, quote, not aware of or of or in possession of documentation that the Interior Department had of installation problems at the time that they charged hern. The government's case was dismissed last month, but the president has continued to insist that it was vandalism that caused the peeling. He publicly lashed out at his top prosecutor in D.C., Janine Piro, and called the

decision to drop the case a mistake. There's some thought now that DOJ might be looking to find a way to revive it. Meanwhile, our next guest argues in a new opinion piece, for Newsweek that Democrats should be formulating their own Save Act. This plan, though, would include two key planks, AI and affordability. Joining us now, the author of that piece, Editor at Large for Newsweek, and CNBC founder, Tom Rogers. Tom's also senior advisor for Versan, MS Now's parent company. Tom, always great to see you. So the Save Act, just to remind those watching at home, is a Trump-backed initiative that would really curtail voting rights

and it jams in a lot of other things. But even Republicans say, this isn't going to happen. You know, he still blusters about it, but Thune is sort of suggested it won't happen. But the threat of it remains. But you say, well, Democrats should take up that concept, but in a very different way. Explain. Very different way. This is about truly saving America money, the true meaning of save.

AI and affordability top the list for voters in terms of anxieties. And the Democrats should position themselves for a win on. both. And the question is, how do you do that? What I've proposed here is a plan to create a read-through of consumer pricing in the form of an AI app with the gentic capability that would have in it all supermarket prices, all big box retailer prices, drugstore prices, gas station prices. There are limited ways to compare pricing on the internet and through Amazon. but no way to really do it comprehensively that include all the brick and mortar local locations that people shop at. And this would be a use of AI that would allow people to input their club membership,

so rewards and discounts and sales would be available to them. So at any given day, they have a comprehensive look at the items that they buy and where to get the cheapest goods. So let me ask you, though about AI, which has become such a lightning rod politically. And, you know, we've seen Trump has really championed it, you know, pushing it, you know, no guardrails for the most part. But we're seeing a lot of pushback of data centers built around the country, your higher prices that come with that, electricity and the like. So what's the political risk that? How do Democrats message that if they're suddenly embracing AI in your idea? Well, I don't think you can save America by opposing AI on all fronts. AI is coming. And the question is, how do you tame it in a way that,

Americans can see that it has everyday life value. And if you can do that with affordability, the number one anxiety. This has real consequence. I went into a major pharmacy retail chain last week and stocked up on all kinds of toiletries. Bill came to $270. I input my club membership, discount, sales, and what came out was close to $100 of savings. And most Americans are just too, it's too hard to figure out where at any given time the sale is, what your rewards give you, where the two-for-one pricing is. There's enormous opportunity to save money, but it's just too hard and complicated. AI could simplify that, provide a personalized pricing mechanism. Yesterday, the FTC actually said personalized AI pricing is going on by retailers, but in the wrong way.

They're getting personalized data about consumers and then turning that into a way to drive prices higher because they understand what they really need at a given moment. By comparing all pricing and giving people the opportunity to input, rewards, discounts, sales, incentives, you have a real price transparency. And trance transparency is going to be much more valuable than going after companies because of accusing them of gouging prices or mandominet's idea of getting prices down by government supermarkets. The best way to do this is making it easy for consumers, and consumers are too lazy. And how do I know that? They're too lazy because gas station prices are the most transparent thing in

the world, big red neon signs in every neighborhood. And any neighborhood I go through, there is no difference between people patronizing a gas station with gas that is 50 cents higher than another gas station. And if when it comes to that kind of price transparency, people are too lazy. We need AI to simplify this and make it easy. Too lazy or too busy. Tom, as you talk about the Democrats should come with their own save program, one thing that occurs to me when you deal with AI, which is not going anywhere. Dash Action Network, my group has been working trying to get some of the companies to partner with teaching people basic AI because there's an employment problem there. If you are not adept with AI, you're going to be eliminated from the job market.

So that should be part of a democratic plan. How do you deal with that? And the affordability question, of course, is related to that. And there's no clear democratic plan out on how you deal with that, which is their core constituency. And it's a great point. And I think there's a job component to what I'm suggesting. If you have this kind of plan, but you need to take advantage of one item at Walmart and one item at Kroger's and something else at CVS, people aren't going to have the time to go to multiple locations and order online for what's available there. And you need companies like Instacart, which employ people to pull things off shells at different locations and deliver them directly to people's homes.

This would involve a huge number of employment opportunities for people being those shoppers who allow people to take advantage of where the best price is on any given thing. And I think that's one of the areas where an AI solution would drive employment. Yeah, no, I think there is an opportunity here for Democrats. Because certainly we've seen, it's swung wildly the other way on AI. But there's still ways it can be certainly embraced and used well. The new opinion piece is available online now at Newsweek. Tom Rogers, Tom, thank you so much. One more news, one more headline for you before we go.

President Trump set to tape an interview today with his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, the one-time fixer who became a vocal critic and then key witness in Trump's New York Hush Money trial. Cohen confirmed the interview will air on his WABC radio show tonight with additional excerpts going out on Sunday. The conversation will mark a remarkable thaw after years of bitter conflict. Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to financial and campaign finance crimes, including hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and lying to Congress, went on to spend more than a year in prison. He later built a podcast and book career devoted to harsh criticism of Trump, even testifying

against him in two trials that secured the Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts. But in January, Cohen suddenly did an about-face, claiming he had felt pressured and coerced by prosecutors to testify against Trump. Cohen says this will be the first public conversation between the two men and eight years. They used to be incredibly close. In fact, in the 2016 campaign, Michael Cohen would known to stream it reporters. This one included whose coverage of Trump he did not like together again. Well, that does it for us this morning.

We'll see you again tomorrow live at 6'Am Eastern for another morning, Joe. Money, power, politics with Stephanie Rule is up next on MS now after a short final break.