Morning Joe - 'Extraordinarily tone deaf': Joe slams Trump for mixed messaging on economy

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

'Extraordinarily tone deaf': Joe slams Trump for mixed messaging on economy 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.

I do want to talk about the economy, sir, here at home, and I wonder what grade you would give A plus. A plus. A plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus. Look, electric bills have gone up. Everyone's bills have either stayed the same or going higher. Grocery prices have not gone down. Everybody suffered from inflation that happened during the Biden administration. And I think the president needs to be aware. that he's a billionaire, president of the United States, and you can't gaslight people and tell them that their bills are affordable. All right, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green,

calling out President Trump on the issue of affordability. It comes as the president continues to tell Americans that prices are coming down. We're going to dig more into that in just a moment. Also ahead, we'll go through the latest in the U.S. military, an oil tanker yesterday off the coast of Venezuela. Plus, a third judge has granted a Justice Department motion to unseal grand jury materials from the Epstein files. We'll explain what comes next. Meanwhile, President Trump is already making demands in a potential major media deal between Netflix and Warner Brothers. He is weighing in. Good morning and welcome to Morning,

Joe, it is Thursday. This is a hardest day, right? You're almost a Friday, but you're not there yet. December 11th, we have Joe back with us. Glad you're feeling better. And also with us, the co-host of the 9am hour, staff writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. He's an MS now political analyst and presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author. John Meacham joins us. Joe, we have a lot to get to this morning. We have a lot to get to. I mean, we can talk about Taylor Swift's advice to Stephen Colbert that we heard on the end of way too early, which very good advice for all of us.

If you're not focusing on your, if you're type A, but you need to take a break, you know, from your, take a break from work. As Taylor said, you can still be type A, but just channel it in different directions, like making bread. or I loved her, quote, this isn't going to cross-stitch itself. So there you go. I think I may get a cross-stitch pattern, have somebody do a cross-stitch pattern for you and just put that up on your wall.

This ain't going to cross-stitch itself. I like it. I would take it. A pillow. Might be fun, exactly. And Willie, just really, we're going to get into it in a little bit, but I have been so struck over the past couple of days

about the fact that the president, Remains extraordinarily tone-deaf when it comes to the economy, giving himself, of course, which, of course, we know he would. A-plus-plus-plus-plus on the economy, when, as Vaughn Hillier told us yesterday, a lot of people in Pennsylvania really struggling. Even people who support Donald Trump and went to his rallies weren't giving him A-plus-plus-plus-plusses. And Marjorie Taylor Green talked about it there. Heating bills, electric bills, going up. grocery prices, still going up, still difficult, beef prices, just going through the roof, housing prices, the prices of cars, the prices of use cars. I could go down the line. And the fact is,

again, he has this terrible blind spot on affordability where the White House comes up with a splendid idea, hey, we'll get the president out on the road. He's not been out on the road in a really long time. We're going to get him out on the road to get him to get him to talk about affordability. And he immediately, of course, does what? He calls affordability a con job by Democrats. And then he says, you're doing better than ever before. So who are you going to believe? Donald Trump, or your lying wallets and your lying bank account? Yeah, I mean, remember, that event in the Poconos the other day was supposed to be the correction, which is a few weeks ago, there was a series, there were a series of elections where

affordability clearly was the main issue, not just here in New York City, where Zohran Mandani was elected mayor, but across the country. The price of living is too high in this country. The president's advisors reportedly got to him and said, hey, you've been saying this is a hoax. It's a democratic scan. It's actually not a lot of our people. A lot of our voters are concerned about this too. Let's go have a rally in the Poconos, and you can talk about affordability. We're going to make banners. We're going to hand out signs that everyone behind you will be holding. And as you say, he immediately got on the stage and said, there's always a hoax from these Democrats. The latest hoax is affordability.

The latest hoax is that you can't afford your life. And as we said yesterday, people walking out of that event two days ago spoke to our reporters, spoke to reporters from the New York Times across the media and said, he's wrong. That was really disappointing to hear from him because I'm here to listen to him and to hear how he's going to bring prices down. This is the thing that matters the most. And when he drifted over 90 minutes into conspiracy theories and talking about Ilhan Omar's marital history and anything else that came to his mind, they tuned out because they want to hear what he's going to do. And so yesterday, President Trump actually went out and I'm sure they got to him again and said, hey, again, this is real. He said, actually, I should get a little more time when it comes to the economy.

I inherited very simply the highest prices in history, and I'm bringing them down really fast, led by energy. And when energy comes down, everything else comes down. But I've only been here a short while, and we gave them a beautiful, beautiful thing, and they destroyed it. So prices of some items like gasoline have come down during this first term, but the overall cost of living has continued to climb for, example, as NPR points out, grocery costs are up 2.7% for the year ending in September. Electricity costs jump more than 5%. That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yesterday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the president's tariffs are impacting the central bank strategy to bring down inflation, Joe.

Yeah, and again, it's just a question of do you get it or not? And when he goes to the Poconos and he says, affordability is a con job and then follows it up. I say, Well, well, my staff are saying, I'm not supposed to say that. But it's too late. You've already said it. And you're only telling us now that if you don't say it, it's because your staff's telling you not say it. But he still believes it's a con job.

And we looked at grocery prices going up, heating bills going up, electricity going up, the cost of cars going up, the cost of how everything is, again, more of a challenge than ever, ever before. you were seeing Peter Baker, people coming out of that event, talking to Vaughn Hilliard and others, saying, you know, he just, he doesn't get it. And he's a billionaire, of course, so maybe he's not going to get it, but at least he used to pretend to get it. But again, going on conspiracy theories, doing all of these different things, again, staying away from the one thing that's really impacting these Americans. And how is it playing out? We saw, yes, we saw Zoran Mondami win. A Democrat won in New York. Okay, big shock. You see Abigail Spanberger

win by double digits in Virginia on affordability. You saw Mikey Sherrill win by double digits when many people thought that race was going to be neck and neck right up until the very end. And then, of course, Miami elects their first mayor, first woman mayor, and first Republican in a generation. All of this keeps adding up. And Republicans, Republicans understand that. They understand the president is out of touch on this key issue, and they're the ones who are suffering at the ballot box, which may be why now they're starting to talk about, hey, maybe we should do what the Democrats were asking us to do during the government shutdown. And that is provide Americans relief on the Affordable Care Act subsidies. Yeah, I mean, look, Joe, we've seen this movie before, right?

a president tries to tell Americans that they're doing better than their own lived experience seems to indicate, right? And didn't work out well for Joe Biden. And we'll see whether or not Donald Trump can shift these rules of political, you know, politics like he has so many others. But the truth is we're seeing a backlash. You look at these poll numbers. Trump is underwater on the economy. That used to be his strongest area, certainly one of his strongest areas. And one of the main things he won last year's election on, right?

Two main issues you could say that he won on. fighting inflation and fighting immigration. And I think that the fact that he has a mixed message here has not helped him. On the one hand, he says everything's fine. Affordability is a hoax. On the other hand, he says it's going to get better, just hang tight. And those are conflicting messages. One of the other might work, but he can't even stick to the same script himself.

So, I mean, lived experience will always trump what a politician tells you over the long term. And I think that's what a lot of Republicans are worried about right now. Yeah, well, to your point, Peter, the president seems to be telling Americans what to think, whether it's on the economy, saying the tariffs are helping people, farmers would say otherwise on foreign policy. He thinks the Pete Heggseth story and the possibility of accountability on potential war crimes is a dead story. He told that to a reporter and then insulted the reporter maybe to distract. And meanwhile, these ice raids and gruesome stories from across the country, keep coming, but the president has a different version of things, getting rid of the worst of the worst. And President Trump is inserting himself into even further into the current

drama surrounding the sale of Warner Brothers Discovery, saying it's cable network. CNN should be sold off as part of any deal. I think CNN should be sold because I think the people that are running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent. And that would be a factor in the decision making because you know we've got some Well in my mind But I can be talked out of that By some very talented people

That we have Antitrust people But I just think that the people That have run CNN Into the ground by the way Nobody watches very few people watch I don't think they should be entrusted With running CNN any longer

So I think any deal It should be guaranteed And certain that CNN is part of it Or sold separately, but I don't think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don't think that should be allowed to continue. I think CNN should be sold along with everything else. I mean, this is just one of those moments Sean meets him where we have to stop.

Everybody stop and draw a breath and just play the game that we love to play, what if any other president that preceded Donald Trump had ever said that a network or, you know, what if JFK had said the New York Times needs to go away? Time needs to go away. I don't like what they're writing about me. What if, you know, George W. Bush said Newsweek needs to go away. And he probably did mutter that when you were running things over there. What if any of these presidents had said this from time to time, the shock coming from all quarters would be overwhelming.

But here we have a president who is saying just that and saying CNN is untruthful and that, you know, basically tipping his hat, telling his regulators what deals to agree on and what deals not to agree on. on. And before I show you that, I want to show you what Donald Trump defines as being dishonest. This is a CNN reporter yesterday that was asking him a question, a very basic question that every reporter would ask in that same exact position about whether he's going to back off his earlier promise to release the footage regarding the September 2nd attack, which many people on Capitol Hill, including Republicans, believe may be a war crime. Let's show that exchange right here.

Mr. President, has Secretary Hex has told you why he hasn't released the video of the Second Strike? No, he hasn't told me. I thought that issue was dead. You're surprised you're bringing up. You must be, you must be CNN. Lawmakers are still talking about it on the hill. Are you seeing it?

I am with Santa. Don't you. I'm shocked to find that. But lawmakers are still talking about it on the hill. Well, I'll tell you, I don't know. know about lawmakers? Which lawmakers you're talking about... I mean, the people that you work for, the Democrats? You know, you work for the Democrats. You're basically an arm of the Democrat Party. Yeah, you know, it's so outrageous what he does there. And he's doing this more and more where somebody asks him a basic question. What about the Epstein

files? And he first says, well, nobody cares about that anymore when that's all his own people are talking about nonstop on the Hill. Or in this case, what about the September 2nd strike? Are we going to get the video like you promised us earlier this week we were going to get? And then he says, oh, wait, nobody's talking about it. No, Mr. President, everybody's talking about that on Capitol Hill. Roger Wickers talking about that on Capitol Hill with his ranking member Jack Reed. Everybody's talking about a war crime that appears to be committed. And if it wasn't a war crime, as Andy McCarthy with Fox News says, then it could be worse. It could be murder charges.

So no, no. No, nobody's forgotten this and nobody is going to forget this. But that's just background, John. That's just to explain the bad faith the president has. And what a bubble he's put around himself where a basic question that every report is asking suddenly is an excuse for him to strike out at a young reporter and say nobody's talking about that anymore. Again, when everybody is, you must be with CNN. You work for Democrats. Again, it's it's preposterous and I don't know. The question's not what the president's

going to say and do. The question is, what are the regulators going to do? What are Republicans in Congress going to do? What are the courts going to do? Are they going to do? Are they going to to allow a president to destroy a news organization simply because he doesn't like what they say about him. Because that's the direction he's headed. It is. And I mean, one of the things that I think ties several of these episodes together from the affordability and kudos to whoever came up with that framing of the issue as opposed to inflation, which feels a little more abstract. I don't know who did. But, But it's cut in.

It's become part of the conversation. President Trump has repealed virtually every law of political gravity over the last 10 years in change. Everything that you and I sit around and that Peter Baker, we all sit and say, well, because John Tyler did this, no president can do that, right? That's how we talk. It's how we think about the efficacy and prevalence of precedent. Donald Trump has repealed that, with the exception possibly of a truth that when your own people begin to turn on you, begin to disagree, that is a genuine sapping of support. And it may just be when you look at Representative Taylor Green, when you talk about the Epstein Files, and in fact, with what the CNN attack there, is something that can, in fact, lose the what we, Joe, you and I have called the Peter Millar Republicans, right? the conservative, traditional conservatives, economic conservatives, largely Reagan conservatives,

who for reasons of convenience and reflexive partisanship, have supported President Trump at least once and probably twice and maybe three times. The conservatives I know, the genuine Reagan conservatives I know, are outraged when he tries to tell universities, corporations, tell private institutions or the organic parts of civil society what to do. And that's sort of the 14.9% of his support, right? 35% is MAGA. The dispositive number of voters are the conservatives who, for reasons of convenience, decided to support him.

And it may be that the criticism from those two groups will be, will cause any political shortage for him as opposed to folks who have never been with him. You know, Willie, the challenge comes, though, and yes, as John says, the Peter Millar Republicans, the

Nantucket Republicans, all of those Republicans that sort of come and go obviously offended by much of this, whereas the Maga Republicans, yes, usually they are there and they're fierce and they're the most loyal. But there has a fight has broken out

between MAGA Republicans over anti-Semitism and it's gotten very ugly. But you also have the president talking about invading Nigeria, invading Venezuela, now threatening an invasion of Colombia. That ain't America first. That's not even close to America first. And he's running for a field of what he promised MAGA Republicans when he ran. for office in 16, 20, and 24. Yeah, massive debt and deficit tariffs, which were encountered everything a Reagan Republican would appreciate. As you say, now military adventurism in Venezuela most prominently. And we do have to give kudos to John Meacham for fitting John Tyler and Peter Ballar into the same thought. That was even for John. That was impressive. Even by his

high standard, that was something else. So Jonathan Lemire, there's always a tell, as we all know by now, when Donald Trump wants to move on from an issue, when he's uncomfortable with the question, which is attack the person asking the question and say, no one's talking about this anymore. That's a sure way to know everyone's talking about this, and he's feeling that pressure. So inside the White House, the people advising him, for example, to talk about affordability. Is there anyone who has his ear? Clearly, they pushed him out on that stage in the Poconos, and it didn't go the way they expected it would or hoped it would. Yeah, they hope that event would be a bit of a reset on the issue. It was far from that.

I mean, I think clips are already being cut there for Democratic ads going forward. There were Republicans I talked to yesterday who were pretty dismayed about the president's messaging there in the Poconos when he did his usual schick. And he just, one of his weaknesses, he can never acknowledge weakness. Everything always is great. Everything's always perfect. Everything's always the best. He can never say, actually, I hear you. I understand. Things aren't going well. He really hasn't done that since 2016. And it's gotten really bad here in this last year. Republicans fear. And I think these two, these two things are linked, this idea to try to push, try to hijack CNN. The Wall Street Journal is reported that David Ellison has promised the White

House that if he indeed does take control of Warner Brothers discovery, that he would make line up changes to CNN, like replace the leadership there. And there, we presume new on-air talent as well, new shows, because we know President Trump doesn't like some of the voices on that network, which again is in itself is a gross overreach, but also it's an effort to grow the bubble that Trump is living in, right? That's the problem here. I wrote about this a week or so ago. Republicans have been saying to me for a few weeks now, Trump only hears good news. He doesn't want to hear bad news, whether it's his media diet or the people who work for him in the White House. He's not been out in the road for months until the other night. He's not hearing the

stories. He doesn't want to engage with the stories of people who are struggling. He wants to talk to whether it's foreign leaders or billionaires at home who are telling him that everything is great. And Peter Baker, this is another effort to say, well, if we can eliminate the voices we don't like on CNN, that's another avenue from which I won't hear the bad news. I won't hear how people are struggling. I won't hear about my slipping poll numbers. And the president, it is a tell, as Willie said. He lashes out at reporters.

There's been a whole bunch lately. We should note mostly female reporters. and there is a sense here in that building that things are off track. Yeah, well, I mean, you've written about this so smartly, Jonathan. The isolation here is important, right? In his first term, he had people around him who told him things he didn't want to hear, right? He had conventional Republicans, you know, establishment Republicans, military officers, other people who were not ideologically MAGA, but we're trying to help him be successful,

who were part of his White House, part of his administration, who would at least from time to time say, hey, you know, this is what we're hearing and this is what you want to think about. He got out more. He was out on the road more. Lately this year, he's been much more inside the White House or on foreign trips, not so much, you know, talking with everyday people except for those who happen to belong to Marlago, right? And he has been, in fact, as you, I think, wrote, he's not even on Twitter so much anymore. He's on his own social media platform, which is, of course, just a reinforcement of everything he thought. That's where John Tyler went wrong, though, by the way, John each of them. I think the same thing. His social media diet was really quite limited. But, you know,

I think that for Trump, you know, he doesn't do the I feel your pain thing. That was Bill Clinton thing. He does the I feel your anger thing. And the problem is the anger right now is about something he doesn't want to admit. And by the way, Tyler would have had a second term if he had had a more robust social media diet. That's another conversation. Last point, I think not an insignificant point about this CNN deal that Donald Trump is now talking. about is that David Ellison, who runs Paramount, and is making that bid for Warner Brothers Discovery, brought on a company called Affinity Partners to back the deal. That company's run by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law.

David Ellison clearly knows how Donald Trump operates. Well, that works. Yeah. All right. Still ahead on Morning, Joe, what we're learning this morning about the United States seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Plus, health care will be a major focus for lawmakers on Capitol Hill today as Congress faces an upcoming deadline to extend Obamacare subsidies.

MS Now's Alley Vitale joins us for more on that. And as we go to break, a quick look at the Travelers' Forecast this morning from Accuethers, Bernie Rayno. Bernie, how's it looking? Mika, it is windy and cold in the Northeast on Thursday. Your Accuethers exclusive forecast showing 36 degrees, Boston, 35 New York City, flurries especially west of the I-95 corridor. Accuather, real field temperatures in the 20s. The South is looking great.

Miami sunshine, Dallas sunshine, but colder, despite the sun in Atlanta and Charlotte. Your acuether travel forecast the wind causing delays in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, make sure to download the acuether up today. Take me, take me to the riot Take me, take me to the riot Take me, take me to the riot. Take me. Do you get the sense that Republicans have a cohesive health care plan at this point?

Like, maybe not a bumper sticker, but a lengthy bumper sticker for a large car. Like, do you have an understanding of what that plan would be? Well, listen, I think that we're going to vote tomorrow on a Republican proposal that I think would help with health care costs. I mean, listen, I think at this point, let's keep it simple. Let's just let's put forward things that will lower the cost of health care. I would take that. I mean, comprehensive this, comprehensive that, that's a lot. I think with the American people won is help with health care costs.

The reason I ask, sorry, the reason I ask is because you guys came from a place of repeal and replace Obamacare, which was short, succinct, simple. And I'm wondering if that's where you think your party still is or should be. Well, I'd say all of that predates me. I mean, the Obamacare fight and everything involved with that is before my time. So I would just say that for me, I'm a simple guy and I want to keep it simple. And the question I ask myself is, will this help lower the cost of health care for the American people? And again, I'm in the all of the above category. I think we should be doing everything.

MS Now, senior Capitol Hill reporter, Ali Vitale, speaking yesterday with Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. And Allie joins us now. She's, of course, the host of way too early. MS now contributor Mike Barnacle joins the discussion as well. So, Allie, today could be a consequential day on Capitol Hill on the issue of health care. And although Mr. Holly says the issue predates him, what will they do about it? What can we expect? The issue predates him, but it doesn't really mean that the party has coalesced anymore around one central plank of what they plan to do on health care.

And that's part of what makes this moment so difficult for Republicans heading into a midterm that's likely to be about the cost of living and a huge chunk of people's expenses are health care, especially at a point where next year, Mika, we know that these premiums for those who are using ACA subsidies are spiking because the premiums are set to lapse. And so for Republicans, it's a thorny political issue teased out. in part by my conversation with Holly. But then for Democrats, they have really kept it simple. And I imagine that Chuck Schumer is going to hammer this when he comes on a little bit later today. But the idea that when we see the Senate vote a little bit later this morning,

they are going to put forward on the Democratic side, a proposal that just says, let's extend these ACA tax credits for three years. We'll talk about it then. Republicans are not on board with that. That was always true. And so we expect that proposal to fail. But then on the Republican side,

they're going to put forward something of their own. something that stays away from the ACA tax credits being expanded and instead moves towards health savings accounts and basically giving Americans money more directly to spend towards health care. That also is not likely to pass. And in fact, it's going to be interesting to see which Republican senators ultimately vote for that themselves

because it's not clear that the caucus itself is united around any one health care plan, which again brings them back to the fact that this is a party that very much wants to stick closely to what President Trump wants. But President Trump has merely said concepts of a health care plan, and that doesn't help them. Ali, appropriate that you talk to Senator Hawley, because he has been one of those Senate Republicans who stepped out in a very public way and say, we cannot let these subsidies expire, or at least we've got to come up with a different way to cover the gap. They expire in a couple of weeks, three weeks from today, I think. So there are some Republican senators who have kind of defected from the MAGA majority there and said, wait a minute, I'm not on board with this new plan.

And we've got to find a way, even if we clean up the system and get rid of fraud and change eligibility a little bit, we've got to keep some version of these subsidies in place for our voters. So what standing do they have within the Republican Party to make that happen? What you're talking about, I think, is the clearest thing for those of us on Capitol Hill, which is if you put the Venn diagram up of what Democrats want, what Republicans want, there's actually a pretty significant amount of overlap on that. And you know what would solve it? Time for negotiations.

But when you had the House that was out for the entire month of October and a bit of November during the government shutdown, one of the complaints that Republican members had was that this was wasting time negotiating on the central issue of can we save these tax credits and prevent a spike for Americans come January. That's still the problem that is in front of Senate Republicans and Democrats alike. There is a theory on Capitol Hill that may be watching both of these votes fail later today, jumpstarts negotiations anew. But again, that doesn't add any extra days to the calendar, even if it adds some momentum for the end of the year. And these kinds of negotiations take a ton of time. And just because the Senate agrees on something doesn't mean that it makes the House dynamics any easier. And those are consistently thorny as well. As multiple new proposals got put through discharge petitions overnight, those are basically meant to pressure Republican leadership to put something on the floor. But

there's not even cohesion around which discharge petition. Because right now, there's three of them and not all members are on board. Yeah, you know, and here we have the problem, Mike, where you've actually got Republicans who are finally figuring out, hey, maybe we should have gone along with the Democrats during the government shutdown. And I'd heard from Democrats.

Well, listen, if they don't go along with us, all they're doing is hurting themselves because these prices keep going up. And, Mike, even if they come to an agreement on these Obamacare subsidies, that's just a temporary fix. That's a band-aid. The bigger problem is health prices are skyrocketing, private health insurance companies are jacking up their rates. They're cutting back on coverage. They're passing on hidden costs to patients. They're actually denying services, medical intervention that doctors are saying they need medically.

And that's the world that most Americans are living in with health care insurance. And with that, you have Republicans still sticking their head in the sand. Now, this is the same Republican Party that objected to Barack Obama's Obamacare in 2010, but said, don't worry, we're going to have a replacement. We're going to repeal and we're going to replace and we're going to reform and it's going to be even better. Remember Donald Trump used to say, my health care plan is only two weeks. away. Well, here we are 15 years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and there is nothing from Republicans, there are no plans, and it is now starting to really cost them. You know, Joe, you seem to be describing in one aspect of this, an affordability crisis,

something that people have been talking about for quite some time. And the affordability crisis encompasses everything that has to do with leading a normal life. in the United States of America. And it occurs to some people, you know, that there are two great eras in this country politically that you can really measure. One occurred starting in 1932 with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The other started in 1964 with Lyndon Johnson's great society. And now we are living in a country that has drastically changed daily, I think, from the era's started in 1932 and 1964. And John Meacham, the question to you is the changes that are being wrought in this country, many of them being led by the President of the United States, who is enforcing a policy that if it conducts itself the way he is described it,

will result in the new phrase America alone on the global stage, having less to do with the fact that millions of Americans are perhaps three weeks away from having no health care. or paying exorbitant monies unless they fix this problem. Millions of Americans. What is going on with our democracy? Well, the democracies are the fullest expression of all of us. The great thing about American democracy has been that, as you say, in 32 and 64, I would argue the Reagan era as well had a renewal of confidence,

just to make sure it's not an entirely a democratic vision of the century. But what you have at the moment is a long-term, long-simmering anxiety, that fear is more than anxiety. It's a fear that tomorrow will not be better than today. And in that kind of moment, when there is a disorientation and a loss of confidence, people do, not trust a system. They don't respect an arena when they don't believe that arena or that system can produce good results for death, right? That's kind of a fundamental. I think that's the most direct answer to your question, Mike, is the norms of democracy that folks like us talk about are not dispositive, are not respected as much.

when those norms and that democracy is not producing opportunities for prosperity and a sense of security for folks who are not particularly well connected. This is an ancient populist drama. I do not believe that President Trump and Andrew Jackson have as much in common as President Trump and Steve Bannon and others think. but it is true that when you don't trust that the world that you see that's in authority is delivering for you, you react. And that's what I think the last 10 years has been. And it may be that we have a situation where if the president can't deliver, he might be consumed by those same forces. Well, one of the biggest problems here, Mika, is you actually have in this health care issue.

You have three things coming together. You have affordability, obviously, because Americans can't afford their health care. That's number one. Number two, you have the issue of the rich, getting richer. You look at what executives make and why they make it and how much they make it. Private health insurance companies making more money every year. And third, and this is a real problem, you look at what people are seeing, working Americans are seeing, as corporate greed. When you have somebody going into their doctor's office and the doctor prescribes them treatment, and the doctor prescribes them medication, and they come home to find out that those treatments are denied.

And that denial, make no mistake of it, that denial only adds to the corporation's bottom line. Now, this is not populism. This is not demagoguery. This is Econ 101. And even though I slept through that class at the University of Alabama, even I understand, this is a political crisis because it does touch on affordability. It touches on corporate greed, and it touches on the rich getting richer while you have people that live in central Pennsylvania who aren't able to give their children basic health care needs. Yeah. And another thing is the news conference yesterday was another display of confusion in terms of if you're the viewer listening to them. The president was talking about these visas that people pay corporations pay a million dollars for, whatever the number is, to get, and this was a person next to him sitting a member of his administration saying to get the best people into this country and not the people coming from countries who may actually have them living off our doles. I mean, they said it right out loud. Oh, wait, wait, you mean, Mika, wait, you mean people living off our dole like a 19-year-old woman?

that leaves Babson University to go down to visit her parents over Thanksgiving and then comes back to complete her degree. She got here when she was seven years old and then got got handcuffed and shackled. Oh, are those the people you want to get rid of? Because that's who Christy Gnome is getting rid of right now. That's who Steve Miller is getting rid of right now. That's That's the person that they think is causing Americans great, great troubles. And it's just, it's obscene. Yeah, you're talking about the ice raids that we're seeing across the country. And here yesterday, they were talking about who to let in.

And then the optics, finally, of all of this, these glitzy parties at Marilago, where Donald Trump is hanging out with the special ones who get by. because maybe they have money or they, you know, take an oath, the oath to Trump. But mostly the broligarchy or whatever it's called. But these parties are glitzy and, again, not in tune with where the American people are today. And I wonder if that will be felt at the ballot box. Mika, that Trump gold card you're talking about cost $1 million. It is a million.

So if you have a million dollars right to the front of line. Right. So if you're a company, you can send some. someone here. We can get, and literally that million dollars buys what the president was presenting yesterday at the news conference, the best people. So it's turning what the whole story of America is upside down here. A presidential historian, John Meacham, thank you very much for coming on this morning. And Ali Vitale, thank you as well for your great reporting this morning. And coming up, the central bank announces its third consecutive cut to interest rates. But the decision

has highlighted new division within the Fed. Wake up the kids. Steve Radner has his charts. He joins us next on Morning Joe. Our rate should be the lowest rates in the world because all these countries that you see, you know, with low rates, many of them are low because of us because they suck so much money out of us.

But that's not happening anymore. we should have the lowest rates in the world. And without us, none of them really exist as an economy. It's President Trump speaking yesterday after the Fed Reserve reduced interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, the Fed's third cut in a row. Joining us now with charts on what it all means. Former Treasury official, Morning Joe Economic analyst, Steve Ratner. Steve, good morning.

Always good to see you over at the wall in front of the charts. So let's just start with the baseline fact. Quarter of a point, the Fed says don't expect too much. much more next year, maybe modest cuts, but what do you make of the number yesterday? Yeah, Willie, so they, as you say, they cut it by a quarter of a point. You can see that here. You can see the three cuts that they've done so far this year here as well. And you can see they did four cuts back last year. But what's interesting about it is that the Fed is only projecting one cut for next year down to here. These are different projections it makes at different times

during the year, but basically they end up right down here. So it's a fairly modest further path for interest rates. And there is a lot of dissension on the Fed at the moment. You have a bunch of Fed governors and bank presidents who basically think the economy is pretty strong and we shouldn't be cutting interest rates anymore. And then you have the president who you just heard saying that he thinks rates should be dramatically, dramatically lower. And he did put one of his people on the Fed so that you had dissents, very unusual for the Fed to have a lot of dissents, but you had one dissent by the president's appointee arguing for deeper cuts, and you have two dissents arguing for small or no cut in this particular meeting.

And so when thinking about what the Fed may do next, may do next year, we go to your second chart, Steve, and they do make an economic forecast, along with this announcement of a rate cut. How does the Fed project our economy to look going into next year? Yeah. So why is the Fed gotten more reticent about cuts? And the answer is because, interestingly, it has been raising, it has raised its projection for GDP growth. And you can see that here. The Fed makes projections every quarter, and this is what they were thinking back in December 24 and March and June, when this was after Liberation Day and they thought the economy was really

going to slow down, then they thought it was going to speed up a bit. And now they've become quite optimistic about the pace of economic growth. They've become a little bit more optimistic about inflation. I will explain why, because these are obviously good news, but they have become no more optimistic about the jobs market. They expect the unemployment rate to hang in around the 4.4% rate. They actually raised it very slightly in this meeting, and this is up from a low of 3.4% we had before.

So what we have going on here, which I'll explain in the next chart, is an unusual economy in which you're getting a substantial amount of economic growth. Inflation is coming down, but there's really nothing good, happening in the jobs market. And we've talked a lot about the difficulties, especially for young people trying to find their first job at the moment. So, Steve, we really don't know, do we, though, the situation regarding the job market. And that's something that Chairman Powell suggested yesterday. We're still really whistling in the dark. And he said it might be even worse than the numbers suggest. That's right, Joe. And so let's move over here. Now, of course, because of the

government shutdown, we don't have all of the numbers, most recent numbers. But ADP, the big payroll processing company, does estimate, not estimate, they do their own survey and they get pretty good numbers. And you can see the enormous slowdown here in the monthly job creation numbers, the point where now we've had a couple of months of jobs actually being lost. And to your point, in addition to all this, Chairman Powell said yesterday that he thinks, and his staff, his economist, he's got 900 economists, think that these numbers could be overstated by as many as 60,000 jobs a month. So what's going on out there? What's going on out there appears to be that companies are becoming more productive, that they're able to produce more with fewer workers.

So they're cutting back on their hiring, and they're producing more. And the GDP numbers look good, inflation numbers look good, the jobs numbers look not so good. The other thing that is, causing this to happen, of course, is AI, both in terms of its impact on economic growth and its impact on jobs. If you look down here, you can see that historically over this period of time, AI investment as a share of GDP growth was bouncing around the 10% level. That was pretty typical. In the first half of this year, it's 31%. So this 31% is powering this GDP growth, which is what's causing the Fed to become more restrained. They're only projecting one interest rate cut next year. And it is also producing some of these productivity improvements that are allowing

that are allowing companies to get by with fewer workers, or at least not with more workers, and that is creating this weakness in the job market. It's a very unusual economy. I can't, every economic cycle is different. I can't say I've seen one quite like this before. Well, and adding to that, I'm curious, Steve, where do we stand with the tariffs? The president and the administration says it's a windfall for the economy. What's the impact right now on the economy? Well, the tariffs are bad, from my point of view anyway. They do raise prices. They are the equivalent of a sales tax on Americans. But what's happened so far is the president has been negotiating these different tariff agreements. And so they've been coming down

slightly. It's also been true that they have been passed on a bit less to consumers than many of us feared. A lot of it's being absorbed by the countries where they're being exported from. Some of it's being absorbed by the companies that are importing it, and some of it is getting passed along to the consumers. The whole tariff battle seems to have quieted down for the moment, except in certain particular sectors like soybeans and things like that. Right. Morning Joe, economic analyst. Steve Ratner, as always, thank you so much. Mike? You know, the charts are really interesting. And Peter Baker, if you were paying attention to the charts, as I was, and I assume you are too. You know, there's this one

aspect of the economy that is hard to measure by any poll or any chart, I think, and it is the startling level of hopelessness among young people, many of them college graduates age 20 to 25 to 27, who are out there floating around in a jobless world. And I'm just wondering what you think the impact of their feeling and the lives they're leading will have on our politics as we move forward. Yeah, I think you're right to point that out. I think it's very tough. I've got a college-age student son.

We spent a lot of time this fall, actually, on a college campus with some younger people. And they definitely feel some sense of anxiety to use John Meachon's word, fear, perhaps, about the future. They don't know where it's going. They don't know what they're going to do in order to be as successful and prosperous as their parents and grandparents were. They don't know how to be able afford a house. They don't know how to be able to, you know, afford insurance. This is, this stuff is really hard. And I think it's that disconcert, that sense of disconcerting look at the future

makes them politically more volatile than a lot of previous generations have been. They're not voting the way their parents did. They're voting for their own future. New York Times, Chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. Thank you, as always, for coming on the show this morning. We appreciate it.